Song for the Dumped

“No jobs, no work here in Kansas, but I hear there is work is Missouri,” the man with the straw hat and overalls slowly claims as he goes back to hustling some hay. I know it sounds like a scene from the 1930s, but besides the blatant racism, there aren’t too many differences between now and then. People, my peers in entertainment who are trying to get work, have been gang raped by a bunch of thugs.

At least gang members let you know they are gang members. They have the decency to let be up front from the start, “I’m going to rob you, stab you, and then inappropriately touch your female companion,” the nice Crazy 88 gentleman says. A quick rob, a quick stab, and you’re done—but when the rich white executive befriends you, treats you to nice dinners and conventions, and gives you some market advice, before you know you lost your family’s fortune. So let’s put it in perspective, the gang member robs you of a hundred dollars at the most (really, how much money do you carry around in your wallet at any given time?), he may or may not stab you (and if he does stab you, you’ll have an awesome looking scar and a crazy story that you can tell some girl at a bar), and you wind up moving back to the suburbs…big whoop. It’s the high powered middle aged white dude who will steal your whole life savings, stab your soul, and rape your families name and reputation. It’s the middle age, wearing a hat to cover his bald spot while driving his convertible, fast talking but always seemingly listening to your concerns, white man who is the very person or who is a part of the very group of people responsible for the meltdown of the most powerful market in the world. They’re the scary ones. They are the thugs. I’ll hang out with a guy who looks like Bernie Mac over the guy who looks like Bernie Madoff any day. It’s hard to believe that in the world of the Bank of America, AIG, Toyota, and Enron, people are still prejudice towards anyone excluding a middle aged white man.

And I’m not trying to be a phonie working class hero, I’m ranting for other reasons…

Recently, I got laid….off.

For a lot of people, most of America, getting laid and getting laid off are very similar; in the end it’s confusing, sweaty, and you find yourself pleading that you can perform more adequate if given another chance. In my case, I understood that the project I was working on, at the place I was working at, was the only opportunity to work there and that when the project were to be complete, I would be no longer necessary. But for a lot of people, getting laid off is more of a shock—not a shock that it’s happening, but it’s a shock that it’s happening to you.

Working in the film industry, you are laid off every time production ends. This makes it tough because, unless you are well connected, you are unemployed every three months. The shock of getting laid of, at this point, always gets easier for me, but the soul crushing boredom of not working is always the same. You walk the streets in the middle of a weekday and you feel like everyone is looking at you and thinking to themselves, “Look at this putz, at a Ralphs at 2 o’clock on a Tuesday. He probably doesn’t have a job. He probably doesn’t even want a job. He is a bum… I should pick up some peanuts. Cashews are good. They are kind of expensive though. Why is that? 5 bucks seem a little high for this small container. Wow, they have a lot of fat in them. But it’s the good fat, right? Good fat? I never understood good fat. I mean, fat is fat, right? They say that about olive oil too…I hope Juno is on Starz tonight. That girl is so witty.” I’m sure people think a lot about a lot of things in a short period of time, but when you are unemployed you feel as though everyone is secretly judging you all the time.

Before I moved out of Los Angeles, my roommates had a yard sale on a weekday. A woman came up to me and before she asked about prices or product, she said out of habit and embarrassment, “I was a school teacher, then the school had cut backs and now I’m out of a job.” It was as though she, before anything, had to make sure that I knew that she wasn’t a bum. That she was there on our porch, on a weekday, looking at our used cheese grater and microwave because of public school cut backs, not because of her own laziness. That word, “laziness” is prevalent because it’s exactly how you feel, lazy. You can spend day after day, hour after hour submitting résumé’s and unique cover letters but yet feel lazy. A lot of people have jobs where they can get away with doing the absolute minimum, yet if they do the minimum 5 days, 40 hours a week, it seems they are more productive—a more respected human. It seems that even prostitutes have more respect walking the streets—at least they are providing a service of some kind.

I heard that losing your job has the same emotional effect as losing a loved one or ending a relationship… In the case of the latter, I just wish there was severance package that the girl could offer after she breaks up with you. Maybe something like hand jobs for the next 5 months…you know 60% of what you were getting before. The thing is, after you break up with someone, there’s always somebody who says, “Oh, I know the perfect girl for you. You guys would really click.” Nobody says that when you lose your job. Not these days. You’ll get calls from people who say, “I think there is work in New Mexico,” or elsewhere. It’s like looking for gold in the 1800s, people have a hunch where it is, but when you travel west there is nothing but CZ and toothless Dodgers fans.

It’s my fault. I chose the profession. I was the one who studied film at the state university. I could have studied something that may have landed me a nice paying job in a nice city—but I was told to try out the American dream. Our society centers on the idea to follow your dreams, but when dreams fail you become nothing but an inimitable American failure… Whenever somebody says to you “follow your dreams” there should be the fast talking radio commercial disclaimer guy who says quickly (read this part fast), “Some dreams are more obtainable than others. Offer is only available in striving economies and mostly only available to those who have connections. ‘Follow your dreams’ is a trademark of America. Void where prohibited, which in the case of now, is everywhere in America. Good luck. You’re going to need it...sucker” It always seems that the disclaimers in radio ads are a lot longer than the actual ad. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Chapter 2:

Now for the past six months, I’ve been working in an office. There are some perks about office work, but there are some things I won’t miss at all. The one thing that strained me in my office position was the fact that you are not alone. Ever. If you want to talk on the phone, you have to know that the entire office will be listening. You can talk about something like going to the Phillies game, but you can’t have a 10 minute debate on the phone about the probability that Enzyte* will actually make your penis longer or if it’s just a hoax and a waste of $40. When you buy Enzyte you have to go into it like you are going to Atlantic City to gamble; just think of it as you already lost your money, it would be nice if you win a few bucks at Blackjack or whatever, but if you lose you can’t go back to the ATM. The point is, when you go down to AC or buy Enzyte, there is a slight finical risk involved. You must accept the fact that you already lost the money.

ANYWAY, the biggest problem with working in an office is that when you have gas, you can’t get a completely accurate estimation if it’s a nice poop coming on or if it’s just methane that has to get out of your system. Either way, you have to excuse yourself to the bathroom. You can’t just fart in a cubical and expect to get away with it… On your way to the bathroom you have a lot of obstacles; you have to say hi to those who you make eye contact with, you have to look at the new baby pictures, you have to complain about Kyle Kendrick** all the way down the corridor until you finally reach the bathroom.

Once you’re in the bathroom, you have a whole other process to go through.

Now if you are like me, using public bathrooms can be very tricky. I’ll go in there, examine the seat, grab a horde of tissue paper (maybe a few wraps around the hand), wipe the seat, then grab three more pieces of tissue paper to cover the seat (one across and two down), then I’m finally able to drop pants and sit down.

All that work, all the preparation, and now it’s time to deliver…

You hear a loud, self fulfilling thunderous sound—one that bounces off the walls in an echo heard bathroom wide. But wait! No splash? You look down and to your bewildered displeasure there is nothing to show for it. You just shot a blank…Maybe a second push will do the trick….Ah, still nothing. You find yourself left with self doubt and a toilet bowl filled with tissues.

Just gas? All this work, this sacrifice just for gas? And just as General John Burgoyne*** after the Battle of Saratoga, you have to convince yourself that retreat is the only option.

To make matters worse:

There is somebody in the bathroom that you make small talk with before you go to the stall. If you get into the stall and realize its just gas, you can’t flush and stand up right away if the person is still there. The person in the backroom will think your some kind of freak if it only takes you 45 seconds to take a shit. So you just have to sit there on the toilet as a failure until the person leaves or a few two minutes roll by. This is why I like when people write on the walls; it gives you something to read as the time rolls by. Not in an office setting though. No bathroom graffiti there. You just have to sit there and literally count 65 Mississippi’s before even thinking about getting off that toilet.

As I said before, when going to the bathroom you have to walk past a whole barrage of people who know exactly where you are going and what you are going to do and how long it takes you to do it. Those people also know exactly how many times you do such a thing, so if you waste a trip on a fart, when you actually have to poop later on you can’t go without somebody saying to you on the way back, “are you feeling okay?”

When you are at work and around people all the time, everyone knows your business. When you by yourself most of the day you don’t get bothered. But you kind of miss it. It gets lonely all by yourself.

Farting whenever you want < eating and living life because you have a paycheck.

Releasing gas is nice and all, but I’ll take eight hours of holding it in any day. I guess the point of all of this is that work can get strenuous sometimes. It can get irksome and tedious as well, but being unemployed is far worse. People don’t want to be unemployed, even with all the freedom in bathroom use. So don’t be one of these people who say, “They should cut unemployment benefits because people are too lazy to get jobs.” Saying that is not only untrue, but it’s also un-American. To think that Americans and the American way and that our society is not of the utmost strongest—if you feel that we’ve become lazy, just get out. You forgot the definition of this country and the meaning behind it. You’ve missed the boat. You forgot the first, and often most elapsed word in the name of this ultimate nation; UNITED. We are United before we are states. We are United before with are America. We are the UNITED States of America. Don’t forget that….asshole.

Chuck 0ut.


*the natural male enhancer

**A young Phillies pitcher with a 5.0 ERA

***A British General who failed to bring down the American troops during one of the most important battles in the revolutionary war. (Go America! Screw the King!)