Just a quick note to let you all know that we are safe and sound from the fires.  Don't let the name "Firestorm" give you the idea that fire is raining down from the sky.  "Ashstorm" might be more appropriate from that angle.  We have smelled the smoke, and the ash has fallen on us, and we saw some flames north of Los Feliz, but we aren't in harm's way.  Also, Jamie's parents' home is not in danger either, though Don's school at Camp Pendleton was closed at least part of this week.

Today's a big day here in the Coulter household.  Jamie got a new computer, a Sony Vaio W510G.  It's pretty awesome for what she'll be using it for.  It's got a widescreen, and the keyboard flips up to cover half the screen, at which point the display switches to a clock/CD player.  It's also got the capability of recording television and such, but as it's right next to our TV at the moment, and we've got TiVo, there's probably not much point in hooking that up just yet.  We also got a new phone.  It's 5.8 GHz.  I've found that I use my cell phone enough for business, that it's cheaper to start using our land line, but I didn't want to start using it until I got caller ID and a digital answering machine, which this phone has.  So, I'll be sending out a mass email some time soon with that phone number, in case you don't already have it.

Well, I didn't get to make it out to the PDC today, because I was getting pretty far behind on work.  I do plan to make it tomorrow, though.  At the moment, I'm waiting for Mark to get home from work, and so I've been reading other's blogs to pass the time.  I read Ben's blog, and he's talking a lot about skateboarding, so I thought I'd throw my two cents in.  I've gotten pretty good on the long board in the Sieber's driveway.  I have a hard time on narrow sidewalks, because it pulls to the right, so it's hard to get momentum going in the right direction before I get off the sidewalk.  In the virtual world, I'm much better.  I've also been playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4, and I just hit 50%.  I'm not sure how much more of it I'll play, as it is not relaxing like Gran Turismo; it's infuriating.  Plus, Jamie just bought me Tony Hawk Underground (T.H.U.G.), so I may have to move on to that.

Again, I've waited too long to blog.  I know I won't remember everything, but I'll do what I can.  Friday, Jamie had the day off, and so did Tony.  So, we met up with them to go out to the Greatland Target in Burbank.  We ended up going to the Olive Garden first, because Tony & Martel hadn't eaten.  I can safely say that this was the nicest Olive Garden I've ever been to.  As Jamie and I had already eaten lunch, we just had a glass of Chiraz and breadsticks.  One thing that wasn't as good about this OG compared to the Waco OG was that neither Andrew nor Jason were there supplying us with beacoup mints on the sly.  Anyway, we hit Target, Michael's, Best Buy, and Aaron Brothers, where Jamie picked up a little something to get started on Jeff's commissioned work for his apartment.  One side note, as we were enjoying a little Starbucks outdoors, we noticed the thin layer of ash that was across our table, a reminder of the many fires blazing in the Southland.

Later that evening, we headed over to their apartment.  We ordered pizza and watched the second episode of Tony's show on DVD.  This time it was a rough cut, without Ron Howard doing the narration.  It was still good, but it was interesting to see a professional show before it's completely polished.  I fixed up Martel's laptop that was suffering from both Klez and Sobig.  I got rid of that stuff, and the computer's running much better.  However, I still can't open Task Manager, which meanse that there's still some kind of problem.  Anyone with ideas on how to fix this, please let me know.

Saturday, Jamie worked, and so did I.  But Saturday night, while Jamie was still at work, I went to meet one of my clients at The Palm for a dinner sponsored by Microsoft.  The group there were mostly deans and professors, as well as Microsoft Academic Development Evangelists.  It looks like Microsoft is finally working on getting involved at the curriculum level in universities, rather than just marketing their products to universities.  My client was in town for some pre-PDC meetings, but she was going to be in Europe during the actual PDC, so she gave me her pass.  I haven't gone to any of the sessions yet, because Jamie and I are about to go meet Tony on set for lunch.  However, I did get the initial bag of goodies last night.  It has some sample software and magazines and blah blah blah.  The crown jewel of the bag, however, is a full-fledged copy of Office 2003 Professional Edition.  Score.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Jamie's parents came into town on Sunday morning.  They went to Pacific Crossroads with us that morning for church.  At church, the pastor spotted somebody sleeping in the congregation, and he basically started yelling at them.  He started talking about how "that's not worship" and that people should be listening to him "as if it were God standing up here."  That pissed me off quite a bit.  I hope he knows that person enough to know how his tirade will affect him.  I hope that wasn't that person's first time to be back in church in years.  To make matters worse, shortly after the pastor continued his sermon, he quoted the passage from Matthew 18 about "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you."  It's one thing for a pastor to struggle with practicing what he preaches as he lives his daily lilfe.  Nobody's perfect.  It's another thing entirely for a pastor to not practice what he preaches while actually preaching it.  The man often preaches about how we should be firmly committed to a local body and submit to its authority.  I agree.  However, after many weeks of hearing him preach, I don't know that I could submit myself to his authority.

Anywho, after church, Clinton, Tony & Martel joined us for lunch at Baja Fresh.  Then, we took Don & Connie to The Grove to show Don where Jamie works.  Then, we introduced them to the ArcLight by seeing Veronica Guerin.  Wow, that movie was intense, but really good.  It's amazing how much one person can affect a country when the country is as small as Ireland.  After the movie, we went to Grace, a trendy restaurant over on Beverly, where Connie saw Jeff Goldblum and some other celebrity whose name no one could remember.  Needless to say, a good time was had by all, and it was nice to have Don & Connie come hang out with us in our element.

Camera phones are the perfect companion to blogs.  One day I will have one.

I really like the idea of learning to read lips.  For the spy factor, but also for the hard-of-hearing factor from spending so much time in Mark and Brandon's cars in high school.  Also, I'm not sure why rappelling would be better than skydiving, but I believe it would just be as useful.  So, that will make the list.  As for driving at high speeds, I like to think I'm learning that with all of the Gran Turismo 3 that I've been playing.  See, the thing is I want to learn the stuff legally, so some of your suggestions are right out.  Like making Jason's blog pretty.

Finally, at long last, I received my California driver's license.  I took the test back in July for crying out loud.  I don't remember if I complained about having to retake my picture.  Well, when we went in the first time (when I took the test), they put Jamie's birthdate down on my application, so I got a letter in the mail saying that I had to make another appointment and show them my birth certificate, because the birthdate on the application didn't match the birthdate on my social security records.  Hey, I've got an idea.  If you are going to look at my social security records anyway, why not just use that birthdate?  So, I had to make another appointment two months later.  I assumed this time that they wouldn't retake my picture, because I figured they'd want the picture of the guy who took the test on the license.  Au contraire.  Normally, it wouldn't matter, because on any average day, I'm looking pretty good, or at least driver's license photo worthy.  However, on this particular day, I was going to get my haircut right after the DMV, so I hadn't bothered to pay any attention to my hair.  Anyway, I don't think the picture turned out bad, but the fact of the matter is, I don't really care.

For those of you that I haven't already mentioned this to, I realized something a couple months ago that I think I need to document.  I'll preface this by saying that I do not want to be a spy.  However, I do want to have a spy's training.  Maybe it's my desire to learn new things.  Or maybe, when put in an extraordinary situation, I want to know how to handle myself.  So, I've started to create a list of things that I should learn.  Here it is so far:

• Skydive (UPDATE: Jumped Sept. 4th, 2004)
• Fire a gun (UPDATE: Went to shooting range July 9th, 2005)
• Scuba dive
• Learn foreign languages
• Some kind of martial art.   I understand Brazilian Jujitsu is good for that sort of thing.
• Picking locks
• Hotwire a car
• Hostile Environment Training

I'm planning on going skydiving with Jeff in December, if he can get up the nerve, and I'll keep you posted on my progress.  Any ideas of other things to add to the list?

I'm tired of being behind, so I'll just gloss over the fact that I bought a PlayStation 2 this week, and I went to Leno on Thursday, where I got to hang out in the green room and then sit on the front row of the audience.  There, caught up.

Just trying to catch up.  On Sunday, after church at Pacific Crossroads, we hit Baja Fresh with Tony and Martel.  Jamie and I had to get going pretty quick though to go see Baylor friend Mike Overman do an improv show at The Groundlings space on Melrose.  We were a little late getting there, but we caught most of the show and found it pretty enjoyable.  One thing I decided was that I do not want to do improv.

That evening we met up with Tony & Martel again at the Grove to go see "School of Rock" with one Jack Black.  Tony had called to invite Liza but never got in touch with her.  It's probably for the best, as her name was mentioned in the movie.  That would have been really weird for me.  Before the flick, we went to Farmer's Market where Jamie and I had ice cream while Tony & Martel had dinner.  I think we talked them into going to The Caves, where Jamie and I honeymooned.

While Clinton and I are standing there in between takes, the guy next to us strikes up a conversation.  I say, "strikes up a conversation," but that implies a two-way street.  So, I guess he strikes up a monologue, in which he tells us that during the winter months he goes to Florida and works as a VIP tour guide at DisneyWorld.  He tells us all kinds of odd facts about DisneyWorld, and how it's 10 times the size of Manhattan, blah, blah, blah.  What he forgot was that we didn't ask.

Around 12:30, we break for lunch, which was a box with a sandwich, chips, apple, and cookie inside.  It was actually pretty good.  But anything's good after standing out in the sun for hours pretending to enjoy Clay Aiken.  It was during lunch that I called Jamie at work and told her that Clay wanted to say hello.  I then handed the phone to Clinton, who did a Clay impersonation and talked with her for awhile.  When he handed the phone back to me, I could tell from her voice that she didn't doubt for a second that it was really Clay.  I couldn't bring myself to telling her.  I figured that as the day wore on, it would dawn on her.  It didn't.  She was not excited when I broke the news that night.

We were not summoned again until at least 3:30.  In the meantime, we sought some shade and ended up sitting next to Switchblade Kittens, among others.  By this time, I had informed Clinton of the earlier conversation that I had overheard.  The girl explained that she had toured all over the world with her band, that she had her own fan club, and yet today she was doing extra work.  She also mentioned that she hated her day job, being a janitor.  At that point, without skipping a beat, Clinton chimed in with "my dad's a janitor."  The Kittens looked at each other with this amazed, I-can't-believe-it look and immediately swarmed us with their excitement about how they had a song called "My Dad's a Janitor."  She "proved" it to us (though we showed no sign of disbelief) by giving us a copy of her CD.  Wow.

By 7:00 pm, we were done, and I'll be getting a check in the mail.  Worth it?  Yeah, I'd say so, but I wouldn't want to be one of the many people there who are professional extras.

Man, I hate when I get this far behind in blogging, because I know I end up glossing over some good stuff in order to catch up.  Before I get to the Clay Aiken shoot, I should mention that Jamie got some free tickets through work to Cirque du Soleil's Varekai.  It was pretty awesome, though less awesome than it could have been had I not already seen parts of it on TV.  As it was with the last Cirque du Soleil show I saw, it was the juggler that amazed me the most.  I can't describe it, you just have to go see it.  After the show we went to eat with the manager of Quiksilver and his wife.

The next morning I had a 7 a.m. call for the video.  Clinton and I rode together wearing our neutral, solid colors, parked his huge truck in a parking garage that could barely fit it, and then walked down to Hollywood & Highland where the shoot was going down.  Extras holding was in the empty lot next to the Chinese Theater that you may remember from the story about going to the premiere of Grind.  We filled out some paperwork, and then we sat and waited with all of the other extras.  Before long, one of the casting people called Clinton over to another area, and I was really worried that he was going to be doing something else the rest of the day, and I was going to be alone in the sea of extras, bored out of my mind for the next 10+ hours.  After he left, I turned my attention to eavesdropping on a couple girls that were sitting across from me.  It turns out that they are in an all-girl punk band called Switchblade Kittens.  One of the girls was clearly less experienced than the other and was asking a lot of questions about how the release of their CD would work if they got picked up by a label.  The one being asked was very knowing, and explained that their 'hits' would all get put on to the first CD, but that you never knew what would be a 'hit', because 'the people' always chose something different.  Like, for instance, who would have thought that their song 'My Dad's a Janitor' would be so popular.  More conversation like this but with a serious tone ensued until a PA called us to the set.  I was quite relieved to find Clinton already at the set, and that we would not be separated the rest of the day.  Not that I didn't want Clinton to get his big break as the bike messenger in the video.

When Clinton was called away, he was put in a line of about 8 guys, and the director and casting people studied them to figure out who would be the best bike messenger for the video.  Two things were funny about this.  One, the director came right up to Clinton, made a circle with her fingers, and looked through the circle at him.  Needless to say, he had a hard time keeping a straight face.  The other funny thing about all the deliberation that went on to select a bike messenger is that the bike messenger is really just a guy who rides by the concert on his bike.  I guess they could have shot some other stuff with him later.

For the next 5 hours or so, we would walk up to this spontaneous Clay Aiken concert that is supposed to be set in NYC, but is actually happening on Hollywood Blvd, and act like we are really enjoying the music.  I must say, I acted more that day than any other day of my life.  More to come...

Sorry that it's been almost a week since my last blog.  Much has happened, and I don't think I'm going to get to it all tonight.  Part of the reason, apart from busyness, that I haven't written is because I've been frustrated with the comment-emailing abilities of this relatively new dasBlog software in conjunction with my web host.  I modified the old version to email me whenever someone commented on the blog, so I didn't have to try to keep track of how many comments were there on a particular entry the last time I checked.  The new blog software had this feature built in, except for one little problem.  It had a line of code in it that my web host server doesn't seem to like, and since the source code project was created with VS.NET 2003, and I hadn't installed that yet, I could not go into the code and take out the naughty line of code, which by the way is setting the SmtpMail.Server property to anything at all.  I finally got 2003 installed this week, went in to take out the offending line of code, recompiled, and everything works dandily.  I don't know if dandily is a word, but I do know that it is describing a verb, and I'm pretty sure that dandy is just an adjective.  Anywho, now that I've gotten this working, I'll be updating the blogs for the Segues, which hopefully will jump start a bit more material out of you guys.  When I pick up next, I'll tell you all how the Clay Aiken shoot went.  Oh, the stories.

Looks like they need somebody invisible.  I'll be spending all day Saturday as an extra in the new Clay Aiken video.  Wow, am I ever going to hate that song by the end of the day.  Oh wait, I already do.  If Jamie can get off work, she'll be there too.  No word from Clinton.

With a title like that, I'm bound to get a bunch of hits from Google.  So here's the story.  Clinton, Jamie and I went to Johnny Rockets on Melrose for lunch today before taking Jamie to work.  Afterwards, Jamie wanted to do some shopping at Urban Outfitters and some of the other Melrose boutiques.  So, we were walking down the street, and this young woman with a polaroid camera stops us to tell us that they are casting for the new Clay Aiken video.  Would we mind if she got our pictures, and if the casting director liked it, we would get a call.  The spiel.  We naturally consented, and so we stepped into this little stairwell in between two shops and she took our picture.  The picture on the left is the first picture that she took of me.  As the polaroid developed, she looked at it strangely, and asked, "Why are you so washed out in this picture?"  Apparently she's blind.  "I'm washed out like that in real life.  See, I'm white, that's my thing."  So, she took another picture, in which my face showed up a little bit better.  I've really got my hopes up though, because the name of Clay Aiken's new single is "Invisible."  If I'm not perfect for the role of the invisible guy, who is?  While we're on the topic, I thought I'd share something I decided the other day.  Tony was talking about how on some movie set, Bette Midler was such a diva that she wouldn't allow any other red-haired people on the set, because that was her thing.  So, if I ever become an actor that reaches diva status, my plan is to not let any other white people on the set, because that's clearly (pun intended) my thing.

We met Tony and Martel for dinner tonight at Madame Wu's, right next door to Jamie's work at Hawk.  David Spade was there in the lobby waiting for a table.  Tony thought Martel might know him, since she used to do makeup for SNL, but Martel was pretty sure he wouldn't remember her.  After dinner, they came over to our place, and Tony brought the pilot for his show.  Their friends Greg and Maria also came over to watch the pilot.  Jamie made this new brie, walnut pastry thing that she learned from the Food Network.  It was tasty.  And we watched the pilot, which was excellent.  I think I'm really going to like this show.  If you liked Andy Richter Controls The Universe, you'll like this show, though this show is shot more like a documentary.  The whole cast is great, especially Tony (and I'm not just saying that, he doesn't read this), but I was most pleasantly surprised by Jason Bateman, who plays the lead.

So, Terence and I headed to the set of Arrested Development yesterday at about 4:00 pm.  The show is shot in studios 3 and 4 of Culver City Studios.  We met Tony, and he took us all over the place, to wardrobe, hair, makeup, production offices, and the sets, introducing us to everyone we met along the way.  We met most of the cast, including Jason Bateman, David Cross, and Jeffrey Tambor.  Tony got his hair cut in the trailer next to his at the same time that Jessica Walter, who plays his mom on the show was getting her hair done.  She was mildly interested in meeting Terence and I as Tony's friends until she asked what we did.  When Tony told her that we were working on becoming producers, she perked right up, and said, "Hey, aging Jewish actress, right here!"  I think she was only half kidding.

Next up, we hung out in the wardrobe trailer while Tony was fitted for his various 'Buster' costumes.  Then, we raided the food wagon.  Sour skittles to take home for Jamie, and a little hot chocolate for yours truly.  Then, we went back to Tony's trailer so he could run his lines.  We didn't actually move to the set for taping until around 7:30 pm.  Terence and I stood watching the monitors, because it's a four-walled set.  It was pretty amazing being in such a professional studio.  I mean, the air conditioner cut off whenever they yelled, "Rolling", for crying out loud.  Anyway, it was fun and a good learning experience.  Chances are good I'll be going back.

Last night, we went out to Venice to James Beach (a restaurant) for Tony's birthday.  Jamie had the lobster tacos.  I had the bacon cheeseburger.  Mark, you would have been proud.  Just about everybody there was a 'couple'.  Gar and Rebecca, from the Lost in Translation night, were there.  Terence and Elise were there, and they sat across from us, so they were our conversationalists for the most part for the evening.  If I haven't mentioned Terence before, now's a good time to give a little background. 

I first heard about Terence through working on Matt Diffee's short film Walk.  Terence had been the original producer for Walk but had moved to LA, and so he was then only marginally involved.  Terence is also involved with Scott Teems on the short film The Locusts Have No King, which I worked on while still in New York.  Back in April, when Jamie and I were just visiting, we met with Terence, because we were going to be working on this film together.  Then, we moved out here.  So now, the Terence context is at church at Pacific Crossroads.  Also, his goals are very similar to mine producing-wise.  Chances are good that we'll be working together on something in the near future.  Today, Terence and I are going to hang out on the set of Arrested Development, the show that Tony (and Liza) are in.