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Tent Raising Plus Recovery Slash
May. 27th, 2009 04:12 pmJump: Westport, WA → Raymond, WA – Anderson Field: 40 miles
Go out the way we came in… arrows back to HWY 105 South
HWY 105 South to Raymond
Arrows to the lot
Two prop guys from Disney on the lot this morning. They’re working on the upcoming Disney production of Water For Elephants, but they’d never seen an actual tent raising.
The battered old tent is obviously the true star of the show. It weighs 3600 pounds and is 120 feet, 80 feet wide and 30 feet tall at its highest point. It's pitched every morning and loaded back on to the flatbed truck every night. travels on a flatbed truck. It takes 32 side poles, 16 quarter poles, 2 center poles and 100 stakes to raise the tent.
For the sake of Disney prop guys everywhere, the process looks like this:
The roustabouts are all Mexican. Remember JDK’s legal alien importation business? They be it. Personally I have come to believe that in such perilous economic times, H2B visas are a bit of an insult to an unemployed citizenry that desperately wants to work. (Not a day goes by when some guy doesn’t wander up to me and ask, “So… is the circus hiring?” They’re not all drunks and dissolutes either. One of them even handed me a resume.) But that is a public policy rant for another day.
###
The travails of a 35 year old RV crisscrossing our mighty nation could be a reality TV show of its own. Half a mile outside of Westport the RV started gushing. A veritable Old Faithful of transmission fluid spewed from the motor.
Well, this is too fucking bad, thought I to myself. Westport, Washington is not where I want to spend the rest of my life. Because if the transmission blows, that’s it for the RV and even in the sunlight – the rain did eventually stop – Westport, Washington is a gritty little town. Home to a bustling fishing industry, true – do Americans still eat fish? But an absolute failure as a tourist destination – dirt cheap, deep sea expeditions may lure the bass fishing entuhusiast but what are their wives supposed to do all day? The cute little tschotske shops are shuttered and closed.
Scott the Mechanic saved the day, proving once again why he’s the most valuable member of the show. “Hose came lose,” he drawled to Ben in his endearing west Oklahoma twang. A quick readjustment, a couple of quarts of transmission fluid and the RV went back on the road again. I am IN LUV with Scott the Mechanic. I want to ride on the back of his Harley!
In other news I am finally reading A Million Little Pieces. I figure since I’m attempting to write a bestselling memoir, I should really attempt to read one.
My friend ___ wrote a memoir several years back after the breakup of his marriage. _____ ______, it was called. Didn’t sell but in other ways was more successful than he could possibly have dreamed, scored him lunch with Ruth Reichl, assignments from Gourmet and numerous other upscale foodie magazines. New York Times picked it up as one of 2002’s Memorable Books.
I will tell you right now that food writing is the way to go for a freelancer – for a few years there ___ was forever jetting off to Morocco to evaluate the cuisine at Marrakech’s newest five-star hotel or cruising the Mediterranean on a ship that had just hired the hot new baby chef. He didn’t do anything with it though, being of an erratic and irascible disposition. He got into a fight with the publishers slated to bring out the trade version of his memoir – refused to listen to his agent. The paperback never came out. The proposal for his second book kept morphing – one minute it was a treatise on Maloccio, the Evil Eye; the next it was an analysis of a strange little town in Mexico famous for its sheep and candle-makers.
“Well, obviously, you should write about food again,” I said one day, as we were getting drunk together. “Food or religion.” ___ was the author of a very delightful column in the ___ _____ ______ called Goats and Sheep, essentially restaurant reviews of local church and synagogue services.
___ snorted. “Do you know what happens to people who write about food? They write about food. Forever and ever and ever.”
“What about fiction? As a change of pace from memoir.”
“As a change of pace from memoir?” ___ roared. “Ha, ha, ha, you silly rabbit! All memoirs are fiction!”
This was several years before James Frey’s public pillaging at the hands of America’s anointed conscience, Oprah Winfrey.
___’s words stuck with me. What’s more important – the facts or the story behind them? I would say the story behind them, it satisfies more human emotional needs. Personally I never hesitate to recolor truth’s duller details in the interests of narrative – caveat lector, let the reader beware.
But the details still have to be plausible.
That’s the problem with James Frey. He’s not plausible.
Take, for instance, Frey's description of a trip to the dentist. It begins on page 62, goes on for five pages or so. A most elaborate and unpleasant adventure in oral hygiene! Cavities drilled! Two root canals! Jagged tooth fragments filed! And all this without anesthetic! Or so he claims. And I’m reading this and thinking, O-kay, I get why they hold off on the laughing gas and the percocet aperatif. As Frey never ceases to remind us, “I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal.” But what’s with the weird capitalizations, and why wouldn’t they give him novacaine? No one's ever gotten a buzz off of novacaine.
Didn’t need Oprah to clue me in that Mister Frey's recovery slash is 50% compressed air.
That I don’t mind. A well-constructed scam is a thing of beauty in my eyes. What I mind is the execrable writing. If you want a good junkie memoir, read Jerry Stahl’s Permanent Midnight. Jerry Stahl can write.
Go out the way we came in… arrows back to HWY 105 South
HWY 105 South to Raymond
Arrows to the lot
Two prop guys from Disney on the lot this morning. They’re working on the upcoming Disney production of Water For Elephants, but they’d never seen an actual tent raising.
The battered old tent is obviously the true star of the show. It weighs 3600 pounds and is 120 feet, 80 feet wide and 30 feet tall at its highest point. It's pitched every morning and loaded back on to the flatbed truck every night. travels on a flatbed truck. It takes 32 side poles, 16 quarter poles, 2 center poles and 100 stakes to raise the tent.
For the sake of Disney prop guys everywhere, the process looks like this:
The roustabouts are all Mexican. Remember JDK’s legal alien importation business? They be it. Personally I have come to believe that in such perilous economic times, H2B visas are a bit of an insult to an unemployed citizenry that desperately wants to work. (Not a day goes by when some guy doesn’t wander up to me and ask, “So… is the circus hiring?” They’re not all drunks and dissolutes either. One of them even handed me a resume.) But that is a public policy rant for another day.
The travails of a 35 year old RV crisscrossing our mighty nation could be a reality TV show of its own. Half a mile outside of Westport the RV started gushing. A veritable Old Faithful of transmission fluid spewed from the motor.
Well, this is too fucking bad, thought I to myself. Westport, Washington is not where I want to spend the rest of my life. Because if the transmission blows, that’s it for the RV and even in the sunlight – the rain did eventually stop – Westport, Washington is a gritty little town. Home to a bustling fishing industry, true – do Americans still eat fish? But an absolute failure as a tourist destination – dirt cheap, deep sea expeditions may lure the bass fishing entuhusiast but what are their wives supposed to do all day? The cute little tschotske shops are shuttered and closed.
Scott the Mechanic saved the day, proving once again why he’s the most valuable member of the show. “Hose came lose,” he drawled to Ben in his endearing west Oklahoma twang. A quick readjustment, a couple of quarts of transmission fluid and the RV went back on the road again. I am IN LUV with Scott the Mechanic. I want to ride on the back of his Harley!
In other news I am finally reading A Million Little Pieces. I figure since I’m attempting to write a bestselling memoir, I should really attempt to read one.
My friend ___ wrote a memoir several years back after the breakup of his marriage. _____ ______, it was called. Didn’t sell but in other ways was more successful than he could possibly have dreamed, scored him lunch with Ruth Reichl, assignments from Gourmet and numerous other upscale foodie magazines. New York Times picked it up as one of 2002’s Memorable Books.
I will tell you right now that food writing is the way to go for a freelancer – for a few years there ___ was forever jetting off to Morocco to evaluate the cuisine at Marrakech’s newest five-star hotel or cruising the Mediterranean on a ship that had just hired the hot new baby chef. He didn’t do anything with it though, being of an erratic and irascible disposition. He got into a fight with the publishers slated to bring out the trade version of his memoir – refused to listen to his agent. The paperback never came out. The proposal for his second book kept morphing – one minute it was a treatise on Maloccio, the Evil Eye; the next it was an analysis of a strange little town in Mexico famous for its sheep and candle-makers.
“Well, obviously, you should write about food again,” I said one day, as we were getting drunk together. “Food or religion.” ___ was the author of a very delightful column in the ___ _____ ______ called Goats and Sheep, essentially restaurant reviews of local church and synagogue services.
___ snorted. “Do you know what happens to people who write about food? They write about food. Forever and ever and ever.”
“What about fiction? As a change of pace from memoir.”
“As a change of pace from memoir?” ___ roared. “Ha, ha, ha, you silly rabbit! All memoirs are fiction!”
This was several years before James Frey’s public pillaging at the hands of America’s anointed conscience, Oprah Winfrey.
___’s words stuck with me. What’s more important – the facts or the story behind them? I would say the story behind them, it satisfies more human emotional needs. Personally I never hesitate to recolor truth’s duller details in the interests of narrative – caveat lector, let the reader beware.
But the details still have to be plausible.
That’s the problem with James Frey. He’s not plausible.
Take, for instance, Frey's description of a trip to the dentist. It begins on page 62, goes on for five pages or so. A most elaborate and unpleasant adventure in oral hygiene! Cavities drilled! Two root canals! Jagged tooth fragments filed! And all this without anesthetic! Or so he claims. And I’m reading this and thinking, O-kay, I get why they hold off on the laughing gas and the percocet aperatif. As Frey never ceases to remind us, “I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal.” But what’s with the weird capitalizations, and why wouldn’t they give him novacaine? No one's ever gotten a buzz off of novacaine.
Didn’t need Oprah to clue me in that Mister Frey's recovery slash is 50% compressed air.
That I don’t mind. A well-constructed scam is a thing of beauty in my eyes. What I mind is the execrable writing. If you want a good junkie memoir, read Jerry Stahl’s Permanent Midnight. Jerry Stahl can write.
