hotchkiss park, i love you

Jesse and I are so grateful to live across the street from a beautiful park. We have a great view from the living room windows, Yuki gets to sit and stare at dogs all day, and we are continually entertained by lots of crazies. Some of them are genuine crazies, like the ones that scream at no one for no reason. Some of them are only a little crazy, like the ones who think they are providing "live music" but really are only irritating all of us within ear shot. And others are just crazy on purpose. Why not. These are my absolute favorite kind of crazies. Here are three examples:

1) Hotchkiss Park (like everywhere else in this city) seems to attract a lot of filmmakers...mostly amateur, it would appear. One day, Jesse said there was a crew filming all day. The scene? A variety of people took turns sitting on a park bench. When the director yelled, "action," they jumped to their feet and screamed at the top of their lungs. I caught the tail end of this when I got home from work, and thought it was hilarious. Apparently Jesse had to listen to it all day, and it lost its humor after a while.

2) One weekend afternoon, two guys wearing clownish wigs sat in the back of a pickup truck beating drums. The passenger in the cab played a horn. They drove around the block for several hours. A couple of weeks later - repeat.

3) This one is my favorite, but unfortunately I missed seeing it in person. Jesse is so lucky he gets to work at home and watch all of this. While working of course. A guy in a cat suit was sitting in a tree. He was supposed to jump out of the tree on to an air mattress on the ground. Actually two air mattresses, including one really thick one. There were three or four other people there filming. Please note, the tree branch is NOT that far from the ground. According to Jesse, the guy sat in the tree for half an hour refusing to jump. I assumed it was the whole - can't get the cat of the tree thing. Nope. He really was too scared to jump, and apparently the film crew was getting really annoyed and was ready to pack up and leave him there, when he finally went for it. My wonderful husband captured this on video. It's hilarious.