Holly Northrop Blog

Martha and I saw John Doe at Joe's pub the other night. In a nutshell, fucking fantastic. I am a sucker for just a man and his guitar. His voice is so alluring and velvety; it just makes me feel good to listen to him. The only issue, (because there is always one, right?) was a cockroach that kept crawling back and forth on the railing in front of us for about half the show. It was a baby and if I could have hoisted my boot up there without drawing unnecessary attention towards myself, right in the middle of John Doe performing an extra sweet cover of Sugar Mountain, then I would have. It was smaller than a basic beetle, another fine, fine, skin crawling bug in its own right.

The cockroaches at work are the real deal. Big American Cockroaches, or as old school New Yorkers call them "Water Bugs"; the size of a large Bic lighter and not the least bit afraid of humans. When I come around a corner on the fourth floor at work and see one of those things lingering near the bathroom, well I almost want to pull the fire alarm and evacuate the building. One of the super-sized ones fell from the ceiling and landed in a co-workers hair while she was talking on the phone. What are the odds of that? All that exposed loft piping sure is pretty to look at but it's just a superhighway in bug world. The poor woman was almost hit by a car when she ran screaming from the building and jumped across Cooper Square to the little island right before Bowery Street. She stood there hyperventilating with traffic whizzing by until her boyfriend came out and talked her down. She took the rest of the week off and it was like a Tuesday. That was three years ago and while she no longer works there, I ran into her on the street about six months ago and she still can't laugh about it.

Anyway, this little baby bug was more of an annoyance to me and a total freak out to Martha. It took her a few minutes to realize that we weren't leaving and all I was going to do was move all of our shit away from the railing. She took several deep breaths and dealt. She's such a trooper.

DIRTY ROADS TO HOME
Jasmine has returned to college and life goes on. Her test results are back and she is fine. Like fine, fine. If anything, she needs to loose a few pounds. Don't we all? I asked her to cut me a break and to try to cut back on the hypochondriac behavior. I simply can't handle it right now. I've got my own shit to try and pump up and feel good about. Mommy is a tad depressed, so cut it out. God, it is so fucking hard to love someone their entire life. From the cradle to the grave, I mean really, who has the stamina or patience for all of that? Think about it, the WHOLE life span? All of it. Christ, there were times when I wanted to throw Jasmine out the window and not even waste the time opening it first. Oh sure, when they are little and cute, that's easy. Unless you get a brat right out of the gate, then life is, very, very long isn't it? But pre-teen, teenager and then the twenty-something self-absorption of it all is pretty damn exhausting and (God willing) you aren't even halfway through it. I figure it'll take another ten years for the balance to slowly start to dip in my favor. Whatever that might mean.

So now, the focus for the Jasmine is this summer's trip to Europe. That's right Miss Jazz is going to study/shop/get drunk in England. She has signed up for a summer writing program at Oxford. Yep, that Oxford. Pretty great stuff and I am so excited for her. I wish we could go. Actually, we can. Something about parents can go and stay in a double dorm room (eww!). Maybe we should look into it. I'll probably be unemployed by then so what the fuck, we've got passports.

MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE
There is nothing worse than feeling like a paycheck drain on the corporate tit. Just a tad frustrated with the new régime but honestly what does it matter? Why am I letting any of this bother me? Move on and get another job.

It's just a little painful to watch them destroy, with such middle-American, franchise momentum, something that the department has worked so hard for. Maybe, it is because I have worked there for four years and it is the longest job I've ever had; the sad fact about being a working creative, no long-term devotion on either side of the fence. Maybe, it is because I have a great deal of respect for the people in my department. I hate to see all of us discarded in such a self-righteous way. Maybe I am just being melancholy and I need to get over it.

But there is something so infuriating about being thought of as a waste. Because there is no web initiative, I am useless to them. This type of thinking makes me nuts. Who cares if we have increased our revenue stream by 50% in the past year? Our model is the model to follow, not the other way around. Oh yeah and by the way, this whole napkin thing is about as dumb and embarrassing as anything that has ever come up out of eighth-grade social politics.

Ah well, who cares, we just passed a $2.8 trillion budget so par-tay as they say. Let it burn baby, let it burn.

All of this nonsense reminds me of the time I worked for a small design firm that was bought out by a much larger consultancy. Say what you will about those Cambridge boys the one thing they do have is big, BIG ideas. Anyway, after the very friendly merger, (unlike now) the company was poised to go public. Because of a few screwy factors and my allotted shares, I was sitting on a potential 40-50k goldmine. In white-trash world, 40-50K IS a goldmine. Now, you can't make this shit up, (unless you are a young, stupid and a cheap rock writer), on the very day that this company was to go public the stock market crashed. It was known as the Dot-com crash or how I prefer to remember it as, my mother's 77th birthday.

Um, yeah, no one made any money and in fact, the whole thing was pulled from going public at the last minute. And while I was able to be transferred to New York City via that job, I was eventually laid-off, (along with 900 other employees) shortly before they closed their doors a year and a half later.

I often walk by my old building on my way to work these days. I remember that I never felt unnecessary when I worked for them. Not even when I knew I was going to be laid-off. It was just a simple matter of the business dissolving. It is what happens. But now, this whole thing is very, very different. Different in a nasty kind of way.