� Smokey Robinson, interviewed by Nick Spitzer in the (New Orleans) Gambit Weekly, July 1, 2003 � link lifted from where I lift all my good links these days

First of all, you people Googling for all manner of information on the H*lton sisters are gross. You should get a life too. Second, my usual don�t-want-to-be-here is magnified about tenfold today on account of whiny stress and stressful whininess due to no word on the job; pre-holiday impatience; resentment of the other Gastro staff who get to leave early today (don�t get me wrong � I do plan to leave early if I can, but unlike them I might get busted later); and fretting that I will get caught in traffic as I drive home to change into something adequately "cleavage, cleavage, cleavage" � Vanessa�s advice as to the dress code � for the demolition derby tonight. Note to self: get cleavage.

After the derby I am leaving first thing tomorrow morning for Hood River, Steve and I are, for hiking and mountain-biking and maybe windsurfing and the whole great-outdoors tip, not to mention the great indoors of cable TV in bed, and then Sunday on the way back we are going to stop in Portland and visit Lib. I�m taking her the console stereo that until last night was in my Beacon Hill bedroom, because people don�t seem to understand that giving a 91-year-old a cd and telling her that it�s easy to copy it to cassette so she can listen on her ancient player really does not get her any closer to hearing the music. (Also, some people in particular don�t seem to understand that it�s not cool to make your 91-year-old grandmother keep using an ancient cassette player with buttons so sticky that she barely has the strength to push them; some people have no right at all to point out that a new one would cost thirty bucks. Grrr.) So I�m a tiny bit irked with myself for never having thought of this before, bringing her my stereo, which is so simple to use that it�s the perfect solution even for the techno-phobic and occasionally forgetful; it�s got a three-cd changer, so all she has to do is push 1, 2, or 3. If the lady wants to listen to Sibelius and Czech folk music, then without getting up on a soapbox or anything I think that we as her family owe it to her to make that happen. My second cousins disagree, apparently, but that � as they are � is no concern of mine.

No no no no word on the job: Mrs. Roboto just wrote and suggested that perhaps they forgot it was a short week and that people are on vacation, that they may be having trouble getting in touch with my references. That sounds plausible, don�t you think? Last night, out with Steve and Stephen and Dave, we were chatting about the position, Dave was asking questions about the photography aspect of it, he hadn�t known I did photography, and as I was explaining about the architectural stuff I�d worked on and that I submitted as part of my portfolio, Steve interrupted. "Wait, you gave them contact sheets?" he said. "You are so old school! I bet they were so impressed by that." As I may have mentioned, Steve is not a guy who gives compliments for the sake of politeness, so I felt better, and in fact the whole of last evening was kind of a process of better-feeling, finding a way and a space not to be pre-emptively self-beating-up (I admit it) and/or obsessing at every single moment; there were several stretches of about ten minutes� duration in which I forgot about the abeyance and was fully engaged with whatever else was going on. One of my references, when I worked for her, gave me on my yearly evaluation the only Excellent she�d ever given anyone as regards writing skills, she told me, and when I left that job she insisted that I put potential future employers in touch with her so she could be the one to fill them in on the nature of that excellence. But she is also a, ha ha, director at Microsoft now, and I do know she travels for work plus takes a lot of vacations. So I am going to believe and resolve that Mrs. Roboto�s guess is the right one. They liked my resume, they liked the fact that I�ve been using FrontPage since 1996, they liked the article I wrote at last Friday�s interview, they liked me enough to ask me about a hypothetical start date, presumably they will like my references. Sometimes a person has to vaya con dios; sometimes she has to shrug the shrug of Oh well, there�s nothing I can do and get in the car and head for Hood River, where her only job is to have a nice weekend.

I haven�t written before that when I was at the second interview on Friday, I got a look at the other two candidates. They are both white females, so it�s a level playing field there, good to know. One I saw heading across the parking lot to her car as I made for the building entrance. Picture Lucille Tarlek from "WKRP in Cincinnati" only blown up with a bicycle pump to about twice Lucille�s size, with frosted streaks in her hair (same hairdo), visible makeup, and dressed head to toe in an ensemble of white and royal blue, the same royal blue as my sixth-grade airplane earrings. I�m not even being catty when I report that her nylons were way too dark for her white pumps � as Vanessa and I agreed last week as we devoted a moment to remembrance of Fernanda, some facts exist outside cattiness � and that her skirt was too tight. She was struggling with a very large artist�s portfolio, like the kind that graphic designers and account execs carry, the size of a medium-large suitcase only flat, and I thought, Oh, please; the sight made me not jealous or anxious but irritated, because based on the job description there was no way for what she had in the portfolio to be anything except overkill. Then as I was being shown into the testing room where I�d do the copy editing and the article-writing, the second other candidate was just finishing there and getting shown into the interview room. She had long straight brown hair and looked like a friendlier, edgier Jesse Sykes � "edgier" operative here because she was dressed in a way that I myself do not think appropriate for a job interview with a government agency, indeed for any office job: a low-slung brown skirt over which peeked some midriff, a brown top with fancy stitching on it, maybe it was homemade? (I only caught a glimpse), a long orange-brown wrap sweater made from bulky yarn, and, unaccountably, black flats with ice-blue knee-high nylons. She was a hipster, all right. I�m an angle-playing whore and I admit it without apology � it was much hotter than it had been on Monday when I wore the suit and tights, so I was rocking a two-piece cotton dealie that I got at the Woolrich outlet in Reading, A-line skirt and camp shirt in dark brown fabric with a pattern of red and white flowers on it, and my red shoes and a stylish red handbag. You could say I looked like somebody�s mom from Bellevue, but you could also say that when I was there on Monday I had taken note of what other females around the place were wearing and that I really wanted the job. Oh, and also, by Friday I had found the Fearless lipstick, so I was armed with that too.

Now, see? Writing this, I�ve made myself feel even better!

I am going to quit while I�m ahead. Nils, argh, I vex myself, I keep meaning to write something either here or via e-mail in response to your latest guestbook note � because, dude, I dig it � and I keep not quite getting around to it. Sorry. Soon I hope. Mrs. R also says that she�ll be done with the Sebold by Monday, so Monday night I�ll drop by and borrow it so I can be informed for Book Club on Thursday. Hoo-freakin-ray, right? No, I should stop, it�s not so bad � things are not so bad at all.

P.S. (later): Word up, huss.