Harder Than it Looks

I don’t remember the details, but a few years back Tom Cruise got semi-canceled for saying that filming The Edge of Tomorrow was like fighting in Afghanistan. What ensued was a dogpile from political commentators and celebrities alike. I have a pinhead Coast Guard Academy classmate who is usually the first to get his knickers in a knot about comments like these.

I thought about it, and I was like, you know, he is probably right. I mean, aside from the part where you can get killed.

I’m not sure if you ever saw that movie, but there are numerous, extensive battle scenes in terrible conditions, including lots of rain and mud. Undoubtedly it was one of the most physically demanding things he has ever done, from the guy who once stood on the wing of a plane as it took off, and drove a motorcycle off a cliff. Could you or I be a movie star? Not a chance. I certainly couldn’t. First of all, I don’t have any facial expressions, which automatically disqualifies me from acting, but I would look like a complete donkey trying to do fight scenes. No amount of magic beans or camera tricks in the world would get me to look like Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, or Christian Bale. My guess is that acting is really fucking hard, probably a lot harder than you think it is.

But we look at these movie stars and we think, wow, they must have it so easy. Red carpets and TV interviews and the Academy Awards. It must be such a charmed life. Wrong. First of all, any male celebrity has dozens of stalkers, some of them dangerous, and female celebrities have thousands. And there are a lot of crazy people out there. Every time you step outside your house, Imelda in her muumuu is going to want a selfie. I think that any celebrity would tell you that fame is not all it’s cracked up to be. Not to mention the actual mechanics of filming a movie, including doing 150 mind-numbing takes on a single scene until you get it exactly right. Honestly, it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. And if you want to talk about harsh conditions, Leonardo DiCaprio essentially won an Academy Award for The Revenant for spending days swimming in freezing Canadian Rockies water. I pass.

Tom Brady stepped in it once, too, saying “I almost look at a football season like I'm going away on deployment for the military. And it's like: 'Man, here I go again.’” Pinhead got up in arms about that one, too. How dare you! My guess is that being a quarterback of a professional football team is probably pretty hard, even with the offensive line protection that Brady gets and the favorable treatment from the refs. It’s fucking arduous. Try getting shithoused in the back by a 260-pound linebacker. Even if that only happens 10 times a season, that is 10 times too many. Brady was no physical specimen, but these guys are working out all the time. And you’re probably physically destroyed after playing 60 minutes on the gridiron. I simply don’t have what it takes, and you don’t, either. When Tom Brady says that playing football is like deploying in the military, first of all, it’s an offhand comment, so calm the fuck down, and second of all, I take him at his word. My guess is that it is equally hard, though in different ways, and without the risk of getting killed. Though that almost happened last season, with Damar Hamlin almost taking a dirtnap on the field after being hit in the chest with a helmet. No thanks. Playing football is a lot harder than it looks.

You know what else is a lot harder than it looks? Working on Wall Street. To the outside observer, it probably looks like a bunch of rich white guys throwing money at each other. First of all, there is no more money. Check the headlines about layoffs on Wall Street this year, with bonuses going down the poop chute. People are getting zeroed. I’m not kidding when I say that it is practically more remunerative to drive a UPS truck than to be a trader. Maybe there was a time in the late 90s when it was rich guys throwing money at each other, but those days are loooooong gone, never to return. If you do it, it’s because you love it.

But what is there to love? Compliance is absolutely suffocating. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that you can go to jail for accidentally pushing the wrong button on your keyboard. To say that the culture has changed is an understatement. In the mid-2000s you could have an open conversation about licking balls on the trading floor. Now, you had better have a very strong filter. Not saying that this new civility is a bad thing, but living in fear that you might say the wrong thing is no bueno. But most of all, the fun part of the business—thinking of ways to make money—is pretty much gone. The Volcker Rule killed that. I like to say that traders are no longer traders—not the swashbuckling risk-takers that they once were. They are now finance workers, lunch pail types, going in to make the doughnuts every day. There used to be real glamour associated with the job. Dropping 100,000 shares of XYZ into an algo and staring it all day is hardly glamorous. I haven’t even brought up office politics and the psychopathy associated with it. Conclusion: it’s not a lot of fun, it’s a lot harder than it looks, and it pays less than ever. And, everyone hates you.

The solution here is to take a walk in someone else’s shoes. People dump on teachers these days, but that’s not an easy job, and speaking of compliance bullshit and hassle, that job is worse than ever. Before you criticize teachers, maybe try out teaching? My guess is that you would suck at it. I teach at the university level, and I think I do a pretty good job (and I do, as evidenced by my teacher evaluations), but it’s not easy. I’m teaching one class, and it wipes me out. There are lecturers teaching five classes at a time. That’s a lot of time in class, and an inordinate amount of grading. It’s an 18 hour-a-day job, if you’re doing it right. I would not want to be a construction worker. I would not want to be a cop. I would not want to be a soldier. I would not want to be a cowboy. I would not want to be a biker. I would not want to be an Indian chief. Actually, that’s the Village People. In all seriousness, if we all put our problems in the middle of the room, you would probably want your problems back. Nobody’s job is harder than anyone else’s.

Except for government jobs!

I will add one last thing. If you were the type of person to get offended by Tom Cruise’s comment or Tom Brady’s comment, let’s have a few words. You chose to be offended. That’s right, it was your choice. The world is filled with shitty opinions. They are all over Facebook, Twitter, TV, and radio. When I encounter an opinion that I find distasteful, I simply keep on scrolling, or change the channel. I do not react, because I am not an animal. Animals react. Human beings can theoretically control their emotions. Speaking of shitty opinions, it is pretty much my job to spread thousands of shitty opinions across the internet. I can’t possibly expect someone to agree with all six million words that I have ever written. I would hope that one sentence would not cause someone to fly off the handle and rage quit the newsletter, which is not the appropriate response. The appropriate response is to strike when the iron is cold, and have a thoughtful and reasoned conversation about it. You might be pleasantly surprised by how it goes.

In any case, go fuck yourself.