My life is a paradox. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember. On one had I’m cynical and sarcastic; a jaded and calculating realist who thinks the world is out to get me. On the other hand I’m a romantic idealist who firmly believes in the beauty and wonder of the Universe. It is not easy to rectify these two halves of myself. I have often wondered if I am crazy.

Then I started working in entertainment and removed all doubt: I am beyond crazy.

This is a business that attracts the weirdest and screwiest of our population. I’ve given you some examples of these in pervious articles, but they are the loonies in from of the camera. What about the people behind the lens? What about us?

I have already admitted I’m crazy, and given some good reasons for that. Anyone who knows me can likewise testify. In fact, everyone on this website is total wacko. Brian O’Malley, who you know as the owner/operator of A101, is unquestionably off the deep end. Rob Cunningham, fellow contributing writer, is also a few marbles short of a stack. And Kevin Williamson (where the hell did he get that nom de plume?), filmmaker, office supplies genius, celebrity impersonator, and all around good guy is without a doubt bonkers.

Every professional I’ve ever worked with, and some promising amateurs, have all been crazy. I believe it’s actually a two-part mechanism. First, you own inherent wackiness attracts you to the business. You see it as a place where you can be free to express your unique ideas, and get paid for that expression! An environment where you will be surrounded by other chicken neck eating freaks, and you will be comforted by the funny farm of your own design.

Then, once you realize the entertainment industry is far more bizarre then even you can handle, the second mechanism kicks in: self preservation. You become crazy in order to save your sanity. Case in point: I worked with a guy named Martin, and he was an asshole. (Normally I try to avoid such profanity in my columns, but there is no other word to describe Martin. In fact, he was the biggest asshole I have ever had the misfortune to work with.) He slept through his graveyard shifts, disregarded his responsibilities, insulted his fellow employees, and he smelled of baby powder and cheese. Weird. He also liked to wear this pink sweatshirt that boldly advocated, “Don’t just exercise, JAZZERCISE!” A bold move from a man that made lewd remarks about all the women in the department. Our Engineering Manager insisted this scrawny, balding, pointed headed, pathetic man would someday arrive for his shift with a gun under his coat and vent on us by ventilating us. Thus he was nicknamed “The Bullet Headed Postman”, with no offense intended towards our fine readers from the United States Postal Service.

The story going ’round the office was that he used to be THE director for the San Diego Padres a few years back until he was forced to quit. The exact details are clouded by myth and legend, but it seems one of his cameramen tried his hand at vehicular homicide after a game where Martin was particularly offensive. I contend Martin was unable to cope with the madness of the industry and it got to him. Now he’s working in a basement master control dungeon from 11pm to 6am, Wednesday through Sunday. Sucks to be him.

I’ve seen it time and again: you either let the beast get you or you jump on its back and ride the bastard. Well, you could run away from the Biz and ask for your retail job back, or you could take that generous offer from your Uncle to sell used cars on his lot in Palmdale.

Trust me: a bad day in television is better then a good day in retail. ‘Course maybe my perspective is warped. After all, I am certifiable. And my last job in retail was selling crappy coffee beverages to boorish mallrats who never suspected the corporate policy was to re-steam the milk even after it had returned to room temperature while sitting in either a poorly cleaned refrigerator or out in the open exposed to all the microbial life forms that love to eat lactose sugars make people violently ill, but would those slack-jawed mouth breathers listen to me even after I pulled a book off the shelf in the beverage isle plainly stating the dangers of such a dairy policy, but these were the same retards that insisted the undercooked beans in the “Chicken and Black Bean Soup” were perfectly edible even after I had every single bowl returned to me uneaten that day, but what am I to expect from managers that couldn’t understand how I learned the register system just by watching them but didn’t think I’d notice when they took extra long breaks or “borrowed” CDs from stock. But I digress.

It is often said genius and vision are associated with madness. Mozart, Van Gogh, Patton, Edison, the first guy to ever eat an oyster, and countless other masters of their art have walked the fine line between wicked cool and playing poker with a pinochle deck. I’ve never heard a story yet about a movie or television director that didn’t have his or her idiosyncrasies, and unfortunately that sometimes included stories of abuse towards the cast and crew, and there are still a lot of those Martin type assholes out there. Do you really want to work out there, maybe with one of them? Do you belong out here with the rest of us loonies? You’ve got to be nuts to want to work in entertainment; you got to be crazy to actually get a job here; and you have to be off your rocker to survive.

I leave you with a bit of Confucian Wisdom:
“Man who stand on street corner with hands in pockets, he not crazy, he just feel nuts.”