A former neighbor of mine clued me in about craigslist some years ago. “You can find all kinds of gigs”, he said. “Some are full-time; some are just for a day. You can get furniture, you can sell things. You can find all kinds of gigs—“—yeah, that was repetitive, which is easy to do when you’re trying to tell somebody about craigslist for the first time, since there’s just so much on the site, but I was also talking to someone who smoked a staggering amount of dope (you could get a contact high just inhaling outside his apartment), so this effort had probably blown his remaining short-term memory.
It was a real favor, though. Just a few things I’ve been able to do through craigslist:
#get hired to dress up in a hat and cape and sing Xmas carols in Georgetown (DC) during the shopping frenzy after Turkey Day
#buy a pair of 2nd-hand but still really good stereo speakers
#proctor law school finals last December, which basically means I got paid to sit and read a book
#find auditions and open mic nights
# get with other comedians and join a writers’ group.
And that’s all been swell. Mostly. There’ve only been a couple of promo jobs where I had to threaten legal action to get paid, but hey, that could happen anywhere, right? Right. The world is changing., and this is the new way we schmooze, but these are still the neighbors.
So let me tell you about the neighborhood on Washington, DC craigslist. You know how in regular neighborhoods there are associations that get together to deal with all the stuff like who’s organizing the Cinco de Mayo fiesta and which intersection needs a stop sign before somebody gets killed for chrissake-? Well, the “gigs” on DC craigslist need one of those something awful. It’s like all the perverts made the same New Year’s resolution to be extra disgusting in 2010, and went online together. Ooooohhhh, I’m woozy just thinking about it. Like this one guy who said he knew there were women who felt bad about their bodies. He knew just how to help. If they’d just come over to his place and take their clothes off and spread their legs, he’d take special pictures and show them just how beautiful their vaginas are.
You know what? I suggested he could help women by making a donation to a scholarship fund. He didn’t like that idea. (But—he wanted to help women feel better about themselves….)
Then there’s this guy who posts over and over and over, looking for a “model” or “girl next door type”, 18-24. Hey, he might be a movie director, looking for the next Reese, Gwyneth, or Halle, right? Well, no. He wants a cute young thing to have sex with him a few times a week, and he’ll pay her $2000 a month to do it. This shouldn’t be too difficult, since he says he’s handsome and successful and intelligent and fun to be with. I can’t figure out why some guy who’s all those things keeps running this ad, but maybe he’s shy. Hmmmm: he’s intelligent, but he doesn’t seem to understand that sex for money is prostitution, and that’s illegal here.
Oh, and there’s the dude who’s got a foot fetish. He really likes Hispanic feet, with their pink soles—scuse me, I need bicarb here.
Oh yeah, here are some other neighbors, but more like the kind who come to the fiesta and eat all the tacos they can get, and then complain about “those people”:
“I want I want I want I want!!!!!” Take my wedding pictures! Design my business logo! Do my makeup/the makeup for the 6 models paying me for headshots/me and all my bridesmaids/storyboard my movie!!!! Of course, there’s no MONEY in it for you but: you get credit/you get experience/I’ll tell all my friends/you get pictures for your portfolio/you can stay and help yourself to the buffet and all the beer you can drink… (Explain to your landlord that you got paid in “she said she’d tell all her friends”.)
There was this one really special Bridezilla who was poor-mouthing about her wedding. Her fiancé was coming back from Iraq for the special day and who will bake a cake, she didn’t have it in the budget for a big bakery cake. Ooohhh, and only a few coins for the flowers, who will decorate the chapel? Whither a kind-hearted photographer to take pictures to show the future grandchildren? Well, of course she only had pocket change. She’d booked the Hotel Ginormous for the reception and wedding night, and invited CANADA!!
And I just love to see this kind of post in “writing gigs”: “I need a research paper written, subj. History of Grain Silos, pie charts req., ref. the Hapsburg Dynasty and the Panama Canal Zone. 20,000 wds, due by tomorrow, counts as half my final grade.” There’s usually some kind of chump change offered, but usually the GW Bush wanna-be seems to think that pulling an all-nighter for him is reward enough.
And—I’ll leave you with this—those types who blow their own horns, just in case Steven Spielberg or James Cameron is browsing craigslist instead of having their people set up auditions, which is so, you know, overdone: “Hi there I am a aktor put mee in yur moooveee I am hansum”.
Well, that’s my cyber-hood. Careful where you cyber-step.
Donations for fountain pen ink would be swell.
