Where I've been...

Wow… been a while since I had ten minutes to myself to write something. Where the hell did my summer go?

For the most part, I’ve been working a temp job at this documentary company a ten miles from Amy’s office outside Pittsburgh. Check that: it was supposed to be a temp job, but they decided my first few weeks there that they had really been looking for someone full time. The fact that they had hired me three days a week didn’t tip me off to this fact, though. I thought things would have been perfect. I could re-arrange my schedule (so my direct supervisor (ten years younger than me) told me, the out-of-town trips wouldn’t be a problem—yay!

Well, no. Because her direct supervisor didn’t want that to happen. I’d either work Monday, Wednesday and Friday or… well, not. They’ll show me. Without me, the work just won’t get done! “What do you think of that?”

See, I have too many “outside interests” for this company, as it turns out. “This isn’t a 40-hour-per-week job,” I was informed. “It’s a 24/7 job.” Surprisingly, they only want to pay you like it’s 40 hours, though. The extra time, thinking about the company, coming up with new innovative ideas on your spare time, it would seem, was on your dime as well.

So it’s not working out. Tomorrow is my last day. Which is fine with me. I only needed some extra money before Genghis came on like a freight train. Monday, I can devote more time to the companies I do PR for. And my temp agency agent tells me that there’s plenty of part time work out there, so I should not worry. After Genghis, I’ll find a new office that doesn’t care that I occasionally have to switch some things around. (And won’t condescend to me at every turn and ask if I took my San Diego Comic-Con business meetings in costume.)

The only crappy thing is that I really enjoyed the work. Granted, I was doing little more than scanning WWI documents and captioning pictures for their website and upcoming documentaries, but it was interesting work. I dug it. I run the risk of having the next job being interminably boring, stressful or, like the Post Office, damaging to me physically. But, oh well. Them’s the breaks, right?

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As you’ll soon read in Film Threat, Amy and I traveled to the Comic-Con in San Diego, Twisted Nightmare in Cleveland and Horrofind in Baltimore. We saw a lot of friends, drank copious amounts of alcohol and sold fewer DVDs and magazines than we’d wanted to. But at least fun was had.

Today, I auditioned for the Movie Week version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. I thought sure I’d nailed the written version—a multiple choice SAT-style test with nothing but movie trivia. I knew that I’d missed three: one about Soul Food (which I haven’t seen), Legally Blonde (which I’ve avoided) and one about Ishtar (because there are some things my brain refuses to acknowledge ever existed). As it turns out, the first Palm D’Or was not awarded to 1955’s East of Eden but Marty. So I missed four. Okay, still not bad out of 30, right? 88% is still a passing grade in college.

Apparently not on Millionaire. Seriously, I was astonished that I didn’t make the cut. My arrogance aside, I’m a major film geek! I mean my pride was at stake here. So either the curve is really high, to keep people from wasting their time or, as some people have said to me, I over-shot it. I mean, really, they’re giving away a million dollars to the winner. They don’t want people to do it too easily. Personally, I have accepted the latter explanation. My ego needs this to be true. I mean, really… Really! I read the Maltin Guide cover-to-cover every year! I’ve seen a lot of movies.

Honestly, I don’t have any other kinds of information up there.

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Hopefully, I’ll be back in the swing in these last few weeks before Genghis takes my life away and leaves me a broken shell of a human. Don’t forget people: Blood Wrestling!! Check it out, tell all of your friends and come to http://www.genghisconpa.com!