Thank you, Eric, for this delicious blogette.

I read a comment of yours elsewhere, lamenting that no one made a comment about this post, and that you were hanging your head. I didn't know if you meant hanging it out to dry, or what. So I came, I read, I said maxi-padding? wha? but most important, I recognized me in there and laughed the good laugh. In this zone is a vein of something that every writer can tap: jobs we've had. It could make an interesting project.

I started my career as a grip for movies produced around Chicago -- mostly commercial work. No porn that I remember.

However, I do know the feeling you described of seeing someone or something on tv that's as familiar as a shoe, but which shoe? and whose?

Lisa and I were watching "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance," when the fat guy's family shows up. I said WHOA! Lisa said WHAT? I said THAT GUY! The DAD! It's Luke from "Green and Growing!" It was my first big movie written and co-produced by moi for McDonald's Corporation in 1980. The Big Fat dad played Luke, the main character in my story -- and there actually was a story... I'm sorry now I threw all that stuff away. I'd be interested to see if any of it held up.

Back then this actor guy and I weren't too close because I was disinvited from the set on the second day on account of making the director scream, "Who's directing?" more than three times. Also the director worked for McDonald's, so I couldn't, you know. Walk away. Like I wanted to. I was and am an artist. Only now I'm old enough to be wise enough to see myself then as I would become now, and I'm pleased to report overall that I'm similar in good ways and quite different in even better ways -- all this thanks to self-imprisonment.

The actor playing my main character in my movie was my age, just starting out... and there he was 24 years later on my television. And he got this part in part because he remained an unknown. Like me! Not so sad, just funny.

Funny to see such inauspicious beginnings with such inauspicious ends.

Thanks CW, that was worth ten comments. I'm glad you know the weirdness of seeing someone you know or have known out of context. I agree previous jobs is a motherlode topic. Thanks again!

Pulling more fucking teeth - what interesting and/or pathetic jobs have our readers had?

Selling cemetery plots. I was 16, and outsold everybody.Summer job, and I really didn't care :0)

I once rented canoes to people in lovely Geneva, Ohio. Holy shades of Deliverance, dude.

This job was actually kind of fun. The worst job ever was working at Brookstone when I was in college. Humoring the cliche spewing imbeciles who would come in and play with the toys in that store was just flat out unbearable.

The line I always wanted to use, but never had the balls to say:

"If you comment on that massager one more time, I am going to massage your spleen when I stick it that far up your ass."

By the way, it was a cool story. It kind of reminds me of my fear as a child when there was that barn in Kirtland and they found all those dead bodies. They kept showing footage of Kirtland, which I knew so well from driving through. That kind of visual association made the whole thing very scary for me.

Good one Sheri, maybe your distance from the other end of life made it easier to flog those puppies.

Thanks Craig, I appreciate it. I've only ever had one retail job and that was at Record Revolution for the Xmas season of '79-'80, so at least I was interested in the subject. But it still sucked.

That Kirtland thing was very creepy - we used to drive that way pretty often also, going to the Great Lakes Mall. It's very dislocating seeing people or images out of the context we are used to.