8/10/11 posting
Jan works in a company that sells kitchen table size machines that were used to edit film before digital video editing. The company consists of a machine repair apprentice, Jan and the owners who are a married childless Greek couple in their thirties,. He is the engineer who started the company ten years before they adopted Jan as their employee. She is a former corporate lawyer who calls Jan into her office regularly to gossip about film editors and talk about the qualities of perfectionism.
Jan works in a company that sells kitchen table size machines that were used to edit film before digital video editing. The company consists of a machine repair apprentice, Jan and the owners who are a married childless Greek couple in their thirties,. He is the engineer who started the company ten years before they adopted Jan as their employee. She is a former corporate lawyer who calls Jan into her office regularly to gossip about film editors and talk about the qualities of perfectionism.
8/11/11 posting
Perfectionism according to Jan's employer: She tells Jan that when she and her husband first moved to New York City from Thessaloniki, Greece she had one excellent quality suit, one silk shirt and one pair of fine Greek leather pumps. Instead of buying cheap American department store clothes, she hand washed and ironed her silk shirt every night to be worn the next day at her job until she saved enough money to purchase another worthy outfit. She glides through the front door with her radiant well defined face held high in her clean, pressed top quality clothing and says “good morning” with accented daily enthusiasm. Once, before leaving, she persuades Jan to go to the designer floor of Bloomingdales to see how much better Jan could look in a well tailored tweed jacket with matching knicker pants. Only the most expensive lotion from Saks Fifth Avenue is strongly advised after Jan comes into work on a Monday bright red and blistered from a weekend sun burn. After her blisters are snubbed by the young woman at the counter, Jan's employer furiously comments about how the low paid sales girl had no right. Jan takes the subway downtown to a drugstore where a friendly middle aged woman talks to her for a long time about the most healing lotion for Jan's face.
Short story to be continued.
8/17/11 posting
When Jan's employers travel to Thessaloniki for two weeks to visit family, Jan is left by herself because there is no purpose for the apprentice. Jan watches the clock, takes orders for parts, takes messages for her employers and talks to her employers once per day when they call in to report to Jan about the joys of focusing on family and delicious sun soaked tomatoes. They also ask Jan to read to them the orders and the messages. She doesn't make any mistakes according to them. Because Jan is in the office alone and is asked to eat in, she treats herself every afternoon to one of the Cokes they keep in the small refrigerator. She drinks the sugary caffeinated substance while eating a sandwich brought from home, such as peanut butter and jelly or tuna fish, and reading a noisy magazine advising her about fashion, sex, food, weight loss and the stars. Customers send couriers to pick up their film editing machine supply orders. The couriers are young men usually with longish hair slightly sweaty from riding delivery bikes around the city. Outside of lunch and the occasional phone call, it is the couriers who break the daily monotony of watching the clock inch its way toward the 5:00 pm. closing time.
Short story to be continued.
8/24/11 posting
The machine repair apprentice invites Jan to dinner during his time off. He lives in a small apartment east of Cooper Square with his wife Cheryl. Cheryl was Jan's best friend in college. After a two year hiatus in their friendship, they are reunited through the apprenticeship of Cheryl's husband. Jan had sought him out after her employer said he needed some trainable help. After he is hired, there is the feeling that something about the relationship between Jan and Cheryl has changed. Although Cheryl is two years older, she may no longer be in a big sister role especially since Jan can no longer talk to Cheryl about school. Also formerly, some kind of spiritual power had enabled Cheryl to accurately read tarot for her dorm mates and channel the moon Goddess Hecate evidenced by a swirling warm energy felt around the head when touching Cheryl's hands.
“Hi Jacob.”
After Jacob leaves I hold up the Jews for Jesus literature accusingly.
When it's time for me to leave the apprentice walks me to the subway.
The machine repair apprentice invites Jan to dinner during his time off. He lives in a small apartment east of Cooper Square with his wife Cheryl. Cheryl was Jan's best friend in college. After a two year hiatus in their friendship, they are reunited through the apprenticeship of Cheryl's husband. Jan had sought him out after her employer said he needed some trainable help. After he is hired, there is the feeling that something about the relationship between Jan and Cheryl has changed. Although Cheryl is two years older, she may no longer be in a big sister role especially since Jan can no longer talk to Cheryl about school. Also formerly, some kind of spiritual power had enabled Cheryl to accurately read tarot for her dorm mates and channel the moon Goddess Hecate evidenced by a swirling warm energy felt around the head when touching Cheryl's hands.
During dessert there is a knock on the door. I hear Cheryl say:
“Hi Jacob.”
She walks back to the table followed by an obese man about our age. He has dark brown touchable curls surround his face making me think of a well cared for, oversized poodle. After maneuvering himself onto one side of the table, he helps himself to a large piece of cherry pie. Cheryl takes the vanilla ice cream back out of the freezer and puts a scoop and a half on top of Jacob's pie causing him to smile with satisfaction yet take a moment, before digging in, to reach into his backpack in order to pull out a pile of pamphlets that he places on the corner of the table next to me. The top pamphlet says Jesus Made Me Kosher. Curious, I look at the second pamphlet causing me to pull my hand away as though touching a hot stove.
After Jacob leaves I hold up the Jews for Jesus literature accusingly.
“Jacob loves Jesus,” Cheryl looks directly at me. “So, do we,” adds the former tarot reader.
When it's time for me to leave the apprentice walks me to the subway.
“I'm half and half,” he says apologetically. “Cheryl is more into the Jesus thing.”
“What's your other half?”
“Maybe like you.”
“So you're half like Cheryl and half like me.”
Jan smiles as she recalls the apprentice having an unrequieted crush on her in college then courting Cheryl just when Jan was reconsidering. She would, of course, never do anything to hurt Cheryl even if Cheryl did have ulterior motives for Jesus at the dinner table on Friday night. Saturday morning The Village Voice serves as a distraction from the flirtations of the apprentice and Cheryl. Jan stops at the ad for the Museum of Modern Art video exhibit and decides to take the subway from her tiny Brooklyn apartment into the city wondering if she will feel inspired. Her employers had once taken Jan and the apprentice to visit a video editing suite to see if either or both of them would be interested in the evolution of film editing to video editing.
Short story to be continued. Www.vidsync.com/tinytim
August 30, 2011 posting: The next day at work is the day before the owners are to return from Greece. The apprentice comes in that morning to inventory parts. Jan goes through the invoices and bookkeeping to make sure she hasn't made any mistakes. The apprentice works in the back room. Jan works in the front room at the receptionist desk. When a film editing company across town orders several parts to be picked up by courier, the apprentice wraps up the parts in a large box and puts them on the floor near Jan's desk then lingers and looks at her with large sad blue eyes as though waiting for her to say something about him or maybe engage him in a heated discussion about different faiths. Jan can't stop thinking about the Tiny Tim video she saw at the Museum of Modern Art so can't think of anything to say to the apprentice. He responds to her silence by going back to the parts room.
Short story to be continued. Www.vidsync.com/tinytim
8/26/11 Posting.
Every single exhibit at the museum is abstract art moving on a screen. A tall young man with curly hair and wire rimmed glasses takes notes in front of one of the screens that shows different kinds of dissolves to both animated and still pictures. Jan reads the plaque: Created on an Amiga Computer by Owen Findly. She walks away from the tall curly haired man and the Amiga wondering about new opportunities.The next exhibit Jan sees is a large screen video of the 1960's oddball performer Tiny Tim singing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” in a falsetto voice while playing the ukelele. Jan presses a button to loop back to the beginning. Two men she remembers from her childhood named Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, from the comedy variety show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, introduce Tiny Tim hesitantly as though they aren't sure how to present the singer to the mini skirted, bell bottomed, love flowered, floppy hatted and long haired culture. Tiny Tim has the long hair but he wears a suit. His face is too pale. Instead of standing straight and proud with a guitar, he crouches over his ukelele as though he is holding something more fragile and delicate than the wildly popular guitar. As Jan listens to his impossibly high warbling voice, she things about how he was in the public eye at the same time as The Rolling Stones. He referred to his first wife as Miss Vicki. Eleven year old Jan got to stay up late to watch him marry her on late night TV. Jan missed him like she missed her life as a shy eleven year old who once tried ironing her curly hair straight.
Short story to be continued. Www.vidsync.com/tinytimAugust 30, 2011 posting: The next day at work is the day before the owners are to return from Greece. The apprentice comes in that morning to inventory parts. Jan goes through the invoices and bookkeeping to make sure she hasn't made any mistakes. The apprentice works in the back room. Jan works in the front room at the receptionist desk. When a film editing company across town orders several parts to be picked up by courier, the apprentice wraps up the parts in a large box and puts them on the floor near Jan's desk then lingers and looks at her with large sad blue eyes as though waiting for her to say something about him or maybe engage him in a heated discussion about different faiths. Jan can't stop thinking about the Tiny Tim video she saw at the Museum of Modern Art so can't think of anything to say to the apprentice. He responds to her silence by going back to the parts room.
Short story to be continued. Www.vidsync.com/tinytim
August 31, 2011 posting: Two young men from the courier service come to pick up the large box. One surveys the box while the other plays an imaginary string instrument on the hand truck. Jan had seen the hand truck musician before and wondered if he was in a band because he was frequently strumming a fictitious guitar or something and singing out of ear shot. With his shoulder length dark brown hair that managing to be wavy and stringy at the same time, large shadowy eyes and hook nose, Jan now realizes, he could be Tiny Tim's and Miss Vicki's young attractive son. His skin was not pale and he stood straight like someone who holds a guitar rather than cradles himself around a ukelele. As Jan feels herself being drawn through a crack in the perfect world of film editing machines, she can feel the imminent presence of her employers.
To be continued www.vidsync.com/tinytim
The musician walks directly to the side of Jan's receptionist desk as though headed towards the apprentice to question him about packaging but then he stops, bends down towards Jan, kisses her gently on the cheek then walks out to join his courier partner with the box on the hand truck. Jan can smell the gritty Manhattan streets.
August 31, 2011 posting: Two young men from the courier service come to pick up the large box. One surveys the box while the other plays an imaginary string instrument on the hand truck. Jan had seen the hand truck musician before and wondered if he was in a band because he was frequently strumming a fictitious guitar or something and singing out of ear shot. With his shoulder length dark brown hair that managing to be wavy and stringy at the same time, large shadowy eyes and hook nose, Jan now realizes, he could be Tiny Tim's and Miss Vicki's young attractive son. His skin was not pale and he stood straight like someone who holds a guitar rather than cradles himself around a ukelele. As Jan feels herself being drawn through a crack in the perfect world of film editing machines, she can feel the imminent presence of her employers.
To be continued www.vidsync.com/tinytim
September 1, 2011 posting:
Jan looks away from the hand truck musician/Tiny Tim look-alike as he moves close to her desk to help load the box of film editing machine parts. She feels sad when the two couriers walk together into the hallway with the box on the hand truck but then hears the words, “Wait here.”
The musician walks directly to the side of Jan's receptionist desk as though headed towards the apprentice to question him about packaging but then he stops, bends down towards Jan, kisses her gently on the cheek then walks out to join his courier partner with the box on the hand truck. Jan can smell the gritty Manhattan streets.
The born again apprentice comes out from the back room and says to Jan's blushing speechless face, “I saw that.”
www.vidsync.com/tinytim
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