On Set with Diabetes

This week has been quite a change from life in Brooklyn, New York. I’m currently in Seagrove Beach, Florida, with my wife Katherine, Murray, and a few other friends filming our last two videos for Heavy.com.

Our first video is up on the Web site today. Check it out at www.heavy.com. It’s called “Garden State of Love,” and it’s about every New Yorker’s favorite joke, New Jersey.

For our next two Stuckey and Murray videos, we decided to get out of New York and shoot down south. One of the videos is called “The Ukulele Song,” so it makes sense to film it on the beach.

We shot the video for “The Ukulele Song” yesterday, complete with hula dancers in coconut bras and grass skirts. They drove down from my hometown of Dothan, Alabama, about 90 miles from the beach. It was overcast for most of the day but we managed to get hints of sunshine when we needed it most. Of course, today there is not a cloud in the sky, but alas, we have no hula dancers.

Yesterday, one of the scenes for the ukulele video required me to pour a powdered substance into a hula dancer’s drink. As I searched the beach area for a small vial, I realized that I had just replaced the OneTouch Ultra test strips that I use to check my blood sugar. So, I walked over to the garbage can and pulled out my recently discarded test strip container and, just like that, I had a shady vial to use for the video.

I peeled the label off the strips and filled the vial with pure sugar to use in the scene. Why sugar? Why not?

Another scene in the video had Murray and me buried in the sand with only our heads above ground. I haven’t been buried in the sand since I was a kid and, back then, I don’t think I did a very efficient job. Yesterday, our friend Mark used a shovel and dug out two large holes. Once we were in place with sand on us, it was impossible to move and a little difficult to breathe. Thank goodness we had fruity boat drinks with umbrella straws next to our heads in case I got low blood sugar.

We are driving back to New Orleans this afternoon and filming a few more scenes on Friday for a video for our song “Mimosas in the Rain.” Murray had a sweet moustache for the first part of the shoot but had to shave it for the ukulele video. It’s an old Hawaiian custom that no one with a moustache plays a ukulele.

We will be on Bourbon Street and in a beautiful oak tree in City Park tomorrow afternoon. Then back to New York on Saturday, and I’ll be playing music with my wife and a few friends this Sunday afternoon at Hope Lounge in Williamsburg for an afternoon of music, booze, and bar-b-que. Music starts around 3 o’clock so if you’re in the area, come join us. There are a lot of good musicians scheduled to perform, including Adam Hood and members of the band Hogzilla. I “Hope” to see you there. Ha ha.