Self-Aggrandizement: May 2006 Archives

Plus Side, Updated
Filed May 31, 2006 3:32 PM.

After spending the last six hours on nonstop conference calls, I've moved past Johnny Cash and into Tom Waits.

On the Plus Side
Filed May 31, 2006 12:12 AM.

With slight laryngitis, my Johnny Cash impression is currently dead on.

Lightning Round
Filed May 30, 2006 9:51 PM.

Just one week back, I wrote about an ex who pointed out that my life seems to largely consist of a single recurring pattern: sleeplessness, illness, then the avid (drunken) pursuit of women.

And though, at the time, I maintained I was 'mainly entrenched in avid (drunken) pursuit', a week packed past bursting with train rides, business dinners, bar mitzvahs and funerals dragged me deeply enough into sleeplessness that I'm now nursing a spring-allergy-driven sinus infection.

Thanks to the miracles of modern antibiotics, however, I'm already on the upswing. Which means I should be, fortunately, back to avid (drunken) pursuit by the end of the week.

Why I'm Not Blogging
Filed May 26, 2006 11:49 AM.

Looking at my Gmail inbox this morning, and feeling like a bad Tetris player as I watched the lines pile up far faster than I could clear them out, I decided to take a moment and tally my email count for the past month.

On average: just over 200 pieces of 'legit' email and just short of 450 pieces of spam, each and every day.

Looks like it's time to return to my old trick of stopping sleeping and gong to the bathroom to free up time.

Re-run: Eyeballing
Filed May 22, 2006 10:56 PM.

[An ex-girlfriend, after reading through too much of this site for either of our good, once observed that my life appeared to be composed largely of recurring patterns, the central one being: "sleeplessness, illness, then the avid (drunken) pursuit of women."

And while, at the moment, I'm mainly entrenched in avid (drunken) pursuit, I also seem to find myself repeating other regular life patterns. At least once a month, I come up with something I'd like to blog about, then am hit with a vague sense that I've compulsively overanalyzed the topic before. A quick search of the archives invariably yields a post - usually about two years back - nearly verbatim to the one I'd just begun sketching out in my head.

Normally, that sends me back to the drawing boards. But, if I've forgotten about the post, odds are you have, too. And as I rarely give any of my blogged ramblings the careful edit they deserve, I've decided to mash better re-drafting with the apparently cyclical nature of my life.

Hence forth, when I catch myself about to re-write something I've already pondered through, I'll instead be editing the previous post, then throwing it up here anew labeled 're-run'.

As they say, one good turn deserves another.]

Having spent much of my life in photography (and now, in film), I'm obsessive about visual clarity. Which is why, despite my prescription being repeatedly described as 'totally pansy' by those who really need their glasses, I wear mine all the time. I have since getting my first pair, in eleventh grade - bought, initially, to help me read the board from my customary back row seat, rather than force a move to the front.

To be accurate, throughout most of college, I actually rotated contacts in about half the time. But, since moving to New York some five years back, I've slowly drifted away from rotating. Perhaps it's my hectic bags-below-the-eyes-inducing schedule, the irritating grit of city air, or a desire for the faux-intellectual look a good pair of spectacles provides. Whatever the reason, my contacts have fallen by the wayside.

I realized as much last week, and have since been trying to work contacts back into regular use. And, by and large, it's been an excellent change. But there's one major downside: I awake constantly throughout the night, suddenly convinced I forgot to remove the contacts before going to sleep, leaving me hours deep in irreparable corneal damage.

I should, at this point, admit that I'm a complete and total hypochondriac, the combination of medical knowledge, vivid imagination, and general neurosis conspiring to convince me - often aided by Google symptom-searching ("headache and slight fever? I knew it! Malaria!!!") - that my world is coming to a slow and painful end.

This is particularly true with contacts, due to a booklet I once read at the optometrist's office on the potential dangers of sleeping in contacts not approved for 'continuous use'. In pictures and gory written detail, the booklet laid out the risks of 'serious eye infection' and 'abnormal corneal blood vessel growth'. It is the second that most plagues my imagination, as the line between vodka-induced 'harmlessly bloodshot' and slept-in-contacts-induced 'abnormal blood vessel growth' is a distinction admittedly beyond my abilities of accurate self-diagnosis.

Fortunately, unlike in the case of goiter, femoral hernia, or any of the other imagined afflictions I woefully cast upon myself, shaking slept-in-contacts fears should be rather easy - if I'm not actually wearing the contacts as I sleep, I'm fine. Less fortunately, my contacts-less vision is good enough that, in a darkened room without any distant objects to stare at, I'm often unable to decide whether I am, in fact, wearing them or not, at least without repeatedly poking myself in the eyeball.

Because my contacts are one day disposables, I've now stumbled upon a workable solution: after removing them, I leave them on my night-stand. Waking up at three in the morning, then, I'm able to simply look over at the small silicone discs slowly drying out to relieve my worries and put myself back to sleep. Gross perhaps, but certainly better than abnormal corneal blood vessel growth. Or, at least, better than fears of it. As is the case with most of my hypochondriacal self-diagnoses, I happily doubt I'll ever have the chance to experience the real thing.

Like a Chihuahua
Filed May 18, 2006 4:43 PM.

This afternoon, I discovered that, with the din of blow-dryers in the background, "just a trim, please, I'm trying to grow my hair out a bit" apparently sounds exactly like "please whip out the buzz-clippers and sheer off most of my hair."

The Medium Tail
Filed May 18, 2006 9:55 AM.

[Though we dropped the name Long Tail Releasing for Cyan's distribution arm largely because having two different company names was confusing the hell out of people, I've also had increasing reservations about the extensive philosphical waxing going on around the internet about the power and importance of the Long Tail effect in film.

As I continually receive emails asking for my thoughts on the matter, I thought I'd post my usual response here.]

There's a great David Foster Wallace essay about television, "E Pluribus Unum", in which Wallace states:

TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.

Which, essentially, is the classic argument for the importance of the Long Tail in media: if only we could democratize distribution sufficiently, we could let all this wonderful, refined niche content find its own set of consumers!

That's a lovely idea. But, speaking as someone who gets sent reams of unreleased indie films each day, I can definitively say most of the film along the far end of the Long Tail isn't there because it's niche-ey, it's there because it's remarkably badly made.

So, at some level, the Long Tail is the result of a sort of Darwinian winnowing process, in which the 15,000 films submitted each year to Sundance, Cannes and TriBeCa are pared to the hundred or so fit for broader consumption. And, looking back over the past ten years, as the number of films submitted to festivals has exploded yet the overall quality of films released hasn't much changed, I'm not sure that a larger quantity of films along the tail necessarily dictates better films at the head.

However, I do believe that, between the crap in the Long Tail, and the major releases in the head, there exists a sort of 'medium tail' - content too small to justify release given the economics of traditional film distribution, yet quite good and potentially highly appealing to at least a specific, focused audience group. That's where changes in how film distribution works should really intersect with Long Tail thinking in a positive way.

Conversely
Filed May 15, 2006 10:21 PM.

[An old Buddy Hackett joke]

A guy goes into a doctor's office; he's got a dot on his forehead.

The doctor says, 'Oh my God, I've never seen this before, but I read about it in medical school.'

The guy says, 'Well, doctor, what is it?'

'Well, in six weeks you are going to have a penis growing out of your forehead.'

The guy says, 'Well, doc, cut it off.'

The doctor replies, 'I can't cut it off; it's attached to your brain, you'd die.'

So the guy says, 'So, doctor, what you're telling me, is that in six weeks, every morning when I wake up and look in the mirror, I'm going to see a penis growing out of my forehead?'

And the doctor says, 'Ah, no, no, no, no. You won't see it. The balls will cover your eyes.'

How to Carve an Ox
Filed May 15, 2006 10:05 PM.

[An excerpt from the Chuang Tzu]

Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee - zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou music.

"Ah, this is marvelous!" said Lord Wen-hui. "Imagine skill reaching such heights!"

Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, "What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now - now I go at it by spirit and don't look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.

"A good cook changes his knife once a year-because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month-because he hacks. I've had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I've cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness into such spaces. There's plenty of room - more than enough for the blade to play about in. That's why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.

"However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I'm doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety until - flop! - the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away."

"Excellent!" said Lord Wen-hui. "I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!"

Mamma Mia
Filed May 14, 2006 9:32 AM.

One afternoon, when my brother and I were about 5 and 8, respectively, our mother picked us up from school in the family Volvo. She then drove down the road about five hundred feet before announcing that she wasn't our mother, but rather an alien, who had come to kidnap us.

Obviously, a debate about this ensued, with my brother and me insisting that she was, in fact, our mother, and her insisting, no, in fact, she was an alien, but that the other aliens had just done a remarkably good job in making her look precisely like our mother. The debate raged for nearly the entire ride home, with my mother holding out just long enough for my brother and I to start developing serious doubts.

To this day, I'm not entirely sure what possessed her to do that, but if she were to do it again, I also wouldn't be terrribly surprised. Because, while she's smart and articulate and logical and organized and successful, my mother also jumps on beds and pushes people into swimming pools without warning.

Or, at least, without much warning; by now, my brother and I have both learned to recognize that certain gleam in her eyes which serves as the signal for both of us to run for our lives.

Apparently, my mother inherited this troublemaking streak from her own mother, who once, while measuring her for a skirt she was shortening, poked my mom in the posterior with a pin, "just to see what would happen."

So, on this Mother's Day, to any readers who have been following along with self-aggrandizement and wondering what the hell is wrong with me, I say: go ask my mom. Much as she'd deny it, her genes clearly account for at least half of the whack-job traits I possess today.

Happy Mothers Day to moms everywhere, but especially to my own, because, frankly, she's better than yours.

Do You Know What it Means
Filed May 12, 2006 1:54 AM.

Ever since my first visit, well over a decade back, I've loved New Orleans. Aside from New York and San Francisco, it's the only place in the continental United States I daydream of, feel the need to return to, over and over.

Yet, as I drove along I-10 towards the Crescent City earlier this week, my stomach churned with apprehension, unsure of how the city - and my love of it - had fared Katrina.

As we closed in, the highway was lined with downed trees and abandoned strip malls, buildings reduced to shells and piles of rubble. We parked just outside the French Quarter, amidst broken windows and shutters hanging loose on their hinges.

Iberville Street was oddly empty as walked to the Acme Oyster House, to join some local friends for lunch. The restaurant, at least, was full, and, waiting for a table, I spoke with some Louisianans at the bar. And, in that one conversation, all my fears subsided.

I recognized the way they talked of the hurricane, of their surprise that friends and relatives would even suggest they consider uprooting their lives and moving somewhere else. I recognized it because I had said and felt precisely the same things, living in Manhattan in the wake of 9/11.

I don't know if some cities have a spirit and character that carries them through disaster, or if, like a cornered animal, nearly any would pull together in that same intense yet casual way were its existence threatened.

But I knew, at least, that New Orleans had. That, as we in the rest of the country worried on their behalf, fretted and opined about whether the city would ever be the same, the people who lived there had already set aside such academic debate, consumed instead with the day-by-day process of carrying on with life.

By the time I left Louisiana the next morning, continuing on I-10 towards Austin, my thoughts were already drifting back towards the city behind me. If it ever slept, I'd tell New Orleans to wait up for me; it won't be long until I'm back.

Home Again
Filed May 11, 2006 12:46 AM.

Though I set out on this week's road trip with lofty blogging intentions, two problems quickly became clear: First, none of the people we stayed with had wireless internet access. Second, our time was so thoroughly consumed with driving, eating, driving, drinking, driving, buying gas, driving and driving some more that blogging (and, for that matter, sleep) just didn't seem to fit.

As of this evening, I'm back home safe and in one piece. But I suspect I'll need a bit more recovery time yet before I can coherently recap any of the trip. Apparently, hitting six states* in five days really wears you out.

* For those following along at home: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

On the Road
Filed May 4, 2006 10:42 AM.

I head out tomorrow night on a road trip with former roommates Colin and James. Though the dysfunctional dynamic between the three of us is long honed, we'll also be joined by the dynamic Alicia Van Couvering, which should add a whole new layer to the boiling, barely concealed hatred we'll all doubtless feel for each other by the end of that much time wedged together in a small car.

We fly in to Atlanta on Friday evening, then head down to Athens, Georgia on Saturday. Sunday is Pensacola, Monday is New Orleans, and Tuesday is Austin. I fly back to New York on Wednesday to wrangle the three-ring circus that is Cyan Pictures these days, though the rest of the crew will continue motoring west, all the way to Los Angeles.

Apparently, we're also making a film as part of the road trip, based on a short story by one of our Yale classmates, though I've still yet to wrap my brain around exactly what that's going to entail.

But, I'm armed with a laptop and digital camera, and will do my best to chronicle the misadventures as they unfold.

Wish us safe driving, and round up the bail money in advance.

Cantankerous
Filed May 3, 2006 11:31 AM.

As my last post led more than a handful of female readers to write in saying how 'sweet' the sentiment was, I spent a drunken train ride back from Connecticut last night brainstorming potential posts about beating children and small animals, as a way to counterbalance and regain some semblance of masculine street cred.

If anyone has a baby seal for me to club, say, send it along.

The Looking Glass
Filed May 1, 2006 10:27 PM.

`Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. `Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

`I don't much care where--' said Alice.

`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

I've long been fascinated by the neurobiology of attention - the interactions of parts of our brains like the hypothalamus and the reticular activation system. Each day, all day, we're bombarded by sensations; yet, somehow, we filter out the vast majority, letting through a select few. Reading a book, we lose ourselves in the pages, blocking out completely the world around us. Or, talking at a cocktail party, we tune down others' conversations, focusing in on just the words of our conversational companions.

I'm reminded of that particularly when I buy something new. I remember, in college, purchasing a Toyota Celica, and suddenly finding myself passing hundreds of other Celicas on the highways and streets. Not because, of course, people had suddenly rushed out to lease similar cars; but, rather, because my brain decided the ones that had always been out there were, for the first time, interesting enough to pass through to my conscious mind.

All of which is to say that I believe the brain is largely cybernetic. Not in the computerized sense of the word, but closer to it's Greek root, 'kybernetes', which means something akin to 'steersman'. It begins with an end in mind, then focuses us on and readjusts us towards those things that bring us closer and closer to that goal.

Which leaves us floundering, then, when the target isn't clearly locked; without somewhere we want to end up, like Alice, it doesn't much matter which way we go.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately, mainly in the context of dating, of big city romance. With so many potential partners - an embarrassment of riches - we urban singles are weighed down by the tyranny of choice. There are so many people who might be right, and so many more who might be just a bit righter still than whomever we're currently with.

But most of us, at a very basic level, don't have any idea of what 'right' looks or feels like in the first place. We drink our way from date to date, trying to guess, hoping our hearts or guts or friends or mothers, or even the Cheshire Cat, will somehow jump in to tell us when we've found it.

So, for weeks, I've been brainstorming my way through my own sense of 'right', my own list of qualities I think I'm looking for. I've been quietly analyzing the long happily married couples I know, squaring that with my own experience, adding ideas, crossing off items, and boiling things down to the bare essentials: things I can look for that, alongside the requisite lightning bolt, would leave me happily ever after. In short, a target, an end in mind that my subconscious might, day by day, guide me towards.

And while my list is still brewing, certainly not yet ready for public consumption, I did, earlier this week, find at least one item that seems sure to make the final cut. Dr. Dan Gottlieb, a quadriplegic psychologist and guest on NPR's Fresh Air, related the story of a young woman who he'd seen in his practice. "I feel like my soul is a prism," she told him. "But everybody sees just one color. Nobody sees the prism."

As someone too long practiced at playing social chameleon, I find her concern hits particularly close to home. Which is why, among anything else, I can see the appeal, or perhaps the necessity, of ending up with someone with whom I could always be my full, garishly multi-colored self.

Plus Side, Updated Filed May 31, 2006 3:32 PM.

On the Plus Side Filed May 31, 2006 12:12 AM.

Lightning Round Filed May 30, 2006 9:51 PM.

Why I'm Not Blogging Filed May 26, 2006 11:49 AM.

Re-run: Eyeballing Filed May 22, 2006 10:56 PM.

Like a Chihuahua Filed May 18, 2006 4:43 PM.

The Medium Tail Filed May 18, 2006 9:55 AM.

Conversely Filed May 15, 2006 10:21 PM.

How to Carve an Ox Filed May 15, 2006 10:05 PM.

Mamma Mia Filed May 14, 2006 9:32 AM.

Do You Know What it Means Filed May 12, 2006 1:54 AM.

Home Again Filed May 11, 2006 12:46 AM.

On the Road Filed May 4, 2006 10:42 AM.

Cantankerous Filed May 3, 2006 11:31 AM.

The Looking Glass Filed May 1, 2006 10:27 PM.