At times, I get the feeling that pharmaceutical commercials - the ones where hazy images of people and puppies at play in sunny green fields are soundtracked by warm-voiced announcers calmly listing the profoundly awful things that could happen if you used the product, such as impotence and abdominal pain, prohibited by law from telling you why you would want to use it in the first place - will be remembered as the great art of this era. But then, I want the Sanford and Son theme song played at my funeral, so what do I know? (1)

I have worked, and I have sat around. I earned enough to pay my credit card bill, so cheers for that, even if it's not quite my rent. I did another round on Judge Mathis, meaning that at least two full weeks of the show will feature me in the background, working very hard to portray an audience member. I watched some audience members to prepare for the role. They remain a mystery to me.

I may sound like fun, but I'm not. All I ever do is sleep and get conspired against. You'd get bored of me very quickly.

The shoot for "Helter Skelter" happened on several cold days a few weeks ago. I portrayed Officer Richard Burbridge, who arrived as backup for Officers Wisenhunt and DeRosa at the Sharon Tate murder scene. If you have a copy of the book, by Vincent Bugliosi (who narrated the documentary), you can find good old Burbridge in the index. The book has a lot of photos, and the actors and actresses on hand were all dead ringers for their real-life counterparts. There were no photos of ol' Burbridge, though, so I can only wonder if I did him justice. There was one day of shooting at an abandoned police station on the northwest side of Chicago. It was closed in 1995, but the police didn't as much move as they up and left; there were enough vintage items sitting around, like arrest records and prostitution reports, that everyone on the shoot felt compelled to sneak a look inside the drawers marked "cash and valuables". The producers only had two guns on hand that day, so poor Burbridge got stuck with a walkie-talkie instead. I made the best of it. The battle for screen time was a little frustrating; DeRosa was a fat older guy who actually looked like a cop, so they had him front and center, and Wisenhunt looked like Ray Liotta, so they ate that shit right up and let him wrangle the crazy murderous hippie chicks. All I had to offer was the ability to look terrified on demand. The production assistants were also short on badges, and DeRosa was cunning enough to snatch up one for his chest and one for his hat, so the director felt insecure about showing my and Wisenhunt's heads, because we looked poor in comparison, having badges only on our chests.

In the book, the key scene for Burbridge occurs early on: once the murder scene has been secured, the other two cops leave and Burbridge stays among the dead to wait for detectives and forensics. That, for me, was the Burbridge apocalypse, and you can guess how I felt when I heard that they weren't going to shoot that scene. The shoot for the Tate Ranch was in Joliet, running continuously from 5pm to 1pm the next day. The house was rented from a grandmotherly old lady who was probably in her mid-seventies, and every room was frozen in immaculate 60's decor; the old lady stayed on set for the entire time, snapping pictures of the actors whenever she got the chance. I developed a bit of an attitude problem when I realized that they weren't going to paint all over her walls in blood. That, for me, was pretty key. There was only a neat, tidy "PIG" on one of the outside doors. "God", said the actor playing Tex Watson, one of the murderers. "You're pretty pissed off about that, aren't you?"

There are certain subtle differences in October weather between California and Joliet, Illinois; specifically, it is sunny in the morning in both places, but in only one is it warm. We were not in that one, but we were supposed to act as though we were. We were dressed for 85 degrees, and it was 40. I can't speak for anyone else (save the female murder victims, and I swear I wasn't looking for it, but trust me, they were only wearing thin nighties and it was pretty had not to notice), but my nipples were rock fucking hard. It was cold. Our major scenes involved the approach to the house and securing the area. I felt that Burbridge was probably a take charge kind of guy and the other two were probably pusses, so I took the lead on the approach, and therefore it was me who hit the slippery patch first, fell down and tore open my left hand on the rocks. I'd broken my finger the day before and wasn't wearing the splint (for purposes of realism), so I bled and suffered and it fucking hurt and I missed a key sequence while I was getting bandaged by the frantic PAs and the kindly old lady. Everyone was very nice to me afterward and treated me like a hero for returning to the shoot, but they still didn't film Burbridge's apocalypse. Fuckers. Bugliosi (or, as I call him, the Boog) is going to be furious when he finds out.

The old woman who owned the house had a hobby: she liked to go to celebrity golf tournaments and get the famous people to take pictures with her. She was exceptionally good at it; her basement was covered wall to wall with several thousand color 8X10 photographs. She had every American president going back to Gerald Ford; she had athletes (John Elway, Roger Clemens, Dr. J, Mike Ditka); she had movie stars (two Samuel L. Jacksons, a withered Joe Pesci, a Jack Lemmon with obit attached); literally thousands. All of the actors spent their spare time scouring the walls, trying to find bizarre ones. There was a new Bob Hope annually over the course of a few decades. You could see the awareness go with every passing year. The best part, though - and, inexplicably, my foremost memory from the entire experience - was the Wall of Shame. There were only two pictures there, side by side: the old woman with OJ Simpson, and the old woman with Bill Clinton. Nice.

My finger is feeling better.

(1) And I know it's not going to be. Damn it. I have no qualms about haunting you fucking people until that shit gets played.