Reluctantly Hallmark
My second or third week at [redacted] I got saddled with birthdays. "I don't want birthday cards that we all have to sign because those are lame," The Ballsy Career Gal said. "Maybe just send a company-wide email that says happy birthday or something. You'll figure it out; you're creative."
I didn't want to be birthday-creative. I didn't want to be the birthday guy. But I also didn't want to be the new guy who said "no" too often. So my plan was to write the email, have it be too creative, and then have The Ballsy Career Gal or someone else say, "You know, Hallmark's not bad."
Of course, they didn't. They loved the birthday emails. They're now this huge thing, and the meaner or more out there I am, the better they go over. Well, except for one. One birthday boy didn't like the fact that I compared his birth with the coming of the anti-Christ. However, I don't like that guy in the first place and if anyone deserves an Omen reference, it's him.
Anyway, here's my most recent birthday email I did, this time for the Aging Rockstar in the office:
_____________________
As a child, I watched Alice Cooper sing "Welcome to My Nightmare" on The Muppet Show and had nightmares of my own for weeks following. Being a rockstar never seemed like a viable career alternative after that. Rockstars were always biting the heads off of rats or sleeping with Joni Mitchell or drowning in pools of vomit or not kicking Tiny Tim's ass all the livelong day like I feel they really should have been. I mean, come on rockstars. There's harmless freakshow and then there's this. Anyway: rockstars scared me. Especially if you were Prince and I was 13 and you were crawling naked across the floor after slithering out of a bathtub and I wasn't sure what the camera man's intentions were but I was pretty sure that 60 Minutes did a special about what happened to kids in situations like this, and it always involved crying in court.
[redacted] is a different breed of rockstar. If [redacted] swung an electric guitar on stage, it would be an electric Nerf guitar, and it would bounce harmlessly off the drummer's head and then they'd smile some funny smile and make Isaac-from-the-Love-Boat fingers at each other. [redacted] would probably challenge you to a skip-off – and then let you win. [redacted] wouldn't trash a hotel room; he would carefully refold the towels and probably leave a little "Have a Great Day!" note for the housekeeping staff and even if they didn't speak English or couldn't read or were learning disabled and this is the only job they could get because the dyslexia wasn't caught in time only maybe that one teacher had an inkling but the wage we pay to educators in this country is measured in what? Pennies? Anyway, even people who don't take to reading would know that the note said "Have a Great Day!" because [redacted] would hang around and make sure that they got it and that they understood what it said because [redacted] is Very Careful.
[redacted] is what's going to make Rock 'n' Roll great again. And he'll do it not by dating an endless string of supermodels named Tawny or Lace or Chardonnay because they're trashy and besides those girls don't really date so much as they find themselves waking up in strange apartments wondering how they got there and who's going to do their hair that morning. Sometimes these supermodels are force-fed mind altering drugs and there they are, several years later married to Billy Joel and thinking it's a good idea when really he's just a drunk with a piano and the world's got enough of those that we don’t really need to encourage Billy Joel any more than we have to, right? "Shut it, Piano Man." And don't even get me started on Rick "Zombie King" Ocasek.
So today, on [redacted]'s birthday, don't bother singing him the Happy Birthday Song – and not just because I've told you again and again not to because that song is like nails on a chalkboard especially when it's sung at a Benihana because the thing I don't want to happen there is for one of those Japanese guys behind the hot metal grill to try and hit all the right notes instead of watching where that samauri sword of a chopping knife is going to end up because on my list of places to be stabbed, in the Benihana isn’t one of them. But back to [redacted] and the Birthday Song: don't sing it, because [redacted] should sing his own song for us. Because he's our rockstar. And the kid's all right.
I didn't want to be birthday-creative. I didn't want to be the birthday guy. But I also didn't want to be the new guy who said "no" too often. So my plan was to write the email, have it be too creative, and then have The Ballsy Career Gal or someone else say, "You know, Hallmark's not bad."
Of course, they didn't. They loved the birthday emails. They're now this huge thing, and the meaner or more out there I am, the better they go over. Well, except for one. One birthday boy didn't like the fact that I compared his birth with the coming of the anti-Christ. However, I don't like that guy in the first place and if anyone deserves an Omen reference, it's him.
Anyway, here's my most recent birthday email I did, this time for the Aging Rockstar in the office:
_____________________
As a child, I watched Alice Cooper sing "Welcome to My Nightmare" on The Muppet Show and had nightmares of my own for weeks following. Being a rockstar never seemed like a viable career alternative after that. Rockstars were always biting the heads off of rats or sleeping with Joni Mitchell or drowning in pools of vomit or not kicking Tiny Tim's ass all the livelong day like I feel they really should have been. I mean, come on rockstars. There's harmless freakshow and then there's this. Anyway: rockstars scared me. Especially if you were Prince and I was 13 and you were crawling naked across the floor after slithering out of a bathtub and I wasn't sure what the camera man's intentions were but I was pretty sure that 60 Minutes did a special about what happened to kids in situations like this, and it always involved crying in court.
[redacted] is a different breed of rockstar. If [redacted] swung an electric guitar on stage, it would be an electric Nerf guitar, and it would bounce harmlessly off the drummer's head and then they'd smile some funny smile and make Isaac-from-the-Love-Boat fingers at each other. [redacted] would probably challenge you to a skip-off – and then let you win. [redacted] wouldn't trash a hotel room; he would carefully refold the towels and probably leave a little "Have a Great Day!" note for the housekeeping staff and even if they didn't speak English or couldn't read or were learning disabled and this is the only job they could get because the dyslexia wasn't caught in time only maybe that one teacher had an inkling but the wage we pay to educators in this country is measured in what? Pennies? Anyway, even people who don't take to reading would know that the note said "Have a Great Day!" because [redacted] would hang around and make sure that they got it and that they understood what it said because [redacted] is Very Careful.
[redacted] is what's going to make Rock 'n' Roll great again. And he'll do it not by dating an endless string of supermodels named Tawny or Lace or Chardonnay because they're trashy and besides those girls don't really date so much as they find themselves waking up in strange apartments wondering how they got there and who's going to do their hair that morning. Sometimes these supermodels are force-fed mind altering drugs and there they are, several years later married to Billy Joel and thinking it's a good idea when really he's just a drunk with a piano and the world's got enough of those that we don’t really need to encourage Billy Joel any more than we have to, right? "Shut it, Piano Man." And don't even get me started on Rick "Zombie King" Ocasek.
So today, on [redacted]'s birthday, don't bother singing him the Happy Birthday Song – and not just because I've told you again and again not to because that song is like nails on a chalkboard especially when it's sung at a Benihana because the thing I don't want to happen there is for one of those Japanese guys behind the hot metal grill to try and hit all the right notes instead of watching where that samauri sword of a chopping knife is going to end up because on my list of places to be stabbed, in the Benihana isn’t one of them. But back to [redacted] and the Birthday Song: don't sing it, because [redacted] should sing his own song for us. Because he's our rockstar. And the kid's all right.
posted by Mike at 8:26 AM
2 Comments:
chriswoznitza led me to your blog, and am I ever glad that he did. The birthday e-mail is priceless. Thanks.
Awesome. That's what they get for making you the birthday boy. I always refused to pitch in more than a little card-blurb for office birthdays. That, and the prevalance of khakis, is the reason I don't work in an office.
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