Tuesday Night, July 22nd...2008

What's the word this evening?

Dog barking down on the street, open windows blowing a cooler air throughout the apt., and me in a sweater and sweatpants, looking forward to the deep sleep the cool air and my down comforter and clean sheets will provide. Got home after 8pm -- and at that point, 2 phone conversations later, it truly is time for bed. Staring at the canvas bag my parents got me for Christmas. It has my initials..RTH...it's really RHT but the T gets the middle placement. T for Taufen. It's cream and navy and the canvas is canvas colored -- a beige/cream. It fits my computer bag and all my pens and books and mail that I end up mailing and also anything I need to bring in for the day. Just now, staring at my initials, I had a moment of seeing something familiar -- but almost as if they were the intials of someone else. I'm sure that makes no sense, or perhaps it's some subliminal thing about me recognizing the unique individual I am -- full of power and ability.

Mintilligan sent me a disturbing article today about doctors at the University of Pittsburgh having found real evidence of cell phone usage causing brain cancer -- especially being detrimental to young children whose vital organs are still developing. This doesn't surprise me. I mean, it makes perfect sense that if the technology is strong enough to beam your voice over thousands of miles without being plugged into anything, or send and receive emails at a constant stream, or connect to the world wide web on your handheld device, it makes perfect sense that the strength of those rays moving through dense brain tissue might have an adverse effect in their effort to keep moving and carry the information.

Today The Movie Star (let's just call him #1 -- as that's his number on the call sheet) was the only cast member called to set. We did more complicated stunt rigs and a lot of running and gunning in the Archives. Rattler dealt with re-writing the denoument by incoporating the work from Saturday's rehearsal with touch-ups from the writer in LA and finally by adding his own spin (having gotten input from #1) to the dialogue. Had a couple good highlights today: movie star being friendly with me, call from Anna about someone who really loved what I did with Kitty, but the highlight viscerally, in the moment -- was when I brought my chicken scrawl/blocking notes to Grant in the Art Department and gave him the first 2 beats of the scene, which he and Claude both were missing. I liked being able to talk through the action, what motivated which character to move and when, etc. I stared at the Art Department's architectural layout of The Castle set and noticed the shapes that represented a character entrance. In fact, although the lines were prettier, the method was the same in that the blocking, and the moments are made into a KEY or a map for what happens when.

So that was fun, hearing myself talk and explain. Getting lunch for Rattler today was a chore because they went 20 minutes over and keeping the food hot was a near impossibility. Today I wore my COMANCHE BUFFALO black and white hat, a longsleeve black shirt, my orange scarf from J-Miss -- and my glasses. When someone asked me about the Comanche Buffalo (and they did) I just said: "I've seen one up close."

And I have... at the Witchita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Lawton, OK. Large, hairy, thick looking animals with crimpted hair that hangs down over their massive hides and sometimes even falls in a strange wave before their eyes. Their eyes...like a whales. Big, human like, stoic, and sweet.