Memories.

Yesterday I wrote about Apple's wonderful Christmas spot. Today, in my perpetual search for easy blogging material, I am revisiting a spot we did more than 10 years ago, when I was enjoying my life as a steadily employed overpaid freelance writer.

It's a modest little spot with a "small" story that was shot in one long 10 hour day (actually night) in the Angeles National Forest near Pinion Hills. I've thoughtfully marked it off for you, in case you were curious. I've also marked off the desert hamlet of Littlerock on the Pear Blossom Highway (138), in case you have a taste for the odd.

If you ever get a chance you must stop off at the Kite/Souvenir/Nazi Memorabilia store. I kid you not. This amazing compound of tchotchkes is a sight to behold. It's literally 6 or 7 smaller buildings, each with its own theme of worthless Chinese-made crap.

On a sojourn there, I told my oldest daughter to pick out something funny for Deb, and the dependable off-kilter Siegel genetics led her directly to this...

Sadly, I had to screen grab this photo as my wife either hid ours or chucked it when I wasn't looking. This was going to be a family heirloom!

Also, if you do make it out to the Antelope Valley, which I find fascinating for so many reasons, you can swing by the wedding chapel made famous in Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2, one of Tarantino's underrated films as far as I'm concerned.

I miss going on shoots and doing productions with creative people I genuinely enjoy and admire. More often than not they turned into laugh-fests. And almost all of them resulted in stories and memories that are now buried deep in my cranial hard drive.

As I often say when getting together with old colleagues from back in the day, "We didn't know how good we had it."

For example you might have noticed the shot of Santa Claus included a pan left to show reindeer. We had eight of them on set. Eight actual Arctic-born reindeer. If this were to be shot in 2021, the budget would not be so forgiving. 

And instead you'd be looking at two Great Danes with fake antlers glued to their heads.

Truth.