By James Lucas, MonkeySee.com Producer Recently, I was woken up by the shrill high-pitched beeping of my alarm clock at 2:00 AM--never a pleasant experience. As I swatted mindlessly at my unyielding wake-up call, I thought about the excitment that this day would bring. In a few hours time I would be leaving DC behind for a more exotic location, Long Island, and a Monkeysee.com video shoot with Fitness Celebrity, John Basedow. After a brief wake-up shower and a short stop in Arlington to pick-up my Monkeysee colleague Courtney, we were on our way to BWI Airport. Thanks to heavy traffic and a GPS system that stopped caring, we barely made our flight. We arrived into Long Island airport at 7:00 AM for our noon shoot with John. Now if you know anything about Islip, Long Island, you probably know that it isn't very close to New York City. Unfortunately, Courtney and I never received that memo. We both figured that we had more than enough time to take the train to Manhattan, do some sight-seeing and come back in time for our shoot. WRONG. We, did however end-up taking a lovely scenic train ride to Penn Station then directly back. Courtney and I arrived to the gym a few minutes before noon. We had just barely begun to setup the equipment when John and his assistant arrived. The video we were shooting that day was called John Basedow's Guide to Awesome Arms. It didn't take John long to get our format down and before you know it, we were done shooting. Our biggest obstacle of the day was the constant and persistent gym noise. Thankfully John's Assistant, Carline, had no problems with asking people to quiet themselves down, and we completed our shoot without any major snags. We had a few minutes after our shoot before we had to go to the airport, so some obligatory snapshots were taken. We decided to forgo originality in photos and opt for the "Welcome to the Gun Show" pose. An uneventful flight home wrapped up our day and I was at home and in bed by a little after midnight. Not one of my shorter days, but definitely one of those most fun I've had at work. I also took away some great workout tips, so you better watch your back John Basedow--there may be a new fitness celebrity in town soon. I'm gunnin' for ya. And if you haven't seen the video series yet, check it out here. James Admittedly, I was a little nervous about meeting him. He is the first celebrity I've had a chance to work with, so I really didn't know what to expect. Fortunately, for both of us, he was extremely nice, very willing to follow direction and work with our ideas and had a great since of humor, which helps during long shoots.
Predictably, John was several buffness levels above me. It was not my best picture.
Editors note: Sadly, since finishing this shoot, James decided to move on from MonkeySee, but his new adventures can be found here. Best wishes James!
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