“I Also Worked at Nakatomi Trading”: Jackie’s Complete Résumé
EDNA’S EDIBLES
Job Responsibilities: Assistant to bakery’s owner/founder Edna Garrett. Prepared baked goods; Fulfilled orders; Kept a very detailed diary of the actions of her other four female employees for the purposes of potential blackmail so that they could never leave her or each other.
Reason for Leaving: Bakery burned to ground in what is still considered an act of arson, especially given eventual disappearance of owner. Replaced with “Over Our Heads,” the very name a silent, neon-colored cry for help, that sold inflatable palm trees, toy penguins, and what I believe was a life-size Gerorge Clooney action figure.
STRICKLAND PROPANE
Job Responsibilities: Sell propane tanks, propane tank refills, propane grills, propane hoses, propane hose connectors, propane RV connection hose, propane bulk tank hose adapters, propane tank stabilizers, propane regulator valves, propane y-splitters (please see attached pages for more propane).
Reason for Leaving: Shoved a portable propane gas tank in my mouth and threatened to shoot it if I had to spend one more day saying the word “propane.” Was saved from imminent self-immolation by a rather slow-talking individual who was still shocked that women now wear slacks.
TYRELL CORPORATION
Job Responsibilities: Test applicants.
Reason for Leaving: May have failed own test.
McMANN & TATE ADVERTISING
Job Responsibilities: Administrative Assistant to Howard McMann. Typing; Filing; Wondering if boss had been kidnapped or died due to constant absence.
Reason for Leaving: Entire business model became dependent on a single Account Executive and his wife, who would occasionally put on a brunette wig and pretend she was her own evil cousin for reasons unknown.
THE SINGING SIRLOIN
Job Responsibilities: Musical Waiter. Served restaurant customers; Sang to restaurant customers; Died a little inside each day.
Reason for Leaving: Business was replaced by Eye Caramba then The Perm Bank then Krusty Burger then IRS Burger then Mr. Burns’ Casino then Springfield Box Company then Praiseland then a horrible gas leak then a garbage crisis resulting in the entire town needing to be moved.
NAKATOMI TRADING CORPORATION
Job Responsibilities: Administrative Assistant to Harry Ellis. Responsibilities included looking away as he burned a third nostril in his nose with copious cocaine and generally avoiding him at all costs.
Reason for Leaving: Got drunk at Christmas party. Woke up to find everyone either dead, severely injured, eclectically international, or renewing commitment to their marriage.
OCEANIC AIRLINES
Job Responsibilities: Flight Attendant. Served passengers; Assisted pilots; Repeatedly typing same six numbers to prevent an island from exploding.
Reason for Leaving: May or may not be dead.
It’s True! The Legends Are True!
Yes, Virginia, there is a “Six Million Dollar Man Christmas Album.”
Now for anyone who never dropped the needle on this after sobbing through the “Puff the Magic Dragon” LP and before trying to determine the breed of an arrow-headed dog while listening to “The Point,” the “The Six Million Dollar Man” album is not uber-Gil Gerard Lee Majors as Steve Austin warbling “The 12 Days of Christmas” in dramatic slow motion as Oscar Goldman provides backup or at least occasionally shouts “He’s just talking about Santa!” Instead, these are stories that encompass such classic holiday tales as the one about a molecular toy duplicator, an ersatz Santa stealing fuel cells, a dying planet orbiting the Star of Bethlehem, and “Elves’ Revolt,” which is best left to The Bionic Wiki to describe:
Steve discovers that Santa’s elves are in a labor dispute with their boss. Complaining of low wages and bad working condiions, they go an strike. Their “picket line” is literally formed by a terrorist elf named Ramat, whose scheme to bring Santa to the bargaining table involves melting the polar ice cap.
Now upon seeing all this your first thought may be the very same one I had as a kid on a Sunday Night having just finished watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom (known to early Gen Xers as Marlin Perkins Once Again Sends Jim to Certain Death) and was getting ready to watch still one of the coolest opening credit sequences ever: “Shouldn’t this be called The Six-Million-Dollar Man? Aren’t the hyphens kinda necessary if the phrase ‘Six Million Dollar’ defines ‘Man’?”
That aside, I loved the show, even (okay, especially) when they introduced a robotic Bigfoot protecting cave-dwelling aliens and Maximillian, the bionic German Shepherd who, like Frankenstein and any company that has ever insured an Italian restaurant in New Jersey, is very leery of sudden fires. Of course, some may say this is just two of the many, many times the show jumped the shark, but if somehow they aired an episode featuring a bionic Great White protecting spelunking extraterrestrials when it’s not trying to kill them, I would have watched that show on first and summer-rerun airing.
To put it another way, I loved The Six Million Dollar Man/The Six-Million-Dollar Man, to the point that my friend Val and I would constantly play “The Six Million Dollar Man Board Game,” a time-killer best described by its own back copy: “Four bionic men each claim to have Steve Austin’s powers. Your job is to prove that you are the real Six Million Dollar Man. The computer spinner reads out your moves and gives you the power to handle assignments. You will take part in dangerous missions. Each assignment will make you stronger. The stronger you become the faster you will move around the board and back to the Bionic Research Lab where you will win the game.”
Then again, we also played the “Emergency! Board Game,” based on a show I remember almost entirely by the fact I played the board game based on it. There may even be the remote possibility I played board games based on Welcome Back, Kotter (in which one would imagine your goal would be to leave 70s-era New York, not re-enter it) or Good Times (in which every move belies the very title of the board game).
In other words, there was a considerable lag time before Atari finally showed up. But really, let’s finally get to the real reason we’re all here—those opening credits…
“Is This Store a Front?”—A True Story
Way back in the very early 90s when I was an unofficial student at Weill Cornell Medicine School in NYC (I’ll explain another time) there was what appeared to be an abandoned yet somehow still operating copy shop nearby on the corner of 69th Street and First Avenue. The sign on the door always read “Open” but if you peered inside you could only make out in the unlit, unstaffed room a lone copy machine that was not turned on and seemingly unplugged. We all referred to it as the “Brigadoon Store” because we thought perhaps once every 100 years the lights would go on and it would be nickel Xeroxing for all.
But then one day my girlfriend at the time—an actual, official med student at the school—needed to copy a document. (Again, this being the very early 90s not everyone had ready access to a printer.) So she went to the copy store during what one would assume to be business hours, opened the unlocked door, and was greeted…by no one. She then walked over to the copy machine and found that not only was it unplugged but also nowhere near any outlet in reach. Needing the copies that day, she then called out for some assistance but received none.
That’s when she noticed in the unlit room a hallway leading down to another door. And thus with document in hand—and apparently any fear on holiday—she calmly walked down to the door and softly knocked. Nothing. She then opened the unlocked door only to be greeted by the sight of several angry, sweaty men at tables answering/yelling into landline phones while on the wall a dry erase board featured a host of sporting events and dollar amounts. And that’s when finally a rather imposing (read: mob-like) “company employee” noticed her and responded with a most customer service-oriented, “What the fuck do you want?!?”
And so she had to go elsewhere to make copies. Quickly.
Next Time: My brother is greeted with “What the fuck do you want?!?” while serving as an unwitting illegal courier for a boiler room.
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