Snow Day

Middlebrow called yesterday morning when I was in the throes of pre-work dread. Although I often hate my job I never really experience pre-work dread like I used to when teaching or working at the video store or working as a waiter or administrative assistant or whatever. There isn’t that whole before-work-winding-up and after-work-cooling-down time to get the resentment up—it’s just a bunch of work from the moment you wake up to the moment you pass out. You learn to accept your fate.

I came out to do two days of B-camera on a Super Bowl car commercial and the director, a typically boorish, buffoonish ass, was operating my camera. He didn’t seem that talented—rumor is that he has a brilliant editor—but he clearly enjoys the role and will bully any and everyone he views as being beneath him. It’s laughable because in a situation like that the high-profile director is actually the most expendable person on the shoot. The client hires the ad agency, the ad agency hires the production company, the production company hires the director, the director hires the cinematographer, and the cinematographer hires much of the crew. The agency has the concept and most of the shots all storyboarded out, so even if the director didn’t exist (particularly this one), the commercial would still make itself. You shoot the product from an infinite number of angles and then the brilliant editor cuts it together and they buy the rights to some Led Zeppelin cue and whammo, you have your commercial. It’s not hard. But this guy was going to be a dick and I had to be next to it and receive some of it, so there you go I was seven years old again and back on the playground.

So I went to work, already prepped for a little abuse, but when I arrived it was discovered that there had been a mixup and I wasn’t supposed to be on for the last day of the commercial. Hooray! Of course Production tried to imply that it was a camera department blunder and didn’t want to pay me, but it was their fault so I worked out a deal with them and they paid me cash and I walked out of the airplane hanger and into the wonderful 80-degree sunshine of my snow day.

There was a rebroadcast of an old This American Life last week about a guy who decides to live his life as though he only has six months to live. Eventually, he becomes convinced that he will cease to exist at that point in the future, so he goes about, making preparations and tying up loose ends. He begins to wonder what he wants to do with his remaining time and is surprised to discover that he doesn’t want to climb Mt. Everest or go scuba diving in Belize. He wants to do the ordinary stuff. He wants to hang with his parents and work on the deck or wash dishes or take out the trash.

This is how I felt yesterday. Every little ordinary thing that I did was charged with life. I went to a café and put on my iPod and drank coffee and studied a little Korean and wrote out some New Years goals. And I had the best time doing this. I went bowling with my friend Jimmy. I did a little reading. I ate some hot and sour soup. I got a bottle of wine and watched Minority Report. I fell asleep on the couch. Ordinarily, this would be an unspectacular day off, but on this—my snow day—it was very very sweet. Delicious almost.