Regarding the merits of having a wall of windows in your bedroom:
Pro: Room is well lit.
Con: Room is well lit, even if the shades are drawn and you were out drinking until five in the morning plus you slept comparably little the night before and mainly you just want to get some god damned sleep so you can stop it already with these pointless, rambling run-on sentences.
Since 9/11, a slew of pundits have suggested that airports install biometric sensors, such as retinal or fingerprint scanners, at check-in counters, security checkpoints or boarding gates. Perhaps they’ll want to narrow that suggestion to just retinal scanners, as a Japanese scientist has recently determined a way to make gummy fingers from lifted fingerprints that fool fingerprint scanners over 80% of the time. Worse, the process can be done with less than $10 of materials and equipment found in an average kitchen.
At times like these, I’m oh so glad I live in perhaps the US’s most likely bombing target, half a block from the United Nations and sandwiched between a number of controversial embassies.
Amazingly enough, the Verizon repairman did actually show up this afternoon. Unfortunately, the problem he diagnosed – a broken wall jack – was one he had come completely unprepared to fix. But, he assured me, he could be back with the requisite equipment by late this week – early next week at the latest.
Unwilling to wait, and dubious that he would make even that lengthy time frame, I ventured to the local hardware store, picked up an RJ-11 jack, and installed the damn thing myself. And it worked. Granted, it wasn’t rocket science. But it was the first repair project I’ve pulled off in this apartment (beyond assembling furniture and changing light bulbs), and I was hit by a sort of pride of ownership (or, more accurately, rentership). I now have a stake in the place. I’ve pried a chunk out of the wall, messed around with the wires contained therein, and reassembled the whole deal as good as new (more or less). Look out Bob Vila; there’s a new do-it-yourself guru in town.
I’m off to a Mets game with Randy Wolfe, a Yale friend who’s up from DC for the weekend to interview for hedge fund jobs. He’s been crashing at my apartment since Thursday, and has therefore unwittingly been dragged along to my first two movie-world networking bashes – one hosted by Stellar Network on Thursday evening, another by GenArt Friday night. We also found time to hit the club scene, as well as the inimitable Jean Georges (Zagat’s highest rated restaurant in New York) for dinner last night. Thanks to another of our Yale friends, Melissa, who hostesses there (and joined us for dinner), we snagged a usually impossible 7:30 window table and a ridiculously reduced meal price. I’m still full.
This coming week, I join the movie business in earnest, with a slew of meetings with lawyers, investors, producers, directors, graphic designers and commercial real estate agents – all the people we need in getting Cyan Pictures off the ground. In fact, I’m booked nearly solid for lunches and dinners through late May, and have just started scheduling business breakfasts as well. Who needs sleep?
It is Good Friday, but I don’t care. After all, I am Jewish, and, due to last week’s vacation, have way too much work to take off the holiday. So I am at my office. The rooms are deserted. It is eerily quiet. I am reminded of Yale’s antediluvian Sterling Memorial Library – where I didn’t study even once during my four years. Without a hum of background activity, I am completely unproductive.
To compensate, Miles Davis’ Sessions at the Plugged Nickel pours out of a tinny set of Harman/Kardon speakers. I fight the urge to return home for my stereo system (or at least a decent pair of headphones – Beyerdynamic or Etymotics). I sink into my chair, enveloped in the strains of “Stella by Starlight,” and get to work.
From my window on the 24th floor, I can see all the way uptown. On a clear day, thirty, forty blocks up.
When it rains, the clouds descend, sitting low outside my window. They elide the view, bringing buildings on the Upper East Side oddly, hazily close.
On those rainy days, the air outside my window is thick and heavy. It can be scooped with a ladle. The city is quieter, slower, weighed down by the heavy air. I spend all morning lying in bed, pinned by the weight of the clouds, listening to the rat-a-tat-tat of raindrops on pane glass.
Six month anniversary. Headed to the roof with my trumpet, played Taps facing downtown. Read the Mourner’s Kaddish, a hebrew prayer of remembrance. Never forget.
Much too early. Flight to San Francisco leaves out of JFK in two hours. Played jazz gig last night at Opal involving significant quantities of vodka. Woke up this morning with lipstick on undershirt – must have been a good evening. Note to self: Swear off drinking and begin looking for replacement livers.
I work down the street from the Yale Club of New York, and have been exercising my alumni-ship by working out there several mornings a week. While the equipment is sparse and a bit rusty, they have a decent collection of bars, plates and benches, which is pretty much all I need. The real downside, however, is the locker room. While brief stints of nudity are the locker room norm, the Yale Club is truly in a league of its own. Never before have I seen crowds of old fat guys lounging around on couches completely naked, watching CNBC or reading the Wall St. Journal. They prance around, letting it all hang out, seemingly without a care in the world. While I’m thrilled they’re enjoying themselves, that much pasty, jiggly flesh early in the morning just isn’t a good way to start the day.
My parents are in from San Francisco, staying with me for the weekend. Which means, of course, that I get to take a trip to Bed Bath & Beyond. Thank goodness they’re here – I never knew how empty my life was until I got a suction cup sponge holder for the side of my sink!
Still, the BB&B here in New York is worth the trip for anyone from out of town – very few other bedroom superstores feature uniformed doormen hailing taxis for exiting bag-laden shoppers. The highlight of the store, however, is the shopping cart escalator. Next to each person escalator, a narrower parallel track hauls shopping carts between levels. Nota bene: riding in the carts on the cart escalator is apparently discouraged.