You Know You Love Me! XO XO Gossip Girl.

So yes, sometimes I watch Gossip Girl. It's all Rashi fault if you must know. Rashi is a friend from school who told me it was her favorite show. I laughed until I realized she wasn't kidding. She was dead serious. Granted she is like 12 (okay, 25) and I am 40 (not true...but closer to 40 than 20). But she was going to drag me into loving it too, regardless of how I might feel about spoiled New York rich kids.

I hate spoiled New York rich kids.

And yet, Gossip Girl is like watching Beverly Hills 90210 15 years ago. It's a soap opera for teenagers. Spoiled, wealthy upper east siders. The kind of people I loathe going to school with and should loathe watching on a tv show. But I guess I am a 33 year old teen because I am strangely hooked. And today it paid off.

I am producing a classmates thesis film. It's about teenagers in Middle America. And half of the girls who auditioned mentioned auditioning to be on the show Gossip Girl. And they all essentially look like this:

The director and assistant director had never seen Gossip Girl (and said girls who dressed like this were not appropriate for the film), but there was something comforting that I, as the oldest person in the room, knew a lot about teenage culture.

Making arty movies and producing like crazy!

It's November. It's also 64 degrees outside. This little body of mine (well...maybe not that little) doesn't know what to wear! Coat? Sweater? Skivvies? It's so hard. Maybe it's why I have banned getting dressed ever again until the weather decides to behave and make up its mind.

I have been producing and production designing up a storm. What this means to all you lay people is that I have been making all the plans and prep work for a film a classmate is directing (everything from finding locations, casting and figuring out how to feed the crew). Part of the time it's fun. The other part of the time I want to rip all of my hair out.

Production design, on the other hand, is almost always fun. Production design is all the art work involved in the movie. Making sets, designing rooms, finding props and (sometimes) doing the wardrobe. It's sort of like interior decorating. The last film I worked on the people were catholic and I ended up using this cross in the film:I don't know why this photo makes me laugh so hard. Or why my hair looks so weird. But the cross is pretty scary I think. Someone used it as a hammer at one point on set, which I think might be sacrilegious.

Been working on some experimental stuff. Like this film I shot of my best friend Karin in Israel last summer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6c0Ynudsdk

or this, which is supposed to capture the frenetic energy of getting ready every morning while I was there (make sure you click on the "watch in high quality" button):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_2GjY_mbtA

Israel was lovely by the way. You should go. I enlarged my student loans to shoot some of my pre-thesis work there. What's another $5000 when I am already over $100,000 in debt?