[300] Screed City
[300]
09/28/2024 Saturday. Papers Boxes. CRISIS HQ. Ridgewood, New York.
You know, I never did finish telling the story about working on the cruise ship a couple weeks ago. First, however, I need to clear my conscience. Just a few minutes ago I was walking to my studio, minding my business. I was getting ready to cross the street, waiting for the light to change and all this traffic was backed up through the intersection. I could see down the block that the light had changed to green so, being a good citizen, I was waiting for the intersection to clear before I crossed. It was raining and my day had already been quite harried. I got up early to get ready to get my teeth cleaned and then I had to haul ass home to make burritos for next weeks work up in Syracuse and then I had to run to my studio to print out a manuscript of Hilarious [italics] for Jayboo to read and hopefully blurb and then write this screed for tomorrow. I was not in a particularly good mood. Mostly because I am a jerk to myself and waited to the last minute to do anything even though I had an entire week to do shit. Instead of the traffic clearing the intersection, the car blocking the intersection honked at me. I looked over and frowned. Then I cross against my will. For some reason I put my hand up behind my head and flipped the driver the bird. She rolled her window down and yelled:
"Same to ya, asshole!" I turned around and yelled:
"You didn't have to fucking honk, man!"
Look, I am sorry. I was wrong and I'm foolish and I'm sorry. Meanwhile, a few blocks later as I was walking by her because the traffic was stopped, an ambulance was coming from the opposite direction with its siren blaring. I made a huge show of plugging my ears so she could see I was sensitive to sound. I mean, on one hand I was a dick, for sure, but also, you never know what someone is going through at any moment and honking your horn is never the right thing to do in any circumstance. Still, I should have just kept it to myself.
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Conversely, yesterday I was on the train coming back home from Tom's studio where that jerk worked my fingers to the bone moving heavy metal and glass. There was this guy playing Hendrix on his acoustic guitar. He was quite good. A middle aged white guy who had clear snot dripping from his nose. I was digging his tunes so and I remembered I had a dollar in my wallet. I took it out and waited for him to finish his song and come around with his hat to retrieve his good will in the form of money. He looked at my dollar and frowned. Scoffed even. In my mind I was like, "Sorry its not a fifty, you ungrateful bastard." But he redeemed himself when he yelled out, barked out, really:
"In case anyone is familiar with that music, I basically played it note for note!"
I don't know if that was a brag or if he was pissed because he felt like he was Hendrix reincarnated and nobody could appreciate him, but my thought after that was, "Same bro, same." Just joking, I squawked out a, "Ha!" and jumped off the train before he could punch me.
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The cruise ship though. One of the oddest things I have ever done. I know I complain a lot about getting trapped in hotel rooms around the country with nothing to do. How I get hired to do work and I the pay never reflects the reality that I am basically an indentured servant until the job gets done. Like what the hell am I going to do in Rochester, New York from 330p until sleep time? Why don't they work us 7am to 7pm? Travel home on Thursday. It is kind of ridiculous. But that is one thing. The cruise ship? My god, you are literally stuck on a boat the entire time. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Everything costs a million dollars and you're working over night so your body rhythms are just fucked. Its like you have jet lag the whole time even though you are in the same time zone. Go to work at 10pm, work until 8am and then what? Go drink at the Sunset bar at 8 in the morning? You can't. It doesn't open until 10am. But then what? Wait until 10am and go drinking? Then what? Stay up until noon and then sleep until 8pm and get ready for work? That is also insane. I don't want my body to think I should go to sleep at noon and wake up at 8pm. I would rather be asleep on two legs than do that. Because what happens when you get home? When Professor Curly gets up at 6am to do edit number 54 on the screenplay she just finished for the 53rd time? I really don't know how she does it. She deserves the Cormac McCarthy for that kind of dedication alone. I just finished doing a second edit of Hilarious [italics] that was mostly just agreeing with Jess's first edit and it nearly killed me. And that was just six hours of my life. And if I never have to read that writing again in my life, I would be okay with that. Although I do think I will do the audio book, so woe is me.
But you don't do those things. You finish work at 8am and then go back to your room, worn out and confused. The boat is like a casino, in fact there is a casino on site. You can't tell what time of day it is if you are inside. Once you go onto the deck, of course you can tell, but once you do that, it is another world. Everyone is wearing swim trunks or bikinis. Drinking. Swimming. Hot tubbing. Smoking cigars. Everyone, well, the men, seemed to be smoking cigars. There was a ping pong table, a basketball court, some grass here and there. A place to get ice cream if you wanted. There was usually a dj or a live band playing. There was a place for kids to hang out. But so what? I brought trunks, I really did think I might hop in the pool, but that seemed wild. Too wild. I don't even know if they would have allowed it. Technically I was a guest, but also, I was working. And I do wonder, if I was in my 20's or early 30's, what kind of shenanigans I would have got myself into. The scene was so bizarre that I think I could have probably found some sort of shame had I gone looking for it.
The work was oppressive. Oppressive in a way that on the last night, after working four hours longer than we were planning to work, right before forcing myself into bed because I had to get up in three hours to disembark, I mulled the idea that we should have been paid twice as much as we were paid. That Scott, himself, should be making three times as much as he was getting paid. The job was insane. We were hanging five two-ton chain motors from I-beams 50-60 feet in the air, I can't remember the height. A very simple job in normal circumstances. But these were not normal circumstances. There was no scissors lift, or Genie. All the rigging had to be done while harnessed and clipped into the existing wire rope rigging. Like we had to climb out onto the pipes over stage and literally stand on pipes the whole time we were working. Scott doing most of the pipe standing. The demo of the existing loft blocks, which were welded on with half in welds at least, they looked like 3/4" to me, but what do I know. I was exhausting work compounded by the fact that there was also performances happening every night and rehearsals in the day time. It was rough, I tell ya. Real rough.
And then what? After you work your ass off all night? Go hop into bed and try and get some sleep? Hungry, thirsty, exhausted and aching. I had a scheme that worked pretty good by the end of the five day work/trip. There was a crew bar next to the theater that sold beer at cost, essentially. I could go there sometime during the day and buy a few beers unopened and pay like seven dollars, take them back to my room, put them in the fridge and then after work, I could pace around my tiny cabin and write missives for a couple of hours before hitting the sack and hopefully getting a few hours of sleep. Then when I woke up, I would wait until 6pm when the dinner started being served in the cafeteria and go and get breakfast, which was usually a four course meal. I would drink iced tea and coffee. Then I would go back to my room and try and sleep more. That usually didn't work, so I would pace around up on the deck and watch fools get drunk and have good times and smell the salty air and feel the hot heat. Then before work I would haul ass to the crew bar, get a few beers for later, take them back to my cabin, put them in the fridge and either pace around for a while or go for a walk wherever there was to go for a walk at. Then I would go to work and work all night and that was difficult, but by the end I knew the ship pretty well. I felt insane due to my lack of sleep, and a little cranky about how insane the work was. There wasn't much I could have done about that though. Next time will be different. I can feel it. Same with this work up in Syracuse next week. It is going to be the job that changes everything. I know it will be.
[Insert flier for tomorrow]
