I was less than two blocks away when it happened, leaving Giant after picking up a script.
Reflections on Friday’s shooting…
It’s freaky because we were planning to go out for dinner and I had suggested Applebee’s, but we ended up a the Mexican place instead. Audra hasn’t been too pleased with what she’s had the last couple of times. Of course, that was a bit later in the afternoon, but it really hit home that this stuff just happens everywhere.
I heard the sirens and saw the ambulance coming up when I left the Giant strip. By my calculation the shots were probably fired between the end of my haircut 4:15 and my stop at the pharmacy counter moments later. Freaky when you have a cinematic mind. We’ve eaten there tons of times.
We had Mexican around 7:00. Then we stopped at the wine store afterward, where there were two police cars (not sure if that was related, but it’s just down the road), then we came towards the Giant plaza and saw several cars with flashing lights still at Applebee’s around 7:30. It was only then that I found out what had happened via a call to my mom on my Blackberry – even with mobile internet access, I call mom! Mom was watching the news and was up to speed on things before we were.
We went to see Star Trek (very good by the way), and after that let out around 11:15, we passed Applebee’s and the news crews were just pulling out, but they had no more details until later the next day.
More on Star Trek…
We had a chuckle that perhaps the ice planet was made of styrofoam, or was a recycled planet Hoth. I thought it was good fun, and I can see the franchise exploiting itself in a predictable fashion with Klingons in the next movie, then perhaps a Picard cameo in the one following, with perhaps a touch of tribbles (in place of their Ewok analogue). The only thing we can be grateful for is that these movies wont be released in multiple versions as the Star Wars movies were.
