Since I’ve posted last, wound up relocating to a big fat animation studio in Greenwich CT as a Story Artist Graphic Designer. Apparently thanks to NAFTA that’s my designation. Thanks Mulroney! Without you I could never have left my friends and family behind.
Mind you, one of the two groups mentioned above will be following me, most likely for the next 19 years or so, no matter where I try to run.
I’ve been at this studio for…2 months, 1 week. (that’s 2 years and 1 month if you count the overtime.) I’m actually staying somewhere in the East Village in Manhattan where I can get into all kinds of trouble until said party mentioned above will capture me from the concrete jungle and relocate me to somewhere safer for my own sake.
Not that I need any help with co-workers like these. I’m just gonna assume nobody reads this crap blog anyway. To whit:
- DAY 3: one dude comes into my office and asks me if I ever heard of a website called LivingSocial. I hadn’t. It’s a site that has a ton of coupons for shit in NYC, and there was a coupon for a bath house, would I like to go with him and one of the guys? We could check out each other’s junk and shit. I asked him to clarify, and I couldn’t tell if he was joking. I don’t know this guy at all. Laughing, I told him to get out. NOT MY SCENE i shouted after him. BUY ME A DRINK FIRST AT LEAST. Turns out it’s a co-ed, partially clothed bath house – but i heard that second-hand. Four days later. Apparently the guy felt bad about it.
- DAY 4: there is a chinup bar in the doorway of the same guy’s office, in a high traffic part of the dept. All these same dudes crowded around, cheering each other on while they do chinups and spot each other. Everyone else (the PAs, etc) ignore them while they high five Top Gun style – and they look like they’re being serious. For real. I make some crack about a Cock & Gun Show which gets a laugh, but a self conscious one. I leave, feeling like a jerk..
- DAY 6: this new story artist lives down the hall from me in the temp apartments that the unnamed studio set us up in. So I drive her to/from work. Working late, we hang out and she wants to order Chinese food. So we do. Turns out she’s got a wicked shellfish allergy and has a reaction on my couch. No esophagus closing or nothing, just going into shock, major intestinal pain, etc. Pulse is kinda crazy. I insist on the emerg room and she refuses. Instead she stays on my couch for two days. I didn’t mind, I wasn’t about to kick her out to be alone in that state. She doesn’t know anyone else in this town anyway, she’s from LA. She recovers – kind of – I have to use up a sick day cause she’s so effed she can’t stand very well.
- DAY 8: On her first day back after almost dying on my couch, one older gent wanders up to this new story artist’s office door and scratches his back on her doorframe while looking at her. Scratching like a bear. Then he leaves without saying a word. Then, another guy comes in and tells her that it smells better in here when she’s around, and leaves. Now she’s thinking she smells. Another dude comes in, flapping his arms like a chicken. Says he just finished playing ping pong and is all sweaty. Gotta smell more like man in here, he says. Then HE leaves. No one says ‘welcome back’ except the director, the producer and the PA and a few others..
- DAY 12: One of the older gents (the bear scratcher) discovers a life-sized mascot costume sitting in the corner of the room that we pitch boards in. Before the meeting starts, there’s just a few of us in the room, and he picks up the head – it’s a yeti costume, so it’s conical, 4 feet long, has a face and is shit brown – and he absent mindedly rubs it up and down, then proceeds to dry hump its base. WITHOUT LOOKING AT US TO SAY ‘HEY GUYS! CHECK IT OUT! HAHAHA’ . So i say ‘FUCKIN HELL ***, YOU MISS THE WIFE OR WHAT?’ then ol’ *** wanders out into the hallway with this thing on his crotch, pumping at it. and bellows WHERE”S MAH WIFE?! just as this new story artist walks around the corner, only to see an old guy with a giant, furry brown penis – one with a face – pointed right at her while he yells in her direction. She splits ASAP. No one cheers *** on. He’s on his own. Everyone waits for the HR to show up. They don’t.
- DAY 15 or so: A biologist is called into the studio to consult on a new film idea. He’s made a huge name for himself in his field. In the course of the roundtable discussion (creative heads from LA, the owner of the studio, some of us board artists there) , I mention like a keener that I thought that one part of his dissertation on African fish was pretty funny. (Let me clarify and enphasize that unsaid film idea has absolutely NOTHING to do with African fish. You’ll see. In 2060. Or whenever. These things take forever.) The professor said he thought it must have been in some other paper. He didn’t remember that. I said it was right here, see? He flipped through it, told me to find it because he didn’t think it was in there. I underlined it and handed it back to him, trying to apologize profusely while my boss gave me a dirty look and the scientist turns red. And he’s a brown dude. His handler promptly steered me out of the conversation.
- WEEK 4 – we decide to have a send-off for one of the crew in the Village in Manhattan. One guy comes over to my place with a bag of animal masks. Three of us don them and head out to the bar. Comments abound, but mostly not – it’s NY, after all. Once there, we proceed to get hammered, making friends with a table of South Americans and some semi-pro photogs who are snapping us from outside. More of the story crew shows up, and soon we all have masks on, about 12 of us. Pretty soon it’s free shots from the bartender and old ladies tripping on acid are high fiving us. Some crazy dude tried to kiss me. He wasn’t crazy because he tried to kiss me – I’m a handsome fella. He just spent most of the conversation telling me he was an American Navy SEAL and speaking Creole. Off to the next bar, and it’s a yard sale – coats, credit cards, ID, masks – all left behind at the bar or all over the street. Drinks were shattered on the dancefloor. Woke up and thought I was back in Canada, but alas, I was in my East Village flat. I wept. True story.
Anyways, so far so good!
Here’s a picture. More fun about this drivel below:
It was originally destined for a fund-raising idea for a hike club up in Collingwood, then I never finished it and handed it over because:
a) It has implied cussing in it. Seniors don’t like the cussing, I bet. Did I think of that when I made it? Of course not.
b) The “joke” is predicated on the notion that you’re old enough and white enough to know what ‘blue’ means – a code word for cussing! Haw haw. It is to laugh.
c) It’s dumb.
