Day 5 -- Friday, February 12

And then the fires came.

We all make our little prayers to God. Some are grave. Some dire. Some massive in their scope. A dying loved one, natural disasters, emergency surgery. These prayers are felt in every fiber of our being and they rattle us to the core. We're praying for a miracle, for the loving hand of God to reach down and alter the natural course of events and surprise us with a little joy in our difficult times. And then there are also prayers that maybe we don't even know we're making: hoping the kicker makes the field goal, wishing for potatoes at dinner, looking forward to a good night's sleep. At some point today, some part of my body, from some recess of my soul, from a tiny corner of my heart, sent up a teensy prayer to God: 'With all the sickness and death and sorrow in the world, God, if you could just spare a moment for an actor drowning in desperation on a show you probably aren't a very big fan of. Just send me a sign, give me some strength, alter the course of natural events just a hair and bring some joy to your child's day.'

About an hour into rehearsal today, with everything going about as it did yesterday, stopping and starting scenes, laboring through camera-blocking, lack of focus and energy all around, the answer came. A light bulb blew. One of the main lights that flood the stage throughout the day popped in the middle of the fourth time running a scene. "Don't look up!" came the shouts from the experienced crew members, and the actors on the set slowly inched their way off. The camera operators moved their heavy machinery out from under the electrical equipment and we all slowly looked up to see where and what exactly the problem was.

"Fire!"

Something then caused the casing of the light to smolder and ignite. It was a few small licks of flame but they grew larger as we all stood around doing pretty much nothing to contain or extinguish it. As Kevin Connolly remarked later, "Well, I knew where the door was and I knew I could still make it out alive." Finally a couple of gentlemen made their way up a ladder with the intention to quelch the now significant blaze. One of them carried nothing to assist in the fire-fighting. The other was armed with a folded-up newspaper. I don't think this is what they generally advise in these types of situations. As the latter tried to squash the flames with the L.A. Times, the former started taking apart the now flaming walls of the casing, tongues of fire dancing about their heads and shoulders. The fact that neither of these two men were seriously injured is just further proof of the intervention of the hand of God. A third and slightly more intelligent young man then broke the case on the fire extinguisher on the set, sauntered over to the disaster site, kindly advised his fellow fire-fighters to take cover, and in one 0.4 second blast of gray powder, the fire was out.

No one was hurt, no significant damage was done, but the course of the day would be forever altered. We took a twenty minute break as the situation in the soundstage was stabilized and examined and returned to normal. By the time I was called back to the set, even the glass covering up the equipment of the hour, the fire extinguisher, had been replaced. There was no visible evidence that anything had even happened. But I could tell. I could tell because now we had a little more urgency to get through all of our scenes. We became pressed for time and everyone had to focus on getting the required work done to perfrom for an audience tonight. From the moment the surge of current caused that glass shell to burst, the day had been rescued. I had been rescued. God took pity on the WB today. The miracle did not extend to any line changes, but it was a successful miracle as far as I was concerned.

There were two tapings this evening. The first was attended by a slew of Ducey guests. My mother and father were the guests of honor, accompanied by friends Kelly Love, Daniella Eckert, Rachel Reenstra, Jeff Ingalls, and Terry Ward. They attended the 'dress rehearsal' and sat through one run-through of each scene in front of cameras. Besides my guests, everyone else in the audience appeared to have attended high school earlier in the day. There was a lot of screaming and high-pitched wailing and the whole attitude could be summed up by a young man from Northridge who, when asked if anyone had any questions, responded with, "Yeah, can I give Nikki a hug or somethin'?" Needless to say, he did not.

I had no guests at the late show but the crowd was now more college-aged and seemed to appreciate our efforts a little more. There was still plenty of screaming but the laughs were better and more consistent this time around. It wasn't too bad a night and we were all wrapped up by 10 o'clock or so. It was a fun experience overall, very interesting for a lot of reasons, and something I was very glad to have survived.

Go back to Day 1

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