Jingle Bells, my hat smells...

Apologies for the radio silence over the weekend, but I've been right poorly. a bad headcold turned into some 24 hour vomitathon, which pretty much wiped out my weekend. Not good. Here I am feeling sorry for myself -

I had made it out the apartment on Saturday to see the eclipse that we'd been promised, and it was pretty spectacular with the sun/moon turning red and a weird eerie light everywhere. Obviously my shitty camera on my iphone couldn't capture it. So here's a photo from the Daily Mail to show it in all its full beauty above the Golden Gate Bridge....

Very cool. Anyway, my weekend went rapidly downhill from then on in. Which meant I was a bit dopey and vulnerable this morning. This is the only explanation I can give for what happened next.... I usually get in earlier than most, as I'm not travelling in from San Fran, and therefore not subject to the inherent problems of rush hour commuting. Anyway, this woman came round the office needing people to appear in the Android Xmas video. A couple of people who were also in early and who sit next to me agreed to do it, so it seemed churlish to refuse. I mean, I'm about to leave the country, so some small internal email will be amusing, but I won't be in the same office any more for people to take the piss out of me. So I agreed to turn up in reception at 10am for filming.
Anyway, I turned up, but not many other people did. And then they decided they only needed 4 people, and lucky me got picked. And then the full horror of the situation came to light. The Android Xmas card is usually seen by a few million people and gets put up on YouTube and sent around. So no chance of running back to England to avoid it. This thing is global. Then to make matters worse, I found out I had to sing. Jingle Bells. And dress up as a carol singer. This was so far beyond my comfort zone that I started to totally freak out inside, while trying to remain calm on the outside. Not good.
First stop was wardrobe, where there were so many delightful garments to choose from -

I say choose, but actually some woman just started pulling things off the rail and making me try them on. None of them looked good. She gave me this furry hat, and when I tried it on I commented on the fact that it smelt pretty bad. Turned out it was her hat. I think that was the point she decided to make me look as ridiculous as possible....  Next stop was make-up, where they seemed to want to turn me orange with big red clown cheeks. Always a good look, especially as I didn't have any make up remover and it was 10am and I was going to be stuck with the look all day.... And finally I had to see the soundman, who put earpieces in me, which he taped to side of my head (I say head, it was actually mostly my fucking hair), and miked me up. Oh yeah. Microphones. So even if I just mumbled, they could amp it up. The earpieces had the music for a verse and chorus of Jingle Bells playing on a continuous loop. So that wasn't annoying at all.... Anyway, here I am in all my glory

Luckily it's not like the location was somewhere really public, like the main lobby of our building or anything... Oh...

With all the studio lights, it was pretty warm in there. Added to that the thick woolly clothes and massive fur hat and I was soon sweating like a knacker. I got kitted out first as well, so my humiliation and discomfort was the longest. We all ended up having to stand outside to avoid passing out from the heat, cos our hats were covering up earpiece and microphone wires and holding things in place, so we couldn't take them off. Santa was in an even worse state than us, as he had loads of padding too. He wasn't a Google employee, and was a bit strange. When I was taking photos, and he didn't have his wig and beard and hat on, he seriously asked me to show him some respect and courtesy and not take pictures of him "half done". Like this one....

Maybe he was the real Santa. In which case I've royally fucked up my chances of presents this year. But the real Santa would have a real beard and belly. That said, when he was all dressed up and in full character, he was jolly and much happier about having his picture taken....

Anyway, once we were all ready, we were on set and ready for action. This basically involved the four of us singing Jingle Bells repeatedly while they filmed us from various angles, all holding the latest Xoom tablets with the lyrics on (nice bit of Android product placement!). We even had to do mad laughs after the "laughing all the way line". I died a little bit inside every time I had to do one. And then got told off by the director for not making my laughs hearty enough. I really wasn't feeling it.... I'm sure I just look like a right mental. Even worse, the guy next to me was singing really out of tune, which was totally putting me off. At least I think it was him that was off key... Maybe it was me....
We then had to change back into our normal work clothes and do some acting. Brilliant. Just what I wanted to do after getting horrific hat hair from sweating in a big fur hat for half an hour. I'm not entirely sure what I was doing by this point as I think I was so appalled by what I was doing that I had some weird out of body experience so I would never know what actually happened. Apart from when the video comes out. Obviously. My discomfort was totally off the scale.
And then everyone else got let go. Apart from me. I think this was my punishment for saying the hat smelt bad and taking photos of Santa off duty. I had to get dressed up again, so they could do some over the shoulder shots of me holding the tablet, so they could edit some content onto them. Probably my name and address and phone number so people can randomly contact me to laugh at me.
And that was it. All done. Remind me never to volunteer to do anything ever again. Ever. No matter how much of a good idea it seems at the time. To make matters worse, it took up the whole morning, and I had loads of work to do, so it meant I was crazy busy all afternoon. At least there was strawberry and green tea fro yo at lunchtime to cheer me up. It does look a bit like a turd in this picture though -

Did a load of work, then popped over to Charlie's Cafe late afternoon as for some random reason the Filipino Googler Network had got Apl.de.ap from the Black Eyed Peas to DJ for us. Here's a rubbish photo of him - let's be honest he could be anyone stood in front of a picture of Apl.de.ap...

It was 4pm and he had a full on rave set going on. And weirdly there was loads of mad dancing going on. In the middle of the day. It was good fun, and once again somewhat strange. Here's a slightly better photo -

So that was my decidedly odd day. Only four more to go and then I'll be flying home for Xmas. And to find out what craziness the London office holds. Can't wait!
Hopefully tomorrow will be a little more subdued.
H xxx