When I'm not leading the glamorous life of an internet comedy blogger, I have a high-pressure day job where it is my duty to be on top of any and all celebrity gossip. I have "E!" running in the background at all times and I've got TMZ set to auto-refresh in my internet browser every 30 seconds.
I also have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which is where almost all external stimuli give you a panic attack. If you're doing the math at home, you're coming to realize the sad reality that is my daily life. The following are a few of the depressing experiences I've had over the past 2 years in this job:
- I got in a fight with a co-worker over what Paris Hilton ate on her first day in jail. The co-worker in question was trying to tell me Paris had been given potato chips (which she hadn't), and I'd gotten so stressed out over reporting her jail menu exactly right that when this co-worker broached the subject for the 3rd time my heart rate raised rapidly, I began to sweat, and the pounding sensation in my head became so deafening that I screamed,
"LISTEN DUDE, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT. BOLOGNA SANDWICH, AN APPLE, BABY CARROTS, AND HER CHOICE OF JUICE OR MILK. DO YOUR FUCKING HOMEWORK!" I then printed the actual menu out from TMZ, crumpled it up, and threw down on his desk in disgust of his blatant disregard for accuracy. Out of all the things Paris Hilton has put in her mouth, baby carrots were not the item I thought I’d be getting excitable about.
- There was footage of Britney Spears climbing into the back of an SUV about 6 months ago where you could see the entirety of her naked, unfortunate ass. Every entertainment gossip show had a slightly different cut of the footage and I was given the last-minute task of finding the longest existing piece of the video in question. I was sweating, cursing, holding a TiVo remote in one hand and a stopwatch in the other, timing each show’s Britney’s ass story to the millisecond. As my deadline rapidly approached, I felt my throat start to close and the fingers on my TiVo remote hand lock up, rendering me effectively paralyzed.
I sat there staring at a fallen pop star’s cottage cheese, drenched with sweat and wondering if this is what it is like to die. In case you’re wondering, Access Hollywood had the most footage by a whopping 34 milliseconds.
-I was asked to watch for crazy moments on VH1’s "I Love New York," you know, the show where a bunch of idiots, one of which is a midget, compete for the affection of a loud-mouthed hooker? I thought I’d caught every episode until I read online about a casting special I’d somehow missed earlier in the season. The realization of this small mistake made the floor of my cubicle drop out from under me and spun the room around me like a carnival ride. Images of all the crack-head applicants I’d potentially missed whirled around me like some kind of blacksploitation reality nightmare. I clutched my desk to futilely fight off the inevitable, but I fainted… I fucking fainted over a Flavor Flav reality show SPIN OFF.
While I hope you find some enjoyment in these tales, I would not wish them upon my worst of enemies. I know I either need therapy or a new job, and the kicker is that I can’t afford either one. So I guess for the time being I’m destined to a life of frantically worrying about nip slips and Lindsay Lohan’s on-again, off-again sobriety. ...I just took my college diploma off the wall in shame.
