"Up from here" Chapter 19: Universal Studios
Well when I left Redding, California I made a comment back in March 1988 that I was going to get a job at Universal Studios. Well, I was half right. I did get a job at Universal Studios Tour Park. I left on a Thursday, March 1, 1988, and boarded an Amtrak train not knowing where this new chapter in my life would take me or lead me. But in my life I have always had a wondering spirit and wanted to experience new things and new employment opportunities. And that's the reason I have never stayed put in any one job "as time passes" I usually get bored and want to move on.
I boarded the Amtrak train at 2:21 AM on the Coast Starlight heading to Los Angeles to Union Station to arrive 18 hours and 39 minutes later to arrive at 9:18 PM. I was leaving all my cares behind me. I had fulfilled my responsibilities to Eric Wells the young man I had raised since he was 15 years old until he turned 18 years old. I was heading in a new direction and adventure. I was flying high that I was leaving Redding, California. For good, I had hoped.
I was wide awake and looking forward to be going to Southern California where I was born and where I grew up in the Long Beach, Paramount, Bellflower, Downey, Lakewood, Norwalk, California. I had spent 30 years of my life in Southern California and I knew the Los Angeles area by the back of my hand. This was going to be a trip of a lifetime to get a chance to start over again. I had enough of Redding, California and was ready for a change. I had worked for Myers Motels in Redding, California as a laundry driver and part-time desk clerk for The Capri and Motel Orleans owned by Myers Motels at the time.
While on the Amtrak train I met this other person who befriended me and offered for me to get off in Santa Barbara, California and check out Ronald Reagan’s Ranch and that I could stay at his house for a couple of days then go on from there to Los Angeles, California. I agreed after all I was in no hurry to get to Los Angeles, except that I had called a friend of mine and said I would be arriving in Los Angeles that evening. All I had to do when I got off in Santa Barbara was give him a call and let him know that my plans had changed.
I arrived in Santa Barbara, California and departed the Amtrak train with my new friend. I had to go the restroom so I went inside the restroom and when I came out my newfound friend was nowhere to be found. He had deserted me. It was all talk he never meant for me to go with him to his house. Here I was in Santa Barbara, California and stuck as the Amtrak train had already left on its way to Los Angeles, California. Now what was I going to do? Well, I asked the person behind the desk when the next Amtrak train would come through and she told me not until tomorrow. I asked if there was a bus I could catch to Los Angeles, California. She said the closest bus was in Oxnard. I told her my situation that I had got off in Santa Barbara, California by accident. I did not want to tell her how foolish I was for trusting someone I had just met that had invited me to his house.
She mentioned that when she got off work she could give me a ride to catch the bus for Los Angles as she just happened to be going my way because she lived in Oxnard, California. I took her up on her offer and accepted the ride. When I got to Oxnard, California I bought a ticket for LAX as that is the closest place I could go and then call my friend Brain Curtis and have him pick me up there, instead of Grand Central station in Los Angeles, California. My friend Brain Curtis came and picked me and I stayed at his house.
The next day I put my suit in the cleaners and picked up a Los Angeles newspaper to begin a job search. I was going through the classified ads when I noticed there was an advertisement about interviews for Universal Studios set for the coming Saturday. Wow, wouldn’t that be something if I did get a job at Universal Studios? Well, I thought to myself that would be ideal and if my luck was looking up I could land a job at Universal Studios.
I went to the Universal Studios job interview and was hired to work in the merchandise warehouse on the lower lot at Universal Studios. All I need now was to find a place closer to work as traveling back and forth on a bus from Norwalk, California would be a long bus ride both too and from and depending on the work schedule hours that would be a nightmare.
On that Sunday I found a motel room with weekly rates that was not what you could call a great place to live with all the uninvited guest cockroaches that lived in my room. It was at least in walking distance to Universal Studios in North Hollywood, California. I did not have to report until Monday or Tuesday from what I can recall from that time. I started off sitting at a table where we put price tags on merchandise and did that from 7:00 a.m. in the morning until 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon.
Everyone at Universal Studios had uniforms that we had to wear that identified which department we worked. We had a locker room in the top of the Tour Park where we changed from our street clothes into our uniforms. We clocked in and then went to catch what was called a stand-by van that would drive us to the lower lot Universal Studios to the merchandise warehouse. We had to clock in fifteen minutes early in order to be down at the job site in merchandise warehouse at Universal Studios. I was now working for MCA, just like I said I was going to with one exception is was not on the movie side of the business but instead working for the Universal Studios Tour Park. It was a job I had lots of experience at doing what I was doing at Universal Studios. Everyone started at the same place at the bottom and then applied for job openings from the inside that way Universal Studios did not have to advertise job positions when they become available.
I started out sitting at that table marking merchandise, which was a very boring job. I began asking questions about how things worked when it came to the paperwork end of things. And before too long I was doing UPS shipments, receiving merchandise, driving a forklift and working out in the warehouse unsupervised because of my past job experience. I was moving up. I just was not making any more money and the motel room was taking everything I had. I had to go to the local churches for food, as I could not afford to do both. Put a roof over my head and eat too. In fact, I even decided I needed another job so I applied for a job at a place in Universal Studios Tour Park called Sound Tracks Recording studio where people could pick out a song, sing it themselves or lip sink and have it be recorded on video or audio tape.
Now this job was a fun job not that I did not like the other work I was doing in the warehouse on the lower lot at Universal Studios but this was in my field of education as I had an AA degree in Theater Arts/Telecommunications from Long Beach City College, Long Beach, California.
While working at Universal Studios on the back lot in the Merchandise Department and I worked in a place called Sound Tracks Recording Studios in the Universal Studios Tour Park, right next to Star Trek Screen Test Theater back in 1988. As the people would exit from Star Trek Screen Test theater they would enter "Sound Tracks Recording Studios" where they would find me waiting to announce to them what Sound Tracks Recording Studios was all about. I wrote the following: "Good Afternoon ladies and gentleman and welcome to Universal Studios Sound Tracks Recording Studio where you become the star. We have over 420 songs to choose from and once you decide which song to sing, you can do it one of two different ways. You can either limp sink the artist on the recording or sing it yourself. If you decide to sing it yourself you can practice the song and then record it and then you can do your won music video. Once again welcome to Universal Studios Sound Tracks Recording Studio where you become the star. If you have any questions please feel free to ask the technicians here and they will be more than glad to answer your questions. Welcome to Universal Studios Sound Tracks Recording Studio where you become the star."
I loved doing this job until I got burnt out. Day in and day out I would stand in front of three TV screens that showed videos of people who had just come out of the recording studio’s after making their recordings. Be it video or audio. I would say the following:
"Ladies and Gentlemen up on these screens we have the latest recording artist that just came out of the studio and here they are to perform their latest hit." I would then look up at the screen then look around the room to see if I could recognize them and once I spotted them I would say. "And now ladies and gentlemen lets give them a hand they are right there." I would then point at them and everyone in the room would give them applause. Sometimes I embarrassed them and other times they enjoyed all the attention.
When I took a break, a break for me would be when I followed a group through the recording process to the final product, as I was able to do the engineering work too. I was just better out front with the crowd getting them fired up and I brought in sales that way. I was offered to work for Sound Tracks Recording Studio full time but I could not work part-time for Universal Studios Tours on the lower lot in the Merchandise Department. I gave notice and quit Universal Studios Tours working in the Merchandise Department. To this day I do not if that was an error because I ended up being laid off in the fall when the summer season was done. If I would have stayed at Universal Studios Tours I may have been a General Manager by now but I will never know what may have been.
I lived down there from May 1988 to October 1988 then moved back to Redding, California once again and as to be expected.
Imagination
Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability of forming mental images, sensations, and concepts, in a moment when they are not perceived through sight, hearing or other senses. Imagination helps provide meaning to experience and understanding to knowledge; it is a fundamental facility through which people make sense of the world, and it also plays a key role in the learning process. A basic training for imagination is the listening to storytelling (narrative), in which the exactness of the chosen words is the fundamental factor to 'evoke worlds. Imagination is the faculty through which we encounter everything. The things that we touch, see and hear coalesce into a "picture" via our imagination.
It is accepted as the innate ability and process of inventing partial or complete personal realms within the mind from elements derived from sense perceptions of the shared world. The term is technically used in psychology for the process of reviving in the mind, percepts of objects formerly given in sense perception. Since this use of the term conflicts with that of ordinary language, some psychologists have preferred to describe this process as "imaging" or "imagery" or to speak of it as "reproductive" as opposed to "productive" or "constructive" imagination. Imagined images are seen with the "mind's eye."
Imagination can also be expressed through stories such as fairy tales or fantasies. Most famous inventions or entertainment products were created from the inspiration of someone's imagination.
Imagination From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
End of "Up from here" Chapter 19: Universal Studios"
Comments
Post a Comment