For this weeks rendition of rock-and-roll intern memoirs we were summoned to write about anything we wanted. A n y t h i n g. Immediately, the ideas poured in and bouts of creativity spewed and flowed out of me like a fountain of infinite free speech.
With so much limitless expression at my disposal I could have attempted to really dazzle ‘em with something like a new record review or maybe even a sneak peak at an up-and-coming-next-big-thing indie band. You know, really played in the ring with the big dog editors and finally earn my keep as the next Hunter S. Thompson, marking my territory in the well-respected business of music journalism and bask in all its glory.
Not wanting to upstage the professionals, I opted for a different angle.
It’s been three weeks of solid, well-versed intern blogging at the Lounge - kudos, gang! And for three weeks straight and to my dismay I have succumbed to reading the odd negative feedback from somewhere out there in middle America. Apparently these members of the working class feel the need to shoot down those of us who slave away willingly to the unpaid labor force. Fed up and unable to go on stomaching such commentary as “working for free sucks” I have vowed to make amends.
Look out haters – you’re getting’ served.
Perhaps it is your own dead-end job that will ultimately serve as the bane of your entire existence and kill you slowly, sending you on a downward spiral to fear and self-loathing. I work for free and have doing so for a long, long time. Interning isn’t just for college kids anymore you know – it’s a foot in the door to where you want to be. Whether it’s a steppingstone, a launch pad or networking opportunity - consider it a sort of real life grad school. I have the rest of my life to receive paychecks and benefits. At the risk of asserting absurdity, I often look at it as free education. At last, a light of socialism sheds on our otherwise dismal capitalistic nature. I find it refreshing. I also grew up in Canada.
I work for free because there’s a new generation of working class heroes in pursuit of happiness. Success is rendered through the intrinsic happiness that comes by way of art form practice. Sometimes I work for free from home, too. I write for myself when no one may ever read it.
Make art, wait tables if you have to and get hired somewhere eventually. Discover your ambitions. Have drive to do more than go through motions and be a robot with a salary.
A musician strums a guitar for hours upon end – sometimes for nobody, sometimes for the passersby on the subway for an occasional dollar. An artist paints with vivid color and imagination because their surroundings foster creativity. And lest we forget – is not volunteer work the ultimate reward?
Working for free is key to unlocked desires. I never wanted to be that person who looked back at their life and wondered, what if.
I’m an intern because I can’t have my dream job right away. Paying dues is more than having deep pockets and stems higher than ascending the corporate ladder. Passion enables free labor to be enjoyed, that is - if you let it.
It’s not for money or my name in bright lights and certainly not for bragging rights. It’s a change I’ve wanted to see in the system since the day I stood at the crossroads of music and writing versus dead-end jobs. Guitar prowess lacking, I put it down and picked up a pen instead. I intern at Rolling Stone for free because my craft is writing and I’m inspired by music. I care about the goings on about town and in the world and desire to see it, live it - write about it. All I am saying, is give free labor a chance
Monday, April 21, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
When The Stones Aren’t a Rollin’ - Facebook is a Virtue
Ah yes, down time at RS. A breath of fresh air, a brief moment to stretch your legs and work out those hand cramps. Although slow days are few and far between, we interns still relish in well-deserved break time, but try our best to keep it short. In all honesty I find it difficult to pry myself away from Radiohead research and interview transcriptions with the likes of Robert Smith from The Cure, but every so often I might just have to get up to pee.
When I’m not drowning in the library archives or bogged down by hours of transcriptions, I’ll come up for air and surf, switching gears to my beloved Facebook. Having attempted to boycott such virtual bandwagons in the past - I finally caved. Ever since my last semester of college when I was distracted in lecture halls by hundreds of iBooks glowing with up and running MySpace pages, I vowed to swear off the addiction of the machine altogether. I firmly believed in real communication, until the day I discovered the beauty and essence of Facebook.
Transcribing interviews can be somewhat tedious and I find it important to open up new windows on my screen on a regular basis so as to not go cross-eyed. Not only is it fundamental to stop and crack your knuckles and rotate your wrists, carpel tunnel is very much a high risk in this business as tunnel vision is also a factor. Immersing myself into a Macintosh for eight hours a day can be grueling, that is, unless you’re actually writing, or unless you have Facebook.
Thank you Facebook pioneers for showing me the way and being the light at the end of my tunnel vision. If only you knew the true power with which you possess and the impact you’ve had on my cyber networking. Until I discovered downtime at RS I was subject to mere email alone as my tool to connect with the outside world. Nobody seems to call my cell anymore – my friends and family have realized I’m far too busy these days to answer, so I suppose they just gave up. But now that I have succumbed to Facebook and jumped on its’ bandwidth, it seems there’s no need for much else.
My Facebook page flourishes with tagged photos from friends and wall-to-wall posts and even some fellow Rolling Stoners themselves (don’t worry editors, your secret is safe with me). I frequently add links to my own personal blog (insert hyperlink here) as if I’m music’s answer to the next Perez Hilton. There are good times for Facebook and of course there are bad, especially if I’m sitting at the Intern desk in the editorial department right outside of Jann Wenner’s office. FYI, being busted for exploiting company time for personal use by said Editor-in-Chief is probably not the best way to get him to notice you.
When I’m not drowning in the library archives or bogged down by hours of transcriptions, I’ll come up for air and surf, switching gears to my beloved Facebook. Having attempted to boycott such virtual bandwagons in the past - I finally caved. Ever since my last semester of college when I was distracted in lecture halls by hundreds of iBooks glowing with up and running MySpace pages, I vowed to swear off the addiction of the machine altogether. I firmly believed in real communication, until the day I discovered the beauty and essence of Facebook.
Transcribing interviews can be somewhat tedious and I find it important to open up new windows on my screen on a regular basis so as to not go cross-eyed. Not only is it fundamental to stop and crack your knuckles and rotate your wrists, carpel tunnel is very much a high risk in this business as tunnel vision is also a factor. Immersing myself into a Macintosh for eight hours a day can be grueling, that is, unless you’re actually writing, or unless you have Facebook.
Thank you Facebook pioneers for showing me the way and being the light at the end of my tunnel vision. If only you knew the true power with which you possess and the impact you’ve had on my cyber networking. Until I discovered downtime at RS I was subject to mere email alone as my tool to connect with the outside world. Nobody seems to call my cell anymore – my friends and family have realized I’m far too busy these days to answer, so I suppose they just gave up. But now that I have succumbed to Facebook and jumped on its’ bandwidth, it seems there’s no need for much else.
My Facebook page flourishes with tagged photos from friends and wall-to-wall posts and even some fellow Rolling Stoners themselves (don’t worry editors, your secret is safe with me). I frequently add links to my own personal blog (insert hyperlink here) as if I’m music’s answer to the next Perez Hilton. There are good times for Facebook and of course there are bad, especially if I’m sitting at the Intern desk in the editorial department right outside of Jann Wenner’s office. FYI, being busted for exploiting company time for personal use by said Editor-in-Chief is probably not the best way to get him to notice you.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Britney Watch!
Paging Dr. Drea, come in Dr. Drea...
When I signed up to assist Contributing Editor Vanessa Grigoriadis for an upcoming cover story, I had no idea what was in store for me. For nearly two months I served as an on-call ambulance chaser for none other than the one and only Britney Spears. Oh baby, baby. Only difference was that I followed a trail of Starbucks lattes, packs of blinding paparazzi flashbulbs and a Mercedes Benz. One exception being the infamous ambulance chase that we all know too well by now – the day ‘ole Brit tried to kill herself and the unpleasant train wreck photos of her ride to the hospital that followed. With Britney on suicide watch, my Gmail account was like my personal beeper. I was always on duty. On my days off I brought my laptop to coffeehouses and tearooms - just in case. If my cell phone went dead, I panicked. I was a living, breathing Britney machine.
For a while, all talked about with my peers, was Britney Spears. It was as if nothing else in the world mattered at the time.
It all started with simple Mouseketeer research. My first assignment was to dig deep, well beyond the usual random sensationalistic articles about the pop princess that we have all come to loathe. I was informed that the purpose was to get to the bottom of Brit’s recent and tragic insanity. For hours upon hours I was buried deep in the library archives at RS, trying to fish out just what Vanessa needed – and I delivered. Soon I had all the dirt. From Brit’s secret Palm Springs getaways with her paparazzi boyfriend, to one failed manager after another, to the truth about when she really lost her virginity – I knew everything about the infamous pop tart before it would hit the mainstream press.
Around the office, I would often be asked, “How’s Vanessa?” I’d reply by saying that maybe I hadn’t heard from her that day. “That’s a good thing”, was always the response. I suppose I underestimated the constant demand of working with a real reporter. Not that I minded – after all, I am an aspiring journalist. Gotta’ pay those dues, right? Besides, its not like she pulled a Britney on me and had me charter a jet and bring her favorite coffee. It’s a good thing we don’t have Coffee Bean on the East Coast…
At times my research would be interrupted by an abrupt email or a call on my cell. One time in particular, I was designated to tmz.com – a popular celebrity gossip site of which prior to this point had never served as interest to me, whatsoever.
"They have a live feed outside Britney's lawyer's office,” Vanessa informed me. “They're waiting for her to show up for a deposition. I have to go downtown to get some court papers for her case, but I’m going to try to hit this up on my way back.” Vanessa was in L.A. at the time and hot on Brit’s trail. She desperately feared of missing Brit’s grand entrance - this was vital for the story. For over an hour I sat and waited, staring at my computer screen and barely blinking - for a Britney that never showed. She reportedly “called out sick”. I guess getting her kids back wasn’t exactly a top priority.
On a slow Spears day, tasks were a bit more mundane. I would check in with my editor to hit me baby, one more time with some additional work. One afternoon, I recall tearing anything and everything Britney out of every US Weekly issue since last year, to put together in a portfolio for Vanessa. FYI – Britney appears in US weekly, on a weekly basis and let me tell you something - that’s a whole lotta’ crotch-shots. I managed to surface from the cavernous library once or twice for field trips. One mission in particular was to head to the 42nd Street New York Public Library and locate a copy of “Not That Innocent” – another crucial component to the piece. My task was to find the book and Xerox it in its entirety, and then Fed-Ex it to Vanessa ASAP. As I attempted to convince the reference desk that I swore the book wasn’t for me (forgive me, I’m just not a fan) I was disappointed to discover that this bestseller wasn’t available anywhere. Bummer. Not a total loss however - I scoped out the Jack Keroac exhibit on my way out.
Most of the time I delivered, but sometimes I could not. When I was asked to go to a newsstand and grab the latest issue of Blender (Brit was on the cover) I failed to do so because it had yet to be published. I wasn’t discouraged, however, as I could imagine that perhaps Blender would have been difficult to find near Vanessa’s Hawaiian home - the island being so desolately remote and all…
In the end, whether or not I was just another intern, in some small way I felt like I contributed to this big story. I was a Slave 4 a big-time editor, and if you were to ask me if I’d do it again – I think my answer would probably be something like, “Gimme, Gimme,” because once you take part in the hunt, it only leaves you hungry for more.
When I signed up to assist Contributing Editor Vanessa Grigoriadis for an upcoming cover story, I had no idea what was in store for me. For nearly two months I served as an on-call ambulance chaser for none other than the one and only Britney Spears. Oh baby, baby. Only difference was that I followed a trail of Starbucks lattes, packs of blinding paparazzi flashbulbs and a Mercedes Benz. One exception being the infamous ambulance chase that we all know too well by now – the day ‘ole Brit tried to kill herself and the unpleasant train wreck photos of her ride to the hospital that followed. With Britney on suicide watch, my Gmail account was like my personal beeper. I was always on duty. On my days off I brought my laptop to coffeehouses and tearooms - just in case. If my cell phone went dead, I panicked. I was a living, breathing Britney machine.
For a while, all talked about with my peers, was Britney Spears. It was as if nothing else in the world mattered at the time.
It all started with simple Mouseketeer research. My first assignment was to dig deep, well beyond the usual random sensationalistic articles about the pop princess that we have all come to loathe. I was informed that the purpose was to get to the bottom of Brit’s recent and tragic insanity. For hours upon hours I was buried deep in the library archives at RS, trying to fish out just what Vanessa needed – and I delivered. Soon I had all the dirt. From Brit’s secret Palm Springs getaways with her paparazzi boyfriend, to one failed manager after another, to the truth about when she really lost her virginity – I knew everything about the infamous pop tart before it would hit the mainstream press.
Around the office, I would often be asked, “How’s Vanessa?” I’d reply by saying that maybe I hadn’t heard from her that day. “That’s a good thing”, was always the response. I suppose I underestimated the constant demand of working with a real reporter. Not that I minded – after all, I am an aspiring journalist. Gotta’ pay those dues, right? Besides, its not like she pulled a Britney on me and had me charter a jet and bring her favorite coffee. It’s a good thing we don’t have Coffee Bean on the East Coast…
At times my research would be interrupted by an abrupt email or a call on my cell. One time in particular, I was designated to tmz.com – a popular celebrity gossip site of which prior to this point had never served as interest to me, whatsoever.
"They have a live feed outside Britney's lawyer's office,” Vanessa informed me. “They're waiting for her to show up for a deposition. I have to go downtown to get some court papers for her case, but I’m going to try to hit this up on my way back.” Vanessa was in L.A. at the time and hot on Brit’s trail. She desperately feared of missing Brit’s grand entrance - this was vital for the story. For over an hour I sat and waited, staring at my computer screen and barely blinking - for a Britney that never showed. She reportedly “called out sick”. I guess getting her kids back wasn’t exactly a top priority.
On a slow Spears day, tasks were a bit more mundane. I would check in with my editor to hit me baby, one more time with some additional work. One afternoon, I recall tearing anything and everything Britney out of every US Weekly issue since last year, to put together in a portfolio for Vanessa. FYI – Britney appears in US weekly, on a weekly basis and let me tell you something - that’s a whole lotta’ crotch-shots. I managed to surface from the cavernous library once or twice for field trips. One mission in particular was to head to the 42nd Street New York Public Library and locate a copy of “Not That Innocent” – another crucial component to the piece. My task was to find the book and Xerox it in its entirety, and then Fed-Ex it to Vanessa ASAP. As I attempted to convince the reference desk that I swore the book wasn’t for me (forgive me, I’m just not a fan) I was disappointed to discover that this bestseller wasn’t available anywhere. Bummer. Not a total loss however - I scoped out the Jack Keroac exhibit on my way out.
Most of the time I delivered, but sometimes I could not. When I was asked to go to a newsstand and grab the latest issue of Blender (Brit was on the cover) I failed to do so because it had yet to be published. I wasn’t discouraged, however, as I could imagine that perhaps Blender would have been difficult to find near Vanessa’s Hawaiian home - the island being so desolately remote and all…
In the end, whether or not I was just another intern, in some small way I felt like I contributed to this big story. I was a Slave 4 a big-time editor, and if you were to ask me if I’d do it again – I think my answer would probably be something like, “Gimme, Gimme,” because once you take part in the hunt, it only leaves you hungry for more.
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