Traffic.

Too much freeway. The job so far is cake, but the drive down to Irvine is a bitch. I live in Los Angeles, I've also driven in New York City and Boston, so I think it means something when I say that drivers in Orange County are the biggest assholes ever. Especially the drivers of SUVs and trucks... but thats the case everywhere, right?

Fortunately, last night Claire and I stayed with her friend Lisa in Huntington Beach, not far from my meeting point with the crew. So, while it took me 15 minutes to get to work, it took everyone from L.A. about 60 to 90 minutes (which I'm in store for tomorrow morning).

Work, as stated before, is easy. After loading in the video games and assorted set ups, I man the "green screen", taking pics of visiting office workers, and then importing the pics to a G4 Mac, and, with PhotoShop, cropping the people out of the original photo and putting them into a shot at Dave & Busters... its a silly little thing, as they pretend to play pool, and I then put them into a picture in the middle of a pool hall, or have them holding up beer mugs, and then insert their pics in the middle of a bar setting. But, its a huge hit. More importantly, my crash course in PhotoShop went smoothly, and now that I know a couple basics I'm sure I'll be using that program more often than Image Composer... still hate the Mac, though... when are they going to add a second mouse button, if ever? Are they afraid of confusing the simple Mac users minds?

At the end of the day, the tour manager, and my cohort, Matt and I had to take the 23' cargo truck back to a Dave & Busters to drop off some food carts to be replenished. A general note to the world: driving a giant cube truck is not fun... if you see them trying to merge into a lane ahead of you, please do, cause somebody has to. But, since nobody wants to, eventually you have to start changing lanes and FORCE people to let you in, and blow their horns, and let you know how much they hate you. Alas... we know it sucks, but we also know we're insured. If not out of courtesy, please be nice to your neighborhood cargo truck driver because he doesn't care if he crashes into your oversized SUV.

After hours in the ass of traffic hell known as Orange County, I met back up with Claire and we headed home. No traffic, as it was past 8pm, until we hit Hollywood. We almost detoured at an exit, but saw it was an accident and decided to do a drive by. I was crossing my fingers that it was some jack ass in an SUV... not that I wish it on these people.

Indeed, it was. I'll be going to sleep tonight and hitting the road tomorrow with the bad karma. The smile on my face was worthwhile.