fine whine

I just watched The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and I really, really liked it. One of these days I'm really going to make a list of the best films I watch every year, and this is a shoo-in for one of the top spots for 2004, I guarantee it. As a movie directed by a well-known and talented music video director, it certainly was worthy to be directed by a well-known and talented music video director. It feels like a music video (that said, the video culled from it by the Polyphonic Spree is brilliant in its own right) even while the score/soundtrack is near silent and almost absent.

"MTV-style editing" was for a long time a derogatory phrase. This is an MTV-style masterpiece and would serve well to begin the ultimate redemption of the phrase (as it is now on standby, I believe) and its practice.

I realize I'm gushing.

I just really, really liked this movie. I want to have written it. I want to have directed it. I want to have been on the sets, particularly the forced perspective ones. It was just brilliant.

Well, for about two hours today I was in hell. A lower case 'h' hell, but a rather complicated one. Let's say it had at least three levels.

I was on the level devoted to people who had their worlds flipped inside out suddenly. Before I get to that, though, here's a little background.

The company hired some well known consultants not too long ago to streamline our business processes and whatnot; they'd be making us more efficient and all that. Of course we all knew the truth: they'd be eliminating needless work all right but with it, needless workers.

No amount of pussyfooting and issue-avoiding could soften the blow, and last thursday the hammer started to fall. We got an email telling us in very certain terms not to take this Monday and Tuesday off, that the big little project was coming to an end and we'd get all that information we'd been waiting to learn. We knew what that meant: axe time.

I'd tried to remain upbeat. I'd tried to stay positive. I'd tried to update my resume. I'd tried to get my job done. I'd tried to sleep well at night.

Well, I slept at least.

Monday came and almost everybody was on time for once. Tension mounted for the first hour or two until an email started circulating about a 12:30 meeting. Whatever work was being done ceased, and rumor-mongering, speculation and worrying began. Lunch yesterday was interesting, with everybody away from their desks and sitting in the cafeteria, joking and bantering about our impending doom. In those last minutes before the meeting, well, the minutes dragged even more slowly.

The meeting had three purposes: first, to tell us, yes, head count was being reduced; second, to confirm the rumors about which directors had been fired; third, to tell us that we'd not be told which of us underlings would be fired until today. Uhoh. We were supposed to return to our jobs as normal, business as usual as it were. This meant more paranoid water-cooler conversation and online job-surfing, I think. Any of us feeling "too distressed" could feel free to go home.

I left around 3pm, having sent out a pair of emails that I felt were important. Naturally I needed to explain exactly what the situation might be at work as per me and my continued employment. I remained an optimist, though, albeit a downcast one.

Tuesday comes, and once again everybody's pretty much on time, except for my boss. We'd been told that they'd be talking to us through the morning in small sessions, so we gradually watched fellow cubicle-dwellers leave, and some of them even came back without tears in their eyes.

The local higher-up dropped by my cube looking for my boss. She hadn't shown up yet, and before he left he told another neighbor to hold tight and be ready for a 1pm meeting.

Minutes passed like hours. The hours didn't pass at all.

My boss arrived, but before too long she got a phone call that meant she'd need to leave right away. No waiting for her. She tracked down the higher-ups and found out before they got around to finding her.

She found out that they'd eliminated her. Everybody started crying and then so did she. We cleaned up her desk and cleaned the tears off her face and took her stuff out to her car.

I think she'll be okay, and so does she. Nobody's been less happy to come into work lately, so more power to her.

Now as for me? Screw that optimism crap. I'm a wreck. Despite her assurances that I'd be fine I'm suddenly worrying that since she's gone the department's going to be gone, ergo I'd be gone.

I'd be gone.

This is not a prospect I wanted to face, no matter how well prepared I thought I'd been. I'd cleaned out my desk, after all, and had a stack of the few things left for me to take home next to me.

I was going through emails and I got a tap on my shoulder. The local higher-up told me, reassuredly, "Don't worry."

I worried.

At 1pm it was all over. All told well over a hundred positions were eliminated, and they started this meeting with having us all stand up and congratulate each other for not being fired.

Um, what the hell? A little respect for our departed, dearly or otherwise?

Through the course of the meeting we learned little other than to never, ever use tiny fonts in a powerpoint presentation and that we didn't have copies of the so-called org chart laying around because they were confidential. Go figure.

We also learned that our days of sitting in meetings (well, they felt like they lasted for days) were far from over. So much for our newfound efficiency.

Bad things are happening, and I'm not quite sure how they will play out, as far as I'm concerned. It's awful difficult to be the only optimist surrounded by a bunch of pessimists, or the only sane person surrounded by paranoid conspiracy nuts.

More tomorrow, if I make it that long.

I'm beginning to think I've seen too many movies. While I've had this inkling of a suspicion for quite some time, tonight the point was driven home.

Knowing there was no general DVD release of it yet and thus my library wouldn't be acquiring it soon, I used one of my preciousssss Netflix queue spots for Martin Scorsese's After hours. I'd heard good things about it though as usual I was skeptical, since most of the good things I'd heard and read originated from the films' most rabid fans.

So it goes. I put in the disc (prominently marked FOR RENTAL ONLY) and let it go.

Slowly, though, I started to have an inkling of a suspicion of familiarity, and this was not the familiarity to the seedy, paranoid and surreal undercurrent below our cities' dark cultures but the familiarity in the literal sense of having seen it before. I'd watched the movie before, likely on AMC, and in the past five years no less.

Except that I'd forgotten everything except for a couple important but small scenes starring Cheech and Chong.

I could use the excuse that I've seen four hundred films in between, but to have forgotten 90% of a film completely and utterly boggles my mind.

The film, forgettable as it apparently is, is amusing and even pretty smart at times, but I could well find myself stumbling across it again and wondering if I'd seen it.

The strangest thing is that I'd apparently never moved it across lists from "to watch" to "watched" on my Palm. Now why would(n't) I do that?

We went to the zoo today. I wasn't overwhelmed or anything like that, but then again zoos don't really do much for me these days. Animals are interesting and all, particularly the exotic ones, but I don't need to seem them all the time. I haven't ever latched onto the Pokemon-esque need to make sure to see every single one.

The most interesting thing I saw all day was one of the workers, behind the scenes, trying to feed the rattlesnakes. Evidently I'd missed the appetizer, as one of the reptiles already had a mouse-sized lump about a third down its body. The zoo guy was serving up the main course, a dead white mouse held by some very, very long tweezers. He was trying hard to make the mouse looke lively but the snake wasn't taking the bait. The other one, lacking any obvious lumps, wasn't interested either and eventually the guy gave up and presumably fed his macabre puppet to some other animal.

It was interesting not because it was a dead mouse or whatever (so don't think I'm some sort of freak) but because this guy was just doing his job, and somehow it attracted a small crowd of us onlookers even if the snake was paying him no attention.

It must be nice to have an interesting job. Until they send him over to the elephant house, shovel in hand, I guess.