Needle, Meet Haystack

The job: CGI Animator

You might like this job if: You enjoy computer-generated images, be it from movies, video games, TV, or stills used in print ads.  A healthy dose of love for animation helps too.

The good: You get to develop cutting-edge entertainment for the masses, making people and items that only existed in imagination come to life.  Plus, you can make cool ‘splosions and ninja-versus-dinosaur fights!

The bad: It takes forever to get a lot of work done.  There was a scene in the recent Transformers 2 where a human character was revealed to be a robot.  In a 3-second bit of CGI, the flesh on her face stripped away to reveal her true mechanical form.  Do you know how long it took a dedicated team of a half-dozen CGI animators to make that effect?  THREE MONTHS.  So to recap: that’s 2880 total hours of work for a 3-second special effect that most people won’t even remember.

Summary: If you have the patience, attention to detail, love of technology and obsessive-compulsion to make movie/video game/TV magic, go for it.  Otherwise, just watch the latest Pixar movie again.

Rating: Two Gollums that should have won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor out of five

The job: Halloween costume designer

You might like this job if: Do you like dressing up for Halloween?  And making your own costume?  Do you want to make other people’s costumes?  If you answered yes to all three of these questions, you might like this job!  If these criteria seem familiar, it’s because they’re similar to another job we’ve previously discussed.

The good: You get to make Halloween costumes!  Masks, full-body outfits, props and more… whenever you see a gorilla or a superhero or a slutty pumpkin, you will know that your handiwork is on full display.

The bad: You are, regrettably, making disposable fashion that will most likely only be worn once.  And oftentimes, you will be making costumes that are almost identical to last year’s model.  Sure, you might get lucky and have the chance to design a line of costumes around a recently departed celebrity, but odds are you’ll be making tiny tweaks on Dracula or Frankenstein.

Summary: A fairly fun and creative job, but your pay is forever tied to one day of the year.  And no matter how creative a lot of your costumes may be, chances are they still won’t break the top  20 of the year (with witches and vampires almost always in the top spot).

Rating: Three sets of wax lips, which are definitely not an acceptable substitute for candy, out of five

The job: Superhero

You might like this job if: You like truth, justice, the American way, striking fear into the hearts of evildoers, exercising great responsibility with your great powers, defending a world that fears and hates you, etc.  Also, a healthy dose of hating evil and enjoying kicking bad guys in the face wouldn’t hurt.

The good: You get to fight evil, champion the innocent, stop super-crime, and possess abilities far beyond those of mere mortals…

The bad: …if you were in a comic book.  If you tried to be a super hero in real life, you’d probably end up like these guys, dressing up in homemade costumes and doing more community outreach than crime-fighting.  Not to mention that being a vigilante is illegal.  And forget about making money doing it.  Want to make cash with superhero licensing?  Get into making comic books.

Summary: A nice daydream, but if you really want to fight crime, join the police.

Rating: Five mint-condition copies of Action Comics #1 out of five

The job: Brewmaster

You might like this job if: You like beer or chemistry.  But mostly beer.

The good: You get to make beer!  As much as you want of whatever kind you want!  Upset that there isn’t a beer with the flavor of your favorite snack?  Make one!  The beer-making possibilities are endless!

The bad: As you may be aware from watching Super Bowl commercials, the beer industry is very competitive.  And as such, making a great beer that sells well (regardless of taste) can be harder than one might think.  And even if you want to start a micro-brewery, you will still have to contend with the high costs of equipment and obtaining raw materials.  Want to work for a beer company as their brewmaster?  Get in line.  In addition to the job being hard to get, many brewmasters have to rise through the ranks of a single company for years before getting the official title.  Plus, you’ll smell like beer all the time, which might sound cool at first, but will slowly start to gnaw at you until you can barely stomach the taste of what used to be your favorite beverage.

Summary: An awesome-sounding job that will earn you numerous high-fives at the bar, but one that requires a loving devotion to your craft and requires a lot of time and dedication to master (while trying to succeed in a fairly crowded field).

Rating: Three rather large and imposing industrial vats full of beer out of five

The job: Zookeeper

You might like this job if: You like animals, zoology, biology, ecological conservation, saving endangered species, PETA-like organizations, developing habitats for non-local wildlife, and the shows on Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel.

The good: You get to help with repopulating some endangered species, and get to care for a lot of awesome animals.  It’s pretty much the only way that you could interact with pandas, rhinoceros, emus and lemurs all on the same day.

The bad: Just look at the picture below.  You’ll be cleaning a lot of that stuff up.  Because animals don’t have the same stringent devotion to personal hygiene that many people do.

Summary: A pretty fun job if you like animals, but you’ll have to deal with a lot of crap while you do it.

Rating: Three clips from YouTube of a sneezing panda that were just so adorable that you had to go to the zoo out of five

The job: Ninja

You might like this job if: You like ancient Japanese cultures, ninja video games, ninja comic books, ninja movies, ninja TV shows, ninja action figures, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, stealth, or badassery.

The good: You get to be a ninja – a master stealth assassin whose kind is known the world over as being ruthlessly efficient.  Plus you get all those cool ninja weapons and stuff!

The bad: You’re, you know, a master stealth assassin, meaning that you kill people for money, which is illegal.  You’re pretty much a glorified fugitive, and despite all the awesome martial arts skill and throwing stars and all that, you’re still a criminal.

Summary: A pretty awesome job if there ever was one, but not the best career choice for those who enjoy not being hunted by the authorities.

Rating: Four silly ninja clan festive sock face masks out of five

The job: Lawyer

You might like this job if: Do you like Ally McBeal, Arrest and Trial, Boston Legal, Crossing Jordan, Damages, Eli Stone, Family Law, The Good Wife, The Guardian, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, JAG, Judging Amy, L.A. Law, Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, The Lyon’s Den, Matlock, Night Court, Perry Mason, The Practice, Raising the Bar, or any of the other millions of lawyer shows out there?  Or Court TV?  Or John Grisham novels, the superhero Daredevil’s secret identity, Phoenix Wright games, or just objecting to stuff?  The you might like real life lawyerin’!

The good: Objection!  Order in the court!  Habeas corpus!  Other exclamations!  Defending the innocent, punishing the guilty, making tons of money, yelling at people…who wouldn’t want to be a lawyer?

The bad: Probably anyone who’s seen all the paperwork, research and actual methods that real lawyers have to go through.  After paying off the mountain of law school student loans, you can look forward to 80-hour weeks, reading until your eyes bleed, writing briefs till your fingers go numb, and very little courtroom time.  And that’s only litigators, who actually, you know, litigate in the courtroom.

Summary: A lot more work and stress than you see on TV, movies, books, video games, radio, the newspaper, legal school catalogs, and lots of websites.  But if you’re passionate about the law, go for it!

Rating: Two liti-gators (ha!  get it?) out of five

The job: Politician

You might like this job if: You enjoy public policy, speechifying, political science, social reform, governance, and watching CSPAN for a purpose other than helping to kill insomnia.

The good: Politicians have the ability to affect social change through new policies, laws, directives and so on.  Instead of being one of the masses complaining about how hard it is to change things, you’ll be the one doing the change.  Whether it’s at the city, county, state, regional, national or global level, you’ll be making decisions that will help make things better for others.

The bad: …or not.  Putting aside the special interests, bribery, pork barrels, election rigging and everything else that made “politics” such a dirty word, the simple action of getting your ideas made to actions is a tremendous undertaking.  Between committees, debates, changes to the proposal and other conflicts, it can take months or years to even get the chance to have one’s suggestions put up to a vote, much less approved.  Additionally, there’s a lot of campaigning that has to be done all the time in order to secure donations to run for re-election.  Put together these factors (and more, like stress), and it’s easy to see how politicians age so quickly.

Summary: It’s a big headache for those involved, full of corruption, stress and scandal, but if you’re truly passionate, you might like it.

Rating: Four American flag pins that darn well better be on your lapel out of five

Today’s title might intrigue, mystify or confuse you.  But fear not!  All will be explained in this week’s Jobs That Might Seem Cool But Actually Kinda Suck!

The job: Professional TV Watcher

You might like this job if: You like watching TV.  A lot of TV.  Especially news or clip shows, as they’ll be the ones hiring you.

The good: You get paid to sit around and watch TV for hours at a time!  Who said that turning your brain into mush would never be a marketable skill!

The bad: Ever wonder how I Love the (Decade)s or The Soup or The Daily Show or most any show that uses clips get just the right part?  It’s by hiring a bunch of rubes to spend hours every day pouring over the minutiae of TV, making copious notes, getting timestamps, and so on.  Imagine watching CSPAN for 10 hours straight…and staying awake.  Not so fun now, is it?

Summary: The TV watcher is the second cousin of the video game tester: cool in theory, boring and tedious in practice.  Watch TV on your own schedule; you might not get paid for it, but you’ll enjoy it a lot more.

Rating: Three busted videocassettes out of five.

Cheesey smiles, buzzers and fabulous prizes, come on down!  You’re the next contestant on Jobs That Might Seem Cool But Actually Kinda Suck!

The job: Game show host

You might like this job if: You enjoy midday television, random trivia, giving people gifts, theme music and announcers.

The good: As a game show host, you get to be a constant in a sea of changing faces.  You will reign over your little corner of TV land (not TV Land the station, unless that’s the channel your show is on) and dole out cars, money and dinette sets only to those who are deserving.  Plus, they give you cards with the answers on them.

The bad: Routine, routine, routine.  The contestants and particulars might change, but you’re stuck doing the same old formula day in and day out.  Do you think that Alex Trebek isn’t sick of Potent Potables?  That Regis Philbin doesn’t want to ask people if that’s their final answer?  That Drew Carey has calculated the exact amount of intertia and force needed to land on the “100″ spot on the Price Is Right wheel?  You’ll have to put on a smiling face and show the same level of enthusiasm every day (at least 5 days a week) for a long time.  After all, game shows aren’t seasonal in the way that most TV programs are…

Summary: As long as you can drum up excitement and enthusiasm for the Plinko board every day for 30-odd years straight, you should be fine.  Otherwise, stick with being the banker the next time you play “Monopoly.”

Rating: Two trips to fabulous Hawaii out of five