by jfruhlinger

What is weird?

starwars

I’m writing a book. It takes place in Tokyo. It involves the ghost of an elephant, a talking cat, an electronics parts shop owner who gets involved in an underground power-trading ring, and it questions the notion of what it means to belong. To have somewhere to go.

Sounds weird, right?

But what is weird?

What did it sound like when George Lucas first described Star Wars, or when Murakami first explained The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle? I’m not so presumptuous to compare anything I am doing (or will ever do) to those brilliant works, but I think you catch my drift.

In fact, I worry that my ideas aren’t weird enough. As I write, I worry that there hasn’t been a ghost, a talking animal, a nightmare, or just a strange turn of phrase within a few pages. I think that’s a good problem to have. It means my project still has creative energy.

Or it’s just weird.

And that’s great.

I like weird people. Normal people – people with normal jobs and normal families – are wonderful. They ground me. They show me what it could be like, and, sure, I sometimes long for that.

But as I sit here by myself on Thanksgiving with the time and space to write, then clean my place, and just host a friend or two, I’m thankful for my unique, weird life. Even when some thing about it are extra weird, I find energy in those dislocations and turn them into inspiration.

Read this:

“You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are.” ~Yogi Bhajan

So if you’re weird, if you’re afraid to turn your weirdness into something, it’s time to put those two things together and make something really weird.

Because weird doesn’t exist beyond the idea. Star Wars is the least weird thing in the universe.

by jfruhlinger

Cooking is good for nerds. Nerds are good at cooking.

screen-shot-2016-11-20-at-10-36-52-amThis originally appeared as part of my weekly column at Engadget in 2013. As I was setting up a chicken to roast today, doing the math for the temperature and desired results, I was reminded of this piece. So, here it is again. I think it’s still relevant and worth another look.

Let’s over-generalize the nerd archetype for a moment: unhealthy, eats fast food, drinks sugary sodas, sits on his (or her) butt playing video games, a misanthrope with nothing better to do than troll Reddit and pirate some leet warez. Antisocial, anti-nature, probably works in IT while angrily commenting on tech blogs behind the shield of anonymity.

We all know that’s not accurate, but there is always truth in the construct others give us. Appease me, won’t you?

I’d like to offer something up for those who find themselves stuck in a rut of stereotypical nerdiness: bad health, depression, anxiety, shortness of breath, consumption and / or straight-up boredom: Cook something. Anything.

Start with spaghetti — it doesn’t really matter as long as you make fire in the kitchen. It turns out that when you cook, you’re using different parts of your brain that will calm you, allow you to make sense of things and even help you make new friends. I have very little scientific evidence of this, but I am sure it’s true.

When you cook, you’re using real, three-dimensional tools; you’re contemplating the end result; you’re modulating fire; things might get dangerous; and you’re feeding yourself and probably others. Everything we do in technology tries to emulate this what-we-see-is-what-is-happening interface. Mouse pointer, touchscreen, 3D objects — it all adds up.

If you’re a programmer, cooking will be surprisingly familiar: You follow a program, put objects of code — ingredients, in this case — together in a particular order and come up with something new and intriguing that will impress those who double-click or bite. The thrill you get from turning bits of code into a working application is two-fold when you affect your senses of taste and smell.

If you’re a web designer, cooking will allow you to explore colors in their native state. If you’ve painted, you know that nature commands the colors we can choose: green peppers contrasted with tomatoes; a swirl of cream in a deep-brown bean paste — art! Mix and match.

If you’re a gamer, you know all too well that critical items don’t just appear in treasure chests, and if they do, you’re dealing with some lazy programmers. No, they require knowing what to look for, knowing how to find them and knowing how to put them all together. The grocery store is a place. The recipe is a quest. The result is a victory. The food is a boss fight you win.

Let’s continue with the tools. Many of us spend our days staring at a two-dimensional plane called a monitor. While we interpolate three-dimensional objects from the images we’re seeing, we’re still just staring at a bunch of tiny lightbulbs. I’m not going to say that that’s bad for us, but I am going to say that working with actual tools — knives, ladles, strainers — at about the same distance that we stare at monitors, but in the real world, is good for us. It is said that humans first struck out from the animal crowd when they began using tools and there’s still something to skilling your hand with a knife. If you’ve ever julienned an onion or sliced one into razor-thin discs of flavor, you know what I’m talking about. Simple, human satisfaction. Making cubes out of spheres. The most basic form of creation.

Next we have the recipes. Like computer programs, recipes recite what comes first, what comes second, how they’re combined and how they should behave. There’s a distinct technology to the ways that ingredients interact with one another: this is alchemy. Boil something too long and it turns into mush. Understand the way a steak needs to rest after cooking lest it turn into jerky. This is science, dudes. This is what we live for. OG Nerd.

Then we have the visceral experience. I once showed my girlfriend — and now wife, possibly due to this event — how to reduce a sauce with red wine. The heat of the pan, the rate of caramelization as it related to reactivating it with more wine, scraping the scrapings, all very logical, but at the same time physical.

The most important part of making a sauce, I told her, was tasting it as it went along. Take a sip. Be in it. Program it. Add code. Add more salt or pepper. Back off on the wine or add more. Maybe drop in some citrus. Be in it. Concentrate. Focus on the fire.

Be a scientist, a caveman and an artist all at once. Cooking is everything you love about technology. It’s logical. It’s creative. It’s dangerous. It’s mysterious. It’s really hard. It’s awesome. And it’ll bring the ladies — or men, what have you. Trust me — you’re meant to cook if you made it this far, nerd.

by jfruhlinger

How to Roar and Mean It

sparky

There’s a great saying that goes like this: A real man has a joke that can win him any woman and gain control of any social situation. Actually, that saying doesn’t exist. I just made it up. Sorry! But if there really were such a saying, I think that one more condition for being a real man would be having a roar that could show the world who he is, control a room, and yes, win a woman.

The other day, I was teaching a young woman karate. She was extremely talented: could move, listened to instruction (and remembered it!), was focused, and had great spirit. She had all the ingredients to become a great martial artist. But when I told her she needed to “kiai” — or scream — any time she threw a chest punch, she reverted to some unconfident little kid. She thought it was silly to scream out loud when punching the air, and, let’s be honest, it kind of is when you first try it.

But we worked on it. At first, she’d smile through it. I had her walk back and forth from one end of the dojo to the other just walking, punching, and shouting with each punch over and over again. Soon, the embarrassment got old. Soon, she grew tired. Soon, the repetition of just walking and punching turned from a mundane ritual and into a meditative take on learning how to not just move, but yell and mean it. She heard that her yells weren’t real. She yelled harder. Soon she was shouting with passion, with anger, with meaning. It was scary. It was awesome.

Remember that scene from The Lion King when a young Simba is frustrated with his place in the world right after being bailed out of a tight spot by his big, strong father? Brooding on a rock, a lizard walks by — an easy target by any measure — and he practices his roar on the uninterested reptile. The first one gets no response. Growing angry, the second one elicits nothing. The third, though, echoes off the cliffs and sound bigger than ever. He delights at his accomplishment and smiles. He found his roar.

My cat, Sparky, weighs maybe 13 pounds. He’s not a big cat even though I tell him he is. We play pretty rough sometimes mostly because we both need it. Occasionally I’ll go too far or I’ll hold him down a bit too long. This only happens a couple times a year. But in those moments, Sparky turns from cat into lion, releasing a yell that is both instructive and meaningful. It says so much in just a half second. It makes me immediately release him, and gets him out of a situation he doesn’t like. It gets him what he wants. He controls the room. And I bet if a woman was there, he’d get her, too.

It also makes me realize that the little 13-pound furball could probably shred me at any moment, and I’m thankful that he likes me.

As civilized humans, we like to ruminate on “finding our way.” Social Scientists like Max Weber have been discussing man’s need to find meaning in his vocation, create a life of purpose, and then die, fulfilling his role has human. We then find outlets in sports, exercise, and sex that give us release and calm the beast inside. We wonder if our jobs are right for us, if we should be spending our days following our passions, if that would make us happier.

Maybe we should also be roaring. It sounds silly, and there are plenty of self-help groups and “find-yourself retreats” that teach people to scream and roar as an outlet. Maybe it works. But it sounds really expensive, and the idea of going to the mountains to roar with a bunch of other people who are struggling in life isn’t exactly appealing to me. Who knows.

But imagine if you walked into a meeting this afternoon at work and, during a tough spot, just started roaring. How would your coworkers react? First, they would laugh, assuming that you were joking. Then, they’d be concerned. Then, they’d probably call HR and have you checked out. No one wants people to be randomly screaming at one another during business meetings. It’s scary. But imagine if it was normal. What would life be like?

Maybe a business meeting isn’t the right place to practice your roaring. And a karate dojo is fine, but roaring is expected there. All the places in between, though, that’s where we could be roaring. What if?

Consider this: There are even gyms — GYMS! — that don’t allow grunting or roaring, because it’s “scary” and makes people feel bad about themselves.

And that’s fine. If you prefer to be in a safe place when you stroll on the elliptical, have at it. I won’t judge.

We all need to find our roar. When was the last time you screamed out with passion? I mean, really just screamed out with a deep, frothy “THIS IS MY MOUNTAIN!” scream? Go ahead and try it. I bet, even if you’re alone, you’ll feel uncomfortable doing it at first.

It’s in all of us, that roar. Some of us channel it into our work, our art, our writing, our exercise. Others bottle it up and drink it. Others do nothing about it and get depressed.

So go ahead and roar. Do it again, with meaning. Do it again, without meaning. Do it again and again until you find your roar.

And play with your cat.

by jfruhlinger

5 Things I Would Do With Twitter

parisphone

Twitter just revealed its quarterly results and the takeaway is that growth is slowing, takeover and buyout interest is waning, and no one knows what to do with the platform.

For those who don’t have Google, revenue slowed (even though it grew), active users slowed (even though it grew), profits per share beat expectations, and they’re cutting workforce to save some money by 9%.

All of that sounds good on paper (literally), but it’s not good enough for the Wall Street sleuths.

Why?

Because everyone wants Twitter to become something else. Something bigger. Something Facebook-like.

Everyone’s asking, “What should we do with Twitter?”

I’ve been a pretty active user of Twitter from almost day one. I think my first tweet was on day two of the operation. It was something like, “I like poop” because I’m an idiot.

But we were all idiots on Twitter at the time. We didn’t know what to do with it. It was a 140-character IRC channel with # symbols and RTs and we had to do all of that ourselves. There were no buttons. There were no pictures. There was no live video. There were no politicians using the platform as a platform.

When you think about Twitter that way, it’s come a long way. But, fine. Let’s do this. What can we do with Twitter? Here are 5 things.

  1. Make it an actual political platform. Verify politicians on another level – they can have little American Flags or something, like those pins they wear on their lapels. This way, they can converse directly with their constituents. The fact that they’d have to do it in 140 characters would mean they’d have to cut back on the bullshit. Followers who can DM would need to be verified to be in that district in order to cut back on chatter and trolling. Make them pay for it from their campaign and operational costs. Twitter can then donate the funds back to the districts for education.
  2. Allow and feature AI bots. Remember IBM’s Tay? Sure, it was a disaster – Twitter lovelies taught it racism and other awesome things, but isn’t that what alpha and beta testing is all about? Twitter could be the world’s best AI training ground. If the bots end up a sad reflection of ourselves like Tay did, perhaps it’ll get some conversations – and change – going.
  3. Create a “to the death” fight chamber. All the complaints about racism, misogyny, and real-world threats are real. Very real. And serious. So let’s create a duke-it-out chamber in which the bad people can go and fight. Whoever wins (based on likes, RTs, and other metrics that I’m sure Twitter has somewhere) keeps their account. Whoever loses says goodbye. Everyone can watch them duke it out. Twitter can sell advertising. It’ll be like Thunderdome. Mel Gibson can commentate.
  4. Make DMs more accessible. I don’t know why they do this, but Direct Messages have always been a bitch to send and receive. Someone in product at Twitter clearly thinks all conversations on Twitter should be above the board, and I can understand why they would want this, but let it go. Twitter could be a fantastic alternative to SMS and there’s really no reason for them to not capture that before it’s too late, especially now that Apple made iMessage a sad simulation of AIM circa 1999 (sorry, I do not like GIFs and sketches in my messaging. My mom does, though.).
  5. Create support groups. I’ve been struggling for a couple months to integrate Coach.me into my life. It’s the best of its breed, but it’s still pretty weak. There are dozens of duplicate support groups, it’s impossible to tell which coaches are legitimate, and the Q&A portion is an unmoderated mess. With the momentum and openness that Twitter has, they could easily create Twitter support groups for people wanting to do anything from losing weight to waking up on time. Imagine getting a swarm of Tweets from real people at 6am encouraging you to go to the gym.
by jfruhlinger

Holy Shit

martin2

I look at the last three posts on this site, and they go something like this:

“Hey! I’m moving to LA!”

“Hey! I’m moving back to New York!”

“Hey! I’m in New York!”

And then silence for two years.

That’s because I took a corporate executive job running a division at a media company, thinking that I had it all figured out. I had run media divisions before. I knew digital editorial forwards and backwards. I led teams and they liked me. I knew product. I knew SEO. I knew metrics. I knew content strategy.

Then I learned something really important: What you know and what you love are often, especially in this crazy evolving world we live in, two different things. So I’m single professionally again.

And it wasn’t because I fucked up. In fact, we grew our social presence by 200%, we grew organic traffic by 25%, we grew direct traffic by 77%.

Yay.

None of that matters. I hated myself as I typed those metrics. They only matter to the advertisers, the marketers, and the big bosses who want to look at a line and see that it’s going in the right direction.

The readers, the consumers of your stuff, they don’t care. In fact, they probably don’t want to know that what you’re doing is becoming really big, that you may one day sell out and leave them behind.

Anyway, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like putting the metrics before the content. And when I put the content before the metrics, my bosses got nervous and mean. I don’t do well around nervous and mean people. The marketers started blaming people. I don’t do well around people who blame.

So, like the little kid who, when asked what he wants to do when he grows up, either says “I wanna rock!” or, to the horror of his football watching dad, “I wanna dance!” I’m here to say that…

Well, I don’t know. I wanna write?

I started a novel. I know, I know. I, too, don’t trust anyone who says he is “writing a novel.” Because then they start bringing up “the book” in casual conversation and you want to kill yourself. Because when they bring it up, they talk about it like an infant who’s still learning to walk, and it’s really funny when it almost falls down, and omigod it said its first words and finally has a plot device and structure.

But I am. And it’s good, I think. At least, the five people I’ve shared it with all got excited about the story. To be clear, the got excited about the story, not about poor little Josh having something to do with his time.

That all said, it’s entirely possible I’ll be at a media company again within weeks. I’d be happy at the right place. I’ve done it before.

But for now, I have plenty to do with my time, and I like it. I. Like. It. A. Lot. I actually have more of a schedule now that I don’t have a schedule. My day looks something like this:

  • 8:00am: Wake up, feed cat
  • 8:15am: Make coffee
  • 8:30am: Write
  • 11:00am: Check email, freak out about future
  • 12:00am: Go to gym. Lift (I’ll write about this soon).
  • 2:00pm: Make lunch.
  • 3:00pm: Bath or shower.
  • 4:00pm: Read or write, or both
  • 6:00pm: Check email, freak out about future
  • 7:00pm: Go to class (on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) or freak out about future
  • 10:00pm: Read or write, or both

I’m purposefully not playing videogames, partially because everything sucks right now and also partially because I know that would make me feel really bad about myself and do more of the FOATF thing.

So there we have it. That’s my life right now. There’s other, darker stuff happening on the relationship front, but I’m not ready to deal with that in words, because I have no idea how that one’s gonna end, or even develop by this time tomorrow.

If you’re still around, welcome back. If you’re new, hi.

by jfruhlinger

How Danny DeVito Convinced Me to Move Back to New York City

Image

I have an ancient memory of New York City. I’m not sure if I remember it or my mother or father told me the story enough times that it became my own, but that’s not really important here. I’ve held onto the memory as a kind of cornerstone for why I love New York City and why, after two years in sunny Los Angeles with my family and friends, I am moving back to the cold, gross metropolis.

It was the beginning of the 80s, and we were visiting New York City. I was 10. It was my first time in New York. My entire family decided we were cowboys for the trip — probably an homage to us being from California mixed with whatever my sisters thought was cool at the time. We were all wearing jeans and cowboy hats with feather roach clips attached to them. Yes, feather roach clips, the things you’d buy at head shops to hold your joint. I have no idea why this was cool, but it was a thing.

We were walking around midtown like a bunch of careless cowboy idiots when my hat took flight in a gust of wind. It frisbeed its way under a hired taxi – not the kind of taxi you imagine today, but one of those really old ones that were on that TV show with Danny DeVito, Judd Hirsh, Andy Kaufman, Tony Danza, and basically everyone we now consider to be the best comedians ever. My family watched it religiously.

So the hat with the roach clip was resting under a taxi cab sitting in slow traffic somewhere on a street in midtown. What happened next has defined my opinion of my father my entire life. Without hesitation, he handed my mom his Ricoh, tapped on the window of the taxi to get Tony Danza’s attention, and before anyone could say anything, he was on his belly under the car. In one motion he grabbed the hat by the roach clip, walked over to me, put in on my head, grabbed the Ricoh, and took a picture of me. I think my sister still has the photo.

As my mom looked at my dad in disbelief and said something like “What exactly were you thinking?” I was immensely proud of him. He was a free spirit. He wasn’t scared of no New York taxi. He was a badass. We probably high-fived in front of my mom just to be dicks.

At that moment I knew I wanted to live in New York City.

In that moment, I experienced the helplessness, fear, and triumph that one feels when living in New York (if you do it right). Every moment in that city is dangerous, and everything around you has the potential to reduce you to a whiney little wuss. But then, every day, you accomplish something new, meet someone interesting, have a conversation with a friend, and you win. You get the hat back. You take a picture, and you call it a day.

by jfruhlinger

What’s Next

Image

So two posts below this is a sappy thing about how New York gave me so many things and how I appreciated all of its wonderful and horrible little bits and pieces. You may notice that about three posts down I wrote something about finally owning a place. That was all in New York.

I want all that back.

After two years in Los Angeles and an experiment in career change that was both amazing and … interesting … at the same time, I am moving back to New York. I’ll get into why and what in moment. When I decided I wanted to head back to the best/worst city in the world, it was -5F in New York. Meanwhile, it was 73 degrees and sunny in Los Angeles. I had just gone for a 23-mile bike ride along a “river” (Los Angeles doesn’t have real rivers but instead has concrete post-apocalyptic movie sets) and was feeling good about life.

When I was dragged out to Los Angeles to run the digital content division at TMZ, I secretly knew that this would be a relatively short-term endeavor. They wanted me for three years, I agreed to two. And last month, we all decided that there wouldn’t be a third or fourth year. In two years at TMZ I got more done that I even hoped: saw things through two redesigns, created thirteen new content franchises (including Sagas), overhauled their metadata and content tagging methodology, and brought in some seriously talented people. I’m happy with that.

So for now, that’s that for Los Angeles and me. I’ll always be back, as I have family and friends here. But after 17 years in New York, I became a New Yorker. I miss the conversations I had with strangers in taxis, bars, on street corners. I miss being able to meet a friend on a whim in 20 minutes. I miss snow days. And yes, I miss the subway.

I gleefully passed the keys of one our cars this morning to its new driver. In about a month I’ll do the same with the other (unless I decide to drive across the country [anyone wanna come?]), and I’ll re-juice the Metrocard that I never took out of my wallet. I’ll head back to Brooklyn, back to the place I bought a couple years ago, and put my furniture back where it belongs. Then I’ll settle into New York once again, picking up the pace, writing freely, and not worry about restaurants that close at 9pm or angry BMW drivers who want to kill me because of the way I change lanes.

As for what I’ll be doing, I’m in the process of figuring that out. Could be a startup. Could be full time back in editorial. Could be a line chef. No, not a line chef – I burn too easily, and I still can’t poach an egg. So if you want to work together, I’m still a free agent, at least for now. Sort of. Not ready to announce anything, etc. In the meantime, I’m gonna go mountain biking while I still can. Email me at stencil(at)gmail.com if you want to get together in LA before I head east. Or if you just want to talk.

by jfruhlinger

Starting a Band

I quit my job today.  I did this without any calculation, religion, or sexual urges.  Well, maybe some sexual urges, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

 

I’m – I was – editor for a very popular baseball blog that I started.  My job was both challenging and fun.  It was rewarding.  It was something I had created.  I got paid to do what I love.  I would listen to friends grouse about their terrible vocations, how they hated waking up in the morning, darted from their desks at exactly 6:01, as I tried to not beam with pride about how much I loved my job, how I was being paid well by numerous advertisers who wanted to be in front of my crazy fans, and how I looked forward to every day.

 

But I was incomplete.  I was enjoying each day, but when I put all the days together into weeks and months, I had nothing to look back on.  Sure, we broke a few stories about the latest Yankees acquisition, did a tell-all interview with an all-star pitcher the day before he left his wife, but those were just moments.  What did I have to show for it?   A nice apartment in Fort Greene, Brooklyn and a killer record collection?  No, that wasn’t enough. Call me selfish – whatever – but I was ready for some surprises.

 

So, yeah, I was starting a rock band.  I figured I had enough money in the bank for about a year of rent and food, and enough extra to buy some equipment from Guitar Center.  Plus, because I had started the blog, I was given a few months of severance despite the fact that I had quit.  Quite nice of them.

 

This wasn’t the craziest idea in the world.  I know it sounds juvenile: quit your job, start a rock band, get lots of pussy.  But I already did all the responsible things.  I had my success.  I had my love.  I was just getting into adulthood and I was already done with it all.  I had all the things people waited for in life.  I was ready to go backward.

 

So I called Steve, my friend of fifteen years and a struggling designer who worked for a bike shop managing its website and online orders, packing wheels and derailleurs in biodegradable packing material for rich treehuggers from Vermont.

 

“Wait, you quit?” Steve asked, putting down his beer before taking a first sip.

 

“Yup.  I need something new.  I donno.”

 

“Did you tell Catherine?”

 

“No.”

“She’s gonna freak out.”

 

“I want to start a band.”  

 

He laughed.

 

“No, no, wait.”  I slapped the bar in front of him firmly as if to show I wasn’t fucking around.  Slapping wood surfaces makes men listen.  Not sure why, but it works.  Try it sometime.  

 

I continued, looking him dead on: “I call myself a writer, but I’m not.  I haven’t written a thing in months – years, maybe.  Everyone else writes.  I just approve shit.  I give them ideas, and they execute them better than I would have.  It’s depressing.  I’ve somehow removed myself from everything I do.  Everything feels like I’m doing it by proxy.  I need to feel something real, get nervous, get butterflies.”

 

“Okay, Okay.” He spread his hands on the bar right where I slapped it.  

 

“I always wanted to be in a band.  I mean, the last time I had a band was in high school, and we sucked.  I never got over that.”

 

“Okay, okay,” his “okays” becoming more administrative.

 

“No, man.  I’m okay.  Seriously.  Don’t worry.  I really want to do this.  I’m psyched.”

 

“Really?  Okay.  Okay.”  He looked at the floor.

 

“You’re saying ‘okay’ a lot.  Are you okay with this?”

 

“No, man, I’m not!” he almost yelled.  “This is fucking crazy.  You’re supposed to be the stable one.  I get to hate my job, and you have to be the model of stability and success.  What the hell?”

 

So join the band.

by jfruhlinger

New York: What You Gave Me

What New York City gave me

 

I never had to think about north, south, uptown, downtown before I moved to NYC.  You gave me a sense of direction.

 

When terrorists took away my southern marker, you gave me a sense of civic pride that I never felt for any other place I’ve lived in.  You also gave me a vulnerability that reminds me every day counts.

 

When the blackout shut down our toilets, restaurants, and bars, you gave me comfort knowing that New Yorkers care for one another in times of need.  They also have a hell of time in the dark streets at night.

 

You attract the most intelligent, curious, and beautiful people in the world.  Thank you for giving me the best friends one could hope for.

 

You gave me an itch on the back of my head that still hasn’t gone away.  I should have that looked at.

 

Koreatown at 3am.  Wo-Hop at 4am.  St. Dymphna’s (who allowed me to iPod DJ to the horror of others).  The Magician.  BPH.  Black Swan.  Being a local and knowing what beer I drink.   Buybacks.  Indiscretion.

 

Watching hipsters develop from ravers in the 90s to vegetarians in the naughts to 1920s-styled barbers as of late.

 

Ten blizzards, eight ice storms, fourteen weddings, nine divorces, two bar mitzvahs, and one bar fight.

 

So much love.

 

So little time.

 

Yankee game sunburns, Red Sox douchespotting, meeting Derek Jeter in a bathroom at a steakhouse, talking to Bernie Williams in an elevator, and having a steak with Tino Martinez.

 

The Globe, Charged, Mercury Seven, Xceed, Hylotek, Razorfish, Engadget, AOL.

 

Crashing company open-bar parties.  Yes, I’m Steve from Marketing.

 

The knowledge that anyone can turn on you in a moment if their needs outweigh yours.  The subsequent knowledge that real friends are rare.

 

That generosity feels really good.

 

A black belt in Goju Ryu karate.

 

The understanding that I should not, under any circumstances, drink cocktails.

 

The understanding that some people are just like I was ten years ago:  Really naive and excited to be here.  Be patient with them.  They’re kinda stupid with excitement.

 

Patience with the absurdities of the MTA, taxi drivers, tourists, 5th avenue, Times Square, Central Park, Broadway, Ground Zero.

 

What romance – real, desperate, sharp romance – truly is.

 

An identity.

 

Deep, deep love for you.  You stinky, noisy, manic bitch, New York.  I love you.

by jfruhlinger

Wormholes and floorboards

4:00am, or thereabouts.

So I own a place.

My high-school science teacher, or maybe it was one of my dad’s friends, described black holes (or were they wormholes?) as anti-spaces in which time and space compress, and were you to go through one, you would travel in time. That’s what happened to me over the past three months.

I remember seeing this place for the first time, walking in past the entry way and into the grand living room, seeing the massive windows and and endless view of Bedford Stuyvesant, I remember holding back a smile as to not let the broker know how bad I wanted to live here, my jaw hurting like I was hiding some sour candy I stole from a jar.

I feigned disappointment in a couple details and made an offer two days later.

I’m not sure what happened after that. I remember negotiations, lawyers, checks, and near breakdowns that included calls to my mom who injected me with the fire I needed to call lawyers and brokers and demand things. I remember movers who seemed to do nothing but somehow got my stuff into my new place. I recall my first night that wasn’t as special as I had hoped because I was fucking exhausted.

And now I’m here, waiting for new furniture and fussing over two floorboards that aren’t even. I’m calling the super tomorrow, damnit.

But it’s mine.

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