Well I’m finally home from work—8am to 1am yesterday, 9am to 12am today. It’s getting tough to concentrate. Thankfully it will all be over after tomorrow when I enter back into the world of the unemployed… wait a second, maybe that’s not as cool as it was sounding. 🙂
Hopefully that will be only for a week. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
So after these two long-ass back-to-back days, I’m walking back to my car and I have to pass through the Universal backlot to get there. They put me in this lot that’s way in the back, it’s pretty close to my building which is nice and even closer to my apartment than the normal entrance, but I do feel like a second class citizen at times. It’s after midnight but this section of the backlot with NYC-like buildings is lit up like daylight with flood lights because they’re filming something. According to one of the thousands of studio tour trams that drive by me everyday, it’s XXX 2 that they’re shooting. But who knows. So I’m walking by when this guard calls out to me.
“Hey, you! Stop!”
I turn around. “What?”
“You can’t go there. We’re filming.”
“Yeah, well I have to go home.” I turn and start walking away.
“Stop. Don’t go any farther! They’re shooting all the way to the steps there.”
“Those steps lead to my car. In fact they’re the only way to my car since your stupid studio decided that my great parking spot that was next my building was too good for me and put me all the way back here.” Actually I didn’t really say that. The thoughts were floating through my mind though. In fact the only thing that came out my mouth was, “Ok.”
“Hang on.” The guard proceeds to have a long discussion that I can only hear half of with someone on the other end of a walkie-talkie. “It’ll be just a minute.”
The minutes seem to crawl by as I stand impatiently—dying to slide behind the wheel of my car, knowing that it’ll only take a few minutes to drive home and crawl in bed. (Wait a second… why am I staying up to write this?!) My anxiety must show because the guard gives me a shrug which could be sympathy or could be something along the lines of “like I care”.
“It’s been a really long day,” I say. The guard just looks at me.
I turn back to gaze longingly at the steps that lead to my freedom when I notice a man with all-manner of tools hanging off several belts that are strapped around him walk right through the area I was so recently told I can’t walk through. I turn back to the guard to lodge a protest when suddenly the walkie-talkie bursts to life with a squawk.
“You can go ahead,” the guard says to me. And I walk away without another word.