I call it “The Straight World”, this land of cubicles in the 9-5 and I can no longer participate. It sounds high and mighty but I’ll do anything to continue my art, including all manner of odd, low wage and/or under the table work to pay the few bills I have so that I can continue to write or act or study my various artistic endeavors every day.

I should pause to admit that I am considering applying to Puget Sound Blood Center as a part-time/substitute driver. I hear you get to sit around and read a lot, and watch movies if you have your own laptop but once the phone rings, you’re off delivering pints of blood, which makes me woozy just thinking about. Needless to say, I could use this structured time to my advantage as I am spending more and more time at home slave to the increasing influx of rock related emails.

In case you didn’t know, I get anywhere from 20-40 emails a day from bands, publicists, PR firms, record labels, marketing peeps and they all want to “Follow up on the album I sent you. Have you had a chance to listen? Are you going to review? We have so-and-so available for interviews? Please, write me back, say you like it, say you’ll write!”

In short, I’ve created a rock monster. I’m not complaining. I love music journalism but it’s gradually taken over my life. So a structured job that gets me away from the demands of my email and provides some organization to my life could be good for me… or I could stay at home and try to curb myself, wean my desires from the immediate satisfaction of doing something productive by answering all of those emails and listening to all of those records! Get up at 8 and stick to a rigorous schedule that limits email to 2 hours/day and journalism to 3 hours/day and demands creative writing for at least 2 hours/day, maybe include some exercise… Other than masturbation. Would I rather do that? Yes. Am I capable of doing that? Um.

Why don’t I? It’s the five thousand dollar question. The life you’ve always wanted is only two feet away, so why is that first step always the hardest?

Hmm.

Anyway.

I was circuitously coming around to another odd job story. This one was much, much cooler and can best be surmised in this late-night, bleary-eyed account from my on-the-job journal:

Report from today, not the greatest day but not so bad neither

***************************************************

Sitting in my hotel/casino outside Oly [Olympia, Washington] after a long day of hunting “gooey ducks”. You know what those are? They’re these penis shaped crustaceans or maybe mollusks or maybe bivouacs… but they look just like penises with a touch of syphilis and a clamshell. So, we went out on the low tide plateau, through the mud and muck to hunt these phallic fuckers. By the way, the hunt goes like this: teams of two look and look and look until one finds the two valves of the geoduck sticking up from the sand; these look like fingers, or so I’m told, I never actually saw one. The spotter then grabs the duck and holds on while it digs down and away. Meanwhile, your partner digs an adjacent hole to cut the geoduck off as it goes deeper. If you hold on just right, you can catch the thing. And let me tell you, there’s nothing like seeing one emerge from the sand, gripped by it’s shaft, peeing an arching stream of water into the air, it’s only defense. Not only does it look like a penis but it acts like one too.

All this for a PBS/Gourmet magazine show called “Diary of a Foodie”. It’ll air in the fall and again next spring. Then the Discovery channel is going to go international with it.

I’m a “PA” which is short for production assistant which means that the woman with the clipboard [producer] gets to get mad at me and tell me to focus when I’m knee deep in the muck with thirty pounds of expensive camera gear over my shoulder and a child-like fascination with the ocean that is slowly rising all around me. It’s the gruntest job ever but there’s only 4 of us—two producers, a cameraman and me. Mainly, I drive the van and say in my ugliest, white trash voice, “Getinth’ van. Yr momma said not to argue.”

“Oh, Shawn,” they laugh, shaking their heads, “You’re crazy.”

“You like candy? Getinth’ van!”

“Ok. Now, you’re scaring me.”

“Getinth’ van!”

They always get in the van. So I guess they’re not that scared.

Needless to say, they put me up in this Ho-tell and fed me all nice with three pan-fried gooey duck penis fish thingies that we caught that day (sautéed with vegetables, ginger, lime grass and spices by this woman named Xinh who makes the best seafood I have ever eaten). Yes, it was yummy.

Now I’m so effing tired. I gotta get me a hooker and some coke, round out the
evening. Maybe I’ll go troll the sluts–%##*@?!–SLOTS! downstairs in the casino. Casino? Oh-Oh-Oh, oh no!

Huh? How you like me now?

S to the T

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