On Day 3, I woke up before the alarm went off again. It’s a nervous habit of mine. When I’m in anticipation of something, my body works like a clock and knows what needs to be done. That’s not to suggest that I’m a morning person. Uh, NO. WAY. Larry’s best childhood friend, , wrote a great song called, “Don’t do mornings” where the line after that says, “…not today.” That’s me all the wayyy.

So Lar and I get ready and get our stuff downstairs since we also need to check out and meet Drew and Pam in the lobby, and all this before Vince shows up. We head over two by two because his cute little Audi won’t fit all four of us and our stuff.

It was another ghost town arrival at Chez Burbank Studio, but this time it was because the first act was already being filmed. The morning Kraft table left much to be desired, with two bagels left out on the table and boxes of cereal I just don’t eat. I opted for the bagel, crossing my preverbal fingers and toes and hoping it wasn’t still sitting out from yesterday. I grabbed a luke warm bottle of water and wolfed it down.

You see, yesterday I decided not to eat breakfast because I tend to lose my voice in the morning. I certainly didn’t want to fill it up with bread. But as a result, Drew had to listen to the rumbling in my stomach, and dare I say this was while tape was rolling. At one point, someone from the Electronic Spaghetti exclaimed, “Wait. Hold up. An airplane must be going by.” And then came a wave of laughter that was kind of unsettling. I wasn’t sure if they meant a real airplane or just my stomach. Drew later confirmed the latter.

I inhaled the bagel and waited for Judy to make an appearance, all the while glancing at my already lined up step outs for the day. Another director type person came over and asked me to review my “talking points” for this project. It was easy! And I told him that along with the idea that this was clearly a one Act deal. We discussed where would be a natural place in the line of step outs to take a commercial break and come back. We both agreed and that was that.

When he left, I had a chance to take in the local Art scene, lovingly provided by the props department:

I believe it was Dave’s creation:

Judy arrived and I again went over the talking points. We discussed a chart I had made for this project, which had my logo printed at the bottom. The goal was to get that on t.v.! Plus, because we cut out a portion of my second project from yesterday’s show, I wanted to get in the one hook that  had made me. It was a half size smaller but I figured I could fake it and no one would be the wiser. I just wanted it to be seen on t.v. It’s the one he made for me with the .

We finished reviewing the “talking points” and I told her I had no worries about this project. It was easy! Plus, it was the focus of the show and the reason why it was aptly called, “Back in the Saddle.” It was at that point that we learned that Allison, the host, was going to be doing a project of her own.

Now, when we had Melody as our producer and Erin as assistant producer, I had pushed to let Drew do a project for this episode. But I never received a clear answer as to why he couldn’t, or they didn’t want him to. And I know he contacted them on his own to ask if he could do a super short project there. Now we knew why.

Apparently, Allison is contracted to not only be the host, but to also come up with at least 20 projects of her own to demo on the show. This was the first we’d heard of it and thus the reason why he was short changed a project. And when you look at what she’s required to do, it’s actually very daunting. She has to memorize, to some degree, the script, work with guests to be “riveting” and keep the energy up, and create her own projects and demo them on the spot. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the gist.

So I’m standing there with Judy, who proclaims that she’s got to head upstairs for an unexpected meeting and that she’ll be down to go over Pam’s stuff with her one last time.

We had some time to watch the first group do their projects, which I was interested in because being that they were doing sewing stuff, I felt it lent itself to more interaction amongst the host and guests. I watched to see the faces of the other people not demo’ing. Where they looking plastic-y, with broad fake smiles? You know, because at this point the last phrase I wanted to hear was, “MORE ENERGY!” when we went to the set. I watched as they worked around the sewing work area. The other girls seemed to be standing and looked like they were there, but enjoying themselves. I saw some smiles here and there, but by this time I wasn’t really watching the t.v. so much, so I wasn’t getting an accurate read on things.

Judy comes back from her meeting and asks Pam and I to meet her at the work tables where the step outs are. Turning back to Drew as though it was an after-thought, she says, “Oh Drew, you can come too. I don’t know what I was thinking.” We huddled near my project and she says, “Here’s what we’re going to do. The producers are realizing how long all these projects are taking and they want to get the steps for each portion. This was like when we asked you to make additional step outs yesterday because we weren’t seeing enough of each part. Allison has a project to demo,” she says as I glanced back to see it sitting behind me. It was rather extensive looking. So much so, that the prop guys took awhile getting it ready for her. “…and it looks like it’s going to take two Acts. Pam has a hat that’ll take a full Act, and then we have one short final Act. We’re going to cut this project, ” she says as she’s pointing to my step outs, “…and make the last Act a Show and Tell.”

After that, I can’t say I have the most complete memory. Instantly, through the vortex of space and time, she turned into Charlie’s Brown’s teacher. You know who I mean, right? The one who spoke with the unauthoritative muffled noise protruding from her mouth, like a sullen trumpet on its last tute: “Whaa, waa, WAAa, waaahh, waaaaahh, whaaaa…”

“Is that OK?” The fog lifts because now I think she’s speaking to me. I’m not a terribly good lier and I don’t make it a point to disguise my feelings often, but for my sanity and the sanity of those around me, I clenched my lips tight and vaguely nodded my head. What can you say to that? “I just spent the last 3 months doing that project, prepping for it. It was the focus of the show. I had a lot riding on it, and now you’re cutting it?”

Judy made a fast get-away over to Pam’s project since they needed to go over stuff there too. Her stuff was picked through and edited down, similar to the project from the previous day. And that stunk because the part that got cut was SUPER cool. It was seriously their loss for doing what they did. I’ll leave it at that.

You know, there comes a time in the life of a craft show when the viewers no longer watch. “,” as it’s termed, is a viewer-driven statistic which refers to when a show goes bad and no one wants to watch it. Drew cited the Carol Duvall show as an example of this, when the show became more about the host than the guests, or lack thereof. In reviewing the format for the show, I was so unenthusiastic because Allison’s project, as super cool as it was, had nothing to do with crochet AND we would be doing some on the spot Show and Tell using unknown projects to talk about. Plus, this was going to be the first episode viewers saw. And there we were on Day 3 pretending to have met for the very first time! And I had just been cut, and Drew wasn’t showing anything! It just all seemedDUMB to me. I felt we had jumped the shark before taking the first leap.

I went outside for a good while and Lar reluctantly put me on the phone with his mother. I had just been cut. I didn’t want to pretend to be happy and have to put on a face. I’d rather just be who I am. Pretending is for Romper Room.

It was at that moment that I decided that Larry was coming in with me whether they liked it or not. There was no reason why he couldn’t the day before, and I wasn’t letting it happen again. I told him that when I went in, he was to follow me and I’d show him where to stand.

The first group is done and now it’s our turn to go on set. Larry followed me in and I found him an unobtrusive place to view the taping. They had us do the intro standing behind the couches. I was holding Pam’s project, since it was the only thing our group was demo’ing on this whole episode. I motioned to Lar to snap some pictures if he could and gave him the “don’t use flash” sign with my hands. He did a good job of being sneaky and worked it so the camera wouldn’t make noise while shooting.

Pam was up first. They placed us at the table to crochet, but which we all seemed to like a little bit better. At least it didn’t make our hands sweat! Larry’s view was blocked but I know he didn’t care that much. He just wanted to see the cameras in action.

The crew and director talked for 5 minutes trying to figure out camera angles and such and then asked, “Who is most likely to talk here?” I said I was. I knew Drew wasn’t happy with what had gone down earlier and I figured I should just say I was, since he didn’t. Gordon, the director, decided to place me next to Allison, which was kind of foolish because if you want two people to talk to one another, they need to be facing each other. Instead, Drew was across from Allison. I just went with it.

Pam’s project involved using a natural material and would be considered challenging to demo. Having spent last night trying out this material, I can say I have a new found respect for her ability to demo this on camera. It’s not an easy job and I appreciate she took this project on (especially since I was the one who had chosen the difficult material in the first place. (Insert pangs of guilt here). Drew had his own similar bit when he needed to use sequins the day before. Working with them on a pillow was just not conducive to comfortable crocheting.

I tried to be cheerful as best I could with three cameras pointing at me. And I made a few efforts to interject comments, thoughtful ones. I know that at this point I was acting. The teacher in me was taking over and again, I just went with it. The last thing I needed to do was look like I wasn’t happy (i.e. “MORE ENERGY!”). We had a couple snafus during this segment, but if I recall correctly it was more in the gabbing and nothing to do with Pam. She was Stellar!

With Act 1 behind us, the producers and director(s) frantically began hashing out an unscripted Show and Tell for Act 4. Luckily, I had brought with me several of my items seen on . I had thrown them into the bag last minute because the materials provided to us early on said to bring stuff to decorate the set. Everyone had a little something there. I brought  with me and was proud to show it off. Allison seemed to like it. And I think she wanted to steal one of Drew’s purses too! And I kept wanting to get my hands on this super cool metal chain bag Pam bought. It had a biker flava to it.

I stumbled through the Show and Tell, especially when they asked us to do it a second time. Ugh. I think they wanted Drew to talk more or something. It ends and I’m thinking we’re done for the day and we can start thinking about packing our remaining stuff. Judy tells us that they’ve decided to have us in the 2nd and 3rd Acts with Allison demo’ing her project. Oh Yay! Now I can look like I’m even more excited to be there. At this point we broke for lunch.

Returning from lunch, they set us up on these uncomfortable stools. Secret agent Larry snapped this one:

I think they decided to put Drew close to Allison because they wanted him to talk more. And he kept leaning over to me saying silly stuff. It was there on that very stool the phrase, “I’m not an actress, but I play one on t.v.” was born. The phrase was given life from the very same unambiguous phrase hurled our way for the last 2 days, “MORE ENERGY!” But what can I say folks? It was torture sitting there listening to the demo because of the incredible amount of starts and stops involved. And this wasn’t Allison’s fault. She was having so much trouble with the sewing machine. I felt bad for her, well not that bad considering that she had the prop guys to help her out. But I did feel bad because it completely messes with your rhythm to have a tool or machine break on you in mid sentence. Here’s her sewing:

At one point Allison was showing how to create (do?) a grommet. That interested me. I always wanted to know how it was done. Drew and Pam got to bang one into place through fake leather and I got to squeeze one closed with pliers. As a critique, if they wanted us to be more involved and enthusiastic, they should have let us try our hand at the sewing machine. And they shouldn’t have had us on stools. We looked like the Peanut Gallery, and actually, Gordon spent the day calling us that: “The Peanut Gallery.” I took it to be condescending towards us.

We sat through 2 Acts of this. I was so happy when it was over with. I immediately got up and went to Larry to see how it all looked from his point of view. Pam and Drew were behind me and we headed outside. I began packing my stuff away (I had done some in the morning too), trying to figure out how to get everything to fit. Someone was kind enough to post the airplane restrictions after the incident on Thursday. I screened all my luggage for items that could be confiscated and proceeded to turn 2 carry-ons into 1. It’s a magic act folks.

Jane, the super cool wardrobe gal got us a shuttle that was arriving in 45 minutes or so and we lined up all our stuff. Drew was heading to see Crazy Aunt Purl. Pam had a connecting flight to Wisconsin (via Las Vegas), and Larry and I had a straight flight home. We said our goodbye’s to Drew and got into the most insane cab/shuttle ride yet.

At some point we realized we weren’t going to the airport and asked where we were heading to. The driver, a short Chinese man with an unassuming posture, explained that we were going to pick up other people. At this point, I’m thinking we’d better not be late to the airport. Pam was leaving in less than 3 hours and with all that was going on, I didn’t want to see her get stuck in security.

About half way through the trip Larry announces that the driver appears to be tired, so tired in fact that he’s driving erratically. Now, every vehicle we were in drove fast while in LA, so I wasn’t sure how you tell the difference. But this guy was opening and closing his eyes throughout the trip. I tried not to get panicked. We were less than 10 minutes from the airport. Putting two feet on the ground was a relief.

Pam was dropped off first and Larry and I second. As we were pulling up, we could see cop cars and officers all over the place. The airport was heavily guarded. Walking in was like seeing a ghost town in the distance. There were very few people there and those that were, walked with purpose to their departing gates. As we approached to head upstairs, I knew I had to toss my water bottle. The woman at the gate told us that she joked with the last person saying that they only liquids allowed on board were the ones already in your system. We needed the laugh!

We headed to the gate through security and found that ours was conveniently located next to a bar! YAY! And they also had the beer, Marzen, that we imbibed the first day. There was no wi-fi (we tried) but the beer was flowing. We met a super cool guy named, Luther who was heading to Buffalo. It was like running into an old friend. And with 5 hours to kill, we had time to talk. We grabbed some bad pizza there (Californians make the worst pizza ever. Sorry! Come to NJ to see the difference).

At one point our flight was about to board and so was Luther’s. Lar arranged to have our seats put together, since we were originally placed apart. Luther went to his gate where they were doing extensive security checks, but nothing was happening on ours. I thought it was weird, but I wasn’t complaining.

I fell asleep within 10 seconds of sitting down in my seat. And after only getting about 3 hours of sleep, I woke up to see several shooting stars. Lar wished me a Happy Birthday. Yeah. It was my birthday that day. And after the plane ride we averted a hellish ride home on Route 78 by cutting through Newark. We had no map and didn’t know where we were going on to say that we were at least, “…heading in the right direction.” We fell asleep at 9:00am until 3:00pm. And later that night went to Toro Loco, my favorite Mexican place with our best couple friends, Mark and Steph and told them our tales.

What a crazy 4 days.

Looking back on it all now, I’m glad I did this t.v. thing. And I’d do it again for sure. But I’d make sure some things that happened, didn’t happen. I can’t say for sure how to fix all the problems, but I will make some recommendations for others who are planning their own stint on the show:

I’m sure I’ll add more to this list when I think of things.

Tags: burbank, california, Crochet, show, taping, tv, uncommon threads