Getting the Most Out of Your Summer Internship

Or how to steal office supplies...

Over the next few weeks, thousands of naïve college kids will descend upon the city to work as unpaid bitches for giant corporate behemoths in the hope that they will one day be able to find a job despite having useless liberal arts degrees. While experience and contacts are valuable, there are so many other things to take advantage of during your three-month vacation to the real world.

Going Places You Don't Belong

Your boss will be invited to clubs, parties and premieres. You won't. You will, however, probably be opening his mail. Just sayin'.

Also, if your office is on the lot, take every opportunity to steal a golf cart and sneak onto all the various movie/tv shows that are shooting. If your office is on the Universal lot, sneak through the service entrance next to the Jurassic Park ride so you can do T2:3D on your lunch break for free. To get past security without being hassled, always make sure to be talking on your cell phone. No matter how sketchy you may appear, no one fucks with the guy on the phone.

Pretending Your Boss' Stuff is Yours

At some point your boss is probably going to ask you to take his Porsche to the shop. In all likelihood, you will never own a Porsche or any car even remotely that awesome. Drive it fast. Drive it really fucking fast. Try to pick up chicks. You won't succeed, but you will feel really good about yourself in the three seconds before the girl gets a good look at you and realizes you're a nerdy twenty-year-old wearing a hand-me-down suit.

Dating Other Interns

Normally, the rule of thumb for inter-office dating is don't shit where you eat. But since you won't be around for that long, have at it while you can. Just know that if you're going after a female intern who is even slightly attractive, she'll already be getting hit on by every other guy in the building and even the dudes in the mail room make more money than you.

Stealing Office Supplies

Generally, if it requires a hand-cart to get to your car, you probably shouldn't take it. Pretty much anything else is fair game.

I'd Rather Be a Poor Assistant Than Elbow Deep in Mangled Pussy.

My mom still wants me to become a doctor.

After the family next door recently moved away to a brand new McMansion, she couldn't help but reiterate what a great profession the medical field is. Our former neighbor happens to be a gynecologist who specializes in going back and fixing botched vagina surgeries. It's unsettling enough to think about what your average ObGyn experiences on a daily basis, but I honestly don't think I could do what this guy does and remain heterosexual. As much as I love money, I'll take being an underpaid bitch over touching random women's messed up insides any day of the week.

That's the thing my mom doesn't understand, though. Throughout my youth, she'd tell me about how great it would be to work as a doctor. I'd be a pillar of the community, live in a huge house, drive a fancy car, date women way hotter than me...the works. Don't get me wrong, it sounds awesome and all...but it also means I'd first have to spend ten years of the best years of my existence busting my ass in school and in residency. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in education down the tubes. Thirty-six hour hospital internship marathons. Studying endlessly for tests and poking at cadavers. I have to say I'd honestly rather be fetching coffee and answering phones for a relatively light 60 hour workweek.

But back to my mom's phone conversation....

After explaining to her that a high six figure income still wasn't enticing enough to make me want to follow my former neighbor into the field of putting back together mishandled ladyparts, she simply replied, “Hey, I'd do it if I could!” And since this was by far the most frank sexual discussion I'd ever had with her, I hung up the phone and threw up in my mouth.

Sean Young's Bloody Yarn

A few years ago I was waiting to go up at the Hollywood Improv when the host came on stage and announced “we have a special treat, Sean Young is in the audience and she’s going to do stand-up for the first time.”

Sean Young is an actress semi-famous for making an ass out of herself. Most recently at the DGA awards for heckling Julian Schnabel, but also for dressing up in a homemade Catwoman suit and storming the Warner Brothers lot in an attempt to win the role in Batman Returns.

Sean took the stage and lit a cigarette “I really just wanted to come up here so that I could smoke,” she said. The audience laughed. With one simple line and a dash of D-list celebrity magic, she had won them over.

Then Sean went on to talk about how when she gave birth to her first child she was really into mother earth, so she kept the placenta and buried it in her back yard. Needless to say, this anecdote did not go over so well. As much as the audience liked her for killing them with second hand smoke, they didn’t want to know the intimate details of her hippie childbirth.

Unfortunately, it only got worse, as Sean described how her dog dug up the placenta and ate it, at which point the audience collectively threw up in its mouth.

At this point one would have hoped that Sean would graciously exit with a “thank you for enduring my bloody yarn, and good night,” but she didn’t. The room was tense in the way that only a celebrity publicly humiliating herself can make it, and the red light in the back of the room that is used to tell comedians that their time is up was flashing like crazy. But Sean is not a comedian, so she didn’t understand the light system and barreled on.

Digging herself deeper into a whole, she recounted the birth of her second child and how once again she kept the placenta and buried it in the back yard, and once again her dog dug it up and ate it.

Then, in a moment of ultimate mercy, the host of the show approached the stage and lured Sean Young off with a glass of wine; at which point I turned to my friend Jason and said “that’s funny, that’s exactly how we get my grandfather to take a shower after he’s pissed himself.”

I can’t say I did any better that night then Sean. She pretty much killed the room. But at least I kept my dignity and left my placenta where it belongs, in the freezer next to the icy pops.

The Seven Wonders of a Hollywood Studio Apartment

There’s a studio apartment for rent in my historic Hollywood apartment building. If you’re dying to live in the heart of Hollywood, where dreams are killed and midwestern tourists walk by stores selling bongs and stripper shoes, this is the place for you.

Here are seven things you should know before you sign the lease.

1. The Price

$925 a month buys you your very own studio apartment in the middle of movieland complete with a homeless guy for a doorman. Can’t afford $925? Get a roommate or, if you’re Mexican, a wife and three kids. In Los Angeles a studio apartment can house two besties from Peoria or an entire family from Guadalajara!

2. The Address

Tell your friends back home in Illinois that you live in Hollywood and they will think it is so glamorous. Tell your friends in Echo Park and they’ll tell you to move east.

3. The Neighbors

Whenever you’re feeling down on yourself, take a quick trip over to the Grumman’s Chinese Theater where grown men who couldn’t make it as background extras get dressed up like Spider Man and Jack Sparrow to hustle tourists out of $5 for a photo. There’s nothing like observing someone else’s pathetic life to make you feel better about not booking that SAG experimental from Backstage West.

4. The Parking

There is none. Nor is there pubic transportation. And don’t even think about walking more than two or three blocks unless you want to be mistaken for a homeless person or a tranny. You’re screwed with a car or without one. Get used to never leaving your apartment or get a second job just to pay your parking tickets.

5. The Odor

There’s nothing better than coming home after a long day of PA work to an apartment that smells like someone else’s dinner. Well, except maybe inviting your date up for some post-car-make out, pre-sex “tea” only to find that your apartment smells like a fish market in Chinatown. To combat, keep a stash of incense and take your revenge by making loud gratuitous noises during sex.

6. The Sounds

If there isn’t a mariachi band playing in the restaurant downstairs, there’s a ghetto bird in the sky or your loud obese neighbor yelling at his girlfriend. Invest in some earplugs or a prescription for Ambien.

7. The Other Odor

Since the shower is 30 feet from the kitchen, and the kitchen shares a vent with the apartment below, you can look forward to smelling your neighbors breakfast while you try to wash off last night’s sexual encounter with Jack Sparrow. This means that when your neighbor decides to cook broccoli at 10am, so will your shower and you will never really feel clean. Welcome to Hollywood!

The Most Generous Guy in Town

Or what would Jesus do if he made way too much money producing bad TV...

So I was invited to dinner at the Palm with a guy who may or may not produce this pilot I wrote which may or may not ever get made. We were to “meet” with this huge TV producer whose name I won’t reveal on the off chance I ever get anything approximating a career. He brought his son, or as I will now refer to him “the luckiest-graced-by-birth-no-talent-son-of-a-bitch on the planet or ‘TLGBBNTSOAB’” for short.

Huge TV Producer held court, “The thing is, and it doesn’t make any sense to buy a Gulfstream (for the uninitiated, The Gulfstream 450 carries 8 passengers and 3 crew and has a maximum range of 4,350 nm. A 2009 will cost you about 44 million). See, unless you plan to fly at least 350 hours a year you’re better off renting. Then it’s only like $5700.00 an hour plus whatever added expenses. That’s why I ended up selling mine.”

The conversation moved onto politics of course. I’ve always suspected that Hollywood was full of closet Republicans. Guys who publicly support the Democrat du joir but once inside the voting booth, it’s all about whichever Republican will protect their cash. Though Huge TV Producer drives a Lexus Hybrid and was flawless in his blowhard rendition of the entire lexicon of liberal talking points, something was off. “It’s time for Hillary to admit that she lost the nomination two months ago. Don’t get me wrong; I gave her money-” TLGBBNTSOAB chimed in, “I thought you gave Obama money…” “Yeah, him too…”

The check arrived: $627.00. That’s $73.00 more than an Indonesian factory worker earns in a year. As we headed out, a homeless man stood just outside the door. He spoke directly to us, “please can I get a little change? I haven’t eaten in a while.” I gave him all the change in my pocket. Walking away, I turned to see Huge TV Producer as he strolled right by Mr. Homeless, big smile on his face…just the nicest guy in the world.

Crazed Employee Attacks Workplace with Water Weapons

A fun alternative to that classic chestnut, the office-wide killing spree.

So that sweet bitch Summer is on her way, and you’re stuck pulling pea-dick at the same soul-murdering joe-job, quietly orchestrating a workplace massacre with the precision of an alienated MIT student? Painting up the office in brain is a tempting fantasy, and your boss’s chest cavity could use a few more decorative bullet holes, but before you go all Columbiney on little ol’ Lawrence from accounting, consider a more fun-in-the-sun oriented outburst. On Taco Tuesday, hang on to that internalized anger, but instead of M-16s and hand grenades, why not rampage through the office with an array of squirt guns and water balloons? One of three outcomes will occur:

Fired

Citing your conduct as unprofessional, your superiors will likely terminate your employment. But imagine the look on your coworker’s face when you storm into the office all trenchcoated out, muggin’ a Danzig glare that says “I am the Angel of Death, come to reap…” Your manager’s life will flash before his fat eyes, and he might even piss himself, up to the point when you matter of factly produce a yellow and purple Super Soaker. Sure you’ll be out of a job, but at least you’ll get a cool Digg headline: “Crazed Employee Attacks Workplace with Water Weapons.”

Crazy Leave

If your job is progressive enough like Google (i.e. “fun” colored walls and a company Smoothie bar), you may find yourself on the hooked up end of a sweet, paid-ass vacation. Use your new found loony-flow to settle up a righteous custom Xbox, all under décor Aztec mural style (Master Chief cradling a Tenochtitlan virgin upon a stormy mountain top). When you return, everyone will treat you with more respect, nervous to upset you into maybe using real weapons.

Water Fight

The best of all scenarios, you might be surprised to find that other employees share your anti-repressive beliefs, and the drench attack turns into an office wide water fight. This surprise jolt of liberation will in turn get everyone’s freak flag flying original Woodstock high, and escalate the crew into a classic job-orgy. Once things mellow down, and the last of the naked human resource department cease to snap and twang the flesh ditty, some Js will get floated around the make shift sex camp, your bellies and thighs fat with pleasure, like shiny rich hogs. You’ll all grow closer as a company, and productivity will shoot up 30 percent. Plus no one is dead!

Say Uncle

One of the best ways to get a foot in the door in Hollywood, I’ve heard, is to have family connections. So I decided to get in contact with my connected family.

Martin Wiley is a half-way successful producer, and he’s also my uncle. Now, I’ve never actually met him, I’ve only ever met George Wiley, his brother, my other uncle. He’s a very friendly man, and the last time I talked to him – about 4 years ago – he took me out to lunch at Canters. We enjoyed our matzoh and discussed his younger brother’s ascent from film student to producer of such great films as Under Seige II and Chill Factor. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked to Martin – for that matter neither could George’s son. This man has been AWOL from his own family for the better part of a decade or so.

When I moved down here I figured who better to induct me into the halls of Hollywood righteousness than the producer of Mutator (aka Time of the Beast)? I arranged to meet up with him a few times, but whenever the day came he’d be calling me up with weak-ass excuses involving a meeting or a car repair.

I was forced to pull out the big guns. I talked to my aunt, the ex-wife of his older brother, who in turn got in touch with his mother in an attempt to lean on him to cut this bullshit out. I received a cryptic third-hand message that supposedly originated from him, then passed through his mother which was then told to his brother’s ex-wife and emailed to me, the content of which consisted of him urging me to persevere. My exegesis of this proverb entailed my leaving him increasingly terse voicemails, until one day I could no longer persevere. That was about two years ago.

So Martin, if you’re reading this, let me just say I’m highly anticipating the release of The Heaven Project, and I’m a huge Paul Walker fan.

Leave me your new phone number in the comments section.

The Bad, the Good, and the Totally Awesome

Working in entertainment probably requires way more bitch work for slave wages than most other industries, but then there are the moments that make it all worthwhile. They usually involve blow, blowjobs, festivals, and semi-famous people.

The Bad

Get sent to go pick up a lighting package for a music video on my first day of my first internship. Not able to fit said equipment in the trunk of my ’94 Nissan Sentra. Roll down the 101 with one hand out the window holding on to this mysterious gear that I’ve shoddily tied to the roof of my ride, praying that wind doesn’t pick up.

They tell me they’ll bump me up to a PA and pay me for my efforts. They don’t pay. My first day at my second internship I spend assembling drawers from IKEA.

The Good

Find myself at Sundance with no real agenda. I party near (not necessarily with) Mary Kate Olsen, making eye contact several times. End up at a club where Paris Hilton pushes past me. Decide I’m probably in the right place. Next thing I know, I’m hanging out with two full blown cougars from Calgary. Pretty sure one of them mentions a husband. Things are going good when we are cuddling against eachother in the snow after the club closes. Things go south when an Escalade full of black guys they somehow know pulls up and picks them up. They invite me along, but I pussy out of a possible gangbang.

The Totally Awesome

Get to be flown out to Austin for SxSW to shoot videos with the Comedians of Comedy, Les Savy Fav, and Andrew WK. Get Andew WK to say “Your love of pussy is no excuse for leaving an upper decker.” Texan blonde sees me sitting next to Brian Posehn and Michael Showalter. Apparently thinks I’m somehow important. End up getting a fantastic blow job in my shared room at the La Quinta Inn. My Mexican co-intern watches for about half of it and then goes to IHOP. Spend rest of trip getting shitfaced for free because I know a band.

Why I Moved to LA

Most people come to Los Angeles to act. I didn’t. I came here to get off heroin.

Needless to say, this fact makes for awkward moments in conversation when people ask me why I moved here. I have lived in Los Angeles for seven years and I still don’t quite know how to answer that question.

Sure, I could lie and say that I came here to be an actor. I mean, after I got off heroin that’s what I ended up doing. I became an actor, a writer and a comedian. No one would blame me if I just left the whole heroin part out of the equation. But for some reason I just can’t seem to let the words “I came here to act” come out of my mouth. In fact, I would rather say, “I’m a heroin addict,” than say “I’m an actor.”

I think at some point during my childhood, the seed must have been planted in my head that acting was a fine hobby, but not an acceptable life goal. Although, apparently the seed about not doing heroin was left in its package, because my say no to drugs tree never grew, while my don’t be an actor tree flourished.

Then there is the fact that everyone and their sister, and their sister’s kid, is an actor in this town, so being an actor just doesn’t seem so special. Whereas, how many ex-junkies can you honestly say that you know?

[Ed. note: All the ex-junkies I know are writers for this site.]

I know it’s not really the sort of thing you are supposed to take pride in and it’s a lot to digest for someone you’ve just met. So I have found myself saying things like “I moved here for the weather,” but sunshine just seems so lame in comparison to hard-core heroin abuse.

Lately my reaction has been to get embarrassed and say, “Oh, it’s a long story.” However, this answer only seems to solicit guesses. “Did you move here for a boyfriend?” is a common one. “No…” I say, dangling the ellipsis like a carrot.

I haven’t used heroin in seven years though, so I guess you can say that my LA dream has come true. How many people can really say that?

Not That Good At It

Even though my crappy office job is so menial that for most of my waking hours I basically exist as an answering machine that occasionally needs to get up and piss, I still manage to somehow be pretty horrible at it.

This hit me during one of the more physically undignified poses that I’m routinely forced to strike during a typical workday. I was squatting like an ape over a large filing cabinet with a clutch of time clock reports, lunch violations, vacation request forms, the patchwork quilt of modern office tedium, when suddenly I became aware that I was having to mentally sing the alphabet song to myself between every shuffle and file.

The file that I was holding began with an “L”. I had to start the song right from the top, at “A”.

Then, at some point in the “F” neighborhood, I got lost. I had to start over. I wish I were making this up.

I spend at least a quarter of the day, every day, on this activity. You’d think that after that kind of grinding repetition I would be able to work that cabinet with the sightless finesse of Stevie Wonder doing a standing #1 in a public bathroom stall. No. They might as well hire a six-year-old to do it the way I do. At least the song would be fresher in his memory.

Slinking back to my desk, I took stock of all the other mundane facets of the job that I exhibit a total lack of aptitude for. I drop messages, I forget supply re-orders. I stick a payroll stub in the copier, the phone rings, and some unlucky fuck doesn’t get his check that week. After 15 minutes of frantic searching five days later, the stub is discovered still in the copier. I once made this Russian delivery guy so late picking up a package from us that his Turkish dispatcher cut off one of his thumbs.

Back before I had this kind of job, when I was steadily failing to get one in interview after interview, I used to piss and moan about how unfair it was that I kept getting passed up for bitches who are so bubbly it’s contributing to global warming. Now I finally get that they’re exactly the candidates you’d want for this type of shit . They spent all of high school training for this job just by remembering friends’ birthdays and talking on the telephone.

My skill-building regimen in high school was basically alternating bouts of video games and manually induced orgasms. I’m not likely to find a market for those skills anywhere, not unless I’m willing to shave my balls and move to Thailand.

I guess for now I’ll just keep showing up, and leave my diploma right where it is: on my bathroom wall just above the toilet.

These Cardboard Boxes Smell Like Failure

I’m stacking furniture and re-arranging boxes of old scripts and movie posters in a place so depressing I want to forget that I’m nearly 30 and, at one time, had a promising career and a sense of dignity.

Not only am I in the fucking basement of a development company doing manual labor for free, I’m in a mouse-infested storage area literally called, “The Cage,” where the Important Producer keeps his broken Bowflex and old promotional material featuring Tom Cruise with hair extensions.

It’s a fitting example of the profound indignity of trying to weasel your way into a Hollywood career from the bottom, a degrading process that encourages you to wallow in the sleaze under the idiotic hope that somehow, one day, an Important Producer will see your work and say something like, “Man that guy can re-arrange moldy boxes of outdated crew lists, I should hire him to write a major summer blockbuster.”

The retarded logic only becomes more stark when you are in a fetid basement enclosure surrounded by chain-link fence, re-piling crates of someone’s long-lost copies of “Once and Again” scripts and inhaling mouse feces. With every box I stack I get more and more fucking furious at Hollywood in general, and the assholes who told me to do this job specifically. Internships, we have been told, are one way to get a hand into the Teflon vault of Big Entertainment, but what they don’t say is that there’s no way that’s going to happen by doing chores you wouldn’t perform as a favor to your paralytic father.

On top of all that, there’s a distinct, rancid odor coming from all these boxes, and it smells like one specific thing: Failure.

Commercial Directors are a Pain in the Ass

It’s true, they are.

I spent over two years working in production companies where my chief objective was to help the director reps get these butt-wads work. As an aspiring director myself, this is a lot like wanting to race cars and having to give the drivers enemas instead.

Back in the early to mid-nineties anyone who had a video camera and a possie of idiot skater friends that could do a kick-flip got signed to shoot commercials, music videos (when this was still a viable occupation), and films. Thus began the fortunate careers of Spike Jonze, Mike Mills and every other tool who had any connection whatsoever to the Coppolas.

Unfortunately for me, that time has passed. Aspiring directors with reels that are slicker’n shit must content themselves with the grunt work of the dying commercial industry as we know it.

Most commercial directors who make a living at it have been on the job for the past 10 years; some of them over 20. A general rule applies to these people: the longer they sit in the director’s chair, the more incompetent and entitled they become. They know as much about directing as the security guard at the mall knows about DNA analysis.

One of the directors at a company I worked for had issues, as so many of them do. He was prone to flashing his favorite two guys in production (as well as, on occasion, the entire office) his dick, balls and ass. No one knew from whence he cultivated these proclivities, though prolonged exposure to Greek life in college was the suspected environmental culprit. Anyway, one day he came in and, without further ado, dropped his drawers, deposited a phat load into theses guys’ waste paper basket, pulled up his pants (without wiping!), politely handed them his spoils and went about his day.

It wasn’t until jokes about defecation of character circulated throughout the building that he was deemed a risky liability and let go.

The moral of the story? Don’t put up with directors’ shit unless you want it in your goddamned lap.

The Lorenzo Lamas Stare Down

The day I became a man.

For those of you who don’t know who Lorenzo Lamas is, he broke into the industry as the cougar spank bank for a soap opera called Falcon’s Crest, which started before I was born and cancelled just in time for me not to acknowledge its existence. His most famous role was Reno Raines on the “crime drama” Renegade which you probably remember watching on the USA network when you stayed home sick from middle school. He’s tried reviving his career as an asshole on Are You Hot? pointing out cellulite with a laser pointer but for the most part he was out of my life. That is, until I saw him at Souplantation in Brentwood.

I was with my girlfriend and one of her friends she met at school in Illinois. I was cramming ranch dressing soaked iceberg lettuce and clam chowder in my mouth like Kim Kardashian on a dick bender (read: the weekend), until a dark figure caught the corner of my eye. There he was: Lorenzo Lamas no more than 50 feet away from me. Clad in all black and standing with his arms crossed, scanning the room for potential threats. I suspect he was watching over his harem of ridiculously hot daughters.

I shrugged it off and continued to scarf like a Jewish refugee on V-E Day until my girlfriend’s friend took notice and started to gush for 15 minutes about how she used to love Renegade. She asked if it would be appropriate to go up and ask him for his autograph. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and blurted out louder than I expected, “Who the fuck cares if it’s appropriate? It’s Lorenzo fucking Lamas.”

Uh Oh.

I knew he must have heard me. I was regretting looking up until I thought to myself, “Hey, listen to your own advice. Who the fuck cares? It’s Lorenzo Lamas.”

He was staring directly into my soul like St. Peter himself.

My first inclination was to look away, but no. Fuck that guy. Even if I never make it big, I’m still better than a soap opera star. So I stared back with the intensity of a coked out Robert Downey Jr. on the set of Less Than Zero. Our eyes were locked into a stare down the likes Souplantation has never and will never see again. It was picturesque, as time seemed to slow to a crawl and a bead of sweat dripped down my cheek like we were two gunslingers dueling at dawn. We were both completely motionless and speechless for what seemed like hours, but was only seconds.

Then all of a sudden, his youngest daughter came out of nowhere and blindsided him with a hug to the leg. He immediately tried to regain his dogging foothold, but the battle was lost and my eyes now silently gleamed with victory. He nodded ever so slightly, acknowledging my fortitude. We both eventually left the epic battleground that is The Souplantation, both having a little bit more respect for each other.

Also, I’m pretty sure I’m entitled to one of his daughters. Hopefully one birthed by Debbie Gibson.

The Most Motivating Moment of my Life

Trying to make it in Hollywood takes daily motivation. I'm lucky though because I had a life-altering conversation when I was a teenager that scared me straight into a continual, perpetual state of motivation.

I got a job being the Easter Bunny at the Mission Viejo mall for a couple of months when I was 15. It was one of the more inhumane jobs a person could be exposed to, but I was making $5.75 an hour at my ice cream store job at the time, so getting paid $8 an hour to dress up in a heavy, furry rabbit suit while fat kids sat on my lap seemed like I was stealing money from these people.

I immediately hated the job. But on my last day, I experienced the most motivating moment of my life. I walked back to the communal dressing room at the end of my shift to disrobe and pass the giant plastic rabbit head over to the next EB. When I got back there, I realized that the person taking over for me was the guy who played Santa at the mall during the winter. He was smoking and staring blankly into the distance. I caught his attention as I took off the head, and we had the following conversation:

"You like doing this, kid?"

"No."

"Then STAY IN SCHOOL."

So now, whenever I'm seeking inspiration about my career and life, the face that appears in that cloud above my head isn't my parents, or God, or Wayne Gretzky... it's that haggard, Santa-looking mother fucker telling me to stay in school. I'm not even in school anymore, but the message is lasting, loud, depressing, and clear. Stay in school, kids.

Unless it's acting school.

Mirror Mirror On The Agent’s Wall

So after a mass mailing of about eighty of my headshots to eighty different agents, I finally got a meeting on Wilshire Blvd. I was feeling…damn good. The building was impressive, my monologue was prepared, I was new in LA, and this was my moment to shine.

When I walked into The Agent’s office, the first thing I was struck by were the mirrors: we’re talking floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall. From The Agent’s last name I was expecting someone of Asian decent, but this guy was British - and once he began speaking I was quick to realize, he also had a lisp. I tried to catch his eye so I could smile and introduce myself, but that proved impossible since he never once took his eyes off his own reflection…even as he shook my hand and invited me to sit down on the couch.

The Agent poured me a glass of champagne, refilled his own, and began to impart his dubious wisdom: explaining to me the impossibility of getting a SAG card without an agent, saying how hard it was to even get an agent if you didn’t have blonde hair and big tits. He found himself riveting. His eyes staring squarely into his own.

Once he was finished with his monologue, I performed mine (a piece from the Vagina Monologues) with gusto and conviction! And as my voice broke for a tear-filled finish, I looked up and saw that The Agent was aligning his toupee with the help of the mirrors on the north and south walls.

I sat back down on the couch and The Agent told me my monologue needed some work. He knelt before me and put his hand on my knee. “Everybody needs…friends in Hollywood. Now why don’t you see my secretary and if you like, she’ll set you up next week for a 6:00 appointment, my last appointment of the day.” He winked at himself.

As I was ushered out of the room, I saw the receptionist packing up and a girl who looked like me except with blonder hair and bigger boobs sitting on the couch. I checked my watch. It was 6:00.

Lie the Balls She Gave You Off

You can literally hear it in her voice when your mother shifts from talking about your father’s bursitis and the son of a bitch your sister married to asking you how it’s going for you out in Hollywood: Hope.

Hope that her little boy or girl is not actually doing what they say they are doing, and toiling in the mailroom at a third-rate talent agency. That the child she wanted to be a doctor, a congressman, fuck even an accountant, isn’t literally washing someone’s dishes just to have a job in ‘the industry.’ With that kind of sentiment underlying your every conversation, why would you do anything but lie your balls off?

A few weeks ago I spent two hours in the office of a powerful director trying to cover his massive, floor-to-ceiling windows with a black, velveteen cloth to make sure no light could get in during an upcoming screening. The process involved cutting and hanging a textile approximately the size of Connecticut without disturbing any of the man’s plants, metallic Buddhas in repose, framed head shots or Arabian tea sets, a task that required me to delicately and painstakingly tap a series of tiny nails into the window molding, standing on a chair.

Not long after, she called.

“Well, I was just in a Powerful Director’s office for a couple hours, actually...”

“Really? What were you doing?”

“Having a meeting.”

“What were you talking about?”

“Art. Movies. Religion. We just kind of talked.”

The Man Himself was actually at his Malibu home at the time, but what the hell.

“Wow. Is he going to read your script?”

“Ma, it’s not like that. He has to ask for it. It’s impolite to offer it.”

“You were in there for two hours and he didn’t ask?”

“He said he was thinking about it.”

“Well, at least you’re not washing his dishes.”

“True. True.”

My Brother is a Putzy Lawyer

It’s true, he is. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t mind his shiny shoes, his two-pound Rolex, or the financial ease with which he maxes and relaxes.

But he has money and I don’t, and sometimes I need to borrow this (his) money, and I don’t think he gets that.

I’m not one of those guys who’s anti rich-putzy-yuppies. It’s just that in the case of this putzy yuppy there are a few salient character flaws I feel he should explore:

-When footing the bill at a restaurant, don’t wince after saying the words, “I got it.”

-When discussing major home appliances, such as televisions and microwaves, avoid phrases such as, “Not enough financial wiggle room.” If your winter bonus can start a hedge fund, there’s room for wiggle.

-Cough up the $25 to get a haircut at Rudy’s. Just because your wife can cut your hair doesn’t mean she should.

If he were to follow these pointers (as well as ease up on sending me Youtube videos every time Zach Galifianakis makes a joke about Asians) he might just de-putzify himself.

I ate dinner at his house the other night, an exquisite Japanese dish served by his exquisite Japanese wife. As he washed and dried the dishes and I watched, we discussed the hardships only those with money can really know.

“The thing is,” he said, “people with money wear Golden Handcuffs. That’s something they don’t talk about.”

“What are Golden Handcuffs?” I asked.

“When you make a lot of money, you have a lot of responsibilities.”

Translation: Mo money, mo problems. Three years of law school and everything he knows he learned from Biggie.

(Editor's note: I always thought Golden Handcuffs were when a chick cuffed you to the bed and pissed on your face.)

“Like what?”

“Like…saving for a house. Retirement. That stuff.”

“But,” I protested, “people who don’t make a lot of money also want to save for a house and retirement. They just can’t. So I guess you could say we wear Bronze Handcuffs.”

“I know,” he said, “but…I have a lot of responsibilities.”

“Yeah. Someone has to Rick-roll me on the half hour.”

It’s true, he does.

I, Dream Crusher

I didn’t see it in the job description when I first signed up for the internship at the Hollywood TV and movie production company, but by the third day it was clear: Much of my time would be spent crushing people’s dreams.

Not discouraging them, not deterring them, not suggesting they would be better invested in practical pursuits like scrapbooking or slum-lording, but outright devastation of people’s dreams, loud and declarative. You. Have. Failed.

I, intern, you see, where my main purpose is to deliver salads to powerful people, quickly and with all the god damn peppers removed, thank you very much. As a side job, I am also often asked to perform what is called ‘script coverage,’ in which I take the pristine, coveted gem of someone’s imagination and in the matter of hours reduce it to a single word: PASS.

“Please,” the authors seem to say, “Recognize my unique talent and do one thing to help me realize the desire I have harbored since the day of my creation, and recommend this script.” To which I generally reply, “No,” and then go pick up a salad.

I don’t relish the job of Dream Crusher, but the worst part is that I do it for free—as if I’m doing a favor for friends. “Hey, could you come over tomorrow and help me dash the hopes of aspiring writers for a few hours?”

“Sure,” I say. “Sure I could.”

A White Collar Mask

Striving to fit in applies to every social scene, including the work place. This was particularly hard for me when I got my first job after college at a medical supply company in Rancho Cucamonga.

For the first time in my life, I am being forced to socially interact with old people (Yuck, I know). It doesn't help that I’m the only person under 30 in my whole company. And it became even more difficult when I started trying to balance my vanilla, white-collar life during the day and my aspirations of being a coked-up Hollywood writer at night.

Subjects I talk about to fit in:

Mondays = Bad, Fridays = Good – There is no easier way to bond with your co-workers than to rely on the fact that everyone hates their job. If anything goes wrong in the office, immediately reference the day. “Mondays…am I right?” or “Hey, at least it’s Friday!” are adequate phrases that will be repeated uncountable times throughout your career, yet will somehow never get old.

The Shared Refrigerator – Someone is always stealing a co-workers food or spilling some wretched leftovers in the shared fridge. So don’t be a stranger to complaining about your Lunchables being stolen at every lunch break. Consequently, I’m usually the one stealing said food because I’m too cheap to go out and too lazy to make my own meals.

The Lamest Possible Movie in Theaters – And you always wondered who actually paid to see movies like Fred Claus or anything with Hugh Grant in it. Well now you know: people without souls.

Subjects that will Alienate You:

Music – These people think bands like Foreigner and The Eagles are Avant-garde so making references to Vampire Weekend will only result in severe bewilderment. At best you’ll receive a line like “Oh, I’ve heard of them before. I grounded my daughter last week for listening to that jive, colored music.”

Sexuality – Don’t even reference anything even remotely phallic shaped or you will get fired for sexual harassment. So as far as you are concerned there is no such thing as Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, space shuttles, and definitely not rock-hard, blood-engorged, visibly throbbing penises.

Politics – Since everyone is old, out of touch, and grossly misinformed by the mainstream media, they’ll all be voting for Hillary. If you see your boss sporting McCain paraphernalia, start planning for a near-future promotion because your boss may die from being so old and out of touch.

My Awkward Dreamworks Interview

I interviewed for a development internship at Dreamworks despite having absolutely no qualifications for the job other than that I thought working there "would be cool."

During my final semester in college, I was presented with a decision: Find employment in the field I was about to receive my BA in (Psychology), or chase my dreams of being a big-time, Hollywood producer. While getting paid minimum wage to administer anti-depressants to rats wasn't the most appealing career option, I also had absolutely no experience in "the biz." I'd always been able to bullshit my way through oral presentations in class though, so how hard could an interview at a studio be?

Thanks to a cleverly worded cover letter (using words like "multi-tasker" and "Caucasian") I found myself in the reception area at Dreamworks. I was interviewing for a content development internship in their animation division. I had no idea what that meant, but I had it all worked out: if this guy asked me why I was qualified for the position, I would joke that "I like cartoons." We would laugh, pat each other on the back, and "skip all these silly formalities and start me a career."

A very nice man named Mark greeted me and gave me the tour. He seemed genuinely happy to meet me, but with every world-class sound stage we passed and proudly-displayed Oscar we marveled at, it became exponentially more clear to me that the situation I had bullshitted my way into would not be bullshat out of.

Mark asked me a series of questions that lead to the inevitable one: "What makes you qualified for this job?" In conjunction with my pitiful resume, the "I like cartoons" line sounded significantly more retard-y than it had in my head. I came clean and told Mark I had no qualifications. The tone of our conversation shifted drastically. It was like we got 3/4ths of the way through a first date before I told Mark that what I was really looking for in a man was a daddy for my 6-year-old son.

Mark told me he'd call me if they needed someone like me. It's been 2 years now, but he'll call... he'll call.