This really happened...June 24, 2018

Sitting comfortably I was happily sweating sel-de-fleur-caramel anxiety, aided by a Pamplemousse La Croix, and clicking my mouse madly. I was creating a FedEx shipping label for Vincent Van Dyke FX – a vendor in North Hollywood sending us fake blood, fake scars, or fake whatever-the-shit. And I might have been listening to either Suga Free or Fleetwood Mac.

This was for Season 2 of the now-canceled NBC show Midnight, Texas. 

In the Film Industry, we do Cancer-curing work, baby! Bullshit we do. Not a single solitary person working in a film industry capacity has ever, nor will they ever be doing any work that comes close to curing Cancer. But they all sure do act like it! Even locals, the scum! Since exactly St. Patrick's Day 2015, I've worked in the film industry in multiple departments, and, as Pure Scum par excellence incarnate, I've learned that it is an inexcusable transgression if you forgot to check if the restaurant put the Lemon Verbena Ass-Sweat dressing on the side of your boss's Chicken Butt Whiff Salad. Truly. No lie. I gotta be real honest: that type of character is a buttersoft, Kool-Aid bleeder, y'all, and it has left my wig permanently flipped and split down the middle. That means I have a butt crack running down the center of my coif', and local Hollywood dick sniffers still catch a whiff and try to fuck it. Let's get this straight: these people are baby BITCHES over salad dressing, or why there aren't anymore pens for them to chew on, yet all day, for months, that same person has been sitting on a Studio-purchased Ergonomic chair, assembled by me, and cooled in a comfortably air-conditioned room with an inexhaustible supply of Craft Service exactly twenty feet away in the kitchen, anticipating its journey and eventual squeeze through their fat, cold, Dead-Butt suffering ass. How's this for a denouement: eat shit dressing and shove that pen up the coast. That's what. Woot!

So, from day one on Midnight, Texas - literally day one on the job, not Day-1 of shooting, which was 6 weeks away - I did not know or care about what they were ever shooting, what was going on, nothing. I couldn't have given a flying rat shit fuck, and I still don't. However! On this particular day, the bell rang on the elevator door, and I heard a bunch of commotion start glaciering down the hallway. So, being credited as "Production Assistant Face #1 (but not the Key!)," I was to greet visitors and/or crew as they entered our Production Office, and, by that fact, my desk was closest to the front of the office… I never, ever once truly on purpose upheld this duty. Never.

But now, as a commotion thundered in my direction, I naturally focused my peripherals, and immediately thought: "Oh woooow, there's a bunch of huge, loud bodies and one of their kids approaching me." I just kept my eyes forward and continued entering DIMs for Vincent Van Dyke's FedEx slip, on a quest to cure Cancer.

These huge, loud bodies were Stunt Performers billed/credited as "The Fight Demons," and the four or five of them and a kid were skyscraping toward me, looking for Jim Vickers, our Stunt Coordinator. They still had to fill out start paperwork; discuss their upcoming scene; and collect Per-Diems, if they had 'em in their contracts. I really don't know if they did (they do) because I didn't give a fuck.

Then I heard a distinct voice advance in my direction and point toward my desk and say, "Oh wow - he's wearing a Detroit hat!"I looked over and it was the actor Martin Klebba! He was one of the "Rhinettes" from the movie Death to Smoochy, and much much more! I was pleased as POP he was here, right next to me!

The Detroit hat he was referring to was on the cover for horrorcore rapper Esham's 1991 Homey Don't Play! album.

I printed a copy of it on the Art department's printer (budget), and taped it to my desk to act as a welcome sign for every single visitor. It was true: Esham was wearing a hat embroidered with a red Old English "D" for Detroit, and it was on my desk because...homey don't play, and I still don't, baby.

So I turned to Mr. Klebba and said: "Yea, man. He's a rapper from East Detroit." He cried back: "Oh wow, I grew up around Detroit!" Just then, Jim Vickers, the Stunt Coordinator, grey-hair-muscled up with a genuine white person smile, and they all hulked into an office and disappeared. "I need a caramel," I thought. 

About twenty or so minutes later, Mr. Klebba walked by my desk again. With my wolfish hunger for fetishizing every little morsel, crumb, Pewabic tile and scrape of soot of Detroit history I can stuff in my cheeks, I sent it: "So what suburb of Detroit, man?" He stopped and said, "I'm from a place called 'Troy.'" I knew about Troy. Then he asked me: "You from Detroit?" "No," I replied. "I just know about it because of Esham and I.C.P." He'd heard about I.C.P. Then our conversation shifted. He said, "Ya know, we always forget," waving his hands in the air for effect, "about the kids mostly buying rap music, and who are they?" My eyes shifted. He gave it a beat...

...and continued, "White kids in the suburbs, right?" "Hmmph," I uttered by impulse, "I never thought about that." I have extensively and ad nauseum thought about that but I didn't care about the theory. Then his urgency amplified: "So it's weird that people always get so surprised when these white kids say, ya know," he paused and lowered his voice, "drop the N-word, right?" I wasn't quite sure where things were going now, or how to respond, so I just gave him my trademark not-know-what-to-say response: "Interesting." Then he said: "Ya know, my people have been persecuted for centuries!" I knew exactly what he meant and confidently nodded my head and said, in sotto voce, pointing toward Mr. Klebba, "Yea, the Irish!" as he passionately wailed over my words, "Little People, like me!"

As luck would have it, he didn't hear what I said. 

Little People. The obvious thing…

Damage control, I thought to myself.

"Oh, yea," I started stuttering, "you guys were used by Kings as good luck charms."

Sincerely, 

XXÀNN ΧΡΥΣΌΣΤΟΜΟΣ NEWCOMM SMITH, A FORMER PRODUCTION ASS.

PS:

Martin Klebba is in Episode 204 of Midnight, Texas Season 2, titled "I Put a Spell on You," and the Line Producer told me the Fight Club Demons must break down a door, and they do so by wielding Mr. Klebba like a battering ram and using his head. So I guess you can say that there are also battering ram people, too…

PSS: 

"Klebba" is of German descent.

Much love to Martin Klebba!

I need a fuckin' caramel…