what Chris Parnell and Vincent D’Onofrio have in common

Today I attended the mandatory motivational training arranged by the big boss in my office for all of us minions. In fairness, he attended as well and even sat in the very first row in the closest spot to the motivational speaker, who looked like a cross between Chris Parnell and Vincent D’Onofrio (of SNL and MIB/L&O CI fame, respectively). Unfortunately, the result was not nearly as hilarious as you’d expect. Instead, all we got was the big head and awkward head movements without the alien humor or the bombastic wit of “Lazy Sunday”.

I must confess a bad attitude going in. I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of sitting through 7 hours of ‘motivation’ at the hands of some joker whose credentials included working for several Fortune 500 companies and the phrase “former stand-up comedian”, especially when I knew that I could have skipped out of this trap earlier, if only I’d been properly forewarned. As it stands, all I got was a smart-ass grin as my supervisor whisked out the door yesterday. “You know we have that mandatory training tomorrow, right?” he asked. I said yes, and assured him that I was going. “Good,” he said, “I’m going to ‘motivate’ myself from home—have fun tomorrow.” Ass. I hope there’s a fucking quiz on Monday.

Anyway, despite my conviction that I would have no fun whatsoever and my fear that I would be chosen out of the crowd to perform some humiliating trust exercise in which I would have to catch/be caught by co-workers who have not yet had the opportunity to meet me, the experience was not completely devoid of substance. For one, it was kind of funny—at least until the speaker ran out of good material an hour into our motivation. At one point, whose context I am not able to recall, he asked us what Michael Jackson and Tanya Harding have in common, besides the fact that they’re both probably women, hahahaha. Tentative answers escaped the crowd from all around, but the most interesting came from directly behind me: “They’re both athletes,” someone murmured with complete sincerity. Wow, I thought, today could actually turn out really well.

But the best moment was not a humorous one, but rather educational. It involved an overly long story that went something like this:

Jim’s garbage disposal stops working so he calls the plumber to fix it. The plumber arrives soon afterward, in his beat-up van, lousy hair and less-than-flattering low-riders. He reaches into the garbage disposal and pulls out banana peels and beer cans, finishing the job quickly. Before leaving the house, he tells Jim not to ‘put anything weird’ down the disposal again, and even calls the next day to make sure that it’s still working. It is. The End.

Then the speaker asked that each group of participants rate the plumber’s performance on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest. A few minutes later he went around the room to collect the answers. By far, the most popular answer was 4, with many 5s thrown in for good measure. Besides the group of engineers who (for unexplained reasons) rated him a 1, my group was the only low score (3) and that was only because my vote for 2 dragged our average down. After the vote everyone spent the following minutes extolling the virtues of the plumber, who not only showed up for the job but also fixed the problem in record time. Only one lonely female voice articulated my concern, piping out of a sea of uniforms—“But he didn’t address the root of the problem—so how could he have fixed it?” Her question was ignored and the subject changed without further discussion.

Now, I don’t remember the purpose of the exercise—something was briefly mentioned about a second, more attractive plumber whose quality of work was not elaborated on—but the sense of horror that washed over me at the general acceptance of such a crappy fix for a problem (especially considering the ongoing lesson in Iraq) will stay with me always. The other trauma I suffered today was realizing that my boss most reminds me of a gleeful 5-year-old kid with red juice stain all around his mouth. I could feel his radiating delight at the speaker’s risqué jokes all the way across the room. Now that I’ve seen him giggle like a little girl, I’m not sure I will ever look at him the same way again.

When we broke for lunch I had reached my mental suffering saturation point, so I cut my losses and headed home for my personal brand of motivation—naptime and Spin City re-runs. Let the healing begin.

yaaaarrr, shiver me--oh christ, I'm dying!

Ever since moving into this apartment we haven't had good luck with the hot water. In fact, we even complained and had the repair guy drop by to check out why we weren't getting any hot water. He checked it out and determined that, actually, we had hot water, it just took fifteen minutes of running the faucet for it to kick in. You're at the end of the line on this side of the building, he told us, you just have to be patient. But just to appease us, he said that he'd bump up the heater temperature a couple of degrees to make it easier on us. Thanks, guy.

And that worked for a while. Sure, sometimes we had to run the shower for five or ten minutes to get the hot water to make an appearance--sometimes merely lukewarm. But hey, we're no wusses. We can handle little hardships. Even when we lost power from the ice storm a couple weeks ago and had to shower in complete darkness for a day we didn't really get upset. Showering by tealight isn't so bad, anyway. It's just like our ancestors the pioneers used to do it, and you don't hear them whining.

But tonight we hit a new low. We came back from the gym and tried, unsuccessfully, to coax hot water out of the shower for two hours. Nada. And it wasn't the kind of 'nada' that you can just suck it up for, and take a few quick breaths, and power your way through. No, this was freezing cold water, and not a drop of warmth in sight.

As we were not prepared to die of hypothermia, we took a page from the pioneers' book (the one besides the Bible) and boiled water on the stove, mixing it with the frigid tap water in a giant soup pot and juice pitcher. A few quick douses and quick soaping technique carried us through. It was a bit of work, but I've never felt so satisfied with being clean.

Though it wasn't as awful as it sounds, nothing is going to stop me from tearing the apartment office staff a new one first thing tomorrow. And if they give me lip, I'll kick their injun asses--pioneer-style.

everything's coming up Millhouse!

The past couple months have been a little stressful, what with J & me applying to school, and me starting a new job, and J starting a new job and then quitting its evil influence that very same day, and both of us having almost daily aneurisms at the thought of not getting into school this fall or getting into schools in far-apart cities or, perhaps worst of all, only one of us getting in at all. Well, I’m not sure there’s a Greater Power anywhere—and if there is I’m not entirely convinced that he isn’t just a big cosmic sonnuvabitch with a wicked, though not entirely unfunny, sense of humor—but if there is, something has definitely swayed him in our favor. I don’t know if it was our parents’ desperate prayers or our incessant whining or just plain dumb luck, but things have turned out very well. To summarize our recent fortune: J got into NYU and got a job working in public television, and I got into Columbia.

Now we’re both employed, both going to school in the same city this fall, and both sporting giant goofy grins. After I discovered the admissions notification in my inbox the other night, we spent the better part of the next four hours popping M&Ms and jumping excitedly around the living room squealing, “New York! New York!” and “Wheeeeee!” and “More candycandycandy!” We forced ourselves into bed at eleven, but stayed awake to bask in our joy and let our sugar-high temper. The following morning, the six-thirty alarm only reminded me of my good mood, and all day I’ve been secretly researching student housing, tuition, classes, and summer programs.

Wow. Tuition is expennnsiiiive. And the rent quotes on the housing page almost killed my spirit. I feel another aneurism coming on…

Aaaahhh, it feels so good.