Bananas-ing Around

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Dear friends (hi, Mom!), I hope that I did not, in missing a post on Friday, send anyone into a weekend-long panic that something awful had happened to me.  I mean, all the regular awful things happened- I showed up to work and the building hadn't burned down, I got to my desk and my computer password was still valid, my boss spoke- but nothing out of the ordinary.  It was just a regular workday which- thank goodness!- my boss had prepared my office mates and me for the night before by coming into our office at 10 o'clock when we were all still here and saying, "Hey- We have a project to get done, so don't you guys show up to work tomorrow thinking that you don't have to do anything all day."  Well- If the heavens didn't literally part to shine the glorious light of an angel's wings on a once dark and mysterious subject when she said that!  People work?  At their jobs?  I have never met the Buddha or Dr. Phil, but it seems as though I lucked into having a glorious sage and savior of my very own right here at the office.  And one who, as was made obvious by her instructions to us, really has faith in me. 

So we did try this whole "showing up to work and knowing there's work to do" approach on Friday, and all went well.  Because we don't have an intern as of a week and a half ago, we all took turns cracking ourselves up yelling to the empty desk where the intern used to be to ask him for help with certain parts of the project, or just requesting that he brings us various food items.  But yelling into thin air became less funny at every shout, so we decided to go for comedy broke and make the office stuffed monkey, he of previous nap time decoy fame, into our new intern.  He now sits at the intern desk with the computer on (someone gave him a little booster seat to make the whole thing believable, I mean- how could a stuffed monkey really be doing work if he couldn't see the screen?  Think about it), and fairly regularly someone comes by to take the pen that we've placed next to his left paw (he's the creative type) and writes a note on his notepad, usually something banana or jungle related.  And if all this work on our unpaid stuffed monkey intern creation doesn't show our boss that we know what it is to put our noses to the grindstone, then I just don't know what will.

To Sleep, Perchance to Pzizz

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

A pretty awesome trend has started in my immediate office this week: Napping!  I know it sounds difficult to actually fall asleep at work, and we really did used to struggle with it.  Last month, for example, after a weekend of 18 hour days working on a friend's movie, one of my coworkers crawled under his desk, hung a jacket in front of him, and put this decoy in his place:

But he couldn't quite relax on the hard ground and worried that- somehow- someone would on second glance realize that that was in fact a stuffed monkey at his desk and not a working human.

Enter: Pzizz.  If the catchy name doesn't at first tempt you, let me testify that the site is worth visiting if you want to be guided through the most awesome power nap of your life.  We Pzizz our day away at the first sign of anxiety, fatigue, or boring assignment.  Sometimes with headphones, sometimes through computer speakers for a community doze.  It's a revolution.  Look at this person, whom I don't even like:

He is Pzizzing!  And you can, too!  I'm not even being paid to write this except by the company that pays me to sit at this desk and do something else but instead I nap and write a blog!  But not by Pzizz!  No- For them I volunteer my services.  My hard-working services.

Oh, balls

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Partook in a three person competition to putt a golf ball into a cardboard tube as held in place by the office stuffed monkey, Captain Bananas. I did not win.