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end of the fund
Thursday, February 1 2001
Sometimes the day is going along just fine and then you find out that somehow the global.asa file on the live site was mysteriously replaced with the copy from the development site. Today was one of those days.
Then Frank, the producer guy who had flown back to the UK a few days ago, called me from London and told me he'd just learned he was going to be laid off from the UK subsidiary. It hadn't been one of those hostile knife-in-the-back affairs; the shit had gone down with far more civility than I can expect when my time to be laid off finally arrives. The CEO just pulled Frank aside and said that though funding was in the pipeline, it hadn't yet come through and there simply wasn't the money to keep everyone on. But Frank wasn't immediately escorted to the door and he didn't suddenly discover that his email account had been shut down; indeed, here he was allowed to make at least one international phone call!
In the evening the ensemble of former colleagues comprising the erstwhile Community team had another rendezvous at the Waterfront Café in Venice. We sat out in front and the weather was almost warm enough for us to be comfortable, but not quite.
Due to the crossover connections from my current assignment, we were (as before) joined by the hard-drinking members of the UK team, the few now left in Santa Monica. There were a few others strangers who turned up, mostly friends of the ever-gregarious Kolja and one former colleague of Linda's who is thinking of hiring her. She's been unemployed since early November 2000.
By the time we were done with our endless pitchers of German beer and plates of things from the golden food group, we'd run up a tab exceeding $200, far more than completely erasing The Fund that was established last week.
For some reason I was in remarkably good form, making not-always-stupid jokes and keeping people laughing. Linda gave me an extra tight hug when she and Julian dropped me off at my house. Every time she kisses me on the cheek, Julian feels compelled to do so also, as if to negate the specialness I might feel.
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