Dark Bilious Vapors

I learned an important lesson: if you want to find out who lives in your neighborhood (especially if you want to see what babes live in your neighborhood), blow up your house.

I'm serious; one of the summers when I was in high school (I think the summer between sophomore and junior year, but I'm not sure) the house about two doors down exploded (the family that lived there went on a week's vacation, and the grapevine later suggested that while they were gone there was a small gas leak that allowed their house to fill up with gas, until the pooled up gas hit a pilot light (either the gas range or the furnace), and.... KABOOM!!!). And within minutes, just about everyone within a three block radius converged in front of the conflagration.

(Second lesson learned: if you want to see what babes live in your neighborhood, and you want to know what a lot of them wear to bed, blow up your house at about 11 PM in the middle of summer. That's when our neighbor's house blew up, and a large number of the female spectators came in their nighties, pajamas, etc. For a teenager with a bad case of raging hormones, it was quite an experience....)

Tonight I've learned another important but much less destructive lesson: if you want to find out who lives in your neighborhood, get someone in Hollywood to shoot a movie there.

We received word yesterday that the filming crew of Walk the Line, a biopic about Johnny Cash (which is currently filming on location in Memphis) wanted to use the scenic ambience of the historic Gilmore Apartments, or more accurately, the alleyway on the east side of our building, as a shooting location. I had the venetian blinds up so my dog could look out the bedroom windows (my bedroom window faces Madison Avenue, a major east-west thoroughfare in Memphis), and about 8 PM or so my dog began to get quite restless, whining softly and acting like she wanted to go out. I glanced outside the window and noticed a crowd beginning to gather; pretty obviously onlookers gawking at the movie crew going about their business.

I left the dog alone in the apartment for a bit, and positioned myself in a hallway window which had a fairly good view of the goings on. The street next to our building is lined with 50's vintage cars (my best buddy Dave, who's a motorhead, would be having orgasms right about now). Interestingly enough, they have a water truck with a fire hose, and every 10 minutes or so two or three crew members take the hose and wet down a large swath of Madison. I'll probably stay up half the night wondering why; my current speculations are either that they're filming a scene which is supposed to have taken place after a rainstorm, or that for some reason wet streets photograph better than dry streets do. (Any readers who have an answer to that one? Or I suppose just an answer to the question, "do wet streets film better than dry ones?" If the answer to that is "no", I go with my hypothesis that the scene requires wet streets.)

Len on 09.01.04 @ 09:34 PM CST