No, really.

In certain areas of Los Angeles, the locals celebrate major holidays (4th of July, New Year's Eve, birthdays, tax refund checks) by firing guns into the air at random intervals from dusk until they get tired or run out of ammunition, whichever comes first.

The funny thing is that I never even realized it was gunfire until someone told me - I always thought it was fireworks. The only time I ever heard gunfire that I knew without looking was a gun was when one of my neighbors fired off a shotgun - not in the air, though. He thought he saw a prowler which later turned out to be a stray cat. Guess it's a good thing he's a bad shot.

That, and machine gun fire on set, which is really loud and scares the crap out of me even though I know it's not real.

This weekend, I'm going to a pool party (so many friends with pools who will never let me come over and swim - I have to wait for parties), a birthday (not mine so I have to find a cheap or free gift), and I'm going to try to go see the Hunter S. Thompson documentary since I do worship at the temple of Gonzo.

Hope everyone has a great weekend full of greasy food that's been cooked outdoors!

This was last night at the book release party for Taschen's new coffee table book about penis. Yes, that's right - an overpriced 'art' book about wang.

Since I have an overactive imagination, I'd pictured the book release party as being something right out of A Clockwork Orange - you know, giant penis sculptures, white foamy cocktails, etc.. The actual party was considerably less visually thrilling and more like every other book party I've been to. Crowded, hot, bar stocked with lukewarm chardonnay, but still fun.

I have to work all night tonight - at least I won't be frying in the heat.

One of the advantages of living in a place that used to pass for a desert is that it cools off at night- the knowledge that once the sun goes down the temperature is going to be in the high 60's or low 70's it's much easier to cope with 100 degrees during the day.

This past weekend, however, nature played a cruel joke on Los Angeles and it didn't cool off at night so much as become marginally less hot and miserable, but still too hot to sleep.

If I wanted to toss and turn in my sweat-soaked bed at night, struggling to breathe and wondering how to sleep in a bathtub full of cold water without drowning, I'd go to Florida. Or NYC, but at least I could manage to sleep on the fire escape there.

Although I'm not near the beach, which is the preferred place to be when the weather gets this hot, at least I'm not in the San Fernando Valley, which is 10 degrees (or more) hotter. During the summer, I dread going into the Valley even though I sometimes have to do so.

Since I'm currently on a short enforced vacation due to bursitis in my left shoulder (what I really need to do is take a few weeks off, but right now I can't do that because there's not enough money in my account to survive another strike so I'm only taking a couple of days of turbo-rest and I can actually let the thing heal when SAG walk out and I'm unemployed for an entire month. Or four),  I decided to take the time to drive up into the valley to go to Contract Services for the I-9 debacle.

Contract Services are the people who keep track of who in the union is in good standing, up to date on safety training and able to work, and a few years ago someone there had a really good idea.

For those of you not in the USA, when you work here you have to fill out a form called the I-9, which is a proof of citizenship/work eligibility. The information required to prove work eligibility is just about all someone else needs to apply for credit in your name, buy a bunch of expensive shit and then not make any of the payments and leaving you to sort it out, which can take years and years and turn just about every hair you have grey.

So, Contract Services decided that we'd all go there once every three years and fill out the I-9 info at the office and they'd keep it on file and not show anyone and the production companies could just give them the list of names and they'd tell them if we were cool or not, and then we wouldn't have to fill it out the form for each job and subject ourselves to potential hair-greying problems.  Saving a couple of trees by reducing the amount of paper required would also have been a good thing.

Except that none of the production companies will accept the Contract Services on-file I-9, so we still have to fill one out each time we start a new show, plus since Contract Services simply will not admit that this program, while a good idea, just. isn't. working.  we still have to go up into the inferno that is Encino once every three years and fill out that stupid fucking redundant form that no one ever accepts.  My complaints about this have so far fallen on deaf ears.

Perhaps I should complain louder. Or write someone a very angry letter which would probably be put in the same file as the I-9 and used against me at a later date.

I've been getting up at the crack of dawn and not going to the gym because of my shoulder, so I'm starting to bounce off the walls.  I'm not working tomorrow, either, but that will be the last day I can afford to be off work so that shoulder better hurry up and get better.

Dammit.

Just for a giggle (and because I've been home and able to partially catch up on my internets), Laurie at Crazy Aunt Purl has some hilarious pictures of what San Fernando Valley heat will do to a pillar candle:

http://www.crazyauntpurl.com/archives/2008/06/enough_talking.php

I won't be able to completely catch up on my internets, though - the way I hold my arms when I type hurts that damn high-maintenance shoulder after a while.

Basically, I need a monkey to sit on my shoulder and hit me over the head with a blunt instrument whenever I have a really bad idea - which, this past weekend, occurred about every 10 minutes.

Friday: The news predicted a gradual warm-up over the weekend, so I figured it would be an excellent day to ride my bike out to Santa Monica so I could go to the 'good' gym (it's not all that great, it just has a lower Band-Aid (TM) to pool water ratio than does the gym that's close to my house). Needless to say, the warm-up was not, in fact, gradual and I got caught by the heat on the ride home. At one point I figured it was a great idea to find a bus and get on it as I was relatively certain I could feel my brain swelling (or shrinking, depending on your viewpoint), and sat in the shade for a few minutes while I failed to find any spare change anywhere on my person. I guess it was a win, though because I did find some electrolyte tablets which kept me conscious until I got home.

Saturday: I figured that since the weather had officially been set to 'broil', I needed some straw to use as mulch for my garden to keep the soil from turning into a hard dry wasteland (plants, I'm told, do not like this). Of course, the place to get straw is a feed store, and the feed stores in Los Angeles are all located in the hottest parts of the city, so I drove north until the air felt like a furnace, parked in a vast wasteland of blacktop, and then single-handedly wrestled two bales of straw into the cargo area of my carpeted SUV. Also of course, I hadn't thought about any type of carpet/straw barrier method so the bales immediately started shedding straw bits all over the inside of my car. Since my air conditioning works but using it makes my fuel economy go from moderately bad to laughable, I stupidly got on the freeway with two bales of straw in the back and all the windows down. I'm still picking bits of straw out of my hair.

Bad Idea Monkey, where are you?

Sunday: I got up early to go throw the straw into the garden, but then realized it was the weekly farmer's market so I went there first. Market starts at 8:30, I got home around 9:45 and didn't get to the garden until after 10 am. Then, I had to wrestle two bales of straw out of the back of the truck and into a wheelbarrow (in case you were wondering, a bale of straw is much longer and wider than a wheelbarrow and as such must be placed in the wheelbarrow on the narrow side, making the wheelbarrow top and front heavy) and then push precariously overloaded wheelbarrow up a hill to the actual garden.

Once I got the straw there I had to cut the bales, break it (mostly) out of the flakes and lay it down. Then I had to pull out yet another tomato that got the ick, water, and then go and clean the three inches of straw leavings out of the back of the truck. All this in 100+ degree heat. I sweated off my sunblock and got burned, so of course I then went to an LAist barbecue where I continued to fry until it finally cooled off about 8 pm. My back's now starting to itch and I'm betting it's going to start peeling while I'm at work.

Wow. I really need that monkey.

I'll be on an air conditioned stage tomorrow which is good, and the weather's supposed to be 20 degrees cooler.

Each day that I'm not sweating profusely is a meteorological special happy place.

Since I haven't worked so far this week, I've been out on the bike every day enjoying the mist and the cool air (and not using overpriced gasoline, which is always good).

Well, that's going away now. The cool days are becoming fewer, the hot days are becoming more frequent and the news is predicting record heat over the weekend (and issuing warnings about heat stroke and general sweatiness). It's easily 20 degrees warmer today than it was yesterday and going to get even hotter, which I'm predicting my tomatoes will not like one little bit.

I've already lost two to my garden's soil borne tomato wilt (also known as "creeping crud", "icky" and "goddammit") - one of the two Marvel Stripe plants I had and sadly, my only Jetsetter (the perfect food porn tomato - perfectly round, perfectly red, perfectly tomato-y, perfectly hard to find. Oh, well. Maybe next year), and I'm desperately hoping the extreme temperature shift won't finish off the rest of them.

I'm also not sure if I should call the diet a success or failure so far. I've only lost 5 lbs (target was 10), but my body fat percentage has gone from 26% to 22%.

I don't think that muscle weight is any better for my knees than fat weight, so I may have to re-think my strategy of hell-bent weightlifting until I can grate cheese on my abs.

Guess I'll sweat some of it off this weekend by just going outside.  Although if bits of Southern California keep catching fire I may have to stay indoors.