Crew gossip

The best part of hanging out on a movie set all day was catching up on real life celeb gossip - it was a walking, talking Us Weekly! They gossiped about everyone from Jennifer Aniston (kept to herself) to Angelina Jolie (a favorite - on her birthday, bought everyone an iPod).

The best celeb story I heard was about during the shooting of Wedding Crashers. They were ready for Christopher Walken, and could not find him anywhere. Most of these actors have people that talk to them - like, a Production Assistant, can't tell them they are needed in makeup, they'll only listen to their "person".

Well, Walken's person couldn't be found, and so the crew member who re-told this story to me went to go look for him, and saw him swimming in the lake. But, he was doing this weird thing, swimming near the surface, and diving up with his arms clapping out straight in front of him. So crew member is all, "Uhhh, Mr. Walken? We need you on set. I brought towels and a robe for you".

He said Walken paused for a long moment, and then announced, "No acting today. (Dramatic Pause) Today, I am an alligator" (in a sing songy voice). It was then that the crew member realized that Walken's arms were an alligator snout, and he was snapping at imaginary birds flying above the water.

Apparently dude is like class A, certified nuts. That makes me like him so much more.

Ohhhh, those college nights!

Met up with three of my favorite sorority sisters on Friday night for a night on the town. We ended up at our favorite bar in college, which has a fabulous rooftop deck. The whole evening was lots of fun, and definitely had me reminiscing about the good old days with these girls!

The four of us:

The blondies:

The tallest guy we'd ever met - he is 7'2"!

With the four of us all spread out pretty far from each other, it makes nights like these all the more fun :)

Christina's Version

I am exhausted and will type out my version later, but this is what Christina emailed to the rest of the FIFs:

---

Premise of the movie is Reese is dating Owen who is the Nationals superstar pitcher. She keeps getting ignored because he's famous and she starts to fall for Paul Rudd who is a business man.

So we get to RFK at 4pm. They put us on a bus. We go to a random Presbyterian Church at New York and 13th? to fill out paperwork. There is a room full of random people. They are serving breakfast. They approve our outfits and send us to props. We are supposed to be college students with cars. They have Kelly where a white skirt with a gray short sleeve sweater and black flip flops.. They have me where khaki shorts and a peach top with Jack Roger sandals. They give us each an ugly back pack. We walk to the set. There is a LOT of sitting around and it was very hot. There is a lot of aspiring actors. For the first scene they Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon are filming on the other side of the street. You can see reflections on the building so we were walking back and forth on the other side of the street. This went on until 8/9.

We head back to the church to get lunch around 9/10. We get on a bus back to RFK to get Kelly's car because we are supposed to be college students with a car. One of the production assistants was on the bus with us and we offered to drive him back to set. A lot of the extras were stereotypical stupid/annoying DC residents or people who thought this would make them famous, so we were joking with him about that. We get to set and he tells us to grab lunch real quick. Then one of the wardrobe people asks us if we brought clubby clothes. Because Kelly and I are crazy we had enough to put together "going out-ish" clothes in 5min. If they had told us to bring going out clothes, we could have done better but we looked good. Kelly ends up in jeans, black patent heels, a black tank top, and a black cardigan-y wrap. I am in jeans, a gray tank top, wedges and a black and gray leopard print top. My shoes were nude-ish so they didn't completely match but I guess it was ok.

We go back to set and they put us in place for our big role. We are with a bunch of guys waiting to get in a club. Owen and Reese come out. We recognize Owen as this famous baseball player and stop him for autographs and pictures. Reese walks off while Owen is taking pictures with us. Then he realizes she walked off and he runs after her. So they walk out and we stop Owen. The guys with us ask for autographs and then they say hey can you take a picture and Kelly and I each get on one side of Owen. He puts his arms around us and we take pictures and then he chases Reese. We practiced this a bunch with the stand-ins for Reese and Owen so that the directors can get the lighting/angles right. At this point some German director who is apparently big with Steven Spielberg asks me how tall I am. I tell him and kind of laugh and say sorry and he tells me how good it is. This man is like gawking at me. He comes over to stand next to me to see how our heights measure up. He tells me to be sexy for Owen. This director stared at me all night.

So Owen and Reese come out and we start doing this scene with them. Reese is the smallest thing you have ever seen and she is flawless. She might not have pores. My legs have mosquito bites and bruises but apparently mosquitoes don't like her. She looked like a perfect doll. Owen was a little more friendly and had ostrich boots on. So we start doing this scene with them at 11/12? The guys were originally going in for the picture with Owen but Owen said that the girls should be the ones to take the picture with him. So he literally kept pulling us into his waist. He was kind of scratching Kelly's back. With heels, I was Owen's height. He kept putting his hand on the small of my back. After the first couple of shoots, his hand started drifting to the top of my butt. Then after every scene he would give my butt a little pat pat after the picture was over. I am in love. At one point Owen said he liked my watch picked up my arm and looked at my watch. Later, while he had his arm around us, he asked Kelly and I if we were in school. I told him I had just graduated law school and Kelly said she worked for the government. He seemed impressed with the law school thing and was like, "law school?!" At least he thought we looked young enough to be in college right!

Again, we did this scene like 30 times. Sometimes in between takes the actors would take a break, go inside, get the hair redone (even owen was getting his hair curled), etc. After almost every take they would have a fan on them, get their make-up touched, and get blotted down. Every time they changed the camera angle, the stand ins would come back out. Both Owen and Reese were really in the zone. They have the stand-ins so the actors don't see all the background stuff. They want the actors to feel like they are really in the moment. Reese was really in character the whole time. We didn't stop this until like 2:30am. I literally had Owen's arm around me and feeling up my ass for 3.5 hours. Swoon. Its all so surreal.

Now for the downsides. Besides waiting around forever and being up all night, you guys know I am a huge sweat-er. We were standing for about 45min before Reese and Owen came out. There were huge lights all over the place. They wet down the pavement so it looks new and not all dried out and old and this causes mass amounts of humidity (it also makes your feet wet and rubs mass blisters in your leather shoes). When Owen and Reese walked out everyone and particularly myself, was a hot sweaty mess! Like Owen and Reese both looked at me like why is that girl drenched or Owen was checking me out, whatever. After sweating for hours I did not look my best at all. I'm going to make my big screen debut looking horrid. I was all warm and Owen kept grabbing me waist and pulling me in close. What do you say? Sorry for the heatstroke I am having? At least it didn't prevent him from wanting to be close to us. I was vindicated later when I overheard Owen say I didn't know why everyone was sweating when I came out but now I really understand. He kept pulling his jacket down presumably to cool down his arm pits and upper body.

After this we sat around for a while. They had Kelly drive her car around the block a bunch of times for a background car. The production assistant Marcus was with her and gave her some more info, but she will have to tell that. I went and turned my paperwork in around 5am and hopped a cab back home. I got 3.5 hours of sleep and was an hour late to bar class, but the whole night was awesome!!!

Its a go!

Woo hoo! Read this post for the back story on my attempts to be famous ;)

I am going to be an extra in the movie! I have to be in DC on Thursday from 6pm til Sun up - my role is "College Student".

Ugh, that could be anything! There were kids in college that rolled to class in pajamas.

The jeans, hoodie sweatshirt and flip flops crowd.

The denim skirt, pastel button up, pearls and Rainbow flip flops girls.

The sorority letters and mini skirt kids.

Girls that dressed up in heels and dresses for every class.

This is so complicated! I think I need to go shopping :)

I love my dogs, I love my dogs...

I just have to keep repeating that!

We took them to get groomed on Monday, and apparently Kimchi's Rabies shot is due. While making her appointment, turns out Holly needed some shots also, so I arranged to take both of them in.

However, my sister was having her wisdom teeth out, and so I needed to babysit my nephew, so he came along with us to the vet. I explained to Parker that it we were taking the dogs to the doctor, and that made sense to him. Until we walked in to the examination room, and Parker loudly demanded that the vet look at his "owie" - a several day old scab on his knee. Lucky for him, he's adorable, so the vet and vet tech happily obliged to examine his knee, and declare him "good as new!"

The dogs then had some vitals check, including having their temperature taken in their rectum. After the vet left, Parker kept trying to climb up on the examing table. I helped him up, thinking he just wanted to sit high, but he promptly laid on his belly and stuck his butt out, announcing he was reading for them to "fix his butt" also. I felt bad laughing, and tried to explain that his bottom was fine, its only a puppy test, and he was adament they needed to fix his butt. He started crying big alligator tears about it, and luckily my mom arrived just in time to play with him while I had the dogs there. Parker sure knows how to keep everything interesting!

Sure enough, the dogs needed every test and shot under the sun. I asked about the number of skin tags that Holly has been developing, and turns out its sort of like dog acne, so we got special shampoo for that.

Finally got to pay out - a whopping $440 later!

Good thing I love these mutts.

Is Hollywood in my future?

Last month, I wrote in this post and this post about a girl contacting me to be a stand in for Reese Witherspoon in her newest movie.

I was pretty disappointed about not getting chosen. I have zero aspirations to be a famous movie star, but it definitely seemed like one of those once in a lifetime opportunities, story for the grandkids, dream come true sort of things!

THEN, I get this message!

I'm emailing because of one of three reasons: I've either used you, wanted to use you, or intend to use you for this movie that's here in D.C. with Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, and Owen Wilson through the end of the week. If you are still interested and available either Thursday or Friday for night shoots (that means something like a 7pm call time until at least sun up), you have to let me know so I can fit you in somewhere. Reply back to this message or call me at the office tomorrow starting at 11am. xxx-xxx-xxxx If there's a spot left and I can use you, we'll make it happen. :)

Thank goodness for internet on phones - you better believe I sent a response less than a minute after hearing from her! Can't wait to hear what she says!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all you dads!

We kept it pretty lowkey this year, and went over to my parent's house.

Parker immediately beelined for Tyler, and refused to get out of his lap. Tyler didn't particularly enjoy this.

But my sister did help him make a super cute shirt for my dad - "Best Grandpa, Hands Down!"

And he kept us all giggling, climbing in his toybox.

My dad is definitely one of my closest friends. Its very rare for me to go more than a day or two without talking to him, even if a quick text. My family had a very open relationship while I was growing up, and they were always people that I could turn to whenever I needed a support system. He is, without a doubt, my biggest hero.

It is better to be alone than in the wrong company

As someone struggling with handling a very dear friendship turned awkward and hurtful, I enjoyed this post today over at All Things Fluffy...Fashionable...and Famous!

It Is Better To Be Alone, Than In The Wrong Company.

Tell me who your best friends are, and I will tell you who you are.

If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you will learn how to soar to great heights.

A mirror reflects a man’s face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses.

The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you closely associate for the good and the bad. The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve.

Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity.

An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people.

As you grow, your associates will change. Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you to stay where they are.

Friends that don't help you climb will want you to crawl.

Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream.

Those that don't increase you will eventually decrease you.

Consider This:
Never receive counsel from unproductive people.
Never discuss your problems with someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those who never succeed themselves are always first to tell you how.
Not everyone has a right to speak into your life.
You are certain to get the worst of the bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person.
Don't follow anyone who's not going anywhere.
With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it.
Be careful where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life.
Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships.
Choose to rise...Don't settle...and go for your dreams!!! And most of all let God lead you in everything you do.
"Do not ask God to order your footsteps, if you are not willing to move your feet."

Blogger on a Hot Tar Roof

I get weekly job listings from Careerbuilder.com. I usually skim through them, since few are really what I do - I do a pretty specific job in the government contracting world, and usually that gives me quite a few "Contracts Manager" or "Database Administrator" listings.

Today's e-mail, however, had a rather unusual position nestled in there:

I can pretty much guarantee I won't be submitting a resume for that one.