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Let me start by saying that this was the last day of February, which is officially the anti-Joneses month. Perhaps we tempted fate by writing a scene that mocks Valentine's Day, and the gods of February did not like it. And of course as evil months go, this one had to have an extra day. Nice.

To bring you up to speed, February began with one giant location snafu, kidney stones, massive rescheduling (and that was just within the first couple days). Though we did have two successful shoots over the last two weekends, pretty much everything that could go wrong has this month. And for some reason Stacey & I thought her monthlong battle with kidney stones, after a pretty significant surgery Tuesday, would not be enough to keep her from shooting Friday night. Not smart on our parts.

So I would describe the weather Friday as a "wintry mix." Stacey (laying in the backseat with heating pad) and I drove to Stoughton and were lucky to be welcomed by our hosts for the next two nights: Tom, Tina & Gianna. It was very gracious of them to give up their house for the weekend--and from our "Naughty or Nice" experience, they knew what they were getting into!--so we really appreciated it.

Tom, Maura, Mark, Lou, Rajah and I began setting up the first scene to take place out on the porch by the grill. Because people love to grill when it's 23 degrees out. Maura shaped the burgers, and thankfully the hot dogs were already hot dog shaped. We got a perfect lighting set-up. I created a song called "I Like To Tota Tota" as an homage to the Tota light. It's to the tune of "I Like to Move It Move It". It does not have verses, sadly. Anyway, we were moving like clockwork!

And our cast began filing in one by one. Besides Stacey & Mark, we had Tony & Leila (as their significant others), Amy & Jim, and Kevin & Johanna. It was couples night, for sure. The girls took over the upstairs bathroom (except for kidney girl who was convalescing in the TV room). Jim, Tony, Kevin, & Mark all found spaces to get ready in themselves--the garage, a towel closet, Gianna's doll house. Whatever, we made it work.

And then we were ready to shoot! Leila, Mark, Tony, and Kevin did a great runthrough, the burgers and dogs were cooked, and the camera and lights were all good to go (or, G2G). All we had left to do was plug in the microphone. And that's when it all went to hell.

Last weekend, the microphone was acting a little finicky, with a weird sensitive buzz, but this night that buzz was present, oh, about 93% of the time. We tried everything to fix it. New battery? Nope. Different kind of battery? Nope. 3 different cords, holding the microphone in our hands, moving it away from the other electrical devices: no matter what we did. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz. That's when I imploded. I was pretty proud it was my first on-set implosion so far, seventeen days in, but of course this would all have to happen the night when we had the full cast, two nights in a row to shoot, and a full nine scenes to do. Stacey & Maura went downstairs to look into how we could potentially buy an all new microphone in time for tomorrow's shoot, while I decided we were going to have to rejigger the entire weekend on the spot and come up with every cutaway and M.O.S. shot to shoot tonight. I was displeased.

So we did a close-up of the grill. Then we did a close-up of the meat photos. Then an over-the-shoulder shot from the second scene. We would soon run out of things to do. Stacey came upstairs and said she researched it online and that some people found they had buzzing when a screw was loose in the mic. So she screwed one a bit tighter and wanted us to try it again. I had approximately no confidence this would work, but...miracle time...it was completely fixed. Just perfect. We lost an hour and a half or so, but we had our microphone again! Woo hoo! Stacey got a round of applause. She was happy, before she doubled over with the heating pad and passed out again.

We were now ready to shoot the barbecue scenes. Kevin, Leila, Mark and Tony didn't miss a beat and were terrific in the scene that kicks off the whole viewing party sequence. Not only were we just happy to be shooting, but it's a very good scene and everybody had a part in making it happen. Then we moved the camera around for the second scene on the porch, with Jim as Mitch, sulking in the background while Paul, Victor, and Todd salivate over a photo album of various meats. I loved this scene--it was really funny, just great performances, and damn cool shots to boot! We were on a roll.

Somewhere in between the two scenes we took a look at what we would still be able to do that night and realized that our options for Amy & Johanna were to either keep them waiting another hour and a half for potentially one scene, or send them home early, without using them at all that night. We went for option B, which made me feel bad having them come all the way out there for nothing, but I'm the same guy who wouldn't cancel the shoot right after Stacey's procedure, so I'm extremely lucky to have people who are this invested in the movie. Also I forget to eat during shoots, and thankfully a burger was shoved into my hand. What a weirdo.

We were ready to shoot the third scene with Tony & Jim on the porch--all the lights were set up. And then it began snowing. Into the lights. We quickly brought everything in and called it a night.

Tom & Tina (and their wonderful toilet paper!) said it would be OK if we started earlier the next day (which would be March, if you're keeping score) so we all drove away and put this horrible, horrible night behind us. The two scenes we got done looked really great, but I was very glad to have this cursed month over with.