I'm deeply entrenched in week 4 of unemployment - or "funemployment" as many friends have insisted I'm in - and living like this certainly has its highs and lows. It's funny, really, because when I first got into the DGA training program, my parents and I scoured the internet for anything and everything about the program. At the time, all we could find was someone's blog about how, as a trainee, you are shackled to the program - "can't even go to your brother's wedding," was how the blogger put it I recall. And yet I've had ample opportunity to travel, take time off, enjoy responsibility-free living (sidebar: I conveyed the same sense of amazement to the program administrator the other day and she said that that blogger likely had gone through the LA program...).Regardless, after a week skiing in Colorado with the fam, I stopped briefly in Pittsburgh to watch the Super Bowl with the folks I spent each Sunday with during the regular season, before heading back up to New York to move back into my apartment.
And what a time to be in New York! When I got back, the murmurs around town were that Jeremy Lin, a classmate of mine in college, had just been called from the Knicks bench and had tacked up a gaudy line against the Nets. Cool, I had thought. Little could I imagine how the whole thing would play out. Game after game, the legend of Lin built. It finally hit me last Thursday - after he had scored 25 against soon-to-be-BK, 28 against the Jazz, and 23 at the Wizards - as I was sitting in my favorite gourmet mac-n-cheese place. The guy sitting at the table next to me was regaling his girlfriend with Lin exploits with an enthusiasm so utterly childlike it could only be matched by the fact that he was slurping mac-n-cheese. I decided immediately that I had to see Jeremy play before the clock struck midnight, leaving a slackjawed MSG collectively holding an empty black Nike sneak.
So I convinced (not really sure if that's the right word since he agreed to it pretty willingly) my buddy to accompany me to the Laker game to try and scalp tickets. Without needing to go into too much detail on how we got the tickets*, we made our way in. And what a show! Every time Jeremy flinched, the decible level in the place peaked. It was a madhouse. But the interesting thing that my buddy - who was my co-editor of the sports page of the college paper and so we had seen Jeremy play a lot - and I both noticed was that the moves he was pulling weren't necessarily anything we hadn't already seen him do against the likes of Boston College (fortunately, as I later found, Tommy Amaker validated our assessment on the Boomer & Carton show). The only difference was he was busting these moves out on the likes of Kobe freakin' Bryant. It's just a joy to see.
*No, I'm still not going to go into detail on how we got the tickets, but I needed to force a segue into why I felt capable of making such an investment. As soon as I had gotten back into the city, I stopped by the DGA office to debrief with the program administrator. She had gotten positive reviews from my Pittsburgh employers that she wanted to share, and I was hoping to gather some intel on my future prospects. She confirmed my worst fears that I probably won't get my next assignment until well into March (pilot season, baby!) but before I left, she asked if I'd like to work on a commercial. "Sure," I said. "When?"
"Tomorrow. I'll let the production manager know. She'll get in touch with you about the details."
"Tomorrow...? Cool..."
I got a call no less than 10 minutes later. "Be there at 5:30am." Yikes!
That being said, the job was actually a really good learning experience. It was just me and the 1st AD, a one-day, 30-second spot for laundry detergent. We got to an empty stage, built a laundry room, got the coverage, broke down the laundry room, and left an empty stage. As de-facto 2nd AD, it was really cool to be able to interact with the director, director of photography, department heads, and the ad agency people so directly. Granted, once everything was in place and things got clicking, it was a long, painfully-boring day (I mean, how exciting can a laundry detergent commercial get, right?), but it kept me, at times, more engaged than I've ever been and certainly bestowed me with greater responsibility than any job yet.
But aside from that, I've just been reacclimating myself to New York lifestyle and pace. A friend from Pittsburgh visited for a couple of days, which motivated me to get off the couch (my preferred New York lifestyle and pace...only kidding) and get out. Saw
Oh and lest you think my time spent lately has been totally mindless, I picked up a valuable little nugget of education today. If you lose something in an NYC taxi cab and pay with a credit card, you can call Creative Mobile Technologies, the company that manufactures and operates the credit card swiping machines in the back of cabs and they can trace your transaction back to not only the medallion number, but the actual driver. Of course, if you pay with cash, as the nice guy at Style Management Co - one of the many cab dispatchers I had till then been contacting one at a time - told me, "You're shit out of luck."
Ah, New York, it's good to be back.
