Chapter 2: Chapter 2 – A Typical Day at an American Media Conglomerate

Peter Chang is late for work again. His legs are asleep from the toilet seat cutting into them and he has only just started wiping. He had sat down to force out a bowel movement at 9:46 AM and after 20 minutes of pushing and grunting, which left him red in the face and sweaty throughout his crotch, back and chest, he was only able to squeeze out a small nugget of loose shit. To make matters more frustrating, he goes through six wads of toilet paper and flushes three times, before he’s finished, and this isn’t before scratching the surface of and drawing blood from his asshole, which mixes in with the shit from his seemingly minute excretion. 

Of course, right as Peter pulls onto Montana Avenue, he feels that familiar dropping and groaning of a large shit making its way down his rectum. “Fuck!” he yells out, smashing the wheel of his car with the palm of his hand, as he pulls away from the stop sign. Why does he have to shit now when he just tried to shit? The human body was designed by the devil to trap us in constant pain, humiliation, and indignity. An older woman stares at him as he leaves the stop sign. “Fuck you too, cunt!” he screams at her, thankfully muffled behind the driver’s side window of his Tesla. 

He stares at a woman who jogs along the sidewalk. He cranes his neck to look after her while she disappears down a side street. What he wouldn’t give to rip those spandex running shorts off her and lick her sweaty ass crack clean. The light has turned red and a honk from the car behind him sends Peter over the edge. He grabs his phone and smashes it repeatedly into the hand-sewn leather knob of his car’s gear shift. The glass of the screen splits into spider webs. He honks his horn while turning his head out of the window. “Go around me you fat fuck. Have a fucking heart attack.” The rotund driver of the car behind Pete throws his hands up in indignation and frowns impotently. Pete waits a few beats, then screeches a left turn through the now-red light, ensuring the honker could not responsibly squeeze through the same light for fear of causing a pileup. 

Peter speeds up Barrington Ave., gawking at the variety of runners and dog walkers in their uniforms of yoga pants, sports bras, and pajama pants, which cling pleasingly to their ass cheeks as they walk up the hill. He scoffs at a Mexican nanny pushing a straw haired child in a stroller and then shakes his head at a homeless man laughing at a paper bag and smoking a cigarette backwards.

He stops at the next light, across from the All-girls high school, Archer, and watches the school girls in their gingham skirt uniforms laugh and jog across the street. He makes sure not to gawk too obviously behind his sunglasses, as you never know who could be in the car next to you, and who they could be connected to. Nevertheless, he drools at the taught hamstrings of the nubile jailbait slurping down their Starbucks as they cross the street in front of his car. He’ll find a way to fuck one of them, one of these days. 

The light changes and he speeds down Sunset Boulevard, overtaking the gardening trucks, Priuses, and other such shit boxes as he cuts to the front of the long line for the 405 Northbound freeway onramp. On the 405, he rockets up the gentle incline, becoming weightless for a moment as his car climbs to 90mph, then weaves in and out of the traffic blocking his decline into the sprawl of the slum-like Valley, where the smog hangs low and the temperature is double that of the gentle Santa Monica flats that Peter Chang calls home.

After winding down the interchange, onto the 101 Southbound, and deeper into the Valley, around the curve towards Hollywood, Pete pulls up to the great Comcast NBCUniversal building, which reaches up into the sky like a giant granite tombstone. He valets in the executive parking lot and rushes out to arrive late to the Urgent Meeting. 

On the 35th floor. In the Big Conference Room. Gray walls and OLED television monitors stare down at the mid-level and upper-level executives sitting around the room. A metro-masculine lesbian (think soccer player, not softball player) with a perfect nose bridge (most likely a nose job) delivers a confident, no-bullshit presentation in front of a pull down projector screen. She’s wearing a smart blazer with trousers and a smartly faded haircut. An ominously titled “Q4 projections” hovers behind her. She clicks a small remote and a graph appears, the focal point a jagged red line that violently plummets to January 2022. 

Peter takes an empty seat towards the back of the room, next to another lesbian, Karen. This one is chubbier and more friendly looking. The one at the front projects her voice assertively. “To be frank, we haven’t shit the bed yet. But we are very close to shitting the bed.” 

Pete nudges Karen and whispers “Actually, I think I already did, last night.” She shakes her head. 

“In a digital media landscape that becomes more crowded every day, when anyone can make content from their bedroom that can go head to head with a major studio, for half a percentage of the budget, and streaming services from every network are pouring billions into the creation of new shows and movies… a company needs to be agile. It needs to evolve every day instead of doing the same thing month after month, year after year. As you can see by this graph, we’re being murdered. Outpaced by our competitors. I don’t want anyone to panic, and as a consultant I don’t have the authority to make any real decisions---” She pauses as the room laughs. Pete snorts condescendingly and tries to make eye contact with Karen. “--but I have advised for the consolidation of the digital development wing if we don’t see major progress by next quarter. It’s unsustainable at this point, and there is no justification for this department’s budget based on the results it’s been producing. Out of the 150 projects that have been developed in the wing, only one has launched successfully, and it never became profitable. If it’s any consolation, Doggy Runway was a great name.”

The woman at the front finishes her presentation. As the people clear out of the room, she approaches Peter. “Peter Chang, right?” 

Peter eyes her with mock suspicion. “You don’t have a summons for me, do you?” 

She extends her hand “Were you expecting one? Alana Fish.” Peter shakes it. 

“Pretty strong words up there. You really want to fire all these good people?” He indicates the group of self-serving assholes networking with each other around the room. 

“I actually wanted to talk to you about that. Walk and talk?” She leads him out into the open concept office space of the 35th floor. “I was going through the budget of this department and I noticed almost $60,000 was spent on business expenses, just through your expense account. Hotel rooms… restaurants.” 

Peter smirks. “Client meetings are expensive. I’m the face of the department, so I’m responsible for maintaining and fostering client and talent relationships. If I take Brad Pitt to dinner to convince him to be in one of our new projects, do you expect him to pick up the tab?” 

“Did you take him to dinner?” 

“You’re funny.”

They cross by Peter’s boss’s boss’s office. Bob. He yells from his desk “Peter, come on in I need to talk to you for a moment.” 

“You’re not allowed to yell at people like that. Especially not at someone of diversity such as myself. You could end up in an exposé in the New York Times very quickly.” 

“Shut the fuck up and get in here. Please.” 

Peter turns to Alana and nods warmly. “Let’s connect later. Find me on LinkedIn.”

Peter enters the room. He attempts to shut the door, but Alana follows. Peter’s boss’s boss indicates the seat in the corner to her.

Peter takes the seat across from his boss’s boss. “I feel like I’m in a police interrogation. You guys didn’t find the bodies did you?” He’s met with silence. “Bob, come on. I’m joking.” 

Bob clears his throat. “Peter, you know I hate doing things like this. Let’s just get through it, alright?” 

“Okay, are you firing me? Give me my severance package and I’ll be on my way.” 

“Not yet.” 

“What? Why?” 

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“The numbers don’t lie. We brought you to the digital wing so we could take on our competitors. We need eyeballs on our shows, and they’re just not there. You were paying attention during the presentation, weren’t you? Or at least those fifteen minutes you showed up for?” 

“So why are you doing this in front of her? Don’t people get some privacy when they’re laid off? What’s with the public fucking flaggelation?” 

Bob raises his voice. “You’re not being fired, damn it. Yet. Because I like you, alright? I’m giving you another chance because I believe in you. And if I have to can my protege, I’ll look like a bad decision maker. And I think Alana here has some good ideas that could help you out.” 

“I’m good.” 

“Let her at least shadow you and see if there’s anything an outside perspective could help you see. I’m giving you until the end of Q4 to get us a hit. After that, it’s out of my hands.” 

Bob’s office phone rings. He picks it up. He waves Peter away. As Peter walks out, Bob calls to him “And you might need to re-read the structure of your severance package again… it’s mostly royalties on the back end from the shows you greenlight.” Pete counts his fingers in mock confusion. Bob sneers at him, “Yeah, as of now you ain’t getting shit.” 

Peter looks at Alana. “You coming?” She briefly looks up from her laptop, then shakes her head politely. He exits the room.

Pete finds Karen at her desk. She’s sipping a Diet Coke. Pete points to it condescendingly. “Those will kill you someday. Do you have any idea what type of chemicals they use to flavor that?” 

“Actually, recent studies show sugar is much worse for you than anything in diet soda. And don’t you still vape?” 

“Recent studies show shut the fuck up.” 

“So did they finally fire you? Can I have your office?” 

Peter takes a seat next to Karen’s desk. “No, not yet. They just wanted to scare me. They’re having your crush shadow us… see what we’re doing wrong. If we don’t get something good I’ll be out of here soon. All that bullshit. Shall we rally the troops?” 

As Executive Producer, Senior VP, and Director of the digital wing, Peter Chang’s job is to manage the development and production of new digital projects for his corporation. The biggest hit so far, microwave interview, was a ten episode show on Snapchat, during which a micro-celebrity guest would be interviewed by an influencer host over the course of time it took for a microwavable meal to heat up in the microwave. It was worse than it sounds. The show did not get another order from Snapchat after its first ten episodes. So far the digital wing, under his tutelage, has hemorrhaged $6.5M from the company. With Hollywood accounting in play, this means they have almost broken even for their shareholders, but the optics are bad enough that its shuttering had been in discussion for quite some time now. 

Pete and Karen take the elevator to go to a development meeting on the 28th floor. This is where their best and most talented content creators and storytellers pitch ideas for development. Alana Fish is already seated in the corner, taking notes on her laptop as the creative producers brainstorm new content. They’re not at their best today. 

Tobey, in a fisherman’s sweater and prodigious beard grown to compensate for the massive bald spot (a misnomer, because there is more baldness on his head than hair, so it’s more like the wisp of hair above his forehead and the barely connected pelt on the upper part of the back of his neck is a “hairspot”) waxes poetic about a dream he had the night before, and how he thinks that it could be great inspiration for a TikTok series. Celebrities and influencers could describe their dreams and then an animator could animate them in a stoner-art-meets-Adult-Swim-aesthetic. His disjointed, rambling retelling of his own dream (something involving a whale coming up to the shore, him fellating it, watching his parents get murdered, then playing hockey with his dead dad’s skull) serves as a perfect argument for killing the idea before they waste any more time on it.

Peter rubs his temples and tries to catch eye contact with Alana to telepathically let her know that things are usually better than this. Next, Bentley, a mousy, redheaded girl with large pedophile glasses and stick-and-poke tattoos patchworked across her arms, pitches her idea for a musical competition show targeted for YouTube, wherein they scout homeless shelters for musically talented individuals experiencing homelesseness, to form super bands that compete with each other to win money. She hunches her neck in an unattractive way and stumbles over her sentences while reading from her one-sheet. 

Like so, Peter’s crack team of creatives embarrass themselves and, more importantly, him, in front of the glowering Alana Fish. Peter thinks he can detect the shadow of a malicious smile curling her lips as she types at a rate of 120 WPM, ceaselessly.

“What kind of notes are you taking over there? Hope you found something useful.” 

She finishes typing a sentence or two. “Yes, definitely. I think I’ve seen plenty for today, so I’ll leave you all to it.” 

“You know, these brainstorming sessions. You gotta talk a lot to get to the good stuff. 99% of this, we don’t use. So I’m hoping you’re not basing your audit off just this one meeting.” She shuts her laptop and smiles at Peter. She doesn’t say anything, so he continues to fill the silence. “When Walt Disney would brainstorm with his writers and animators, he used to have something called a ‘no “no” session.’ People could say whatever idea they had without judgment, and instead of shooting it down, they would explore everything, because they never knew where inspiration might come from, or what big idea might come from a small idea.”

Alana packs her laptop into her smart, handheld leather business briefcase (recommended by the New York Times). “Yes, I also read his biography. I could see how that method would have its uses.” Alana exits.

Peter scowls at the door after it shuts behind her. “What the hell was she typing?” 

Karen shakes her head. “No idea. It’s probably just a mind game.”

The atmosphere of the development meeting gradually heats up. Now that they can finally relax, the creatives are messing around and having fun. They laugh hysterically at their ideas and in-jokes and impressions. 

Pete feels even sicker. He nudges Karen. She claps her hands “Okay, we’re gonna leave you guys to it. Just send us your top 25 ideas by end of day and we’ll start sorting through them.” 

Peter raps the table. “Get us a hit.” 

In unison the table calls out “you got it, boss.” 

Pete and Karen exit with knots in their stomachs.

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