Sunday, October 29, 2006

I leave for the West Coast tomorrow morning. Meetings in San Francisco. A conference in San Jose. Then, it's up to Seattle for more meetings, and home on Thursday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Sarah's work just kicked into high gear, and she's a bit concerned how she's going to handle AsherCare with me on the West Coast. Anyone want to pitch in?

Quick weekend recap:

  • I finished the midterm 30 minutes prior to the deadline. 3,600 words, the last 400 of which ended up being an indictment of Marxism. That was not part of the question, and should at best be discarded as irrelevant.

  • Sarah and I went to the Tea Lounge to see Avishai Cohen's new jazz quartet. Some pretty sick stuff.

  • Halloween party this afternoon at Sabrina and Andy's apartment. Everyone in Sarah's moms group went. Asher's costume consisted of his bathrobe with a "Rocky Balboa" sign sewed on the back.
  • Thursday, October 26, 2006

    I'm 13% of the way through this midterm, and pondering the phenomenon that the melody in Pavement's "Silence Kit" is a rip off of Buddy Holly's "Everyday."

    I'm procrastinating.

    I've been trained to be succinct, dammit. Why should I say in 3,000 words what I can say in 1,500?
    Just got the midterm exam. Three questions. 3,000 words. Two days (minus business hours).

    Luckily, two out of the three are on Heidegger, Plato and Benjamin - my faves.
    Pass The Whippits

    Asher, Sarah and I all have stuffed noses that woke us up before 5 in the morning.

    Midterm gets sent out today at noon. I have 48 hours to complete, but only about 8 hours to work on it.

    The vendor that's handling the functional specs for the redesign bailed on us.

    Pavement's first two records are on auto-repeat right now.

    Tuesday, October 24, 2006

    I'm going to Amoeba Records next week. What are five 2006 releases that I should pick up?
    Schedules. Spinning Out of control. Must. Find. More. Time.

    I've got a take-home midterm on Thursday that's due Saturday. I've got a conference the following Tuesday, where I'm on a panel that will require a fair amount of last-minute studying. And, I've got the usual domestic milieu of unpaid bills, co-op responsibilities, a needy-but-lovely son, and an under-the-weather wife.

    On a more positive note, Sarah and I went out this past weekend. Like, by ourselves. Until midnight.

    Sarah's a huge Paul Simon fan, and he was doing a one-night engagement at Radio City Music Hall. Our friends the Real Estate Mogul and the Corporate Lawyer happened to have extra tickets. My not-so-inner cynic/music snob was prepared for a boring, 45 minute show, packed with the kind of mediocrity served up by washed-up artists who trade on their earlier fame to sell a few hundred thousand records of new and limp material. Not so, this time. Paul Simon puts on one hell of a show.

    Thursday, October 19, 2006

    Where My Head's At

    I've had this recurring dream.

    In my dream, it's the morning after Election Day. I'd gone to bed the previous night at 2 a.m., with control of Congress still up in the air.

    I look over at the clock, see that it's 6:30 a.m., and quickly shake the last tendrils of sleep from my brain, replacing them with fear, hope, and exhiliration. Did we take the House back? Is the Senate now a Democratic majority? Are there still major races that are too close to call?

    Then, I wake up for real. And it's 3:17 a.m., 19 days (20 days, 21...) before the Election.

    Wednesday, October 18, 2006

    Sarah had to go into work early today, so I dropped Asher off at school.

    This was my first time witnessing the parade of Park Slope parents doing the day care march, and it was quite the scene. Dozens of children and parents were shuffling up the side streets with me, forming a river of strollers, Thomas the Train backpacks, briefcases, and business suits. It was literally an all-ages commute.

    As we passed each pre-school and day care, little toddler tributaries broke off. Some streamed into Garfield Temple. Others were bound for Berkeley Carroll. We got out of the river at Chai Tots, where Asher headed straight for the fish tank, and ignored my repeated "goodbyes."

    Tuesday, October 17, 2006

    I have seen the future of internet video, and it is Move Networks.

    Monday, October 16, 2006

    Eight things I learned this weekend
    (in temporal order)



    1. If you let your kid play in the street during a block party, you're in danger of undoing a year's worth of "don't run out into the street" training.

    2. I don't want to live in a small town, but Sloatsburg sure does have cool hiking nearby (see above image). And it's only a 45 minute commute to Manhattan.

    3. The 45 minute commute from Sloatsburg to Manhattan is three hours in traffic.

    4. Religious Jews who are stoners will not smoke pot on Yom Tov unless they can light off a pre-existing flame.

    5. Hans Mangus Enzensberger is smart. Theodor Adorno is funny (but probably didn't mean to be). Karl Marx is boring - but I already knew that.

    6. One of the most uptight, secretive guys I knew in college now works at a medicinal marijuana farm.

    7. One of the most crazy, on-the-edge guys I knew in college now works for a corporate law firm representing manufacturing companies in consumer negligence suits.

    8. Weddings are funny ways to find out about people you used to know in college.

    Thursday, October 12, 2006

    Sarah edited this for a DVD a while ago. Tonight, I figured out how to compress and post it.

    Testing the ability to embed a video
    (and re-living a great moment in political history)

    Wednesday, October 11, 2006

    Random Notes

  • Last night, I met some ex-NPD colleagues for a quick drink before class at a rooftop bar called 230 Fifth. It was very Manhattan - view of the Empire State Building, scantily-clad waitresses and $14 beers.

  • Class was relatively uneventful. We had a guest professor who explained Habermas better than Habermas does. Got into a fun debate with a fellow student named Mushon who is spearheading some sort of egalitarian Internet design project called ShiftSpace in his spare time.

  • I had a dream last night that my sister-in-law Debbie kept coming over to smoke pot in our bedroom.

  • Busy weekend coming up: Debbie's having a housewarming party on Saturday night. Giles and Susie are getting married on Sunday night.
  • Monday, October 09, 2006

    Congratulations to Zahavah Levine, General Counsel at YouTube!

    Why, it seems like just yesterday that Zahavah was working at listen.com, drinking at the Rite Spot dive bar, and driving the shittiest car known to man. Today, YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 Billion.

    It's been a long time since a friend of mine hit the jackpot on that thar internet thing. And this one's a doozy.

    Saturday, October 07, 2006

    The Lost Generation

    I was sick to death of Laurie Berkner, Sandra Boynton, and Dan Zanes tonight, so I begged Sarah to put on some grown-up music.

    "What's your preference?," she asked.

    "Anything, just as long as its not kids music."

    So, she put on Simon and Garfunkel.

    I guess I should have specified which generation of grown-up music.

    Wednesday, October 04, 2006





    I'm afraid I'm That Annoying Grad Student.

    You know - the one that dominates the conversation, contradicting the professor and dismissing the premise of the author's argument that's being discussed. I usually hold back, but last night, it was too familiar a topic - Marshall McLuhan.

    Some things to keep in mind:

    1) I've had a bit of time to think about this stuff. Understanding Media was assigned reading in one of my freshman seminars back in 1991. More generally, any undergraduate Communications or Rhetoric class (of which I took more than my fair share) is going to be peppered with references to McLuhan. And then there's the whole techno-shamanistic bent that has been getting me off for years, since.

    2) One thing that always amused my undergrad professors is that I never swallowed wholesale the philosophies we studied. Instead, I preferred to explicitly recognize the rhetoric of extremes (used by EVERY philosopher to make a point), and take the more instructive/useful parts of the readings. This was in direct contrast to the other students in my class who engaged in the kind of "close-reading" that's really more akin to the rabbit-hole exegesis practiced by religious thinkers who use God to justify God.

    So, when we started talking about McLuhan's whole "hot" vs. "cold" media, and people were getting hung up on his definition of television as the ultimate particpatory medium, I had to interrupt.

  • "Hot vs. Cold" is nothing more than a soundbyte gone awry. It has nothing to do with pixellated images, despite what he says.

  • Let's put this in historical context. The only reason he lauds television as the ultimate participatory medium is that he's trying to insert himself squarely in the middle of one of the main popular debates of the 1960s - the effect and potential of television (Those damn kids and their tv!). This was the first generation that grew up in front of the set.

  • It's more useful to look at media in terms of their participatory levels, not in terms of "hot" or "cold." McLuhan's terms get you no where.

  • A medium that's largely non-participatory is not "bad." It's not "good." It simply "is." The best way to approach study of this quality is to see how it is used.
  • Tuesday, October 03, 2006

    Fun weekend with the fam.

    Yom Kippur sucked, as usual.

    Asher got me sick. Now I'm doped up on Sudafed.

    I just got tapped to speak at a conference in the Bay Area at the end of the month.

    Class tonight. Still have 20 pages left of reading.

    Anything I've missed?