re: What’s one of the most fun things you ever did for money ?

I was a musician runner for the Jazz Fest and Bayou Country Superfest for several years. I was assigned to a specific band while they were in town and responsible to get whatever the staff and band members needed such a groceries, guitar strings, lots of alcohol, hard disc drives, plastic snakes, hair spray, Mothers' Day and birthday cakes and pizzas when the groups got on their busses to leave town. Did I mention I bought a lot of alcohol? LOL. Whatever they needed, I had to figure out quickly where to go for it. Sometimes I'd take band members & their families to restaurants in New Orleans & Baton Rouge or back to their hotels. You had to mind your business and not talk to the musicians unless they spoke to you. Some of them would get quite chatty at times. The bigger the group usually meant I was given a large sum of money to purchase all the things they needed. At the end of each band assignment I'd go backstage or in their tour busses to settle my receipts and remaining cash with the road manager. Some of the most memorable groups I was assigned to were The Eagles, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Kenny Chesney and Zach Brown. It was a blast to do and you had to always be prepared for anything!

Used to do video for Arkansas athletics, got to run the camera under the basket for basketball games. Super cool to be courtside for every game and it paid $30 an hour. Great job to have right out of college, best job I’ve ever had really.

Worked in the shitty kitchen/concession stand at a shitty country club.... on slow days it was fricking off with friends and on busy days I'd lose myself w music blaring just hammering out orders. Bartender came to know me and would pass me daquris every now and then. Worked there every summer from 15 till I graduated high school.... good times

Photo lab (film) developer.

Serving supoenas for a law firm while in college.

Paid great, easy hours, and no one is awake in the hood at 7:30am.

Harvested rice for a couple summers.


7a-9p was a pretty normal day. Got to come in after Mass on Sundays. Stayed til 11p a night or two a week. 7 days a week.
I got a sandwich, bag of chips, two boiled eggs, and two beers a day + $200/w.


The hourly rate was terrible, but the job was fun, I learned a ton (if something is broken, start taking it apart until you find what’s broken and fix it. Sounds simple. And it is. Dad (not a farmer) taught me a bit of it. But it wasn’t anything like doing it on the farm. Once I caught a car on fire. I had driven about 40 miles to get a part for the combine. Specifically a fuel line (mechanically timed). I had all 6 fuel lines (and the busted one) in the trunk of the car that had caught on fire about 15 miles from the farm. The fire department came and put it out. Then we pried the trunk open, took the fuel lines out, ran soapy water through them til they were clean. Blew them out with an air compressor til they were dry. Put them back on the combine. Cut rice til after midnight that night. Borrowed the farmer’s spare truck he had just bought his son for the next week til I could find another vehicle to make it back and forth to work. This is the only example that involves the fire department. But a breakdown requiring a couple hours of mechanic work happened roughly once a day. I thought that was an exaggeration when someone told me that when I first started. I do remember as long as a 3-day stretch with no major things breaking). it beat the hell out of most other ways to make $200/w and kill time as a teenager. I also worked with a guy who was on the lower side of the intelligence scale. He provided a lot of entertainment. In particular with regards to his love of cigarettes. It got too expensive. So he started rolling his own. They didn’t taste right, and they were too much work. He got so hard up once that he took a piece of notebook paper and smoked the grass from the field. He wasn’t allowed to smoke inside the truck or in any equipment. Sometimes he would ride in the bed of the pickup to smoke along the way. Other times, he would ride in the cab and get out to light up a “fat boy” (two cigarettes at one time, held in one hand, done to make up for the lost time while riding from field to bin, bin to field, field to field, etc). For fun, sometimes, he would light up a “trippler crippler” or a “killer quad” instead. One no fewer than three occasions, I watched this human being smoke five cigarettes at once (this was rare for him. And by rare I mean this entire experience spans a total of about 6-9 weeks spread over 2 years, so I guess he did this once every 2-3 weeks). He struggled to keep them all lit and in his hand, but it was good sport for him. One of his passions was making apple wine. I enjoyed drinking it quite a bit more than I should have considering its origins. One last story to finish painting the picture of his problem-solving prowess. Back to the cigarettes (which he smoked 1.5 packs per day and had to store them in the freezer because it helped them smoke better). Again, in an effort to save money, he, his brother (who I believe was his uncle), his mother (who was also his sister, as I understand it), decided to buy balloons, blow their cigarette smoke into the balloons, rubber band them off, and re-smoke the balloons later. The trend lasted a week. The smoke was too stale to be enjoyable. But it did take them a week to decide that it was worth the money to continue to smoke real cigarettes.

This took place after the pool shut down for the summer and I was done lifeguarding, which was another extremely enjoyable way to spend time and get paid. It did not include free beer or homemade wine.

Stand up comedy

A short phase of providing personal services to women, it was enjoyable but too demanding and drama ridden to be sustainable.

Honestly, it's working as a server at your favorite restaurant because you get all your favorite food for free. I reccomend that to anyone under 22.

Wasn’t a job, though I sure wanted it to be till I blew out a disc.

Winning a golf tournament and collecting a check. Wasn’t a big one, but it was the most fun clothed I’ve ever had. Won a 5-way playoff on the 1st hole.