Small Kindnesses

I'm at my childhood home in Indiana, and we have a white Christmas this year.  This doesn't happen nearly as often as a lot of people in New York seem to think it does ("Don't you always have a white Christmas there?" people ask me when the subject of going home for Christmas comes up around those native New Yorkers whose view of the Midwest is largely shaped by Hallmark Christmas movies.)  When it does happen, I always announce that I love it.  My dad disagrees.  This is largely because we have a very long, hilly driveway that made summers playing in the front yard blissfully free and private but makes shoveling snow hellish.  For me, though, I still see the lawn and driveway through the eyes of a child.  The snow smooths everything over, erasing the moss between the bricks on the pathway to the front door, the plethora of patched cracks in the driveway's asphalt, and the sad little half-bush that's all that remains of the once healthy and robust plant at the base of our now netless, sunbleached basketball hoop....  In their place is a glistening, soft, bright cover that blurs all the harsh edges and hints at magic and fun to be had, of a fresh start and new tracks to be made.  Children come out to sled and make snowmen, laughter can be heard up and down the street, and everyone seems a little happier, a little gentler, a little more prone to small acts of kindness.  I love small acts of kindness.

So today I'm going to share a couple of my favorite small acts of kindness from this past year.  I spent several months at the beginning of the year as core background on a large film.  Every morning at work I spent at least an hour in hair and makeup, as did the other background ladies.  Then when we got on set, there was a team of hair and makeup artists specifically dedicated to retouching the background actors between takes.  Another team of hair and makeup artists were dedicated to the principal actors, while, as is usual on a film this size, the film had one man who was dedicated exclusively to retouching the A-list movie star at the helm of this film and making sure he never had a hair out of place, no matter how many takes he did or how much he ran around or what the wind was doing.  Most of the time, when I see movie stars get retouched between every take, it gets to be such a routine act for them that they cease to acknowledge the crew member doing the retouching.  They'll carry on a conversation with someone else or be lost in their phone, never acknowledging the person dabbing away sweat or combing their hair.  That was never true of this actor, who always said "thank you" and was never on his phone.  (In fact, when addressing any crew member, he frequently threw in the crew member's name -- something which you only realize is all too rare once you hear someone do it -- and a pat on the arm or back, a habit which charmingly rubbed off on the little girl playing one of his onscreen young daughters.)  This actor was always aware of his surroundings, always watching people and fully engaged, never aloof, never treating crew members as if they worked beneath him, even if they were assigned exclusively to him.

Though most of the film was shot indoors, there were a fair number of days we shot outdoors, in the very cold, very windy final days of winter.  On those days, the hair and  makeup artists dedicated to the background actors were frequently nowhere to be found for large chunks at a time, wisely electing to stay indoors just off set most of the time rather than freeze as they walked around to check on us.  In fact, we background actors were surprised that A-list Movie Star stayed outdoors between takes and shot setups, just hanging out in frigid weather chatting with people when he could easily have sought the warm shelter of either a heating tent or the heated building feet away.  But by staying out with us, he kept a hundred background actors (and background actors are notorious complainers) from complaining about the weather.  Instead, we were laughing and having fun.  If it wasn't a big deal to him, how could it be a big deal to us? At one point, when the camera guys asked the star if he would "mind taking off your coat and standing here so we can see the shot, since you're already out here," he jumped up from his chair with a grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye and, shrugging off his coat, said, "I'd love to! I was getting a bit overheated...  Aaaahh, that's better" as a vicious wind blew in his face.  Everyone within ear shot laughed, and if it weren't for his attitude and the feeling that he was in this with us, morale on that cold set -- where we were all under-dressed and stuffed with hand warmers and body warmers and feet warmers and as much long underwear as would fit under our costumes -- would probably have plummeted.

Most of the ladies (and by "most" I mean I believe every single lady except for one other and me) had the benefit of wearing a hat on these outdoor days.  I wasn't so lucky.  And the hairstyle they'd given me had lots of face-framing ringlets.  Ringlets look pretty and all, but when the wind is blowing and you're standing outside for hours, hair blows in your eyes and makes your eyes water and you can't keep the hair out of your face and then your eyes get all stingy and red and you keep trying to figure out what the best angle is to stand so that the hair doesn't get into your eyes and you try to hold that position until the last possible second....

I successfully made it through one day like this without too much trouble, but on the second day, the wind was much worse, and I was suffering through stingy eyes and in quite a lot of pain.  Not long after A-List Movie Star came on set that day, when I was placed about 20 feet from him, in between takes as I was trying to flip the hair out of my eyes we made eye contact, and I realized he was watching my struggle with a look of concern.  I looked away, but I saw him motion to his dedicated stylist to come over to him, and he said something to the stylist.  Twenty seconds later, as cameras were rolling and the take was about to start, I felt someone swoosh up behind me and start changing my hairdo.  "We saw you struggling over here.  This is not a wind-friendly style.  I'm just going to fix this," the star's stylist said, quickly and expertly sweeping my ringlets up into a new style.  "That should be better," he said with a smile, swooshing off as I said a surprised "thank you" and the take started.

The stylist checked in with me later to make sure it was working for me.  It was.  I had no more hair in my eyes, no more stinging, no more moments of blindness where I had to shut my eyes and try to toss the hair away.

It was a small kindness to send his personal stylist over to fix my hair, but it made all the difference for me that day (and the days going forward, since the look without face-framing ringlets was now established on camera).  It was small but meaningful, it was unexpected, and it was done knowing he'd never hear a thanks from me.  And that's my favorite kind of small kindness.  That star did similar acts for other people.  On one shot with many performers and very complicated blocking, right as the 1st AD shouted, "Rolling!"  the star noticed one performer was choking down a cough.  She was prepared to go for the shot, and she was far too "unimportant" on set to hold up the take.  She didn't see the star notice her struggling, but as soon as he did, he held up his hand and told the director he needed a moment, making some business until he saw she was good to go, at which point he told the director he was good.  No one knew the take had been held for someone else (aside from eyes like mine that see everything).  From then on for that shot, he got in the habit of looking at every other performer when the crew announced they were rolling, methodically registering that every other performer was good to go, too, before he got in a position that allowed the take to start.  Most people never knew he was doing that, but they felt the effects of his thoughtfulness, whether they knew it or not.

So as the snow comes down and lays the way for new paths and new tracks and new directions, I hope everyone's 2018 is full of small kindnesses, done not to hear a "thank you" but just to make someone's day a little better.  Giving and getting those kindnesses makes life a little easier and a little brighter.  Happy New Year.

Neighbors

I'm trying to write.  You see, I'm 140 pages into a novel I'm writing, and I generally only get good blocks of hours to write it on Mondays and Wednesdays.  Today's a Monday, so it's a writing day.

Unfortunately for me, my neighbors' smoke detector is doing that horrible obnoxious beep every 15 seconds to indicate the battery is low.  Also unfortunately for me, these neighbors have no clue how to turn it off.  Replacing the battery doesn't seem to be an option for them.  I know this from experience.  So I would like to barge into their apartment and channel Phoebe from Friends and do this to it:

We used to have neighbors who were kind of mysterious.  As in the husband seemed to have a wife and a girlfriend who both lived there at alternate times of the day mysterious.  Those neighbors have been replaced by neighbors whom I have to admit I don't much care for as neighbors.  It's a large multi-generational family living in a small apartment, and when one or both of the very tiny children has a temper tantrum, their grandma takes them out of the apartment and into the hallway so they can scream for the whole hallway to hear rather than just for their own family to enjoy.  Several times when this has happened, my fiancé and I have gone out to the hallway and tried (as politely as possible) to tell the grandma that the walls are very thin and that when she does that it's as if they're in our apartment (and to make things worse, the hallway has a couch that sits against the wall to our apartment -- and our own couch is on the other side of that wall.  So when they sit there, we're two feet from a screaming baby).  We quickly discovered that the grandma does not speak English though, so communication is futile.  So now we're resigned to baby temper tantrums and just crank up the TV and remember that we used to live next to train tracks, and at least a baby screaming is better than this:

Not long after they moved in, I panicked when I smelled a sewer smell coming from their apartment.  I was worried no one was home and that their toilet broke and all sorts of nasty stuff was spreading all over the floors and I was breathing in toxic waste.  We mentioned it to the super and he said yeah he knows the smell -- it's their cooking.

So now we're resigned to that.

Then there's the mysterious spraying sound.  Between 4:30 and 7:30 pm I routinely hear what sounds like a large spray hose in their apartment, spraying either a high-powered liquid or gas.  It goes in bursts of up to 30 seconds, off and on for maybe five minutes.  It drives me crazy because I can't imagine what the sound could possibly be.  Do they power-wash their entire apartment with a fire hose?  That seems unlikely.  Do they spray insecticide over their apartment regularly?  Also unlikely.  My fiancé isn't bothered in the least by this, which drives me even more crazy.  Yesterday we were watching a TV show and he was just leaning back against the couch without a care in the world while I was flipping out about what the sound is and how it doesn't bother him that he doesn't know and there are no rational explanations.  WHAT IS THE SOUND???

And then there's the smoke detector.  It first went off a few weeks ago.  Beep...... Beep..... Beep..... Beep.  The smoke detector violently persisted in alerting the residents that it needed a new battery.  I could tell there were people home in the apartment, and I didn't understand how it could not be bothering them.  Beep.... Beep.... Beep.... Beep.   Still, I could hear them shuffling dishes and going about business as usual.  Did they not know what the sound was?  No, impossible.  Everyone knows what that sound is.  And we have a superintendent who is readily available and super friendly and could instantly deal with it.

Hours later, the beeping suddenly stopped.  Then I heard a man curse.  Then I heard a baby scream.  Then I heard the door to their apartment open and the dad of the house stepped out and called our superintendent on his cell phone.  And he explained to the super how he had tried to make the smoke detector stop by cutting a wire, and that had blown a fuse and now the lights were out in the apartment.

...Excuse me, what??  He tried to stop it by cutting a wire?!  WHO DOES THAT????!

Sigh.

It's three weeks later, and I guess they just got the smoke detector hooked up again.

And they still won't just change the stupid battery.

So now this is me:

Channeling Greta Garbo (as a six-year-old)

This is one of the first images that shows up when I do a Google search for "1920s straight line dress actress":

img source: https://vintagedancer.com/1920s/what-to-wear-roaring-twenties/

This is Greta Garbo:

img source: https://waveparade.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/greta-garbo-8.jpeg

And this is the illustration that accompanies a short story I found in my bedroom over Thanskgiving titled "Kaliphan, Goddess of Sparkles":

The story doesn't have a date on it, but it was sometime before I learned that "really" has an "a" in it but after I learned to draw elbows, so I estimate it's from the first grade.  The story itself is fine, as far as 142-word stories that leave an entire village starving and homeless but nevertheless end with "and no one was ever sad again" go....  But what I really got a kick out of was that Goddess Kaliphan is rocking some serious Greta Garbo style here.  She's got the angle, the posture, the popped knee, the dress, the major attitude....  All she's missing is a cigarette holder... which I think is clearly just out of frame.

Yep, six-year-old me was apparently well versed in styles and postures of 1920s Hollywood.

Morning school drill

My morning today started with a school lockdown drill while my team was auditioning third graders at a New York City public school. When the alarm sounded, someone quickly informed us this was essentially a drill for a school shooter.  When I was a kid, we had tornado drills and fire drills, but never school shooter drills. The kids calmly explained to us that we had to turn off the lights, lock the door, and hide out of view from windows and doors so it would "look to any shooter like the room is empty."  While hiding, the kids were giggling and whispering excitedly, delighting in shushing each other so no intruder in the hallway could hear them.  We visiting adults looked at each other wide-eyed with amazement at how nonchalant the kids were about a drill for something so horrific.

Just life as a child in 2017.

In which I share some songs that in my entirely subjective opinion are just really bad.

Today I learned about the existence of two songs I had blessedly never heard before.  As I waited for my train this morning, I was treated to the musical stylings of a local man who might or might not have been drunk and might or might not be homeless, but either way he likes to hang out at the station and sing on a bench there (entirely on key, and in a better voice than a lot of people who do it for money, which he does not).  He always reminds me of this guy from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride:

Despite his pleasant enough voice and his ability to hit notes with his eyes closed and his head tilted back and the impression that he's only semi-conscious, his one weakness (or perhaps his greatest strength) is his inability to stay on the same song for more than a few seconds.  The man is the ultimate mashup machine. His song today as I approached the train tracks (sung in a voice that's one part James Taylor, one part Johnny Cash, and one part Jon Bon Jovi on a bad day) was the following:

There's more pretty girls than one
Yeah there's more pretty girls than one
Oh there's more pretty girls than one
Because the answer my friend
is blowing in the wind.

You big fat woman get your fat leg off of me
You big fat woman get your fat leg off of me
When she moves, she sets, she sets, she sets the city on fire

like a boiled egg

Yeah there's moo-oore pretty gii-iiirls..... than oooooone.

I got the Dylan and crappy Gavin DeGraw songs in there, but I had to look up the "pretty girls" and "fat woman" songs.  So now I know that out in the world there's a song that compares the way a woman moves to a boiled egg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XelrCQSaJYg (sung by -- and arguably written by, depending on whom on the internet you trust -- one of my favorite singer-songwriters), and this little ditty, which I hadn't decided was bad until the female singer warbled the misguided girl power-but-wait-that's-incestuous lyric "Sister's gonna kiss my red ruby lips; I don't need no man" (which I suspect comes across slightly differently today than when it was written): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo0MCQd7274

And now you do, too.

You're welcome.