One Life Left

It’s well after midnight now which, I think means I get to get weird and personal. Is that right?

10 years ago I was a full time Assistant Store Manager at GameStop. I was extremely poor making 12.50 an hour and trying to pay rent and eat. I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pasta (to this day I can't eat PPJ).

A couple of my close friends were working on a TV pilot (funded by the writers of said pilot, nothing big. It was an extremely independent project). They were going to shoot for 4 or 5 days at a college in Massachusetts.

The pilot was called Graduates and 10 years ago TODAY was day one of shooting. I wasn't the producer, or director, or director of photography. I was the assistant camera operator. But that job changed my life.

The DP was someone I knew, but never worked with. He was the full time DP for CollegeHumor. He said to me "you should do this on CollegeHumor shoots with me all the time." And then he made it happen.

I started freelancing for CollegeHumor in August 2008. Since I made the schedule at GameStop I would schedule my days off around CH shoot days often working 7 days a week for a few weeks in a row.