"Oh, oh, California in the summer
Uh-huh, and my hair is growing long
...Yeah, we can live like this"
~Jack’s Mannequin, Holiday From Real.

I GOT THE JOB! I GOT THE JOB! I GOT THE JOB!
French people always say things three times for emphasis. It’s this weird habit I’ve picked up from them.

Last year I spent the better part of spring semester trying to find a summer job. I think I applied for over 20. And I didn’t figure it out until the week before I was supposed to start.
This year, from halfway across the world, it’s not even March yet and I have THE TOP CHOICE JOB I COULD EVER IMAGINE.
Prepare your faces.
There are three things that make a job good, right?
Company.
Position.
Location.
And this one? Every single thing about it is perfect.
An high-profile independent record label.
Publicity/Marketing Intern.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.
DOES IT GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS? I SUBMIT THAT IT CAN NOT.
The home of such acts as Incubus. Korn (Lame, but whatever, they’re still famous). 30 Seconds To Mars. Waking Ashland. (Or maybe it’s Aslin... Ashlin... I don’t remember.)
Basically the coolest indie rock label... ever. And who’s their newest intern? Oh, yeah... ME.

The story of me getting this job is kind of ridiculous... and of course terribly French, as is everything in my life lately, so here you go:
I sent my resume and a cover letter to... someone at this record company, not even knowing if they HIRE summer interns, but hoping that if they do, I could be one of them. [Author’s Note: Apparently this is not a normal way to garner a job, as afterward I was telling a friend, and she said, "I wish I could be cool like you and just email people asking for jobs. You think it’s always that easy? Like, if people would just email each other asking for a job, you think they would get it?" So I guess there is usually some other MO for acquiring employment, but the thing is... I have no idea what it would be.] So I send off my resume about a week ago, and get an email back from their VP Marketing like the next day saying he’d "love to chat" about their internship possibilities and to give him a call. But LA is NINE time zones away from Paris, so I thought it perhaps would be better to get a more specific time from him than that. So we arranged it and I was supposed to call him tonight at 7pm for me, 10am for him.
So at 7, I walk into a phone booth outside my church, since church starts at 730 and I was already down there. I have my phone card in hand, and I am ready to go. I dial the phone, and then... I hear "BEEPBEEPHello?BEEPBEEEEEEEEEP" and I say who I am, and then the beeping gets so bad I have to hang up. Excellent. So I try to call back and this time it doesn’t work at all. Yes. There is one phone booth in Paris for every pigeon, and I walk into THE ONLY ONE that doesn’t work. Now I am freaking out, so I exit the phone booth and take off at full power walk for the next block, where I am praying there is going to be another booth. In short sleeves, because I left my coat in church. So with this bitter wind in the middle of the night, I am flying toward a dark street corner, because the quieter the better... except that the quieter the sketchier too. So I get into another phone booth, desperately stick my card into the phone, and just as I am dialing the number, a guy walks into the booth attached to mine and starts WAILING into the phone. I have no idea what language this guy was speaking, but it wasn’t English and it sure wasn’t French, and I am actually fairly confident it may have been Hittite. I have no idea what the conversation could POSSIBLY have been about, but the guy on my end was howling. Literally. There is no other word for it, he sounded like one of those people at funerals. And I have my finger shoved desperately in one ear, clicking the volume button furiously and trying to edge as far away from his side of the booth as possible when the California guy answers the phone. And then an ambulance goes by. So I am standing there in the pitch dark in the most hip district in Paris, everyone else on their way to a bar, and me on the phone, conducting a major job interview in a PHONE BOOTH. In Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, there’s this scene where the main character is in jail and trying to sell off one of his antiques, so he calls the broker from Christie’s or whatever, and just as the broker answers, another one of the prisoners starts barking like a dog, and the broker can’t hear him at all. And the guy is trying not to let the broker know he is in jail. And now imagine me, trying to front like I know what is going on, like I am sitting in my room– no, my office– being Very Official, instead of an underdressed 21-year-old on the side of the road at 730pm on a Friday.

But the guy, as it turned out, wanted more than just to chat about the job... he wanted to GIVE me the job. He said "I think it’s pretty cool you’re willing to move across the country for this." I wanted to remind him it’s more like across the world, but I decided he got the point already.
So I’m ending up in LA anyway.
Working for THE LABEL I’ve dreamed of.
For the whole summer.
Do you know anyone in LA? Where will you live? What will you do for money? How will you get around? What if there’s an earthquake? you may be asking.
All valid questions, except the last one, which is lame. But the thing is that none of those matter, because there is no way my life could get any cooler than it is.
Plus, I mean, honestly, let’s not rain on the parade. I have, like, three months to figure out the answers to those questions, which are, as of now, of course not, tentatively UCLA, I don’t know, and ditto.
But the important thing is this: I LOVE MY LIFE! And suddenly returning to the US does not seem nearly so bad.

On such a winter’s day...
~B