Today was the beginning of all the stuff I was hoping would be interesting than all the beauty stuff from the past 6 weeks. It was. Our teacher for the week would be J.D. Bowers (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0101063/), who's just finished lab work on the new 'Mission Impossible', and has previously worked on 'Flight of the Living Dead' (awesome), so I was looking forward to it.

The lesson began by being given plastic head moulds for creating bald caps, and cracking on straight away with coating it in bald cap latex. There's obviously a lot more to it, like where and how exactly you need to apply the latex, and how many layers etc., but there's no point in me going into it here. Anyway, if you want to know, you'll have to go to a school to learn this stuff, like I'm doing!

Once we'd all created our bald caps, they needed to be carefully removed from the plastic mould, gently brushing in talc so it didn't stick to itself. This is similar to some of the prosthetics I've made before. There are lines already drawn on the mould to indicate where you need to apply each layer of latex, but I think someone had drawn mine on wrong ad it looks pretty small around the forehead. I'll have to redo the lines at some point. There was then a quick talk on how to set up our work station for a special effects/character type appliance before lunch.

After lunch, we were informed that J.D. had been asked to go and work on a big film until next April, so we'd have Liz Mendoza (an ex-CMS student who recently worked on 'Insidious') and Mike Mosher, who previously worked on 'Titanic' amongst numerous other things. Looking forward to learning from them as well!

There was then a demonstration of a bald cap application to one of the other students, I think mainly because she offered. I think if she'd have realised just how long it would take, and how stubborn the stuff is to remove, she may have reconsidered. We didn't end up finishing until about 4:30, and as we had to make another one at some point soon, I decided to stick around and create another bald cap. I don't think it makes me 'sad' sticking around all the time to learn. I've paid the money to be there, so might as well make the most of it while I can. And at least I'm refining my bald cap creating skills, and have a spare if it all goes t*** up tomorrow!

I'd been told about, and subsequently invited to, a pre-release 'listening' of the new Mastodon album going on above The Roxy Theater on Sunset, so decided to head in that direction. Well, I would have done if all the roads weren't closed off due to some bloke called Barack Obama being in town. Never heard of him. Got speaking to a guy on the bus who was also heading to this 'listening' event thingy, and only just moved to LA himself, so also had no idea of where we were, or where to go. Thankfully, the bus driver was kind enough to drop us off as near as the police would let us go. Even then, we had to ask them (politely; remember they all have guns) to let us cross just ONE road, to get where we were headed. Seriously the whole of Santa Monica Blvd/Doheny Drive was blocked off by cop cars, and they were proper rude about it too. I thought maybe my being English and possibly not understanding why I couldn't cross the road would have offered up an explanation, but I think that generally, they were all generally just fat stupid idiots not knowing what their job was. Some of them told us to cross the road from one-side, but we were shouted at by the cops on the other side?! Poor organisation!

Eventually, we got to The Roxy, met up with a few people I've spoken to before, and went to listen to the new Mastodon album. It's difficult to say what's it like, because I didn't really listen to it thoroughly as we were talking, but it actually sounded pretty good. I'll need to give it a 'sit-down' listen, but it sounded better than Crack the Skye. There was also a two-man punk band playing called 'It's Casual'. they were f***ing great. For those of you back home who like 'The Kick Kick Murder Squad', they're right up your street! I intend on buying their CD's. They finished just before 11, so I had to leg it back to the bus stop for my last bus (that I knew was going to be relatively easy), and came home.

Turned out to be a great night, and thoroughly looking forward to being bald tomorrow. I'll get to see what it's like being my Dad ;)