My Summer Job
The parentals keep secrets so badly
The brochures, laid under only a couple of newspapers
Hiding on my father's desk.
Tuesday nights--the routine never changes.
They bowl
I prowl.
"Summer Camp Jobs--Good Pay, Great Times!"
I'd rather stick needles in my eyes.
Still, forewarned is forearmed.
I look over each one--the first two are religious camps,
I laugh out loud.
The Baptists and Jews would love me.
Then the next--a cheerleading camp.
I could push the progress of humanity 100 years ahead
As an arsenic-laden kitchen lackey.
I scan the rest--equestrian, swimming, tennis...
Not likely.
Then I see the one they've underlined.
"Lake Akinokee Arts Retreat"
They are clever--they've spotted the only camp
With the potential for me to warm
From loathing to apathy.
They drop hints over the next few days:
"What do you plan for the summer, dear?"
and
"Wouldn't you like to have some money for the fall sales
At that lovely new corset shop that opened in the fetish district?"
Like they've ever even shopped there.
I play dumb.
"I just thought I'd stay here,
Cherishing the people I love."
That was overkill. They realize I know the truth.
I could probably have worn them down,
Pointed out my intolerance for sunlight,
Reminded them of my tendency to sleepwalk.
But they have a trump card, and play it well:
Aunt Mabel.
A battleship of a woman, she always arrives
Prepared for war.
Her handbag laden with pamphlets,
Explaining why rock music is a tool of the devil
And gay marriage a sign of the apocalypse.
I might stay and clash with her,
But for her pair of endlessly yapping chihuahuas,
Which she calls her "children".
I extract a few concessions before I concede;
My room locked, forbidden,
And no questions asked next fall
When I spend my summer earnings
On my long awaited dermal ink.
The camp is all I feared--trees and a lake
And no "personal music devices" allowed.
Apparently we make our own music
Voices of the damned, no doubt.
I am, as new staff, assigned to a team.
My leader is perkier than a coked-up cocker spaniel
And she shows me my bunk, beneath hers,
Surrounded by a dozen more of her ilk.
"We'll have such fun!" she exclaims.
I stare at her, wondering,
How long it would take them to find her body.
After the first few days, I find my niche,
Or at least a job assignment,
That allows me the least amount of human contact.
The "painting cabin"--little more than a greenhouse with easels,
But it's far removed from everything else
And buys me brief moments of solitude.
Turns out it's also near the aptly named "makeout rock"
Where my digital camera captures
Useful leverage for later bargaining.
I scowl through the endless "fireside evenings"
Where we sing tacky, politically-incorrect songs.
Passed down from generations of campers previous,
With refrains including "the red man our brother".
Then another exercise to loathe,
We're all assigned a "secret friend"--
Someone to buy special presents for
During our twice-monthly escape to an actual town.
Had I been blessed to draw the name of some stepford in training,
My task would have been simple.
Laxative chocolates or something slimy.
But such was not to be.
I unfold a paper to read "Philip".
I sigh. He's the life guard who tries a little too hard,
Perhaps oblivious that his ectomorphic physique and unfortunate complexion
Seal his fate in this shallow pond.
I've heard stories through my less than satisfactory earplugs,
Giggled after lights out in my cabin.
Seems Philip has courted a half dozen of my roommates,
And each sends him to the next target--their goal:
To each have a chance to skewer his hopes before Labor Day.
Against my natural predilections
I surreptitiously gather information.
Seems he likes toffee, and tries to charm with card tricks.
Unfortunately, one of the female lifeguards,
"Accidentally" dropped his deck of cards into the lake.
I make the purchases, then steathily sneak them to his mailslot.
He is clearly pleased the next day,
Demonstrating for all, his legerdomain.
It would be heartwarming,
Had I not left my heart elsewhere for safekeeping
Before condescending to waste eight weeks of my life
In this fresh-faced hell.
Meanwhile I receive my "gifts":
A "Girl's guide to cosmetics" and
"Chicken Soup for the Adolescent Soul".
Unfortunately for my secret benefactor,
Carrying cash is not her practice,
And I easily discover the secret friend
By checking out debit receipts
In our cabin's wastebasket,
And matching to the offending card
When all others are asleep.
The benefactor of my largesse, meanwhile,
Has managed to figure out my identity.
Seems the rest had already proven
Their lack of compassion sufficiently.
He sought me out, quietly, thanked me.
I shrugged it off--no point in denial.
Nonetheless, an..."acquaintanceship" blossomed.
He knew not to presume more.
We had one bond--our loathing of the others.
My time alone cleaning and setting up the art cabin,
His standing watch for hours at the swimming dock,
It was natural our imaginations had free reign.
We took our revenge patiently on the entire camp.
Seems an old science camp that once occupied this place
Left some supplies around--we find a length of tubing
Perfect to cover the ceiling vent the bats use,
And reroute them into my cabin.
We steal the square dance cds,
And replace them with death metal
I purchased on another trip to town
And the printer that makes the poster-sized copies of student art work?
Seems it also does a lovely job
On those photos I took so surreptitiously
Of antics at Makeout Rock.
The most graphic ones posted everywhere--
Of the girl who provided my self-help books.
Revenge is a dish best served 24 hours a day
It helps to kill the hours--'til it's time to collect
My well-earned tattoo.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a
Caricature Portrait Artist
Oh hi--I should've expected this; you're the kid who got suspended for doing that picture of the principal on the tennis backboard, aren't you? If you ask me, he should've been flattered.
S0--portraits? You mean those funny cartoon ones, right? Yeah, that should be worth tuition at art school... I mean, uhm, you probably don't have to go straight to art school; it might go something like this, instead:
You'll have to find some sort of town where tacky tourists go--make sure it has places where you'll see Texans in flowered shirts and such. Avoid Mexican and most Carribean resorts where the local kids will be pestering you all the time, plus it's too hot for the tourists to sit still for the entire 90 seconds it takes you to draw them. You might think somewhere like Paris is too upscale for this kind of work, but you're not trying to appeal to the locals; your clientele are the same people who think by yelling at foreigners or speaking in a fake accent that they'll somehow be more easily understood.
Plus, you can avoid the 8 seconds it takes to draw their hairstyle and just put berets on everyone. And how tough is it to throw the Eiffel tower in behind them?
The trick will be to find somewhere you don't have to pay outlandish busker/artist fees just for the privilege of working. That's why I suspect most regular tourist traps like the Santa Monica Pier won't work--but if you hang around near the sketchy sellers of fake rolexs in places like Battery Park in Manhattan, you're probably safe from too much harassment.
It won't be too challenging to learn the craft--first of all, almost every annoying tourist type who's paid for one of these sketches then comes home and uploads it to their internet holiday albums, so you can see plenty of samples to get the basic idea. If you need to, wander down to where any local caricature artist is working; treat them like they actually have some talent and they'll be glad to show you what they do--it's not like it ever happens to them.
The basic principle is simple--two-thirds head, one-third body.
You'll set up shop in some tourist town, and it won't take long until you learn the fundamental problem with your career--it's seasonal. In most places, you've got maybe a four-month window to ply your trade. You could try to move to other places to catch their tourist seasons, but you don't make enough to pay high-season rent in any of these locales.
Fortunately, after about four or five years of struggling through off-seasons doing horrible menial jobs you'll pray to forget, you'll sketch another typical rich tourist kid holidaying with her friends on daddy's credit card, but this one will be different. She's almost the same age as you, and while not exactly a looker, there's some little bit of chemistry there--though maybe it's just when she offers to buy you lunch you realize you won't have to make the difficult choice between sustenance and the two packs a day you smoke to get you through the boredom of the down time between customers.
You have a whirlwind romance, and soon you're engaged. Her parents fly you up to their estate to check you out, and it's clear they don't approve--but the suitors have been rare up to this point, so they feign a shallow cordiality that does little to mask their true hostility.
Her father is that type of eccentric that would be labelled crazy if he didn't have money, and your hope of wedded bliss comes crashing down when you sketch him one day. Seems he had a hydrocephalic twin who died shortly after birth and the gigantic head on your caricature convinces him you knew of the family's tragic secret and this is your way of mocking him and his pain. He orders you out of the house and forbids his daughter to see you again.
You exchange emails with her for a few weeks, but it's clear she's not willing to sacrifice her lifestyle to be with you. You go back to your spot on the tourist stroll, but in your absence, a new couple has shown up--she does sketches wearing little more than a bikini at one end of the boardwalk, while her good looking tattoed boyfriend does his at the other. They charge twice what you did and still have lineups of eager customers. You simply cannot compete.
You move back here, to your hometown, where you first try your hand at editorial cartooning. Unfortunately, while other kids were learning about politics and current events, you were skipping class, creating your graffiti masterpieces, and you simply are too ill-informed for your art work to grace the third page of the local newspaper.
Then you go to the local "party time entertainers" office. You think you're offering them something novel, but the owner's eyes just glaze over when you show him your samples of girls riding unicorns and boys in superhero capes. Still, he adds you to his stable of employees, and you go out to various birthday parties, as well as the occasional bat or bar mitzvah.
Your self-esteem is dashed when you realize most kids are disappointed when you arrive--you're a couple rungs of the entertainment ladder below both the clown and the birthday magician. Even the annoying "craft lady" who forces kids to glue stars to clay plant pots is better received than you are.
Desperate, you finally escape the humiliation of your home town--most of your classmates have been getting degrees and building successful careers while you've wasted the post-high school years trying to find some way to live off your modicum of drawing skill. You're lucky enough to score a job doing caricatures on a cruise ship.
You're so happy to get the gig you find out too late it's a non-smoking ship, so you spend half your earnings bribing the crew to let you sneak cigaretttes in the boiler room. You're making next to nothing, and your accomodations are terrible--you share a small stateroom with three dishwashers who speak little English and who spend all their free time playing some card game you don't fully comprehend, although they teach you enough one night to take most of your small stash of cash you've managed to squirrel away during the voyage.
Just before the trip ends, a rather mysterious asian man approaches you and hands you his business card, with a Hong Kong number and address. He tells you he has work for someone with your talents. You are desperate for any thread of hope so you don't check it out; you just dump your remaing cash on the counter of a discount travel agent and get a one-way ticket to chase yet another dream.
He explains that there is a market that his company meets that isn't entirely legal. He explains that in Asia there simply isn't enough of certain kinds of merchandise to meet demands, so that's where creative entrepeneurs step in.
Next thing you know, you're in a tiny, humid room in some southeast asian country with a government corrupt enough to look the other way while you and your other underpaid colleagues churn out the art work that is printed on all manner of counterfeit Disney merchandise--from t-shirts to training potties.
While your new country might be willing to accept bribe money from your employer to ignore the copyright treaties they've signed, they're also willing to take cash to look the other way when Disney's secret mercenary death squad shows up to wipe your little operation out. You and your colleagues are buried in a mass, unmarked grave, but somehow your passport surfaces a few months later, along with a story that you were killed in a drug deal gone wrong.
The dark circumstances of your demise make your easily recognizable signature on your old caricatures a hot commodity, and savvy collectors are soon scouring garage sales for your work--your posthumous fame may last months.
Oh hi--I should've expected this; you're the kid who got suspended for doing that picture of the principal on the tennis backboard, aren't you? If you ask me, he should've been flattered.
S0--portraits? You mean those funny cartoon ones, right? Yeah, that should be worth tuition at art school... I mean, uhm, you probably don't have to go straight to art school; it might go something like this, instead:
You'll have to find some sort of town where tacky tourists go--make sure it has places where you'll see Texans in flowered shirts and such. Avoid Mexican and most Carribean resorts where the local kids will be pestering you all the time, plus it's too hot for the tourists to sit still for the entire 90 seconds it takes you to draw them. You might think somewhere like Paris is too upscale for this kind of work, but you're not trying to appeal to the locals; your clientele are the same people who think by yelling at foreigners or speaking in a fake accent that they'll somehow be more easily understood.
Plus, you can avoid the 8 seconds it takes to draw their hairstyle and just put berets on everyone. And how tough is it to throw the Eiffel tower in behind them?
The trick will be to find somewhere you don't have to pay outlandish busker/artist fees just for the privilege of working. That's why I suspect most regular tourist traps like the Santa Monica Pier won't work--but if you hang around near the sketchy sellers of fake rolexs in places like Battery Park in Manhattan, you're probably safe from too much harassment.
It won't be too challenging to learn the craft--first of all, almost every annoying tourist type who's paid for one of these sketches then comes home and uploads it to their internet holiday albums, so you can see plenty of samples to get the basic idea. If you need to, wander down to where any local caricature artist is working; treat them like they actually have some talent and they'll be glad to show you what they do--it's not like it ever happens to them.
The basic principle is simple--two-thirds head, one-third body.
You'll set up shop in some tourist town, and it won't take long until you learn the fundamental problem with your career--it's seasonal. In most places, you've got maybe a four-month window to ply your trade. You could try to move to other places to catch their tourist seasons, but you don't make enough to pay high-season rent in any of these locales.
Fortunately, after about four or five years of struggling through off-seasons doing horrible menial jobs you'll pray to forget, you'll sketch another typical rich tourist kid holidaying with her friends on daddy's credit card, but this one will be different. She's almost the same age as you, and while not exactly a looker, there's some little bit of chemistry there--though maybe it's just when she offers to buy you lunch you realize you won't have to make the difficult choice between sustenance and the two packs a day you smoke to get you through the boredom of the down time between customers.
You have a whirlwind romance, and soon you're engaged. Her parents fly you up to their estate to check you out, and it's clear they don't approve--but the suitors have been rare up to this point, so they feign a shallow cordiality that does little to mask their true hostility.
Her father is that type of eccentric that would be labelled crazy if he didn't have money, and your hope of wedded bliss comes crashing down when you sketch him one day. Seems he had a hydrocephalic twin who died shortly after birth and the gigantic head on your caricature convinces him you knew of the family's tragic secret and this is your way of mocking him and his pain. He orders you out of the house and forbids his daughter to see you again.
You exchange emails with her for a few weeks, but it's clear she's not willing to sacrifice her lifestyle to be with you. You go back to your spot on the tourist stroll, but in your absence, a new couple has shown up--she does sketches wearing little more than a bikini at one end of the boardwalk, while her good looking tattoed boyfriend does his at the other. They charge twice what you did and still have lineups of eager customers. You simply cannot compete.
You move back here, to your hometown, where you first try your hand at editorial cartooning. Unfortunately, while other kids were learning about politics and current events, you were skipping class, creating your graffiti masterpieces, and you simply are too ill-informed for your art work to grace the third page of the local newspaper.
Then you go to the local "party time entertainers" office. You think you're offering them something novel, but the owner's eyes just glaze over when you show him your samples of girls riding unicorns and boys in superhero capes. Still, he adds you to his stable of employees, and you go out to various birthday parties, as well as the occasional bat or bar mitzvah.
Your self-esteem is dashed when you realize most kids are disappointed when you arrive--you're a couple rungs of the entertainment ladder below both the clown and the birthday magician. Even the annoying "craft lady" who forces kids to glue stars to clay plant pots is better received than you are.
Desperate, you finally escape the humiliation of your home town--most of your classmates have been getting degrees and building successful careers while you've wasted the post-high school years trying to find some way to live off your modicum of drawing skill. You're lucky enough to score a job doing caricatures on a cruise ship.
You're so happy to get the gig you find out too late it's a non-smoking ship, so you spend half your earnings bribing the crew to let you sneak cigaretttes in the boiler room. You're making next to nothing, and your accomodations are terrible--you share a small stateroom with three dishwashers who speak little English and who spend all their free time playing some card game you don't fully comprehend, although they teach you enough one night to take most of your small stash of cash you've managed to squirrel away during the voyage.
Just before the trip ends, a rather mysterious asian man approaches you and hands you his business card, with a Hong Kong number and address. He tells you he has work for someone with your talents. You are desperate for any thread of hope so you don't check it out; you just dump your remaing cash on the counter of a discount travel agent and get a one-way ticket to chase yet another dream.
He explains that there is a market that his company meets that isn't entirely legal. He explains that in Asia there simply isn't enough of certain kinds of merchandise to meet demands, so that's where creative entrepeneurs step in.
Next thing you know, you're in a tiny, humid room in some southeast asian country with a government corrupt enough to look the other way while you and your other underpaid colleagues churn out the art work that is printed on all manner of counterfeit Disney merchandise--from t-shirts to training potties.
While your new country might be willing to accept bribe money from your employer to ignore the copyright treaties they've signed, they're also willing to take cash to look the other way when Disney's secret mercenary death squad shows up to wipe your little operation out. You and your colleagues are buried in a mass, unmarked grave, but somehow your passport surfaces a few months later, along with a story that you were killed in a drug deal gone wrong.
The dark circumstances of your demise make your easily recognizable signature on your old caricatures a hot commodity, and savvy collectors are soon scouring garage sales for your work--your posthumous fame may last months.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Conversation with my Blog
ME: Sorry I'm late--lots going on right now.
BLG: Oh, what's the matter--Facebook temporarily out of service?
ME: What's eating you?
BLG: Just the lame "one post a week" crappy treatment I've been getting.
ME: It's got nothing to do with facebook--really. I mean, I haven't been posting much for a good month or more because of all the busyness in my life.
BLG: So why add Facebook. (pause) I thought so--you're bored of me, aren't you?
ME: No, of course not. I've put my best writing into those posts. Facebook--that's just...
BLG: What? Cheap, meaningless networking? You disgust me. You'll be a Nexopia whore soon.
ME: Hey--that was uncalled for. Look, I'm not like those others--Milly, Murdoch and the rest who quit posting or reading blogs once they got Facebook.
BLG: Sure. What about someone like Camila--she posts, and hers even indicate THOUGHT.
ME: You do know that's a new blog, right. Her old one is rotting, neglected. Is that what you want?
BLG: You already started a new blog. Now it's abandoned. Don't judge.
ME: What do you want from me? How about a nice new layout--maybe something art deco?
BLG: Don't patronize me. It's easy to tell you're just mailing this in. You used to write three cynical career things a week--now what's it been, a month or more? Or that stupid goth poetry or the literature kid--when did you do any of those? I'm not just a weekly diary, you know--nobody cares about the mundane details of your life.
ME: ouch.
BLG: The truth hurts.
ME: Well, there aren't any more high school literature items to explain.
BLG: What about Kite Runner or that Life of Pi book?
ME: I'd have to read them...
BLG: Meh--not like you haven't cheated with internet summaries before.
ME: Oh, now that's going too far...
BLG: And what about the dythandra about her going to work at a summer camp, or the career thing about 'your future as a personal shopper'? That's what we're reduced to now, is it? Empty promises?
ME: What do you want me to do--drop my masters and focus on you?
BLG: Why don't you do something new--be controversial for a change.
ME: What--you want me to go political?
BLG: Look at the other blogs--Berkeley stuck up for Paris Hilton a couple weeks back. Ella snarks at all things popular. That Alex girl pissed off everyone when she posted that Dumbledore dies without a spoiler warning before most people had read the book.
ME: That's not me--I flee controversy.
BLG: Whatever. This conversation bores me--and probably everyone (all 3 of them) reading this blog.
ME: There's more than three. I think. Fine--I have important things to do anyway.
BLG: Yeah right--I saw you just now--counting the numbers of photos in other people's facebook albums that you took. Pathetic.
ME: Look--I'll make you a promise. I'll start looking for interesting things to post as well as writing more of the in role stuff. Maybe post a few videos from time to time.
BLG: Like that pachelbel thing? I liked that.
ME: Sure--why not?
BLG: Okay, I guess. But if you drop the ball this time, I'm posting a "writers wanted" header and you're toast.
BLG: Oh, what's the matter--Facebook temporarily out of service?
ME: What's eating you?
BLG: Just the lame "one post a week" crappy treatment I've been getting.
ME: It's got nothing to do with facebook--really. I mean, I haven't been posting much for a good month or more because of all the busyness in my life.
BLG: So why add Facebook. (pause) I thought so--you're bored of me, aren't you?
ME: No, of course not. I've put my best writing into those posts. Facebook--that's just...
BLG: What? Cheap, meaningless networking? You disgust me. You'll be a Nexopia whore soon.
ME: Hey--that was uncalled for. Look, I'm not like those others--Milly, Murdoch and the rest who quit posting or reading blogs once they got Facebook.
BLG: Sure. What about someone like Camila--she posts, and hers even indicate THOUGHT.
ME: You do know that's a new blog, right. Her old one is rotting, neglected. Is that what you want?
BLG: You already started a new blog. Now it's abandoned. Don't judge.
ME: What do you want from me? How about a nice new layout--maybe something art deco?
BLG: Don't patronize me. It's easy to tell you're just mailing this in. You used to write three cynical career things a week--now what's it been, a month or more? Or that stupid goth poetry or the literature kid--when did you do any of those? I'm not just a weekly diary, you know--nobody cares about the mundane details of your life.
ME: ouch.
BLG: The truth hurts.
ME: Well, there aren't any more high school literature items to explain.
BLG: What about Kite Runner or that Life of Pi book?
ME: I'd have to read them...
BLG: Meh--not like you haven't cheated with internet summaries before.
ME: Oh, now that's going too far...
BLG: And what about the dythandra about her going to work at a summer camp, or the career thing about 'your future as a personal shopper'? That's what we're reduced to now, is it? Empty promises?
ME: What do you want me to do--drop my masters and focus on you?
BLG: Why don't you do something new--be controversial for a change.
ME: What--you want me to go political?
BLG: Look at the other blogs--Berkeley stuck up for Paris Hilton a couple weeks back. Ella snarks at all things popular. That Alex girl pissed off everyone when she posted that Dumbledore dies without a spoiler warning before most people had read the book.
ME: That's not me--I flee controversy.
BLG: Whatever. This conversation bores me--and probably everyone (all 3 of them) reading this blog.
ME: There's more than three. I think. Fine--I have important things to do anyway.
BLG: Yeah right--I saw you just now--counting the numbers of photos in other people's facebook albums that you took. Pathetic.
ME: Look--I'll make you a promise. I'll start looking for interesting things to post as well as writing more of the in role stuff. Maybe post a few videos from time to time.
BLG: Like that pachelbel thing? I liked that.
ME: Sure--why not?
BLG: Okay, I guess. But if you drop the ball this time, I'm posting a "writers wanted" header and you're toast.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)