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12:45 pm - Mon 8/8/05
Working For A Living...If You Call This \"Living\"

Working For A Living...If You Call This "Living"

I�ve been stuck in a bookstore rut for almost 15 years now (!), but over the course of my life, I�ve done a lot of things for money...

Many of them perfectly legal.

I was a lifeguard one summer during high school, at the Durand Swim & Rec Club (I�ve been thinking of that lately as the likely pinnacle of my physical fitness, even though I was probably 30 or 40 lbs underweight at the time).

In Lansing, when I was 26 or 27, I worked at McDonalds for close to a year-and-a-half, behind the grill.

In Texas, in the early-mid 80s, I did phone surveys (For Telesurveys Of Texas) and phone sales (For some police-related charity. Looking back at it now, I�m pretty sure this was not �on the up and up�).

For about five months in �86 or �87, I was a member of The Winged Victory Singers, a male singing group playing what was left of �The Borscht Belt�. After one gig in Atlantic City, and a week at �the fabulous Club Baba� in Queens, NY, I went with them to Miami Beach, playing hotels and condos with a laughably cheesy act, until I quit in April of that year.

For a year or so, I recorded books for the blind at Lansing Community College (That was in 1982�I remember the year because I was in Hair that winter, and recording textbooks by day and singing by night put a tremendous strain on my voice).

Years later, I was a �patient assessment model� for the nursing program at the college (Basically, nurses in training gave me physicals. Which was not nearly as cool as it sounds).

Early in my time in Lansing, I was a �Bellygram� escort (Accompanying a male belly dancer to bachelor parties and the like), then later, I tried my hand at �Gorilla-grams�, doing four or five (A couple �Gorillas�, and a couple as �Super-Chicken�) before deciding I really didn�t like it (If you can believe it, I was embarrassed by what I was doing, and at the same time, frustrated by the anonymity).

For two summers, I worked in the �scholarships� division of the Financial Aid office at Michigan State University (The most boring job I�ve ever had. Like the bookstore, but without the people contact, or easy access to reading matter).

For a time when I was with �Beth 2.0", I had a drive-around paper route.

Don�t remember the year, but sometime in the early 80s, I was a dishwasher at the Clock restaurant for a couple months (I remember getting fired from that job, but don�t remember why).

For maybe a year or so altogether, I was a mediocre waiter at the late great Sensuous Bean (I did it around seasons of summer-stock at Thunder Bay Theater in Alpena, MI).

In the summer of �86, I believe, I was a camp counselor at Camp Catskill, a summer camp for �developmentally disabled� adults. That led to a job at the Sullivan County A.R.C. (Association for Retarded Children) in South Fallsburg, NY, training that same population for entry into a �structured workshop environment� (For the record, I had absolutely no training for this work. And it strikes me as pretty damned funny that I was responsible for teaching �independent living skills� when I could barely take care of myself).

In Atlanta for maybe two months in �86 or �87, I worked out of a temp labor pool called Labor King Temporaries (Worst job? Working for a landscaper. Best job? There wasn�t one).

In Lansing, maybe around �83, I worked for a time for Kelly Services, in the �light-industrial division� (Worst job? A day at the local Coca-Cola bottling plant, unloading crates of bottles onto a conveyor belt. Best job? Probably the month or so I helped pack up books at the old State Library, when they moved into the new building. I also remember jobs that were just setting up chairs for events, which was pretty easy).

During a relatively brief stint on welfare (Back when single males could still get on welfare in Michigan), I earned my food stamps by working at the Boarshead Theater (You�d think I would have been in heaven. But other than a small role in a fund-raising �murder mystery� event, and another bit role in a school performance about Susan B. Anthony, I didn�t really act at the Boarshead till years later, when I played �Medvedenko� in The Seagull). Basically, I stuffed envelopes and worked the box office, and was jealous as hell of the actors.

I don�t even remember the time frame on this one, but I had a brief stint as a �wedding m.c.� (A guy and his wife had a business where they provided a photographer, DJ, and an M.C. for weddding receptions). I did, as I recall, maybe a half-dozen or so weddings around the mid-Michigan area; I might have done more, but I was uncomfortable with the loosey-goosey setup of the business (And I think the business went kaput when the husband and wife divorced).

Prior to coming out to L.A., I did occasionally make money acting.

My first �acting gig� was one summer during high school, when I toured around the mid-Michigan area with a production of Free To Be, You And Me, under the auspices of a government summer-jobs program (CETA, to be exact�the �Career Employment And Training Act�).

Then in the summer of 82, I think it was, I did my first season of summer-stock at Thunder Bay Theater (I went back the following summer, then was back for two more seasons in the late �80s, maybe �87 and �88). My longest stint at TBT was over a year, which was nice�I wasn�t exactly getting rich, but since they were providing �room� (When they moved into their own space in �83, there were apartments over the theater) and some level of �board�, I was able to say I was �making a living as an actor� for the first and only time in my life.

In the 90's, the only money I made from acting, that I can recall, was doing three dinner theater shows for Jane Burnham�s �Act-On Productions�--Who Am I This Time?, from the Kurt Vonnegut short story, then two really lame �interactive murder mysteries�, Frosty The Deadman and Death By Disco (And they really were lame, don�t get me wrong, but they also gave me the chance to play multiple roles, which was fun, and act with Jane B. (Who I�ve had a crush on since I first met her, over 20 years ago) and Jennifer M. (Who is the unrequited love of my life).

Looking back, I hardly know what to make of it all...

From my current mind-set (being stressed and obsessed about money), the first thing I notice is that I�ve never done anything where I made a lot of money�It was either a regular job for a low wage, or jobs that paid by the gig where there either weren�t enough gigs to live on, or I couldn�t �stick it out� for one reason or another, and quit.

I�ve certainly had some �colorful� jobs (�Belly-gram escort�? �Wedding M.C.�?), which will be great fodder for my future appearance on The Tonite Show with Conan O�Brien, but I also see jobs (McDonalds, MSU, washing dishes, phones sales, etc) that were just miserable, go-nowhere jobs that I did only because I had to do something.

It�s not hard to see why getting the job at Schuler Books in 1990 was such a big deal to me�Compared to a lot of what I�d done before, it was a �dream job��Working around books, working with people who read books, getting a job, in part, because I liked to read and was �smart�, that was all good stuff. And while it didn�t exactly pay big money, it was a regular job, and as long as I had no dreams, and nothing ever went wrong, I could get by on it just fine (Who knew then that I�d be in L.A. 11 years later., looking on those times as �the salad days�?).

Which brings up to the hear and the now...

Working at a bookstore is something that should have been over for me years ago, but here I am.

I�ve had a taste of making decent money, doing commercials, and liked it. A lot. And now I�m trying to find some �middle ground�, with a job that will provide me an income I can actually live on, while trying to make the only thing I�ve ever really wanted to do with my life actually come to pass.

But now, I�m going to head back to bed, so I can have a fighting chance of getting through a day at the bookstore without wanting to kill myself...


 

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