Big wheels keep on turning

Hot damn. So right after my last post, I got an email from Peter, saying he has a plot for me to do. I'm picking it up the 3rd, and have to have it done sometime the 5th. He's even paying me, fairly decently. Sometime this week, Matt the designer is giving me a plot to work on as well. So I get that email, and then I get a phone call, from one of the guys that I met the other night. When he was leaving, he had said "well, good to meet you, and you'll send over your resume, yes? We'll find you something, get you set up, absolutely" So this guy Steve calls, says hey, you might be getting a call from this other guy, I passed along your name for some grunt work for fashion week. Cool deal. I don't particularly want to do electrician work, but I'm intruiged by the idea of working fashion week. That's exciting. Also, it pays pretty darn well. I'm working there the 5th and 6th. I could have taken more days, but what with the light plots and the moving I'm already starting to feel a little overwhelmed. Because there's three other job possibilities. One of them is pretty awesome, but possibly full time (but benefits!) and full time is not really good right now. Another is part time, mornings only mindless work that pays fantastically, and the third is as a lighting assistant for an off-Broadway show. Which is what I showed my portfolio for this evening. It was nervewracking. I got my portfolio pretty in plenty of time, figured out what to wear, and was 20 minutes early. When I signed in for the interview, I noticed they had SM next to my name, which was odd because I applied for this twice (found it on two different sites, and decided what the hell. I didn't hear back from them for a while, so I thought maybe they didn't get the first one, or who knows what. Anyway) and both times was very specific about lighting. Lighting, people. So I pointed that out, and they (the guy letting people in to the interview) corrected it. The woman waiting to go after me was also lighting, and she took my phone number and email, said she might have work type stuff for me. Crazy. Anyway. It was terrifying and short. I went in, talked about my background a bit, and then showed my portfolio. I think it went fairly well, though the guy (who I think was maybe the director)was very brusque and asked odd questions, like "A show with 175 cues. About how long would that take you?" what? I have no idea. What kind of show? How much preparation do I have? What does the director want? I said about 4 hours, which gives me a little over a minute per cue. Who knows. They liked the answer. And liked that I can focus and know light boards, and call cues and stuff. But then, after I left, and was putting on my coat, he stuck his head out and said something about "do you stage manage, too?" oh shit. I said that I certainly had, and certainly could, but that I liked lighting better. So I'm a little worried that they'll ask me to stage manage this. Ack. I don't really want to do that. I don't want to have to turn down lighting work because I'm too busy stage managing. That would be lame. But we'll see how it pays, and if they even ask me. Who knows, maybe they'll let me be the lighting assistant. That would be cool. To be in New York for a month, and pick up an off-Broadway gig? Fantastic.
There's an anti-pot ad on these days that makes me chuckle. It's a sketch cartoon of a guy smoking, and his dog watching him. he says "Stop looking at me. I can stop smoking pot any time I want" and the dog says "how about right now?" and he looks around a bit, and then says "Next week is better". The dog turns to walk away, saying "you dissapoint me". I didn't watch tv all day, until I came home from the interview at about 8. I'm very proud of myself. It's so easy to have it on in the background while I'm working on my portfolio, or looking for work or something. So I'm glad that I resisted temptation today. I was quite possibly more productive for it.