THIS MUST BE WHAT HELL IS LIKE.

With a title like that, I must be writing about my new job, right? Nope. While I have nothing particularly nice to say about temping for MoMA, this entry is dedicated to the subway ride home two days ago. There are some really interesting characters sharing the mass transit system, and by “interesting characters,” I mean, “horrible dregs of humanity.”

First there was the homeless woman begging for money. Now, being homeless does not alone make someone a dreg of humanity. I understand that sh*t happens, that much of life is beyond our individual control. For example, a small number of cartels control the production and distribution of crack cocaine, and as a result, the street price of crack cocaine tends to fluctuate. If only a strong regulating body existed to keep the price of crack cocaine from fluctuating, perhaps homeless people would have to beg less in order to raise the necessary currency to purchase crack cocaine. Ideally, they’d raise enough crack cocaine money so they wouldn’t have to beg me. Not that the homeless woman on the train was begging money for crack cocaine. I didn’t really ask her.

However, I did recognize her from the many hundreds of times during the past few years that she went around the trains collecting for the U.H.O. You know the U.H.O., don’t you? Of course you do! It’s the “United Homeless Organization.” They provide food, toiletries, and valuable information to the homeless. Supposedly, anyway. I mean, they claim to have a soup kitchen and everything, but their web site provides no information and the links don’t really go anywhere. Also, panhandling on the subways, regardless of who you claim to represent, is supposed to be a crime. That’s why you see the Salvation Army Santas outside the subway stations, not on the actual subways.

So homeless woman was no longer collecting for the U.H.O., but openly stating that any money you give would go directly to her. I guess she finally decided to cut out the middleman.

Anyway, I’m on the Q-train heading home to Sheepshead Bay, and like every weekday afternoon, it’s packed. I’m standing there next to the door, and I hear music from somewhere in the car. At first I think it’s someone’s discman, but clearly, it’s a radio. I look around—so do a lot of curious people around me—but we can’t figure out where it’s coming from. Then comes the singing.

I should put singing in quotations, like “singing,” because I think it’s debatable just what that futile attempt at melody was. Instead of “singing,” perhaps a more accurate term would be “torture.” It was boiler rumbling belched up through phlegm-laden pipes. Imagine the sounds that an asthmatic goose who had its genitals caught in a mousetrap would make. But it was the sheer, admittedly ballsy attempt of whoever was master of that horrible voice to sing along with the music from the radio that I found surprisingly funny.

Uhhh Ehhh Aa-en ma HAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!
Uh ga lalala hum mah Whoawhoawhoawhoawhoa…

For the fifteen-to-twenty torturous minutes it takes for the Q-local train to lumber from Dekalb Avenue to Church, I had to endure “Muh safahlalamuh uh fuh huhuhuhmuh huh. Hah AAAHGUHRUHUHDUHLA!” I finally figured out where it was coming from. Black guy, probably in his late-forties or fifties. Malcolm X glasses and green sweater, face like a raisin. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Phil X! Don’t write unflattering descriptions of mentally-challenged people with speech impediments.” You think he sang like that because of a speech impediment? Wrong! Right after his quote-unquote singing, he started muttering, and I could make out everything he said just fine. Unfortunately, it was mostly angry nonsense, mostly about how his sister got hit in the head with a “12 oz bottle of Pepsi” when she was little. Then she grew up and got cancer.

“Now, everybody knows she got cancer ‘cuz of that 12 oz bottle of Pepsi that she got hit with when she was little. But tell that to all them m*therf*ckin doctors, all them m*therf*ckin lawyers. She got hit in the head with a 12 oz bottle of Pepsi! How you know none of that had nothin to do with her getting cancer? I know none of you care, you got yer fancy pants jobs. You a lawyer, schoolteacher, pizza delivery guy.”

It just went on-and-on, a lot of it directed at the Pepsi-Cola company. I have no idea what anti-Pepsi rants have to do with singing really badly on the subway, unless the guy just wanted us to feel his pain. If that was his objective, mission accomplished, pal, because I was ready to smash my head bloody against the window.

The guy finally got off the train at Church Avenue. His last words were, “Don’t believe everything you read!” (Especially about a 12 oz bottle of Pepsi, would be my guess.) To his credit, I expected the bad-singing-on-the-train episode to inevitably lead to some kind of extortion. You know, a handout. But anti-Pepsi man did no such thing. He got off at his stop, leaving everyone in the train relieved. I give you credit, Mr. Anti-Pepsi Man. That day, you challenged all of us not to believe our immediate perceptions, and you backed that up by not being a beggar when everyone expected it of you. Sir, you can scream and b*tch on my train anytime. Especially since I am a Coca-cola man.

Well, it’s two in the a.m. on a Monday morning. Not only am I supposed to start a new sh*t job at MoMA today, but I have a final exam for a proofreading class this same evening. Why the hell am I not sleeping? Because my old buddy Insomnia has decided to pay me a visit. As he playfully pokes fun at my deepest insecurities, I wish to high heaven he were flesh and blood, that I might take a long, sharp steak knife and sever his head from his shoulders with a wound ear-to-ear. But Insomnia is a spectre, and worse, horribly talkative. As a guest in my room tonight, he is privileged to speak. As a thing of shadow and the stillness of the twilight hour, I am powerless to make him shut-up.

But writing about it helps, kind of.

I can’t remember what I was dreaming, for the brief hour-and-a-half before Insom shook me violently awake. All I know is, after snapping awake, slightly damp from perspiration, I had this overwhelming urge to pick a hardcover book off the floor and smash my head with it, over and over. I didn’t, of course. But I felt an overpowering desire to. What angry spirits infected my slumber, and had brought me to such an agitated state? Are they the same grim spectres that keep me awake now? Insomnia imbibes some warm tea with me, but keeps such revelations to himself.

What have Insom and I been discussing between us? There is the new job, which should not improve my marketability beyond, “Can certainly wear a buttoned shirt.” Is stagnation the final destination of all life, or simply that of the English major? Looking back to a year ago, when I was finishing up at the Social Register, is this where I saw myself 12 months hence? Still living the life of the job-hopper, still having doors of long-term employment slammed in my face?

A year ago, I had a versatile excuse to fall back on: The economy is bad, and jobs are hard to come by. Is it still as bad today? What about all those reports I keep hearing, the “positive economic indicators?” Large multi-colored arrows on the tube that have pointed upwards as of late. Shouldn’t jobs be more plentiful now, especially to a college grad from a school like N.Y.U.?

See, it was easy to settle for data entry and cr*p jobs when the country was in recession. When twenty-year vets of companies were being laid off, of course it meant finding meaningful, or even long-term work, would be extremely tough. But here’s my big concern: What if, now that the economy is growing again, I still can’t find a decent job—Decent meaning it lasts longer than three months, with the remote possibility of benefits? Not because the economy is out of shape, but simply because no one wants to hire an English major from the class of 2002. I’m not running around yelling that the sky is falling. I’ve had many more interviews for jobs and internships during the last month, but something’s always been missing from my resume, something that keeps me from being hired. Just because the economy is expanding again, it doesn’t mean Company A is on the lookout only for someone who “pays attention to details.” They want their potential employee to be both meticulous, as well as veterans with certain MS applications. Why? Because they laid off some of their MS people, as well as the trainers. So why hire three new people if they can fill all three needs with one applicant?

So perhaps it is nothing short of my destiny to work three-month temp jobs the rest of my life, never moving out of my grandparents’ house. Or, I can take some classes, work my way up to an expert-level MS Office user. Then maybe everything will change again. I had an uncle who told me all I needed to do was get a college degree. “Just prove that you can learn,” he said. “Companies will train you with all the rest.” He must be the only HR manager in the country who follows that practice, because no one has taken that approach with me. My dad, meanwhile, eschewed a different philosophy. “Phil, you cowardly girl,” he would say to me. “Make sure you take lots of business and computer classes in college.” Well, I’ve taken some computer courses, but it’s the job experience I’m missing. And as the old Catch-22 goes, I can’t get job experience unless I get a job, and I can’t get a job unless…

Maybe I should look into a new line of work, like drug dealing. I was watching De Palma’s “Scarface” the other day—I hadn’t seen it in so long and forgot so much about it—and I must say, dealing illegal narcotics certainly seems like a lucrative career choice. I haven’t seen the last third of the film yet, but so far, I can see no cons to being a smack dealer. Or maybe I should relocate somewhere else. Like across the void. Bullet to the head, slashed wrists, leap off a bridge or a library atrium (Not N.Y.U. of course.) Insomnia, your ideas show great vision, but I don’t think they would really solve my problems. And of course, my death would make my parents cry. Probably. Maybe if my corpse is sprinked with freshly-chopped onions, which it should be.

TIME FOR “PHILOSOPHIZING WITH ‘PHIL’”

Well, it’s nearly the end of November, about three months since that fateful day when I learned I wouldn’t be going to Rutgers. Looking back on that ¼ year that went by, I am more certain than ever that it was a blessing in disguise. I’ve spent quite a few afternoons at the public library the last few months, and I’ve learned that the life of a librarian is really quite bad. The pay barely consists of a living wage. Several hours of the day are spent dealing with unruly children, or homeless people, or perverts, or crazies. Or sometimes all four at once. While the librarians I spoke to claimed that their careers greatly satisfied them, the dead look in their eyes, and their barely-concealed desperation when consulting a member of the opposite gender, convinced me otherwise. Certainly, this kind of career black hole wasn’t worth $40,000 in loan monies over the next two years. Librarianism could definitely help me develop my killer rage to its utmost potential, but $40,000 over two years is still rather steep.

Still, I can’t help looking back on the failed Rutgers experiment as part of a larger trend, which I call “Failure, thy name is Phil.” Let’s look back on the last year-and-a-half since my graduation, at some of the ambitions which didn’t work out.

(1) Teaching English in South Korea. (The problem: Not white enough.)

(2) Finding a Full-Time Job. (Bad economy, or perhaps I just lack marketable skills.)

(3) Graduate School at Rutgers. (Alright, I deserved that one. Financial aid fraud is, in all likelihood, a crime.)

(4) Landing an internship which would improve my marketability. (Did I mention Inc. Magazine, which basically gave me the internship, jerked me around for weeks over the start date, then took the internship back at the eleventh hour? Their parent company is G & J, the publishing house that tried to steal Rosie O’Donnell’s magazine out from under her. Ah, what do you expect from Germans? “We’re G & J. Exterminating your souls, if not your bodies.”)

But it wasn’t all that bad, I suppose. There were things I managed to accomplish. For example… … …Hey, I got to work in the Art Department of a feature film! Also, I got to do a lot of dead-end jobs. I’ve got a brand-spanking new dead end job coming up this Monday! Museum of Modern Art! I think it’s data entry, but my temp coordinator called it “Database Proofreading.” Riiiiiiiight. It’s only one month, with absolutely no chance of extension. Wheeeee! And the hours are terrible! This just keeps getting better! And of course, nothing I do there will be marketable to my next employer! Zowee!

Why’d I agree to this shit job? I’ve got the next two weeks off from the movie shoot, so I figure I’ll just work two weeks at MoMA, take their money and quit. That’s if this doesn’t turn out to be data entry from Day One. If that happens, I’m going to take this Bowie knife of mine and kill somebody. Pretty sneaky, huh?

Oh wait! I also got to read lots of books the past three months! I finished Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Ha ha, ho ho, and hee hee.) I re-read Hal Johnson’s classic slab of Americana, Scaevola. Also, I consumed most of Peter Drucker’s Managing the Future, as well as Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia. I also read Robert Whiting’s Tokyo Underworld (Thanks to Adan for the author name.) Which reminds me, I’m supposed to write about the famous sumo wrestler Rikidozan.

OH RIKI, YOU’RE SO FINE.

Rikidozan was Japan’s most famous celebrity up until his death. He had been part of the Japanese Olympic sumo team, but Japan didn’t participate in the 1940 (?) games. (Remind me to check the exact dates.) So throughout the early 1940’s, Rikidozan was more or less another unemployed and overweight guy in Japan. Then Japan lost the War in the Pacific, and Americans descended on the small island like G.I.’s to a brothel, which is what Japan more or less turned into overnight.

America, being the harbinger of freedom that it is, immediately began forcing its values onto Japan. The Japanese psyche, reeling from defeat in the Pacific, was as submissive as a madam in a brothel, which again, is what Japan pretty much became overnight. “How could we have lost to these boorish gaijin?” the Japanese repeatedly asked themselves. Everywhere they looked, they saw their own culture being hedged out by new Western influences, and the self-esteem of the nation took a nosedive. For a while, it looked like there would be no relief. Then came that wonderful drug of drugs: Television.

Sumo wrestling was televised, but ratings were down and many feared that sumo would soon be extinct, like the rest of Japan’s culture. On the other hand, American professional, i.e., “fake” wrestling, was extremely popular. Some genius minister of television or something decided to hold an exhibition match between American wrestling superstars (Actually Z-grade wrestlers from the States who were desperate for work.) and Japanese sumo. This historic match was televised, and the Japanese who tuned in were initially devoid of hope. After all, the Americans looked like giants compared to their sumo counterparts. “Just like the Pacific,” many a Japanese thought to him or herself. “They will defeat us again.”

Then an amazing thing happened. The ringmaster rang the bell to begin the match, and the sumo wrestlers began wailing on the Americans. The American wrestlers probably hadn’t been expecting to be punched, kicked, and chopped at, but that is what they got. The previously-marginalized sumo walloped the Americans into submission, and across Japan, people went wild. It’s like a switch was flicked on, and a nation that had been sleepwalking through the past decade of postwar history suddenly awakened. The Japanese government, realizing the power of televised sumo wrestling matches—ones where the Japanese were victorious, that is—quickly scheduled more. So began Japan’s love affair with sumo wrestling programs, where the ugly Americans, mostly retired G.I.’s who were past their prime, pulled every dirty trick behind the referee’s back, only to be defeated by the pure and heroic Japanese at program’s end.

T.V. sales skyrocketed, and thousands of T.V.-less crammed together in front of 13-inch black and whites in storefront windows. The most popular wrestling program was the Mitsubishi Faitoman Awa (Mitsubishi Fightman Hour—I’m serious, that’s how they spelled it.) and one of its biggest stars was Rikidozan.

While Rikidozan made a name for himself by beating up Americans on scripted television programs, he was still considered one of the world’s greatest sumo, who probably would have gotten a medal of some kind had Japan participated in the Olympic games. Apparently, he must have been a truly charismatic sort as well, for legend has it he was a truck driver who got onto T.V. via an open call. At any rate, the nation loved him, and Rikidozan eventually appeared in movies, commercials, opened his own restaurants, and even found time to be a major leader in the Japanese mafia. He was also as unstable as Jake LaMotta standing on the San Andreas fault, snorting too much cocaine, sleeping with too many women, and picking fights all over town. But he was a tough guy. His death came at the hands of a rival gang member, who inadvertently brushed up against Riki in a restaurant. Riki, who was reportedly several-times drunk already, grabbed the guy and began beating his head in. The gang member stabbed Riki in self-defense.

What’s amazing is that Riki didn’t die from the knife wound. Instead, he walked over to the restaurant bar, got up on stage, and reportedly began singing “Mack the Knife.” The blade was still sticking out of him. The restaurant owner had to beg Riki to go to the hospital. While at the hospital, a doctor gave him an anesthesia he was allergic to, and he died.

But tell me, Scully, was his death a fluke, or part of a larger conspiracy? See, here’s the most amazing thing about Rikidozan: He wasn’t Japanese. Riki’s parents were North Korean, and Riki emigrated to Japan to find work. He didn’t dare reveal his heritage after Japan invaded South Korea, and after the war, his managers warned him that revealing it could cost him millions. And so, Riki’s real heritage remained a secret. Or did it?

Biographers who wrote about Rikidozan after his death claim that he always planned to return to his native North Korea. In fact, the second name Riki chose for himself, when written out in script, closely resembled a Korean word. Korean journalists noticed this; in time, they discovered the truth about him. Then came that fateful visit to North Korea. When Riki and his entourage arrived, they were greeting by cheering crowds, who all held up signs that read “Welcome home” in Korean. The Korean people definitely knew that Japan’s #1 celebrity was actually one of them. The Japanese government, of course, made sure the press didn’t mention the “Welcome home” signs. At the same time, they strongly suspected that Riki was entertaining thoughts of returning to his homeland.

What a disaster that would have been for the Japanese psyche! Their national hero moving to another country, and one that was considered an enemy! For Americans, it would be like Johnny Depp moving to France, only not a good thing. So conspiracy theorists hypothesize that both the knifing, and the death by “complications” at the hospital, were all planned out by the Japanese government. What is the truth? Perhaps we will never know.

Strangely enough, however, the truth did eventually come, and it did not cause a disaster. The Japanese, an amazingly versatile people, have managed to deny to themselves all evidence of their national hero’s not being Japanese. Currently, there are two shrines to Rikidozan, one in Japan, and one in North Korea. He was embraced by two countries as a national hero, which is pretty neat. The following is even neater: Tokyo Underworld was published in the mid-nineties. However, it states that, to this day, there are two different “official histories” for Rikidozan. The North Korean history is Riki’s actual history: He was born in the NK, emigrated to Japan before the war, and became a superstar. The Japanese history, meanwhile, claims that Rikidozan was born to a well-known Japanese sumo master, but was kidnapped by North Koreans and raised in another land. Riki eventually returned to Japan to become a sumo champion, and was adopted by a sumo master, who turned out to be… Riki’s real father!

Rikidozan was the name of Riki’s sumo master, and this master did, in fact, adopt Riki. But come on! Kidnapped? Magically reunited with his original father? It’s like a Shakespearean comedy! But to this day, or at least up to the time Tokyo Underworld was published, this was Rikidozan’s official Japanese history. The Japanese never question it. Rikidozan, a North Korean? Ridiculous. Kidnapped and magically reunited with his family? Well yeah, that sounds likely.

CAN'T EVEN WASTE TIME PROPERLY...

Well, the art department's is off for the next two weeks. Crew is shooting exteriors and up at the Palisades. Flooding has not been a problem, surprisingly. But what do I do in the meantime?

Book I just finished reading: Tokyo Underworld, by this author whose name I can't remember. Remind me to write about famous Japanese sumo wrestler Rikidozan...

“’F’ FOR PHIL,” OR, “HOW I SPENT THE LAST TWO MONTHS”

Before I begin, a disclaimer: During the next few seconds, you will hear events which may seem impossible to believe or too amazing to be real. However, I assure you that they are entirely true. They actually happened. More importantly, they happened to me.

Many people have asked me how I landed an intern gig for Much-Respected Actor’s upcoming film. It’s a long and twisted story, but an entertaining one, assuming you’re high.

As I may have told you already, I landed an internship at After August Productions, a modest New York-based production company. They had recently started pre-production of a script by a published novellist-turned-screenwriter named Robert Alford. I read the script, and I can tell you, it’s damn well-written. So there I was, the new Art Department intern, green to the gills, but excited about helping out on a feature film. Since we’re talking a low budget picture, most of the props for the AD were acquired as cheaply as possible, if not right off the street. My first day, I helped unload several vanloads full of seriously desiccated furniture, so believe me, if you live in Manhattan, and you happened to throw something away during the last four weeks, it will probably appear in this film. Thank you for your contribution.

Now, Robert Alford’s script is about this reclusive author and his attempts to mend his relationship with his daughter. Most of the movie takes place in reclusive author’s house in upstate New York. He’s shuttered himself away in this house for some forty years, so it’s accumulated a lot of books. About five-to-ten thousand books, by the art director’s estimation.

The AD managed to find this library in NJ that was about to lose its public funding. For about a nickel-per-book, we managed to acquire seven thousand books at a pretty reasonable price. I spent almost an entire day helping to carry these 7,000 books from the cube truck to the service elevator, then from the service elevator to the holding area, where all our props are. Now, when I bitch about having spent an entire day doing this, I don’t mean 9-to-5. No one at After August works regular hours, so it was about nine in the evening when the last of the books were stacked, and my spine felt too weak to support my pumpkin-size head any longer.

The AD coordinator (who, to his credit, wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty and lug some tomes) told us all we could go home. I snuck into the prop room and decided to lie down for a bit on a couch for the upstate New York set. For cast-off furniture, it was damn comfortable. Or maybe I was just really tired. Either way, before I knew what happened, I had fallen asleep.

The lights in the office had dimmed noticeably when I woke up. I soon realized that it was because everyone had gone home, and only the emergency lights were still on. The holding area is a pretty big room, and the couch was tucked away behind some stacked chairs, boxes of product placement items, and one of those Japanese-style folding walls. No one had seen me before they left! They must have assumed I had already gone home!

Even worse, to keep anyone from stealing props at night, there is a chain link door with a pad lock. I was locked up behind the wrong side of the door, surrounded by props but unable to get out.

I called for help. I rattled the chain links. I would have made a call to somebody on my cell phone, but my knapsack was in the AD office. I soon realized that I would not be leaving until someone arrived the next morning and unlocked the pad lock. Then I looked around at my surroundings, and took in the surrealness of it all. When I used to go to shopping malls with my cousins, we would conspire to hide somewhere until the mall closed. Then, after the guards went home, we could walk around the mall unmolested, break into Sears or something. Sleep on showroom beds, which was as good as sleeping on someone else’s bed. Here I was kind of doing exactly that, except it wasn’t a retail store showroom, it was a bed somebody tossed out of their home. But that was what came to mind as I sat there, and it took my mind off my fear of rats and cockroaches.

At least I didn’t starve. There were cookies and soft drinks in the product placement boxes, so I drank warm Snapple that had been donated to the film. The chain link door was between me and the bathroom, so I ended up relieving myself out the window. We were seven stories up, but my aim was true, and in the spite of the wind, managed to nail a gold-colored Lexus parked at the curb. Sometime around 3 in the morning, I grew tired again. Rifling through a garbage bag full of bedsheets, I found some natty blankets that would keep me warm against the night air, which was growing steadily colder. I wrapped myself in the blankets, returned to the couch, and soon fell asleep again.

Something woke me from my slumber. The sound of someone talking to herself, then the warm beams of sunlight from the nearby window. I sat up, peeked around the boxes of product placement items. There was a short, blonde girl, half-undressed. She had the folding wall behind her, and must have been using the boxes next to the couch as a second barrier, creating a miniature dressing room for herself. Looking back, I suspect she was an actress of some kind, and had been trying on clothes for the costume department. She must have expected the prop room would give her ample privacy. However, she hadn’t counted on me being there…!

Not wanting to alarm her, I tried quietly climbing over the back of the couch, and tip-toeing past her, then out the now-open chain-link door. Unfortunately, while standing on the couch, trying to climb over the backing, I accidentally upset the stack of boxes, causing the top one to fall down right next to the girl. She turned around, saw me standing up on the couch, partially leaning over what was left of the stack of boxes in an attempt to maintain my balance, and must have suspected that I was some kind of peeping tom who had been leering at her while she changed clothes.

She screamed. Good lord, she screamed. I tried to explain everything to her, my being locked in the prop room overnight, her not seeing me on the couch, possibly because of the blankets I had covered myself with. To no avail, for she was shrieking. So I very calmly decided to wait for the others, more rational people, to come over and to explain everything to them. Surely cooler heads will prevail, I said to myself. Then I decided to fuck it and run like hell.

I ran as fast as my sleepy legs could carry me. Even as I exploded down the hallway, towards the elevators, I could hear her yelling and screaming horrible accusations to whoever would listen. I could see the fire escape from the window, and I decided not to wait for the elevator and ran to the opposite side of the floor instead. I shoved open the fire escape door, ran out into the fresh air. The latticework of the fire escape was like black iron spaghetti; I could see straight down seven stories to the dirt yard and the broiler. My legs turned to jelly as the cold air crawled up my pants legs into my ass. I was about to go back inside, when I glanced at the windows and saw people hurrying across the office. “I cannot possibly explain what happened to an angry mob,” I said to myself, and ran down the fire escape. I tried every door to see if it opened, and about three stories down, there was a door propped open by a large coffee can. I leaped into the doorway, then picked up the can behind me to close the door on any pursuers. Then I turned around, and ran nearly face-first into a man with a bald head and facial hair.

“Hey, good thing you’re here,” he said. “Joanna wants that,” he said, indicating the coffee can. I looked down and noticed it was full of sand and cigarette butts. However, not feeling like drawing attention to myself, I nodded and walked past him, looking for anyone who looked like a Joanna.

Luckily, finding Joanna didn’t take long. She had an office nearby with her name on a sign next to the door. She was Prop Master for Much-Respected Actor’s upcoming film, and wanted all the butts put into a brown paper envelope. She mentioned that she hadn’t seen me before, and I told her that it was my first day. I ran errands for her the rest of the day, and got a chance to read the screenplay, too. I thought it was a pretty good screenplay, even better than Robert Alford’s. So I came back the next week, and I’ve been here ever since. Most of the work is similar to what I did at After August, but there’s no half-naked woman shrieking at me here, and maybe that’s what counts.