the magic of Hollywood
We finally made it to the mall this evening, and it is indeed true that they are making a movie there. This involves, we find, Christmas decorations, fake vendor carts, and a crew of portly, pony-tailed men in t-shirts and black jeans testing air cannons buried in a giant ball pit. Clearly, a classic film for the ages is in the works! The strangest thing about the scene, Leah and I both felt, was how all that artifice makes you doubt the reality of the world as a whole. There were fake plants and fake marble pedestals, as well as the aforementioned fake vendor carts (complete with dopey looking signs); what else might not be genuine? Is that a real soda machine, or another prop? How about those funny looking people over there: real mall-goers, or movie actors?
"This is probably what people feel like all the time in LA," Leah says.
We were trying to go to the Apple Store, but again we were denied; just as we were approaching the alluring portals there was some sort of alarm within, and we arrived to the site of the motley crowd of Apple personnel escorting would-be customers from the premises. Now there's a crowd with not a single tinge of artifice: the movie execs would never cast crazy looking folks like that as computer salesmen. It just wouldn't be believable.