You've gotta have styyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyle!!!

Alright, so after shooting in NYC I went back to LA for about 5 days were I spent the majority of my time packing up everything I own into boxes and moving it all into a storage space.
It really puts your life in perspective when it's boxed and stacked into a 9' x 12' storage unit.

So after living with Erik and Emily for a month, I was pretty confident in my long-term packing abilities. Packing only what I thought necessary for the next month of travel in Temecula- along with a little forethought for Japan (keeping that stuff easily accessible in the storage), I managed to fit it all in two medium suitcases and a backpack.
I packed those bags into my car, along with a grocery bag full of my 360 and controllers, and Steve helped me shove my HDTV into the back seat.
Hey, if you're going to live in a hotel for a month you might as well bring some entertainment.

Remember when I worked for BAVServices for a year and traveled all over the place? One thing I took from that is knowing that no matter where you are and what hotel you're in, their TV's won't have inputs that work. Hence, bringing my own TV.

So that all said and done, the only thing left was to say goodbye to everyone...that didn't go over too well. It seems that my recent attempts to round people up to drink haven't been to successful, this time being no different than the others.
But hey! Guess it makes it easier to leave eh!?

So I drove the 2 hours south to Temecula, an Indian town about 40 minutes outside of San Diego, where I arrived at the fabulous Pechanga Casino and Resort.
The following are imagines acquired from a Google search...but are a pretty accurate representation of the experience:


The outside, front, of the casino. My room was the 2nd (black) window above that center sculpture, looking out at the parking lot.


This is pretty much the lobby.
NOT PICTURED: Tons of old people with nothing better to do.


Pretty much what the whole casino looked like...except for the mini-baccarat tables. Those looked a billion times cooler because they were computerized and extremely pasty CGI Asain woman would deal cards to you on a big screen.


It's like I took a picture and glued it onto the website...amazing.


The outside of club "Silk." A no jeans, no sneakers, collared shirt ONLY pimp cave. Seeing as that very few of us even packed collared shirts we only entered the club on one occasion. An occasion I shall never speak of.


The top picture is a little irrelevant. The bottom picture is "Silk" when it's doing the proverbial "thumping."
I was shopping at a Target down the street from Pechanga, and while in the changing room overhead the following conversation take place between 2 female target employees, around 25 years of age:
Girl 1: "So what're you doin' after work."
Girl 2: "I dunno, I was thinking about going out."
Girl 1: "We should call the girls and go to Silk."
Girl 2: "Yeah! I'll start text-ing them!"
In Derek's Head: 'sarcasm' "Hey ladies, I just happen to be living there for a month if you want to party in MY room."

And it never even occurred to me, until this moment, that had I felt inclined I could have purchased a collared shirt at Target.
This is likely due to the fact that I'm not gay. (Implying that males that enter "Silk" are gay)


"Silk" also houses the world's LARGEST fiber-optic chandelier. Isn't that just FUCKING amazing? Now I can totally see why all of Temecula's finest white trash would choose this as the premiere party club.
Also, notice the stairs in the back-left of that picture...?


No words can properly caption this picture. (From left to right: Derek, Zak, Chris)

I'll give you a minute to catch your breathe.

And ladies, your hearts.

Alright...moving forward. So as with all the previous blog entries as of late, I can't really go into much detail about my life due to the non-disclosure forms I have to sign for these jobs. As fate would have it, most of the eventful things that happen- occur during the 14 hours of working, not during the 5 hours of sleep or other collective 5 hours of drinking and eating...

Figures the interesting things have to remain secret eh? ;)

But here's a few things we did that needent remain secret.


Zak and Travis rocking out in my room to Guitar Hero.


Foreground to Background: Derth, Camera (sportin' the ol' space blanket), Chris, Mountain.
(Notice the Pechanga name tags? Those mean you are Pimp.)


A mini-van in the middle of being rigged with ice-cube cams. I was helping Steve do this, who apparently was responsible for a lot of the car and helmet cams in shows such as Survivor and Fear Factor. I guess he's kind of a big deal. Probably gonna have to go for him for work in the future...

Tony (director) brought two 4-wheelers with him to Temecula, and Mo and Troy brought a dirt-bike each. It's a little known fact that Temecula is home to many X Game competitors, likely due to the massive amounts of desert in which they can train/ride.
So about mid-way through the shoot we hauled the quads and bikes 2 hours out into the desert, along with Zak's 24' trailer (which has like...6 million beds in it) (minus the million).


Just to give you a visual, this is the area we were camping/riding in (this picture was actually taking as the sun was rising, when we got to this spot it wass 8:30 at night and pitch black).

So when we got there Zak, Tony, Jeff and Troy hopped on the fout vehicles and rode off into the night. Chris and I hung out in some fold-out chairs in front of the trailer, the sky was full of stars, Zak's trailer was pumping some ambient music through it's external speakers.
It reminded me of home, where I grew up. How I could come home late at night and walk up our driveway and the sky would be FULL of stars, stars like you can only see out in the country.
It was about 109 degrees, but a dry heat. There was a slight breeze, but it was barely noticeable because of the temperature. It just felt like you were in a dry sauna and someone was wafting around the air.
After about an hour of sitting around eating chips and considering how great it would be to just live in the middle of the desert out of a trailer, Chris and I decided to wander out and see if there was anything to find.

We walked about 100 yards away from the trailer, in pitch black darkness. Eventually our eyes adjusted so we could make out shapes in all of the grey emptiness...it was a very surreal experience.
Of course standing in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around you, at night, can get pretty eerie pretty quick so we headed back to the trailer.
When we got back the lights were all off, and the music had stopped playing.
Using the small flashlight I was carrying, we checked inside the trailer through the windows...with very strong visual memories of "The Hills Have Eyes" coming to mind.
After it was decidedly clear, I went in and turned the lights back on. Chris then brought it to our attention that we just did what everyone in every horror movie always does: we investigated the blatant setup.
Funny how when you see it in movies you're like "You idiots! Don't investigate, just leave!"
Then of course it had occurred that the murders were probably below the trailer waiting to slash our heels, or on top of it waiting to jump on us and send us crashing to the ground.

Man...we totally failed our mission considering how familiar we are with horror films.

So sitting around became boring again (maybe living in the desert wouldn't be so great), so we wandered out to a nearby plateau to see if we could see everyone riding around in the desert (if you look at the picture above again you can see it, directly under the sun. It wasn't as far as it looks).
After a little hike and some simple climbing we made it to the top of our new domain. MAN. This would be a great place to set up a fort...
Looking out into the desert you could see the faint headlights of some of the quads, about 2 or 3 miles away. Haha...they were totally lost. Of course, you couldn't blame them. It was pitch black and there was no way they could see the trailer lights from where they were.
After watching them for quite a while, they finally found their way back. We watched them come back to an empty trailer, as we stood on our plateau domain.
They seemed very confused, so finally we started walking towards them and their screams for our names stopped sounding so panicked.

Turns out they were completely lost and had mostly ran out of gas JUST as they got back to the trailer.

Chris and I hopped on the two quads and rode all over the place. I lead the way, with blatant disregard for staying on the trails. Scoff. TRAILS.
Because we had spent so much time standing around it the middle of nowhere (watching the moon rise) we didn't seem to have trouble getting as lost as the others. I had made it a point to make note of the moons position and the stars in the sky, in relation to the direction that would point towards our trailer...yeah...I'm pretty sure I was a kick-ass sailor in a past life. A freaking nautical savant. ;)
Or perhaps it was the instincts of a great trucker....Trucker Jacket.

So riding around was awesome. Nothing put what the headlights showed us, going about 55 mph over hills and bumps...it was crazy fun.
Man...I kinda wanna do it right now...

Eventually everyone went to sleep...pretty drunk...in a trailer...in a 109 degree desert...so...you can imagine the amount of man-heat radiating in that puppy.

After a few hours of no one being able to sleep, the first team of 4 took an early morning ride again. By the time they got back the sun was well positioned in the sky, so Chris and I opted out of riding. The temperature was breaking 117...time to go home.


Chris rocking the lawn chair while the others were out riding.


Everything that...wasn't...to the left of the trailer.




Facing 180 degrees the other way...more...nothing.


Guys getting back from morning ride. There's our plateau!


"We should have brought more water."


Zak. (Packing up the trailer to leave.)


Chris. (I want cereal. And I want air conditioning.)

That was about that for that adventure. That that that that....

The only other thing I took pictures of was the forklift debacle. See, Zak's trailer was being used as private office where we were shooting. Of course to get it where it needed to be we had to drag it down a windy narrow rock-walled drive-way...which took about 3 hours and involved a lot of un-hitching and re-hitching to try and angle it from hitting walls.
After going through that hell we convinced production to get a forklift to tow it out (instead of Zak's big ol' truck) so that it would be more easily controlled going up the drive-way.
It worked great, only took about an hour to get out...but then when we came back the forklift we were using was stuck in a bunch of dirt on a hill...
Apparently Mike O. tried to move it to the side of the driveway, and it decided to just slide sideways down the hill next to it.
Mo convinced Zak to drive it backwards down the hill onto a concrete gutter, I suppose to position it on solid ground where it could easily be attached to a wench and pulled back up the hill.
Well Seabass thought it'd be fun to try and drive it straight up the hill...this idea lead to:


A very sideways forklift. In a ditch.

So it basically sat there for days. No one was really sure how you move a 10,000 lb. forklift up a hill...on it's side.
Eventually the company it was rented from showed up with this monstrosity of a truck, tied a chain to the side of it and spent a couple solid hours trying to tug it so hard that the chain would lift it up from it's side...
I think I would have tried some other approaches first...but low and behold, they actually succeeded during our lunch break (they were the afternoon entertainment of course).


Of course...then they had to drag it up the hill without it tipping over...


Here's the location I was working at...nothing like a 2.6 million dollar home to make you feel a like a slacker.

Alright, so yeah. Some other highlights were our group addiction to Mini-Baccarat, eating dinner at Kelsey's every night, and Trucker Jacket's appearance at the wrap party...

Another thing worth mentioning was that Zak was having some personal issues during the majority of the show, so he's quitting the business for at least 6 months...if not permanently.

So...that of course has me re-evaluating my life.

Hopefully if he stands by that decision I can get some of his work passed my way...I guess only time will tell.
It's sad though, after spending 3 solid months with him I was looking forward to taking the little upcomming Japanese break, and then getting right back to good ol' reality tv.
He was a kick-ass guy to work for, oddly enough I consider him among my best of friends now...
And of course I definitely enjoyed the position...it'd be tough to take jobs as an AC after doing the Tech. Assist thing.

So hopefully I'll be able to fill his shoes for some of those jobs...or better yet he'll be given the opportunity to come back and work in the industry...

I guess only time will tell eh? As usual...but dammit I'm impatient!