Jobber-Walky

Today was a day of successes, failures and to-be-determineds. It began with the acceptance of failure: I am not currently being paid to do anything significantly writing- or film-related... in fact, I am not really being paid at all. Theoretically I have at least 4 jobs, but they're mostly for show. As far as I'm concerned, my resume is just a piece of paper with unicorns printed all over it.

"We're going on welfare, Charrrrrrlie!"

This led to a successful notion:

perhaps I ought to apply for jobs!

I recalled that Monday as I had been walking around Chinatown, I had seen a "Help Wanted" sign in a window for a bakery...

Yes, I realize I've never worked in a bakery before.
Yes, I realize I don't speak Chinese.
Yes, I realize that we are all inconsequential specks occupying little more than a temporal blip in the vast expanse of the universe.

But I figured, what the hey, might as well. So I went in there and left a name and phone number. The people who worked there spoke fluent English, which was promising. I told them I could do cashier work, be a baker's assistant, or work as a cake decorator. Cake Boss has taught me many things, but the most exciting discovery was learning that bakeries will actually hire artists to frill and deck out their pastries.

Or in this case DICK out their pastries... HEY-O

It's like being paid to be an artist, except you can eat the art. I think I had a dream about that once. It was a good dream, until I woke up and realized I had chewed up a bar of soap.

So we'll see what happens there... I also applied to a couple ambiguous Craigslist writing jobs, and tailored a cover letter and resume for a film CEO assistantship: "Oh yeah, I assist, like, ALL the time. Just yesterday, I was at the grocery store looking at grapes, and this lady asked me whether purple or green tasted better. I assisted her in her decision by saying that the purple kind are better, but the green ones are cheaper and they're almost as good so you might as well just get those instead. Yup, you could say assisting is just sort of built into who I am and what I do. I should also mention that I have more than 6 years' experiences both holding AND transporting hot beverages."

At this juncture, all of these job applications are to-be-determineds, but we'll find out whether any prove to be successes in the next week or so.

Aside from applying to these few "worth-a-shot" kinda deals, I also had a productive day picking out a piano book for a new student I'll be tutoring. She's like 6... I'ma be honest, I have no idea where to begin teaching a 6-year-old how to play piano, since I'm not even sure if she's got the alphabet down yet. But I found this beginner's book in the butt-fucking-nowhere district of K-Town and it's pretty step-by-step, so it should be useful in giving me a good starting point. And the book was surprisingly cheap, AND I got a store discount for being a teacher ("Tutor," she mumbled into her hand). I'm being reimbursed for the thing anyway, but I'm still counting that as a success. As a Jew, I'm biologically predisposed to get slightly aroused from bargain prices. TMI? NEI, if you ask me.

From the music store I tried to find a Big Lots because I had to return a prop I had purchased from there for the film shoot. The first one I went to was in downtown, which was my bad. Completing the simplest shopping errand in downtown is like trying to climb up a giant piece of barbed wire. You have to navigate through congested 5-lane streets while grappling with the overwhelming paranoia that you'll make the wrong turn down a one-way, and then once you get to the store there's no parking lot... there's a parking FORTRESS that involves counter-intuitive entrances, several stories of unavailable spaces (except on the Saharan rooftop), tickets that need to be validated or else you get charged like $45 for every 15 minutes you're there, and some kind of fuck-you-for-shopping-at-Walgreen's fee for being there ANYWAY.

I dealt with this for the first time at City Target, which is essentially a gargantuan Target in downtown that's surrounded by a giant wall I can only imagine was inspired by the PanOpticon. So the second I rolled up on 7th street and saw the big "PARKING -->" sign for Big Lots, I dipped the fuck out of there and went to the next closest one, which was about 20 minutes away in some unsavory neighborhood off of Slauson. Of course, it wasn't until I arrived at Big Lots numba 2 that I realized I had everything I needed, except for the receipt.

As you might guess, this was one tally for the "failure" column.

BUTITTURNEDINTOASUCCESS because wonderfully sketchy areas like that tend to have really cheap grocery stores sprinkled about. I hit up a "Superior Grocers" because they always leave promotional ads in my mailbox and I stare longingly at those 33 cent per lb. tomatoes.

Git in mah sandwich.

And 20 cent avocados? More holla for your dolla.

Will they be good, or are they just giant pits with peeling around them? To-be-determined.

Oh! Another success! I remembered to park on the right side of the street for street sweeping tomorrow. Who's getting fined $51? Not this chick.

Unless I forget to move my car to the other side of the street tomorrow... to-be-determined.

Final recountings of the day: I'm not sure how to evaluate it necessarily, but I'm tempted to put it in the "success" category because it was so enjoyable. My flatmate came home after being gone all day (he BIKED all the way from the NEPTUNE-LOVING BEACH), and he was all kinds of chatty. He's a really nice dude, but he's rarely talkative or... around..., so it was a pleasant surprise.

We talked for a while, but you know that moment where you're talking to someone and it's going really well, and you're positive you've just made a lifelong friend, and you think to yourself, "You know, gosh darn it, I really am a likable individual," and then you realize the person you're talking to is drunk?

Welp. Somewhere between the beach and Chinatown he had had a few drinks and somehow rode home on his bike. Is it bad that I respect and like him even more now? I'll take it, flatmate bonding is flatmate bonding. Dude is seven layers of awesome, and a total goofball. We hung out in the kitchen and talked for a while, I made tea, it was great. I found out that he's like a hardcore cross-country biker, and that he works at a certain extremely trendy/popular cafe that I won't reveal in order to give my flattie some semblance of online privacy. All I'll say is that it's an effing delicious 24-hour place on Spring Street that I stumbled to and from drunk as hell on New Year's. It was a falafel wrap unlike any other.

So... drunk roomie discount in the near future?

He even asked me if I would want to get a cat. O_O

Yes plz right meow?

He might have been drunk but I'm holding him to it.

So let's see, add up the 1's, carry the 7... overall, it looks like today was pretty successful! YEAH existence.