It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

I'm deeply entrenched in week 4 of unemployment - or "funemployment" as many friends have insisted I'm in - and living like this certainly has its highs and lows. It's funny, really, because when I first got into the DGA training program, my parents and I scoured the internet for anything and everything about the program. At the time, all we could find was someone's blog about how, as a trainee, you are shackled to the program - "can't even go to your brother's wedding," was how the blogger put it I recall. And yet I've had ample opportunity to travel, take time off, enjoy responsibility-free living (sidebar: I conveyed the same sense of amazement to the program administrator the other day and she said that that blogger likely had gone through the LA program...).

Regardless, after a week skiing in Colorado with the fam, I stopped briefly in Pittsburgh to watch the Super Bowl with the folks I spent each Sunday with during the regular season, before heading back up to New York to move back into my apartment.

And what a time to be in New York! When I got back, the murmurs around town were that Jeremy Lin, a classmate of mine in college, had just been called from the Knicks bench and had tacked up a gaudy line against the Nets. Cool, I had thought. Little could I imagine how the whole thing would play out. Game after game, the legend of Lin built. It finally hit me last Thursday - after he had scored 25 against soon-to-be-BK, 28 against the Jazz, and 23 at the Wizards - as I was sitting in my favorite gourmet mac-n-cheese place. The guy sitting at the table next to me was regaling his girlfriend with Lin exploits with an enthusiasm so utterly childlike it could only be matched by the fact that he was slurping mac-n-cheese. I decided immediately that I had to see Jeremy play before the clock struck midnight, leaving a slackjawed MSG collectively holding an empty black Nike sneak.

So I convinced (not really sure if that's the right word since he agreed to it pretty willingly) my buddy to accompany me to the Laker game to try and scalp tickets. Without needing to go into too much detail on how we got the tickets*, we made our way in. And what a show! Every time Jeremy flinched, the decible level in the place peaked. It was a madhouse. But the interesting thing that my buddy - who was my co-editor of the sports page of the college paper and so we had seen Jeremy play a lot - and I both noticed was that the moves he was pulling weren't necessarily anything we hadn't already seen him do against the likes of Boston College (fortunately, as I later found, Tommy Amaker validated our assessment on the Boomer & Carton show). The only difference was he was busting these moves out on the likes of Kobe freakin' Bryant. It's just a joy to see.

*No, I'm still not going to go into detail on how we got the tickets, but I needed to force a segue into why I felt capable of making such an investment. As soon as I had gotten back into the city, I stopped by the DGA office to debrief with the program administrator. She had gotten positive reviews from my Pittsburgh employers that she wanted to share, and I was hoping to gather some intel on my future prospects. She confirmed my worst fears that I probably won't get my next assignment until well into March (pilot season, baby!) but before I left, she asked if I'd like to work on a commercial. "Sure," I said. "When?"

"Tomorrow. I'll let the production manager know. She'll get in touch with you about the details."

"Tomorrow...? Cool..."

I got a call no less than 10 minutes later. "Be there at 5:30am." Yikes!

That being said, the job was actually a really good learning experience. It was just me and the 1st AD, a one-day, 30-second spot for laundry detergent. We got to an empty stage, built a laundry room, got the coverage, broke down the laundry room, and left an empty stage. As de-facto 2nd AD, it was really cool to be able to interact with the director, director of photography, department heads, and the ad agency people so directly. Granted, once everything was in place and things got clicking, it was a long, painfully-boring day (I mean, how exciting can a laundry detergent commercial get, right?), but it kept me, at times, more engaged than I've ever been and certainly bestowed me with greater responsibility than any job yet.

But aside from that, I've just been reacclimating myself to New York lifestyle and pace. A friend from Pittsburgh visited for a couple of days, which motivated me to get off the couch (my preferred New York lifestyle and pace...only kidding) and get out. Saw Ground Zero the 9/11 memorial for the first time, which was an awe-inspiring sight. You see pictures of the fountains that mark the footprints of the Twin Towers, but there's really no way of getting a sense of the size of these fountains without seeing them in person. I noticed on my Google maps app on my phone that the fountains are illustrated as actual square-shaped bodies of water - on par with the ponds of Central Park. Simply breathtaking.

Oh and lest you think my time spent lately has been totally mindless, I picked up a valuable little nugget of education today. If you lose something in an NYC taxi cab and pay with a credit card, you can call Creative Mobile Technologies, the company that manufactures and operates the credit card swiping machines in the back of cabs and they can trace your transaction back to not only the medallion number, but the actual driver. Of course, if you pay with cash, as the nice guy at Style Management Co - one of the many cab dispatchers I had till then been contacting one at a time - told me, "You're shit out of luck."

Ah, New York, it's good to be back.

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

Well I'm now a little over a week removed from the working life. Time to kick up my feet, take a load off, lay back, rest up, stress out...wait, what? Yeah, hard to say it but as hard as working life is, the hangover that ensues when you're dropped from employment cold turkey can at times be worse.

Having done this three times before, I decided to try a slow withdrawal and the jury's still out on whether I made the right move. I stuck around Pittsburgh for a few extra days, because after living there for four months I couldn't stand the idea of leaving the people I had come to know and love so easily. That was certainly well worth it!

But now I'm out of house and home - I let my subletter keep the apartment until the end of the month. I stopped by New York briefly this past weekend to drop some stuff off and catch up with old friends. It was bizarre feeling, like being a stranger in a familiar land, being back at my apartment but sleeping on the couch. Watched the South Carolina primary results come in with my brother, and played a drinking game to Gingrich's speech. "History?" Drink. "Radical?" Drink. "Fundamental?" Drink. "Baloney?" Eat bologna. I was home.

But just as New York was beginning to feel familiar again, I hopped back on an airplane bound for home in Birmingham. Birmingham in late-January is a strange time, that I don't have a lot of recent experience in. The last time I came home in late-January was for a weekend to be an escort at a debutante-like event when I was a senior in high school. It was warm then, and it's surprisingly warm now. It was 73 degrees when I stepped out of the airport and I felt ridiculous wearing layers, especially one with "omni-heat." And it's weird being home at such a non-traditional time to be home. Usually I'm only home during the holidays, when all my friends are also home.

I'll be kicking around for the next two weeks, before returning to New York to move back into my room and start hoping for a new job. As grueling as life is while on the job, the waiting game while off the job can at times be worse. I may not find another project until March, and when you're so used to being on your feet all day every day, it feels strange to pull such a 180.

No Resolutions Without Some Resolve

I'm sitting in the Baltimore Airport, going on hour two of my epic layover before my flight to Pittsburgh (explanation to follow). A flight to Portland just left from my gate, a couple hundred people clearing out to a city I've never seen. And as I continue to wait with my paltry Pittsburgh-bound "family" of fellow passengers, it has occurred to me that I never once updated my blog in 2011.

So as we set off on 2012, with a renewed sense of conviction and a self-awareness of my inability to communicate well, I'm back.

This past year has been, for lack of a better word, eventful. I'm now going into my "4th quarter" of the DGA program - basically all that signifies is that I get a slight uptick in my pay rate and I'm just moments away from being discharged to the fun-filled, fast-paced world of freelance. But before getting too bogged down in the prospects of the future, I suppose I should attempt to make some sense of the past. I'm in the homestretch of my fourth job since becoming a DGA trainee - a Tom Cruise movie, called "One Shot," which is filming in Pittsburgh (thus why I'm awaiting a flight to Pittsburgh). Since finishing "The Sitter," which apparently is my only frame of reference for this blog so far, I worked on Season 2 of HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" and Sacha Baron Cohen's new soon-to-be-released shock-mock "The Dictator," which "tell[s] the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed." Every job has presented unique challenges and opportunities, and I've had the privilege of working with some of the best people in the film industry. As I delve deeper into this blog in the coming weeks and months, I'll elaborate more, provide fun anecdotes, and ruminate on the film industry and my place in it.

Outside of work, I've had the chance to check off more world destinations from my bucket list - visiting Paris in late-May and Kaua'i, Hawai'i in late September. I climbed the Eiffel Tower at midnight and learned to surf (sort of) in the embrace of Puff the Magic Dragon, but I still get no greater contentment than when I fly home to Birmingham (my Alabama license expires this year, and I'll be damned if they make me switch over to New York!) In an industry with such uniformity of experience, my Alabama-ness is probably the most interesting thing about me.

Oh and I'm no longer waking up in Brooklyn! My roommates and I finally sold out (more like got kicked out) in June, making the big move from downtown BK to a much much much much smaller place in the East Village. My room, which I'm subletting while in Pittsburgh, isn't much larger than my bed and makes for fun times trying to get to the bathroom on the other side (depending on my mood, I do some kind of variant of a hood slide or somersault).

So I welcome 2012 and the prospects that come with it! Thank you 9 followers for sticking with me, I promise to keep things exciting and will hopefully attract new converts. I'm too lazy and uncreative right now to think of a new, more appropriate blog title, so WUIB it'll have to remain.

Home Sweet Home

Yes, I'm aware that all my Brooklyn posts bear the tag "Home" and this one will, when Blogspot asks me to do so, bear the tag "Travel," but Alabama is still in many regards home and I'm happy to be back. I felt like I was slowly seeping into a funk for the past couple of days in Brooklyn. All the IKEA furniture had been built, my to-do list was a majority crossed off. But everyone I know is working, leaving me home alone with very little to do. So I decided now was as good a time as any to take a respite at home. And what good timing it was! I found out yesterday that No. 3 has been assigned. It's been awhile since I've posted about work, so I'm not sure if "No. 3 has been assigned" means anything to my lay readers. Basically at the beginning of the training week, we all drew numbers out of a hat. I drew No. 4. No. 1 got assigned to "Gossip Girl," No. 2 got assigned to "Law and Order: SVU." And yesterday I found out that No. 3's been assigned to "Running Wilde," a new show from the writer of "Arrested Development," Mitch Hurwitz. So I'm next up! In the meantime, I'm going to shadow a second-year DGA trainee, who's working on a film called "Premium Rush"—starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I'm pretty psyched to see a real set operate. I'll be starting that up next week when I get back.

But for now, I'm home and I love it...or at least most parts of it. I think I've reached the conclusion that when you no longer recognize a single haircutter at your lifelong haircutting place, then a little piece of home dies. That was the case today, when I went to Head Start and discovered all new faces. My haircutter was so fresh in fact, that midway through my haircut, another woman interjected and proceeded to give the woman a tutorial in cutting hair...using my head! It definitely ranks up there as one of the more bizarre moments of my life.

My mom and I also decided to take on the task of finding art for my apartment. She showed me a couple prints of watercolors done by Zelda Fitzgerald shortly after Scott died. I liked them and after a whole convoluted process, we finally emerged with seven prints. I think they'll be perfect for our apartment. They're New York, but not too New York. Plus they have the added bonus of being done by an Alabamian. And they'll hopefully be good conversation starters. Here they are:

Brooklyn Bridge

5th Avenue

Times Square

Central Park

Grant's Tomb

Washington Square

Grand Central Station

A Case for Teleportation

I hate traveling. Actually, let me re-phrase that, I love my destinations—especially this trip to Honduras, which was exactly the trip I was hoping it to be—I just hate getting there and back again. That was certainly the case when my Tuesday travel back to New York seeped into my Wednesday.

It started as most travel days do for me, I woke up early, showered, and threw all my stuff in my suitcase. I checked my email and, little to my surprise, I had an email from Delta saying my flight was delayed—only half an hour. But when I emerged from my room for breakfast, my girlfriend's sister said that apparently the Tegucigalpa airport was closed for the next week due to some repairs. That would have been good for Delta to have told me a month ago when I made the reservation, let alone that morning when they said I'd only be delayed a half hour. So I dug around online and found that sure enough the Tegucigalpa airport had scheduled the repairs a month in advance, but apparently had failed to mention it to the airlines who had to land there. Long story short, I think under the pressure of a potential lawsuit, the airport officials did whatever needed to be done to get the airport passably operational so my flight could take off—two hours later than originally scheduled.

I then had to connect in Atlanta. Bad weather had forced us to maintain a holding pattern for about an hour, so we arrived three hours later than originally scheduled. Of course, the bad weather also delayed my departure to New York, so I wasn't rushed through customs. The big board initially said my flight was pushed to 11:10 from 9:30pm. Ok, I thought. This way I can get some dinner and watch some of the All-Star game. I found a place close to my gate, ordered a sandwich and a beer and picked up the game in the third inning. I talked to a sufficiently-inebriated guy who had been trying to get home to his wife and kid in Phoenix since 6pm—after four weeks digging up WWII-era chemical debris from an Army compound in the Atlanta area. He was soon replaced by a professional bass-fisherman, who was trying to get from Little Rock, Ark. to Las Vegas (via Atlanta?) for a fishing trade show. He had been traveling since 6am. I was beginning to detect a pattern.

I checked out of the conversations and the game just after the sixth inning to go catch my flight, only to find that my gate was only just now seating a much-delayed flight to Denver. Fearing a gate change, I asked the woman at the desk and she assured me I was in the right place and that my flight had now been pushed back to 11:25. Enough time to go to the bathroom and get some reading material for the flight. When I emerged from the newsstand with the latest copy of the New Yorker and Entertainment Weekly ("homework"), I checked the big board once more. JFK...JFK...JFK...Ah, JFK...1:00?!?!?! Yes, my flight was scheduled to leave Atlanta one hour after it was initially scheduled to land in New York. So I returned to the bar to discover that just after I had left Brian McCann drove in three on a bases-clearing double in the top of the seventh and my bass-fisher buddy had been replaced by a woman trying to get from Minneapolis to San Diego, via Indianapolis and Atlanta (not all in the same day), who was sharing the same delayed fate. I was suddenly attune to the grumblings of the masses, a constant refrain, "I've been traveling all day," percolating across the terminal.

As I was finally boarding my plane at 1, I did so behind a couple, who had only managed separate middle seats. I asked where they were sitting and one had the seat next to mine, so I offered a trade. I was hoping that karma would reward me with a seat on an empty row, or at least next to someone engaging enough to pass the mind-numblingly earliness of the now-morning's flight. Nope, landed myself between two heavyset women—one of whom, I think, was wrapping up a phone-sex conversation as I took my seat. Both fell asleep as soon as we began taxiing and I soon realized that my little TV screen required me to pay for everything, including the headphones.

To cap off the night, when we landed in New York, the plane pulled up just short of the gate. "We're going to sit here for a little while," the pilot chimed in overhead. "We have to wait for a grounds crew team." After an excruciating 20 minutes, we finally pulled into our gate at 3:45am. "Welcome to New York," the flight attendant said, adding with a stinging tone, "Have a nice morning."

I eventually made it back to the apartment at about 5, after a painfully slow baggage claim process (I contemplated leaving it behind) and passed out. I'm hoping next time I travel, they can just beam me up.

¡Feliz 4 de Julio!

So this was news to me at the time I was buying my tickets, but it is significantly cheaper to fly on the 4th of July. After searching wildly for midweek-to-midweek flights that were running at least $650, I finally stumbled upon a 9-day, roundtrip flight to Tegucigalpa, Honduras for just $500. Now those who don't know me are probably thinking, why Honduras? Well, simply put, the love of my life lives there. My girlfriend and I met freshman year in college and have been together ever since. We haven't seen each other since the chaos of graduation/moving out this past May, so it's nice to be able to have a relaxing week+ with her.

I've been to Honduras once before, during the summer after freshman year. We really packed in a lot during that trip—bat-filled caves, Mayan ruins, Caribbean islands off the North Coast. It was all very Indiana Jones, which is right up our alley. So this trip is going to be much more relaxing. We're going to take in some awe-inspiring waterfalls as well as Isla El Tigre (an island off the Pacific Coast).

My girlfriend's family has moved around a lot over the years, so they're in a different house than the one I stayed at last visit, but I couldn't be more comfortable here. When I arrived, her dog, Bucho, excitedly ran around me in circles—apparently a sign that he remembers me. Bucho's a tiny little Chihuahua, so last time I came to visit he was having some hesitancy walking down the stairs at their house. During that stay, I finally helped him conquer his fears and we've been best of friends ever since.

I've just now woken to my first full day in Tegucigalpa and it sounds and smells like breakfast is cooking, so I'll sign off for now.