The Week that Was, or at least a few days of it

Well this is odd. I am here at work, doing another overnight shift (more on that later) and as I sit here there is no one else here. Not even someone to watch the stations to make sure there is no technical difficulties, everything is running in automation and nary a soul in sight. Mind you, no one planned on me being here, I didn't even plan on it until this morning, so it wasn't like I was on a schedule or anything to be here, the plan apparently is to leave the stations unmanned overnight, or at least until midnight when Bill gets here.

I think part of the deal is that they are pulling people in to work the mornings in the studio while the FM station is out on its two week Make A Wish holiday/charity event, where all of the shows that air during the week are on location and collecting money for Make A Wish, which means someone has to be back here to push the buttons, and as understaffed as we are, that means evenings are apparently unmanned by anyone.

Okay, enough of that we have bigger fish to fry than the workings or lack thereof of my main place of employment, so gather ye Peabodys and Shermans while ye may kids, its to the Wayback Machine for all of us.

I mentioned in a previous blog that I had picked up a new part time job. Well that started on Saturday and the place of employment is The Original Hot Dog Shop. We now pause a moment while Rich, reading this before he heads out to work in the morning, chokes on his coffee and wonders to himself just what the hell I am thinking. He and I met working there many moons ago, though we met at the little shop they had in the student union of Carnegie Mellon University, but that place has since closed and I am back in the big store in the heart of Oakland. Mind you, this isn't the first time I have worked there, all told I have had three stints with them, one at CMU, two in Oakland and they consumed about 6 and half years of my existence, but for the most part I have always managed to leave on good enough terms that should I ever need a place of employement in an emergency, I could always hang my hat there for awhile, make some cash and then look for something better, which by better I mean anything else save for jizz mopper at the local peep show booth. Well, after 16 applications and nary a hit, and no secondary income coming into ye olde apartmenthold, I considered it enough of an emergency situation to exercise my fallback option again. Of course as soon as I agreed to it, one of the other applications did call back but I am not one to make a promise and then just walk away from it, though the thought is tempting, moreso because they called again this week, still seeking me to come in for an interview. Yes, in a failing economy and a shitty job market, I am apparently a prized commodity amongst the underpaid set.

Anyway, I was told to stop in Friday and get my schedule, as their weeks start on Saturday and run through Friday, so I stop in and sure enough my first day was Saturday, a measily 11am-11pm shift. If ever I needed a reminder of why I disliked the gig so much, a 12 hr shift on my first day back is always a good means to an end. So I go in and there are a few people there from the last time I worked there, which had to be almost 20 years ago, at least as far as the Oakland store is concerned, so a lot has changed, including some items on the menu, the layout of the section, the fact they have closed the upstairs bar, locations of some of the stock items for the section, the cash register, etc. etc. etc. Nothing overly unmanageable, but enough that I am glad that I had someone with me, as otherwise I am sure I would have been lost on some of what was taking place. The thing I learned about my first day was I forgot how much my legs hated 12 hour days, as by the time I got home, sat down and checked my emails and what not, I really didn't want to even get back up to go to bed, but manage I did, as Sunday is another radio day after all.

Sunday was relatively uneventful, but I did bring my camera to work for a couple of reasons, one being that Friday when I last worked, the view outside was just awesome and I regretted not having it with me. When I went outside to have a cigarette, the trees were all covered in a coating of ice and snow, creating a cool almost black and white scene of the landscape and I was hoping the integrity of the landscape would hold till Sunday, and also because I had been meaning to do a little more walking for both exercise and so that I might find a few more Pepsi or Coke caps in my meanderings, especially Pepsi where I was sitting on 4 points and one more cap would be a free song from Amazon. I am not looking for any big ticket items at this point, but if I can scrape together a few points here or there, I might yet be able to snag another tune or two before the giveaway ends in a couple of weeks. And if I can scrape together another 100 points from Coke by the end of the month, I still plan on getting another free month of Pogo, so there was a method to my madness.

Anyway, I get out of work around 3:30pm and decide I am going to walk home, and so begins the beginning of what is normally a two hour journey. However, as I reach the bottom of Greentree Hill and start walking toward the West End, I pass by a little city park, nothing major, just a basketball court, a few horseshoe pitches, a softball field and a small playground. Well I meander around the park a little, in hopes I might find a stray bottle cap or two and instead I found a dog. I am not sure who the dog belonged to, he had tags saying he had his rabies shots and was licensed and all but there was no address on his tags to take him back to where he belonged. I called him over to me and he came pretty willingingly and better yet, he came with a stick in his mouth, so he and I played fetch for about half an hour. I would like to say I did it in hopes that maybe his owner would drive by and claim him, but I would be dishonest, I was just enjoying what I would consider a pleasureable diversion that hadn't been mapped out by me when I started my journey. After about a half hour however I had to get moving, at least if I wnated to make it back to my apartment before it was completely dark outside, the dog stayed in the park, so maybe he was familiar with the area or something, he didn't try following me and while I did feel guilty about leaving him there, I didn't have many choices in the matter. So I continue on my walk and I end up finding 6 more Pepsi caps before I even make it to downtown Pittsburgh, enough to add two more songs to my collection, which is good because by the time I made it downtown, roughly the midway point in my walk, my legs just didn't like me. Something about a 12 hour Saturday followed by a 3-4 mile walk on Sunday and my legs were voting to, to quote the Greek philosopher Susan Powter, "stop the insanity". So I bussed it the second half of the journey and when I got home I added my caps to my account and snagged two more songs, "Every Dog Has His Day" by Let's Active, a song that I liked way back when I was but a wee pup, and "I Am Over the Blues" by Bill Wharton and the Ingredients, who puts on an incredible live show, playing Cajun style blues while making gumbo on stage at the same time. If he ever plays in your area, it is worth the trip just for the spectacle of watching a guy cook and play music at the same time. And the gumbo is pretty damn tasty too, as they ladle it out for the crowd when the show ends. I was just surprised to find him on Amazon, but once I did, it was a no brainer that I would be grabbing some music by him.

Monday starts off on a bad note, the fantasy hockey team got crushed again last week, a 1-7-2 week for me and I am now tied for last place. My team now goes down more often than Paris Hilton on say, a Wednesday. We may suck, but we are not yet to Paris Hilton weekend sexcapade worthy. Next I go to look at my fantasy football effort in the first round of our playoffs and I trail 78-52 going into Monday night, things are looking bleak indeed, though I do have the Philadelphia defense playing against Cleveland in that game, so I have just a slight glimmer of hope. I need to somehow come up with 27 points, or 26 and have a defensive touchdown as part of the scoring, as the league does have a rule for tie breakers, the first being touchdowns scored by your roster that week, I trailed there 3-2 so a TD would even it and send it to the second tiebreaker which would be QB points scored for the week, which I won as Peyton Manning outplayed his brother Eli on Sunday. Still, I would need a lot of things to go right for a win to happen.

Anyway, the radio shift happens without incident, and I managed to get home in time to grab a nap before Day #2 of the new part time gig. Amazingly I was able to sleep a little, I got about an hour and a half in and then got up and headed out to work. Thankfully, I was only scheduled 4-10, but as it turns out I am 4-10 on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, so take those 24 hours and add my 12 on Saturday and my part time job only scheduled me for 36 hours my first week. Seems awfully full timish to me, but what do I know, I just work there. Better yet, I get into work, and I ask who is with me from my 4-10 shift, being my second day back and all and not knowing all of the menu or the register and I am told I am there by myself. Great, just great. I have no idea what all they want me to do to help the guy coming in after me, am I supposed to start breaking stuff down to help him close time permitting, am I just to worry about keeping the section clean, am I fetching my own stock from the prep kitchen if I need it and leaving the section unattended. Those questions will be answered next time on 'Matt, What the Hell Were You Thinking?" so stay tuned. As I am working, the Monday Night football game does get underway, it starts around 8:30ish or so, but I barely get a glance at it. The one moment I do though proves to be worthwhile, as Asanti Samuel steps in front of a Cleveland pass and returns it for a touchdown for Philadelphia, so I now have my defensive touchdown that I needed to win a tiebreaker. Woohoo,  but I am still at work and work still sucks.

Sorry, took a quick break there, had to finish recording the Sinatra show (I am at work after all, might as well you know, work and stuff) and fired up the Coke Rewards playlist to listen to while I type my endless gibberish. Feel free to go to the lobby and grab some refreshments, our feature presentation will begin again momentarily.

I manage to make it through my 4-10 shift with only a dozen or so screwups. My thought is if they have so little concern for their business that they will just throw anyone back there and hope for the best, I don't care either. No use fighting the company "we don't give a shit" policy, especially when it is one I can easily abide by.

I drag my butt home, call my mom, as I needed to get Christmas lists from her, her husband and the name I drew for the family gathering on Christmas Eve. Hardly helpful. At least I can come up with a list, what did I get for asking? Oh, we don't need anything, and you could buy your cousin some gift cards. Don't get me wrong, I like gift cards as sort of a nice stocking stuffer type item, but when the family is exchanging gifts I want to do better than the simple, here have a gift card type deal. At that point I might as well just hand over an envelope with cash and say, here I put no thought into this whatsoever, at least then you aren't tied to a single store.

While talking to my mom, I am on the computer, seeing just how good or bad the football team was faring. It is looking close, but I am not sure how close, so I wrap up my call with my mom and start checking stats versus our scoring system. Lets see, I need 26 points and so far I have 6 points for a touchdown, 3 points for an interception (9), 3 points for a sack (12) and 8 points for points allowed, as Philly had only allowed a field goal (20). I am in this game, down just 6 with about a quarter and a half to go. Now this is why I like fantasy football, in a game which is pretty much meaningless in real life as Philadelphia was kicking Cleveland's ass 23-3 at the time and Cleveland has already been eliminated from playoff contention, I am sitting on the edge of my seat because the game still has implications for me. Wait, what's that, Philadelphia picks off another pass and I score another 3 points (23) and in the fourth quarter my team has cut the lead to just three points 78-75. The bad part is Philadelphia extended it's lead to 30-3, so when they get the ball, they will just look to run off clock, which hurts me as my defense isn't on the field scoring points as that happens. Wait, is that the backup QB I see for Philadelphia? Yes it is, and that is him on his second pass attempt having it intercepted and returned for a touchdown, Cleveland has now scored 10 points and that costs me two points on points allowed (21), it is back to 78-73. Philadelphia's next drive stalls and they kick to Cleveland and look, a sack by the Philly defense (24), it's 78-76 with two minutes remaining. Just one more play guys and I get a win. The play never comes, three incomplete passes and Philadelphia gets the ball and runs out the clock and I lose 78-76, right? Hold the phone. Turns out that because Cleveland scored on an interception return, those points count against the Philly offense, not the defense since they weren't on the field for the play. They get tagged with the extra point, but that moves me back to 8 points for points against (26) and we have a tie 78-78 and by virtue of the second tuiebreaker I win and move to the second round of the playoffs. Wow, by far the best fantasy game I have ever been involved in, coming down to the closing minutes of the last game of the week to move on in the playoffs and even then needing to go to a second tiebreaker just to determine a winner. Mind you, it's not a money league, my friends and I are just doing this for fun, and as the game was winding down, George, who I was playing, and I are on the phone at midnight just laughing about it because we have no idea how it is going to play out in the long run. A simple statistical change by the NFL after the fact could change who wins and loses this game, so we are just goofing on the phone wishing each other well in the next round for whoever did eventually win.

A brief break if you will, something I have been meaning to get to regarding our lobby here at work that I have been putting off for some unknown reason but came back to me while I was out grabbing another cigarette.  In our lobby on the wall we have hanging the call letters and frequency designations of our three radio stations in gold lettering.  Hanging there is WSHH 99.7 FM and WJAS 1320 AM.  As I have mentioned previously we have changed format at my station and part of the format change was changing the call letters from WPTT 1360 AM to WMNY 1360 AM, but remember where you are, where sugar rations are king, and you can guess what I am about to say.  We changed the call letters better than three months ago, yet all that is hanging on the wall is W    1360 AM, as apparently it is beyond our means to afford an M, an N or a Y.  Thank god this isn't Wheel of Fortune, because we would be totally fucked on vowels.  Plus there is the matter of the coffee table in the lobby.  Most places, in their waiting area will have magazines or newspapers for people that are waiting to be seen, just something they can read to pass the time.  We are to cheap for that though, all we have is a copy of Whirl Magazine, a local rag that puishes local businesses and has photos of the same 20-30 white people that show up to every charitable fundraiser to pat each other on the back and congratulate each other on being such great human beings, and that magazine we get for free with a trade agreement on one of our stations.  So, in an effort to be a dick, like I am sometimes prone to do, I will throw out the magazines I get as reading material for visiting folks.  Problem is, I don't get cool stuff like People, Sports Illustrated or even Time magazine, rather I get stuff like Education Next, a quarterly magazine that publishes essays on education, or Foreign Policy.  Not your standard lobby reading by any means.

Okay, let's get back on track here, we are up to Tuesday and hopefully the last day I will blog about, but that depends on how long this takes to get through.  Anyway, I arrive at work Tuesday morning, I am all snug in my booth just making sure things are running smoothly for my station.  meanwhile down the hall, the FM station is off on their morning remote for Make a Wish and the other AM station is getting ready for their morning show to start at 6am.  The person who does news and sports for them, Chris, is on vacation this week, which means Hank, the guy doing news for the FM station has to also record news and sports to air for the AM station as well.  Our owner wants to spend as little time on news and sports on FM as he can, so he doesn't run and soundbites in the news or sportscasts, he just wants the the segment to be a relatively quick in and out so they can get back to music, or this week, get back to the remote broadcast.  That being said, he is more lenient with the AM side, allowing them more flexibility in doing show banter, longer news, using sound bites in news and what not.  Well, to Hank, the chance to use sound bites is like a kid in a candy store, he is all excited that he is going to run some cuts from the Steelers regarding the controversial ending of the game I blogged about.  Hank is all caught up in putting together this sportscast, the only problem is, by getting so caught up in putting this sportscast together and getting it recorded he forgot one thing, the newscast he was supposed to record.  But wait, it gets even better, next thing you know, after missing the first newscast Hank is sure he will get the second, but he can't get it to record, because somehow he managed to start playing a Barbara Streisand song in his studio.  How he did this I have no idea, but then he couldn't even figure out that by pressing stop, the cart will stop playing, so it keeps going on and on and finally Bill, our overnight guy, comes down and fixes the problem for him.  Now we are set right?  You really have to meet Hank, though I suppose we all have met him in one form or another, the guy that you just don't want touching a computer because you know that even turning it on would be a challenge for them, anyway it's Hank take three, now we are going to record that newscast, but it still won't record.  Why, well because he kept hitting stop, the very button he couldn't figure out before has now become the only one he can find.  It was the type of stuff that had me in tears in my studio, I just couldn't help it.  I am just listeneing to this line of expletives coming from down the hall, from the simple "God damn" to a sordid conspiracy by that bastard Bill Gates and his Mircosoft cronies to keep Hank off the air.  There really are days where I won't admit it publicly, but I would do this job for free.

Anyway, after Hank finally gets things squared away, at least as squared away as he will get them until Bill Gates fucks him over again tomorrow morning, Bill stops by my booth and has a bag of Pepsi caps for me.  Just when I think I am just going to get a few here and there and maybe get another song or two before the end of the year, all of a sudden I have another 61 points to blow through.  Add that to the fact I have found another 26 Coke points already this week and it has been a most good kind of week on the soda front.

About the only bad thing to come out of today was why, here at 2:15am in the morning I am sitting in the studio and that is Carol waited until today to say that she was off until the day after Christmas.  Mind you, I knew she would be off next Monday and Tuesday, but I wish I would have had more warning that she would be off this week as well so I could have made better arrangements than the schedule I have at my part time job, instead it looks like I will be doubling and overnighting at the station for the next 5 or 6 days.  And I still haven't started my Christmas shopping yet.  That crazy thing called sleep has definitely been elevated in importance on my Christmas list because I don't see much of it coming anytime in the next week or so.

Okay, I am off to go do whatever it is I do around these parts.  Nite all.