August 12, 2008
maybe i need GPS
since the show i am currently working on is an NBC Universal property, we shoot quite a bit on the Universal Studios backlot. now, if you're a normal human, you probably would love being there -- you get to see cool things like the phenomenal carnage of the giant plane crash site from War of the Worlds, or the Bates Motel from Psycho, which, very oddly enough, immediately adjoins the cartoony marshmallow-looking snowy world of Whoville from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. however, if you're me, you do not love being there. no, i am not some crusty jaded below-the-line crew person who does not care about movie magic; it's because the place is best seen by professionally-driven Universal Studios Backlot Tour trams. it is not meant to be navigated by innocent non-crusty crew members in their own car, as i learned last night.
now, the last few times we have shot there, crew parking is at the gate, and we're shuttled in to location, usually becoming completely disoriented by the time we get there. however, for reasons still unknown to me, we were told this time to drive all the way into the depths of the backlot to "Falls Lake" (most recognizable as the giant artificial lake where Jim Carrey ends up at the conclusion of the The Truman Show), where our big nighttime shoot was going to be. the gate guard told me (and i quote) "follow James Stewart here straight into Six Points Texas, turn left at Steven Spielberg, and go up the hill to Falls Lake." um, okay. at this point i should explain that Universal Studios is huge (230 acres or so) and old (been there since 1915) and pretty much built into wilderness land (so it's an incredibly confusing, hilly, twisting layout that is random film sets surrounded by brush). so yeah, these directions were pretty much useless.
but off i went, hoping to actually just find "Steven Spielberg." luckily, a tour tram turned right in front of me. sweet! i thought, i'll just follow that! this turned out to be an amazingly bad idea, as it was only at the last second that i realized i was about to drive straight onto the Jaws dock and get attacked by a giant rubber shark. i awkwardly reversed, ignoring the stares of the tourists, and squeezed around the tram, humiliated.
T.T. will be the first to tell you that when it comes to being directionally challenged, i am VERY directionally challenged. i admit this freely. so is it so surprising that next, i managed to somehow get stuck driving in circles around Jurassic Park? when another tram passed me, i wretchedly hoped that it wasn't the same one that watched me almost follow them into the gaping maw of Jaws. quickly becoming a tragic tourist attraction myself, i finally found a nice security guard on Wisteria Lane at Desperate Housewives, who told me he'd been there only a few days, but that Rosa down the hill and to the right could help me. thankfully, Rosa did, and i managed to barely make my call time.
now, remember that i said this was a nighttime shoot ? we wrapped sometime around 3am, and boy was it DARK. you'd think i'd have been more nervous about finding my way out, given how much trouble I had getting in, but i was cold and tired and just wanted to go home. instead of waiting to follow a less directionally-challenged person out, i foolishly peeled out of the parking lot thinking of nothing but a hot shower.
had I been starring in a horror movie, this is where the menacing music would have started. there were no streetlights. a light fog blanketed the roads, reducing visibility to barely a few feet. condensation was obscuring my windshield faster than my defrost could keep up, and i almost immediately took a wrong turn. a very wrong turn, as i found myself suddenly trapped... in a tunnel.
not just any tunnel - a claustrophobic "stone" tunnel from The Mummy, only as wide as my car, with no way to turn around, and ditches on either side. i stopped the car in disbelief, thinking oh craptastic, i have to actually drive through this. i slowly crept forward.... and my headlamps illuminated NOT the end of the tunnel, but a huge, riveted iron door. great, i thought, if this was Indiana Jones, right now would be when the giant boulder would start rolling towards me and i'd be crushed in my faithful wee Honda and dear God how am i supposed to get out of here? i had to inch my way backwards, visibility almost zero, out of the evil tunnel. despite the cold, i was sweating when i finally emerged and turned around. and that's when the coyotes started howling.
no, seriously, there are packs of wild coyotes that roam free on the Universal backlot (remember this is wilderness land) and when they start baying, it pegs the creep-o-meter right off the scale. completely spooked and exhausted, i blindly drove ahead, just wanting to put the tunnel behind me. as I passed the massive wreckage of the crashed War of the Worlds 747, i thought oh please do not let me get lost near the Psycho house where is Rosa when you need her?!?! only there were no Rosas. not even at Desperate Housewives, which i thought ALWAYS had security around. apparently not tonight, because after aimlessly weaving around Wisteria Lane, i began to completely resent Universal Studios, all stupidly named roads of Universal Studios, and any show or film ever shot on Universal Studios. oh yeah, and all coyotes of Universal Studios.
somehow, thank God, i miraculously popped out into Six Points Texas, the western town, which blessedly signaled to me that I was close to the gate. after making my way through saloons, wooden clapboard houses, and hitching posts, i emerged, exultant, at the exit gate. i knew i had just escaped certain creepy death by fog tendrils and coyotes, and cheered quietly for myself.
too bad i then spent the next 35 minutes pathetically trying to find my way onto the correct freeway going the correct direction...
Posted by hadashi at 12:25 PM | Comments (2)
July 2, 2008
connection
some of you may remember that about about a year ago, T.T. had to undergo neural reconstructive surgery to repair the damage from a botched outpatient procedure in which a major nerve was severed by a surgeon we'll call Dr. X. he had lost all use of his left trapezius muscles, and his left shoulder was caving in from the atrophy. initially, we were told we would know in about six to eight months if it was a success -- what was actually meant was that it would be a minimum of six to eight months before we'd know anything. for there to be any hope of him regaining movement and usage of that shoulder, several things needed to happen. first, the graft would have to "take," then the nerve would need to "wake up," and then the slow growth process would have to begin: nerves grow at the snail's pace of one millimeter a day. if all that happened, THEN we would have to wait and hope that the deadened trapezius muscles would not be so atrophied beyond repair that they could not begin to regenerate with the newly firing nerve.
in these long intervening months of waiting, T.T. has been doing physical therapy to try to keep his left shoulder in the best condition possible, but there has been no conclusive evidence anything was happening. this is when we really appreciated everyone's patience and concern: you would ask "how's the shoulder?" and we'd have to say: "no news yet." meanwhile, i watched T.T. struggle with the new reality of the landscape of his body: men relate to theirs so differently than women, and there were many times when i could simply feel him grieving, or letting it go...again, or even gathering himself for battle against the creeping dread that there was nothing happening under his scarred skin. there was nothing i could say, though; no magic words of consolation that would do any more good than simply putting my hand on his ruined shoulder, or gently kissing the white, twisting line that now runs down his neck.
my own private grief would sometimes bubble to the surface in odd ways, but mostly i have kept it to myself, because hope is much shinier and easier to carry like a shield in front of your tender parts. my faith tells me this is not self-delusion; this is how life is and i can either choose to trust that there is some kind of good even in the smelliest cesspool of circumstance, or i can give up and wallow. (honestly, wallowing could be easier, but i'm just a stubborn ornery girl sometimes and that's saved my sorry arse more than once from despair.) we're still fairly newlyweddish, i think, enough so that it has been scary learning to navigate the big wide chasms of soul distance that yawn wide when you look at your beloved and realise: as much as i could drown in these eyes, i will never, never see the world through them and thus i am essentially alone. but, cheesy as it sounds, love does build a bridge over those pits somehow and we have learned to be closer through this. i still can get a little emotional when he comes back from surfing -- rehab in and of itself -- and i can tell by the way he holds his face a little too steady, that he desperately misses the days when paddling out to the break wasn't the Herculean effort it is now. but i've seen his back become less hollow; he can put shirts on now without contorting to get his left arm in the sleeve, and his range of motion has improved. we've remained hopeful -- he's a stubborn ornery guy too -- yet subsequent visits to the neurosurgeon have been inconclusive. so it was decided to schedule another neural conductivity test.
Posted by hadashi at 5:37 PM | Comments (0)
June 3, 2008
relieved
i didn't realise quite how much i was invested in the presidential race until tonight, when T.T. and i were having a nice boba milk tea and the tv monitor in the coffee shop suddenly started flashing the words "Barack Obama" and "presumptive Democratic nominee" together. i suddenly realised i'd been more or less holding my breath ever since Super Tuesday.
i don't normally wear my politics on my sleeve, or my (woefully-underposted-to) blog, but this election feels like such a crux for the state of affairs not just in America, but for this weary globe, that i'll go ahead and just plead:
please, if you're an American citizen, get informed. be part of the dialogue. get registered. and for heaven's sakes, VOTE.
if you're not, do as T.T. does and get informed. be part of the dialogue. get other people registered. get them to vote.
as exhausting as this year's election cycle will now continue to be, don't opt out.
(yes, i've been an Obama supporter from the beginning, ever since i read Dreams From My Father and later, The Audacity of Hope. but i've continued to solidify my position over the course of the long Democratic primary slog, especially after that speech on race in America that i think should be required listening for all American highschool and college freshman. there, now you know.)
Posted by hadashi at 12:48 PM | Comments (2)
May 27, 2008
of baths, baklava, and balance
as some of you may know, we once again ditched the country -- and this time we went to Turkey. why? because, well, we could. since we're still working on the kids thing, we don't have a mortgage, and we're both freelancers, we figure while we have this freedom of time & finance, we'd be foolish to waste an opportunity to see more of the world.
but why Turkey? honestly, ever since i was a small wee Hadashi, i have had the map of Turkey floating in my head as a Land of Wondrous Culture and Mystery. it's been at the top of the Places To See list for ages...and i trace the allure back to being a child sitting in a hard pew on a Sunday morning, trying not to fall asleep. as those of you who had childhoods in church will know, one of the Approved Activites During a Boring Sermon That Will Not Incur Your Parents' Wrath is to look through the pew Bible. now, at the back of any Bible worth its proverbial salt are maps. they sport fun titles like "Palestine in the Time of Christ," or "The Twelve Tribes of Israel." but for some reason, these did not interest me half so much as the one entitled "Paul's Missionary Journeys." perhaps it's because Paul, quite the nomad, did three of them, plus a one-way trip to Rome, so there were lots of colorful lines criss-crossing the page. perhaps it's also because since i was living in Japan, i was attracted to the large label that said "Asia Minor." i would pore over the map and try to impress myself by pronouncing tough words like "Smyrna" or "Pamphylia."
in any case, i made it to adulthood with the map of Asia Minor still lurking in the corners of my travel mind. the glowing testimonials of people who'd been to Istanbul plus genuine curiosity as to what East meets West really looked like made the answer to "where do you want to go next?" easy. i have to hand it to T.T. -- he wasn't immediately sold on the idea of Turkey, but he agreed to it when he knew how excited i was. to him, Turkey was this murky land of overpriced beach resorts and home to the largest population of Germany's guest workers -- basically, Turkey is to Germany as Mexico is the United States. if your whole idea of Mexico is Cancun and an immigrant workforce, you'll understand the initial reluctance. however, when you travel in a country and get to know it on its own terms, instead of through foreign perception and prejudice, it's a really freeing experience -- which is why he got excited too. so off we went, for three weeks.
Continue reading "of baths, baklava, and balance"
Posted by hadashi at 5:06 PM | Comments (0)
April 9, 2008
A hui hou
he was driving home from work, so they say, when he fell asleep at the wheel ten blocks from his house. when his car hit the tree, he was instantly killed. i'd known him for almost ten years; we'd adventured our way together through the crazy world of making television. he was a camera operator; as an audio mixer, i'd been paired with him before, and our jobs together were always more fun than work. he loved life with a fierceness that made people take notice; a native Hawaiian, he truly embodied that famous aloha spirit. he was generous too; with his time, his smile, his possessions. sometimes we would talk about what we were going to do after we retired from tv production. he was re-launching a clothing line he'd started, and would lament that he was a bad businessman because he just wanted to give everything away.
his sudden, unexpected death has hit our little community of production folk really hard. T.T. knew him too; when he was with me on a job in Hawaii, they'd gotten to know one another over the generous lending of a surfboard. it seems impossible that someone so alive, someone whose life burned so bright and strong, would be gone, in an instant, without warning.
i struggle now with why his story had to end now, so swiftly. i struggle with seeing the grief of my work family. i struggle with knowing that we daily live life on the razor edge; it takes not much at all to tip our fragile selves into the end of our earthly existence. i struggle with my deeply-held belief in life after life; "i know that my Redeemer lives and i will stand with Him on that day," but what about THIS day? what about the gaping loss and all the questions and whys now?
and so this weekend, at the memorial service, i waded into the Pacific Ocean, tore the lei i had made from around my neck, and tossed the flowers into the water. as i watched the waves take the blossoms out to sea, i said A hui hou -- until we meet again -- to my friend.
Keoni, thank you for all you gave to so many; if we can live life with even just a little more aloha, a little more fearlessness, it is because of you.
Posted by hadashi at 6:15 PM | Comments (0)
March 8, 2008
reduce, reuse, recycle...resell!
when T.T. & i got married, thus not only adding our lives to one another, but also our worldly goods, we tried to pare down all the Stuff we'd accumulated. we thought we'd done a pretty good job of it, but the garage was still pretty full. this began a saga of three years of being embarrassed by our garage and then talking about Having a Big Yard Sale. the key word here was Talking.
T.T.: we should just have a yard sale and get rid of this Stuff.
Hadashi: great idea!
T.T.: maybe next weekend?
Hadashi: no, i'm working. how about the weekend after that?
T.T.: i have a huge deadline.
(silence)
Hadashi: well, you're right! we should have a yard sale!
eventually, as time passed, this conversation would degenerate into:
T.T.: we have to have that yard sale soon!
Hadashi: um, i have to wash my hair.
-or-
Hadashi: we need to have that yard sale!
T.T. um, i have to organise my DVDs.
then we would generally moan about our accumulated Stuff and sometimes make a pathetic attempt to sort it some more. in a massive effort, we got plastic bins to "organise" everything, but that basically meant the garage stayed full of Stuff in Plastic Bins, as opposed to Stuff in Random Cardboard Boxes.
Continue reading "reduce, reuse, recycle...resell!"
Posted by hadashi at 10:43 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2008
(new year's) resolutions vs. goals
i've written before about how i hate the idea of New Year's resolutions, but i can't deny that a new year rolling around does motivate one to think about changes, growth, and goals. i realise this may sound like semantics -- goals vs. resolutions -- but there is a difference. "resolutions" tend to be big, unfocused, and possibly, ultimately out of one's control: common ones involve losing weight, getting a better/new job, paying down debt or saving money, or even finding a mate. it's just setting oneself up for failure -- conventional wisdom says people make resolutions simply to not keep them.
however, "goals" are incremental, realistic, and potentially fun. i wasn't originally planning to post about this, but after a phone conversation with a good friend who challenged me to do so, here goes with making them public:
1. give up the coffee.
2. cook at least one recipe from every cookbook i own.
3. take at least one -- maybe two -- trips to visit & catch up with old friends.
4. finish my self-study German language lesson book.
5. and one secret goal that i just can't share. sorry!
so far, number one has gone really well. it helped that i was ridiculously ill the first few weeks of January and had no desire to drink anything stronger than chicken broth, but i still miss the gorgeous aroma of fresh-ground coffee. sigh. one day i will maybe go back with decaf, but for now, cold turkey is cold turkey. i'm glad we got some really good teas in China!
as for number two, it's more of a use-it-or-lose-it goal. i want to cook more, be more creative/adventurous in what i try cooking, and also cull out the cookbooks that are useless to me. this seemed to be a good way to go about it.
number three is why my friend wanted me to blog this: i've said so many times i'd love to visit friends of yore, and yet haven't gone because of schedule issues, sheer inertia, or a false sense of how complicated it would be. so with T.T.'s blessing, i've decided that if i just go for a few days by myself, i could start doing one or two...dare i say three? trips a year to visit far-flung friends that i'd just love to have a cup of coffee with. oh wait. i guess it'll have to be tea.
numbers four and five are pretty self-explanatory -- i really want to continue to improve my German language skills, and it's just laziness that has kept me from doing so. as for number five...well, a girl's gotta have some secret skills up her proverbial sleeve.
so there you have it: my goals for 2008/Year of the Rat. i challenge you to come up with five realistic, positive goals that are actually achievable and go for it! and any encouragement for me is welcome...
Posted by hadashi at 8:31 PM | Comments (1)
February 6, 2008
happy Year of the Rat!
i'm thankful to report that we are fully recovered from the stealthy attack of flu that descended upon us, and now we're just working our tails off on various jobs (for me, a dog grooming show, of all things). i've just finished making a batch of what my family calls "mudoi," but are more commonly known as bao, in honor of the Lunar New Year. it's the Year of the Rat, which means that supposedly we'll get to enjoy financial success, romance, or perhaps a tsunami (seriously). around this time i try to celebrate my Chinese heritage in some way, and that way usually involves eating...of course... there have been a few years when i've made a big feast and had people over, but at this point, making the steamed buns is the extent of my effort.
i have, however, been thinking a lot more about China. it still feels so immediate, our whirlwind 2-week trip there. although it was immensely foreign, there was still a feeling of familiarity that i couldn't explain, except to say it must be in my blood somehow. while there were the outward senses that felt comfortable -- smells i knew, food that i loved, faces that looked like family members -- there were also these inner flashes of comprehension that i can only describe this way: as much as i have longed to see China for myself, maybe China wanted to see me again too.
Continue reading "happy Year of the Rat!"
Posted by hadashi at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)