Well...I think I'm gonna try something new. Updates on my move to NYC aka "The Big Apple" (as my former boss insisted on calling it) aka "NEW YORK FUCKIN CITY" (as the t-shirt I keep seeing in random street vendor booths tends to put it.)
So far I've worked one freelance job for a Spanish-language digital public television channel based in Manhattan and another more weirder job that I got via a friend of mine. The former I found via mandy.com and ended up being pretty cool. Everyone was bilingual and spoke Spanish the majority of the time. I worked with people from Venezuela, Columbia, Chile, and Mexico among others. The specific project was related to a public promotional presentation at the
Time Warner Center and required me to author a ton of DVD and blu-ray discs, do some really simple editing, and work for 16.5 hours straight on the final night. I was fucking exhausted. They paid for my cab ride home, which was nice.
Unfortunately, when I got home to the punk house I was staying at about 4am, the punx were playing baseball with beer cans in the room I would be sleeping in that night. And while this actually looked like a really fun time, I couldn't seem to wrap my brain around anything at that point. Luckily, my awesome friend let me crash in her room that night while she stayed up and partied. :)
The second job was with this guy who does fancy event production whom a friend called me about the other day and told me they needed some extra help for an install and breakdown for an event at the Javits Center in Manhattan.
Things we made included:
- A giant tornado made of brand-new Nike shoes
- A giant bar graph made of books
- Houses with walls made of folded towels, blankets, and shirts.
- A city skyline made of cans of corn (which was dubbed "Cornhattan" or "Corney Island" by our work crew)
All of the stuff we used went to charitable organizations that were funded by this organization for which this event was a gala for. Shakira performed and apparently Conan O'Brien, Jay-Z, David Byrne, and Tom Brokaw were all in attendance as well. I wasn't there for the event but made it there just minutes after for the breakdown so I could help tear down the make-believe city we had built over the past few days. I made friends with a hilarious gay Brazilian dude, a nice dude from Miami via Argentina, a dude from Iowa, a lady from outside of San Diego, and a lady from Virginia. Is anybody here from NYC? Probably not. Except for the NYC Teamsters who were working alongside us the whole time. Those guys were hilarious but also kind of dicks. Best quote from a Teamster was to a fellow member of our crew while he was creating the City of Cornhattan: "I bet ya makin' ya parents real proud. They send ya off ta' college and now ya stackin' cans of corn!" Haha.
The union guys were pissed that they had to share their food with us. They would say things like "YO DO THESE GUYS HAVE MEAL TICKETS??? I DON'T KNOW...WE'RE RUNNIN' OUTTA FOOD REAL FAST..." We avoided this situation by going to sit outside on the dock for lunch with a beautiful view of the Hudson River...like so:
1. Mr. Softee Chocolate Dip Cone!!! - We don't have these back home. Everyone here hates the little tune the truck plays but...I kinda like it? This thing has the after taste of donuts for some reason and the cherry dip one tastes like donuts + maraschino cherries! Where has this bullshit been all my life??
