Guess Who's Having Dinner

More action on my street.

It started with a flyer being dropped off announcing that MTV was going to be filming an episode of Rock Dinner at a house down the street. The shooting was to include an exterior music performance in the yard after cooking and eating a meal in the house.

My immediate response was what rock star lives down the street? Then I realized there was a good chance that even if I knew it was, I wouldn’t know who they were, if you know what I mean. Not that I really should have been spending time on this. The fourth crochet mystery is due March 1 and I am rushing to finish it.

The next day both sides of the streets were lined with a generator, trucks, cars and vans. A bunch grungily dressed people seemed to be involved in setting things up until late in the evening.

When Thursday rolled around even though they posted the filming hours as 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m., the street was quiet until afternoon. But then that goes along with musicians. It was obviously a low end production. There was one trailer, two port a potties and no security. In contrast the production on our street a few months ago had trucks with dressing rooms complete with real bathrooms, a whole line of fancy trailers for the actors, and an off duty motorcycle cop to keep an eye on things.

So, I was still wondering who this rock star neighbor was.

Night fell and I took my dog for a walk past all the trucks. Blindingly bright lights were set up in the front yard of the house. The production assistants and assistant director types were hanging around in the street caught up in their self importance and I asked one of them what was going on. A lanky guy with an attitude said they were shooting a mayonnaise commercial. Like, sure. The dog and I went home.

Around 11:30 p.m., I took some garbage out and heard the thump of music along with the excited squeals of fans coming from the house down the street. Now I got what the white vans parked across the street were for. They had brought in fake fans for the outdoor performance. But I was kind of surprised they were making so much noise so late. My husband went down the street determined to find out what rock star had cooked and eaten dinner and was now performing in their yard. I figured he knew how to talk the production people’s talk since he’d produced TV shows including a Michael Jackson special (a long time ago before Michael got weird). Meanwhile I listened from the end of our driveway. The music was unintelligible, and the screams were obviously choreographed.

So who did my rock star neighbor turn out to be? Well, actually it wasn’t a rock star, but a band. And such a not famous band that the production assistant didn’t even know their name, just that they were a Latin band that was popular in Puerto Rico. And no, it wasn’t even their house. And then figuring my husband was a crotchety neighbor annoyed by the noise, the P.A. said they’d be finished soon. I didn’t hear exactly when the music ended, but around 1:00 a.m., I did hear the rumble of trucks as they drove away.

I wonder if even the cooking and eating dinner part was real.