Remains of the Day

How it all went down

Everyone who hears about my basketball injury asks how it happened. There were no video cameras there, but imagine me as Chris Paul and this is an eerie video replay of the shot I hit just before my Achilles exploded.

T-minus one day until I go under the knife. I am ready to get it over with and start on the long rehab process. The thought of not being able to run or jump or exercise until sometime in February or March of 2009 is driving me crazy. No NY Marathon in November, no golf trip with the boys this summer, no snowboarding next winter, no running along the beach in Santa Monica, no hitting tennis balls with coworkers.

I need something, and I'm not sure what it is yet, to dissipate my agitation, or I'm going to lose my mind.

My first patent

Cool, I actually got awarded a patent. That patent is the basis of what is now Amazon's Flexible Payment Service. It's humbling to be on the same inventor list as some of those names.

Achilles heel

I spend over 6 hours in UCLA's ER today, waiting to see someone who could put my leg in a splint and to get a pair of crutches. Too much TV may leave you thinking ER's are thrilling places, with severely injured patients being rushed in on stretchers, oxygen mask pressed to their faces, clothing drenched in blood. Or, when they aren't embroiled in life-and-death situations, TV depicts them as a collection of odd and colorful patients mingling with attractive and earnest interns who are hooking up in closets when they aren't learning lessons about life from their cases.

The truth, as anyone who's had to go the the ER knows, is far far less glamorous. After checking in, I waited about a half hour before they sent me into a see a nurse who took my blood pressure and asked me why I was there. I explained that I was pretty sure I'd ruptured my Achilles tendon.

She tapped away at her keyboard, then paused, wrinkling her brow.

"How do you spell Achilles?" she asked.

Another nurse took my paperwork and then dropped it into a file bin attached to the wall. The bin was labeled Tier 4/5 and was packed with what appeared to be the paperwork for 15 or 16 other patients, mine slotting at the end.

"Intimidated?" asked the nurse, with a laugh.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"By all the papers ahead of you," he said. "Don't worry, you're fast track."

I never thought to ask what that meant, though I hoped it was something like the Fast Pass service at Disneyland, where you get a ticket that tells you what time to come back for a ride in the park, helping you to avoid waiting in line for hours. But no, my fast track status didn't seem to confer any special advantages.

I spent about three hours siting in a wheelchair in a waiting room that smelled of, well, the dozen or so other patients snoring away (a few appeared not to have showered anytime recent, so the scent I'm referring to wasn't exactly like "lavender breeze" or some Williams-Sonoma liquid soap scent). I couldn't get a single bar of cell phone reception the whole time I was in ER, so I spent a lot of time reading the magazines I'd brought with me.

To their credit, quite a few of the people who did help me out in the ER were friendly, even cheerful. They moved me from one spot in the hallway to the next, parking me (in the wheelchair) at random spots. I felt like Keri Strug being passed around in that ESPN commercial.

When a doctor finally saw me, he quickly confirmed my suspicions, using the same test I'd done on myself the previous night (I believe it's called The Thompson test). They put my leg in a splint, handed me some crutches, and finally, I staggered out of that ER, starving and stir-crazy, and struggling to shut out the nagging thought that the one thing I'd need over the next year was a quality that seems to have slipped away from me bit by bit over the years, and that is patience.

The one positive thought I held onto tonight, as they confirmed my diagnosis, was that at least I wasn't a horse, like Eight Belles. I don't know if horses have Achilles tendons, but I suspect if I was a horse, I'd have been put out to that great pasture in the sky.

Snap

Even never having injured my achilles tendon before, I'd heard of enough instances of the most dreaded of injuries to the Achilles that it's the first thought that ran through my head after I landed in a heap and felt the searing pain. It felt as if one of the other pickup hoops players had kicked me really hard directly in my left achilles tendon (I'd later read online that this is one of the symptoms of that injury that I thought if I never pronounced might not be true).

But the web has made amateur doctors of us all, and as soon as I hopped back to my sofa at home, I did a Google search for "ruptured Achilles tendon symptoms" and went to one of the lists of symptoms.

Check.

Check.

Check.

Check.

Check.

Of course, I'm no doctor, I just did a quick stay at the Internet Holiday Inn, but I'm 97% sure that my left Achilles completely ruptured when I landed on somebody's foot tonight. You can actually see and feel the spot where the tendon is no longer connected.

And so for the second time in my life, I'm facing major surgery on my left leg and months of rehab to get back to doing things I enjoy, like basketball, cycling, running, tennis, and other such sports. Right now, I'd even settle for jumping, or even just plain walking.

In general, I think I'm pretty level-headed. But I've got to be honest, I'm feeling more than a little dejected right now.

She & Him

I caught She & Him at the Vista Theatre on Monday night. She & Him are actress Zooey Deschanel and indie music star M. Ward, touring in support of their first album together, Volume One.

Their music is simple and has a nostalgic charm. Zooey is not going to compare to Matt on musical talent--if real-life guitar skills transferred to the videogame world he'd be dominating people on Guitar Hero--but she has a strong, clear voice and that same sweetness that she's showcased on screen. They both have a relaxed, confident stage presence that draws the crowd over to their side.

On the "do they sound better on CD/MP3 or do they sound better live" question, based on this concert it's the latter. M. Ward die-hards may feel a bit short-changed that he doesn't sing as much in this collaboration, but I'm not familiar enough with the oeuvre of M. Ward to know what I missed. Live, their sound is bigger and richer than on CD.

Why I wasn't wearing green

Because I forgot. My life contains no visible markers of upcoming holidays other than the commercial ones from retail stores. The only reason I know Easter is approaching is because the grocery store carries a lot of egg dye kits and those yellow gooey rabbits made of some unknown substance.

If I had remembered it was St. Patrick's Day, and if I were a woman, I would have tried to find an opportunity to send this e-card from someecards.

Happy birthday Sadie!

I was shooting a classmate's film recently, and there's a line in her script about how the first ten years of your life go by slowly, but every decade after seems to accelerate. There's something to that.

I remember Sadie turning 1 and trying ice cream for the first time, and now she's 5 and ready to enter kindergarten. Meanwhile, the last 4 years of my life are smeared across my memory like some broad, impressionistic paint stroke.

I think we get along because she reminds me of me as a kid, somewhat shy.

Technorati Tags: photo, birthday, sadie

Hulu launches

Around 1:45AM this morning, Hulu shed the covers of private beta and opened to the public. Anyone in the U.S. can now come to our site and watch any of our videos for free. No special software needed other than a web browser, Flash player, and an internet connection. PC, Mac, Linux users, we support all of you.

We've all substituted caffeinated beverages for sleep for days now, and this morning I came into work with my t-shirt on backwards. Coherence is going to be a bit of a reach.

We have increased our content lineup significantly. Among my favorites:

• Every episode ever of Arrested Development, all 52 of them.
• The Big Lebowski. Dude.
• The Lonely Goatherd from The Sound of Music, and the other musical numbers you'd expect from there: Sixteen Going on Seventeen, Maria, Do Re Mi, Edelweiss, My Favorite Things, So Long, Farewell, and The Hills Are Alive. Pauline Kael may not be a fan, but it's the music of my childhood.
• Kagemusha . Yeah, the Akira Kurosawa classic!
• The top 10 moves of February from the NBA. Warning: more than a few ankles are broken in this one. And here's that crazy Chris Paul dribble move from the All-Star Game, in which he fakes a crossover and snaps the ball back to himself with backspin, goes by the defender, and dishes to the trailer for the dunk. Chris Paul is crazy good.
• "Down by the River" from SNL, featuring Chris Farley. I miss that guy, and I miss his show.
• "Ultimate Power in the Universe" from Family Guy: Blue Harvest. Watching for free is a great way to try out shows you've heard of but missed out on the first time around, and Family Guy has been that show for me, the one that Hulu got me hooked on.

People love to associate Hulu with big media because of some of our investors, but Hulu is a startup through and through (look at the team photo below, taken at around 1:50 this morning--I don't think we look big media, do you?). It's the smallest company I've ever worked at if you don't count the lemonade stand I ran one summer day when I was about 8. Smaller than Amazon.com was when I worked there. We have our initial investments from which to run our company, but we're not going to be spending it on big parties with models walking around holding trays of saffron baby lamb chops. No, our pre-launch evening meal for everyone pulling an all-nighter was some 100 tacos from a local taco truck here in Santa Monica, at the extravagant cost of $1.25 per taco. Our biggest spend that night, out of our own pockets, was to raise $160 among the team to dare one of our star programmers Andrew to drink two cups of salsa, one red hot, one green, in 30 seconds. Andrew woke this morning $160 richer, though I'd venture to guess he paid the price sometime during the day.

A small group of people, a little family, work night and day (sometimes more night than day) to put this site together from scratch. Some of the user e-mails I've read make the easy assumption that we're an ignorant, uncaring media behemoth, but we do care, perhaps too much for our own peace of mind. Between Eric, Betina, and myself, we've read well over 10,000 e-mails since we went into our private beta, and rather than go the form e-mail response route, we've tried to respond personally to every e-mail we can. We're gratified by the compliments, and we agonize over the angry e-mails, even the inaccurate and/or profane ones.

We do want to be able to distribute our content internationally. We do want to offer more episodes of every show on our site. We do want more varied ad creative so that we don't have to watch the same ad spots over and over. We do want closed-captioning on every video on our site. And we do want to do it legally, in a way that compensates the creative people all the way back at the start of the food chain. Not a day goes by that we don't wish we could just accelerate the future with a snap of our fingers and have everyone in the world streaming HD content to their plasma TV's.

It's easy to bash big media and claim to be forced to resort to piracy, and it is absolutely the right of users to write in with their honest feedback. It's the most useful kind. But it's far harder to try to fix the problems. It's easy to open up your blog editor and rip the movie you just saw. It's exponentially harder to go out and make a movie. It's easy to laugh at some startup you read about in the news because the business plan sounds terrible. It's much harder to start a company yourself.

We're working here to try to fix the industry from within. We want to be able to watch all our favorite videos however we want, just like you. We're building this service to be one we want to use. We're not anywhere near the finish line. It always feels like the to-do list outweighs the completed side of the ledger. But if it didn't, then it wouldn't be that interesting a challenge, and most of us probably wouldn't be here.

Check out our site, and if you don't mind, help spread the word. The more users we can rally to our cause, the quicker we can transform things for the better.

Cheers!

Conan O'Brien playing Rock Band

Since I got my repaired guitar for Rock Band (looks like there was a design flaw that they've since corrected in other shipments, thankfully), it's the only game I spend any time playing. When I hear a song that's in Rock Band come on the radio, my ears try to pick out the guitar or drum line, and I visualize the notes in the guitar line scrolling down towards me as in the videogame. It really does engage you with music in a very deep way. It's the same bond I feel with classical pieces I played when I was in the violin section of various youth orchestras.

I'm not the only one who feels that way. In just two months since Rock Band launched, players have purchased more than 2.5 million new songs to add to their game libraries! I'm responsible for at least a good 10 to 12 of those song purchases. $1.99 for a song I can play forever in the game seems entirely reasonable to me. I would love to see them allow third parties to offer songs for the game, though, as the trickle of 3 new songs a week already feels paltry (though they added some Oasis songs this week--can't wait to try my hand at those!).

This past weekend, the morning after one particular late-night Rock Band session, I found a notice hanging on my front door for a Community Violation. The box for "loud music" was checked off. At first I was perturbed, but then a certain sense of pride took hold as I realized I was still young enough to keep the neighbors up.

My one and primary complaint is that stand-alone guitars are still not available for the game, so you can't play with a full four piece band. Unless you invite over a Rock Band-playing friend who plays it on the same console as you do and is willing to bring over their guitar, you're limited to playing either guitar or bass but not both. That guitars from one game, like Guitar Hero, don't work with other games, like Rock Band, is extremely disappointing as they all use the same basic control scheme.

My only guess on this is that they rushed the game out for the holidays and couldn't ramp up production in time to have stand-alone guitars available. Forecasting in the gaming industry seems dodgy, at best. You'd think after so many years that the Nintendo Wii would be readily available, but no.

2000

I rated my two thousandth movie on Netflix today. I've probably seen more that I haven't rated, but that's a pretty good approximation of how many movies I've seen in my life. That works out to about 1.1 movies a week, or 58.8 movies a year for my lifetime. Given that I didn't start watching movies until I was probably in my early teens, it's probably more like one and a half movies a week.

Not as many as a movie critic, but still a lot of hours of my life.

Technorati Tags: movies

It's your birthday

Yesterday was, alas, one more tick of the odometer on my life gauge. Yesterday some friends of mine decided to accelerate my progress towards the grave by taking me to Cut, the acclaimed Wolfgang Puck steakhouse in the Beverly Wilshire hotel, a 2007 nominee for "Best New Restaurant" by the James Beard Foundation and the winner of Esquire's 2006 Restaurant of the Year award.

It's one serious luxury steakhouse with one heavy-hitting menu. Walking in we strolled past a Bentley and an Aston Martin and several dozen middle aged people whose dress and mannerisms screamed of old money. If I knew what many executives in town looked like I probably would have spotted several seated in the dining room

The first three starters listed:

• Kobe Steak Sashimi, Spice Radishes
• Prime Sirloin "Steak Tartare", Herb Aioli, Mustard
• Bone Marrow Flan, Mushroom Marmalade, Parsley Salad

It went on to include starters such as...

• Austrian Oxtail Bouillon, Chive Blossoms, Chervil, Bone Marrow Dumplings
• Prime Filet Mignon "Carpaccio", Celery Hearts, Shaved French Black Truffles
• Maple Glazed Pork Belly, Asian Spices, Sesame-Orange Dressing, Winterella Pear Compote

Even the breadsticks and bread, laced with parmesan, tasted decadent. Cut serves four levels of beef (listed here from expensive to obscenely expensive):

• U.S.D.A. PRIME, Illinois Corn Fed, Aged 21 Days
• U.S.D.A. PRIME, Nebraska Corn Fed, Dry Aged 35 Days
• American Wagyu/Angus "Kobe Style" Beef from Snake River Farms, Idaho
• True Japanese 100% Wagyu Beef from Kagoshima Prefecture, Kyushu, Japan

Before our meal, the waiter brought out five huge slabs of beef wrapped in cloth, three slabs of American Wagyu and 2 of true Japanese Wagyu. The marbling in the meat was apparent to the eye, just beautiful and mouth-watering.

I went with the American Wagyu 10oz Rib Eye, while others ordered Bone-In Filet Mignon, New York Sirloin, Colorado Lamb Chops with Cucumber Mint Raita, and Kobe Beef Short Ribs "Indian Spiced" and cooked for eight hours.

For a starter I had the bone marrow flan. I still prefer the cleaner and simpler mix of flavors of the Beef Marrow with Oxtail Marmalade at Blue Ribbon Restaurant in New York, but the bone marrow flan is damn impressive. Transformed into flan, the bone marrow lost a bit of that marrow flavor I love so much, but in combination with the mushroom marmalade it made for one fancy bread spread.

Seven waiters delivered our entrees, setting them down in front of us with the choreographed timing of a theme park fountain show. I cut a piece of my rib eye, cooked rare plus, and dipped it into the shallot-red wine bordelaise sauce. Then I put it in my mouth, and about 1.7 seconds later, as I finished my first bite, I went to a happy place. The marbling produced a rib eye with the consistency of foie gras. It was spectacular.

Dessert of banana cream pie and chocolate souffle brought traffic in my remaining arteries to a standstill. As far as steak dinners go, this was one of the more memorable ones of my life. I may not eat another piece of beef for the remainder of the year, but if so, the memory of the various cuts I tasted last night will tide me over.

Technorati Tags: dining, food, LA, restaurants, steak

Holidays 2007 in Scottsdale

Free wi-fi at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. Boo-yah. (I wrote that back on Dec. 30, when I started writing this post, and now, weeks later, I'm still trying to finish)

With the addition of so many little kiddies to the family, we tried something different for the holidays this year and rented a vacation home for a week in Scottsdale. The four bedroom house had a pool, a hot tub, a grill, a pool table, a home theater room, and lots of flat screen TVs. My favorite was the home theater room. It had six plush, reclining, leather theater seats with cupholders, arranged in two rows of three, the back row raised off the ground slightly in a stadium seating configuration. A small and somewhat middle-of-the-road projector hung from the ceiling, shining its picture on a screen flanked by theatrical curtains. The kicker was an old school theater-style popcorn machine.

James and Angela had said before the trip they planned to rent a Toyota Solara convertible. So as I stood curbside waiting for them to pick me up from the airport, I thought it odd that a flaming red Mustang pulled up next to me, the passenger waving at me. A second glance revealed that it was Angela sporting her giant movie star sunglasses.

"We decided it was too cold for a convertible," she explained. So we drove back from the airport in a cousin to the future KITT (Knight Industries Three Thousand). The engine makes a suitable American sports car growl, a low, menacing rumble.

That car is no friend to the environment. "I can see the fuel gauge needle moving!" Angela said as she drove.

We all have our natural roles at the holidays. Mine are chiefly around entertainment: I'm responsible for bringing lots of movies on DVD, bringing by Nintendo Wii, and taking photos or video. The parents did most of the cooking. James and Angela bought most of the groceries. Joannie was our liaison to the vacation home owners. Karen looked up info for our social outings into Scottsdale, like the location of hikes and downtown attractions. My dad was responsible for playing with the grandkids in a semi-educational manner.

I brought two movies from the past year for people to watch: The Bourne Ultimatum and Once. James bought Pan's Labyrinth. When the kids weren't watching the Pixar Short Films Collection in the home theater room, those three movies occupied most of that room's screening time.

Usually we'd put on a movie after the kids had gone to bed and the dinner table had been cleared, dishes washed. That meant starting at 10pm some nights, so it took some people a few days to find the time to watch a movie start to finish without having to run off to collapse in bed.

Every one enjoyed all the movies, especially Once.

Our family has just the right mix of personalities to escalate things, so the day someone mentioned the durian, the so-called "king of fruits," and discovered that most people at the table had not eaten it before (come to think of it, that someone was probably me), it was inevitable that we'd end up buying one from Ranch 99 and forcing every one in the family to take a bit on video camera. See, the thorny-skinned durian is famous for its polarizing taste and odor. Those who enjoy it worship it and, I suppose, are the ones who dubbed it the "king of fruits." Those who find it revolting describe the odor as similar to that of rotting sewage or trash. I count myself among the latter.

The durian we bought was not as malodorous as the ones I'd encountered before in China. I remember the scent of raw durian to be so revolting that I couldn't bring myself to eat it raw. I was only able to consume it after it had been incorporated into a pancake, which was actually decent. But under the glare of my father's video camera, there was no escaping it this time. My dad chopped it open and scooped out the yellowish flesh onto a styrofoam plate.

James, the most curious one of us all, stepped up first. Or perhaps it was Sharon. Either way, both found it neither tasty nor awful. I was next and spooned a generous heap into my mouth.

Big mistake.

The taste of it reminded me of its smell and nearly made me gag. It took me about a minute of stomach-turning chewing and mental fortitude to swallow it without coughing up my dinner. I seem to recall breaking out into a sweat as I tried not to heave in front of my family, a sign of weakness that would be recounted at family reunions until my funeral. Karen, Joannie, Mike, and Angela had similar reactions.

My dad was convinced our revulsion was merely in our head, that we had prejudged and condemned the fruit without giving it a fair trial. To prove his point, he took two large bites and chewed away with no reaction. I'm convinced, however, that my dad has lost all feeling and taste sensations over the years. I've seen him slice his finger open nearly to the bone and have minimal reaction, and I thought his nonchalant reaction to the taste of durian was related, somehow, to his indifference to pain. Still, he pitched out the rest of the durian, giving our trash that evening the smell of, well, trash.

Some random holiday notes:

• Most played song: No One by Alicia Keys. By the end of vacation, was I sick of the song? Probably. But for the one week before you reach saturation with a catchy tune, it's toe-tapping good times.
• Most listened to local radio station: Phoenix's Movement 97.5. Like the music they'd play at a dance club that you're just slightly embarrassed to admit you like (think Tone-Loc, Timbaland, Fergie). Driving around in the Stang, blaring 97.5, I realized that James, Angela, and I were a parody of suburban cheesiness.
• Some random food consumption stats: 4 boxes of Gobstoppers, two bottles of Scotch (one Macallan, one Glenlivet), two gallons of Tampico (my brother's private equity firm owns them, so drinking this was a show of solidarity), about twenty bottles of wine, somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty dozen eggs, maybe six cases of water. Last chance for some fun before the New Years resolutions kicked in.
• Most watched movie: Once. That scene in the music store? I've seen it about 28 times now. Best scene of the year.
• Most played video game: Wii tennis. I'm impressed by how hard and flat my four-year-old nephew Ryan can crack the ball in Wii Tennis. Wii sports is the great equalizer. Young children who have infinite patience can, through repetition and immediate feedback, can develop some wicked skills in sports like Wii tennis and bowling. I discovered this the hard way when I ran into a six year old girl who nearly dropped a 300 in bowling on me. I was not amused.
• Number of kisses planted on my nephew Connor's cheeks: 389.

Some personal highlights:

• Scoring 100 in pop-a-shot at the Sugar Bowl ice cream parlor in Old Town Scottsdale. I'm pretty good at pop-a-shot, but for one transcendent moment, I entered the zone. The rules are simple: 45 seconds to shoot as many baskets as possible. Each basket counts for two points, except in the final 10 seconds, when they count for three each. You shoot with a cantaloupe-sized basketball at a smaller than normal basket. I think I missed two shots the entire round, breaking 100 on my last shot. I felt like Michael Jordan in that first half against Portland, or Reggie Miller at the end of the game against the Knicks. "That will be your opus," said James. If so, then that will have been one sad life.
• Scoring a birdie on hole 10 at Troon North. On a good round, I usually shoot one birdie out of sheer luck. But not having played golf in a while, I wanted to snap my clubs over my leg while hitting on the driving range before the round. I thought I had a better chance of actually killing a bird than scoring a birdie during the round (hundred of wild guinea roamed around the golf course, apparently oblivious to the dangers posed by amateur golfers like myself). But by the last several holes, I started to slow down, and my swing started to come around. On the last hole Alan and I played, I hit a drive about 270, a pitching wedge to within 5 feet, and toilet-bowled a putt for my birdie.
• The craziest moment of the holiday, by far, occurred on the third hole of Monument Golf Course at Troon. This par 5 hole is known as the Monument hole for the massive rock sitting right in the middle of the fairway about 260 yards out. Just past that hole, as I walked towards my ball to play my third shot, I spotted what appeared to be a small tiger sitting on the hill. The golf instructor who was riding with us was strolling up the fairway. James and I asked him what it was, and he said it was a bobcat. I stood my ground, expecting it would wander off, but our presence didn't faze it in the least. Soon it wandered into the fairway, past my ball. I took a couple steps back, but it didn't even look my way once, even when our instructor tried to shoo it away. The bobcat was gazing across the fairway. I followed its line of sight and realized it was looking at a rabbit sitting just off the fairway. It crept slowly across the fairway. I couldn't believe the rabbit didn't spot the bobcat which was now within 25 or 30 feet. Though the bobcat was now crawling on its belly, it wasn't hard to spot against the green fairway, and its tail wagged expectantly. And then, just as I thought it might be sitting there for a half hour, the bobcat shot towards the rabbit which dashed off through the bushes across the cart path. The bobcat didn't go after the rabbit but hurled itself into a bush. A narrow escape for the rabbit, I thought. But I was wrong, on both counts. First I spotted the bobcat coming out on the other side of the bush, another rabbit in its mouth. Then I heard our instructor Ryan hitting the brakes on his golf cart. The first rabbit I'd spotted had run across the path just as Ryan was cruising by in the golf cart, and Ryan had hit it. I walked over and saw the rabbit's cotton ball of a tail sitting on the cart path, and we found the rabbit nearby, limping around, one of its back legs broken. Rabbits are pretty damn cute, and we all felt awful, but I wasn't about to pick up a rabid rabbit and try to fashion a splint for it or anything like that. I thought it would be dramatic if I took an 8-iron to it, put it out of its misery, tears in my eyes, screaming "Damn it all to hell!" as I brought the club down again and again, but I didn't. Life, death, the circle of life, and a three putt bogey, all in the course of one hole. Only in Arizona.
• Seeing Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West. I've seen Taliesin in Wisconsin and Robie House in Chicago, and both were inspiring. Now I just need to get out to Fallingwater. Many Heloise Crista sculptures adorn Taliesin West, and they're great.

Most mornings, I'd be woken around 6 or 7am by the sound of my nephews running around. This would be after I'd stayed up until 3am by myself, maybe watching 30 Rock - Season 1 on DVD in the home theater room, or reading The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, or something else. So I'd spend the day sleepy. But not tired. The thing about vacation that keeps me running on so little sleep is the thought that I could get sleep at any time. When you're working, you're never sure how much sleep you'll get from one night to the next, and that worry is more mentally exhausting than anything else.

Most awkward moment of the holidays. Just as we were about to wrap a book I'd bought for my nephew Ryan, he burst into the room and surprised us. He grabbed the book, looked at the cover, and said, "Don't get me this book. I already have it." Then he ran out.

I went running with James and Angela and even Alan a few times. There's a budding movement to try and get as many of us together to run the NY marathon this year as possible. Will it happen? I'm not sure. It's a new year, though, the time to resolve such things.

Technorati Tags: christmas, connor, family

Connor

Connor makes you earn his smiles, so we document each of them with great care.

Technorati Tags: connor, photo

Ivy

Ivy auditioning for a future role as the ingenue. She has grown up so quickly from a tiny baby into the cutest, sweetest little girl. Poor Jason is going to have his hands full when his angels reach their teenage years.

Technorati Tags: photo, ivy

Connor

I visited Connor in DC the weekend after Thanksgiving. He is a mellow kid whose smiles are fleeting, but thanks to high speed continuous frame rate shooting modes on my digital SLR, I was able to capture a few or his elusive expressions of happiness.

By the way, you do not want to get into a staring contest with Connor, he will wait you out until your eyes are watering something fierce. He has an amazing poker face, and I expect we'll be sending him to Uncle James at an early age to begin his training.

Technorati Tags: connor, photo

Last weekend

If you ever want to experience what it would be like if there was a run on goods because of impending disaster, come to LA and go shopping at Costco or IKEA on weekend. I was with my roommates at IKEA this past weekend and a woman riding in one of those motorized chairs drove into the back of my right foot in an effort to get into a cashier's line. I hobbled around for a day with what felt like a contusion on my Achilles tendon.

***

Why can't DirecTV put another set of satellites in the North? I moved to an apartment on the north side of the building, and now I'm relegated to standard def because our complex signed a deal with Clear Bay Communications, and they're too cheap to rewire the building for high definition for DirecTV. My only choice is standard def DirecTV. In my previous apartment I could just get a view of the southwest sky from the balcony, on which I mounted a high-def DirecTV satellite. Now I can't see the southwest sky, but I can sure see the clouds...no, wait, those aren't clouds, those are the huge pixels of my crappy television image through standard def.

DirecTV has a great product if you can get it, but the "if you can get it" part of that is more of a catch than it should be.

***

I was unpacking more boxes this weekend, and I found my passport and an iPod nano that I thought I lost two years ago. I should unpack more often.

***

James Surowiecki on the writer's strike. Both sides believe strongly in their positions. The studios aren't making much off the web yet (nowhere near what they make in syndication or DVD sales), so they don't want to strike any long-term deals now. The writers did not get their fair share on DVDs from their last agreement, and they don't want to get burned again if the internet takes off as quickly as DVDs did.

Given all this, the two sides should strike a short-term rev share % agreement and go back to the negotiating table after it expires. The money online really isn't significant yet relative to DVD and syndication, and a more just % deal will buy some time for the online market to mature.

But the smarter long-term view for writers and directors and producers and actors, in my opinion, is to look to the Internet as a way to bypass the network and studio system altogether and get more fair value for their work. It won't happen right away, as the theatrical and DVD markets are still quite lucrative marketing and distribution systems while the Internet is still in its infancy in this space. But it may happen sooner than people realize.

There's an entire new generation coming up that's used to watching programming on a computer, or getting content from the computer to their TV. Broadband penetration and web speeds will continue to increase to the point where getting high-def content through the Internet will be just as fast as getting it from a satellite or cable. At that point, for many creative types the equation will shift so that it's more efficient for them to go direct to consumer rather than through the studio system. It won't be worthwhile for them to cede so much of the profit to a middleman who probably can't market their product efficiently anyhow.

Blockbuster mass-market movies may still benefit from launching on thousands of screens opening weekend, but most other programming will benefit more from efficient Internet-driven targeting. Maybe no such mechanism exists today online, but it's not difficult to imagine a company like Amazon is for books arising on the web to help people find the film and television programming they'll love.

The last foothold for studios in this distant future may be the theatrical distribution space. It's not easy to replicate a network of thousands of movie theaters nationwide. That's just not a lucrative business. But even as much as I love the look of film, the advent of digital technology will lower the cost of distribution to the point where building a network of theaters that only downloads massive digital files of movies will be feasible, avoiding the massive cost of generating all those prints. Cameras like the Red One will enable indie filmmakers to shoot films that can be projected on a massive theater screen and look fantastic at a much lower cost than shooting 35mm film. These files can be edited on a desktop workstation, and the digital output can be distributed to theaters with digital projectors.

The other things artists have traditionally depended on studios for is financing. But even there, times have changed. I took a class at UCLA last year called Indie Film Financing, and every week a different type of financier came in to talk about some film project they'd funded. It's not just studios anymore. We heard from old-fashioned banks, private equity, ultra-wealthy individuals, and on and on.

We will get back to a world where the scarcity is not in theater screens or financing but something much harder to solve, and that's true creative talent.

***

Speaking of the future of content distribution, the stats from the Radiohead experiment in direct distribution of their album "In Rainbows" are fascinating. The average price paid among people who paid for the download was $6.00. Given that over 60% of customers chose not to pay at all for the download, the average price paid worldwide was $2.26 per album.

Sounds low? It's still more than Radiohead would have made per album if they'd gone through a studio. I think they could have easily gotten sales if they'd chosen to sell their album at, say $4.00 a pop, instead of letting consumers name their own price. But this turned out to be a much more interesting, and I think, successful experiment.

***

Last Saturday I went downtown and caught the Takashi Murakami exhibit downtown at the Geffen Contemporary at the MOCA. I love his massive prints and his appropriation of pop and high culture. His works seem to distill so many elements of Japanese culture.

I had hoped to buy a print there, but the museum only carried limited editions of 300 of a few of his prints, and they had all sold out already. I had to settle for a t-shirt.

Murakami collaborated with Marc Jacobs, artistic director for Louis Vuitton, on a series of handbags. On display at the museum was a luggage chest with about a dozen or so compartments inside, each holding a Louis Vuitton handbag. Out of curiosity, one of my friends asked how much the chest was. It turns out you can take that chest and all the handbags inside it home for the meager sum of $500,000.

Not for sale were these two NSFW scultpures.

Also playing at the exhibit was Murakami's music video for Kanye West's song "Good Morning" off of Graduation. I guess it hasn't released to the world yet as the only copy I can find online is at YouTube, some bootleg from the Murakami exhibit. Not the best way to enjoy it.

Commercial interruption

[I started this post a few weeks ago, got buried with work, and never finished it. I still don't have time to finish it today, but if everything had to be perfect before it went out then the world would move too slowly, or this blog might sit untouched for weeks, like it has. So...]

A few years ago, I took a couple months off from work to travel, heading first to New Zealand. During that, trip, I went on a sperm whale watching expedition. I started the trip filled with anticipation. I hadn't seen any sperm whales in the wild before, but the images in my mind were romantic and fabulous: giant white sperm whales locked in battle with giant squid, or the white leviathan from the movie version of Moby Dick, last seen swimming off with Captain Ahab (a bearded Gregory Peck) tied to its side.

By the time our boat arrived at the viewing location some two hours later, I too had an Ahab-like obsession with a white leviathan, but it was the seasickness bag whose head poked out of the seat pocket in front of me. We'd listened to one report after another of whale sighting here or there, each of which sent our boat scurrying in another direction, but thus far the only marine life we'd spotted had been on a poster stapled to the front of our boat.

Finally, we got the signal to climb out on deck. At long last, we were called to the deck and told to bring our cameras. We were pointed to one side of the railing where we elbowed and shoved to find a suitable position to point our telephoto lenses.

"There it is!" someone shouted. I looked through my lens and saw...a thin sliver of the sperm whale's back, maybe fifteen or twenty feet long, maybe a foot or so above the surface of the water. It looked like a gray log. It barely moved.

For fifteen minutes, that thin sliver of sperm whale bobbed up and down in the ocean. For all I know it could have been some piece of garbage they had tossed out in the ocean to head off what might have been mutiny by a hundred or so disgruntled and seasick customers. After fifteen minutes of inactivity, and with one kick of its tail (the only moment worth photographing), the sperm whale headed back to the depths of the ocean. If the crew had staged the whole thing, the least they could have done is strapped our boat's captain to the decoy and given us some Moby Dick-level entertainment.

This is me surfacing for air, though I hope I'm not as disappointing as that sperm whale. Sometime this summer, I dove back into the tech startup life with some friends. Summer ended, school was about to start up, and my work was not yet done. I was faced with one of those moments when surplus of choice seems a burden.

Opportunities don't always orient themselves around your personal schedule, and they also don't always persist. The startup gig seemed more time sensitive, but despite that, it was a tough choice. In the end, the folks at school were gracious about letting me take a leave of absence, and I wouldn't have felt right leaving so much undone.

So our merry band at work went into 7 day a week crunch mode, purchasing some air mattresses for the office so we could sneak naps when we weren't planted in front of our computers. It reminded me of that first year at Amazon, when we had sleeping bags under our desks for those overnight days.

I'd roll out of bed and head into work, and then I'd roll back home at 3 or 4 in the morning, and most days Eric would still be at work when I left. I ate every meal with my coworkers, spending all my waking hours with them. In the midst of this I had to move, one of the things I hate most in the world, so when I wasn't working I'd be home trying to pack up all my stuff.

There were the usual tight timelines and technical and business obstacles, and you never quite get everything you want into your v1, but getting a product out the door always provides a huge psychological boost. And today (or was it yesterday) we sent our private beta out into the world: Hulu.com.

We're in private beta right now, so you'll have to sign up for a beta invite, and we'll get one out to you as soon as we're ready.

But I can offer a sampling of what we have to offer here, or you can check out much of our content at our partner sites, like AOL.

One of the cool features is the ability to embed a video but point users to a portion of it. Since this post is a bit of a pitch for Hulu, let's start off with an ad of a different sort. Here's the Michael-Scott-directed version of the Dunder-Mifflin commercial from last week's episode of The Office:

Never saw Arrested Development, that show that was tragically killed off before its time? We have all 22 episodes of Season 1 for you to watch. Here, for those of you looking to see what you missed, is the entire first episode.

Sad that you won't be able to see more of those Dane Cook baseball promos (someone help me to understand Dane Cook)? Here's an SNL take that can tide you over until next October (yes, there's more than one October, there's actually one every year).

Planning a long lunch break tomorrow? Maybe you'd like to see a movie. One I really enjoyed from Universal's library is Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Here you go:

There's more, but to get it to you, we need to go back to work. Thanks to those of you who still visit for having endured my non-existent posting schedule, and if you're one of the select group who've received beta invites, let me know what you think.

The Perfect Storm

The poster tagline for The Perfect Storm read:

In the fall of 1991, the Andrea Gail left Gloucester, Mass. and headed for the fishing grounds of the North Atlantic.

Two weeks later, an event took place that had never occurred in recorded history.

You know how it ends, with the camera framing Mark Wahlberg bobbing up and down in massive, violent waves in the dark of night. The camera recedes, revealing the disparity in size between Wahlberg's head, all that remains above the surface of the water, and the sheer magnitude of the angry ocean around him. Inevitably, he disappears, swallowed by forces far greater than him.

Something analogous happened to me, just a crazy convergence of different life pressures, and right now I'm the Mark Wahlberg character, bobbing in the ocean. Anyone following my posting frequency here will know that I'm usually better about checking in here on a regular basis.

Cooking, exercise, reading, paying bills, laundry, keeping up with personal e-mail and friends and family...all have dropped off the list. You'll be glad to know I've drawn the line at personal hygiene and continue to shower on a daily basis, but I'm starting to think that might need only be a dotted line.

More on all the chaos once it's over. Laughably, amidst all this insanity I also have to move apartments this weekend and haven't packed more than a box so far.

If I had more energy, I'd try to keep up here, but even more than inspiration, writing requires sheer physical stamina and mental energy, both of which I have little of now.

But bear with me, I shall return, and sooner, I hope, than later.

Smile

My nephew Connor is learning to smile, a welcome feature to go along with his high decibel crying. Too cute. I wish I could be there for firsts like this, but until then, I must make do with the occasional photos from out East.

I wonder if I can make him smile through a video chat.

Technorati Tags: connor, photo

Stay tuned

What a hectic week. The only thing that hasn't been packed into this week is sleep, so I just need to make it to bed tonight so I can reset.

I made a fairly big life decision this week. I'm really worried about a friend. My little (well, at least to me) sister landed a job in NYC. I will, by the time tomorrow rolls around, have been to 3 concerts in 3 nights. My website got hit with a huge traffic spike on Tuesday because of a link from TMQ (Tuesday Morning Quarterback Gregg Easterbrook); he's not impressed by what he hears of Moto, but I want to respond because unlike Gregg I've actually been to and eaten at Moto. I met the first year film students from the incoming class and showed my first film school short, which I had to stay up all night editing with my telecine'd footage to match the cut I made on the flatbeds with my workprint. My parking appeal for fall quarter at school was denied, but it may not matter. I saw a bunch of my classmates again for the first time since the start of the summer.

So more tomorrow, once I'm rested and lucid.

Abracadabra...uh, open sesame...uh, hocus pocus

Last night, I got home from work around 1 in the morning and pulled up to the electronic gate to my parking garage and pressed my remote key fob button. Nothing happened. I waved it out the window, then got out of the car and walked up to the gate, pressing the key fob near any place I thought the sensor might reside. No luck.

One car pulled up behind me, then another, and soon a few others. We all stood outside our cars, pressing our key fobs. In our neighborhood, there wasn't any street parking, so we were stuck. It was 1 in the morning, I was dead tired, and I was not a happy camper (though if my key fob was out of order then I was on the verge of being literally an unhappy camper).

So I turned my attention to the exit gate, just next to the entrance. That was one of those gates that opened as soon as you pulled up to it. The sensor for that was a bit further inside the garage, but by sticking my tennis racket through the gate I could just reach far enough to trip it and open the gate. I managed to lean my tennis racket against the sensor and then directed traffic through the exit like John McClane waving the planes home at the end of Die Hard 2.

A different discontent plagued me in the nanosecond before I passed out. The security in our parking garage is not good, not good at all.

***

Kanye vs. 50 Cent, as judged by Amazon Sales Rank: Decision to Kanye. Critic's average judgment? The same. From guns to lyrics to now sales...hip-hop conflicts are progressing to more civilized playing fields.

***

Jon Stewart will host the Oscars in February. He seemed a bit nervous to start the last time (even the coolest customer can experience some jitters in the face of so much star power), but he loosened up by the end of the ceremony. I think the second time will be the charm.

***

My favorite Microsoft application was always Excel. I spent a good portion of my early career in that application building massive models, writing macros in VBA, pushing it to its limits. It didn't always keep up--I always had problems getting linked workbooks to update and calculate quickly, and sharing workbooks among my team never worked quite as we wanted to--but of the Office suite, it's always been king.

I hate Powerpoint, and Word's formatting quirks always drove me batty. So when Apple came out with Keynote, and then Pages, I was willing to switch over. I haven't yet, but only because I don't use Word or Powerpoint anymore. All my writing now is done in a plain text editor, e-mail client, script formatting software, or with an actual pen and notebook. As for Powerpoint, I haven't had to make one of those in years, hallelujah.

But I was curious about Numbers, the new spreadsheet app in iWork 08, so I fired it up, imported an Excel spreadsheet, and gave it a whirl. I attempted to update the spreadsheet

Though I like a lot of the interface decisions made in Numbers, I will remain, for the time being, an Excel guy. And it isn't because Number lacks advanced features like pivot tables. My main complaint with Numbers is that it's not keyboard friendly. You have to use the mouse to do so many things that Excel allows you to do without leaving the keyboard. Mousing around a spreadsheet is just counter to my working style.

Numbers might be the "spreadsheet for the rest of us," but I guess that makes me one of Them.

***

George Saunders appears on David Letterman.

***

Looks like I won't be seeing The White Stripes in concert after all. Disappointing.

***

Patriots fined and penalized for videotaping NY Jets defensive signals. Outside of the Bears, the Patriots were once one of the few teams I rooted for because they seemed to win by being smarter than their opponents. Outside of Tom Brady, they didn't have too many marquee names, and they didn't have a crazy financial advantage like teams like the Yankees or Red Sox because of the NFL salary cap. They were the Oakland A's of the NFL.

I suspect that the advantage they gathered from videotaping opponent signals is overstated (as is the case with many forms of cheating in sports), but what's disappointing is the hubris and stupidity/arrogance represented by the videotaping scheme. They were playing a team coached by one of their ex assistant coaches; how did they think they were going to get away with it?And anyone watching the two teams would think it ridiculous that the Patriots had to resort to such scheming to defeat the Jets.

If Mangini was part of such a practice when he was with the Patriots, and if he was indeed the one who snitched his ex-team out, then there's a beautiful tragic resonance to the sequence of events. Every one involved with the scheme is getting what they deserve: Mangini is seen as a rat, Belichick (never a warm fuzzy personality to begin with) is seen as a win at all costs Nixon of the NFL, and the Patriots now will never get the full credit they deserve for their accomplishments.

People are always going to be jealous of and resent perennial winners, but it certainly helps the cause to have ammunition. Brady fathering children out of wedlock and dating supermodels, Harrison using HGH, Belichick and staff using videotape surveillance...it's more than enough.

As a sidenote, a cyclist caught using HGH nowadays is looking at a minimum of a year's suspension and a lifetime of disgrace. A pro football player caught using steroids or HGH gets a four game suspension and then is back on the field, or in the case of Shawn Merriman, on to the Pro Bowl or Nike television commercials.

The NFL has been rocked by all sorts of scandal for a year straight now, from Michael Vick to HGH to PatriotsGate to the revolving convict lineup on the Bengals to who knows what else, and you know what? The league is as popular as ever. The NFL is so popular that it doesn't seem to absorb any economic penalty from scandal. Perhaps because of the violent nature of the game, fans seem far more tolerant of steroid use in the NFL than in other sports.

The Big Parade and Born to Be Bad

I caught up with a film school classmate last night by attending a double bill of King Vidor's The Big Parade (2nd highest grossing silent film of all time after The Birth of a Nation) and Nicholas Ray's Born to Be Bad (a sort of All About Eve starring the lovely Joan Fontaine). You might ask what links these two movies (shortly after asking "What movies?"). You might ask because I did, shortly after my friend suggested the double bill.

It turns out that the what links the two movies is that they are rare pieces from the UCLA Film Archive, not to be found on DVD or at your local megaplex or as a torrent on the high seas of Internet piracy, and both are black and white.

Together they loomed as a formidable opponent to my attention span on a Friday night after a long week at work. I laugh now to think that I initially asked if I should leave work earlier than normal in order to buy tickets in advance. I must have been thinking of Superbad, that movie showcasing those new film technologies known as color and sync sound. No, even in the most ardent film appreciation city in the world, I doubt a back-to-back showing of a 2 hr 20 min silent film and a 1 hr 30 minute black and white from the 1950's would sell out.

When we strolled into the very new Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum, I spied a die-hard audience of about 8 people, most of them old enough to have been Billy Wilder contemporaries. I was no longer nervous that I'd pass out and start snoring loudly as it was likely that a few of the other filmgoers might do so as well, out of sheer age. One seat in the theater, right on the aisle, is a different color than all the others. Supposedly it was actually Billy Wilder's chair from some long gone age; unfortunately they chose to model all the other seats in the theater on that one instead of opting for more comfortable and modern furnishings. I felt like I was sitting in a coach seat of a 737. My friend's knees were wedged against the seat in front of her. Not a promising sign for what promised to be about four hours of viewing.

Some man had the audacity to sit in Billy Wilder's chair despite the preponderance of empty seats. I thought of approaching and reproaching him on his impudence, but a second glance gave rise to a second plausible theory that perhaps he was simply too old to notice which seat he had occupied.

A pianist played en electronic keyboard to accompany the entirety of King Vidor's silent film. That guy had a good memory and a good sense of timing. In part because I'd just finished Discover Your Inner Economist, I had promised myself that if at any time the movie bored me I'd walk out and do something more productive with my time, like play keep away from the dozens of hobos wandering the streets of Westwood.

After a somewhat disturbing first act, the movie increased in watchability, and I found myself unexpectedly moved by several moments in the movie. Spanning the period from just before the start of WWI to just after its conclusion, the movie follows the story of Jim Apperson, a lazy son of a wealthy businessman who comes of age when he enlists in the army. His character arc mirrors that of the nation, from idleness to patriotic fervor to disillusionment with the war, and his personal triumphs and tragedies are those of America.

While in France, he falls in love with a French woman named Melisande, and their first date is a staple of that romantic comedy genre classic, the meeting between two people who are in love but don't speak the same language. They trade a French-English dictionary back and forth, and their resulting meet-cute dialogue is genuinely touching and romantic.

Many people think of silent film and think of Chaplin or Keaton and keystone cops and those sorts of physical capers, but many of them, like Intolerance and this Vidor film, work in modes other than comedy and offer great depth and complexity. The acting may not impress a modern audience, but there's stronger story and heaps more emotional heft in The Big Parade than in The Transformers.

Born to Be Bad is some good melodrama. You'll either laugh at that old school sass (that the movie is hard to find on video is the only explanation I'll accept for why IMDb has no memorable quotes listed) or chuckle at the old school syrup, with Joan Fontaine being pulled into about twenty to twenty-five passionate kisses to the accompaniment of strings soaring to a crescendo.

I'll also confess to thinking Joan Fontaine is a stone cold fox who looks ravishing in this movie. Younger sister of Olivia de Havilland, Joan was not just a pretty face. According to her IMDb bio, "Joan Fontaine has been a licensed pilot, a champion ballonist, an expert rider, a prize-winning tuna fisherman, and a hole-in-one golfer, a Cordon Bleu chef and is also a licensed interior decorator." She's the only actor to win an Oscar in a Hitchcock film, and "Howard Hughes, who dated her sister Olivia de Havilland for awhile, proposed to Joan many times." And that, as we all know, is as foolproof an endorsement of a woman's hotness as existed in that age.

Technorati Tags: film, movies

Connor nearly dozing off

Here's a short Quicktime clip (I had to remove the embedded link because of the bandwidth hit anytime this page loaded) of my nephew Connor nearly dozing off while Joannie burps him. I guess feeding requires a ton of energy at his age (4 weeks old) so usually after a feeding Connor teeters on the edge of food coma. His eyes roll back, his eyelids start to sag, and if Joannie wasn't holding his head up he'd probably topple over like a drunk.

In this case, we laughed and woke him up again.

Technorati Tags: connor, video

Nephews and birthdays

Happy birthday to my little sis Karen. She left LA and went to Chicago just before I headed to LA from NYC, and now she's making the move to NYC. I suspect she's avoiding me. The other possibility is that the country isn't big enough for all of us Wei kids so we're constantly whirling around the country in a geographic pas de trois.

I flew out to DC this past weekend to visit my nephew Connor. My timing was good as my flights out and in were sandwiched around an air-traffic-crippling computer outage at LAX.

Connor was just over 3 weeks old when I met him. He's a tiny thing, between 7 and 8 pounds. My iPhone is taller than his head right now.

His mode of communication is binary at this point. He's either crying or he isn't, and our goal at all times was to get simple: if he was crying, we did everything in our power to get him to a state of non-crying, and if he wasn't crying, we tried to keep him in that state. He likes to be patted on the back all the time. If I so much as stopped doing so for a few seconds, usually because I'd fallen asleep, he'd let me know with an ear-splitting wail.

Until his belly button is healed up, he can't be immersed in water, so for now he has wipedowns instead of baths, like army baby-wipe showers. He's really not a fan. He's highly sensitive to how he's being held. Sometimes he wants to bee lying facedown on your chest. At other times, he prefers to on his back, cradled in your arms. At other times he wants to be held against your shoulder and walked around. Finding which position was preferred at any point in time was a matter of trial and error. He'd let us know when we were off.

After eating, he loves to crane his head back and throw his arms up in a cat stretch. In general, he loves to tilt his head back or to the side as far as possible. Mike is worried he'll develop some strange reverse hunchback posture; I think it's adorable.

When he was well-fed, I'd try and burp him, and then I'd sit on the sofa and rest him on my chest. It's the greatest. His little arms flail around, his motor skills being fairly limited for now. He has that fresh new baby smell, which ranks above new car smell on the list of magical, transitory scents. His little body is a furnace, and feeling his body heat against your chest is pure magic. When awake and excited, he pants or breathes heavily, and he strains to swing his head from side to side as if in search of something. Holding him is like cradling a hummingbird.

He can't quite seem to focus his eyes on anything yet, but I think we made momentary eye contact a handful of times over the weekend. And while his facial expressions are still a cipher when he's not crying, I remember three times when it appeared he was smiling. Joannie thinks he just had gas, but I like to imagine that he thought of something funny, like "boy are you in for a surprise the next time you change my diaper."

It's a good thing newborns are so cute, because they're so helpless. Or maybe they're cute because they're so helpless? I'm exhausted from just the short visit--I have no idea how Joannie or new mothers deal with sleeping a few hours at a time--but I'd trade sleep for some quality time with Connor anytime.

I shot a bit of video of Connor and will post a short clip as soon as I have a moment to digitize and transcode.

Technorati Tags: connor

Earthquake?

I think I may have just experienced my first LA earthquake, but I'm not sure. It felt like a giant just leaned against the outside of my apartment and shook it the same way I'd shake a vending machine if my bag of chips failed to drop down into the receiving bay.

UPDATE: Not the most intuitive map, but I see a big red square on this earthquake map indicating seismic activity in the last hour. Judging by eye it looks like around a 4.0 magnitude earthquake. Ah, wait...here it is: a 4.5 earthquake at 12:58AM.

Technorati Tags: earthquake, LA

Joy

When I hear my sister and brother-in-law talk about their new boy Connor, I believe that they are experiencing a type of happiness I've yet to feel in my life.

I've had other friends who've had kids and talked about the joy of being a new parent, but because I've known my sister her whole life and because she's always been so emotionally open in a way that's quite different from me, her joy is particularly pure and potent.

I'm high off of secondhand bliss.

Technorati Tags: personal

Connor Richard

Technorati Tags: photo, connor

Big day!

As of 10:30am EST today, I'm an uncle to Joannie and Mike's newborn boy who shall be named later (I think I know the name but will wait to get official confirmation from the commissioner's office)!

I'm the wrong person to ask about the medical play-by-play (a significant chunk of my knowledge of the delivery room proceedings having come from Knocked Up), but my sister's water broke yesterday at 4 in the morning, two weeks ahead of schedule (I'm told it's normal for the first to be fashionably early), so the little guy had to join us out here on the other side of the belly whether he wanted to or not.

On any other occasion, the biggest news this day would have been my first day on my summer job (I actually had to find a wrinkle-free button-down shirt), and that is also exciting for many reasons, but my nephew is like the sun, and for a good amount of time our family will revolve around him. We're all anxiously awaiting photos, and you'll all probably see one or two here soon.

Technorati Tags: personal

Thanks!

To two folks who will remain nameless here. One sent me an gift of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The package arrived out of the blue and the card read like a human version of Amazon Similarities--because you enjoyed All the Pretty Horses, I thought you'd enjoy this. I can't remember the last time someone just volunteered a gift like that based on my tastes--thoughtful in more ways than one..

And to another person for using an employee discount to land me Adobe After Effects CS3. Being a student with no income, it's tough to afford the software you need to do lots of your work, and student discounts help, but employee discounts make student discounts look stingy. Like no other group of students I know, film school students depend on the generosity and donations of so many people.

Technorati Tags: adobe, book, software

A queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest

Legend has it that one night, famous choreographer Agnes de Mille was depressed because one of her shows had to close. And Martha Graham, another famous choreographer and also a great dancer, said to her:

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than others.”

Amy Brenneman, who teaches a class on collaboration with her husband Brad Silberling, read that quote to us at the end of the last class tonight. It's a famous quote but one I'd never heard before.

Those are words that ring of some deep truth. I wish I could speak off the cuff with such eloquence.

9 more days until the school year ends. All of us live in a constant state of fatigue, but work, much like exercise, generates its own hypnotic momentum.

Technorati Tags: art, filmschool, quote

Memorial Day weekend

I am really sick: eyes watering, nose running, throat burning. My sinuses and chest are so congested I feel like I'm breathing through one of those coffee straws. A lot of people at school seem to be sick; one professor just canceled a class tomorrow morning. It's odd to see a cold seize hold around school when the weather is 70 degrees and sunny every day.

I have not slept as much or as regularly this quarter, and this weekend was really packed. Perhaps the lack of sleep has compromised my immune system. Whatever the cause, here's a sick day worth's of content.

Saturday I spent as 1st AC (assistant cameraperson) on a classmate's shoot. Since this was a reshoot, we had the luxury of a 2nd AC, and it made life a lot easier. Last quarter we had one AC per shoot, and that's a lot of work for one person. You have to load and download film, take focus measurements, guard the camera, swap lenses, check the gate, clean filters, move the camera into position, swap the camera from sticks to dolly and back, pull focus, keep a camera log, set the T-stop on the lens, run a stopwatch on shots to calculate how much film was run and how much is left, mark and clap the slate, write camera reports, and more. It's a very technical position, but I enjoy it. The day started early, with a 5AM alarm buzzing in my ear. When I got home at the end of the day, I told myself I'd take a quick nap and then head out to meet up with a few friends. I woke up at 5AM the next morning.

Sunday was spent at a wedding in Laguna Beach. I know nothing about the city other than what I'd seen on a few episodes of that MTV show of the same name (that show was shot beautifully on Panasonic Varicams, I believe). I'm not sure the city had any say in the matter, but that show forever cemented that town's image among most of America as the place where wealthy, self-absorbed teenagers ply their Machiavellian schemes to climb the social ladder.

Monday, on a last-minute suggestion from Mark, I attended the last day of the Star Wars convention at the LA convention center (the official title of the event was Star Wars Celebration IV). I consider myself a moderate Star Wars fans (enjoyed eps IV-VI, watched eps I-III out of devotion), but next to the types of fanatics you'd imagine at a gathering like this, I felt like Paris Hilton at a Mensa meeting.

At one T-shirt booth I asked a vendor if she had a particular Boba Fett t-shirt in large.

"Which one?" she barked.

"The second one from the right, top row?" I replied, taken aback by her hostile demeanor. She looked over her shoulder and then back down at some book she was reading.

"That's Jango Fett," she muttered, and paid me no further attention. Oops.

This being the last day of the convention, the schedule was very light on Lucasfilm-generated content. Most things to see were created by vendors or fans, from droids, action figures, and models to fan films and costumes. One room featured dozens of decorated Darth Vader helmets, much like the ubiquitous cows that appeared on city sidewalks a few years back. Darth as Lady Liberty? Or the Unabomber?

At another booth, as I looked over some artwork, a boy of about 8 or 9 years old walked behind me holding a yoda lightsaber, one of the ones that lights up and makes lightsaber sounds when swung through the air. A booth clerk, in his early forties, stopped the boy.

"The yoda lightsaber?" nodded the man in approval. "Strong choice."

"It's my first one," said the boy, beaming.

"That one's very light," the man explained. "Good for people who use a one-handed fighting technique, like me." He proceeded to demonstrate with some shadow-fencing, but one of his parries smacked me in the back of my head.

"Sorry, man," he said.

"Easy there, Jedi," I said, rubbing my head.

I watched a couple of fan films in the screening room. The ones I saw were all 2005 award winners. "One Season More" is an animated short that imagines Luke Skywalker's yearning to leave Tatooine as a musical number. It has the suitable mix of love and satire that characterizes the best of fan homages. It's one portion of Star Wars The Musical. This year's winners and entries can be seen at AtomFilms.

No plans for a new Star Wars movie were unveiled, but one welcome bit of news was the announcement of a new CG series from Lucasfilm Animation: The Clone Wars. Here's a sneak peek. I really enjoyed the last animated series, Star Wars - Clone Wars, Vol. 1 and Star Wars - Clone Wars, Vol. 2. This looks to be in that style.

Tuesday morning and early afternoon I spent at Disneyland with Alan, Sharon, and my two nephews Ryan and Evan. What do Disney and Lucas have in common? Both appropriated stories and built entertainment empires. Lucas took strands of Japanese film and set them in another universe (Lucas was originally supposed to direct Apocalypse Now, and Star Wars is his version of that movie, about how a small force--the Rebels--can overcome a larger force--the Empire--through sheer force of will). Disney took Grimm's fairy tales, which were indeed grim, and gave them happier endings and an animated life.

Since the last time I visited Disneyland, over 10 years ago, the most apparent change is that the price of admission has more than doubled. But seeing it all through my nephew Ryan's eyes helped me to appreciate just how enduring a piece of culture Disney built. He was so excited he was a live wire--no nap needed on this day.

While sitting with my nephew on It's A Small World, he almost jumped out of the boat he was so pumped up. That ride doesn't look like it's been updated one bit since my parents took me on it when I was a child (I thought perhaps we'd see young children in India answering customer service phones, or Chinese kids sewing Nikes, but the ride retains its idyllic view of the world), and yet it still kills with youngsters.

Something I wondered while wandering the park: what happened to the Mickey Mouse Club? Why isn't that show still running? Look at some of the talent that came out of the sixth and seventh seasons of the most recent incarnation of the show, which ended in 1994: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, and Ryan Gosling. That's the pop music equivalent of the 2003 NBA Draft that produced Lebron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh, among others. The Mickey Mouse Club was so competitive that Jessica Simpson and Matt Damon failed to make the cut. I'm not sure why they ceded that space to the likes of American Idol. If Disney doesn't bring back that show, I hope they've at least retained the services of the casting director/talent scout.

------------------------------------

I miss walking the streets of NYC. Google Maps Street View allows me to revisit old favorites. Here's my old apartment.

Microsoft Surface, coming Winter 2007, is one of the early products pointing towards the gesture-manipulated touchscreen interface seen in Minority Report.

An upcoming June software upgrade will allow it you to watch YouTube videos on the AppleTV.

The 2007 Cannes Film Festival winners. From what I've heard from folks who attended, the lineup of movies was very strong this year.

Christopher Nolan is going to shoot some of The Dark Knight in IMAX format. Most features that have been projected in IMAX theatres are simply 35mm films blown up. Since they weren't framed for the IMAX theater, I find many scenes incomprehensible unless you're sitting in the back row. Audiences viewing The Dark Knight at an IMAX theater will see the movie switch aspect ratios from whatever the 35mm aspect ratio is to 1.43 to 1 when the IMAX scenes come on screen.

Based on Gallup Polls, America is willing to elect a black or a woman for president, but if you're gay or an atheist (or both, I presume) your time has not come.

Darren Aronofsky disses the DVD for his movie The Fountain. It doesn't have a commentary, but Aronofsky has said he recorded one himself and will post it online soon so you can listen to it while watching the movie.

as many of you can tell it is light on the extras as compared to my previous dvd releases.

everything at the studio was a struggle.
for instance: they didn't want to do a commentary track cause they felt that it wouldn't help sales.
i didn't have it in me to fight anymore.
whatever.

so:
niko, my friend who did the doc on the dvd came up with a novel idea.
we recorded a commentary track ourselves.
we're gonna post it on a site soon, http coming soon.
you can play it and watch the flick and hopefully you'll enjoy it.

Technorati Tags: Apple, cannes, dvd, film, filmmaking, filmschool, microsoft, movies, music, politics, disney, starwars, tech, tv, video, youtube

The river

I'm still recovering from a weekend in Vegas for Betina's wedding. Good times, though exhausting. If I ever stayed there for more than a weekend I'd surely end up like Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. Two cruel and stone-faced blackjack dealers nearly made it a costly weekend, but I managed to fight back valiantly at a poker table and a blackjack table, finally surfacing into the black sometime around 4am on Sunday morning.

Get your order in now for the 2005 vintage of Marilyn Merlot.

A list of the world's fastest growing religions. High birthrates in countries where a religion dominates are critical for growing the religion.

SomeEcards offers e-cards for the modern, sardonic sensibility. I'll definitely be sending some of these in the near future (some are funny but borderline NSFW).

Steampunk Star Wars desktops.

RetailMeNot collects coupons for online shopping sites. They offer a Firefox extension that notifies you when there's a coupon for the online shopping site you're visiting (there's also a Dashboard widget).

Tim Allen to star in the mixed martial arts drama Redbelt which David Mamet wrote and will direct. Huh?

Technorati Tags: desktop, film, humor, movies, coupon, religion, shopping, wallpaper, wine

Don't bring a knife to a pillow fight

My mother always told me not to give a knife as a gift because it would mean a severing of the relationship with the recipient, but adhering to that is a pain in the butt. Invariably, I find, staring back at me from some Williams-Sonoma/Crate & Barrel/etc. wedding registry, a column of unpurchased knives. Who's the selfish person who bought the all 12 napkin rings?

Technorati Tags: wedding, superstition

Write what?

If Ticketmaster's fees weren't painful enough, their online captchas are out of control. The other day, I tried to buy some tickets on their site. Part of the way through their purchase pipeline, I encountered this captcha:

GHU??Y

I tried something, and it was wrong. So next I got this captcha:

I thought BEMGOAG or BEMGDAG. I'm not sure which one I tried, but it was wrong. Was I going blind? Did I need a new prescription?

One more appeared on screen:

Finally, one I could handle. I raised my arms and channeled my inner Johnny Drama, "Victory!"

Then the next screen informed me that the concert had sold out.

Ticketmaster has to be one of the least customer-friendly companies out there, but perhaps the problem is that they're not seeking to deal with human beings. I think their captchas are designed not to weed out robots but humans.

Technorati Tags: captcha, ticketmaster, web

Back from NYC

Back from an exhausting but fun weekend trip to NYC for various family events. The weather in Manhattan was perfect. I only wish I'd been able to spend more time with family and less time in transit (traffic around NYC Sunday was brutal due to the 5 Boroughs bike ride and street fairs and car accidents).

With gas prices over $3 a gallon nationwide, I got myself a Discover Open Road credit card which offers 5% cash back on gas and auto maintenance purchases (and 1% back on other purchases). No annual fee.

Maria Sharapova lists her top 10 dream mixed double partners. Yao Ming?!

"Fluorescent Adolescent" by the Arctic Monkeys is my favorite new rock tune this year (here's the album). Alex Turner is a fantastic lyricist.

Help to fight global warming by having fewer children. Since U.S. citizens tend to be the world's worst carbon dioxide emitters, this is especially true for us. A simple way to encourage this would be to impose tax penalties on families for each additional child. Take that Shawn Kemp.

I was born without replacement teeth for my top two canines. Those two baby teeth have been hanging on forever. I went to a new dentist here in LA last week who recommended I get them replaced before they fall out. I asked how much it would cost, roughly, and she told me to talk to the receptionist up front. Always a bad sign when you ask how much something costs and get the runaround. The receptionist's quote: $8,000, not covered by insurance. Are you kidding me?! I may just have to go toothless if they fall out. At any rate, I'm going back to my insurance company on this one. That hardly seems just for a congenital condition.

Technorati Tags: finance, music, sharapova, sports, tennis

All you can eat

After the production madness of winter quarter, I thought the spring quarter might be a more relaxing one, but it's turning out to be just as, if not more, busy.

Part of that is my own choosing. We're assigned to take 22 units of class this quarter as 1st years, and they recommend though do not require 1 elective. But I discovered that we're allowed to take as many electives as we want, and there's no difference in your tuition if you take no electives or a hundred.

I'm interested enough in all sorts of subjects related to film that this was like being set loose in an all-you-can-eat buffet. So I signed myself up for four electives for a total of 34 units of class. I also have to edit my 6-minute film from last quarter for screening during finals week, and I have given up three Saturdays to all-day workshops led by Stephen Burum, this year's Kodak cinematographer in residence (legendary for his longtime collaboration with Brian De Palma, his work heading up 2nd unit on Apocalypse Now, and his contributions to the American Cinematographer Manual).

I had one day in April which was open, last Sunday, and I spent it doing homework and laundry. In May, I also have one day that isn't already booked by class, weddings, or workshops. It's amazing how quickly all my plans for going out and working out and trying out some restaurants and watching movies all just evaporated.

But for the most part, I'm digging all my electives, and I'm learning tons. The craft of filmmaking just requires a life-consuming commitment. Sleep is scarce these days, and I've found myself dozing off Grandpa Simpson style

Being a student has one great advantage, and that's access to student-discounted software. I've finally got Pro Tools installed on my desktop and I'm learning my way around it. You can do some amazing things with the software--it's like Photoshop for sound. Add the Pitch N' Time plugin and you can turn your out-of-tune karaoke rendition of "Welcome to the Jungle" into something Simon Cowell would be proud of.

One of the most enjoyable classes I'm taking is Music in Film, and our first exercise was to go through North By Northwest and log all the musical cues, when they began, when they faded out. When a director sits down with a composer for a "spotting session," the director will collaborate with the composer to select when music should come in and go out. What's fascinating about Bernard Herrmann's score for North by Northwest is how Hitchcock had Herrmann hold back on bringing in the musical cues until the last possible moment. In places you'd expect a swelling musical cue to come bursting through the speakers, there's nothing (the famous farm field scene is a great example).

Our professor talked about why that might be, and that restraint is really striking given how liberally modern movies use score to cue the audience on how to react emotionally to scenes. Most viewers never stop to think about why music comes in at a particularly point in the movie, and it's a useful exercise to do with one of your favorite movie scores. Our exercise for next week's class is to spot Monsoon Wedding, a really enjoyable movie, and not just because of its score. Listen to just the title credit score, and without having seen a single frame of the movie, you should be able to predict the theme of the movie.

Our professor took us on a field trip last Friday to the famous scoring stage on the Sony Studios lot. Named after Barbara Streisand, it's the scoring stage of choice for John Williams, and so many famous scores have been recorded there. On this afternoon, we had the opportunity to listen to a scoring session for an upcoming episode of The Simpsons by renowned composer Alf Clausen. While Alf conducted an orchestra in short cues to match the Simpsons footage projected on a large screen (some of the animation hadn't been finished and consisted of sketches), we sat in the control room and watched through the glass, listening to the music on one of the most sublime sound systems imaginable. It was inspiring to see how much work goes into a 7 second musical cue for a half hour episode of The Simpsons. Very few TV shows score with an actual orchestra. Lost, for one, and Desperate Housewives, though on a much smaller scale. That might be it. Who would've guessed The Simpsons would be among that elite group (I say that not to disparage the show, one of my favorite TV shows ever, but to express surprise that a half-hour animated satire would spend more on its score than most hour-long dramas).

Listening to the music in the control room elevated the familiar Simpsons musical cues to a sublime pla