Who’d have thought it? I had an adventurous weekend, by my standards.

Memorial Day is a solemn day, and I spent it solemnly, in part out of reverence, but to some extent because I was recovering from Saturday’s and Sunday’s exertions.

On Saturday I helped make a movie – hence the elfin photo above.

There’s a young man I met through my Viking reenactment group who told me, sometime last year, that he was involved in making small independent movies. I told him that I have acting experience, and am generally available. He said he might have a part for me in the one he was working on.

Some time later, he sent me a script – or a piece of a script. My part would involve three scenes out of a longer production. I would be playing the Norse god Njord. A small role, but as we old troopers like to say, “There are no small roles, only small… paychecks.” The production is described by the writer/director as “Star Trek meets Norse mythology.” I would wear my regular Viking outfit.

Then there was a long pause. A filming day was proposed a couple months back, but got cancelled because of somebody’s car trouble. Finally we were all able to get together this past Saturday, in a basement in South St. Paul. I’d been told we’d be working in front of a green screen, which shouldn’t mean a lot of hassle.

But once I arrived, and been issued pointed ears (a surprise) and met the (very pretty) young woman who’d be playing my daughter, the goddess Freya, the director said, “You know, it’s always better to shoot on location.” What location could stand in for the halls of Asgard? After a few minutes we were all in a car, headed off to the state capitol.

The state capitol.

I’ll tell you the truth – it would never have occurred to me that you could just march into the capitol building (after a three-block trudge from our parking spot – in costume, of course) and shoot a film. Surely there’d be security. Surely there’d be rules.

Well, there was security, but they ignored us. And if there are rules, nobody seemed to care. (Continued on next page.)