Things to do with a BA in English
13 March 2006So the last time we got into the depths of things I do at my job that are slowly turning me into That Girl around the office (and not the cute, throwing your hat in the air, You’re gonna make it after all That Girl, but more of a “ohhh…. THAT girl”), it was the holiday grab bag shenanigans. Which went over better than I could have imagined– though I am forever branded in our President of Sales’ mind as “the girl who brought the crab,” and I was informed a few short weeks after the exchange that said crab has since shuffled off his mortal coil, RIP–which was a big relief, since I spent the days leading up to it having all sorts of abnormal fears about ways in which it could go wrong, rendering myself a total and complete ass. When I started in on my latest “look, it’s possible to get your work done and also have a superfun time because, let’s face it, life is funny” project, Whitney commented “this might be better than the hermit crab.” From her mouth to God’s ears. I hope. I hope.
Soooo back in December, SNL’s chris parnell and the hot jewish guy busted some rhymes about eating cupcakes, using google maps, and going to go see The Chronicles of Narnia. Everyone in my office damn near fell over when we saw/ heard it because we do the Narnia books, and our entire lives– ENTIRE LIVES– had recently been focused around the Narnia movie and how that was going to impact the book sales. (in a word: greatly). We had a departmental dinner a month later in which it was proposed that we show the clip at sales conference. This was the same dinner where everyone admitted to having been/ currently being afraid of me. Score. Anyway, much of the dinner was spent trying to get my boss to learn the proper scantion of the chorus (“Is it ‘ChronIC-cles of narnia?’ ‘no, like two people are saying it, and put the “c” in twice– ChronicWHATcles of narnia!”). It was then decided that we were going to adapt the words to be more company specific, and bust that out at sales conference. I thought this idea would eventually die out, you know, like communism and other things that shouldn’t be put into action.
It didn’t. Two weeks before sales conference I got asked to send on the link to the skit and print out the lyrics. Then I got asked to order Tshirts and red vines. Then I got handed the lyrics back and asked to rewrite them, with the direction “go as crazy as you can, and we’ll calm you down if we have to.” DONE and DONE. “Do you think you can?” they asked. “Oh please, I was in a sorority,” I replied. I realize now that this probably didn’t make sense anywhere outside of my head, but in college, I LIVED for skit day during sorority rush. All I wanted to do in life was rewrite the lyrics to Pink songs so that they were GPB-specific, then wear coordinating outfits and do snazzy dance moves.
Having said that, though, this rapidly turned into the most stress inducing project I’ve had in this job. It’s relatively easy to be funny when no one is watching, but it’s rough to be funny on command. And the worst-WORST-people on earth are the ones who think they are funny but actually are not, and I live in fear of one day unknowingly joining their ranks. (Don’t tell me if I already have, just take me out back and pull an Old Yeller on me. I won’t struggle).
So I freaked out about this for a good week, wherein I got no less than 4 inquiries per day from my bosses about how it was coming along. And these are amazing managers who don’t even ask me follow up questions to large projects I’m on for things actually related to work. They just trust me. (fools!) But they wanted to know how the skit was coming. I started having red vine-themed nightmares (BTW, want to know how hard it is to get $100 worth of red vines shipped to short hills, nj? Hard).
Tuesday morning my boss asked to see what I had so far, and I had to say something about rushing creative genius and not having typed it up yet. She then asked for me to just recite it, to which I gave a resounding No. So Tuesday I designed some ironic Tshirts, called a hole in the wall in chinatown to have them iron them on to actual shirts, and shut my door for two hours to write a rap song.
And, here’s the thing– I love how it turned out. I’d throw it up here, but it’s kind of one of those songs that they sing on the last day of summer camp that makes fun of all of the counselors that no one from the camp across the lake would get/ find amusing. Lots of shout outs to our inventory lookup system and whatnot. My favorite line, which only a publishing kid could love, is when Boss2 goes “Me and {Boss1}, yo, we kick it in tandem/ I never busted rhymes while working at Random.” yeah, I went there. Over the course of the song, they also holla at Dakota Fanning, our stock control manager, one of our marketing directors, a dead lion, and our warehouse. (For the record, nothing- NOTHING- rhymes with Scranton, where said warehouse is).
Towards the end of last week, I started to understand why stage moms get so worked up. I wasn’t even going to be there to witness it, but I was consumed with fear that the bosses would freeze on stage, or have some kind of negative experience (perhaps involving laughing AT instead of laughing WITH) that would scar them for life. This was compounded when two of the three people performing copped to having had narnia rap-themed nightmares over the past week.
So now, they all are in the rap room in NJ, and I am at work, fretting about them. And worrying that they’re going to ask me to do something similar on the Charlotte’s Web movie in three months for the next sales conference. And nothing- nothing– really rhymes with Dakota Fanning.
(other than carol channing)
(and taryn manning)
5 Responses to “Things to do with a BA in English”
March 13th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
you are amazing. that is fantastic.
March 13th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
We’ve got an author whose last name is “Stan-ton” (that’s the pronunciation not the spelling) so you could totally do a rap about her and Scranton.
March 14th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Stickles, this is awesome, you are awesome. I stand in awe of your genius.
March 14th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
What about that world you used earlier we both remember from Latin, scansion? That sort of rhymes with Scranton. A dog who is “pantin’” would also do the job, as would reggae superstar Buju Banton. Too late now though, huh?
March 14th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Also, you could have said, “I shift units from New York to Scranton/and I’ve licensed more movies than Harry Dean Stanton.”