Friday, June 06, 2014

A Summer Celebration

To observe the 100th anniversary of Wrigley Field, dozens of pairs of stadium chairs have been decorated and are on display up and down Michigan Avenue. When the celebration is over, the chairs will be auctioned off for charity. If only I had the room and the money, I'd buy these three.

Before they were the Cubs, they were the Feds

My all-time favorite Cub, immortalized!
One of the best things about being a Cub fan is our victory song, "Go, Cubs, Go!"

How to describe Buyer and Cellar?

My friend Barb and I went to see this wonderful little one-man show last Wednesday and I was enchanted. It's funny and sad. It's about celebrity and loneliness and love and sex and Barbra Streisand.

Official synopsis: "Buyer & Cellar is an OUTRAGEOUS new comedy about the oddest of odd jobs: an underemployed Los Angeles actor going to work in Barbra Streisand’s Malibu basement.” -NYT

But that doesn't do it justice. Watch the clip.


When perfect doesn't matter

The meeting I was so worried about Monday morning? I aced it. The client literally said, "This is perfect."

My boss wasn't in attendance.

He's been there for each petty recitation of every typo I made on the manuscript, for the heavy sighing because I used Cambria when a san serif type would be preferable to ... someone. Our Drama Queen Account Executive has been acting as though the margins and font of my copy deck matter mightily when, in reality, a production artist is just going to convert it to HTML anyway.

So after the meeting I asked him why he wasn't there. He shrugged and said, "I know you present well."

I won't go into the permutations of all the office politics, but we had another round of layoffs a week ago today and he's working on our performance evaluations. I told him I was confused and nervous about the way things are being handled ... that anyone would. But he acted as though I was just being a hysterical female. OK. So be it.

If the work, the content, the words, we present to our client matters, I was "perfect." If being able to negotiate the complex office politics are more important, then I'm in trouble. I have to believe that pleasing the client means more than pleasing the Drama Queen. I have to believe that, or I'll start screaming at the unfairness of it all.