If time doesn’t fly by enough, this past Friday was my two year anniversary as Press Secretary for the Department of Buildings. I still remember looking forward to my first day of work – and now – two years have gone by. Two years of countless accidents and hundreds of collpases and dozens of press conferences and Lord knows how many newspaper articles quoting me as a “spokesman for the Buildings Department”.

I have to say that I love this job. Of all of the other titles that were below my name on a business card – this one has made me the happiest and makes me feel like I truly accomplished something. If I have things my way – I plan to retire doing this.

I mean who wouldn’t love this job? In the past two years, I have been on a NYPD Harbor Patrol boat pursuing a floating billboard, been mentioned in Channel 7’s top story when I was taking evidence shots of an accident at Coney Island, made the front page of several Brooklyn weeklies – I even made the gossip column when a reporter “overheard” me having a conversation with Governor Jesse Ventura.

But while all that is wonderful, the one part of my job that is the toughest is when there is an incident that captures that attention of the press. I have to tell you that while my love for this job is taller then any building we monitor – my hatred for the press since starting this job grows stronger each day. From trying to scare the hell out of everyone, to misrepresenting the facts, to taking a quote I said for one story and placing it in another – to outright lying – from my first day on the other side of the journalistic fence – the press have yet to cease to amaze me.

When there is a major accident, the press come out of the woodwork and prod and probe me for information. Did you ever see that movie Jason And The Argonauts? The movie was out in the 60s and had one of the most famous scenes in movie history in it. In the scene, Jason is attacked by an army of sword-carrying skeletons. The reason why this scene is so famous is because it was the first to really feature stop-motion animation – and the reason why I brought it up was because that is how I feel when an incident occurs and the press call.

From Wanda at Channel 2 to Rose from New York 1 to Ron at the Tribeca Trib to Karen at the Staten Island Advance, they all bum rush me like an army of sword-weilding skeletons with a laundry list of questions and the demand to be dealt with immediately regardless of the other “skeletons” that are about to take a swing at me. To be able to whack this entire army away in one day and walk away unscathed is a task that I do almost every day – and still can’t figure out how I do it.

There are days when I’m talking to one reporter and I have three calls on hold. The press and their endless questions can be, in many ways, like an army. And whacking them away in the form of answers and research can sometimes take its toll. But while it may be tough – its fun. I love being the person that the press comes to when they want to know what is happening in this City. I love being the person that winds up in the paper the next day – and I love being the Press Secretary for the New York City Department Of Buildings.