Remind Me Why I Didn't Major in Economics Again
“We need [big famous celebrity] on the cover next month, or we’re screwed! You hear me? We’re fucking screwed!”
“What, I’m a miracle worker now? You see the words ‘Mother Theresa’ tattooed on my forehead, asshole?”
Relatives sometimes call up and ask how Life in the Big City is going, if I’m having fun, etc. I always tell them, “Everything’s fine.” Yep, everything’s dandy up here in the Big Apple in the New Year: lost 10 pounds on the cheese-free pizza and organic energy-drink diet, ghostwrote for Gawker on top of spewing out 20 articles in January, and seriously considered offering the junkie haunting my subway stop $10 to punch one of my editors in the face, with a whole $5 bonus for a broken nose, and…oh dear me…
I just discovered absinthe.
Because nothing helps a late-night editing session like pouring a hefty dose of the Green Dragon into a tall glass, followed by cold water, followed by the drippings of a flaming sugar cube. Combine that with a Cohiba smoked on your office balcony, and suddenly your underlings are looking at you strangely because you’ve been humming Lily Allen’s ‘Everything’s Just Wonderful’ off-key at an extraordinarily high volume. “Just the wormwood,” you tell them, opening the CAO humidor on your desk. “Care for one of Castro’s finest?”
Hard Case Time turned down the book, after a solid week of deliberation. Publisher of that little outfit wants to see the next penny dreadful I churn out, so that’s more of a draw than a loss. Non-fiction book and its promise of an advance rolling forward, which is excellent, because the IRS wants a hefty chunk of last year’s freelance revenue.
The Girl’s roommate has been blogging about the ‘creative underclass’ lately. That’s us – underpaid, overeducated twentysomethings working the media trenches – more and more of us pour into the city on a monthly basis, and not enough of us die in comically horrific ways to make an apartment in Manhattan cost anything south of $2000. Except you look at our overlords, twenty years down the road: making bank, true, but with the loft payments and the wife and kids’ educations and mistress and BMW as the 800-pound gorilla on their back – Should we escape to the country? Get a place in Westchester. But…but…I can’t leave NYC! I’d be robbed of all that illicit NYU poon! It’s a trap either way.
“What, I’m a miracle worker now? You see the words ‘Mother Theresa’ tattooed on my forehead, asshole?”
Relatives sometimes call up and ask how Life in the Big City is going, if I’m having fun, etc. I always tell them, “Everything’s fine.” Yep, everything’s dandy up here in the Big Apple in the New Year: lost 10 pounds on the cheese-free pizza and organic energy-drink diet, ghostwrote for Gawker on top of spewing out 20 articles in January, and seriously considered offering the junkie haunting my subway stop $10 to punch one of my editors in the face, with a whole $5 bonus for a broken nose, and…oh dear me…
I just discovered absinthe.
Because nothing helps a late-night editing session like pouring a hefty dose of the Green Dragon into a tall glass, followed by cold water, followed by the drippings of a flaming sugar cube. Combine that with a Cohiba smoked on your office balcony, and suddenly your underlings are looking at you strangely because you’ve been humming Lily Allen’s ‘Everything’s Just Wonderful’ off-key at an extraordinarily high volume. “Just the wormwood,” you tell them, opening the CAO humidor on your desk. “Care for one of Castro’s finest?”
Hard Case Time turned down the book, after a solid week of deliberation. Publisher of that little outfit wants to see the next penny dreadful I churn out, so that’s more of a draw than a loss. Non-fiction book and its promise of an advance rolling forward, which is excellent, because the IRS wants a hefty chunk of last year’s freelance revenue.
The Girl’s roommate has been blogging about the ‘creative underclass’ lately. That’s us – underpaid, overeducated twentysomethings working the media trenches – more and more of us pour into the city on a monthly basis, and not enough of us die in comically horrific ways to make an apartment in Manhattan cost anything south of $2000. Except you look at our overlords, twenty years down the road: making bank, true, but with the loft payments and the wife and kids’ educations and mistress and BMW as the 800-pound gorilla on their back – Should we escape to the country? Get a place in Westchester. But…but…I can’t leave NYC! I’d be robbed of all that illicit NYU poon! It’s a trap either way.
posted by NiK @ 1:13 AM
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