The Fakes

The witch had apparently struck the tree at great speed. Although she was small, she had been flying dangerously low in this leafy residential neighborhood, and had face-planted into the oak. Her petite broomstick bent and stuck out from where it had hit at a crooked angle. Adam coughed politely- can we hurry this up, please? I stood up, brushing the autumn leaves from my blue uniform, handcuffs mutedly jangling from the case on my belt.

The front lawn of the house had been transformed into a graveyard. Stryrofoam memorials commemorated the passage of Ima Guhl, Dr. Livingbones, and the late Mr. Late- better Late than Never. Cotton cobwebs hung from the trees, and an entire pumpkin patch grinned and gaped at us from the porch. However, what grabbed the most attention were the three glistening skeletons staked out in front of the tombstones. They were life size, eerily realistic from the street, and the patches of gleaming and crusting red suggested a disturbing provenance. Adam and I exchanged a look and walked up the front path.

A werewolf glared at us from the bench when I rang the bell, and a sign in the window asked “Boo’s there!?” There was a dark and hesitant movement behind the glass, but finally the door cautiously opened and a woman looked out at us. “Can I help you, officers?”

She was in her late forties to early fifties, dressed for lounging- sweat pants and an oversized sweater. Tall, nervous. Her eyes moved back and forth between Adam and I with a mixture of fear, confusion, and some contempt. Some people just don’t like cops. I sighed inwardly.

“Ma’am,” I began, “this is this your house?”
“Yes...” she replied, coldly..
“Ma’am, we’ve received a few calls about the skeletons in your yard. You have some neighbors who are concerned about the ...realistic nature of the skeletons, and we were compelled to come and investigate.”

Adam broke his silence. “Lady, we can’t tell you you can’t have skeleton decorations in your yard,” holding up a hand to stop protests that don’t come, “...so we just need to verify that they are decorative.”

They lady in the doorway started to speak quickly, in halting sentences. “Well of course they’re decorative...totally ridiculous that I’d have.... three... bodies rotting! in my front yard... some people!” A slight sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead.

I nodded and look towards the yard, “Then you won’t mind us taking a closer look, then.”
“Be my guest! One moment I’ll come out with you.”
She opened the door fully and came out, closing it firmly behind her. She squeezed by us, scrupulously avoiding contact, and marched into the front yard in a pair of strangely white slippers. I caught a whiff of her scent...odd. Adam was already following her.

“They’re some kind of special resin... really expensive...got em online from a Hollywood prop store. All handpainted.” The woman babbled on nervously. Adam knelt and picked up a femur. He grunted.

“You know, this doesn’t feel like resin to me.” He said simply, turning the bone over. “No manufacturer's marks, no pour joints, no ‘made in China.’” He lifted the bone to his face, sniffed it. Adam turned to her, bone in hand, with a very serious look on his face.

“Ma’am, I’ve seen some real bones in my time on the force, and I think you really need to tell us where you got these skeletons.”

The woman had been shifting her weight back and forth, but she stood stock still at what Adam was telling her. Beads of sweat visibly formed on her face and I could see her jugular vein jumping erratically. “That’s... totally impossible!” she gasped. “They can’t be real! They’re definitely not real bones! I swear to you I got them online.”

I cut in. “Ma’am, can we look around inside your house?” She jumped.
“No! this is... absurd! Those are not real skeletons and I don’t think you need to needlessly invade my privacy. You’re not coming in!” She was breathing heavily.

Adam set the bone down at his feet. “Lady,” he said slowly. “You said you ordered them online. Did they come in a box or a package you can show us? You can either show us what you have now, or,” looking in my direction, “we can go get a warrant. You can’t just show us a box in that case. We’re required to do a thorough home search from top to bottom.”

“Fine, you want to see the box, I’ll show you the box.” She walked quickly back to the house and Adam and I followed her closely.

We entered a dark foyer and the woman closed and locked the door behind us. We followed the woman to the kitchen where she began to dig through a closet, muttering and talking in an oddly high pitched voice. “...bought it online, seemed totally legitimate company... found them through Amazon.com... no way...” I leaned against the bar while Adam stood impassively and waited, hands on his belt.

“Here! here it is!” she cried out with relief. She turned and hauled out a large, bright yellow box. I read aloud: Hyper-realistic skeletons for stage, live action, cinematographic uses. Hand-stained, authentic smell. Used by the leading studios! Lifelike Industries, Pasadena, CA.

I looked up from the box, and passed it to Adam. “That’s pretty incredible, Ma’am. You sure had us fooled.” The woman looked like she was calming down. Her eyes still darted between us. Her hair was sticking from the sweat.
“Well, that’s that.” She said, indignantly. “Good day, officers. If you don’t mind, I’d like to recover from this heart attack in the peace of my own home.”

Adam put down the box and laughed quietly. “It’s amazing what replicas you can find online these days”, he said. “Watches, bags, bones, hats, badges.”
The woman’s eyes automatically traveled down the cheap fabric of our uniforms, and fixed upon the quiet stamp on the vinyl leather of our holsters: made in China. She took a step back.
“Yes, ma’am, you sure had us fooled with those bones,” Adam said, still smiling as he slowly moved towards her, “so incredibly... realistic.” Knife in my hand, I shook with silent laughter.

If they neighbors ever called about the four lifelike skeletons staked out in the yard, I wouldn’t know.

Review week

Last week was a major push week, where we attempted to bring our conceptual models into a full realization of project with sections, plans, understanding of site, materials, etc. Starting a week from last friday, I switched into a pattern of three to four hours of sleep a night, with occasional naps during the day. The night of my review, I worked until six am and got four hours of sleep.

That's because I'm an idiot.

And because I care about this project way too much, I kept fine tuning what I wanted to do. I ended up pounding out some good renderings and threw my boards together quickly, and actually, I ended up taking up about twenty feet of wall- sections, diagrams, illustrated sections, renderings, plans, sketches, and half a dozen models. It's still a stupid way to work given that the quality of what you do decreases based on your sleep level. A little sleep deprivation is not a bad thing in that it makes you a little less critical of what you're doing, but it quickly becomes a matter of diminishing returns.

Sometime tuesday night, I felt like I was flying through my work, being incredibly productive, working really fast. When I looked at the clock, I realized I hadn't left my chair in six hours. I wasn't working faster or more efficiently. In fact, I was working more slowly, but I was so tired, the hours melted away. This is the kind of stupid thing you do in undergrad.

The review went well. I presented well, but I was probably a bit to quick to mount the soapbox and proclaim emphatically "We are the river!" One of the two critics said that he appreciated my conviction. Thinking back, I just don't want to come across like the crazy prophets from Life of Brian.

Wednesday, I also found out I was not going to San Diego. I was planning on going with my informal cities class to San Diego and Tijuana, and to get a better price on the tickets, I went ahead and purchased tickets there and back. The problem is that the school requires a certain number of students to enroll in the program to make it worthwhile. There are only nine students in our class. They opened the workshop up to the school... two weeks before the planned trip.

In architecture school, many people will take a trip if it's part of the studio they're taking. A much smaller percentage will take a trip if its part of a seminar or other elective class. I would be very much surprised if there were more than two people in the entire school who would take a trip, even for a 1 credit hour workshop, if it was not directly related to either studio or a class. So that was disappointing. At any rate, because I booked with southwest, I was able to switch my ticket to Phoenix without any extra charges. So, my trip to the Mexican slums turns into a few days in Phoenix with mom and Tay, and a chance to meet mom's boyfriend, Larry.

Anyway, the past few days have been about recovery, relaxation, and recreation. Friday, I went climbing again, and then went out for a drink with Saori at Three Kings, where we watched the Cardinals win to a euphoric bar crowd. Yesterday, I worked in studio for most of the day, and took a break to go see Looper. Not bad for a scifi flick.