Crazy Stable

                                          
Shooting day! The first crew members from Law & Order arrived by 6:30 a.m.; soon they had rigged up their generator and started flinging cables and lights around. 

The Child left for school toting her science-fair project past this array.

The scene, for an episode to be broadcast in mid-May, consisted of the two intrepid detectives entering our downstairs hallway and following Carl the Skanky Suspect upstairs to our kitchen, while grilling him on a murder case. Here are the stars in the stairwell: Jeremy Sisto and Anthony Anderson. Both are apparently new to the series (Anthony's first episode hasn't even aired yet), and new to me; Jeremy was on Six Feet Under, I'm told, and Anthony has mostly done comedy flicks. (He was immediately recognized with delight by the school guards across the street as he left the house.) If either of them wondered why our stairs and bannisters are red, they didn't say so. (Answer: The CrazyStable was a Chinese boarding house, and red is a lucky color in China.)

This gives some idea of just how crowded the landing was outside the kitchen. The living room was also piled with gear. 

The director and his assistants holed up in the cat-clutter of the Child's room to watch the monitors and chat between takes. "Jerry Orbach would've hated this scene, he hated doing stairs," one assistant recalled with obvious affection. "He used to do the 'over/under' number, betting how many takes they'd have to do. Over his number, he won, and under it, the house won." The show's crew, many back at our house for the second time, does seem like an extended family, one in which everybody drinks a lot of bottled water and coffee and knows just what to do with rolls of tape and tripods.

The smell of frying bacon filled the house; the Carl character was supposed to be cooking it while talking to the NYPD (although the sound man made them turn off the heat while shooting to reduce bacon noise). They went through numerous batches. I got hungry but couldn't get to my fridge (under a bank of lights, left); so the location guy let me pick snacks from the set catering buffet!  I ate half a Law & Order danish and a bag of authentic Law & Order Doritos. This made me insanely happy.

Everybody was gone by 1 p.m., although the set dressing guys will return tomorrow to replace the furniture and haul off their props. "We have 3 pounds of bacon still in your fridge," a crew lady said as she washed down the counter. "Would you like to keep it?"

Guess what we had for dinner? NBC BLTs!

Sometime before 7 a.m., the Traffic Cone Fairy visited our street, clearing the way for the Law & Order crew tomorrow morning. They'll be rehearsing their interior scene at about our usual breakfast hour, in our slightly transformed kitchen. Last Friday, the  set dressers came out and removed our window decor, refrigerator magnets, cookbooks, and assorted tchotchkes, and replaced them with a convincingly random tumble of food and clutter for "Carl," the character whose "exurban house" the CrazyStable is standing in for. They also replaced our huge farmhouse table with a dinky one, so we've been eating off a network television prop for two days now. Everything's topsy-turvy, but we are being very decently remunerated, so we will shut up and follow orders tomorrow when the trailers pull up and disgorge their light-meter-toting hordes.

Only disappointment: This time around, no Jesse L. Martin. He's leaving the show, so my handsome detective, who stalked around our garage with gun drawn last September 2006, will not be part of tomorrow's festivities. Good luck in your future endeavors, Jesse; we'll miss you! 

Aw, poor Charlie and Cocobop; they have no idea what's in store...all hell will be breaking loose in a matter of days. Law & Order is coming back to the CrazyStable! Yes, our old friends from NBC, who blew things up here back in 2005, are returning to shoot a scene for a new episode next week!

This blog made its debut, in fact, with the transformation of the house into a mad bomber's workshop for this episode of the show.  The location scouts chose us because the script called for  "a dilapidated house." This time, they're looking for something more prosaic--just an "exurban house" in Plattsburg, upstate. Apparently our countrified kitchen will do nicely, although they said they'd "thin out" our tchotchkes a little.

The crew is as nice as ever and the three-day shoot will be remunerative enough to permit a trip over the summer to visit Beloved Cousins in the Rockies. Plus, we get to hear real directors say "Action" and "Cut!" right inside our house...again! Yesterday, Child emerged from the bathroom to find a dozen crew members swarming over our living quarters with measuring tapes and digital cameras, saying things like, "Yeah, I'd do it all with the SteadiCam." She has learned to take that sort of thing in stride.

More delicious details to come. 

Around the base of the Ent, the vinca is putting on a gratifying show.

 
And these babies have been fresh and lovely for more than a week. They also refrain from complaining about the unraked autumn leaves. 

How does this stuff know how to spill out from among rocks artfully? Taken together, I hope they draw the eyes of some weekend visitors away from the peeling facade of the CrazyStable.  I was going to go out and attack the property with rake and broom in the warmth of this afternoon, but a creepy bronchitis-like thing has started to spread through my chest. After spending almost all of January sick, I am appalled by this development. There are seeds to be planted, there is cement to be smashed up and removed...and there is a bicycle ride to train for.  Today even brought the brochure for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden plant sale, my yearly wild indulgence in "optimism over experience." The immune system is hereby commanded to produce radiant good health for the 21st Annual Vernal Assault on the Garden! [cough]