Oh Come, all ye Faithful: March 2005

Does anyone know what this building is? It's near Harvard, it's worth a stare if you're there.

Here we are at the 11th table of a restaraunt called "10 Tables". My scallops await.

They couldn't be doing more predictable things on the Charles, could they? It was such a nice day, even I wanted to strap into an "8 manner". (I was nummer 3 in high school)

Three Kings, Three Amigos, Three Stooges? No, we're even more stereotypical than that. (Too much for Hollywood).

And they'll be rocking in Boston

Last Friday, Good Friday. If there was ever a day that lost its original meaning, it's Good Friday. It seems to be good to everyone, because the Financial Markets are closed, so that means that everyone is off work, even just a little. I felt good doing my part, precipitating this towards the exit door movement. Everyone was wondering, whispering at the lunch table about asking to get off Friday afternoon. Then I had to break it all off by saying hi to my boss and just asking, "so, would it be okay if I took a bus out of town a bit early on Friday, maybe 3?" Oh, I told him. Then everyone in my 23-28 age bracket followed suit. There are leaders and there are followers, and I think I know what it takes to be a certain kind of leader. It may not be a paid position, but I'm out of town before all ya'll! Peace!

So on this holiest of weekends I ended up with two unholy people that I grew up with. Oh, we had a great time, doing what we used to do as kids: Bowling (candlepin bowling to be specific), drinking...sodas..., listening to music, pointing out how stupid I am. We added in some new activities that as young men we didn't take part in: Fine dining and foreign films. Of course, any dining is a little finer when you're seated across from the young chinese chef. Oh la la we said as we tried to finish one course after another. This young girl was headed over to the same region of France that I spent a weekend in with a young English girl. I told her, "visit the abbey, it's beautiful". Such sage advice can't come from anyone, just from someone who recommends abbies or museums without ever remembering their names.

It was great to walk around Harvard and MIT campuses. For the first time in my life I knew that my place was not among them. I enjoyed the architecture and looked at everyone with a quiet midwesterner's gaze which said "you may be smarter than me, but I can run you over with my truck."

Unreal made real

It's a vertical city, there's no doubt about it. Sometimes it's nice, when you're on the outskirts or in downtown, to pretend that this huge city is composed of 4 story buildings. Not in Midtown though. What was once a novelty for me when I was a child, to ride 23 floors up, is now just entirely normal. Everyday, I work on the 21st floor.

We were doing a company call over at Atlantic Records. To refresh, Atlantic is a part of the WEA group (Warner Music Group), W is Warner, E is Elektra (the Doors' label), and A is Atlantic. We were actually going over to the Asylum label, which is simply a name owned by Warner. Asylum was David Geffen's label in the 70's for such luminaries as Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, and Jackson Browne. Warner bought it and, in record labels' partial faith in luck over logic, set it up as an urban label. You can catch the Geto Boys' new release out now on Asylum records.

As our elevator went up, I told my superior that I had a friend at Domino records, a label we had talked about before. He couldn't quite remember what the label was, so I reminded him, and at that moment the elevator jolted to a stop. No floor was on the display, just two red x's. He said, "we're going to get off here" but the door didn't open. Before we could say anything else, the elevator started to fall, slowly, then a bit faster. Then it stopped again.

I wasn't sure what to do, and as usual, when I'm unsure I usually do nothing. Well, this time as the elevator descended I bent my knees for the impact. Fortunately, there was no impact, but the elevator was totally unresponsive to our button pushing. My superior especially kept pushing one button that seemed to do nothing. I looked at the same button that I had on my own panel of buttons. It said, "pull for emergency stop". I pulled it and the alarm went off. I remember a girl from long ago wanting to pull that button for less emergency and more explicit passions. Because it was an emergency and an odd situation, I considered my superior for what would be our last minutes with another human being. I figured we could hug or something.

The intercom came on and the maintenance man was hoping that we would be able to tell him what was wrong. He talked to someone who gave us very little news, and after that asked us to depress the pulled button. The elevator went up and let us off one floor sooner than we had selected. From there we took the stairs.

Since the elevator didn't crash and only a few people in the building noticed the alarm, no one really cared about our perilous happening. As events turned in the tri state area, a woman's car was struck by a train not far from a pharmacy where my superior's wife was buying drugs. So he didn't even mention it to his wife. As for myself, I forgot to mention it a few hours later at the German conversation group, but I think that was also because I couldn't remember the German word for elevator.

Elevators have such a place in Midtown Manhattan that I think they are never, ever even looked at as something fun or interesting. Put mirrors in one, it's everyone's powder room. Some even have TV's, like the ones at Atlantic Records. I watched the updates on celebrity and executive trials as our elevator stopped and stayed stopped. But if an elevator takes the plunge, that's it. The plunge begins, though, just as eerily as our little floor drop. Who knows what the next few seconds will bring? It left us with nothing but to think of our last seconds on earth being spent with the guy from work, he we left happily each day to return home to books or to a loving family.

Tonight I almost ran in front of a cab because I was exercising my jaywalk abilities while out for a run. I forgot that it was a two-way street. For the angel believers, there's definitely one tailing me these days, or for the occult, there's an ancient Indian Mahattan God who's trying to kill me.

Palm Trees

It's a little cold in Hawaii's 2 month winter!

This is at the Doris Duke House. You can go on a tour or just walk to the beach (there are no private beaches on Oahu).

Building of the Week: Japanese Buddhist Temple, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Heat may have been used in the preparation of tea.

And it couldn't be real

It's all happened. Another person has seen my apartment, deemed it small. I left New York for a vacation and came back within a week. I watched TV. I found life again difficult to enjoy.

A week spent with my parents showed me how much I had compared to other kids. My parents are both successful in business and so they coached me in everything from how to interview to where to look for jobs, from losing in corporate politics to winning in corporate politics. This was priceless stuff, and as I looked at the desperate titles of career guidance in a Honolulu Border's Books, I really didn't know what I'd do without it.

Hawaii is a sport-lover's paradise. I went after traditional surfing, which I learned how to do pretty fast in calm but steady waves. I only hit one person, and it was only his head, which he probably should have ducked underwater. Surfing was everywhere, even at a museum we could look out at someone surfing a couple hundred feet off shore. On a cold afternoon we watched kiteboarders cruise through choppy waters. I even found out that the old Discovery Channel standby, getting in a cage and having sharks swim around you, is now availible for consumers.

None of us, though, wanted to stay for the rest of our lives. With my sister and I, you'd have to take our word for it. My parents, though, have the wherewithall to move out there, but plans made years ago really mean something to them. They're still going with the life of farmers, a life that's guaranteed to be "in-the-works" for years to come.

Early in the Morning and Late in the Eveningtime

I can't tell you what's happening in New York. Hopefully it's not buried in snow, hopefully a bunch of robbers haven't figured out how to get into the window of my apartment. I'm writing from Hawaii, for our spring-time family vacation. My mom just came back from the beach, looked at the laundry and asked why no one had collected it yet. Well, clearly we're all on vacation, feeling kind of lazy, and so we all expect her to do it. That's not exactly true. We're pretty P.C., so we don't believe that mom should do all the work. But we do wait for the work to get done, and when mom does it we're all pretty happy.

I met a relative today, he's of my Grandmother's generation but is 18 years younger than her. He moved to Hawaii in the 70's and never came back. I can understand how he did it, he worked nine-to-five's in cultivating all kinds of big gardens and then spent and still spends all his leisure time on several beaches seven days a week. I'll have to post a picture of this guy because he looks real healthy, tanned but not cancer-spotty.

Don't Worry, to all those who worry about me. I'm enjoying this week in Hawaii as much as I enjoyed last week, when I told everyone that I was going to Hawaii. We've only driven the length of Oahu, stopping here and there, and it's taken hours. My parents have reached a point in their lives where they don't see this Hawaii trip as their last. They're happy to do almost everything, even things they've done before.

I know that parts of Hawaii can get crowded, but we haven't seen those crowds yet. Instead, there's been people who were at the North Shore on Sunday to see 25 foot waves who were on the Eastern shore to swim in some finer waves today. People here don't just talk about the weather, they know what the weather, especially the wind, will bring to certain parts of the island. Then they follow the conditions to follow their own pleasures. My great-uncle twice removed (at that point we would call him a distant cousin) has been doing it for over twenty years.

Roll Over Beethoven!

Out of a city of 15 million, I should expect to get upstaged in a big way any time I try to do anything. Here it is:

newyorkintern.blogspot.com

Don't let the straightforward web address fool you. This guy is in the jokes telling business, so you don't get the straight scoop. He works for the Daily Show, and in reading his jokes, it makes me think, "ah yes, that's what it's like if you're actually funny."

A little bright spot showed up in my week when a little senorita gave me a call on Monday. Unfortunately, she's leaving in a week, but this could still have some real long-term benefits. It all revolves around her mattress, something I'd like to buy from her. It's more expensive than my first car and looks like it took only a bit of wear in its year of usage. I think my back would thank me for years if I bought it.

We met in German class (oh, before I let you assume it too long, she has a boyfriend and we've been platonic) and it turns out that her boyfriend is a German from some town, one of the hundreds that I've never been to. They'll both be at her little going away party tonight, to which I'll be going. Who knows, maybe I'll regain my ability to speak a little German? I've found that it goes well, or decently, as long as people don't give me a strained look that says, "give us a phrase, anything that we can use to understand you."

Manhattan life is progressing faster than I'd thought. Before I even have a real job, I've got real stress, which focused itself on the left side of my back. Yesterday I could take no more of this and I called my sports club for a massage. The expensive massage left me weary and today it still hurts, something that the masseuse assured me would happen. This is really standing in the way of my rigorous exercise program, which goes 6 days a week unless I'm a little sick or tired. Then I cut it down to no days a week.

My creativity and attraction to a certain class of intellectual led me to think that the banking industry was the only place for me. Well, I've heard nothing but warning or astonishment from those who know me, so today I thought about the job, as I understand it, of coffee importer. It's a beverage I like, one that I can discriminate between the awful and the tolerable. I've spent a little time in Central America and in Africa. I can sleep at night while people toil away for poor wages. I can speak Spanish and French, and in instances where my language abilities falter, I can pretend to speak them instead. I can even go to a port and watch containers lifted onto trucks, thereby confirming the actual importation of the coffee.

I must say, for those of you like me, with some French ability (or even Italian might work), the job of wine merchant is a booming trade in New York. I can't do it because I don't drink, but there are those of you stuck in boring jobs who could really do a number here and in France. According to the wife of someone in my French Class (a country girl from Lainguedoc), the first year was hell, but now her wines are at Tavern on the Green, the overpriced Central Park eatery, among other places. Life probably doesn't get better than describing beverages to people.

Sorry my German or Spanish friends. I don't think that peddling dry sherry or Riesling will buy your daily bread.

Oh Come, all ye Faithful