A Blast on My Own Horn

Yesterday I edited some commercials for a well-known wireless cellphone company. I don't think I went over and above what I normally do. I just tried to get the job done as well (and as quickly) as I could. Today I got this really nice email from my boss:

Dinky,

I wanted to pass on the very positive comments which I just received about you from [the client's name] of [the cellphone company.] [The client] got my number from [the account exec] and said that he wanted to speak directly with your supervisor to compliment you on the fine work which you did for them yesterday. He said that he has now worked with you twice and is totally impressed with the job you've done for them on both occasions.

[The client] said that you are very personable, a tremendous listener, thorough and very quick and efficient. They have been very happy with the product which you have been able to provide.

While I know that this is the kind of work which you do for all of our clients, I appreciated hearing it very much directly from [the client] and wanted to be certain that you heard about it as well.


Thanks, Dinky for this effort and for all of the others which tend to go unheralded,

[The supervisor]

That was really nice of him, don't you think? I almost started bawling.

Party Time

Our station had its annual summer party today and I'm wiped out now. We went to the Olympic Oval to have our own little Olypmic Games. It sounded kind of lame at first but I sure as heckfire am glad I went. It was a kick in the pants! Our first event was curling. We had some instructors take us through the basics for about half an hour and then we had a shoot out. This was interrupted for some time, however. One of the sales associates was sweeping the ice to get the stone to go further when he went down, his face taking all the force of the fall. He cut his forehead open right at the eyebrow and a large puddle of blood formed on the ice. I think he also broke his nose, cut the inside of his lip, and nearly separated his shoulder. The paramedics were called and he went to the hospital to get stitches. I'm sure glad it wasn't me. Then we resumed our contest. Although my form was pretty good, I kept over shooting the target. While we were doing this, the U.S. Speed Skate Team as well as some Aussie Olympians were working out on the ice. They sped by us in tandem at unreal speeds.

Our next event was, of all things, dodge ball. Is that an Olympic sport? I was better at this. I helped our team advance into the semi-finals with two consecutive game-winning shots, each to the head. Apparently head shots are ok in the Olympics. After this we noticed the Skate Team was finished and a few of us went to talk to 1500 meter Olympic record holder, Derek Para. He was a very nice (and really short!) guy.

Our final event was the slap shot. We had to shoot at a target positioned in front of a hockey net. After a little coaching from my hockey-playing friends, I actually made a rather difficult shot.

After that we strapped on our harnesses and bungie-jumped on the trampoline the freestyle aerial jumpers train on.

In the end, our team won third place and each of us recieved a purple ball cap! Whoa, that's a little more than I can handle. We went back to the station to have a catered lunch and the prize give-away. The main course was a whole-roasted pig that they rolled into the room. It was smiling, wide-eyed, at everyone. The women sitting at my table were all disturbed by it. One of them, a reporter, had to change seats so she didn't have to look at it. Another one couldn't eat very much of it and got two desserts to satisfy her hunger. As far as I was concerned it wasn't great. I've been to a Tongan wedding and I used to have a Neighbor from Hawaii and they do the roasted pig thing much better. After I covered it with salt (which I had to dig out from my own stash) and spicy bbq sauce, it was tolerable. I had two helpings. I'm not going to let a little thing like lack of flavor stop me from gorging myself. After the lunch, they began drawing for prizes. The grand prize was a 21-inch tv. In the back of the prizes was a new golf bag ($199.00 retail value) with various drivers and woods in it. I have an instinct about these things. There have been three occasions in which I've known what I was going to win. Once in Idaho Falls I was at a company Christmas party. There there were about 3000 employees there. When they held up this stupid grandfather wall clock, I knew it was mine, and they called my name. Another time, at the place where I now work, there was a Chia Head in the prize stack. Something inside me said, "You're going to win that." I did. Today, I leaned over to my friend Di and told her I was going to win some of that golf stuff. I won the bag. Woo hoo, I guess. The only time I don't get the premonition is when I win something I want to win, or don't win anything at all.

I don't golf so if anyone wants to buy a new golf bag let me know.

In other news, Princess Rufflebutt's running a fever. She was sniffling a lot last night and she's really grumpy today. I've given her some Tylenol. I hope it helps.

My two oldest boys started school this week. I keep asking them what they learn but they don't say anything. Today I pressed my 1st grader and he said, "Either I didn't learn anything or I forgot it all." At least public school is free. I guess you get what you pay for.

Oh, one more thing. I stumbled on to this and laughed pretty hard.

Vacation

We just returned from our vacation about an hour ago. We left for my Parents' house in Idaho Falls on Tuesday. I needed to use my some of my vacation time. I get so much of it that I have a hard time using it. It would probably be easier if we could afford to go to Disneyland or Hawaii or somewhere, but as it is, we just don't know where to go that would be exciting. Then last week I had the brilliant idea of going to the lake I practically grew up at. About twenty minutes from my parents' place is a small manmade lake that's about thirty feet at its deepest and maybe 3/4 mile across. As a kid, my friends and I would go up there almost every day during the summer and float around on the boat dock we'd managed to unhook from the bottom, hurl ourselves from the rope swing, and dare each other to swim across the whole lake, an exhausting feat I accomplished twice. I figured my kids would enjoy it, so we packed up and left. The kids loved it. They splashed around and waded to and explored the small, wooded island. Rufflebutt had a blast, too. We went there two days in a row. The kids wanted to go today, too, but it was time to get back.

When we weren't at the lake, the kids were jumping on the trampoline. For some reason they didn't like me getting on with them. In fact they seemed terrified. I just can't understand it.

We celebrated Rufflebutt's 1st birthday while we were there, not that she noticed.

During my time away from the lake I was lazy as, well, heck. I revisited some of the reasons we don't have cable at my house. I'd be watching tv all day long. TCM is doing "Summer Under the Stars" which I could (and did) watch most of my waking hours. The first day was Edward G. Robinson day and I gained a new appreciation for his ability. I watched "Larceny, Inc." which Woody Allen remade as "Small Time Crooks" without giving any credit to the former. It was a fun little farce, but my favorite was "The Cincinatti Kid" with Steve McQueen. It's smart and intense and unappologetically ends the way real life would instead of giving us a fairy tale. It's one of my favorite films now. I also saw bullets or ballots, a typical Bogie film, which was fine, and his last film, the inane "Soylent Green", a Charlton Heston futuristic blunder (see "The Omega Man" for comparison.), a very unfortunate swan song for Robinson.

The next day I added another film to my favorites list. It was Bette Davis day. I've seen very few of her films and haven't really formed an opinion until now. I saw "All This and Heaven Too" which I enjoy in spite of some cheezy optimism, and the soap opera "The Great Lie." But the best one was "A Stolen Life", the only film she produced. It didn't have the ending I would have wanted, but its a wonderful film full of subtle twists and great performances.

Wow. Did I do anything this week? Not really, but isn't that what vacations are for?

What a Day!

The scheduler and my boss are both on vacation, so who does all the crap filter down to? You guessed it. First thing on the docket was a live production that I direct every so often. It's a three-minute commercial done interview-style and geared toward older people. It features products and services like hearing aids and assisted living, and the guy who hosts and sells the show works for a mortuary as his day job, so you can imagine how exciting the whole thing is. To top it all off, we had five shows, each of which had as the guest someone who is not used to being on tv. Imagine a deer...now think, "headlights." Great fun. That went for four hours. After that I had to field call after call about renting the sound stage and trying guess at what our rates might be. Then I edited a spot for a broadband company from footage that was shot in Georgia. That was actually fun. Tell me if you've seen the spot. I guess it has been running in other markets: A guy is talking about how slow dialup is and he crams a little kitten into one-inch pvc pipe. I don't care who you are...that's funny right there. So I got that one done and then I fixed another spot, and added a new logo to another one. Then I was on the phone again, giving people rates and our stage dimensions...I don't know how he does it. But I do know this: He can never go on vacation again!

Autograph

You probably won't believe this, but someone's signature on a piece of paper doesn't mean much to me. That's probably why I have a gazillion autographs from various famous people at home. It does, however, mean something more when the autograph is a response to something I created or did for said famous people. And most of the ones I have at home are just that. They're either copies of drawings I gave them or cd's and posters of bands that I worked with on the music show. So there's something of value to me there. I don't understand why people will buy something for hundreds or even thousands of dollars because it's signed by someone else. Ok, maybe they did something that was really cool. But, you know, I don't even understand why that should make us react the way we do. I react that way too and I don't understand that about myself. I just watched Coldplay's concert dvd and it blew me away. I haven't felt this way about a band since 1985 when I was absolutely in love with The Cure and Depeche Mode. I just want to hang out with Coldplay and be their friend and smile a lot. How corny is that? But it's there. For some reason there is a need to tell someone you admire them. It kind of completes the circle, I guess. These drawings I do don't mean very much by themselves. It's something I can do, but it's something anyone can do if they work at it. But they allow me to give something of myself, however insignifcant, to someone I admire. So here is the wonderful actor Tom Cruise's signature on a photocopy of an insignificant drawing I did in my spare time for you all to admire. Neener, and again I say, Neener.

Stuck

I know it's probably not a good thing, but Princess Rufflebutt is at the age when she cries a lot for nothing and we don't always rush to her aid. Most of the time she's just tired or bored and wants to be held. You can tell the cries when she's really in trouble and we're immediately there to help her. But the other cry, the aimless wailing and moaning, that usually goes unheeded and after a few minutes she finds something to occupy herself anyway. It was one of those cries I heard the other day coming from the kitchen. I was busy with something so I let her go on squawking the way she was. Finally I wandered into the kitchen and saw this:

Spud Days

I discovered Blogging for Books at Buzz's. I thought I'd give it a go. And by the way, this is all true.





The mud sucked at my boots, desperately tugging at my feet so that every step was a greater struggle than the last. I knew that my demeanor was different, that all the other guys were chuckling at me. I wasn't looking at the plants. I wasn't looking at anything in particular. My head hung low under the weight of one of my migraines and the added oppression of the sun roasting my bare neck. The fact that the sprinklers were on and we were all soaked to the skin didn't help either. My whole body was chafing. The furthest thing from my mind was diseased potatoes. Not that I could have recognized one if I saw it.

Two weeks earlier we new guys were given an abbreviated lesson on how to spot diseases like leafroll and PVY. I really tried at first. Mike, my boss, a skinny, scruff-bearded guy, showed us what to look for. "See how these leaves are yellow and rolled up? You've got to get rid of it." I couldn't see it but I nodded agreeably like the rest of the guys and watched as Mike dug out the plant completely and then chopped it up with his shovel. I still couldn't tell any difference between it and the other plants. And then came the first test, which I failed miserably, of course. I went up the row searching for yellow, curled leaves, but they all looked like that to me. I started to dig one up and Mike screamed, "There's nothing wrong with that plant! Keep moving!" But, I thought, I'm just following the Roguer's Rule: When in doubt, dig it out. Of course if I did that, there wouldn't be any potatoes left to harvest. I tiptoed along the row a couple more feet and heard another yell: "What the f*** is wrong with you, you f***in' idiot! Get that plant!" I looked around for a minute and then gingerly began to stab at one. "No! Sh**, Kid! How the hell did you get this job?" and he dug out the plant behind me. I got a little better after that, though I'm not sure how. It was mostly luck. Every few feet I'd pick out a plant that I thought might be a culprit and jump on it. After three correct guesses in a row, Mike left me to my six rows. Some of the other veterans kept a watch on me for awhile and they were just a hateful as Mike, but eventually they got caught up in their own work and left me alone.

I stopped for a moment to dig out a plant, although I was certain I was fooling nobody. No one was talking. It was a particularly hot afternoon and we'd been at it since 5:30 am. The sprinklers should have been a comfort in the heat, but they weren't. There are few things worse than trudging mile after mile knee-deep in mud in drenched jeans. Why did I ever agree to do this? I thought, my eyes still on the ground a few feet ahead of me.

My dad was always on my case about getting a job during the summer. I usually balked but this summer my friend, Chris, and I were fed up with having no money. There were things we wanted, a boom box, for instance, but we were destitute. In addition, Idaho Falls was about the most boring place two teenage kids could imagine. Maybe a job would be just the thing for us. So we looked in the paper. There were the usual fast food jobs but those were boring and too much work. Then we saw a chance to earn $6.00 an hour (an unheard of amount when the minimum wage was $3.25). "Hardworking
individuals needed to work 8 to 10 hour days for the summer roguing potatoes," the ad said. We talked about it for awhile. What was roguing? Was it really that hard? We had both thought about moving irrigation pipe and it couldn't be harder than that. So we applied. The address was a single-wide trailer, a couple of miles from our neighborhood. It was Mike's house. The first thing he said to me was, "What the hell are you wearing a tie for? This ain't no office job!" I felt stupid. My mother had told me to dress up so I did. But, in spite of my tie and my neatly combed hair, Chris and I both got the job. We chatted excitedly about our new fortune and had the money spent in about half an hour.

The first morning was rough. I was used to sleeping till noon and now I had to get up at 4:30 am. I drove to the place we were supposed to gather and wait for Mike. The rest of the crew was already there. Most of them were as new as me but there were a couple who'd been doing it for ten or twelve years. As far as I was concerned, this was only for a few months to get me some spending money. There was no way this would be a career. Mike arrived and we piled into the back of his pickup and rode about 45 minutes to our first job. After an hour I knew I'd made one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

I looked up and saw that we were coming to the end of the field at last. It was at least a mile long and we had gone back and forth on it, end to end, all day. I didn't have a watch but I was sure it was around 4:30. It was going to be a short day. We were finished with the field and there was not enough time to tackle another one. I made a decision right there. After two weeks on the job (it seemed more like a year), I was going to quit. I would call Mike on the phone that night and let him know I wasn't cut out for this. Chris was, though. He'd made friends with the rest of the crew and never seemed tired. He was going to make it through the whole summer.

I thought about the past two weeks. It had certainly been an experience. But I had never worked for someone so degrading before. On about the third day of being baked in the sun, I had decided to bring a hat to work. I was already singed to the point of not being able to sleep at night, so I thought it might help. The only one I could find was narrow-brimmed one my dad had. It was sort of like a fishing cap. I pulled the brim down as far as I could to keep the sun off me. In the field that day, it drew attention to me. "Where you get that ugly f***in' hat!" Mike said. And that day he watched me more carefully than ever, ridiculing me at every step.

On another day we were crop-dusted by a low-flying plane. I thought he'd avoid hitting us with the poison but he didn't. The roar from the engine reverberated off the ground, pulverizing my eardrums.

On another occasion we were on our way home when the pickup jolted upward, throwing us around under the camper shell. We looked out the window and saw one of the rear tires racing ahead of us. It bounced over a canal and shot into a field doing about thrity miles per hour. Then it reached the end of the field and shot straight up into the air. We waited for half an hour for Mike and Dave to retrieve it and "fix" the truck. The axle was broken but somehow we made it home. I think we averaged about 20 mph.

But the worst thing that had happened to me was the day there was a lull in the work. We'd just finished a field and Mike went to check on another farmer to see if he was ready for us. While we waited for him to return, a couple of the guys started to dig a large hole near the road at the end of the field. As they dug, someone else explained that there was a tradition among the crew. New guys were buried in the dirt up to their necks. I couldn't believe it. No one was going to bury me. But I was the only one they could catch. As soon as they grabbed me, I gave up. There was no point in struggling, after all. Two of the veteran roguers sat me down in the hole and held me while the rest of the guys filled it up. It wasn't long before they could let go. I was encased in dirt and I couldn't even move a finger. They said the custom was that the new guy had to get himself out. I started to struggle and the dirt gradually loosened. I tried not to show the panic. I'm not claustrophobic but I don't like people laughing at me. I finally got a hand to where I could start pushing the dirt away when Mike drove up. He got out of the truck and threw a shovelful of dirt on me for good measure. He laughed at me and I thought he might spit some of his chew on me, but he just said, "Get him out of there. We've got to be at the next field in five minutes."

I got to the end of the row at last and jabbed at a healthy plant, plucking it out and chopping it in half. On the ride home I endured the jibes from the rest of the guys in silence. "Dude, you looked dead out there. You could barely walk."

That night I plucked up what was left of my courage and called Mike.

"Hello, Mike? I'm not going to make it tomorrow."

"Why not? We need you. We've got three fields to cover tomorrow."

"I just can't do it anymore. I'm not the right guy for this. I don't even know what I'm doing out there."

Mike sounded pissed off. He told me I could come get my check on Monday.

My dad drove me over to Mike's house and I reluctantly knocked on the door. "Where the f*** were you on Friday?" He shouted.

"I told you I wasn't coming."

"No you didn't. You said your last day was today. We waited for twenty minutes. We were late for our first job and couldn't finish all of them because of you."

"Mike, I told you I wasn't going to be there."

"The f*** you did. Get the f*** out of my house." He threw my check on the ground.

Chris rubbed my failure in my face for the rest of the summer. I was a little envious when he brought home his new boom box with the three channel equalizer, but not when he showed me his shredded kegger boots, damaged from the vines. Apparently what I went through was nothing. It was spring time and the plants were still small. As they matured they covered the ground and grew waist-high. I'm glad I got out of it when I did.

Cruisin'

Well, I'm a little disappointed. Tony gave my drawing of Tom Cruise to Tom himself over the weekend. The reason I'm disappointed is that he didn't do anything on video like Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman did. But he did autograph a copy of the drawing for me. I'll post it when I get it from Tony.

The Village

The much-anticipated film was an over all success. I really wanted to see it and I hyped the thing up quite a bit for myself, yet, as always, I was ready to rip it apart at the first sign of weakness. I want things explained only when they absolutely must be and when they are, it has to be done with a masterful touch. Don't make me feel like you're explaining it. Make the details unfold naturally so that I'm enlightened to what I did not know as if I'd discovered it myself. That was the one weakness I found. But I liked the rest of the film so much that it was easy for me to dismiss that. The actors were amazing. Bryce Howard is going to be a star and should earn some awards for her performance as should Brody and Phoenix for theirs. The veterans William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver seemed to be just laying a foundation for the riveting performances of the younger actors.

I'd like to deconstruct the story (but I won't spoil anything) because after the stunning plot twists have lost their novelty, the story itself could use a little work. It is not well-propelled; the reason for having a story at all is a little unclear to me. As for the much-talked-about questions that are supposedly raised without explanation at the end of the film, I can't begin to fathom what they might be. As I said, everything is pretty well summed up.

That said, I still liked the film very much and it's worth seeing again. It's Shyamalan's first good film since Sixth Sense. Of course, I liked Waterworld, The Postman, What Dreams May Come, and Bicentennial Man a great deal too, so you're going to have to be the judge for yourself.