American Coney Island, Detroit

Red Dawn

I don't know who had the idea to give big tax breaks to the movie studios who film in Michigan, but they should get a big fat raise. In no time Michigan has become a virtual Hollywood East. A Clint Eastwood movie used a house on North Connecticut right across the street from Heather's parents. Everywhere you look there are films being made. The impact on the neighborhoods where the filming takes place is pretty huge too.

For instance, the remake of Red Dawn (with the Chinese as the invaders this time as there is no more USSR) is being filmed in Detroit at various locations, one being the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Griswold right across from The Lafayette and American Coney Islands. Can you imagine how many coney dogs a hungry Key Grip can eat? Me neither, but I'm sure it's more than seven. Multiply that by a few hundred and those restaurants are living large, just because of one film.

The guy who was guarding all the props and gear at the spot when we arrived (a local, there's one more job) said the film company had been there six months and was paying the city of Detroit thousands of dollars per day to use that intersection. Assuming nobody in the city accounting department spends that on drugs or women, it could really help the money situation there. Of course, there is the additional spectacle of large explosions and huge assemblies of actors dressed up like Chinese military roaming around to spice the place up.

In addition to that coolness, Red Dawn is filming today at the former K-Mart World Headquarters in Troy! I could probably smell the explosions from my living room.

And of course, all the big porn studios are now filming here too, so if you ever had that kind of fantasy, plus an enormous sexual organ or two, just look up Vivid Entertainment in the phone book and give them a call.

Everything in these pictures is fake. The big "Spokane Washington Police" building is a parking garage with a completely fake facade built on it. The concrete barriers are Styrofoam, you can pick them up with one arm. The gun is fake, and so are the empty shells lying around everywhere. I hope the explosions were too, they said they were huge.

Rest Less

Both of the kids are very restless sleepers. They have different implementations of it though.

Zach grabs and kicks the blankets, like he's wrestling a giant anaconda somewhere deep in in the Amazon.

Maddie, on the other hand, rotates continuously when she sleeps. Heather says she's like a hot dog on a rotisserie at 7-11.

We have two monitors, one in Maddie's room because of her age, and one in Zach's because of his seizures. So we pretty much hear it all, every hot doggy rotation, every snake-grappling shuffle and bump. All night long.

Lately, Maddie has been charming or crying her way into our bed at night. This is so she can give us a front-row seat at the hot dog rotisserie window. Once that show starts, all hope of restful sleep is lost.

Five Things

This week is Zach's last in the third grade. Ever. Chilling!

His teacher wrote a post on the class blog about their last week and asked the students to list five things they enjoyed during 3rd grade. Here is Zach's response:

9:02 AM
Zach said...

I enjoed DQ, crayfish, rocks, AND
micro envertibritets

And then, six minutes later, he must have realized he had listed only four things, because he came up with one more:

9:08 AM
Zach said...

And hotdogs.