I type this super tired and sunburned. More tired than sunburned, but still, one may contribute to the other. It doesn't make me want to blog all that much.
I worked on a TV series today, outdoors, in a football uniform, and while they really exercised me for about an hour (might only have been 45 minutes), I was tired for the rest of the day. It didn't help that I got home from my cousin's house at nearly three am the night before, with no words written, and forced myself to get at least 200 words before I fell asleep . . . and then my alarm went off only three hours later.
They hired a bunch of big athletic guys to play the real football players (although a couple of them were pushing middle age--I guess with a helmet on you'd never know), a pair of stuntmen to play the tackler and tacklee, some old men to play coaches, and a handful of other guys to play miscellaneous. I was one of those. I showed up on set, bleary eyed, squinting at the rising sun, without an idea of what I was there for. "Did you bring compression shorts?" the wardrobe lady asked me.
"I'm not sure what those are. Something you put on a sprained wrist or ankle?"
She handed me a pair, and they turned out to be longish boxer-type underwear.
I put on my benchwarmer football uniform (four of us were guys who were in training, apparently), and was surprised by how elaborate the whole setup was. It took a full minute to lace my pants up*, and two minutes just to loop my belt. Later, I found out I had put the pads on wrong, like you see in this picture:
Turns out I wasn't the only guy who had the shoulder pads over our chest and back instead of our shoulders. Whoops.
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 461
There was a guy on the set whose arms were gargantuan, truly amazing, immense things, complete with veins so prominent, they seemed about the size of my own arms. He had played in the NFL, and his kids had encouraged him to show up that day, and while he was a very nice guy (and way friendlier to me than he looked like he should be), he was making for the whole day approximately what he made in an hour in professional football.
I have never played football (I guess I played flag football a few times, centuries ago, but as a kid I wouldn't have played tackle football for a thousand dollars an hour. Although that seems like a lot of money, considering I wouldn't have survived even a single hour, it wouldn't have amounted to much.
The way we were treated on Friday was so poor I did a whole podcast about it (I'll put a link in here in a couple weeks when I finish editing it), but I have to say that the way we were treated on this set was up there with the best, most respected and valued, I've ever seen extras treated. No exaggeration, I personally was offered water five or six times throughout the day, and the P.A. in charge of us, name of Ariel, was so nice and concerned and accommodating**, that I fantastized about marrying her at the end of the day.
In the end, the coaches and whatever the heck we weres were allowed to go home early, since they really only needed the "real" football players for the last set-up, and I was immensely grateful to be sent home. But I still had to do a little bit of regular work, exercise, and figure out something to write before I keeled over.
Extra work, while several yards from glamorous, does not pay well, but I continue to do it, and continue to want to do it, and that says something about me, doesn't it?
Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In May: 500
I was insanely tired, and wrote a paragraph--which I could easily turn into two paragraphs on a normal day--checked my word count, then wrote two more, and called it quits.
Words Today: 259
Words In May: 2714
*A few hours later, when I went into the bathroom to pee, I realized it would be a Herculean effort to get my pants down (especially with the belt, shirt, and jersey over them, so I chose to just hold it in.
**And determined to not only learn all of our names, but make sure all of us were comfortable and having a good time. None of that was strictly in her job description, but made me want to go above and beyond instead of focus solely on snagging craft services and staying in the shade.
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