I think Old Man Winter has finally been put down. Me, well, I’m happy to dance on the sour bastard’s grave. I earned my first sunburn of the year by spending a wonderful day shooting video out and about on the southside.

The morning was a bit suspect. And as I was assembling my morning cappuccino, I found myself looking out on a dreary morning with a light mist settling down on the neighborhood. I knew it was supposed to clear up and get warm by late morning or early afternoon. But it looked like the first scene I planned to shoot of the day would be overcast.

I planned to shoot in the large central parking-lot of the Blue Star Arts Complex. But the construction crews working on the river walk expansion were out in noisome force. Backhoes, cement mixers, bobcats, big diesel generators. Shit! I decided to move to that little alleyway back towards the UTSA satellite gallery. Jacinto Guevara was the first to show up. He was to play the role of a fictional Southtown artist. He gave his character a name. Odum Hohnerman. My friend Deborah showed up to help me out. And then Nikki Young showed up. She was to play the role of a TV news reporter. I had sent her a script. And she made some great embellishments, such as creating a name for the TV station, as well as giving her character a name. Nova Mendoza. She showed up absolutely glamourous in a stylish suit. (Afterwards, Deborah said that Nikki really should be a TV reporter or news personality, but she might be too cute with too much fashion sense.) The shoot when great. Jacinto and Nikki were perfect. I only hope we didn’t get too much in the way of artists Bryson and Holly Brooks, because we were basically shooting on the front porch of their Blue Star loft.

Deborah and I took a late breakfast at Los Sarapes (a cafe on S. Presa, located in the building which once housed the late and lamented Pepe’s Cafe). I highly recommend the chicken chilaquiles with the tomatillo sauce.

And then we drove back to the Blue Star parking-lot to meet up with Lisa. And that’s when the sun came out. Perfect. I wanted clear skies to shoot a montage of Lisa jogging along the river on the southside.

Lisa brought along her mom. Mom can walk, but she’s getting up in years, and we were planning to set up shots where we needed to walk a bit of distance, so Lisa had brought along a wheelchair. Lisa’s mother suffers from Alzheimer’s, and it’s fascinating (and quite moving) to watch the coping mechanisms which they both have developed to help them navigate through their days.

We shot at five locations along the river, from Blue Star, all the way down to Mission San Juan. Lisa grew up on the southside, so she knew the area well. And Deborah has a long history of the area as well. And I also know the area fairly well. The four of us had a great time.

What I was shooting was a montage of Lisa jogging. It’s important to the script to show her as a strong, fit woman. And I knew she could pull it off. Lisa isn’t just one of the more talented actors in town, she’s also a certified gym rat. She teaches various workout classes. For a woman almost as old as me, she’s beautiful, sexy, and very fit. Here’s a still from today’s shoot.

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We wrapped around five. I headed home, with the thought of taking a nap. I never managed to get around to that. I had some pressing email to deal with.

By seven in the evening I gathered my audio equipment and headed north to a grocery store on the far northside to crew on a short film which the good folks of PrimaDonna Productions were shooting. It was just a two and a half hour shoot.

The best thing was that I got to see Katsy Joiner. I love her. I haven’t seen her in probably four or five years. She’s a wonderfully accomplished and lovely actress. She’s not aged a day. What I like about Katsy is that she always treats everyone with the same warm and kind consideration. She’s engaged and curious about the whole production process. I like to think that in high school she was this bombshell who looked like she should be a cheerleader, but she was actually something of a nerd in the AV club.

So, now, it’s pushing 1am. I’m winding down. Drinking Modelo. I should be editing or sleeping. I’m foolishly doing neither. I’m gonna had to bust ass tomorrow and Thursday. I need to turn all this mess (video and audio clips) into a coherent eight minute (or less) short film, with the delivery date and time of 3pm at the Office of Cultural Affairs–oops, I mean the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (this is good, because the parking will be easier to find).

And, now that I think about it, I realize I’ve not eaten since Los Sarapes. I wonder what’s in the refrigerator…?