#the fact that a bunch of my favorite characters are kids contributes but doesn't explain it entirely | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oonajaeadira · 1 year

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What was your first job?

What is the best compliment that you’ve ever received?

What is something that makes laugh no matter how many time you hear/see it?

Hello friend. You have questions. I have answers.

What is the best compliment that you’ve ever received?

It's kind of hard to explain, but I did a show that took place in a black 10'x10' tent decked out to be a Victorian parlor and we did short, odd shows for audiences of 8 or less. There were Edward Gorey shadow puppet musicals. We did a whole Cat Opera with beanie baby cats and singing in meows. We did terrible fortune telling with Pokemon cards. And one of my favorites was a retelling of Beatrix Potter's Two Bad Mice using cat toys and a Barbie dreamhouse. The tent would pop up here and there around town and the only way you could find us was to go onto our website and solve a bunch of puzzles for clues.

It was meant to be stupid and weird. And it was. Oh. It was. (Fun fact: what I love most about all this is that I actually got a grant to do this project. Fk. I am so thankful to live somewhere that appreciates weird art.)

ANYWAY.

This kid came and watched our Two Bad Mice show. And later, he brought back a friend.

At the end, I was ushering the audience of 8 out of the tent but the two little boys stayed. And the one who'd seen it before just turned to his little friend and said

"See??? I told you. WEIRD."

I've never been so delighted.

What is something that makes laugh no matter how many time you hear/see it?

This establishing shot from While You Were Sleeping.

It doesn't contribute to the plot, the paperboy isn't a character in the story, it's just there to let you know that it's a new morning. But it's 13 seconds of brilliance, and it gets me every every time.

What was your first job?

Hoh boy. Strap in.

I worked in a cheese factory, night shift. I was the youngest worker there and while the others were kind to me, nobody befriended me except the cheese squeezer. (We were hired on the same night and got to know each other waiting in the lobby while we waited for our shift manager to fetch us. They forgot we were starting that night. We sat there for a long time chatting.)

Now, my job wasn't that interesting, I worked the factory lines in the process part of the plant. (The other half of the plant was called "real." I guess nobody wants to call processed cheese "fake.") Here are some things:

I got burned a LOT when I first started packaging velveeta. We had to place the boxes and then HOT CHEESE RAINED FROM ABOVE (it came down a shute) and we had to quickly fold up the little silver paper by hand.

Never let the brand dictate which cheese slices you buy. Get the cheapest one. They're all the same. Hand to the gods, they literally stopped the line, changed the wrapper roll on the machine, then turned it on again and kept going.

Also, when given the choice between singles that say "cheese product" and "cheese food," please for the love of goats, avoid "cheese food." I can't even tell you what that is.

I was very short and scrawny then and sometimes it was my job to take barrels of squeezed cheese into the mixing room. I used to have to get a running start and bang through the swinging doors because there's so much oil built up on the floors of the mixing room and the barrels were so heavy that I knew if I ever stopped, I'd never get going again.

I still have nightmares about dried, caked, pimento cheese build up. I still don't really know what pimento cheese is.

Sometimes it was my job to watch the cheese slices. You heard me. I just had to look at'em. Basically I was watching for stacks that didn't seal properly and then I'd have to scream over the noise of the factory to tell the operator which stack in the line wasn't working right. Then I'd have to catch that stack as it came down the belt and THROW IT into the "bad cheese barrel." When the barrel was full, I'd take it into the storage room and it would get lidded, dated, and stored away.

Sometimes for MONTHS.

Then it would got to the cheese squeezer. That was his official title. He was a grizzled old biker dude and he worked in the storage room. He sat at the squeezer which is a machine with a round table full of holes like a six-shooter revolver barrel. Someone would determine which barrels of "bad cheese" were about to expire, open them up, and bring them to him.

He'd stick his hand in, grab a handful of badly-sealed cheese singles, and stuff them in one of the chambers, then turn the table so it revolved. Then he'd pull a lever (like a blackjack handle) down and an arm would come down into that chamber and poke holes through the mass of it, basically poking holes in the plastic. When he'd rotate the table again (all the while stuffing new, empty chambers with handfuls of "bad cheese"), an arm would come down into that chamber that just pressed all the cheese out like little strings of spaghetti. One more rotation and the final arm would push the used plastic out the bottom of the table and into the trash.

So now that the cheese was squeezed out of the plastic into new barrels, THOSE would get lidded and dated and stored again.

Sometimes for MONTHS. AGAIN.

And it was those barrels that would then be unlidded and placed on a rolling dolly and given to me to get a running start to take into the mixing room.

So heads up, cheese singles eaters. Some of that cheese has been through the wringer a few times. And may actually be years old.

#ask me three things you want to know about me

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