irreducible figure

The Other SoCal Industry

2011-05-14T14:15:00.000-07:00

Developing a start-up is quite like running for office. You shake plenty of hands, make friends of strangers, and venture into unknown territory in hopes of either conquering or turning it friendly.

Since my departure from the film business in 2006, my changing social circle and professional ambitions have lured me away from one very prominent Southern California industry, Hollywood, toward another one, less prominent yet deeply rooted in Los Angeles lore.

In a word, aerospace. Fortunately, as a Pasadena native, I may have an unfair advantage.

Before I was old enough to ride a bike, I knew what Lockheed was. I knew that my great-uncle Frank (always Tio, to me), worked long hours for them at Burbank, later Palmdale. I knew he could never talk about his work, like he never talked about his service in WWII, but I also knew that he was good at his job. Lockheed paid him well, and in turn, Tio later paid for my tuition at USC, though I think he would have preferred I attend Caltech, like he did.

Before I knew how to drive, I knew my uncle Eric was not like most other uncles. He traveled the world, working for NASA, his calendar at home had names like KEK and Ames scrawled on it, and he wore his hair very long (my cousins refered to him as Doc, in homage to Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown from the movie Back to the Future). Uncle Eric's frequent flyer miles were generously passed around for various trips and vacations, and I was their grateful recipient on more than a few occasions.

Over the past year, while developing my start-up company, I cannot help but reflect with a sense of gratitude my early introduction to the world of aerospace, science, and technology.

Though perhaps not as glamorous as the film business, the Southern California aerospace community offered me a glimpse into the world that I am now proud to call friendly territory, for both personal and professional reasons. And frankly, a photo of my younger brother and I next to Lockheed's famous F-117 Steath Fighter is much cooler than even the most notorious movie star, but, naturally, I might well be biased.

Practical Philosophy

2011-04-26T16:03:00.000-07:00

For more than 3 months, this blog sat sadly ignored, but not without good reason. In my quest to focus more closely on my entrepreneurial ambitions, I have abandoned entirely the consumption of alcohol and other illicit substances that marked a great many days of my youth.

During the past seven months, I have felt less of need to write down my thoughts, ideas, and observations, and more insistent a need to put these qualities and philosophies to work.

Less reflection, far more action.

In my nascent moments of gentle clarity it was The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin that offered key insights. Here, I felt and still feel, lies a kindred spirit.

Franklin's 13 Virtues offer a daily, practical means to govern one's time, and, perhaps most importantly, build an aggregate of behavior in which attainment of one virtue is not possible without the mastery of the one prior. Having little use for religion in my personal life, I've found that practical philosophy and moral support outside of a religious context to be in short supply, especially in these United States.

Franklin's autobiography is rife with such instruction.

So, as my occasional blogging becomes even less occasional, I will share some of the advice that Franklin put down in his autobiography which I found useful, in case it is a long while before I return.

"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do." [pg. 27]

Franklin was a noted polymath, but, as I might remark in conversation, knew how to "keep his flavors sorted." His third virtue, that or Order, states: "Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time."

The inventions, business ventures, statesmanship, political discourse, and scientific contribution that unfolded through Franklin's lifetime would appear comfortably couched as an act of pure, manic genius. Though clearly brilliant, these acts were acutely reasonable given his plain-faced approach: "I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind if he first forms a good plan." [pg. 75]

His key to happiness was not grand endeavor, but steady, incremental change. "Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur everyday." [pg. 101]

Much of Franklin's philosophy was borrowed, especially that which he put down in his Poor Richard's Almanack, proving himself as much artistically derivative(i.e. creative theft), as he was entrepreneurially inclined.

As the seeds of own entrepreneurial endeavors begin to sprout I can't help but remember one of my favorite of Poor Richard's poetic quotes:

"If you would not be forgotten,

as soon as you are dead and rotten,

either write things worth reading,

or do things worth the writing."

I've been writing professionally since 2006. It would appear that a stint of action might be necessary to balance out those efforts.

Leadership Strategies: Power vs. Control

2011-01-25T19:44:00.000-08:00

Unlike many young people of my generation (I will turn 30 next month) I don't have a single tattoo. My reasoning is that my ideas, beliefs, and philosophies undergo constant evaluation & evolution, and tattoos, more/less, are permanent.

An emerging perspective that I've developed regarding people in positions of leadership is a subtle yet pronounced distinction between two types of success and the role specific behavior plays in that success.

One type of success relies primarily on control. These are your micro-managers, your domineering bosses, the person at the office or job site who explicitly instructs, with fine detail, each aspect of the job you are expected to perform. These bosses have likely worked their way up the ranks, previously working that job that you currently hold, or have seen first-hand other individuals make mistakes that they, the boss, are hellbent on avoiding any repetition of. They fundamentally believe that the actions of people who report to them are both within their reach and quantifiable. While not often widely loved for their roles within an organization, control-oriented individuals very often produce quality results.

Another type of success relies on power. These are your charismatic thought-leaders, the people within the organization that many people revere but who are often hated by a concentrated few because they have a tendency to ascend quickly or enter said organization without equal experience or education. Power-brokers tend to rise quickly because they rely on social connections and favor banking (also called parallel currencies), to build collaborative and strategic partnerships. Those relationships earn difficult to quantify social value but are often redeemed for powerful positions, influence, or access. Influence is key to power-oriented leaders because they usually believe that, fundamentally, people are beyond their control, unless their favor is won over, unless they have some "skin in the game." Power players often display a different managerial philosophy, believing that people function more effectively without hands-on direction.

In the last month two extremely well written articles have been published that illuminate with expert specificity these different philosophies.

The first, published in the Wall Street Journal, begins with a list by a Chinese-American writer on the great many 'normal' activities that she did not allow her children to do, very explicit control strategies that foster individual excellence and parentally-spurred discipline. The list of forbidden activities includes:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

The second, published in the New Yorker magazine does an excellent job itemizing the trappings of what writer David Brooks calls, The Composure Class. In his article entitled Social Animal, Brooks writes:

The traits that do make a difference are poorly understood, and can’t be taught in a classroom, no matter what the tuition: the ability to understand and inspire people; to read situations and discern the underlying patterns; to build trusting relationships; to recognize and correct one’s shortcomings; to imagine alternate futures.

I can say that without hesitation, my own guiding philosophies fall much closer in the spectrum toward favoring the importance of power, over control. In my opinion and experience, to get the best out of people, you need to allow them to make their own choices, which may in fact include making their own mistakes. Providing for the possibility of individual freedom, coupled with hierarchical responsibility.

For many of my business practices that demands competition, I look to strategists like Sun Tzu and his treatise The Art of War. However, much of today's world demands not competition from its ambitious achievers, but expertly executed cooperation.

Though, as I've previously stated, my guiding philosophies do change over time (I am fundamentally and inherently pragmatic, i.e. stick with what works), cooperative influence based on power seems, at this time, the best fit for fostering success. I am not ready to get the word 'power' tattooed anywhere on my body, but I do recognize it importance and will use its tactics so long as they serve me, and the organizations and social networks with whom I associate, well.

Worthy Competition

2010-12-28T18:01:00.000-08:00

Its been said that Coca Cola's true rival is not Pepsi, but water.

That Facebook's competitor is not Twitter or MySpace but, in fact, email.

And so it goes, the only real competition for a singular creative talent is not another artist, but the concept of God.

As an artist, you will often find yourself in the company of others who resemble you, both in terms of their productive output & efforts, or their respective creative worldview. It can be a bit daunting, if not entirely dissuasive, to encounter other talented individuals whose work forces your to examine your own. Comparing yourself in this way is terribly counterproductive.

However, if you realign your perspective to compare yourself to the idea of God, not only will you shift the competitive advantage to your favor by usurping the possibility of competing with another artist, you will fundamentally empower yourself by better defining your work, whatever the specific field or medium may be, in the context of grace, style, and unparalleled productivity. The central notion being that in the presence of greatness, even the toughest competitor will shirk away and be left behind.

First, a brief word on "the concept of God." As previously established, I am not a religious person. I don't find one particular religion to be altogether useful. Within all religions, however, there exists a creation myth, persisting lore that explains how human beings arrived on Earth, and what their intentions and obligations were after their arrival. The idea of breathing life into an otherwise devoid landscape is incredibly useful, not only to the religiously observant, but to the faithful artist.

Christian, Islamic, and Judeo religions and their concept of a God arriving and providing light is referred to as an ex nihilo creation myth; Latin, meaning from nothing. This idea might prove helpful to photographers or filmmakers, whose work has been couched as "painting with light." You're not a human lugging a camera and coaxing a pose or a performance out of your subject. Nor are you capturing a landscape's beauty or an urban alley's filthy realism. You are a deity, breathing light into a void where none existed previously.

Another creation myth, is the idea of the "Earth-diver." In Earth-diver stories, which have been found in Native American, Chukchi, Tatar, Finno-Urgian people, a divine power sends an animal into primal waters to dig up sand or mud from which to build habitable land. What better metaphor for a writer, painter, or sculptor, plumbing the murky depths of the mind's interior to find something universal upon which to build their ideas, their perspective.

If I had to choose my own idea of God to work with, I would likely select it from the Greek or Roman tradition of theology. Ancient Greek poets and historians conceived elaborate dramatic plots from which each god descends from his or her own genealogy, pursues differing interests, has a certain area of expertise, and is governed by a unique personality. Their Gods were basically people, granted with supernatural abilities.

In the Heroic Age of Greek mythology, gods and heroes occupied the same sphere of existence. I can't think of a better way to explain the vast diversity of urban American environments like New York City and Los Angeles, where the gap between the most desired celebrities, savage businesspeople, and talented artists, is so vastly disparate from the omnipresent reality of abject poverty, common violence, and wasted urban landscapes.

In the later Roman empire, the previously worshipped sun gods Apollo and Helios were collapsed into Sol Invictus, the invincible sun, by the Roman emperor Aurelian. Aurelian is credited for selecting December 25, then thought to be the winter solstice, as an important day of observance and why Sunday (think SUN-day) is considered a holy day (Romans traditionally, to varying degrees, worshipped the sun). The iconography used to depict Invictus Sol survives today and can be compared to The Statue of Liberty.

I like the idea of the sun, as my idea of God, as the sun, our parent star, is responsible for all life and energy on our planet and quite literally banishes darkness, providing order and beauty to the otherwise lifeless rocky void of Earth.

Whichever your choice may be, a spirit creature or a divine being, the central tenet here is that focussing other artists will not aid you in any way with respect to developing your talent. I'm off to better hone my god complex, but I'll leave you with this quote from American writer David Foster Wallace, from his magnum opus Infinite Jest:

"Feral talent is its own set of expectations and can abandon you at any one of the detours of so-called normal American life, so be on guard."

Signal to Noise

2010-12-13T13:35:00.001-08:00

It doesn't matter how brilliant or savage you may well be, you will never conquer the world alone.

Be them friends, allies, consorts, or minions, you will need them on your side. Of tantamount importance is having the "right" or most effective people in your proverbial corner.

Call me a snob and I'll say, I'm selective.

Call me an elitist and I'll say, I have refined taste.

In fact this singular quality, good taste, may be the most important necessity for the "finer things" (happiness, success, accomplishment, creativity, etc), a marked ability to filter the juicy signal from the superfluous noise.

Consider, if you will, one linguistic aspect of Jewish culture to better demonstrate my point.

First, I will state, definitively, that I am not religious in any way, shape, form, or variant. Nor am I agnostic. I firmly believe that religion is more/less the memetic persistence of fanciful stories (i.e. myth).

Second, I will also state, that growing up in the Thousand Oaks area (suburban Los Angeles), gave me a unique look at, largely secular, modern Jewish culture.

In Thousand Oaks I learned to correlate being Jewish with being intelligent (and often being a picky eater). In high school my first two girlfriends were Jewish and in elementary school my best friend was Jewish. My first employer, an entrepreneur from Pittsburgh, was Jewish. Suffice it to say, I may not be "chosen," but I am most certainly, "tribe friendly."

Which brings me to my point.

The idea of being chosen (a Jew) versus being non-Jewish (a Goy) illuminates a useful analogue for developing a keen sense of taste. No, not actually keeping the Sabbath holy or being bar mitzvah'd or eating Kosher, but remaining allied with the chosen people in your own life, in your personal and professional circle.

This certainly means different things for different people. I am often asked how I find time for photography, writing, friends, events, starting a new business, yard work, exercise, etc.

My secret, though obviously not well-kept, is to be extremely picky. Taking an inventory of who your personal chosen are and who the goyim are (i.e. signal to noise ratio), can help maintain a crucial balance in life (especially if your life revolves around poly-disciplinary participation in a great many things, like mine).

Who are the best movie directors? The finest photographers? The most gifted writers? The unique businesspeople? I am not suggesting that there are objective answers for any of these questions, rather that knowing the answers, within yourself becomes the first step toward greater and more distinguished accomplishment.

Ira Glass has more advice on this subject:

Los Angeles, Meta-Society Poster Child

2010-10-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

Tucked inside this unfurled geography is a totally decentralized network, simultaneously tethered and untethered to itself. Worlds within worlds. Bubbles within bubbles. Circles within circles. Nebulous, adrift, and ultimately alien.

There are likely innumerable more ways to say it, but through any lens, Los Angeles is *so* meta.

"We're all just background in each other's lives."

While writing this week at Swork Coffee in Eagle Rock, I happened upon Russ, an acquaintance that owns the eyewear shop where I bought my glasses. Russ spotted me, or more likely, my glasses, from across the coffee shop, and I recognized him immediately and approached to re-introduce myself. Both Russ and his female companion seemed to peer into my glasses as if trying to discern something. Then it dawned on me. They were likely thinking that was wearing only the frames, that I liked "the look," but did not actually need the glasses. For the record, I do.

"Los Angeles is a series of interconnected islands."

Russ's eyewear shop, Old Focals, was introduced to me by my musician neighbor, Scott, who was showing me around the storefronts near Colorado Boulevard and Eagle Rock Boulevard. Old Focals provides the retro glasses for the AMC series Mad Men. I pieced this factoid together, after purchasing my glasses, when Russ passed me the Old Focals business card.

"Oh, from Mad Men. That must make you Russ." I remember saying.

"And you must read the credits." replied Russ. Indeed, so.

Each of these little islands of Los Angeles exports its own unique resources, be them tangible or intangible. Once exported, each respective resource can be changed or co-opted into something else, often bastardized, by those who consume it. Russ and his companion were scanning for exactly that, for evidence of the authentic remaining intact beyond its island haven, or of being absorbed into something shameful and less real.

My closest friend works in the film business and his circle does the same, demonstrating fraternal camaraderie among insiders and vast skepticism toward perceived outsiders. Their tastes are the best, at least to them, and they bow to creative "gods" of their own merry devising. My neighbor Scott and his musician friends have their circle, as well, replete with its own customs, rituals, and observances.

Personally, I best identify with the poly-disciplinary Mindshare LA circle, and the related tech, science, and start-up community, who tend to be more inclusive and inquisitive. I also, however, occasionally move in progressive political circles as well, circles which are extremely suspicious of outsiders.

Additionally, I count myself as a photographer and a writer, roles that allow me to move freely between circles, but share little island real estate with those of the same ilk. The majority of writers and photographers that I've met prefer to work alone and, in my experience, hate or speedily dismiss other writers and photographers.

"I don't miss the kingdom, but I do miss the kings."

In many ways, this meta-city is emblematic of our still maturing information age, where decentralized networks have long ago overtaken the previous hierarchy of top-down organization. There is nothing ultimately "wrong" with this, a more modern method. Its the price of admission for a city that is indeed still rather paradise-like, multicultural, progressive, and unique. I don't dislike Los Angeles. It is, after all, my home base. I do however, very often, miss New York.

A Night with Prom Queen

2010-09-22T18:24:00.000-07:00

Hear the name Julia Allison and a constellation of words likely spring to mind. Journalist. Blogger. Pundit. New York City. I began to follow her on Twitter at the behest of a friend who bent a sympathetic ear toward my kvetching about my recent move back to Los Angeles from NYC. I knew very little about her, personally or professionally. In her tweets, Julia requested style feedback concerning celebrities I held little regard for: Justin Bieber, Nick Thune, Blair Fowler. Who are these people? I felt somehow out of the loop, especially considering that I am Ms. Allison’s senior by exactly eleven days.

Still, like many people who have called NYC home, I was happy to hear the occasional snatch of gossip from someone who appeared, on television at least, to be an authority on such matters. Julia Allison remained among the 150 or so Twitter accounts that I followed and kept up with on a semi-regular basis.

Several Sunday mornings previous, having little planned for the day, I reposed in my bed and scrolled through my Blackberry, checking email, Facebook, and, naturally, my Twitter feed. I noticed a tweet from Ms. Allison, roughly 30 minutes old.

Hey LA denizens - I have an extra ticket to the Streamy Awards - anyone want it?

The Streamy Awards (this, their 2nd annual) are a well-funded, corporate-sponsored, unfortunately named attempt to confer legitimacy on the mostly free, occasionally profitable, streamed content programming that makes up today’s Interweb.

Largely a nerd or techie-oriented event, I knew a few people who had attended the year previous. They included web developers and nascent comedy writers, folk who take YouTube quite seriously and consider their smart phones to be vital organs. To some degree, these are my people. I no longer own a TV, and thus, depend exclusively on the net for news and information.

I composed an email.

I did not anticipate receiving a response.

Julia Allison is followed on Twitter by 20,000+ people. I, by contrast, am followed by slightly north of one hundred people.

Twitter, by design, is the most fickle and striated of all social networking sites. Communication is limited to 140 characters, personal profile information remains uniquely spare, and there exists only one line in which a Twitter user may enter website information. Twitter’s growing popularity stands as lasting testament to our headline-thirsty society.

Two hours later I received the following reply:

Done!! One favor though: would you mind taking a few photos of me throughout the evening?

Fortuitous, indeed, as fine art portrait photography remains one of my great passions; the equivalent, perhaps, of inviting Kobe Bryant to a party, one the condition that, once arrived, he can sink a few free throws. After a handful of logistical details, we arranged to meet at the Orpheum, a beastly, aging Art Deco theater, in Downtown Los Angeles.

Walking up to the Orpheum, I felt a bit antsy, the more I considered my odd twist of fate. The internet, whether it be a blog, Twitter handle, website, or Facebook page, has a way of making web-surfers feel as though they “know” a celebrity by gleaning information from posted content.

Honestly though, I had no idea Julia Allison even existed until a few weeks previous. I knew she owned a pocket dog. I knew she recently broke up with her boyfriend whom she referred to, in previous tweets, as Prom King. I also knew she appeared to be beautiful. Beyond that, the whole situation seemed nebulous and alien. Part of me felt like a Make-A-Wish foundation recipient, malignant cancer cells somehow allowing for an otherwise un-grant-able desire.

After a volley of concise text messages, I located Ms. Allison, who was queuing up to walk the red carpet. She was, without question, haltingly beautiful. I asked a few stock questions.

“What brings you to LA?”
“Meetings.”

She wore a pink, high-waisted, strapless dress accompanied by hefty bling around her neck.

“Where did you go to college?”
-unintelligible- (I thought I heard her say Deutschland)

She fidgeted with her black leather purse and generally seemed nervous.

”Oh,” I responded, sarcastically, “and where’s that?”
“Um, in Washington DC.”

I later discovered she answered Georgetown. In my defense, I have disproportionately small ears, Ms. Allison is about foot shorter than me, even in heels, and the crowd around us was, well, a crowd. Noisy.

I was asked to hold her purse and camera, and then politely instructed to meet her “on the other side.” BRB, I believe, considering the event, would be the appropriate vernacular. Clearly, my red carpet debut was not going to occur this particular evening. I waded through massive lengths of high-bandwidth cables, shoulder-to-shoulder press figures, celebrity wranglers, event staff, security guards, and the occasional autograph-seeking fan. I spotted Justine Bateman and Illeana Douglas while waiting for Julia, who made it through fifty feet of red carpet in roughly ten minutes.

Observing Ms. Allison walk this gauntlet, I would imagine its something like what a lab rodent feels in the presence of experimenting, semi-sinister scientists. Flitting from camera to camera, posing regally in Plasticine perma-grin until asked to stop for an interview.

Once through, Julia thanked me graciously for waiting, apologized for seeming nervous, reporting that she had to present an award tonight, her first time doing so. We were whisked away by event staff, a female celebrity wrangler wearing a headset and microphone tethered to a hip-holstered walkie-talkie, who unloaded a dearth of event paperwork, all of which was given over to me. I now held my camera, Julia’s camera, four tickets, four party passes, and two official programs.

Julia kindly introduced me to several well-dressed male and female acquaintances, who in turn, trained all of their attention back to her. I felt like celebrity arm-candy or a professional escort, but I remained chipper, obliging Julia’s every request. My only unvoiced concern was that we had sped past the lobby bar without stopping.

Now inside the auditorium, I used the opportunity to snap a few photos. The interior of the Orpheum is a lasting tribute to the Downtown Los Angeles of decades past. Unlike most other relics downtown, the Orpheum remains remarkably up-kept, authentically preserved. Three columns of opera boxes straddle each end of the lower mezzanine. The balcony, seats several hundred additional people and twin twenty five-foot cranes were afloat, to “stream” the event, over the Internet.

Next to our ticketed seats, sat three vacant spots. Like a drug-fueled wave of profound realization, my position in the evening’s proceedings became unflinchingly clear. Here at my arm, introducing me to haute couture-encased blondes and skinny-jeaned hipsters was a beautiful female comet of pure ambition, whose trajectory, orbit, and velocity did not rest long enough for the inclusion of friends, not at events like this.

Flanked by empty seats, Julia asked me repeatedly if I was having a good time. No, I thought, sitting next to an attractive celebrity is really taxing. Do you have any prescription pills? To me, this was an horrifically good time: a chance encounter with an individual who’s relative A-list status allowed for line-jumping, red carpet walking, and placard-secured seating. I felt oddly notorious, like a spy or a foreign dignitary.

The Streamy Award Host was comedian Paul Scheer, largely of Internet notoriety, who navigated as best he could through poorly written masturbation, vaginal rejuvenation, and porn jokes. Technical snafus saw video projector miscues occur repeatedly and without correction, despite audience boos and hisses.

Julia turned to me, “Is this bad? This seems bad?”

I shook my head. “Terrible.”

A pair of male streakers managed their way onto the stage, performing two naked laps, before it became clear that there was no security to shoo them away. Eventually they covered up their previously flopping genitalia and shirked awkwardly away, off stage. Crass, perhaps, but, LOL, I believe, would be an appropriate response.

Julia then sprung from her seat with little explanation, a case of apparently jangled nerves, in order to prepare for the presentation of her award. I was left to chat with whom I assumed to be a seat filler. After the technical hiccups began to reach an astronomical level, I leaned over to “Sib,” as his business card denoted, and mockingly blamed him for the fiasco. He smiled with worried eyes and said nothing in reply. Later he mentioned that he was a voting member of the Streamy academy.

Julia sent me a few text messages from backstage, commenting on a duo of presenters known as the Ed Hardy boys, who she found funny. Absolutely, I replied, Best yet. Time wore on and the audience thinned considerably. I heard murmurs of the lobby being more crowded than the auditorium.

Julia’s presentation went smoothly enough, in comparison to the rest of the debacle. She stumbled briefly with one line, but by that time, the audience had thinned to loose rabble, feet propped on seatbacks, little cliques of conversations in the aisles. No one seemed to notice.

I snapped the requested photos and once Julia exited the stage, made a b-line for the lobby, intent upon imbibing as many cocktails as I had I had cash on hand to afford. Not that I wasn’t having fun, but, in my estimation, my role had come to fruition and the time to drink had arrived.

Astutely sober, I was devastated to see that the bar had shuttered early. A quick once-over proved that the crowd in the lobby had indeed exceeded that of the remaining audience. I found a lanky Swede, whose Ja I mistook for German, to take a photo of Ms. Allison and myself. Julia remained gracious through the bitter end, and we parted with a nice hug and the promise to remain in touch, during any future LA visits on her part, or future NYC trips on my part.

The next morning found a boyish grin unable to depart my face, bad jokes, daft organization, and forced sobriety notwithstanding.

Just my kind of weird. Given the choice, I’d do it all again, though next time, I’d likely pack a flask.

Recognizing Value

2010-09-05T10:48:00.000-07:00

One of the most simple yet crucial aspects of good business is the recognition of value. There is a sublime process of selecting why certain goods, services, methods, brands, and styles more attractive than others. Although business strategies, project management, networking, etc can be taught in MBA programs or learned by experience, there seems some innate, unteachable aspect to value recognition that lies deep in the human mind.

When I was 9 years old, my family and I attended what was to be an ordinary baseball game at Dodger Stadium. On this particular hot summer night in Chavez Ravine, June 29th, 1990, the legendary Fernando Valenzuela stepped onto the pitching mound and threw a no-hitter against the St. Louis Cardinals.

After the game (yes, we actually stayed until the end of this game, a family rarity), I ran ahead of my family as we walked back to our car, picking up the littered ticket stubs left behind my fans who did not seem to gather the historical importance of what had occurred.

Over the course of the next two years, I gradually sold of my collection (20+) of Fernando no-hitter ticket stubs to various baseball cards shop in Pasadena and Thousand Oaks. Each stub fetched about fifteen dollars, which in baseball card shop earnings, is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Later, at age 13, my friend Nick, who lived near a golf course, pointed out a spot near the driving range where errant golf balls had collected in a weedy lot. We spent that afternoon, and actually several other afternoons following that, grabbing as many Titliests, Top Flites, and Calloways as we could stuff into our backpacks, before hauling our loot over to the pro shop and selling the golf course back their own range balls for five cents each.

Nick and I averaged about $35 per run, which was then split 50-50.

Trouble came when one other overly ambitious friend was included in what would be our last golf ball hunt. Steve found a hole in the fence at the farthest end of the rectangular driving range enclosure and began grabbing balls on the range itself, some as they were still rolling toward him.

Certainly not the wisest move, Steve's ambition caught the attention of course officials and we were briefly pursued by golf carts, as we ran to our bike. Cornered before we could get to our bikes, the two gentlemen in Greg Norman-style hats confiscated our brimming backpacks, emptied their contents, and promised ominously that next time, "the sheriff will be waiting."

There are certainly a number of words for this kind behavior, ranging from hustling and entrepreneurism, to trespassing and petty theft. Still, the point remains that at whatever age you are plying your proverbial trade, recognizing value is a key principle to generating revenue and turning a profit. I don't know how teachable this idea is, but I do believe that without it, all the ambition in the world will not amount to much.

Reclaimed Drainage

2010-08-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

The idea first came to me in the spring of last year, while living in New York, that though most used water that makes it way down the drain is indeed waste, a good portion of that water seems to be at least reclaimable, if not potable. So I had this design made:

Its a normal drain assembly for your average kitchen sink, however, where the clean-out plug would normally be, at the bottom of the trap, a 1" length of PVC or galvanized pipe would extend into a pH tank. I failed to consider that with a pH balanced dishsoap, such a tank would not be necessary. Nevertheless, the idea was born.

Cut to one year later. Back in Los Angeles, I had the opportunity to put my idea in practice, at my ramshackle old place in Glassell Park. Old pipes and a house situated on a sloping hillside allowed me to built two unique versions of water reclaiming drainage assemblies; one for the kitchen sink and one for the washing machine.

At left, the kitchen sink drain reclaiming assembly. With a rubber adapter ring held securely in place by two hose clamps. Water is drawn out of the main drain using a short vent stack to suck in air, and ten feet of 1 1/4" PVC to guide the water into my thirsty row of jade plants.

The second system, applied to the washing machine, was a bit more convoluted, but equally effective.

Again utilizing the house's hillside, sloping situation, water is guided away form the laundry room, snaking around the base of the house, in as least obtrusive position as possible, and eventually drains into the piney hedgerow in the front yard.

Clearly, my roommate's Tide is not the wisest choice for detergent, but Trader Joe's makes both a pH-balanced laundry detergent and dish soap, as not to choke your plants with unnecessarily soapy water.

The combined effort for both projects was less than three hours. 50 feet of 1/2" PVC and 11 feet of 1 1/14" PVC were used, as well as a dozen or so elbows, connectors, and three-ways, mainly for the labyrinthine laundry drain.

Total cost was less than 50 dollars. It would have been less, had I not first purchased a cheap PVC cutter, which broke and had to be replaced.

The feeling upon completion, however, is priceless. Doing a load of laundry or washing the dishes now doubles as watering at least a portion of the yard. Try it yourself, and know that your not just cutting corners on chores, but also reusing a bit of water that would otherwise go completely to waste.

Why I love the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, too

2010-07-19T01:32:00.000-07:00

I am a university-educated, young liberal/progressive who currently lives in Los Angeles, and recently called New York City home. I voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election and John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. I drive a Japanese import that gets terrific gas milage and read the New Yorker every week. I, secretly (until now, of course), like the Tea Party movement, a lot. Oh yeah, Sarah Palin too. Honestly, like is too weak a word. LOVE is better. Love them both, dearly.

Before you run me out of my blue state on a rail, please, allow me to explain.

The Tea Party movement is great for Dems. In fact, its the best thing to happen to the Democratic Party since FDR. The splinter-ish Tea Party represents the fractured state of the GOP, and no matter how PC both Biden and Obama have remained toward it, the fact remains that the Tea Party are comprised largely of undereducated, white idiocrats who, at one time, represented the more radical percentage of those who usually vote for Republican candidates.

The Tea Party is emblematic of broken Republican ideology that crashed its ship into the rocks during the George W. Bush administration and currently remains adrift, at sea. During my political consciousness, I have remained impressed by the GOP for their lock-step, party-wide unity which, quite frankly, Dems often lack. I have grown politically aware knowing that there are many shades of Democrats, but, generally speaking, one kind of Republican, The Party Loyalist, until recently.

These days, the GOP looks more like a herd of gazelles in the midst of a lion hunt, panicked, afraid, and running in many directions at once. As much as Obama's approval ratings have dropped considerably since his election in '08, the fact remains that no candidate has yet distinguished his/herself as the politically viable opponent. Which is an excellent moment to bring me to the second part of the title of this piece.

I love Sarah Palin.

I ~~hope~~, I ~~dream~~, I fantasize that come 2012, she somehow convinces the GOP to allow her to run on their ticket. Which is not to be cruel, suggesting that former Governor Palin is not a strong candidate, only that President Barack Obama is an excellent candidate. One or two friends who work for the president have regaled me with stories of our commander-in-chief's daily excercise routine, while both home at the White House, and traveling. Former Governor Palin, on the other hand, has been noted many times for her frequent use of a tanning bed.

My point remains that although the electorate is unhappy, disgruntled, and generally pissed off, the GOP still has to send someone up against a very strong leader. Obama has demonstrated his leadership primarily by his refusal to bow to job approval numbers. In a time of American politics where so many candidates "lead" via poll numbers, Obama chooses time and again to forward a progressive agenda of pragmatic change, as opposed to catering to populist issues that might be more palatable to a wider national constituency.

If not Palin, I also encourage Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and, most emphatically, Newt Gingrich to run in 2012.

Why now.

2010-06-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

When President Barack Obama announced his plans to cancel future moon missions, coinciding near the time that the long-planned shuttle-program-decommission was taking effect, many among the rank and file of NASA remained skeptical.

Especially for shuttle engineers and scientists, the future of space exploration appeared murky at best, and at worst, in terrible jeopardy. Obama then called for a dramatic up-tick in NASA dollars in the federal budget (somewhere in the $8 billion range) and a long-term agenda that would send Americans to the planet Mars. "And I expect to be around to see it," the president was quoted as saying, echoing John F. Kennedy's famous 1960 call to go to the moon.

Though the shuttle's three-decade mainstay of space travel, experimentation, and exploration is indeed vanishing, there exist tremendous possibilities within the private sector to both expand on the progress made during the shuttle years and to usher in a new era of post-shuttle space flight.

Elon Musk's SpaceX venture recently successfully launched Falcon 9, the first private rocket to achieve earth orbit. In addition to privately funded, heavy-lift rockets, progress has also been reported on the space elevator front, with wirelessly-powered, ribbon-climbing robots competing for a NASA-sponsored prize, which was eventually claimed by a team whose ground-based lasers and photovoltaic cells propelled its climbing robot past 2,000 feet.

Now, more than ever, do both a uniquely-sympathetic US government and prevailing private-venture circumstances, offer opportunities for bright ideas and clever theories to couple with talented engineers and technicians to welcome a new era of human-fueled space ambitions.

I, for one, intend to seize this opportunity by allocating a substantial portion of the resources of my new start-up company Cozy Dark, toward the research, design, and development of new orbital technology. Alas, I've already said too much, as this is indeed another space race (i.e. hotly competitive), albeit private-venture oriented. Time will tell which company will help to craft the new era of the human space frontier, but one winner is already clear: the benefit of all humankind.

The Beat Exists Beyond the Metronome

2010-05-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

Humans have short memories. Little more than a decade after the underwhelming climax that was the Y2K bug, yet another human-generated phenomena is beginning to seep into the American mainstream consciousness.

If you listen to the Average Joe, who has either heard the rumor or repeated the meme, the Mayan long-count calendar has predicted THE END OF THE WORLD for December 21st, 2012 .

Before you run off to rape, pillage, dig a bomb shelter, or withdraw your life savings as gold Krugerrands, consider this story.

On February 24th, 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued an order, known as a papal bull, that the world (really just Central and Western Europe, silly pope man), would adopt the Gregorian Calendar. It was a bold, yet necessary move to extend the previous calendar, known as the Julian Calendar, by 10.8 minutes.

Though historically never friend to math or science, the Vatican knows a sure thing when it sees one, and this modification was indeed that sure thing. The Gregorian Calendar corrected issues regarding the length of days, occurrences of equinoxes (equinii?), and seasonal variations that had been accumulating sloppy mathematical remainders since the First Council of Nicea had fixed the Vernal equinox permanently to September 21st, MORE THAN 1,200 YEARS BEFORE.

That's right folks, for more than a millennia the modern world had just occasionally dropped as many as ten days from the calendar to make their wonky, miscalculated calendar match the seasons of the natural order of Earth and its Solar System. The Gregorian Calendar would not find widespread acceptance in Eastern Europe and Russia until the 20th century, another 400 years, give or take a decade, after the first 1,200 years of the miscalculated Julian Calendar.

My point is this. Calendars, whether Julian, Gregorian, advent, lunar, or long-count Mayan, are human-made constructs. Though their approximation and refinement processes have gotten more precise over the years, they still exist as a lens to understand and predict the natural world, not as extensions of the natural world itself. Even our modern estimation of incremental time, using ceasium-based atomic clocks, has changed many times during the 20th century and will continue to change into the 21st century.

It does not cease to amaze how anthropocentric humans remain, even centuries after geocentric theory was abandoned for heliocentric theory. We are not, nor have we ever been, the center of the universe, our galaxy, even our own solar system, yet humans like to believe that our estimation of events, is the end-all, be-all for the natural world and its patterns, events, and changes.

I intend to host a dinner party on December 22nd, 2012 and I sincerely hope you have the presence of mind to RSVP.

Isn't that cute..

2010-05-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

The public uproar over Facebook's recent privacy changes has me a bit puzzled. After reviewing the changes on my own profile page, I've determined that the only elements that you can't change back to the way settings previously were, are your employment, education, and birthdate information. There are several solutions to this problem if you don't like your work, personal, and education info on display.

1) Find a better job.
2) Apply to and enroll in a better college.
3) Delete all information you don't want public.
4) Continue to lie about your age, like you know you already do in person.
5) Stop complaining and adapt.

Facebook has changed their internal settings several times since its inception. I have only been a member for three-ish years, but I can safely state:

1) I enjoy Facebook
2) Its SOCIAL media, i.e. by design, an inherently public activity
3) even with the new changes, it still beats the goobery pants off of MySpace

True, it does take about three and a half minutes to change back the privacy settings on your photo albums so they are only viewable by friends. Ok, four minutes if you have a great many albums. But, really people, FOUR minutes of your time for this enjoyable, FREE website?

In closing, to those of you who gave your money to Diaspora or plan to leave Facebook for another social media site, I have a few words: that's just super adorable, so totally cute. I love your guts, kid, but GET REAL.

Facebook is here to stay. 500 million registered users. How many humans can even accurately pronounce the word "diaspora?" And doesn't it seem to trivialize the plight of Jewish people leaving Palestine to compare leaving Facebook to the wholesale disenfranchisement of an entire ethnic community?

Given the public outcry, I would not be surprised if some settings do change back. This would only further serve to illustrate my point. The world changes and people adapt, or they don't and the world passes them by. Charles Darwin would have relished this debate.

SB1070 and Special Order 40

2010-04-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

The recent state bill from Arizona, SB 1070, is yet another reminder that in order to preserve democracy, one must behave in a vigilant, proactive, and progressive manner. Too often do the whims of the moment ignore the precedent of the past. The current flap over immigration reminded me of an unpublished piece I wrote back in 2007, which seems all too pertinent today.

Never Again

The day I graduated high school, my Aunt Annie gave me a piece of advice about learning from one’s mistakes. She said, “Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me.” The point being that an initial trespass is nearly not as bad as a second trespass done by that same individual. The current attack on Special Order 40 aims to do exactly that to the citizens of Los Angeles at the hands of the LAPD.

In 2000, the Los Angeles City Council voted 10-2 to allow a federal judge to oversee of reforming the LAPD after multiple excessive force complaints. In exchange, the Justice Department agreed to drop its civil rights suit against the department. The deal, initially opposed by then-mayor Richard Riorden and then-Chief of Police Bernard Parks, paved the way for a mending period following a tumultuous decade of police-citizen relations during the 1990s. Eventually, the former mayor and former chief of police accepted the arrangement, however humbling, and Justice Department began its five-year oversight term. A new lawsuit, recently filed by private citizens of Los Angeles, endorsed by Federal Immigration Reform Enforcement Coalition and, purportedly, by many rank and file police officers, aims to undermine nearly a decade of rebuilt trust between the LAPD and the citizens of Los Angeles by dancing around Special Order 40 with a myopic interpretation and application of legalese.

The main proponent of the attack on Special Order 40 comes from a group called the Federal Immigration Reform Enforcement Coalition (FIRE Coalition). The FIRE Coalition are supporters of the controversial MinuteMen, a vigilante-style organization which admits to hunting down illegal immigrants crossing the border in states like Arizona and Texas. In 2005 the FIRE Coalition started a website called WeHireAliens.com which seeks to “out” businesses who hire undocumented workers. In the San Fernando Valley most-notably, a recent city census places the foreign-born population as high as 40 percent with non-English speaking households as high as 80 percent. Given the immigrant heavy population of California, it is abundantly clear that the goals, values, and agendas of the FIRE Coalition are not in-sync with the majority of the Southern Californians. California has long-established a rich history of progressive political thinking, which in addition to a robust economy, has also earned California a much-deserved nod as being, along with New York state, a vocal leader in state’s rights.

Current mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Chief of Police William Bratton continue to support Special Order 40, first codified 28 years ago into the LAPD manual, as a progressive and beneficial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward immigration status with respect to citywide policing. In 1979, Los Angeles was the first large city to enact such a city code, which was seen as an organic extension of the Equal Protection laws of the US Constitution. Prior to 1979, Los Angeles police officers were required to ask the immigration status of detainees, even if they were not formally charged with a crime. Ironically, it was embattled then-Chief of Police Daryl Gates who approved Special Order 40. Since then, Special Order 40 was the subject of focus in the Rafael Perez scandal, during 2001 whose fellow CRASH anti-gang officers reportedly engaged in frequent violations of the Special Order to serve their own personal and illegal agendas.

Like many other national issues currently in the political crosshairs, including privacy rights, the death penalty, gay marriage, assisted suicide and medical marijuana, the possible revocation of Special Order 40 is tantamount to denying progressive states like California the right to enact more practical and functional interpretations of the Constitution for the benefit of its entire citizenry. The population of California owes its economic strength and cultural diversity to such protections. California is perhaps the best and most vocal demonstration of the power of state’s rights.

Given the past isolated incidences of Gestapo-like tactics by the Los Angeles Police Department, which led to federal take-over in 2000, the LAPD would be wise to shrug off the politicking of groups, like the FIRE Coalition, and look further down the political road at the effect that lack of Equal Protection will have between the LAPD and its citizenry. Such previous violations have left the reputation of the department mired in controversy. The pending lawsuit makes use of an obscure 35-year old clause in the state Health and Safety code that requires local police to notify the federal government if illegal immigrants are arrested for drug possession or trafficking. The implications of this interpretation would effectively turn every LAPD officer into a double-agent, who also reports to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It does not take a domestic policy expert to realize that this would be a gross misappropriation of valuable civic resources.

That the lawsuit does not attempt to bring attention to the detention of violent offenders, who might be illegal immigrants, demonstrates that the suit is a superficial attempt to exploit a supposed loophole in state law, rather than to “safe-guard our jobs, communities, [and] way-of-life” as the FIRE Coalition’s website claims. The Los Angeles Police Department cannot afford to further jeopardize its on-the-mend relationship with local civilians in order to carry out the agenda of a questionable political organization.

Although a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the economics of immigration has yet to be initiated here in the United States, other such analyses in immigrant heavy countries like England, has demonstrated that immigrants provide an elixir to local economies by infusing them with tax revenue on dollars spent and a robust job market for positions that middle class citizens would be wary to fill. The robust economies of states like California and New York stand as proof positive to this notion. To shun the influx of immigrants into sanctuaries like California would be to cut us off from the very wellspring of our diverse economic success.

Rather than further erosion of state’s rights at the behest of national politics, the city of Los Angeles must reject the argument of opponents of Special Order 40, and embrace practical policing policies. Failure to do so would gradually place the LAPD in a position where they would effectively make the same mistake twice. Aunt Annie would not approve.

Advice for Up & Comers

2010-04-26T13:28:00.000-07:00

I speak, but I know when to listen. I still feel young and ambitious, but tempered too, with a bit of wisdom that experience has afforded me. At age twenty-nine, I feel that I have hit a stride in life. Seems like a valuable opportunity to give back some of the wisdom gained.

Learn to cook, even if its just a few dishes. It will both save you money and contribute to your health. Develop a taste for fresh vegetables.

If you wear contact lenses, buy a three month supply of daily disposables and change them once a week. You can make three months last for two years. This will save you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars during the course of your life.

If you are not independently wealthy and would like to become an established artist or a successful entrepreneur, find a job. Even a semi-steady part-time job will support you from early beginnings to initial success. Keep the job until you are established, even if it seems beneath you. Simple, steady work is important to maintaining your financial base and will keep you motivated toward greater accomplishment.

Pay your bills on time. Credit is important and difficult to repair if damaged.

Drink a little wine. Drink a bit of beer. It will help keep the occasional pains of daily life in perspective.

Make friends. Family is important, but friends matter just as much. Build relationships. Give up parts of yourself to these friends. Be vulnerable. I recently helped a friend of 20+ years move while I was in the grips of a dental abscess. The whole left side of my face was swollen, but he was grateful and we are stronger friends for it.

Love. Women, men, whatever suits your palate. Make your love known verbally, physically, materially, musically, poetically, by whatever means possible. No one ever gained perspective being a prude.

Take chances. Move from your home town. Change your name. Adapt. Let experiences change you. Make yourself tiny in the presence of those greater than you. Learn from them. Teach yourself. Embrace greatness gradually. Keep your ears opened.

Listen to music. It will enrich your life and contribute to overall happiness and sense of well-being.

Smile. Behaviorists call smiles "the trigger of approach behavior." Even if you fake it, flattery works. Give compliments without expecting their kind return. If you can't be modest, at least be gracious. Say, thank you. Say, you're welcome. Be nice.

Know that you can't please everyone. Some people are sticks in the proverbial mud. Do not let their misery ruin your bliss.

Embrace discipline. Create everyday. Stay focused. Learn how to be clear and sober for long stretches at a time. It will save you money and keep you in a better mood. Be an omnivore. Be a vegetarian. Be a vegan. Do what makes you happy. Exercise helps.

The two main engines of human behavior are guilt and sexual attraction. Yes, there are shades of gray between, but most human action is nudged by these two factors. Know this fact, walk with it, and use it to your advantage.

Don't feel guilty about earning a lot of money. Don't feel guilty about not earning very much money. Life is a series of peaks and valleys. Understand this process, prepare for hard times during feasts and allow for good times during famines. Warren Buffet once said, "When everyone around you is scared, get greedy. When everyone around you is greedy, get scared."

Maintaining balance between active and inactive behavior is vital. Read books. Read magazines. Read websites. Reading is an active process. Read at least half as much as you watch television.

Learn to "read" people. Be considerate. Think of events from their perspective. If you value their opinion, tell them.

In general, know that life is short and if you're not happy with your daily doings, no one will change that for you. Take control of your destiny. Develop opinions. Give back to those who seek advice. Make choices and stick to them.

Aerial HD

2010-04-01T16:10:00.001-07:00

After receiving my new FlipHD during the recent holiday season, I was immediately filled with inspiration on how to put it to work. Long a fan of hand-held video, especially during my NYC adventures, the FlipHD from Mino is a low-cost, light-weight consumer-friendly means of capturing high definition video.

My first three videos using the FlipHD all included self-shot, hand-held clips, edited in iMovie on my MacBook. I especially enjoyed setting up the FlipHD on my Gorilla Pod to capture long takes of sunsets, etc that were then down-converted and sped-up into faux-time lapse shots, like the one below.

Last week, the idea occurred to me to attempt to gather some aerial footage using a rented helium tank, some party balloons, and 500 feet of 100-pound-test nylon kite string.

It took 25 fully-filled helium balloons to float the FlipHD and related airborne assembly. The rig floated nicely, was extremely light-weight, but proved highly susceptible to wind. My rooftop near Downtown LA offered a nice view, but a persistent on-shore breeze prevented the rig from climbing as high as I would have preferred. Still, there is something fun, something perhaps Ben Franklin would have approved of, about devising do-it-yourself concepts and pitting them against the elements, the arm-chair inventor and his living room laboratory.

a very public life

2010-03-22T15:02:00.001-07:00

Living a public life has both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, one becomes accustomed to living and making decisions in the public sphere; living a life that bears scrutiny, that borders unceasing performance. On the other, such an existence makes such a person appreciate, all the more, those close friends whose loyalty stands the test of years, even decades, amid so much tumult, change, and adaptation.

Though my first day of kindergarten was also my father's first day as an elementary school principal, casting my youth, forever, as the Principal's Son, my odd vernacular, my preternatural verbal ability (called by some "affect," by others "a gift") would likely have forced me into the spotlight regardless of parental profession. In many ways I do feel grateful that my public life began at such a young age. Normal was never, and never shall be, in my proverbial hand of cards.

Which is not to say that, later in life, the transition from untried youth to public gentleman went at all smoothly, or even to suggest that this process is complete. To quote David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest, "..no, the system isn't perfect. There is greed, there is crime, there are drugs and cruelty and ruin and infidelity and divorce and suicide. Murder." Not that I experienced each of these particular trials, but life, indeed anyone's life, is fraught at times with external, circumstantial difficulty, and moments of occasionally placing my proverbial foot squarely in my own mouth.

So, on that note, rather than my own creative efforts, I would like to share the work of other photographers who have lent their talents to capturing me, living that very public life. I am infinitely humbled by the brilliant friends, acquaintances, contacts, etc that I have met, especially in the last three years, at Mindshare LA, Little Green, Dealmaker, the LA World Affairs Council, the Manhattan Young Democrats, Obama For America, the LA Lecture Series, and more, I'm sure, that I'm forgetting. You inspire me, challenge me, and help guide me, as I continue to wade into living publicly among these United States and beyond.

The Tower Light

2010-02-26T14:17:00.000-08:00

Designed and constructed by Z. Urbina, the Tower Light measures 15 inches across each of its four sides, 9+ feet from the wheels on the floor to the top of the tallest spire.

The actual light enclosure measures 7+ feet. The internal assembly includes more than 50 feet of strategically reinforced 1/2 inch white PVC pipe & two 150 watt-equivalent soft white compact fluorescent bulbs.

The veneer was constructed using roughly 32 square feet of engineering paper for diffusion. I'm still considering gel-ing the top area, below the spires, with green cellophane for artistic affect.

All images are clickable and enlarge.

State of Israel

2010-02-13T13:38:00.000-08:00

When my family moved from Pasadena to Thousand Oaks, in December 1989, one of the first activities that my father led my younger brother, Noah, and I to was CYBA, the Conejo Youth Basketball Association. Though taller than Noah, I never possessed the fluid physical dexterity that so gracefully defined his young sporting life.

I was, frankly, a lanky nerd, and as such inclined toward bookish things, a high center of gravity, and a general lack of cohesive on-court ability. I tended to play defense well, and sit on the bench a good deal of the time.

Noah, however, even at an extremely young age, proved himself agile and gifted with that point-guard leadership that the great NBA guards like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Kobe Bryant seem to always take for granted. Noah, of course, was much younger, much shorter, and much whiter, but his skills placed him among the top players in the league, for his age bracket.

Not long after our first season, Noah was jettisoned on a track of being picked in first round after tryouts, and in suburban Ventura county, there are few things that carry more parental cache than a well-positioned young athlete. Noah's CYBA coach Bob Israel was one of the first outside our immediate family to notice Noah's skills, and selected him to play on his team, alongside his own son, Ryan, and the two made for fine teammates, with nascent ball-handling, shooting, and offensive skills.

Bob was less of a coach, and more of an older teammate. He had a terrific sense of humor and a vaguely New Yorky, what I now know to be kind of Jewish-y, cadence to his speech that made nicely for telling off-color jokes when parents were out of ear-shot. Bob became very much a mentor to Noah, who spent a great deal of time playing Nintendo, collecting baseball cards, and practicing basketball outdoors under Bob's "supervision." More than a few times, I tagged along, and laughed wildly as Bob mock-teased me about my name, calling me Zachariah (he pronounced it Zach-uh-REE-uh) with the diarrhea.

Bob would launch into these elaborate, imaginative scenarios in which I, Zachariah, was cursed with said diarrhea and had to charge headlong into awkward situations in order to relieve myself of my affliction. When you're eleven years old, there are few things funnier than an adult who freely bandies about the word diarrhea, let along one gifted with humor who can work said word into personalized jokes at your expense.

Bob was very easily my first childhood idol. This stemmed mainly from the fact that my own father, the elementary school principal, would rarely break from his professional authoritarian poise, save the few times Noah and I overheard him shouting at the television during Los Angeles Laker games. Bob was a breath of fresh air, an oversized child with adult wit who had no trouble reclaiming his pre-adolescent roots in the company of kids.

To this day, strangers seem determined to place me as a native New Yorker, based on the cadence of my speech. I've long since embraced my bookishness, and tend to speak with rapid-fire precision with a subtle hint of something Eastern about my lilt. I am not, as a point of fact and despite my Old Testament name, Jewish, and was actually born in Pasadena, CA but when I hear these remarks, I can't help but be reminded of Bob Israel, that big kid, who gave my brother and I our first introduction to genuine, ad lib humor.

I've since lived in New York City, found it quite to my liking, and keep up with a number of Jewish friends, in both East and West Coasts. My first two girlfriends, at age 16, were both Jewish, and I consistently seem to gravitate to the films of the Coen brothers, the New Yorker magazine, fiction by Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, & Jonathan Safran Foer, and virtually any film with Natalie Portman. In short, Bob turned the key to the door of a realm that for me never stopped developing.

Data Visualization

2010-02-09T17:23:00.000-08:00

This Information Age, driven largely by the Internet, with its ready access to vast, free pools of data like Wikipedia, has helped open up a new frontier of human consciousness not just in our ever-expanding and further-connecting knowledge base, but in the way we perceive the world around us, and how we express those perceptions.

In no realm is this more clear than the burgeoning field of data visualization. Vitaly Friedman describes the goal of data visualization, also known as infographics, as follows:

"the main goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means. It doesn’t mean that data visualization needs to look boring to be functional or extremely sophisticated to look beautiful. To convey ideas effectively, both aesthetic form and functionality need to go hand in hand, providing insights into a rather sparse and complex data set by communicating its key-aspects in a more intuitive way."

Data visualization can be humorous, informative, fictitious, and/or clever. We're talking much more than just your average pie chart or bar graph. Whatever the capacity, effectively visualized data will likely alter the way we perceive information and continue to be refined further as the Information Age unfolds further in the coming years.

Humans have a natural predilection toward the appreciation of visualized data, as it predigests the correlations, patterns, and conclusions that often remain elusive amid large swaths of information.

I, for one, am captivated and always on the hunt for unique infographics. All images are clickable and expand..

leadership

2010-01-30T01:31:00.001-08:00

Lately, both sides of the aisle disgust me. Still, this is a great demonstration of leadership. This is how to be a boss.

this cooperative metropolis

2010-01-28T19:48:00.000-08:00

Heading home from the East Village on Tuesday, I hustled from the 4 train platform at Grand Central Station, to catch a train to Queens, downstairs.

As I descended the ramp toward the 7 train platform, the handle on my overloaded brown paper Trader Joe's bag broke, spilling its contents (wine, bagels, almond butter, tomatoes, etc) across the subway floor, rolling and tumbling in every direction.

Wearing my headphones, as I generally do en route underground, I failed to notice three people stop to help me gather my groceries, until they were literally beside me, hunched over the floor. Two stooped to wrangle the various foodstuffs, and a third pulled from his backpack a replacement bag, handles intact, for me to use.

No sooner did these kind strangers rush to my aid than did they scurry off to wherever they were previously headed, vanished amid the Manhattan crowds, my gushing thanks trailing behind them.

Upon riding the train home to Woodside, it occurred to me that this event, though lovely and inspiring, is not beyond the pale of the general day-to-day doings of New York City.

The shoulder-to-shoulder crush of humanity, be it walking down the street or packed into a subway car at rush hour, has little choice than to behave with protected selflessness while occupying space in such close proximity.

Though, like any major urban city, there exists a periphery of ne'er-do-wells, vagrants, hustlers, and outright, brazen criminals, the populace-at-large demonstrates remarkable cooperation and decency, considering a galling, contradictory stereotype (perpetuated greatly by film and television).

Though I have always practiced a steady reticence, with respect to my public doings in NYC, it never fails to impress upon me the tidy, pragmatic, outright friendly manner by which the vast majority of the city's diverse denizens live life.

I can think of no finer place to live, no better people to dwell among.

pale is the new black

2010-01-15T15:56:00.001-08:00

By American pop media standards, let's call 2009 the Year of the Vampire. New Moon, numero dos in the Twilight saga, grossed just south of $300 million domestically. Not including the True Blood series on HBO, the running count for 2009 includes 41 vampire flicks released on DVD and theatrically. And as far as an explanation goes, well, I'd say your guess is as good as mine.

So here's mine..

About ten years ago, I met a girl, a beautiful Latina that I worked with at the Cheesecake Factory in Pasadena. We had a brief romantic fling, which officially fizzled in October 2000. Five years later, we reconnected and she shared her issues battling anemia.

Among other symptoms, such as lightheadedness and thinning hair, this lovely young lady was struck by the overwhelming compulsion to eat paper, spiral-bound, looseleaf, whatever, a disorder known as Pica. She would marvel at its texture, rub it over with her hands, and eventually, like a five year-old with a nose-picking compulsion, eat whole sheets of paper when no one was looking.

This went on for several months, until she saw a doctor who told her bluntly, You need more blood in your diet. She corrected her eating habits, and shortly thereafter, improved dramatically.

Evidently, the human body, despite much popular counter-programming, needs animal protein. It has guided our survival and evolution. This is a tricky contention. I have a great many friends who swear by a vegetarian or vegan diet and also a great many omnivorous friends.

Writer Jonah Lehrer, in his book Proust was a Neuroscientist, provided a neurological basis which documented our human need for protein at the level of taste receptors that not only connect directly to the hippocampus of the brain (providing Lehrer with his titular moment), but that are designed specifically to receive the taste of protein. Culinary enthusiasts better know this taste as umami.

Of course, the counter-programming message, against eating meat, remains strong. One of my favorite writers, Jonathan Safran Foer, spells out the moral argument against meat consumption in his recent book Eating Animals. Foer, sad/happy to say, is a much stronger writer than Lehrer, and while I don't personally believe in a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle, his message will likely be better received.

So then, is it too thin a strand to consider that the compulsion for blood leads humans toward strange forays, such as vampirism and the like? Hardly. Its not likely that the millions of theater-goers who shelled out beaucoup bucks for New Moon have even a subconscious connection to vegetarian lifestyle.

Still, like my friend and her paper compulsion, this behavior is likely some kind of symptom, a sign of the times, a comment on consumerism. I have no problem with consumerism, nor do I with eating animals (the actual animals, not the book. sorry JSF, but I look forward to your return to fiction). There is, more than likely, a stronger case to be made for the psycho-sexual connection between vampires, bloodlust, and female readership, but we'll save that one for another blog.. ;)

dynamic tension

2009-12-27T12:53:00.000-08:00

I was recently asked, during one of my infamous conversations/rants, to explain my definition of dynamic tension, a concept that I consider myself expertly conversant in, and a strategy that I am a regular practitioner of.

Let's first being with an analogy..

Imagine, for a moment, a live auction; auctioneer, gavel, expectant crowd, placards with numbers, etc.

Up for auction is a painting by Picasso. Its a later work, oil on canvas, created near the end of his career, and not very sought after. Despite the efforts of the boisterous auctioneer, a professional appraiser, and a crowd of moneyed, willing bidders, only a single bidder steps forward and manages to snap up the painting for a mere twenty-five thousand dollars.

Now imagine the next lot up for auction, another painting. This work is a previously unidentified early work of Gustav Klimt, substantially smaller in size than the Picasso, but possessing a rare charm, genuine appeal. Gold leaf, fine artistry, at a time when Klimt is enjoying the peak of his posthumous worldwide notoriety.

The auctioneer opens the bid at ten thousand dollars, and immediately five placards shoot up. Before long, the bidding skyrockets, ten thousand, twenty thousand to fifty thousand, to one hundred thousand and so on, buoyed by multiple bids from highly dedicated bidders, until the final winning bid secures the rare Klimt for just north of eleven million dollars.

This example should effectively demonstrate the unique nature of dynamic tension. When leveraged properly it can achieve exponential results. Without it, there is little to do but listen to the peeping of nearby crickets.

So, to better explain, the concept of dynamic tension depends on several parameters.

1) it must be applied to something competitive, in which there can only be one defined winner or victor. (i.e. no silver medals)

2) multiple people must have a vested personal, financial, or reproductive interest in the outcome of the competition. (i.e. that which is being competed for must be seen as valuable, unique, desirable, or indispensable)

3) the competition must not occur in secret (i.e. those in competition must know they are competing).

After those initial criteria are met, you can apply dynamic tension to nearly anything competitive, be it establishing and maintaining a long-term relationship (business, personal, or romantic), winning a competitive business contract, selling a client on a new product, the list is truly inexhaustible.

Within the concept there are a variety of methods of ratcheting up the tension, to create a more profitable outcome, but this golden goose only gives away the occasional egg for free. I will state, definitively, that guilt and sexual attraction are, in my experience, the two primary engines that drive human behavior. Happy hunting.. (:

Pursuit of Excellence, Rejection of Mediocrity

2009-12-14T15:53:00.000-08:00

There exist corners of time, mere moments really, where you know that the choices you've made, the path you've chosen, resonates beyond you, makes a kind of eternal, transcendental sense.

Last year, near this time, it was the PT Anderson film There Will Be Blood. I had not seen a film more than once in theaters since I saw Ace Ventura seven times when I was 13. I eventually watched There Will Be Blood four times, on the big screen. I believe it to be not just the best film of 2008, but one of the best films in the last ten years, skipped over, or largely ignored the same way that Raging Bull was missed in 1980.

What appealed to me in TWBB, was the exacting nature of the film, from writing, to directing, to performance. PT Anderson captured the times, the sensibility of the emerging power of the pre-industrial US, and allowed Daniel Day Lewis to unfold a performance worthy of two Oscar statuettes.

Topically, TWBB captures the essence of pure, unblinking, and singular ambition, thrown in the face of limp-wristed mediocrity. The film moved me, inspired my journey to New York. I now own the film on DVD and return to it, from time to time, as a kind of consiglieri, a primer from which my inner ambition finds focus.

After taking down two literary juggernauts this past year (Infinite Jest & The Corrections, respectively), I picked up yet another beast, Atlas Shrugged. Though, as of this evening, I am only 70 or so pages into its 1,000+ page girth, I know that this book will inspire me, focus me, drive me, much in the same way that TWBB did.

It is in these moments that I realize overachieving is nothing to feel shame over, that modesty, in certain respects, is patently dishonest, that passion and brilliance are best tempered with grace, not with humility.

NYC in Black and White

2009-11-12T11:55:00.000-08:00

When I first moved to NYC, my brilliant and beautiful friend Robin Katz joked that the city was like the Rutger Hauer movie Logan's Run, nobody survives past the age of thirty. Of course, I had to start looking for counter-examples almost immediately, and while the median age seems to hover just north of thirty, the common element to those who inhabit the city appears to be ambition. I also noticed a well-represented 70 to 90 year-old demographic. Especially older ladies, whom I dubbed Toothy Seabirds, pushing their wheeled shopping carriages, which I dubbed Granny Baskets. In short, New York City is a town of extremes.

In my brief time, thus far, calling the city home I have had the pleasure of meeting some of the most unique, talented, intelligent, passionate, and beautiful people that I've yet encountered in life. This is truly saying something. I've long had the gift of being able to discern quality humans from humans of lesser quality. Not to say that there aren't quality humans in Los Angeles, but that New York, similar to LA, attracts the ambitious from all corners of the world and throws them in to mix with each other.

What better way to depict those extremes than in the medium of black and white photography. When I think about the photography of Richard Avedon, Woody Allen's magnum opus Manhattan, even Jay-Z's new video with Alicia Keyes, Empire State of Mind, it seems rightly appropriate that black and white be the medium of choice. And on that note, I present, a slice of that life..

and my own NYC B&W work...

Soft-Light Rig 2.0

2009-11-03T21:08:00.000-08:00

Despite our most noble efforts to get inventive with PVC pipe, the first version of the soft-light rig became obsolete after only one week of use. Justin found a telescoping overhead projector screen that was light enough and collapsable enough to suit my photographic purposes. Truth be told, despite its six-bulb functionality and newly added wheelie-feet, it does look a bit alien-ish and freaky. In order to fancy-up our awkward new addition, we put a nice sweater on him. Perhaps a name might be in order, as well. Hmm.. He kinda looks like a Clarence or an Edgar. Yep, Edgar, definitely.

In the meantime and between uses, the remaining PVC was shaped into a bedside lamp which also doubled as a storage space for the single-bulb china ball head. With new shoots coming down the pipe, I'm excited to bring our creation out to play. (:

pragmatic industrial design

2009-10-28T21:57:00.000-07:00

It began with a scrap of paper, no bigger than a cocktail napkin, following a photo shoot in Hollywood with Amanda Bauman. Shooting photos in New York spoiled me, got me accustomed to abundant pools of ambient light, available freely and at all hours of the night. Being able to work in that ambient light became a big part of my recent photography. It gave my photos a warmth a depth, a secret dimension, without ever having to lug a strobe or hot lights.

In LA, there are still plenty of places where that playful light lives, but those places are fewer and further between. Driving home from that shoot I lamented to my cousin, Justin, that I would like to have just a single fill light, something to supplement that lost layer of depth that I learned to appreciate in NYC.

So it began..

The Soft-Light Rig is little more than a few strategically cut pieces of half-inch PVC pipe, arranged to be semi-sturdy, yet easily assembled.

At first, we envisioned little more than a life-sized version of the word game Hangman, but the X and Y axes proved too wobbly & needed a bit of support, so after using only 90-degree elbows and a few three-way joints, the inclusion of a Z-axis stabilizing arm was added using two, well-placed 45-degree joints, and a length of PVC extending from one corner of the 36" foot.

The central idea was that the whole rig could collapse into a backpack and be light enough for me to carry around and bring into play during shoots in a quick, efficient, and self-contained manner (i.e. without the use of external AC/DC power).

The PVC proved light enough. The last remaining challenge was providing enough light for it to read on-camera, during shoots. In order to evaluate options two light-heads were built. One using a common flashlight, stripped of its reflector and fitted into a two-inch length of PVC with D-cell batteries, the second using the harvested parts of a desk lamp, a bit of electrical engineering courtesy of Justin.

After the two light-heads were completed, a test was done using a variety of China balls, whose colors and diffusion could offer a handful of options while shooting on location.

The end result and first successful test, seen below, was done using only the stripped flashlight head, and a piece of scrap diffusion (a greenish, translucent wrapping from a Trader Joe's-bought pear). The test was performed in total darkness to evaluate the lights solo abilities. Though never meant to be used alone, the result reminded me of the paintings of Caravaggio, moody and dark, highlighting limited details.

Special thanks to Justin Becklin for his ideas, hard work, and persistence, and to roommate Mike for being a good sport and our guinea pig.

The Soft-Light Rig pleased me greatly not because it was elaborate or complicated, but because it was designed to fit a singular purpose, its role totally pragmatic. In all, less than thirty dollars was spent on materials and total work-time (from design, to building, to completion, to testing) through spread over several days, amounted to only 5 total hours. Imagination and utility working together, in the service of a reachable goal.

a photo essay

2009-10-21T12:18:00.000-07:00

3501 - The Infinite Potential of a House in Disrepair

There never existed a set of guidelines or rules, but it always began with a plan, a vision.

Buying a fixer-upper became my earliest introduction to the arena of abstract thought.

You had to look past the run-down, rotting elements and people your mental horizon with images of the completed improvements, of that proverbial finish line.

In Los Angeles, the surrounding landscape places your house into a natural context. There are scant, if any, other large American cities where so urban a concrete jungle mixes so immediately with plants and animals.

LA is inextricable from its wild nature.

Even before work begins, the purposeful evaluation of a a house with potential, is absolutely mandatory.

Part of this is an acquired skill, an eye for charm, but like much else in life, it relies heavily on luck.

A well-developed arsenal of existing foliage acts as a tilde to a home, a flourish of livability.

Finding a house with some history in LA remains a challenge.

The work takes time, is done largely by hand, and requires a miscellany of tools which are collected over decades.

Putty knife, texture gun, drywall, Watco Danish Oil, kickspace, finishing nail, strike plate.

Not just architectural terms, as in structural elements or concepts, but pragmatic solutions that require paternal-isms like elbow grease and know-how.

Light fixtures become talking points.

Ceiling fans take down the crushing heat in efficient, cost-effective ways.

Painting facilitates long conversations and the echo of radio music.

Restoring a house mirrors the inner restoration of one's soul.

Nearly every green plant you see in LA has been co-opted into the landscape.

When industrious farmers first settled the area, they saw only sand, dust, cactus, and a bit of mesquite.

The belief, at first, was that plants could not grow here. Then came well-diggers and concrete pipe irrigation.

Even in LA, its possible to find a little history, a dark forgotten corner that has yet to be torn down and rebuilt.

The history of LA is largely the story of a series of interconnected islands and our growing base of knowledge of their existence, a New World for daring explorers.

Bougainvillea takes years to develop an established root system, but once it does, the plant thrives seemingly without any care at all.

Its perennial bloom-die-bloom cycle is a welcome addition to any SoCal home.

My father owned seventeen houses over the course of thirty years, despite his semi-hectic career in public education.

Some we lived in, some he bought expressly to fix-up and flip.

As much as I do see myself happier among other, more urban American geography, these experiences growing up in and around LA provided a sound, fundamental basis for my later ambitions.

I may not live here forever, but part of it will always feel like home.

The Work: Solitude and Productivity

2009-10-14T12:24:00.001-07:00

Fine, true words, from indeed a brilliant artist. In the modern sense, Banksy embodies best the spirit of the Individual Creative Force at a time when so many others choose to lend their creativity to a hive, a collective, a corporation.

In order to weather the isolation, necessary focus, and maintain ongoing productivity, the Individual Creative Force must spend hours upon hours alone, working.

Let us expand the idea of the Individual Creative Force to apply to all individuals whose productivity remains their livelihood, including artists, musicians, writers, and entrepreneurs.

It has long been a belief of mine that conceptualizing, executing, and maintaining a functional, profitable business is one of the highest forms of creativity. Especially when so many business-minded individuals take up work in larger corporations, the small business owner, at least in the initial phases, faces robust competition, seemingly insurmountable odds, amid a flotilla of more well-established organizations. Also, individuals who participate in non-team sports like running, swimming, boxing, etc. would also fall into this category.

The single element that links the Individual Creative Force with others in his/her similar position is their relationship with solitude. To be a creator or a producer, on one's own, solitude becomes a large part of one's existence. Whether it be research, practice, or the simple act of creating, the initial stages of creative expression (i.e. The Work) quite often take root in the world of alonetime. It is these moments, spent in near-monastic isolation, that creative output and productivity find their proverbial legs, and take off.

Nicola Tesla and his lab, fighting poverty and better-funded competitors like Thomas Edison. Ludwig von Beethoven and his music, resisting deafness and an abundance of children literally eating him into the poorhouse. Thomas Pynchon, media-shy yet producing thousand-page novels well-past his "glory days." Banksy and his urban art, confronting a modern society that would rather see him jailed as a lowly graffiti artist. Each of these Individual Creative Forces has allied themselves with solitude, made the realm of the mind their chief concern. Like the Ginko tree, separated by thousands of years of individual evolution, yet obviously thriving.

One possible initial criteria for the impetus of the Individual Creative Force is birth order. I've spent a great many weeks considering the importance of birth order with respect to creative output and overall comfort with isolation. Though not an only-child, I spent the first two years, two months, and ten days of my life alone, having to make sense of the world around me without the guidance of sibling peers. I cherish alonetime, and find myself creatively frustrated when separated from The Work, for more than a few days in a row.

My NYC friend Jessica Baxter once described alonetime as being her favorite time to spend and one aspect of the rationale for marrying her husband being that "spending time with Chris, is like alonetime, but better." Jessica grew up an only-child, clearly a type-A personality, and is very much an Individual Creative Force in terms of her ability to organize support for political, charitable, and non-profit causes. Though anecdotal and perhaps intuitive, it would seem that birth-order, specifically the necessity of forging identity outside the aid of sibling peers, lends due momentum and foundation for an Individual Creative Force.

This is not to suggest that an individual cannot change or alter their behavior or that middle-children, etc. are strictly consumers or spectators, only that the Individual Creative Force seems to stand apart from their peer group. Orson Welles once said, "I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time." The basic idea being that creators of culture must place themselves further upstream from their consumer counterparts.

When I think of my most admired Individual Creative Forces, Tom Waits, Chan Marshall, Richard Branson, Quentin Tarantino, Stella Im Hultberg, Banksy, Gregory Crewdson, Muhammad Ali, Nicola Tesla, Benjamin Franklin, Lorrie Moore, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jonathan Safran Foer, I often consider the vast amount of time they must have spent alone, to master their creative output. My hope is, that in my own respective zone of productivity, isolated by The Work, that I too will delve, completely introspective, not be distracted, never lose ambition, always value my ideas, and continue to produce, until I am physically unable to do so.

Infinite Jest

2009-10-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

Talent is its own expectation, screamed David Foster Wallace, in such self-reflexive irony, that you couldn't help but feel his postmortem wink. Wallace's magnum opus, Infinite Jest, with 1,000+ page heft was the perfect literary accompaniment for my giant leap to New York City. I bought the paperback from Amazon.com and began reading it on April 3rd. Officially, I set the completed book down on September 9th, making it both the longest novel I've yet read and the most time I've spent with a single book.

To read Infinite Jest completely is to join a unique club of wordsmiths and lit-philes, on par with an runner's completion of a marathon. While schlepping around this massive tome, I ran into person after person, even in New York, who'd said they'd tried to finish it, but put it down after a few hundred pages. Not to brag, but the book does take a real sense of both patience and determination to conquer. I am of the opinion that there are two schools of thought with respect to Infinite Jest. You can either plow through the perspicacious jargon and attempt to infer its meaning on your own, or frequently mark your place, set down the book, and pick up a medical reference guide or the Oxford English Dictionary, to purposefully define each obscure word's meaning.

I chose the latter and, as stated, it took me five solid months to tame this intimidating beast. It was highly rewarding, but obviously time consuming. Still, for a writer who's footnotes can stretch on for 10-15 pages, it felt just, noble, and worthy of the effort Mr. Wallace pain-stakingly put forth.

Infinite Jest, for me, became more than just a book. The title refers to a film of the same name which, upon viewing, renders the viewer unable to do anything else but continue watching, again and again, until their pants are soiled, their mouth is gaping, all normal brain activity stops, and they eventually perish, disheveled, but totally amused.

The act of reading Infinite Jest, was quite similar. Having known of the book only by reputation I, in January, read a New Yorker article chronicling the life and final days of David Foster Wallace. After reading this article, Infinite Jest, the book, took on a parallel stature to Infinite Jest, the film within the book. It had this looming, fatal quality, that I was deeply tempted to indulge, yet admittedly terrified to undertake.

After so long, with such an amazingly inspiring novel, I had to take the edge off the IJ withdrawl, by picking up a few short stories. Harper's, in commemoration of the man's work and recent suicide, released every story he placed with them, on their website, for free.

Infinite Jest left me with a better grasp on this country's hang ups with boredom, drug use, parental dynamics, and athlete idolatry. Ultimately, its about the United States, but only in the way that War and Peace is about, as Woody Allen once joked, Russia.

Buy it. Read it. I dare you..

the feminine contingent

2009-09-23T23:59:00.000-07:00

As a pre-pubescent, lower-case Z, my younger brother Noah and I would very often watch television together, sometimes right after school, sometimes in the early morning, before. Whether it was GI Joe, Duck Tales, Gilligan's Island, Tale Spin, what have you, we would both cringe and snap our heads away from the TV set whenever a product aimed at the female demographic splashed its way into the commercial repertoire. I suppose, on some then-yet-unconscious, machismo level, we equated watching a "girl commercial" on the same level as longing or desiring to own or play with, said girlie business.

One of the best examples that springs to memory was Kid Sister, basically a quasi-life-sized doll meant to act as a companion or play date. I can remember the jingle, "Kid Sister, Kid Sister, Kid Sister, Kid Sister, where ever I go, she goes..." It was hokey but obviously catchy and readily palatable, the way all commercial jingles seem to wriggle easily their way into memory. The irony in our awkward reaction was that virtually the identical product was repackaged and aimed at young males. Called My Buddy, the doll had the same vacant-eyed stare of his female counterpart. The doll was seen romping with commercial-starring actors participating in the same basic "invisible friend" capacity, and with the names so syllablistically similar, My Buddy's jingle was a mirror image, but for some reason, My Buddy, although obviously the spoils of some oft-beaten, kindergartening nerd, was never frowned upon, nor avoided, eye-contact-wise.

For some reason (wink, wink.. see above), I've noticed a prevailing trend among many twenty-something males, with respect to their musical tastes. Though their exist a great many female vocalists and singer-songwriters among the current and past cannon of all musicians, many younger guys seem to actively avoid listening to female singers. Women are scarcely so discriminating when it comes to male vocalists.

My oldest friend in the world, Mike Alba, and I, share a penchant for talented female vocalists. Though both hetro-sexual, we find the likes of Nico, Bjork, Ultra Orange & Emmanuelle, Feist, Regina Spektor, Cat Power, etc to not only be something worth listening to, but something worth actively pursuing, finding new and undiscovered veins of as-yet-unexplored feminine songstressing.

Which is, of course, not to say that we don't appreciate talented male singers, only to insist that gender is not a limiting factor is terms of talent and listenability.

Here are a few whose visual style and vocals have inspired me recently..

Manhattan politics

2009-09-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

After only eight short months in The City, I can say that I've cemented some key relationships with some brilliant and amazing friends who have introduced me to corners of NYC that would have been a bit inaccessible, had I moved here in January knowing no one at all. Being an extremely active individual I am quite grateful for these hallowed few.

My USC friend Jessica Baxter is one of these people. She's beautiful, smart, well-connected, and does an extremely effective job bringing people together for various causes, including political rallies, fundraisers, and non-profit gatherings. Jessica introduced me to Deanna Tilley, who also remains politically active here in NYC after the two met, I believe, volunteering for the Obama campaign.

Recently they have both poured their collective heart and soul into the campaign of attorney Richard Aborn, as he pursues the Manhattan District Attorney position, recently vacated by Robert Morganthau, who has held the position since 1975. Its a big paradigm shift in NYC politics, a transformational moment, as politicians like to say, these days.

Richard impressed me with his straight-forward pragmatic approach to criminal activity in New York City. He favors gun control as a means to stem gun violence (Aborn was one of the original authors of the Brady Bill). He favors treatment and rehabilitation in lieu of incarceration for drug offenders. In general, he seems to live up to the moniker that his campaign is pushing Manhattan's most progressive DA candidate."

After having attended two fundraiser/mixers and chatting with the candidate both times, its seems clear that his professional pedigree (he manages a sizable law firm), political agenda (most progressive!), and familial dynasty (he's married to Ingrid Rosselini, who is both Ingrid Bergman's daughter and Isabella Rosselini's twin sister ) place him in a unique spot to serve a progressive city with fresh tactics and bright choices. Manhattan residents, don't forget to vote in the September 15th primary election.

Manhattan residents, vote September 15th..

Depiction vs. Reality

2009-08-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

Back in elementary school, one of those goofy childhood conceits that would made my friends and I giggle, was to fold up a dollar bill in a particular way, which would change the front banner from reading "The United States of America" to "Tits of America." It was amusing for all of five minutes, the way that slap bracelets, Mustlemen, Garbage Pail Kids cards, and cashew shell burns all briefly held our pre-pubescent attention. Not that the dollar bill would actually reveal bare female breasts from the US, but the mere idea of tits and a dollar sharing the shame space seemed to stoke our innocent reverie.

Recently I went to the movies to see the quirky romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer. The film was well-reviewed and more importantly, came highly recommended to me by several film aficionado friends. Regardless of plot, (its a rom-com, so, the guy gets the girl, loses girl, gets girl, loses girl, gains life lesson, the end), I found the depiction of my home turf, Los Angeles, to be presented in a clever way, the director selecting locations that best featured the few corners of LA that have remained unchanged since the turn of the last century. I thoroughly enjoyed the film.

I left the theater with a profound sense of nostalgia. When at USC as an undergrad, I took a walking tour of downtown LA with a California Lit professor and the rest of our class. We toured the Historic Core, including the Million Dollar Theater, the interior of the Bradbury Building, Skid Row, and the former site of Angels Flight. If you know the right places to look, LA hides charming and arresting architecture, kitschy history, and a unique narrative all its own. To watch 500 Days of Summer is to indulge in the very best that Downtown LA has to offer.

Living way out here in NYC, at the present, I felt the heartstrings being yanked fairly intensely. That is, until, I posted something laudatory on FaceBook about 500 Days.. and a friend reminded me that it was just pretense, that LA, in reality, is a massive sprawling, decentralized metropolis and that 500 Days did a good job making the city seem cozy, classy, and essentially New York-y. I then realized my sense of nostalgic loss was the end-result of a smart filmmaker and selective presentation. Though the dollar may read "Tits of America," the reality a far cry. I'm not a kid anymore, but I can occasionally be duped, however briefly.

Dollar Bill Trick: "TITS OF AMERICA" - Click here for more home videos

Chelsea Piers, the High Line, and the West Village

2009-08-27T21:38:00.000-07:00

Today's New York adventure brought me to Chelsea, to visit childhood friend and former Olympic swimmer Liliana Guiscardo, now a swimming instructor at the Pier Sixty Gym. This neighborhood of Manhattan is by far the favorite I've yet encountered. The streets of the West Village feature brownstones of every size and shape, while the canopy of trees that covers most streets reminds me of Pasadena.

The Chelsea Piers, now converted to various outdoor and indoor sporting facilities are complimented by the newly opened High Line, a park and walkway situated atop an old train trestle. The weather today could not have been more perfect, with a sweet breeze pushing in off the Hudson River. With a bit of luck, the photos below will convey a bit the essence of today's gorgeous outing.

Cellular Momentum: Old Theory/New Application

2009-08-25T16:15:00.000-07:00

After more than a year in the thinking I present, A Newtonian Law of Cellular Momentum. This one has haunted me long before I gave it serious thought, since an Anthropology class I took as an undergrad. It strikes at the heart of nature vs. nurture questions, as well as the current fixation on the American obesity epidemic and other aspects of cultural malaise. It encapsulates the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and synthesizes them into a practical theory that explains a great many modern social problems as well as intellectual concepts.

My Hypothesis:

The advanced human animal is so successful at adaptation that the introduction of foreign substances, artificial chemicals, and saturated fatty foods into our unique biological make-up, alters our DNA by forcing cells to modulate and normalize that which is unnatural, but does so in surprisingly predictable ways. Although the outcome of that normalization is unpredictable, the machinery and processes by which these outcomes are arrived upon, are well known and previously established, thanks to the first and second law's of Newtonian physics.

Ok, jargon-y. I get it. Let's get practical, shall we?

Basically, the cellular need to maintain biological life, and adapt, forces our DNA to change. These changes accrue over time, altering our cellular composition, and are eventually passed along congenitally to our offspring.

If a person is in top physical health (i.e. frequent cardio, weight-training, and healthy eating), their biological make-up is gradually altered in a positive way. Human DNA gets accustomed to a high metabolic rate, fewer foods with saturated fats, and regular exercise to promote the growth of healthy bones and tissue. If they reproduce during this period of beneficial health, their reproductive material (sperm or ovum), also reflects this altered state of beneficial health, and they pass along fit DNA to the incoming offspring.

Conversely, if a person is in poor physical health (little or no cardio, minimal physical activity, unhealthy eating habits marked by high quantities of sugar and saturated fats), their biological make-up is gradually altered in a negative way. Human DNA is forced to accommodate unnatural substances: the kidneys work harder, the liver filters out more toxins, the intestines stretch and distend as metabolism slows, and the human body softens over time. Reproduction during this period results in unhealthy or prematurely obese children and the cycle perpetuates.

Basically the idea is that whatever your normal routine becomes, your body will accommodate it. The cells don't initially know what is good or bad, they just know how to process. Entropy, inertia, Maxwell's Demon, and the first and second laws of thermodynamics reason out how these processes adjust human cellular momentum, setting off in whichever direction our respective habits, lifestyles, and routines dictate. These adjustments are made value free. All the cells know is how to adapt, not why they are adapting.

If you extrapolate this theory, it can help explain some of the issues that behaviorists, psychologists, addiction medicine specialists, and nutritionists deal with on a regular basis. It also explains certain aspects of culture, and why human minds are attracted to them.

For example, if a brilliant writer, say Thomas Pynchon, creates a novel that employs the use of clever prose, the human mind responds, because it is unaccostumed to parsing language in this writer's particular style. Our neural circuitry recognizes something unique and is stimulated accordingly. Humor works on this same level. Jokes incorporate real human experiences then subvert our expectations via clever interpretations or presentation. Steven Wright's witty one-liners spring to mind. (i.e. "Did you ever stop to think that the Earth is bipolar?")

As the human mind processes the experience of prose or humor, via previously established neural pathways, new and unique stimuli force the brain to make sense of something that is not senseless, but presents information in a way previously unconsidered. Cells want to equalize, so the brain works through these new presentations and is stimulated accordingly, literally forging new neuronal avenues and branches where none existed previously.

Conversely, this is also why certain cultural artifacts (i.e. art, television, movies, jokes, writing) are perceived as boring, derivative, or cliche. They are passing through our neural processing facilities via previously established corridors and are ultimately interpreted as dull, literally, unstimulating, as they do nothing to force our neural net to think.

We can take this even further.

Zoologists have recently discovered tiny life forms that have adapted to niches previously considered hostile to all life. Called extremophiles, these organisms live in physically or geochemically extreme conditions like the Arctic tundra, or underwater volcano vents, or uber-dry desert conditions, etc. Their DNA found ways to change rapidly and parse these extreme conditions. As their cells adapted, so did their reproductive material, and, in turn, their offspring. The conditions are very obviously different, from extremophile to extremophile, but the process by which they change remains the same.

Further still...

This process explains xenophilia in more educated people and xenophobia in less educated people. Education, or the process by which new information is introduced to the brain, begins to perpetuate. It alters our view of the world around us and breaks it into conceptual terms. More educated humans stop seeing each other in terms of physical or racial appearances and relate on a more intellectual level. Opposites become more appealing to the more educated because the idea of these people is more stimulating to the brain, and therefore more appealing.

Also covered by this theory, is the process by which drug users become drug addicts. As foreign chemical substances are either inhaled, injected, ingested, or otherwise introduced to the human body, the first response to the initial impact of those substances upon the mind and body, is usually euphoria or analagesia. Eventually, entropy takes over and our cells attempt to rid the body of the substance. However, as this process is repeated, the drug comes to be expected by our cells, and without it, the cells literally hunger for it, not because they perceive it as good or bad, but because they became accustomed to the presence of that substance after a certain number of experiences with it (varying vastly, of course, substance to substance).

This does some justice to the maxim that substance recovery professionals further, that substance abuse, is on some level, a disease. Though not technically accurate, the idea of substance abuse as disease seems to corollate to a disharmony that humans are forcing their body through, which eventually seems to envelope them, beyond their ability to control it. LIterally, our cells become almost zombie-like, hungering for that which they've become accostumed, even if, in our mind, we know that substance to be physically harmful.

Though Sir Isaac Newton couched these terms and processes long ago, I doubt he intended them to cross-synthesize into other branches of cultural and biological applications. However, there seems to be a timeless, universal aspect to Newtonian physics and applies not only to the physical properties of the natural world, but the to very essence of biological adaptation.

Darwin would have loved this.

darkness falls on my e-world

2009-08-20T00:32:00.001-07:00

Last week, despite all the due care, years of experience, and valued hours together, I did the unthinkable. I murdered my laptop. This was not a premeditated act, nor was it a crime of passion. I simply drank a bit of red wine, placed the glass inadvertently atop an uneven bundle of wires, and watched helplessly as the glass emptied into the right mini-speaker of my 2003 Mac PowerBook G4 Power PC lappy. I tried, without success, to drain the wine into an absorbent cloth, and waited fruitlessly for days for the wrong to right itself. It did not. My immediate feelings ranged somewhere between internally-directed fury, to mild fatherly disappointment.

I'm trying not to think too much about the years of writing, media, and creative work, both in and out of progress, that has been jeopardized by my careless vino mishandling. More importantly, I believe, is what I did during the week I lived without a computer. True, I still had my BlackBerry, a fine and capable little machine. Smartphones, in truth, are meant as a supplement for a personal computer, not a replacement. On my BlackBerry Curve 8330 email is handled without any trouble. Web browsing is a bit time consuming. Porn is possible, but completely tedious. In short, I was forced to look beyond the e-world for the vast majority of my newly available downtime.

I ventured out for a walk, during the evenings when I'd usually be listening to music or writing. I watched a veritable ton of DVDs. I caught up on some Mad Men episodes. I caught up completely with my long neglected pile of New Yorker magazines. I've always been extremely active and self-propelled when it comes to my free time. Still I was amazed to see how much I'd come to depend on my lappy. I might call it borderline addiction, if I didn't know that my time with my computer is ultimately productive. Business, creativity, entertainment, and culture exchange fill the vast majority of my computing time.

Via BlackBerry, I looked up the best remedies for a liquid soaked laptop. They all said the same thing: Liquids and computers should never share the same plane.

Ok, I thought, I need an end table. New Yorkers are notorious for leaving cumbersome furniture behind when moving from apartment to apartment. I've seen refrigerators, dressers, coat-hangers, tables, chairs, the works, all sidewalk parked, like a clutch of unwanted kittens. I hit the streets of Queens, looking for something to suit my needs. This occupied all of five minutes. Less than a block away, mixed in with a three-legged fan, bagged garbage, and a doorless mini-fridge, sat a perfectly level, slightly dusty, cheap and somewhat tasteless end table.

Perfect, I thought.

I carried it home, cleaned it thoroughly, and nestled it snugly between my bed and my computer desk.

Ok, now what?

I rooted in my pocket for my BlackBerry, checked the FedEx website, and tracked my imminent MacBook. Shit, I thought, still three more days to go. Its remarkable how much these computers fill our daily lives..

I named my new notebook Zipper, my childhood nickname, which I once despised, but now find endearing..

Retention

2009-08-10T00:21:00.000-07:00

When my mother tells me anything, I always take it with the proverbial "grain of salt." Not that she's a bad source of information, but that her semi-backwards Bible-loving ways just don't jibe with my particular lifestyle. One day, two years ago, she mentioned that an author was giving a reading in Thousand Oaks, a sleepy, culture-bereft suburb, north of Los Angeles, and that she bought me a ticket to attend with her. "I can't remember his name," she struggled, "Jonathan something.." The author in question happened to be none other than Jonathan Safran Foer, my favorite young writer. As it's said, even the brokenest of clocks is correct two times per diem.

At the reading, Jonfen (Everything is Illuminated readers know what I mean), read the first few pages from his, at the time, most recent novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This book stirred me, moved me to tears. At the reading, which was attended by a few hundred others in a large auditorium, Jonfen read aloud. Extremely Loud's protagonist is a precocious pre-pubescent boy named Oskar who at one points mentions,

"Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn't, because there aren't enough skulls!"

At the reading, I laughed out loud at this line. I was, in fact, the only person to do so, and Jonfen stopped, and graciously said that this was his favorite line he'd yet written. I'd like to think that comment was for me. (:

Anyhow, though it did not dawn upon me until recently, the fact is that we (all humans) are living in an age of unparalleled retention. Specifically, we are holding onto so much life, that the flow of out future progress is obviously slowed by our unwilling-to-die past.

Allow me to unravel this point.

Via medical technology people are defying death with alarming grace. Emergency attempts to save lives in hospitals, extraordinary efforts to prolong life via pharmaceutical intervention, organ transplant, artificial limbs/organs/mobility. We are living longer, and more supplementally, than ever.

Additionally, social networking sites are keeping up in contact with our past more completely than ever. Whereas, in the past, we would forget about past loves, former friends, and so much else in our proverbial rearview, now, more than ever, humans remain connected to our history in such a subtle yet sweeping way, that the implications of it have not yet been fully fleshed out. No longer do young people look forward to high school reunions. We know full well what our former classmates are up to, because we've added them on FaceBook and stalked their profiles.

A great deal of life is letting go of things that have previously haunted us. Traumatic experiences, awkward childhood memories, relationships gone sour; so much of living in the present is forgetting about the past. That both our ongoing lives and social interactions are now supplanted by technology raises interesting questions about how we as modern humans are to experience life in the present and prepare ourselves for the future.

Rather than damning all modern technology as "evil," I'd like to take exception to certain elements of it, as merely constipatory and generally unproductive. With our aging relatives and former friends so close to our daily existence, how are we to face forward and address our respective upcoming agendas? So much of our past is retained in our present that it cannot help but slow our impending future.

I'm the last person to demonize FaceBook, or older relatives. I spend a great deal of my time entertaining or considering both, but I do often wonder if my own life is progressing in a totally different course than my grandparent's or even my parent's generation. Am I cheating myself out of a more complete present, or merely delaying the inevitable future arrival of middle-age, maturity, bigger responsibilities, and larger consequences?

I don't yet have any answers, but I'd like very much to hear more people asking these same questions.

Jonfen reads from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

it's my first time..

2009-07-19T22:38:00.000-07:00

When in my middle teens, those angry, awkward years, I never liked to admit to doing something for the first time. When Deija, a fellow seventh grader, asked me if I 'smoked out,' my initial response was, 'Out where?' When she clarified and inquired, 'No, I mean, do you get high?' I blushed a half-shade shy of tomato-red. 'Oh, sure all the time,' I chuckled, 'I'm stoned right now, in fact.' The truth was that I'd not yet touched the stuff. That changed quickly, as Deija provided the requisite ingredients.

When Melinda, the first girl I kissed (at the ripe old age of 16), asked if I'd 'been with' a girl before, again, I chortled. 'You're not dealing with an amateur, here, missy. I've been around the block, if you catch my meaning.' Of course, I'd meant that literally. It did earn me an lip-numbingly-long make-out and feel-up session, and to my lanky teenage credit, I later lost my virginity that same year.

However, the point is, despite the fact the I'd led a well-sheltered life, guarded by the twin parental sentries of my elementary school principal father and fanatical Bible-toting mother, I never wanted to be thought of as a first-timer. I wanted experience and wisdom. I desired the perspective of age without the messy acquisition of actually experiencing events through new eyes. Fortunately, life has proved this impossible.

At long last, I finally have the courage, perspective, and genuine desire to want to do things that are foreign to me, while simultaneously acknowledging, that, yes, indeed, this is my pink-cheeked, rosy-glowing, you-betcha, wobbly-kneed, legitimate first time. And I'm fine with that.

This past week I, for the first time, witnessed fireflies in person (at Tompkins Square Park, Prospect Park, and Ft. Tryon all within a few days) and welcomed my inaugural visit to the fabled boardwalk of Coney Island for the Siren Music Festival (namely to see Built to Spill). Photos and video below..

Coney Island

Built to Spill

Z

Mark

Joe & Amy

Chelsea & Jessica

Self-Reliance and NYC

2009-07-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

As of late, I've been on an undeniable photographic tear, having shot seven separate portrait sessions between June 20th and July 12th, with no hint of slowing down. I know what you're thinking: "But Zach, aren't you supposed to be a creative nonfiction writer? or aren't you in NYC to start a career in finance or some such nonsense?"

True, choosing one specific discipline has never been my forte, but that doesn't mean I feel any less confident about any particular area of my life. Calling into question one's life pursuits pushes me back toward my first literary hero. No, not Hunter Thompson, but Ralph Waldo Emerson. His message was timeless, universal, and especially now, consistently relevant. I've long identified as a person who "...walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession', for he does not postpone his life, but lives already." [from Self-Reliance]

Self-Reliance and Other Essays can be purchased from Amazon.com or any bookstore for less than a dollar. If you have not read this collection, pick it up. It remains remarkable. Although it is a century-and-a-half old, time has not diminished its relevance nor its poignancy. Emerson's themes are aphoristic, didactic, and instructive. His passion and confidence is written for both the meek and the bold. For the meek, it offers the nudge of encouragement. Live like this. For the bold, a tip of the proverbial hat, whispering, Keep it up.

I'm often asked what my reason was for moving to New York City. There is no single answer to this question. My reasons are creative, romantic, familial, entrepreneurial, professional, symbolic, and just plain ol' curiosity. Plus, its New York. The city itself lives, breathes, and exists as a reason, and a large one at that. A newly-made artist friend Alexander Ross, described this idea as "available energy." Basically that there is so much activity going on all around the city (hustle, bustle, etc) in such a confined space, that just existing in this environment is creatively stimulating. I think Emerson would have liked this idea. It broadens one's horizons and appeals to Emerson's notion of the over-soul, his 'common heart.' The opening line from Self-Reliance starts "If the single man plants himself indomitably on his higher instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him." I am that single man among that common heart.

Beyond the fact that I've long considered moving here (more than a decade, at least), a great many people, back home in LA, would ask me, "Are you from New York?" Be it either my speedy conversational delivery or the odd cadence of my speech, I've heard the "Are you from NY" question more than a hundred times, and frankly, doesn't it make sense to surround yourself with like-minded, similar thinking people. Not just the line of best fit, but the niche where one is most likely to thrive. In just over six short months here, I like to think I've begun carving out that niche.

more recent NYC photo shoots:

Maria Sandoval

Natalie Backman

Faye Lorraine Dennis

Ashley Orzol

Claudia Aires

Louisa Stratigis

Jessica Baxter

Z

on the death of Michael Jackson

2009-07-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

The news last Thursday, that Michael Jackson died at age 50, spread through the streets on New York City like wildfire on a hot dry day. I was walking on 14th Street and first overheard someone say it, thinking little of it (insane jibber on the streets of NYC is not uncommon), but after hearing more people talking, it was clear, the man had indeed passed on.

The life of Michael Jackson presents many music lovers in the US, and certainly the rest of the world, with a quandary.

On one hand, we know and love the very public life of Michael, growing up with the Jackson 5, his eventual solo career starting in the late 70s, then unparalleled superstardom by the early 80s. Michael's music represented post-racial America, a time of broken stereotypes and burgeoning multiculturalism in most US cities. MJ was no longer a black entertainer, but a massively creative celebrity whose race was mere afterthought, totally secondary to his primary role as an artist with broad appeal. Michael the entertainer was indeed missed by an entire spectrum of people across the world, regardless of race. Not since The Beatles has a single musical act held the power and appeal of Michael Jackson, both in terms of consumer drawing power and in ability to transcend cultural pigeonholing. In short, he truly was a legend, larger than life, transcendent and universal.

The personal side of Michael Jackson is more difficult for some people to parse. Beginning in the early 80s MJ's global success afforded him absolute financial power, and as the saying goes, 'absolute power, corrupts absolutely.' First started the drastic alteration of his physical appearance. Plastic surgery became the initial way by which MJ's detractor began to poke fun. Michael's soft-spoken, nigh-timid persona was only reinforced as the color of his skin and shape of his face became further and further altered under many-a surgeon's scalpel. Then, in the early 90s, the first, of what would prove to be many, accusations of improper relations with underage children bloomed into public consciousness. Slowly, the parody of MJ as pervert, molester, fondler, sexual deviant, due largely to American and British tabloid press, became yet another vehicle of both the butts of jokes and the corrosion of his once pristine public image. This continued for more than a decade, before MJ was reduced to human parody.

In the end, as Michael was preparing a largely anticipated comeback world tour, he succumbed to the excessive lifestyle brought on by his material wealth. Though final autopsy results are still out, it was likely prescription drugs that finally felled the man. In memorium, most people worldwide will probably remember the man as legend, as artist, and forgive or forget his very public misgivings. The idea of MJ as transcendent artist/dancer/entertainer will persist beyond his embattled personal life. His message was one of unity, of peace, and of post-racial ideology. MJ passed on leaving a massive body of work, emblematic of the post-modern experience of global multicultural identity.

Ye Olde Timey Tunes

2009-06-14T12:51:00.000-07:00

If you blinked, or found yourself too far from its youth-oriented source, you likely missed it. From the early 2000s through roughly last year, a phenomenon within 'independent' music came and went very fast. It was startling, original, decidedly Old World, simultaneously retro and progressive.

Not unlike Bob Dylan eliciting poetic visions of some distant, nigh-fictional pioneer west or Tom Waits-style majestic urban mythology, there exist a tiny handful of musicians who have made conscious decisions to couch their creative expression in an of old world vernacular and aesthetic, replete with the geography, phraseology, imagery of a more provincial era.

The choices reflect an escape, a sojourn, from modern technological climes, into a distinct, vaguely intangible era, pre-war yet post-industrial, during which creative camaraderie, impromptu campfire song, and a café lifestyle collide to reify the comfort of the past and banish completely, the harrowing, uncertain present.

Not just incanting the style of Old World music, but making musical choices, in terms of instrument selection, composition, and arrangement that invoke, reenact, and reanimate the life of the Old World itself. We ride through this world, borne on horseback, afoot in a desert, on sailing ships, wagon wheels slowly rolling away from the grim future, into the distant past. Music to be performed, nay, enacted around campfires, in an impromptu, happenstance fashion. Thrown together, yet impossibly well-done, as through the musical Magnificent Seven (or perhaps more appropriately the Seven Samurai), were assembled from the finest performers that the bygone past has to offer.

The archaic lyric poetry of the Decemberists, who burst perhaps most notably into the mainstream with the help of television personality Stephen Colbert. Their lyrics bleed like love letters from pre-war Europe written on postcards, public emotional confessions, in the face of technologically supplied privacy. The Decemberists, named for a pre-Bolshevik revolution in Russia, invoke the world of the circus, the stage, acrobats, and vaudeville, sea shanties, elegies.

The potent, distant geography of Calexico and Beirut. Calexico, first, with it gypsy-cum-jazz-cum-mariachi sound that transports the listener through The Frontera, the dusty plains, a gentler, simpler past. Though their best work fell between 1998 and 2005, Calexico's recent collaborations with Iron and Wine keep them in the running for one of the most prolific new/old time artists.

Beirut, perhaps best upholds the central idea of this new/old time wave. Named for either a city in Lebanon or a variation of the drinking game beer pong, Beirut, led by early-20s virtuoso Zach Condon, at once shatters and recombines the popular notion of Indie music by introducing their audience to sounds they've likely never heard, using instruments rarely audible outside the world music scene, including mandolin, accordion, French horn, piano, tamborine, wood block, big drums. Beirut's first three albums Gulag Orkestar (2006), Lon Gisland (EP, 2007), and The Flying Cup Club (2007) will absolutely alter your life, if you've not yet heard them. Arabesque, European, Old World, brilliant. I continue to expect great things from Mr. Condon and Beirut and hope they do not disappoint.

The gypsy incantation of Andrew Bird, as though here were channelling Django Reinhardt and dancing his eternal soul around on stage. Though deeply anachronistic, Bird employs a number of stylized techniques including whistling, xylophonery, and spinning twin-gramophones. Legend has it that Bird moved into his grandfather's barn outside Chicago and listened to no other music for three years during a lull in his career. The resulting album Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs is nothing short of miraculous.

The mighty horns of DeVotchka, most expertly, tuba player Jeanie Schroder and their Ron Orbison-sounding lead singer Nick Urata. Their is a sorrow, a pining, a heartfelt romantic passion that especially in our post-modern world seemed only to exist in literature, fable, or lore.

The neo-classicism of Regina Spektor, modern, yet infused deeply with the likes of Chopin, Tom Waits. The restrained lyric quality of Lavender Diamond and Mirah. Spooky female vocalists that haunt and unnerve.

One of my personal favorite new/old wave musicians is perhaps the least known. Jason Webley, who, after eleven years of continuous music, yours and performs all over the world. I had the distinct pleasure of first encountering Webley's music on MySpace, one of the few unsolicited friend requests that actually led to enjoyable new music.

My first in-person experience with Jason Webley was at the Echo Curio on East Sunset, in Los Angeles. He performed for less than 30 people, yet riveted us all with his old world mystique. More than just a concert, Webley evokes audience participation, storytelling, altered mental states, and jovial camaraderie to intone a full-scale, old world aural aesthetic. The foot stomp and barroom antic quality of his solo performance left me sonically assaelted, pleading haplessly for more. MORE! Literally perched upon a chair, Webley proved that a single musician holding steady the fixed gazes of a roomful of adherent music lovers, was not just possible, but altogether delightful. No drone of inebriated LA background chatter that pervade most gigs in the city. Someone passed a forty-ouncer of malt liquor in a brown paper bag.

Webley's best songs include Map, Dance While the Sky Crashes Down, Icarus, and Broken Cup. During his version of The Drinking Song, a bit of dialogue witht he audience revealed that, well there was no alcohol for sale in the sub-compact venue. No one’s drunk? No problem. Webley instructed the audience to point to the sky, stare at your finger and spin, until you feel drunk. Then we sang the Drinking Song, voices as one. We listening reverently to Webley’s stories of touring through Russia, where everyone is named Sergei. Nevermind that when we stomp the linoleum-stretched foundation, instead of a wooden floor in some dimly lit basement. Still, the aesthetic held. For a few hallowed moments, we there gone, escaping to some place faraway and magical.

Beirut - Nantes (courtesey of La Blogotheque)

Jason Webley - Dance While the Sky Crashes Down (Live @ Safari Sam's in Los Angeles)

terrific show

2009-06-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

Mad Men, with its mid-century iconography and themes, immerses the viewer neck-deep in a hostile, semi-nostalgic relic of Americana replete with ubiquitous smoking, rampant sexism, and garish racial subjugation.

We enjoy the show because of this fact, not in spite of it, for its frankness, its confrontational ability to simultaneously reify American myths while pulling back the guise of political correctness that's gradually clouded our collective eyes during the last five decades. Lewdness and effrontery are construed as a species of honesty, one seemingly gone from the oblique serpentine of our modern manners.

The cast performs well, the writing demonstrates wit, charm, brashness, shock, and grace, and all are arranged in a deliberate mise-en-scene of 50s New York, a setting that makes the general conceit of the show, the once grand now broken myth of American cultural superiority, not just possible, but alive and thriving in an oft-forgotten realm, only two generations removed.

In short, I enthusiastically recommend this show. Can't believe it took me this long to come around to watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcRr-Fb5xQo

AIDS Walk New York 2009

2009-05-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

The sky threatened rain, but the weather held. A day filled with inspiration, laughs, and sneaking off to pee at a nearby crepe restaurant. Below are some pics and a short video.

Killer Tomatoes

2009-05-02T09:06:00.000-07:00

As a ritual breakfast-eater each and every morning, sometimes steps must be taken to liven up the routine. Recently, my closed-faced whipped cream cheese everything bagel, and chicken sausage has become, the blistered grape tomato and basil, closed-faced whipped cream cheese everything bagel, and sausage. Grape tomatoes are toasted side-by-side in a toaster oven with the bagel, and then halved, de-seeded, halved again, and placed on one half of the bagel, while the cream cheese holds the basil in place. The toasting unlocks the juices and flavor within the wall of the tomato and gives it new life, taste-wise.

The blistered tomato is a deviation of Chef Richie's (Leila's), oven-blistered tomatoes, that would accompany his Jamaican jerked chicken breast entree. I miss Richie's food like I miss an intimate friend I haven't seen in several months.

Here's Richie's AMAZING recipe for blistered tomatoes. Good as a side dish, or if you just enjoy grazing on deliciousness.

Spread Grape Tomatoes on an oiled baking sheet.

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees.

Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.

Sprinkle herbs du provence, salt, pepper, bits of garlic and basil.

Sprinkle last a bit of sugar.

Slide the baking sheet into the oven for 20 minutes, or until the skin of the tomatoes looks blistered and bubbly.

Remove. Enjoy. (:

Culture Exchange: Candidates and Participants

2009-04-28T02:33:00.001-07:00

If you are a participant, then you might be a candidate. Yes folks, that's right, even though we all enjoy the trappings of culture, not all humans are created equal. Some people choose to participate. Some people guide and speed along the process by which we enjoy the fruits of culture.

If this is you, you are my people. (Andre, Kat, Emily, Mike, Alleigh, Louisa, Scott, Nicole, and.. well, I'm sure I've left a few out, but you know who you are!)

Its more than just sharing music with friends. Its more than just accepting book recommendations from co-workers. More than forwarding quirky emails or sharing YouTube finds. Its much more than just passing along a recipe or suggesting a previously unheard of restaurant. Culture exchange facilitates the maintenance, introduction, and engagement of an ongoing chain of social totems in the continuum of ideas in the human world.

I, for one, cannot get enough.

Scattered across the desk top the left-hand side of my laptop, sits a small but growing pile of such recommendations. Restaurants, movies, books, music, artists, the list goes on.. Transmitting, i.e. passing along recommendations is vastly important, but just as important is keeping ears open, eyes wide, taste buds at the ready, essentially maintaining an open mind. As much as one might believe they have acquired "enough" cultural artifacts, the collection is never truly over, not for me.

First, there is always something new to discover. Even if you believe you've uncovered "everything," there is the culture of the past, and the constantly churned out culture of the steadily moving present. For some odd reason, many decent people cease to either transmit or accept new culture at or around their late twenties. Perhaps keeping up grows tiresome, and "real" life steps in with its bevy of responsibilities and obligations.

But not for me.

Even with just under 20K songs on my iTunes (95gb!), a NetFlix queue as long as my leg, an Amazon wishlist that could be published as a novella, and a miscellany of hand-scrawled notes that better resembles an upset garbage can, I will still accept and transmit those fabled recommendations, those cultural artifacts, to ultimately preserve the endless, building stream of culture that makes life not just worth living, but truly worth enjoying.

In the spirit of good will, here are a few recently acquired music recommendations, received by me, transmitted to you:

Nosaj Thing
Prefuse 73
Daedelus
Flying Lotus
Arthur Russell
Sondre Lerche
Frida Hyvönen
Coconut Records
Ezra Furman And The Harpoons
Beat Happening
Black Lips
A Place to Bury Strangers
Dirty Projectors
Augustus Pablo

Central Park escapist

2009-04-18T16:10:00.000-07:00

Today marked my first trek into Central Park. The day's weather could not have offered a better opportunity to explore this sprawling urban treasure. I hopped off the N train at 57th St and 7th Ave and walked the two blocks to Central Park South. From the street, a nearby CNN multimedia billboard proclaimed the time to be 4:05pm, the temperature 74 degrees (F).

Evidently, my idea to venture into the park on this lovely Saturday was not at all original as a veritable flotilla of baby carriages, frisbee tossers, horse-drawn carriages, softball players, wine drinkers, balloon salesman, soft pretzel merchants, and cigarette smokers descended on its greenish climes to bask or hock wares in the day's remarkable weather. In the air hung the very human scents of cotton candy, tobacco smoke, sticky-sweet cherry chapstick, bubble gum, and the occasional pile of bagged garbage.

I waded through the olfactory sensory overload, wearing my saffron yellow Zankou Chicken tee and trademark doctor's scrubs, the navy blue pair, today. With me I brought my current read, Infinite Jest, a granny smith apple, and a bottle of Poland Spring water. Eventually I made my way from south end of the park, past the Merry-Go-Round, the baseball field (there was a fast-past softball game underway), into an area designated a Quiet Zone, known as Sheep Meadow. Later I read the Sheep Meadow actually facilitated the grazing of sheep when the park first opened in 1859 until 1934.

Sheep Meadow today better resembled a mini-Coachella, without the stages. The meadow was absolutely packed with parents, children, lovers, friends, mostly reposed on towels and blankets, as well as an airborne hive of frisbees, footballs, baseballs, laughter, and conversation. Attire remained decidedly spare, with many people electing shirtlessness, beachwear, bare feet, or at most, short sleeves and sandals. I doffed my Zankou shirt, cranked the iPod, laid on the grass and considered the newly-downloaded recent release from The Decemberists.

Though I spent only two hours basking in the sun, watching the off-white cherry blossoms shed petals in the breeze and reading, on some deeply psychic level, I felt as though I'd managed to escape, if only briefly, the steel and concrete maw of New York City, into a grassy paradise of peaceable park-goers. I'd not realized how sun-starved I'd become since leaving Los Angeles, until i found myself face to face with that same bright sun. Clouds passed intermittently, allowing me to escape the sun-burning of my flesh (which, as you might imagine, is pastier than an ice-fisherman's arse, after three sunless months in the shady urban corridors of the city).

I caught the N train once again, heading back to Queens, knowing that the notion of escape, albeit brief, is not only possible in New York City, but damn-near necessary.

(word)

2009-04-09T01:27:00.000-07:00

There dwells in them a music, a rhythm, lyric as Dylan, frank as gangsters. Inside they betray a secret logic, an inner structure, labyrinthine, complex,

layered. These words float untethered, avian, circling a busy park, crouching together on pavement. They beg of you their attention and you there's. Writing lives in an economy, capitalistic. You demand their supply, the market-clearing point where all sides leave pleased. They seek in you arrangement, you in them, availability. Refuse them nothing and they endow you eternally. Without you, they are an orchestra pit bereft of conduct. Without them, you evaporate, no way to be heard, couched, or construed. You've starved in their absence, Israelites in a desert march, lauded their return, rain emptied on parched earth. They may take other lovers, but only in passing, a dog straying from its yard only to be found sheepishly awaiting keys to your latched front door.

The words come easily now. Once they were weekend sofa sleepers, unexpected guests arriving at strange hours for indeterminate spans. Once skittish pigeons they now obey, a falcon to your glove, parrots echoing, a predictable mynah's cries. You command them, but they also give orders, expecting you to mirror their cooperation. They possess needs occasionally, request a lover's reciprocity. Should you refuse they desert, but alas, here you both are. They go on secret missions for you, midnight sorties deep over enemy territory, foreign borders that you could not otherwise trespass. They now trust your leadership, you having earned their respect while months turned to years across battlefield, foxholes, the icy tundra of abandon, doom, and death.

Left alone words graze, happy heifers awaiting your seated submission, your milking hands. They fatten and bulge, the precise pairing of rain clouds and falling barometrics, urging your wind, that tipping point, to drive down in sheets of precipitation. You welcome these words, childlike, knowing nothing of adult umbrella cynicism, let the water drizzle your cheeks, soak your clothes, fill your shoes.

The Principal's Son

2009-04-04T13:51:00.000-07:00

Today my thoughts turn to the past. The not-too-distant past of my early childhood. Blond bowl-cut, stripy long sleeves snail-trailed with snot, Osh Kosh overalls with grass-stained knees in a time before cynicism, pink and fresh and new to the world.

From here, or near here, a decision was made by my parents to enroll me at the same elementary school of which my father was newly made principal. His first day as an autonomous administrator was also mine as unmoored offspring. Maybe it was a consideration of timeliness and morning schedules. A choice of convenience, of lesser resistance. Hardly justification for such a life-altering choice in my book, but then, at that time, my book had not yet been authored and my life was largely not my own.

There I am, age five entering a school whose teachers knew me who I was before I had opened my mouth. Before I existed as a human child, I existed as a known figure, a reputation tethered to another. The Principal's Son. Nevermind the fact that I had from age 1 1/2 demonstrated preternatural verbal acuity. Nevermind that, as I believe, I was the genetic composite of an uber-articulate, half-bright jock and an intuitively gifted yet emotionally frayed former hippie, self-christened with new age sobriety. These facts exist as irrefutable determinants. Not feathers in a hat, but the design and positioning of the hat itself on the wearer's head.

What concerns me now are those feathers, those light flourishes that affect the overall interpretation of the picture. Nothing can be done to reconcile those big picture determinants. But those proximal choices, those which, like a ray of sunlight, can tip a sneeze into existence, or in the sun's absence, scuttle that same nasal explosion entirely, are now my chief concern. So today, I would like to indulge, to 'What If?' in the name of my own peace of mind.

What if I had gone to another school? What about a private school? Considering the painfully obvious gifted nature of my young life, the possibility of attending a private school with a scholarship would have been very real. However, my father and his siblings all entered the professional world as public educators. What about a different public school, not under th

e administration of my father? I would still have remained outspoken, true, but not in the context of The Principal's Son. I might have begun to deal with the attention that my abilities draw to me with a different skill set. An autonomous gifted human, rather than one of nepotistic determination.

As The Principal's Son, my brilliance was expected, no surprise. Of course he's that way, he's the Principal's Son. This unfortunately diminishes the impact of my unique abilities. If they are already placed in a paradigm of expectation, that first and early 'coming out' was taken in stride, and not marveled over, or placed into an individual context. I feel that too much of my life now is given over to the attention I receive from other's with respect to my life, my work, my creativity. Diminished is the importance of the work itself, while highlighted seems to be the reception of that work; essentially audience response over exactitude of performance.

As any artist will explain, this is wrong. Not just wrong, but dangerous poison to one's creative pursuits. Or so we've been conditioned to understand the nature of artistry. The popular understanding of artistic achievement seems couched in terms of poverty, anonymity, with the only the vague possibility of posthumous appreciation. This is how the modern world has come to understand artists. Of course, this is largely intellectual exercise. I don't believe it, and I'm glad that there are some other's out there who see creativity differently.

Perhaps my own inner-torment stems from the nature of my own resistance to this notion. Perhaps I learned very early that like any creation worthy of an audience, an artist must first understand who he/she is attempting to dazzle. Perhaps, taking this further, the audience does not like it when they seem "gotten" by an act of creativity. Perhaps their comfort level better suits them for the idea of art as surprising, an act of spontaneity that could never be figured in, worked out, and strategized.

Then the question ultimately boils down to With whom am I chiefly concerned? My work, my audience, or my work's reception by an audience? Um, I actually like the third most of all. It has, built into it, the idea of economy, of structure. A supply, and its reflective echo, demand. Given this conclusion, perhaps I should thank my parents, although too much instant gratification (i.e. writing a quick blog as opposed to tirelessly working at a large, unseen manuscript) is surely something to avoid.

Still, though I enjoy considering these proximal determinants, I know full well, that I have within me, the power to overcome them. When I was a child, I was a notoriously picky eater. This c

ontinued into the first twenty-four years of my life. My father would tell me, "Your grandfather was that way, and I am too, so its makes sense that you would be too." Again, couched into context before real life experience could naturally and environmentally shape my worldview. For the record, I'll now eat anything tasty, while my father still cringes over the mere existence of tomatoes.

Considering my own latent narcissism, it is taken for a given that I will likely procreate. But I would now like to put in check that same narcissistic perspective to arrive at What Might Work Best for my future child/children. With my own life now better understood through retrospective insight, I will make some pragmatic choices of my own.

1) Individual identity. Giving my child/children a middle name(s) that might be acceptably used as last names, should they desire identity beyond me and my own achievements and persona.

2) Alternative educational options. Namely, private school, or at least private school as a consideration.

3) Selflessness during consideration of the majority of proximal determinants in my child/children's future. If something so superficial as shaving a few minutes off of my morning commute impinges upon my decision as to where to enroll my children, kindly slap my face.

I and David Foster Wallace

2009-04-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

Backlogged as I perpetually am with my New Yorker subscription, I only recently happened upon a terrific piece by D.T. Max on David Foster Wallace from March 9th. Like all good journalism, Max's piece deftly maneuvers the reader through the biographical details pertinent to Wallace's recent suicide while touching softly upon the sobering points of what made his writing so important during and beyond his lifetime.

Wallace, from a young age, appeared hamstrung by depression in ways that would eventually usher in his undoing, his self-annihilation. So many other prolific writers have elected this exit. I've visited Hemingway's grave in Ketcham, talked with Hunter Thompson in Las Vegas. Why do these pioneers, those living on the leading edge, find solace in suicide?

I very rarely take the time to acknowledge the presence of mental instability in

my own family, as my tendency remains to focus on the positive, those over-achievers whose impact and influence reverberates via constructive means. This does not, however, paint the entire picture. Both sides of my family, as I'm sure is true of many families, bear elements of mental illness, both diagnosed and undiagnosed. My own experiences with both hyperactivity and obsessive compulsive disorder exist as nearly impersonal relics, pieces from my past that seem not to relate to who I am today, who I have grown into.

That is not to say that I am fully divorced from my concerns.

The Wallace article stresses his own battle not just with mental instability, but with desire for creative growth, of exceeding beyond what he has previously achieved. If I truly have settled the demons of my past, should not the next goal be to uncouple myself from that past, and more importantly its detrim

ental present, and stride boldly into the future, one of my own devising whose goals are limitless and whose potential is unknown.

In terms of writing, I cannot help but shake the notion that I have seen my best days swim past me. I feel that my burst of creativity between '06 and '07 was a direct result of my personal and professional life collapsing into an unrecognizable shambles. From the ashes of my own chaos did arise this neat and orderly creative output, one that sought to right the ills of my life with the control of a narrative.

Writing became my peacemaker, the optometrist's lens correcting myopia. Which is clearer? This one? Or this one?

But, dammit, that will not do. Not at all! I reject this idea. Why must there exist chaos before order? Cannot the two exist in parallel? Do I always have to consider my broken past, or "will all the pieces ever mend?"

I think now, more than ever, we need the consolation of writers like David Foster Wallace

who isolate and identify the idea that the biggest enemy of creativity is our own opposition to boredom. If we can truly exist in harmony with boredom and reject needless elements of

entertainment, then maybe, just maybe, we can filter out the inconsequential and welcome in something sublime, something lovely..