The Traffic Light who Changes for No One

I don't know how many people actually still read my LiveJournal, but I figured I'd post this here in the spirit of the season.

Yesterday, I did my annual Holiday Spectacular edition of my radio show, Aural Fixation. It's a collection of my favorite and some really funny holiday music of all sorts, and you are welcome to totally download it here. Another thing that happened on the show is an "interview" with Andrew W.K. that can be downloaded separately (but is also included in the show proper). I use the term "interview" loosely. There's a lot more to be said about it. I think my brother will blog about it, at which point I will link or paste it. Suffice it to say that I don't think the story is quite over yet.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Festivus and all that jazz. Tis the season, so be a good person.

Is anyone who checks my LiveJournal a friend of mine on MySpace? Or was, rather? I don't even know, but my MySpace was recently deleted, so I've a new one that looks almost exactly the same. Add me, if you would.

Last night, I went to take out my contact lenses because after swimming in the ocean, they got all salty and were bugging me. So I went to my room to find my lens solution and case. When I opened the case, I found there was already a pair inside. "How strange," I thought, "I'm pretty sure I threw away the pair I wore last." After not being able to find an extra lens case for this extra set, I decided I had to put them both in the same. I step into the bathroom to take my current lenses out, and after poking my eye for a second or two, it doesn't feel like there's a lens in there.

And for the briefest moment, I think, "Did something happen that miraculously fixed my eyes and I no longer need corrective lenses? That would be fucking cool."

But only for a moment. Because then I found the lenses in my eyes.

Wonderful, nutty day two of the wonderful, nutty internship. I got up around the same time as I did on Tuesday, 8:15am. Well, actually, 8:20, cuz I hit the snooze. I figured that since I wasn't trying to buy an album beforehand and that the trains didn't take as long as I thought, I could leave a bit later. So I ate a bowl of cereal, watched a bit of some movie on Comedy Central and left around 9:15. I actually wound up getting into the area real quick, around 9:35. So I can leave yet later, and sleep yet more. That's good. To kill the time, I walked around the neighborhood, scoping out places to eat for lunch later in the day. I considered maybe just going to the Subway that's about a block away, but since I'm an out-of-towner in the city, what the hell's the point of going to get something to eat if you're not going to sample little city places? Anyway.

Got into the office promptly at 10am. Maybe 10:01. I didn't shave for this one. Yee Yeo has scruff, I figure I can too. Shaving is annoying. I didn't wear the button-down shirt over my t-shirt this time around, but I did bring a long-sleeve shirt in my bag because the office tends to get a bit chilly. It was just so fucking hot on Tuesday that it was a relief.

Alissa was already there when I got in, apparently she got there a bit earlier. Another guy was already there, but was in the bathroom at the time. I think that was Greg, who's a very nice guy. He was wearing these shorts that were cut-off jeans, except they were really tight jeans, so the cut-off-ness was amusing to me. Also since nobody was really there yet, I was able to snag a computer. Hooary! Jason, I think, came in next. He was also pretty cool. He laughed at my little jokes through the day, which I always give folks points for. Then Aimee and Paul. Paul was wearing a Germs t-shirt, so good for him. Also a nice guy. Nice people work at Killer.

There was nothing for us really to do for a while until the intern to-do list came out. Today, there were some of the tasks that us interns are more loathe to do, such as dropping off/picking up Christine's laundry, buying her cat food and cat litter, and picking up a dartanion and six lemons (not five, not seven, but six) from Dean & Deluca. There were also a few runs. A Sloss run, a Pam run, something about an EPK. So I continued dicking around on my computer, trying to avoid getting stuck with the laundry, kitty or lemon runs.

Alissa and Jason opted to do the laundry and kitty stuff, which was nice. Aimee asked to use the computer I was on initially to figure out some flight stuff for Christine and her daughter, which was fine, since I wasn't doing any work. Jason got off the front desk computer, so I hopped on and chatted with Paul a bit. There was also a call that I picked up and accidentally hung up on. Again. But they called back, so that wasn't a big deal. At some point, I faintly heard Charles in the back calling for someone, but I couldn't tell if he was calling an intern. Then as I saw a flashing instant message from Yee Yeo, I heard Charles again...

"HEY, I NEED SOME HELP OVER HERE!"

"Charles needs an intern," Yee Yeo's IM flashed. So I shot up and sprinted over to Charles' desk and was handed a piece of paper to fax to a person. Not really being familiar with the fax machine, I asked Paul to help, which meant he basically did it for me. But at least now I know how to send a fax. Then there was more downtime during which I finished a script I had started on Tuesday.

Next kind of intern-y thing was that Yee Yeo asked Aimee to set up the printer to print a few scripts (which means switching out the normal paper to 3-hold-punched paper), which she was unsure how to do, so I assisted. So did Paul. It's easy for one person jobs to become three person jobs around here. The scripts printed and Aimee and I brass-tabbed them and I ran them back to Yee Yeo. He asked if we checked to see if all the pages were there, which we didn't. So Aimee, Greg and I did that. My script had two pages missing, which Yee Yeo found were missing from the scan. So hooray for it not being my fault!

[I apologize to anyone who found that part of this entry very, very boring. I find it that way too. But I remember it, so I'm writing it.]

Soon after, Yee Yeo came out and informed us that he had a task for all of us. He wanted a list of all movies shot in the New England/Tristate area in the last two or three years, made for under $10,000,000. He wouldn't really say why. Paul and I started to get to work on it, and so did Alissa and Jason, when they returned. It took a while for us to figure out the best way to go about this. For once, Wikipedia wasn't really a help, in terms of having a useful list. Studio System was working out pretty well, because we were able to search by budget and location.

After about ten minutes of this, there was another run up, which I volunteered to do. This run was to a post-production office of a movie they're wrapping up to pick up a DV Cam tape from the cutting room. So I grabbed my music and was on my way. The subway ride there was actually insanely easy and convenient, the building was less than a block away from the stop I got off the train at. The building was crazy. And by crazy, I mean really lavish and reflective. I could see myself in just about every surface, most of which seemed to be brass. Myself and a few other people piled into the elevator when it arrived. A few of them got off on the fourth floor, which was apparently the headquarters of Broadway Video (as in SNL, Letterman, etc). Another guy got off on the fifth floor, which was more of Broadway Video.

Myself and another guy got off on the seventh floor, which was the company housing the post-production office for the flicks. I went into the office and kind of stuttered my asking if this was the post production office for movie in question. The lady at the desk figured out I was from Killer and handed me an envelope addressed to Charles. I fumbled it and dropped it, but caught it before it hit the floor. I may or not have kind of hit my side on the doorway. Any way you look at it, I bumbled. I am one bumbly dude. Anyway, it took me a little confusion to figure out how to get back downtown on the train I came in on, but I did, and I got back fairly quick.

When I got back, Jason was working on EPK stuff for another movie wrapping up production. I think he was going through clips and figuring out what to title them, and it seemed work had stopped on the New England movies list. So I kinda just hung around and started to read a script that was kicking around cwith a title that intrigued me. After only a few minutes, Yee Yeo asked if anyone was working on the list, so I had to get cracking on that again. We all tried to figure out getting back into Studio System to do the specific search again, but we couldn't get the login info correct and Paul (who had logged in before) went on a run to Sloss during the time I was getting the DV Cam tape. So I figured out how to manipulate a normal IMDb search to my interests. I was also, thankfully, able to get back on the PC and off the iMac. Which I hate.

After I got into a bit of a good swing of the search, after Jason had returned from a brief run and was not working on the EPK anymore, Yee Yeo asked how the EPK was coming. Of course, it wasn't, so I had to go back onto the iMac and keep up the search while Jason worked on the PC. To make it so I didn't have to go back to the iMac, I took this opportunity to grab lunch. I think I went to "Le Sandwich", but that sounds stupid, so that probably wasn't the name. Obviously, by this time, I had completely forgotten any of the places I had scoped out earlier in the morning. I got a burger and fries and they were very, very tasty. When I got back, I read the first few pages of another scipt called, which had a pretty grabbing opening sequence. I'll be trying to finish that over my next few days there. The one I picked up before, Greg said wasn't really that good. How sad.

So I did that for a while longer, and Jason and Aimee went out to pick up the laundry and I switched back to the PC. And then I proceeded to work for about another half an hour before Yee Yeo informed me that he also wanted the name of all of the Unit Production Managers for the flicks I was finding titles, locations and budgets for. So I had to double-back and find those names. Now, I realize that in the summary here, it doesn't sound like I was doing this for a terribly long time, but I was. A very long time. Like, almost non-stop (except for the lunch) for three hours. Possibly the most monotonous thing I've ever done. If it's not, it's up there. Once I was finished, though, that was a very nice relief. Things were really winding down at that point. I asked Yee Yeo if I could come in a third day next week because an intern named Jen is away, and he replied "of course", which is awesome. So I get three days next week.

But there had to be one thing in the day that brought me down. I mean, there had to be. It was my second day, and I hadn't really fucked anything up. So then I fucked something up. Not to go into too much detail, but I took a message for a call without finding out if I should have even taken a message. I felt very small. But I won't fuck up that procedure again.

Half of the interns had already gone and the other half were just about to leave. Yee Yeo came in and asked us to do one last thing, copy a DVD. So I volunteered to do it to try to redeem myself a little bit, I guess. Paul left and as Aimee left, she pointed to my They Might Be Giants button on my bag and said "Ooh! They Might Be Giants! I like them, very cool!" So that was neat. I took the next fifteen minutes to copy the DVD, and Yee Yeo asked me to put them in sleeves and give one to Charles. So I placed a copy on Charles' desk and he smiled and gave me a thumbs up (he was on the phone). I like that the guy is appreciative of something done right.

Before I left, I bagged a a headshot that was sent in and was going to be thrown away, unwanted, and headed back to the apartment.

I feel markedly better about the second day of this madness. Despite the thing that happened at the end of the day, I know that I'm in much better shape after today than I was on Tuesday and that I'll be yet better come next week. I'm starting to get the hang of this crazyness, and I'm still pretty enthralled by it. Really looking forward to my three days next week, and of course, the TMBG show next week as well.

For the next three weeks, I am interning with Killer Films in New York City. To check out what films they've been involved with, check out this link. It's a lot of stuff. And it's all good. This entry is slightly edited from its original form to remove specific information that I should probably keep to myself.

I woke up way early to go to get there promptly at 10am. I left earlier than I normally would in hopes of purchasing the new They Might Be Giants album before I went in. This turned out to be a bust as the one store that was open at the time didn't have the new release stock out yet. Oh well. I wound up walking around for a good half hour, becoming quite sweaty and gross in the process. After an attempt at the wrong building to get to the office, I made it there promptly at 10am.

The first person I met was Yee Yeo Chang. He's kind of the office coordinator and go-to guy for any questions and phone calls throughout the day. The second person I met was another brand-spanking-new intern named Josh, who was overdressed for the occasion, as it turned out. I wore a variation on my common attire: I wore my poodle button-down shirt over my t-shirt. Otherwise, normal black jeans and Misfits shoes. I also shaved. Josh was all in khaki pants and a striped button-down. Julia would later tell him that he was overdressed, but I'll get to that later.

So the first thing Yee Yeo did was show us the general intern area and make us copies of the KILLER FILMS INTERN HANDBOOK, an intimidating 20-page list of dos, don'ts, names, phone numbers and procedures. He told Josh and I to just have a seat and get reading. Other interns came in soon after. Aimee, an English girl who had just started the previous day. Julia, a shortish girl who is from New Jersey (but goes to Oberlin) with red hair in dreadlocks. She was wearing a suspender-y outfit that I thought was neat. Blake, a tall guy with plaid shorts, glasses and sandals who knew what he was doing. And last but not least, Alissa, who's kind of the senior intern. Either her or Blake. I couldn't quite tell.

Anyway, they got to their various tasks while Josh and I struggled to remember all kinds of things we weren't expecting. Like the day one of us does Christine Vachon's laundry and the day where one of us waits at her apartment for a food delivery. Or how to expect calls from various people I never thought I'd be talking to, like Todd Haynes, Todd Solondz or Helen Hunt. And how if Christine calls, we literally shout across the office to whoever she's calling for.

Something else I found very interesting about the way the office works is that nearly all communication between the interns and Yee Yeo occurs through AOL Instant Messenger. For more involved things, we're explicitly shown things, but a lot of stuff is carried out over AIM.

After we finished reading through all of that handbook madness, we began another office task. In this case, copying some DVDs. These DVDs were a workprint of a new film that in the final polish stage now. I think it's set to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. There was also a makeup test for a movie in pre-production. The makeup was pretty damned good.

For our first taste of an intern's day, Julia took Josh and I on our first "run", from the intern to-do list. This particular task was to walk to Christine's apartment to pickup a Starbucks bag and an unopened Amazon.com package. So we walked and chatted in the hot, hot sunlight, whereupon yet more sweat was emitted. This is when Josh was informed he was overdressed, which relieved him. We got to Christine's apartment, verified that nobody was inside, went in, took the specified items and returned to the office.

Once we returned, I didn't really have much to do for a little while, so I began poking around the office to check out what was around. The first thing I noticed was an area with lots of filing cabinets. There were neat things like Killer Personnel files, files of stuff for films in Inactive Development, reams and reams of paper dedicated to wrapped/released films. Definitely some really neat stuff. Most of the racks on one side were labeled "KILLER SCRIPTS ARCHIVE". Of course, I had to look through it. I came across a few interesting things along the way, some of which will be future reading during my downtime there.

The first real task that I helped with at the office was helping Josh find a restaurant in LA for Christine to have a meeting at. That killed about ten minutes. Then we were given a somewhat meatier task: OFFICE SUPPLY INVENTORY! That's right! Finding out the exact contents of the office supply shelves of Important Film Production Company, Killer Films! Okay, so it wasn't that exciting. But they have a lot of glue sticks. And different lengths of brass tabs. And lots of blank VHS tapes. The monotony of this task drove me to a great hunger. Julia recommended a quite literal hole-in-the-wall place called... I don't even remember anymore. Crosby Connection? That might have been it. I got a big turkey sandwich. I walked back to the office to consume it. It was very tasty. So was the script.

The next thing I was assigned to do was to return the unopened Amazon package that I picked up at Christine's earlier in the day. I opened it up to figure out what to do. So after getting the Amazon account info from Yee Yeo over AIM, I packed that sucker up, taped the address label to the front and put it in the outbox. I think it was also in this time that I helped Aimee rearrange the intern schedule a little bit. Hooray for menial office work!

When Blake piped up that there was another run to do that sounded easy enough, I snatched up the opportunity. I had to run a package to the Sloss Law Firm that's a few subway stops away from the Killer office. I grabbed my music and my bag and set off. Kind of ironically, the Sloss office is pretty nearby to Merrill's apartment in Chelsea where I'm staying. The walking was kind of awful because of the heat, but the Sloss office was really nice. And air conditioned. I wished I coulda looked around, but I pretty much just plopped the package on the reception desk and left. I bought a soda on the way back to try to cool myself down. When I got back to the office, I tried to clean up a bit and not be so gross.

The day after that calmed down a bit, at least for me. I did some more restaurant finding for meetings in LA, I found info on a delayed flight (apparently there was a lot of weather weirdness at JFK), read a script and talked to Emily over AIM. I also answered some phone calls.

I was trying to avoid the phones all day because, frankly, I didn't want to fuck anything up. The first time I answered phone, probably closer to when I got back from Sloss, it was Christine.

"Christine for Yee Yeo."
"Uhh... hang on... [hold button] CHRISTINE FOR YEE YEO LINE ONE!"

That was easy enough. And I didn't answer another one for a while, until everyone else kind of started giving me a (joking) hard time about not answering the phones. So I bravely said that I would answer the next call that came through. A few minutes later...

"Todd for Charles."

Now, let me rewind a bit. The handbook also went over how various more familiar people would talk when they called. "Todd for ____" means it's Todd Haynes for whoever and it should be immediately forwarded. It probably had something to do with the movie he's finishing up with Killer Films. Charles had already left for the day, so I broke a bit of protocol and disclosed that information, because I figured Todd Haynes could know.

"One se-- oh, wait, he left for the day."
"Oh, okay, uhh... Can I speak to Yee Yeo, then?"
"Yep, sure, one sec."

Then I press the hold button and try to get Yee Yeo on the intercom and tell him. But he's on a call, so it's busy. So I follow procedure by writing Todd's name on a Post-It and I carry it across the office to show to Yee Yeo. He will then either take the call or tell me to take a message. Of course, in this case, he was going to take it. So he went to pick up the line... except there was no blinking light. I became confused. I went back out to the intern area and everyone was giving me that knowing look.

"Did I hang up on Todd Haynes?"
Blake replied, "You hung up on Todd Haynes."
"But how?! I hit the hold button!"
"Well..."
"Didn't I hit the hold button? I thought I hit the hold button. Did you see me not hit the hold button?"
"I saw you not hit the hold button."
"Oh fuck."

They assured me it was okay and it wasn't something to worry about. Stuff like that happens. Blake said he hung up on one of their directors three times in a row by accident last week. It definitely rattled me, though. He didn't call back. I assume he called Charles on his cell phone or something. I got one other call, which I was able to deal with properly, but fuck, that's why I didn't want to answer the phone in the first place! Oy.

In my last half hour at the office, I read some of a script, learned how to sort the mail, and chatted with my fellow interns.

All in all, I'm pretty goddamn elated. This was a taste of my career of choice, and man was it sweet. The super-quick wheelings and dealings, the menial office work, the messenger boy jobs, all of it. And just being around so many DVDs and scripts and props and awards and archives of production notes and schedules and everything was so goddamn cool. I can't wait for Friday. I just hope I can work a third day next week.

Also, I wound up getting the new TMBG album at Other Music right around the corner from the office after I got off. It's great, of course. But I already knew that.

Writing a script, listening to Kraftwerk, with softcore Cinemax in the background. This might be the weirdest immobile thing I've ever done.

So... I got a haircut for the first time in two years.

I'm finally switching my screenname to be more in accordance with my handle just about everywhere else on the internet.

You can now contact me on AIM as ReverendBeastly.

I bought a MicroKorg today. Wow.

It took me 20 years, but this morning, my mom bought me ice cream for breakfast.