The daily bump & grind...

Yup. Yup, I was, for a brief period of time in my very early 20s, a stripper. And as seedy and nasty a job as it was (and actually waaaay too close a look at that particular aspect of male sexuality for my comfort), it wasn't the worst. But it made a good blog title, I thought! :)

OMG, jobs. Can you say perennially underemployed? It's a talent of mine, although I've also gotten paid for such wonderful things as teaching college theater (the students were great, the administrative politics were a crock), directing, screenwriting, acting... Part of the reason I've continually taken B.S. jobs was to have the time to do the things I truly loved: acting, directing, writing -- although the screenwriting came damn close to being the worst job I ever had. Some seriously cool things about it, including getting to fly out to L.A. and spend a month hanging out at a producer's house (she even let me drive her Jag, once). But screenwriting...

Do you know how many screenwriters work on your average Hollywood movie? In fact, there's almost a direct correlation -- the more 'average' the movie, generally speaking, the more screenwriters worked on it. Everybody, and I do mean everybody, thinks they have some God-given right to give you 'notes'. 'Notes' are these (often-dreaded) little comments -- from anyone, from the producers on down to the girl who keep's the starlet's pet Pekinese's toenails clean -- including such gems as, "We ought to have an elephant in here" (I shit you not -- I think Operation Dumbo Drop was some screenwriter's way of venting before he blew a gasket). Ask why -- go ahead. The answer? "I dunno, I just think it needs an elephant."

In all fairness, I have to add that I once got to work on a script with an agent from CAA who gave absolutely brilliant notes, and then LEFT ME ALONE to execute them. Dude was good -- and smart. It's a great script. I hope it gets made some day.

Other jobs... oh, my. Migrant farm labor. Grunt and sweat and get fifty bucks for it at the end of the day. Of course, back in the 80s, fifty bucks went a lot father. Tree-planting sounds kinda cool, doesn't it? Helping the environment, all that... Wanna see the reality?


You're hiking across the remains of massive clearcuts, with brushpiles the size of... elephants (AUGH!!!) swinging a tool called a hoedad, sort of half-spade, half axe. It starts out weighing about seven pounds and by the end of the day weighs about thirty. My biceps were a thing of beauty, I tell ya.

Or blueberry raking -- that was another one. Starting in July, on the Barrens of Washington County, Maine, the annual blueberry crop comes due and the entire county, practically, descends on the Barrens to get the crop in. Or did, at least, back in the day. Now a lot of it is done by machine and by Mexican laborers who come up for six weeks, harvest the crop, and disappear again. Sometimes I wonder where to... One thing about Mexicans. They work like the devil. They have to -- they're usually supporting a whole extended family, ten or twelve people whose lives ride on their efforts.

But, hard as it was, blueberry raking had some wonderful advantages. Summer in Maine? Oh yeah. And very often you simply camped out on the Barrens, and in the evenings you'd crack open a beer, and someone'd pull out a guitar... And of course, there was the scenery.

And then there was a loooooong stint as an overnight waitress at Denny's. I was in college, my son was in preschool, for two years I don't think I slept more than four hours a day.

I work the late night shift from eight till four
Getting staler than the coffee that I pour
Seems I'm passing out my best days with the danish and the dinner trays
and the pay is barely worth the working for...

And at 1:05 am every weekend night, the drunks'd descend. Not your homeless street drunks, either. The partiers. The revelers. The college kids who thought leaving four quarters under an upturned (and full) water glass was the height of cleverness. Yeah. Okay. That one was the worst. :)

No moral here, just a travelogue...

-- Sierra