ride it out

I am powering up for a seven week stretch of destruction at work. A long, breathless sprint to the finish. I wish there was another way but dammit there isn't. Blood will spill, feelings will get hurt, longstanding tensions will boil over, pettiness will surface, and there will be a moment or two when we all wonder if the ship be sinkin'.

We can't let it sink.

Here's my game plan:

Show up every day. Take 7 minutes to write down all the shit I need to do. Or get a cool iPhone app for making to do lists. Tell everybody to shut it while I compose my list.

Then, start doing shit. Check the shit off the list. Have an iced coffee. Check a couple more things off the list. Have a decaf iced coffee. Do more shit. Walk around the block, appreciate spring. Come back and check another thing off the list.

Don't think about how much overall work there is to do, except when trying to come up with a strategic plan for completing it. Instead, bust the shit into small chunks, devour the chunks, and keep the line moving.

Ease up on the work drinking. Ease up on the potato chip sampling. Stay away from the chunky chews.

On the weekends, play sports when possible. Get the bike out of storage. Ride around. Drink a smoothie now and then. Eat lunch with the family. Read books and magazines. Watch the NBA playoffs. Catch up on sleep.

Blog to relieve stress and update facebook when something clever comes to mind. Twitter only in an emergency.

Issue blanket apologies. Sorry.

Let other people handle their problems. Handle my own problems when I can. Hide/bury them when it makes sense to do so.

As always, grease my back so stuff will roll right off of it. Ignore the assholes; tee off on them only when they need it like a drug. Don't dump my stress on other people. Say nice things about everybody. Treat people with 125% of the respect they deserve.

Be unflappable, or at least flap only in private. Revel in the quiet splendor of the 4pm work piss.

Do what the bosses say. Give them what they want. If they don't like it, change it until they do. If they like it, don't question why.

Don't improve the approved.

Never initiate a fist pound. Avoid them unless it would be rude to turn one down. Even a sincere high five is preferable at this point.

During unexpected moments of fleeting work triumph, when people step away from the stress and drudgery of the task at hand to bask in the triumph, remind the group not to start sucking each other's dicks yet. Acknowledge that this breaks my own rule about movie quoting.

Stay healthy. Think about future gadgets. Be handsome. Reflect fondly on secret victories from the past and chuckle knowingly about them at my desk. This will annoy my co-workers a little but too bad, let them chuckle knowingly about their own secret victories.

Talk about Tom Selleck as much or as little as I want.

Survive.

Because on June 19th, HIATUS is back. California dreams. Hoop dreams. Facial hair. Bike-ridin', lemondade-drinkin', photo-snappin', park-chillin'. Failing to do 90% of the things I thought I would. Peace of mind. Joy. Reflection and stategery.

See you there.

Status Update

Feeling good about: the shoes I've been wearing lately
Worrying about: May
Excited about: July
Reminiscing about: 1999
Blog I can't get enough of: mostly meat
Thing I'm struggling with: my loyalty to the Yankees
Sport I'd prefer playing over all others: basketball
Book I'm reading: none, just finished cheesy one that I always secretly wanted to read, too embarrassed to name it
Rating, on a five star scale, of first softball game of season: 3.25
Recent event that made me feel old: Danny Ainge heart attack
Celebrity Death I somehow missed: Marvin Webster
Dead Celebrity I just realized is still alive: Gore Vidal
Internet Thing I assume you are using, and if not, why not?: google reader
Most recent amazing meal: late lunch with family at Balthazar last Friday
Recent entertainment disappointment: "Parks and Recreation" -- but with Ken Tremendous at the helm I am holding out hope
Adolescent fantasies I have come to understand I will never fulfill: driving around country with basketball in trunk, playing on courts all across the land; other ones I won't mention
Person I have come to grudgingly respect: you
Thing I could use more of: sleep
Topic of "Odd Couple" Episode I watched the other night at 4am when I couldn't sleep: insomnia
Weekend Plans: working
Thing I'm missing: Original PBdotC (no offense to wayward O)
Movie I want to see: "Adventureland"
Thing that saddens me to think I might never do again: streak

I've already got Friday on my mind

I got home from work at midnight tonight. I had lost again. It wasn't even close, really. Just another forgettable defeat, final score like 24-10. Maybe I nearly tied it in the third quarter before having an interception returned for a score that put it out of reach, or maybe it was 24-3 until our side scored a late and meaningless touchdown, I don't remember.

As soon as I walked into the house, I poured myself a glass of water and sat down on the couch. It was the first chance I'd had all day to relax, to take a deep breath and selfishly enjoy a few thoughts that were just for me. I wanted to think about something soothing and vague, like a green field or a sunset or a breeze blowing on my balls through a screen door. Something to make me feel happy enough to go to sleep while requiring almost no concentration or mental commitment on my part. But instead I had a quick moment of: what the fuck am I doing? Should I get a new job?

I mean a whole new field. A new industry. A new setting. New co-workers. New jargon. New tools of the trade. New commute.

It could be done, I reasoned. People change careers all the time, some of them even do it when they're 50 or 60. It's not too late. I had always thought of these career-changers as damaged goods somehow, and I subconsciously lumped them into two categories:

1) Dreamers who had drifted from job to job, industry to industry, never figuring out a career, never achieving financial stability, always assuming something better was just around the corner.
2) People who did something for a long period of time, moved up the ladder, found financial success, only to suddenly realize that their job was soulless and their life to that point had been a complete waste of time.

I guess if I had to categorize myself I'd be a little bit of both. I kind of accidented my way into a job, assuming it was temporary while I figured some stuff out, and then I looked up at the calendar and Holy Smokes it's 15 years later.

And with that number in mind I realize that changing a career for any reason at all takes real guts. It's the move of a winner, the move of someone who, in the words of Mr. Brucey Springsteen, ain't gonna take what they're handing out.

Do I like what I do? Sometimes. I love working with cool people and cracking terrible jokes and the general sense that we are a team and we can do it if we all pull together. I like office pools* and cheap gossip and I enjoy the creative side of my job when it works well.** I am so scatterbrained that the office environment is probably helpful to me in terms of giving my day structure. I like that we turn out a new edition of the product every day so mistakes don't stay with you too long.

But here are some things that suck:
-the hours
-the stress
-the relentlessness
-the low margin for error
-the hours
-the all-consumingness
-the unnecessary sense of importance and urgency
-the hours
-the impact it has on my family

Per my contract, I can't leave for the next 2 years even if I wanted to, which gives me plenty of time to rethink my career...before ultimately deciding to do nothing.

I think the simplest thing to do is use a process of elimination, to rule out all the jobs I just won't ever do for one reason or another. Here are my first few definite non-new-careers:

-President
-Sea Captain
-Athlete
-Gambler
-Scientist
-Doctor
-Weatherman
-Fisherman
-Bookie/Pimp/Pusher***
-Blues Singer
-Butcher
-Taxi Driver
-Cop/Fireman/EMT
-Farmer
-Lawyer

And there are some jobs I simply can't bring myself to eliminate. The possibles:

-Bartender
-Night Watchman
-Therapist (seems farfetched, but my old therapist ran a car parts store for 20 years before switching careers)
-Life Coach (I just love this title, it's a perfect combination of self-importance and meaninglessness)
-Expert
-Consultant
-Hanger-on
-Catcher of tennis balls thrown out of car windows
-Payroll Error

Any suggestions of things I might be able to do -- or things I should avoid at all costs -- would be appreciated.

*I won my first ever NCAA pool today, $280
** And sometimes even when it doesn't. Today I attempted to use The Cars' "Moving in Stereo" to score a scene of a middle aged woman climbing out of a pool in a bikini. The bosses rejected it on a number of levels, but I still loved it.
*** Note my old man lingo.

Review: Jesse Stone: Thin Ice

I was sick this weekend, like cholera era sick, so I stretched out on the sofa and took in the latest Tom Selleck TV movie -- Jesse Stone: Thin Ice -- on the ol' DVR. I estimate that 30-35% of CBS's grayheaded primetime viewing audience at any given moment is watching from their deathbeds, so I felt right at home.

I had expectations, but they were modest and they were based almost entirely on my previous Jesse Stone experience. I expected to see Tom Selleck do some of the following things:
-beat dudes up
-drink scotch
-bang a chick or two
-be impossibly handsome
-engage in bad banter loaded with unpleasant sex jokes
-anger the corrupt town leaders of Paradise, MA with his refusal to play by the rules
-shoot some fucker
-say a few sarcastic but loving things to his dog
-end up being right about everything.

Jesse Stone: Thin Ice fulfilled all of my hopes. And then some. You want details? I got details.

Jesse Stone shoots some fucker (non-fatally) in the first scene of the movie, after the fucker shoots Jesse and his buddy (non-fatally). I felt like saying to the fucker, "Fucker, is this your first Jesse Stone flick? Don't you know you don't just shoot Jesse Stone and think you'll get away with it?"

Later, Jesse Stone beats up a bad guy in the bathroom, right after the guy takes a dump. In the middle of the beatdown, the guy asks to see Jesse's badge. Jesse shows it to him. This seems all wrong but Jesse Stone knows a bit more about policework than I do, thank you very much. The only real problem with this scene is that the guy he beats up/down turns out to be the fucker he shot earlier, so you end up feeling sort of cheated. Like you want one more beatdown or shooting or something. Oh shit, I forgot -- he does beat the same guy down again later, so it is two beatdowns and one shooting. All the same guy though.

Jesse engages in painfully bad banter with a medium-sexy internal affairs broad, which sends a clear signal to the audience that bangin' time is fast approaching. He soon bangs her (off camera) and when they are done, he goes to the kitchen and gets a scotch for himself and a coffee for her. They engage in more bad banter as she gets dressed. He sits on the bed drinking scotch in his underwear and indicates verbally that he would like to bang her again at some point in the future. He promises her that his seemingly prodigious banging abilities are but a fraction of what they would be if he hadn't recently been shot in the arm. She tells him she is more than satisfied then leaves, which you kind of think is what he wanted her to do. Unfortunately, this is the only chick he bangs in this one, although he later asks a hot nun out to dinner and she says she'd like that very much. I'm pretty sure he will bang her in the next installment.

Jesse drinks a lot of scotch in this one. After all, he is a recovering alcoholic. He does make some inroads in his attempt to quit, with some help from his ex-cop shrink, played with uncharacteristic restraint by William Devane. Seeing Jesse in therapy is a reminder to the audience that Jesse is way more than a rugged chief of police who is right about everything all along, he is a three dimensional character with feelings and doubts and insecurities. However, he is still a rugged bastard at heart, and he constantly snaps at Devane and keeps the shrink at arm's length. Their bad banter reaches an oddly homoerotic climax when Jesse asks the shrink if he'd like to have dinner sometime, and the shrink says he'd like that very much. They may have sex off camera, it is left for us to decide, but if they do it's just two rugged straight bastards having sex, it is NOT GAY.

Selleck is handsome throughout the film. This does not seem to impress the shitheads who run the local government in Paradise, MA, as they keep bothering him and getting in his way. Luckily, Selleck always has his trusty pooch to keep him company when times get hard. His pooch died in the last movie I saw but I think I missed a couple and he must have gotten a new pooch. This new one: trusty as hell.

There are a lot of other exciting toppings that got thrown onto my slice of Jesse Stone pizza, things I didn't necessarily see coming, such as:

-a subplot about a grieving mother whose child may or may not be alive (Jesse's got a hunch)
-another subplot (or is it the main plot?) about a teenage boy who might be banging his saxophone teacher
-another subplot about a speed trap
-Selleck cutting down a tree with a chainsaw (this could be considered pornography for women over 70)
-Selleck teaching other cops how to be cops
-Selleck kissing the internal affairs chick on the neck in her office -- in plain view of the rest of her officemates -- so she will print out confidential information for him
-Jesse getting suspended without pay
-Jesse refusing to carry a cell phone
-Jesse talking in great detail about his service revolver and ambidextrous safeties and all sorts of gun geek crap that seems to serve no other purpose than to please gun geeks
-Jesse making things right in the end, even at great cost to his personal and professional life

Basically, it's got all the things you look for in a Jesse Stone film, but unfortunately the plot of this one is both kind of lame and kind of confusing. There's a lot going on but none of it is overly dramatic or tense. It almost feels like it's setting the stage for the next Jesse Stone film.

Even though these movies are based on a series of books that Selleck didn't write, he is the Executive Producer and I sense that the movies reflect his views on what is right and proper in the universe. I get the feeling that Selleck's personal philosophy took shape in the 80's, when he was banging even more frequently as Magnum, P.I.

From what I can gather, here are some of his core beliefs:

-Guns are good, as long as good people have them. When bad people have them, ahhh, not so good. Yikes, scary. Can I get back to you on that one?
-When you are attracted to someone, you should at the very least try to bang them.
-Only follow the rules you agree with.
-Women are inferior to men when it comes to solving crimes, issuing beatdowns, and seducing ex-cop shrinks. But for banging purposes, they'll do.
-If you don't have a moustache, you're not really even in the game.
-The people in small towns are ultimately better than the people in big cities, but small towns often elect corrupt community leaders.
-There is a supernatural force in the universe (otherwise how do you explain that moustache?)
-Stay true to your ideals no matter what Rosie O'Donnell says
-Cell phones and all modern gadgets are useless and distract us from what is real and important in life.

It seems like a dated philosophy, almost embarrasingly so, but then you think about it and you're like, dammit Selleck, it works for you. Don't change. Sure, some people can adapt to evolving tastes and sensibilities -- David Bowie comes to mind -- but Nolan Ryan didn't stop throwing fastballs when he turned 40. It was what he knew and it was what we wanted from him. AND IT STILL WORKED. So he kept on bringing the heat until he just physically couldn't do it anymore.

Onward, Jesse Stone.