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Apparently the devil – that red guy with the horns! the goat legs! the pitchfork! the fuego! – is interested in more than just torturing sinners. He’s also into fashion!
And apparently he’s assumed the body of Merryl Streep, given himself a white crashing-wave haircut, and taken over as the editor of Runway magazine.
And apparently I’ve only gone to two movies with my friend Joey this summer, and one was The Break-Up and the other was The Devil Wears Prada.
I’d like to say Joey is a girl who looks like Katie Holmes from her Dawson’s Creek days, but unfortunately Joey is a guy who looks more like Katie Holmes from her scientology days, but heavier and with a Red Sox hat.
Just for the record, it’s not our fault that we had to watch The Devil Wears Prada. The Pirates of the Caribbean was sold out. And The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was accidentally filmed without Vin Diesel or Paul Walker. So we went to The Devil having no other options, but you know what? It worked out for the best… because I LOVED IT!
No, I’m kidding.
But it was very good.
We went to The Devil Wears Prada expecting the worst and ready to employ all the standard tactics that straight males have developed to ensure that when attending a chick flick with another dude, everyone else in the theater knows that they’re not on a date with each other. Here are five sure-fire methods:
1. When you’re about to enter the theater, look both ways, make sure nobody is watching, then quickly duck through the door with your shirt over your head like George Michael breaking for a public restroom.
2. Loudly laugh during the basketball scenes of previews for John Tucker Must Die and say, “That 5’9” white guy would never be able to do a forward flip dunk.” Showing an understanding of sports makes you sound less gay.
3. Be prepared - all the previews are clearly aimed toward those moviegoers who would appreciate Kirsten Dunst’s Bring It On and Bree Turner’s Bring It On Again, but not toward those who would appreciate Steven Segal’s Half Past Dead or Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Sudden Death. This should give you a clear indication of what you’re in for, so at the end of the previews, Joey will turn to you, roll his eyes, and say, “I guess we know what we’re in for.” Then you will high five each other.
3. Don’t cry, even if Simba’s dad falls off a cliff and dies and you’re twelve. I’ve made this mistake before.
4. If Joey has a bag of popcorn between his legs, don’t reach for it, even if you’re really hungry.
5. When you leave, find an unsuspecting girl and walk next to her like the two of you are an item. This is an easy maneuver to pull off because 80% of the audience is female. Keep a ten-foot buffer zone between yourself and Joey, so that nobody will associate the two of you. When you’re next to a girl, nobody’s going to stare at you or anything, so don’t worry if you end up walking with a 15-year-old who smells like Cotton Candy Bubilicious. As long as she’s a female, you’re safe. If she looks like she might still be hot in three years, then what the hell, see if she has a myspace account.
But actually, I don’t think a fifteen-year-old girl could fully appreciate The Devil Wears Prada. I think it’s really for 20-25-year-olds. Because those of us in our early twenties can relate to Anne Hathaway’s character, even if
A) we’re a guy
B) we’ve never worked in the fashion industry
C) we hate chick lit, or
D) we’re not really sure what Prada is, but it sounds like a jungle snake
Question: Wait, by jungle snake, do you mean…?
Answer: Do I mean what?
Question: Nothing.
(three seconds of awkward silence)
Answer: No, seriously, what?
Question: It’s just that “jungle snake” sounds a little like “jungle stick.”
Answer: Jungle stick?
Question: Yes, jungle stick.
Answer: So?
Question: So sometimes people will refer to a black man’s penis as a jungle stick.
(seventeen minutes of awkward silence)
Answer: Oh.
But anyway, the reason most young people can relate to Anne Hathaway’s character is because we’ve all been (or are) where she is – performing stupid tasks for a stupid boss for next to no money, all so someday we can be the boss and tell somebody else to do some stupid task for no money. (I will know that I’ve “made it” when I have an intern, and when I can yell at that intern for not properly organizing my bathroom reading material, and when I can look at that intern and see the failure in her eyes.)
This is the way careers work. You start off as a young, attractive cappuccino-retriever, work your way up to a human filing cabinet, and if you somehow manage to make your way through a couple years without doing something stupid like quitting your job to move to a peasant village in India where you attempt to prevent natural disasters from happening, you eventually become a senior ______. But by then, you’re no longer young and you’re no longer attractive. Instead you’re old, you’re twice-divorced, you’re a bad mother or father, you’re wondering what you did with your thirties and forties, and you’re considering asking your kid’s soccer camp counselor on a date, even though he or she is seventeen and smells like Axe or Coconut Milk Herbal Essences.
But you drive a late model BMW, so by some measure, you’re a success.
Here’s what’s so stupid about this system though: in no way does being a good intern or being a good personal assistant or being good at assembling numbers into neat Excel spreadsheet rows make you worthy of promotion. Especially in jobs that require you to think outside the box, the aforementioned qualities should, if anything, get you fired.
With this in mind, I will (someday) promote my interns based on their unwillingness to follow orders. If they refuse to re-organize the magazines in the bathroom, they get a stipend. If they call me an asshole for even suggesting that they do such a thing, they become my assistant. And if they quit, move to India, and actually prevent a tsunami from hitting the coast, they can be my boss.
For now I’m still an intern. At twenty-three. The other day I got an eighteen-ingredient salad and a diet iced tea from Sebastien’s, and I had to do it with a smile, because the guy who ordered the salad is the head of a very impressive advertising agency.
Maybe, just maybe, there’s some purpose to the career hierarchy system. Older generations think we’re weak, and maybe they’re right. Maybe you have to stand at the downhill end of a mudslide full of corporate shit in order to prove your worth. Maybe it’s like the Oregon Trail video game, where you tried to make it all the way across the country, but invariably the weaker members of your family got attacked by yellow fever or Indians and died, leaving you with a kind of all-star family by the time you got to Oregon. Maybe this is what corporations are trying to do – build a super strong all-star family that’s invincible to yellow fever and Indian attacks.
I guess this Oregon Trail weeding-out process, if nothing else, tells you whether you’re passionate about something. If you are, you’ll put up with the crappy errands, be a slave to your Blackberry and maybe lose some friends, but in the end, you’ll succeed professionally.
If you’re not passionate, you can always quit. And then you can write a book about your experience. And maybe somebody will turn that book into a movie, and if it’s like The Devil Wears Prada, it will be pretty good.
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