So today (probably yesterday by the time you read this) is (was) a pretty busy day for me, getting-published-wise. I’ve got a wee bit of personal essay on Opium magazine’s website. It’s about a painting that has been a part of my family possibly for longer than I have been. In case you’re curious (and for a little behind the scenes action), here’s a photo of the painting:
who's that lady? *sexy* lady.
Then, as if that wasn’t enough for one day, I got a piece in the Travel section of the LA Times about Cape May, NJ, and the birdwatching and Victorian architecture mecca that it is.
In the interest of continued innovation, I am trying to create some lively(?), self-produced videos for this space. With my natural predilection towards guerrilla/cheap endeavors, I am attempting to utilize the tools readily available to me (i.e.; using my cell phone’s “camcorder” function) to create said videos. Shooting the footage actually works quite well, in its limited, low-rez, lonelygirl15 capacity. But problems have arisen in the “getting the video onto my computer” phase.
so... close...
Thanks to a mildly helpful Sprint customer service operator, I was able to connect my phone to my computer via a USB cable, which allowed me to easily pull the *photos* off my phone, yet the videos were inaccessible. After placing me on several holds and insisting that, well, this really *should* work, the operator finally admitted defeat and transferred me to technical support. Whom had I been speaking to before? Apparently someone with the best of intentions, but perhaps no specific training in what may be called “the technical field.”
"I'm going to put you a quick hold. Okay?
Well, fine, onto the experts (“experts”). I explained the situation to my new phone friend, went over the steps I had already tried with the previous Sprint representative, and almost immediately the tech supporter admitted defeat and said I would be transferred to “advanced tech support.”
tomorrow, today.
I have to admit, I had high hopes for this advanced technical support. I pictured Tom Cruise in Minority Report (“There is… no question.”)
And the guy on the phone had the appropriate swagger of someone with one foot in the future. There was a backdoor way of getting the video off my phone, he casually informed me. Would I like to know it? Yes. Yes, I would. Well, he told me how to get tothe picturemail page on the Sprint website (which I had already been to), and I did see the video, and a button that said “save to my computer.” So it seemed my problems were over and I thanked the guy and hung up.
fool's gold
Alas, when I actually tried to save the video to my computer, the site was unresponsive as the video just constantly said “processing…” and, you know, never finished processing, which I suppose is what the “…” meant. So I’m back on the phone with Sprint, trying to get some customer service and technical support, giving my number and name and pin number and explaining the situation over and over and over, going through the same channels, handed from one person to another, each one admitting defeat and passing the buck, until I’m on hold for “advanced” technical support and then the line clicks dead and an automated voice urges me to hang up and try my number again. Getting a little irritated now. I wait for whomever put me on hold to call back, since they must have number, as I have given it out over and over and over again thus far. But no call. So back on the phone and dialing Sprint. Back through the same prompts. Back through the same hoops. I get to I reach advanced technical support. We run through the same options again, a dance whose choreography I can recite by heart, including the lack of success which greets every suggestion. Finally the advanced technical support guy confesses, well, he’s googled everything he can think of to help me, but he’s just not finding anything. I call for professional help and I get a guy googling shit. Hell, I could do advanced tech support! You could do it. Everyone is doing it. You and I have the exact same tools at our disposal as Sprint advanced technical support. Google is the great equalizer. Anyway, the guy says he’s going to put me on hold and try to find a colleague who is more knowledgeable about Macs (I am so high maintenance!). But it’s a hold I’d never awaken from.
corporately sponsored euthenasia
The line goes dead again and still I have no answers. And Sprint is not utilizing my call back number. So I slowly climb the Jacob’s ladder of Sprint customer service operators again until an operator tells me she’s transferring me to advanced technical support and the line goes dead. Again. My phone company, specifically the tech support people within my phone company, lack the technical know-how (no how?) to successfully transfer a phone call.
"Right this way, sir."
The whole thing has gotten a bit too Sisyphean, so I gave up for the day. And yet I still needed to figure out how to get the goddam videos off my phone and onto my computer. So the next day, I set my jaw and started the process again. I tersely though not angrily explained the situation and how I needed advanced tech support from someone familiar with Macs and mention how I have repeatedly gotten disconnected. The operator and I reach a consensus that that shouldn’t be happening and that the operators I have been talking to should have, at the very least, called me back.
"Hey, I'm on your side."
She does manage to get me through to an advanced technical support guy, but she doesn’t believe that there are any specific Mac-savvy folks to be found. The advanced technical support guy gets on the line in a hillbilly drawl and we take up the timeless dance once more. Try this, try that, I’ve tried it, how about this, doesn’t work, maybe this? He slowly repeats several keywords as he no doubt hunts and pecks them into the google search window. His remarks almost all have a coda of “lemme/I’ll do this real quick” and “and stuff like that.” It was really an amazing experience in rhetoric. Somehow his saying “real quick” as he prepared to do something was supposed to convey to me that he was, in fact, working at maximum speed and efficiency. And his tagging of “and stuff like that” was usually almost non-sequitur but somehow hinted that the vastness of his knowledge and/or efforts was beyond his ability to express (or at least to express it real quick). In the end, he basically said I had to download a driver from the phone manufacturer’s website, though a visit to the website showed no drivers were available for download. I suggested maybe the phone, or at least the video function, was somehow not compatible with Macs. The guy conceded that, yeah, maybe that was true. Has no one ever had this problem before? I asked. No. No, they hadn’t, he replied. I guess maybe all self-respecting Mac users have migrated to iPhones.
Justin Long, your soup is ready.
So here I am, still unable to upload my videos directly from my phone to my computer. I did find a way to pull the video off the Sprint website by using Devo’s laptop, then emailing the saved video from her computer to myself and then downloading the video from my email on my own computer. I know there is a much simpler way to achieve my goal, but I haven’t been able to properly google it yet.
I went to the 92YTribeca last night for “Wainy Days Live,” a sort of variety show hosted by David Wain, the guy who did all the stuff (Stella, The State, Wet Hot American Summer, et al [sorry, I've been looking for an excuse to use "et al" for a while]). Wain has his own web series, “Wainy Days,” and the fourth season (whatever that means in web terms) just started, and the evening was a celebration of that fact, jack.
New York City?!
An impromptu taco night had delayed our arrival (though we got there on time) and the place was super packed. We did manage to score some seats in the way back, like the back of this second but connected room so it looks like you’re watching from down the hall but you can still see the people so it’s okay. And you’re sitting. Standing is a young man’s game.
wanna go *back* in time
David Wain is a funny motherfucker and a great host. Paul Rudd did some stuff. Michaels Showalter and Black joined David on-stage for some browbeating and a sketch about extra farts. And there was a performance of the original “Wainy Days” episode/script, written by a 12-year-old Wain. It was provocative with an exploding erection impregnation rolling into a Roe v. Wade punchline. That kid was some sort of prodigy. And we watched the premier episode of the fourth “season”:
Well, the MyDamnChannel video doesn’t seem to be loading very expediently, so here’s a few other Wainy Days episodes for a taste of the madness:
First, my farewell email to the LA Times was excerpted in an LA Times article about farewell emails several months after I was laid off by the company. I made some “Superman II” references and likened Tribune/LA Times owner Sam Zell to an older version of Non, the mute Kryptonian with the bum heat vision. It was nice to get my name in the paper again, but the article had a sort of undercurrent of “gee, I’m not sure these kinds of farewell emails are a good idea.”
fire bad
Now, after relocating to New York and not finding work for several months and then deciding to volunteer some time at a non-profit bookstore that raises funds for homeless people with HIV/AIDS, I got a note from the volunteer coordinator that NPR was looking to do a video blog story about unemployed volunteers. I figured NPR was cool and, hey, you know, I might as well try to wring some kind of publicity out of my volunteering, so I volunteered to do the interview. I volunteer at the bookstore because it’s a charitable thing to do, plus the bookstore frequently hosts cool literary events featuring writers such as Jonathan Lethem and David Shields. And it’s a book store, and, well, I like books. Volunteering seemed like staying at least tangentially involved in the literary world. So after talking to one of the NPR producers for the NPR, the video crew — who turned out to just be Columbia journalism students — came and interviewed me during my shift. Here is the hatchet job.
cartoonish
I have worked in reality TV, and I have worked in journalism, so I know a certain amount of cherry picking goes into compiling and article or video. You put your trust in the producers/writer/editor’s hands. And these guys squished me like a baby bumble bee. I come off looking like some scoundrel who is dicking around the good people of the non-profit world, leaving them hanging at a moment’s notice. What the video didn’t include is that the bookstore’s volunteer program asks volunteers to agree to a three-month commitment. I have been volunteering there for about two and a half months, so if I did get a job at Barnes & Noble (a line that was basically fed to me by the interviewer and then taken out of context) in the next few weeks, I would have fulfilled my commitment. And there was another unused line where I said that if I did get a job, I would continue to volunteer, though I would probably have to rearrange my schedule (I currently volunteer on Tuesdays, but would probably have to shift to the weekends). Then, on top of that, there’s the part where the volunteer coordinator complains about us unemployed volunteers and how she doesn’t want to spend “five hours” training someone who will then only use that skill for “three hours.” Okay: one, of all the things I have been trained to do at the bookstore, none have taken more than five minutes to learn; two, the volunteer coordinator has never taught me any of these things anyway; and, three, a volunteer shift is four hours, so what is this using the skill for only three hours thing? The math doesn’t add up. Are blogs not subject to fact-checking? I thought this was NPR, not Fox 11.
off you go
Okay, so be crucified in the video itself was rough handling. But then this “Renee” woman gets in a few shots in the comments section under the video blog. She explains that, as a person who works in the non-profit world, it makes sense to her that “these folks [me] are not being welcomed as true volunteers.” “True volunteers.” I am an imposter. A poseur. A burden.
