Conference Calls - The Townsquare of Corporate Life

If you have ever had a corporate lifestyle, this video will resonate in a painfully funny way.
* late-joiners
* non-mutes
* roll-call
* miskeyed re-joiners
* screaming babies
* screaming parents (my favorite in the past includes a budget-planning meeting interrupted by an irate co-worker/dad reminding his kids that they were to "TAKE THAT SHIT INTO THE GARAGE, DAMMIT!")

Enjoy!



Take Me Home
My Blog About My Dad


MC, HOST, CORPORATE, COMEDY, SEATTLE, GEOFF, LOTT

New Open Mic In Culver City

If somebody wants to express themselves, publicly, loudly, amplifi-edly... great.

And thus, with all compassion and encouragement due a child of God...

What the bag o' farts is going on here?

I'll tell you what's going on here...
This is the parking lot of a business across the street.
They've been holding some sort of A) Fund raiser, or B) Contest For World's Worst SwapMeet all day.
About an hour ago, this lady started setting up shop. In a totally-velvet cape and hat combo.
She's got a laptop pumpin' tunes into the PA, while she sings.
The black t-shirt guy works at the 'cross the street biz. The other 2 folks are haggling deals to purchase items found and fumigation-needed.

I.
Loves.
It.

Take Me Home

My Blog About My Dad

Blog 600! Gotta Do What Ya Gotta Do

There was a time when I thought to myself, "there's no way he's going to make it to the next rooftop." He did, by the way. I still can't believe he did, but squirrels are very athletic, with high degrees of Athleticism, which is a word a sportscaster made up to sound as though he had a high level of intelligism.

Life, as I've learned, is not a lineal path from Point A (your mother's "baby garden") to Point B (3rd Grade) to Point C (Cryogenic Head Reanimation). Oh no, it's not. It's lot of twists and turns. Like a river, filled with some rocks, some rolls, some backfat, some babyPhat, and some bodies. And I'm the water. In MY life, I mean, I'm the water, you are your own water.

Whatever it is you're planning on doing, stop planning and start doing. PLanning is NOT work, mmkay? It's been documented frequently - and perhaps to my detriment - on how many issues I had in corporative Americanus. Meetings, for one, were rarely places that work got done. They usually set up other meetings because some dipshit who called the meeting "Necessary" didn't make it. Likely in another meeting about their love of eating crapwiches and mustard shakes.

I now embrace my personality and creativity. For a looooooooong time - longer for my teachers - I was told to sit on those things, take them outside, or disallow their development. Well, NOW, I get to use them as a way to make money. A lot of money, I hope. Money's just a tool to build other things with, don't frown upon my desire to prosper and develop a robot to crush the dreams of my foes. Both of them.

So whatever it is that feeds your Zen belly, get the heaping handfuls you want and cram them inna yo face. I, at times, have to remind myself that "this is water," for you D.F. Wallace fans, and that I'm where I'm s'posed to be at this point in life. No, the money's not rolling in right now. There aren't agents knocking at my door. I don't have a big deal to sign tomorrow morning. These aren't things to discourage me, however. These are MOTIVATORS. And if I do what I'm supposed to do, which is different for everyone, then it will happen. And if it doesn't, so help me Bob Bledsoe, I will call a meeting.

Take Me Home

My Blog About My Dad

Feels Like I'm Losing It Sometimes

Lately, without a dayjob and getting every other thing in order in life...

such as registering a car in a new state, getting smog-checked, taking a driver's test, handling insurance, handling renter's insurance, calling after jobs, handling investments, etc...

I have to spend a lot of time on the phone. Supposedly that is to make life more convenient. But I have a network or a phone or a connection or a bunch of people on the other end that are seriously malfunctioning. And that lack of ability to communicate with one's mouth and brain in full connection is incredibly widespread, and causing me to understand how our economy could very well be undermined by people who finance their clothing.

When I think of having to call an institution about an account change or anything that will cause me to change anything at all... which means i have to talk to a person!!!!!!!... I cringe. I don't want to hunch up, but I do. It's a gut reaction, as my gut churns while I think of the menu I have to negotiate (these will soon be a thing of the past, BTW, if we really want to stimulate the economy), leading me to a complete stranger. So every call is another communication style to learn and adapt to. And if the person on the other end of the phone is pissed off or underpaid or self-righteous, I'm in for an overly long call. Just read my previous entry on Lingo.com. That company can suck it with their eyes open.

I am who I am, a good guy who is doing the best he can to get in and get moving in his career, meet people, and be the kind of guy I would want to hang out with. There's no horn-tooting there, I have had to TRY very hard to make that happen every friggin' time I leave the house. It gets easier and easier each time because I have a clean slate of interaction where ever I go now. Nobody knows me. So I can joke around and chat it up and be as cordial as I want to be. Maybe I'm the only person in that person's day who didn't tell them they should go back to furrier school. I am who I am. And if you hung out with me for a while and had some beer, I think you, too, would like me. If you replenished the beer, that, too, would be nice of you, but no pressure.

LA is bigger than Seattle. It sprawls. It's got more of everybody, every color, every background. So by sheer numbers of people, there are more people doing dumb things and rude things and dipshit things, and those always stand out. Example... Stopping at a red light doesn't make nearly the impact as running a red light and T-boning a car ALSO running that red and making a left in front of the hitter. It's rampant here. I don't even chance that water. And these people aren't ever going anywhere. If it were that important, they'd have left their shit-tents much earlier.

So today, I'll chalk it up to heat and frustration and get it out of my system. Writing and a good hard workout later. I am going to a church service tonight, also, overdue for us. I knew it was bad a few weeks ago when we attended a church service and all I could think was "this pastor can't preach for shit. This guy's awful. I've heard more passion in a Little League dugout." Then his pushy wife went up and had the full-pew press about getting people to attend, you BETTER attend, DON'T THINK ABOUT NOT ATTENDING, YOU SINNERS, for some Halloween thing she wanted to do. And I sat there and judged them like they were dancing their way across the floor for my amusement. So I need something bigger than Me right now to focus on.

Today I walked by 17 people. I counted them, because I wanted to do an experiment on how people react to strangers on the street. Of the 17, 14 were wearing sunglasses. Of those 17, 2 were on bikes. Of the 17, 4 of them and I traded "Hello"s or "good morning"s. All 4 of them were white. The other 13 were all non-white. No eye contact, no recognition. Just a fact, that's how it went for me this morning. But, hey, I'm not shutting off or down. Next time, however, maybe I shouldn't dress as a cop.

On the bright side, it's nearly 80 degrees already, no clouds in the sky. I got calls to make.

Hello, Xanax?

Take Me Home

My Blog About My Dad