05-03-09 LA CA: 1930 hrs. I am glad to say that I have my first shoot day on Sons Of Anarchy behind me. A cooler bunch of people you would be hard pressed to find. Today we shot promo photos in Valencia. The photographer had me chase him and throw punches at his lens as he was pulled down the road on a skateboard. On one pass, I got too close and ended up clipping his lens guard with my forearm and broke it. I am glad it was only that and not the lens or the 40 grand camera it was attached to. I will be working again on the show tomorrow.
Last night’s radio show was pretty good. Engineer X couldn’t make it last night and Good Golly Miss Holly was there instead. She’s a great engineer but not having Engineer X there throws me off some so the music was good but I was a little off the mark. At least I got all the music I brought played. That’s always the goal, to get all the stuff I brought with me onto the air for people to listen to. I came back here and worked on more radio stuff for a couple of hours and then tried to get some sleep because I had to get up early for the photo thing this morning.
Last Thursday, I went to Century City to be on a panel for a press conference the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America was having there. The press conference was to announce a new outreach program IAVA is initiating via internet called http://supportyourvet.org/. This is a great thing and will do a world of good for returning veterans, their friends and their families. It’s always good to see IAVA’s executive director Paul Rieckhoff, he’s one stand up guy. He and his organization are kicking ass for veterans. The week before last, I did the voice over work for their next video promotion campaign. I am glad to be able to be part of what they’re doing. Here’s the address for their homepage: http://iava.org/. I can’t say enough good things about IAVA and Paul.
It is no secret that there are more abuse photos of detainees that will soon be released to the public. That news is weeks old. I got some information from someone recently, who has seen the photos and says that some of the images are extremely hard to take and if those particular ones are released, it could shake things up quite a bit. I am not one for conspiracy theories so much but I have time to listen to different takes on things and one thing that I have read and heard that is interesting to me is that the Influenza A, previously known as swine flu, which, is getting a lot of news at the moment is perhaps a bit of a diversion from the state of the economy, bailouts, Iraq not extending the withdrawal date, increased casualties in Afghanistan and again, these photos that apparently will soon be out in the world. I am in no way trying to belittle the lethality of the virus but it doesn’t seem to be the pandemic that sources said it was. What’s more interesting to me is that a potential cause of the whole thing could have been from US pork that had been outsourced to Mexico. There’s an interesting book by Paul Roberts called The End Of Food that talks about hog lagoons (I’ll let you look that up on your own if you are so inclined.) and the damage they do to local water supplies. When food is produced on such a massive scale, there is a price to be paid. I am no scientist but I don’t think it takes one to come to the conclusion that we are in for more tainted food and in your face viral outbreaks in our future. But back to these torture photos. I have been thinking about this a lot, having just finished Jane Mayer’s book, The Dark Side and getting a fair way into Charlie Savage’s very interesting book Takeover. I read an interesting article earlier, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/us/politics/04detain.html?ref=us, that makes me even more curious about what the hell was going on with all of this over the last few years. Maybe more information will makes itself available later this year.
On a lighter note, I just got my copy of Heaven & Hell’s new album The Devil You Know and am one song in. H&H is The Dio, Iommi, Butler and Appice of Sabbath. So far, so good. I can only find a vinyl copy in Germany so far. I am going to go to the record store on Tuesday and check to see if I can get a vinyl copy of the new Horrors album Primary Colours. Also, there will be a new Dinosaur Jr. album soon called Farm. You know how excited this makes me!
Until next week, thanks for reading this. Henry