Memory, All Alone In The Doomlight
The RV's had reached their capacity of human waste.
You could hear the solids and liquids swishing around when you drove.
Yumsies!
Jerry handed the task of emptying the RV's to Alex and myself.
Holli was pissed off about it.
PA's aren't supposed to do this.
Jerry laughed.
Revenge is sweet.
Or sour.
It depends on what you ate.
Alex and I convoyed west on Route 64 through the terror twilight.
The nearest RV dump station was way out by Dekalb.
I knew this stretch of road very well.
In 1993 I hit a deer on this road.
We were on the way home from Sycamore Speedway.
The spectacular spectators in the demolition derby had given us our Friday night fix of twisted metal, spin-outs, rollovers, flip-outs, real fire, thick black smoke, asphixiating levels of diesel fumes, tolerated racism ("he's drivin' a rice burner"), and the occasional brawl, whether it was on the track or in the stands.
While Paul's Boutique blared, a deer darted out from the fields.
At 60mph, I had little choice but to hit it.
It was either the deer or the oncoming traffic.
Its clueless skull smacked off the corner of my parents' plastic car.
No one in the car was hurt.
So we kept driving.
Later, we noticed it had banged up the whole passenger side of the car.
The deer had sacrificed its life for a few hundred dollars in damage.
I didn't feel great about using my car to demolish a living creature.
I didn't thrill to sound of bone-crushing metal death.
I didn't feel much like a spectacular spectator.
Well.
Unless the deer was foreign.
That same summer I woke up on a trampoline.
I was on Route 64 in the tiny town of Wasco.
My friend Shelley had moved there.
We were teenagers.
The night before a bunch of us had hung out.
We sat on the roof and waxed optimistically about our uncertain futures, the way teenagers do.
Then we lied down on her trampoline and stared at the stars.
As if they had the answers.
Seventeen years later I found myself on this same stretch of road.
Still uncertain about the future.
Though I did know one thing.
Soon I would be emptying the piss and shit from the vehicle I was driving.
That much I knew.
Blackwater Down
The Sycamore RV Resort was enjoying the beginnings of a peaceful Wednesday evening.
A neighborhood of nomadic campers and tents dotted the lake.
It looked like a decent life.
Alex and I pulled our RV's up to the dump station.
He had done this before.
I watched Alex.
• First, find the shit hose
• Then, find the shit hole
• Next, insert the shit hose in the shit hole
• Fourthly, pull the lever that releases the shit and the piss
• Fifthly, listen for the flow of the shit and the piss
• Do you hear the shit and piss flowing?
• Do you smell it?
• The piss and the shit?
• You probably do
• This is because it is unbearably pungent
• If so, walk away and gag
• Some dry heaving may occur
• After that, continue until the flow of the shit and the piss subsides
• Now, cradle the hose
• Milk the sitting shit from the shit hose into the shit hole
• Finally, shake the shit hose
• Next finally, rinse any stray shit or piss from the shit hose
• Then finally, place the shit hose back in its compartment
Easy enough, right?
It was my turn.
The only problem was I couldn't find the shit hose.
My RV was an older model.
We asked the nice lady in the office.
"Did you check the bumper?"
Sure enough, there it was.
Tucked inside the back bumper.
All I had to do was pull it out.
Luckily, Holli had lent me some work gloves earlier in the shoot.
Sorry, Holli.
I pulled out the long accordion tube with the gloves.
Of course it was brown.
I hooked up the shit hose to the shit spout.
The shit spout is connected to the shit hose,
The shit hose is connected to the shit hole...
I released the shit lever and listened.
It sounded awful.
Like a continuous stream of death farts.
And then the stench punched me in the mouth.
I ran away gagging.
I dry heaved.
Ugh.
People actually used this one.
Ugh god.
I had to walk back and finish.
With an elbow over my nose I approached the gurgling RV.
I cradled the shit hose and baptized the world with the bowel movements of stars.
Just think.
These were men who had both been directed by Robert Altman.
And now I was directing their shit into a hole in the ground.
I made a mental note to update my resumé.
Human Artipede
Call time was 6pm.
Alex and I were still at the shit dump.
We had all the tables.
So when the breakfast pizza arrived everyone had to stand and eat.
G & E were being assholes about it to Holli and Dan.
The art department hovered, waiting for the RV's to return.
The art department is comprised of three people.
Mort is the head of the department.
A bespectacled sweater urchin with an entitled arrogance.
Then there's Kay.
An empty space cadet with an entitled attitude.
And finally, Melicity.
Melicity is Sid's 19-year old sister.
She, too, has random, misguided arrogance and attitude.
Basically, it's two art school messiahs and the producer's spoiled little sister.
A whiny Voltron of entitlement.
Stomping around aimlessly complaining that life is so boring.
And not answering its radio.
Alex and I arrived on set, fresh from the shit dump, and began setting up tables.
The art department smirked and 'pffted and made constipated faces.
It was 6:30.
"What is happening?" they said to each other.
How could we be so incredibly incompetent?
Clearly we were inferior to them.
They sat down and ate the pizza that was owed to them.
It would fuel them for their hard day of spraying a window with fog every ten minutes or so.
Using my imagination, they made a Human Centipede (Melicity-Mort-Kay) and I fed them snacks from the RV shit hose.
Hate Breeders Whoa-oh-oh
Tensions ran high today.
For reasons known to nobody, a grip shoved Mikey out of his way.
Mikey (again: Mikey who is not getting paid) considered physical retaliation.
I didn't try to talk him out of it.
Many of people on this film needed to be fucking punched in the fucking face.
At lunch, Jimblob shared more of his enlightening, Jesus-esque wisdom.
I had mentioned that I didn't understand why people needed to treat PA's as beneath everyone else.
Jimblob had the answer.
"That's what PA's are for. Shitting on."
I balked.
"I feel the same way, Jimblob. Only, instead of PA's, that's how I treat people of a different race."
Patrick, a grip PA of color, thought I was serious.
"Whoa, man."
He was right.
I should have said that I discriminated against people of a different weight.
"I'm sorry. I meant that's what fat, blowhard, walking heart attack assholes are for. Shitting on."
And then I would have pointed the RV hose at him.
All fat worthlessness of him.
Later in the evening, Dan carried a stuffed animal pumpkin around the set.
"It's Pumpy!! Everyone loves Pumpy!!"
Pumpy made sound effects when squeezed.
It annoyed every single person that came into contact with it.
"Fuck that thing!"
"Get that fucking thing away from me!"
The slate girl took delight in stabbing Pumpy.
Dan and Pumpy approached me.
"Everyone hates Pumpy," Dan lamented.
I told him that I, too, hated Pumpy.
The director had the last word.
"If you don't get that thing off the set I will kill you."
That night Pumpy died in a food-filled trash bag.
Mikey 10:33-35
As the clouds began a new day for the rest of the continent, Mikey made a run for a crew meal.
He brought back 640 breakfast sandwiches.
The crew ate 11 of them.
Mikey was annoyed.
"What do we do with all these sandwiches?"
"Throw them out," came Dan's reluctant reply.
"What?!"
Mikey wouldn't have it.
He went to the producers.
Who didn't care.
But Mikey persevered.
There in the morning dew was a landscaping crew.
They happily consumed 11 more of the 890 breakfast sandwiches.
Mikey drove, looking for a home for the remaining meals.
On the way a grip ran his car off the road.
And the art department complained that they didn't get more than two sandwiches each.
Also they didn't answer their radios.
33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him he had compassion on him,
34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, taking in his sausage, egg & cheese biscuits and bacon, egg & cheese croissants, and gave them to a food shelter.
35 And on the morrow when he worked his other job as a janitor, he took out two pence, and gave them to the producers, and said unto them, Take care of your crew; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thy food shelter.
RV Trivia
Did you know?
Keys for the outside panels on RV's are universal?
That means you only need one key to open all the locks.
Tonight I twisted a key until it broke off into one of the panel's locks.
It wasn't the universal key.
Did you know?
While I was away, Jerry's RV lost 2 tables and 18 chairs.
Summarizing The Shit
What a shitty night.
Literally and figuratively.
Verdict: Shit
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