cash ebb reupdate

muppets became sesame street and then turned into nothing at all.
$0.00

looks like i might have a monday night edit loading session coming up though. that may be some money. probably not.

i've officially re-retired from the coat room, turning down tonight's offer to handle the banana republic coats of this evening's new jersey drunkards.

POSITIVE THINGS

comedy central meeting was SO GOOD. they will maybe give me money to make one of my ridiculous shows. now to actually write them. i'm just worried that i'm not funny, but anyone willing to open a pitch meeting with a reality show where people portray animals has to be at least a little bit funny, right?

the burger people are flying up from tennessee next week to hopefully fork over the cash for our majestic and thrilling show on eating said americana.

showtime is seeing us this week about our adoption epic. a second meeting is only a good thing and so...

now i just have to write the dead people thing for them by monday morning and write really funny things for the ha-ha channel at the same time.

"...and then she died, the fourth in her family to succumb to an astrocytoma brain tumor."
"Right, but then the pig-girl knocked over the trough and chicken-boy had a hissy fit. They lost the event and Tracy Morgan was fucking pissed. He slapped himself and then, staring at pig-girl, pointed to his own face and said, 'That was you, in my mind.'"

see. not funny.

and shit, i forgot all about mexico. i have to write that too.

but i did dance on wednesday, have a fun dinner with my dad on thursday, ride my skateboard on friday, and see my friend's movie premiere at the tribeca fest on tuesday. i shook david cox-arquette's hand even though he was sporting a faux-hawk.

i'm certainly not johnny...

i'm straight.

i saw jonathan richman play to a mid-size house in athens georgia last year. i love him. and my friend lisa turned me on to him and the lovers at some point. she's amazing for that. and also for the sublime singalong we had in my car and other things like santa barbara and how we miraculously and somewhat disappointingly never slept together.

i also kinda knocked her out once. she was the second girl i did that to.

my parents helped out with the aftermath.

i'm straight

i'm certainly, well, maybe i'm stoned. i'm not "straight" in the traditional jonathan richman, modern lovers way, but if i'm at a party, and you're a boy, and you start making out with me, and i say, "I'm straight," it means that i'm not gay.

that's all.

that's it.

how difficult is that to understand.

also, Comedy Central loves me.

money!

coat check 911

i got a call at around 10 o'clock last night. surprise coat check!

got 75 dollars.

slept late this morning.

showed up an hour late to the edit room.

doesn't matter though, i just won't bill them for the hour i was sleeping.

coat check again tonight. awesome.

cash ebb update

muppets isn't muppets, it's sesame street. not bad, when compared to the fact that the shoot is now only one day. let's all wave goodbye to some more income that just vaporized.

i did have my first power lunch today. the figure "six-hundred billion dollars" was bandied about like a little beach ball at a bon jovi concert (daytime, 1989, giants stadium). all we want's a million of it. trying our best to get it. then, if we do, i'll probably get a thousand dollars or something.

in the making-up-for-expected-income-disappearing category, i will make my triumphant return to the coat check closet at the old H.E. on saturday night. i had retired, but only because i had grown to hate it. so now, for one night only, the reunion show will be broadcast live on the closed-circuit surveillance system directly into bob's office. maybe i'll do that thing where i pretend to recognize everyone who walks in.

let's be honest-part 1 (1980 through 1997)

THIS IS THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF ME CHRONICLING MY EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

i am not qualified to do most of the things that i do for money.

when i look back on it, it seems that i used to be, but with time and the aspiration to do intersting work i have recently found myself in situations i am ill-prepared for.

so, starting from the beginning, lemme splain:

Job: paperboy, Glen Rock, NJ - time unknown, possibly late eighties
Expected Skills/Knowledge/Training/Attributes: none, but maybe fear or lonliness helps
Actual Qualifications: a bicycle, helpful parents
The Experience: I tire of this quickly, but not before experimentally opening the door of a car in the driveway of a house I am delivering to. I take nothing, but am shamed by my curiosity a little. But not too much. I quit after a very short time because the job is terrible and I am paid, I think, nothing.
Result: I do not work again for many years.

Job: intern at Robert Cole Productions, Inc., New York, NY – summer 1994
Expected Skills/Knowledge/Training/Attributes: successful completion of middle school
Actual Qualifications: graduated the eighth grade (dean’s list)
The Experience: I answer phones, print things, type things, mail things. I also commute.
Result: I gain a respect for my father of a type that I never could have without seeing him in his work. I leave this job to attend High School.

Job: intern at Boneau/Bryan-Brown PR, New York, NY – summers of 1995 and 1996
Expected Skills/Knowledge/Training/Attributes: successful completion of the ninth grade (and then the tenth), the word of my father
Actual Qualifications: both of ‘em (all three)
The Experience: My first immersion in a heavily gay atmosphere. Do phones and copies and put together press kits and mailings. I cover reception when Jamie goes to lunch and one woman tells me that I have a great voice and should be on the radio. I ask her if she knows anyone. She tells me no, she works in television. I rush to drop the mail at 5 everyday and do local messenger duty, which I love (it being summer in Times Square and absolutely chock full of all that humanity has to offer in terms of tourism and capitalism). I am hit by a livery cab while riding my skateboard across 48th street and end up laying on the hood, unhurt. The terrified driver grabs my shirt and shakes the living shit out of me jabbering incoherently and clearly shaken by the momentary thought that he had killed me or whatever. The whole thing is entirely my fault.
Result: I enjoy the office environment, even when the people have their not infrequent disco freak-outs. I become chummy with people twice my age. At the end of each summer I leave to attend High School.

Job: barista at Nova Coffee Shop, Ramsey, NJ – fall 1997
Expected Skills/Knowledge/Training/Attributes: presentable appearance and attitude, the ability to communicate with customers and operate coffee machines, some math
Actual Qualifications: all that, plus no fear of being burnt and an innate ability to steam up some pretty sweet milk foam.
The Experience: My first customer service position. I am very good at this job. I enjoy interacting with the customers and I make delicious espresso drinks. I eat a ton of freshly baked goods of all types.
Result: After two months I leave for Tahoe. This has been my plan all along, but I lied in order to get the job and had told the owner that I was planning on staying indefinitely. This is the first time that I lie in order to procure employment. It will not be the last.

Job: clerk at Video Maniacs, South Lake Tahoe, CA – mid-November to mid-December 1997
Expected Skills/Knowledge/Training/Attributes: a basic grasp of computers, a possible interest in movies, not a thief, some math
Actual Qualifications: totally overqualified for this one
The Experience: Incredible. I am away from my parents for the first time in my life, I can do whatever I want, and I get a sweet job at a video store working the four to midnight shift so I can snowboard every day before work. One day, the old married guy I work with on some nights brings in a twelve-pack of beer and we drink it sitting at the counter, watching movies. We smoke pot in the store. A Blockbuster is across the street so there isn’t all that much traffic at the old VM. No one really to witness our transgressions or really bother us at all. Another night I compose my college application essay, which I send to both Brown and NYU. One university accepts me. The boss is this amazing little mountain man with a bushy mustache and, I think, only plaid shirts. He has a nice down vest and a manner of speaking which listening to amounts basically to how it must feel to be tethered to a pole in the middle of a dusty yard with old dolls and action figures in the corners of the fence and the whole time you’re the dog, and you’re thinking, “Why the tethering when there’s this fence here?” Anyway he is a moron and is actually the interim manager, hired by the bank that took over ownership of the store when the original owners went bankrupt. He is embezzling quite a high percentage of our daily take. I never catch on. We rent out pornos by the truckload, and I sometimes feel grossed out touching the tapes even though they have amazing names. I get into an argument with a man over late fees. Later that night his wife convinces him to call me at the store and apologize. I sleep late on a day I am covering this girls shift and no one is there to open the store. When I get there, I see people waiting outside. They are not happy with me, but I ignore everything they say and go about the business of opening the store.
Result: Someone buys the store and we are all laid off, promised it is only temporary, and never contacted again. I never receive my final paycheck for somewhere in the neighborhood of $84. I am broke. My parents fly me home for Christmas. I throw up at two friends’ houses on consecutive days. Neither makes the slightest mess.

not attached

i am not. except maybe to some ideas. and my career goals – to own a boat and a plane. or some kind of new hybrid they should invent instead of spending all this energy and these resources on space exploration, which, let’s face it, should really only be considered by children and the impaired.

the designer

according to someone on the internet, the designer i'll be bartending for has

"a sculptural approach to construction. Her clothes can be configured and worn several different ways, assembling various panels of the same style differently to create new garments. The result is a collection that has a soft feminine beauty yet structure and strength."

a perfect match, since that's exactly how i define my bartending style.

cash flow update

first, what had initially been planned as my triumphant return to making pretty good money for doing pretty much nothing at all, well, it transmogrified from two days of "work" to two hours. that's exactly 10% of the money i'd expected to make and approximately 530% more time to spend money. MTV shoulders the blame. alone.

but then the tide turned. the brackish, polluted, east river tide that i sometimes imagine being able to smell through the diesel exhaust that cakes my windows and my alveoli, it turned.

i made a quick 40 bucks helping roommate-timmy remove scaffolding from inside his boss's loft. instead of appreciating the easy cash (only about a half hour of work), i mostly just thought about how nice it would be to live in a place that needed scaffolding in place for work to be done on it - on the inside.

and now i've shaved my beard.

i did it to make money. two hours from now i will be bartending some sort of fashion/magazine party. and i need to look pretty. so, finally, i was given enough of a catalyst to go and remove my fur. it was starting to make my head hot. but back to the point, it's $150 plus tips for three-ish hours of work, so...

and i swear, hamburgers and lightning bolts will pay off in the end.

hamburgers and lightning bolts.

and muppets.

sun struck

it sure was nice this weekend. how's that for profundity?

the work on wednesday night turned out to produce a completely debilitating headache and so when i got home i took my last percocet and then slept until almost thursday night. i've taken to turning off my phone when i go to bed so no one can wake me up and ask me to do work. it's one of the best business decisions i've made in my entire career.

that night started good worldly and proceded to a sort of LES hopscotch of parties, leading ulimately to nothing noteworthy.

keep reading. my life is captivating.

friday was jill's birthday and it was preordained to pale in comparison to her great stripping/car-surfing/bottle-smashing birthday of yesteryear. we ended up wallowing in secretafterpartyville, where everyone seemed to be having more fun than us, even though we had a chauffeur and were probably the only ones who had accidentally first gone to the bulgarian disco around the corner.

then i walked home in the sunrise and it was quiet and i could hear all of the majestic pigeons chirping and i took a picture with my phone.

saturday then turned out glowing and drenched in sunlight and margarita juices and rooftops and crazy people. plus, i was reunited with my erstwhile first mate, joel, who never did get his sea legs out there on the open ocean, but within the confines of this dark metropolis he sauntered about like a man. that's it. a man.

SOME CONSISTENCY

on sunday afternoon i got a call for a job booming a shoot next week, for a delicious $300 a day. and it's the fucking muppets! damn, my life is hard. making it even more difficult is how a previously dead pitch that i wrote, which included lightning and hamburgers, has been revived as a film. a film with a million dollar budget. will it actually happen? will i see penny one even if it does? oh the trials of this hard life.

not to be outdone by this muppet magic or a potentially ridiculous film, my sunday was beautiful. i can't even bring myself to rehash or critique it.

some recommendations though:

walking
chinatown
boat rides
signing petitions
prune's bloody maries
the smell of las vegas
believing in canned-food-phenomena
spending an entire distraction-free day with someone you love.

i was wrong

that was some serious miscalculating on my part. sure, i'm able to type this now, and i have no work to do for the next ten minutes, but dude, seriously... 45 tapes?

this means i have to insert and eject 45 tapes. that's like a total of a minute of work right there. then i have to type clip names and times into the computer. at three minutes per tape, we're talking over two hours there. sure, i'll be here for ten hours and so, again with the mental calculations, it's almost a hundred dollars an hour of actual work, but that's shit compared to last week.

on top of all that thouogh, amy said it would only be a couple of tapes and it's melissa's birthday bash tonight and now i don't think i'll be able to get nearly as drunk as i expected. or at all. also didn't bring weed or anything because i figured it was an in and out thing.

maybe i can score some from one of the guys hanging out in front of Lace.

BRAVO!

so i pitched an idea in the meeting today. The Network Lady seemed to like it. The Network Lady then proceeded to muse that it was probably “too gay for Bravo.” WTF?

at the end of the meeting she gave us a bunch of assignments that would help our chances of getting one of our shows greenlit there. i hate assignments. between my erratic schedule of strategy meetings, story conferences, pitch meetings, brain-stormings, internet research, and aimless cavorting, there’s been precious little time for completing assignments.

and this is all not to mention my new ideas about sin and animal people (not really my idea). time-consuming.

i watched a program on The History Channel today. i learned the origins of the words bootlegger, and moonshine, the saying “the real McCoy,” and the phrase “monkey rum,” along with its origin. had i been taking notes, i would be smarter. i plan on watching historical documentaries and taking notes in the future. maybe that’s what i can write about on this site. i can be an educator.

now, after a nap, after the show, after the pitch meeting, i sit in the lobby of my magic computer gig (three out of five business days isn’t bad for a new freelancer) waiting for the tapes i’ll be loading into the computer.

lazy nights.

$25 an hour.

hundreds of stock music CDs

that's what we have here. that's what i'm putting into the computer to be used for this show.

i think if i was a musician i'd want to sucker-punch one of these stock musicians when i saw him one night at some bar where musicians hang out.

it's all about how i make money

i was just sitting and staring at the wall, ruminating on some unbelievably convoluted shit, for probably 5 minutes or maybe, and less probably, 45. this after just returning from smoking a joint, sitting down, standing up, getting a drink, looking at the computer screen, and realizing that i was still not needed here. then the catatonia.

when i came out of my daze i was worried that i wasn't doing my job. i looked at the screen again and remembered that i'm getting paid to do nothing. i put on some music.

TWO THINGS I REALIZED:
ABOUT FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO
(in order)

1. i am not the only one here.

2. my choice to smoke a joint on the street coincides perfectly with all of friday night broadway being let out of their theatres.

as to 1 - so what? and maybe they like my singing voice. and they offered me pizza. and they're the ones making VH1's 50 Least Hip-Hop Moments.

and 2 - well, again, so what? it's still new york, right?

ooo, i just worked again. 79 seconds. i timed it. so basically i'm making $500/hour of actual work. believe me. i did the math.

i'm going to turn all the lights off now and see how that treats me.

still collecting money for doing nothing - plus... FREE NACHOS!

so i'm back at it again. this time i'm importing CD audio and converting the sample rate. for each hour of time here, i spend about two minutes on the job. and that is exactly what is expected. if the boss walks in and i'm on the phone, yammering about my drunken misadventures, i just wave and he waves back. if he sees me making a paper airplane, he comments on its design and my execution. of course none of this actually happens because i'm the only person here. i have an entire floor of the Brill Building to myself, some pretty sweet amps, a high-def TV, a bunch of leather couches, decent nachos, and one huge problem: the adapter cable that hooked my computer's music up to the mixer is missing! who moved it? what's the deal? where the beats at?

and now, a half hour later, i've got one.

and now i will rock.

and that whole text message transcription thing, that might happen too.

i was kinda-like surprised when they attacked me

it's been a good run and now i'm so exhausted that it's perfect that a call came to my phone at 5 this afternoon, inviting me to sit in an edit room tonight (a skill position) and do almost nothing at all (drag a media folder to another drive and wait an hour or so for it to copy and then do another one, and then another...) for $25 an hour. A JOB?! FOR A WHOLE DAY!? so basically i'm already a paid blogger. i mean, i'm on the clock right now and i'm doing exactly what i'm supposed to be. plus, i hooked my computer into the mixing board and i'm pumping out the jams like you wouldn't believe. plus i'm writing about it. fun!?

THE SUNDANCE CHANNEL LOVES US. or at least that was the impression we all got. way less into death than showtime was, but way more into, like, filmmaking. i was worried the residual booze oozing from my furry body would ruin our chances, but aparently two consecutive nights of binge relaxing only strengthened my impression on the network brass.

and so but i'm exhausted. and this is fine, but it keeps me from writing about all the events i wanted to. or maybe that's because i can't remember them?

had dinner with my ex-girlfriend, alissa, on tuesday night and it was fun. so drunk. ate duck. second desert of the day. first jarmusch sighting of the week. tenth free cocktail of the day. then i met my second pair of canadian girls and they proceeded to come home with me but, alas, i passed out. six am.

now wednesday, canadian girls texting me incessantly. next entry will be a text message transcription. prepping for today's sundance meeting. free wine. weed pipe and ANTM hilarity with the roomies and the meg(h)ans. bjork's birthday party. megan's birthday party. wait. this was all after...

MEGHAN GOT BIT BY A DOG!

A WIENER DOG!

that's right, it was awesome. i was pretty stoned still, and wiener was sitting in timmy's lap next to me, and meghan was leaving. she went to pet the wiener and it bit her on that fleshy spot right between her thumb and forefinger. she freaked the fuck out. i immediately assumed overreaction.

then i saw the blood trail.

we methodically dealt with the situation - perfectly, i'd say. aside from maybe an inadequate scolding of the beast. there was a hypothesis floating around that it wasn't so much his fault because her hand smelled too much like a hamburger.

meghan handled the whole thing like a goddamn mutant warrior. except how she kept saying 'i can see my guts.' i mean, it was her hand, so...

but it was a pretty rad vampiric double-puncture, and we all agreed sutures were necessary. timmy offered to perform the procedure. we opted instead for...

THE EMERGENCY ROOM!

i love hospitals. last time i was in one they gave me morphine and i talked about party time and my sunglasses and kept calling all the nurses 'babe' so, yeah.

this time i got to sit near a piss-soaked man named Dr. Birdman. see why i love hospitals?

meghan was fine. dr. birdman, on the other hand, was not. while meghan, timmy, and i mixed and drank vodka/cokes in the waiting room and triage, the good doctor was busy asking what had happened to his ladyfriend, asking no one in particular who they were, threatening to drop wisdom, but mostly just dropping his pants, which weren't even his pants, which were urine-saturated and taken away by a kindly nurse and replaced with the scrubs-type. his butt-crack was hanging out with us, just about as coherent as the doctor himself.

"i was kinda like surprised when they attacked me... you know what i'm gonna give 'em..." he strikes a kung-fu stance "...power of the lord... i remember now, and it DID happen... i wanna tell you somethin' 'bout the devil. she pops up."

he claimed to want his pants back, but i tried telling him it was a bad idea. he insisted. this limping girl asked him if he had his wallet in the pants or something. "i don't have a wallet!"

meghan got no stitches, bjork drank all the vodka, i made out with no one, and by the time i leave this gig at around 6am, i will have been awake for only 18 hours, but working for 17 of them.

things went great at showtime today

now prepping for sundance channel. wasted. no typing for me.

but how about this one, via Piet:




so?

pitching over, soused

i don't know how long this is going to last. like this as in this post and this as in "blogging." i'm trying though. problem is, i was out till all hours drinking while watching folk music at sam's party, drinking while watching a goth beauty pageant at beauty bar, and drinking while not dancing and flirting with an "older woman" at the smiths and morissey night.

then an atm didn't give me the money i asked for but told my bank that it did.

then i was annoyed.

today we prepped for the first of our BIG MEETINGS! we're so hot right now. tomorrow will be my second ever pitch meeting with a tv network and if it goes anything like the last one, i'll sell a show. i just hope they're into the fact that i haven't shaved in three weeks or cut my hair in nine months. and i drink too much. i like pills. i'm getting back into the weed thing. well, it's all very hip right now and almost certainly impressive. i was warned though that this showtime lady can be pretty intimidating. i will charm her with my beard. henry's the pro anyway, so all i need to do is be young and hip.

no pressure. i mean i already don't have a job, so the worst that can happen is that i still won't.


oh. and i have to learn to look around before making fun of people who i know are in the same room as me.

big day

the picture thing kind of worked. it showed up. the link is active. the text formatting though, why like that? regardless, far more successful than anticipated and also since the daylight savings switch was going on, i didn't technically stay up all night because all night didn't even exist.

is this DST thing a fucking nightmare for staisticians or what? all the paperwork.

today was huge. i had composed a list of actions and was ready to attack. the list included 15 actions and 2 sub-actions.

i attempted seven-and-a-half actions, completing four-and-a-half. nothing notable. sub-actions pending.

i got april fooled the other day like you wouldn't even believe. unacceptable. i can't stop thinking about it. crying. hospital. accusations. maliciousness. i will explain later when i'm not so hungry, but a photo clue, maybe?

i want to try a picture now

this is a still from a thing i did by accident last week.  i've
attempted to link to it, but have no idea if i was successful.  if
it's anything like having a job or a girlfriend, i will probably have
failed.

that's right. i am

who would've guessed it? probably a few people.

anyway, i'm just doing it in the hopes that i actually do it so i can get a book deal.

i feel like exercising tomorrow. i don't really know what that means. maybe i'll have the same feeling tomorrow, in which case i might exercise the day after. but what can i do for exercise?