My First Day On The Nightmare Before Christmas
I hit the security buzzer to the left of a door that must have set the studio back eight bucks.
Disembodied Voice: “Can I help you?”
Me: “My name is George Y—”
BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!
Me: “I got it.”
A ping-pong table greeted me. Eraser Head and Dash Riprock were squared off in a competitive match that highlighted either their natural skills, or a tremendous amount of free time to perfect the sport. If the Chinese discovered this enclave of capability, the building might have been leveled in short order prior to the next Summer Olympics.
Disembodied Voice: “Up here, George!”
I left Eraser and Dash to their gold medal match and took the creaking stairway to the second floor. At the top of it stood the Disembodied Voice sporting a Jean Harlow hairdo and holding something that looked like a doll owned by the star of The Bad Seed. She stood with a sewing needle in one hand and stitched up the toy, perhaps preparing it for a decent burial.
I took in the surrounding floor. The previous occupant of the studio had been an austere operation with a bullpen of cubicles in the middle and more private offices on the perimeter. That establishment’s employees moved like the residents of Bellevue and the only noise I ever heard up there might have been the occasional pre-suicidal sigh of the desperation of being trapped in a career ending infinite loop.
But not now. The black and white USSR design motif of just a couple years ago replaced by the dark and rich primary and secondary colors of grade school. But the reds were bloody. The blues funereal. The yellows and oranges imbued with the glory of sunset and sunrise . . . with enough vampire black to shadow them. Purple muted itself to voodoo indigo. And the green so close to stagnant pond water that mosquitos hovered over it.
Figurines from The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Creature from the Black Lagoon decorated windows and tops of cubicle spaces. Storyboard frames adorned desktops and drafting tables. One office, inhabited by a former resident of Mordor, no longer had walls. Just sketches on paper shoved into the sheetrock by pushpins.
The occupant of this space moved his forearms rapidly over a sketch pad. Green eyeshades covered his miniature Cro-Magnon forehead, and just when his work came to a halt, he tore the top sheet off and floated it across the room. He picked up a slingshot and nailed his latest effort over several other drawings by firing a black pushpin into it and securing it to the wall. The Disembodied Voice pulled me out of my stupefied fascination.
Disembodied Voice: “Phil’s office is over this way. Follow me, please.”
Me: “The stairway can be treacherous.”
Disembodied Voice: “The next line is ‘Stay close to the candles.’ You skipped it.”
Me: “Yes, you’re right.”
The Young Frankenstein dialogue exchange complete, she deposited me just inside Phil’s door. He waved at me to hold my position, while he finished up with a woman seated on an apple box. She’d tied her blood red hair on top of her head with a railroad spike.
Phil: “You think someone actually poisoned your rinse water with zip kicker?”
Anonymous Person: “How else do you explain the puppet with their limbs glued together?”
Phil: “I’ll look into it.”
Anonymous Person: “Thanks, Phil.”
She departed and stepped on my foot on the way out.
Phil: “Pull up an apple box.”
And that is how it started. Once that door slammed shut behind me, The Nightmare Before Christmas owned me. Though never a big fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I now understood how Brad felt during “The Time Warp.”
The two-week jaunt originally promised ended up turning into more than a year, one of the most challenging and rewarding of my professional life.
It broke down into four periods.
1. The Two Week Lie. – September 16 through September 30
2. The Four Week Extension. – September 30 through October 28
3. Some Time After the Holidays. – October 28 through Some Time After the Holidays
4. The Bitter End. – Some Time After the Holidays through The Bitter End
Each of the four periods had subheadings, but for the purposes of clear writing, I am going to forego listing most of them. One has to be mentioned. It follows “Some Time After the Holidays.” It’s called “Jackie’s Going on Maternity Leave” and essentially shut the door on me ever getting free from the building at 7th and Harrison.
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