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I worked as both the arts and special projects editor, for the same meager pay that the rest of the Hatchet staff received, but with one major perk - swag. Most of my weekends out have been subsidized by tickets from press screenings; CDs and bestsellers on my shelves have "promotional advance copy" stamped on their covers. Yes, life is sweet when you write arts and entertainment, as you skip lines to get into sold-out concerts, see movies weeks before they come out and meet the occasional visiting celebrity to chat. I have those traditional graduation fears of course - How will I pay my bills? Where will I live? But also: How will I survive without publicists adding me to press lists? Four years of free entertainment has flown by quickly. I've gotta find another gig like this one, and soon.
So, in lieu of advice (which, if I were to offer, it would be to find something you love to do as much as I loved writing about the arts, and stick with it), I'll give you something that I've done much better in the Scene and the Insider anyway - entertainment. I've written a lot of stories throughout the years, but what appeared on the pages of the paper was not nearly the half of it. Reporters all have war stories, but mine have tended to be more glamorous than most, involving making a fool of myself in front of celebrities, usually.
For example, last year's Mark Twain Awards at the Kennedy Center was my first time covering a genuine red carpet event. I put on some heels and a red dress, arranged my hair in a chignon, and headed down the Hall of States in search of the press table, which was nowhere to be found. Concierge told me it was in the Hall of Nations, which, for this event, was the red carpet, where limos were lined up to deposit their celebrity contents. I headed towards the paparazzi and commotion, where I was stopped by a burly security guard. "You can't come through here," he said. "I'm looking for the press check-in," I said. And then he made a colossal mistake. He waved me through to walk down the red carpet. In front of me, Claire Danes got out of a limo, and having no other place to go, I followed. Larry David was in front of her. Diane Keaton is super pretty in person. Flashbulbs went off all around, but not for long - a man with a walkie-talkie noticed the imposter, and cut off my red carpet stroll halfway down, with a terse "I don't think you belong here," leading me directly to the unglamorous press table. The next day, I looked at photos of Danes at the event to see if I was in the background of any of them. I might have seen my elbow.
