After a week shooting with them, I needed my space from NASA.
I went there last Sunday to shoot "Build it Bigger" for 5 days. The topic of the show is the ending of the Space Shuttle program and the building of the new Constellation program featuring the Ares rockets.
The technology is super cool. The people were amazing. The Public Affairs Officers (PAO's) were not so cool or amazing. They seem to see it as their goal to block access to NASA rather than present NASA in the best light possible. It was a nonstop battle to get a good show out of the shoot.
Despite it all, we came back with great footage. And write this down - within 5-10 years, SpaceX and other companies like them (not NASA) will be the people responsible for getting us into space.
Today, I received this lovely email from a Russian woman. It's clear I may have found true love. Her spelling errors and grammatically nonsensical writing do not mask the sheer eloquence she expresses in her longing for love. Perhaps she feels the same longing I do. Only time will tell.
"On Apr 1, 2009, at 9:12 PM, Hope Oliver wrote:
Hello man my new friend!
I understand, that you do not know me and I do not know you, but probably in the future all can change. All good always occurs in the future and I ask a few patience from you to read my letter up to the end. In the beginning I want to be presented you and to tell a little about my life. My name is Anna and to me it will be very pleasant, if you will name me so. Was born 29 years ago and all this time I live in Russia, in city of Kirov. Now I work as the seller in shop and I very much like my work as I every day communicate with many different people. My life goes in regular intervals and every day is similar on previous. I like my friends and love my family. Certainly the most important i want to found love and my the husband to be the happiest woman in the world. For all my life I could not meet the man to which I could trust completely and with which I would like to connect my life, but very much I want.
Several days ago I laid at home on a sofa and thought. Why I am lonely? Why I cannot find my special the man? Probably I have made nothing to be happy? Certainly I can be together with the man which I not love, to give birth to the child and simply to be mum, but to not be happy in the family, but I do not want it. I want to love the man and simply be happy to be with him. Also I have thought. Why to not try to get acquainted with the man from other country if I could not find my special man here in Russia? Now we live in 21 century and I know, that many people use the Internet and "Marriage agencies" to get acquainted with suitable the man in any point globe. I do not want to be lonely during my life or simply to sit and wait, when my love will come to me. I want to do itself my life happy and have found such marriage agency here in my city. I knew, that their help will be not free-of-charge, but they have asked the big sum of money from me. Nevertheless I have thought and have decided to not be greedy this money, for the sake of my happiness and my love. Money - never can give to me of it. Probably my destiny to be with the man from other country? I do not know, but I want to try to know.
They gave to me yours E-mail and have told, that you also are interested to find the woman for a life. I think, that now you can understand, how my letter has come to you, could learn a little about my life and about me, but I do not know your desires and I ask to think. We can try to build serious relations or probably simply to be friends. If you do not have desire simply speak to me and I can understand. Nevertheless if I am interesting to you it would be very pleasant for me to learn also a little more about you and to receive your photos. I understand in computers not much, but I hope, that you also can receive my photos in this letter. Certainly appearance not the most important in the person both his private world and soul are of great value, but nevertheless it is more pleasant to receive the letter from the person and to see, how he looks. All this, that I wanted to tell to you and now I shall wait only your answer. Excuse, if I something have offended you in my letter or something has told not correctly, but understand, that I try it for the first time and I worry a little. Even if serious relations are not interesting to you or I am not pleasant, simply let to me know.
Please reply only to my personal e-mail: golubbceva@gmail.com
Ok? bye bye
Tired of loneliness Anna
P.S. My e-mail: golubbceva@gmail.com where I shall wait your letter!"
Next day, it was through the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, passed through Salt Lake City, then into Wyoming, through the sparseness that is Laramie and Cheyenne, and down into Boulder to visit Garvin and Tania and their son Aden.
Leaving Boulder, I took I-76 through desolate eastern Colorado. This was my chance to see real tumbleweeds. I took a little video of them, but it doesn't capture the true weirdness of giant rolling bushes:
Next day through Iowa. Very exciting. I spent the night in Chicago at Stacey's, with a quick visit to Tami and my cousin Erik and his new baby Frida Ruckus.
It's finally that time. It's Sunday night, October 19th. 9:00 PM. My apartment is just about empty. My car is packed. Tomorrow, I will be doing a very quintessentially American task .. that is, driving my car across country to a new job in Boston.
We Americans are incredibly mobile. Moving cities for our jobs, sometimes across the country, to places where we know very few people. But I haven't done this kind of thing since my mid-20's. So I'm kind of stepping back in time.
It's probably one of the last times I'll be quite so mobile - able to uproot so quickly, sell everything and move. It's just me and my cat right now, so that's what makes it so easy.
I'm a little sad to leave my amazing community of friends, but strangely detached from the whole experience. Watching all my possessions sell and leave my world forever. Saying goodbye to everyone I've known for 9.5 years here in the beautiful Bay Area. Having my last Bay Area sushi dinner.
Who knows...maybe after 7 cold months in cold Boston I'll want to come back. I'm leaving the option open...
More stories from the road. Next stop, eastern Nevada.
I now have two shows that have been officially published into DVD's by the networks who I produced them for. That means you can buy these programs and keep them in your home library. Right next to your copy of "The Matrix" and "Shrek". Seriously.
Yep, that means I'm moving to Boston. After 9 years in the Bay Area, I'll have my first winter in a decade. I haven't lived on the East Coast since 1995, when I spent 9 months in Washington, DC. Since then, it was 4 years in Michigan and 9 years in San Francisco. Needless to say, I'm expecting some culture shock. Who knows, maybe I'll return to SF. Or head to LA or NYC. Either way, it's a change, and that's always good.
In case you've never seen my show "Berlin Wall: Great Escapes", part of National Geographic's Megastructures series, it's been posted online at Google Video.
It's a fun watch, and one of my favorite shows. For some reason, this version was revoiced by a hilarious Scottish VO artist. Keep your eyes peeled for cameos by Patrick van Beusekom (smoking his first ever cigarette), Kat Covell, a number of Kat's film friends, and even yours truly crawling through a tunnel.
Overnight flight from San Francisco/LAX to Santiago Chile. Now that I'm here in Santiago, with a 6 hour layover before I head to Antofagasta, I have to say, I'm happily surprised that there's free wireless internet in the airport. That's more than most American airports can say. They'll charge you $10 a minute!
LAX is an absolute pit. Confusing, dirty, poorly staffed, poorly laid out. I consider it the 7 levels of hell...in one location. An example, the security check through point for the int'l terminal looked like the back hallway of a rundown YMCA. Ceiling tiles drooping. Makeshift barriers cracking and peeling, and out of place. One barrier had a hole that had been papered over with paper towel that someone had ripped, so it fluttered in the warm air. Ugh. The line was stretching across the hallway, so they divided it in two, only to have those two lines come together again only 50 feet later. Bizarre.
The flight was nice. Free chilean wine.
Chile is a touch European. They drink capuccino and espresso standing up at wooden bars. Very civilized.
When we were finished in Japan, our next stop was New Zealand. First, I had a couple days to write script and see my friends Matt & Minette and their daughter Lillian:
It was a bit windy on the Auckland volcano where all the tour buses stop (CAUTION: LOUD WINDY NOISE ON VIDEO!):
Then we went back to their house in Ponsonby. Matt and I headed out for beers. After a long red-eye flight from Japan via Australia, this was the perfect antidote:
Back at their house, Lillian showed off:
I headed off for some surfing in Raglan...and stayed in an eco-hostel where the cabins were made from recycled train cabooses:
Then we got to work. In Auckland, we met Maori tattoo artist Tu Duley, a great guy and excellent artist. He tattooed our host:
Then he invited us to join him on an adventure. He was heading up into the mountains of the Te Urewera National Park, to a village called Te Mapou, where his tribe, the Tuhoe people have lived for centuries. They're the only Maori tribe who weren't colonized by the Europeans, and they live pretty close to the land - under the shadow of their sacred mountain, Maungapohatu:
We filmed the drive:
When we arrived, they did a traditional welcoming ceremony:
Here's a video of us approaching the Marae:
Then Tu tattooed some facial mokos on other members of the tribe:
Tu looking like a stud:
Rua Kenana is the prophet who founded the town in 1908:
Then we spent the night in the longhouse - the marae - and left the next day. All in all, an amazing trip.
Working on a History Channel show about the history of tattoos, I went to Japan and New Zealand to see what tattooing was all about in both of those places.
I took millions of photos and videos, so I'll condense it down to the highlights.
In Japan, we visited the world's busiest intersection in Shibuya:
We also stayed in some tiny hotels:
On our search for tattoo history, we visited Jikei University, which has a dried and mounted tattooed skin - preserved from a dead Yakuza in the 1930's. Kinda gruesome, but very very interesting. They were very nice to us and showed us the skin:
Here's a video of the skin:
We met Horiyoshi III, the country's top hand-poking tattoo artist. He gave our host a tattoo. Horiyoshi has a tattoo museum with some interesting displays, including preserved tattooed heads from New Zealand and Kewpie dolls:
When the shoot was over, I headed to the slopes for a little skiing:
