cigarette butts and zombie unitards

The life of an unpaid intern goes something like this

-Wake up shivering on the linoleum floor of your sister's apartment at 7 am, huddled beneath the travel case for your bass which, fully unzipped, barely fits over both arms, providing just enough warmth to make you feel like you're being mocked.

-Pile on a bunch of clothes and hustle down to the subway. Get on the right train going in the wrong direction.

-Arrive at the studio! Have everyone remember your name! Feel a surge of Fuck Yeah!

-Find yourself minutes later scouring the sidewalk in front of the studio for cigarette butts to fill up an ashtray in one of the shots.

-Tell yourself as your hands overflow with gritty, damp filter ends, to think of this as character building.

-Stride -- stride! -- up to the head of the art department with a mountain of cigarette butts spilling from your cupped hands.

-Stand there for a moment and wonder what you should do with the butts after the director steps over, looks at the pile in your hands, and turns his nose up at them because they look too dirty.

-Throw the pile in the garbage, then go make more coffee.

Yes, the duties of a pushing-30 intern on a stoner-friendly TV show are many, and unpaid. Still, when I made the decision to return to film-and/or-television, I told myself that it was not only important, but necessary, to start at the bottom.

Standing in front of a green screen while a man in an Italian leather jacket tells you that the muddy pile of trash in your hands is too dirty is the bottom.

This episode of the show I'm working on features an Internet Zombie attack. An Internet Zombie attack is like a Regular Zombie attack, but for the fact that the zombies are all wearing silver unitards. I jump at the chance to be an extra because it meant that the only trash I'd have to touch would be the actress I was chasing.

Count it.

Needless to say this was my first time wearing a unitard, and as such I'd never heard of a dance belt. (Actually, I'd heard the term used as a punchline on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I didn't get it, but I laughed anyway. Ah, the folly of youth.) A dance belt, for those of you who have never had the pleasure of wearing a unitard on a soon-to-be nationally televised internet-themed comedy program, is a swathe of fabric used to mask the contours of the wearer's naughty bits. I, being among the uninitiated, walk on set with the smothered tangle of my junk protruding from the otherwise smooth, sexless contours of my unitard. The director positions me and my fellow extras behind the actress and we run through the shot a couple of times, then get ready for a take. He calls action, we sink into our best zombie slouch and lurch toward the camera.

All of a sudden the director calls cut and announces that he can see my penis. The man who moments before had given me the business about the dirty junk in my hands is now giving me the business about the dirty junk in my tights. He phrases it more delicately than that, but his tact is somewhat offset by the fact that he announces it to a room full of people. Cue a five-minute pow-wow between the director, producer, DP, and various other interested parties, about whether or not the visibility of my man-bits was a problem.

It is ultimately decided that, because this show will be viewed by the children of America, I should be strategically positioned behind a waist-high wall. We get the shot, and the children of America are safe.

And so I come to the larger point: that no matter how bad you're feeling, no matter how put-upon, overlooked or underused, having an entire room full of people talking about your penis -- no, not merely talking about it, talking about how dangerous it is -- will lift your spirits quick-smart.