WE HAVE MOVED

to http://addyfox.tumblr.com

I'm Not Getting Married!!!

Exciting news people! I'm not getting married. The reasons are not too hard to understand, but the problem that frames them is complicated; “Problem” not in the sense of it being a nuisance, but rather a subject that needs some contemplation and dissection to understand.

I grew up in the Mid-West and am now in my mid-twenties. Conventional knowledge suggests I should either be on my way to the altar, or actively trying to get there (at least that seems to be the general consensus among my relatives.) I do not feel that way-- or rather, I don't anymore.

I have nothing against marriage ideologically, outside of the whole Women’s Studies 101 history of the institution. I realize we’ve come a long way, baby, and I am fine with committing to one person for the rest of my life. In fact, the whole idea seems really nice, especially when you're in love. I’d just like to explain why there is an ethical argument for not getting married in the US today.

I didn’t really want to feel this way, but now I’m here, stuck with the mindset. I suppose it’s because when faced with the reality of the situation, I made myself stop and think about it.

I moved in with my boyfriend after only a couple of months of dating, and I knew even then we were never breaking up. I knew I had found the man I wanted to marry.

Now I'm not so sure, though it has nothing to do with him.

I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of spending loads of money on a wedding when that money could be put to better use in a million other ways, but I figured I could sort of tweak The Big Day when it came so it didn't bother me too much (veggie menu, no diamond ring, I’m not paying anyway.) I also knew that it was really more for my family than for me. Because for my Catholic family-- and my boyfriend’s Jewish family-- marriage is basically required, and certainly expected, if you’re planning on starting a life and family with someone. It is also required if you want to do things like sleep in the same room at my Dad’s house. (Yes, even when you’ve been living together for 3 years.) If it were up to me, it'd be City Hall and a handful of people. Of course that would piss everyone off, so at some point I resigned myself to the fact that my giant family and my boyfriend's rather large family would inevitably collide at Papa Fox's country club.

So several months ago we started looking at rings and talking about dates and doing the usual "maybe it's time" thing. (Side note: diamonds are ridiculous-- WHY do people spend so much on these rocks? The only reason they cost so much is market control, and the only reason we buy them is advertising- see: The Diamond Invention - but I digress.) It was about this time things started to get weird, and not in that familiar "I'm uncomfortable with the money/time/energy required by this one day" way. It started with me thinking about who I would want to fly in, want in the wedding, and need for emotional and pharmaceutical support. It occurred to me that some of those people would not be able to get married themselves, at least not where I live (NYC) or where I’m from (STL), and that even if they did get married in Iowa, the Federal government would never recognize their full rights thanks to Bill Clinton signing the Defense of Marriage Act. (DOMA)

Soon after, I saw this: The Huffington Post

I have loved Charlize since That Thing You Do!, and when she said she didn't feel right about getting married when so many people can't, I realized I totally agreed with her, but hadn't actually ever thought about it in that way.

When I did start to think about it, the obviousness of the problem surprised me. Of course I don’t want to buy into an institution (literally, you have to pay for a marriage license) that discriminates against people, especially people I care about. Of course I have a problem contributing money to a state that amended its freaking Constitution to insure wacky discriminatory practices would carry on for as long as possible. Of course there is something wrong with marriage being a privilege offered to only heterosexual couples. But I feel like most people don’t even think about it.

Then again, people who belonged to country clubs that didn’t allow Jews or went to schools that didn’t allow Blacks probably didn’t think about that much either until they had to. But at some point they either had a moral epiphany and left, tried to change those institutions, or were forced into evolving by legislation. But we have no new Civil Rights Act coming our way today in defense of equal marriage or gay rights, and even the standards we do have (see: not tolerating institutionalized discrimination) are obviously not being applied to this very applicable situation. So while there are plenty of people making it their life’s work to eradicate this blatant inequity, it is clear their progress is and will be hampered by a nation that has not yet come to fully grasp it’s own ideals, and is intent on staying backwards in this regard. So the only thing I can do at this point, outside of contributing money and effort to political action organizations, is to not join the club.

There are plenty of people who will say, "This is only hurting you, and does nothing to advance gay rights. I'm not going to stop voting just because other people in the world don't have fair elections,” etc.

Well, this is not some problem with “the system,” nor some kind of boycott I’m advocating. I get that I am forfeiting rights I would otherwise have were I married, and that me not being married does nothing to directly help the gays marry.

However. There is something to be said for solidarity, and even more to be said for personal moral fiber, regardless of the pay-off. For me, this is simply an aversion to targeted, purposeful discrimination, keeping me away from an institution that does such things.

Take something like a driver's license. We need the government to regulate certain things like who can operate automobiles so we don’t all die when my grandfather decides Alzheimer’s shouldn’t keep him off the road. Sure, there are restrictions (age, physical and mental ability, etc) but it should be open to all who qualify. And if everyone but gay people, or black people, or short people could get a driver's license, I would have a problem paying and supporting the DMV. (It would be a pain in the ass to not have a license when I went home for Christmas, but I’d probably survive.) Same with paying someone to give me a marriage certificate who wouldn't give one to a gay person. It just doesn't seem to jive with my conscience.

And I get that this is all a part of the government, but it is not the government per se that is the issue here. It's a policy, namely DOMA, and a collection of local policies like Prop 8, and, most importantly, peoples' mindsets that are the problem. So there's no need to take on the government, to stop paying taxes, stop voting, etc. I don't disagree with everything the government does-- just this institution (marriage) it controls on various levels. I think that marriage should be about love, not politics, but when it is politicized by legislation and discrimination, leaving the politics out of the equation just isn't an option anymore.

The mindset behind this discrimination, as far as I can tell, is that allowing gay marriage will hurt what we think of as traditional marriage, because it makes it less special/holy if those sodomites can join in too. They are unnatural, god hates them, and so on. “Who will we be marrying next, people and cows!?” proponents say. (I love the equating being gay to being a cow.) Well, I think we can stop at "consenting adults." These anti-equality pundits tend to ignore the obvious problems with their religious arguments, like if you are getting this “moral” basis from the Bible, then you also have to follow the rest of Leviticus and the Old Testament and outlaw things like shellfish, divorce, and women leaving the house while on their period. But these people aren’t really open to being reasoned with, and I’ve never known a racist or a bigot to suddenly see the light because someone pointed out their reasoning wasn’t wholly sound. That’s not really how these things work. And I don’t see them picketing Red Lobster.

So the only way for me, personally, to contradict that mindset is to show that traditional marriage is not protected, but in fact diminished and out of the question for certain people who would normally join in because of the bigoted nature the institution has taken on-- banning gay marriage in certain places, doing the separate-but-equal thing in others, and in most places, simply tuning out the voice of the gay community because they are a minority, after all, and minorities only seem to garner equal rights in this country once the majority decide to sympathize.

Also, do not think that “no one” would notice or appreciate this sort of gesture-- my entire family (and my boyfriend’s) will certainly notice on that fateful day I’m finally forced to explain to them why we haven’t made the move yet. And I am sure there are people who will take it to heart that there are straight people willing to sacrifice their own rights in order to stand in solidarity with those whose rights are denied. Also, all these people definitely care: [marriageboycott.ning.com]

This is not to say gay people, or any people, give a fuck whether I get married-- it’s not about that, or whether or not they think this is just some empty gesture. It’s about making a personal decision while putting it in a larger context, something we should probably all do more often.

Now most people I’ve bounced these crazy ideas off of respond with, well why don’t you just get married in Boston or some other place gays can get married, and donate money to the cause instead of gifts or something?

I think that is a fine idea, but it doesn’t totally get around the problem for me. DOMA is still in effect, and I feel like anti-discrimination and pro-equality continue to lose the good fight all over the country. Simply going to one of the five places where they are making an impact is nice and all, but avoids the larger issue. I could also go to Holland. But I don’t live there, and neither does anyone I know. And this isn't really about statement making for me. It's more about what's in my heart, and how I would feel joining a club that has rules I don't agree with. And in the bargain, taking the argument against gay marriage (it will hurt "normal" marriage) and flipping it on it's head by showing that denying gays marriage can turn plenty of straight people off it.

But, hey, listen, it's not that I disagree with people getting married, so let’s just get that out of the way. I'm not saying anyone (gay or straight or otherwise) should or shouldn't get married because of what I think. No one should make that decision for you-- including the government. I know and love plenty of married people, and I’m not questioning their life decisions. Plus, I love an open bar as much as the next lush. It’s not about the party, or the sentiment behind it. It’s about me, personally, putting my money where my mouth is as far as Civil Rights go.

And I get that there are a lot of people who for religious, familial, immigration, or financial reasons need to get married, and I am not trying to give off an 'all or nothing' vibe here. For them, do what you need to do, and enjoy those rights while you’re at it. Mazel tov! There are millions of reasons people get married, and most are perfectly valid. But there are also reasons not to, and all I ask is that we consider those, too.

Just like with eating meat, there is only so far you can take lifestyle choices with other people. Personally, I decided to become a vegetarian for environmental and ethical reasons, not because I don’t love bacon. (God do I miss bacon.) But other people, for the most part, don’t get it and/or don’t give a shit about the environmental impact of their eating, and I’m probably not ever going to change their minds. I just try to do what I think is right, and hope that other people can come to understand why I think it's important. But while I think the vegetarian message is pretty 'out there' in terms of people understanding why it’s effective, I don't think enough people have talked about this marriage abstention thing.

As far as civil unions go, it's a start, but it smacks of separate-but-equal to me-- but it's a perfectly understandable option if it floats your boat. For the gay and madly in love, it is sadly the only option. So go for it, but we all know it’s a stepping stone.

We should still be hoping for something better. And straight people should be just as concerned about this, because we all have a gay friend or relative who is currently being discriminated against.

The point is not that I think people shouldn’t get married, but more that I don't think people consider these questions before they start buying rocks, and I think they should. For me, I think about how I live in one of the most progressive cities in the world with zillions of gays, and the fact that they can't marry here really bothers me. The fact that no matter where they get married the federal government won’t recognize it bothers me even more.

Just to reiterate, I am abstaining-- not boycotting. I think that marriage as a legal entity is something that should be available to everyone, and every consenting adult should be able to choose someone to enter into it with. I would just like to feel good about doing it first.

And again, I don't expect anyone to care if I get married or not. But I do think if Megan McCain, or some other famous young conservative (do those exist?), came out with the same sentiment, someone would care. If there were hundreds or thousands of young people refusing to get married because of this, it certainly wouldn't go unnoticed.

Maybe I will get married if I get to see the day DOMA is repealed. Or maybe I will have a commitment ceremony or a big ass anniversary (of our first date) party to appease my grandmother, who is not above dropping hints about how she won’t be around forever and would love to see me walk down the aisle. I might even wear a ring and call him “hubby.” But I don’t think I can put my name on that marriage certificate, despite the tax breaks, until it's a privilege we can all enjoy.

You can call it an empty gesture, but for me, it's a gesture that speaks to my personal dissatisfaction with the option available to me, which unfortunately is not available to everyone else. And I'm not saying donating time and money to this cause isn't way more important. Do those things, please.

But also think about what you’re getting into-- and what you’re endorsing-- before you decide to join up.

Going Native

I recently found out what I am-- my mom got curious a while ago and did our family tree. I suppose there are always bound to be surprises.

For most of my life I was told I was a good chunk Russian, but it turns out that my forbearers were Germans who moved to Russia and intermarried, so I'm really more German than anything. I'm also descended from Scottish nobility, probably Black Irish, and more Native American than I thought. I knew that my grandfather's father, Cicero Walker, was a full-blooded Cherokee who had no doubt been part of the Native assimilation thrust upon his generation (change your name and try to pass as some kind of whiter race, or GTFO.) His family was from Georgia, where they had owned slaves and a plantation and were eventually killed/burned/expelled/sent to Oklahoma with blankets covered in smallpox. He ended up in Kentucky with Rebecca, the most beautiful woman in town, who gave me the Scottish and, it turns out, some more Native blood that moms couldn't trace as far back.

I've always felt somewhat drawn to this part of my heritage, but sometimes I feel like an asshole for saying that I'm part Native, especially since I don't even know exactly how much I am (definitely more than 1/8th, I suppose) and don't look the part. My grandfather could easily be Big Chief in a movie, and I have the eye-flaps and the cheekbones, but I am deathly pale and have curly brown hair, so I feel kind of stupid calling it my own. I have always been aware of it, however, and have always been touched by their culture and their struggle. And most of all, I have always been offended by the caricatures and other offensive shit (it's like pornography, I know it when I see it) that passes in our country as harmless entertainment.

I'm thinking mostly of sporting mascots, where I think it's the worst - the Atlanta Brave's and their stupid tomahauk-cheer thing, the KC Chiefs, the Cleveland Indians, etc, where drunk dudes can putter their hands over their mouths and put feathers in their hair and no one gets offended. Ever since I was little it has bothered me how NA's are seen as extinct historical cartoons, like cowboys and arr matey pirates-- they are still around after all! albeit relegated to the saddest parts of our points west, and even though most of them were wiped out thanks to Andrew Jackson, racism, and manifest destiny.

Other historically oppressed groups demand some sensitivity and respect, at least in public venues. We would never see an African Tribesman mascot for an American baseball team jumping around in some vaguely historical ceremonial garb, or a team called The Chinks or The Spics, because it is fucking offensive. (There is the whole Fighting Irish kinda thing, but 1- it's college, and they seem to like it, and 2- that seems to be a more flattering, fantastical mascot. Leprechauns are not real people.) I mean, my high school almost changed it's mascot from the Bombers because of 9/11. And yet I look at the TV Sunday and there are the Texas Rangers and the Cleveland Indians on national TV in their own version of Cowboys and Indians, in front of thousands of people with that ridiculous logo on their bodies.

Perhaps the grossest part is that these people we're mocking are not even Indians, and while some call themselves American Indians just to differentiate between them and those on another friggin continent, they are NATIVE Americans. "Indian" is just early explorers not knowing where the hell they were, and calling these people something convenient, just as they did with slaves and other people of color. They did not recognize these people by their true roots or cultures, so they just slapped some derogatory name on them and told them to get on the boat, or get off "their" land. Most of those names have faded from common use, but certainly not this one. So why is it OK for us to keep using this derogatory shit in our public venues, and how are we supposed to teach our kids to be respectful of other cultures when one that this country nearly wiped out is allowed to be derided and degraded in our sporting stadiums? Using NA culture as inspiration is one thing-- I am all for fashion, art, music, etc. borrowing from their rich history and culture. But turning them into idiotic caricatures for your own entertainment is another thing altogether.

This debate has been going on since the Civil Rights movement of the 60's, and plenty of entertainment outlets (looking at you, Disney) have revamped the way they portray minorities since. Yet in sports this ridiculous racism persists to little outrage. I say bring the outrage back. It's about damn time we stopped embarrassing ourselves.

Getting Googled, Part II - A Very Corporate Ass Fucking

Getting fired from Google is sort of like breaking up with Angelina Jolie, my boyfriend tells me.

You try to forget the unavoidable truth that you've attained and lost something everyone else seems to want, but no matter what you do, you will inevitably be reminded of your ass-chucking 40 times a day. Like Angie, Google will sneakily embed itself in your reading material and television programming, come up in random conversation when least expected, and, of course, forever taunt you with their fabulous riches and media adoration. I am writing this rant on a Google subsidiary, after all. There is no escape.

Breaking away from such an icon is expected to be a difficult affair, and I hope that even with his fear of antique furniture, Billy Bob Thorton didn't have to go through quite as much hell as my boyfriend, who is now an ex-Googler.

See, despite their virtuous motto, they treat their employees with about as much diplomacy and discretion as your average Fortune 100 company-- that is to say, with very little.

It is one thing when, at the company retreat, they put you in a room with a guy that gets wasted on the first night and wakes you by banging a random chick so loud on the bed next to you that you're not only somewhat traumatized, but strangely turned off by the sounds of tennis forever. (Don’t worry, they will give you a new room to smooth things over the next day.)

It is another thing entirely when, after being placed in a new position, you are forced to go in circles with HR and all your superiors just to get the message across that your job is incompatible with your skill-set... and then instead of trying to move you, work with you, or listen to you, having them all ignore and ridicule you for a year while they slowly try to make you no longer exist.

This is what you would expect at Microsoft, sure. But it seems kinda evil to me.

As far as I can tell, Google suffers from all the HR nightmares you'd expect at any other major conglomerate. They like to flaunt a lot of existential garbage on the way in about dynamic team-building, the best-of-the-best, and exciting career possibilities, but really, they are operating straight from the text of Corporate Ladder Building 101. Maybe they put applicants through so many pre-interview tests and questionnaires to explain their rejection of so many people, but once you're past those hurdles, it's business as usual.

Basically, it works like this: Google first decides they like you by 1- placing an inordinate amount of emphasis on where you got your degree(s), and 2- putting you through an insane amount of personality testing that determines whether or not you are cool enough (or dorky enough, depending on how you look at it,) to hang out with them. My boyfriend was graced with an Ivy League education and a music industry resume, so they took him as a Temp and quickly offered him a permanent position once in the door, which is par for the course.

The problem came when they told him he was going to have to work his way up to what he actually wanted to do at the company, and instead of gleaning (or even attempting to understand) what it was he actually had to offer, they put him in the first thing they had available and left him to flounder. Imagine being an accountant, getting a job at the best company in the world, and then finding out you’ve been put on the marketing team-- and have to be awesome on it for at least a year in order to do anything else.

Mr. Fox (as he will be known herein to protect his future employability) is a creative kind of guy. He comes up with inventions and business ideas like I come up with hangovers. When we took the LSAT together way back when, he showed up at the break with a song written on his scrap paper, which he came up with during the freaking logic games section. An idea man, if you will.

He went to Google with the hope of using this creative skill-set, and made these wishes clear. At the time he was hired, however, there was no "Creative Team" or anything of the sort. Everyone pitched in on the creative process, he was told, his input would be valuable, etc, and whatever he did come up with would help place him in a future promotion. So when HR initially offered a position to him, they sold him on the fact that it was in “entertainment”, and hey, he was into that, being a musician and all, right? Well, “entertainment,” it turned out, was entering 5,000 keywords for a Batman DVD into a spreadsheet. Then, only a few weeks after he was permanently hired, the obvious need for an internal creative resource caused the company to make such a team because they probably should have had one years ago.

But, alas. In order for Mr. Fox to get to the Creative team, he was told he would have to manage enormous spreadsheets of key words with a team of ball-busting perfectionists for an undetermined amount of time first, because NO ONE can move ANYWHERE at Google without 1- the consent and endorsement of their bossman/lady, and 2- a year of hitting their "projected goals," aka getting 4 consecutive B's on their quarterly report cards. It doesn’t matter how long your resume is, or how good you are at something else. You have to prove your worker bee worth, first.

This did not work out so well for him.

Some people are not proofreaders. These are big-picture people who tend to outsource details, and they need proofreaders themselves. Trying to make these people minutia-loving spelling Nazis is like trying to turn a Porsche into a pony-- the essential building blocks are simply wrong. So his job took him twice as long to do, and he fucking hated it. And his boss, a new mom who clearly did not care about anything but wanting to go home, was not very nice. To put it mildly. But he stayed because of the promise of things to come. Then he found out that was all horse shit, too.

See, corporations operate on the HR philosophy of earn-and-receive. You earn ratings from your team income and team/management grading of your performance, and if you do well, you 1) get more money-- in the case of Google, they raise and reduce your bonuses based on your grades-- and 2) have the opportunity to move up or to a job that doesn’t suck. And Mr. Fox, lucky guy that he is, was on a team that was working against him, blamed him for everything that went wrong, and essentially fucked him out of ever going anywhere but out the door, despite the fact that he earned them all healthy bonuses.

He did this by winning a company-wide creative competition with a campaign that was totally unrelated to his job, but that each team needed to submit something for. He came up with the whole concept, and then salvaged the mess that those anal bitches turned it into with their text-crammed PowerPoint Presentation. At aforementioned conference with aforementioned tennis-grunt-fucking, he earned his team members an equal cut of substantial cash winnings and VIP access for the week.

He also came up with several other ideas for them, for free, on his own time-- new media stuff for YouTube that he pitched to several of his superiors, and that MySpace later stole (or psychically channeled) and rolled out before he could get anyone with a budget to do anything. It was pretty obvious that someone had either leaked or sold his ideas since the campaigns were almost identical, and this even lead to a brief internal investigation, which stopped at upper-middle management because they decided taking it further probably wouldn't yield any "results."

He made a lot of friends on the new Creative Team doing all this extracurricular work, and they expressed keen interest in getting him out of the sales-report trenches. But you cannot move (promoted or laterally) in a corporation without your daddy’s say so. And, like I said before, his daddy was a bitch. ***I should note Mr. Fox would never say this, because he is a gentleman. But I am a foul-mouthed lady with no connection to these people, so I can say what I want. And I read some of the e-mails she sent him near the end, and I can testify to said bitchiness.

I can also tell you:

- No man ever survived his boss. When he got there, there was only one other guy on his team, and he was the whipping boy who got blamed for everything and was fired within months of Mr. Fox's arrival. Granted, he was pretty fucking terrible at his job from what I hear, but the point remains. While he was still there Mr. Fox got good report cards. Once he was gone, well.

- In whipping boy #1’s absence, Mr. Fox took up the mantle. He did not belong in the position, and he made it pretty clear to his boss early on that he wanted to move to something that was more in tune with his interests and skill set. This was a Very Bad Idea. Once she ascertained this, it was easy for her to blame him for whatever she wanted, because he didn’t want to be there anyway, the ungrateful bastard. She had a NEW BABY. He was just some carefree musician kid. Whenever a “build” (keyword-filled spreadsheet madness) was off, it was his fault. Whenever “communication” (a thing that actually requires more than 1 party) was lacking, it was his fault. Naturally this was not an easy way to work, and it tipped everyone else on the team off that they could blame him for their fuck-ups, too.

- Once targeted by a pack of cornered females, there is no hope of survival, and going up against your boss in Corporate America is like taking on Rambo-- bish, you gonn die. His attempt to move to Creative coincided with the economy freaking its shit out last year, and they needed a fall man when the team only hit 70% of their projected income. Why not blame it on the guy who didn’t want to be there anyway? And, you know, make a bunch of shit up to get rid of him.

- His boss put him on one of those “Action Plans” that are basically fair warning that they’re trying to get rid of you. She did not tell him that he was expected to do things like give her weekly updates once this thing started, so he was further reprimanded and made to look even worse when he didn’t. She then came to an HR meeting he called to try to straighten things out with a list of fabricated and largely delusional versions of events that she then tried to get him to sign. When he refused, she and the HR lady then informed him it didn’t matter if he signed it or not, because she was his manager and her reports were as sacred as the fucking scrolls, as far as they were concerned. She then made his Action Plan include goals that were rationally unachievable, on purpose, and wouldn’t admit that she was asking the impossible.

- When he went to his boss’ boss for some kind of guidance, he was told that he couldn’t call his boss a liar because she had been there longer, and this guy was friends with her, so, sorry, but tough cookies. When he went to HR, he was told he couldn’t move positions, anywhere, at all, without a positive rating from his boss. So.

- The bitch was demoted just 2 days before Mr. Fox's "Action Plan" reached it's inevitable end. Small justice, but better than nothing.

Now in all fairness, Mr. Fox did take that awful spreadsheet job of his own free will. And he admittedly knew going in it wasn’t what he really wanted to do at the company. The problem was there were no entry-level positions that would have offered him the proper spring-board for what he did want. He would have had to be a good data-entry drone for a while, no matter what, and I just don't see that working. It's like imagining Don Draper doing a budget report-- he could do it, but why would you want to make him? Make him for over a year, if you knew he didn't like it, wasn't very good at it, and was really good at other stuff you needed done? I mean. It drove him crazy and he really wanted to just quit, but Mr. Fox needed the unemployment, so he stuck it out. He knew he was a marked man once the main advertiser funding his team cut their budget by 50% and everybody was like, oh shit here comes restructuring. He was Action Planned immediately, but it took them MONTHS to pull the trigger. Why the delay? Of course, it's just another lovely aspect of their protocol.

He was so happy on his last day. I mean, he gets like 99 weeks of unemployment now. So, in the long run, I guess the bitch sort of did him a favor. Nevertheless, there is still something ugly about this story.

While it might not be obviously evil, there is a nastiness lurking this typical HR policy of theirs.

Why do these businesses, even ones that try or claim to be progressive, think that in order to be an effective worker in a coveted position, you must first be an effective drone?

Why do you have to be a good assistant to work your way up the corporate ladder?

Some people are just not good assistants, and those people are probably not good proofreaders, either. Does that mean these people hold no value in the corporate world?

The answer appears to be Yes-- and for a company that relies on innovation, creativity, and adaptability like Google, that seems pretty stupid.

The larger a company grows, the more difficult it is for anyone to make any relevant changes to its structure. I dealt with this shit myself at Universal Music (see post below), and I can tell you, it didn't help business. So why doesn't Google take its own advice?

It's been said that ignorance is the root of all evil, after all-- if they want to live up to their motto, they should really rethink their obtuse corporate hierarchy.

Living a Life of Leisure is a Full-Time Job

When I first started this blog it was because I was writing a book, and I thought I should have some more search engine results than my high school softball statistics. The book was called “F!!k This Noise,” and it was about my experiences in/opinions on the music business. It turns out it was just “The Future of Music” with more name-dropping. The blog was supposed to be some kind of online portfolio that would help me network, publish, etc, but I discovered you can do all those things (and not do them) without the help of the interwebs. I got bored with the subject matter, especially after I realized most of what I had to say had already been said better and more concisely somewhere else, and the project never really took off after I turned it in as my senior thesis-thingie. So I gave up for a while and decided to stay in school.

Law school sucks, and you should not graduate from a school like NYU (and especially from a “is this really considered college?” program like The Clive Davis Department) and go right into one, no matter how much money they throw at you. It’s like going from Disneyland to Rikers. Only prison does not require liver damage to survive.

So now I work at home in my pajamas, and while I’m poor and probably getting carpal tunnel, I’m also writing stuff I don’t hate for the first time in a long while. Living this way-- broke, happy, and without a single realistic long-term goal-- has inspired a new project, based on people I’ve met and befriended in the last five years who manage under and un employment with style.

I’m declaring it now so that there is an official record of this brilliant idea and no one can steal it-- perhaps I’m paranoid because I stole it myself, but with permission.
The new book is:

“Living a Life of Leisure is A Full-Time Job”

(When Googling that in quotes there are zero results as of 9/9/09, so at least I know if you steal it, you stole it from me. fucker.)

Right now it is 12 characters that, in one way or another, manage interesting and/or fabulous lifestyles by unorthodox means. I won’t go into specifics because I am very self conscious and not quite there yet, but it takes a special kind of human to survive completely on personality and charm, and I think you will love them as much as I do.

Hopefully I will get some or all of it done while the recession still makes it seem timely, and someone somewhere will give me money, so I can pay for the premium cable television I so dearly love.

I will also, hopefully, not wait another two years to share more of my genius and wit with the 10 people who are apt to read this. There is something about the bite of autumn that always gets me going after a lazy summer, and I’m all jazzed up about this one.

FUCK. THIS. NOISE.

Speaking of the old book, here is the first chapter for your reading pleasure.
I like footnotes, and those don't work so well in this format, so just try to adjust. They're fun.

I know you thought you´re a real operator
But I don´t know why
All you had was a bankroll, babe
And a glint in your eye
I´m a high-steppin´ like an indian brave
I´m the one
Dancing on your grave

You know I´m a killer babe
Here´s late news for you
you couldn´t buy me with a million, babe
I´m too good for you
I´m know you think I´m real rough trade
Now I´m the one
Dancing on your grave

One time you was a real high-stepper
On the high trapeze
But you know you ran out of money
Wound up on your knees
I´m the one you never made
Now I´m the one
Dancing on your grave

-Motörhead, “Dancing on Your Grave”

The first time I found myself alone with Jay-Z, I was as wet as a drowned rat and an hour late to work. My alarm clock, the bane of my existence, had let me sleep in again, and when I ran out of my dorm without an umbrella I managed to convince myself that the hoodie on my back would protect me from the unassuming drizzle outside. Forty-five minutes later at the mouth of the 49th Street subway station, the ridiculous delays I encountered on the tracks were explained by the torrential, apocalyptic monsoon erupting above. There was no saving me, and no turning back with my tardiness, so as I dashed west past the Ambassador Theatre toward WorldWide Plaza I prayed I would at least be able to slip in undetected, and wring out my hair in the bathroom sink.

I had wiggled my way into an assistant position at Island Def Jam at the age of nineteen while still going to school full time, and while this led to many sleep-deprived days and tedious all-nighters, I thought, most of the time, that it was worth it. I was supplementing my studies as a Recorded Music major with real life experience, gaining useful contacts, and getting paid moderately well; While I didn’t necessarily think I had found my dream job, I thought the credentials were worth the effort.
Also, I got into a lot of kickass parties.

You get a glamorous job like this (answering phone calls and packaging mountains of Fall Out Boy posters) by expending endless amounts of enthusiasm about any and all of the artists on the roster and uncomplainingly working for free, at first. When I moved to New York for college I started going into the office and helping with mailings on my days off, so when a position opened up I was already there, salivating at the prospect of thirteen dollars an hour. I had acquired three years of on-the-ground experience in high school while running their Street Team(1) in St. Louis, so I was no stranger to the workings of the company-- I had watched countless bands try and fail to satisfy the colossal appetite of the major label system, as they were heralded as the next big thing for a time, and then unceremoniously kicked to the curb when the sales numbers didn’t meet projections. I knew that while the ideal of Artist Development was still alive, its practice was contingent on quarterly reports, and that in reality, it was the Finance Department whose opinion mattered most. And the longer I was there, the more I began to recognize something even more disturbing, something I hadn’t expected to find in this swanky west side office: the unmistakable stench of desperation and fear.

See, as it turns out, I came along at kind of a bad time for record companies, especially this one.
Did you know that music sales aren’t doing very well?
I won’t insult your intelligence with all the gory details, but let’s just say they’re down, and have been falling steadily since 2000. CD sales are spiraling into oblivion, and digital sales are not even close to making up the difference.
I hope I haven’t blown your mind.

Also, a little over a year before I got there, most of the upper echelon of the company jumped ship when head Lyor Cohen took the $100 million he made off IDJ’s sale to Universal in 1999 and ran off to the new Warner Music Group, where he was given a $3 million/year salary (plus up to $5 million in annual bonuses.)
Eventually just about everyone who was “anyone” went with him, though it wasn’t for that kind of money. (To be honest, I don’t really understand how a hemorrhaging industry that won’t give its employees dental insurance can justify over-compensating its CEO… especially when Warner’s share price has fallen 72% since 2005, and is downsizing every quarter to try and shed some of its debt… but this is corporate America, after all, and I digress.)

So Lyor, Julie, and most of the old guard I had come to know and revere, they were long gone when I first laid eyes on the lobby of 825 8th Avenue, but they had been replaced with far flashier names: L.A. Reid, former Babyface band mate and Arista head honcho, and, of course, the man I found starring at me when the elevator doors opened the day I left my umbrella at home.

Jay-Z’s office was on the floor above me, so my glimpses of him were rather rare and almost always in a crowd. Occasionally you’d find him walking through the halls to a meeting, sometimes having a conversation in a doorway, but usually, people went to him. Tucked away behind inconspicuous double doors with a private kitchen and a corner view, he was never on display, and when you did see him, the security and cohorts that were constantly in orbit made him less than approachable. So when I looked up, still dripping from my two-avenue dip and blushing from the security guards’ hysterical (and all the more reassuring) reaction to my arrival, I was not nearly as shocked by seeing him as by seeing him alone. And, of course, bone dry.

Naturally, my heart rate skyrocketed, I turned a lovely shade of puce, and I stood there like a total idiot for at least ten seconds before snapping to my senses and getting in the car. As I stepped in, I noticed how good he smelled, and was even more embarrassed by what was certainly an aroma of wet, stanky cotton emanating from my own direction.

Understand, I had envisioned my talks with him many times, almost as many times as I imagined marrying Gavin Rossdale when I was in middle school, and it did not begin like this. From the moment I heard of his impending arrival as the new President of Def Jam I was so freaking excited about working for Hova that I cared not that my former mentors had abandoned my label. I had always been inspired by his intelligence and moxie, his musical talent and ability to make shit tons of money; He was not a business man, but a business, man! When no one would sign him in 1996, he created Roc-A-Fella Records and released Reasonable Doubt independently, heralding in one of the most successful and iconic hip-hop brands of all time.
He was an entrepreneur, a comrade-- not a corporate dinosaur-- who could understand the new dynamic landscape of our industry.

See, when Napster was shut down in 2003, I remember realizing for the first time that it was very possible that the heads of the companies I was aspiring to work for had no clue what they were doing. They had, in essence, the largest audience in one place that they had ever had, and with the law on their side, could manipulate it to their advantage. Do you have any idea how many people USED Napster?(2) Or how many people would have, if it hadn’t been sued into oblivion?
Had they not acted like stupid farty old codgers without the sense to realize the potential of such a tool, record companies would have been able to supplement (already) declining CD sales with revenue from the digital realm-- AKA, exactly what they are trying to do now, years later.
Jay-Z, with his appreciation of digital dissemination(3) and new revenue streams (the man has his fingers in dozens of different pies,) would surely lead us into the future.

From my own point of view, aside from online ventures, I saw the rise of publishing and licensing as a potential boon for our own business-- Universal Publishing, after all, had agreements with all of our artists, and they were owned by the same company! And they made our artists money! And actually made money themselves! And what do you know, their departments were: Marketing, PR/Publicity, New Media, Advertising, Communications, Film and TV Licensing, Business Affairs, Creative/A&R, Finance… the same as us! Why, then, weren’t we taking our cues, or even merging our business, with them?(4)
This was what I thought about while sitting in class and in my cubicle: fresh, new, exciting ideas for the music business!
I understood the possibilities of the new digital age!
I was the new generation, and I had all the answers!
These were the things I wanted to say to Jay-Z.

Instead, with an embarrassed twitter, I managed, “Forgot mah umbrella.”

Yes. You. Did.

He smiled, thank God, and seemed to genuinely take pitty on me.
He saw that I pushed 28, and he knew I worked for him.
I felt the puddles in my shoes oozing onto the carpeted floor.

“Got a little wet,” he offered.
I laughed, nodded, mortified. When the doors opened, I put my arm up in a half-wave-Nazi-salute, and squished away with all due haste.
Moments later, I was greeted at my cubicle (which, did I mention? I shared) with another round of guffaws.
Life, mercifully, went on.

But that was certainly not the last time I would be laughed at in that office. As time passed and I continued to harp on my ideas about getting away from the old bastions of Top 40 radio marketing and CD sales, many of the people I worked with started to see me as a bit of a loony-- because at major labels these days, the employees basically fall into two categories:
Skeptics and True Believers.

The Skeptics, with whom I will rank myself, are those that realize that the business model is not working, and in many ways, is getting worse.
I would guess that most of the 5,000 record company employees who have been laid off in the last eight years tend toward this category as well. Also, people under 30, DIY enthusiasts, record store employees and, um, internet users.

The True Believers, on the other hand, think that their brilliant new ideas (see: product-branded labels, 360° deals and ad-sponsored music sites) will not only revive their companies, but make them even more powerful and lucrative. They also think that they are still the best solution for artists, and serve them better than other distribution solutions.

As a Skeptic, I naturally think this is horse shit.

This opinion started to form in my brain even before I started working for IDJ, but didn’t really come to fruition until the following instance, which took place a few months before I put in my notice:

We are in (another) meeting, and we are talking about one of our new artists, Courtney Jay.
She is a 30-something singer-songwriter from somewhere, who reminds me a bit of Sheryl Crow, if Sheryl Crow made a rather mediocre pop record. But she can sing, and she is talented enough, and she will tour tour tour til we break her in some market.
Naturally I am thinking she will be on the Adult Contemporary circuit, and that we will put her on the road with a band or singer that draws the middle-aged women that will like her. She looks kind of old compared to most of our female artists, so I’m thinking dimly-lit clubs.

And I find out that L.A. Reid has decided we are going to market her to 9-15 year-old girls.
Because 9-15 year-old girls buy CDs.

My protests go unrecognized.

This is when I realize that we do not give a fuck about what is best for this artist, who we have promised the world and are sending on a suicide mission to The Limited Too.
This is when I realize L.A. Reid still thinks we can make money off of new, unbroken artists with album sales.

In the following months, I will send street teamers out to disperse Courtney Jay stickers at screenings of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and the week her album Traveling Light comes out, it will sell about 600 copies. Courtney will be dropped before a single quarter passes, and soon her A&R will follow.

Today, you can’t even find Courtney Jay on the internet-- a major label artist that was released nationwide cannot even be Googled. What does that say about her promotion and marketing, the promise of which was probably the main reason she signed with us to begin with?
What does that say about our ability to keep any kind of promise to our artists?

Every time an artist is signed, you hear the obligatory chorus of “Welcome to the Family!” from all corners of the company; every time one is dropped, it’s hushed up like a back-alley abortion.
And this will continue as long as artists themselves are True Believers-- and they simply will not die.

The majority of musicians believe in their heart of hearts, I think, that they need a major record label to be successful, or at least think that being on a major will increase their chances of success. For most, this is the tragedy of their careers.
In order to prove them wrong I guess I will need to present some evidence to the contrary, so I’ll just go back to our friend in the elevator, who sparked his own career with his own brand, his own label, and a healthy dose of hustle. And now he’s worth over $300 million.

Why, then, won’t artists take the high road?
Sure, it might require a little more legwork in the beginning, but the rewards of owning and controlling your own art, image and brand are worth it if you plan to have any sort of longevity. The way is more open than ever, but everyone keeps turning back.
I’m assuming this is because the myth of the major continues to lure them in, and few artists have the willpower to resist.

Resisting, however, is the way of the future, and it’s easy to see why: given the increasingly hopeless state of their primary source of revenue, labels are now turning to “360° deals” while laying off large portions of their staffs.

A 360° deal, or Three-Hundred-and-Sixty Degrees of Fucking You Up the Ass, as we Skeptics (ok, me,) like to say, usually looks something like this for a new artist:

-The label gives you an advance to make your record.
In the case of a band that is upstreamed from a feeder label (an increasingly popular practice) or that is already enjoying some independent success, they may give you a signing bonus since your record has probably already been made or written and will require less investment.
That bonus, and any money they give you to record-- less and less these days-- is of course totally recoupable.

Once the album is finished, the label
-Owns 100% of the recordings
-Forever

-Can reject any/all of the material you give them and force you to change it

-Will make you agree to accept a lower, fixed royalty rate, forcing you to sign away the privilege of enjoying the rights afforded to artists by federal copyright law

-Makes you forfeit royalty rights
-on 15% of your albums (free goods, baby!)
-then reduces your royalty rate to a fraction of what it started as, through a series of stupid, sneaky tricks, like imposing a 25% CONTAINER charge on DIGITAL sales

-Ensures that any debt you owe them from previous albums rolls over to new ones

-Ensures that you cannot break up with them, but they can break up with you.
-Whenever they want

- Often even if everyone you know at that label leaves and goes somewhere else

This is all status-quo, nothing new, the norm in the Biz.
We’ve all seen that Behind the Music: TLC where they talk about selling millions of records and never seeing a dime, right?
So that’s just the jump-off.

Now,

-The label starts talking about “profit sharing,” like some wise investor that is going to help you get your company off the ground.
By “sharing,” they mean they are going to tap into your other sources of income, like merchandise, touring, licensing, ringtones, sponsorships, partnerships... basically, all of the aspects of the music industry that are still making money, and that artists until now have made most of their income from.

-You sign away a portion of virtually all music-related revenue you receive. Now, aside from paying a cut to your manager, lawyer and agent, you get to pay your label for doing the same thing it did before you agreed to give them so much more of your proverbial pie.

-The label devotes the same amount of time and energy to you as they would have if you had just signed away the rights to your master recordings.

Oh and by the way, they’re still going to keep downsizing.
And paying their employees less than people doing the same jobs at other music companies.
And posturing like they have all the money in the world by paying their CEOs ridiculous salaries and throwing lavish Christmas parties.

So there are fewer people working for you, trying to do more with less, and they want to take a chunk of your merchandise sales.
Also, I think it’s important to note that they aren’t even making money from your music anymore. They’re making money from your “brand.”
Remember “all about the music?”
Psht.
This is all about the TAG Body Spray.(5) And your t-shirts.

Now, like I said before, I have friends at these majors, and most of them are still True Believers.
360° deals, they preach, allow labels to stop focusing on the BIG HITS, and start focusing on artists’ careers.
Paramore LOVES their 360° deal, I’m told.
Well, they love that they are touring, selling t-shirts, making money, etc.
But do they LOVE paying twice the price for the same service?
I mean, they have a manager. It’s his job to “focus on their career.”
It’s the label’s job to get them on the radio.

If not for getting you a Top 40 hit, what the hell can they do that an independent promotions company, your booking agent and your manager can’t do?
And if your label is going to be your manager, why are you still paying everyone else?

In my view, it’s the manager’s job to protect the artist from the label-- with a deal like this, he’s not only letting the artist give up way more than they have to, but he’s basically saying that his own job is obsolete.
And if you think you need a major label to “brand” you, you obviously haven’t met the press, a publicist, or the internet.

And this is where I think there’s the most evidence to support my theory that new artists have no reason to sign to a major: with the possibilities of today’s increasingly independent music-service sector and the rise of digital distribution, there is absolutely nothing a major can do for you that with a little hustle, you can’t do for yourself.(6)

You can put your music on iTunes or any other online store, make a website, book and promote shows, find fans, post music, and sell CDs, t-shirts, booty shorts, and tickets all from the comfort of your bedroom. Hell, you can do it for free at you local library.
You can find coalitions of independent artists and venues with a simple Google query; you can find management, booking, legal representation, publicists, agents, distributors, stylists, photographers, directors, band mates and back-up dancers without ever going near a label.
You can get recording gear at more and more affordable rates, or go to the Apple store, fire up Garage Band and record a song for free.
You can decide what you look and sound like, and you can decide where all your money goes.
Most importantly, you can get money from the same sources that labels are now trying to dip into without a middle-man.

Even for established artists, for whom it might be worth it to buy into a major deal for the large advance (and given their leverage, easy terms,) it is now clear that sidestepping the label can be a far more lucrative and empowering move. Case in point: Madonna and Jay-Z’s multi-million-dollar deals with Live Nation. Though they are in effect entering into 360° deals, the enormous amounts of cash offered (advances of over $15 million, it is reported, just for signing the deals, and up to $120 and $150 million respectively over several years) make up for giving up a share of their various revenue streams. Labels simply can’t compete with those numbers, especially up front, so for artists that are already brand-names, there’s really no reason to settle for the more controlling and less rewarding environment of a major.

This is perhaps what Jay-Z was thinking about when he recorded

Forget this rap shit I need a new hustle
A little bit of everything, the new improved Russell
I say that reluctantly cause I do struggle
As you see I can't leave, so I do love you

in 2006, just after I left Def Jam. He did the same at the end of 2007, probably so he could finalize his Live Nation deal.
Despite loving [Def Jam founder] Russel [Simmons], he did leave, and so did most of his Roc-A-Fella camp.

Everyone should leave, if you ask me.

And on that note, it's time to turn for a moment to a kindred spirit, producer and musician Steve Albini, who summarized the spirit of this argument a decade and a half ago better than I ever could:

“Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end, holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed.
Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the lackey says, ‘Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim it again, please. Backstroke.’
And he does, of course.” (7)

I like to think that on the other side of that trench is me, Steve and the other Skeptics that still care enough to stick around, despite the rancid stench.
We will be there if and when you claw your way out, and we will even lend you our soap.

C’mon out, and we can change clothes and go.




FOOTNOTES:

(1) A few words on “street teams”: they offer wearisome positions that often entail annoying and humiliating activities, like pretending to be a rabid sign-holding Hoobastank fan outside of TRL. The good ones, however, offer perks that make up for this-- namely, they will pay you to go to concerts and get you free tickets in exchange for sticker and flyer dispersal. This is why, from ages 15 to 20, I never had to pay to go to a show.

(2) 28 million in 2000.

(3) Remember when he released all those a cappella tracks for DJs to remix? And Danger Mouse made that awesome Beatles mash-up that EMI soon quashed? That was fun.

(4) I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was kind of onto the 360° deal with this.

(5) IDJ recently announced a new imprint, solely funded and sponsored by TAG.

(6) Except, again, maybe get you on Top 40 radio. Radio promotion is a weird incestuous facet of the industry that I don’t quite understand, and won’t try to here-- I mean, without payola, what’s the point?

(7) “The Problem with Music,” MAXIMUMROCKNROLL #133.

Getting Googled

The blog was on summer vacation, but is now back and better than ever (under penalty of death.)


When people hear you work at Google, they usually get jealous. It’s supposed the greatest place in the world to work, and they pay employees exorbitant amounts of money to do things like associate words with other words. A million people (really, a million people) apply for a job there every year, and other than the whole caving-in-to-the-Chinese-government thing, I’ve never heard anyone badmouth the company. That is, until I was reading Gawker yesterday while I was supposed to be learning about copyright law.
I realize that New Yorkers are inherently skeptical about anything that sounds too good to be true, so it’s no surprise that we’re looking for the shortcomings in such a visible icon of supposed professional bliss. Perhaps we’re overly judgmental, or just jealous, (ok, we are,) but it’s also possible that the Goog is not all it’s cracked up to be. Yesterday I found myself becoming more and more curious about the mysterious insides of this omnipresent brand. See, I hear about this place all the fucking time. I’m dating a Googler.

He has been trying to get me to come in and see the place since he started there, and as he’s allowed to have two visitors a month, my only real excuse for putting it off is an inexplicable aversion to Chelsea—and laziness, as he usually eats lunch at noon and I don’t like being up that early. That said, I have been quite curious to see the place, this sanctuary of food and fun and friendly workspace that he so often tells me about at the end of his day. Everyone is SO NICE, he raves, and there’s Guitar Hero! Foosball! Ballpits! Professional masseuses! Air hockey! A gym! Scooters! And ALL THE FOOD YOU CAN EAT. Despite the fact that he thought he had food poisoning last week,* there is no end to his pontification about the delights of their cafeteria. Three squares a day are often relayed to me late in the evening in astounding detail, making my attempt at pizza bagels seem feeble and pithy. The Google 15 is, apparently, a common concern among new arrivals, and I’ve been tempted to make said Googler write down all the food he eats there just to approximate the amount of money they’re sinking into his stomach every year. (It’s gotta be well over the five figure mark, considering his metabolism.)

So yesterday I showed him the things people were saying on the interwebs about his beloved company, and as he read his jaw started to work, his eyes narrowed, and I think he may have even started sweating. They’re just jealous he assured me, and most of that is ridiculous. We don’t even use the 16th floor, the cafeteria is on 8, there is no view across the river etc etc. So today, I decided to go find out for myself.

As I made my way west, I started to wonder: Could the food really be bad, and my boyfriend simply a poor judge of culinary acceptability? Or did he just eat all the good stuff before the author of such accusations arrived? Also, were all the women really made-up hussie clones? Was my Googler surrounded every day by sexy eye-batting Googlettes? I imagined him coming home at night feeling like he had settled for the Yahoo of female companionship, ready to eat my disappointing food that I did not know the local or organic origin of, wishing he could be back with his cohort of corporate hippies parading around large blown up charts of ever-rising GOOG stock.
Of course, only parts of this turned out to be true.

Upon entering the building, I was told was that security was at an all time high—perhaps there were a lot of other Gawker readers who had the same notion as me today—and sure enough, as soon as I left the elevator, I was mildly scolded by a friendly black man for not having my visitors pass properly displayed on my shirt. (I mention he was black for a reason. I’ll get back to that.) As we walked to the Game Room, I saw numerous other blue poloed guards making their rounds and eyeing my sticky pass, reminding me of the hallway outside of Jay-Z’s office on 8th Avenue.
Google, I realized, is actually a lot like Def Jam.** The feeling of slight disappointment you have when you walk into Worldwide Plaza and don’t see champagne and fly girls, that’s the feeling you get when you don’t see the hippies dancing around the stock analysis. Because, and it’s easy to forget this, it’s just a fucking OFFICE. It’s uncomfortably quiet, with acres of desks and monitors and uninspired carpeting, and the lighting isn’t what you’d call sexy. An office. Because people are supposed to work there. And, like Def Jam, the company logo is EVERYWHERE, from the walls to the signs to the shirts on half the employees. (This, of course, is to remind you of where exactly it is that you are working.)

Once I got over the initial shock of the corporate environment, it all started to make sense. The fun stuff is just there to make the office evironment more bearable-- these people work with CODE all day, for god's sake. This in mind, I started to assess things with more perspective.

This is what I learned:

-The Game Room(s) are indeed awesome, and my five year old brother would be happy to relocate to one permanently. Also, my boyfriend is better than me at Guitar Hero and Foosball.

-There are Giant Bouncy Balls everywhere. And they really are quite fun.

-The women are totally normal in terms of appearance. I saw a couple of VP-types with suit jackets and high heels, but I also saw a much larger number in typical casual office-day attire, and even some in jeans, flip-flops and (this was, granted, too much) sweat pants. I would not have noticed any unusual excess of make-up unless I was looking for it, and when I did find it, it was on women who, I’m sorry to say, kind of needed it.

-The scooters are very handy for traversing the insanely large floorspace of the office, which spans the length of an entire city block.

-The cafeterias are like the cafeterias at NYU, only with much better food and far fewer people. And they’re cleaner. This is my only point of comparison, as I went to one of those weird high schools where they make you eat family-style.

-The food is, well, far better than you’d think. They have an actual sushi chef in one of the cafeterias who made me a truly delicious spicy tuna roll, and from the main “café” I sampled the salmon (very good,) the salad bar (exceeded expectations in all areas but dressings,) the couscous (pretty good,) some kind of grilled eggplant dish (SO good,) and the barbequed (?) tofu (ok, that was awful.) Then, as we took our trays out onto the terrace, we were greeted by a buffet of tasty “Mexican Street Food,” complete with mango and tutifruiti soda. And I had gelato. There are also kitchen areas all over the place, stocked with cereal dispensers, Clif bars, billions of beverages, candy… you get the idea. Google 15 my ass. Google 50.

-The cereal bins have those twist-to-flow knobs on the bottom, so if anyone was eating out of them “bare handed” they weren’t touching any of the cereal inside. So that's not really gross.

-The people are SO NICE. It is clearly commonplace to share a table with Googlers you don’t know, and people bring in their kids and their dogs like it’s no big deal. Also, I get the feeling that most of them aren’t native to the city. This is probably why they seem so nice. Plus they all make lots of money and are not afraid of being laid off.

-You can’t have sex in the bathroom. I’ll admit this was my first idea upon arriving. I harbor certain office fantasies (unashamed!) that I’ve always been tempted to fulfill, and the thought of being Googled at Google by my Googler was just too much. But then, with the tightened security and the whole getting-fired-if-we-get-caught thing (something the Googlers would call a CLM – Career Limiting Move) it seemed all too risky. You can, however, take a shower in there.

-There are no offices, only conference rooms, and everyone from temp to VP has a desk out “on the floor.”

-No one there smokes. Not a single person was puffing away on the terrace, or outside the entrance when I walked in and out. Freaks.

-And last but not least, perhaps my most startling revelation: there are no black people at Google. I saw one throughout my entire tour, (other than the man I mentioned outside of the elevator,) and he might have been visiting too. Indians, Asians, Canadians: yes. African Americans: no.
Really. Forget about China.
Somebody call Al Sharpton.


*He did not have food poisoning, as he gave whatever it was to me.
**Without the black people.

Go Greyhound

As a groomsman in my brother’s wedding (yes, a groomsman! Aren’t we modern and interesting?) I was invited to his bachelor party, despite the fact that I am a girl and not a stripper. The wedding isn’t until July, but for reasons that I have either forgotten or did not bother to learn, the festivities were held last Saturday. I did not find out about this until just two days before, because John is a total jackass and didn’t tell me (and because I am a total jackass and don’t call my brother enough) so I had a very limited amount of time to get to St. Louis. My tax return had STILL not arrived—three week turnaround my ass—and airfare for the next day was outrageously expensive. The train was almost as bad, and I still haven’t figured out the ins-and-outs of identity theft, so I was forced to get a little compromising:
Greyhound.
25 hours.
Each way.

This is a cautionary tale.

At the risk of sounding like an over-privileged asshole (I am kind of an over-privileged asshole, but I will try not to sound like one,) there is perhaps no better way to lose faith in humanity than to cross half of America in a Greyhound bus. The passengers are, for the most part, either on drugs and/or insane and/or smell, the terminals are decrepit sinkholes at the shittiest location in any given city, and the amount of legroom allotted to each passenger is downright criminal. There are some redeeming factors (they let you out to smoke and eat and pee! Also, no security lines!) but by “redeeming” I mean “just barely keeping you from suicide.” From the moment I decided to embark on this perilous quest, I knew I was in for some curious and possibly uncomfortable experiences, but I had a worthwhile purpose and a positive mindset. I was on my way to a full on bro-down with 25 asskicking karate dudes that involved not only golf, booze and party-bussing, but the watching of the Ultimate Fighting Championship with a guy who once blew the arm off a prisoner on PCP and then wrestled the still-raging unilimbed inmate to his death. This would be, I knew, worth every painful second. Oh, young naiveté.

Now, this was not my first ‘hound experience. I knew better. In the summer of 2003 Fun Bobby, my usually delightful Toyota Corolla, threw a rod going 90mph down Interstate 475 right on the Macon County line in Georgia, and had to be sequestered in said county for several weeks while he received a new engine block or transmission or whatever the hell blew pillars of flame through the hood of my car. In order to get him home, my boyfriend and I were forced to bus it down to the Peach State in the heat of August and drive him back. That trip was not exactly fun, but was made bearable by the company and the relative brevity of the ride.
This time, I was dealing with a different animal.


8:55pm. I will arrive at my destination at the same time tomorrow. I am outfitted with:
3 lengthy books
1 fully charged iPod battery
1 bag assorted candy
1 bottle water
1 Mogu pillow
4 Nyquil capsules
$$ for casino
$$ for strippers
2 Vicodin (5mg)
1 bag clothes
1 jacket

I also have a Sennheiser microphone case with a small bag of non-medicinal goodies inside, because my friend K- is a beautiful, beautiful man who helps his friends out like that, even if it is an hour before I leave and the day before 420. This will come in very handy later.

The trip begins with a good forecast despite starting at Port Authority, indisputably the foulest place in Manhattan. The bus is half empty, and I can put my feet on the seat next to me. There are no screaming babies (yet.) Since the route begins in New York, the cleaning crew has just been through. I am unafraid.

12am. Philadelphia. We do the get-off-the-bus-wait-for-20-minutes-get-on-the-bus routine, and when I return to my seat the one next door is filled. My heart sinks. He does not get up to let me in and I am forced to do the ass-in-face slide over him. He smells strongly of something like bleach and faintly of something like body odor. Head and Shoulders? (It’s not working.) Long stringy ponytail to mid-back. Canadian tuxedo complete with tapered jeans. Bald spot. Tall. Trim. Overall, it appears, relatively harmless. At least he’s not the 400lb woman in the front row, next to whom some poor small child was forced to sit on the now-full bus.

12:30am-6:30am. I am going to fucking kill this guy. I go through a good amount of my sleep-inducing materials trying to ignore his egregious intrusions on my personal space.
I am 5’4, (well, almost,) so I have the option of curling my legs up and attempting to sleep in the less uncomfortable sideways-upright-fetal position without crossing the seat border. This guy is 6’2 at the very least, and shortly after seeing my brilliant attitude decides he too can enjoy the luxury of this pose.
This places the whole of his ass directly in the middle of my seat.
I sigh. I squirm. I poke. I elbow. I make it abundantly fucking clear that he is really, really pissing me off. Finally I ask him kind of nicely to scootch. He obliges and puts his now de-shoed and smelly feet on the ground. I fall asleep. Two hours later I again awake to denim-covered rear all up in my business.
My reading light does not work, so I have no choice but to try to sleep through this. My iPod runs out of battery. I am not yet halfway there.

7am. It is bright and clear and we are somewhere in Amish country, illustrated by the homemade fudge on the counter at the gas station. (They use plastic containers and label makers? And have a digitally designed logo? Hm.) Back on the bus a child has awoken with an affliction for which the only remedy, it seems, is spontaneous outbursts of bloodcurdling screams and the playing of a little toy boombox that features one very poor quality MIDI rendition of the Sesame Street song over and over and over. And over. My neighbor continues to nap and occasionally attack me with his ass.

12pm. He has been up for several hours, and has done nothing but stare out the window and at me.
No reading material. No music. No cell phone. No computer. Nothing. Sitting. As I look around the bus, I notice this is not that uncommon. I ignore my seat mate, who I have now dubbed in my head James William Montgomery But Everybody Calls Me JimBob, and I decide that I do not want to know his real name. I finish Chuck Klosterman’s new book, which was sometimes very good. The bus is less full but not empty enough to facilitate moving to an empty pair of seats, and JimBob appears to be in it for the long haul. It seems I have nine more hours to avoid his roving eyes.

3pm. We get a new driver in Indianapolis along with eighteen thousand more passengers. She comes on the loudspeaker with, “ALL RIGHT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WELCOME TO THE TRAVELING CIRCUS. THERE IS NO SMOKING NO DRINKING DEFINITELY NO DRUGS OF ANY KIND, NO STANDING NO CURSING NO LOUD CONVERSATIONING. IF YOUR FRIEND IN THE BACK HAS YOUR CHIPS OR WHATEVER, I SUGGEST YOU GET THEM NOW. SORRY ABOUT THE CROWD BUT YOU KNOW— GO GREYHOUND.” I like her immediately. We are running late for some reason, but she assures us she will get us there when we get there.

3:30pm. JimBob speaks. He asks me how late we are running, and I pull out my phone to make it seem like I have some ability to answer that question. I tell him the time. He is immediately interested in my Blackberry, which is a bad sign. I know he will not stop talking to me, so I finally relent and give him a brief overview of its features, which launches him into a story about how he was going to buy a laptop when he was in New York. This leads to a painfully long monologue about how he was going to leave from New York, but went to Philadelphia for a few days and decided to leave from there, but his ticket was from New York, but the tickets are all in segments and he had to go through Philly anyway, and isn’t that a well-maintained city with all the statues everywhere and have you seen that bell? and he gave his New York to Philadelphia ticket to someone for a t-shirt or something, and do I think it’s ok that he did that, and they don’t check your ID like they do at the airport and blah blah blah. I am nice enough but cringe every time he ends another promising moment of silence after his increasingly mundane and odd statements. Then something catches my ear:
JIMBOB IS GOING TO SEATTLE.
Seattle.
3 and a half days on a bus and this guy doesn’t even get a magazine.
This is a big red flag.

4pm. We return to the topic of the Blackberry, which is apparently limitlessly, magically interesting. JimBob tells me he even sat next to a guy on a plane one time who had a Blackberry AND a laptop, and was using them at the same time! He thinks this man was French. He wishes to see the miracle of retrieving web pages via my supernatural device so I show him the Google home page. Google, he tells me, is a stupid site, because they filter out a lot of stuff. There’s too much! They filter. He does not like that. He asks if you can see ANY web page on the Enchanted Box, or if it too filters like the evil Google. I tell him I think you can see basically anything, thinking longingly of my dead iPod in my purse. JimBob then proceeds to pull out a long receipt, on the back of which are many scribblings in a small, cramped hand, and asks me if he can try a website, presumably from this list. I say ok, preparing my thumbs to type, but JimBob promptly takes the device from my hands, asking for instructions for each step in the page-visiting process. Well Goddamn, he is astounded that you can indeed see anything on this! Just look!


THIS IS THE WEBSITE HE WENT TO.


I am breathless and astounded. Am I on camera? Where is Ashton? Dom?
Allen Funt?
IS THIS GUY FUCKING SERIOUS?
And then
Look! Free video!

I grab the Blackberry back, clutch it to my chest. I attempt to think of an appropriate response to this incident and can only come up with, “Uh, I use this for work. And that is gross.” JimBob laughs. He is not even uncomfortable. He is still wrapped in happy, wide-eyed astonishment that a phone can retrieve porno. I consider going to my friend at the front while she is driving, running up the aisle and screaming that there is a pervert in our midst. Then I remember that this bus is beyond full, and I also don’t want to sit next to the 400 lb woman. I stare at my book hoping to set it on fire with my eyes so that we will have to pull over and evacuate our seats.

5pm. JimBob continues to try to speak to me. It has not entered his head that I am beyond uncomfortable. Models of cars driving by, cornfields, the St. Louis Cardinals—there is no end to the topics he wishes to pontificate on, and they are all at the top of the List of Things I Have No Opinion On or Interest In. Every word furthers my suspicion that he is going to follow me into the next rest stop, rape and murder me. Or start jerking off on my leg, like that guy in the trench coat on the F train last year, or the guy through the glass at Chipotle on 8th street at lunchtime.
While in the bathroom at the next TA TravelCenter of America, I smoke as much of K-’s magnificent gift as possible, making the situation much funnier while I am relaying the afternoon’s events to interested parties via the now contaminated PDA. When I get back on the bus I am subjected to another string of drivel, this one ending with the disclosure that he once banged a girl with three nipples. It now occurs to me that 1: JimBob thinks these awkward sexual suggestions are a great way to hit on chicks; 2: JimBob is hitting on me; And 3: JimBob is probably getting off on this. Before he can ask me how many nipples Î have I put on my headphones.

5pm again. I have just remembered the time change. The extra hour is about to turn into a bit of a buzzkill when I realize, yes, the bus is emptying out quite a bit, and yes! There are empty rows. I wait eagerly for JimBob to move. A few seconds go by, I start to tap my foot. This stretches into a minute and I am screaming at him with my mind and using every ounce of brainpower I have to achieve telepathy, begging him to get up and take the smell and nipple stories with him. I do not have the nerve to ass-slide across him again. Finally I am moved to remove the obviously silent headphones. “Looks like we can spread out now, huh?” He nods. He moves!
I am ecstatic, relieved, grateful to Hermes.*
He moves to the seat directly in front of me and reclines it as much as possible, situating his dandruff right in front of my face. He can swivel his head and talk to me.
I replace the headphones quickly and am only slightly less ecstatic, relieved, grateful to Hermes.**

8:55pm. I am free! I am here! The moment the Arch passes by the far window, a wave of relief fills my heart, envelopes my very soul. I have never been so happy to see the shit-filled colon that is North St. Louis. I do not even mind the cracked out woman who demands and then begs for money in exchange for her (incorrect) directions to the street. I breathe in the bleach-free air, elated, prancing with glee like an eight-year-old at Disneyland to my brother’s jeep.
I have survived my ill-advised journey through the sludgy trenches of America; I have reached the summit; I have conquered the Beast.
I have arrived safe and sound, dirtied but unscathed—save for a now diminishing leg cramp and a (haha!) tainted box.




*The Greek God of land travel.
**Who also, appropriately, guided the souls of mortals to the underworld.