Nope. She is still performing and touring, and even after all these years, I don’t want piss her off. Plus, I know from experience she is not the only bitch diva on tour, so why single her out?
Find a reputable magazine or newspaper, offer to write interviews and reviews, get them to fill out the paperwork and then submit application in a timely manner to the film festival press credentials department (usually no later than a month before it starts, sometimes even earlier). It is a lot more work than you might expect - watching some truly horrible films, sometimes as many as 6 in a day, and then trying to write reviews before the next day’s onslaught of films. Interviews with up and coming (pre-fame) talent can be fun - I got to spend a few hours with Gus van Sant, half a day with Pedro Almodovar, had lunch with Derek Jarman - plus a lot more people who were just fun to be around during the strange days of a film festival. At the end of the 10 days or two weeks of 16-18 hour days, you are totally burned out and need about three days to recover, but the experience is worth it.
I raised mosquitos for a company that tested repellants.Had about 2 hrs of real work to do each day; the rest of the time I sat around and BS’d with my boss…
This was 1994. We didn’t have scanners back then. We had a printed list produced by a dot matrix printer that was given to us at the beginning of shift. We would litterally walk through the warehouse and fill our carts, then place them all in one corridor to be loaded onto the freezer trucks. We had one guy that would go through and double check our picks to make sure our counts were right. I have no idea how they did inventory control at this place because it was pretty chaotic.
The hardest part of the job was loading the freezer trucks. We would take two at a time and run with them down the freezer ramp, turn the corner, then turn another corner and hopefully have enough momentum to make it up one of 3 loading ramps to the trucks. Often times we wouldn’t have enough momentum to make that 2nd turn and would wipe out, spilling ice cream all over the place.
I sold sex toys for a “novelty” store in Dallas. It was my job to tell you all about the wonderful things you can do with these toys and show you where to put the batteries without ever actually referring to them as sex toys. They were “cake toppers” and “personal massagers” and the like.
I worked at a biofeedback business for a few years. I was shipping manager among other things. Due to being the new guy, I was also the test patient for doctors who were learning how to use the equipment. My back is in a demonstration video that has been shipped to clinicians worldwide.
I was an editor at Weird Tales for a brief period. I worked in a basement. The house was a museum of collectibles and sf art. I read submissions and rejected them. One story out of four hundred was the ratio of publishable stuff.
Last year, I performed in the Fringe Festival. I did a whole act as a street preacher for Cthulhu. Nobody got the joke, and the show was a financial failure. The Festival is again upon us and I’m trying to figure out what to do and where.
Incidentally, this thread inspired me to start a spinoff thread about jobs that people get paid (often generous amounts of money) for, that you would gladly do for free.
zoogirl, that sounds like a lot of fun. How often do you guys play? I’m actually close enough to go.
I haven’t really had a weird job, but I did have an awesome one - like ArrMatey! I tested video games. I posted that in the other thread already.
I also worked in a chocolate store for a year. Everyone liked to make the joke, “If I worked here I’d be 300 pounds oh ho ho!” I thought the same, too, but the job was actually kind of physically demanding, at least to the point where I didn’t gain any weight. I gained all my weight while doing the video game tester job instead - sitting on my ass with chips, sunflower seeds and pop!
My favourite things to do at the chocolate store were making cotton candy, making ice cream cones (and decorating them), and decorating candy apples.
I haven’t had these jobs, but I met someone who did.
Aphid sexing - no clue what that experiment was trying to prove. He was provided with the aphids, though, and had to use a microscope to count up how many of each.
Use weed-whacker to simulate sheep grazing. This one was part of an ecology study. The idea was to create small enclosures in a sheep meadow that were protected from grazing and see what size they had to be to be useful as natural habitat. And how close they had to be to each other.
Unfortunately, the sheep were also part of an experiment and it ended sooner than the ecology one did. Enter the grad student who got to take a weed-whacker out into the meadow and keep the grass between the enclosures short to keep the experiment going. She looked back on the job fondly, parly because it was only for a few weeks.
Pelvic exam model for a med school. Those med students need hands on training and twice a year the local med school would pay something like $15-$20 per exam, plus pizza. Knew one guy who was a regular and was pleased that he could coach nervous students through the process. (Yes, men can have pelvic exams, too.) He offered to set me up, but somehow I never got around to it.
I have a friend who had a job cleaning out the demonstration vacuum cleaners of door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen (or at least this is what he told me.)
“Dude…learn HTML or something…shit.” Yes indeed, the very definition of pointless shit-job.
Jersey Joe’s at the Ramada on Lougheed in Pitt Meadows on Sept 22. Cover charge is $12 at the door. Opening band is Hooligan. I won’t be doing Frankenstein there though as we’ve got a shorter show. I’ll be up for the other stuff though. We’re sold out in Victoria but the next confirmed one is The Red Room on Richards Nov 11.
Oh, forgot to add: Also wrote for a role-playing game company. Have writing credits in 2 game supplements, and remain uncredited in two more, from AEG. Unfortunately, they axed the line I -did- get credit for, and my uncredited work … Well… Didn’t parlay into anything credited.
While temping just out of college, for two weeks I was a staple remover. That is, I removed staples from all document files in a large bank’s mortgage portfolio that was being assigned to a new bank, in order to microfilm the documents. Essentially, I sat in a windowless warehouse and removed staples for eight hours a day.
Hmm, I’ve never been to BC, although the apparently large number of cute girls who wrangle snakes, test video games, and do other totally cool things does make it somewhat tempting.
Sadly, My job fits into the Generic category, and I would feel rather out of place even if I ever got the time off to go.
In September of 2001, I was laid off from my job. A couple of days following that, I went with a friend of mine to get his car inspected & registered for a driving class at New Hampshire International Speedway (NHIS).
The guy at the registration desk asked me what I was doing the next couple of days, and I replied, “Trying to find a job.” He gave me one for $150/day to work as a flag-man on the course. Not bad money (tax free) for standing around with a radio, and waving flags as needed, and a front row view of cars going VERY fast around the road track at NHIS.
Not to mention that I got to go about 80mph on the way back to the garage for lunch/end of day.
No, Naked Trucker is a new skit comedy show on either Comedy Central or Fox (I can’t remember which.) It has its funny moments but since we had to watch the whole show repeatedly it got boring pretty quick.
Watch for the new game show “The Rich List.” It promises to be pretty good. I’ve seen people win over $400,000 so far and we’re only 4 days into taping.
