While Most of You Were Sleeping

It's blogs like this that almost had me take my blog private when I knew I'd be looking for jobs in the USA rather than rinky-dink rural spots in Central America.  I reserve that as an option that I probably won't use, even though my blogspot in general and this blog specifically may cost me a job or two.

I put in hour upon hour looking for pedantic wage-earning jobs, and I'll probably land one soon.  I also figure I need to go for the jobs that move me, the jobs that I'd really like to work, even if I don't know if they're even real jobs.  I hadn't planned to pull an all-nighter this evening, but I keep odd hours - I'm a writer.

I'd begun working on an application for one particular job on Friday night, then put it off when I recognized my initial effort was sub par.  Recognizing earlier this evening that this job was from a craigslist ad that could be deleted and taken down at any moment, I decided to crank out a worthwhile application to this unusual job offer.

The ad:

"Are you funny? A good writer? Good with people? A major national entertainment brand is looking for a young, inexperienced comedy genius with a lot of promise to work full-time in our Chicago office. Please email a funny resume and funny writing samples. If we like what we see, we'll be in touch. Please, no bad submissions." 


After many dark roast driven hours at an all night cafe, I present the totality of what I submitted.  Feel free to take it in piecemeal, as this may be 2 or 3 times longer than whatever was my previous longest post.  Now I go and maybe sleep.  Cheers.


The email:


Greetings Funny Folk,

I pulled an all-nighter to get this application off to y'all, lest the ad be removed from craigslist.  Lovely to see that the link remains active.  

I consider the original piece I wrote last night through this morning to be not only 1 large story, but at a bare minimum, 2 shorter stories.  I'd like to think you will, too.  

I've learned some decent editing skills through crafting what's now the 3rd draft of a book I'm writing.

I can create works of fiction.  I have and probably will again.  In this case, I thought truth to be a nice place to demonstrate some comedy through strong writing.  

It'd be great to hear back from you,

Richard T Najdowski

The funny resume:

Richard T. Najdowski - This is my name!

917-753-0441 - You can avoid actually speaking with me by texting this number.

7300 N. Wolcott Ave. Apt# 101 - I accept mail here when I’m gypsying the nation/world.

Chicago, Illinois 60626 - I also happen to be living here now.

richard.najdowski@gmail.com - My name again!

Objective:  Seeking a challenging position that will allow me to apply the myriad skills I have acquired     traversing our North American continent.  Oh, wait, that’s the legit sing-song sentence I have on a different resume.  Here’s yours: Seeking to force a permanent shit-eating grin upon your noggin, possibly have you fall out your chair from laughter, and definitely pee yourself a little.

Experience

05/2012-06/2012.  Swinger Party Promoter.  New York, New York.

• I am silly enough to actually have worked this job.
• I am not silly enough to reference it in that other resume.

08/2011-04/2012.  Various positions in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.  Key “Jobs” below.

• Hotel and Hostel Manager - My resume speaks to lack of stability.  I’d probably be denied work at the average US Subway store.  And not for their manager job, for the sandwich maker.  
• Kayak Guide - I have paddled a kayak once in my life, is that good enough to work for you?     
• Rain forest Guide - Look, monkey! Now give me tips.  Hey, another monkey (extends hand).  
• Sea Turtle Conservationist - Many locals laughed as they spoke about how delicious turtle eggs tasted, but the stingy bastards never offered to make any for me.               

• Organic farming - Let’s play with shit!  
• Bartender/ Bar-back - We as a species are ridiculously funny in that we attribute rock-star openness with our sexuality to these positions merely because there’s an implied conversation barrier that is broken down due to the implied talky nature of patron/patronizer. 2 Patron shots please!
• Wholistic Retreat Volunteer - I think I’ll decide I’m in love with an American that’s set to return to the US in less than 2 weeks, then eventually make my way there solely to actualize this glorious love.  She dumped me after barely 4 days in my passport country.  

10/2010-06/2011 & 01/2008-11/2009.  Wilderness Guide for At-Risk Teens.   SA. Stow, Maine.  

• Despite never getting more than an uncomfortable laugh or two, one co-worker continued to refer to the fully immersed working week as detox and the full week off after as retox.
• Discuss in private, off-the-record conversations, the hotness of choice young females.
• The first time I put on a snowshoe, I managed to somehow attach it backwards.

08/2010-09/2010.  American Rambler Tours.  Adventure Tour Guide.  The American West.  

• On Angel’s Landing in Zion Natl Park, I would have merrily taken a free ride from an angel.
• I’d also make said angel my bitch.  I can hear Michael now.  “Thank you sir, may I have another!”

11/2009-05/2010.  Vallecitos Mountain Refuge.  Caretaker.  Tusas Mountains, New Mexico.  

• Oversaw facilities during off-season and wrote the 1st draft of a book.
• May have went crazier than Jack Nicholson, just nobody was there to witness it.  Or were they?
• Masturbated often.  Once to a mental image of a threesome between Jesus, Veronica, and I during Jesus’s bloody walk.  He was bloodier after I devirginized him.  Though, now that I think of it, he was pretty loose, and he did have a knowing way about him as he ate out Veronica’s ass and pussy and took me in his mouth atm style.  That little slut!

    

11/2007-01/2008.  Orion’s Mind.  Tutor for K-1st graders.  Chicago, Illinois.  

• Attempting to tutor this age group immediately after the school day ends is in the running for worst ideas in the history of civilization.  Vasectomy please.

     

01/2005-09/2007.  American Capital Partners.  Stockbroker.  East Meadow, New York.

• “Oh my god, what the fuck am I doing this again for?”

07/2004-08/2007.  Huntington Learning Centers.  Education Director/Tutor.  Baldwin, New York.

• Instruct proper instructors on proper instruction.
• Regale my female co-workers with my off-premises whorish sexual exploits.

    

08/2003-06/2004.  Commerce One Financial.  Stockbroker.  Westbury, New York.  

• On a 1-5 scale, if 5 is boiler-room illegal, then the bosses spoke of us as a 4, because we were an 8.

• Fantasize about suicide, bomb threats, murder, snow days, and the NYSE and NASD imploding.
• Look at porn when feasible.  Relatedly, in this office, I found what was likely an ex-girlfriend of mine on a local amateur lesbian porn site.  I emailed the link to a couple people who knew us and they were in the 70-90% range on it being her.  I guess when she told me she had no desire to ever eat muff, she didn’t realize it came at $500/hr.  

09/2002-06/2003 Young Adult Institute.  Assistant Psychologist.  New York, New York.  

• Use various substitute words for retard, despite all the clients being labeled as MR, ie retarded.
• Laugh my ass off when I discover one resident client actually went to the trouble to shit out her 2nd floor window all winter rather than go the extra few steps to the toilet next door.  And suck my ass if you think I participated in the roof cleaning.

05/2001-08/2002.  Community Counseling Centers of Chicago.  Case Manager.  Chicago, Illinois.  

• Make fun of most every severely psychiatric individual when not in their presence.
• You really want to give me the power to have people institutionalized?  Yes!

5/1997-08/2002.  Hackney’s on lake.  Waiter.  Glenview, Illinois.  

• I worked with a kid whom had turrets until he was fired for having turrets.  His actualized condition was not the speedy, “Fuck, shit, bitch, cunt, cumblaster” tor something verbally similar that you may see in the movies.  This guy would shriek loudly in a high pitch.  That didn’t go over well when other servers were near him with trays full of drinks and food.

Education
1997-1999.  University of Illinois.  Chicago, Illinois

Learned more and more sinister ways to be a smart-ass.

1993-1996.  Oakton Community College.  Des Plaines, Illinois.

• Before it was trendy to start off at junior college due to inflated costs of higher education in an economic depression, I attended for the more classic reason - lots of drugs in high school.  

Skills  

Certified in:

CPR - I’ll stick my tongue in your mouth.  

First Aid - I’ll stick my tongue in your open wound(s).  

Life Guard - I’ll cop a feel as I swim you to safety.  

Three different methods of crisis intervention - Just try and cop a feel on me!  Seriously, try.  Please.

Languages - The Bastard English and a moderate level of Spanglish.  Entiende?

11/2009-Present.  Writer.

• I actually think of this in progress book as a gift for humanity.
• I’m not there, so you needn’t uncomfortably laugh at the above comment.  I laugh at it frequently.  And still think it’s true.

The writing sample:

I’m cruising down Highway 80/90 somewhere in the middle of Ohio at 3 in the morning with a guy I met about 12 hours earlier.  Reeling and healing from the open sore vanquished love that had me return to the United States after so many months away, I’d answered a “rideshare” ad off craigslist looking for people to travel from the New York area through Chicago.  There were other viable ways for me to return to my people in Chicago, but none had the unknown variables that this one potentially contained, so I decide to ride with him.

We meet up at a Connecticut train station.  For recognition purposes, I’d informed him that I had long hair, a large turquoise backpack, and was wearing pink pants.  

“I had a hard time spotting you because your pants are more mauve than pink,” is one of his first comments.  

“This is gonna be interesting, “ I think, as he excitedly tells me of his plans to drive I80 all the way west for 700 miles or so.  It’s not long before his logic tells him to head north through the Catskills as a means to travel to highway 80, which is southwest of us.  

I know he’s taking us in a disjointed route.  I’ve driven most all of the major roads between Chicago and the Northeast, having grown up in Chicago, lived in New York for 5 years, and lived in New Hampshire for 3 years.  Plus, I know you don’t drive north to get south.  

Now, I no longer have a car.  I sold it to buy a one-way ticket to Central America with no certainty that I’d ever return stateside.  And I find myself traveling with someone that hasn’t gone as far into the crazy as I have to come back saner than sane.  I decide against pointing out his poor navigation and to enjoy the mountain drive.  A mental note is also made to sleep when I can, because this will be my longest ever drive from these parts to the geographically northern and more eastern than western Midwest.

By this time I, and not Mr. 60 mph in a 70 zone, am driving.  The music is loud and the driving is smooth.  Even if it wasn’t, I’d taken a number of defensive driving courses during my speed racer youthful days, thus supposedly getting tickets removed from my license.  In those classes, I had the 2 second rule of safe driving - sometimes it’s 3 seconds or more - reinforced time and again by some unhappy cop that probably let out an unmelodic chorus of “bullshit” and “fuck” when he pulled the short end of a straw.  On this black sky night, with plenty of bright red tail lights shining well ahead, in both lanes of traffic, that particular skill would not needed.   

I come to a stop, kill the engine, roll a smoke, and get out of the car to see what’s happening.  Beyond the few cars and a couple semi-trucks I’m behind, I see the concrete highway median pushed well into the middle of the road on the opposite side of the highway, I see one car wrecked and stopped in the middle of both lanes on my side of the highway, I see about 10 people standing around, and I see no emergency vehicles - this just happened.  Good thing I have a phone to take pictures with!

I hear from pedestrians that the driver of the wreck has claimed he is uninjured and okay.  I hear a 1st person account from a truck driver about how he was driving in the left lane while the now-wrecked car was in the right lane.  I hear how the car in the right lane started to swerve to the left, and applying what I presume he learned in offensive driving school, the driver cut to the left, getting nearly perfectly perpendicular with the direction of travel, then rams the divider, before going almost sideways, and then sputtering to a stop in the middle of both lanes.  I figure if the accident happened like that, then the driver is probably concussed, so I walk over to see him.  But not before I snap a couple pictures.  They’re poor because I don’t have flash on this phone.

Car pieces and shattered glass litter the highway like Hansel with a never ending supply of breadcrumbs for his return trip home.  The front of the Honda is crushed, the front axle is no longer elevated above ground, and the driver’s side door shows signs of having contacted the divider with some rebounding force.  The driver exits his car at about the time I finish my approach.  I ask him if he’s okay, and his response makes me think of a typecast, drunken Walter Matthau.  My thinking - of course you’re okay, you’re shitfaced!

I return in my mind to an evening I had two nights prior, when I’m shitfaced in a car passenger seat while my buddy is shitfaced in the driver’s seat, and we were pulled over by an undercover shortly after driving away from a not-quite-gentleman’s club.  I remember talking some great talk and walking a dancy walk after I was asked to exit the car a couple minutes after my friend.  I recall some of the wonderful banter between Cop One and I as he patted me down for weapons.  

“You have a couple twenties here.”

“Money might be the biggest weapon of all.”

“You have a lighter,” as if I needed the verbal recount of the few items in my 2 pockets.

“Homeland security considers that a very dangerous weapon.”

Before Cop One begins a search of the car, he asks me to go to the back of the car, and then says something like, “Nice pants.”

“I love my pink pants.”

“I’m sure the ladies do, too” he says, or something like that.  

“Oh, they do!” I exclaim, wide-grinned and jokerish.  I don’t recall the exact verbiage we shared here, partly because I was trashed, and partly because I knew then that we’d be driving away from this incident.  You don’t give me the hard-ass/jokester cop and not expect me to own him.

I remember almost immediately disobeying Cop Two’s direct order to keep my butt firmly against the back bumper.  I recall him not caring because I am entertaining - the passenger is allowed to be drunk!  I recall Cop One taking whippersnappers from my buddy’s console and throwing them on the pavement.  I recall Cop Two’s mystified look.  I recall cracking up, kinda dancing side to side, and flashing to the scene in Boogie Night’s with the literal Asian whippersnapper.  

“Yeah, they are called whippersnappers, aren’t they?” I offer.  Calling them snaps doesn’t suffice when there’s such a superior, longer, master word.

I recall Cop One handing my friend and I our licenses back shortly thereafter.  I recall a mutual lawyer friend seeing us both about 20 minutes later and being: 1 - mystified at how we were allowed to drive away, and 2 - unwilling to be in our presence for more than a couple minutes because we were both clearly messed up and he wasn’t.  His loss.

Two night’s later, I’m still wearing the pink pants, though I’ve changed my skivvies.  My headband is probably the same one I wore that night, keeping not sweat from entering my eyes, but rather my long hair.  I talk with a few of the bystanders, casual and common dressed one and all - a middle aged black couple, a middle aged white couple, and a few black and white truck drivers of varying ages.  The driver of the wreck keeps company with himself just outside of his car, while the rest of us are about 20 paces back, near the now-arced median, where we watch a police car make its way up the empty shoulder before weaving its way between the parked vehicles and coming to a stop mere feet from us.
The cop exits his car and looks directly at me, “Are you the driver of that vehicle?”  
I have to smile as I turn and point while responding, “Nope, that would be that guy.”
Red lights flashing above the cop car, I take the opportunity to snap a couple pictures that allow the rearranged median to be viewed.  Two or three minutes later, Mr. Funky Turner is in the backseat of the cop car and the vehicles are being directed to drive past the wreck on the shoulder.  I get back in the car with my whippersnapper chum and hit it.
“Whoa, 80!” he says, maybe not recalling a time where he’s ever dared such a velocity.  We make good time, for awhile, until I start to fade, whereby I let my cross-country comrade founder the horsepower reigns.  After 20 ½ hours together, or about 7 hours slower than I easily could have made the trip solo, we arrive at my destination.

He gives me an update on his trip via text a couple days later, and lets me know that I will now receive updates on all his future road-trips!  I deny myself the imagination to see myself ever again sharing car space with him.  “Lucky me!” I reply.