How I Didn't Get a Job at Universal Studios

So, it's been an eventful week for me down here in LA! First and foremost, there's the release of the new Star Trek movie! What an exciting time to be alive. I think the movie got a little over-hyped for me. It was really good, but I was still disappointed. That's just me, though. I'm too picky to enjoy anything. Go see it, you'll have a good time.

Second, I got a job! I work for DVD Group, a company that produces DVDs for film and television. I'm an assistant editor, which means that I do grunt work. I won't go into a bunch of boring technical details, but basically what I do is go through other people's edited sequences and make lists of the shots they used. To give you an idea of what kind of an undertaking this is, I'm currently working on a 19 minute featurette about that new Fox show "Fringe." I worked on it for eight hours today, and got through fourteen minutes of the sequence. Still, there's worse ways to make a buck! Hopefully I'll be able to sock away a little dough, because I really miss Juniper a lot and I can't wait to get her down here.

Third, I applied for a position as a tour guide at Universal Studios theme park. It's an awesome place, and it would be an amazingly fun job to have. I didn't get it, I didn't even get called back for the interview. I think I know why.

So I get to the park at about 2:30 PM last Thursday. A helpful security guy directs me to the Jurassic Park garage (all their parking garages are movie-themed). The garage was called...you guessed it...Jurassic Parking!!! I parked Nellie in there and made my way down City Walk to the VIP lounge, which is where the job interview was being held.

City walk is a ridiculously gaudy high-end open-air shopping area. Imagine if a super-rich society made a theme park devoted to malls, and you get City Walk. It's really a very cool place to hang out. I went in a candy story called "It'sugar" (stupid name) and bought a bunch of high-end gummy bears. They had a nine-foot tall statue of Marilyn Monroe made entirely out of jelly beans in there.

So I get closer to the main park gates, and there's this huge line of people. Sure enough, they were all there to apply for the tour guide gig. I'm talking hundreds of people. I had worn my nice jeans and a button-up shirt, but now I had to stand outside in the hot LA sun and sweat up my good clothes. Oh well.

Pretty soon, a hot wannabe actress in a cast got in line behind me. I started chatting her up, and things were going okay. She seemed a little cold, but attractive women in LA are often that way 'cause so many of the guys are evil. She also seemed a little self-absorbed, but whatever. Anyway, I feel like I was starting to make a little headway when this Universal employee came up and snatched her out of the line because she had the cast on. So she got to skip about 2 hours' worth of line and I had to stay there in the sun without an attractive woman to talk to. Ah, well. C'est la vie.

As we neared the VIP lounge, people started getting really catty. A lot of smack was talked about the cast-wearing actress because she had gotten to leave the line. A lot of smack was talked about Universal Studios. A lot of smack was talked about a lot of things. I didn't understand it. Everyone here is really jealous. I guess competing against hundreds of people for crappy jobs does that to you.

So we get into the VIP lounge and we thought we were done, but they basically gave us water and sent us out into another line. Eventually we neared the room that would be our ultimate destination. As I got close a Universal employee told us how the job interview/audition would go down.

In the room were four tables, and each table had a person in fancy clothes sitting at it. Four applicants would enter the room, sit at a table, and talk to the fancily-dressed person for 1 minute and 30 seconds. After the time was up, a Universal Employee would ring a small bell and those four would get up and leave, and the next four would go in.

So I finally get my turn. I sit down across from a woman named Rachel and start explaining to her that I have some basic performance experience, I worked in visitor information for a long time, I used to write movie reviews when I was a kid. She seemed surprised, so I was all "It gets a whole lot crazier!"

As most of you have probably heard, I was a guest on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno when I was 13. It was because of the movie reviewing gig I had when I was a kid. It's not something I like to talk about a lot, but it's on my resume, if you get my drift. So anyway, I was about to start telling Rachel about how I went on the Tonight Show when I was a kid, but I really don't like talking about it, so I got all tounge-tied and started stammering. I was trying to figure out how to broach the topic when the bell rang. I just muttered "Aw, it's in the resume", then I got up and left.

As I walked out, I thought about what would happen next. Rachel would probably page through the resume until she found the item about movie reviewing. Then she'd look further down the page and see that I claimed to have been a Tonight Show guest at age 13. And what do you suppose she would think about that? In a place where hundreds of people show up for a tour guide job, each of them desperate to stand out from the crowd? If I were her, I'd think it was a filthy stinking lie. My stammering and getting cut off by the bell would look like a carefully-crafted bid to get her attention. I mean, if you think about it, the idea of some guy from Alaska going on the Tonight Show at age 13 is totally absurd.

So, I didn't get called back. I'm thinking I'll probably take the Tonight Show appearance off the ol' resume.