Earlier today, I stopped by gameLab HQ to have a meeting with Eric Zimmerman. The place is more or less a gamer’s paradise: at one end you have a stack of systems, old and new (from an Intellivision to a GameCube… even a top loading NES!), with tons of games of course, and on the other are shelves entirely dedicated to Ultraman and other heroic robots from Japan. The walls have various board game boards hanging like fine art and there’s even an old Asteroids machine in the waiting room; the only thing to read is game magazines, plus I found a few PSone games, mostly RPGs, buried underneath.
We spoke at the conference table, which had a big bowl of Legos; there were others involved in this meeting, and I’m not sure if it looked good or bad when at certain points I was more interested in getting a tire to attach to the headless ninja Lego body than any technical mumbo jumbo being discussed.
Anyhow, it was nice checking out the inner-workings; it’s always been a goal of mine to one day work at gameLab, hence my curiosity with the place. But to be honest, I really can’t complain about my current gig at SVA. Granted it’s not glamorous, and the pay isn’t all too hot, but it’s a nice, ultra laid back environment with some really awesome people. In fact, it’s the only job I’ve every held where I genuinely like all my workers and they don’t hate me. Plus, where else can get paid to I sit around all day while talking about crappy movies, surfing the web, and work on other freelance jobs? Oh, and they gave me the opportunity to be a teacher. I can’t forget about that.
Actually, almost one year ago today was the last day of my last job. Believe it or not, I used to sell swords, suits or armor, dragon’s eggs, fairy dust, and other pieces of medieval crap, and I hated every minute of it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like it was hard work or anything, but most people think that such a job would be awesome (even myself at first). Well it wasn’t. First off, I had to deal with the general public, which for the most part consisted of annoying tourists. Plus there was the steady stream of sad souls who filled their gaping emotional wounds with overpriced crap. Hey, like I can criticize; I buy just as much useless crap as the next person. But I just bought the 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime the other day on eBay (not that I’m bragging or anything, though I did get a killer deal!) and at least that can transform. What the hell can you do with a big fake sword? Lord knows that a girl thinks when she goes to some guy’s place and he has a huge replica of the sword from Conan the Barbarian: “Wow, this guy’s got class! I’m SOOOO gonna bang him tonight!!!”
But best of all dealing with the angriest person alive, my former boss. I’m not going to air other people’s dirty laundry, but let’s just say if I had a life like his, I guess I’d be perpetually pissed I suppose (and striving for a constant state of drunkenness as well). My other coworkers were for the most part pretty cool, though they got on my nerves as well. The worst was their constant complaints regarding customer’s always touching the swords, which they’re not suppose to. They simply couldn’t understand why. How about this for a reason: they’re fucking swords!!! It’s not exactly something you see everyday, especially if you’re some backwards hayseed like 90% of the people who walked in.
Don’t get me wrong, I tried approaching the job with as much enthusiasm as I could, at least at first. At one point I figured it could be a good chance to talk to girls, but as soon as I discovered that out most ren fair chicks are totally nuts (which wasn’t very long actually) I lost all interest. Hence why I was actually relieved when the store was closed down and I was laid off. If I really wanted, I could have gotten a job at the castle in Jersey, but I wasn’t going to inflict myself to such torture, even if I was friends with the king (at this point, I was still friends with the west coast princess and had enough castle politics in my life).
But back to SVA, today’s also the first day of open registration for all Fall Continuing Education classes, including my own, which starts again in October. You can sign up here.
