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.

Julia Roberts Talking About Being Too Fat

It’s hard to pick a least favorite moment of “Eat Pray Love.” Cause I hated so many of them.
But if pressed, I would go with the scene where she and another gorgeous woman chat about how they are both developing “muffin tops” during their trip to Italy. In this particular monstrosity of a scene, Roberts advises against worrying about weight and going ahead and eating the pizza and the pasta and Italy’s other great culinary gifts. She tells her pal and the rest of us that they will go out later and buy “big lady” jeans. I think that was the comment. Then, unfortunately, we get to see that scene . . . complete with Julia struggling to get into a pair of jeans.
So wrong on so many levels.
First of all, there should be a Constitutional amendment against Julia Roberts talking about being too fat. She’s basically skeletal. Second, she’s making the argument that she does not care about the weight gain or needing bigger pants and then she’s out struggling to get into jeans that are too small. Why the struggle, when the God-awful script just had her saying that the pizza was worth the bigger size? Sorry. My fault for paying attention to any of the words spoken here. Third, there’s an obesity epidemic going on and it’s jarring—it takes the audience out of the movie, way out—to listen to Julia Roberts talk about being too fat. Which takes me back to the Constitutional amendment.
I had read that this was a bad part of a bad movie. Probably right on both counts. Although I did like Richard Jenkins in his one big scene, where he basically gave a lesson in how to steal a film, and I liked Javier Bardem in everything he did, wherein he basically gave a lesson in how to be hot. Viola Davis was the wry, wise best friend, who was right to worry about whether any of this particular trip was necessary. I would have been happier if we had stayed with Davis in the city, seeing up close what it's like to juggle with good humor a job and a mate. Not as scenic as what "Eat Pray Love" offers us, but probably in the long run more useful.

The Waiting Game

What a way to spend an afternoon.
We got to the doctor’s office before 1 p.m. Then we waited and waited and waited. My mom was finally called in at almost exactly 3 p.m.
I don’t want to go all street on you, or street from several years ago, but: Whassup with that? I mean, are people waiting two hours to see a general practioner?
They are in Riverdale in the Bronx. Granted, the cast of “Cocoon” in the waiting room was not going anyplace. Maybe this is the plus of being a doctor for the geriatric set. I sure as hell would not be waiting even an hour to see my doctor. But then again, I don’t love my doctor as much as my mother loves hers.
Sometimes it’s nice being me. This was one of those times. Not while we were waiting, but when we actually got around to seeing the doctor. The phrase “two hours” came out of my mouth within seconds after saying hello. Actually, I’m not sure I said hello before going for the complaint. She took it pretty well. Later, she even agreed to a profile in the New York Post, if my editor in the At Work section decides he would like an interview with her. And once we were in there, she really listened. Which is what I guess my mom likes about this doctor.
As I said to the doc, though: call and tell me that you are running behind a couple of hours. I’ve even had veterinarians do that much. Alas, when it comes to medical care, my cat is more likely to be treated well than a lowly human ever is.

Did Late-August Arrive in Mid-August?

It feels like the dog days came early.
I could be wrong. One of the dangers of freelancing is that I sit here alone in a room—well, you could count the three cats, as I certainly would—and come up with ideas about what is happening out there in the universe. I’m not sure that the notions imagined correspond with reality. Even when I warn myself about that, though, I cannot help coming up with a sense of what’s happening in the city and the nation and the would, what the mood is.
Especially when it comes to the city. And the sense I get on a Monday morning, the one that passed by relatively uneventfully a few hours ago, is that not a lot is getting done in the offices of my hometown. It’s not that I think that everybody is out of town. I worked 50 or so weeks a year in an office for too many years to believe that there are too many completely empty workplaces. But I do have the suspicion that not a lot is happening. People are in Wait Mode, getting done the absolute necessities and not much more. Returning my phone calls not necessarily having scored a spot as an absolute necessity. Unfortunately.
I read recently in one of those not very helpful stories about job-searching that it’s best to go full speed ahead in August. You don’t want to be one of those jerks who is calling prospective employers on the days after Labor Day, announcing to the world that you are back in the game. Better to make it clear during the dog days that one is ready, willing and able to rejoin the workforce.
That sounds sensible to me. Right now I’m after an array of writing assignments, from the full-time gig to the very-very-freelance assignment, but the editors I’m eager to harass are in Wait Mode. Unless, perish the thought, it’s just me.