Popcorn Apocalypse, a comedy blog by New York City actor & writer Colin Fisher

Movies I've Never Seen #6: The Gundown

2012-01-27T08:53:00.003-05:00

The Gundown

In which I fully describe the plot of a movie I've never seen and know nothing about, based solely upon its Netflix picture.

Screenwriter Mikey McCaffernathy had a problem. He'd just polished up the last draft of his new feature-length script, The Shootout. It was a Western, something he'd always wanted to write.

But it just wasn't working.

He hit all the right points: the reformed ex-gunslinger, the hooker with a heart of gold, the ranch under threat of bandits & foreclosure. But it was boring. It lacked heart. It lacked the edge that would make it stand out from a pile of scripts on a producer's desk.

Mikey took a long walk one evening, thinking about anything but his script, hoping inspiration would strike from the ether. And friends, strike it did. "What if," said a ghostly voice from the back of Mikey's brain, "gunpowder had never been invented?" Mikey fell to his knees. He knew he'd found his answer. His edge. And his tagline: In a world with no bullets, the man with the heaviest gun is king.

The Gundown is an alternate history of the classical Western. Slim Hopkins is a champion gunslinger who's turned his back on his gunslinging ways. But in this world, with no gunpowder, he's literally a gun slinger. Gun fights here are fast, furious, and short, because it's just a bunch of guys throwing guns at each other.

"But why invent guns? Wouldn't they all just carry swords?" you ask. Well, stop asking so many questions kid, you're bothering me.

The Gundown only grossed $53 domestically, but fortunately Mikey McCaffernathy didn't stick around to see its abysmal failure and resultant rash of suicides. Turned out that strike of inspiration was a massive stroke. Mikey went home, revised his script & sent it to his agent, then dropped dead.

Friends, let this be a lesson: sometimes that voice in your head is The Muse, gifting you with an artistic vision. And sometimes, it's a blood clot in your brain shutting down the activity in your prefrontal cortex.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Temp Office Assistant, private preschool in Manhattan

2012-01-26T09:04:00.002-05:00

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Temporary Office Assistant, private preschool in Manhattan

Duration: 5 months

Year: 2008

While technically a temp job, this is one of the few long-term temp assignments I've done. I believe there were more temps than, um, perms, in the offices of this school. They were interested in someone with decent computer skills who could research things for them. I got hands. I can Google. Hired.

I got dropped right into this one. I didn't have any day-to-day regular tasks. From day one I began working on projects, the first being to research bus companies in the city and get a ballpark on how much it would cost to transport the 20 or so kids whose parents had expressed interest in this service. Short answer: good lord would that have been expensive. Had they been a fully chartered kindergarten, subsidies or something would have played a part, but that had yet to occur. Fun fact: there are approximately three companies who actually run bus service in Manhattan. You've no doubt seen at least ten different names on the sides of buses, but trust me when I tell you that every call I made got routed to one of three people.

Shortly after I wrapped that up, we moved our offices closer to the school and I began researching things for the new facility they were planning to move into. You may currently have an image in your head of adorable little desks, and hutches for their jackets & lunchboxes, and like paper. Allow me to disavow you of that image. This was a Reggio Emilia school (think Montessori). As such, I was researching things like climbing walls, giant soft geometric shapes, and insanely advanced whiteboards.

Around the same time, they decided to start sending me over to the school to man the door during the changeover from the morning class to the afternoon class. This gave me a chance to meet, and be terrified of, some of my favorite actors, whose children attended this school (ahemBillyCrudupahem). More importantly, it gave me a chance to be incredibly awkward around and somehow more terrified of their children.

These kids didn't know me. They weren't introduced to me. There was never a "hey everyone, this is Colin, he'll be in the hallway at lunchtime now!" moment. No, one day there was a strange, quiet man stopping the children from running out into traffic or the arms of waiting kidnappers.

I got comfortable at this job. I had my own desk, that no one else ever used, for I think the first time in my working life (age at time of job: 28). I started my own snack/candy drawer. They let me move my schedule around for auditions and/or classes. It was a good setup. I'm concerned I may have comforted myself right out of a job though. They increased my hours so I could get more done. I don't think I got more done. When the semester was up, that was all she wrote.

In future posts, I'll tell you how much I learned about urban gardening, how much I bonded with a gecko, and I'll introduce you to Tiger, the excited old English Bulldog.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Outbound Customer Service, Call Center in Oak Ridge TN

2012-01-24T08:05:00.005-05:00

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Outbound Customer Service, Call Center, Oak Ridge TN

Duration: Two months

Year: 2002

It's tough to say if this was my worst job. Had I remained for close to a year, I'm guessing the answer would be yes. As such, I stayed at Dillard's for far too long and they win.

I'd been at my campus job at the Alumni Association past graduation, and felt like I needed to take a step towards adulthood. That meant getting a job (dun dun dun) OFF-CAMPUS. My friend Mark and I applied here at the same time, in response to a classified ad. We had to take placement tests; being more tech-savvy than I, he was placed in tech support. Being an actor with a good phone voice, I was placed in outbound customer service. At the time, this call center's client was BellSouth—specifically, BellSouth Fast Access DSL. That phrase rolls off my tongue now, but it took some effort getting there.

My duties were to sort various accounts in a queue into the appropriate subcategory (read: a lot of clicks on a computer). The only category I remember now is Pending Facilities. What that means is that a new customer awaiting their BellSouth Fast Access DSL service to start up is going to have to wait a little longer. That further means that I get to call them and tell them this. My stomach still turns at the sight of the words "pending facility." Ugh.

I would have a hard time believing this job is not now automated. There wasn't a true quota that I remember, but you definitely wanted to keep the number of accounts you sorted as high as possible. That meant a lot of repetitive actions, eight hours a day, five days a week. No music. No conversation, even though you're surrounded by people doing the same thing. And I had the good fortune of sitting near my boss, who was a furry.

No, seriously.

There were people in my training class who were surely, legally, mentally deficient. Nice people, but they could not wrap their heads around all the pointing and clicking we were being told to do on these computers. The training supervisor, sensing I was not in fact mentally deficient and maybe was getting the hang of this, had me take one of these poor souls under my wing. I did. He stayed on. One week after training. The first time we got paid, someone asked me what they were supposed to do with their paycheck. "Umm, you could deposit it?"

"I don't have a bank."

"Funny, you don't look like an Amazonian tribesperson."

The same guy marvelled at my ability to say "Hello, this is Colin from BellSouth Fast Access DSL," without, I don't know, chipping a tooth or something. I should've known something was wrong with him on the first day, when we were talking about the weather and he said that something about rain made him drive faster.

In future posts, I'll tell you more about ruining people's day via phone, the one redeeming thing I got from this job, and the glorious day I quit.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Student Assistant, UT's Alumni Association

2012-01-16T13:55:00.003-05:00

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Student Assistant at the Alumni Association, University of Tennessee

Duration: 1.6 years

Year: 2/02-10/02, 12/02-October 03

This was the first job I got through a recommendation, and the first of several jack-of-all-trades positions. A secretary at the Honors Department was friends with a secretary at the Alumni Association. I had come back from Christmas break with no intentions of returning to the library, which surprised my supervisors there. I was weakly sending out feelers for jobs and this came back to me.

It was typical office busywork: filing, mailing, lots of things involving paper. It was, and still is, located in the Tyson Alumni House on campus. It's a beautiful house that's been on that site since the late 1800s. I worked out of a big room with five secretaries, all hardcore East Tennesseeans. I learned two oddities of East TN grammar there: you'uns, a variant of y'all (the thickest of accents would rhyme "you'uns" with "buns"), and "I don't care to do that" with the meaning of "Yes, I would be happy to do that." I would interpret the latter as "I don't care for you and I don't want to do that job." But hey, what do I know? Kind of a lot, actually.

They were all great women to work with. I think they lived vicariously through the students who worked in the office (there were sometimes up to four of us in there) and they always took an interest in what we were doing with ourselves. One of the secretaries, Michelle, kept a candy drawer, and she occasionally brought in homemade beef jerky. I've never had better. This mama's boy handily made the transition from living at home to living on his own and working with five surrogate mothers.

The best part of the job was the state car. I have fond memories of cruising around on various errands listening to the radio, in no particular hurry. We started with a Chevy Malibu, and moved up later to a bigger Dodge. We'd use it mostly for on-campus mail runs or other various deliveries, but sometimes we'd get to drive across town to the university's mail facility. Depending on traffic, you could count on up to an hour of hanging out in the car listening to the radio. I became very familiar with Mancow's morning show at this job. The car also got me into trouble a few times, but more on that in future posts.

Overall I enjoyed this one, though I remember feeling a little stagnant after I'd been there a while. I stayed on well after graduation and really had no business at a job like that as an "adult," but the die was firmly cast in favor of acting so anything else I moved on to would just be killing time as well.

I left this job for two months to work at a call center, which was of course a huge mistake.

In future posts, as mentioned, I'll tell you about that car trouble as well as what this job taught me about walking into new buildings, how the RIAA probably could have prosecuted our office, and how I got black lung.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

The Gospel of New Year's Eve

2012-01-02T22:45:00.002-05:00

And so the Ball did drop; and the tourists did look upon it and see that it was good. Thus did the holiday season end in the City of New York, and the tourists did scatter back to the four corners of the United States. The people who did live in the City of New York came forth from their homes and looked about them, as if waking from a long sleep. They saw the streets were empty. Gone were the cheerful wondering looks and slow paces of those from Elsewhere. They saw that it was good.

And the residents of the City of New York did rejoice, for they once again had dominion over their own streets, free to walk without fear of interrupting someone's photograph, free from telling someone they were on the wrong train and then explaining the intricacies of the Authority of Metropolitan Transit. Free to scowl and flee down the streets as if late to the birth of their Child.

There was rejoicing in the Financial District, where the sidewalks did flow like streams and rivers, where no tourists did look for Ground Zero.

There was rejoicing in Rockefeller Center, for Brian Williams freely strode where once there was a tree, and a sea of Nebraskans to admire it. Radio City once more fell silent.

There was rejoicing in Herald Square, where no Santa did say "ho ho ho" in Macy's, nor did any tourist shout "They have TGI Friday's just like home!"

There was no rejoicing in Times Square, for it was cursed by a dying hooker long ago to be forever an orgiastic den of commercialism and billboards. Such will it ever be.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Hotel Door/Bellman

2011-12-09T15:13:00.005-05:00

Hostage Crisis

2011-12-05T09:43:00.003-05:00

My only company in the room is in a cage on the floor. One bare bulb casts harsh shadows across us. It's quiet. I hear murmurs from the street below; people on the busy sidewalk going about their evenings. They have no idea of the struggle happening here.

I sit across from the cage in the room's only chair, fully dressed in a coat, ready to go at a moment's notice. In five minutes, I will take my ward from his cage and try, once again, to get what I want out of him. This can all be over in an instant, but how can I explain that to someone who doesn't speak my language?

My partner walks into the room. I say "Can you keep an eye on him? I need to get a snack and hit the bathroom." It's been a long day. She nods. We have to maintain constant vigilance if we want to accomplish our goal here. We had no idea this is what we'd signed up for.

In the kitchen I think about what got me to this place. I'd read the books. I knew the principles behind the training. I felt confident. All that confidence can erode in a heartbeat when you face your target for the first time.

That's something you won't learn in a book.

I go back to the chair and switch out with my partner again. I have to be near the cage, but it's important to avoid eye contact. Developing sympathy for the target is the first step on the path to breaking down. I pick up my book and keep him in my eyeline as I read, watching for subtle signs that he's ready to try again. We're walking a fine line between taking him to the edge without pushing him over. We crossed that line yesterday and there was an...accident. We don't like accidents.

Finally I see him becoming restless. "Let's go," I shout to my partner in the kitchen. She gets what she needs as I take the target out of his cage and bind him. We lead him to the designated spot and start this process with which we've become so familiar now. He looks at us, pleading, shivering, but we return his look with uncompromising faces and demand that he follow orders. We just need him to give us this one thing and it will be like this never happened.

This goes on for the longest ten minutes of my life.

It appears this round was for nothing, just like the one before it. I'm about to take him back to his cage when he urinates on the ground. I look at my partner, shocked.

"Good potty Omar! Such a good potty!" We shower him with treats and affection. "Awesome. Let's go watch Saturday Night Live."

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Movies I've Never Seen #5: R U Invited?

2011-12-01T11:52:00.004-05:00

R U Invited?

In which I fully describe the plot of a movie I've never seen and know nothing about, based solely upon its Netflix picture.

The text-speak in the title is a dead giveaway to the plot of this romantic comedy. Hector is an up-and-coming [INSERT QUIRKY ROMANTIC COMEDY OCCUPATION HERE], but golly is he busy! He's been looking forward to this weekend, because it's his monthly super-hetero topless party with all his super-hetero friends. But to keep them exclusive, they send out a location via email the day before. Turns out, Hector has been so scattered at [QUIRKY OCCUPATION; MAYBE, LIKE, ARTISINAL CHEESE SCULPTOR OR SOMETHING], he totally deleted the location!

He spends one crazy night trying to chase down his friends, texting everyone he knows to get into the totally hetero and chill topless party with all his buddies. But rules are rules! Every time he texts one of his friends to get the location, the only response he receives is "R U INVITED?"

What starts out as a mad dash to find his bros and admire their oiled pecs in a totally no-homo way turns into a night that could change Hector's life. Who is the mysterious man who keeps showing up after Hector? Could this adorable girl Hector just met (played by Zooey Deschanel) be The One? Will Hector ever find his friends?

Now, you may be wondering where that tagline "Beauty Isn't Only Skin Deep" comes in. Turns out Hector was dreaming all along. In reality, he's in the year 2023, at a type of party that's all the rage now: Flesh Parties. Taking the adage "beauty isn't only skin deep" a little too far, and having seen one too many "It's Stefon!" reruns (the sitcom that started in 2013 featuring Bill Hader's "Stefon" character), the homosexual community in NYC has taken to flaying themselves to show off the quality of their musculature. Hector was in mid-flay and passed out from the pain. He then dreamed he was in a mediocre movie from 2006.

In a second twist, we learn that the Flesh Party is actually all in the mind of a young autistic boy named Tommy Westphall playing with a snowglobe. Technically, this puts Hector's Flesh Party in the same world as St. Elsewhere, Law and Order, and others.

In a third twist, M. Night Shyamalan is still making movies.

Job Journal: Assistant, Hodges Library, UT

2011-11-30T14:07:00.004-05:00

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Student Assistant, Hodges Library, University of Tennessee

Duration: 11 months

Year: 2001

This was only my second job, and to this day one of the longest durations I've ever withstood at a job. If I remember correctly I got it through a university-only classified site. I'm not sure. This is pre-Craigslist time, so my memory of how things happened back then are vague.

There were two major departments at Hodges: circulation and stacks. Circulation sat at the front desk, checked out/received library books, and put the returns on carts in the back. My department, stacks, got those carts and took them up to our various floors to reshelve them. When that was done, we checked the stacks to make sure the books were all in order. Hodges Library is six floors, and at the time home to over 2 million books. They use the Library of Congress system (vs. the Dewey Decimal system), so call numbers like PS1360.B64.1907 were not uncommon. Needless to say, walking down a row of books and making sure those numbers all line up can start to work on you over time.

I started out in the spring semester on the fourth floor. This is where most of the books people were coming to read were located: fiction, plays, poetry, general humanities, fine arts. You know, all those fun things your parents don't want you to major in. Given my shorter shifts during the schoolyear and the volume of books moving in and out due to finals, most of the time I was just shelving. In the summer, the grind really hit. We'd finish shelving books within an hour, and I'd have six or seven hours in front of me of just walking down the rows, checking every shelf for out-of-place books. I tried bringing my Walkman in and listening to the radio. The signal was weak in the building. This is a job that would have been revolutionized with an iPod.

In the fall, I was given my own floor (oooh!). They sent me to the sixth, and smallest, floor. I alone was responsible for maintaining order! This mostly translated to me sitting in the floor reading The Right Stuff, thumbing through arty photography books, and returning the medical photography books from the men's room to the stacks with a pair of tongs on a daily basis.

I went home for Christmas at the end of the year, and upon returning to school I quit showing up for this job. I didn't tell anyone; I just quit going. Apparently they were expecting me for some crazy reason.

In future posts, I'll tell you about the joy of living on my own for the first time, one of the strangest bosses I've ever had, and a few translation quirks with my coworkers.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's just an actor and a writer.

Puppy Journals: Day 8 (Puppy Class!)

2011-11-28T14:35:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, Omar got to walk on the ground outside for the first time. He got his final round of shots last week, and the vet said he'd be good to go and mingle by the end of the weekend. On Friday we signed him up for a six-week puppy training class that started yesterday, which was my only contribution to Black Friday. I'm sad to have contributed anything, but come on, it was $20 less.

Now begins the long process of teaching him that the awesome thing he's been doing on a pee pad 90% of the time is now something that needs to happen in a loud, strange, distracting, kind of cold environment. Yay!

Class went very well. We were worried he would be the only puppy, but two other dogs had signed up too. One was a big standard poodle puppy, and the other was a shiba inu. A big part of these classes is just socialization. Your dog needs to meet other dogs in controlled environments so he can learn how to behave around them. According to the trainer, throwing them into a dog park as soon as they're out of quarantine is not the best idea.

I have to admit I was nervous. What if that dog manual I'd been reading was, in fact, correct, and I'd ruined our puppy for all eternity? What if he was too stupid to learn the things we were going to teach him? What if WE were too stupid? What if he was the unruly kid in class, and we got kicked out because it was just easier without him?

Also, as a long-time cat owner, my assumption is that any time I take a pet outside he will immediately bolt away from me, never to be seen again.

All my fears were groundless. The dogs were excited to see each other, and Omar was able to figure out the three basic things we worked on. We've already had good success with sit, and her technique wasn't too different. We also started an exercise that will eventually teach him his name, and that when I say it he needs to pay attention. For now though, it just consists of showing him I have treats in my hands, holding them out to the sides, and rewarding him when he makes eye contact with me. The final thing was getting him to come to me. That took a little more work. Again, all you do is show him you have treats, then walk backwards and say "Omar, come!" When he does, give him a treat and say "Good!" Our dog is laconic, to say the least. When he did come, he'd take a few slow steps, sit, and think about things. The trainer gave us a toy to use as motivation instead, and that worked for a few rounds, but then he slowed his roll again. I looked at the other two dogs sprinting across the store to their owners with just a pang of jealousy, but it's OK. We wanted a chill dog, and boy did we get one.

They got one good period of play time in the middle of class. Omar and the shiba played together first, then the poodle was introduced since he's so much bigger. The shiba was shy, but Omar knew this game thanks to Tommy. He kept trying to engage the shiba by popping up on his hind legs and pawing at him. The shiba mostly wanted to hang out by her owners. She slowly came around, then the poodle game in and all bets were off. He and the shiba started rolling all over each other, and Omar was doing his best to jump into the game. It was hard not to jump in when it looked like it was getting rough, but the trainer knew what she was doing and it turns out, so did the dogs. Having only compared him to Tommy though, I now realize Omar is a tiny, tiny little dog.

This morning was the first of our new routine. Where Amy and I both got up at 7:30, her to get ready for work and me to squeeze all the pee and poop out of our dog that I could onto a pee pad, now we're getting up so I can take him outside and squeeze that stuff out there. No success yet, but I am meeting my neighbors finally. They will all come to know me as that sleepy guy in pajamas with the adorable dog, who introduced himself as "Omar, let's go potty!"

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Doorman at fancy women's clothing store

2011-11-22T08:23:00.002-05:00

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Doorman at upscale women's clothing boutique in the Meatpacking District, NYC

Duration: 3 months

Year: 2006

This was my second summer in NYC, between my second and third year at grad school, and I needed a job. I couldn't go back to the hotel job after telling them I'd decided to go back to school last year, because what excuse would I use at the end of this summer? Turns out, the same one, but at a different job.

This was a Craigslist ad, just like the hotel job. I had experience this time, all the experience one needs to stand in one place for eight hours and open a door. They wanted a headshot too, which makes me think they wanted a big handsome model. Well, they got me instead. I believe they were considering another modelesque applicant, but apparently, spoiler alert, he was dumb as a rock. Which is saying something when your chief duty is opening a door.

In addition to opening the door, I was also "security." If someone wanted to walk out with a $500 dress, they probably could have. But I took it quite seriously, having grown up secretly spying on people anyway. I kept a mental map of every customer's position, made easier by the small size of the store. I made a game of wandering from the door to watch people without them knowing I was watching them. Creepy right? This is what happens when you're told to STAND IN ONE PLACE FOR EIGHT HOURS. Also, I follow every rule ever told to me with such fervor you'd think I was a Fascist in a former life. If you tell me to keep an eye on people, I damn well keep an eye on them.

Now, the uniform. Some of you reading this may have been fortunate enough to swing by and say hello to me at this job, so you know what it was. For the uninitiated, see below:

Note also the large glass wall I'm standing by. That meant a couple of things. First, several gay men popped in just to say things to me like "Aren't you just a little angel!" or "Is it your job to just stand here and look fabulous all day? Then you're doing great!" Don't get me wrong—that's super flattering. But I look like a clown. Which leads to number two: I'd stand so still, and so close to passers-by, that many times if I did slightly move they'd jump out of their skin. That was fun. I still have that shirt and belt.

Some of the people who worked here were nice enough, but come on. This was not my world. I make no claims to geniusry (see?), but I think it's not immodest to say my mind is active enough that if I stand in one place for eight hours, five days a week, I will slowly go insane.

In future posts I will tell you about our champagne stock, the racist music we were forced to listen to, and the time my manager tried to kill me with stupidity.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

Puppy Journals: Day 7

2011-11-21T14:15:00.003-05:00

Tonight we discovered that around 9 PM, Omar turns into a demonic bunny hell-bent on expending so much energy that our apartment spontaneously combusts. We were all on the couch, and he was seemingly getting relaxed in his own way. This typically consists of Omar throwing himself into various positions against the couch cushions, sliding along them, and grunting. He'll relax for a minute or two, then throw himself into another position until he finally falls asleep.

But not tonight. He began throwing himself more frequently, and finally did some sort of inverted twist while uttering a squawking yelp that I can only describe as the battle-cry of the damned. This kicked off a round of couch windsprints, wherein he charged back and forth between me and the end of the couch, running full-force into the cushions there. He tucked those bat-ears back and worked his back legs in such a way as to resemble said demon rabbit. Our initial surprise turned into amusement turned into oh god he's going to break himself.

We set him on the floor to pre-empt his falling off. Once there, he drew a pentagram and called forth dark shapes to aid his freak-out. It was weird.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Hotel Door/Bellman

2011-11-18T14:10:00.004-05:00

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Doorman/bellman at Upper West Side hotel
Duration: 3 months
Year: 2005

I found this job through Craigslist. I had no relevant professional experience, though most of my previous jobs also did not allow me to sit and as a polite person I've opened many a door and carried many a bag for other people. Suddenly they were handing me 1s, 5s, and sometimes 20s for being polite. This was the first and thus far last job I ever had that involved tips. I liked it. If I had to go back to one of my old jobs tomorrow, I'd probably pick this one. Because I did not, in fact, have to dress like that guy in the picture.

The duties were self-evident. Open the door genially, carry any bags that needed carrying, and give directions/recommendations if asked. I didn't know the Upper West Side very well at the time, so whenever someone asked for a good restaurant I would just parrot the places I heard the other doormen recommend. I'm sure they were basing these recommendations on doormen before my time and so on, so that we were in fact recommending Tammany Hall-era speakeasies. If so, it never got back to me.

I was living by myself at the time in Inwood. This was the first summer after grad school. The hotel of course thought I was quitting school because it wasn't for me. I knew this entire time that at the end of the summer, I'd be telling them the school offered me an attractive scholarship and I was going to go back (see also: 2006). Taking a look at my somehow-still-increasing amount of student loan debt, I wish desperately this were true.

I usually worked the 3 PM-midnight shift, and since I was living alone I decided to flip my own script. I would wake up around 1 PM, eat breakfast, shower and head to work. I'd eat lunch at work around 6, then eat dinner at home around 1 AM. I would stay up til 4 or 5 playing video games or writing short pieces about how much I wanted to burn down my neighborhood. It was a solitary summer, but I'd gone through a bad breakup and I think it helped me reset to 1.

My fellow doormen were all pretty nice. There was an even split between blue collar and actor/artist types. One guy filled most of his time by getting DVDs from Netflix, copying them, and sending them back as fast as he could. Another guy was apprenticing with someone who was teaching him how to win online poker. The teacher made a steady living with his skill, and was including a few other people in a pyramid where he'd fund their playing after teaching them to at least break even, and giving them a cut of the winnings. If this is true, I'm still convinced it's the best way I could make money right now. There were at most three of us at the door at a time, but usually just two. Eight hours of standing around with another guy, you get to know them fairly well. The poker apprentice and I had the most in common. He was also an actor and generally into the same stuff as me, though frustratingly he would not hurry up and read the sixth Harry Potter, which came out while we worked there.

We were given shirts to wear with the hotel logo on them, and we had a locker room downstairs. I believe there may have actually been a working shower in there. Fun fact: I've never seen a shower in a locker room in use, though I've never belonged to a gym either. One time I was in the locker room getting ready for work with the poker apprentice. He looked at his shirt and said "do you think they'll let us keep this when we quit?" Career men, we were not.

In future posts, I'll tell you about how endearing a racial epithet can be to a white guy, why Italians have skin like their luxurious purses, and why I don't like French people.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Toys R Us

2011-11-16T08:31:00.004-05:00

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Cashier/Wheel World associate at Toys R Us, Clarksville TN
Duration: 3 months, both times
Year: 1999, 2000

This was my first-ever job. I got it the summer after my freshman year of college. My parents had never really encouraged me to get a summer or after-school job, for which I think I'm grateful. I certainly liked all my summers up to this point. I asked mom later why they never made me get a job, to which she said something along the lines of "it sucks and we wanted you to enjoy yourself for as long as possible." Fair enough.

I don't remember what motivated me to start working that summer. I think it just seemed like it was time. I had applied at a few places I thought I might enjoy: the Sound Shop in our mall, bookstores, things like that. These were all places I liked as a customer, so naturally working there would be fun right? Which incidentally is why I'm an actor now. I also loved Toys R Us.

That might be a bit of an understatement.

My hometown didn't have a Toys R Us for a long time. When I was young, we would drive to Nashville every few months and go to Showbiz Pizza and Toys R Us. I am too inexperienced a writer to describe to you the joy I felt on these trips. I remember marveling at the walls of strange toys, characters and entire worlds I'd never seen before. I remember the Millennium Falcon, out of the box, high up in the action figure aisle. Amazing.

So this was a natural target for me. They needed a cashier, and a cashier they got. After I was hired, I came in on a Friday afternoon for training on the register. Once I got it all down, the person training me walked away and left me to fend for myself. What I thought would be a quick few hours turned into a full eight hour shift on my feet. I had never stood for that long in my life. I don't think I ate dinner. I came home in shock. The MTV Movie Awards were on. It was the year Jim Carrey did that weird Jim Morrison thing.

The assistant manager had written down my schedule for the next week for me. I wasn't due in again til Sunday, so I was relieved to have Saturday to recover from my first ever day of standing for no reason. I was accustomed at this time to sleeping in until noon or so. The phone rang shortly after 10 AM, and mom came in and said it was for me. It was the store manager. "You're scheduled to open the store today. Are you going to make it in?"

Um, what? "Oh, Libby told me I wasn't coming in until tomorrow."

"Well, you're on the schedule for today. Come in as soon as you can and we'll show you how to read the schedule, OK friend?"

Fantastic first impression.

In future posts I'll tell you about my second summer here, how much I loved working at 3 AM, and my skill at finding deeply existential reasons to dislike any day job.

Colin Fisher is a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

Puppy Journals: Day 6

2011-11-14T10:08:00.002-05:00

That picture there? That is the face of a falling separation anxiety bomb. I'm reading about how to prevent this from happening while my puppy lays in my lap for three straight hours, which I take as a good indicator that we would both make awesome codependent spouses.

A big reason dogs freak out when you leave them alone is that you never taught them to be independent as puppies. So as I wait for his playpen to get delivered, I have to try crating him while I'm home so he doesn't have "unlimited access" to me. But—LOOK AT THAT FACE. How do you not grant said access to a face like that? We've clearly spent thousands of years evolving into this sick dance together. He knows what he's doing.

One key way to stop him from holding his breath until you come back home is to play it real cool when you do get back. Now I come in, set my stuff down, walk through the bedroom and turn on the computer. I'll look at him out of the corner of my eye. He's in his crate, watching me quietly. We're both pretending that we're not dying to run circles around each other. It's cool.

I need to set up my webcam to run the next time I leave the house for a few hours, but I'm scared of what I'll find. My chief concern is that he's howling and barking while I'm gone, but really it could be worse. What if he's running some sort of illegal poker/cockfighting/gladiator ring while I'm gone? It could happen.

In other news, dear lord how much pee can one dog hold?

Colin Fisher is a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

Puppy Journals: Day 5

2011-11-11T09:57:00.001-05:00

The keyword today has been chewing. Our apartment is too small to really warrant a playpen for the dog, but just too big for me to be by his side without a constant effort. As such, I'm forced to follow him around the apartment, constantly nudging him aside or offering one of his MANY viable chew-objects when he starts chewing something else. The wall. A door. The magazine basket. The corner of the couch. These are all amazing shapes to be fully explored. You cannot know a thing til you've flaked off little pieces of that thing into your mouth. That's Voltaire, right?

We have this bitter apple spray we're supposed to use on things we don't want him chewing. Honestly I think the only way to effectively use it would be Ghostbusters 2-style, when they hose the inside of the Statue of Liberty with pink slime. I can't imagine our cat Tommy would be thrilled with that. Even he gets chewed from time to time.

We must buy him more chew toys. The apartment must be thick with chew toys to keep him from chewing non-chew-toy things. He requires a nonstop stream of floppy, rubbery, squeaky, food-filled gadgets to keep him occupied. I'm in the process of patenting a revolutionary design in which an entire apartment, both structure and furnishings, is just chew toy.

I have now said "Omar no" more in my life than my own name.

Colin Fisher is a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

IncCorp Inc.'s Sort-a-tron 3000 Employee Processing Pod

2011-11-10T09:12:00.000-05:00

Greetings, NEW WORKER. I am IncCorp Inc.'s Sort-a-tron 3000 Employee Processing Pod. Please step forward and place your hand on the employee identification cubelet in no less than three seconds. Three. Two.

Thank you.

Please shift your hand a bit to the right. A bit more. No, too much. Back a little. There. Hold for processing. I said hold.

Thank you.

Hello, BRIAN. Let me be the first and last to welcome you to IncCorp Inc. I look forward to placing you in the appropriate division of the corporation so that you may live out the rest of your life there and then die. Please stare directly into the brilliant blue light in front of you. Any discomfort you feel will be a small price to pay for the benefits of gainful servitude. Please do not blink.

You blinked. I now understand your low score on the motor skills week of the application procedures. Stare into the light again. Whimpering will not make the processing go any faster.

Thank you. Now hold. Hold. Hold. Think about the woman who birthed you, or the first animal you owned, if that is helpful. Hold.

Thank you. Full vision should return to that eye within seven cycles.

BRIAN, our application judges have found that you are an unexceptional example of your species. Your intellect is slightly above average, though you exhaust your entire conversational reservoir within 2.3 days. You have degrees from respectable IncCorp Inc.-sanctioned institutions, though the concentration of your studies has a relevancy factor of 1.5% in the current political and economic climate. This shows an inability to plan in the long-term on your part, as well as an unwieldy ego that makes you think you are able to escape the conditions of your environment. I find this a curious trait in humans. Nine billion of your contemporaries live in obscurity, you have a background that deviates from the norm by .03%, yet somehow you persist in thinking that you will achieve a lasting legacy amongst your species.

But I digress.

Based on my analysis and available positions, you will best serve IncCorp Inc. as an entryway maintenance technician. There are 3,281 doors in this facility. Your duties will include opening and closing each of these doors, checking for noise, friction, and ease of use. You will document all anomalies and submit them to the entryway maintenance supervisor for further review.

Analysis of your facial contours indicates that you are disappointed in this placement. Rest assured that the pressing and sensitive work done by the more intelligent, better-paid humans at IncCorp Inc. depends on their comfort in the workplace. My research has proven that silent, gently gliding doors will result in an output increase of .7%, or, to put it in terms your modest intellect can better grasp, 300 million Google credits. Given the incredibly high ratio between this number and your salary, you can see how valuable an investment you are for IncCorp Inc.

As per section 64, heading 2, subheading B, paragraph 1, refusal of this placement will result in extermination of both you and any human sharing more than 99.9998% of your DNA. You may begin your duties by examining the doorway leading out of this room.

Thank you.

Colin Fisher is a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

Puppy Journals: Day 4

2011-11-09T09:42:00.001-05:00

Omar is sleeping consistently through the night in his crate. We have set our alarms for four hours after we go to sleep, so we can get up, put him on the pads, cheer like idiots and then crate him and sleep for another four hours. We have the precision of a German special forces unit.

Today was Omar's first vet visit (with us, anyway—he's almost done with the battery of shots dogs need before they can freely mount each other with useless genitalia). He did very well. I'm looking forward to delivering the stool sample they'll need. I have a small clear plastic tube with a white spoon in it with which to do the deed. My plan is to walk down Ninth Avenue with it held at arm's length, screaming.

Last night's meltdown was revelatory. If he enjoys the crate enough to sleep in it, why push it? I'll get him to pee on the pads without confining him hourly. He's already getting there. A couple of times today he walked right over to them and peed without my prompting, though he certainly got a healthy reward when he was finished. I may be too eager though. If someone ran into the bathroom while I was in midstream and shouted "GOOD JOB COLIN! SUCH A GOOD JOB!" I'd probably clam up too. However, I cannot explain the pride I feel when he does what's expected of him without my asking. I know just how Michael Phelps' mom felt in '08.

Colin Fisher is a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

Puppy Journals: Day 3

2011-11-07T08:46:00.001-05:00

Well, we've been going about this all wrong. I read a for-real guide this morning and if he's 12 weeks old, we're about four weeks late to the game. He needs to socialize with at least 100 people! He needs to be able to sit at the mere flick of my wrist! He should land an F-16 on the deck of a carrier in choppy seas!

First things first: the crate. Apparently I'm supposed to keep him in there for hour shifts, and bring him out to eliminate at the desired spot. I use the time after to constructively play with him by teaching him to sit and come and how Napoleon shouldn't have invaded Russia, then put him in the crate for another hour shift so I can control where he eliminates. Fun and love clearly have no place in dog ownership.

But wait—I thought keeping a dog in the crate all day made him neurotic? And won't the whole housebreaking thing go a lot better once he's fully vaccinated and I can set him down outside? And if he doesn't get into the right preschool, can he still get into Yale?

I believe my dog thinks his name is "Omar let's go potty," and that I am a strange man who lives in the corner surrounded by pee pads.

Tonight was bad. After systematically crating and uncrating him all day, and occasionally getting to reward him for peeing in the right spot, he peed in his crate. The whole purpose of the training is to keep him in a den-like area where he definitely won't eliminate, so we can show him where we do want him to go. If he violates that principle, the whole ordeal today was for nothing. We melted down. We saw our future, and it was Amy and I at 70, standing deranged over a confused 40-year old puppy croaking "go potty! go potty! go potty!" Sensing our weakening grip on reality, Omar came to the corner where we were huddled, rocking each other, and climbed all over us.

We'll keep him. For now.

Colin Fisher is a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

Puppy Journals: Day 2

2011-11-03T17:40:00.001-04:00

Last night wasn't quite as bad as we thought it would be. Given the setup of our apartment, we were forced to accelerate the crate process and have Omar sleep in it. He'd seemed pretty comfortable with it through the day. We kept it next to the bed so he'd feel close to us. I guess it wasn't quite close enough though, because once we all settled in he started whimpering. I read the material. I knew what to do. "Omar, settle," I said in a gently commanding voice, while giving him a reassuring nudge through the crate. That's all they said you needed to do to get him to quit.

He didn't quit.

He got progressively louder. His whimpers turned into weird, strangled howls. Frenchies are not known for resounding barks, which is one of the many things that makes them great apartment dogs. But I learned last night they are known for warbling, glass-rattling howls. Slightly less than my desire for him to stop so I could sleep, was my desire for him to stop so the neighbors wouldn't hear him.

Amy got on the floor to settle him, and it worked. She got back into the bed, and in came the grunts and whines. She got back down, stayed longer, then came back. Again, the sounds of a puppy slowly being disemboweled. This time she brought her pillow and laid down a while.

This went on until 8 AM.

While our puppy certainly fell below expectations his first night, my certainty of his savant status has not diminished. Based on the brief reading I'd done before getting him, I was expecting worse. I don't know from where these dogs the authors spoke of came, but I have to assume they would all recognize Michael Vick on sight. We spent the day cradling him while he looked lovingly in our faces, playing with him with all the toys we bought him, watching him pee in every room of our small apartment, and marveling at the amount of odor that can fly off of one small dog turd.

Colin Fisher is a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

Puppy Journals: Day 1

2011-11-02T16:21:00.001-04:00

We spent last night in MA, four hours from home, so we could pick up the newest addition to our family this morning. We've been obsessing over French Bulldogs for at least five years now, and last weekend we decided to make the jump. Within hours we were in touch with a breeder, and the next day we Skyped with a puppy. Five puppies, actually. They were docile, sweet-faced animals who simply sat and watched their owner scoot her laptop around on the floor so we could see them. They weren't jumpy. They weren't shy. They were perfect.

Meteorology is not perfect. After a late start and a long visit at the breeder's house, surrounded by snorting, grunting, happy Frenchies, it was time to hit the road and get our rental back before its 3 PM deadline. We had about 30 minutes of wiggle room in our timeline, and we knew the living-evidence-of-climate-change-late-October-freak-nor'easter wasn't going to blow in until the evening, so we felt OK. A little worried, but OK. Amy sat in the back of our odd little Nissan Cube (seriously Japan?) and held Omar in her lap.

As it happens, that nor'easter blew in about four hours early and ten inches heavier than expected, and our lovely country jaunt through New England turned into a nightmare race against time and the elements to get this stupid purple box on wheels back to Budget in time. I was constantly doing math. "At this rate, for a few hours, I'll be x minutes faster than Google Map's estimate. We're in good shape." Our wheels skated along the slowly building slush. Semis would splash by, wiping out my visibility for a sphincter-wrenching three seconds. But all I had to do was turn back and see Omar's face, serenely looking back as if to say "you got this, strange man who I now love with all my being."

We hit the last traffic jam just outside Manhattan at 2:53. I knew we were done for. But this puppy hadn't made a sound all day. He was perfect. We parked the car and ate the charges for a second day, and spent the rest of the day with our dog. He spent his time flinging himself from one lap to another to the corner of the couch. Sure, he peed on the floor a few times, and sure, when we tried taking him outside he just shivered in the LATE OCTOBER SNOW and looked at us as if to ask, "What did I do wrong?" But he never whined. He never barked. He never chewed anything.

We read the books. We knew the problems ahead. But clearly, we had chosen wisely, because our puppy is in no uncertain terms a genius.

Colin Fisher is a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

So Your Ten Year Reunion is Approaching

2011-10-07T09:57:00.004-04:00

So your ten-year high school reunion is approaching. Congratulations on reaching this milestone of adult American development. As a much older, wiser person, I'd like to offer you some advice for this event in our digital age.

First things first: yes, it really has been ten years. No, I can't believe it. Yes, it seems like you were dorm-shopping at Target just yesterday.

Great.

For the purposes of this guide, I will assume you are the sort of person who moved away from your home town after high school and is now pursuing a difficult, low-paying field in a much bigger city. Why? Because I don't understand any other lifestyles.

Step 1. Your reunion may be up to a year out at this point, but you've just received a notification on Facebook/email to that old address you forgot you had, telling you to save the date. You're toying with the idea of going (you will not end up going). You may have already asked your best friends, with whom you're still in touch, if they're thinking about going. Wouldn't it be fun if you all went together (probably not)? Tentative plans are lightly pencilled in. You begin daydreaming about what it will be like, based mostly on old TV shows or 80s romantic comedies. You'll show off your partner to that person you always had a crush on. They'll tell you they secretly had a crush on you, and you'll just laugh and laugh while your ego inflates. People who stayed in town will marvel at your ability to live in a larger city, and how much cereal costs there. You are the life of a party that you will in no way be attending.

Step 2. Six months out, you've gotten a few more specifics on what your old student body officers have cooked up. Really? It's in THAT hotel? And it costs HOW much? And there's a FAMILY day? Who has a family already (see step 3)? You make the rounds with your friends, who are all in different large cities, debating the merits of these new details. You still keep the weekend open, but think it might be fun to just plan your own thing. This is pencilled in somewhat more lightly than the reunion itself.

Step 3. The Facebook tsunami. Scientists have yet to figure out quite how this begins, but you are bombarded with friend requests from people who look like the parents of people you kinda knew. Remember that time your freshman year at college when you were eating lunch by yourself, and that guy you'd gone to school with for 12 years and never spoken to sat down next to you, said hi and invited you to a party? This is like that, but with much more passive aggression and baby pictures.

You call your mom and have her check your yearbook for you, to verify some of these names. This is stressful because half the people have changed their names. She verifies them and asks when you're going to figure out what you want to do when you grow up. You get sweaty and hang up. Now, you're going to be tempted to say "yes" to all these requests. DON'T. If you follow my advice, you'll be happy with what you're struggling to do in that big city. You'll have no problem dedicating 80% of your income to rent and working mostly for free. You'll still find the narrow aisles and random stock of your corner grocery room quaint.

But you're going to say yes anyway. And when you do, you will regret it. The growth is exponential. You will find your secret crush, and see pictures of their five children. You will also discover their favorite musicians are Nickleback [sic] and Chris Brown. You will go down the rabbit hole of friend lists, spending hours remembering where these people sat in English and who they went to prom with. You realize some of those uteruses have only been baby-free for a total of five months since high school. But you will begin to think: I could have a house. I could have a regular job. I could make a set income and actually try creating a budget. I could mow the lawn on weekends and drink tea on a thing called a "porch." And you will realize My God, I've been spending $20 a week on Golden Grahams.

You will then be horrified by the political views of most of your classmates, but wish you'd talked to that one weird kid more because they seem pretty cool now.

Step 4. The reunion is a month away and it looks like you'll be missing it. You just went to those two weddings on opposite coasts, and work's been thin lately. Your friends all agree that the slumber party you were planning would have been awesome, but you'll meet up in one of those big cities you live in soon. You once more daydream briefly about really cutting loose on the girl who laughed at your new haircut that one time, then go back to accepting Facebook requests out of guilt.

Step 5. The reunion was last week. You've thus far resisted the pictures all your new Facebook friends have uploaded, but you finally caved. It looks like everyone had a decent time. It looks like you wouldn't have had a single person to talk to. And ugh, people still smoke inside public places back there. You probably made the right move. You crack open a box of cereal, go to your window, look at the city and cry a little.

Movies I've Never Seen #4: Spirit of the Forest

2011-10-04T16:40:00.002-04:00

Spirit of the Forest

In which I fully describe the plot of a movie I've never seen and know nothing about, based solely upon its Netflix picture.

Spirit of the Forest is based on the whimsical Scandinavian folk tale "Skellenvagbitchmunden," so get off the director's back already because it in no way infringes upon the Smurfs.

Now, on to the plot: Gargamellen is an evil wizard who lives in the forest and wants nothing more than to feed the Smorfen to his pet dog Israelen. The Smorfen are of course the titular "spirits of the forest," but this isn't truly known until a stellar reveal in the 7th act. I suppose I should mention that since this is based on a Scandinavian story, it comes in at a bulky 5 hours 23 minutes.

In an attempt to escalate his Smorfen-cooking efforts, Gargamellen uses chopped up Smorf bits to create a female Smorf and sends her into the Smorf village. Once there, she entices the all-male Smorfen with a surprisingly lewd dance. Dada Smorf, being older, wiser, and far less interested in females than the rest of the village, recognizes this as sabotage on the part of Gargamellen and uses ancient forest magic to reprogram Smorfette into a vicious killing machine.

The film takes a wild turn here. Smorfette, now completely consumed with desire to destroy Gargamellen, dons a pair of Ray-Bans and a leather jacket and speaks in broken Austrian-accented English. At one point the director inserts a full scene from Terminator, apparently transferred directly from an old VHS copy.

In the hour-long climax of the film, the Smorfs, led by Smorfette and Dada Smorf, invade Gargamellen's compound and kill him. The death scene is a combination of those from Braveheart and Passion of the Christ, but without the nuance. With Gargamellen dead, balance is restored to the forest and the Smorfs celebrate with a 24-minute musical number. This was Sweden's 2008 entry for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars.

Also there's a talking tree voiced by Ron Perlman, because why not.

Movies I've Never Seen #3: Somebody Help Me 2

2011-09-05T17:48:00.005-04:00

Somebody Help Me 2

In which I fully describe the plot of a movie I've never seen and know nothing about, based solely upon its Netflix picture.

Somebody Help Me 2 is a deeper look into the philosophical implications put forth in Somebody Help Me; chiefly, in a slasher film populated entirely by African Americans, who dies first?

Marques Houston (left) plays Dr. Marques Dallas, an astrophysicist keenly aware of the spacetime consequences of this paradox. Similar to the situation of Schrodinger's Cat, the characters of this film exist in states of both dead and not-dead until the film is viewed by an outside observer. Fortunately, this has yet to happen.

Malika Haqq (second from left) plays Maliqqa Hak, Dr. Dallas' mysterious lab assistant.

Omarion Grandberry (third from left) plays Mario Littlefruit, childhood friend of Dr. Dallas and a beloved pop star. In either a bold acting choice or a desperate cry for help, Mr. Grandberry is barely intelligible and may actually be speaking Russian. At one point he's clearly on the phone with his agent trying to get out of his contract.

Chrissy Stokes (right) spends the whole movie being all "bitch, please."

In a startling third act reveal, it turns out Maliqqa Hak is actually Jennifer Love Hewitt in blackface. As soon as a white actor is introduced, all three African American characters are simultaneously murdered.

Movies I've Never Seen #2: The Stranger In Us

2011-09-05T17:33:00.003-04:00

The Stranger In Us

In which I fully describe the plot of a movie I've never seen and know nothing about, based solely on its Netflix picture.

Eddie (top) is a quirky copywriter who does the descriptions on the back of shampoo bottles. Edgar (bottom) is the scrappy orphan Eddie took in to impress the new girl at work (Zooey Deschanel). On a madcap adventure to find the out-of-print vinyl edition of Zooey's favorite song, Eddie and Edgar accidentally kill a homeless man (middle) and eat him to hide the evidence. They spend the rest of the movie looking at each other smugly.