And Then I Met Matt Damon

...or at least one of his more famous incarnations: the puppet in Team America:World Police. By that measure I also met Alec Baldwin. And several life-sized Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I spent most of the weekend working for a friend as a PA on the set of a new pilot presentation they shot over at an FX house in Burbank.

My duties mostly involved standing in for the real actors while the crew was lighting the set and figuring out how to save the really perishable food on the craft services table from the ignoble fate of the dumpster.

It's PA work, there's nothing glorious about it.

There were some serious geek-out moments, however. Several of the people involved had worked together on Enterprise, the last Star Trek tv series. So I met John Billingsley and Gary Graham, who was also in Alien Nation.

My personal biggest thrill was meeting Michael Okuda who did most of the graphics for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Pretty much every time you see a computer screen in TNG, it's something he came up with.

You know you're a geek when you're excited to meet the guy who drew the computer interfaces for a Star Trek series.

We spent 8 hours on Saturday getting the studio set up to shoot. Sunday ran a full 12 hours from 10:30am on. I left in the middle, did the final performance for my Improv 101 class through the Upright Citizens Brigade (which was both better - in both performance and attendance - than I expected) and then drove back.

My job was relatively easy -- run errands, serve food, and lift things. But it was a great experience. Once there are some links to the final product, I'll be sure to let you know.

-Tom, who now has to go rent Killer Klowns from Outer Space, cause those dudes look freaky cool.