January 27, 2010 | lists

As the graph above illustrates, things can be easily organized into pie charts, and just the thought of a bit of pecan pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side is delicious. Also, if the world Hollywood presents accurately reflected our world, all amoral rich people would be one chance encounter with a charismatic pauper away from a life-changing shift in values, and the workforce would be divided roughly according to the graph above.

A Hollywood world come to life in this way would be anarchic, with the average citizen being hung from the lampposts as high-powered lawyers would go after the civil liberty abuses and backroom beatdowns that are the specialty of jaded cops, the two canceling each other out in terms of benefit to society. On the bright side, society’s collapse would be well documented by intrepid reporters and everybody would be looking fabulous thanks to the input of the unusually large number of folks involved in the fashion industry. As it rains fire outside, passionate inner city teachers would be inspiring their young charges to abandon a life of perpetual felony crime by introducing them to the collected works of Judy Blume.

There are obvious reasons why Hollywood films tend to focus on some jobs more than others. Movies are an escape mechanism for many people, so it would be difficult to drum up much box office by offering female viewers the Roto Rooter man to fantasize about. Likewise, it would be tough to construct a viable narrative around a telemarketer selling memberships to the meat of the month club.

As writers, a hugely overrepresented profession (most bafflingly portrayed in the Murder She Wrote series in which writer = harbinger of death), we thought we’d remedy this vocational discrepancy by highlighting professions that are unlikely to receive much screen time at an Imax theatre near you anytime soon in this our list of the Top 10 Jobs Never Seen in Movies.

10. Archaeologist of really tedious, perpetually unfruitful digs: Movies tend to distort the profession of archaeologist and make it seem more glamorous than it really is. Instead of a swashbuckler rescuing ancient treasures from snake-pits, we’d like to see an archaeologist who digs tediously for months on end to unearth, say, one shoe horn from the Bronze Age every 11 years. Again, in keeping with this cinema verite approach, the archaeologists should not be played by actors fulfilling the screen portion of their good looking pop idol contract, but rather the type of personal-care avoiding sloppy intellectual whose own ears are a few missed cleanings away from being dig-worthy.

9. Auctioneer: The auction is a convenient device for screenwriters to ratchet up the tension during the course of a movie, particularly a spy caper, and establish that the main characters are beyond-all-dreams-of-the-audience rich, but auctioneers are never main characters, and usually do not get more than a cursory bit of dialogue, “Sold, to the gentleman in the velvet tuxedo, who has attached a bomb to the hero of this film and locked him in a seemingly impenetrable cellar in this very building.”

8. Welder: A welder’s work is evident throughout every movie ever made. Buildings, bridges, two sheets of metal stuck together for no good reason as part of a decorative set piece, these are all products of the welder’s craft, and yet Hollywood has yet to set aside a budget of, say, 100 million dollars to feature one as a protagonist in a blockbuster feature film. The only tribute thus far, has been the Machinist, who was not exactly a credit to the profession, leaving associates with one less arm with which to wave at a parade.

7. Entertainment Coordinator for Luxury Cruise Line: Passengers, disillusioned with attempts to organize a karaoke night based on a back catalog of Eagles songs, (mostly unavailable due to copyright restrictions), kidnap the entertainment coordinator for a luxury cruise line and convince him to go ashore and avail himself of cocaine and Malaysian prostitutes—but the clincher is, he’s gay (earlier attempts to organize a Sound of Music pantomime tip off passengers under the age of 57 and much of the audience).

6. Roofer: For a culture that worships criminals, there are shockingly few movies featuring roofers in the lead role…Nail Gun Massacre is as close as we’ve seen, followed by Witness, which while featuring Harrison Ford erecting an Amish home, places him on the wrong side of the police line-up divide to be considered an accurate representation of the roofing profession.

5. Key Grip: There are countless movies about journalists, copywriters, editors, and novelists, mainly because that’s the background of most screenwriters, who tend to follow the ‘write what you know’ and ‘someone in a romantic comedy will walk into a post and another will pretend sing-along to Motown with a hairbrush’ ethos. But what about key grips? They are right out there with the gaffers among the heroes of film who never get any screen time. Plot suggestion: Rigging technician alters an otherwise dependably dull European film when a bout of vertigo leads to an unintended third camera angle.

4. Human Test Subject for New Diarrhea Medication: Countless movies have relied on the premise of humans being used as test subjects for various nefarious products, which generally result in Homo sapiens being transformed into rapacious apes. Here, test subject is transformed into a rapacious avoider of solid foods.

3. Professional Badminton Player: On the gridiron, a heroic last-second touchdown will bring a tear to the eye of the dad who momentarily regrets beating his son to make sure he didn’t quit the team. On the diamond, there is the singles hitter who suddenly, (without ingesting a regimen of pills that made Mark McGwire look like he wore a parka under his uniform), goes yard for the kid with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Up until this point, the definitive badminton movie has yet to be brought to the big-screen. Plot synopsis: Professional badminton player bemoans the lack of adulation, groupies, media coverage and respect accorded to his sport and begins a slow, steady descent into alcoholism. Includes at least one sad, poignant and yet unintentionally funny reference to a shuttlecock.

2. Antique Dealer: An antique dealer finds a rare Victorian mahogany drop front desk with lions and goes on a killing spree.

1. ASL Teacher: First movie in the history of modern cinema where English subtitles are required for an English film as American Sign Language Teacher inspires a group of misfit, deaf (def!) ghetto kids to fulfill their dreams (dreams shown in conspicuously silent flashbacks)

Honorable Mentions:

Cheese Shop Proprietor: People meet and fall in love at local Fromagerie, as samples are given away by good-hearted proprietor/matchmaker. Man’s love for Swiss Gruyère leads him into the arms of a lady friend, who leaves him after being prescribed cholesterol lowering medication.

Nutritionist: The health professions are well represented in cinema, be they psychiatrists who propel the protagonist through mind-numbing flashbacks or young doctors stuck in traffic alongside a woman who is about to give birth in a taxi, but what about those folks whose homilies about the importance of fish oils go unheeded in the mass media? Nutritionist romances a shut-in neighbor by saving them from a bout of Osteomalacia by opening a curtain and exposing them to vitamin D.

January 6, 2010 | reviews

You’d think someone who many people think is the Antichrist would have a better security detail, because you know what they say, the devil is in the detail. After this recent breach, perhaps it’s time to revisit whether the pontiff can be properly protected by a combination of Italian police and the Swiss Guard and use the New York Jets offensive line instead. If you meet the following criteria, feel free to apply c/o

His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI PP.
00120 Via del Pellegrino
Citta del Vaticano
OR
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Apostolic Palace
VATICAN CITY

Credentials: Security Guard License.

Work Setting: The Vatican, the world.

Work Conditions and Physical Capabilities: Attention to detail, combination of sitting, standing, walking, praying, ministering, preparing the tarmac for osculation.

Skill Set: Follow emergency procedures, mixed martial arts take-down sprawl defense, monitor security television, operate security control room equipment, control Popemobile vehicular and pedestrian traffic, keep lepers to a manageable level.

Security and Safety: Criminal record check optional.

Languages: Anything, but preferably conversational German, Italian, English, Spanish, ecclesiastical Latin

Transportation/Travel Information: Must have own transportation.

September 2, 2009 | lists

When historians one day take a look back and criticize us for our barbaric ways, they’ll have to give us credit for at least raising workplace safety standards somewhat from the days of kiddie chimney sweeps and railroad dynamiting duty. With most people safely ensconced in office jobs that will leave them without a muscle in their bodies, put them at risk of stress-related illnesses, and give them the flexibility of giant crabs, at least the risk of awful death on the job is quite low. Indeed, aside from bumping your head when attempting a push-up under a desk, the odds of injuring oneself in the workplace these days are far lower than  back in the days when your job was likely to leave you with one less digit to hail a cab.

That’s the case for most of us. There are others, however, who really should not use the playing of workplace safety videos as an excuse to smoke a joint in the emergency stairwell. Their workplace hazards go far beyond an expired egg-salad sandwich in the vending machine. In honor of Labor Day and our heady joy at the fact that “writer” was not included on the list (yet), we salute those who are, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, working in the the 10 Most Dangerous Jobs in the US, (in order from “likelier to kill you than unemployment insurance” to “grim reaper-riding-shotgun dangerous”):

10. Garbage Men. A rule of thumb when it comes to dangerous jobs is that if you have to wear a reflective vest and you’re not in a chain gang, well you might consider night school. Since most of us are at work or — more likely — asleep when they do their morning rounds, we usually don’t take notice unless they get fussy about disposing a hollowed out grand piano that goes on to become a curb decoration or if they throw a strike and bring a major city to its knees with insane demands like having their unused sick days converted to cash and tacked onto their retirement payout. But given the stuff we’ve thrown out after particularly good parties, we do not envy them their jobs — or the fact that the best representation of their work in the arts was on the sitcom Roc.

Cost Benefit Analysis:

Cons: Everything.

But On the Plus Side: See above. Get in a particularly good union and a public health crisis will be in the making as crap gets dumped into city parks while you refuse to work and squander the goodwill of the public. AND they get to use hydraulic lifts to haul the trash. What’s next? Potpourri in the glove box?

9. Farmers and ranchers. Some of the contents of microwave food boxes stuffed in your refrigerator that will still be edible when the sun blinks out comes from the toil of the honest farmer. These good folk are the salt of the earth, and apparently the fathers of some very promiscuous young ladies if the jokes about them are to be believed. Whether it’s a cow that objects to your cold hands on its udder giving you a kick in the head or a piece of heavy machinery putting an end to being able to test which way the wind is blowing on a fairway, farming is hard and dangerous work.

Cost Benefit Analysis:

Cons: You inspired some of Steinbeck’s drearier work. According to the Insurance Journal, it’s more dangerous than even mining, which, had it inspired Steinbeck instead, would’ve meant a Hemingway-like end.

But on the Plus Side: Workplace casual means shit-kicker boots. Plus Willie Nelson loves you.

8. Electrical repairs. This is another occupation taken for granted unless the power goes out while you’re under anesthetic. When Fluffy the Siamese cat meets a transformer — the kind not under the hackneyed direction of Michael Bay — the first one on the scene, or maybe the second after the fireman with a putty knife for feline scraping, is the electrical technician. While window washers, construction workers, or the guy teetering on the top rope in a WWE pay-per-view need only fear gravity, electrical workers scale power lines during inclement weather at all hours of the day or night and risk not only falling but electrocution and encounters with rabid squirrels.

Cost / Benefit Analysis:

Cons: Don’t need to commit pre-meditated murder in the United States to know what the electric chair feels like.

But on the Plus Side: Panoramic views, stealing cable  and getting mileage out of jerking around like you’ve just been electrocuted to scare passersby.

7. Roofers. If you’ve ever wanted to inhale tar during the warmest months of the year and instead of holding the sign that says ‘Slow’ on a seldom traveled overpass for union pay, you’d rather risk plummeting off a roof (and have just been released from a stint in the state pen), have we got the lax background check occupation for you. Comprised of minds more warped than the than the cut-rate shingles they slap on for an inflated price, this is the place to drop off an application once you’ve stashed the orange jumpsuit.

Cost / Benefit Analysis:

Cons: Mostly ex ones do this job.

But on the Plus Side: Minimal background checks, you get to be outdoors after all that time spent scratching out the days on your cell wall, and you can wave hello to your parole officer as he passes by on the street.

6. Truckers and Salespeople. The most prevalent occupation in North America and also one of the most dangerous, as anyone who’s ever been shunted into the nearest ditch by one at a dangerously high rate of speed knows, is that of trucker. The reasons for this are twofold:  incredibly tight time constraints for the delivery of materials and making sure they’re not late for their next truck stop bathroom dalliance. Logging hundreds of miles everyday on the nation’s highways, with nothing but conspiratorial talk radio or a maniac hitchhiker for entertainment, while a rockstar buffet’s worth of pharmaceuticals are processed through their kidneys and tossed out the window in a plastic bottle, is a surefire recipe for death and destruction.

Cost / Benefit Analysis:

Cons: As far as work-related fatalities go, highway incidents (on a steady climb between 1992-2005) far exceed homicides, falls and getting struck by objects, all of which are on the decline. So the situation is none the brighter despite the odds of picking up a serial killer being down.

But on the Plus Side: It’s one of the few remaining vocations (lifeguard is the other, provided the tower is high enough) where you’re still able to smoke on the job. Plus every day is like a non-arm-wrestling scene out of the Stallone classic “Over The Top.”

5. Iron and steel workers. Most of us haven’t seen a harness since a despotic babysitter took us out for a stroll in the mall. Steel workers though, are often strapped in due to a very high risk of falling, and if that wasn’t peril enough, inhale more noxious substances than those that spray down a strip club dancer. Plus if you spend any part of your day around something so hot it’s labelled “molten”, you might want to study up on disability fraud.

Cost / Benefit Analysis:

Cons: Falling, being hit by falling objects, eye injury as a result of flying splinters, back/spinal column injury, high noise exposure—basically, what the average heel has to deal with on the low-rent wrestling circuit. Having to put up with the one show-off asshole who can bend a steel bar with his bare hands.

But on the Plus Side: No need for a gym membership, and, as the Full Monty and Flashdance have shown, a second career awaits you on the dance floor.

4. Pilots and flight engineers. If you test drive a car, you can complain the cappuccino cup doesn’t fit snugly enough in the holder, but a test pilot can take out himself, the townsfolk below, a herd of cattle and an innocent puppy who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with one false move. Others included in this category are crop dusters, who face getting shot down by cocaine dealers as well as inhaling fumes that might shave a few points off an offspring’s SAT scores and suffer conditions many are only familiar with in porn predating 1987—lack of landing strips.

Cost / Benefit Analysis:

Cons: shift work, burnout, long hours, being posthumously lauded for bravery, which, as far as being lauded for anything goes, is one of the better ones provided it’s not posthumous, and the first one whose bar bill will be examined in the event of a crash.

But on the Plus Side: Dirt cheap vacations, the mile-high club, the ability to really freak out people living in the country side by flying at a low altitude.

3. Fishing. Outside of oil rig work in hurricane season, there are very few jobs as isolated and dangerous as fishing. If feature films have taught us anything (and surprisingly they mostly all have, except for those made by Joel Schumacher), it’s that as soon as the outboard motor is fired up, an anaconda the size of a mid level sedan will spring up out of the water and make swamp munch out of the helmsman (we watch terrible films). Working on a fishing boat is like enjoying the stink of a fish market with the added benefit of topsy-turvey waves to empty your stomach contents. Like hookers, weather does not directly impact their work and like hookers, help is often not readily available if something goes horribly wrong. Crew members also have to be concerned with slippery surfaces (and at this point, it’s high time we put the hooker analogy to bed… last one, we promise) and malfunctioning gear can mean having to free more than Willy.

Cost Benefit Analysis:

Cons: Fishing and logging, two of the industries with the highest fatality rates, had higher numbers of fatalities in 2008 than in 2007. If that wasn’t a gloomy enough outlook, fishers face a risk of death on the job that is 20 to 30 times greater than any other single occupation.

But on the Plus Side: Cheap lobster dinners, bragging rights when you bag a Great White.

2. Logging. We had assumed the cartoon depiction of logging — sawed at the base of the tree then tipped over with an index finger to the shout of “timber” — was more or less accurate, but it turns out that much of a logger’s job is done at a very high altitude and if not harnessed in properly, a good wind is enough to take you to that great wood chipper in the sky. Loose branches falling is another risk as is anybody who snuck a flask in at the logging camp operating a chainsaw.

Cost / Benefit Analysis:

Cons: It’s number two on this list and one of the key dangers is being cut in half by a chainsaw, so there’s not much of an upside here.

But on the Plus Side: The Monty Python Lumberjack Song, of course!

1. Cops/Law Enforcement. This should not come as a shock to anyone unless they’re being Tasered by one. Cops risks their lives every day, and once in a while in ways that are not related to caloric intake. Police work is more dangerous these days with street gangs a greater threat than they were back in the day when territorial disputes were settled with dance-offs. Still, this study did not look at whether being a cop was more dangerous than having to deal with one without a video camera capturing the proceedings. We’re guessing the latter.

Cost / Benefit Analysis:

Cons: According to the Bureau of Labor Suicides by Selected Occupation (2007/2008) stats, protective service occupations are in the top 10. Probably because shit shovelfuls aren’t given a firearm to take home.

But on the Plus Side: If you’re interested in shooting someone other than yourself, well, this is a job for you. Aside from that, this is a job with more perks than most — fixing traffic tickets and working your way up the ladder of corruption gimmes is a police tradition that goes back to Roman times. Plus you can commit various other crimes in your personal time and trust that only the lowliest of finks among your fellow boys in blue would blow the whistle.

Conclusion: Work sucks. Click here for the Top 10 Songs that say that the best!