cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- March Momentum Yesterday afternoon I did my inverview with KCRW. As usualy, it went perfectly. I'm really good at doing those things. While I was hanging out in the studio of my local NPR affiliate beforehand (I did the interview remotely), the manager was asking about what I was up to generally and I mentioned the st@rling hunt this weekend. Her jaw dropped (why?) and she was all over that shit. She wants to come along on the hunt to cover it for the local station and see about getting All things Considered to pick it up. Natually, I agreed. I really need some fucking publicity right now because I am broke as shit and have zero signups for my next class. Lots of shit to coordinate right now and no money for any of it. I should be finding out any day now what my tax refund will be and that will help things A LOT. It will be somewhere between $2k-$8k, which is a pretty wide range. Meanwhile, I've got to figure how to get through the next month or so until that refund shows up. And not just survive, but also finance all of the promotional and research stuff that is scheduled for March. Aside from that fact that I need to come up with $200 to pay a bill in 2 days and then will have zero money for gas and groceries until March 12th, I've got to come up with about $40 for ammunition for the st@rling hunt on Saturday. Plus I should really have snacks and drinks for the people coming to help. The starling thing is turning into a bitch to plan because that state biologist has not responded to me yet about whether or not we can hunt st@rlings on the particular parcel of public land that I have in mind. I had thought about doing it in my front meadow, except that I have seen precious few st@rlings there during the hunts before and after work that I've been doing. That anthropology student is coming back down for this hunt. I can't tell at this point whether this is still stuff she needs to do for her professor or if she's just in it for the weird adventures now. Which I have to say, in spite of all of the back-end work and administrative shit that I get bogged down in, the actual field experiences that I bring students/camera crews/reporters/anthopologists on are a really good time for them. I take them out to do shit that they would never have otherwise done and I create memories that they will look back on for the rest of their lives. For someone who spends most of their life in front various screens, this shit is a blast. I've got my ticket to NYC paid for. But I still need to scrape up cash for Metro fares and food and such. Maybe there will be something for that out of my mid-month paycheck. The other thing gnawing at me is the fact that I still have not actually killed a single st@rling in spite of them being the most common invasive vertebrate in North America. I've got this great chef who wants to work with me but I need to supply him with some actual starlings. His interest will wane without some birds to hand him to start experimenting with. And I can't start planning the dinner and talking to the Audubon Society people until the recipes get moved along and the chef's commitment is total. When I have a cooler full of dressed st@rlings then I will feel much better. At that point all of this other shit can move along and I can start lining up the event and the publicity and get someone from the NY Times to come down again and cover it. Then when that article runs, I'll be set for a few months at least. I'll be getting a flood of emails again, fill up classes with paying students, get more film and TV offers and hopefully drive up the advance offers for my books. It is really hard not get hopelessly discouraged right now by my continued broke-ness, which is made even worse now that I've been told pretty explicitly that my job will probably not exist next year. But I keep reminding myself that my plan is exactly on track and working exactly as I'd laid out. Everything I have attempted has been coming together, including the Sl0w Food workshops. If I can just keep all of my shit together for the next couple of months I really do think that the things that pay real money will start happening. Like its about fucking time that I had my own TV show. My talent holding option with this production company expires at the end of this month and if they don't have something to show in terms of selling it to cable channels then I'm not renewing the contract with them. There are plenty of other production companies that I could be talking to. 1:49 p.m. - 2010-03-02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||