Susan is so clogged with work that I periodically suggest she pay someone to be her itinerant research assistant. I helpfully nominated two colleagues from the rescue squad for the position. One of them was talking ominously of quitting her job, apparently having suffered through several weeks of bad days, and the other is a student who confessed that she has so little money that she frequently weighs the merits of spending $1.10 to take a bus. Moreover, I thought Susan would find it amusing to have a measure of authority over one of my fellow rescuers, since it must seem that they receive an ever-expanding percentage of my time and attention. I pointed out that getting to boss one around might be a pleasant reversal of fortune.

Alas, my Machiavellian plan came to naught. Having managed subordinates at her last job, Susan is every bit as averse to it as I am. So she slogs on alone, and her burthen is not light.

In other news, the phone rang shortly before 11 PM. It was Doreen Gentzler, revered anchorperson at the Washington NBC television station. She told me the news that night would feature a short item mentioning a website that I put together, and she wanted to let me know in case there were any last minute changes I needed to make. I had the feeling of unreasonable glee one gets sometimes when brushing up against Fame. Doreen called me! At home! I'm special!

The website was a pro bono job I did for a couple local AIDS-prevention organizations to highlight an upcoming fundraising event. They'd held a party that evening at the Hard Rock Cafe to kick the whole thing off. I had never actually spent time in a Hard Rock Cafe, which I now found to be like Graceland with 90's furniture. The walls of the restaurant, loaded with lame memorabilia, seemed to physically strain to hold in the splintering genre of Rock Music. The constant stream of videos playing on ubiquitous screens was straight out of the playlist for a nostalgia station that promises "the best of the 70's, 80's... and 90's!" The videos only underscored the idea that Rock was no longer a viable form -- like Zeus, its children had sprung from its head and were off changing the world on their own. The cafe was a temple which appeared to be built in honor of a dying god. In reality, of course, it's a temple built in honor of Greed, a deity that is alive and well and siring its own offspring, Packaged Fun.

Doreen was at the kickoff party, and I was briefly introduced to her by one of the co-chairs of the event. She told me she liked the site. (Doreen liked the site! I thought. And she's famous! Sort of!) She said she hoped they could feature the event on the late news, and mention the site as a promotional tool. I gave her my email address and phone number just in case her web manager needed to contact me for any reason. I didn't really think that the anchor would call me herself. I thought that recognizable people had people who dealt with other people for them.

We actually set the VCR to "record" and watched the late news. And there, in the final 15 seconds of the broadcast, was our promo. Because it did not feature dramatic camera shots of bloodstained pavement, it was easy to miss. But there it was.

And in another increment of my fifteen minutes, the movie Seven was broadcast on TV recently, sending around 1,600 people wandering into this site. Not exactly porno-site stats, but not bad for a site that features only a single naked ass.