Was reminded today of an excellent, excellent story from a former employee:

He had been out drinking for the evening–perhaps drinking a bit too much–and badly needed to relieve himself. So, in true New York style, he turned onto a quiet street, walked to the side of a building, unzipped, and let loose.

As he peed away, he began to sober up slightly. Just enough, at first, to realize the wall he was peeing on was glass.

Then, just enough more to realize it was the glass wall of a restaurant. On the other side of which was a table for two, where the patrons sat shocked, mouths agape, as he blasted full-stream against the glass, right at face-level.

[Coda: Amazingly, he wasn’t ticketed for this. He was, however, ticketed a few months later for drunkenly urinating on the side of a police car. We never learn.]

A month or so back, one of Jess’ friends, an editor at a major beauty magazine, convinced her to sign up for three days of the Blueprint Cleanse.

The two were meant to do the cleanse together. But Jess contracted the late-winter flu, and ended up postponing. Until, apparently, tomorrow.

Earlier this evening, three small, square, zippered bags showed up at our front door. Each stuffed with an ice pack and six plastic containers – like Odwalla bottles without labels, numbered one to six.

The cleanse comes in three levels, and it seems Jess opted for the middle-of-the-road “Foundation Cleanse” – more intense than the “Renovation Cleanse”, though less than the terrifyingly named “Excavation Cleanse”.

Yet, despite that moderation, without her friend’s encouragement, and with the chartreuse reality of the ‘cleansing’ juices in hand, Jess had cold feet.

So, to keep her from tossing out $200 of high-end juice immediately, I agreed to do one of the days of cleanse with her.

According to the Blueprint site, the experience should “give my insides a rest” while I “simultaneously go on about my daily life”. So I should be able to blog about the experience all along the way. Especially if my wifi connection reaches the bathroom.

Cyan’s house at Sundance was, apparently, the world capital for adults contracting childhood diseases. Rob got chickenpox, Wes got ear infections in both ears, and Kristina got a case of strep bad enough to necessitate a cortisone shot to the buttock.

So when I returned from the festival in good health – despite the jetlag, altitude, lack of sleep, heavy drinking, over-caffeination, and non-stop high-stress schedule of meetings and screenings – it was with at least some small sense of schadenfreude.

It was probably well deserved, then, when a few days after making it to New York I came down with a severe winter cold that I’ve not been able to shake since, though that I did manage to share with Jess.

To make matters even more “exciting”, last Wednesday, a woman knocked on Cyan’s office door, and asked if she could show the space later that afternoon.

“Show the space?” we asked. “To whom?”

To potential tenants, it turns out. Because, though our sublet contract continued through to the end of the year, the master lease for the space ended on Sunday, something we hadn’t been previously told. We spent the second half of last week packing all of Cyan’s possessions in boxes, packing those boxes into a Uhaul, and then unloading it all into a giant Manhattan Mini-Storage shed.

And, at the same time, business has been cranking full-speed ahead. We’ve been trading documents on several films that fit our new TASER co-production deal with Wells Fargo, and have put in distribution offers on a few high-profile films we enjoyed at Sundance and that we’d love to theatrically release.

I’m still full of snot, still running around trying to find Cyan new office space, still meeting with producers and sales reps and agents and film financiers all day long, and still trying to wedge the rest of my work into the few remaining slots of open time.

But, on the plus side, life certainly isn’t boring.

Aforementioned picture found:

My brother David wanted me to meet a loose acquaintance of his, who runs a billion-dollar real estate investment trust, and who he thought might be interested in some of the financial things we’re up to at Cyan.

Problem was, the only time he knew the guy would be free to chat during his pass through New York City would be at a McCain fundraiser this past Tuesday night.

Fortunately, David’s girlfriend’s good friend is a deputy director of fundraising for the McCain campaign, and got us in to the event free, exempting me from the moral calculus of whether it might be acceptable to donate money to a candidate you fervently hope won’t win, just because it might yield some personal avaricious gain.

But, it turns out, she didn’t just get us in, she got us in with VIP-room passes that implied we’d each donated $25,000 to the event. Which is how, despite my good San Francisco uber-liberal roots, despite my current political leanings which could best be called either free-market socialist or tax-and-spend libertarian, I ended up the night before the Presidential debate sandwiched between Sarah and Todd Palin and Cindy and John McCain for a photo I’m in equal parts fervently hoping I can find a copy of and that nobody ever finds a copy of.

Life is never dull.

In photos.

Talking today with my brother’s partners in his real estate development company, both of whom are fluent Spanish speakers, I flashed on a friend from college who couldn’t speak Spanish at all, but who, after spending a summer in Mexico, returned able to say exactly four phrases:
– “There’s a little man dancing in my pants”
– “Where are the lesbian girls we love?”
– “Show me the way to the nearest keg”
– “May I kiss the baby?”

Apparently, it was the best summer of his life.

While my trip to LA a few weeks back was exceedingly productive, there were a handful of meetings (and a talk to give at USC’s film school) that I couldn’t quite fit in. So, the first half of this week, I was back in Los Angeles for a very short trip – in Monday morning, out Wednesday afternoon.

And while the trip was certainly worthwhile from a business perspective, it was the non-business stuff that made it truly memorable. Mainly because, the second evening, I got to share dinner with Ole Eichhorn, a long-standing online friend whose kind words and wisdom I’ve much appreciated over the years.

But also because, the first evening, I ended up having drinks at the bar of the Thompson Beverly Hills with a middle-aged black guy who was in from Atlanta ostensibly to visit his friend (who lived in LA, and was at the bar) but really to celebrate his eighth anniversary with his Canadian mistress (who was also at the bar, and seemed more than happy with her ‘other woman’ status), all of whom were chased off by Ridley Scott’s wife, a late-50’s eurotrash cougar who kept buying me drinks until I had to excuse myself to the bathroom and sneak out of the bar before she realized I was gone.

It’s official: the details are all locked for the Palo Alto High School Class of 1997 Ten Year Reunion.

Therefore, it’s also official: I’m old.

In truth, I probably wouldn’t be attending the reunion, except that, as student body president my senior year, it’s apparently my job to plan it. I didn’t realize this when I ran for the office, didn’t get the memo until just this year, which is probably why our class never had a five year reunion.

But, this time, for the ten-year mark, we are. Not some big event in the gym with balloons and streamers and nametags and speeches, but an evening at a Palo Alto bar the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Lower key, it seemed, might be more likely to get people to actually show up.

And, by now, more than a hundred of my classmates have RSVP’ed. I’m curious to see how we look as a bunch by now – how much hair lost, how much weight gained. At least two people will be bringing small kids, and many more their husbands, wives and significant others.

Jess, wisely, will instead be visiting her younger sister, abroad for the semester in Copenhagen, so she’ll be spared. So I’ll be facing things solo – and, more to the point, very drunk.