“Yes, Let’s Do This Again Soon! Just Next Time Without Hoping Over Fences.” – Laura Saladino

A week behind, how did this happen? Well I guess that’s what happens when you go out of town for the weekend and work during the week. But no worries, you shall be all caught up in no time. I’ve got the Strokes on in the background and a diet coke by my computer so let’s do this!

Wednesday was met with a somewhat empty office as Josh, Super Star Intern Sarah and some of the production people were on the set for day 2 of the BBC shoot. I kinda made a side remark to Ben about the shoot asking if it was going on all day and he said, “Don’t worry Devon, you’ll get to go to a shoot.” The man already knew what I wanted without me asking for it, brilliant! He then told me how he appreciated me going round his flat5 yesterday and that I was willing to do it showed a lot of initiative. Cheers Ben! Does this mean I’ve won gold stars and intern points?? As I was going to the kitchen to make tea (I know, I know, what have they done to me?) I noticed that Georgie was back! I’m not exactly sure what she’s working on since she’s now on the other side of the office, but I’m glad to see her again! She’s one of the few really pretty yet still incredibly nice and down to Earth people I’ve met in my life. The morning was pretty uneventful as I really just gathered more information about events to make a sort of ‘presentation’ to give to Ben and Matt so we can come up with some new ideas. The only noteworthy thing is that the girls in Production have come to love that “I Wanna Be a Billionaire” song (ughh, I guess it’s still ‘new’ in the UK) and like to play it on repeat. This resulted in Ben calling them on the phone from across the office and asking them to “Turn that sh*t off right now!” Couldn’t agree more.

After lunch, Ben announced that he was going to have a meeting with Harry Redknapp, a famous football manager, the next day and decided that he needed more knowledge on famous football managers of all time. Who to give this to? Ah! Why not our American Import who knows loads about football (*cough* soccer) and teams and their managers? Sounds like an excellent plan to me! As Ben’s explaining what he wants from me, he says,

BEN: I want you to read all this stuff and summarize it for me. Like Johnny 5, have you seen that? Do you know how he reads a book? I want that to be you and then you summarize it. Yeah?

Ohhh to tell him or not to tell him? Since this is the second Short Circuit reference I’ve heard him make since I’ve been here I opted to tell him.

ME: Umm Ben… you know that movie, Short Circuit with Johnny 5, yeah?

BEN: Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. I want you to summarize like Johnny 5.

ME: Yeah, no I know. It’s just, you know Johnny 5 the robot? My uncle is the voice behind the robot.

BEN: *quietly* Shut. Up. Are you serious?

When I nodded he pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up and thought it would be an amazing idea to tell the whole office.

BEN (shouting): Did everyone just hear what Devon Martinez just said? Did everyone here that?! Her uncle is the voice behind Johnny 5 the robot!!

Enter the whole office erupting in a bunch of ‘NOs!’ and whispered excitement here. Ben literally went running around the office spreading the news to everyone who possibly didn’t hear him while Matt leans over and starts asking all these questions and demanding that I get him on the phone right now.

MATT: Are you serious? Get him on the phone right now! I want him to do the voice! Will he do the voice? I love it when he sings the Bee Gees. What does he sing, More Than a Woman? Will he sing that? That’s my favorite part in the whole film. *does robot voice and hands* ‘More than a woman. More than a woman to me.’ Get him to sing it!

BEN: Ohh I can’t believe we’re going to get to talk to Johnny 5! And Josh is going to miss it! Brilliant, he’ll be so jealous! God, I can’t believe it. He’s your uncle, like your truly related to him?

ME: Yes, he’s my mom’s brother. He’s done some other stuff too. Like you’ve seen Men in Black, right?

BEN/MATT: Yes.

ME: Well, he’s the voice of the Pugg dog Frank, and he did some of the puppet and voice work with the worm/coffee guys.

BEN: Shut up!

MATT: GET HIM ON THE PHONE!!

Hahaha. Ben then had to jump on IMDB to make sure I had his name right and that I wasn’t lying while I gave them my Uncle’s full resume. Look who’s racking up on those cool intern points now! All for things that I didn’t do. Not so cool, but we’ll get there, right? I left the office that day promising to get in contact with my Uncle and earning the ultimate cool status from Ben for cool family members. Cheers Uncle Tim!

Thursday we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum for class. This is quite the interesting museum. It doesn’t specialize in a time period or any one thing specifically, but just has random things from everywhere. And I mean that in how the organize everything as well. They’ll group things together in similar groups. Like this stuff is all statues, let’s put them in one giant room. Doesn’t matter time period or who made them or where they’re from. And this is all casts. Let’s put them in one room! And stained glass, give um a room!

The thing we were going to look at were the tapestries from the Sistine Chapel which were actually done by Raphel, not Michelangelo. The cool thing about this exhibit was the fact that the cartoons (not like how we think of cartoons. It’s what they call his really big drawings) Raphel drew in order for the tapestries to be woven were brought together with the actual Sistine Chapel tapestries in the same room for the first time in I don’t know how many years. So we’re all supposed to go and soak up this rare opportunity! It was really very cool, but sadly, no pictures were allowed in that room, and for once, I obeyed.

My favorite part was the actual museum itself. It had a really cool courtyard outside (which of course we didn’t’ actually get to go to, but I might just go back!) and even the staircases were full of artwork. Where else can you climb stairs that pretty in a public building? Certainly not in the US you can’t!

My theatre class was also supposed to go on a field trip that afternoon, this time it was back to the Globe for a tour. Only problem was that something or other got messed up while ordering our tickets so that we were no longer going on the private tour like we thought, but on a public one that was quite pointless and quite frankly a waste of my time. Not only was the lady in charge very rude and mean, but she told me nothing I didn’t already know and didn’t even let us touch the stage.

God forbid you try and actually get on it like I did, cause then she’d yell and put up a huge fuss (even though other groups got to do it!!) The only thing she let us do was take pictures. Pfft. Yeah, you’re cool lady. The good thing was that we got out of class a whole 2 hours early, which was perfect for me because I had to prepare for movie night!

So after a successful hunt for microwave popcorn and cleaning my room, Laura came over to watch a movie. It was so good to see her since we haven’t hung out since the group’s been together and I got to hear all about her Paris trip! And we got to watch Whip It! and eat popcorn. All in all, it was an amazing night. It got a little interesting when I decided it would be a good idea to find the secret door in the basement I’ve heard so much about that comes in handy for sneaking people past the security guards. Haha, bad idea. We got lost for about 5 minutes in the sketchy garage area of Marylebone and we couldn’t get back in the building because the door locked behind us. Thankfully, I managed to find the way out. After you go through this door and up these stairs and hop over the little fence at the top that is! So after seeing Laura out and agreeing to use the real door next time, I went back upstairs to finalize any last details for my trip, because this weekend I went, that’s right, to Oxford, Bath and Stonehenge! You see how I ran out of time now?

Love,

A-very-happy-she-found-the-elusive-microwave-popcorn-in-London-Devon