Before I walked head-on into the pole and started bleeding I’d had a grand day. Saw my daughter off to school in the autumn mist, then drove to the Mall of America and got a parking spot right by the door. The technical team – the people who make video possible, because without them the anchors might as well stand on a roof and shout – had everything in place for the day’s shoot -

Except for a SVGA connector. As the ditty goes: for want of an SVGA connector, the war was lost. Pink ran to the nearest Radio Shack, and I mean nearest: in the mall, upstairs. Closed. She drove to another one a few miles away, and that explains why the company is still around: if you need a SVGA connector and your local Shack is shuttered, try another. We all love Amazon, but until they can materialize items in front of you with sparkly transporter effects, bricks & mortar have an advantage.

Unfortunately, the other store a few miles away didn’t have an SVGA connector. But they checked local inventory, and discovered that the Mall store, 120 yards away from our set, had one. But it’s closed! Calls were made; a local manager, perhaps realizing that his entire training as a Radio Shack manager was leading up to this moment, set his jaw with grim determination, whipped out his keys, laughed at the consequences and opened the store a few minutes early. If only a fellow employee had cautioned against this rash action, and the manager had barked “Then I’ll see you in hell!”

JUST LIKE HAN SOLO!

Always thought that was a stupid line. I thought it was odd at the time when I first saw the movie. (In the theater. Opening night.) It had a great rakish adventurer ring to it, but it didn’t make sense. Sir, it’s going to get dark and cold soon on this ice planet; it may not be wise to go out now. THEN I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL! Uh, sir, I’m not intending on ending up in hell, and even if that does happen, how is that an appropriate response? Or are you just saying that to everyone these days? Was that you in the cafeteria this morning telling the lady at the steam table you’d see her in hell because she was out of bacon?

Then the blast doors go down, and someone walks up and asks what that was all about. “Oh, Solo – he’s the guy whose prior motivations are encapsulated in his last name, you know him? Shouts a lot about seeing you in hell? He went to look for the Skywalker kid.”

The other guys nods, and says “He take a thermal imager?”

“Oh, crap. I was supposed to put one in his bag.”

“Well, don’t say anything. We never saw him go. Anyone asks, he was going to the cafeteria to see if they had bacon yet.”

Anyway, we got the cords plugged in, and began. Shot most of the interviews out of sequence, because guests arrived in staggered intervals. Found myself doing a nine-minute demonstration of Things to Buy with a local shopping maven, and had to keep telling myself: play it straight. Play it straight. Behave. And then she described a game kit that includes “A wand that remembers everything you’ve ever done,” and I almost wept. DON’T HAND ME A LINE LIKE THAT. When she introduced a seven-CD Michael Jackson set it was all I could to keep from asking if she had a ninety-six Edison cylinder collection of George M. Cohen songs. She would have parried it well, though; she had that perfect TV gloss that can absorb any shot, like Star Trek shields. Although she probably wouldn’t rock back and forth when the shields took a hit – not because the act of firing upon a Starfleet vessel has a physical reaction, but because the tremendous strain of absorbing the energy usually requires the ship to shunt power away from the inertial dampening system to avoid blowouts. Which is why people fall over. No, really.

Then a food shelf guy. Then an accountant who talked about holiday shopping this year, and what the predictions say. (It’s a mixed bag.) We had a Mall of America decoration spokesperson who described the seasonal ornaments – blue and silver this year, very early-mid sixties. There’s only so many ways you can talk about bulbs without eventually using the word “balls,” and I made a special mental note NOT to use that particular term when asking about the ornaments below the statue of Spongebob Squarepants. Orbs! Spheres! Round things! And so on.

Interviewed a mall cop, and afterwards had a release form thrust in my hands: they were shooting a show called “Mall Cop” for TLC. Cool. Interviewed a proper cop from the local burb-force, thanked him for coming. Turns out he’s a fan. “I have ‘Falling Up the Stairs,’ he said. I advised him to sell it on eBay for as much as he could. So it went for hours, and then it was done, and we packed the gear, and headed into the bowels of the Mall of America to the loading dock. Never been backstage at the Mall. Wide halls, guys whizzing around on carts; if only they’d had a CMDF badge on the side. (Okay, nerds, that’s your challenge for today. Stands for? NO GOOGLING.)

We put the gear away, returned to the Mall. Let me tell you: nothing makes you more aware of the mall as a stage than being backstage.

Walked through the Nickelodeon amusement park, en route to the Twin City Grill. I wanted to see if they could seat eight, so I called directory assistance. While walking. Was waiting for the number. While walking. Passed a Spongebob Tree, and turned around and said “That’s what I meant by Spongebob’s orange balls.” While walking -

I hit the pole hard enough to shove my glasses into my head, which I did once before in junior high school. A big red-haired gawky kid had been dribbling with his head down, smacked into me, sliced my brow, blood everywhere. The coach said: oh yeah, you’ll need stitches. Went downtown to the clinic. Got stitches. Still have the scar. This time? Who knew? The day was young! I was certainly bleeding. But I was still walking! We were all walking! Hey, are you okay? I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL! I literally heard a BONNG when I struck the pole. As I said on Twitter, it lacked only birds, twittering.

Everyone peeled off to the restaurant; I went to the bathroom, got some tissue, blotted the flow, and went to my car, where I have a complete assortment of bandaids. En route a young woman at a skin care kiosk handed me a square foil package of something or other, and asked a question. I didn’t get it – Rooshian accent – but she had a concerned look on her face, and I asked her to repeat herself.

“Let me look at your nails!” she said.

There are times in my life when I drop the social niceties, and being asked about my fingernails while bleeding from the head is one of them. I walked on. Applied ointment and a bandage in my car, and had a laugh and a cigar.

At least I waited until the shoot was done to walk into something, eh? We call those “professional instincts.”

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