Of meterologists and movie makers

The American Meteorological Society is holding their annual convention in New Orleans this week. Late this afternoon I picked up a convention-goer, and as he settled into the seat, he asked me: "Is it going to rain this evening?"

I started to give him my best guess when I remembered who he was. I whirled around in my seat to look at him in disbelief. "Seriously? You're asking ME?"

Looking back on the incident, I'm wondering if he was collecting data for the forecast. Maybe they factor the intuition of pedicabbies into it or something.

Speaking of the forecast, it was supposed to rain today. A couple of times during the course of the day, it acted like it was actually going to start up, but it never amounted to much. I did get a good drenching, but not from Mother Nature. They were filming a movie (Now You See Me) in the French Quarter, and they had this big rain machine creating quite a downpour at the front of Cafe du Monde off and on all day.

The movie people and the New Orleans police department were working together to control the flow of traffic past the spot. I started getting angry because every time I went that way they would let a bunch of cars go, including those that were behind me in line, but they wouldn't let me pass for a really long time. It seemed totally unfair until I finally figured it out. Cars passing in the background would presumably make the scene look natural and authentic; but a big yellow tricycle pedaled by a 45-year-old with freakishly large calves might draw all the attention away from Morgan Freeman, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, and Mark Ruffalo. You can't blame them really.

You've heard that Mark Twain quote about how everyone always talks about the weather but no one does anything about it, right? Well we've got several thousand people in town who have gathered from across the nation to spend four days talking about the weather. (At least, I assume that's what they're talking about).  Meanwhile, just a mile or two down the river, we've got movie makers who are actually doing something about it -- albeit on a fairly small scale.

By the way, the movie's supposed to be out in January of next year. I can't wait to watch it and look for the scene where I'm not there.