Taj Mahal

Have I ever told you about my trip to the Taj Mahal? I know what your thinking, how could I afford such a trip on my salary while supporting a family? You’re right I can’t, neither could the movie company. The movie production company originally planned on filming on a back lot in Hollywood, but we convinced them we could build them a much better set for less money. They accepted our offer.

We Woodpilers like to collect the most unusual, odd and exotic odds and ends. (We are natural born hoarders, its in our genes.) We dug into our vast subterranean warehouse. An old Christmas cookie tin and giant outdoor Christmas bulb suddenly became the Taj Mahal. A leaky tea pot that never whistled became a magic lamp. By now, you have probably googled the Taj and are shaking your head, no way could our set look the like the real thing. You would once again be correct. The tin can that serves as part of the building has gingerbread men and candy canes printed on it. The movie producers absolutely loved it. It is fit perfectly with their “Late Night Show” style humor.

When we signed the contract no one read the 53 pages of fine print. Turns out, we also agreed to supply the special effects for the movie. The script called for a magic carpet which flies. Lucky for us, when we were building the set, we found a light weight  bamboo carpet. The set crew had a hard time with it because it literary kept trying to “fly away” in the breeze. We had to hold it down with a couple logs from the woodpile. What started off as an annoying problem turned into our saving grace. We installed a couple industrial fans on set and poof we had instant low budget special effects magic flying carpet.

Moving the Christmas bulb onto the top of the cookie tin was a Herculean task.

Hey we have problem, this thing is leaning to one side and sliding off the log

Okay, I will push it back into the right place.

 

 

Lets use these sunflower shells to level it.

 

After all that work, the movie director (sitting on the log to the right) loved our Taj but said we needed to move it three inches to the left to take better advantage of the natural lighting. 

 The magic carpet kept fly away. We tried to weigh it down first with sunflower seeds but then carpet and our seeds started to take off!

 I quickly jumped on top of it to keep on the ground …

… but that didn’t work either and I started to become airborne!

My cousin Vinnie held it down and prevented me from being whisked away to the Land of Oz. 

We rolled two logs on the carpet to keep it in place. Then I started adding the props like the snake charmer basket. I heard something ... is there a live snake inside of this???? I heard the old phrase “curiosity killed the cat.” I not going to look inside, no way.

Look a magic lamp, I'm going to rub it. What could possibly go wrong?

 

That never happens in the fairy tales. The lamp just vanished when I rubbed it. What a disappointment. I wish I knew where that “lamp” disappeared to?

POOF! Yikes! There are swirling colors all around me. Wait a second, it is beginning to clear, incredible I can see the real Taj Mahal in the distance.

So, that is how I took a trip to see the Taj Mahal.