Saturday, April 23, 2005

another rite of passage

Piano lessons, trumpet, his soccer game this Monday--all on hold. My son broke his arm tonight. He's being a trooper about it, though. It had to be his right arm, unfortunately.

At least he has something cool to show the kids on Monday. The next four weeks won't be much fun for him, though.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As A

Telemarketer

Look kid, I'm trying to eat lunch here... Okay--if you don't mind me spittin' pastrami on you. Telemarketer--figures you come at mealtime. Hey--you want to make 3 bucks? I just remembered my cupboard key dropped in the urinal and wondered if you'd go get it... No wait--sit down. I was just checking to see if you have the right mindset for telemarketing.

There's a special kind of preparation needed for telemarketing, but since you're already in the country and I understand at least 50% of what you say, you're way ahead of the curve. Still, the really big telemarketing operations will want to take you through some special training before they give you your cubicle, phone and diaper and turn you loose on... Oh--well you see, they can't afford to have you wasting time on bathroom breaks.

So, they'll take you to somewhere secret, and you'll get your training. First thing you'll do when you get there is meet some shady guy in a black trenchcoat with his hat pulled down low--he'll want you to sign some things in blood. Don't worry--a soul would just get in the way in your line of work anyway.

Once you're in there, you'll go through a series of role-playing exercises designed to give you no shame. You'll simulate phone calls to houses where people tell you to get off the line so they can call 911 and save their baby--and soon you'll realize that they're just pulling another tired sales-avoidance technique--you never hang up until you've read the whole card. Don't worry--they'll keep hanging up until they realize you're still there every time they pick up the phone, and rather than have you keep starting again, they're wiser to let you finish.

Of course, you'll have to become immune to insults and abuse. Their psychologists will walk you through every rejection and humiliation of your childhood and adolescence--you'll even cry all over again when Mary Sue laughs at your prom invitation. Scary, large men will come and scream at you--threatening your life and punching you every so often just to be convincing. When you can ignore them and finish reading the card, you'll have proven yourself ready.

It won't be easy--your targets will be warned by the telltale noise of the call centre for those few seconds before you pick up from the autodialer, and they'll have their best insults and threats prepared. Don't worry, by that time you'll have learned that every householder who screams his desire to dig up your grandmother's bones and urinate on them, or promises to burn the homes of you and all your family so your DNA can be justly wiped from the planet, is just another future satisfied customer who will give thanks for the day you brightened their life.

Now get out of my office--I gotta make some calls.

More career advice can be found here.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A Talent Agent

So--you want to be an agent? That's not going to be easy--way more people want to do that than there are openings, so you'll probably have to take a shot at starting your own agency and getting lucky. It's maybe a little better odds than the lottery, but not much.

First of all, you'll need to find the ideal location. Big cities, like L.A. or New York, have an overabundance of agents, all struggling to find something for an overabundance of actors. Small cities are often too far away from where the work is happening. You need something in between--somewhere where the shooting locations and tax laws bring in movie business, but where you have an advantage of being able to find local talent quickly.

The big agencies in the big cities will provide all the main talent, of course, but you can help find the small roles--so you'll need a certain type of clientele. Quirky character actors--the ones who can be mumbling shopping cart street people, or concentration camp guards--anyone who's versatile and not too proud will work. You'll also need bimbos. Hollywood, whether at home or shooting away, knows the value of gratuitious nudity and knows that minor, background characters should be attractive--we're so conditioned to see beautiful people filling in the extra roles that anyone unappealing draws our eye and distracts us from the main characters and the plot lines.

Of course, you can't tell the ones you hire that they're destined to remain "filler" for the few projects that wander into town; instead, you'll feed their dreams like a pickup artist at last call. If you actually succeed in getting any work for anyone, this makes you "legitimate", and they'll be beating down your door to get you to look at them.

You'll find your line of sliminess--don't think you'll be able to keep your integrity without ever slipping--you're going to be the target of every 18 year old wannabe starlet in town, and you'd best be careful; when the movie cast and crew leaves town you're still there amid the shattered dreams and crumbling self-esteem. The truly desperate and rejected can be unpredictable...

You'll find your niche--staffing car shows and rich kid's birthday parties will keep a little money rolling in, and you'll figure out the whole "talent search" scam where you charge for your "expenses" in putting together portfolios for aspiring performers. You will work out side deals with small time recording studios to send your clients for demo cds, and a local beauty parlour will give you kickbacks for sending them your customers before you bring them in for their photo shoots.

That comfortable niche is why the end will suprise you. Some "arthouse" film will show up paying little but offering bigger roles than usual, and you'll find yourself in the awkward position of explaining to an ingenue that those risqué and demeaning things they want her to do are part of the "artistic integrity"of the movie--"Think of 'Brown Bunny'" you'll hear yourself say, and then hope you're never part of something like that again.

The predictable happens, and when the film debuts in the local theatre--it played in 30 theatres for an average of 5 days before going to video--her whole extended family dresses up and fills half the movie house. Before the show is over, there will be tears, a minor heart attack, and recriminations which eventually lead to the conclusion that you should be lynched.

You'll be warned by a friend and go to ground for a few weeks until things simmer down. That's why you won't be expecting the sniper shot through your kitchen window a few months later that leaves you hooked up to machines until your savings run out and your family decides to give you a dignified end by switching off the power.

With so many well motivated suspects, they'll never find your killer.

Read the other 29 Career Counsellor posts here

Sunday, April 10, 2005

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A Sports Announcer

Hi there--a sports broadcaster? Yeah, you've got a pretty good voice and you don't stutter, so it might just work.

You can go to one of those "Columbia School of Broadcasting" things you see advertised in magazines but really, any media courses will just give you the ability to run the electronics and make a demo tape--ultimately, you've got to get the chance to do it so the right people hear you. As usual, that means starting at the bottom.

I won't go into how truly awful that will be--let's just say that you probably won't get paid, and your status as a geek loser will be reinforced to all. The only sports you'l likely be given a chance to "broadcast" are lame high school games where your vocabulary will frequently include the word "drubbing". With luck, you'll turn that into a weekly cable broadcast of a Triple-C farm team of the Pawtucket Red Sox and gradually move across North America trying to slightly improve things until you might actually earn enough money at it that you aren't constantly dizzy from selling your own blood. You'll become better at feigning excitement than your Socials teacher on project day.

Which sport are you... Oh, baseball? Well, you should understand that as broadcaster, your job is to distract people from the fact that for 98% of the baseball game NOTHING IS HAPPENING by having tons of trivial facts to... Oh, football then? Well, you should understand that most football broadcasters get to work in places like Detroit and Chicago IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WINTER. L.A. doesn't even have..., oh, basket ball--now that's better--it's indoors and they actually play.

It will be a life out of a suitcase. If you plan to settle down and have a family, you'll have to look outside the basketball culture for dates... why? Well, have you ever been to a WNBA game? The women watching those aren't bringing their, uh, boyfriends, let's just say. Anway, since you'll likely marry someone who has a life seperate from sports, you'll quickly learn how meaningless and trivial all your valuable sports knowledge is in any social gathering outside of the sports bar. This won't make for a happy home life, trust me. And forget asking out the sports babe who does the interviews after the game--those perfect teeth save their smiles for the players--you aren't even on the radar.

When you interview players and coaches, you'll become master of the soft question--after all, most broadcasts are owned by the same company that owns the team, so all you are is a glorified PR schill. "What positives can you take from this loss" will be as tough as you get after the 124 - 67 shcllacking. Meanwhile, even though you travel on the same planes and stay at the same hotels as the players, all they can think of when you interview them is how much you remind them of the nerds they used to torment in gym class.

On the bright side, you'll get to see some great moments in sport. Too bad you won't ever get to relax and enjoy them.

Saturday, April 09, 2005

The Kid Who Sits Behind You Explains

Huck Finn

So this book is like the sequel to Tom Sawyer, and instead of being all "paint my fence you suckers" it's all about Huck, who's kind of got the home life of Nelson Munce from the Simpsons. Tom does a whole cameo/guest thing later in the book, though.

So Huck is all "I hate living in this religious house and learnin' stuff" and he takes off and fakes death (didn't they already do that in Tom Sawyer--get some fresh material, dude) and runs away with an escaped slave who's all superstitious and so's Huck but Jim the slave's all stupid most of the time too. It's kinda a racist book--no "Injun Joe" though--and our teacher wouldn't let use "the N word" except Bobby Higgins who's black, er Afric..., whatever dude, you know what I mean. Anyway, Bobby's all "Yo Beeotch" and "Daaamn, Nigga" and the teacher never says a thing because she doesn't want to get into that with him--but here's the thing--I was at Bobby's 10th birthday 'cause I was on his soccer team but nearly everybody there went to this expensive private school with him, and Bobby's dad is a doctor and he was "Robert" back then and he thought Compton, Watts and Harlem were encyclopedias, lightbulbs and basketball teams. Oh, yeah, right. The book

So anyway, this book is hella racist--crap, I just said hella, and I've got less street cred than Bobby--and Huck gets beat on by his dad and sees lots of people die and most of the adults are creepy and these rich people are all Hatfield/McCoys and shoot each other and Jim gets sold and Huck has a bunch of money from back in the Tom Sawyer story and Tom shows up and he's kind of Bart Simpson to Huck's Nelson except Huck doesn't punch him.

Oh, and Mark Twain was like some confederate army deserter who was really Samuel Clemens and I saw him on one of those Star Trek shows and Woody on Cheers was him once and he kinda' reminded me of Colonel Sanders (but now it's KFC) and now I'm getting hungry so good luck with the 43 chapters dude.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A Recording Studio Technician

Hey--you're the kid who runs sound for the assemblies in the gym. A studio techie? Yeah, I guess that's a possibility--let's see...

You'll have to do more than run the crappy gym sound system to learn the skills needed for a career in the recording studio. You'll have to hang around those pathetic rec. center teen band nights, help out in the ska festival, volunteer to run the board for weddings, funerals, elementary school Christmas concerts--whatever it takes. Eventually, you'll understand how to avoid the crappy sound you so often subject us to each time we gather in the gym--hey look, honesty is the only way to go in this sort of business, okay?

You'll either resort to the lamest approach possible to this career--convince your parents to set you up with semi-crappy equipment in your basement or garage--or you'll finally luck into one of the studios downtown. Once you're in, you'll have to be ready to have no life outside the studio--not that you'll get lots of hours, but you have to hang around and be ready to work at a moment's notice.

You visualize making the perfect mix for the next Kurt Cobain, and then while you're smoking up with some rocker during a break he'll invite you to join his upcoming tour so you can live out your own "Almost Famous' fantasy, but that's not likely to happen. More often than not, you're helping some spoiled princess make a demo tape or some bad Christmas CD for her extended family. You get blamed for the shrill, off-pitch caterwauling that is her rendition of "Jingle Bell Rock", and you learn to swear with your mouth closed--so effective when you're in the soundproof producer's mixing room. The hourly rate the studio charges makes them hate you all the more; little do they know you see less than a quarter of that in salary. You take revenge in small ways--deodorant is something you bother with only for the nice clients.

Even worse are the commercials--rarely do singers or talented voiceover professionals grace your sound booth--you get the egocentric real estate magnate who thinks he and his team of ersatz professionals can somehow make their cheesy ditty about their great service into something that doesn't cause thousands to switch stations each day.

You'll never really make any significant money--studios continually go out of business because it only takes a few years for people to realize there's no real profit margin in it. If you're lucky, maybe you'll get hired to run sound in the hockey arena or down at the arts centre. That, and second job down at the rendering plant is the only thing that may eventually enable you to afford moving out of your parent's attic.

Next assembly, how about doing the sound checks BEFORE the entire school is sitting there mocking the special way your voice cracks...

Saturday, April 02, 2005

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as an

English Professor

Hi there--you're the kid who writes the book reviews in the school paper, right? Those are pretty good--there aren't many kids your age writing about the pre-raphaelite brotherhood, I expect. You want to be an English Professor? Why am I not suprised--here goes:

You'll do an honors degree in English Literature someplace Ivy League, or that feels Ivy League. At first you'll join a sorority, but after one year you'll realize those people aren't for you--clumsy gropings by drunken frat boys send you scurrying instead to dimly-lit downtown poetry readings, where you gradually find your fellow travellers. Unfortunately, the price of intelligent discussions of literature is your participation geekdom's lesser festivities--long nights of role-playing games and the occasional renaissance fair make you a reluctant expert on things you can't talk about outside the inner circle without risking your chance of ever procreating with a non-wizard.

You'll have crushes on a few of your professors--their erudite insights leave you sadly unsatisfied with the young men you spend your time with on weekends--and it's only too likely that one or two of them might violate their code of ethics after a long chat about your most private poetry you've deigned to share some smoky evening at a local angst cafe.

You enter grad school with great expectations--now you can truly focus on your passion for Victorian novelists--and you promise yourself not to let the increasing burden of student loan debt limit your enjoyment of your studies. You immerse yourself in grad school, and your fellow English majors become your surrogate family, though not much of a dating pool; the few pasty males in the crowd evidence Oscar Wilde's sexual proclivities and Hemingway's gender sensitivity.

A master's degree, of course, is merely a wall decoration in the world of literature, and you manage to find a post grad program that accepts you largely based on a few poems you had published in an obscure university literary journal. There you find yourself increasingly isolated--part of you wants to be carried away by some hero from the pages of a Bronte or Austen novel, while the conclave of unshaven lit/women's studies majors you smoke dope with every Friday night scoff at those who seek fulfillment from mere males.

Upon graduation, you do manage to land a position that evolves into an associate professorship at a small college--unfortunately, as junior member of the department, you're stuck with classes of first-years who have the literary sensitivities of Stanley Kowalski from Streetcar Named Desire. You weary of the stupidity of the phys-ed. cro magnons in the back of the class who only lose interest in picking their steroid acne to guffaw when you explain that Lawrence's serpent isn't merely a snake. From that point on, every assignment they submit are little more than puerile attempts to find phallic symbolism in everything they read. You know that all of their decent work has been ghostwritten or bought off the internet, but you are too apathetic to fight the constant onslaught of plagiarism.

Meanwhile, your student loans burden you more than you ever anticipated--you will have to spend two decades driving that VW bus you bought with the professor who left his wife for you and repented his mistake scant six weeks into your relationship.

On the bright side, the money you save on depilatories and hair products will allow you to indulge your need for really nice emo glasses and a trip to an Ani DiFranco concert once every year.


Go here to see other advice from the Cynical Career Counsellor

Friday, April 01, 2005

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Teen Pop Singing Sensation (by request)

What's that? Oh, I remember you--you're the girl who booked me to be one of the judges for the karaoke contest last fall and then when Mr. Carter wasn't going to be sick after all, you dumped me and put him in. Sooo, you fancy yourself a singer, do you? Well, I think we can figure out what lies ahead:

First of all, you'll need to drop about 25 pounds. Your mother may think you're perfect, but you're gonna have to prance around in some pretty slutty stuff, and you ain't got the shape for it, believe me. Also, look at the people "making it"--that australian piece of fluff--Kylie Minogue--you think she's got some sort of corner on the good singing voice market? Face it, even more serious music can't pretend; how much have you heard about Charlotte Church since she turned chunky--who cares about the "voice of an angel" if she's making too many trips to the buffet? Every time they tell you some chick like Stevie Nicks is making a comeback it's just another way of saying they've finally joined Weight Watchers. What's the matter? You got something in your eye? Yeah, there's some kleenex in the box there...

So, where was I? Oh yeah--you've been taking singing lessons--but that's only half of it--you need to learn to move. I've seen you in that morning dance class--you look like an injured water buffalo. You need to take some intensive dance training--maybe drop a few academic classes, after all, when you're famous and rich who cares if you learned high school chemistry?
Your parents don't think so? Tell me--who's the career counsellor here, anyway? If your parents cared about your performing career they'd have gotten you an agent by the time your were 6 and you wouldn't be sitting here wasting both of our time. Remember that girl who played the clumsy dancer in "Hollywood Steam Baths"? You don't--well trust me, it was a classic in the genre. Anyway, she went to this school, and about eight years ago she sat in this very office and I told her what she needed to do to make it in show business. Now look at her--she's even got a web site with pictures. So who knows more about how to succeed in a performance career--me or your parents?

Hey, you know that girl in the library club with the braces and the thick glasses? Jeannie? Yeah that's her--she's got an amazing voice. You should get her to record some stuff and practice lip syncing to it--her voice is good enough, but the way she looks... Let's just say she won't be on any album covers any time soon. Talent? Of course talent matters--just like you care about the color of a car you might want to buy--but it isn't the main factor.

Hey, where you going? I ain't halfway finished... Hey--why don't you go ask Mr. Carter what he thinks? Oh wait--he's a P.E. teacher--what does he know about singing? Must be a lot, since he was such a damn good karaoke judge and all...

hmm--I think I'll send a note home to mom and dad about her burgeoning eating disorder...