Brady C. Mallory

As I waved goodbye to the news station where I spent a summer of indentured servitude, also known as an internship, a foreshadowing sentence loudly reverberated inside my head: “Ever since this job has pretty much sucked my soul out of my v*****, I just don’t care anymore.” In retrospect, that piece of guidance is one of two fond memories I have of the station’s anchor, Diane.

The other being the magical time she yelled at me for filling her FIJI bottle with water from the tap. The worst part was, she only referred to me as Intern Two because my name was of no importance to her. Obscurity is a cold and unforgiving seductress with man-hands. It was the first time I cried in five years; silently of course.

With summer slowly fading away from the midnight air, I now find myself lying awake, wondering what I should do with my career in order to escape the same fate as Diane: being a premature burnout, though not necessarily entailing abstaining from crushing the dreams of my underlings.

While I have an affinity for TV news, I also have an affinity for being able to feed myself without pulling a Heidi Fleiss. With the pressure of finding gainful employment, I decided one day, at 1 p.m., to sit down and take as long as I needed to list my talents. At 1:05 p.m., I stared down at my blank sheet of paper and realized how very screwed I was.

I felt impotent and out of control and could not believe that I have made it through 22 years without any sustainable talent. In order to avoid financial ruin, coupled with not wanting to work hard for something I really want, I decided my next step should be to get myself on a reality show.

I decided to immediately eliminate the reality shows that I was incompatible for, thus making an attainable list to come to fruition. My lack of addictions, bulimia and inability to cry in frenzied rants of hysteria put me out of the race for “The Real World”. For a moment NYC Prep entered my naive list of options, until I remembered my Norwegian tree-trunk thighs can barely fit into a Hefty garbage bag, let alone aqua Diesel skinny jeans.

For a split second, I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. I had a brilliant plan that would segue into a life of parties, grandeur and repeated trips to the Betty Ford Clinic. I could get a reality show based on being a shallow, talentless hack with a distaste for everyone that is not myself. Unfortunately my dream was dead with five little words: “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”

WWKGD, What Would Kate Gosselin Do? In this situation, she would calmly put on her teeth-whitening strips and take the half hour to stare at herself in the mirror while the peroxide destroys her imperfect enamel and find someone else to blame.

Channeling my own self-loathing, I decided to fault my parents for encouraging me to make my own decisions in life. Had they forced me into the dark perils of the childhood celebrity scene, I probably could have had my own book deal by now, not to mention an “E! True Hollywood Story.” This should detail the further proof that a loving family with parents who act age-appropriate does not pay the bills.

Falling victim to yet another disappointing climax to a half-baked way to avoid middle-class society, I decided to pick up Heidi Fleiss’s biography and a pair of tight leather pants.

Visit Brady’s blog at bradylately.blogspot.com.