My Weird, Fun Work

The day started at 2:30 in the morning, which is abnormal, even by film crew standards.  Doing night work is common, but beginning so ridiculously early is not.  I don’t even think the Amish were milking cows yet.  However, the odd hours are worth it.  I’d take a camera truck over a cubicle any day.  I find the physical aspects of the job appealing.  A little sweat is good for the soul and keeps a person young, granted you don’t over do it.  

As I took the escalator through the Hollywood and Highland complex, the last of the stragglers from the clubs stumbled to their cars, holding each other up.  Reaching the boulevard, I found the crew at the work trucks and we began moving our equipment into the Hard Rock Café.  By day, this is one of the busiest streets in Los Angeles, bustling with tourists and character impersonators, but at 2:30 it was ghostly it was so empty. 

We began setting up for a cooking competition we were shooting for one of the networks.  Cameras were being built, lights rigged, and all kinds of cable run.  There’s something unique about film sets.  On its face, it may seem like any other big operation--a factory line or a construction site.  But when you take the time to look around you find dozens of people, all doing something different.  Actually, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a greater variety of individuals doing a greater variety of tasks.  You might see a guy hanging from a ladder, focusing a light, while another person practices their lines.  One person could be setting up a bank of video monitors while a producer schmoozes his clients.  A car gets prepped while a gun gets loaded while a dog gets trained.  Inconsistency, often, is the only consistent thing on set.

When coming on to a new film project there seems to be an unwritten social protocol.  After everyone rushes to set-up and get the first shot you catch your breath and assess your surroundings.  Most people start out by taking an inventory of the opposite sex.  For me, this was a quick process that night at the Hard Rock.  Next, you might catch up with old coworkers--perhaps someone you haven’t seen in a while.  Often times, there’s some guy you know but you just can’t place.  This can be terribly frustrating.  And every once in a while there’s someone you’re certain you’ve met before but they won’t admit to knowing you.  They may just brush you off or they may actually become defensive and disown you entirely--kind of like how Peter did after Jesus was taken into custody.  At any rate, once everyone’s sufficiently caught up, the conversation usually turns to shop talk or war stories.  Personally, I have a low tolerance for discussing my craft--especially on a night shoot.  Eventually, I end up having to fake interest.  War stories can be fun, though. They all start out the same way, with someone saying, “I was on this one show…blank, blank, blank.”  There’s no telling what you’ll get.  They could say they were on a job with transsexual raccoons that jumped through rings of fire or they could say they were shooting mailboxes that turned into robots that crapped five-cent stamps.  Again, there’s plenty of variety. 

At the Hard Rock that morning, time began to take its toll and conversation turned into a working rhythm, which turned into a rush to the finish line.  Eventually, after many hours someone had the good sense to call wrap.  By then, the sun was blasting through the windows, revealing the fatigue on the crew's faces.  Hollywood Boulevard filled with sightseers as we packed up and carted to the front door.  I squinted out at the tourists walking along, realizing it wouldn’t be easy to herd though the sea of bodies.  Suddenly, the Jason impersonator from Friday the 13^th walked up and stretched out his arms. Wearing a hockey mask and with his machete extended he blocked the crowd, allowing our convoy of carts to move forward.  He looked over his should and said, “Follow me.”  Then he began walking ahead of us, parting the never-ending mob and blazing a trail to the camera truck.  Reaching our destination, we thanked the gracious psychopath impersonator and he went on his merry way.  The strangest part is that it didn’t seem strange--not in Hollywood, not after working half the night and finishing our day at noon.  But I guess it was a little weird…and fun, too.

The Myth of Coexist

I’m sure if you live in a metropolitan area or a college town you’ve seen this bumper sticker before--coexist.  Five of the seven letters represent different religions and the other two letters represent peace and the sexes.  Since it so overwhelmingly refers to different religions it’s been branded a symbol of religious tolerance. 

I always thought that the order was interesting.  The letter “C” which is a crescent moon for Islam is exclusively accompanied in the prefix by “O” which takes the form of a peace sign--a symbol that is associated with the political Left.  In case you were unaware, the peace sign is semaphore representing the letters  “N” and “D” which stand for one of the original mantras of the Left, Nuclear Disarmament. 

It seems appropriate that they keep each other company on the sticker just as they seem to keep each other company in life.   Perhaps there’s common ground.  I’ve certainly noticed a fanatical, totalitarian kindred spirit if you will.  Islam wants to control how you pray and how you dress.  The Left wants to control everything else--two peas in a pod.

           I don’t think it’s quite that simple though.  More specifically, I don’t really see Islam defending the Left but I find the Left is almost constantly defending Islam.  When America went to war against Islamic terrorists who was the biggest detractor?  The Left.  When Israel tries to defend itself who makes excuses for their fanatical Muslim attackers?  The Left.  When the first and only American president to have a Muslim background is elected what side of the political spectrum is he from?  The Left.  And when the building of a mosque is proposed on the sacred ground of 9-11 who seems to be its loudest cheerleader?  The Left.

But why?  It’s not reciprocated.  Islam almost seems like the older, cooler kid that puts up with the younger, doting kid because the Left seems to worship them, but at the end of the day Islam is actually kind of embarrassed to be seen together.  So, I wonder why the Left is always going to bat for Islam.  Is it because blacks make up 25% of Muslims in this country and blacks are big supporters of the major Left party, the Democrats?  Is it because the Left generally has contempt for traditional Christianity and views Islam as an anti-Christianity of sorts?  By backing the religion of Middle Easterners are they trying to exploit the voting potential of yet another ethnic minority?  Maybe it’s a knee-jerk reaction to conservatives opposing strict forms of Islam--therefore, prompting the Left to offer its endorsement.  Or perhaps it’s just because conservatives tend to like Israel and Muslims don’t.  So, the Left, opposing conservatives, are forced to favor Muslims.  I don’t know. 

At any rate, it seems to be the most self-defeating alliance since Roosevelt backed Stalin.  If, hypothetically, Muslim influence grew to the point of instituting Sharia Law who do you think they’d go after first?  It wouldn’t be the modestly dressed conservatives who oppose abortion and the proliferation of pornography.  Rest assured, it would be the Left.  They’d stone half of New York City and LA in the first week.  Say goodbye to every gay friend, bartender, and boutique owner you know.  The theocrats would be burning paintings, books, and movies in bonfires that would make the Acton fire look like the cherry of a cigarette. 

But these possibilities seem to completely elude the Left.  When it comes to the mosque controversy they’re the project’s biggest defenders, continuously citing the first amendment.  I find this rather amusing.  When it comes to a Leftist and an Islamic Radical the only question I would have concerning the constitution is:  Which one’s spit would land on our government’s founding document first?  Does anyone really think that the Islamic radicals promoting this mosque care about the first amendment?  If you were to ask a group of political cartoonists they would probably say no.  Radical Islam doesn’t want to coexist alongside other religions or forms of thought.  It wants to dominate.  And the idea that its zealous elements should be treated like every other religion when it acts like no other religion is something I’m still trying to wrap my head around. 

Nevertheless, President Obama defended the proposed mosque, prompting a national discussion on his own faith.  Using the coexist symbolism, a good amount of the public thinks he’s a “C” which means Muslim.  The largest portion thinks he’s a “T” which means Christian.  The truth is he’s neither.  If anything, he’s an “O” which means that his religion is the Left.  The church events he attended over the last 20 years are barely indistinguishable from the political events he attended.  It appears his faith isn’t in Muhammad or Jesus Christ, but in Leftist social planning.  His continual references to collective salvation seem to have more to do with politics than with God, although his defense of Islam, like many on the Left, is steadfast.

The call to coexist, albeit warm and fuzzy, actually exemplifies one of the greatest misconceptions that the Left tirelessly promotes--that man is basically harmonious.  The fact is that Islam has been at odds with almost every other religion represented on the “coexist matrix” and the Left has endlessly fought against traditional Judaism and Christianity since the dawn of the 20^th century.  Perhaps the greatest enemy of coexistence is the bigotry of radical Islam and Leftist thought.  Maybe it would be more realistic to drop the prefix and urge the world to simply exist.  However, the one thing the designer of the coexist slogan got right was placing the “C” and the “O” together.  We may never quite know why the Left carries so much water for Islam.  Perhaps they think appeasement is the way to go since it’s worked so well for Europe.  Or maybe, it’s the only way to have an idiotic bumper sticker make any sense.