Two Jokes Plus Getting Here From There
May. 21st, 2007 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraRobin told me this joke:
A beautiful woman decides to supplement her income by giving etiquette lessons. Three guys sign up. She takes them to a restaurant and asks them how they would handle nature's calls
"I have to take a piss," says one guy.
"You flunk!" says the woman. "That's impolite."
"I have to go use the toilet," says the next guy.
"'Toilet' is a disgusting word at the dinner table," says the woman.
Finally the third guy says, "Will you excuse me for a moment? I see a friend I need to shake hands with. I'm hoping to introduce him to you later this evening.
Then Robin stood there blinking at me.
"That's pretty funny," I said. "Where'd you hear it?"
"I made it up," said Robin.
"No way!" I said.
"Way!" said Robin.
Could he have?
He has a great sense of humor, watches Comedy Central obsessively and moreover has an excellent ear for cultural memes, those tipping points between fringe culture and pop culture. Plus at 12 and a half he's officially Too Old for me to be able to predict everything that comes out of his mouth.
At 12 and a half I'm also guessing he has minimal experience with introducing beautiful women to his "friend" though he's gettin' the handshake down.
"Write that joke down," I tell him. "You know Stew has that recording studio. He says if you get enough material together, he'll make a demo tape for you."
Robin nods sagely. "You know that's how Shia LaBouef got his start," Robin tells me. "He did stand-up when he was like twelve years old in coffee houses. And an agent saw him."
"I'm a big fan of his work," I say. "Big fan. Even Stevens? Mwah!" I kiss my fingertips. "I bet his Mom is really fat and wears muumuus. I'll have to stock up on muumuus."
###
I knew the check would be processed some time today, but I wasn't prepared to have it go through first thing this morning before I'd had time to buffer the business account with cash infusions from the weekend just past.
So, first thing I saw when I logged on to online banking this morning was a minus number with a lot of zeroes.
Beep!
All together now, studio audience: "Life On the Margin!"
I am paying out more than I am taking in.
A large portion of what I'm paying out goes to credit card debt and a large portion of that goes to servicing the interest on the credit card debt.
I suppose when most people think about credit card debt, they think "unnecessary expenditures." Jewelry crafted from blood diamonds and extinct ivory. Weekend trips to Paris. Dinner at Le Bernardin.
That isn't where my credit card debt comes from.
No, my credit card debt was incurred starting a business.
And I started the business so my family wouldn't starve.
Four years ago when I started the business I was fifty and unemployed. I'd been unemployed for two years, which means, essentially, I was broke and beginning to have a sneaking suspicion I was unemployable.
My last corporate gig before that had been with the Silicon Valley spin-off of a famous mega-giant entertainment agency, operating out of an I.M. Pei-designed glass tower on Wilshire Boulevard. To tell you the truth I'd never been quite sure what the business plan behind this spin-off was. But that didn't seem to matter. Led by our Charismatic Leader – a whirlwind of a woman, beautiful, brilliant and tortured which led to all manner of CEO's falling desperately in love with her or at least wanting to fuck her – we'd shaken our money-makers at Microsoft, Oracle and America Online among other so-called "new media" stalwarts, and for a while there, solid gold doubloons were raining from the sky.
I liked the job. The hours were tough. Fourteen-hour days, much of it spent on the road. A mounting sense of panic when I realized that however many hours I spent at the white board, brainstorming with different color Sharpies, or designing complex organizational charts and mounting them in PowerPoints, I still couldn't figure out the value proposition. But they paid me a lot. I liked my team. And I got to pitch some really ludicrous business proposals to some really big name players. Like the time I tried to interest Benny Medina in a ghost-written J-Lo novello series ("Think of what it'll do for literacy and lingerie sales!") set up by a series of free website teasers. Or the time I spent a week at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons with a biz dev team from the ill-fated Enron, cobbling together a video-on-demand package.
But then the money stream dried up. It had something to do with a bubble bursting, we were told.
Personally I thought it might have more to do with the relationship between the CEO of the mega-giant entertainment agency and our Charismatic Leader.
This particular mogul was widely known throughout Hollywood as an intellectual (for which read "cold" – in fact, the Hollywood press had nicknamed him "The Glacier, and I'll throw in the usual disclaimer: names changed to confuse the innocent and protect the guilty, blah, blah, blah.) At the beginning of my tenure with the company, our Charismatic Leader was the thinking man's wet dream come to life! She could spin a mean postmodern dialectic plus, you know, she was a babe, Kant plus cunt: long dark hair, heart-shaped lips, breasts a man would be happy to plunge into and die between.
Towards the end of my tenure though… One afternoon my boss and I were traveling together. We'd had to change clothes in an LAX bathroom. Long story – we'd been meeting with Looney New Age Movie Star in Santa Fe, were on our way back to razzle-dazzle some Mega-Bucks Shipwreck-Obsessed Producer/Director-backed private space launch consortium in Glendale.
My boss stripped down to her bra, panties and panty hose. I tried not to stare. Quite frankly all three were what you might expect the medical examiner to pull off a corpse that had lain quietly decomposing for three days or so in a rat-infested shooting gallery.
(Must remember this joke for Robin…
Acolyte to Beethoven: Herr Ludwig! What are you doing in that coffin?
Beethoven to Acolyte: Idiot! Can't you see I'm decomposing?)
And come to think of it, it was kind of unusual that my boss was accompanying me a commercial flight at all. Recently she'd been doing all her flying on the Glacier's private jet.
She caught me staring. She laughed; we bantered. I forget exactly what it was we said to each other. I'd like it to have been some pithy summary of our mutual awareness of fortune's fickle nature. But I'm sure it wasn't. Did I mention she is independently wealthy? She's independently wealthy. Did I mention she always lands on her feet? She always lands on her feet. Bads things happen to the people around her. But she always lands on her feet.
I wasn't sure I was going to land on my feet, of course, and I'm still not sure. Maybe I can. Maybe I can't.
But – cue Chariots of Fire theme – I'll keep fighting and I'll keep trying. I continue to believe in the soundness of the business model. I was undercapitalized going into this venture and I didn't have anyone to help me. That led to making some fundamentally unwise, unsound financial choices. There has to be a way to rectify that.
A beautiful woman decides to supplement her income by giving etiquette lessons. Three guys sign up. She takes them to a restaurant and asks them how they would handle nature's calls
"I have to take a piss," says one guy.
"You flunk!" says the woman. "That's impolite."
"I have to go use the toilet," says the next guy.
"'Toilet' is a disgusting word at the dinner table," says the woman.
Finally the third guy says, "Will you excuse me for a moment? I see a friend I need to shake hands with. I'm hoping to introduce him to you later this evening.
Then Robin stood there blinking at me.
"That's pretty funny," I said. "Where'd you hear it?"
"I made it up," said Robin.
"No way!" I said.
"Way!" said Robin.
Could he have?
He has a great sense of humor, watches Comedy Central obsessively and moreover has an excellent ear for cultural memes, those tipping points between fringe culture and pop culture. Plus at 12 and a half he's officially Too Old for me to be able to predict everything that comes out of his mouth.
At 12 and a half I'm also guessing he has minimal experience with introducing beautiful women to his "friend" though he's gettin' the handshake down.
"Write that joke down," I tell him. "You know Stew has that recording studio. He says if you get enough material together, he'll make a demo tape for you."
Robin nods sagely. "You know that's how Shia LaBouef got his start," Robin tells me. "He did stand-up when he was like twelve years old in coffee houses. And an agent saw him."
"I'm a big fan of his work," I say. "Big fan. Even Stevens? Mwah!" I kiss my fingertips. "I bet his Mom is really fat and wears muumuus. I'll have to stock up on muumuus."
I knew the check would be processed some time today, but I wasn't prepared to have it go through first thing this morning before I'd had time to buffer the business account with cash infusions from the weekend just past.
So, first thing I saw when I logged on to online banking this morning was a minus number with a lot of zeroes.
Beep!
All together now, studio audience: "Life On the Margin!"
I am paying out more than I am taking in.
A large portion of what I'm paying out goes to credit card debt and a large portion of that goes to servicing the interest on the credit card debt.
I suppose when most people think about credit card debt, they think "unnecessary expenditures." Jewelry crafted from blood diamonds and extinct ivory. Weekend trips to Paris. Dinner at Le Bernardin.
That isn't where my credit card debt comes from.
No, my credit card debt was incurred starting a business.
And I started the business so my family wouldn't starve.
Four years ago when I started the business I was fifty and unemployed. I'd been unemployed for two years, which means, essentially, I was broke and beginning to have a sneaking suspicion I was unemployable.
My last corporate gig before that had been with the Silicon Valley spin-off of a famous mega-giant entertainment agency, operating out of an I.M. Pei-designed glass tower on Wilshire Boulevard. To tell you the truth I'd never been quite sure what the business plan behind this spin-off was. But that didn't seem to matter. Led by our Charismatic Leader – a whirlwind of a woman, beautiful, brilliant and tortured which led to all manner of CEO's falling desperately in love with her or at least wanting to fuck her – we'd shaken our money-makers at Microsoft, Oracle and America Online among other so-called "new media" stalwarts, and for a while there, solid gold doubloons were raining from the sky.
I liked the job. The hours were tough. Fourteen-hour days, much of it spent on the road. A mounting sense of panic when I realized that however many hours I spent at the white board, brainstorming with different color Sharpies, or designing complex organizational charts and mounting them in PowerPoints, I still couldn't figure out the value proposition. But they paid me a lot. I liked my team. And I got to pitch some really ludicrous business proposals to some really big name players. Like the time I tried to interest Benny Medina in a ghost-written J-Lo novello series ("Think of what it'll do for literacy and lingerie sales!") set up by a series of free website teasers. Or the time I spent a week at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons with a biz dev team from the ill-fated Enron, cobbling together a video-on-demand package.
But then the money stream dried up. It had something to do with a bubble bursting, we were told.
Personally I thought it might have more to do with the relationship between the CEO of the mega-giant entertainment agency and our Charismatic Leader.
This particular mogul was widely known throughout Hollywood as an intellectual (for which read "cold" – in fact, the Hollywood press had nicknamed him "The Glacier, and I'll throw in the usual disclaimer: names changed to confuse the innocent and protect the guilty, blah, blah, blah.) At the beginning of my tenure with the company, our Charismatic Leader was the thinking man's wet dream come to life! She could spin a mean postmodern dialectic plus, you know, she was a babe, Kant plus cunt: long dark hair, heart-shaped lips, breasts a man would be happy to plunge into and die between.
Towards the end of my tenure though… One afternoon my boss and I were traveling together. We'd had to change clothes in an LAX bathroom. Long story – we'd been meeting with Looney New Age Movie Star in Santa Fe, were on our way back to razzle-dazzle some Mega-Bucks Shipwreck-Obsessed Producer/Director-backed private space launch consortium in Glendale.
My boss stripped down to her bra, panties and panty hose. I tried not to stare. Quite frankly all three were what you might expect the medical examiner to pull off a corpse that had lain quietly decomposing for three days or so in a rat-infested shooting gallery.
(Must remember this joke for Robin…
Acolyte to Beethoven: Herr Ludwig! What are you doing in that coffin?
Beethoven to Acolyte: Idiot! Can't you see I'm decomposing?)
And come to think of it, it was kind of unusual that my boss was accompanying me a commercial flight at all. Recently she'd been doing all her flying on the Glacier's private jet.
She caught me staring. She laughed; we bantered. I forget exactly what it was we said to each other. I'd like it to have been some pithy summary of our mutual awareness of fortune's fickle nature. But I'm sure it wasn't. Did I mention she is independently wealthy? She's independently wealthy. Did I mention she always lands on her feet? She always lands on her feet. Bads things happen to the people around her. But she always lands on her feet.
I wasn't sure I was going to land on my feet, of course, and I'm still not sure. Maybe I can. Maybe I can't.
But – cue Chariots of Fire theme – I'll keep fighting and I'll keep trying. I continue to believe in the soundness of the business model. I was undercapitalized going into this venture and I didn't have anyone to help me. That led to making some fundamentally unwise, unsound financial choices. There has to be a way to rectify that.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 09:36 pm (UTC)Sorry abt the big negative numbers. I wish I knew how business works. I can only offer sympathy, but no advice.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-22 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-22 01:29 pm (UTC)You probably already thought of this, but if it's possible that your business would be ok if it weren't for the cc debt, it might be worth asking around about a real bank loan that would let you pay off the card and would have a less usurious interest rate. Check out the Small Business Administration website: http://www.sba.gov/
If you qualify, and you really might, they have a deal where they guarantee part of a loan in order to encourage a bank to lend you the $. They also have a soft spot for "woman-owned" business, and they'll help you get certified as such, if you want to. Basically, it sounds like you should do whatever you can to lower the interest you're paying.
Is your store picturesque? I've heard of people getting money for letting movies film on their property. You have to register with location scouts.
Maybe you should send a bunch of hot sauce to The Troops and get good publicity and lots of grateful soldiers will shop there when they get back?
Good luck. It sounds scary.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 03:11 pm (UTC)We had a good sales weekend and are coming up on our busy season. So we shall see what we shall see. This LJ is where I come to vent indiscriminately -- personal boundary-confused human that I am... :-)