When my mind gets wound up about a big event coming up, events transpire with a storyline. Of course, I view my reality like I'm in a movie, so that is how my reality is organised. In this case, it was prepping to shoot a live town meeting with three cameras and a v-brick. This is supposed to be modern video making, where all you need to do is plug into a phone line and your video be instantly accessible from Minneapolis to Singapore. But nothing ever goes to plan, and you deliberately plan for things to fail. I learned early from working on feature films that production work was accomplished by three important things: Backups, Backups, and Backups. Need one light take three. Plan on two people speaking, bring four microphones. Need one hour to setup, plan on two.
So the final video shoot was completed with gaff tape, more gaff tape, and any extra wires found sitting around. As I write this the meeting starts in about 9 hours, and hopefully I will get a little sleep.
However, today was also a big day because the movie Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy opened. The original BBC TV series hit a perfect whimsical tone with it's nearly preposterous plot guiding it. My friend Chris refuses to see it, because the TV series is also renown for it's ingenious approach to making a science fiction series with very little money. I am a big fan of satire, and this story makes fun of the genre - such as depressed robots - and has some classic Python-esque moments. A large whale appears out of nowhere and is plummeting toward the ground, and we get to hear what it's first and final thoughts are.
So after I got home and relaxed a bit this evening, I set out to see the Hitchhiker flick at my favourite googleplex . I always calculate the exact ETA to the theatre from my house, because nothing is as much of a waste of my time as paying $8.25 to sit and watch TV commercials before a movie starts. In this case, I also had to calculate the time it would take to stop at the cash machine at SA (2 minutes - using the fast cash option), and stopping at another gas station (nicer staff), to fill up my car (5 minutes). The other gas station has warning signs cautioning that the pumps may not stop when the tank is full. As I wait for my car tank to fill up, I notice that the guy next to me is washing his back windshield while pumping, and I decide to venture off to get a squeegee and do the same. How un-original, I thought.
I have noticed that I can also influence other people's behaviour . As I am sitting in my car at an intersection, I will hit the wash button to clean my windshield. Then I look behind or across and see other people doing the same thing. As I stepped away from my car to get a squeegee, I was subconsciously thinking that I am risking the pump overflowing while unattended. At that moment, the pump on the other guy's car started gushing out. I noticed and instinctively went to stop it, only to see that the other guy noticed the sound. I still could've dived in and stopped it, smothering myself with petroleum. But instead, I shouted out "Dude, you pump is overflowing". I was really thinking "Glad it wasn't me". I finish pumping and walk toward the cashier when a lady starts running out, trying to catch a bus that's pulling away. At first the bus stops, then pulls off again. The cashier said "It wasn't right for the bus driver not to stop for her". I told him the same happened to me when I took the bus in college. "They don't care", I told him.
I got to the theatre right at 10:10 pm. They were short on cashiers at the box office, so a line had developed. To expedite getting my ticket and stick to my timetable, I always pay in cash with a solid bill, ask for the specific time, and use the official nickname for the movie. "One for the 10:10 Hitchiker". Paying for movie tickets with a credit card should be banned just like indoor smoking. Good film, not disappointing for fans for sure. Then comes a scene on a Volgon planet or something, where these 8 foot tall bloated green aliens are trudging off to work in the Brazil-lian worker drone world. A bus approaches a Volgon bus stop and drives right past. The disgruntled alien complains: "This always happens to me".
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