10. Feelings of self-righteousness towards masses of the kind of pseudo-liberal, rich fucks who think "antique" should be used as a verb.
9. Overtime.
8. It's truly rare to find someone who loves what they do, and all the lecturers have one thing in common - they love to talk. For a long. Long. Long. Time.
7. My presence in Great Barrington is something akin to magic. As soon as I cross its borders, the populace is united. I find the high school where the lecture is taking place, set up my recording equipment in the lecture hall, and as I work the entirety of GB stands outside the lecture hall discussing one thing - how many questions they can come up with for me that I don't know the answer to and don't care about.
6. The people of Great Barrington are a truly evolved species. They have moved beyond any kind of understanding of common sense or body language. For example, if I am obviously working on my recording equipment, if I am wearing headphones and listening intently to them, and if I in fact have a job whose primary requirement is that my sense of hearing be directed at one specific thing; it's very likely that all of these things going on at the same time would signal - to the knuckle-dragging legions of the savage races - that I'm listening to what I'm listening to because I have to, because it's my job, and because it's very likely things could go wrong if I don't. But the people of Great Barrington have moved beyond such rudimentary communication, so much so that they don't even comprehend it. They will come up to me and ask me where the best seat in the place is, whether or not the seat over there is taken, whether it's okay if they plug their personal recorders into the sound board, whose sweater that is over on that chair, where the speakers are so they can sit near them, what channel they can get my station on in Pittsfield, or just to swagger up to me stupidly and say nothing but, "So...you're the sound guy, huh?"
5. According to Rage Against The Machine, anger is a gift. If so, Christmas came motherfucking early.
4. Country roads are so fucking boring when you can actually see where they go.
3. When you can't see where country roads are going, you get to see many more country roads.
2. If the car breaks down on a Great Barrington Road and I'm accosted and raped by Great Barrington bumpkins, I will at least know that after their assault they will give me tips on where to find the best covered bridges, which antique stores in the area are the best, and great stories about how they almost made it to Woodstock.
1. The end of the return trip is the only time I'm ever happy to see Arbor Hill.
1 comment:
As someone who used to have THAT EXACT JOB, I found myself nodding and laughing while reading your list. So true man, so freaking true.
I was very often mistaken for one of the high school kids, and people used to ask me all the time if I got credit or let out of school early that day for doing the recordings. And when I told them I was from the radio station, they got very confused. They didn't understand at all why a high school kid would be recording something for the radio.
And when I was pregnant- I shit you not- an obviously rich lady leaned over and "quietly" told her obviously rich husband that I was "such a sad sight". See, because, they thought I was a pregnant teenager.
Gotta give credit where credit is due. It's really is refreshing to see such a diverse crowd. You have old white people, REALLY old white people, young white people, white women, white men, white liberals, white rich folks, white democrats, white elitists, white hippies, white intellectuals, and middle aged white folks too. It's like a taping of "we are the world".
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