I Sold My Soul To Nexterday

The avid followers of my life might be wondering what I've been up to lately, as I haven't posted anything in a while. This has not been because nothing has been happening, but rather because I have been suffering from the rare occurrences of both business and Vermontiness at the same time. The first left me with little free time, and the second left me with only shoddy, sporadic, and stolen internet connections. So, in brief, here are some of the highlights of my life.

I got a new job. One of my old company's clients is paying almost my full salary to work about eight days a month for them. So in a rare but welcome change of pace, I win! But the best part is that the day after I started my new job, the CEO of National Lampoon (who just bought my old company, putting me out of work) was charged with securities fraud, along with several other executives. Schadenfreude never tasted so sweet.

Just before my first day of work, I went to Schedule B of Confronting Chekhov, a series of short plays inspired by the playwright. There were six plays, all of which were highly enjoyable. Sleepy, the only one based directly on a short story by Chekhov, involved a woman with a baby going mad. Perhaps I'm a terrible human being, but how can you not enjoy the theme of a child destroying someone's mental stability? Sexy Monk was based on a seemingly gimmicky premise of putting a monk on a "You Bet Your Life" type reality TV show, but managed to win me over with such quips as the monk observing that "life is wonderful if you don't think of it as important." But the real highlights of the show were the final two plays, Through the Red and Dr. Chekhov, Gunshot expert. The first was an interesting tale of a young American woman on a trip to help rebuild post-Soviet Russia. The second was a delightfully absurd mixture of Chekhovian drama and Marx Brothers-esque wackiness, with just a hint of post-modern deconstructionism to keep things interesting. A good night, all around.

And then a week later, I found myself in Vermont. Within half an hour of arriving in the unnecessarily snowy state, I found myself at a solstice party where a man lectured me at length on how there are natural cycles that we aren't in tune to, all based on the Fibonacci sequence, and how a man who was shot several years ago in Brattleboro was the result of a World War II cycle. And then he told my mother she needed to "connect with the ocean." Going home is always a good way to understand why you are who you are.

As a random aside, I've been listening to Nexterday by Ric Ocasek rather a lot lately, and I highly recommend that others do the same. The former frontman of The Cars and producer of such notable works as the first two self-titled Weezer albums, Ocasek hasn't had the most successful solo career, but he has put out a few albums that I think are just great, and this one may well be my favorite.

And now I am back in New York. We'll see what happens next.
-TC

Keys

Wednesday was my last day of work.

So on Thursday I was at work, and on my way out the door, I took out my keys to lock the door for what was to really, truly be the last time. But then I thought, "No, that's too easy, locking the door and leaving." So instead, I took out my keys and with the sort of flourish that only a sleep deprived tall man can quite manage, I dropped my keys down the elevator shaft.

I spent the next hour on the phone trying to find someone who could put me in touch with the superintendent for the building. Then I spent the following hour standing in the freezing rain waiting for him to come. After that second hour, I got a call telling me that the super wasn't really coming.

I went back today, and after ladies behind the desk of the shoe store next door fininshed laughing at me, they had a man who didn't speak any English but had mastered hand motions indicating how tall I was lead me down to the elevator motor room, where I collected my keys.

A typical Thursday, really.
-TC

No More Porn...Or Other Work For That Matter

The good news is, my company is not being bought by a porn company. The deal fell through, and all the porn magically vanished from my desk one day.

The bad news is, that puts my company back into dire financial straits.

The good news is, my company is being bought by National Lampoon.

The bad news is, they are shutting down my office.

My last day of work will be next Wednesday. Suddenly, porn doesn't seem so bad...
-TC

Vomit?

I'm having one of those odd life moments. I walked into my bathroom and found an unidentifiable substance on my sink. It didn't look like vomit, but I had no other plausible explanation for what else it even might be.
-TC

No More Porn

I think I am either unemployed or I work for National Lampoon now. I'm really not sure which.
-TC

Hypothetical

So, let's play the hypothetical game. Let's say, hypothetically, you're at work. And you're working. And you overhear a conference call involving raised voices and more than one occurrence of the word "bankruptcy." Would you be concerned?
-TC

Montreal

Yesterday I went to Montreal for a sandwich. And then I drove back.

While there, I also ate poutine. For the uninitiated, it is a French Candadian dish consisting of french fries smothered in brown gravy and cheese curds. And while it sounds like the most disgusting thing ever, it was actually quite delicious.

But the real revelation of the day was the Coke. I ordered a Coke in Canada, expecting nothing out of the ordinary, and discovered that they make it with sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup. The difference was astounding. Clearly this is a truly great civilization.
-TC

Spaghetti

Today at work I somehow managed to go the entire day without making any porn. But I did see a nude lady rolling around in a giant bowl of spaghetti. As she was more frolicking in than cavorting with the pasta, I'm pretty sure it doesn't count.
-TC

Doctor Atomic

Yesterday I went to a live broadcast of the premiere of an opera about Los Alamos called Doctor Atomic. I felt a bit silly, as it was being broadcast from The Met, which was about three blocks away from the theater I was in.

Knowing nothing about opera as I do, it was an enjoyable experience. The stage design was very good, the singers and orchestra both performed very well. And an interesting depiction of how the scientists coped with the moral dimension of their work, or, more frequently, avoided the moral dimension entirely. All around an enjoyable afternoon at the opera at the movies.
-TC

Jobs

Yesterday I found the perfect job. It was as an assistant editor, and only involved using programs I am pretty proficient with. Plus, it sounded like a cool, laid-back work environment where I could meet new people, learn new things, and generally enjoy myself. The only odd thing was that part of the application process involved going to their website and writing about what your favorite video was and why. It struck me as unusual, but whatever, if it gets me a job that isn't in porn, I'll write as many essays as they want. But then I went to their website and found that it was one of the many sites marketing themselves as "The YouTube of Porn."

I hope it goes without saying at this point that I didn't apply. Nor did I hang around long enough to determine what my favorite video was or why. Though I suppose if they need an answer, it was the one that kept me from discovering that I was a pornographer two months after I accepted the job.
-TC

In Poor Taste

I managed to come up with the best Halloween costume assembled entirely from the few things I could steal from the costume rack at work that came in the "freakishly large" size. I had middle-eastern clothing, a slightly undersized bowler, and a fake severed head. I was Lou Costello in Abbott and Costello Meet the Iraqi War Correspondent. Fortunately for the sake of taste, I had nowhere to go, so no one else was subjected to my genius.
-TC

Columbia Dance Majors

This weekend I drove six hours for French toast. It really is that good. After driving another six hours back, my friend asked if I wanted to make an appearance with him at this gathering. I said sure, as I am always up for meeting new people to fail to talk to, and we showed up. It was of course pouring rain in New York, and I hadn't shaved in a good week or so. So upon our arrival, I have a pretty strong appearance of being a hobo.

It turned out that the "gathering" in question was less a party than a get-together for a group of Columbia dance majors who were premiering a dance video many of them had done together. And, of course, I knew no one. Being me, I used this opportunity to talk to no one and just sort of hang around creepily. That is, until I left, and I blew up a lamp, covering the room in shards of glass.

Here's what happened. I went to put on my jacket, and I was standing next to this lamp. It was the sort where there is a bare bulb on top, and a cheap plastic bowl shaped thing underneath, usually attached with a locking nut of some sort. However, this particular lamp had nothing attaching it at all, and as my newly coated arm came down, I hit the rim, and it tried to come flying off. Trouble was, the bulb was considerably smaller than the hole in the bottom, and the whole thing shattered and flew all over the room and all the gathered dance majors.

Point being, I am pretty sure I am now known amongst the Columbia dance set as "the creepy hobo who breaks your house." A typical Saturday night all around.
-TC

A Series of Unfortunate Events

So, you know that feeling you get when you're at work editing porn and a stranger comes in, mistakes you for a secretary, and hands you eviction papers for your office? 'cause I do.

In other words, it was a typical day at the office.

As many may already be aware, porn has deep pockets, and I was bought a brand new iMac at work that exists solely for the purpose of ripping old, bad porn DVDs. However, when this process began our instructions were simply "rip these DVDs," and we failed to interpret that as "rip the individual scenes from these DVDs as separate movie files." So, silly us, we Started ripping entire feature length porn DVDs. When this error was cleared up, I was instructed to go back into the QuickTime files we created and cut these movies down to their individual elements. So, over the course of two days, I have been editing nearly five terabytes worth of porn. It's good that I never meet women I can try to impress, because it's becoming increasingly difficult to honestly say "I am a video editor, and I do not work in porn." But that's neither here nor there.

As I was nearing completion of this project, a man walked into my office and caught me at it. Now, it is worth remembering that there is a children's charity run out of the back, so whenever people walk in, I do my best to hide any porn that may be in plain view. But, just in case I'm not fast enough, I try to screw my face up in look of deep concentration so that if anyone does catch me, they will immediately realize that I am hard at work and not enjoying myself. Though to be fair, since I then immediately hide what I'm doing anyway, they might just think I am a very dour man who enjoys pornography.

In any case, the man looked at me and said "I have these papers for someone." I then promptly said to myself for the first time in my life, "Hey, I'm someone!" And since the man seemed disinclined to offer any more clues as to what he was holding or who it was for, I agreed to take them. He handed me a loose stack of about a half a dozen copies of the same form: A letter from our landlord's lawyer informing us that if we don't pay the rent within the next ten days (which we appear not to have done for a very long time), we must vacate the premises. I know my company isn't in great financial shape, but I was still a bit surprised to learn that a company that seems inclined towards paying me so well, if never on time, is about to end up on the street. But there was nothing really to do but bring the papers back and give them to someone. So I did, and like a good American, I didn't ask any questions.

A few minutes later, our accountant stormed out asking if the man had asked for him by name, or if the papers had at least come in an envelope, and I said no. And he started off on a nice little tangent about how irresponsible of the lawyer that was. "It's not a big deal because we have no secrets here and we've known this was coming, but if this had been a real company and people saw this, there'd be a lot of panic." Clearly not panicking, I paused for a moment to assess the implication that I wasn't working for a real company, but I let it slide. The accountant explained that this was all part of an on-going discussion with the land-lord, told me that we are not moving out in ten days, so I shouldn't worry. And for a lack of anything better to do, I decided to take his word for it. At least for the next ten days. At that time I might start asking myself what kind of discussion actually involves not paying someone and having them send a lawyer after you.
-TC

Pornographizing

Among the characteristics that make us human, denial and rationalization are among the most treasured. For example, when I found out my company made "adult" comedy, I decided that it was okay, because it was theoretically comedy, and I support comedy in all forms. Then when I found out we were being bought by a porn company, I decided it was okay, because I wasn't making porn. Then when I found out I had to rip DVDs and log some footage, I decided it was okay, because that is relatively uninvolved work, and it's not like it actually requires me to think about what I'm doing. But today I discovered that I will actually have to cut some porn tomorrow. And I finally had to admit that I am in fact a pornographer. I have officially relinquished any claim I might ever have had to dignity or self-respect, and I may finally run wild and free with my pornographer brothers.
-TC

An Odd Feeling

It's a very odd feeling to be editing a children's show on one computer and to see transexual porn playing on another. Yet another in a series of observations I was not expecting to be making at this point in my life.
-TC

Six Toes

Today I was mentally undressing a girl on the subway, and as I looked down I noticed she had six toes. So I mentally put some socks on her.
-TC

W.

I was supposed to attend the premiere of Oliver Stone's "W." tonight. It was not entirely for pleasure, as I had too do sound for some red carpet interviews, but all things considered, life could be worse. But apparently that's not happening, and apparently it's because of the Chinese government. I'm not entirely clear on the details, but I don't suspect they're going to get a whole lot clearer than that.

It's the story of my life, really. Every time something good happens in my life, a communist country comes along and ruins it. I am still reasonably sure that the fact that I am single can be traced back to Cuba.
-TC

New York City

For those of you who have not been following the saga of my life as closely as you should be, I suppose you're wondering exactly what it is that I'm doing with my life. I have been living in New York City since April, where I have found a previously unimaginable degree of prosperity. It didn't take me long before I got a job with a major credit card as a "data analyst." What that means is that I got paid to look up online to see if people take their credit card, which you'd think they'd know, but apparently they needed me to tell them.

But only three weeks into it, I managed to wrangle a job as head video editor for a small comedy studio. While the pay is insulting by New York video editor standards, it is easily the most I have ever made at a regular, full-time job, so it's not hard to keep my spirits up, which is a nice change of pace. And what is more, it affords me the opportunity to get paid to work with comedy, my one true passion in life. Having been in the city for just a few short months, I had managed to find a great apartment and land my dream job, and I was able to do it all on my own. Needless to say, I was walking around the city with my head held high and a bounce in my step. The operating word here would be "was." That all changed one day when I bounced my way into work and discovered that I now work for one of the largest porn companies in the US.

I am sure you have a question or two, but let me back up for one second. When I originally interviewed for this job, I had been told that they do a small amount of adult oriented comedy. I took this to mean that they did comedy with adult subject matter. Blue comedy, if you will. But shortly after I started working there, I discovered that they meant "adult" in the biblical sense of "porn." (I read a very good bible.) They produce things like comedians doing "funny" commentary over Girls Gone Wild type videos. I hadn't thought there was anything in life that could be more demeaning than taking your top off for beads on camera until I saw someone taking their top off for beads on camera with untalented comedians making fun of them. It's hard to say whose life is going more poorly there. But at least the girls don't have to admit that this is their career. The comedians do, and unfortunately, so do I.

After another short while, I got to see some of the other adult comedy they produce. Perhaps the most bizarre segment is one where they take old footage of unwitting stand-up comedians, put it on one side of the screen, and slap a girl stripping on the other side. The girl was probably equally unwitting, but to be fair, it's probably less damaging for a stripper's career to have her show juxtaposed with a comedian on TV than the other way around. I wasn't especially happy about the voice-over segments, but I was okay with it, because even if it's not funny in the most traditional sense, I can at least understand the theory that having a comedian make jokes about something is in fact comedy. So on a very, very theoretical level, I could see how the Girls Gone Wild stuff constituted humor. But no matter how hard I try to rationalize, I just can't see how any humor is added to stand-up by simply slapping a nude lady over it. And whenever I tell people about it, they always laugh, but not in the way I think they're meant to.

Oddly enough for a company that produces edgy porn-comedy, they've been having financial difficulties. To this day, I have yet to be paid on time, and after a month or so, I found out that I was the only person being paid at all. No one was being paid because there was no money, and I was only being paid because I make so little of it that even when they were going broke, they could still afford me. Point being, work had been a stressful environment, but I remained hopeful that they could turn things around, as my boss always talks up the connections they have. And of course, I have endless faith in the power of comedy.

But after I'd been with this company for a month or two, my boss walked up to my desk and said "We've been bought." Seeing my no doubt surprised expression, he quickly added "And that's a good thing." He then proceeded to tell me that we had in fact been bought by an adult entertainment company. Fighting back the urge to ask "And how exactly does that qualify as a good thing," I tried my best to keep the frozen smile on my face from turning into a look of horror when I wasn't paying attention.

He explained that the president of my company was in fact a huge porn mogul ("a junior league Hef" is the phrase he used). When asked to become vice president of this adult company and help them launch some new companies, he said he would accept on the condition that they buy and fund the comedy studio. I asked what felt like an obvious question: "How will this effect the content we produce each month?" After a good half-hour of him explaining the history of this deal and the history of everyone involved (coincidentally, everyone at this company but he has a background in porn), I finally stopped him and guessed "So you're saying, our content won't be changing, and our company will continue to exist with its current business plan, but we can expect some bleed-over work while these other companies the president is starting get off the ground a bit?" And he said yes. And I died a little inside.

This was all several weeks ago. In the time since then, not only has my company made me shoot a series of events for a children's charity, but porn has slowly become a more and more pronounced part of my day-to-day life. So far it has only relatively low-end and uninvolved work, but the phrase "thin end of the wedge" keeps coming to mind. The other editor who works for me really hopes we're going to actually start producing porn so we can get to do some camera work with naked girls. Or at least I think that's what he said, all I could hear was "I have no artistic ambition or future."

It probably goes without saying at this point, but I have started applying for other jobs.
-TC

Welcome

For years now, people have been trying to convince me to start a blog. Perhaps they are under the sadly misguided impression that I am funny. Or perhaps the schadenfreude they derive from observing the constant degradation that accompanies me in my day-to-day walking around time gives enough solace to their otherwise dreary lives that they are able to hold their heads up for one more day. Who can say?

I have never regarded myself as the sort of person whose life and opinions were worth putting on public display, and I often wonder why it is that everyone seems to think I am a natural born blogger. As much as our culture tends to embrace the potential for technology to network and bring people from disparate worlds together, I have always regarded those who actually do so as sad, desperate people who need to create a web of virtual camaraderie to mask the emptiness and isolation of modern living by fueling the fire of an otherwise unsatisfied sense of self-importance. And whenever someone suggesta that I should join in the festivities, I always ask myself, do I really want to be one of those people?

But I finally paused for a moment to take stock in my life, and I came to some startling realizations. I have very few real friends and the sort of abundant free time that comes from having nothing of interest or value going on in my life; I have an innate sense that the world should be revolving around me and considerable bitterness about the fact that it doesn't; I hold very strong opinions in spite of the fact that I am ill informed about virtually everything. In short, I already am one of those people.

So, I finally decided to give it a shot. I will use this space to update the world with all the awkward stories that come my way, which if the past can be taken as any sort of measure, will happen rather frequently. And in between moments of excruciating awkward, I will fill the silence with the inanities of my life and the random musings that occupy my thoughts.

To the extent that you care, I hope you enjoy.
-TC