In which Bwog staffers reminisce–namelessly, by and large–about how they occupied themselves for the last few months. If you’ve got something better, send
it (bwgossip@columbia.edu) in and we’ll share!

So my boss just sent me out on an errand, with nothing more than an address and his credit card. I assumed the location was a store, I assumed wrong. I ended up at a vet’s office, picking up his cat’s medicine. I returned to the office, pissed off, and told him, “I hope your cat doesn’t die.”

Ten minutes later, he walks over sheepishly, hands me a bottle of shitty wine and apologizes. Cellar No. 8. California Merlot. 2005, aged to perfection.

 Small(ish)-town newspaper writing is inexorably absurd. My summer experiences include: riding a creaky fire-boat around Lake Erie with drunk seamen, driving 2 hours in the rain because the police in Pennsylvania cracked a case about a pizza delivery man who robbed a bank just before his head literally exploded, interviewing historical re-enactors in one of their encampments (including a man named Ghost in the Head who actually lived the life of a 19th-century Native American trapper), having another reporter violently cuss out a cop who didn’t want to tell me the name of another cop’s baby who drowned in a pool, trying to get a bunch of media-hatin’ rednecks at a freakin’ tractor pull to talk to me… Not to mention the obituaries!

…Like sand through an hourglass, such were the days of my life.

I mow greens, rake bunkers, and pick up acorns at a local country club.  I like my job, but it’s a good thing that I don’t have to interact with the club members, because it’s hard not to have open disdain for people who pay thousands of dollars a year to smoke expensive cigars while they suck at golf.

Declaration: if it is not ridiculous to casually smoke while doing something, it is not a sport. (It is important to note that the logical converse of this is not true. That would make filling your gas tank up a sport.  For something to qualify as a sport, it must be:

1.A competition that people can win and lose

2.Ludicrous to perform while smoking.)

One of the weirdest things I ever saw is one of those guys with a personal oxygen apparatus strapped to his back, out gettin’ some wind playing golf.  My reaction to this was first thinking it was kind of funny and then feeling kind of bad for thinking it was kind of funny.  Then the guy hit a bad shot and threw his club.  I stopped feeling bad at all.

My editor had a crush on the 20-year-old male intern in the office… it was really awkward…she’d ask me to facebook him so she could see his profile and at first I thought she just didn’t realize how young he was, so I said, “Oh, I already friended him and turns out he’s a junior and a journalism major.” she looked thoroughly unfazed at this remark, and the fact that he’s at least four years younger, and said, “I knew that. I already googled him.” she would also make backhanded disparaging remarks whenever I’d spend time with him, like when all the interns went out to lunch, she’d say in her mock-friendly voice, “Oooh, you’re already going out to lunch with him?”

Awkward….

I worked at Central Casting, and basically all I did was look at the terrible resumes wannabe actors sent us, actors who had been in plays like “Twelve Angry Jurors” and “Joey: A Mechanical Boy.” There were so many ridiculous things people listed under the heading of “Special Skills” that I began writing them down.

My favorites include “certified tandem skydiver,” “proficient in most ball sports,” “changing water into wine (bartending),” “bourbon enthusiast,” “treasurer – $4 billion Fortune 1000 company,” “butter sculpture,” “co-writer of ’79 disco hit ‘Keep On Dancin’ and member of NYPD,” “can dance like someone who doesn’t knw how to dance,” and “reader at lighthouse for the blind.” Why would the blind need a lighthouse?

I think the weirdest thing that’s happened to me is having my editor, Rochester ’98, friend me on Facebook.