No work, no hope for work, like every day's Sunday.

Sunday morning and it's grey and crappy and Mr. Moose was supposed to surf but no one knows where he is and the house is still a mess and the pirate bar ain't even up yet and I don't have any work on the horizon. 

Sigh.

At least I've got my health.

Peace out, bitches.

And I half expected it to be made of wood.

Ahhhh! I awoke to Melah and the midget getting ready for school and thought, "How sweet, domestic tranquility." I then proceeded to do my usual morning yoga and decided to start rearranging stuff so I could fully move in. All I can say is I am now more than a little frustrated and I'm going for a surf.

I mean really! Video cassettes with no cases and DVDs from Netflix of movies that came out two years ago and were probably ordered two years ago. DVDs sitting around scratched to hell, dust everywhere. Papers everywhere. Pens! There are enough pens stuck into every nook and cranny in this place to open a fucking Staples. And everywhere little notes and piles of obvious recyclable papers. I don't even know where to start. It makes no sense.

Update:

I have stomped on the terra! Also, I've trod upon some recycling, skipped along some junked furniture, and generally began rearranging this mess into a co-mingling of households and sensibilities. The garage doesn't look like much right now but soon, real soon Ralph, it will be a clubhouse. What do you think, pirate theme or hunting lodge theme? Also, Jitlada Thai Food is straight from heaven and if you're in LA go there immediately and order... anything? It's very good and captain insane-o hot. The Mad Turk took me there so you know it's gotta be good.

Peace out, bitches!

How stupid do you want me to be?

I woke up at 3am and thought, "What the fuck am I doing with my life?" Yep, early call this morning for a project of eminent cultural import: the president of El Pollo Loco was available for a commercial! Hoorah! Up with America! Damn the recession? Yeah, this was one of those jobs where you show up and realize that you're a fucking mercenary and as long as the kroners/doubloons/pesos/francs/marks/dollars are flowing you will stay. You will stay and jump through flaming hoops, run through a mine field, or jump around like a monkey as the only 1st AC with four cameras. Thank me lucky charms, J-Boogie was there and made it all bearable. It wasn't the worst day but it certainly did blow having to get up before the sun so we could load in and get lit. I personally don't think we needed to be there that early but what the fuck do I know. We came, we saw, and we kicked out a commercial in just under ten hours and I bailed.

Sucks to be me: got home after picking up and dropping off various and sundry bits and pieces of gear and came back to my new home with girlfriend and promptly became depressed. The place is a mess and I have no idea where to start as my idea of firebombing the whole place and then moving my stuff in was met with resistance. I don't know what it is but Melah just didn't like my particular spin on integrating our design ideas. No matter. We sussed it out tonight while being seduced by Bourdain in Vietnam and I now have a nice little list of crap to move prior to going to work tomorrow afternoon. Yay! I have a mission! Like I said, sucks to be going out with me.

Peace out, bitches!

Mr. Torrance, I see you can hardly have taken care of the business we discussed.

Working in an airport is the funniest thing. Everyone there is in transit and looks at a movie crew with the sort of bemused detachment that befits the harried traveler. By this I mean, what better to distract one from the unpleasantness of modern American air travel than a bunch of clowns with lights and cameras and action? We must look like monkeys, recently escaped mendicants, or possibly petty street thugs with nothing to do except muck it all up for everyone else. The people that work at the airport here in Seattle acted like we might be trying to smuggle uranium aboard an outbound flight. We're shooting in a bathroom for fuck's sake! Clearly none of us are of the caliber or in possession of the requisite contacts to even begin to dream about maybe one day doing something that crazy and lucrative. I push the green button and spin the white wheel and someday someone sees the results of this and maybe someone gets and award and maybe not but someone else definitely says, "Fucking boring commercials!"

Ah, at least it's beer-thirty and maybe I'll see something interesting. At the very least I made my shekels, saw some of Seattle, and stayed in a nice hotel. Not bad, not bad at all.

Peace out, bitches!

Baby, I think we associate with a very unstable group.

Last night was hilarious! I found a restaurant up here immediately after booking the job. It had received a glowing review in the LA Times food section so, fuck it, why not try it out? Right? Right. Genius move. Cascina Spinasse is one of those crazy finds that leave you feeling like maybe there is such a thing as God and maybe it likes me. Maybe it really likes me! The food was phenomenal! The space is small and cozy and the gaffer and I sat at the marble bar and proceeded to eat like Kings. The kitchen is open and mellow and staffed by several full-on culinary geniuses. I started off with a gin and tonic so good it made me want to slap myself. Aviation Gin, if you can find it, is worth it no matter what they're trying to charge you. Hook it up, for reals. We were given little toast points, two with rabbit liver pate and two with fontina and anchovy and while I normally don't really like anchovy these were so mouthwateringly good I was tempted to ask for another round. I ordered a glass of 2006 Gavi and was pleasantly surprised at its balance of fruitiness and crispness. Goddamn, a good glass of wine is such a wonderful thing and it went really well with the salami and roasted leeks I inhaled. The gaffer ordered a heirloom chicory salad with pheasant reggiano and aged balsamic vinegar and it was beyond good. Both of our starters were lick the plate good. Wine finished and onto a glass of 2007 Arneis that blew me away. Totally different taste than the Gavi of course, and equally well balanced and perfectly matched to the reason I was here: pasta! Wonderful, divine, beautiful handmade fresh pastas! The chef/owner, Justin Neidermeyer, trained in Italy for a year before embarking on becoming an amazing pasta chef. I don't know when he opened Spinasse but it is one of the best Italian joints I've ever been in as it's authentic. Light touches on everything, no heavy sauces and bullshit. It's pure. I ordered the ravioli stuffed with spinach and served up with sage butter and toasted pine nuts. The gaffer got the maltagliati with chickpeas and thick chunks of pancheta. We ate like Kings, I tell ya! At this point I was feeling well stuffed and happy and decided to get dessert: a small chocolate terrine that absolutely killed. Soft, moist, full of chocolate heaven. 

Up to this point things were going great. Then this happened:

Yes, that's right, I went and ruined a perfectly good meal by drinking Pastis. It's not that the Pastis was bad or didn't go with the meal. It's more that drinking Pastis leads a man to make bad decisions, which we wholeheartedly proceeded to do. Witness the following photos and know this: we walked everywhere we went, covering some four miles, and we ended the night drinking with the bartenders at a place called The Funhouse. If you have any questions about the following photos please feel free to not ask me and simply make up your own answers.

Peace out, bitches!

I'm in command of this submarine, and I am not sticking another torpedo up that spout...

It's 11am and I find myself in Seattle, Washington on the fifth floor of the Arctic Club Hotel in room 520. I am very pleased with all of this, of course, and am being paid to be here so I'm even financially pleased with all of this.

The Arctic Club is done up, not surprisingly, to look like an explorer's club: large leather seats, excessive black and white portraits of men with moustaches, dark wood, endless maps, etc. I love it, I want to come back here already and I just set foot in the place. I'm now going to explore downtown Seattle and find Pike's Place Market as I'd very much like to intercept a fish.

Update: 1:46pm

So Pike's Place Market is one of the coolest places to go if you're hungry and into good, locally made food and spirits. I walked around, fell instantly in love with the place and it's history (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_Place_Market), and couldn't decide where to eat. Seriously, you could spend a week, three meals a day, and never eat at the same place. So cool, so local, so good, so what? I decided I'd like to do a sample lunch so I bought a salami from a local producer, cheese made by a bunch of talented women, fresh baked bread, and a glass of Pinot Grigio from upstate Washington, and one of the best apples I've ever had. Nice lunch. I sat in a coffee house and listened to some jazz and decided that if global warming helps this place out I might have to move.

So I saw this sign and started salivating but decided that patience was the better option. Perhaps I'll visit the pub a bit later. I do have reservations at an Italian joint later and was told by one of the barristas at one of the six Starbucks I passed that the Funhouse was the place to go. Music and booze in Seattle? What could go wrong?

Peace out, bitches!

I heard the music of true forgiveness filling the theater, conferring on all who sat there, perfect absolution.

On Saturday I attended the funeral of an 88 year old man who I had never met. He was a father, grandfather, great-grandfather, war hero, outdoorsman, painter, and a racist. An unrepentant racist, as far as I could tell. His equally old wife is also a racist but she will soon die as well. I was at the funeral because the dead man in question was my girlfriend's grandfather. He apparently never let my girlfriend's black father into his home or spoke to him or acknowledged the marriage and the two children it produced until the marriage ended. Interesting.

According to the people gathered in the hundred year old church in Santa Paula this man was a gentle angel. I wonder how many of them are also consumed by irrational hate.

I also went to a baby shower in Eagle Rock. Strange day, Saturday.

Peace out, bitches!