朗读版：万圣节想到“打工人”肖恩·康纳利，顺便用莫妮卡的话鼓励下自己 | CGTN周末随笔

有一阵没一阵的秋风，拐带着北京凉一阵缓一阵的天气，给各路出门要糖吃的“妖魔鬼怪”留了一点余温。

穿梭在影影绰绰的南瓜灯之间，夜店酒吧里的服务生时不时会闪到门口招揽下犹豫的顾客，生意比风还要紧的时候也不顾室外凉不凉：

“薅捞问趴体！”

偶然畅通的视线里闪过了女巫帽子、骨头架子模样的室内装饰，好像还有…蝙蝠造型的东东！这一跳吓得不轻…汗。

年初那几个月，疫情神出鬼没，气氛可比今天晚上瘆得多。安稳下来了，得赶快“报复性挣钱”，打工人多少都会有一点这种焦虑吧。

万圣节这天“初代007”肖恩·康纳利走了。第一位“邦德”遗憾没赶上最新一部邦德电影首映。

肖恩老爷子生于爱丁堡，家境谈不上显赫。为了生计也从“打工人”做起，16岁参军前做送奶工。老爷子曾分享过一个段子：他2009年返乡，叫了辆出租车回家，车上随口道出路过的每条街道的名字，让司机惊为天人：

“你咋知道这么多呢？” 
“我小时候在这一带送过牛奶。”
“那你现在是干嘛的？”

最新的邦德电影叫《无暇赴死》，疫情的缘故也一直无暇上映。整个英国院线业眼巴巴盼着通过一部大片“报复性挣钱”的时候，片方把首映一口气推迟到了明年，留下大大小小的影院哀鸿遍野，继续开工荒。最近的流言更是让院线打工人提前感受到了强烈的万圣节气氛：网飞（Netflix）公司似乎对买下电影版权很感兴趣。

在当年依靠租售DVD刚起步的时候，比起影业大佬，网飞的角色在领便当的边缘徘徊。三十年河东三十年河西，互联网崛起再加上疫情，当年的“打工人”如今绝对够壕：2019年，为了留住《老友记》的播放权，网飞豪掷一亿美元。2020年9月《老友记》继续在其平台上播放，不知道背后又达成了多少个亿的“小目标”。

《老友记》是不是也算讲述打工人自己的故事呢？第二季第十五集，莫妮卡带着菲比去给父亲的朋友开的趴体帮厨，妥妥打零工的节奏。客座明星、美国老戏骨汤姆·塞立克饰演“父亲的朋友”理查德·伯克。风度潇洒的他一出场就让临时工服务员菲比秒变迷妹：“詹姆斯·邦德”！

地处“英国东北”的爱丁堡，天气有多冷，送牛奶的肖恩应该比演邦德的康纳利体会更深。对于打扮古灵精怪地站在深秋北京街头的酒吧服务生，希望圣诞老人的戏服可以再厚一点。

如果按照社交网络上最广义的解读，我们绝大多数人都属于“打工人”。生活并没有给予我们过多优待，也没有时时刻刻都在虐待。“努力生活”的标签，只是喜怒哀乐、厌倦和憧憬动态平衡那一瞬间安静的样子。

就像莫妮卡对逃婚的瑞秋说：

Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You're gonna love it.

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Sidelines | A heroic Halloween

Sidelines is a column from CGTN's Social Media Desk

In the days before Halloween, temperatures had inched down in Beijing, to the point where dressing like Aquaman might give you a bit of a chill, though Chewbacca would be too much.

Pretending to be James Bond for Halloween as a tribute to the late Sir Sean Connery was a little harder if you couldn't bring an Aston Martin to the party. A dry martini was probably the only thing that might redeem you in the absence of the classic Walther PPK.

Dusting off Halloween decorations, bars and clubs certainly didn't want to miss out on the night. Spider-shaped stickers or devil horn headwear were distributed among the servers at local joints. In the interim between delivering food and drinks, they endured the chilly outdoors from time to time to advertise for their Halloween party. It was going to be a busy night.

Being busy means business doing well. News headlines about the pandemic forcing some countries into lockdown again are constant reminders to the hardworking people in China of what could have happened to their own businesses. Bars in the UK, for example, can stay open only if they serve "substantial meals" under the government's new anti-COVID-19 guidelines. It is a blessing to see bizarrely clothed customers under your roof given the circumstances.

The gears of China's economy started churning months ago, hauling the country from contraction induced by the epidemic. People are working extra hard to make up for the lost time and opportunities, aware that their jobs could be at risk should COVID-19 strike again. The novel coronavirus spreads fast. No one is fully secure until a treatment or vaccine can put an end to the coronavirus disease once and for all worldwide, which is why small flare-ups across the country, though quickly contained, still put everybody on edge. 

In the hard work and constant alert, people are worn out. The physical as well as mental exhaustion were probably a boost to Halloween parties last night in Beijing, and across the world where social celebrations are still permitted. Seeing people in the most grotesque costumes reveling in a festivity that barely has any cultural connection with their own backgrounds simply to forget about the fact that this may have been the scariest year in their young living memory, and the servers hurrying with orders from table to table with masks sometimes pulled halfway down to their chins as if it was only part of an odd Halloween dress-up, the scene almost felt heroic.

People need some distraction from this extraordinary everyday life. Even self-mockery helps to discharge some negative energy accumulated during an unusually distressing year.

On Chinese social media, the hashtag "Dagongren" suddenly went viral. Its meaning is a combination of "part-time worker" and "hired hands." People of various professions (probably including those celebrating Halloween and working in Beijing's bars) rushed to identify themselves with the term, venting out their frustration about a life that doesn't always feel productive, a sense of not belonging to anywhere and lack of fulfillment. The hashtag's popularity surged after a discussion about how to regulate overtime work. In a world where workplace morale has already been dragged down to the bottom by the pandemic, a discussion about overtime would surely have stiffened people up.   

But even in the self-directed sarcasm there is a tinge of heroics: admitting the hardship but not giving up yet.

It is a shame that Sir Sean, who first brought 007 to life, couldn't see the official debut of the latest Bond film, "No Time To Die." It has been postponed again until next year because of the pandemic. The decision couldn't be worse for the movie theaters in the UK that had been hoping for the potential box office revenue the spy hero film could have generated to deliver them from the financial abyss.

After the announcement, British film lovers were rushing online and phone-in shows to share their gratitude toward independent cinemas that had striven to remain open in their neighborhoods, as bankruptcy loomed in the horizon, like a tragic hero refusing fate in vain.   

The last straw that might bring a sad end to these cinemas' heroic struggle came with the news about Netflix's interest in buying the film for its digital shelf, chilling the cinematic world even before "The Nightmare Before Christmas" did.

Upon reading about the trending "Dagongren" hashtag, your columnist suddenly recalled the American sitcom "Friends," a show about ordinary people's lives which can also be viewed on Netflix after it paid hundreds of millions of dollars for the right to air it.

Coming right off the bat was the theme song with a tiny twist: No one told us life was gonna be this way in 2020. Then it was a line by Monica Gellar, one of the six main characters. It's a simple punchline, yet in this time of hardship it sounds incredibly heroic:

"Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You're gonna love it."

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