My Job

The job I am working right now is a document review - a company needs a bunch of people to read contracts and write certain info for the contracts so they can pay them out or collect money on them. It's all part of a bankruptcy and similar to projects I did before film school. Picture a big conference room with boxes of documents, groups of people going through the documents and putting the in piles based on whether they have all the information, missing one piece of info, two pieces of info, etc. It's really easy, but pays awfully well because the presupposition is that you have some legal background. Most folks are former lawyers, people in transition, trying to pass the bar, out of work paralegals, or other forms of shysters - wannabe filmmakers, etc. The crowd is hilarious and I often feel as though I've stumpled upon a summer camp. All we do all day is read the documents and chit-chat about all sort of things...the summer camp reference is simply about a big group of unknown people coming together, getting to know each other pretty well in a really short period of time and then going back to their regular lives.

About half the group are church-going African American's. A group of generally overweight African American ladies lament Steve Harvey being taken off the radio, saying, "I NEEEED to laugh in the morning. I ain't even trying to listen to music." I politely suggested listening to Howard Stern. The 50 year old lady, who openly admits to being in love with Johnnie Cochran, turns to me, "Oooh baby, we living in different worlds, you know. They about four, five, different worlds up in here."

The scrawny jewish dude, the most vocal, and irritating, offers the suggestion to listening to KPFK, the communist radio station, 90.7. This guy spends most of the day whining about the WTO and George Bush and is the most widely disliked member of the group. He seems like a nice guy, but he is utterly insufferable to listen to talk. He stole some post it notes from another table and one of the African American ladies (not the one in love with Johnnie Cochran, but the one interested in having a baby, artificially inseminated, if necessary) got pissed. He replied that the supplies ought to be common and shared. She said that he should get his own post it notes from the supply center and quit stealing hers. He refused to apologize and said that he was working here first and brought the group supplies from the supply center to the group - she wouldn't have the post it notes if it weren't for him. She called him annoying.

I spoke with the scrawny guy (who not surprisingly is into documentary) a bit about documentary filmmaking, actually he asked me some questions, I gave him answers that he didn't listen to, about shooting formats, DV versus Beta, HD vs. Film, etc, but he used the opportunity to basically talk about how he know about composition. His problem: he is incapable of listening, all he does is spout off.

Today my table partner didn't show up. She comes in progressively later each day, first 8:30am, then 9:30am, then 10:30am, then 12:30pm, 2:30pm (on Sunday), and today she didn't even bother. She is this funny, boy crazy, Mexican girl who on the first day was bossing everyone around, which made her an automatic target of my jokes. We were talking about *sex* (of course, what else can people talk about) and she says something about America being obsessed with sex and look at how much we followed the Monica Lewinsky thing. I said, "What else should we be paying attention to?" She says very quickly and seriously: "The OZONE layer!" My other table partner and I started falling out of our seats laughing, just by the way she said it. Her phone message, "Hi, this is ----, I'm not here to pick up the phone, OR, I didn't want to talk to you. Leave a message."

She keeps offering me ginsing tablets and I read the bottle the other day, "Not FDA approved." "Oh, so what, it's all political, a conspiracy, they don't want you to eat ginsing, to make money, it all societal." She rambled on using parts of almost any cliche she could remember. Hilarious stuff.

One of the more interesting stories I've been listening to is this girl who looks like an undergraduate sororiety girl (she's the most attractive of the group) talk about her newborn child that her parents are taking care of. Apparently, she is a lawyer, been practicing for four years, got pregnant and the guy runs off, has the baby and is now trying to work out what she is going to do with her life. It's quite bizarre, cause this girl is small and I swear to god could easily pass for a sororeity girl at USC, just completely like a million people I grew up with - yet she is a complelely single mother and is going to raise this child. Her parents are in town taking care of the baby and she went out partying one of the weekend nights. Obviously, I respect this need to party (she probably hasn't for nearly a year), but at the same time I'm thinking - man, you have a child and you're out partying? Didn't Chris Rock warn about this? Of course, it's none of my business, but it's weird.

Lastly, there is my other table partner, a young African American lady, only about 24 who graduated from Notre Dame, who will talk about nothing but relationships. Her favorite line to start a sentence, "Let's talk about RELATIONSHIPS and how..."

Funny stuff, but I start to zone out a lot when she speaks. Nice, smart girl, though.