Work of an Irregular Nature
Ever since I can remember, I have dreaded Sunday nights. The end of the weekend has always held a special place in my Chamber of Horrors. It was the last gasp before MONDAY, when the school or work week began all over again.
I haven’t had a steady 9-to-5 job since 1968, when I was fired for the first and last time. I have managed to live out my dream of never working M-F 9-5 again. M-F is a mofo.
Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee, It’s the Odd Job Life for Me
As an actor/writer/performer/musician, I love working in my chosen field(s) and pretty much loathe working anywhere else. Can you say “soul-destroying”? So it’s been my goal to find those odd jobs (a.k.a. “survival gigs”) which satisfy my sense of adventure and creativity.
The bottom line is a very dotted one.
There have been high spots. Once upon a time (1967, when I was 27 years old), I wrote the headlines that loop around the tower on Times Square. The tower then belonged to Allied Chemical and the headlines were written courtesy of the Associated Press, my employer. No one checked my copy, so I was free to call establishment pariahs Malcolm X and H. Rap Brown “black leaders,” bash LBJ’s escalation of the Vietnam war like a 1960s Keith Olbermann, and make up stories about my friends. “Come on over to Times Square and see your name in lights,” I’d say. They did, and we all hooted. The AP never had a clue.
Thanks for Dim Memories
I screened manuscripts for 20th Century-Fox in 1969. I remember reading them in my favorite drinking establishment and off-hours haunt, the dear, now dead Lincoln Center pub O’Neal’s Balloon, being served scotch on the rocks by the dear, now dead world-class bartender Jimmy Armstrong (before he became proprietor of his own establishment and a fixture in Lawrence Block’s novels starring recovering alcoholic detective Matt Scudder). I remember drinking there more than I care to remember. I remember a lot, and forget even more.
I was hired to read manuscripts for a literary agency, which was in the business of telling would-be writers that for a fee the famous agent would evaluate manuscripts with his brilliant staff. This would mean me. The essence of my letter (always signed by the agent) was that “your style is exquisite, but your plotting needs a lot of work.”
I passed out two-for-one theater tickets. In the midst of the job one morning, at 38th and Broadway, I passed out myself. A trip to St. Clare’s Clinic showed I had hypoglycemia. What it didn’t show was that I had been drinking heavily the night before, and the night before that, and…
I told you there’s a lot I don’t remember.
The Higher Power High Turnover Employment Agency
After 1977 I tend to remember most things. That’s when I stopped passing out. But work, of an irregular nature and always just when I was about to get evicted, kept on coming. My higher power, which I had just recently discovered existed, seemed to have a degree in career planning.
At a fancy ticket agency, I sold seats to Broadway (and when necessary, off-Broadway) shows, fielding such questions as “Do you have seats for ‘Guys and Gals’?” “Anything left for ‘Who’s Tommy’?” and “Is ‘Kittens’ still running?”
As an editor for the trade newspaper American Metal Market, I talked my way into a self-created post of drama critic, being warned to include metals in every review. This resulted in articles on “Goldfinger” and the career of Tommy Steele, but not much else.
I’ve been a man-in-the-street interviewer for world travelers at JFK and voters in presidential elections; I’ve been a proofreader for a heating industry newsletter called “Warm Thoughts,” where the micromanaging boss made me forever mistrust young Turks with ponytails; I’ve collected proxy votes for a Wall Street firm specializing in dehumanizing its office drones.
Don’t Give Up Your Night Job
And once in a while, blissfully, I’ve been able to do my day job – as a songwriter, a comedian, an actor, a composer. I was in the final cast of “The Fantasticks” at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, wrote material for Jerry Orbach, Dick Shawn, Madeline Kahn and countless others.
Today, the Allied Chemical tower is no more. O’Neal’s closed its only remaining restaurant a few months ago. Jerry Orbach, Dick Shawn and Madeline Kahn have passed on, as has the only employer who ever fired me. But as Sondheim put it in “Follies,” I’m still here.
Defying the old actor-gig cliché, I’ve never been a waiter. Go figure.
I still dread Sunday nights. Go figure.
Me, I try not to figure. I just take it one job at a time.
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Bill Weeden is an actor and writer based in New York City who has appeared in many stage productions and feature films. As a member of the musical comedy cabaret trio Weeden, Finkle & Fay, he won multiple awards and was the voice of Fortunemagazine for most of the 1980s.
