What Looks Like an Awfully Difficult Job

“Oh, to be a bus driver,” the woman next to me said.
Immediately I agreed. She and I had been watching as the complaints kept adding up on a rainy day on the M5 bus. We had seen the old ladies complaining about too much air conditioning and heard the travelers as they berated the driver about how slowly the traffic was moving. Then there was the requisite crazy guy offering tips on how to navigate the congestion.
For most of it, many blocks of the drama, we had not spoken to one another. But once my neighbor broke the silence, I instantly joined in. I said that being a bus driver certainly looked like a job I did not want. Everyone who complains thinks that they are the first too notice whether it’s too cold or whether there are too many cars on the road. New Yorkers are an insistent bunch, which can be a charming affectation or evidence of self-regard and decent character. But on this wet morning, they (we?) were just a pain in the ass.
It’s funny because a few years ago I made the mental leap from the subway to the bus. I began to wonder why I was in such a hurry. I started to like seeing the long journeys from one part of the city to another, especially on my beloved M5, which delivers me almost to my apartment building’s front door. The subway, I started to think, has become more worrisome in post-9/11 New York. The bus was worth the extra time.
Not on days like this, though. Today I was thinking the speed of the subway would be a plus. Less traffic and far less whining from the crowd. The bus driver, God bless her, took it all in stride. She responded well to the streaming critiques. If she had gone mad and began assaulting passengers, she would have been wrong, but I for one would not have eagerly testified against her. Difficult job, indeed.

People Need to Pay Me

I spent a chunk of the day trying to get paid for work I have done. Some of the pieces have been used, some not. Some of the people are pleasant about being behind on the bookkeeping, some not. In all cases, it’s enervating and demoralizing and feels way too much like begging on the streets.
Sometimes I just want to scream, “You people need to pay me.”
Cause they do.
It’s been strange and potentially healthy, this switch from one side of the street to the other. For years, I was an editor who depended (more than he knew, actually) on freelancers to fill the pages of a newspaper and then of a magazine and a web site. I was pretty good in handling these staffers, who were outside of the office and whose health care costs were way outside the interest of the companies where I worked. But I could have been better. More often I should have made the extra phone call, encouraging the freelancer to feel like part of the family.
Now I’m on the other side, provided copy that is met with what feels, even in the digital age, like a shrug. It’s all about content, but those of us who provide it sometimes find our work ignored. Not cause it's bad or even particularly good, but because there is too much crap for editors to wade through on any given day. The editors cannot possibly process it all with intelligence and responsiveness. The freelancers among us crave, meanwhile, crave feedback and recognition and appreciation. We’re lucky to get a returned email.
Which reminds me. Today a guy who I worked for full-time for five years…could not be bothered to return my email. What’s with that?
It’s the understaffing, probably. The lucky few left behind with full-time jobs are doing the work that the rest of us left on the way out. On this particular day, I’m not crying for any of them.

Even More Mad About 'Mad Men'

A couple of weeks ago, someone with taste posted on Facebook that she's disappointed with "Mad Men" this year. I know that this is around the time when most TV shows tend to get soft or silly or both. Jump the shark and all that. But I'm finding this year better than ever.
Everyone from my Facebook friend to Regis Philbin has complained publicly and with considerable enthusiasm about missing those scenes of domestic hostility between Don Draper and his former wife, played weirdly but wonderfully by January Jones. I had had enough and like seeing the exes with new and, in Don's case, various mates. Both characters remain decidedly themselves and it shows how they carry their sometimes menacing character traits with them, regardless of who they wind up with on a given day or night. Not a bad relationship lesson, I'd say.
The other wonder of the season is that Elizabeth Moss as Peggy has gone from being everything from a feminist role model to, in the episode eight days ago, something out of "Long Day's Journey Into Night." I love me some Don and Peggy scenes, and that particular episode sported some exceptional acting and surprisingly subtle script choices tossed in with the dramatic fireworks. A lovely and lyrical mix.
A.O. Scott told the truth in yesterday's Times: TV is often better than its film equivalent these days. Nowhere is that more true than with "Mad Men." I get why some are turned off with the depressing subject matter and the consistent tie-in with historical moments. But so long as there are compelling characters saying funny and scary and sometimes even true things to one another...I'm sticking with Draper and company. And I'm grateful to have them.

New Year's Day, or Something LIke It

I always feel like Labor Day is New Year’s Day.
So this is the day after New Year’s Day, when the holidays are over and it’s time to move seriously into a new year. The age of summer fun ends abruptly.
Of course there’s something about September, still the official back-to-school season. Even if my niece and nephew in Florida returned many days ago to school. There’s something, too, about the fall itself. The kickoff of the big season, especially in New York City, where we gear up for what a friend reminded me this morning is her favorite season. And probably her favorite season in the city. The “When Harry Met Sally” part of the year, as she reminded me. The glorious color. The end of the awful heat. The beginning of the theater season and the TV season and the movies not necessarily produced solely for 13-year-old boys.
With it all, though, comes a responsibility I can feel on my shoulders. Time to get going. Surely this is the time to fix everythin and clear things out, from the stacks of crap on my desk to the extra hair products in the bathroom. It’s time to make a few tough financial decisions about the future, add an extra day at the gym each week and somehow think short-term, medium-term and long-term. All simultaneously. That’s a hell of a to-do list, and so yesterday I spent a couple of hours shifting the lists themselves from a Word document to my Google calendar.
This is when I expect a lot of myself. Maybe too much. And perhaps that’s why, amid all the to-do lists, I want at this time of year to come up with a vacation schedule too. To have some labor-free moments to look forward to during these days just after Labor Day.