stupid work emails redux

Several weeks ago, I posted my first series of stupid work emails. They're a collection of the finest emails a law firm can produce. And mind you, except for the ones where I say they were intended for me only, these are emails that go out to the entire firm.
There's dumb, and then there's spellcheck.
Requests for certain kinds of behavior:
Requests (from the same individual, mind you) for important legal references:
I love my job!

positivity and crap like that

In addition to my day job, I work a few nights a month at one of those Actors' Seminar Companies, where actors pay exorbitant fees (up to $31)to meet (for five minutes) with agents and/or casting directors, who are then paid by the company to do, what, in my opinion, they should be doing for free -- meeting actors. To protect the innocent, we'll just call this company Schmactors Schmonnection.

What I do for them is to host these seminars. Basically, I act as a combo stage-manager/maitre'd, checking in the other actors, getting the guest to the seminar, and then timing each one-on-one session between the actors and the industry guest. It's so simple even a monkey could do it, which is the only reason (I believe) the owners actually trust actors to do it.

[Having recently complained about the inappropriateness of actor jokes, I hope you all see that I say that from the point of view of the owners, who I assume from their need to control us completely, think actors are stupid pieces of crap. I, however, love actors. (just as much as I hate them.)]

Last night I had a mandatory four hour meeting in which one of the current co-owners (who is easily the most "positive" person I know, which really just means she smiles at you when she disagrees with and dismisses you) started to (cringe) "build a team" of hosts for the (blech) "new opportunities ahead." Barf bags were not provided, but munchkins were, which offset the misery of this meeting but little.

The first thing we did was to come up with The Rules of the Team. The inside of my skin started to itch almost instantaneously. We came up with a variety of them -- be on time, treat others with respect, only give information you're sure about, blah blah blah. All very positive, but all very much common sense. Personally, I think the only rule we really needed was "Don't be a Fucking Idiot," but that's phrased in a negative way, so maybe "Be Smarter than a Bag of Hair" would be a better choice.

Here's the thing. This woman wants positive, upbeat, reliable people to run her seminars and to represent the face of Schmactors Schmonnection in her absence. I can totally understand that. It's her business, and she wants to create an atmosphere of complete service, so she can compete in the marketplace. However, she is only willing to pay these representatives $8 an hour. You know what you get for that pay scale?

"You want fries with that?"

And actually, my problem is not the payscale. I have a day job to make money. I host these seminars because we used to get a free seminar credit for every seminar we hosted. (due to things like state laws, they've had to change that, and now they have to pay us in money, not credit.) My problem is with this front of positivity and her complete lack of faith in her employees (or whatever the hell we are) to behave like grown ups with common sense and decency. And the need I felt from her to control every aspect of our interaction with the clients.

For example, a big war was fought over whether "leave your personal stuff at the door" should be a rule. I for one, found it retarded. You should always leave your negativity and garbage at the door -- especially if you're meeting an industry guest! Hello, no agent wants to sign Cranky Carol! But to make it a rule? For which there are consequences if you break it? No thanks. I'd rather self-police than have the Positivity Patrol up my ass.

I left the meeting feeling manipulated, dismissed and otherwise used. I am not a ridiculously positive person, but neither am I an outrageously negative one. And all I felt she focused on was how, even without being there herself, she could fill the halls with Stepford Hosts.

Where, after four hours, was my incentive to excel at customer service for Schmactors Schmonnection, to be that perfect host? What's in it for me? Because as much as I want to "leave my ego at the door" (no, it's not a rule, but it is in the Code of Honor... can you imagine four hours of that???) the only cause I'm really interested in working to benefit is me. Not Schmisa Schmold, not Schmactors Schmonnection. Because this is not about Art, my friends, it's about Business. And this is a woman who wants each of her employees to "Come to the Office with a Higher Cause."

I think my days at Schmactors Schmonnection may be drawing to a close. And maybe that's the most positive thing there is.

kate throws up and dies (and other theatre news)

King Lear is now up and running! And enjoyed a very successful (if not ironic) Fathers' Day performance, at which my parents were in attendance.

Post show conversation:
Mom: We loved it! Oh, it was so good! Now, tell us what we didn't like.

Kate does.

Mom: Oh, well, yeah, I can see that.

Despite the heat and some opening day jitters (Gloucester was renamed Burgundy, the King of France was renamed Kent, and my exit line got cut, so I had to just pick a point, pretend to puke and hightail it out of there) it was still a solid weekend of performances.

And the actor playing Lear told me that his wife said to him after the first show, "Oh, that second daughter [me] is just evil! She's so pretty and sweet looking but then she just stabs you in the back so badly! I'm thinking we should reconsider giving money to the kids..."

Further performances:June 24 & 25 in Riverside Park (108 & Riverside)July 8 & 9 in Prospect Park (near the tennis house at 9th Street)July 15 & 16 Empire Fulton Ferry (New Dock Street and Water Street)July 22 & 23 Central Park (at 69th Street and CPW)

some pics:
mom calls this one "Kate acts nice"

mom calls this one "kate throws up and dies"________________________________________________________
In other theatre news, check this out! It's the story of some appalling behavior in a theatre -- luckily nobody did this to us!________________________________________________________
And, last but not least, I'm famous. No, really I am. I made some cookies this weekend, and gave them to my friend who works at the Public Theatre (currently working on Macbeth at the Delacorte in Central Park) and he shared them with folks at the theatre. And Liev Schreiber ate one of my cookies. Which makes me instantaneously famous.

Doesn't it?

saving up for a cow

I met someone online recently who was interested in dating me. A solid, but by no means stand-out guy that, sure, I'd accept a brunch date with... except... he's in what he describes as an "open relationship" -- he and his girlfriend have been seeing (and sleeping with) other people after ten years of monogamy, and everyone's cool with that.

Now, I can see how that might work well. If you eat a little peanut butter every day, you won't sit down and eat a jar in one sitting. And as much as I love peanut butter, I've never actually gotten through a whole jar of it, but you also won't find a trace of peanut butter in my house.

So (for more reasons than my lack of self-control with peanut butter) I know that for me, an open relationship is not an option. I don't want to be second to anyone, except maybe the guy himself (or whatever eventual family there might be). Hell, even a guy with a dog is almost more than I can bear... although I'm willing to learn (girl's gotta have some flexibility).

Adapting the standard cow metaphor ("why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free") my personal open-relationship theory is "why even try to find out if you like the milk if you can't always count on the cow to be there?"

ANYWAY, to get to the point, after I had made it clear that I was too jealous a person to get involved romantically with someone who was involved with someone else, he made a joke that, even though I knew he was kidding, was so inappropriate, that it just shut the door on brunch forever. He said, "I suppose if you were capable of sharing attention and affection rather than needing it all for yourself, you wouldn't have become an actor."

[In his defense he apologized later, saying it wasn't a joke about me, or even about actors, but about the stereotype of actors. But come on, I haven't even met you yet and you're making needy actor jokes???]

What really surprised me, though, was how hurt I was by the implication that my desire for exclusivity somehow translated into a need for attention, which in turn was translated into something bad. And by the judgment I felt him making about my life and the choices I've made -- especially when I tried so hard not to judge him based on his.

He wanted me to apologize for the needs I know I have. Which, a few years ago, I probably would have done.

No more selling out, though. I'm going to buy me a cow someday, and I need to start saving.

kill the wabbit

So a few months ago (around April 15th, to be exact) my friend at work got a solid milk chocolate bunny from his girlfriend's mother. For Easter. And, since he's a good friend, he decided to bring the bunny to work to share it, by putting it on the Shelf of Opportunity.

What's the Shelf of Opportunity, you ask? It's the place where all the extra or unwanted (or just plain old bonus) food goes when you've had enough of it. At the moment, there's a granola bar, two packets of oatmeal, some cupcakes, a cookie, a can of juice, a bag of potato chips and a fruit roll up. When the candy machine gives you an extra candy bar, you put it on the shelf. When your boss brings you back some treats from a meeting, you eat what you want and then put the rest on the shelf. And conversely, when you want a snack, you visit the shelf. It's a very egalitarian system, and works very well for us here.

But the bunny was too big for any one person to eat all by him or herself.

And he had to be stored in a plastic bag so that whenever we were ready to eat him, we'd have a sanitary container in which to beat him up.

That day finally came today, nearly two months after the bunny's arrival on the shelf.
With an oversized stapler, two law books and some elbow grease (derived from pure stress), we reduced the bunny to a shadow of its former self:

And then we ate it. (I got the head)
And man alive was it tasty!

Usually, I don't particularly care for my job. It's boring, dull and very much beneath me. But on a day like today, I wouldn't trade it (or my friends at work) for just about anything!

people jerky

So I went to see the Bodies Exhibit last night at South Street Seaport, and I'll tell you what: I've never been a big meat-on-the-bone eater, but after an hour of looking at rooms full of people jerky, I won't be chomping down on anything with ligaments anytime soon.

It's a very interesting exhibit, full of, well, people. Everything in there came from somebody, or, rather was somebody. And in our world, where so many museums serve us as cultural memory centers (I'm thinking specifically here of museums like Ellis Island, the Holocaust Museum, Lower East Side Tenament Museum, etc.), museums serve as places where we can go to look at fragments from a time, or a culture, or an event, which we then use to imagine ourselves in that time, culture or what have you.

Not all museums function this way, of course. Art museums don't try to generate nostalgia for the Renaissance, or the good old days of Roman sculpture. Science museums are often more about creating a learning environment than developing the feel for an era. There are military museums, spy museums, other museums... I'm not a huge museum-goer, so I can't think of them at the moment, but I feel confident that they're out there (and probably around the corner from where I sit right now.)

Anyway, I am personally a big fan of Museum As Memory Center, probably because I'm an actor and like to imagine myself in the situations that are being commemorated, picking up the bits and pieces of research that I collect from the exhibits, and tucking them away for later use. Not exactly something I want to do with the Bodies Exhibit.

The exibit (which can be found here) is really more like a frozen zoo or aquarium, where you can go and observe things in a completely unnatural habitat. There were some really cool bits -- I liked seeing inside a spongy bone, the section with the capillaries is amazing, and I liked seeing what my spleen really looked like, but all in all, it felt cold and impersonal -- very scientific. Which is good. Because if I thought of each of these people as people... well, I'd have had an even harder time in the Baby Room.

An article from msnbc talks about how "the specimens were obtained from a laboratory at Dalian Medical University in China that preserved them using a process where water is removed and replaced with a polymer that turns them rubber-like." And they are. Very rubber-like. Which makes it even harder to see them as anything more than, well, people jerky. And, at this point, very dusty people jerky. With fannyholes, special girl-lips and bellybuttons.

"The show has come under fire from human rights advocates who charge that the bodies and organs may have been illegally obtained through the Chinese government." (more of that here) All the more reason I don't really want to think of them as people.

They're happy little giraffes living in their one acre plot. Right?

bad hair day

I got my hair cut on Friday (more on that here) (shivers) and it's a little shorter than it is in the picture on my profile. Which is fine. It's cute, and it's hair: it'll grow.

But today, for some reason (probably because the sun is threatening to come out) my hair is inexplicably fluffy and all over the place.

I feel a little like this guy: