Dreams and Reality in South America

Once again I’m sitting on the bench overlooking our beach landing except this time I’m the crew going down river tomorrow to try and pull off the impossible. I’m staring into the flame of my burning production notes that burn in the butt can. We live with our cast in tight quarters and if they found these story notes some of them would be upset. It’s hard to keep up the 4^th wall in small spaces but it’s our career and we do it all the time on every show. This particular show hinges on one moving part and that part is nowhere to be found so I am going to try and get it here. This jungle is a black hole that eats time, people and equipment. Nobody has a sense of time and when the locals tell you something will take a ½ hour they usually don’t show up until 1 ½ later. How can someone know what a half hour is if they don’t own a watch, live by the sun, and have no concept of time. For the locals it works great; making a television show under these circumstances is frustrating. We had some major problems the other day and our director Captain Shamrock called me on satellite phone and said, “We’re good now and the boat driver should be here any minute.” I looked up and Gaba, the expected boat driver, was in our kitchen eating breakfast. Our interior compound is three hours from where the crews were. “Put a fire under everybody’s ass now!!!!” Captain Shamrock yells.  That’s all I need to hear. I grab Gaba, the driver, pull him away from the table, load the gas for the boat, and start driving our ATV to The Landing. I try to be a good American while traveling abroad but in this case we get to the boat dock and I start throwing fifty gallon barrels of diesel down two flights of stairs into the water, run down the stairs then pull the barrels into the boat. Gaba is freaking out and so are the random passengers standing around. I start chucking all their personal belongings off the dock and yell “everybody better grab your stuff now or I’m going to load it for you.” I started a fire and everybody starting moving in North American time.

Later that night, Cooley, my good friend and owner of Big Buy Out tells me, “DJ Cash Bar, I hear you loaded a boat faster than anybody ever around here.” I laugh, “Just taking care of business my friend.” I sit down with Cooley and we share our thoughts. He tells me “A man dreams tonight and most likely can’t accomplish that dream tomorrow. Day to day people make changes in their life, sometimes those changes take effect in a day or week and could possibly be as long as years but a person has to do this to realize their dream because life in not one way.” Cooley is my most trusted local friend and we have shared many nights discussing life and the differences of our cultures. That night the Big Buy Out sells out of beer and he tells our group there will not be a shipment of beer for three days. We all cheer like we won the superbowl. It’s not the first time production people have bought a place out and it won’t be the last.

I am with the hardcore of the reality world and everybody has worked on the most difficult and challenging shows ever made. I fit right in. Our bunk has traded the shotgun we smuggled here for a Smith & Wesson 45 caliber pistol. Drama, Drugs, Sex, and Violence is a way of life here and we are prepared for the worse. Last night in town it wasn’t my fault is was just my turn to be told by a fall down cross eyed drunk local, “I was a solider once and I will shoot you.” I’m assuming it’s like prison and they just want a reaction. We always tell the crazy drunks, “We are all Americans, but I am a North American and if you try to pull a gun I will slit your throat and let you bleed out in the street.” Sometimes it’s good to have the reputation of a warmongering country behind you. It’s a heady trip going into The Landing and we rarely go into town alone and always watch each other’s backs. In addition it’s impossible to get a gun around here and as far as I’ve seen we are the only ones with them. In reality the Jungle has thousands of ways to kill you and when you’re out there you have to be on high alert so when people are in town their guard is down and they are there to let off steam. It’s all posturing so we go back to drinking. However it is still a little unnerving when 5 guy from the jungle walk into a bar and they are all carrying machetes. Everybody has some kind of weapon and it’s surprising nothing more than shouting matches happen most of the time. Keep your head down, don’t talk smack, and be as nice as you can is our rule.

On this night Captain Shamrock tells us, “I am glad I grew up in the generation of jumping curbs. I would have killed myself if I was born during the generation of X games.” He’s not joking and he probably would have killed himself. Taz, an Australian and my new favorite Cameraman, tells us he misses his kids and their milkshake night, “We still have real whole milk delivered and I take the top 4% which is straight sweet cream, add that to ice cream, pour in the chocolate and then we get fat. Other times I just drink the cream straight off the top.” I enjoy Taz’s company. Captain Shamrock, he and I are a fearsome threesome when we roll together. There are crazy things happening around us all the time and all I can think is I’ll be alright and even if I’m not I’ll be okay.

Jungle Boogie

This is the fourth night in a row that I am the last one awake in camp. I’m looking out from our beach landing in South America. We sent a crew down the river four days ago to find a crew we sent down the river two weeks ago.  I envy them because I came here for an adventure and it’s more like Jungle camp.  Don’t get me wrong it’s still serious business living here and you always have to know your surroundings. The interior crews are living a hard life in the deep jungle sleeping in hammocks, eating what they can pack in, carrying gear and generally living a great adventure. Mean while we are eating great food, drinking fresh from the forest coconut rums, having cold beers, blasting music, playing guitar, sleeping in bunks and traveling over to the closest town which is a short walk or quick ATV ride. This experience feels like the old west here; I’m living in 1850.  

The Landing was one building three years ago now it is a small town of thirty buildings. There are no roads or cars here and riding into The Landing on our ATV’s is similar to a stranger riding into town on a horse in the good old days.  It’s like any western movie town; bars, brothels, markets, discos and a pharmacy. The Working Ladies bathe in the river and run through the streets naked on their way back to their red light rooms. In my opinion they could run around the town a few more times to help their physique. They occasionally come up to us and push their breast together, wink and make pouty faces. We call it out to each other as they start to walk up…”watch out here comes a Booby Trap.”  It’s crazy to see guys come straight out of the jungle for god knows how long, take a couple shots, and then go buy a girl. There are no showers here and I can only imagine what new diseases are being created in the rooms with numbers on them. Lyndon a local entrepreneur tells us that it is the businessman’s duty to spend half his money to support the women and town, “Without them we couldn’t be here.” He believes by spending money God will give him more than double the next time he ventures into the jungle for work. All the locals throw their beer cans and bottles in the street. They look at us crazy when we use trashcans. I am having a blast throwing cans off the balcony of the Big Buy Out, our chosen bar.

I am on first name bases with many of the town’s residents and walk with them every day on the walking trail we call interstate 405.  I have one friend Jack who I saw on the trail coming back from work the other day when I was wore out. He told me, “For us we have one bottle of Old Label (a fire water whiskey we drink) in the hand and one in the backpack. When you feel you can no longer go you take a drink and keep doing that until you fall down and sleep. If you dream of a white woman, when you wake you make your work there. If you dream of a Negro woman you wake and start walking in the first direction you look because black woman are too much work.” I was exhausted but laughed for a good couple minutes, “Jack I can tell you have never dated an American white woman.” The locals have taken us in and find us funny. 

The other night at the Big Buy Out, our bar with the biggest patio in town with a screen and projector that plays 80’s MTV on a loop, our director Shamrock and Military Boots were UFC fighting as I stood at the bar mixing drinks with Pretty Girl. We were telling the owner Cooley that it wasn’t real and they were only messing around. Pretty Girl, our story producer, tried to stop it after round six and caught one to the jaw as we were trying to leave.  The next day I was dropped off at the landing by a water taxi and everybody was talking about the crazy white people fighting. I could hear it, “Ya mon, the whiteies were fighting but for fun not for real.” “The WHITE PEOPLE???” “Yes mon. I’m serious the white people.” Cooley walks up to me and now it seems I am promoting fight night and sizing up the members of the crew who volunteer.   I have the town wired and have learned where to find whatever I want. The Landing is lawless but our Fixer is basically the sheriff and his brother Green Soxs is the deputy.  I think it’s unsaid that if anything happens to us, there might be some trouble for the town. However coming home from the bar the other night we pulled into camp and there was a search party being rounded up to go into town and find us. Our Chef, a local woman, was worried that “Pretty White Girl was in a black man’s town at night.” We laughed and settled everybody’s nerves that we had her back safe and sound. Frankly after the wrestling display at Big Buy Out I am sure nobody really wants to mess with her, or us.  Our main local guide, Short Man, is 5’0 90 pounds. We could take on a mob of them and probably make it. Plus we’re armed. The bars don’t sell drinks, so you have the option of a beer or bottle of liquor. We buy bottles, get mixers at the market across the street and watch the action in the street. It’s great sitting there and having locals walk by, “What’s up DJ Cash Bar, how was ya day?”

There is adventure in other ways also. I was taking with Yoga Editor about his bush plane landing at the muddy dirt strip that is a one building airport, military outpost, market, disco and funeral home. They were the last plane in on a rainy day and as soon as they hit the ground mud covered the windshield, they slid 180 then fish tailed to a stop. Harrowing and that’s what I mean. The airport has been closed ever since and we hope the rainy season doesn’t last much longer or we will be here longer than we planned. We are living in a great compound that has been build for us, but danger is always lurking. I was so spent walking into my bunk tonight I had a vicodin washed down with a swig of vodka. Two falls, sweated through my clothes, grabbed onto bastard tree spikes, and got stuck thigh deep in red clay and had to be pulled out by Short Man. That’s an example of one day. I feel bad for one cast members; Short Man calls him Fat Man. Our river front compound is very nice for what it is and the food has been amazing. We have a group of ladies that have been taking very good care of us and keeping our energy levels high with awesome meals with food smuggled from a country that is an enemy in our geopolitical world view right now. The Kitchen help keeps hitting on Lead Tech and he’s about to break. He told me last night “I’ve never dated a woman with a pet monkey.”

I am living a dream running through the jungle and amok in town, but tonight I sit in camp playing our camp guitar looking up chords on the internet thinking about the crews in the interior. I'm trying to remember something but I’m trying too hard. I have to forget about something to remember it. When I try to remember I always forget. It’s ass backwards but it works for me.