Fuck you, R--- Township! (long, and probably boring)

The BBQ Pit
1

Flashback to December of last year. A friend of mine calls me and asks if I want to tape a local township board meeting so someone can put together a library of local government. I’m interested in politics, and the pay is twenty dollars an hour, so I decide to take the gig.

It’s now July, and I’m ready to quit. These people are fucking insane. Nobody can fucking behave - it’s like they’re in study hall. There’s always this group of three women in a corner making little bitchy remarks to each other. There’s a guy sitting in the center cutting his nails mid-meeting. One guy has decided to be teacher’s pet, and tells everyone else to be quiet, and actually started yelling “Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!” at one point in the meeting when another guy wouldn’t shut up. I’m twenty-three, and I feel like I’m the mature one in the room, which just makes me want to slash my wrists (or better yet, someone else’s, anyone else’s, just give me a set.)

Then there’s the paranoia, which is weirdly extreme. My friend called me to set up with the gig because he couldn’t do it - he was not in fact hiring me. There’s another guy, Tall Man, who was doing the actual hiring. He writes my checks every month, picks up the tapes, etc. I thought Tall Man was the guy in charge. I was wrong. Tall Man was hired to hire me by a “Township resident who wishes to remain anonymous.” Okay. Why the fuck do you need to remain anonymous about taping a public meeting? What is going to happen if people find out that you are getting the tapes? Are they gonna canonize you? Crucify you? Kill your cats? Who really cares if you’re taping the meetings?

On the other hand, I walked out of the meeting tonight to find a bunch of people standing around talking about some stupid fight, and someone getting yanked out of his truck and turning around and threatening to press charges, so the potential for violence is there.

The sad thing is that I don’t really know what the big deal is. There’s been some board conflict, but the board members themselves seem to have gotten past it. These idiot audience people just feel like they need to keep the fight alive or something.

It’s fucking insane, and I don’t know if I want to go back again. I like getting sixty dollars for standing in a corner and pressing the zoom button, but I shouldn’t have to consider protecting my camera with my body. Maybe they’ll all come to their senses. But I doubt it.

2

I’m reminded of a great line by Garrison Keillor:

“The problem with democracy is that it attracts people who have time to kill.”

3

Sir, your name is ridiculous. No one can ever see a ninja.

4

We are a hedge.

5

As one who has been training for years to avenge her brother’s death at the hand of those scum they call ninja, I assure you that the ninja can indeed be seen. What you’ve gotta do, see, is sorta squint, and then turn your head a leetle to the left, and…

Look! Ninjas.

'Scuse me. Important avenging to do.

(Oh, by the way, look!ninjas has chick parts, not dude parts.)

6

After a long night of avenging, might I submit that you also have dude parts? Admittedly, a bit less connected to things than they used to be… Look, I need some for my work… got a spare left leg and a spleen?

7

Do you zoom in on the guy clipping his nails? Study the concentration on his face as he squeezes the clippers? Do you follow the nail shard as it flies up into the air and lands in his neighbor’s take out food container? Maybe a slo-mo of that would be good for the movie.

I think you need a shotgun mic so you can get good audio from the bitchy corner.

Maybe edit all the bizarre footage together and show it at the township fireworks or some other community function.

You could take it to Sundance and market it as real-life democracy at work.

8

If your location didn’t say Michigan, I’d think you were talking about our local city council. The mayor and the council chairman regularly get into fistfights (I’m not kidding) at council meetings.

On an unrelated note, our county treasurer was recently arrested because he beat the crap out of some kid who had pushed over a port-a-potty that the treasurer’s adult son was using. Oh, he used a 2 x 4 to facilitate the beating.