I arose on Thursday morning less than an hour before our noon departure and commenced my typical last-minute packing. Brett, Nick, Reid, Wey, Marco, Sharon, and I all piled into the van with lots of luggage and film equipment and departed for Dulles.
We needed gas, so Nick went to stop at the first gas station we saw, but Brett told him hell no, don't stop there because the clerk is a monster or something. So Brett had us keep driving until we got a little bit out of town and then said we could stop at Carroll's Exxon Market & Deli. Which was a good call because this looked like a much more interesting place for us to get snacks while the van gassed up, since none of us had eaten yet.
Carroll's had a lot of shit inside, perhaps the weirdest being full baked pies shrink-wrapped by the register. Wey said something about being sad that Hostess Twinkies were now gone. I told him they were coming back, and that even if they weren't, there were still facsimiles in the market. I showed him two that were in that very gas station: Tastykake Dreamies and Little Debbie Cloud Cakes. He said they weren't the same, but I think he was just being stubborn. Of course they're the goddamn same. It's a tube of cake filled with imitation creme.
Most people got sandwiches from the deli inside the gas station. I would never eat a sandwich from a gas station, so I went for a Moon Pie, of which there were four flavours to from which to choose: Vanilla, Strawberry, Chocolate, and Banana. Although I'm sure the other three would prove at the very least interesting, I knew the most satisfying would be chocolate, and so that is what I got, to tide me over until that Dulles Chipotle.
We rode for a long time, and conversation was sparse. I spent most of the trip half asleep listening to Maryland/Virgina radio on my headphones.
Here is a list of movies that are officially canon with The Perfect 46, as approved by Brett:
1. Jurassic Park (1993). Whit even played the volunteer boy at the dinosaur dig in the beginning of the movie, whom Brett says could easily have been a young Jesse Darden. He was then worried that the Jurassic Park novel on Jesse's desk contradicted that, but I explained that that was an in-universe book about their real life Jurassic Park. I then wondered if future JP installments would ever reveal the titles of Grant and Malcolm's books, which have thus far only been mentioned in passing by child characters.
2. Gattaca (1997). Still haven't seen it, but it's apparently relevant.
3. The Matrix (1999). It was my idea that P46 takes place either many years pre-Matrix, or possibly a few years post.
4. Jason X (2001). This inadvertently makes all the Friday the 13ths canon, but far as I can tell, that still works.
5. Star Trek: The Original Series (1966 - 1969). Similarly, this makes every single Star Trek TV show and movie canon. It fits perfect.
And this one we didn't discuss, but I just rewatched it on Crackle, and I think maybe The 6th Day (2000). And the minor character played by Don in that film could simply be a relative of Don's character in P46. It's perfect.
When we got to Dulles, Brett stuffed 73 extra items into my bulging carry-on and we tunneled underground to the thing of the airport where you take off your shoes and guards feel your body. Sharon looked up information on her phone about the Finnish architect who designed the terminal. She said he wanted to incorporate lots of elements that suggested flight. I noted that this explained the Superman crests.
We had a little time to kill before the flight, so I had some Dulles Chipotle while everyone else walked around and looked at shit. At a Starbucks, Marco finally realized the reason for the migraines that had crippled him during the shoot-- apparently he was going through coffee withdrawal. Hell, I could've told him that, if I'd known he was into the bean. But I don't drink coffee, so my mind was elsewhere.
Wey, Marco, and Sharon were on my flight, across the aisle from me on the right side of the plane. I had the window seat on the left, with a strange man on my aisle seat and NOBODY in the middle seat between us. This was so awesome. It gave me a nice buffer from the man as well as an object staging area for when I needed to move around.
The flight is kind of a blur. I was very tired, and suffering from allergies the entire time. I think I listened to some music. This time I didn't buy Internet, so I saved some money there, but I did apparently order some Sprite Zeros and a $4 bag of Chex Mix. Also, at one point, I watched an entire episode of NCIS on USA Network. It was godawful. No one told me how godawful this show is. I would fucking love to watch this show with some friends and spend the whole hour making fun of how godawful it is. But instead, I just watched it by myself on the plane, in silence. The episode was about a boy that everyone at NCIS takes turns babysitting because they're investigating his parents or something.
When our flight arrived at LAX, I was still with hardcore allergies. I told Sharon I felt like someone had blown pepper in my face, but I couldn't make it go away. She told me to look up at the lights, because that would make me sneeze or not sneeze or something. It worked. I felt better after that.
My brother picked me up and on the drive home, we finally discussed what he thought of Star Trek Into Darkness. He asked me what I thought he thought of it. I told him I'd never seen Wrath of Kahn, but I imagined that someone who had seen Wrath of Kahn would probably think that Star Trek Into Darkness was a big piece of shit. He told me that was about right.
This was two weeks ago. There has been no news about P46 since then, except that Sheldon and I finally saw Furious 6 with Carl and Ayaka, during which I told Ayaka how much she was missed in Maryland, primarily by Brett.
Also, Brett asked me if I cared to design the book cover for the book-within-the-movie about Jesse Darden. I said yes and did that. Brett sent me two photos of Jesse and the cover of a Steve Jobs book that I should model it after. We then emailed back and forth till the cover looked good. I wonder if I could put this thing on my resume. Maybe I could get work designing covers for books-within-movies.
Like, what if they let me design Grant and Malcolm's books in a JP movie? It wouldn't be the first JP character book jacket in my repertoire.
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