Wherein I say "And so tell us..." multiple times

I just found this fast-moving action sequence on YouTube. It's from the auto show, specifically the design challenge at the auto show. The guy's named is spelled Jacques but he pronounces it Jack. Sort of like how my name is spelled Alison but I pronounce it Yolanda. But lest you are new to all things me, please watch some of my more exciting videos before deciding that you love me. (That's where this was all going anyway, right? Admit it: you love me. You love me in spite of this video. I knew it.)

I did all my own stunts in this video

For example, when the car turns left, that's totally me turning left!

Outtakes

My dream of an outtake reel from the recent MINI shoot is dying on the vine, time constraints being what they are, so I thought I'd just tell you about what would have been on the reel. The reel that you'll never see. Did I mention you won't see it? Because you won't.

1) Me doing a whole demonstration of how quiet the engine is and then ending it by making a joke about how it's "one horsepower." Then me driving away and then driving back into the frame and explaining that I was just joking, it's "normal horsepower." Then me driving away and driving back into the frame and saying to Ben that the damn take would have worked if only I hadn't said that dumb thing about horsepower.

2) Me taking the battery charging plug that you're supposed to plug into the car and plugging it into my hip and then jumping around as if I were getting electrocuted.

3) Me draping myself over the car in a mock provocative way a la car girls at car shows. (Mockvocative?)

4) Me asking Jim if the car emitted patchouli fumes. He said no. (That was in the video). But then I asked him if it emitted marshmallows, butterflies, rainbows or Nagchampa ("it's a kind of incense" I explained)

There was more, but now I have a headache.

The Art of Driving the MINI E

I weep for all the jokes that didn't make this cut.

MINI E at the LA Auto Show

My face hurts

I've written before about the glee I feel when someone says their face hurts and I spin around and say "Really? It's killing me!" and how even when I'm the one whose face hurts I still feel that giddiness because I can insult myself over and over again. Did that even make sense? Probably not.

But yeah, my face is coated in makeup that I've been wearing since this morning and I'm waiting around to watch footage with Ben to see if we need to shoot anything else. I don't think we do, however if I wash my face then we totally will. You know?

I did a lot of driving today... A lot of driving up and down the same block. I also gave a ration of sass to a German guy for not acting more excited to see me. He told me I had to give him a break because he's been standing in a garage all day. I told him considering he's been in a garage all day, seeing me again for the fourth time in the span of a couple hours should be a fucking WOOHOO type situation.

This is me not making any Virgin puns

I'm sleepy, readers. Sleepy and hungry. I'd order room service but it's closed and plus, I have to be up and at em and in a MINI E by 8am so I should just go to sleep and wake up more lithe. Who couldn't stand to be lither? Not this guy.

(It cracks me up to refer to myself that way, I think, because it's a very indirect reference to one of my favorite off color jokes. Perhaps I'll tell you someday. Or maybe I won't.)

Anyway, I flew here yesterday on Virgin America which was pretty cool save for the fact that the flight was like six hours. Yes, we got in an hour early but what no one seemed to realize is that clever Virgin America scheduled the flight to take seven hours which is ridiculous. So when we got in an hour early people were hooting and hollering but I was raining on their parade in my head and also judging them because it's what I do. I'm fun like that.

The flight attendants were nice and splashy though. One befriended me on my way to the bathroom. I told him it was my first time flying Virgin. "Oh my God, you're a Virgin virgin!" He said excitedly. Then he shouted to the rest of the crew that I was a Virgin virgin. I cried and asked him to hold me. Then he never called me again.

What was I saying? I don't know.

See you at 8am!

It's come to this

Fabric swatches on my couch.


More fabric swatches.


More.

There aren't different swatches in each photo. Just a different configuration.

In other news, today I went to a press luncheon presentation for Chile. This is one of the perks of not working in an office—getting to go to things like this. See, I used to get invited to stuff like this all the time but had to say no because if I vacated my desk for three hours I might never come back. Back in those days I was young and naive. I didn't know what I know today, which is that even though you might think Chilean food is spicy, it's not. That's one of the big misconceptions about this diverse and friendly country with many organic ingredients. "Flavored well, not spicy," said a bald man wearing a pink tie. Also, there is something called Merken and NO ONE made any merkin jokes. That's how civilized this crowd was.

Um, what else? Please forgive me, I'm distracted by Jeff Conaway and that piece of work Vicki Whatshername. Oh wait, I'm wrong! He's not bitching at Vicki! He was telling the new tech Luisha that he doesn't like her. I should never multitask like this.

So I jotted down a few choice sentences I heard today. These are they:

"I just want to give a shout out to the avocado oil."

"Basil? Sauvignon? Love it!"

"Sole Valhalla"

"It's not a wine that shouts at you with exclamation points."

My friend Mike took some photos which he told me he's heard are referred to, in the porn business, as food porn. Or maybe it was in the food writing world.

I'm joking as I'm actually familiar with this atrocious term and long ago decided that until a naked person appears in the photos I don't think we should be calling it porn. Have people no respect for porn?

Um. Oh, Mike's photos:





Oh, also, also! I think I'll get to drive a MINI E which is the new electric MINI. I'm totally going to try to plug my hairdryer into it.

The Final Bang (on YouTube now)

You may have already seen this one but if you haven't, here it is. Perhaps you're wanting to know the backstory with the helicopter shot? Okay then. But maybe you should watch first before I blow your mind? Okay go watch while I sit here admiring myself in this rusty butter knife.

Back so soon?

So Erik and Ben were going up in a helicopter and I was supposed to stand on the top of the dimple hill and they'd get an awesome shot of the roof with me on it, waving. So I get this call from them saying they're about to go up and that I should go up on the roof in about ten minutes and I say "you'll call me to let me know when you're shooting the roof though right?" except I don't get all that out because they have to go and their phones are being confiscated and just wave at all helicopters. So I haul my toned and shapely caboose up there and there happen to be a lot of people setting up and there are some drums on teh top of the dimple hill as well but I explain that I have to go up there and wave at helicopters. I offer to soundcheck their drums but they don't take me up on it and also they want to make sure I'm not "drunk or anything" WHICH I WASN'T, I'm just clumsyish and kind of lost at most times. So I'm up there looking in the sky and one of the guys explains that I don't have to look, I'll just hear the helicopter. This was probably right and it's good he said taht because every time i craned my neck to look at the sky I started to get dizzy and worried I'd take a tumble down dimple mountain, taking out a snare drum and a drummer and possibly a guitar on my way. There was also a guitar up there. So then I developed a dog like sense of hearing, or whatever animal has crazy good hearing, and lurched at all loud noises and waved like a maniac at planes and various things flying by including a flock of birds. Finally after about half an hour I gave up and went downstairs. Erik and Ben told me they didn't see me up there but then they didn't see much of the roof either.

The next day they were goign to go up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building and film me on the roof that way so that it would look like it was from a helicopter. "Is the human eye so good that people know roughly what helicopter shots shoudl look like?" I asked. Ben assured me it would work, however he misunderstood my question. I wasn't asking if people would be able to tell the difference between a helicopter shot and an Empire State Building shot. I was asking if we really need to go up to the Empire State Building for this shot, can't we just hold the camera above our heads and shake it and pretend that was from a helicopter with some kind of phenomenal zoom function. I'm kind of glad he didn't understand my question though, as this is why I'm in front of the camera and on a blog and not behind a camera, etc. So again I hauled ass up to the roof with my microphone and waited while explaining to the guys what was going on and worrying they would think I think I'm being filmed but really the whole thing is in my head since I'm saying I'm going to be filmed by peopel on the Empire STate Building and that's why I have to wave at no one.

But it was goign to take an hour and a half to get to the observation deck, so we scrapped that and filmed what you saw, instead.

Also, by this point my throat and my interviewing style was a little raw.

Closing night video up on MINIspace

I think there might be one more coming, too. http://minispace.com/en_us/projects/mini-rooftop-nyc/videos/

same videos, new, um, post about them

So I put up this blog post on The Activity Pit and then I was thinking maybe I should repost it here but then I was thinking that I already put these videos here but then I was like but there's slightly more commentary in this post and then I was all but only like a sentence or so and then I was like but I don't know and then I'm all sure why not, you know? So here it is:

Hey fancy feet! (That's you. I decided your feet are fancy. Just go with it.) For the last couple weeks I was stationed on a rooftop covering the MINI rooftop NYC event. We made a series of videos which I think are fun, but then I have a very high opinion of myself.

Anyway, if you want to see them, they're here:

http://minispace.com/en_us/projects/mini-rooftop-nyc/videos/

But wait, here are a few of my favorites which are on YouTube. Guided tour? Sure, why not.


In this first one I made a mockery of India and exercise and for that I'm vaguely sorry.



And then in this one, some stuff happened.



And I like this one too but I can't remember why:



Oh and this one too!

Dear India, I'm sorry

Patrick the contest winner

I think I may have gotten a little carried away with the ding...

Okay so it wasn't yoga I was doing that day

The Masala Bhangra video is up. (Thanks to Joe for tipping me off!) It's not on YouTube yet or I'd post it here but you can see it at http://www.minispace.com/en_us/projects/mini-rooftop-nyc/

And in case you are wondering, up until about fifteen minutes before I left the house I was planning on wearing regular exercise clothes because, as I lamented in a previous post, I didn't have access to sweatbands or funny clothes. But then I saw that V Magazine t-shirt I'd been given as a party favor the night before and I ripped the neckband off, Flashdance-style but I was too overzealous in the ripping. On a lark I safety pinned it and then turned the sleeve excess into wristbands. I tied my bathrobe sash around my forehead as I do every morning. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not only a phenomenal dancer but a burgeoning designer as well.

See all the MINIspace videos here: http://www.minispace.com/en_us/projects/mini-rooftop-nyc/videos/

Goodbye rooftop!

Today's the first day I'm not on the rooftop! I think I have rooftop legs. Anyway, here's a photo from last night with the MINIspace team. I don't even believe in teams since there's no "I" in them, but I had fun for these past ten days and more videos will be posted in the coming week so check back, won't you?

I Only Drive Winners

I looked "fascinating"

Coming to a delightfully humiliating video soon!

More roof videos

Another video from the roof

Photos from today

This guy won a trip to NYC through MINIspace. We went to pick him up from the hotel and I interviewed him on the way to the roof. I asked him what he knew about the roof and I said I was going to make a "ding" sound for every correct answer and a buzzer sound for every incorrect answer but then I just started dinging and buzzing willy nilly because that's the kind of person I am.

Here's Erik and me through a fish eye lens.


In a MINI, before shooting.


Ben and I color coordinated today, accidentally.