My first press badge

A dispatch from the Time Before

I have been silent for a long time. For those of you who have stuck with me, thank you. I don’t know what has happened but words dried up. I asked my doctor this spring, “So I’m not sure if what is going is a manic episode —” He interrupted, Italian accent, “It is.” Something’s been way off and I am trying to haul myself out of wordlessness.

I dashed off a Facebook post months ago about my first press badge and it turned into an ode for a long-distant time, the late-90s, where everything was so different even just writing it down was disorienting. The present is so much with us, late and soon, and I guess there’s even a word for it - presentism - and I suppose I have fallen victim to it as well. Writing is a way to not capture an old time in the name of nostalgia, or anything like that … nostalgia is not the word. Writing is a way to actually remember what it was like. Because you forget.

I was telling my niece that the biggest change between then and now is that back then there was no other place to “be” than where you were standing on whatever sidewalk you were on. If you wanted escape, you had a book, or you could go to the movies, or go find your friends in a rockabilly bar on the lower East side. Maybe they’d be there, and if they hadn’t showed up yet, at least you’d have your book. But there wasn’t an alternate world - floating in the ether - continuing on whether you were there or not, where you could step into the flow of it and never come out. There was no other place. I myself can barely remember what this was like: to not have another place to go to.

But I was there as things started to change and there were these other places you could go to, places where you communed with people all over the world, operating under different names, and where you could gather and talk about Tolkien or Friends or breastfeeding or whatever niche thing you were into. I didn’t get involved in any of that, although friends did. I was analog pretty late in the game.

Until I wasn’t.

When I was in grad school, I got a part-time job through my then-sister-in-law. She was hired as a creative director - or something like that - for this new “place” on AOL, but even saying “on AOL” didn’t make a whole lot of sense at the time, because how could you be “on” a place that didn’t actually exist? I wasn’t naive. I was just living in the Time Before.

At any rate, they needed people to build out this site, which wasn’t even a site, it was a channel on the main page of AOL. i.e.:

AOL was designed for people who were afraid of the “internet” or “the web” as it was called. AOL was like a little safe foyer, where you could gather, and click on the “sports” button and not be brought to some other place - that other place to go to - scary and “world wide” where you had no idea who you would meet and what you would find, tumbleweed or OK corrals or saloons and shootouts. AOL kept you in its little suburban world, with all these little pages, where there would be articles and photos, but you didn’t “go” anywhere else.

It was the days when you would come into your apartment building, and go to your mailbox, and on the floor would be piles of these little white discs, the AOL discs, sent out to practically every member of the American population, tenfold. You’d put the disc into your computer, AOL would download, and there you’d be, in the safe foyer, with a safe email, and you’d participate in this new thing, but you wouldn’t be out in that wild OTHER thing.

I was hired to help program these little AOL pages. As I have established, I was still analog. I had only “gotten” email when I went to grad school, and I kept in touch with people writing novel-long emails that I would then print out. I was not a computer whiz but I was taught how to build these pages. AOL used a programming language called “Rainman”. Any geek will know what I am talking about.

This was a very niche brand new skill. I had no idea Rainman would be “marketable”. I was not in the business of being “marketable”. I was an actor. I took dance classes and hung out at rockabilly bars and did plays below Houston Street. I was in grad school, so the 20 hours a week “doing Rainman” - for what was then an outrageous hourly wage (AOL paid well at the time) was better than waiting tables. I paid my rent for the next 5 or so years, doing Rainman gigs. I continued working for this new channel on AOL, which was eventually purchased by New Line Cinema - unbelievable, in retrospect - and our offices were moved from a huge drafty brownstone in the Village to the New Line offices up near-ish to Carnegie Hall. Corporate structures were starting to be erected around this new weird thing. Literally 90% of the people working at this company were artists: photographers and writers and musicians, and people who spent all their free time surfing off Far Rockaway. I’m still friends with some of these people. We all knew Rainman.

I got freelance gigs “doing Rainman” for years, until AOL basically … vanished, and the real internet (as opposed to AOL’s “safe gateway”) took over. At one point, and I can’t even believe this happened, and the details are lost to me, I was flown down to Virginia to AOL headquarters, which was like a Truman Show little village. They had a special plane with, like, 5 people on it, including me. I don’t know what meetings I attended. Down there it was a Defending Your Life kind of world, with immaculate shuttles tooling around, and inspirational quotes on the wall behind the receptionists’ desk. It was more like a cult than anything else. A Demolition-Man “Be well” cult. I was wearing black, of course, and I went out into the blaring sun to smoke a cigarette, and not only was I the only person smoking in the village, I was the only person outside. I felt like the bleak slut from the North.

Doing Rainman took me a lot of places.

For the first time ever, my crack typing speed actually got me work. One of the things AOL would do was host celebrity “chats”. There was barely any video on these little AOL pages, and we were not out “on the web” where more functionality was possible. The “chats” would occur in little special “live” windows and would unfurl in real time. There’d be a host and a guest. I got so many gigs transcribing the words of celebrities for the live chat. Sometimes a million people would “show up” and I would “take questions” from the chat.

The gigs were random and for the most part they were in person. I’d have to show up at some agent’s building in midtown, or the Miramax office, or wherever, and some celebrity would show up with their entourage, and I’d “host” them, I’d set up the chat, I’d tell them how it would work, because nobody understood what was happening, and I’d ask questions from the AOL audience, and the celeb would answer, and I’d type what they said. I could type as fast as a person spoke. This is why I got these gigs. These chats usually took place at around 10 o’clock at night. I met a lot of famous people in this weird little sliver of time, when nobody knew what was going on, or what AOL was, or how the chat even worked, and the famous person would say: “who are all these people?”

In my future life, I could fill a box with all my badges from film festivals. but the first badge I ever got was for a Rainman gig backstage at Comic Relief, the U.S. charity founded - I think? - by Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg. Maybe they were just the hosts. Comic Relief was doing an event in New York City on Halloween and the guest list was stacked. Robin, Whoopi and Billy were all there, hosting, but there were others. Stars, everybody. I showed up at the theatre, making my way there through the crazed New York streets where mermaids and knights and The Shining-Twins lurched by me on their way to monster-mashes citywide. I was not in costume. I had a Rainman gig. I don’t remember which theatre it was.

I flashed my badge and was let into the backstage area.

My assignment was to run a live AOL chat from backstage. A comedian would go onstage, do their set, come backstage, and stop by my “area” to talk to me. Many of them blew it off (I don’t blame them). Many had no idea what I was doing or how it even worked. Big stars asking me: “Where are the people?” I’d say, “In the chat”. They’d say, “Can we see them?” I’d say, “No.” They’d say, “Wait, what are we doing?” The internet was new. I’d walk them through it, being as concise as possible, ask the questions coming in, which they would answer, as I sat there furiously typing, not ever looking up at them. I made no eye contact with huge stars as I was “talking to them”. The whole thing was a weird vibe, especially too since we had to whisper/speak low because Steven Wright or whoever was performing onstage. I was totally in charge. I had no “handler”. It was up to me to wrangle everyone. I was the AOL girl in the corner, typing in the midst of sheer pandemonium.

Typing out what Robin Williams said was the biggest career challenge I have ever faced, before or since. He spoke so fast even I - with my wild typing skills - had trouble. He became Margaret Thatcher at one point. How do you communicate this via Rainman? I think I wrote: "[Margaret Thatcher imitation in progress]” to clue “them” in. I didn’t prepare the questions or engage with the guest, as I would do much later when I moderated panels or hosted QAs as a film critic. Here, I was a court transcriber. For the court jesters.

I wonder if these chats live anywhere. Is there any record of it? Rainman is no more.

A memory from this night I hold very dear. I had no idea what I was doing, ultimately. I had never run a stall at Comic Con, I had never attended a press junket, I had to just make it up, and boss celebrities around, demanding they come “answer questions from the chat”, as half of them were like, “But where are all the people?” “Wait, what are we doing?” I had no idea what I was doing and yet there I was doing it.

One of the “guests” on the lineup was Upright Citizens Brigade, who had just moved as a group to New York. And this is important: I was in Chicago when UCB formed/ Their shows were insane, and we went to them all the time. I knew a lot of those people, tangentially. Many of the founders of UCB were also Improv Olympic people - or started out at IO before forming their own thing - and I was at Improv Olympic practically every weekend for years. I wasn’t friends with any of the UCB people but I was friends with their friends. Plus the improv scene was very boy-heavy and Amy Poehler, whom I had seen numerous times at Improv Olympic and Second City, was part of UCB and that seemed cool too. Progress!

It was a big deal when UCB left Chicago and moved to New York. I remember the chatter. Almost like “…. wait … you can do that?” They were missed in Chicago.

And there they were, a couple years later, on the Comic Relief lineup. They were still a fledgling group of improvisers, and they were making waves, but nobody was famous yet. I was so excited because even though I wasn’t friends with any of them, I had been at parties with them, I went to their shows in Chicago, they were my peers - in. a way Robin Williams, of course, could never be. They all came pouring backstage after their set and clustered around me, answering the questions I asked them from The AOL chat. It was chaos. Interviewing five people at once, transcribing their answers, was not a job for an amateur.

But it was strange. I was a faceless transcriber, and it was not at all a social scene back there. I was “the help” and I didn’t feel like it was the time or place to go, “Oh I lived in Chicago when you all formed” or “I used to see you at Improv Olympic” or “I know so-and-so really well”. We had probably ten friends in common and my Chicago flame was heavily involved in that whole scene (still is, just like they are). But the internet was new, they had no idea who I was, I was a girl with a laptop crouched backstage, throwing questions at them from the AOL live audience they couldn’t see.

Amy sat next to me on the grubby little couch that was my HQ. It’s important to remember, for context: she was not famous at all at this point, in terms of the wider public. BUT if - like I was - you were in the Chicago improv scene you knew who she was. She was already a star to me. I saw her onstage with Tina Fey, doing late-night improv at IO, and it was instantly immediately apparent: Oh. these two hit different. I still remember one of their improvs, where Amy was a photographer and Tina was a model, and Amy setting up her “camera” - invisible - I still remember she was so specific with it I swear I could see the camera.

Amy is very good friends with a friend of mine. I didn’t know Amy personally or who she was as a human, although I assumed she was nice since my friend Rachel has excellent taste in friends. It was probably a safe bet that Amy would be receptive and friendly if I was human with her and not a faceless Rainman with a laptop, but … I didn’t know if it was my place, or if it would be too forward, or if I basically shouldn’t engage in this non-personal context.

But then I had one of those flashes, where your mind turns from a microscope into a telescope. I stopped thinking about myself, in other words, and I thought about Amy. For some reason I got a glimpse of what she might be going through, or what this gig might have meant for her. If you were on that lineup, you were SOMEBODY but I suddenly felt like … this was probably a huge deal for UCB, a relatively brand-new company, who probably had moved to New York that year or the year before. And she’s on a lineup with giants. She probably was nervous and tense, probably hoped they did a good job, etc. For me at the time, however, doing a Rainman gig, wondering what the hell had happened to all MY hopes and dreams, I thought, “Holy shit, that girl I saw at Improv Olympic with the make-believe camera has made it!!” My perspective of her was that she HAD to know how fabulous she was. She HAD to know she had totally MADE IT, as far as I was concerned!

But … something about Amy’s posture and energy backstage – the way she flopped down on the couch with an exhale, how she sat close to me … I turned from microscope to telescope and thought, “To me, she has made it, but this must be a huge deal for her”. I picked up on something. I think she picked up on something too. Maybe she sensed I was a friendly person, maybe I seemed nice and normal, in my Doc Marten’s, flannel and jeans. (‘90s chic). I don’t know, but I think she sensed something because as I was typing her answers for the AOL live chat, she leaned into my arm and whispered, “The sound of your typing is so soothing.”

We both started laughing hysterically, and I said, “Really??” She whispered, “Keep typing, please.” She was soothing herself on a stressful night. I totally got it. We kept laughing. The funny bone was struck, the absurdity of the situation.

And so I thought “Fuck it” and threw myself into the unknown, into the possibility that she would think I was overstepping (which I know now is ridiculous, but still …) and said, “This is probably out of the blue but I’m from Chicago and I am really good friends with Rachel H. and Miles.”

She was startled, and looked at me with huge eyes and said, “WHAT??”

I said, “Yeah, I wasn’t gonna say anything because it’s not really the time or place, but we have about ten friends in common.”

She then literally collapsed against my arm and said, “Ohhhhhh” with this huge sigh of (comic) relief.

I had sensed what was going on correctly! We were in an intimidating environment and everyone was famous but she wasn’t yet - although she would be - and I was an emissary from her recent past, the world of blackbox improv theatres and late-nights and ‘90s Chicago actor chaos, throwing out the name of one of her best friends in the world. It must have been a huge comfort, I can see that now!

She said, “This night has been so crazy and its so nice to see a friendly face.”

I said, “I used to go to your shows in Chicago, so it’s really cool to see what’s happening.”

And it was all lovely. I remember her almost timid whisper, “The sound of your typing is so soothing” …

I “interviewed” everyone that night, it was a blur, she is the only one I remember, what was I even doing there, how much was I paid?

The only evidence I have that any of this even took place is my Comic Relief press badge.

This story is from the late 90s but it might as well be the late 1890s in terms of how much has changed.

Trying to find the the words again. Thanks for your patience.

And since we are in a new world: I do not use ChatGPT, I do not use AI, I do not use any “aid” to my writing, except sometimes I will grab a book from my library to grab a quote. I will never ever use AI in my writing. Never. It goes against my beliefs in every way possible.