Easy IPO

The girl is head of marketing for a high-end maternity-wear company; as such, I got a chance to visit their New York boutique, and was quite impressed by the stylish pairs of women’s jeans stocked there, with top few inches of fabric retofitted with stretch spandex.

And while, certainly, the market for such pregnancy-friendly women’s clothing is well documented, I’m convinced a men’s version of those same jeans could easily become the anchor of a similarly succesful product line.

Consider this: you’ve just eaten Thanskgiving dinner, or an overly generous mid-summer helping of baby back ribs. Your pants are uncomfortably snug around the waist. If only your jeans were able to stretch accomodatingly around your distended stomach. If only, in short, you were wearing a pair of of Eatin’ Pants(tm).

Despite what seems to me a compelling business case, the girl remains unwilling to jump ship from her current job to launch such a no-fail startup. So, entrepreneurs of the internet, I gift this concept to you. All I ask in return is a free pair from the sample run. 30″ length; 29″ waist before I start eating, and perhaps 36″ after a third helping of turkey, stuffing and cranberry come November 24th.

Eyeshot

This morning, I took my first trip on New Jersey’s PATH train, out to Hoboken, where my uncle Robert runs an optometry practice. A quick look at my glasses – whose super-glued right arm evidences their seven year age – reminded me I hadn’t had my eyes checked in three-quarters of a decade. So, Jersey-bound, I contemplated the possibility that I might actually be far blinder than my outdated, rather pansy prescription would otherwise indicate.

Fortunately, after much consideration of number one vs. number two random letter line readings, it seems my eyes are still pretty much exactly where they were before (a piddling -1.75 diopter), though with just a touch of newfound right eye astigmatism.

So, this morning, after forty-five minutes of letter line comparisons, I spent at least as long considering frame after frame after glasses frame. There are few accessories as omnipresent as a pair of glasses, and so I tried to balance out the demands of indie film cool with the need for something I could wear, day in and day out, for at least the next year or three.

The pince nez, therefore, fell by the wayside, as did a number of other options that seemed the optical equivalent of a joke that’s funny the first time, but gets painfully old when frequently retold. In the end, I settled on two frames, aiming to switch back and forth between them as whimsy might dictate: one slightly retro, the other a touch fashion-forward, though neither so bold as to become the first (or only) thing one might notice upon my entering a room.

Doubtless, the girl, my mother, and any other style-conscious female friends and family will disdain both choices. But, fortunately, as I can still glasses-less pass the driver’s license vision test, at very worst, I can always drop the glasses (and the faux-intellectual air they lend) entirely, and stumble through life only a short squint away from seeing things exactly as they are.

|  

Reality

There’s an old truism that, as soon as a guy starts seeing someone, the guy somehow becomes instantly more attractive to women, who apparently telepathically divine his newly taken status. Girls come up to him at bars, exes send friendly emails out of the blue.

I have, however, now taken that theory to its logical conclusion. Minutes ago, I received an email that began:

ABC Television’s hit reality television show, The Bachelor, is searching for its next star. After viewing your profile on LinkedIn, the casting producer has selected you as a potential candidate.

Um, no.

Logistics

As long-standing readers of this site know, I’ve done more than my share of dating since moving to NYC five years back. And, in that time, I’ve even had a slew of several-month stretches of exclusivity. But, in each case, the exclusive girl and I would still dutifully obey a tacit 72-hour rule – seeing each other, say, twice a week, tops, and never even considering multiple consecutive nights together.

So it is with some confusion and little practical experience that I now face liking this girl enough that I kind of want to see her all the time. Fortunately, it seems she’s both equally happy to see me, and equally out of her depth, leaving us, in turns, thrilled and totally freaked out by it all.

How much time should I spend with her? How do we do this without derailing each of our overbooked calendars? How often can I call before crossing the fine line between sweet and creepy? How does this all work?

In short, I have absolutely no idea. But, day by angsty day, I’m slogging ahead, as I think she might be worth trying to figure it out.

Hello, Newman

About seven years back, I was in CNNfn’s green room, waiting to go on-air for an interview. A woman walked into the room with a clipboard, said, “Joshua Newman”, and looked around.

I stood up. So did another guy. We looked at each other. Then at her. As it turns out, there were two Joshua Newmans in line to be interviewed, one of us right after the other – he about a new wireless technology IPO, I about some startups in the financial services space.

After our respective interviews, we headed to a neighboring Au Bon Pain for mid-winter chicken soup, only to discover that, not only did we have the same name, and not only did we work in the same industry, but we had both graduated from Yale, he four years before me.

After falling out of touch in the intervening years, that Joshua Newman emailed me again today to say he’d recently moved out to LA, to become Director of Digital Media for Twentieth Century Fox.

It seems the secret cabal of Joshua Newmans has now moved, en masse, from the world of high tech into the world of film. Movie people, look out.

Disconnected

Cyan’s email addresses are suddenly and inexplicably bouncing. Which leaves me, in short, with absolutely nothing to do today until they come back online.

In the meantime, gmail calls me joshuanewman, should anyone need to urgently track me down.

Update: things are fixed; feel free to once again hit me and my colleagues at cyanpictures.com addresses per usual.

Today’s Quote

“If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.”
-H.L. Mencken, Epitaph

9/11

Five year anniversary. Headed to the roof with my trumpet, played Taps facing downtown. Read the Mourner’s Kaddish, a hebrew prayer of remembrance. Never forget.

Testaroo

Ignore this. Just upgrading MovableType, and making sure I didn’t blow the brains out of the rather kludged together back end I’ve created.