Suiting Up

Last Friday, with a lunch scheduled at the University Club, I came to Cyan’s office in a suit. Which, in turn, prompted unexpected jealousy from my colleagues. Apparently, wearing a suit is actually fun, assuming you’re not required to do it every day.

So, with consensus of the Cyan team, I’ve now re-instituted Anti-Casual Fridays, our old policy wherein we dress to the nines the one day each week that the rest of corporate New York (or, at least, the bankers with whom we’ve been dealing these days for our hedge fund) dresses down.

Of course, we’re not a perfect converse of those bankers’ schedule, as what qualifies as ‘dressed down’ in that world is something so Brooks Brothers catalog as to make even my CFO, a sailboat-owning WASP, cringe.

No, our casual still permits jeans and flip-flops. At least once the weather warms. But, even then, come the height of August, on Friday it should still be full-on Anti-Casual. Who doesn’t love a khaki or seersucker suit?

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Exactly

While press for CrossFit seems to be cropping up everywhere these days (cf., the NY Times Magazine, whose piece about how ‘the superfit walk among us’ has already given Jess endless opportunities to make fun of me), it’s Gawker that deserves special recognition for summing things up way better than I can whenever people ask about the gym:

“CrossFit is an internet-based cult of fitness for psychos, itinerant preachers, ex-killers, and crazy people of all stripes.”

Sounds about right.

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Lest Ye Be Judged

For the past month or so, I’ve been spending a lot of time reading first round applications for the First Cut Film Series, our competition to find the top five film students in the country, then to finance, produce and theatrically release each of their first feature films.

And, to be honest, I’d begun to have some doubts. Not because of any problems with the applications themselves, but because of how much they, in this first round, still leave to the imagination. A short synopsis, a couple of bios (director, writer, producer), and a few pages of screenplay isn’t a lot to go on.

Of course, that was the point of the round: an attempt to initially separate the wheat from the chaff. Still, without any of the directors’ work to screen until round two, I’ve had no real idea whether any of them can make movies that feel like real movies, rather than like student theses, and I’d started to fear the worst.

Today, however, I spent several hours screening graduate student shorts as one of the judges for NYU Film School’s Wasserman Awards, their top honor for outstanding achievement in film*. And, in short, I was blown away. Sure, some of the stuff was exactly the sort of amateur-hour crap I’d feared. But at least two or three of the films were so astoundingly good that the judges actually clapped once they ended.

When the lights came up after one, another of the judges said, ‘shit, somebody needs to give this guy a million bucks and tell him to just go make a feature.’

Which is good, considering that’s basically what we’re about to do.

*[Side story: as past Wasserman winners include Ang Lee and Spike Lee, I went in looking for any other Lee’s who might have a leg up. There weren’t any, though there was a Jennifer Li, and while I won’t give away anything before NYU announces the awards, I will say her short was definitely in the top five.]

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Eat Here: East Village

Momofuku Noodle Bar (171 1st Ave @ 11th): Order the pork buns, the Momofuku ramen, and a Hitachino White Ale. It’s so good, you won’t even mind that you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a reservation at Ko, David Chang’s newer, hipper restaurant (an Asian knock-off of Per Se) just down the block.

Perbacco (234 E 4th St @ B): Cash only, so stop at an ATM first. Then skip the forgettable entrees, and instead order as many of the Sardinian, tapas-style appetizers (and glasses of the excellently paired Italian wines) as you can afford. You’ll literally crave more for days after.

Itzocan (438 E 9th St @ A): Cash only here, too, plus a wait to get in and sweltering heat once you do, given the closet-sized space and the adjacent, hard-firing oven. Suck it up. It’s worth it.

Kanoyama (175 2nd Ave @ 11th): You knew there had to be a sushi place on the list, and this one’s extraordinarily good. If you’re feeling adventurous, ready for top-quality slices of fishes you’ve never even heard of, order omakase (‘at the chef’s discretion’) and enjoy the best sushi bang for the buck in all of NYC.

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Oh Give Me a Home

Though we’ve been searching for a new space for CrossFit NYC for some time (having even previously appealed to you all for help – thanks David and Chris!), we’re still no closer to actually moving.

As of today, it appears our third almost-home is falling through at the contract stage. This time, the landlord suddenly realized that a gym involves members coming and going – in other words, foot traffic – and decided he didn’t really want such a populous use of the space.

So, though we’ve managed to extend by legal wrangling the lease in our current location to April 30th (no mean feat, given we previously knocked down our downstairs neighbors’ ceiling), the countdown’s on.

Add in Cyan and wedding planning, and the ulcer countdown is doubtless on, too.

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Dire Situation

Inexplicably, there’s no running water in Cyan’s office today, a bit of a problem given that I – like most of my team – drink through several bottles of water daily, and consequently pee like clockwork every half-hour.

Crap. Or, rather, not.

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Let the Flames Begin

As previously mentioned, I’m dangerously susceptible to television. Turn one on while I’m in the room, and I’ll watch it, no matter what’s playing. Commercials, re-runs of Full House; it doesn’t really matter.

But, at the same time, there’s relatively little I’d be too upset to give up. No more American Idol? I’m pretty sure my life would go on.

There is, though, one exception: Bravo’s Top Chef, which starts a new season this evening.

Prior to discovering the show, I already considered myself a bit of a foodie, having eaten my way through much of New York, taken an array of cooking classes, and stocked up on key kitchen gadgetry. But over the course of even my first month of Top Chef episodes, I found myself appreciating cooking, really appreciating cooking, in a way I’d never before.

It was Top Chef that led me to read Heat, The Making of a Chef and Kitchen Confidential, that got me subscribed to Cook’s Illustrated, that got me taking wildly over-long and over-expensive culinary school professional development courses (thank you, thank you, Jess!).

And, more than anything else, it was Top Chef that led me to an ever-deeper exploration of the principles of cooking, rather than simply cooking recipes rote. This weekend, for example, when testing out a new red wine and mushroom pan sauce for the flank steak I pan-roasted, I could puzzle through how much stock to use to balance out the wine pre-reduction, knew to toss in shallots, mustard, and balsamic vinegar to balance tastes, could explain why I chose to ‘monte au beurre’ as a final step.

In other words, I’ve now moved past ‘foodie’ and into ‘total asshole’. And I have Top Chef entirely to thank.

Tonight at 9:00 on Bravo. Bon appetit.

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If I Knew You Were Coming

Yesterday, midway through a late-night supermarket run, Jess and I found ourselves standing, transfixed, in the cake mix aisle.

Apparently, a box of Duncan Hines yellow mix and a tub of Pillsbury Funfetti frosting is all it takes to make our week.

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Double Duty

I’m bossy. Very, very bossy.

At least, I assume I must be. Because I have the bad habit of taking increasingly demanding leadership roles in any organization with which I get involved.

Take, for example, the gym, CrossFit NYC. As one of the four founders, my role was largely fiscal (bankrolling the first year of startup) and ceremonial (teaching a handful of classes each week). But, with some recent personnel drama, and the growing sense that CFNYC could actually be very, very big (given our explosive membership growth over the past few months), it seems I’m now stepping things up, and becoming Managing Director.

Which is on top of Cyan, and everything we’re working on here. I haven’t pimped Cyan’s activities much of late, as after an over-slow 2007 I’ve been waiting for significant, concrete progress rather than vaporware to point to. But suffice it to say that we’re making surprisingly big strides on a lot of fronts – from a five-film slate to a $200m film hedge fund – that should make 2008 a considerably more exciting year.

And by ‘exciting’, I mainly mean ‘time consuming’. Two full time jobs, planning a wedding, heavy drinking. I think I’m going to have to go back to giving up sleeping and going to the bathroom to make it all fit.

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Schooled

While Will Hunting may think an Ivy League degree is “$150,000 wasted on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library,” it turns out, he’s wrong. By now, in fact, you don’t even need the buck fifty. Because as of a few months back, Yale has put a handful of its best-loved courses online.

I’ve been taking advantage myself for the past week or two, downloading sessions of RLST 145 – Introduction to the Old Testament – to my iPhone, and listening on my way to work. But there are several others that look good, too, and two classes that I can highly recommend from past experience: PHIL 176 – Death, with Professor Shelly Kagan – which I much enjoyed my sophomore year, and PSYC 110 – Introduction to Psychology – a great survey course now taught by Paul Bloom, my favorite professor of any at Yale.

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