Chris - The Amazing Donaldson

    Before Chris joined our family, he grew up mostly in Santa Barbara. He went to Dunn School, graduated from UCSD and is an avid beach volleyball player and bike enthusiast. When Chris met Lisa he was living in a beer infested apartment in Venice with a surfboard as a countertop, a smelly couch and a couple of scraggly roommates. He and Lisa met on the set of a Daihatsu commercial shooting at 3:00AM. Chris was art department and Lisa was a production assistant at the time. I got her the job.

   

    The next day, Chris asked her out, but said he’d have to ditch his brother, Cameron, who was visiting. Lisa insisted the four of us go out. We all piled in his toilet of a Ford Fiesta™ and went to the movie “Chances Are”. After that, they dated for a couple of years, broke up a couple of times and finally tied the knot at Saint Monica’s with Cam and I by their side. No one’s sure, but we think Chris wore clean socks.
Their black tie wedding reception was on Santa Monica pier with tables set up around the carousel. My dad’s band played. Lisa was very pleased because she got a screaming bargain. The historic site was only $200.00 and she served wine she bought at Trader Joes™.

   

    Not too long after they got married, Lisa decided she was not satisfied with film work anymore. It would be too hard to raise a family, by this time she was second assistant camera, but felt she should go back to school. She considered nursing, but decided to realize her life long dream of becoming a veterinarian. (When we were little she wanted to be a bunny) Chris was completely supportive; he got one of his (formerly scraggly now respectable) roommates back again and kept their financial boat afloat. The amazing thing about Chris is his discipline. He can reinvent himself at any time. After their first daughter, Quinn was born he quit the film industry and moved to Colorado where Lisa was in vet school. He got a job and turned it into a career move. He purchased a Dip’n’Dots™ franchise, wrote a novel, went into advertising, started a company and got a patent on an Internet technology. He sold that property and worked on Toyota’s Intranet for a while.  He’s written several screenplays, and strangely, he even got Daniel Boone Day established in Kentucky. Etcetera.

   

  When Lisa was getting ready to walk down the aisle she turned to me and said, “You know you can marry more money in 15 minutes than you can make in a life time. It’s too late for me.” She later said she dreamed that one day she’d tell people she married Chris for his money and they wouldn’t think it was a joke. I think they’re close.

(Chris as Morticia - on left and Lisa as Gomez)

    Don’t get me wrong, Chris can be annoying, he loves to argue, he’s extremely direct, he’s becoming a neat-nick like his father, every Christmas he expects an Enquirer™ in his stocking and he still wears dirty socks. But he is funny, laughs easily and always wrestles with the kids under the name “MoJo-Cro-Cro”