
Dispatch From the Cubicle of Icarus Oddfellow // No. 001
First off, apologies for the tardy update. I’ve spent the better part of my trial week as an official employee of TAR+FEATHER unsubscribing from spam emails and resetting forgotten passwords for all our social media accounts. I’m Icarus (oddfellow@oddfellow.studio). I’ve been assigned the task of playing liaison between Dr. V (more on that later) and the outside world. After several years of unsuccessfully curating an online presence that captured the appropriate amount of carefree white privilege and humble-braggy effortless success, Dr. V has evidently washed his hands of the whole internet culture and hired me instead. Prior to this, during my senior year at the College of the Canyons, I was assistant to the social media manager for Six Flags Magic Mountain and learned a great deal about generating clicks and cultivating an inflated, unrealistically perfect snapshot of one’s image and general existence. I’ve pitched Dr. V on posting more Instagram photos of himself posed with murals of painted wings, or possibly buying an old Volkswagen Bus so we could capitalize on the #vanlife craze (he said he’d think about it). I suggested that he set up a Twitter account (he told me to get the fuck out of his office). So, we’ll see how this goes. It seems like it might be a bit of a process at first.
Dr. V has requested that I call him “Dr. V” for efficiency sake, thus maximizing the amount of time I can put into work. He seems to believe that each utterance of this abridged name, in lieu of “Varava,” will save us .8 seconds. Assuming that I call out for his attention approx. 64 times a day, that would add up to a daily 51.2 seconds. And a yearly 18,688 seconds – or 311 minutes (rounded down). And in terms of my hourly rate, that’s close to fifty bucks. I asked him if he really had a PHD in something. He sort of chuckled and said, “Did Dr. J have PHD in basketball? Did Dr. Demento have a PHD in novelty songs?” Then, when I tried to inform him that both “Varava” AND “Dr. V” had the same amount of syllables and most likely would require equal time to verbalize, he seemed to get a little irritated and said that “he’s not paying me to make executive decisions here, and anyway the Nespresso isn’t going to brew itself, bud.”
All in all, it has been a fairly interesting week and despite not quite understanding exactly what Dr. V does most of the day, I’m happy to be here and excited for the opportunity to work in such close proximity to Hollywood. I’m looking forward to learning how to navigate the fragile egos and sensitive union politics on set. I’m also hoping to take a course on ProTools so I can finally record my spoken word poetry, and – just maybe – work my way into my dream job: Shia Labeouf’s stunt double.
Signing Off,
I. Oddfellow