a blog for the beleaguered
Brian “Ren” Renfield Nelson, longtime assistant to rocker Alice Cooper, passed away in June. In addition to being Cooper’s PA, Nelson was a collector of Cooper memorabilia and an all-around nice guy. In his honor, the Spider’s Parlor YouTube channel created a special video:
Personally, I would love it if Alice Cooper wrote a song in honor of Ren the way that Bruce Springsteen did when his assistant, Terry Magovern, died in 2007.
Here’s another recession buzzword courtesy of RecessionWire, for the term “brokavore”:
Foodies who are low on cash aren’t just your ordinary brand of foodies: they’re “brokavores.” So says the brilliant new site Brokelyn, started by writer Faye Penn. A takeoff on “locavore,” someone who eats locally grown or produced food, a brokavore is “an obsessively cheap but highly discerning eater.”
ex. The brokavore sought out hot dog stands, pretzel vendors, shawarma trucks and taco joints for local delights.
I don’t care how much money I have, I will always eat food from the taco truck. Seriously, the one in my neighborhood is awesome.
Also, maybe the brokavores should check out Fancy Fast Food for ideas.
Hey all – STA is featured in a really great article on Fortune.com today. You can check it out here, and check out the full text of the horror story they excerpt (it’s one of my all-time favorites) here.
When you get laid off, it’s really tempting to lie around on the couch, watch Law and Order reruns, and feel sorry for yourself. I think it’s fine to do that for a little while, but at some point you’re going to have to get off the recliner. Whether you’re looking for a job right away or have decided to enjoy some funemployment for awhile, there are a couple of things you should consider doing in order to a) keep yourself active and alert, and b) have some stuff to talk about when interviewers ask you about that gap on your resume.
Talk about art imitating life – Ugly Betty star Mark Indelicato, who plays Betty’s fashion-conscious nephew Justin, may be jumping into the fashion world for real. Indelicato, age 15, took a tour of designer Carolina Herrera’s showroom last week. While there, he showed Herrera some sketches he had in mind for a denim line he wants to do. The designer was reportedly so impressed that she offered Indelicato an internship on the spot. Will he be a vanity intern who skips straight to designing, or will he actually get a chance to learn about the workings of the fashion industry?
Let’s just remind Carolina Herrera that, while it was very kind of her to offer this internship, she might want to hold out another year or two. Fifteen-year-olds, as we all learned from the Tallulah Willis at Harper’s Bazaar incident, are not able to be interns. So maybe Indelicato will just have to be a “guest of the designer” while he’s still a minor.
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be on the other side of a firing or layoff? One of the downsides to being a boss is having to let people go, especially when it’s not because they deserve it. Well, now The Washington Post introduces you to “The Five O’Clock Club” – an “outplacement” firm. What, you may ask, is outplacement? It’s a corporate buzzword for laying people off. And companies like The Five O’Clock Club (which I’ll call T5OCC) come in to help companies figure out which people to lay off and how.
While the point of this article is probably to help people – especially ones who lost their jobs recently and are pissed about it – sympathize with what it’s like to be the layer-offer, it doesn’t do much to humanize the characters. Having employees of T5OCC spout off lists of names and numbers – six here, 20 there – doesn’t make me feel sorry for them. If anything, it makes them look like vultures, who are surviving by feeding off of the dying. Take paragraphs like this, for example:
The Five O’Clock Club has nearly doubled in size during the past two years, and Hall has guided more than 200 companies and 1,500 laid-off workers through downsizings in the past six months. The Club, as it is sometimes called, charges each company about $2,000 per fired employee in exchange for providing layoff victims with a year of career coaching. The more businesses that suffer, the better for business at the Club. When Hall joined the company in 2007, she read in the employee handbook that “from time to time, employees will receive small bonuses when the company is doing exceptionally well.” Now those bonuses come almost every month.
Maybe I should reward these people for their business acumen, but all I feel like doing is being mad that they exist in the first place.
Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron is on the cover of the September issue of Vogue. Of course, there’s lots of stuff about fashion, but she also talks about her more philanthropic efforts:
“This is the Asian club right here,” she says, introducing the head of her film division and the woman in charge of her Africa Outreach Project. The two Japanese-Americans, Beth Kono and Ashlee Irish, started out as assistants and then took on more and more responsibilities: Kono develops scripts for Denver & Delilah Films (named for two of Theron’s dogs), and Irish keeps track of Theron’s charity work; lately it has focused on equipping trailers with computers and mobile health clinics, which then travel continuously through remote parts of South Africa, where teenagers have a nearly 50 percent chance of contracting HIV during their lifetime.
Charlize is starting to sound like a one-woman Former Assistants Done Good factory. More celebrities should follow her lead.
Recently, Netflix noticed I’d been watching lots of workplace movies (or just renting 9 to 5 constantly, I’m not sure which) and recommended a film called Outsourced. The movie is about a guy named Todd (Josh Hamilton) whose tedious customer service job gets outsourced to India. In exchange for losing his job, he is given the chance to go to India and oversee/train the new employees of the call center.
The first time I had to write a professional work email and sign my boss’ name to it instead of my own, I was totally flummoxed. There was this particular art to that “corporatespeak” voice, and I couldn’t quite get it right. For those of you in similar situations, here are a couple of useful tips:
Robert Rave’s “novel” Spin isn’t even on sale until tomorrow, but there are already talks of turning it into a feature film. The book, which Rave swears isn’t based on experiences working for his former boss Lizzie Grubman, seems to be on its way to becoming The Devil Wears Prada, 2.0. Unlike Prada, though, the book has a male protagonist, Taylor. He’s a perfect assistant lit cliche – young, wide-eyed, Midwestern, and with aspirations to make it big in New York City. Who could play the role? Some sources claim that High School Musical star Zac Efron is up for the part. This could be a smart move for the teen idol – after all, Prada helped its assistant portrayer Anne Hathaway become a star. It could also help him shed his squeaky clean image – Spin contains plenty of sex, drugs, and blackmail.
The thing I really care about, though, is who will play nightmare PR boss “Jennie.” Jennie is described in the book as being overtanned, coked-up, entitled, and abusive. Perhaps Maya Rudolph as Donatella Versace? Heather Locklear in Amanda Woodward mode? Or maybe this could be the perfect comeback role for Tara Reid…
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