All You Do To Me Is Talk Talk by Rasha Refaie

It happened: Talk magazine folded, the poor little dears. When I read the news, my reaction sort of surprised me: I was elated. I smiled. My heart felt light, as I remembered a little scene from the fall of last year - the closest to Talk I've ever been.

I was attending a panel discussion at the Center for Communications, called "How To Be A Freelance Writer." Some writers and editors were assembled on a cluttered stage at a crappy table with a Soviet-era sound system. There was a delay in getting started, because we were waiting for the final panelist to arrive: Ms.Botox 2001, a.k.a. Phoebe Eaton, Deputy Editor of (then)Talk Magazine.

She arrived finally. Sweeping onto the stage grandly, nestling down into her seat and clipping her mike on, she looked at us, the audience. Judging by the looks on her face, which ranged from shocked pity to dumb horror, she didn't know that little people like us really existed. I think I even saw her mouth the words, "Oh my gawd."

The panelists started up their thing, pretending to sound informed and useful. We, the losers, politely listened. Ms. Eaton voiced important contributions like "I don't know how I start a typical day, it isn't that interesting. I read The Washington Post, and all the other papers." She gently berated all of the freelancers who trotted off to Afghanistan to cover the war without any leads and then called HER for guidance, even though Talk doesn't use nobody-freelancers. This she made perfectly clear. I was actually expecting her to say, "I don't know what I'm doing at this conference, I think it's really stupid and beneath me."

Phoebe Eaton (left) , Maer Roshan, and Peggy Siegal Photograph by Jeff Hirsch

To be fair, she said a few articulate things. She seems smart. But then, Eaton made the fatal statement during the Q&A exchange with the audience. Someone asked her one of those basic obvious questions that I would never in my life have the courage to ask, like "So, what's the best way to 'break in' to the magazine world?" It's about 2 months after 9-11. Madamoiselle had just folded, and the job market sucked. And what did Phoebe Marie Antoinette Eaton say?: "The best advice I can give you is to just go get a job." And have a piece of cake while you're at it.

This response really killed me. First of all, the whole reason we were assembled in that room was to figure out How To Be Freelance Writers - there was nothing in the title of the seminar suggesting tips on How To Be Gainfully Employed With Benefits and Dental Care. Second of all, the job market/economy was already fucked then, and is more fucked now. Third of all - and this bespeaks of my highly desirable resume, I reckon - I have sent letters to dozens of magazines over the years, asking for a job! A total of zero took me up on it (even the freakin' internships, thanks very much)! And this hank of hair tells me - and over a hundred other people - to just go get a job! As if it's that easy. Well, fuck me.

So this is why the death of Talk had me giddy. Ms. Eaton was jobless as of last week. I'm sure with her resume, it won't be long before she's once again firmly anchored in at the helm of some glitzy mag. But at least for a little while, she has to eat her own shitty advice.

Why I Hate The Williamsburg P.O.

Through rain, sleet, hail or snow - or whatever the United States Postal Service slogan is - doesn't apply here. There is one thing I am thankful for, during the Autumn 2001 anthrax attacks: that our Williamsburg station was not targeted, because I would have had a hard time feeling sad about any of those employees dying. As far as I can tell, they already are the walking dead. There is something deeply disturbing about an entire branch of employees that cannot comprehend the words "PRIORITY MAIL" or "INSURED PACKAGE." My people on the Left Coast spend plenty of money insuring and prioritizing these packages. It still takes about seven days for them to deliver it. I get the feeling they're all heroin addicts.

I called them up to bitch at them, recently. The phone rang, no joking, about a hundred times. I guess everyone was in the back room, shooting up. Finally someone answered the phone. "Wymmmsbug," the guy says, in a tone suggesting he had no idea what he was doing there. Something is very daunting about a completely un-speech-therapized person. I hung up on him after I started explaining their latest fuck-up, to which he replied "We're closed - call back in four days." Okay, junkie.

When I visit our local branch, I feel a strange kinship with the blighted citizens of the former Soviet Union. "So this is what the East Bloc was like," I think to myself. The line of customers is out the door, but only two postal employees are working, and then - whooops, spoke too soon - one of those puts up his cardboard "I'm Not Here" thing in his window - even though he's still standing there - leaving only one worker left. Everyone in line is crabby and looks like they survive on primarily cabbage soup and stale bread. We gaze obediently like cattle at the television screen perched above, broadcasting the latest installment of a Spanish soap opera. The waiting drags on interminably. I am in Dante's hell.

Good luck if you're in the other line - for picking up packages or doing passport forms - because no employee is ever there. You can stand at that window for a long fucking time before one of the junkies will finally notice you. Maybe they want you to know their pain. It is a cry for help. Someone, please help them - or fire them.

I come from the Left Coast - Orange County, in Southern California, to be exact - a vapid HWP kind of well-off suburb where everything is clean and neat and the grocery clerks grin while asking you how you're doing today. It is service-oriented, to say the least.

And the post office, oi vay. The employees have IQs above 50 there, and they know what they're doing. They will never accidentally hold your mail for 3 weeks, mistakenly thinking you filled out a 'hold mail' form (yes, Williamsburg postal employees do this). There's a little boutique in the lobby - while waiting for their numbers to be called, customers roam and browse the latest dorky designer stamps and stationery crap while sipping Mochachinos from the mini-Starbucks lounge. This is my idea of a decent post office. Hey, it's better than being herded into a line and forced to watch inane television programs.

Why can't we have that in Williamsburg? Maybe in the 1980s this neighborhood was a hell dive, but now we have our lawyers, accountants, our condo-shoppers and trust-funders. The demographic of our neighborhood has changed, and it's just curious to notice that the services have not changed with it. What good is my American-as-apple-pie sense of entitlement if I'm in a Kabul-esque post office? In the mean time, I have put the word out to all of my package-sending people to never, ever use the USPS - not because of bioterrorism, but because of incompetence. It's FedEx or nothing.

   
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mail@freewilliamsburg.com | February 2002 | Issue 23
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