The plumber told me he never wanted to be a plumber. He learned the trade from his father, before embarking on a career as a sound editor.
“I used to do small jobs on big movies and big jobs on small movies.”
“Anything I’d know?”
He named a few films I’d never heard of and a few more I hadn’t seen.
“Back in the day, I worked on the DVD for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”
“Which one was that?”
“The second one. But they’re basically all the same.”
I’d only seen the first movie in the Pirates franchise, but by the plumber’s logic I’d seen them all. Talk about efficiency.
“That movie was still in post, so they gave us access to all the files so we could make the DVD. One day, we had some downtime, and we figured, why not watch the movie?”
“Yeah, why not?” I said.
“I’ll tell you why: piracy.”
“Huh?”
“Somehow Disney found out we were watching the movies, and the FBI showed up.”
“They’ll show up for anything,” I said. “If they’re not holding the current director’s feet while he does a keg stand, they’re indicting the old director for taking pictures of seashells on the seashore.”
“No, no. This was back in the day when the FBI was a no-shit operation.”
“I dunno, dude, you were just saying they showed up at a post-production house. Not exactly going after Mr. Big.”
“That FBI warning they used to put on tapes and DVDs was no joke. They thought we were pirating the movie.”
“Kind of ironic, pirating Pirates.”
“Yeah, well the FBI does not do irony. We’re sitting there with popcorn trying to explain how we’re watching it, which we’re sorta kinda authorized to do, but not really, not like for fun with popcorn. I mean, it’s funny in retrospect, because they were basically like ‘get back to work.’ But man, I’ll tell you this: The FBI will mess up your day.”
“So is that why you switched to plumbing? The heat.”
“Heck no. I love sound editing, and I still do it. But it’s more of a side hustle at this point, sadly. The work situation has gone down the toilet.”
Was that a plumbing joke or a sad commentary on film and television production in Los Angeles these days? Maybe both. It’s a shitty all around, that’s for sure.
“At first, it was all outsourcing. Some guy in India can do it on his laptop for a fraction of the price. That’s how corporations think, man. If you’ll do it for a buck, they’ll find someone who’ll do it for fifty cents. And look, I don’t blame the guy in India. Not anymore anyway. I used to be mad at him. But then they started with this AI shit. So now, I’m fucked, but so is the guy in India. We’re all fucked.”
“I guess it’s good to have a skill that can’t be outsourced, or done by a robot.”
“Damn right.”
He took his wrench out of his toolbox.
“Now, let’s fix this leaky faucet.”
“Great, it’s driving me nuts,” I said. “All day long, I hear a drip, drip, drip… I can’t hear myself think, can’t concentrate. It’s like I’m a character in some French film about a couple of professional killers and a job that goes bad because the hero loves too much and the woman he loves doesn’t love anyone as much as she loves her cigarettes. But really, the film isn’t about that at all, because it’s all a metaphor for how we’re all just killing time, waiting for a dream to turn into a nightmare. That’s the drip, drip, drip. Sure, it’s a clumsy metaphor, but the sound … it gets in your head.”
The plumber looked at me sideways.
“That’s a lot of story for a leaky faucet. Let me guess, you’re a writer?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you write?”
“Whatever pays.”
“So … no movies, no books.”
“Correct. I ghostwrite opinion pieces.”
“Opinions about ghosts, or for ghosts?”
“Neither. I’m the ghost, I think. My gig covers a lot of ground, but basically I write about current events.”
“So AI?”
“Yeah, that’s a popular topic.”
“Well, is it gonna take our jobs, or is it gonna kill everyone Skynet-style?”
“I have no idea, but I’m rooting for Skynet.”
“Really?”
“No. But that sounded like a funny thing to say, but now that I’ve said it, I realize that there’s nothing funny about the apocalypse, unless you’re Stanley Kubrick. That guy could find the funny in the darkest of places.”
I rambled on about Dr. Strangelovewhich turned into a rant about how nobody worries about nuclear annihilation like they did during the cold war, even though shit is just as deadly as it was then, and likely even more deadly. And then, perhaps because I’d brought up the cold war, I gave the plumber my unsolicited opinion about the movie War Gameswhich I believe everyone should watch, because, if everyone understood that the only winning move is not to play we’d probably play chess instead of going to war, which would be a big improvement, because chess is fun, and war is messy and people die.
“Let me guess,” the plumber said, “you work alone?”
“How’d you know?”
“It just seems like you don’t talk to a lot of people.”
“Not when I’m on deadline. Usually, it’s fine, but that drip, drip, drip is making me a little twitchy and weird. Sorry.”
“It’s OK. Listen, I can fix the faucet, but you gotta make your peace with whatever is going on upstairs, amigo.”
With his wrench, he pointed to his head to clarify what he meant by upstairs.
“You’re right. Sorry it got weird.”
“No worries, friend.”
“Truth is, I don’t mind the noise, I just wish the home office soundtrack sounded a little more like a Spaghetti Western. Like, wouldn’t it be really badass if all the sounds in the house combined to make the music from A Fistful Of Dollars? That would really raise the stakes for when I confront the blank page, or make a cup of coffee.”
“I hear you. Morricone was the GOAT.”
“Exactly.”
“And that would be a pretty badass work soundtrack. Way better than dripping water.”
“Thank you.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t bring Pro Tools to plumbing gigs, so you’re shit out of luck.”
“Was that plumber joke, or a sound guy joke?”
“Both. These days, you gotta have multiple gigs.”
I got you.
My novels will amuse you to death life. Not Safe for Work is available at Amazon and all the other book places. Murder and Other Distractions is available here.
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What’s your hustle? What’s your side hustle? Does your side hustle have a side hustle? Dish!
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Are all the Pirates movies the same movie? Wrong answers encouraged.
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Wouldn’t you prefer a good game of chess? Explain.
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What’s the soundtrack to your work day?