May 25/ 2008

 Time marches on for sure and now I find myself standing in 2022.

Why will I remember that date for so long? At the time there seemed to be nothing special, much later all was revealed.

An American guy at arrivals was asking each car in front of me something and then moving on to the next car. I was around sixth and the question?

Will you take American dollars? Yes ! Great, move up to the door and I will get the rest of my crew. A woman a boy and a girl all piled in. 

The next big bonus question.

Where are we going?

The K club came the answer.

I will show you the sheet so that you know I said. Its €80.

Thats $100 20 40 60 80 100 and off we went.

He was a really interesting man, he was playing with something, I thought that it was a game boy. No it was a Blackberry, the forerunner of the modern phone.

Thought I knew him. But he assured me that he was nobody famous, I did not think that he was famous, but I could not place him.

Its a good spin to the K club and we talked about most things.

I told him about the drug addict who told me of a story worthy of Bram Stoker the author of Dracula. He had a note book and kept notes. Wow he said if I live to be 1,000 I could never have thought of that.

He asked ma if I had seen any movies lately?

I had seen 2 No country for old men and Traffic. Both films about drugs.

One scene from Old country he walks across the desert with the bags of money. What a shot I said.. Yes that was done with such and such a lens with the aperture set at this.

No matter how it was done it was great.

I told him about a shoot that I was driving on with a Japanese pop star. The director was the boss and he never spoke to his crew. He was God.

Princess Hya (The King of Jordans daughter) was the main focus and I was sitting on a bale of straw chatting to her, otherwise she would have walked away. I had no idea who she was.

On the was back the cameraman told me that the shot would never be used as the wrong lens was used. He knew exactly which lens to use but he could not overrule the director.

My man said a very wise thing. Movies are made in cooperation, each person has a skill and when they work together the best result comes around.

I told him about John Hubbard in the distant past. He is a casting director and we would go around giving out scripts. It was some job to get those lazy people to answer the door to get the script from us. The change from "What the hell are you banging on my door at this hour of the morning" and "Its Hubbard Casting. we have a script for you"

So we arrived at the K club. It means Kildare club

John will you come back this evening and bring us back to Dublin and then back to the K club?  No that would be 4 journeys for me and I would only get paid for 2. They have a beautiful limo here its a Mayback and that will bring you up and down in style.

If you measure one leg of the journey I will give you 5 times that amount. The biggest taxi fare of my life. No I am sorry Its my wife's birthday and she would kill us both.

I will just stick this bit in here. the $100 was given to a magician from Las Vegas to help pay for the operation of his baby daughters heart. I met him a year later and asked how the baby was. I am the person who gave you the $100 for her operation

"That was a wonderful gift I put it into a safety deposit box and I will give it to her when she is 18"

So that night he took the limo to Dublin and appeared on the Late Late show and was introduced as Stephen Spielberg. Where he gave me a special thank you.

He is a clever guy, if I had known who he was I would have been asking him about ET and wondering if he had contacted him again or I might have been lounge tied.

One little extra thing. He asked me what was my favorite movie was. Without a doubt it has to be Cinema Paradiso and we both talked about it. He loved it as well and he admitted that it was his most favorite movie as well.We both had the directors cut.

Anyhoo as they say in Canada.

The book can be bought or downloaded from Amazon

The steering wheel university by Paul Malone