Recently, I went to visit my mother in New Hampshire. It’s always nice to see family, but I truly hate New Hampshire. I mean, it is a beautiful place, the foliage is phenomenal, I can completely understand why some people may love it there, but New Hampshire is just not for me. However, all the solitude and silence that comes along with this trip I felt would be a great opportunity for some reflecting time.

Before I even got a chance to start reflecting, I received a call from my talent manager, whom I love. She’s a great woman who has always supported me and my talent. We had one of those “heart-to-heart” conversations where we were talking not just about my career, but where she was having some difficulty in regards to me. She basically stated that she didn’t understand why I hadn’t been going out recently. My headshots are great, my reel is great, my resume speaks for itself, and she raves about me in the comments to the casting directors so she really didn’t understand what was going on and why things were at such a standstill for me right now. I asked her if there was anything I could do. She just stated that I shouldn’t worry and that she would sit and think about my…well, everything, and if there was anything that I may need to change or add. I got off the phone and though she was very encouraging, I couldn’t help but feel semi-defeated and feel like I had, in some way, let her down.

I started to cry a little bit after we said our goodbyes. I was trying to figure out for the life of me what it is that I could do. How I could help. What I should do differently. I went to my website (which does need to be updated) and started making some notes on what exactly I needed to collect and get together for my web designer to update. As I looked at everything on my site, I came across the amazing article that René Garcia, Jr. wrote about me. After revisiting this article, I once again, started crying, but these were happy tears. This article and what René said reminded me of what it is that I bring that’s special. And I realized I had forgotten and haven’t felt this specialness that René portrayed in a very, very long time. I went from feeling horrible about myself and completely lost to feeling inspired and uplifted. Not only has Working Author said such amazing things about me, but they’ve also supported the sketch group I’m in, Cheap Shots Comedy and has always taken an interest in what I’m working on and has always supported that.

When you look at this site, you realize the huge impact that is actually made. Working Author has constantly built up artists, had incredible interviews with artists, great critiques of work, film, writing, comedy and basically anything in entertainment. This site and writing and what it stands for and what it has created is a remarkable reflection of why art is art. It’s a reminder of how entertainment is important and how certain pieces of work and people can change the world and exposes people who have taken a part of that and made that dream possible. It makes you question the world around you…and the fact that I am even somewhat tied in with Working Author is one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever had.

Yes, I am going through a rough patch with my acting career, but I honestly don’t know a single artist that hasn’t gone through this at some point in their life or several times in their life. I’m reminded that it goes with the territory. After revisiting the article written about me, I feel so much better and more confident that I’m doing exactly what I should. Patience is a virtue and I just have to hang in there and keep creating in the ways I know how. And as long as I’m creating, that’s all I’ve ever really wanted to do anyway.

In short…thank you, Working Author and specifically René Garcia, Jr. Thank you for being such a wonderful contribution to the arts, for being a constant inspiration to the many art forms, for reminding me (an artist) why I made the choices I made with my life and most of all, for being such an amazing and supportive friend.

I recently interviewed a prospective writer for this site (more on that in an upcoming post). As a burgeoning writer, she asked if it was important to maintain a blog. Absolutely – especially for new writers. Writing is like any other skill: It’s important to do it on a constant basis to stay sharp and improve. Blogs benefit new writers by giving them a non-threatening place to write. No word counts. No style guides. No deadlines. Just words.

I also suggest blogging for two major reasons. First, I understand that a lot of people want to be creative. They want to write or draw or sculpt or whatever. They want to express themselves. However, self-expression is like morality: it’s only important when other people are involved. A blog gets writers used to other people – strangers even! – reading their work and offering feedback. A lot of people cannot handle that. Now I understand that there are such things as first drafts that are not meant for other people’s eyes. Personal writing is also a great tool to help sort out thoughts that are too numerous to keep track of in one’s head. These inchoate scraps of literature are obviously not meant to be published. For now, let’s just limit self-expression to “outward” expression. If you want to write professionally, then you must grow accustomed to people reading your work.

The second reason I would recommend blogging is that it helps writers find their voices. A lot of the young writers I come across still have a rigid academic vibe to their articles – as if they’ve been tasked with writing a position paper. Finding one’s voice is a process. First, academia brands one kind of writing style on your tongue. Second, you become derivative as you break out and incorporate every clever turn of phrase you can remember reading in the works of experienced authors you respect. Third, you mellow out and hone what you like while discarding what you don’t. You develop a kind of cadence and visual style. You.start.breaking.rules. This is your voice. Fourth, you learn to write for an audience while maintaining your voice. A lot of writers develop strong voices, but don’t know how to fit it into particular assignments. For instance, many writers I interview think that reviewing something means to completely rip it to shreds or sing its praises. “Roger Ebert does it; why can’t I?” The answer: You’re not Roger Ebert. When you have his kind of experience you can turn in your used toilet paper as your reviews and it would be accepted by your editors. Fifth, you become a professional writer.

It all starts, however, with those first, half-baked pieces you thought the world was going to love, but in practice just couldn’t grasp your genius. So you might as well pop that cherry early and get to blogging.

In all honesty, I miss blogging. It was very honest writing and some of my best work came from doing it. Recently, I was reading one of my older pieces that I used for a college assignment called Misogynist and Loving It. There are a lot of typos that I never bothered to correct and some of the metaphors get mixed, but I can still feel the synesthesia in certain passages that I enjoyed penning. Not only do I feel the moment I wrote, but I feel the moment I wrote about. I don’t feel the same way when I write about the entertainment industry. I still enjoy it immensely, mind you, but there are just too many political and career considerations getting in the way of just writing.

The bottom line is if you want to become a professional writer or you just want to develop a serious writing hobby, then blogging is a great initial step in that direction. Once you start walking down that path, it’s unlikely you’ll ever fully leave it.

This site has come a long way since I launched it in 2007 as a writer’s blog. At the time, I had made a conscious decision to blog mainly about the entertainment industry and my journey through it. All of my unrelated personal anecdotes would be placed on a separate blog. As it turns out, I never did quite find the time for the personal stuff. In any event, it’s been a long trip since the site’s meager beginnings and now that it’s looking more “professional” than ever, I’m thinking that posts like the one I cobbled together last week are a bit alien here. As some readers have let me know in the past, a good portion of my popularity is the honesty found in my blog posts, so I won’t say that I’ll cleave this section from the site entirely, but I think I need to blog smarter. As such, it’s doubtful you’ll find any blog posts highlighted at the top of the front page.

Now, to clarify the post: I think that many people react self-destructively to personally bad news. To a large degree, I’m one of those people. Since I don’t drink, smoke, snort, inject or drop, writing is how I cope, and I will do it at any time of the day or night. I don’t throw all caution to the wind, however, and if I have responsibilities in the morning, then my writing can feel rushed. I haven’t gone back to read last week’s blog post to see if that’s the case, but it definitely felt rushed when writing it. I’ll try to keep it together better next time something horribly disappointing happens to me.

Finally, I’d like to end on a grateful note. I am a very cynical person, so I was pleasantly surprised when so many people reached out to me. Some I never thought would interact with me beyond a business capacity and others I never thought would interact with me – period. I was quite moved when people offered to take me out to dinner or coffee or just made themselves available for a chat. Their actions have restored a bit of my faith in humanity.

Hitting bottom is scary, but before you get there you fall. On the way down you flail and try to grab at anything you can to stop your descent: friends, family, substances. For me – and I suspect a lot of other people – nothing worked. All I could do was fall. It was a time of self-discovery. I discovered that my support network was not as supportive as I thought it would have been. I discovered that the only two things in my life that I could ever really count on were my mother and myself. Finally, I discovered that I didn’t want to die as much as I thought I did.

At any given moment, life can be boiled down to a binary decision: live or die. At my lowest point everything pointed to die. I was flunking out of college. I had no direction. No drive. No girlfriend. No friends. Had I been an atheist I think I could have done it. I’d have slashed my wrists open and then days later my brother – who was my roommate at the time – would have to break my bedroom door down and find out what the rotting smell was. One night my passive suicidal thoughts became very active. I didn’t have a knife to my wrists or anything, but the action was just a formality. Preparing my mind to commit the act was the difficult part. I sat there imagining the whole process: the cutting, the bleeding, the eventual sleepiness, the inevitable panic, the physical weakness to do anything about it. The more I mulled it over, however, the more afraid I was of what might be on the other side. I couldn’t stop worrying about it. I was paralyzed with fear. After hemming and hawing for some time I decided that I couldn’t go through with it. I had no choice but to live.

That doesn’t mean my life instantaneously improved, mind you. It just means that I learned to live with my circumstances. A lot of my more distinct personality traits solidified during this period. I became distrustful of people. I found them to be nebulous, chaotic and unaccountable. To this day and more than ever, I find that just because someone gives their word it doesn’t mean they’ll stand by it. As such, I became a loner. I’d always been one to some degree, but now I find other people’s company an alien idea. Before, I used to deal with the micro rejections of calling everyone on my list of friends to see who was free to hang out only to find out no one was. I gave that up and embraced my loneliness. The point of all this is to say that I stopped looking at things through an emotional prism and instead through a logical prism. That’s not to say that I’m emotionless – I think that’s impossible. I just minimize my emotional investment. My goals in life are less driven by a passionate enjoyment of chasing them and more driven by a desire to complete them in ways better than others have in the past. I also find that I do things just to fill time until I die naturally. I might live for a very long time, so why not amuse myself?

Basically, I conditioned myself to live with the bare minimum, like an Olympic runner training at high altitudes where the air is thin. I minimized my fear by trying to be as self-sufficient as possible. To this day, I operate on a fictional premise that everyone I know is dead and gone and that there is no one out there who will help me out of emotional ties. If someone is going to help me in some manner, then it’s going to be because I demonstrate some kind of value to them. That might seem soulless, but I think it’s also logical and fair to all parties involved. I had no fear of loss or rejection, because I lived in a mindset where I was completely alone and nothing was personal. Unfortunately, I recently allowed myself to become attached to something and someone. I made it personal.

In my youth, I was all about the big gesture when it came to romance. I was the guy who showed up to class with a rose between his teeth to give you for no reason, or who left a gift on your desk in every class on your birthday, or who gave you a handwritten poem scrolled up in a bottle on Valentine’s Day. My naïve overtures of courtship were all for naught, sadly, because I didn’t realize that big gestures only supplement desire – not create it. Since I didn’t know how to create desire – and by and large still don’t – I was destined to be single. After 10 years, like a diet after 6 months, I felt like I could do this forever. No one would ever stoke my emotions again.

A year and so many months ago I had the opportunity to watch for the first time one of my favorite recording artists perform live. I went to the free concert just to enjoy her music, because I was a fan. I left the concert after it ended feeling long-forgotten emotions of infatuation and desire. An intense debate raged in my head. On one hand, the logical side of me put up all the usual roadblocks, like the fact that I didn’t know her at all and that she was a celebrity, which made her virtually unattainable to a nobody like me. On the other hand, none of that mattered. I had to meet her at least.

I decided I would use my status as an entertainment journalist to land an interview. Since I don’t have any contacts in the music industry, this proved a lot harder than I thought and apparently no one responds to general email inboxes at record labels. Then by chance I reconnected with a celebrity stylist I interviewed a year earlier who took it upon herself to help me get connected with the songstress. The stylist got me the singer’s manager’s contact information. I immediately contacted the manager regarding an interview and he put me in contact with the singer’s LA representation. I contacted the LA management and they shut me down. The singer wasn’t doing interviews. Alas. The next day I saw an interview with the singer in the LA Times.

I was disheartened, to be sure. Obviously, there was a minimum threshold for publication size before the singer’s management would let her talk to me; however, they couldn’t stop my imagination. I kept myself up at night by imagining how the interview might transpire if it ever came to pass – the things I might ask and the ways she might respond. It was so vivid for me that the imaginary interview played itself out for me like a scene from a movie. I decided then that it should become a screenplay.

I poured everything I had into that screenplay. It’s more than just a story. It’s my life. To a degree it’s her life too, which I really don’t have any right to write about, but I digress. The point is that it was personal – as personal as writing can get. It took me over a year to finish it and when it was finally ready to send out to her management, it was rejected by her manager without being read. I was floored, but when you live on the floor it doesn’t take much to get back up. There had to be another way to let the singer know about the screenplay at least. I knew that the singer’s sister was an actress and I looked her up on Twitter. Lo and behold she had an account and I approached her. I explained the situation and she agreed to read the script.

A couple of weeks went by and I didn’t hear back from the sister, but I played it cool because she was my last and best hope of getting to the singer. I knew, however, that I had to nurture my relationship with the sister, because what we had was a small flame that could easily blow out if left unattended. So I decided to invite the sister out to a screening and coffee. She agreed and we had a good time.

We shared a couple more outings over the following months and while she hadn’t finished the script yet, she confessed that she thought I was a wonderful writer. I just knew that once she finished the script that I’d have her endorsement and the script could be properly pitched to the singer. Despite my emotional turmoil, I still logically understood that the singer saying “yes” to the script and being in the movie was the longest of long shots, and I was prepared for a “no”, going so far as to line up other singers I could tailor the story to fit. But I wasn’t ready to give up on the original singer, either.

My plan was to have the sister send the singer a DVD of me, pitching the script via video. So even if the singer didn’t want to do it, at least she’d know who I was, what I looked like, sounded like and what I thought. I would be a real person to her. If the singer said “no”, then I would be solely responsible for my failure.

Which brings me to tonight. It was about that time keep the flame alive with the sister (whose company I’ve come to enjoy irrespective of my endeavor to approach the singer), so I emailed her about joining me at another screening. In her reply, she regretted that she couldn’t make it, but then ended with this:

And did I mention, I told [the singer] about the movie when she was here a couple of weeks ago. She’s really not into acting. I’m sorry. I knew that. But I ran it past her anyway for you.

There are so many things wrong with finding out this way. She’s known the answer for weeks? How was I not immediately informed? Was it out of the question to invite me over to pitch the singer myself? If not in person, then how about over the phone? How persuasive was the sister when she brought it up? I don’t have any answers to these questions.

For the first time in a long time I knew exactly what I wanted and it is supremely disappointing to not even have the opportunity to be rejected directly. The reality is that she will probably never know who I am – in a real sense – and vice versa. Speaking of reality, all of this heartache could have been avoided if I was just a little more vigilant about living in it rather than in the hopeful version of my imagination. No one ever wants to wake up from a sweet dream, especially when the reality that greets you is so bleak.

Editor’s Note: Please forgive any typos. It’s late and I’m too sleepily to actually edit.

Now that I’m a professional writer, all I want to do is craft and tell wonderful stories. The reality that every professional writer (i.e. a compensated writer) faces is that professional writing is rarely done alone. What that means is that there’s a long line of people who need to approve your writing before it sees the light of day and you receive a single cent – unless you’re getting an advance, but that’s beside the point. The bottom line is that a writer’s work changes from the final draft in his or her head to the final draft that is consumed by the public. It behooves every writer then to distance themselves from their work appropriately. The question then becomes: How detached from a work should a writer be?

On one end of the spectrum are the writers who really have no artistic integrity and simply write for a paycheck. These are the hacks of the world, sticking to formula and never defending anything they write. I know that calling them “hacks” is rather pejorative, but I don’t mean it as harshly as it sounds. We all have to make a living and I can think of a lot of jobs that are far worse than grinding out predictable story arcs for books, movies and TV. I’d be more than happy writing a bunch of unfunny sketches for late night every week.

On the other end of the spectrum are the writers who have transformed their being into a literary work. To change a word, adjust the margins or fix a typo is to alter the framework of what makes them who they are. Whatever the final medium the work is for must present the source material exactly as it appears on the page. The writers that fall into this group usually don’t have much experience and are young. I think every writer starts off here. I certainly did.

I’m exaggerating a little; I was never so naïve as to think my work wouldn’t change. After all, that’s why editors were created. It’s a whole profession designed specifically for changing work. I did, however, think that my work was so good that little would have to be changed if anything. But after my first screenplay was rejected (read the whole story here: Part I, Part II, Part III), I slowly embraced compromise. At the end of the day, a writer wants to be read. At the end of the day, a professional writer wants to get paid. If changing character names, dialogue or stripping out branding will accomplish that goal and the alternative wont, then it’s time to learn to love the next revision.

With that said, my mindset has leaned hackish for quite some time. Writing is a business and as the old saying implies, business is the opposite of personal. Recently, however, I’ve written something that’s extremely personal and that I want to be made into a movie. It’s semi-autobiographical, so how could I not be deeply attached to it? So even though I am practically hackish, I’m emotionally on the other side of the spectrum regarding this work. The problem is that I wrote this screenplay knowing that it would require successfully making the longest long shot in the world – above and beyond the normal entertainment industry walls that keep would-be talent corralled in obscurity. My screenplay is based on my experiences with a real life performer. I wrote her into the movie and it’s named after her, so she would have to sign off on it before it got made.

I’ll spare you the emoting and just let you know that it didn’t get past her manager. Basically, his client isn’t interested in acting right now. And that’s a real shame because this story is amazing. (I know; the guy who wrote Soul Plane probably thought the same thing, but this one really is good!) Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a pretty cynical guy – I call it being realistic, but whatever. Knowing that, I have so much faith in the quality of this story that I foresaw nothing but success for this script. Granted, the script wasn’t rejected per se – I don’t think the manager even read it – so this rejection isn’t a referendum on my talent, but the fact the script isn’t going anywhere is heartbreaking.

My life typically doesn’t go the way I want it to go, so I’m pretty used to disappointment. So when I read the manager’s email it didn’t floor me in the way that I imagine normal people are affected by personally horrible news. Intellectually, I recognized that I was sad and if we trace emotions to a chemical source then I can reliably say that I could feel the chemicals building up inside me. This was confirmed the next morning when I woke up with what I call a “depression hangover”. I think people who have experienced severe depressions will know what I mean. Depression hangovers consist of waking up and instantly being disappointed that you woke up at all. For those of you who live lives without strife, imagine having  the best and most realistic dream ever – perhaps a dead loved one is alive and well or the person you want most holds you and tells you he or she loves you – and then waking up to your reality. That’s only a small fraction of how bad a depression hangover feels. The dream doesn’t even matter (I was waking up from a dream of George W. Bush as a rapping villain in a video game); it’s simply having a complete lack of will to live, because you feel helpless to change your circumstances.

The only reason I got out of bed that day was because it was Easter Sunday and I had to meet my parents for Mass. It’s a good thing I went because I had a conversation with God and he sorted out my mind and now I’m more or less over the disappointment. I’m not particularly religious – I always give up Catholicism for Lent – and I don’t necessarily believe in God, so factor all of that into the previous few sentences. I will state, however, that I was glad the Church was there that morning.

So that brings me to my dilemma: I’m not sure if the performer I have in mind will ever lay her eyes on my script, but I have to assume she never will. On the other hand, I still want this story to be told. That means rewriting the screenplay with another performer in mind. Since the movie is about a singer, my sights are set on the likes of Miley Cyrus. I bristle at the thought of how much the script is going to have to change to fit her life. Even if I have her play a fictional character, there’s still the matter of catering to her audience’s sensibilities.

Is my desire to see this story on the big screen strong enough to overcome my personal attachment to the original work in order to turn it into something nearly unrecognizable? If yes, then will the new version still be the old story? If no, then why am I going to change it? I don’t know and I’m struggling to find the answer.

I realize that a few of you are longtime readers from back in the day when Working Author was primarily a writer’s blog and most of you only read my site for the blog posts. Those of you who are my friends on Facebook and have been reading about my new screenplay are probably not buying the whole “too busy” to blog excuse. If you fall in that category, then I don’t know what to tell you. Everything I’ve done regarding the site – including blogging – has been for the primary purpose of breaking into the entertainment industry as a screenwriter. As such, I have my priorities and blogging comes second to screenwriting.

Nevertheless, I’m making it a point to blog tonight, so live it up while it lasts!

…on Being a Man

When it came to manhood, I’m not entirely sure about what I expected it to be like. I suppose I had a vague expectation that my thinking – as a whole – would change. I’d be focused on…I don’t know…real estate, stock prices, home improvement, child rearing. I didn’t think I’d still enjoy staying up until dawn, playing video games and watching porn. I guess as a guy you never outgrow that last one. And, if my father is an indicator, you can actually grow back into video gaming. He gave me so much grief as a child for wasting my life playing video games, but now he is the late night junkie who drags ass into work the next day and spends his time crawling the Internet for hints and walkthroughs. In any event, my point is that I think my thought progression stopped somewhere along the line and I am stuck with the mindset of a teenager. Sure, I think about “adult” things, like gas prices, taxes and weight-management, but only because they are obstacles in my daily life, not because I seek them out.

What’s more is that those adult thoughts are gender-neutral. What does an adult man think about? I have no idea. I can’t even really define what a man is within a social context beyond his sex. For most practical actions throughout any given day, I think women can handle  them on their own. It’s only when situations arise related to physical features, like strength or height, that it makes sense for women to rely on men. That way of thinking helps me define men within society; however, in doing so, I only further define myself as not-a-man because I’m not much to speak of physically.

A while back I interviewed Tristan Couvares for ControlTV, which was an experimental Internet reality show in which he was filmed 24 hours a day for 6 weeks. I used to chat with him late at night and then in the morning watch him sleep until 9 a.m. while I was at work. I would only watch off and on, but one of the segments I caught was Tristan playing basketball with some of his friends. Tristan stands at 6’5” and his friends looked like they were of comparable height. I remember thinking to myself that if I were on the court with them – not that I would ever be since I don’t like sports – I would look like a child next to them. I think my size really plays a big factor in how I see myself as a man, especially if the only satisfying way I can define a man is by physical attributes.

I don’t even think I act like a man. A few months ago I interviewed stand-up comic Aaron Karo and he was impressed that I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t think he was impressed in a good way. Also, I do drink alcohol, but only when I can’t help it – like during champagne toasts at weddings or when I order a cocktail to make whomever I’m interviewing feel comfortable about drinking during the interview. Anyway, Aaron was curious to know what I did when I hung out with the “boys” if I didn’t drink alcohol.

I regard Aaron Karo as a man, even though he’s about my height and about my build, mainly because he drinks and is into sports. I know that that’s kind of a flimsy criteria, but that’s how I feel. The fact that he found my not drinking strange only further highlighted how far removed from manhood I am. I don’t even have “boys” to hang out with. I don’t even like to leave the apartment. On the other hand, I’m sure nights spent drinking is not reserved for men. So perhaps I’m being too specific in trying to define myself as a man. Perhaps I should begin by first trying to define myself as a human being.

Until I find the time to explore that thought, I suppose I’ll have to be content existing as a freak subset of humanity.

…on Stand-Up Comedy

I love interviewing stand-up comedians. I have enough of an understanding of the craft to ask poignant questions and comics are quick-witted enough to respond with something poignant if I throw them a curveball. When I first started interviewing stand-ups for my site, my friend Anthony D’Allesandro – who looks just like Nathan Lane – suggested that I get into doing stand-up comedy as well. His logic was that a lot of agents and managers like to catch shows at bars after work and it would be a good way to showcase my talent for them. I’ve always considered myself a pretty funny guy with decent stage presence, so I would have seriously considered his advice if he hadn’t given it to me right after we watched several horrible stand-up comics back to back.

I’m sure that right before they got on stage they were all thinking that they were funny as hell. It wasn’t until they had to slog through 10 – 12 minutes of silence, dying a little more with each joke that they had any doubts. By the end, I was exhausted from having done whole body cringes for the past 45 minutes. Yet they had my respect, because I don’t think I could handle bombing. It’s off-putting enough when I tell a hilarious story to my friends and they don’t laugh. Could I really stand another 11 minutes of that?

On the other hand, I’m starting to learn that there is perhaps an unspoken rule for the relationship between comedian and audience member. The proper etiquette seems to be that audiences are required to cut the comic some slack and just laugh even if they don’t find the joke funny. I’m sure that not every comedian feels that way, but it’s obvious that some do. My first experience with this phenomenon was when I was kid and there were still half-hour stand-up comedy shows on primetime network television. One comic was telling jokes about the differences in how his father and mother drove. After a couple bits that didn’t get a response, the comic told them that “this is the comedy you’re getting tonight so do what you gotta do to adjust your frequencies.” Then he pantomimed adjusting dials. People started laughing after that even though there was no noticeable difference in the quality of comedy. Even as a kid, at home, watching this previously recorded routine, I felt obligated to laugh as well.

More recently, Tess Rafferty invited me to watch her act at Malo in Silverlake. She was the best act of the night by far and had the most polish. She knew how to pause for laughter and knew how to move on quickly if a joke didn’t go over. While the other comedians ranged from good to bad, what disturbed me was when one of them essentially told people to laugh. “I know I’m not hilarious,” she said. Another guy felt that he wasn’t getting the crowd response he was looking for so he cut his set short with “I’m gonna end it with that. Fuck it.” When did comics become so entitled?

I’ve always felt that stand-up comics were the rock stars of stage performers – even beyond actual rock stars – simply because they are all alone on stage and are purified nightly by the binary verdict of being funny or not. To beg for laughs or jip audiences with a short set cheapens the craft.

…on Aaron Karo

Since this post was inspired by Aaron Karo, I figured it was only right to end it with a few more thoughts on him. We’re the same age and he essentially got his start by writing an email column that he sent to his friends. I also started out by writing an email column that I sent to my friends. After college, he was able to parlay his collection of emails into a manuscript that was later published. I, on the other hand, parlayed my emails into a manuscript that got rejected by every literary agent in town. Granted, his email column was full of bite size observations on college life while my email column was full of meandering screeds and longwinded introspection. So I guess it made sense that the cards fell where they did.

I just can’t help but feel like he’s living a portion of my life.

Also, I wish he would approve my friend request on Facebook.

My old place was awesome. I had 800 square feet, a large bedroom, a palatial bathroom (no joke, it was big enough to rent out to a lodger), washer and dryer in the unit and a garage. The community was fairly new – built in the last decade – so it had the little features that modern day, misanthropic, individualist Americans don’t realize that they want, like a built-in alarm system and double pane windows that virtually keep all noise from penetrating into the living space. After having lived in an apartment next to the freeway and having to hear every highway patrol stop at the ungodliest hours, double pane windows are an amazing thing. Also, my kitchen was decked out in black Whirlpool appliances, complete with full-size gas range, microwave and dishwasher. As the cherry on top, I also got access to all the amenities offered by the adjacent apartment community that was managed by the same company. That community was much more expensive and offered a 24-hour fitness center and a mini movie theater.

And I only paid just over a grand for all that. Amazing, right?

That’s because the management company also offered a program for low-income renters. If your income was below a specified amount, your rent was cut by a third. When I saw the amount online I figured that there was something very wrong with the unit, like maybe it was missing a wall or a roof or maybe someone had died in there recently. But when the leasing agent explained to me their program I was sold. I’d be living there still if it weren’t for two drawbacks: distance from LA and some of the slowest Internet known to man.

When I had moved there in 2007, I was still struggling as an entertainment journalist and so wasn’t making too many trips to LA. (Yes, I’m still struggling, but less so.) Now that I’m heading that way at least once a week, you can’t imagine how valuable saving even half an hour of drive time is to me. And that’s just when traffic is clear. Less time on freeways means less chance of running into accidents or lane closures due to construction. Also in 2007 I was only blogging on Working Author and didn’t really need to do too much in the ways of uploading or downloading files for my site, so slow broadband Internet was OK. Now that I’ve gone full-on webzine with the site and am in the habit of pulling trailers, images and other media off random servers, it’s important that I’m able to get the updates done as fast as possible so that I can sleep as much as possible. For everything my last apartment had going for it, the Internet they had available was garbage. If I wanted to watch a Youtube video I was better off streaming it on my smartphone. No joke.

This begs the question then of why I didn’t just move to Los Angeles. Well, to add to the “still struggling” admission earlier, I still have to maintain a day job to make ends meet and I had to factor that location into my choice of places to live since that’s where I’d be driving to primarily. The other two deciding factors were rent and washer and dryer in the unit. Living in LA can be pretty expensive, especially if safety is a concern. Furthermore, after having lived with the convenience of a washer and dryer in the unit and being able to do laundry at 3 a.m. if I so pleased I simply couldn’t go back to the communal laundry facility. The apartment I moved into was the best choice that matched my criteria.

My new place is garbage by comparison to my old place. It’s smaller and much older. I think it was built in the 70s. The paint on the walls is uneven and raised in spots from where a hundred coats were applied over the decades. There’s no balcony so there’s no quick relief from cabin fever; I actually have to venture out of my cocoon if I want to get some fresh air and clear my head. The carpet hasn’t been replaced and still carries the stains left by the previous occupant, including some kind of glue material that’s hardened a portion into steel spikes that my bare feet love to step on. No central air or heat. I have a loud wall unit AC and an archaic heater that makes a loud propane gas sound whenever it’s on. Also, no refrigerator and no microwave. Oh, and those much ballyhooed double pane windows? None here. Whatever happens outside might as well be happening in my living room. Not to mention how easily the cold seeps inside as well.

I’m not sure if people were just shorter back in the 70s, but for some reason my showerhead is uncomfortably low. I’m one of those people who enjoys standing facing away from the water and tilting my head back into the stream. When I do that in the morning, the base of my skull is impaled. Yet my toilet seems to be made for tall people or at the very least people with long legs, because when I sit on it I can’t have my feet flat on the ground. I have to tippy toe while s(h)itting.

Despite all this, my washer and dryer work well, the apartment is remarkably quiet when I need it to be and the drive time to work is nearly non-existent. Even the drive home from an LA event was less of a trek. So far the compromises are manageable and having fast broadband Internet again is an amazing feeling.

Tonight, I’m enjoying my first stormy evening at the new pad. For rainy weather with strong winds, rickety single-pane windows cannot be beat for ambience.

Read Part I, Part II and Part III in full.

Part I Summary: Men like gadgets. Men like to be prepared. A smart phone helps me be prepared. I wanted the HTC Incredible. It’s impossible to find anywhere because Samsung makes the AMOLED touch screen and there’s a shortage of that part. Customer service sucks. Best Buy customer service is even worse.

Part II Summary: Best Buy wasn’t always terrible; they’re just terrible now. Their staff has no product knowledge and no desire to help customers. I try to avoid shopping at Best Buy unless they’re the only place to find what I’m looking for. Amazingly, they had an HTC Incredible to sell me.

Part III Summary: Unfortunately, the phone they had to sell me was a used phone. Not only was it previously owned, but it had some of the last user’s information on it, like videos, audio recordings and Internet browsing history, which included porn sites.

In situations like this, it’s important to have a clear goal and a plan to reach it. So I decided that I would request a manager, explain my situation and then demand a free new HTC Incredible phone. I had paid roughly $200 and I didn’t think my demands were unreasonable, considering the hassle I was experiencing and the willful sale of a used product at full price. With my case nicely built, what manager could mount a defense against it? Best Buy managers. As far as I can tell, they’re forced to take classes on making any kind of refund request as difficult as possible.

To prepare for the confrontation, I copied all of the evidence on my phone onto my laptop so that we could browse the files together in a convenient and large-format matter. I also had a sneaky suspicion that the manager might accidentally delete the incriminating data on purpose and then it would be my word against his or hers. In any event, I thought a backup of the files would come in handy for anything unexpected. Before I left for the store I made sure to rehearse key points in the conversation so as to lead the manager down an easy path to where I was as an irate customer, but in a friendly, rational way. Experience tells me that it’s the crazy, screaming customers that get the most placating, but that just isn’t my style. Besides, I felt I had enough hard evidence that I wouldn’t need to use emotion to motivate common decency.

I walked into Best Buy with my laptop bag, phone and phone box in hand. The friendly greeter/security guy welcomed me and I asked if I was making a return. “Sort of,” I told him and then requested a manager. He asked me what for and I gave him very cursory details. He stepped away from his podium by the doors to try and speak as quietly as he could into his store CB. After a few moments, a short man with squishy edges came out from the back to address my concern. He turned out to be the store manager and he had the kind of pinched look that all people in customer service have when they’re forced into a confrontation with a customer, but realize the rules of their job often give them very little leeway on how they can respond. I made this face almost every day during my years in customer service. I shook his hand and asked him if there was a private place we could talk. He gestured to an empty desk near the entrance and I set my bag down to explain the situation.

I already knew how I was going to approach this. I’d tell him my story in sections and allow him to react after each segment. That way his response would have to increase to match the growing absurdity of my situation at each level.

As I recounted my experience, Store Manager looked on with professional patience, but with no real human interest. When I explained that I found the previous owner’s information on my phone, Store Manager said, “Oh, so you got a used phone? OK, then we can take care of that.” And he started to usher me over to the Best Buy Mobile people. What disturbed me was how nonchalant he was about my perceived predicament – as if this kind of thing happened all of the time. I stopped him dead in his tracks when I told him I found a video on the phone.

He watched it intently with what I can only imagine was hope in his eyes that it wasn’t some kind of amateur porn video. Seeing that it was fairly innocuous he replied more seriously, “We need to get you a new phone.” And he tried to direct me to the Best Buy Mobile people one more time. That’s when I told him about the racist recordings. After listening to them he became even more serious. “Those recordings were inappropriate and should never have been on your phone.” Before he could point to the Best Buy Mobile people again I brought up the porn. I was about to pull my laptop out to show him the images and he lashed out, having been cornered with overwhelming evidence.

“What is it you want from me?” he blurted out curtly.

“I want a new phone,” I replied, boring his eyes with mine. He nodded. “For free,” I added and he gave me a look that said my request was ridiculous. I was unfazed and my demeanor never wavered, forcing him to make the next move.

“How much did you pay for the phone?” I handed him my receipt. “Two hundred dollars? I can’t authorize that. I’ll have to talk to my corporate partners.”

“Do whatever you have to do.” I crossed my arms.

“First things first. You know I’m going to have to wipe your phone.” I uncrossed my arms. “I can’t leave that other person’s information on it.”

“OK,”I said, not in approval, but to show understanding. “What’s to stop you from saying that the information was never on my phone after you wipe it?”

“Sir,” Store Manager replied, not out of respect, but in an attempt to dehumanize me in his mind (It was also the first and last time he called me sir.), “I am a decent person. I would not lie about something like that.” I thought about saying no and arguing that it was my phone and no one else was going to touch it until I had a new phone in my hands, but I felt secure with the copy I had on my hard drive and picking a different fight wouldn’t get me any closer to my new free phone. I handed over the phone and Store Manager disappeared in the back. He came out again a few minutes later. “OK, I think we got everything on lockdown now.” He went over a few details on the phone like calendar appointments to confirm they were mine and not the previous owner’s. He sounded surprised when he read aloud some of the film screenings I had attended. I explained to him that I was a journalist. Satisfied, he gave me back the phone and asked one of the Best Buy Mobile people to look for a replacement phone. The inevitable outcome of course was that no one had an HTC Incredible in stock.

We agreed that they would call me as soon as one became available. “I’ll have to make some calls about giving you a refund,” Store Manager said.

I leaned in close across the counter. “When you call your corporate partners, let them know that I’m going to write a piece about my experience and it would look favorably on them if they complied with my demands.”

Store manager made a face and said, “That’s sounds like a threat, but point taken.” As I gathered my stuff to leave, he headed to the back of the store. An employee approached him for a decision on something and Store Manager bit his head off with a profanity and stormed away. The employee walked off, shaking his head. So did I.

What a ridiculous situation. The store probably lost $200 a week in breakage alone. Furthermore, what was $200 to Best Buy in order to retain a customer and secure them good Press and – more importantly – avoid bad Press? Moreover, where was the customer service in all this? I was clearly in the right and had been willfully wronged by the store and not once did Store Manager apologize for my inconvenience. Fearing that I would have to back up my words with action, my mind immediately went to Peter Shankman, a gentleman I had recently interviewed who was an expert in social media marketing, and I thought of asking him to blast my piece to everyone who read him. And they are legion.

Ironically, I got a call the next day from Store Manager. Best Buy miraculously got their hands on a brand new HTC Incredible, which only means that a different customer got screwed over. When I got to the store, Store Manager said that he had spoken to his corporate partners and that they were willing to refund half the cost, but only because of the hassle I went through and not because of anything found on the phone. He made sure to speak in a measured and even tone, as if the legal department made him rehearse the words to ensure they were said verbatim. Since I was getting a new phone I decided that half off was a fair deal and shook Store Manager’s hand.

We unboxed the phone together to prove that it was brand new. Everything inside was wrapped in sealed plastic as any high-end electronic device typically is. Moreover, the phone came with a micro SD card, which my previous phone did not have. I got my service switched over to the new phone and left the store finally content with my purchase.

The lesson here: When it comes to Best Buy – and really any situation where you are the customer – always be ready to fight for your satisfaction, because they certainly won’t.

To briefly recap: Best Buy had one HTC Incredible and – after a woman tried to buy it, but discovered she was ineligible for the upgrade – it was mine! The Best Buy Mobile Guy told me it was my “lucky day”. Indeed.

I went to pick it up on my lunch break and Best Buy Mobile Guy (BBMG) was more than happy to give it to me. While he ran through the paperwork and checked information on his point-of-sale we made small talk. He noticed my security badge and where I worked – I have a day job at an online technology retailer – and asked if we were hiring. I wasn’t sure, but I told him I could check and that if he’d forward me his résumé I might even recommend him. I was feeling amiable; after all, I had just secured myself a currently rare phone.

With the paperwork done and insurance added on top it was time to activate the phone. At this point I got a bad feeling about the purchase. See, I’m pretty observant and very little escapes my forensic eye. Whenever you buy expensive electronics – heck, even cheap ones – all of the important or scratch-prone areas are typically covered by some kind of scratch-proof film that you peel away. I didn’t see BBMG do that. So my immediate concern was that this particular HTC Incredible was a used phone. While my gut feelings are usually spot on I wanted this situation to work out so badly that I rationalized the gut feeling away. Perhaps he peeled off the film while I wasn’t looking. Perhaps it was peeled off yesterday when he was selling the phone to the woman. Now that I think about it, even though I really wanted the phone, I wanted my good fortune to be legitimate more. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any good luck.

Nevertheless, I inspected the phone and didn’t notice any blemishes and – minus the missing protective film – I had no reason to doubt that it was a brand new phone. On a side note, I did feel a little put off that BBMG rushed me through the first-time setup. It felt as though he was hiding something and that hurrying through the initial motions of the phone would somehow obfuscate the secret. I chalked it up to him simply being an excited salesman. After all was said and done, I left Best Buy satisfied with my new HTC Incredible. BBMG said he would forward me his résumé as soon as he got back from vacation which he was leaving for the next day.

When I got back to work I spent the rest of the day playing with the phone, setting up e-mail accounts, downloading apps, etc. One of the selling points of the HTC Incredible is its camera. Not only does the feature boast a bevy of image customizations, like ISO, white balance and more, but the camera also offers 8 megapixels and a dual LED flash. Before I had left Best Buy, BBMG took a snap of me to show off the clarity. Even though it doesn’t shoot in 720p, the video recording capabilities are pretty good too. So I started playing around with the camera at work.

A test image at Best Buy.

I opened up the gallery app to review my snaps. Curiously, there were no demo pictures, which was not necessarily disappointing, but definitely suspicious. I did notice, however, that there was a video already in the gallery. I didn’t remember BBMG recording a video at the store to show me and – from the thumbnail – it definitely wouldn’t have been of the back of an SUV if he had. So, of course, I played it.

It’s a fairly innocuous video. My immediate thought was that BBMG – unable to sell the phone to the woman the previous day – took the phone home to show off to his buddies since the HTC Incredible is backordered everywhere. He wanted to highlight the great video capturing and decided to demonstrate by recording the obvious catalytic converter and/or oil burning problems this vehicle was having. I was disappointed, but it looked like BBMG took care of the phone while he was joyriding with it, because there were no scratches or any visible damage. I decided I’d simply go back to Best Buy the next day and demand a discount for the tomfoolery.

Another feature of the HTC Incredible is an included voice recorder app. I didn’t expect there to be any demos for it, but lo and behold! There were four recordings already in the directory.

WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE

I live a very strange life where reality doesn’t necessarily correlate to life experience. That’s not to say that life doesn’t make sense; it just sometimes speaks through subtext rather than literally. Sometimes understanding life is as simple as taking the time to speak the same language. As such, nothing really surprises me anymore. So when I listened to these recordings it was in a kind of detached, unemotional way. I wasn’t appalled or shocked in the way normal people would be listening to this material. Instead, I was intellectually offended. I understood that this was severely inappropriate material that should never have been left on my phone and knew that my visit to Best Buy the next day would involve a manager.

After scrutinizing the recordings I had a good feeling that BBMG wasn’t the guy affecting the Latino voice, but rather the driver, listening and throwing in his two cents. Still, I couldn’t be sure and if I was going to go back to Best Buy and jeopardize his job I had to be certain – or as close to it as possible. I checked the video again to see if there was any way I could identify BBMG in it. I have to admit that I did feel a little bit of CSI excitement and wished the ubiquitous image enhancing technology existed so that I could make something out in the reflection of the SUV’s paintjob. Alas. Nothing.

I explored the phone’s internal directory to see if there was anything else I could find as evidence. As luck would have it, the phone’s browser functions very much like a desktop browser in that it maintains a cache for visited Web sites. The browser will actually take a snapshot of the site and save the image. When I explored the cache I noticed that there were way too many snapshots for the amount of browsing I had done. I started opening the images and was slowly able to piece together the life of the person who last used the phone.

WARNING: EXPLICIT IMAGES AND LANGUAGE

The mysterious Mr. V____

Ah, Facebook – always a goldmine for personal information. Future politicians beware! You have to know that whatever you write on Facebook is being saved on some server to be preserved until the perfect, most damaging moment comes along to extort you. This little exchange was fairly tame, but it gave me enough information to start with. I assumed it was this Mr. V____ that used the phone last.

My train of thought was still focused on Best Buy. I assumed that BBMG hung out with Mr. V____ and let him use the phone or perhaps Mr. V____ worked in Best Buy Mobile as well and took the phone out himself. Yes, I found it odd that Mr. V____ would use the phone as much as he did in a single day, but it was getting late in the evening and I wasn’t thinking clearly.

Best Buy employee?

The next Facebook image seemed to confirm my suspicions that Mr. V____ was a Best Buy employee, considering the talk about buying a computer. There aren’t very many brick and mortar technology stores anymore. It also proved that Mr. V____ was not only the last user, but apparently the last owner as well. From the timestamps on the files, which I should have looked at first, he had owned the phone since almost the launch of the HTC Incredible at the end of April. So the new theory was that Mr. V____ was a Best Buy employee that bought the phone and then returned it to have his coworker BBMG sell it as a new phone. That sounded like something Best Buy would do.

And then I found the porn. Unfortunately, the revulsion factor is a bit mitigated because the sites were cached before the main videos were loaded, but here are some highlights.

The Old Man and the Teen

This one appears to feature a video that caters to the geriatric-man-with-teenage-girl fetish.

Bukkake?

This one displays a woman regurgitating semen with a stiff penis resting on her cheek.

Don't forget Mother's Day, Woofie!

This one is my favorite; it shows a girl with a dog, suggesting bestiality while the banner at the top reminds visitors to buy their moms flowers for Mother’s Day.

I have zero issues with pornography in general. I do have an issue with discovering someone else’s pornography on something I own. Furthermore, I can imagine that Mr. V____ was operating the phone one-handed while he was cruising this site. You can imagine what he was operating with his other hand and it is unlikely he washed his hand before touching the screen again. This is a phone I’ve held to my face. I seriously wanted to nail Best Buy to the wall, but I had to be sure that Mr. V____ actually worked there.

I looked him up on MySpace and on Facebook, trying to find some kind of evidence that proved he worked at Best Buy. His Facebook profile only offered limited information since we weren’t “friends” and he only maintained a few image galleries on his MySpace profile. I flipped through the images to see if I could spot BBMG among his friends. I couldn’t. I went back to the browser cache and analyzed the files once more.

Spent all his money on the phone...

It truly is amazing what you can find out about someone through their cyber tracks. Apparently, retail doesn’t pay very well.

Powered by Uncle Ben's.

I found a couple of racing sites as well, which is in accordance with his MySpace albums. Mr. V____ devoted quite a few images to his car.

Shop here if you like returns!

And then I found this Google search. At first I discounted it as just a meaningless search since you’d think he knew the address of where he worked if he in fact worked at Fry’s. Coupling this information with his Facebook discussion about an anniversary, I combined the two as a Google search and proved that Mr. V____ did work at Fry’s. So in this one respect, Best Buy was off the hook.

However, Best Buy was still very much on the hook for its employee willfully selling me a used phone at full price, knowing full well that the phone was previously owned. Considering the gravity of the offensive material I figured that even Best Buy would recognize the need to resolve this situation to my complete satisfaction, so I went back to my local store the next day and requested a manager.

The lesson here is to always manually wipe your information off any electronics you own before returning or discarding it. One of the images had Mr. V____’s e-mail address and I was able to contact him about why he returned the phone. Apparently his mother had an extra iPhone and he didn’t need the HTC Incredible anymore, so he returned it after two weeks.

Best Buy Mobile Guy never did forward me his résumé.

Stay tuned for Part IV!

If you’ve ever shopped at Best Buy then chances are that you’re one of the millions of shoppers who have had a terrible experience. If you search for “Best Buy customer service” on Google you’ll find that the first results page is littered with negative links. I assume the negativity goes several pages deep but I didn’t bother to investigate. Ironically, it wasn’t always this bad.

I actually used to love shopping at Best Buy. Before I really got into the Internet and invested in learning how to build my own computer, I’d buy all of my video and sound cards there. If I was ever dissatisfied with a hardware purchase I’d just return it (within 90 days) with no questions asked. I was impressed at how hassle-free it was. It wasn’t until later that the customer service fell off a cliff.

My first run-in with trouble was when I called to find out if they had a video game in stock. I got to the video game “section” without issue, using the automated system. When the clerk answered the phone, however, the guy said he’d have to find out if they had the game. He put the phone down on the counter and asked another employee to get “Adam”. While I waited, the clerk spoke with another guy about recent gossip. At length, Adam came to the counter, but not to answer the phone or my question. Instead, he joined the other two clerks in their conversation. I was young still and hadn’t had much experience with bad customer service so this moment was particularly novel for me. I decided to listen to them and see how long their conversation could possibly go before one of them noticed the phone was off the hook. At the time, I had a headset for my cordless phone so I went about making dinner – something simple: Ramen noodles – and even managed to eat the whole thing before I got tired of their insipid banter and hung up.

Some time later I went to Best Buy to purchase something and noticed that they were selling a set of Klipsch surround sound speakers for 50% off. Since I had been eying them for some time I was very excited that these premium speakers had been marked down so significantly. I called a salesman over to make sure that the price was correct and to find out why the item had such a huge discount. The box looked completely fine, with no signs of having been opened. The salesman – an older guy with longish blond hair and a sad face – checked the box, checked the tag and told me with a kind of guessing in his voice that Best Buy was just trying to make some room for a newer model. Ecstatic, I told him that I didn’t have my checkbook on me, but that I would run to an ATM and withdraw the cash to buy the speaker set. I didn’t have a debit card at the time. When I came back the salesman’s face was even sadder and his voice was full of regret and chagrin. The discounted price was apparently for an open-box item that had been sold and no one updated the price tag when the new item had taken the open-box item’s spot. For his mistake, he said, he would sell me the speakers for 10% the full price. I left without buying the speakers. In hindsight, I probably should have pressed the issue with a manager since working retail would later teach me that managers are typically pushovers in the face of an angry customer – even to the tune of 50% off.

Considering how many uniquely terrible life experiences I’ve had, it would be easy for me to assume that I am alone in the bad service I’ve received from Best Buy. Thankfully, people in my own social circle have corroborated the level of dissatisfaction to be had, ranging from terrible return experiences to purchasing an item that had clearly been returned, but sold as new. One friend bought a Nintendo 64 game only to find a deck of playing cards wrapped in a Nintendo poster in place of the cartridge. Sure, it’s possible someone at the factory decided to swipe the game, but they why go through with all the subterfuge? Once the product is in the box no one is going to look at it until it’s opened by the customer. More likely, the game was returned by a customer who knew that the Best Buy employee would only give the contents a cursory search.

Even if one ignores all of the ridiculous specific moments of bad customer service at Best Buy, there’s also just a general lack of product and/or service knowledge across the board. It’s always a bad sign when you ask a semi-technical question and the employee starts reading the box for the answer. In any event, regardless of all the terrible experiences I’ve had first-hand and those that I’ve heard about, none of them compare to the outrageous situation Best Buy put me through recently.

The HTC Incredible is Verizon’s new flagship cell phone. Even without the same marketing blitz Verizon rolled out for the Motorola DROID the Incredible was still widely popular and the phone almost immediately became backordered. That was particularly disappointing for me since I had just visited my local Verizon store and they had two HTC Incredible cell phones in stock, but I couldn’t buy one right then because my 2-year contract hadn’t rolled over yet. When it finally did, there were no Incredible cell phones to be found anywhere.

I wasn’t ready to give up and, even though I try not to do business with Best Buy if I can help it, I had read that some people had luck finding the Incredible in stock there. I visited my local Best Buy and asked the clerk at the Best Buy Mobile department if they had an HTC Incredible in stock. The guy didn’t even bother to stand up while he talked to me. He said that they were sold out, but that he could put me on a waiting list. I agreed and the guy took down my information.

Afterwards, I went home and called around. By and large, I was able to talk to the right people at each Best Buy and they all told me that they were out. One store, of course, lived up to the Best Buy reputation and condemned me to Department Transfer Hell. At first, the operator was happy to send me to the right department who wouldn’t pick up, which bounced me back to the operator, who then told me that she would walk over there and have them answer the phone. Then I was transferred again. This time, the Best Buy Mobile department did pick up but just put the receiver on the counter. After a few minutes they’d transfer me somewhere. I’d tell whoever picked up to transfer me back. This went on for a good 20 minutes. Since I was using my cell phone now I thought it would be hilarious to drive down to the store while still on hold and tell them to answer the phone only to have them discover that they were speaking to me, right in front of them. Oh ho ho! What fun! Now that I’m older, of course, I don’t really have the kind of masochistic patience required for that stunt. The only reason I was putting myself through this torture was because another Best Buy had told me that this Best Buy had an HTC Incredible in stock. I finally hung up, called back and requested a manager. When the manager got on the phone, she had no doubt already been explained the situation and had that stonewall tone in her voice that people affect when they realize that they’re about to take a load of shit with no defendable ground to stand on. Luckily for her, I wasn’t interested in raking her through the coals. I just wanted my phone. I asked her if she could just walk over to the Best Buy Mobile department and find out if my phone was there. Her personality instantly perked up and she was more than happy to find out the information for me. Alas. I had been inaccurate information by the previous store and this Best Buy was sold out as well.

I resigned myself to the long backorder wait and made an online purchase through Verizon’s site. The following Tuesday I had to call Verizon about an issue I had with a rebate on an unrelated matter. While on hold with Verizon I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize. I let it go to voicemail. After finishing with Verizon I checked the message to find out it was the guy at Best Buy who put me on the waiting list. He was calling to tell me that they just got one HTC Incredible in stock and that he was calling everyone on the list. The first person to call back would get the phone. When I called him back he informed me that someone else had just beat me to the punch. I cursed the Heavens and decided that a higher power simply didn’t want me to have the phone ahead of the backorder date.

The following day, however, the same Best Buy guy called me to tell me that it was my “lucky day” because the woman who nabbed the phone the day before discovered that she was ineligible for the upgrade. Since I was next on the list the phone was mine provided I could come in and get it that day. I went on my lunch hour to pick it up.

Sounds good so far, right? Just wait for Part III!