"i never really cooked for myself, you know what i mean?"september 20this weekend, the highlight, besides seeing
carew - 21, starting a PhD program in "cultural anthropology"was mom and i making/helping colin cook dinner for himself and us, him alone cooking for the first time in many moons - he's been eating out 7 times a week in new york, and his job prevents the kind of leisurely afternoon that favours something like roasted chicken, or even an hour for broiled fish
ethand evaluating conglomerates and other old beheamoth industries for an investment bank
wilson designing candy wrappers
and ayla that evening she would be dancing on top of a silver painted bus in the village somewhere
Yesterday: 17 Septemberand while that blew my mind, it was grocery shopping in preparation when i heard him say, "which is garlic and which is ginger?" and i couldn't even remember when and where i learned that but it was a long time ago and i don't even think about it anymore.
besides executing excellent food under the tutledge and direction of my mother, and the cadjoling and teasing of his brother, colin managed to secure three not-adjacent last minute tickets to Disney's Smash Hit Award Winning Musical "The Lion King!"
unfortunately i had been at times sitting in the theatre counting templates for work - bad sign. just before we went to the musical i called my boss who clearly did not understand why i was in new york still when i was pretty severely behind at work. after talking to him, i didn't know why i was still there either.
sunday we saw the musical, saturday the day before i had spoken on a panel: "X$X$X$X$: Pron Sites are Making Money, How Can We?" a the CMJ/Yahoo MusicNet conference. I was excited to be on a panel with Seth Warshavsky, but his transit was disrupted by the hurricane so it was me, out of the porn linking business for 4 years, David Schlesinger, a marketing guy for Vivid Video, and Aram Sinnreich, a moderator from Jupiter Communications who studies music. i was a little concerned for the panel, especially since Colin had encouraged Mom to come (as long as there weren't any screenshots - there weren't)
so here i am up on stage in a red suit on stage with two dudes, in a huge room (the room where Iced-T would be next speaking), and my mom and my brother were out in the audience. I was introduced as "an amateur pornographer" which was the moderators attempt to make something interesting out of our hamstrung panel, namely, a fracas between professional and amateur internet porn publishers. unfortunately, as i shared with the audience, i make $900 every two weeks, and I don't make it from pron. I argued with people, and made a point of bringing up the essential business model of pay-for-porn online - exploit horny, lonely dudes by making them think entering their credit card number for a free preview is not going to cost them anything.
after a few pages of teasing (and not-so teasing) content, vivid says, "for $1.66 a day, you can see all of our content for free!" (how does that work? "most people don't read terms and conditions") their average retention rate is three and a half months, and the vivid guy was proud of that. i would have been even more righteous about that explotation but i've learned that severely righteous men have their own problems. there's always new suckers coming online i guess, i recommended to him that he expand into pictures of naked indian women, and perhaps naked chinese women if he wanted to be positioned to seduce the new suckers of the next century.
it was not my best work, i was much prouder of the speaking i'd done at the digital storytelling festival - that was an idea and a speech i'd been composing for a few weeks. for this X$X$X$X$ panel, i had read Luke Ford's History of X, in about two and a half hours on the plane. it gave me a good sense of the continuity of porn - people always like to look at it, and people who work in it seldom lead long happy lives. but they make for good stories!
my mother and brother were in the audience the entire time, they didn't leave although i saw my brother fall asleep some. MY MOM IS SO ENCOURAGING after this porn on the web panel, where her son is billed as an "amateur pornographer" she has nothing to say but emphatically, "you were articulate and funny" and other nice things. i was amazed - she really is the best kind of mom i could want to have for doing this kind of wacky personal web page shit that i've been doing for years. thanks mom.
we were looking forward to more cooking at colin's place, but i could somehow only log on at 14.4k with this laptop and i did feel i should catch up with work so i flew on standby at 7am two days early and now here i am.
just as i'm set to leave, i see an exhibit i would really want to see if i was staying - technologically enhanced homes at the MOMA. hey that's the way it should be - sacrifice, right?
i'm sitting on the plane to san francisco, i've slept so long in coach certain places on my body have that "disproportionately stretched out" feeling. i wake up to footage of the sparsely attended but well filmed "celebrity golf championship" and i watch white guys famous for other things than golf make indecent shots. i look away, i'm trying not to watch and i see a guy reaching up for his luggage. shorts are a problem for many people. in addition, this guy was wearing a t-shirt,
"HBO Production Studio" and i'm like, duh, where does [this idiot] work? and then i don't even have to look down to see where this idiot works. just as i'm marvelling at my own unselfconscious stream of judgements, another fellow comes down the asile wearing a "PBG" t-shirt, and i realize even Pepsi Bottling Group is promoting itself on the pectorals of its people.
this has been long, thanks for reading.
