I always kind of knew I wouldn't be at Western for four years. I was leaving Kalamazoo knowing full well that I wasn't coming back. It was hard. This was before emotional goodbyes became second nature to me. To really drive home the fact that I didn't belong at WMU anymore, my roommates threw a party on my last night in town. Here's the thing...it was a birthday party for our neighbor. It wasn't until much later that the "/Steve's going away" was hastily tagged onto the end of "Jason's Birthday." That's right, I got second billing in my own house. But that's neither here nor there. My farewell to the 'Zoo was already covered in Chapter 10.
I don’t know if it was a subconscious fear of leaving or just plain laziness, but I really took my time on the packing front. We were supposed to leave for the airport at 4am, and I didn’t even make an attempt to get my stuff together until 2. It’s one thing to wait until the last minute to pack before a trip, but I wasn’t going on some week-long getaway. I was moving. For reals. Here’s the thing about moving, though. You can’t fit your life in two suitcases. Hell, you can barely fit your GameCube. Luckily, these apartments we were living in were fully furnished and came with all of that stuff. That’s right, Disney College Program students got to have
“the opportunity to meet and live with people from all over the country, as well as the world, within the housing complexes. These complexes are diverse in their amenities and floor plans. Each offers the opportunity to meet fellow participants and create a sense of home in a comfortable living community.”
You hear that? Just like home!
And it’s true. You definitely feel at home, especially if your home life consists of:
1. No overnight visitors.
2. Getting written up by security for leaving your patio door open.
3. Scabies.
When I was assigned an apartment, the kind lady asked me if I minded living with people who had arrived shortly before I did, and would move out shortly before me. Thinking this meant they got there a week earlier, I happily agreed and signed my contract for 11103 Chatham Manor Blvd. What a terrible address. All of those 1's. So I show up and move into the new place. Turns out that when the kind lady said the people had arrived "shortly" before me, she meant six months. I can see how six months can be considered a short period of time if you're engaged to be married or are dying of a terminal illness, but when your entire College Program experience is eight months, that's quite a different perspective. Turns out that Phil, Robby, Jeremy, Joe, and Rob had already completed their programs and extended until May. Whereas every other new CP was out exploring Walt Disney World with their new roomies, I sat alone on the couch while mine were at work. That simple act is probably what garnered me the nickname "Guy on Couch" for the first month.
I didn't have a lot of good friends in Florida. I just didn't fit in. I wasn't a big enough badass to run with the renegades, but I was too cool for the Disney freaks. One night, on the bus ride home from Magic Kingdom (yes, I went to Magic Kingdom alone. Ridiculous), I overheard a girl sitting on the bus behind me. She was one of our new Rescue Rangers. I turned around and introduced myself. Her name was Kara. The first thing she said to me was "I haven't started yet, but I hear our boss is a bitch." With those few words, I immediately knew I needed someone like Kara in my life to make it through the second half of the program. Kara and I wasted no time in talking smack about everyone and everything. I taught her a lot of important lessons, like how if you re supposed to be bussing tables at Electric Umbrella, you can just go upstairs and hide and no one will know you're gone. We also had fun playing with astronaut blankets at the Mission:Space gift shop, where our two favorite managers, Lehlee and Joey, worked. Lehlee was a sultry Asian fox who, much like a speeding locomotive, you did now want to get in the way of. This is an actual conversation I had with her:
Steve: I can't wear these sunglasses anymore. They're hurting my eyes.
Lehlee: How many you sell?
Steve: None. I can't see anything and I'm feeling nauseous.
Lehlee: You sell three more.
Joey, on the other hand, was certainly a nice guy. But bless his heart, he had a short-term memory disorder. That's really the only explanation I could give for why every time I worked with Joey, which was frequently, he felt the need to introduce himself and comment on how we had never met. The only time Joey actually did remember me was when he felt inclined to scold me for leaving Test Track one day without asking. Sure, the ride was down. Sure, it was twenty minutes after the time I was scheduled to leave. I'm not exactly sure what purpose I would have served by staying. Maybe Joey was just upset he didn't get to introduce himself for the 14th time that day.
Kara and I had a lot in common, so she called me her Twinkie. I found this nickname to be really gay, so I called her Twigger in return. One of the most memorable moments of the entire program was probably one of my last weekends there. Hurricane Charley. It was me, Kara, and Robby (whom Kara nicknamed "Divalicious"). We watched the news, witnessed trees getting uprooted from the ground right outside our window, and answered phone calls from our worried mothers every fifteen minutes. We were safe, warm, and cozy, until we saw people actually running outside in the middle of it all and thought "That looks fun!" And off we went. Twigger got hit by a falling gutter, which was pretty funny. The rain was coming down so hard it hurt, and the second you stepped out into it you were drenched. We ran around, had our fun, then decided to go back inside. After drying off, we settled back down, all warm and cozy. Until we got bored and decided to go run around outside again. By the end of the night, we had changed our clothes about 5 times (because who wants to put on wet drawers
I lived in Chatham Square Apartments. The other complex was Vista Way. Chatham was nicknamed "Cheat-on-him," while Vista was affectionately dubbed "Vista Lay." Yes, those Disney College Program kids are known to get a little wild. Especially on Thursday nights, when they get into Pleasure Island for free. Legend has it that the hot tub at Vista was even listed in Playboy as one of the best places for a college student to get laid. In general, I think the CP's (that's what we called ourselves) were divided into two groups of people. Hardcore-party-animal-sexaholics...and Mormons. There were a LOT of Mormons in Florida. Nice people. Smiley. And they love to watch "Friends." I wasn't a crazy partier (which is odd, considering the lifestyle I left in Kalamazoo), and I wasn't much of a Mormon either. This made my social life very difficult. I could either go out to dinner at Steak and Shake and be back home and in bed by 8:30pm, or I could go out to Jungle Jim's and watch other people drink, since I was 20.
Every Rescue Ranger had one quality or trait that they became notorious for. Emily always left early. Mary Beth showed up drunk in the morning. Greg couldn't work Sundays because of his Mormon beliefs/laziness. Everyone knew that I was the one who was constantly being put on "light duty" due to my ability to find new and innovative ways to mutilate my face to a point where it was so unsightly that I was asked not to interact with guests. The first time this occurred was when I was assigned to be the greeter at Mission:Space. Basically this job meant making sure kids were tall enough to ride, reciting the words "It's uses centrifugal forces to simulate an actual rocket launch," ad nauseam, and getting second degree burns on my face from standing in the Florida sun for eight hours. I got two days off from work for this one, and when I returned I was sent to a small desk in the corner of the administration offices with a stack of file folders and a label maker, which they had affectionately named Larry. That day consisted of labeling a file folders for eight hours straight and getting told by countless people that I should have worn sunscreen. Like I didn't know what sunscreen was. Surely, had I any knowledge of this miracle lotion I would have applied copious amounts all day! Alas, hindsight is always 20/20. Sunscreen, eh? That's new. Another women kept telling me to put aloe on my increasingly scabby cheeks. Wait...ALOE? ALOE FOR SUNBURN?! I was being overwhelmed with BRAND NEW INFORMATION!
The second head injury occurred on the 4th of July. After watching the fireworks at Epcot and consuming absolutely NO alcohol (the fact that I was stone cold sober makes me come off as an even bigger dumbass), we decided to have a piggyback race backstage. Rachel, a fellow Rescue Ranger, hopped on my back and we took off. Piggyback rides aren't usually dangerous, but when you're racing someone and it's dark out, the stakes are raised exponentially. I stepped down off of a curb and twisted my ankle. Rachel and I both flew forward onto the pavement, and she landed on my head. My first thought was "Oh God what if I just killed Rachel!?" My second thought was "Oh God I hit my head, what if I go retarded!?" After reading a book in fifth grade about a girl who fell off a horse and hit her head, I've always had a fear of sustaining a head injury and "going" retarded. Luckily, Rachel was alive and my mental health was just as good as it ever was, which doesn't say much, considering the fact that competed and fell in a piggyback race. Rachel had quite a gash across her arm, and my head was bleeding profusely. Everyone around us found the entire scene to be hilarious. Luckily we were behind the World Showcase, so all of the things being shouted at Rachel and me were in other languages. It was safe to assume that the fellow castmembers were laughing and shouting things like "Goodness! Are you okay?!" as opposed to something like "What a fucking dumbass!"
With a gash across my forehead, I was once again deemed unsuitable for the eyes of visitors. This time, I was introduced to Larry the labelmaker's close friend, Shelly the shredder. After a few hours of shredding files (I could pretend that they were top secret documents containing classified Disney information, but it was mostly just payroll), I was transferred to a different office, where I met Twigger. Twigger had thrown up in the garbage (or so she said), and requested to spend the rest of the day doing something other than custodial. Or maybe she purposely inhaled chemicals. Either way, she hated custodial and would rather hear her first born child's death rattle than clean up a "protein spill." The two of us were assigned to the most important duty on all of Disney property. Sharpening pencils. This wasn't really a two person job, considering the fact that despite the thousands of pencils, there was only one sharpener. Not to mention the fact that after sharpening three pencils, the piece of garbage would overheat. You'd have to wait about fifteen minutes for it to work again. Two hours and fifteen pencils later, we went back to deployment and begged them to let us go home. Mind-numbing busy work, although quite Zen, is not worth six bucks an hour.
I showed up in January with about 40 other new Rescue Rangers. About a dozen of us made it to the end and graduated.
How's that for a hook?
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Stories that sucked at the time but are now funny when I tell them.
I don't write a lot because I only want to post entertaining stories. Sure, I could sign on every day and tell you I bought Aquafresh at the dollar store or that after running my ass sweat turned the white to pink on my checkered boxers, but I'd rather hold off on that stuff and only record moments and anecdotes that mean something. In the words of the Huckabee's girl, "It's not quantity not quality!"
With that said, there is a new Walgreens in North Hollywood that I will never be going to again. On Friday, they called me to tell me that they were out of my prescription and the soonest I could get it would be Monday. Sure sure, that's fine. I can wait. Patience is a virtue, you know, and since I'm not modest, honest, friendly, or good looking, the only way I can get people to like me is if I really hold my fucking horses. So I'm-a gon' wait till Monday. No biggie. Now, Monday after work, I head right over to the CBS Radford lot because Virginia Madsen is meeting with all of the Semester in LA students from 2007 and giving us a little lecture and Q&A time. Pretty cool, huh? She was very nice, totally down to earth, and somewhat inspiring. I use the word "somewhat" because after an entire five-week intensive course of people saying "you can do what you put your mind to! Don't give up! Stay true to yourself and good things will happen!" the whole spiel starts to lose its luster, even if the person saying it did star in "Firewall" with Harrison Ford. All the same, Virginia was very cool. And she looked great.
*Small side note before getting back to the Walgreens story. Consider this a tangent of a tangent, if you will. I was unsure of using the word "luster" and so I was going to check a thesaurus and see if I could find something better, but Stephen King says that any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. Remember that.
Monday night's event doesn't bring about any concern, since it ends at nine and the Walgreens website clearly states that their pharmacy closes at ten. I get there at 9:05, and guess what? Closed. Closedy closed closed closed. I'm pretty perturbed about this. On any other day I would have shrugged, taken a chocolate tootsie pop out of my car's CD holder and sang along to "Oil and Water" by Incubus on the way home, but not this day. You see, Monday morning started off with me taking over two hours to get to work, due to a horrible accident on the 101. Not only was the 101 a parking lot, but every street within two miles was just as bad. I was still walking distance from my apartment 45 minutes after leaving. As I tried to figure out who to bother with my patented "I'm stuck in traffic, entertain me" phone calls, I thought to myself how I really hoped that this terrible morning was not going to be an indicator of the rest of my day. Ohhh, but it was. When I finally got in, I had to go pick up a cake from some dog bakery in Pasadena for our accountant's dog's 1st birthday party, as well as cupcakes for the people to eat. I go get the cake, and stop at PetCo for some birthday presents for Rambo, and then head up the street to the cupcake bakery. Turns out the cupcake bakery only takes Visa and Mastercard. The corporate card we use is American Express. I had to go all the way back to the office, trade the card for petty cash, and go all the way back out to Pasadena. For cupcakes. For a dog's birthday party. The rest of my day was filled with similar debacles that I don't feel like getting into on account of I have a lot more stuff to cover and I still haven't said why I hate this Walgreens.
I hate this Walgreens because when I returned the next morning, half of the parking lot was being taken up by a giant tent, podium, and buffet tables. This was the grand opening ceremony. Are you fucking kidding me?! A grand opening for a Walgreens?! What the fuck is there to celebrate? That this is the sixth one in a two mile radius? Who the fuck needs to speak? Who would even attend this? Am I really going to have to put off getting my prescription a third time because there is nowhere to park due to an OPENING DAY CEREMONY FOR A FUCKING WALGREENS? And the store was open the night before! It wasn't even opening day! From now on, I only shop at pharmacies that don't celebrate.
In case you were wondering, I double parked and ran in. Due to my job, double parking has become second nature. Sometimes I have to deliver something to a place with no lot and nothing available on the street. When that happens, I think that it is my God-given right to park wherever I need to in order to get my job done. As if the police or meter maids are going to accept Manifest Destiny as an acceptable excuse and let me go without a ticket.
Today my boss asked if I wanted to go on a run to Venice to pick up some props for one of our shows. I didn't mine. My Focus gets such good mileage that when they reimburse me for gas money, I actually make a decent profit, so I never turn down a run, especially if it's going to kill a lot of time. A little while later, she receives an email with my instructions. I will now repeat to you exactly what I was told to do in order to procure the props, which were old vinyl records.
"...his place is unlocked. you have to jump the fence via the alley. The alley is behind the house."
So, yeah. I'm basically going to this guys house, jumping a fence and walking right inside. Sounds crazy, right? That's not even the half of it. A few things that they could have mentioned before sending me off to break and enter...
-The guy whose place I'm breaking into? It's not even his property. He rents the guest house. That means I'm climbing into some stranger's yard. This makes me slightly uncomfortable.
-The fence I'm supposed to climb is not some hip-length chain link fence that you can easily jump over. It is taller than me and although it is still chain link, it has wooden boards up against it. These boards were probably attached in order to keep people from seeing into their yard...or...I dunno....CLIMBING?
-I laugh it off and decide to just go for it and climb the damn 7 foot tall fence into a complete strangers back yard. I enter this guys house and find the vinyls. Three tall stacks of them. Now, how the HELL am I supposed to get 100 records over this fence? I ended up sliding them (two by two) through the small crack between the (locked) gate and the fence. It was not ideal. When I got them all through and climbed to the other side, I had to go through and put them all back together into piles.
I finally get back to the office with all of these stupid vinyls, and the guy who was supposed to take them to Ventura has already left.
I wasn't pissed though. It was fun.
With that said, there is a new Walgreens in North Hollywood that I will never be going to again. On Friday, they called me to tell me that they were out of my prescription and the soonest I could get it would be Monday. Sure sure, that's fine. I can wait. Patience is a virtue, you know, and since I'm not modest, honest, friendly, or good looking, the only way I can get people to like me is if I really hold my fucking horses. So I'm-a gon' wait till Monday. No biggie. Now, Monday after work, I head right over to the CBS Radford lot because Virginia Madsen is meeting with all of the Semester in LA students from 2007 and giving us a little lecture and Q&A time. Pretty cool, huh? She was very nice, totally down to earth, and somewhat inspiring. I use the word "somewhat" because after an entire five-week intensive course of people saying "you can do what you put your mind to! Don't give up! Stay true to yourself and good things will happen!" the whole spiel starts to lose its luster, even if the person saying it did star in "Firewall" with Harrison Ford. All the same, Virginia was very cool. And she looked great.
*Small side note before getting back to the Walgreens story. Consider this a tangent of a tangent, if you will. I was unsure of using the word "luster" and so I was going to check a thesaurus and see if I could find something better, but Stephen King says that any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. Remember that.
Monday night's event doesn't bring about any concern, since it ends at nine and the Walgreens website clearly states that their pharmacy closes at ten. I get there at 9:05, and guess what? Closed. Closedy closed closed closed. I'm pretty perturbed about this. On any other day I would have shrugged, taken a chocolate tootsie pop out of my car's CD holder and sang along to "Oil and Water" by Incubus on the way home, but not this day. You see, Monday morning started off with me taking over two hours to get to work, due to a horrible accident on the 101. Not only was the 101 a parking lot, but every street within two miles was just as bad. I was still walking distance from my apartment 45 minutes after leaving. As I tried to figure out who to bother with my patented "I'm stuck in traffic, entertain me" phone calls, I thought to myself how I really hoped that this terrible morning was not going to be an indicator of the rest of my day. Ohhh, but it was. When I finally got in, I had to go pick up a cake from some dog bakery in Pasadena for our accountant's dog's 1st birthday party, as well as cupcakes for the people to eat. I go get the cake, and stop at PetCo for some birthday presents for Rambo, and then head up the street to the cupcake bakery. Turns out the cupcake bakery only takes Visa and Mastercard. The corporate card we use is American Express. I had to go all the way back to the office, trade the card for petty cash, and go all the way back out to Pasadena. For cupcakes. For a dog's birthday party. The rest of my day was filled with similar debacles that I don't feel like getting into on account of I have a lot more stuff to cover and I still haven't said why I hate this Walgreens.
I hate this Walgreens because when I returned the next morning, half of the parking lot was being taken up by a giant tent, podium, and buffet tables. This was the grand opening ceremony. Are you fucking kidding me?! A grand opening for a Walgreens?! What the fuck is there to celebrate? That this is the sixth one in a two mile radius? Who the fuck needs to speak? Who would even attend this? Am I really going to have to put off getting my prescription a third time because there is nowhere to park due to an OPENING DAY CEREMONY FOR A FUCKING WALGREENS? And the store was open the night before! It wasn't even opening day! From now on, I only shop at pharmacies that don't celebrate.
In case you were wondering, I double parked and ran in. Due to my job, double parking has become second nature. Sometimes I have to deliver something to a place with no lot and nothing available on the street. When that happens, I think that it is my God-given right to park wherever I need to in order to get my job done. As if the police or meter maids are going to accept Manifest Destiny as an acceptable excuse and let me go without a ticket.
Today my boss asked if I wanted to go on a run to Venice to pick up some props for one of our shows. I didn't mine. My Focus gets such good mileage that when they reimburse me for gas money, I actually make a decent profit, so I never turn down a run, especially if it's going to kill a lot of time. A little while later, she receives an email with my instructions. I will now repeat to you exactly what I was told to do in order to procure the props, which were old vinyl records.
"...his place is unlocked. you have to jump the fence via the alley. The alley is behind the house."
So, yeah. I'm basically going to this guys house, jumping a fence and walking right inside. Sounds crazy, right? That's not even the half of it. A few things that they could have mentioned before sending me off to break and enter...
-The guy whose place I'm breaking into? It's not even his property. He rents the guest house. That means I'm climbing into some stranger's yard. This makes me slightly uncomfortable.
-The fence I'm supposed to climb is not some hip-length chain link fence that you can easily jump over. It is taller than me and although it is still chain link, it has wooden boards up against it. These boards were probably attached in order to keep people from seeing into their yard...or...I dunno....CLIMBING?
-I laugh it off and decide to just go for it and climb the damn 7 foot tall fence into a complete strangers back yard. I enter this guys house and find the vinyls. Three tall stacks of them. Now, how the HELL am I supposed to get 100 records over this fence? I ended up sliding them (two by two) through the small crack between the (locked) gate and the fence. It was not ideal. When I got them all through and climbed to the other side, I had to go through and put them all back together into piles.
I finally get back to the office with all of these stupid vinyls, and the guy who was supposed to take them to Ventura has already left.
I wasn't pissed though. It was fun.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Allow me to explain.
A few minutes ago I was looking on facebook for probably the 20th time today. Somebody I barely know who I worked with two years ago had uploaded a new photo album, and I clicked to see the pictures. That's when it dawned on me.
I don't care about this kid's pictures. I don't care what he's up to. I don't about him in general. So why did I feel so inclined to view his latest album?
Then, I went back to the list of updated profiles and scrolled down the rest of the friends.
And honestly, I have no reason to care what 99 percent of those people are up to right now.
I didn't delete my facebook because I am friends with a lot of people on there who I have no other way of contacting. However, I just crossed into a new state of consciousness. A plane of existence that not many other people my age have experienced. It's the place you go when you realize that at the end of the day, Facebook is a gigantic waste of time.
And no, I'm not drunk and feeling rebellious. If you want to know my work info, favorite quotes, or status, then fucking ask me. Don't look it up on a web page.
I don't care about this kid's pictures. I don't care what he's up to. I don't about him in general. So why did I feel so inclined to view his latest album?
Then, I went back to the list of updated profiles and scrolled down the rest of the friends.
And honestly, I have no reason to care what 99 percent of those people are up to right now.
I didn't delete my facebook because I am friends with a lot of people on there who I have no other way of contacting. However, I just crossed into a new state of consciousness. A plane of existence that not many other people my age have experienced. It's the place you go when you realize that at the end of the day, Facebook is a gigantic waste of time.
And no, I'm not drunk and feeling rebellious. If you want to know my work info, favorite quotes, or status, then fucking ask me. Don't look it up on a web page.
Monday, August 06, 2007
psych!
First and foremost, the last post was a hoax.
Dangles wasn't sure what to write her blog about, and so I broke out my Writer's Block. It's a small book with over 700 pages of words, quotes, and pictures that are designed to spark the imagination! After I randomly turned to a page and gave her the spark word of "indulgence," I decided to do the same thing. My word was "hitchhiker." With such a specific spark word, my only option was to tell a story about hitchhiking. Since I've never been, my only option was to make one up. Yes, it's true. You've been had.
But let's not dwell!
I got a job as a production assistant at a company that does reality shows. I'll gladly tell you what company and what shows, but I don't want to be posting all my professional biznass on the wide wide world of web.
Today, however, I am a temp assistant at Weinstein again. Just today, and never again. It's an obligation that I made before interviewing, and I needed to fulfill it. Being back, however, as conjured up all of the memories of my life as an intern. Yeah, I'm well aware it was like...a month ago, but it feels like much longer. Mostly because Karen is gone, the other interns are gone, and I don't know anyone. Another thing I've come to realize upon my return to TWC is how my life has come a complete 180 in the past month. I was miserable for a while. I still can't decide if moving in with Mike and Jim made all that better or worse. On the plus side, I was living with friends. Contrariwise, I was working 45 hours a week (for free), then coming home with even more stuff to do, while they explored LA, drank all day, and enjoyed the Honeymoon portion of their arrival to California. I was busy, poor, and depressed, and basically hit rock bottom. But now, things are much better and I'm flyin' high.
For one thing, the roommates have entered the real world as well, so I no longer feel like Old Man Crotchett, going to bed and complaining that those rambunctious little whippersnappers are keeping me up at night. Most importantly, though, is the fact that I GOT A JOB. And I love it. A lot. I get to go on runs and pick up and deliver anything from tweezers to Emmy tickets. I get to work normal hours. I get paid well. I couldn't be happier. Unlike the fancy shmancy Hollywood places I've been interviewing and interning at previously, my job is downtown, in a very old building in a less pristine part of town. It reminds me of the 624 S. Michigan building, only a little shabbier. The who neighborhood has a State Street vibe. Not H&M-and-Nordstrom-Rack State Street, but Wig-Store-and-homeless-people-in-front-of-Beef-and-Brandy State Street. In fact, I still have this feeling in my mind that there is a giant body of water on the other side of my the street. I like being downtown again. Even if it's kinda gross and I saw a city worker smoking a blunt with a homeless lady who had no shoes. My biggest concern with work is that since I'm technically on a trial-run, my boss is going to decide I'm not a keeper and throw me back into the murky dark waters of unemployment. Tomorrow I'm going to go in and impress the crap out of everyone.
So...life in LA is looking up. I had a GREAT weekend because I came out of my shell for once and didn't make half ass excuses as to why I couldn't go out. Positive attitudes are swell.
Oh, and Dangles just bought her tickets to LA. Labor Day weekend.
Here's a recipe for disaster:
Las Vegas.
+Me
+Flavin.
+Krasman.
+Dangles.
It is the worst idea ever, and I can't wait.
Dangles wasn't sure what to write her blog about, and so I broke out my Writer's Block. It's a small book with over 700 pages of words, quotes, and pictures that are designed to spark the imagination! After I randomly turned to a page and gave her the spark word of "indulgence," I decided to do the same thing. My word was "hitchhiker." With such a specific spark word, my only option was to tell a story about hitchhiking. Since I've never been, my only option was to make one up. Yes, it's true. You've been had.
But let's not dwell!
I got a job as a production assistant at a company that does reality shows. I'll gladly tell you what company and what shows, but I don't want to be posting all my professional biznass on the wide wide world of web.
Today, however, I am a temp assistant at Weinstein again. Just today, and never again. It's an obligation that I made before interviewing, and I needed to fulfill it. Being back, however, as conjured up all of the memories of my life as an intern. Yeah, I'm well aware it was like...a month ago, but it feels like much longer. Mostly because Karen is gone, the other interns are gone, and I don't know anyone. Another thing I've come to realize upon my return to TWC is how my life has come a complete 180 in the past month. I was miserable for a while. I still can't decide if moving in with Mike and Jim made all that better or worse. On the plus side, I was living with friends. Contrariwise, I was working 45 hours a week (for free), then coming home with even more stuff to do, while they explored LA, drank all day, and enjoyed the Honeymoon portion of their arrival to California. I was busy, poor, and depressed, and basically hit rock bottom. But now, things are much better and I'm flyin' high.
For one thing, the roommates have entered the real world as well, so I no longer feel like Old Man Crotchett, going to bed and complaining that those rambunctious little whippersnappers are keeping me up at night. Most importantly, though, is the fact that I GOT A JOB. And I love it. A lot. I get to go on runs and pick up and deliver anything from tweezers to Emmy tickets. I get to work normal hours. I get paid well. I couldn't be happier. Unlike the fancy shmancy Hollywood places I've been interviewing and interning at previously, my job is downtown, in a very old building in a less pristine part of town. It reminds me of the 624 S. Michigan building, only a little shabbier. The who neighborhood has a State Street vibe. Not H&M-and-Nordstrom-Rack State Street, but Wig-Store-and-homeless-people-in-front-of-Beef-and-Brandy State Street. In fact, I still have this feeling in my mind that there is a giant body of water on the other side of my the street. I like being downtown again. Even if it's kinda gross and I saw a city worker smoking a blunt with a homeless lady who had no shoes. My biggest concern with work is that since I'm technically on a trial-run, my boss is going to decide I'm not a keeper and throw me back into the murky dark waters of unemployment. Tomorrow I'm going to go in and impress the crap out of everyone.
So...life in LA is looking up. I had a GREAT weekend because I came out of my shell for once and didn't make half ass excuses as to why I couldn't go out. Positive attitudes are swell.
Oh, and Dangles just bought her tickets to LA. Labor Day weekend.
Here's a recipe for disaster:
Las Vegas.
+Me
+Flavin.
+Krasman.
+Dangles.
It is the worst idea ever, and I can't wait.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
