26 REDS & A BOTTLE OF WINE

As you may well know I am now the proud publisher and Editor is Chief of a magazine called SnotRag. It’s true that we’re having just a little trouble completing our funding… and we are having what some might call a staffing problem… yet still… onward and upward!

Anyway, my new job as the chief hirer/firer has forced me to spend a lot of time thinking about the kind of employees one should hire. How do you assemble a top-notch staff that will ensure success? I’m sure I haven’t the faintest.

Here are a few people every company should be scrambling to hire.

1. Mind-blowing single-mindedness (Brent Maynard) – I’m not sure what job I can give Brent but his relentless single mindedness, even in the face of unbelievable apathy is inspiring. You see, Mr. Maynard is obsessed with the metric system and determined to see America switch from the standard system. So dedicated was Brent that during last years Metric Week (a week celebrated only by high school science teachers) Brent set up a protest outside Norwich, Conn. City Hall in an attempt to collect signatures on a petition to get the US Postal Service to weight mail in metric. Mr. Maynard collected six signatures. A display of public apathy that has only strengthened Brent’s resolve. Every company needs someone so mind-blowingly out of touch with day-to-day functionality. Someone has to be the floor fire-leader. Someone has to make sure the elevators get inspected twice a year and make sure we’re using energy saving light bulbs in the john. If not Brent Maynard than who?

2. Taking one for the team (Evangelina Carrozo) – When Greenpeace wanted to protest the construction of a paper mill in Uruguay they knew they would have to call out the big guns. After all, it’s easy to get people riled up about baby whale nuking global warmers, but something as nebulous as a pulp mill complicates the situation. After all, I still can’t tell you if Greenpeace is for or against the mill. What I do know is that Evangelina Carrozo took one for the team. She went to Vienna, stripped down to her thong and thigh highs and carried around a protest sign that NO ONE in the room bothered to look at, I mean, really, would you? She’ll be prefect for that Ben Affleck interview that he insists take place in a hot tub. Or that exclusive with Karl Rove that he demands take place in the Champagne Room at Scores.

3. Creative problem solving (Ana Luisa Hidalgo and Alex Hernandez) - What with blogs and the internet and whatnot it’s getting harder and harder for us, the little guys of the magazine trade. So when SnotRag’s circulation drops and we face budget cutbacks and a round of lay offs we’ll be glad we hired these two. These genius are real ‘think outside the box’ people. Faced with their own budget problems and a new baby they were able to turn a negative into a major positive. How? By getting creative: They sold their four-month-old baby over the internet. They used technology to turn a time-consuming money pit into a cash cow. Sure, they got caught and will do major jail time in Mexico, but if they survive prison they have jobs waiting for them north of the border.

4. Office humor (Tatyana Simanava) – Everyone loves to laugh, sometime with people, but in the work environment it’s more often AT people. After all, the hilarious folly of others is often the ‘holier than thou’ moral boost a crushed and humiliated employee needs. A person whose hilarious stupidity will unite the employee together in a chant of ‘did you see what that idiot did today?’ Meet our idiot, Tatyana. Not only is she some serious eye candy for the boys (and something to live up to for the girls) but Tatyana is really stupid. How stupid? Well let’s just say she recently fell out of a moving bus after confusing the exit with the bathroom. She’ll provide hours and hours of office bonding.

5. Creative accounting (John Frederiksen) - John Frederiksen was once the richest Norwegian. Now he’s the richest Cyprusian. Did I just blow your mind? Good. Well it’s all just a plan to avoid paying massive taxes to his native country. We’ll need this type of fly by night thinking when the IRS comes-a-callin’.

6. The ‘crazy factor’ (Dou Wei) – The magazine business is cutthroat, with rival mags saying and doing anything to woo hot young talent from a competitor. It’s a problem our hot young staff will face and damage control in the face of untrue accusation may be a full time job. Meet out PR spinster, Dou Wei. Sure, Dou is already a rock legend in China where he is a founding member of Black Panther, China’s only pro-black nationalism rock band, but I think given his current legal trouble and China’s Draconian legal system Dou might be looking for new digs and a new jig. Recently Dou, unhappy with recent media coverage of his kinfolk, walked into the offices of the Beijing News. There he poured water on the editors (not the band, the real editors) and demolished several computers and a TV set. Then he went outside and set a parked car on fire. That’s pretty awesome. Imagine Dou Wei set loose at Conde Nast headquarters, or better yet: Vice Magazine.

7. Good scheduling (name redacted) - I would like to hire an unnamed Swedish tour guide for his brilliant and cold-hearted schedule keeping abilities. He was taking a bus of old people from wherever “Southern Skane” is back to Stockholm. At some point in Germany some old lady died, but instead of stopping for a medical opinion on the woman’s deadness he opted to keep the bus’ tight schedule and power on. Fucking brilliant. We need someone not afraid to face the hard choices, or completely break the laws of both man and God to keep SnotRag on schedule. Some might say “I need the day off, I’m giving birth”, he would say “Give birth on your lunch break! You got a Neil Patrick Harris interview to copy edit!!”