I can has power tools?

Bob in the Tree starts shooting this Friday night! Whoopie! As we speak I am finishing carving the cave, and pulling things together... Since everything is still in progress, I don't have much to say... so here's a picture of me with a power tool. Hardcore!

when House Paint met Seats

Tuesday, I left my common sense behind on my way home from a painting project on campus. I loaded up what was left of the lime green and neon yellow paint into the front seat of my car and sped home, eager to shower and change before my 6:15 meeting with a director downtown... Showered, changed, accessorized and ready to go, I raced out to my car only to find....

Yup. Green and Yellow paint everywhere.... I've been scrubbing it with latex paint remover daily, and have made a tiny amount of progress.... Either I'll get it all out (whoch would be miraculous) or I'm going to have to "art direct" my front seat before I go home for thanksgiving and my father finds out what I've done to his car.... pray for me people!

Sundays and Sephora

Apologies are in order; august is here and my work load has started picking up considerably. I spent a great deal of time (and money!) this week re-stocking my makeup kit for the fall. I by no means consider myself a professional, but I know enough and have enough products to get by when there is no real makeup artist on set. Anyway, I had decided to try out some samples of these new HD primers I read about online, and so I took a trip out to the local sephora to pick some up. Huge mistake (or blessing?), 3 hours and 200 dollars later I had some sweet stuff for my kit, but even more sweet stuff for myself. I got this awesome new smashbox master class kit-- and even though I normally don't care for box sets, this stuff more or less makes me pee my pants with excitement every time I take it out of the box. I won't go into details-- you can read my full review on the product here if you're interested. Not only do I pretty much use it on me every day, it also came with some really sweet stuff I can use on set, so I technically can write it off as an investment... right dad?

In other news Aurora is back (YAY!), I've been building a cave (sweet!) and I'm getting the ball rolling on many many projects. So I pinky promise I'll have something of interest to put here soon.

victory dance

I love ebay. I mean really love it. Love-it-so-much-why-don't-i-marry-it?-love-it. There's not enough words in the English language to describe how much I love it kind of love it.

I mean it's like shopping, only better. Because you get to find that one perfect prop, or costume piece or makeup pallet you've been dreaming of, and then you get to save a little money and more importantly you get to kick some serious ass. Because it's not shopping, it's WINNING. It's like black friday when you're at an expensive store and there's only one cashmere sweater left in your size and it's marked down by like 90% and some other woman reaches out to take it off the shelf and so you kick her in the teeth and grab it and run to the register and oh good glory it's yours.
Except much less violent. And also you can do it in your pajamas while watching HGTV and eating pizza.

I've been working on restocking my makeup kit with some better products, and one thing I really desperately wanted was some good quality HD primer. And I got some sweet smashbox hd photo finish stuff off ebay for like 20$ less than retail price plus some sweet free shipping. VICTORRRY! The best part was the thrill of putting in the winning bid with less than 3 seconds to go. The second best part is I can win all the makeup I want and justify it to my self as "career supplies" because on ocasion I do makeup on student films. it's a win-win-win situation. Or something like that.

insecure / douche(-would-you-like-a)bag

Do you ever worry you're just not going to make it? I try really hard to just think positive or whatever, but sometimes I can't help but wonder if I am doomed to spend the rest of my life as a ho-hum secretary living pay check to pay check and working on independent films whos pay checks never seem to come. Maybe I'm just not as good as I thought or maybe I won't get that break or maybe or maybe or maybe....

During times like these i find it helpful to refer to a quote from my favorite shallow shoe loving desperate housewife, Gabby: "I've been broke before, but I've never been poor. Because poor is just a state of mind." Try it yourself the next time you find yourself walking to work to save gas money. 

On another note, today I stopped by home depot to pick up some paint swatch samples for a director... a director who hadn't really given me much direction other than "oh either purple or green or orange".... hmmmm. As i shoved every purple-or-green-or-orange paint chip on the wall in my purse i received a scathing look from a man in an orange apron. "Do you need a Bag?" He snapped staring at the bulge in my clutch. 

rude-sauce, or what? Art is totally, like, hard. 

thursday night freak show

don't ever lie to your director about your skills.

I know a bunch of kids who've spent some summers in hollywood, and they all came back saying "if you're asked to do something you don't know how to do, whatever you do don't admit you can't do it!"

In other words, lie, try to do it yourself, and then pass on the task if you can't cope.

Well fiddle-dee-dee.

Let me just say, from extremely recent personal experience, this doesn't work to well.

For example, the other day I was asked to do some basic sewing for some pretty complex and hilarious costumes for a green screen project I'm designing for. We're set to start shooting tomorrow, and I have all aspects of the costume ready, except this little skirt / kilt thing one of the more flamboyant characters is supposed to sport.

Unable to find a plaid skirt of the exact pattern/color/style my darling director was looking for, I stupidly agreed to sew the damn thing myself.

I say stupidly, ladies and gentlemen, because I absolutely positively can. not. sew. At least as far as I can tell. I've never even tried to sew a button, and a few hours ago I had never touched a sewing machine.

I agreed to sew the skirt primarily because several of my sorority sisters can sew, own machines and, (i presumed anyway) could either do it for me or supervise the process.

Well although I love them dearly, it turns out they are all as flaky as the dandruff on that weird animator's head. Despite promise after promise none of them sat down with me to help me out. So today, at my wits end, I committed another stupid act.

I threw down 99.99 $ (which I can't actually afford) on a brand spakin new "simple singer" sewing machine. It came with a how to dvd, accessories and all that jazz. It was love at first sight. I've named her Sally.

I then bought a simple "EASY! 1 HOUR SEWING!" pattern for an elastic band mini skirt, picked up the perfect plaid fabric and bounced on home, happy and naive. Oh so Naive.

I then (how many stupids are we up to now?) in my typical fashion put off the actual sewing of the garment until 10pm tonight. When I finally pulled myself from Real Estate Boys delicious lovely tattooed arms and slumped over to my apartment where Sally was waiting for me, still wrapped tight in her box.

I carefully removed her from her Styrofoam bed, gently assembled her parts according to the instructions and watched the how to dvd 3 times before attempting to thread the needle on my own. Slowly and surely I somehow managed, and (delighted at my own competance!) I eagerly attempted to sew some peices of scrap fabric togeather, before starting out on the real thing.

whir whir whirrrrr!

went sally

horray horray hooray!

went I

bzzzzz-clunk-errrrrrrr-

went sally

OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK

went I.

Yes ladies and gents. Within 10 minutes I managed to jam my machine. The wheel would not turn forwards or backwards. It was terrible. I cried for a brief minute, tinkered for five, cried for another 10 and then hatched a plan to take it back to wall-mart and exchange it. I called the store, talked Jennie the nigh manager into letting me exchange my machine sans receipt (which is against several policies mind you). Just as I was packing sally up to take her back to the hell hole from whence she came

clink!

I tinkered with one last lever, on a hunch-

clink clunk!

whirrrr whirr whirrrr!!!

went Sally.

THANK JESUS!

went I.

Naturally a couple hours later she jammed again. I'm just not meant to sew I've decided. I talked James into hiring a seamstress for the rest and I put Sally up on craigslist. Can't say I'll miss her.