Patrick Cooper has a cold
Patrick Cooper, holding a glass of orange juice in one hand and a TV remote in the other, sat in the middle of the blue couch between two attractive but faded surround sound speakers that sat waiting for him to do something. But he did nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this studio apartment in Courthouse he seemed even more distant, staring out through the pasta steam and fluorescence into a kitchen behind the sink where dozens of Groupons sat stacked around the counter and macaroni twisted in the center of a pot to the clamorous clang of an old flannel shirt knocking off closet hangers. The rear speakers knew, as did Cooper's four other speakers that stood closer to the TV, that it was a bad idea to force action upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had just arrived during this first week of October, days before his big deadline.
Cooper had been working on a project that he still liked, could not wait to finish; he was tired of all the not-sleeping during the summer, which was not in sight tonight; he was angry that the Hold Steady show, this evening at the 930 Club, was happening without him, even though he had called his friends to tell them he couldn't make it; he was worried about his product management role in a sprint cycle entitled Snuffy — A Release and Its Rollout, which would require that Dev reboot the CMS with tools that at this particular moment, just a few nights before code freeze, were in QA and uncertain. Cooper was ill. He was the victim of an ailment so common that most people would consider it trivial. But when it gets to Cooper it can plunge him into a state of anguish, deep depression, panic, rage, even sweatpants. Patrick Cooper has a cold.
Cooper with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel, and Sinatra without voice — only worse. For the common cold robs Cooper of that uninsurable jewel, his momentum, cutting into the core of his confidence, and it affects not only his own psyche but also seems to cause a kind of psychosomatic nasal drip within dozens of people who work with him, drink with him, love him, depend on him for answering e-mails and attending meetings. A Cooper with a cold can, in a small way, send vibrations through the media and macaroni industries and beyond as surely as a President of the United States, suddenly sick, can shake the something something Nyquil and my pasta's done.
October 4th, 2010 at 9:22 PM
Damn! I wondered why I felt like crap.
October 5th, 2010 at 9:41 AM
Monica Hortobagyi does too! So do Emily Brown and Alan Gomez! Hortobagyi would like to introduce you to her good friend, Mucinex D. Mucinex D makes all things possible and will restore that uninsurable jewel of Patrick Cooper. Here's to reclaiming your week!
October 5th, 2010 at 9:25 PM
Good luck to the noses of everyone in the Big Shiny. Here, Nyquil + Sudafed daytime + generic allergy meds = let the comeback begin.
October 18th, 2010 at 8:55 AM
'even sweatpants'
April 8th, 2011 at 12:52 AM
[...] How much I hate having a cold. More than Patrick Cooper has a cold or even how much Sinatra must have hated his cold in the original. I'm more pissed at how much [...]
December 12th, 2011 at 10:54 PM
[...] it. No one likes having a cold, I know. As I've explained here previously, when I get a cold, I'm a ruin. But what's worse for me than having a cold is getting over [...]