Self-Aggrandizement: July 2004 Archives

fast talkin'
Filed July 29, 2004 10:58 AM.

The problem is, my brain moves faster than my mouth. So I speak quickly, trying to keep words at pace with thoughts.

It doesn't help that my parents are New Yorkers. I may have grown up in laid-back California, but I came home to fast talking every afternoon.

These days, living in Manhattan, I often completely forget that quick talkers aren't the norm. Then I'll get on the phone with someone off this frantic little island - say, someone at the Kentucky State Film Commission - and remember again what it feels like to speak with someone who makes each. Word. Into. Its. Own. Sentence.

Or, conversely, I'll have people similarly irked by my fast speaking speed. A few months ago, I went out to LA to pitch a group of investors for Cyan's film fund. Granted, in that case, I backed myself into a bit of a corner - I had ten minutes to give a PowerPoint presentation initially meant to have lasted fifteen. I made good time, though, and was nearly through when the time-keeper shouted out, "one more minute."

"No problem," I replied. "I'll just talk faster."

"Faster? Is that possible? God help us!" the investors chorused. And I got an extra three minutes.

meeting up
Filed July 26, 2004 1:11 PM.

As post-graduation celebration, my parents are now en route to Ischia, Italy, the site of their engagement some thirty-three years back.

And, certainly, engagements are important - particularly now, when "how did he do it?" supercedes even "can I see the ring?" But meeting stories, I've always felt, are what really count.

My grandparents, for example, met at a baseball game - my grandfather, who played catcher, had forgotten his lunch. My grandmother, a cheerleader for the other team, offered to share hers. With that beginning, how could they have weathered less than their seventy years of happy marriage?

My parents, on the other hand, ended up in Ischia in a more round-about way. Both were students at New York City's Queens College. My mother ran the college newspaper, my father the radio station. He appeared on my mother's doorstep two hours early for a joint media meeting being held at her house. He was on his way back from Jones Beach, wearing a tank top and short cutoffs. Depending on whose version you rely upon, he may also have had some nameless girl in tow.

My father, apparently, was instantly smitten. My mother, on the other hand, was instantly convinced my father was a jackass. Still, with a bit of persistence, he managed to drag her out on a date, and then another. He was serious. She continued to see other guys. But they dated, on-again, off-again, from that point.

Towards the end of their senior year (during, I believe, an 'off' rather than an 'on'), my father asked my mother if she had any post-graduation plans. Actually, she did: having never traveled abroad, she was setting off for the summer to tour Europe and Israel. My father, with absolutely no summer plans, jumped on the chance: he was intending to do exactly the same thing - perhaps they could go together?

Somewhere in the extensive pre-trip planning, off became on, and when their flight left JFK, my father's mother famously turned to my mother's mother to ask if she had renewed her passport. Renewed her passport? Yes, just in case their children decided to hold the marriage abroad. After all, my father had decided that they were getting engaged, and he was particularly good at getting what he wanted.

And, in fact, he did get what he wanted - though the wedding wasn't until the following fall, they sent back news of the engagement via telegram.

My brother and I, to this day, give my mother a hard time about their story. Growing up, nearly every pet we ever owned, we bought on the trip back from ski weekends up in Bear Valley. Take her out of her environment, we knew, and she'd come back with all kinds of housemates she'd never have agreed to back at home. My father, it seems, new exactly the same trick.

falling behind
Filed July 26, 2004 12:25 PM.

Despite cumulative travel time for the New York to DC and DC to New York trips passing the twenty hour mark, the trek was absolutely worthwhile - I'm exceedingly proud to say I'm now the child of two doctors, one of medicine, the other of education policy.

As my brother just sent me a copy of his biz-school application essay, it seems I'm well on my way to becoming the family underachiever.

filmic wisdom
Filed July 23, 2004 8:58 PM.

I'm in the Newark Airport. I have been here for the past eight hours and, according to the most recent departure time update, I should be here for at least two more.

With each passing minute, I'm increasingly cursing myself for having not yet seen The Terminal, as I'm pretty sure that, if I had, I'd know how to use this stretch of airport time to bed Catherine Zeta-Jones.

uprooted
Filed July 21, 2004 10:24 AM.

Over the past few years, I've been spending an increasing percentage of my time on the road - a trend that looks likely to continue, as, just in the next month, I'm slated to head out to Washington (D.C.), San Francisco, Israel and Bermuda. (Rough, I know.)

Through all my traveling thus far, I've made a few discoveries. The first, that I don't need that much 'stuff' to be happy, is immensely pleasing in a Walden-esque sort of way. Living out of suitcases, I find I rarely miss the things I've left behind. Which has inspired me, already a ruthless reducer of possessions, to further clean out my closets.

Another thing I've noticed, however, is that trips of different lengths seem to have different feels to them. For vacations, very short trips (three to five days) seem to work best for me. After that, any additional relaxation I gain from pulling myself out of real life accrues increasingly slowly with each added day - a textbook case of diminishing returns. Worse, I start to find that all of the work I managed to push completely out of my head for the first few days begins to creep back in, preventing me from fully enjoying my escape.

As a result, I've realized I'm better breaking two weeks of yearly vacation into three or four shorter trips, spread through the year. Each one, then, is just long enough for me to pull myself completely out of my fast-paced life, and comes frequently enough that I rarely have to go for extended stretches without an upcoming escape in sight.

Five days, I've found, is also long enough to do the tourist thing in a city I've never before visited - long enough to see the sites, wander through a few museums, browse thorough kitschy knick-knacks I fortunately never purchase. Even doubling that to ten days, I've found, makes very little difference. Sure, I get to see a few more sights, perhaps wander more slowly through the museums. But, by the end, I still feel like a tourist - with a vague sense of the city, perhaps, but certainly not like I really know it.

At the one month, mark, however, I've found that I start to feel like I really own a city - I have a sense of the neighborhoods, have found a few off-the-beaten-path secret spots, get some sort of feel for the city as a whole. It's a completely different feeling from the touristy shorter trips, and I find that when I return to a city I've lived in - even lived in for just a one month stretch - it feels slightly more like a homecoming than an outbound visit.

I really like that homecoming feeling, and, as I'm lucky enough have jobs (both on the film and tech sides) that can be done pretty much anywhere, it's something I've recently resolved to experience more often. So, along with my business trips, along with my frequent short vacations, I'll also be trying to take a month a year to live and work someplace I've never lived and worked before. With Manhattan rents so ridiculously high, I suspect I can sublet my apartment, and use the income to cover not only rent in another city, but even the cost of a flight to get there.

I can't relocate for a month immediately, as I'll be all over the place for the next three (mostly related to two tech consulting gigs and a documentary we're getting ready to shoot in Israel and Europe). But my schedule should calm down by November, and I'm hoping to use that eye in the work storm to test out the one month move plan. So, after that exceedingly long-winded introduction, I should now admit that the entire point of this post is to ask for help in determining exactly where I should relocate.

Currently, at the top of my list are Vancouver, the French Quarter of New Orleans, and possibly Paris. My roommate James is lobbying hard for Asheville, NC ('the Paris of the South'). But it's still pretty much up in the air. So, if you have ideas, throw 'em in the fray (ideally with some explanation of why I should choose that locale). If you convince me, I'll even break from tradition, finally buying one of those kitschy knick-knacks to send back as thanks.

birthday photo
Filed July 19, 2004 10:23 AM.

[Recent discovery: cigars and Schlitz beer are about equally bad.]

signs of aging
Filed July 18, 2004 2:40 AM.

Re: really hot girls with brains of toothpaste:

Now, once I know I could, I no longer have to.

ambushed
Filed July 17, 2004 10:13 AM.

I have officially become the first rube in the history of the world to actually be surprised by a surprise birthday party.

Special thanks to my brother for masterminding the wonderful evening, to Tova, Joe, Colin and Yoav for helping him pull it off, to all of my friends who showed up, and to Mikhail Baryshnikov for walking in to Russian Samovar as we were all there drinking, shaking his head, and walking upstairs to get away from us.

Also, you know you're already rather drunk when you stagger into a surprise party being thrown for you and initially think, "that's funny, there are a lot of people I know in this bar tonight."

twenty-five
Filed July 15, 2004 7:34 PM.

On July 16th, 1979, at 2:27pm in the Stanford Hospital, I popped my head into this world. And, from that moment, I couldn't get enough of it.

In California, right after a baby is born, the nurse is required to put sliver nitrate drops into its eyes, to guard against infection. But those drops temporarily blur the baby's vision, and the nurse, telling my mother that she didn't remember ever seeing such an observant newborn, couldn't remember a baby who was trying so hard and so instantly to take it all in, waited until the last legal minute to put those drops in my eyes.

That's pretty much been the story of my first twenty-five years: cramming in as much as possible, trying to fit it all in. Take, for example, just this last year:

I got some excellent work done, and realized how very much more I have to do.

My heart broke, then mended into something more full and whole.

I made a mess of things by being constantly full of shit, and have been working on cleaning up the mess day by radically honest day.

I had some wonderful times and some horrible times.

I had some trying times and some rewarding times.

And as much as there were some things I'd do differently on a second pass, I wouldn't possibly want to give up any of it.

Looking back, I can't see how it all fit into just one year, or, really, how it all fit in to just twenty-five of them. Which, frankly, is sort of a relief, because I have at least that much to cram into the next twenty-five.

resurfacing
Filed July 15, 2004 2:51 AM.

Sorry for disappearing, kids. But after months and months of salary-lessness (due, in short, to rather severe naiveté on my part; we initially pushed Cyan's projects one by one, rather than multiple projects all at the same time - something we eventually learned was the requisite approach in an industry where the schedule on any given film is likely to slip and slip and then slip some more), bling-bling beckoned me out to fair San Francisco to kick off the more tightly re-focused Paradigm Blue with a pair of techno-wunderkind consulting gigs.

And, apparently, if I'm getting paid to crank out overly verbose, snarkily cynical critiques of a company or nonprofit's products, services and strategies, it's tough for me to muster that same snarky verbosity on the home front. (I imagine this same effect must be murderous on the sex lives of gynecologists: "honey, please, put that away".

Lucky for you, though, I'm now back in NYC, back to balancing tech dorkery with movie 'glamour', leaving me plenty of time to write the rambling, inane content you've come to love. (Or, at least, to mildly tolerate).

Before I get on with my life, however, a few highlights from the trip:

1. Brunch with the lovely, smart, funny, articulate, and - sadly - just married Nara Nayar, an online friend I'd been corresponding with since my short Blind Date Blog stint a few years back (if you missed that - consider yourself lucky) but had not previously had the pleasure of meeting in real life.

2. Playing Alternative Lifestyle Life with Helen Jane and Hilary and James and James' friend Cary; laughing, more or less nonstop, for eight or nine hours, to the point where my cheeks were literally sore from the muscular exertion of it by the next day.

3. In celebration of my father's 54th birthday (yesterday) and my 25th (tomorrow), heading to Raging Waters, a water park about a half hour south of my parents home, for an afternoon of riding water slide after water slide. Take that, maturity!

4. A very, very excellent date that I'm not going to talk about because it appeared to have actual potential - something that totally freaks out my inner commitment-phobe if I actually think about it too much.

Still, despite all the excitement: NYC, it's good to be home.

laying off
Filed July 7, 2004 6:05 PM.

There is a tradition in Jewish households that, at Shabbat dinner on Friday night, the challah - the braided bread blessed at the start of the meal - remains covered until just before it is blessed. A centuries old story explains a possible reason: On all other nights of the week, the bread is blessed first, while on Friday night, the wine and candles take first position; the cover, then, is to prevent the challah from becoming jealous.

Previously, I always took that explanation as purely symbolic, commentary on how we should give thought to the feelings of people in our lives. But, over the last few days, I've begun to suspect the intention is more concrete - literally an attempt to keep the challah from choking us to death in spite by stopping itself partway down our gullets.

I say this because, since I mentioned in passing that I was thinking of trading in my Dell for a new Powerbook, my laptop has been deteriorating at a rather alarming clip. Outlook suddenly refuses to check email automatically. At random intervals, Windows puts itself to sleep for no reason at all. The hinge holding the screen has loosened to the point that the screen itself swings precariously as I type.

And yet, I can't be angry with my trusty C400. Not just because of the two years of solid service it's put in thus far, but also because I understand what it's trying to do. It sees the breakup coming, and it's preemptively dumping me. Or, if I'm downsizing the Windows part of my life, it's saying back, "Fire me? You can't fire me. Because I quit!"

flickr test
Filed July 7, 2004 12:16 PM.

bring a book
Filed July 7, 2004 12:01 PM.

The problem with being obsessively punctual is, very few other people are.

chicken scratch
Filed July 6, 2004 12:39 AM.

You know how, in kindergarten, you draw stick figures and then you move on? Well, I didn't. Sure, I can stick figure with the best. But that's about the absolute limit of my drawing ability. I'm what you might call an art retard.

And it's not just that I can't draw. I can't paint either, can't sketch, draft or doodle. I see pictures vividly in my mind's eye, and yet, somehow, by the time they make their way to the page or canvas, the dimensions are so far off as to make whatever I produce look like the work of a drunk, crack-addled six-year old.

It's not for lack of trying either. At several points past, I've set out on stints of daily drawing practice, in the hopes that I'd eventually improve. I didn’t.

In other spheres of my life, I have an excellent sense of spatial relationships - I can load up a car trunk well enough to go pro. And my sense of composition is elsewhere strong as well - I've even occasionally managed to get my photography into gallery showings. But holding pen, brush or pencil, I lose it all completely. My brain says one thing, my hand does another, unintentionally hilarious results ensue.

So, frankly, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that my handwriting is similarly atrocious. Not just so bad that other people can't tell what I've written, but so bad that, a few hours after writing, I can rarely even decipher the scribbles myself.

And this is printing I'm talking about; I gave up cursive five or six days after I supposedly picked it up. Illegible as my print might be, it looks like fine calligraphy against my best attempts at script.

So, for years, even in birthday cards and personal notes, I've resorted to my third grade printing technique, uneven letters jumbled up against each other, precariously swaying from vertical to near-horizontal tilt.

Until, that is, today, when I decided I've had enough. Today, when I decided that, if I'm going to start feigning adulthood, I need to master some writing to match.

Scoff if you must, but I'm pretty sure it's important. Until I get this cursive thing down, for example, fatherhood is strictly out of the question; sick notes penned in my usual hand wouldn't excuse my future progeny - they'd get the poor kids sent straight to an afternoon of detention for forging notes, and for doing it poorly to boot.

So, cursive practice it is. A few minutes each day, in spare moments between more pressing tasks, the quick brown fox will be jumping over the lazy dog. Again and again and again, until I hit flowery cursive that justifies the purchase of manuscript, quill and India ink. Or, at least, until my handwriting is not so atrocious as to jeopardize the afternoon freedom of my hypothetical unborn children.

brain food
Filed July 2, 2004 10:07 PM.

I recently finished reading a pre-release copy of Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs' wonderful upcoming book The Know-it-All, which, in short, follows Jacobs - concerned that he's become steadily stupider over the decade since graduating college - on a quest to counter that trend by reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica, cover to cover. The Know-it-All is a surprisingly absorbing read, beautifully blending lessons Jacobs pulls directly from the volumes with the day-to-day impact his quest has on the rest of his life, on his relationships with his wife, colleagues, family and friends.

I enjoyed the book immensely, though I must admit it also brought forth from the back of my mind a similar fear of slow decline since a collegiate thinking peak. These days, I'm thrust into situations that make me think, and think hard, just often enough to remind me that I don't think hard nearly as often as I should.

I blame that, in large part, on no longer owning a car. Or, to be more precise, on no longer owning a car radio.

I've never been a big radio listener outside of the driver's seat, but, on the road, throughout high school and college, NPR almost never left my radio dial. With each short drive, I'd pick up a small dose of Fresh Air, the World, Marketplace or All Things Considered, any of which never ceased to occupy my imagination.

Certainly, I knew full well that, as a teenage guy, listening to NPR lifted me to nearly unparalleled levels of dorkdom. But I didn't care. I loved it. I could almost physically feel my brain filling up with new facts and ideas, delivered fresh each day over the airwaves.

In standard New York style, however, I sold my car before moving to the city, and with it the only radio I owned. That was the end of NPR for me, save for short trips out west, when, in cars rented or borrowed, Terry Gross and Bob Edwards once again brought me up to date on the world. I knew that I could theoretically find any of those programs at home, archived online, but, frankly, I was too lazy to do so - I wanted my information pushed, not pulled.

Then, a day or two back, I downloaded a copy of iTunes. I did it mainly because, starting at the end of next week, I'll be working part-time on a borrowed Mac for a nonprofit consulting project. And, with my trusty Dell laptop slowly disintegrating, I've also been toying with the idea of making the Mac switch full-time, trading my Dell for a Powerbook G4 and returning to my Apple roots. I downloaded the Windows version of iTunes as a baby step in that direction, a chance to ease my way into the rounded corners and aqua blues of the Mac world.

Overall, I've been fairly impressed with the program. But I was ecstatic about it this afternoon, when I clicked on down to the Radio icon in the left sidebar, just to see what was in there. Ambient, Americana... then, about two-thirds the way through the list: Public.

I clicked. Lo and behold, a veritable cavalcade of NPR stations! I recognized the third on the list, KCRW, from my LA rental car driving, and hit the play button. Instantly: Cory Flintoff, at 128 kilobits per second.

I am not too proud to admit I literally jumped around the room. By another miracle of broadband, NPR will, once again, be flowing back into my brain. Which, frankly, is excellent news, because my apartment doesn't have nearly enough shelf space for an edition of the Britannica.

fast talkin' Filed July 29, 2004 10:58 AM.

meeting up Filed July 26, 2004 1:11 PM.

falling behind Filed July 26, 2004 12:25 PM.

filmic wisdom Filed July 23, 2004 8:58 PM.

uprooted Filed July 21, 2004 10:24 AM.

birthday photo Filed July 19, 2004 10:23 AM.

signs of aging Filed July 18, 2004 2:40 AM.

ambushed Filed July 17, 2004 10:13 AM.

twenty-five Filed July 15, 2004 7:34 PM.

resurfacing Filed July 15, 2004 2:51 AM.

laying off Filed July 7, 2004 6:05 PM.

flickr test Filed July 7, 2004 12:16 PM.

bring a book Filed July 7, 2004 12:01 PM.

chicken scratch Filed July 6, 2004 12:39 AM.

brain food Filed July 2, 2004 10:07 PM.