That ten things thingie

[serai]

OK, why the hell not? Gacked from semyaza.


Ten things I've done that you probably haven't.


1. Climbed to the top of the Giralda.
2. Touched the mosaics on the walls of the Alhambra palace.
3. Played both the Goddess of Love and the Goddess of Death onstage.
4. Watched fifteen moon jellies swimming three inches from my fingertips.
5. Was threatened with a baseball bat by Harlan Ellison.
6. Danced in the surf under the full moon while on Ecstasy.
7. Had an argument with William Campbell over the price of fresh dung.
8. Played Middle Eastern drum for a belly-dance troupe.
9. Bought weed on the street in South Central L.A.
10. Rested my head on Sean Astin's shoulder.



ETA: And like semyaza, I'm having too much fun, so here's a couple more I remembered:

11. Witnessed a drive-by shooting. (No, not while I was buying the weed.)
12. Acted in a scene with Elijah Wood.

Comments

[samena.livejournal.com]

You're in that Deep Impact cap??!! That's really awfully cool! :D Which one are you??

[serai1.livejournal.com]

No, unfortunately. Although I was in that scene, I'm not in that cap. I haven't found one yet of the shot I'm in, and my DVD player won't cap anymore, darn it. It was a fun day, though, and a pleasure to watch Elijah work. :)

[samena.livejournal.com]

But I can see you in the movie, right? Can you describe yourself to me? I mean, the way you looked there? I wanna see you!! :D

And what a lucky girl you are, to have been able to see Elijah work up close!! Where was that scene shot, by the way? *is curious now*

[elycia.livejournal.com]

Um. Okay, you know you're going to have to give us more details on why you were threatened with a baseball bat (I'm assuming, or at least hoping, that didn't have anything to do with the purchase in L.A. either) and what sparked the argument over fresh dung. Re #3: both in the same play? And of course we want the full story of #12.

So get busy spillin', please! :D

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Ahaha! Hm, ok.

3. No, two different plays, but both with the same women's theater troupe in Santa Cruz. In one I played Aphrodite, and taught an acolyte to dance and discover her inner capacity to love. In the other, I played Death in a play about the journey of life and renewal. The protagonist and I did a dance that depicted her death as a seduction by me.

5. In 1986 my friend Lydia, owner of Dangerous Visions bookstore (now defunct - the store, not the friend), held a moving party to get the whole inventory moved six doors down the street to the new location. Harlan showed up at some point during the day and got a wild hair on, declaring that the easiest way to move all the books was to load up a car with them and drive them over. (Yeah, I thought it was silly, too.) He proceded to test the theory out by driving his car from one door to the other along the sidewalk. I and a couple of my friends were sitting on the corner taking a break when we witnessed this. We thought it very funny and laughed, and I called out, "Hey, look at that asshole driving on the sidewalk!" Well, Harlan (for all that he thinks himself a very funny guy) doesn't have much of a sense of humor about himself, and stopped his car. He then jumped out, brandishing a baseball bat, and started yelling about how I should never insult a man carrying a baseball bat. After blustering about a bit, he went inside, and my friend Mike snarked, "Now of course you'll always remember him as that asshole with the bat!"

7. The argument with Campbell happened at the Southern California Renaissance Faire. Bill used to be one of the dungmongers, and walked around with a wheelbarrow full of fresh cow pies. So I engaged him in a haggling bit one day. He was quite good at it, and damn cute to boot.

12. The Deep Impact gig was just a job at the time - two days in the Santa Monica Mountains in the middle of January, dressed in a sleeveless shirt and shorts because naturally the scene took place in the summer. Got the flu the first day and almost didn't go back the next. But I dragged myself out there, and glad I am too, because that was the day I got my camera shot. Got to pass right behind the action several times, and to watch and listen to Elijah working. At the time, I admired him a lot, but I wouldn't have said I was a fan (not like now). He was quite impressive, very serious and focused. And of course very lovely. I remember thinking, "Damn! I hope I run into you ten years from now!" *sigh*

[elycia.livejournal.com]

The stage work sounds wonderful. Are you a dancer, or did you just happen to have dance-intensive roles?

"Now of course you'll always remember him as that asshole with the bat!"

And of course, you do! Right? An ego run amok is a terrible thing.

Bill used to be one of the dungmongers,

::boggles::
Okay, now I have a truly perverse image in my head of that street-vending scene in the musical Oliver!. Right after the pretty girl sings, "Who will buy my sweet red roses?" here comes the guy with the fresh-dung cart...

Re Deep Impact: That is just COOL. Is that the scene where the chosen few are streaming into the underground survival facility?

That "seasonal dressing" thing can be the death of a person. I once tagged along with some friends to be an extra at a nighttime state-fair scene in a Tim Conway movie. We dressed for a summer scene, and it turned out to be one of the coldest nights of the year. I think that's the closest I've ever come in my life to genuine hypothermia. I've never seen the finished movie, but I'll bet in that scene all the extras are staggering around half-frozen in the background like something out of one of the Living Dead movies. :-)

Kewl stories! Thanks for the additional tale-telling.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Hee! Well, that wasn't the only time I encountered Harlan, so I have a number of memories of him, most of them good actually. That was the only time he went bugfuck on me.

The dungmongers were two guys, one of them Campbell, who played brothers. That was their bit at Faire - they were clever guys who had realized they could bilk all these foreigners for big bucks by selling cowshit. They had great spiels worked out for entertaining the crowd, and were lots of fun to play with. Everybody who acted at Faire had to have clever bits worked out that we could use to engage the crowd, because half the fun of attending was being drawn into the whole story of the place by the actors. That used to be my favorite part of Faire, playing around with people in the crowd. :)

And yes, being in DI was cool. It's almost an axiom that you'll always be dressed for the opposite season that you're actually filming in. *rolls eyes* But it was fun watching Elijah work.

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

I've done #1 & 2; I grew up in Spain. :-)

We neeeeed the story for #12!

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Cool! I never would have thought that ramps could be far more exhausting to climb than stairs, but there you are. And if I could choose to live in any one place in the world, the Alhambra wold be it, I think. What an extraordinary work of art that place is!

See my comment above for the skinny on #12!

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

I've got a ton of photos from my trip to the Alhambra. It was soooo gorgeous!

My personal favorite piece of architecture in Spain is the mosque in Cordoba. I literally couldn't breathe the first time I saw it. It just seemed so mysterious or something...