As you know from my last postings, my car was in the shop all last week. Monday through Thursday I drove a puke yellow Hyundai Elantra everywhere. On Thursday Amy picked me up from work and concurrently met with Dr. Veis (the president of ATG … where I work) for a TMJ consultation. He determined that she has definite TMJ damage and wants her to get x-rays to determine the next step.

Thursday night we went to HomeTown Buffet, a restaurant Amy has long been curious about. Ironically this HTB was not as good as the already trashy ones in Columbus. They had no seaters, they didn’t give each table a personal bus-person/waiter, and they didn’t have the whole-pieces of meat (ham, turkey, and beef slabs). They also didn’t have the syrup pumps to put flavoring in your pop. Early on Amy figured out why I’d been avoiding eating here.

The next morning at 7:30 we headed off to Ren-Mar studios. Amy and I had agreed earlier in the week to do a short segment on a television talk show pilot called “Dr. Reef.” As the producers talked to us more and went back and forth with the studio (Sony Tristar), they decided to make our story one of the main segments. After finding the studio we walked around on the lot in a maze with little help or direction. Eventually we found a crew member who took us to the green-rooms on the other side of the lot. We waited there for four hours until it was time for our segment to tape. At the tail end of those four hours we both got the royal make-up treatment. Pictures of this make-up putting on as well as Iyves and Amy fooling around with show producers Nancy and Shana can be found here. The taping of our segment lasted about two hours and was not what we expected, although we were never really quite sure what to expect. There was a live studio audience. We were up on two chairs, on the stage, alone. The show was supposed to feature Amy’s attachment to Iyves and its psychological implications. The show host is a psychologist at UCLA. You can find more info on him here. As we segwayed into the first commercial break the show took a few surprise twists. I was labeled an enabler and told by members of the audience and even the host himself that I’m part of the problem. Both of us ended up saying things that we’d be embarrassed about if this show ever airs, but it probably won’t since it is only a pilot. The taping was very surreal, like a dream, a bad dream sometimes. The weird thing though was that the audience didn’t matter to either of us since they all seemed so fake. I’ll let you in on a little secret.. Remember when it was a big deal that “some” of the fights on Jerry Springer were “faked?” Ninety percent of what you see on the TV talk shows is fake. Almost all of our dialogue was written out the night before and rehearsed with us in the green rooms (they split us up) that morning. When we improvised the sequence would be reshot after the producers would come out and “suggest” what we should say. As I’d never acted in a school play or anything in my life, this was quite interesting. Even more so because I was playing myself, but some over exaggerated version. Taping finished up around 3pm and Amy whisked me off to Eckhart Auto Body (you remember them…Adam Sandler’s workplace in Punch Drunk Love). Everything was fine with the car except one of my aftermarket pieces didn’t work. Amy and I met back at my place and ordered pizza. We decided to try Papa John’s new Pan Pizza. It was actually the best pizza I’ve had in a long time, so I recommend it to any pizza aficionados out there. Afterwards we watched Crash. An interesting movie, but one that anyone not living in Southern California would not understand. Brendan Fraser also just doesn’t sit right with me in a serious role…

Saturday I dragged Amy to Harpers to watch OSU trounce Minnesota.

I’m supposed to play a background alien extra in another pilot this Saturday…but I haven’t received a call-sheet yet, so I’m thinking something has fell through with that (aliens are usually tall, aren’t they? Damn!).

Amy and I are doing a follow-up interview with the Dr. Reef show tomorrow at 5:30.

And yes, we got paid Friday and we will tomorrow too. I asked for a copy of the show when they are done, but the producers made it sound unlikely that we’ll get one. We found out right after the taping that the budget of the show was half a million dollars. So a lot of people (including Sony Tristar) are betting on this to work. We were told that we were basically the most interesting segment on the show. Now, that may have been a fib just to make us feel good, who knows. Feels pretty good to be the centerpiece of a $500,000 production.