sad sad conversation
9/24/2011 sad sad
9/23/2011 sad sad
These are the only people who talk to me.
HEY BUDDY!! GOT A JOB FOR YA!!!
Tech Recruiters: I have great pity for these fine folks – it seems like a horrible job, and I suppose that they behave the way they behave because of behavior on both my side of the industry and the employer side of the industry. But, MANOHMAN, can they be annoying and weird.
Two days ago, I updated my Front End Dev resume on Monster.com. I opted to leave it “searchable by employers” but what that means is “have 20 recruiters call me regarding jobs that I’m not qualified for”.
Not only am I getting calls about .net gigs and email about managing a C# team in Torrance, but I think I’m being stalked by one guy who actually sent me a poem via text-message.
And I (block)quote:
Dean, don’t be mean
i gotta crazy job for u
crazier than charlie sheen.This is the jam
with a bit of penut butter
smashed with hamDean let me tell u about all the goodness i got in between!
True story. Really. It’s on my phone. I’ll show you sometime.
Each and every one of them leads with a variation of this line: “Hey, buddy, a colleague of mine just handed me your resume and I’d like to discuss a position that I think you’re a great fit for. Gimme a call back at Desperate Recruitment Solutions…” The ones who email me send a robot-killer: “A colleague of mine just handed me your resume and I’d like to discuss a position that I think you’re a great fit for, please send me your resume.”
They probably mean “updated resume” but still.
Here’s the problem with all of this. Up until a year ago, I’d been out of work for just about two years. That includes any showbiz stuff. I was scouring the boards… there was nothing for front-end guys. Now I have a very nice gig, but we are just now tying up the loose ends created by that nightmare. What I learned about these tech recruiters is that they do not have jobs that you are a perfect fit for. They are at the worst lying and and at the least just playing a numbers game – compile enough resumes and ‘heads’ and eventually, one will hit and their company will make the arm and leg they charge companies for their “service”. One place I worked was paying the recruiter $60/hr for my $30/hr job. And I never met the recruiter. They just sent my resume over.
I say “just” as if that’s nothing. I understand that one must cull through a billion submissions, but… just sayin’. It’s good money if you can get it.
The poet who is stalking me said he has a front end gig for me that pays 110k. There are no front end dev positions paying 110k. Not U.S. dollars, anyway. Yet.
As soon as a company passes on your resume, they are impossible to get on the phone. I actually made it in to the office of one recruiter and it was like the call center in Slumdog Millionaire. A big dry-erase board with goals and “this weeks winners”. (by the way, if you are a ruby or .net developer, you win at life). A bell was rung when someone filled a position. Horrible.
The experience that really soured me on them was the guy who was buddy, buddy, buddy with me – “they want someone with a sense of humor, buddy” and, after my phone cut out on his boss once, I wrote an email, apologizing to her, ending the email saying that I’d purchased my phone plan from a guy in Nigeria who also promised me 30 million dollars. Cute, right? “I’m sorry that our call ended so abruptly. Service in Los Angeles is maddening. I hope we can talk again soon. I don’t understand why service is so bad, etc. …” Starts off nicely and culpable and then adds a quick little “joke”. No poem… nothin. Right?
My buddy wrote back saying that his boss didn’t think I seemed professional. True story.
I guess I’m just sour on the flesh-peddler idea in general. Except for three people and you know who you are.
Now, if you actually DO have a front-end-dev gig in Burbank that pays over 100k/yr, please shoot me an email at my first name at this domain. Better still – a recurring t.v. gig that leads to a regular gig 2nd season leading to directing 2 episodes 3rd season. Howbout that, buddy?!
Why do we insist on treating each other like shit?
Weekend Fun
I did an interview on this web radio station. There was some technical nuttiness involving “lag” that interfered with us having a completely excellent time, so it was just an excellent time.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ethantudorw/2011/02/05/the-neverhood-show-episode-32-dean-cameron
Five Minutes of Evil!!!
I haven’t been listening as I should… as I promised both of you. Please forgive me. I either miss GB because I go in later than usual or listen to music or talk to myself.
But, I finally listened a couple days ago and he seems to have rounded a corner since the rally. He talked about god answering prayers and that “the very gates of hell” are going to open up.
He still hasn’t said anything evil. He’s just talking about stupid religious stuff. I’m sure lots of the people who think he’s evil talk about stupid religious stuff. I will use broad strokes here and posit that since most of the people who hate him are on “the left”, they don’t go to “church” but do that thing that’s even worse which is call themselves “spiritual”. I prefer people who make a commitment to an ideal. Even if it’s so invisible as to not exist at all.
I respect fundamentalists christians more than someone who breathes a cleansing orange light into their heart chakra at a weekly yoga class. If you’re a fundamentalist who has actually studied, then you’re not a lazy know-it-all like the light-breathers.
It’s the same concept I apply to heroin addicts vs. wine drinkers. I don’t want to hang out with either one, but the heroin addict sure does make a commitment: “I want to get so high, I can’t feel anything” as opposed to the wine drinker: “Oh, dear no, the alcohol is secondary… I love the bouquet on this vintage… blah blah blah…” Liar.
Speaking of respect. It’s been a bad year for the show biz. So bad that both of us are losing our SAG health coverage.I put the word out among friends that I had very little time to earn $7k before we were kicked to the curb.
Only one friend came through and he came through in spades.
Thank you, old friend.
January in NYC – say it soft and it’s almost like praying
After being harassed by the cunts known as the TSA because they couldn’t understand how someone with a ticket for dean cameron and a credit card for dean cameron and a couple of other cards for dean cameron could possibly have a drivers license for dean cameron eikleberry. they made me go back to jet blowme and reprint my ticket with dean eikleberry. then, i told them they were destroying the country so they searched my bags like i was a nigerian packing tnt in his anus.
Good thing that i had stuff saying ‘NIGERIAN SPAM SCAM’ on it, eh?!?
But… i had the entire back row to myself…
Until a woman who took a handful or two too many xanax and jack daniels’sses collapsed and hit her head on the armrest, knocking her doped up self out.
They had her lie down in the aisle for 2 hours. i couldn’t really go back to sleep because that’s what an asshole would do (shut up!) so i feigned interest until…
“Do you mind if this woman sits here?”
“Um… no… of course not…”
So i didn’t really sleep.
There’s snow here.
It seems that my cabbie, a recent graduate of the cliche nyc cabbie school, had been told that ice and snow improve traction and braking times but was confused as to why it didn’t seem to work like that. Instead of vomiting, I got out at 6th and waverly and walked a fair distance instead of the location i can’t mention because i’m staying at a paranoid famous person’s place!!!
Ah well.
I’m thinking that having a child later in life as I’ve done is a good thing because I can’t stop thinking about how cool it will be to see him experience new things… snow, for example. It’s going to be difficult to be the “seen-it-all” guy with a little guy so full of joy and wonder at all of those beautiful things.
There’s that, too.
Besides the last 5 or so hours, I have a delightful life. My wife is beautiful, sexy, funny, smart and makes cookies… and I have a son who only wants to laugh and be happy.
But really. Fuck the TSA. Right in the fucking neck.
I have an atom’s worth of understanding what it must be like to “drive while black”. An RCH of understanding. To be regarded as guilty before proven innocent is a horrible thing and that is how the TSA is destroying this country.
Spam Scam @ Jackson, MI – II – Electric Boogaloo
8:15pm – The venue is a state junior college. Each of us silently take note of the paucity of cars in the parking lot as one of the tech guys meet us at the back door. We scurry in like people late for a performance.
The guys at the venue are, thankfully, ON IT and have all of the required cables, stands and screens set up and ready to go. I plug the show iPod in to their video cable and it works the first time. That’s never happened. I check and make sure that I have the right set of slides (there are three versions of slides) and I do.
I head up to the light booth and set up Paul’s computer and iPod for the audio as Victor and he set up the computers and props for the show. Victor irons his shirt. The computers are all set up, I pass Paul, give him a quick primer on how to make sure levels are good for the phone calls. I change shirts stage right as they let people in.
Total pre-show set up time: 2 minutes.
8: 17pm – they let the audience in. All 11 of them. Eleven people are there to see the show. We’ve done a couple of state schools and both times the taxpayers have paid our salary and it looks like this is no different. Good thing Michigan is doing so well.
8:25pm – “Dear sir, may the blessings of allah be upon you and grant you the wisdom and sympathy…”
We perform the show. This is the beauty of having performed a show over 150 times for the past 5 years. It goes great. The 11 people love it. Laugh in all the right places. Scream at the reveals, etc. Were you there? Killed.
9:40pm – instead of going out to the lobby for the crap collection, we just jump off the front of the stage and chat with people. Ellen Sawyer, a person I worked with at iWin.com when this whole thing began has brought her boyfriend and four other people. They have no idea where to go in Jackson and neither do we. We don’t even know the name or location of our hotel. After some conversation with our superstar tech guys, we figure out where we’re staying and where to go for foodstuffs. We are verrrrrry hungry.
9:55pm – We say our goodbyes to the staff and head off to the hotel. Usually, after a show, there is a nice glow… a nice feeling. It’s such a fun show to perform and we LOVE doing it, but we realize that we don’t really remember doing the show tonight. The show was secondary, at least, to everything else that has been going on. It’s not a great feeling. We do realize that the benefit of having spent so little time there was that we didn’t have any opportunity to feel badly that there were going to be 11 people in the audience. That’s the silver lining, apparently.
10:30pm – We find the ho-tel. It’s fine. Basic business traveller chain. Great. The restaurant is next door, we eat, have a nice time with Ellen and her friends. I have a nice hot fudge ice cream treat and we’re back at the ho-tel by midnight.
Our return flight on Spirit doesn’t leave until 7:30pm the next day. We get late checkouts and agree that we can sleep in and then maybe go exploring beautiful Detroit – Rock City.
12:30am – My room. Sleep of the dead.
11:30am – It seems that the housekeeper didn’t get the memo that I had a late check-out and she wakes me up. Ah well. I get up, pack what little i unpacked, check out and walk across the street to have a nice, leisurely breakfast at the Cracker Barrel.
1pm – As I sit down, Victor calls. He decided to double check our flight and learned that if one misses their initial flight on Spirit Airlines, you forfeit your second leg, ass well. We have no return flight home. We are, once again, fuckity fuck fuck fucked.
We get a hold of Paul, and get in the car and begin driving back to Detroit before we have a plan. We know that we probably don’t have time to have breakfast at the Cracker Barrel. Victor checks the web on his iPhone (technology saved us, by the way) and there’s a 2:15 flight on American for $175 each. Knowing the speed of Budget, we’ll never make it. He checks Southwest. Nope.
We’re laughing. Every time something’s happened, we just laugh. It got horrible so quickly that we didn’t have time to get bummed, it was just funny the entire time. I mean… yeah… so.
I’m driving really fast. Really. Fucking. Fast. Maybe we’ll try for the 2:15 flight, but Victor finds ANOTHER American flight at 5:30 for the same price. He calls, books the tickets and we are golden.
That’s basically it. We stop at a truck stop for breakfast, which is good, as the coffee at the Cracker Barrel was asstastic.
Once we get to the airport (Returning the fucking car took less than a minute. No fucking lie.) and are all checked in with boarding passes in hand, I see the Spirit counter and I get the idea to go over and fuck with them. Just because I can. The reason I booked the tickets on Spirit was that they were the only ones with a non-stop flight and the tickets were about $150 cheaper than the real airlines. But, they charge for each bag each way and also they charge for picking seats in advance. So, it ended up being about the same as I would’ve paid on a real airline.
We’re out just over a grand for the tickets on Spirit, and we’ve spent about 1200 for the emergency flights. It’s all covered by our booking fee and we’ll still make *some* money, but… one must subtract the cost of the extra flights now…
I head over to Spirit and I figure, instead of harassing them, maybe I’ll just try to get my money back. Once again, I use Aye Jaye’s excellent line. “Hi there… I have a bit of a problem and if you can help me, you can have the rest of the day off…” I explain (or ‘splain, as ricky rickardo would say) what has happened and the woman takes my ID, punches up stuff on her screen. “It says here, you have three seats booked on the 7:30 flight.”
“What?”
“You’re booked on the flight at 7:30 tonight.”
To make a very lonnng story shorter, I’ve kept my cool and haven’t been an asshole traveler to her so she is able to refund five hundred bucks. It’s not the whole shebang, which I’m going to try to get (that’ll happen) but it’s five hundred bucks that we didn’t have a few minutes ago. I’m stunned. I aks her who I need to talk to so I can really try to get her the rest of the day off. She laughs and says “If I can’t go to L.A. where it’s warm, I might as well just stay here…”
The other silver lining is that we didn’t have to find a way to get from LAX to where I was parked at BUR.
Plus, at least the show killed. I think.
Nigerian Spam Scam Scam – Jackson, MI
Nigerian Spam Scam Scam show in Jackson, MI – at a small college a little over an hour from Detroit.
Curtain is 8pm Friday, Rocktober 23.
9:30pm Thursday, Rocktober 22 –
Thursday night – arrive at LAX 9:30pm for a 10:30pm flight on Spirit Airlines. Spirit was chosen for their non-stop to Detroit, which saved us from sitting in an airport in Dallas for an hour. Heh.
Spirit Airlines has cancelled a flight to Ft. Lauderdale. The counter looks like the US Embasy during the fall of Saigon. Victor, Paul (the tech guy) and I move to three separate lines. I get close. A woman in front of me begins yelling at me after I tell her that the Ft. Lauderdale flight is cancelled. She doesn’t, apparently, understand the “don’t kill the messenger” concept. Ah well. The two people who are behind the counter are mobbed. We can’t get to them. Finally one guy comes out and yells at everyone who is yelling at him about Ft. Lauderdale. I signal Victor to aks him about Detroit.
“That plane has departed. We made an announcement.” and he leaves. He vanishes.
10:30pm – We are stunned. Shocked. Pissed. We had plenty of time. Okay. We’ll deal with Spirit at another time, they are crushed by the pissed Ft. Lauderdale folks.
We look for departing flights. I call the savior, Colin Summers as we scurry through the airport looking for flights. It’s late. We’ve just missed a flight on United. I’m talking to Colin as we look at the displays. We see a flight to Cleveland. Victor calculates that it’s a three hour drive to Detroit. We could get in at 6am and then drive to Jackson… we wouldn’t get much sleep but we’d be okay.
Colin’s talking about different flights. I mention Cleveland. There’s an American flight to Detroit for 2grand. No. We can’t do that. Colin mentions a flight on some other airline that gets in at 5pm the next day. That gives us time to at least drive to the venue… it’s a bit over an hour from Detroit. The show is a breeze to set up. We’d get in at 5. Get to the venue by 6:30-7pm. We’re golden. Colin books the flight.
“Okay, you’re set on flight such and such arriving in Cleveland at 5pm.”
“CLEVELAND?!?! WHAT?!?!?!”
In the confusion, I’d confused poor colin and… yeah…
Victor finds a flight on Southwest that gets us to Detroit at 5pm the next day. Colin manages to cancel the ticket and tells me he’s going to bed. We’ll be fine. We’ve found a flight.
Victor gets on the phone with Southwest to book the tickets. He’s on hold for 17 minutes. Finally he gets an agent and begins going through the process. He puts the phone against his chest to aks me a question and hangs up the phone.
12am – We’ve gone to Northwest to see if there’s anything.
In Aye Jaye’s schmoozing book, he has the best line to use on someone like a harried ticket agent or some public servant who hates people. I’ve used it in the past and it is a terrific ice breaker that immediately puts them on your side. You have to say it the right way, or you could come off like a condescending (that means “talk down to”) prick.
I’ve used the line “Hi there… I tell you what, if you can help me out, you can take the rest of the day off, deal?” on the Northwest Ticket agent and she had gone through every airline’s schedule for us, trying to find a flight that gets us to Detroit at a reasonable hour.
She wasn’t able to find us anything that we were satisfied with so we thank her profusely, I tell her to let them know that she can go home she laughs and we split.
About 10 minutes later, I realize that I’ve left my backpack at the counter. We head back and it’s gone. One of the “security people” says that the cops came with dogs and they took it away. “You’d better hurry, they usually destroy those.” (she actually said this to Victor who, wisely, didn’t tell me this until much later)
Oddly, she’s not able to get in touch with the police. That makes sense. We go to my buddies at the TSA who, also aren’t able to contact the police but a teenager with a TSA badge sternly akses me about the bag and why I left it. He departs.
The bag is important, by the way, because it has the two iPods that control the show. Yeah.
He comes back and says that it was cleared and is now down at the Northwest lost baggage area.
I head down there. Victor and Paul continue searching for flights on Victor’s iPhone while I wait with three others in line as an old woman tells her sob story about her bag and how important it is to her. The other two have learned to just describe their bags and get on with it. As I approach the counter I see my bag, point to it and it’s returned. Whewwww. I’m an idiot.
1am - Victor’s found a 7:30am flight from Burbank to Detroit. It gets us in at 5:05pm. 5:05pm. At this point, it’s our only shot. If it’s on time and everything goes smoothly, we get to the venue in time to set up and go before curtain time. The problem is, the return flight on Spirit gets takes us back to LAX, so we’ll have to find a way to get from LAX to my car at BUR. Ah well. We just need to get to the DTW.
2am – Back at the house, Victor heads home, Paul sleeps on the couch. The good thing is I get to see Duncan and feed him and then go to sleep.
5:45 am – Victor arrives at the house we head to BUR.
7:00 am – We board the flight to Phoenix to get our 10:10am connecting flight to DTW.
8:45am – Arrive EARLY in Phoenix. Yes, of course, the flight to DTW is delayed by 1/2 hour. It gets us there at 5:30. Okay. Still we have time to get the rental car and drive quickly to Jackson. Sure. Okay…
11am – Wheels up to DTW. The plane has been delayed longer than 1/2 hour. Fine. We can still make an 8pm curtain. We just need to be on the road from Detroit by 6:30pm.
5:30pm – DTW. Victor y Paul go to baggage claim to get the show bag (we haven’t entertained the idea of the show bag getting lost. We can’t fathom it.) I catch the SHUTTLE?!?!?! to Budget Rent-A-Car.
5:45pm - Budget Rent-A-Car – There are 10 people in line in front of me. 10. I’ve now looked up the distance on my phone and it’s 65 miles. We are right by the freeway and the venue is right off the freeway, so there’s not *that much* surface street time. But. These fuckers in front of me need to hurry or die. They don’t. There are four rental agents. Well, until one goes on her break.
The night before, I’d emailed our contact at the venue about our situation and assured her that we’d be there and all would be fine.
Paul y Victor arrive with the bag and Paul gets on the phone with his tech contact and they go through the lighting set up. He sort of techs the show over the phone. Nice.
6:15pm - Apparently, the two sistas in front of me who have never rented a car before today, had reserved a Ford Expedition and weren’t getting one. Instead Budget was renting them a mid-sized SUV (like we were getting), but they had their hearts set on that Expedition. Okay.. at least the other agent is finished… wait what? That agent is now helping the guy get them their fucking Expedition. She saunters away and the sistas chat with the agent about the weather. I am muttering. I have begun muttering and am very close to being “that crazy guy who went nuts” so I begin deep breathing and trying to relax. We are now going to miss our 8pm curtain. It is obvious.
Victor calls our contact to tell her. It looks like we’ll be rolling in about 7:45 at the earliest, 8pm at the latest. We’ll only need 10 minutes to check levels and plug everything in. Victor says “So I guess we’ll need to hold the curtain.” She says “Yeah, you think so?!” in a strangely snide way.
The Expedition sistas are now aksing about EVERY option on the rental car contract and the Budget guy is doing his best to Upsell them on said options. The sistas have actual discussions about the pros and cons of getting the GPS upsell, the gas upsell, the insurance upsell. Then, they have that “argument” about who is going to pay for the Expedition.
I’m hugging myself and rocking back and forth. Really.
The sistas finally get their car. I am conscious of not being “that fucking asshole” so I wait until the agent calls me. I don’t want to rush him. He is quiet and seems skittish and I can tell that if I get at all aggressive with him, he cares so little that he will make my life much worse than it is at this moment, so I get calm and direct and smiley.
I gently convey that we are having a really hard time and if we can get this over with faster than slower, it’s fine with me. He doesn’t really seem to hear me. Okay. That’s fine. Strap in. Stay the course.
I get all the shit done, the good news is that since we didn’t pick it up at 5am like we were supposed to, we won’t be charged for the day, so I apply that money to the foolish upsell insurance because I am suddenly superstitious that something is going to happen to the car.
6:50pm - We are on the road. The dark, windy and rainy road. Victor brought his GPS and has it set. He relays the conversation with the woman and how she seemed strangely pissed. “I wonder if curtain was actually at 8pm…” He checks that web site. Curtain is at 7:30pm. Ah. Okay. That makes sense now. Of *course* we have to hold the curtain. Double doi.
My two friends, Colin y Kramer, who both drive like drunken teenagers late for their SATs would be proud of my driving from DTW to Jackson. Oddly, we didn’t get in a crash, have a blowout or get pulled over by the fuzz and we arrive at the venue at 8pm.
… to be continued…
Paracinema
A young writer in the NYC area did a really nice profile piece about me in a magazine so hip they’re not online called “Paracinema”. He interviewed a couple of co-stars and at least one famous old friend of mine and wrote some really insightful, sweet things about me, my work, my past and my future.
In other news…
We are about 3 weeks from D-Day (Duncan-Day) and The Bride is firmly in the “please get this out of me” portion of pregnancy. I’m hoping he waits until after TAM 7 as we’re scheduled to perform the Nigerian Spam Scam Scam show program then.
We just need to get the car seats installed and we’re ready… if you’re not counting the money and jobs part, that is.
My oh my, how fucked we are and it was so promising a few short months ago.
Bring it on, dickheads.
Handed Ass
One of the the things that kept me from getting killed by the football players when I was in highschool was the fact that I was on the tennis team. Though I had a foot firmly planted with the “drama-fags”, I also had a (sneaker-clad) foot in the “jock” area.
I haven’t played tennis regularly since 1980, way back before you were born, but earlier this year I started playing again, diving right in to competition via “tennislosangeles.com” in the “skilled” category. Skilled is the lowest.
The first season, this past summer, I had to figure out how to play and also figure out how to play competitively again. They are two different skills that are dependent upon one another. I got beaten quite a bit the first season, but once I realized that I really was playing for fun and not thinking about maybe trying to play in college or something things began clicking into place. I also had this weird thing about winning. As in I felt weird winning. I realized, though, that if I want my opponent to play as hard as he can against me, he probably wants me to play as hard as I can against him. Respect the opponent enough to play well.
This past season; my second, I actually won enough to get me into the “playoffs” and actually to the finals. Me and another guy… battling it out for first place.
I played the match tonight. I’d beaten him before during the season and he’d beaten me once when playing just for the fun of it. But tonight, he methodically and decidedly handed me my hairy ass. It was a defeat of epic proportions. 6-3, 6-0. Man, he fucking kicked my ass.
Horrible.
So… there’s that.
That should be enough. Aren’t you ever satisfied?
Okay… Victor and I are going to be performing Spamscam at the Steve Allen Memorial Hairpiece Theater at the Center for Inquiry West. (Memorial Hairpiece is what I think it should be called).
It should be a good fit. Hope I can remember my lines.
Man, he just kicked my fucking ass so hard. Humiliating.
Stewart Lee
A million years ago when I was performing Spam Scam in other countries, I was introduced to Stewart Lee by Paul Provenza.
He helped create “Jerry Springer: The Opera”, which was destined for hugeness over here until christians IN THE UK got upset. Ultimately, Stewart Lee was brought up on charges of BLASPHEMY.
Yes, blasphemy. He has a great joke about that, but I will let you discover it for yourself.
Needless to say, if christians in the UK were upset, imagine what would happen to them here, so it pretty much destroyed any chances for big productions in the U.S.
That is all beside the point of the show. It’s just a bit of background…
When I returned from Montreal, I was raving to everyone who would listen (the bride, really) about Stewart Lee and his show, 90′s Comedian. When you see it, you see what stand-up can be and why someone like Dane Cook gets so much shit. It’s an arena where important and beautiful ideas can be conveyed. I am of the mind that stand ups are the philosophers of our society.
On the other hand, watching his show throws me in to the same sort of sadness that happens while watching a perfect movie like Eternal Sunshine… or Being John Malkovitch. I realize that I’ll never do something that great. (I aspire to that sort of thing… which is why I never get anything done… whole other story.)
I mentioned this to Stewart Lee and, instead of poo-pooing it, he owned it and said that it was the culmination of over 20 years of work. So… without further ado.
The final performance, ever, has been documented on DVD. Get it. At the very least, it’s funny. I mean, there’s that. On the other side of that you’ll see a perfect hour of theater.
http://www.gofasterstripe.com/cgi-bin/website.cgi?page=videofull&id=6
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