The truth about Chris R
(not that he cares)
I used to be employed as a reporter for
several newspapers including the Sebastopol
Times & News. Read that again carefully.
I used to be EMPLOYED as
a reporter at newspapers. Was I really a reporter? Depends on
how you look at me.
If you look at me while I'm standing next
to Chris R., then the answer is... yes.
I first saw Chris during one of my job interviews for the Times
& News. He lunged into the room, struck a horrified gaze
that seemed to say, "My god, I'm fired," and bolted
from the door.
The next time I saw Chris, I had gotten
the job. My editor, John H.K.R. told me, "You need to go
upstairs to the loft and introduce yourself to the sports editor.
That would be Chris.." They kept him far, far away from
the rest of the office, hidden like a crazy relative in a little
attic-like room where he assembled the sports and the specialty
pages -- horoscopes, cross-word puzzles, comics and other syndicated
items. You know, the stuff that people actually read in a newspaper.
"So you're the sports editor, huh?"
"Yes," he said. "But I'm
quitting soon. Don't tell John." As long as I knew Chris,
he was always quitting the newspaper. "Well, tell John if
you have to. I don't care." He was always saying "I
don't care."
"Is that your girlfriend?" I
asked, pointing at a picture on his desk.
"My fiancee," he corrected.
The picture would change every couple of months, but it would
still be his fiancee. I think he bought frames at Target and
kept the photos. He was always quitting the newspaper and he
was always engaged. Not quite employed, not quite married --
just the way he liked it.
"So," I said, still trying to
work-up a conversation with him. "You must go to a lot of
games, huh?"
"Only at gunpoint," Chris said.
"I usually have people do that for me." I laughed at
his joke. Later, I found out it wasn't a joke. He used to convince
high school kids to call him up at home and give him a play-by-play
description. Then he'd write it up. Thing is, it worked. No one
knew, no one complained. Sure, he had to show up to some key
games -- championships and the first games of the season -- but
not too damn many. His goal was to finish his pages as fast as
he could, and then pretend to work the rest of the time. It was
less stressful.
"You can only work so many hours
a day, and two is my limit," he said.
And he limited his sports writing to just
sports, thank you very much. If Chris had covered the 1989 World
Series between Oakland and San Francisco, he would have come
into the office the next day and said, "Sorry, I don't have
a story. They canceled the game because of some earthquake."
What a reporter.
If it weren't for Chris, I might have
never stayed at the Times & News. Management spent so much
of its time dealing with him, they didn't
have time to take a close look at me. The boss didn't complain
about his writing much (who reads the Times & News?) but
they did complain about his work ethic, attitude, tardiness and
absences.
When they did complain about his writing,
it was usually justified.
"Chris, I just got a call from the
girl's basketball coach at El Molino," John said one day.
"He says in the last article you wrote, you called one of
the girls on his team a 'thug.'"
Chris laughed. "Really? Maybe I did.
Well... let's just check." He looked over the article, but
couldn't find the offensive word. "It's not in the story...
wait, here it is. It's in the cutline of the photo. "
He laughed and beamed, proudly. "I
did call her a 'thug.'" Ha!"
"Well, you need to call the coach
to apologize," John said.
"Fine," Chris said huffily.
"I don't care."
John asked me to work with Chris on special
sections. For awhile, we ran a weekly real estate section, specifically
created by management to appease our real estate advertisers.
When we lost the real estate advertising, the section disappeared.
But for three or four months, Chris and I rewrote press releases
and slapped them on a page. It was boring work, but less boring
with Chris involved.
"Let's see how many times we can
get "Gila monster" into the real estate page,"
Chris offered. Sounded good to me. Here's an example of our work:
- If you're looking for an apartment
and you have pets--such as a live Gila monster--you'll want to
make sure the landlord accepts Gila monsters in the lease.
We kept this up for weeks. No one ever
complained. No one. Ever.
The other thing I loved about Chris was
his passion for booze. Wait, that was me. But he was a great
drinking buddy anyway. We would hit deadline every Wednesday
at noon, come in for the editorial meeting after lunch, screw
around till 2 p.m. and then sneak out the back door and down
the alley to Jasper O'Farrell's bar. He'd nurse one gin and tonic
while I downed bottle after bottle of Budweiser. Too soon, the
newspaper moved its offices and, sadly, things were never the
same. We now drank across the street at Don's Bar.
For awhile, life was good.
After the move, Chris lost his loft. Advertising,
production, sales and management hogged several rooms downstairs.
The editorial department -- Chris, me, John, Larry Mac (a columnist)
and Simon B. (who edited the Bodega Bay Signal, a one-man newspaper)
-- were crammed into the same upstairs' room.
Chris was doomed. Now everyone could see
what he didn't do in the course of a day.
The new room did offer one huge advantage.
John's desk by
the window faced directly opposite my desk in the corner. Chris's
desk was next to mine in the other corner. We could see John's
computer in the window's reflection, but he couldn't see our
computers at all. So during editorial meetings, Chris and I would play video games.
"Too bad we can't get paid for playing
video games," I told him once.
"Naw, that's no good," Chris
said. "Then we'd just sit around and write stories all day."
Despite his nonchalant attitude, Chris
could do investigative journalism when he wanted to. For example,
he broke into the personnel files at the Times & News and
looked up everyone's salary.
"Jasper, come down here quick,"
came his urgent message on the intercom one night when we were
staying late at the office. I went downstairs and he had a flashlight
and a handful of manila folders. "Do you know how much money John makes?"
"Don't tell me, I don't want to know,"
I said. "Just tell me that I make more money than you."
"Of course you do," he said.
"But... I don't care."
Chris and I had one good year working
together before management reared its ugly head. A new policy
was initiated at the paper: three strikes and you're out. (Management
was clearly ahead of its time.) The newspaper was losing money
and it was time to downsize. Everyone at the paper knew this
policy was aimed at Chris. Now the boss could start counting
his transgressions so they'd have "legal cause" to
dump him.
Chris went down swinging. First, he referred
to the Times & News as "The Shopper" in earshot
of the publisher and some potential advertisers.
Strike one.
Then he faked the "Question of the
Week." Instead of interviewing people randomly on the streets
of Sebastopol, he went home and took photos of his entire family
and wrote what he wanted. "I wrote the question AND the
answers," he said. "I should get extra pay for that."
Strike two.
Finally, he didn't show up in the office
for a week and called in his stories.
"That's seven strikes, by my count,"
Chris said. It worked. He got the ax. I knew my days at the Times
& News were numbered. Now I was the problem employee.
On his final day, Chris came into the
office and got his things from his desk.
"So they really fired you. What are
you going to do now?"
"I'm going to write for Disneyland,"
Chris said.
"Seriously," I said. "What's
your game plan?"
"I don't know. And... I don't care."
It's been years since Chris and I worked
at the late, great Sebastopol Times & News. Since then, the
paper's been bought and sold and published under a new name.
I moved to Austin and got out of the newspaper business and onto
the internet. Bosco -- John's old Chihuahua dog -- hooked up
with an agent in Hollywood and started doing Taco Bell commercials.
I think.
And Chris? The last I heard he was living
in Sausalito, engaged to be married and quitting his job as editor
of the Windsor Times.
Not that I fuckin' care.
* * *
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This column aims to be funny. If you can read anything else into it, you're on your own. Copyright 1998 by Mike Jasper.
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