The Big Boredom
I think I'm in dire need of a new project.
Boredom is setting it an an all-time high.
Or would that be an all-time low?
Either way I'm sitting here typing about boredom on my iPad 2.
I'm not exaggerating when I say I've watched about 15 episodes of The Big Bang Theory.
Gotta lot happening over here.
I love how Sheldon loves trains.
The Sales Pitch (First Entry into The Big Playoff)
Above is my first entry into The Big Playoff, a web based reality game, where challenges are issued to competitors, who then create video's based on the challenge. Once the videos are posted they are all judged and then the top 50% move on to round 2 while the bottom 50 get axed from the competition. After 6 rounds a winner is crowned. The first challenge was just to come up with a Sales Pitch for yourself and why you should win the rest of the Big Playoff. Enjoy!
My 1st Experience with a Golf Cart
Driving a golf cart has got to be the easiest thing ever, theres a little lever that points to either "Forward" or "Reverse," you put it on the direction you want and push the gas. Thats it. Pushing the gas turns the cart on and pushing the break turns the cart off. I've seen tri-cycles that were harder to figure out.
The most fun thing to driver ever.
Those were pretty much the instructions given to me the first time I was asked to drive a golf cart at the age of 22. I was working on the set of the movie, "Lake Effects" (Starring: Jane Seymour, Ben Savage, Madeline Zima and Jeff Fayhe among others) and it was the 2nd day of shooting. I was almost as low on the totem pole as you could possibly be with the awesome title of: Locations Assistant. Basically that meant I was expected to take orders from... well pretty much everyone. I spent most of my time setting up chairs, tables, porta johns and making sure the actors trailers had running water, truly glorious work.
It was right at the crack of dawn and we would be shooting down on the docks in the morning which meant we had to get all of the amazingly heavy equipment down to the water. There were basically 2 ways down to the dock: one was the stairs, about 95 of them if I can remember correctly, they seemed to go on pretty much forever. As for the 2nd option, well..
As luck would have it I happened to be standing right next to the golf cart that morning and after the quick tutorial above I was asked if I could ferry people down to the water. Easy enough. I did a quick donut to get a feel for the cart and with that one circle of experience I was then approached for a ride. "I need you to take me and the camera down to the set," a short irritated looking guy said to me with the same urgency of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.
The Red - Camera used on set of Lake Effects and other movies such as "Book of Eli" "Pirates 4" and "The Amazing Spiderman"
Yikes. The camera this movie was being shot on is called The Red, and is somewhere in the price range of $80,000. Without warning the short guy and the 80K camera were sitting next to me and I didn't really know where to go, I hadn't actually gone down to the water yet and wasn't aware of a alternate method to the stairs. "Go down to the neighbors driveway," he said, "and hurry."
I didn't know what was in the driveway but it was further down the hill and it made sense to me that this little man would want to eliminate any additional walking distance in which he might drop the camera. I pulled into the driveway and stopped the cart and was rudely asked to keep going. "Where?" I replied staring at the stone wall in front of me. To my surprise the wide drive way took a sharp left behind some bushes where it became a barely-wide-enough-for-the-cart sidewalk. The reason I couldn't see it was because it dropped off so steeply that it wasn't visible until you were right up on it.
I will tell you now that the brakes in a golf cart are laughable at best and on this particular hill if you didn't have them pressed as far as they could go right at the top there was pretty much no chance of them kicking in at all. I didn't have the brakes on. Now The Red's (and the rest of the movie's) survival basically depended on my ability to maneuver this cart down the hill while gravity did its job. To make matters more complicated the hill started off with a nice 10 yard strait away, ya know enough time to really pick up some speed, before taking a sharp right that S-Curved the rest of the way down. As we hit the turn the tires made a horrible screeching noise but they all remained on the ground. My foot was holding the brake down as far as would go and now an odd squealing was coming from the cart itself, like it wasn't used to going this fast. People further down the hill looked up to see what was making the noise.
The gravel path where we were supposed to stop was approaching fast. I was pumping the brake now hoping for some kind of relief, but it was looking less and less likely. Just as we got to the next big curve (this time to the left) where the gravel path intersected the sidewalk there was a moment's relief in the gradient and the brakes kicked in. With a giant lurch forward, we came to a halt. The little man gave me one last exasperated look, as if I had planned the whole almost-catastrophe, and then took off down toward the water (leaning heavily to one side to counter balance the weight). I took a deep breath and resigned myself to setting up chairs for the rest of the day.
So there you have it, my first experience with a golf cart and I nearly destroyed an $80,000 piece of equipment that would have halted production and delayed the careers of about 30 other crew members. It was a fun day.
The Hand Sanitizer
You can always spot a well trained Sanitizer by their brightly colored and extra expensive looking bottles.
"The Hand Sanitizer" - The one who cant endure a hand shake, a communal bowl of chips or a few pets on the dog without reaching for some heavily perfumed cleanser to calm their nerves.
I think everyone knows someone like this, who is constantly on the edge of paranoia about the cleanliness of their hands. The way I see it there is really just no way you can possibly keep up your cleanliness with the number of things you touch. Where to you draw the line? What is considered to dirty? Now don't get me wrong I'm not against be clean, I wash my hands when I go to the bathroom, when I'm preparing food or any time I can visibly see the dirt on there.
Unusually I've found that most "Sanitizers," are more fearful of the germs they can't see than the dirt literally present on their hands. I'm sure it comes down to micro-bacteria and disease and stuff but honestly I'm not sure of the last time I directly attributed anything I ate with being sick, and I really don't get sick very often at all. Like I said though, I'm not against using hand sanitzer, there is nothing wrong with having clean hands, but what I do have a problem with is this:
Imagine your out to eat with a Sanitizer and the food has finally arrived. Right on queue the fruity scent of their pomegranate cherry hand sanitizer stings the air and you immediately know you'll have to wait a few minutes for the smell to pass so you can enjoy your food with a unscented nose. They begin to lather up, and perhaps remark about how good the food looks but without offering you sanitizer yourself put the tiny bottle away.
Now I would gladly eat the food sans sanitizer and never think twice about it, but obviously I would rather have clean hands before eating (although I have found that many Sanitzers will cleanse up even if they will be eating the whole meal via fork and knife). My real concern here is that the person I’m eating with is clearly worried enough about the cleanliness of the situation to think they might get sick, without being concerned enough that I might get sick.
I mean wouldn’t the risk be the same for both people? Either they are admitting that there is no real risk involved in not using it, or they are failing to protect you from the same illness. Perhaps it would be understandable if hand sanitizer was expensive or used in large portions, but it’s about as cheap it gets and I can’t think of anything I use less of at a time. It barely takes a drop to cover 2 hands.
Do you know any hyperactive Sanitizers? Let me know about your experiences down below!
White Shirt and Khakis
Lets face it, every white male with a job that requires them to dress at any formal level higher than "casual" has this outfit. I'd dare say every boy whose mom forced him out of bed on Sunday's to go to church has this outfit. It's about as basic as it gets and when it comes to getting dressed in the morning, we don't need any additional difficult decisions (for god sakes we decided to get out of bed didn't we?). We are white, the shirt is white, the pants are off-white, its very difficult for us to mess up, and I think that's why we gravitate to it (not impossible to mess up though; see anyone playing percussion at a middle school band concert).
As I pulled on my khakis this morning I relished in the fact that it was Thursday and due to the holiday weekend coming up I would not have to wear them again for quite a few days. I opened my closet to select a button down to wear to work and was met with disappointment. The selection I chose from every week somehow seemed stale and suddenly far to casual for office wear. I milled through several American Eagle and Abercrombie options and thought to myself that I needed to invest in some new wardrobe. Just as I was about to settle on a green and pink striped shirt with ripped sleeves that could not be seen if you rolled to sleeves up I noticed it, down at the other end of the closet just poking out from behind several old hoodies: a white button-down dress shirt.
Despite working as a marketer for different family shows, concerts and events it was an exceptionally uneventful day at work. In fact, the only event really happening all week was a Jehovas Witness Convention (You can imagine my desire to stay in my office and off the coliseum floor). It wasn't until lunch that anything interesting happened when, after several other people declined due to schedule conflicts, I was invited to attend a lunch for the grand reopening of the Day's Inn just down the street. You might be thinking that being 6th on the list of invitees to attend the re-opening of a 3-Star hotel is nothing to be excited about, but hey, free lunch!
As it turns out this was a much bigger deal than I would have imagined. Upon arriving I was surprised to see no fewer than four reporters, the mayor of the city and the city manager amongst a crowd of very well dressed people. Suddenly I was very grateful I had not opted for my sleeve-ripped, watermelon-esque, Abercrombie shirt and had instead gone with ole-faithful. Two helpings of food later, which the hotel manager assured us we were welcome to, (although I think my colleagues and I were the only ones to take advantage of this) the speeches began. They were all in the same vein: "Lots of hard work.. blah, blah.. Great for the city.. blah, blah.. Hotel caught fire in January.. blah, blah," the usual stuff. It wasn't until State Senator John Edwards was introduced, and the man sitting on my direct left stood up to go speak was I brought back to the present. How I had sat next to this man all through lunch and missed his occupation was beyond me, but as I looked down at my white shirt and khakis I couldn't help but think, "Well done." Afterwards I managed to shake his hand and introduce myself, feeling extra confident once I realized that I had managed to go through two helpings of food without getting a single drop of sauce or dressing on my white shirt. What a truly victorious moment.
The rest of the day went by with out a hitch, I had a conference call at 1, sent a few important email's out, and walked around feeling as though I looked especially good in my exceptionally pale attire. The clock struck five, I said good-bye to a few people who would be starting their weekend a day early and headed down to the locker room to retrieve my gym bag. Until then I had forgotten all about the Jehova's Witness convention happening down stairs. I passed a few dazed and confused looking people, who nodded politely at me before I turned down some stair's toward the gym. As I rounded the corner I stumbled across a long line of people waiting to get into a room where a man with a microphone was speaking.
Then it dawned on me. I looked down at my clothes, then back up at the line of waiting people.
I was dressed the exact same as every Jehova's Witness in the building. White shirt and Khakis.
Captain Planet is EVIL!
"Oh Ma-Ti good thing you got here, we were about to lose and could really use your help!"
"I will try to reach out to the good inside him with the pow-"
"Yea, yea Heart of the Cards, blah, blah.. LET OUR POWERS COMBINE!"