How To Behave When Company Comes Over

So evidently Sandy and I made asses out of ourselves in front of the company last night. We had a couple Public Radio producers from Sweden stop by the studio last night to observe our process. We know how to behave ourselves, but sometimes we forget that other people are around and interrelate the way we do when nobody’s around. We’re not afraid to tell each other what we think, sometimes in the rudest of terms.

So I completed my draft of Episode 55, a day behind schedule. I assumed it needed a lot of work and put a lot of work into it. Sandy works faster, but pays less attention to detail, I’m a detail guy and that annoys Sandy, Sandy says things are “done” whether they are done or not and that annoys me. Deadline’s are more important to Sandy. I’m not Mr. Deadline, I will noodle and mess with my art until far past the deadline, which is why Stephe makes up fake deadlines for the submission of my films, godbless him (although I even fucked that up yesterday, I don’t know why anyone even works with me anymore). So I was supposed to send Sandy a new draft of Ep55 last Friday Morning, I didn’t send it until 9pm, 12 hours late. I didn’t want to send a work in progress only to have the exact thing I didn’t get to receive the comment that it wasn’t good. Plus I had to sleep and go to work, it’s not like I had ALL DAY to work on it.

So we’re going through Episode 55, with our two Swedish friends in attendance, and after going over Act 1, Sandy feels the need to point this out to everyone, that I take too much time on my scripts. He needles me by doing his demeaning impression of me doing my work. Sometimes I can take a joke, sometimes I can’t, I was proud of the draft I turned in, so this was one of the times I couldn’t, I’m normally tightlipped on the shortcomings of my friends, but I let Sandy have it, all my thoughts on the draft he turned in and why it sucked and we just got into a pissing match, right there in front of the Swedes. Back and forth back and forth.

I didn’t think anything of it until it was pointed out later that the Swedes jaws had dropped watching Sandy and I “fight” and that Justin wasn’t engaging in conversation with them, he was actually distracting them. We were arguing and I assumed Justin and Kate were in a conversation with them, I didn’t realize that we had caused it, so Sandy and I kept going because Justin and Kate were busy. Conversing. It was awful and ultimately just an excuse to work less on the Episode.

Ironically, in the end, neither Sandy or I’s contributions to the show last week mattered much, it’s been rewritten again by the group, again by Justin, again by Sandy, again by the group.

It took me 20 minutes to write this. Sandy would’ve done it in five. It would be shorter, but it would be more efficiently done and you, the reader, should respect that.