Day 1 in the can

Wednesday was the first proper day of filming. The dossier is proving to be indispensible and is filling up quickly with notes and phone numbers. Aut the Intern was supposed to show up at 10am but after a courtesy text, he strolled into the lobby around 10:30. We went on a raging tear the night before and if it wasn't for the jetlag, 10am would've seemed entirely absurd anyway. The night before Aut bought us some Thai brandy called Regency. We cut it with water and slammed it. Mostly it was me and Aut, Morgan had tapped out after the highballs we had at the hotel just prior. We split the flask about halfway down the middle which is notable only because I outweight Aut by 100 pounds or so. We ordered frog legs and squid but they must've been out of frog legs at the time so they just brought us a plate of deep fried rodent bones instead. Delicious all the same.
We humped through the Bangkok humidity for a few hours with Morgan keeping the red light vigil with his Sony DV. We got some great footage which will help add some texture to this thing. There are about 10 distended bug bites on my legs that itch ferociously.
We applied for visas at the Vietnam embassy. You have to leave your passport there which naturally grates the instincts, but I guess this is how these things are managed. That may pose something of a problem, as I just found out today that I need my passport to rent the wireless lav mics. The date we need the mics and the date I get my passport are fairly close together but for the time being I will remain optimistic. We need them by November 4, which is the first day of the Asian Human Resource Development Conference, which Gary will be attending. The passports are also scheduled to be ready on the 4th. I'll keep you posted.
After the embassy Aut took us up to the National Palace via boat ride. Morgan hung the unit out over the side of the rig. It took some minor storm surge, which was promptly wiped off. Hopefully it won't cause any problems.
We wandered over to Kohsan Road, the notorious big tent freak show of through hikers, whores, lepers, scammers, lovers and saints. We sat and ordered a pitcher of Singha and watched the evening fade to night. The beer tastes good when you earn it. When you earn it in Thailand making movies, just how any honest man should. It was a nice place to sit and watch the people pass and that's what we did.
Then Aut led us to a thai restaurant that was cheap and good. I got some type of penut pork hot plate. Best goddam Thai food I ever had. Hell, best food I ever had. I thought a hooka might be a nice thing then, so we wandered over to a back alley mafia hooka joint that Aut knew. It was down a long hall lit with naked flouresent bulbs and up 3 flights of stairs. The place opened up to a huge rooftop bar, open to the sky around the edges. We sat in the corner and ordered an apple hooka and 3 gins for the table. It was 8pm on a Wednesday so the place was quiet. A couple white guys were setting up to play a set later in the evening. In the meantime, odd music pumped through the bar and into the humid night. Mostly American music from the last 15 years. Stuff like Maroon 5 and Sixpence None The Richer. Everything was alright and we had an ok time. A few sex tourists wandered in with their hires. Pasty looking white dudes from Australia or Europe. One ordered a blended drink, deep tourquoise in color. Maybe that doesn't tell his life story but it probably comes pretty close.

The sweet smokey apple shisha burned and drifted like a friendly ghost. The lights were colored and the gin was cold. The breeze cut the Bangkok humidity and we all sang along with deep passion and true belief as the band played Hallelujah.

Breakfast in Bangkok

To Chicago it was 90 minutes. Took about 13 hours to get to Tokyo. Then an easy five hour saunter to Bangkok. All in all it was a wonderful 30 hours of constant low-grade stress and discomfort, with regular intervals of terrible food served hot as hell. Luckily our agent Peter Mills secured us exit row seating on both of the long flights. I guess I could've been crushed between two American type II's for 13 hours. I guess that could've been a scenario. Or I could've been forced to sit next to Gary for a plane ride of any duration. The only comfort there is, at 38,000 feet, maybe it's easy to feel closer to God.
The continental breakfast is included with the 1280 baht a night rate here at the Reno. The breakfast was simple and good. Morgan had a fried egg and a sausage that was a shade of bright pink I had never before encountered. Astonishing. There are a grip of French nationals swaggering around and saying bonjour to the locals and the chairs and the walls. Anything that will listen, really.
Morgan just came bouncing down the stairs to the lobby and declared that he just took a massive dump in the utter pitch black of the bathroom in room 340. I think he's in the throes of a jetlag-induced dimensia that is not to be dismissed lightly. He just spent the last 40 minutes studiously transcribing simple Thai phrases onto a napkin. I'll have to keep an eye on him and hope this thing doesn't turn seriously weird.
Now we're off to the gear shop to secure a rental on a couple microphones and see about a few other things besides. Interviews with the interns will be happening in the next couple days. Cross your fingers. It's humid as a pistol here in Bangkok proper, and you can cut the heat with a bayonet.

Strawberry Pancakes with Ang

Production: Day 2. Through a combination of Capture Features business cards on 80 pound stock, Morgan's guerrilla sweet talk, and my second-hand teal necktie tucked into my shirt, we managed to secure an entire section of The International House of Pancakes for a key interview. It was across the street from what looked to be the main entrance of THE MALL OF AMERICA, where Angella Meyer punches in for one of her three jobs. Ang called and said she would be showing up at 10:30, a half hour later than planned. This worked out beautifully, as Morgan and I debated heatedly in the middle of IHOP for 20 minutes on the merits of versatility vs. gorgeous depth of field in the shot. The latter involves an artillery cannon of a lens on the end, which made me uncomfortable. Ultimately I convinced Morgan that this war would be won with boots on the ground.
Ang showed up and ordered strawberry pancakes. I had a quick breakfast of eggs and a couple strips of bacon and some hash. Deborah was our waitress. She was entirely accommodating and used to be something of a rock star in another life. She said our story was every story, from the brief clippings of conversation she gathered in coffee refills and more orange juice. I smiled and thanked her and we left a $37 tip.
Ang was quite talkative and thoughtful, which made my job much easier. The Family Meyer has entrusted us with their pain and their joy and it's quite humbling. Just keep your tie tucked in and your hair greased and hang on.
New content on the website. Don't forget to stock up on Absinthe Decanters for Halloween, which is right around the corner. $80,000 may seem like a lot to spend on decanters, but depending on the size of your neighborhood, I don't really see what other options you have. If you run out and shut your lights off at 9:30, you'll be cleaning rotten eggs off your Saturn all Saturday morning.

Peter the grip-warrior

We're really getting into it now. The call sheet is done. I sent it to Morgan but he's having rotten luck opening the file. He's been terribly busy with chopping firewood and elaborate ritualistic mid-morning egg breakfasts lately. Plus this unseasonable cold snap we're having took him off guard and killed all the newborn calves and he's gone to pieces over that. He said he can't even look at veal parmigiana anymore.
Gary has a handwritten itinerary ready to spring on us in Minneapolis. We're going to the University, the zoo, and possibly even a liquor store. There will be bonfires and cookouts. I

rented a car and got me and Morg a room at the renowned Minneapolis Raddison-Mall of America/Airport. It received an average rating of two stars. One for me and one for Morgan. At any rate, it will hopefully afford us a little more control over the production process. Last time we stayed in Gary's room. Morgan had to sleep on a suspect mattress in a dark enclave and I crashed on Gary's queen size. Luckily Gary sleeps like a cadaver. You just roll yourself against the wall and pray for daylight. See? Easy.
I've been making a few preparatory calls out there to the midwest and we may have to run a bit of a shadow operation to get all the interviews we need. Sometimes separating truth from legend can be a delicate surgical process. Other times you just get in there and kick a few walls down.
Speaking of legend, I'm flying in renowned olde world chandelier repairman Peter Mills for the Minneapolis phase of production. He will be working for us as an audio consultant, regional location coordinator and B&B manager. He will also do some agenting and deal-making while in town.
Mean Dean the Vespa is packed away in the back of the garage. Lar will fire it up once a week and let her idle for 15 minutes to keep the pipes greased and the battery juiced.
I must go to the bank today for $1000 dollars in traveler's cheques and 200 in cash.
I woke up this morning and everything was frozen and dead. Time to be gettin on to more accommodating climes.
Lar is driving me to Albany tomorrow at 3:45am.

Fine by me.

Name me one other country on the globe where you can find a rhinestone encrusted hand grenade for sale for the bargain basement price of $300USD. you cant do it. Doesnt exist. America? Sure we're in a rough patch. American Dream? Well that's just fine by me. 20 dollars worth of stones and a bottle of superglue and I was smiling too bob. Get in the car we're going to Wendy's.

Reed Places a Telephone Call to New England

I got the grenade done. There must be 400 rhinestones on that thing. All superglued on. One just fell off when I picked it up but that was an isolated incident I'm sure. Now available for purchase at Reed's Haberdashery.
One week out. There must be things to do to get ready for a trip like this but you get close enough to the journey and it's like staring through a dirty curtain at a roomful of angry demons. The terror grips you and your brain goes cold and numb. Everything turns blurry and all you can hear is the air conditioner and that's all you want to hear. I made a list with a bunch of check boxes next to things like ''vote' and 'traveler's cheques'. And wash the sheets. There's super glue on the sheets. The next two months will be illuminated with very important questions that must be asked and must be answered.

Morgan sent me a few shirts to pass around to people. I got two left, I figure I'll give them to the VP and the Business Development guy down at the mill. It was an honest job and sometimes all a guy needs is a chance. You could let a beard grow there and wear any color socks you wanted and there wasn't any hassles.

Reed called last night and held forth for 40 minutes in the proud tradition of the felonious bloviator that he practically invented.

Autoclave monthly

I got Morgan a subscription to Autoclave Monthly. He was very grateful. I figure we could both do for some light reading on the 12 hour plane ride from Minnesota to Tokyo . It’s a strange thing to have been on a plane for seven hours and check your flight progress on the monitor to see there’s still five hours of flight time. It’s impossible to understand on any meaningful level. Time becomes unhinged in a blur of hard sun and black desolation and those depraved smut films so ubiquitous in international air travel. Survival is reduced to the delicate dance with the single serving Jack Daniels bottle. An instant of hesitation will leave you in a seizure of blood clots, vertigo and diabetes. Keep the blood thin and the wheels greased. This bird could drop an engine at any second.

Morgan bought a microphone for his iPod yesterday. Now we’ve got an iPod that grabs audio for when a camera isn’t practical, like when the Vietnamese border police confiscate all our gear and throw us in a leech pit. Not because we bombed the hell out of them 40 years ago, but because we ostensibly trashed their economy last week. The domino effect is back and now the bones are falling the other way after these greedhead money whores on Wall Street turned the global economy into the grandest Ponzi scheme ever conceived. Make $300,000 a week working from home. I got six-hundred dollars for my scrap gold.

Saw Hearts and Minds last night. The marionettes are new but the lies are still the same. We have to show them that America is still Good.

Little Peter Needs to Fly

I bought Peter's plane ticket today. Pete's freecard is maxed out but we needed him in Minneapolis to be the first assistant grip. You always feel rotten buying plane tickets. Thousands of dollars to languish in a cramped child-king's throne made of cheap Styrofoam and cheesecloth, sucking down filth and disease from tainted blower units that should've been replaced back before things got bad. Buying other people's plane tickets is even worse. Never mind that noise though; Stephenson paid for most of my ticket to Bangkok, and Morgan's ticket too. And Stephenson hasn't even met Morgan. Not yet anyways. Imagine buying a plane ticket to Bangkok for a guy you never met. Nightmare.

Also, Peter's old man has a spare Saturn out in the barn that sweet Pete can drive us around in for the week. Save us the hassle of getting a rental car. And with any luck, kind Mrs. Mills will fix us up a hot plate of that Beef Stroganoff I've heard so much about.

I wrote a letter to the upstanding Senator from Virgina, Jim Webb. Hell of a guy. A writer before anything. After you're done here how bout you do yourself a favor and click your way on over to amazon and drop a couple Webb books in your shopping cart. Anyways, I'd like to sit down with him and Reed for 20 minutes. There's a lot of common ground there. So I mailed Senator Webb the letter and a copy of the DVD. My buddy in corporate law down in DC said don't even bother, it takes six months for Senators to get mail on account of the Anthrax screening and by that point we'll all be dead anyways. $2.09 in postage doesn't seem an obscene price for this quixotic request and besides I saved the receipt. Morgan expense me buddy.