my uncle called me on Wednesday and reminded me I had an apointment. My grandpa and I had tickets to go see his favorite ventriloquist perform in Sioux Falls, SD on friday night.

I totally forgot. I was in LA and my flight didn’t leave until monday the 11th.

I called the only person who could help… Classic Ryan Sargent Style.

He said he was taking his car in to have the passenger seat belt fixed at 8am on thursday, and as soon as he got the car back we could go. We left LA at around 5:30 pm western time on thursday, so that’s basically rush hour. At that point the goal was to meet my grandpa in Omaha, NE in 21 hours.

Once we reached Denver, CO I had Erin figure our time. We would have had to average 93 mph for the next six or seven hours, including time spent getting gas, to get to Omaha on time. The show was in Sioux Falls though. So I asked if I could just meet up there. An average of 93 miles per hour just didn’t seem possible, with construction, traffic and so on.

Ryan got me to the Sioux Falls arena during the 15 minute intermission between the opening and main act.

Which is to say our 25 hour LA to Sioux Falls nonstop road trip was a huge success.

The whole thing was totally insane.

Arthur drove me from the gallery to the jaguar dealer in hollywood to meet CRSS on thursaday afternoon around 3:30pm. He wished us luck. I think that’s what did it (oh that and gorilla spirit + chimp attitude).

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Two (Sunday) days ago I drove around SF with lee after renting a truck. I woke up at my friend Jordan’s apartment that day. Lee and I walked from the loin to the truck rental place by CCA, so that would be 7th St. and 16thth St. I think. Lee and I stopped at Carol-Anne’s to get keys. We picked things up from Carson’s studio… and the popcorn maker, calendars from the printers, foam and so on. I don’t know who all to thank for helping us that day. For sure Skye went out of his way to pick things up so that I would not have to drive the big truck trough town too much.

Oh yeah, Christan Einfeldt the producer of Digital Tipping Point interviewed Lee and I on Saturday. It was the first inter view we have given for our project. He kindly captured all the footage from the interview and gave it to Skye on a harddrive the next day!
So that was one stop we didn’t have to make before taking the truck to Oakland to get beautiful hoddies from Alexandria’s studio. She made mine brown and I really like it. I think Terry made the concession stand? It looks awesome! Sky and Lee and I loaded the concession stand into the rental truck, tossed in some spare lumber and away I went down to LA.
Got to LA around midnight. Arther let me in and parked his car behind the truck so as to discourage the many looters living in his neighborhood (he lives in a nice neighborhood, so that was a joke about looters but for real that he parked his car behind the truck). I slept and had nightmares related to driving the truck.

the next day I left the house at the same time as Arthur. He was off to pick up Carson. I was off to the gallery. Parked the truck in front of the gallery as close as I could manage. Skye, Lee, Carson and I worked like leaf-cutter ants unloading the truck. Arthur was videoing us.
Once the truck was empty we headed to home depot to get scaffolding and a bunch of sheise.
We didn’t know how to get to the more reasonable aka less expensive lumber store so I called the place and gave a dim description of where I was, got directions and started driving. Of course since I was getting board and whatever I decided to start driving with out really looking at the map. We were going basically in the opposite direction for a while before we called Arthur with our location/desired destination. Arthur got us going the right way. I decided I would look at the map and that super good before driving anywhere in the future.
Lumber store was awesome. Only about a foot clearance on each side of the truck box … max. We loaded 40 2×6 and 30 sheets of lewon with the help of the lumber yard staff.
On the way back to the gallery I missed a turn and decided to pull into an epty parking lot to turn around. I may or may not have come close to crushing a little white car driving the opposite direction while turning into the parking lot.
Carson, Lee and I unladed the truck.
Alex showed up at the gallery and Skye. Lee and Carson helped them unload. Then we all went to Amy’s to drop things off. She wasn’t home yet so all of us excluding Lee went to go buy refreshments. I learned that the Clamato beer they sell in the store tastes just like the tomatoe seasoning packets that you get with the ramen noodles.
Amy got back while we were having our make shift tailgate party and invited us all in.
Skye and I stayed at Amy’s. The truck was parked outside and needed to be returned by 8:31am the next day a few miles from her place.
We watched a bit of All that Jazz until Amy noticed I was sleeping, Skye was asleep as well. Amy gave me a turkey burger and Skye offered his food as well before the movie. That was really nice of them as I had eaten all my snacks.
So today Amy and I gassed up the truck and returned it to the rental place. And now I’m here with Carson and Alex setting things up.
Carson is building the confession booth and Alex is setting up the basement office.
The others are at the store I think. My eye is a little puffy and I think maybe infected. tty world!

Well, here’s the skinny today:

Chantal, my 16 year old niece bailed this morning. She was going to be an usherette, however her Summer is not going as planned. This is sad news, but not, prehaps, bad news. I have the sneaking suspicion the theater was going to be overstaffed with three employees…
Plus we were a yard short of material before this. I was going to have shorts as opposed to proper long pants for my uniform. Now I’ll have the long pants.

I spoke with Amy this morning, her endeavors to find food in exchange for promotion are not going well. That is no surprise. Though it is disappointing. We may be eating a lot of bread and butter sandwiches. LOL.

Janet sent me the final contracts this morning. So, I’ll have those for my trip to Chicago Friday, and SF next Tuesday.

My production assistant, Arthur, set the wheels in motion today to get parking stickers and permits for July, so we’ll be able to house the vehicles that deliver ten people to my folks’ home (where 2/3 of the crew are staying).

Jonny is uploading ephemera to the 23E ephemera library. I asked him to pick most of it (I suggested a few things I’d like to see up there). I think the archive, like everything else on the project, will be more exciting if I’m not micro-managing it. It is fascinating to me to see the project through other peoples’ eyes.

Spoke to Ali, and she’ll be starting the hoodies for the crew next week.

Also spoke to Carson, and sched’ed a build meeting for next Tuesday night, and a full crew meeting for Thursday. The full meeting will coincide with his birthday, and be a meeting/party.

Alex and I have been emailing all morning discussing how we’re going to capture sound. We’re struggling with finding wireless lavaliers we can afford to rent. But they are not an item we can really forego, we think.

Finally, a potential investor out of NYC offered his regrets today. This is not the best economic climate for convincing people to risk money on an independently produced artwork/art film. LOL. Fortunately, we have all we need now. Everything from here on out is gravy (of course, the kind of gravy that makes architectural models and other important elements possible…)

Just returned from Fringe. My father and I (he’s the de facto production assistant right now) measured the theater and lobby down to the 1/16th inch - with the wall mapped out for the Penrose angle and the wall center set for a 20 foot throw from the video projector.

The front of the gallery is at the top of this drawing. The wall bisecting the gallery is angled, with the right hand side (in the drawing) 12′ 4 3/4″ from the window seats at the front of the gallery. The wall hits the left hand wall almost dead center, pure luck, as the center wall pivots on a point midway between the side walls and 20′ from the back wall. Though I think we may push the wall forward three feet to get a 23′ throw.

Regardless, the center wall is at a 108 degree angle on one side and 72 degrees on the other side, creating angles synced to our Penrose tile themed ceiling.

The lobby of the theater will be 17′ 2 1/16″ deep on one side,  12′ 1″ deep on the other, and 17′ 3 5/8″ wide.  Those measurements take into account a wall that is 3 3/4′ wide.  The angled wall will be 17′ 11 7/8″ long.

Sadly, I forgot to get the measurements for the bleachers. GAR! But I’ll make a model in Berkeley Sunday, 1′ to 1″ scale and get those measurements figured out.

This is another potential problem, the column containing the plumbing on the left hand wall (in the drawing) has some sort of ornamental (or not) extrusion that angles out and will interfere with our metal frame for the ceiling support. As well, next to it, is a rectangular box protruding from the wall, well past where we wanted our wall to connect. So, we’ll have to build ceiling and wall around those structures.

We also mapped out the electric. Bad news there as well, 5 circuits, 10 amps each. Far less than we wanted. I’ll talk to David, Carson, Skye, and Alex next week about how we will handle that.