Nobody, understandably, pities TV critics for their work. It’s not exactly Deadliest Catch or factory work—we don’t run the risk of falling into freezing seas or having our arms sheared off by machinery if we’re not careful. (The chief hazard is strangulation by getting your necktie caught in the DVD-loading tray.)
Nonetheless, we complain. One of the big occupational annoyances is the “creative” PR packaging and/or swag gift. In the past I’ve received screeners packaged in film canisters and oversized popcorn drums and braved monstrous paper cuts to extract DVDs encased in carapaces of plastic and cardboard, like the trucklike plastic contraption in which History Channel sent me Ice Road Truckers, opening which was like removing Excalibur from the stone. The waste alone is staggering: 95% of my job essentially involves throwing things away. Discovery may be launching Planet Green and NBC may plug the environment in primetime, but the TV-publicity business is singlehandedly killing the Earth.
If you do not like to read people paid to watch TV complaining about how they are sent TV to be paid to watch, for the love of God do not click past the jump:
In the last 24 hours, for instance, I have received: a folder for The Circuit, an ABC Family Michelle Trachtenberg movie that I will probably not watch because whenever I open it, it makes an annoying revving-engine sound. (TV PR has supplanted the greeting-card industry as the main customer of novelty sound chips. Why don’t I just rip the device out? Because the last time I tried that, the chip kept playing over and over in my garbage can until I left the office. It is probably still playing somewhere in the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island.)
Also: a perfectly round, porthole-shaped press kit for Cartoon Network’s The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. (Q: How do you store a perfectly round press kit on a bookshelf? A: You don’t.) Inside the round box are press releases, on several cardboard discs that are not perfectly round. Instead, each has two notches on the edge, and to fit the whole stack back into the box, you have to rotate them, one by one, to fit onto a notch inside the box. It’s like trying to solve a puzzle in a Survivor immunity challenge.
And finally, two urgent voicemails from the Time Inc. messenger center, while I was out of the office, informing me that WE TV had hand-delivered me a cupcake to promote some show or another. As far as I know, it is still there.
If anyone from the Time Inc. messenger center is reading this blog: Please, eat the cupcake.