So what exactly transpired between waking up in L.A. that particular Monday morning and finally going to bed again some 40 hours later in Galveston, Texas?*
*I know I wasn’t the one experimenting with hair products.
Take a peek:
Monday
7:00 a.m. Travel to Extra (TV show)—hair/makeup ready
8:00 a.m. Start shooting segment for Extra
9:00 a.m. Wrap from Extra
9:00 a.m. Travel to E! Daily Pop
9:30 a.m. Arrive at E! Daily Pop
9:30 a.m. Makeup and hair touch-ups
9:45 a.m. Start shooting segment for E! Daily Pop
10:30 a.m. Wrapped from E! Daily Pop
12:00 p.m. Lunch meeting with Sony—pitch new show idea
1:30 p.m. Meeting with Fox—pitch new show idea
3:00 p.m. Meeting with agents
4:30 p.m. Travel to hotel to change and freshen up
5:30 p.m. Travel to Guardians of the Galaxy 2 movie premiere
6:30 p.m. Red carpet for Guardians of the Galaxy 2 movie premiere
7:00 p.m. Guardians of the Galaxy 2 movie premiere
10:00 p.m. Travel to LAX airport
12:30 a.m. Flight to Nashville, TN (red eye)
Tuesday
6:43 a.m. Arrive in Nashville, travel straight to set
7:30 a.m. Call in makeup and hair
8:30 a.m. Start shooting segments for Property Brothers in Nashville
12:00 p.m. Travel to Buying and Selling set in Nashville for afternoon shoot
12:15 p.m. Phone interview with People magazine
12:30 p.m. Phone interview with FoxNews.com
12:45 p.m. Phone interview with US Weekly
1:00 p.m. Phone interview with E! Online
1:15 p.m. Makeup and hair touch-ups*
1:45 p.m. Starting shooting segments for Buying and Selling in Nashville
5:00 p.m. Wrapped from shooting Buying and Selling
5:15 p.m. Travel to Nashville airport
6:30 p.m. Flight to Houston, TX
8:35 p.m. Travel to Galveston, TX
9:45 p.m. Arrive in Galveston, TX
*Not me, mine’s still good.
The rest of the week was fairly routine, with 12-hour days through Sunday, and a 20-hour work-a-thon on Thursday. All told, we totaled four flights, six interviews, ten business meetings, four public appearances, and a partridge in a pear tree. Somehow Drew managed to squeeze in a voice lesson and a guitar lesson, both via Skype, and we were each allotted a date night with our lovely ladies. But that’s just what was pre-scheduled—stuff like unexpected delays on-site, answering a never-ending torrent of texts and emails, working on social media, playing with the pups, scarfing down the occasional handful of Skittles, shopping for design/reno goodies, and writing this book aren’t included. Mind you, we’re not complaining. We have a blast doing what we do.
It’s what we can’t do that gets frustrating.
And the biggest thing we can’t do anymore is spend enough time with our friends. That’s one void midnight Skittle raids* can never fill.
*You’ve definitely tried though . . . sugar addict!
Once we started appearing on TV, we began disappearing from the radar of acquaintances who struggled to deal with the new reality of our social lives. We went from being the up-for-anything fun guys you could always count on, to the would-love-to-do-anything fun guys who always had to wait until the last minute to see if they could do something. We were like that friend who marries a Velcro spouse who won’t let you go out anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to come over for dinner next Thursday (it makes my mouth water just thinking about a home-cooked meal) or that Drew wasn’t in the mood to go rock-climbing in the desert next Sunday: We simply never know for sure when our work day is going to end. Sometimes we wrap early and have the windfall of a free Saturday afternoon, and sometimes we miss an extreme full-contact game night because a basement flooded on one of our projects and I’m pulling a late one.
When down time becomes a scarce commodity, you treasure it a lot more, and high-maintenance relationships are the first to die of natural causes. Guilt-trippers and anyone allergic to spontaneity don’t last long, either. And more than a few casual friends from the old days just stopped calling after hearing “No, sorry,” too often. Others got angry or felt insulted.
But one core group flat-out refused to take it personally or get discouraged; they were the ones who would let a thousand apologetic no’s roll off their backs and still come back and ask for the 1,001st time if we wanted to hang out.
Drew and I have been tight with the same crew of guys since we were young teenagers. Over the years, we’ve seen each other through some of life’s greatest joys and deepest sorrows, all of our histories and hopes welding together to form this unbreakable bond. Counting JD, our band of brothers—aka the Usual Suspects—numbers seven.
JD was always cool and mysterious. He had his own room down in the basement when we were growing up, and we were dying to know what was happening down there . . . but were deemed too annoying to gain entry. He must’ve been living the high life, because all the rules that applied to Drew and me up in our bedrooms were abandoned when it came to JD. How did he get to sleep in on weekends and avoid daily bedroom cleanliness checks? I smell a double standard!
As we got less annoying—or maybe he just got more resigned to it—JD shifted more into the wise big brother role, offering us guidance and advice about the ways of life. Girls, music, hobbies, girls. We flunked the girl tutorial repeatedly, but JD never gave up trying.
I remember he had a comedy troupe called YFG (they would never tell anybody what it stood for) that performed locally to sell-out crowds. I would watch JD on stage and see the audience laughing uncontrollably and think, WOW, he is good! My assumption that he was a genius was further confirmed when we were riding in the car and he would be singing along to the music. How on earth did he know the words to all of the songs? He MUST be some kind of genius . . . or perhaps an idiot savant.* He went full goth as a teenager, and people kept telling him he looked like Bon Jovi with eyeliner. Many years later he met a girl who was a professional Liza Minelli look-alike, and before long, JD’s Bon Jovi look was adapted just enough for him to pull off performing as an Adam Lambert impersonator. Then he added David Bowie. We had no idea JD was such a great singer. Yet another one of his hidden mysteries that left us wondering where he learned such skills. Perhaps it was on a “walkabout” during one of the two times he moved to Australia. We’ll never know, but when he was gone, we missed the heck out of him and would make him goofy videos for the holidays, even interviewing his friends for little snippets.
*Or at least an idiot. Ha ha.
Regardless of how mysterious and unknowable he sometimes seemed, JD always showed up to offer his support when we needed it most. He moved with me to Las Vegas, and likewise to the lonely outpost of Grande Prairie with Drew to lend support in any way he could. JD set the loyalty bar high for the band of brothers who followed him.
The founding member of our gang was Pedro, our brother from an Iranian mother and chief co-conspirator in a 25-year string of pranks gone wild, stunts gone sideways, and common sense gone AWOL. Pedro could always run fast and stay cool in a crisis, talents that served him well in our youth. He bore witness to my earliest misadventures in plumbing and landscaping, which occurred at separate times but in the same unlucky place—our high school in Maple Ridge.
The first happened one spring day when we snuck into the empty school building to put plastic wrap over the toilet bowls. Teachers were on strike, so classes were canceled, and the facility was sitting there vacant, just begging to be pranked.* As I went to lift the seat and wrap the first bowl, I noticed a pipe sticking up from the back of the toilet. It had a cap with a screw just staring right at me. Cur
ious, I of course proceeded to unscrew it. Almost instantly there was a liquid explosion, then a geyser of water shot up and began spraying everywhere. Pedro, Drew, and I started yelling at each other as I tried to make it stop. I was pressing on the pipe as hard as I could, but the pressure was too strong. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I then noticed that the screw cap had landed in the toilet . . . and was rolling down the hole to the bottom of the bowl. With no time to think about how disgusting being this intimate with a public toilet was, I reached deep into the bowl and grabbed the screw. I managed to get the cap back on and re-threaded the screw. As I glanced around thinking, Will anybody notice?, I heard footsteps approaching and the principal’s voice shouting, “What the hell is going on in here?” There was no hiding the 90 gallons of water that had sprayed all over the room. I simply replied, “This toilet could have killed me! You need to get these checked out by a plumber,” and we took off.
*We were laughing so hard on the bike ride to school at the thought of the first teacher who would use the freshly sealed toilets.
The next morning, the principal called the house while we were still in bed. Dad answered.
“Mr. Scott, are Jonathan and Andrew up yet?” the principal demanded.
“No, they’re sleeping,” Dad replied.
“Well, wake them up, because they vandalized the school yesterday!”
“That can’t be right,” Dad replied. “What was damaged?”
The principal hesitated. “Well, there was quite a bit of water that had to be mopped up and there was plastic film on some of the toilets.”
Dad put him on hold and came to rouse us.
“Boys, did you vandalize the school yesterday?”
“No! It was an accident.”
“Okay, go back to sleep.”
Dad got back on the phone and gave the principal a piece of his mind for falsely accusing his sons, then hung up. The principal then tried calling Mom at work, and she ripped an even bigger strip off him for going behind Dad’s back when he had already dealt with it. He also got an earful of indignant Farsi when he dialed Pedro’s house. Not surprisingly, the school didn’t call home anymore. We were good kids. But even good kids get up to a little harmless mischief from time to time.
I learned a valuable life lesson: Never mess with plumbing unless you know what you’re doing.*
*Which hand did you reach down the toilet with? Remind me never to shake it again.
Lesson #2 came when Pedro, Drew, and I got on the school librarian’s last nerve—she hated noise and obnoxious teenagers, which crossed us right off her Christmas list. The principal ordered us to spend the weekend weeding the massive garden out front of the school. If done properly, it would have been about a 14-hour job—most of the plants were weeds. Then I had a brilliant idea: There were bags upon bags of wood chips stored around the back of the school, and we could just pour those all over the garden and cover the weeds in about an hour. Mulch hides anything if you’ve got enough of it. I bet even Rome could have looked finished in a day if they had enough mulch to dump on the city. The next morning, the principal walked around with us, astonished at how great the gardens looked. He declared that our punishment was over and we had paid our dues. By lunch that day, all the weeds had popped back up. Fortunately we had already received a full pardon. But at least the wood chips provided a nice contrast.
Further proof that Pedro was the soldier you wanted with you in the foxhole came in Banff, where the three of us got summer jobs at the Banff Springs Hotel right after graduation. There were tons of activities to enjoy outdoors, including rollerblading, hiking, and the occasional game of basketball. It was during one of those games that I fell victim to a flurry of Drew’s elbows, which left me with a deep gash over my eyebrow that was bleeding like crazy.*
*Well, you shoulda jumped higher for the rebound.
I was on your team!
Because we were self-reliant idiots, we didn’t call an ambulance, nor did we want the expense of a cab, so we hustled on foot to the ER with rags pressed against my wound. By the time we got there, my shirt looked like I’d bought it at the Chainsaw Massacre Consignment Store. I finally stopped bleeding, but the cut was going to need stitches. We signed in and took our plastic seats in the bustling waiting room. And wait we did. New arrivals kept coming in and getting called ahead of me. Nobody looked as dramatically injured as I did, but maybe they had impressive internal injuries. We waited some more.
Emergency rooms are always exciting when Hollywood handles the plot line and set decoration, but most of the real ones I’ve been in (maybe six?)* are as dull as a vintage issue of the crochet magazines that were lying around. I wasn’t being upstaged by any gurneys racing past with sympathetic victims of freak spear-fishing accidents, but I wasn’t making the triage nurse’s Top 20 list, either. When I asked how long it would still be, she said I wasn’t an emergency, so please sit down. Pedro shot me a glance that said, Trust me. Then, without a word, he grabbed my brow between his thumb and forefinger and reopened my wound, producing an impressive blood geyser. I was immediately hustled into a treatment room and sewn right up. There are SO many more tales of adventure I could share about our mishaps with the one and only Pedro, but that could fill another book.
*You mean sixty?
The only other member of our main crew who dates back to the good old high school days would be Toni. He had muscles on muscles, a heavy English accent, and was the only friend of ours able to out-“pec pop” Drew. On his own, he apparently was a Don Juan and the women fell all over him, but around us he seemed so shy it was painful. Maybe he didn’t want to give away his secrets. Many days were pleasantly wasted away on the court playing ball, and even more evenings at house parties working on our smooth talk. Toni was the worst wingman because once a girl met him . . . well, there was no sense in me even trying. We were so happy to attend his recent wedding, where he proved once and for all that he did meet a beautiful woman and must have said the right thing.
Then there’s Brad. None of us liked Brad in the beginning. He was the annoying, smart-ass weirdo who lived at the end of the hall in our U Calgary dorm. He was the only student on our floor who had his own room . . . because no one would live with him. One night I was sitting in the common area watching some suspense movie when Brad came in and turned the channel to hockey.
“Oh, I was watching that,” I said, in case he hadn’t noticed me SITTING. RIGHT. THERE. Brad then spoiled the surprise ending of the movie, adding, “It’s not worth it, anyway.”
This guy is a monster, I thought. Why would anyone do that?
I ran into him not long after that, and Brad acted like nothing had happened and struck up a conversation. I don’t hold a grudge, so I let go of the spoiler assault, and we ended up hitting it off. Need a clever insult? Brad was like a Pez dispenser of them. We eventually realized that he may lack a filter, but is as genuine and loyal as they come. He’s a talented golfer and hockey player and never ended up using his archaeology degree before becoming an investment adviser. But hands down he’s the smartest guy we know . . . at least when Jeopardy is on.
We are very open and honest about everything—except one event that we vowed never to speak of again: The Brooks High School magic show. When I was trying to turn magic into a full-time career, Brad’s mom asked me if I would perform at her daughter’s high school graduation celebration in their small town a few hours away. I was typically doing larger venues or more intimate evenings, but I didn’t want to let Brad’s family down. His mom said they had a budget of $450. I didn’t want to be rude, but it cost more just to pay my dancers and haul my props there. I tried to wriggle out of it, but I could tell Brad’s mom would be heartbroken. I decided to absorb the loss and put on the show. She said they had a big auditorium that had been updated, and that it had the stage, lighting, and curtain I needed, and could handle all my tech needs, too.
I pulled up the day of the show to discover I would be performing on the floor of a concrete hockey arena with cut-open black garbage bags for curtains, a lone floodlight as a lighting system, no projector, and an audio system so ancient I had to cut and splice in my MiniDisc player. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, the students started to arrive. A good third of them were absolutely wasted. The boys cat-called my dancers when they came on stage and booed and hollered when they left.
For my first illusion, I was supposed to make my grand entrance by suddenly appearing inside a large empty phone booth–like box rotating about 5 feet above the stage. At the climax of the routine, just before I was to make my grand appearance, the janitor was leaving for the evening and decided to turn off the power. The lights went dark and other than a few kids in the front row straining to make me out, nobody could see anything. Yet, oddly, the music kept playing. (What’s that saying . . . if a magician appears in the middle of a pitch-black arena, does anybody notice? In this situation, the answer was a resounding NO.) Brad’s mom managed to get the lights back on, but other than a few sympathy claps, nobody was impressed.
I jumped down off the prop and, thanks to the sheen of condensation on the arena floor from the humidity of all the people, I proceeded to slip and fall on my butt in a bad way. I hopped back up and played it off with a joke . . . but there was no saving this show.
It Takes Two Page 15