by Dan Kennedy
I try to move in and make a comment to Ms. Chocolate Chip. I lie to myself that my late-in-the-game outgoing gestures of nervous goodwill toward her are some kind of spiritual progress, a sign of enlightenment or something. She stands watching the screen intently, drinking from a small clear plastic cup, holding something small and square on a napkin that she’s maybe planning on nibbling on. It looks like, maybe, a little puff pastry? Filled with cheese? Jesus, don’t ask her about the snack. The last thing I need is another food-based showdown like when I met her way back on my first day here. I stand next to her, also watching the screen intently. I wait a few beats, sizing up the video with a quiet grin. This is the time. She is thinking the same things I am. Say something.
“Oh, boy. Jeeez. It’s kind of strange, isn’t it? I mean, standing here, sure it’s funny, watching and everything, but at the end of the day our commitment to artists is . . .”
“Shhhh!”
“Oh. Whoops.”
“Here it is, you guys!” she hollers out to the room.
Something’s about to happen on screen. The anonymous eighties female rappers have bid a sassy farewell to Smoking Big-Haired Cynical Hooker Alley and are now speeding along in a car. Speeding and rapping, driving playfully reckless as images of streets and traffic are projected behind them. I’m not sure what they’re running from. One of the hookers could’ve freaked them out, perhaps. I try to discreetly strike up a conversation again. Quietly this time, just between us.
“You know, I wonder where they’re driving to and if the . . .”
“Okay, get ready everyone!” she screams.
“Yeah, okay . . .”
“Keep your eyes on the cop when they get pulled over, everybody!” she hollers again.
Jesus, right in my ear, with the yelling. I think my equilibrium is permanently damaged. I bet if I try to walk away in a straight line, I’ll just be walking in tight circles around the snack table.
The car lights up with red and blue lighting. The images projected behind the car start slowing down, then stop. The rapper girls look like everyone looks when they get pulled over, but sexier. Kind of like, “We’re getting pulled over, but we’re just gonna go ahead and let this police officer know that we’re an intoxicating combination of playful, angry, and sexy.”
When the cop walks up to the car, everyone at the party screams. It’s this big-shot executive from upstairs. The guy who signed Twisted Sister and Kid Rock and matchbox twenty. (Note to editor: please leave that last band name all lowercase, otherwise their manager calls up screaming about how their name is to appear all lowercase. And I mean SCREAMING. Trust me on this.) Somebody unmutes the TV just in time to hear him deliver his line about how the rapper girls were speeding and how he’ll need to see their licenses. Then everyone starts laughing so loudly that I can’t hear how the sexy anonymous rappers get fresh with him, but it looks like they got off the hook. The video ends, the party chatter resumes, and me and Ms. Chocolate Chip are finally able to have a moment to chat and catch up with each other a bit.
“Ah, that was funny. Classic, right? Hey, great party, by the way. Good move. Hope you do it again next year.”
“I will, if any of us are even still working here.”
Okay, then.
AUTO FLASH AND THE DARKNESS
First of all, I don’t understand this band called the Darkness. I’ve watched the band’s video about a thousand times in the process of going about making a television commercial for them, and I’m still confused. The lead singer is a guy in a fluorescent pink dancewear unitard thing that is cut low and hints at showing you the flames tattooed above his penis. The bassist looks sort of like every janitor of every public school I ever attended, save for the fact that his shtick in the video we’re watching seems to be walking like a robot and wearing a Kamikaze headband. And in the video, while the singer wrestles on the floor near a ring of flames with a woman who looks like Satan — far away from the big tentacles of the space alien thing that’s trying to kill them all — the lead guitarist (no leotard, headband, or shtick — that must’ve been a tense band meeting) simply plays long solos and casually takes note of the ensuing battle. Your first thought, if you’re anything like me, is that this is some kind of post–Spinal Tap brilliant rock-and-roll irony. Your initial reaction is kind of like, “Ha! That’s awesome!” with this sort of half grin on your face, as if you’re in on the joke. Right, but then you hear how pissed off they get when anyone in the office assumes that this stuff they’re doing is some kind of funny joke, and then what are you supposed to think about them?
There’s the story floating around here about when the band showed up at the offices once and someone in the A&R department basically made a comment something to the extent of, “You’re totally in character, even in a meeting. I love it!” The confused and upset reaction from the band and their management prompted much company-wide discussion about how the man in the hot pink spandex jumpsuit barely concealing his fiery crotch, and his friend the robotic janitor man, are not being ironic. They are being serious, they have sold loads of records in the U.K., and they should be treated accordingly.
They’re coming around here again, promoting the record, plus they’ve got a hit single in the States right now. They’ll be doing an in-store performance in Times Square at the Virgin Megastore. And the usual e-mail gets sent out to everyone in the company, saying you should show up and support the in-store performance. I usually dodge these e-mails when they come around, especially when they ask us to stand out in front of MTV holding signs up in the air as if we’re fans waiting outside for whatever Time Warner recording artist is showing up that day to promote something. I read those e-mails and wonder how this is really fooling anyone. I mean, do people walking around in Times Square see the likes of us standing there with the perfectly preprinted “homemade” signs and think, “Oh, I guess the young pop artist that’s coming to MTV’s studio today is not only a hit with the fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds, but it seems they have quite a contingency of die-hard fans who are thirty-one- to fifty-year-old office workers.” Anyway, a lot of people from the office are going to the Darkness in-store performance, and I figure I probably should, too. Especially with all the talk of a merger and people getting laid off. It’s probably a really good time to start becoming a gung-ho employee. In my head I’m imagining best-case scenarios like this:
New Owner: “I think we can fire most of the marketing department, don’t you, Investment Partner?”
Investment Partner: “Not so fast. Did you see how enthusiastic and supportive Employee Number 2991 was at the Darkness in-store performance? He was even taking pictures.”
See, I’ve recently bought this camera. A great camera, I think. Not some huge pro camera or anything, but a pretty nice, okay, yes, totally automatic point-and-shoot camera. And the idea in my head, unfortunately, is that I will show up at the event, get some kind of press credentials from one of the people I work with, and take great pictures of this band that will in turn make investors and analysts realize I’m quite an asset to the company and should be kept on after the sale and takeover. So, off I go, carrying one of these little I LOVE NEW YORK plastic bags that stores use around here; it’s got my film in it, and in my other hand I’m carrying my little point-and-shoot camera.
I walk into the Virgin Megastore in Times Square and get to the stairs, where I immediately bump into Jackie, a very kind, hard-working foot soldier from the video production department who has propped up many a glorified middle manager’s success; perfect.
I try to indicate that I’ll need some extra access to this event by holding my plastic shopping bag up a little bit.
“What’s this? Do you need me to hold this or . . . ?”
“No, it’s my film.”
“Are you shooting band stills?”
“Well, no, not officially. Yes. I am, yeah.”
Jackie gets on her walkie-talkie.
“I need one laminate — photo access �
� to the front of the main stairs, please. Copy?”
The walkie-talkie crackles to life with a reply. “Copy that, we’re coming to you with one laminate for photographer.”
My eyes dart over to the photo pit. Holy Christ, those guys in there are serious. There must be a hundred of them, all jockeying aggressively for position, all with super long lenses and vests with a million pockets loaded with film and whatever other accessories you can get for a camera like theirs. For mine all you can get is a better case made out of soft leather — it’s a little better than the case it comes with, so I sprung for it — and you can also get this mini tripod that fits on the bottom, neither of which have required me to get a vest like the ones all of these guys have. They have light meters hanging around their necks. Good one, never thought of that.
“You know what, actually, Jackie? I might only be doing photo, uh, shooting for, like, a second.”
Into her walkie-talkie: “Correction. I need one photo access plus one VIP all-access. Thank you.”
To me: “That way you can go wherever you want. Not just the pit.”
The passes arrive, and for a minute I daydream about how many other concerts I wish I had these passes for. But tickets are a joke at work. The only people who seem get tickets to shows are the mega-senior bigshots from way upstairs. Anyone else, forget it. Although, one time I bought a huge bottle of expensive booze for an intern and he got me a set of tickets to a surprise club show by Foo Fighters from somebody across town at RCA.
Passes go around neck, and I go around to the photographer pit.
“Hi, guys.”
There is, it turns out, a look that an entire pit of grizzled New York newspaper photographers can all affect at the same time in order to convey that they’re not above using physical force with the likes of you.
I barely take my camera out of the optional soft leather case and dig into my plastic shopping bag for a roll of film and they give me the aforementioned look.
Okay, I get it. God.
I don’t even bother getting past the periphery of them. I put my “equipment” into my coat pocket and head out of there, off and up to the left. Past a blocked-off aisle of comedy DVDs on sale, past some books about reality TV shows, through a display of T-shirts, hats, and condoms (Goddamn, I thought they said this place was a record store) and around a stack of cases for the band’s guitars, and . . . okay, wait . . . I’m on stage. The side of it, actually, next to two big racks containing about two dozen of the band’s guitars. Jesus, how many guitars do you need to play “Get Your Hand Off My Woman” and “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”?
I look up from the guitars and right across from me, on the other side of the stage, in a glass room that looks to be some kind of manager’s office turned into a VIP suite, is every one of my bosses looking across the stage. Seems I’ve positioned myself right in their line of sight, directly on the other side of the stage. Look: there’s Dick, and Ms. Chocolate Chip, a gaggle of copresidents and cochairmen, the band’s management; everyone who’s anyone, really. We’re locked in a kind of long-distance direct stare, as if the distance across the stage is just enough to make each of us wonder if we’re looking at each other. Quick. Think. Why are you up here? Justify it. I slowly take my camera out of my pocket, remove it from its soft leather carrying case, and do some autofocusing. I fire off a few shots with auto flash and the anti–red eye feature, even though there’s nobody on stage yet.
Suddenly the band is on stage. All I can hear myself thinking — in a voice strangely like my mother’s for some reason — is, Oh, my. Whoops. You never realize it, but being so close to the running around, the posing mid-guitar solo, and the loud yelling for the audience to “put your hands together” — it’s all a little too close for comfort. Like being cramped right up against the weird guy on the subway singing for spare change.
I’m on the far left side of the stage, sort of leaning/sitting against a waist-high case of cables, right next to the rack of guitars that their roadie guy will reach into between songs, pick one from, then tune it and run it out to the guitarist onstage. The lead singer looks over to the guitarist to make a rockin’ face in appreciation of his big blistering rock-and-roll solo. He turns, he makes his eyes kind of squinted and puckers up his lips as if he’s saying, “Ooooh!” I’m, you know, looking in that direction. He seems to look past the guitarist, and for a split second his puckered-up, squinting rock-and-roll face turns into a bit of a “who’s that guy on the side of the stage over there” face. I smile politely. In hopes of explaining things a bit, I pull my little camera up to my eye and take a couple of shots of him.
The guys in the photo pit are giving me that evil look of theirs. With all of the ruckus, I can’t tell if the bosses are all still staring straight at me; I looked once right when the guys in the band started making the audience put their hands up over their heads and clap to the beat again. As far as I could tell when I looked, everyone on the other side of the stage behind the glass was sipping little clear plastic cups of wine or little green bottles of mineral water, eating cheese and grapes from the catering trays. A roadie runs by me with a guitar that he hands to the lead singer, just in time for him to start playing his own blistering rock-and-roll guitar solo. Then another roadie appears right down in front of the stage and gives the lead singer playing the guitar solo a tired look of, “Okay, ready? Let’s do our little thing we do.” I’m still leaning up against the case of cables on the left of the stage, and the lead singer walks up to the front edge of the stage and lets his legs fall, one after the other, over the roadie’s shoulders, chicken-fight style. The roadie then walks through the crowd with the singer on his shoulders, and, thankfully, the rest of the crowd now look as awkward as me about being too close to the action. I take a second to enjoy having a little breathing room up here with the attention off the stage. After a pass through the crowd, the roadie backs up against the stage like a tired, patient father carrying a kid who’s starting to get too big for this game. The lead singer hops off of him and runs to the mic like a kid getting off a bike and running inside for dinner.
The band finishes the song with a huge, extremely loud, picture-perfect stadium-rock grand finale. As guitars are still fading, and ears are still ringing, they all meet at the front edge of the stage, join hands and raise their arms in triumph, then they all thrust downward into a bow at exactly the same time, repeat it once, then walk off stage waving a casual wave, well aware of the hurricane that they created. I make my way out of the store and into the middle of Times Square. I stand there in the stuttering glow of the city’s schizophrenic fit of neon billboards, right in the center of one of the greatest cities in the world, where anything is possible and so many people’s hopes and dreams have come true. I am hoping and dreaming that my bosses thought I was enthusiastic and supportive.
WE WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN. I’M KIDDING. OBVIOUSLY, WE’LL GET FOOLED AGAIN
Here’s a good riddle:
Q: Without using your watch or any personal consumer electronics, how can you tell how much time has passed while you sit in the same meetings time after time, never sure of what they accomplish, in an office building that you come to every day even though you feel it’s impossible to affect change in a large corporate setting, precisely because succeeding in a corporate environment is based largely on blending in?
A: Look in the bathroom mirror at home this weekend and notice that you are visibly a year older, yet again.
I know you’re probably saying, “That’s not such a good riddle, Mr. Bad Attitude.” Or maybe, “That’s a terrible riddle, Mr. Better-Get-with-the-Program.” But it’s the kind of riddle that springs to mind after walking past a huge sign that says TIME & LIFE every morning, thinking about how both of them are flying by, then riding an elevator up in order to sit at a desk or conference table all day again.
Welcome to a very special edition of the sales and marketing meeting. Everyone has taken seats, the entire company this time, top to
bottom. We fall into a caste system something like inmates in a prison mess hall; if you’re big, you take a seat near the head of the table anchored in next to a co-something. If you’re just sort of big, you take a seat at the table a few down from that. If you’re middling or anywhere else on the food chain, you sit in the folding temporary chairs along the wall.
Everyone is talking, Palm Piloting, etc. Then the last few big guys file in. Hey, no way — check it out. Look! It’s that guy! I’ve seen him on the cover of all the trade magazines that have been covering the sale and merger! They keep saying he’s the guy the new owner will make chairman of the entire Warner Music Group. I guess it’s official then; this guy’s the new chairman. Which must mean that the deal went through and our new owner has officially bought us. Everything’s changing so fast.
He’s tall. Maybe six foot four, handsome, graying cropped hair, a solid tan. He looks like the next chairman of a music company, the same way they said Harding looked like the next president of the United States. Do you ever wonder how much more would come your way if you were a little bit taller with slightly more symmetrical facial features? I mean, not so good-looking that it would throw you into a crazy sexed-up tailspin of quadrupled income and bad decisions, but just a little more attractive. Just, say, 20 percent more attractive — enough to get maybe an extra 20 percent of the good things in life and career. An extra three days of paid vacation, maybe; a 20 percent tip added on to each paycheck, one in twenty people going out of their way to flirt with you; a 20 percent edge on getting the promotion. Have you ever really just sat and thought about how it would change things? Well, my advice to you is, don’t sit there thinking about it while you’re staring right at the new chairmen of the entire company, because it looks like you’re enamored with him, or challenging him, or something.
