gotham high class of ’96 – part 2

Flip the yearbook page, and see who’s next:

Amanda Danford

Activities: Student Council (President); National Honor Society (President); Latin Society (President); French Club (President); Students Against Drunk Driving (Founder, President); Model UN; Debate Team; Student Ambassador; Gotham HS “Blade” Yearbook (Editor); Valedictorian; Cum Laude Society; Young Kiwanis Club; Rotary Exchange; Future Business Leaders Of America; Young Life; 4-H Society; Big Sisters – Big Brothers; Blood Donor; Resthaven Retirement Home (Volunteer); Sharing With Appalachian People (Volunteer); Girl Scout (3rd Degree) and Former Brownie; Key Club

Superlatives: Most Likely to Succeed; Most Likely to Join a Club

Next Year Will Be: Attending Princeton

Quote: “In the Bible it says they asked Jesus how many times you should forgive, and he said 70 times 7. Well, I want you all to know that I’m keeping a chart.” – Hilary Rodham Clinton

Misty “Udders” Udders

Activities: Homecoming Committee (Refreshments); Puppies Need Love! (Founder, Sole Member); Jason Priestly Fan Club (President); Babysitters Club Fan Club (President); Pen Pals Of America; Future Homemakers Of America

Next Year Will Be: Attending University of Minnesota at Duluth

Quote: “A hug is a great gift. One size fits all and it’s easy to exchange.” – Elly Biles

Ari “Hey, Jew!” Goldbergstein

Activities: Prayer; Jewish Athletics Club (Founder); Making Gelt; Counting Gelt; Flaunting Gelt In Front Of Poor Goyim

Superlatives: Biggest Kvetsch; Most Likely to Hoard

Next Year Will Be: Attending Simchas Beit HaSchwarma Yeshiva

Quote: “A rich man who is stingy is the worst pauper.”-Yiddish proverb

Christine “Chris” Massangail

Activities: Varsity Softball (Captain, 1st Team All-State); Women’s Lacrosse (1st Team All-State); Indoor Soccer; LGBT Association

Superlatives: Most Likely to Go to the Olympics; Most Likely to Befriend an Indigo Girl

Next Year Will Be: Playing softball at the University of Maryland

Quote: “Just go out there and do what you have to do.”- Martina Navratilova

Rufus Whitney

Activities: Students For Dole (Founder); Ayn Rand Society; Why Not Eugenics? (Vice-President); Elizabethan Society; Class Vice-President; Demolay; Key Club

Superlatives: Most Likely To Be A Millionaire, Best Dressed

Next Year Will Be: Attending Dartmouth

Quote: “I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word ‘fair’ in connection with income tax policies.”-William F. Buckley

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gotham high class of ’96

See also: subsequent ‘yearbook’ installments two, three and four.

As promised, the first chunk of Gotham High’s ’96 yearbook. Go dawgs!

Chip “Jazz Hands” Goldberg

Activities: Drama Club (Vice President); This Box is Getting Smaller! (Amateur Mime Club, Founder); The Bowl Of Nuts (Acapaella Singing Group); Daddy Warbucks, Fall Production of “Annie”; Willie Lohman, Spring Production of “Death of a Salesman”; Hamlet, Winter production of “Rosencranz and Gildenstern are Dead”

Superlatives: Most Likely To Entertain

Next Year Will Be: Waiting tables in New York

Quote: “No day but today!!!” – Rent

Tripp “Cold Trippin'” Taylor III

Activities: Thug Life Hip-Hop Culture Society (Secretary); Math Team

Superlatives: Most Street

Next Year Will Be: Attending Morehouse

Quote: “I ain’t mad at ‘cha. Got nothin’ but love for ya.” – Tupac

K.C. Leviner and “L’il Stuey”

Activities: Hunting And Fishing Club; Survivors Of Incest Association

Superlatives: Most Likely To Be A Grandmother Before Age 35

Next Year Will Be: Working at Winn-Dixie, breast feeding

Quote: “If you see Sherman Meadows you tell that asshole that i’m not gonna leave L’il Stuey in a toilet at a Burger King bathroom no matter what he says. And my baby needs a daddy. Please come home – my momma said you can live with us.” – K.C. Leviner

Amber Cocks

Activities: Cheerleading Squad (Captain); Drill Team; Homecoming Queen; Prom Queen; Fashion Club

Superlatives: Most Likely To Fuck A Baldwin Brother (If She Hasn’t Already)

Next Year Will Be: Moving to New York or L.A. to model and be an actress and stuff

Quote: “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.” – The Spice Girls

Donnie “Tay-Tay” Taylor

Activities: Special Friends Club; Special Olympics (Track & Field); Hall Monitor; Study Room Monitor; Bus Monitor; Inspiring Everyone

Superlatives: Biggest Inspiration

Next Year Will Be: Greeting at Wal-Mart

Quote: “I like sauce. I like sauce from apples. Sauce from apples is my favorite. It tastes good. It feels good in my mouth. Apple sauce! Apple sauce! Apple sauce! When I’m alone I can fly.” – Donnie Taylor

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go dawgs!

Yesterday evening, I shaved off my beard. Then I shaved off my chest hair, donned a Speedo, greased down with vegetable oil, and stepped in front of the camera.

Sadly, that’s not a joke. Nor is it my first foray into the world of gay porn. Instead, it’s just part of the preparation for the Gotham Sugar Shack’s last throw-down – this Friday, November 12th – before my roommates and I head our separate ways.

The party, in short, recreates Homecoming ’96. Why? In the words of the Evite:

That was perhaps the finest time in our lives. Or anybody else’s lives – in the entire history of the world. Do you remember? We were still buzzing from the excitement of the Olympics in Atlanta (how about the rhythmic gymnastics? Estonia was robbed!), and now that the autumn air had grown crisp, it was time to settle old rivalries on, as they say in South Bend, “one hundred yards of glory.”

It was Jaguars vs. War Eagles. Clinton vs. Dole. Coolio vs. Seal. TLC vs. All-4-One. Brandy vs. Alanis Morisette. Hootie vs. the Blowfish. Our virginity vs. Jenny William’s defiant, “I’m not drinking tonight and you’d better put that thing away” steel will.

Due to Evite technical glitches, a number of intended invites apparently never went out. So, we sent out a second. As that seems to have fared little better, if you didn’t receive an invitation but think you should have, or if we’ve never even met but you’d simply like to party like it’s 1996, a few further details from the PTA newsletter:

Come out and support our boys as they Rally against the Ridgeview Tigers. I don’t have to tell you this is the game of a lifetime, as we’ve got the passing strength to really come through and treat this victory not as the decimation of an old rival, but the first hurdle on the road to the first state championship in 30 years. Let’s make ’96 a year for the record books.

I’m also pleased to announce that Misty Sherman will be serving as the Homecoming Queen this year. She’s an honor student and a member of the FBLA, the FFA, and the FHA (looks like she’s got her work cut out for her!). She’s engaged to Brandon Mozinga, a super-senior who most of you know as the guy who drives the green Mustang around the Kwik Mart all afternoon.

The kids are having a dance and we need sponsors to come and administer “refreshments” so please bring something young and old alike can enjoy. And wear something nice–it’s ’96 for pity’s sake. Throw those stirrup pants out and come in a nice new pair of Lee’s acid washed jeans.

Which reminds me of the cheer that has always warmed my heart:

“Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar. All for the bulldogs, stand up….stand up and holler!”

God Bless America and Go Dawgs!!!

Gotham High School Football Rules.

Given the success of the digital version of one of our prior parties (The Hell’s Kitchen Museum of Curious Deaths), over the next week, I’ll be posting the Gotham High Class of ’96 Yearbook. But, of course, it’ll be no match for the real thing.

So, clear out your calendar. This Friday, November 12th, 10:30pm. The Gotham Sugar Shack. Be there.

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eyeballing

Having spent much of my life in photography (and now, in film), I’m anal about seeing with clarity and vision. Which is why, despite my prescription being repeatedly described as ‘totally pansy’ by those who really need their glasses, I wear mine all the time. I have since getting my first pair, in eleventh grade (bought, initially, to help me read the board from my customary back row seat, rather than force a move to the front).

To be accurate, throughout most of college, I actually rotated contacts in about half the time. But, since moving to New York some three and a half years back, I slowly drifted away from rotating. Perhaps it was my hectic bags-below-the-eyes-inducing schedule, the irritating grit of city air, or a desire for the faux-intellectual look a good pair of spectacles provides. Whatever the reason, contacts fell by the wayside.

I realized as much earlier this week, and have since been trying to work them back into use. And, by and large, it’s been an excellent change. The only downside: I awake constantly throughout the night, suddenly convinced I forgot to remove the contacts before going to sleep, which might leave me hours deep in irreparable corneal damage.

I should, at this point, admit that I’m a complete and total hypochondriac. The combination of medical knowledge, vivid imagination, and general neurosis conspire to convince me – often aided by Google symptom-searching (“headache and slight fever? I knew it! Malaria!!!”) – that my world is coming to a slow and painful end.

This is particularly true with contacts, due to a booklet I once read at the optometrist’s on the potential dangers of sleeping in contacts not approved for ‘continuous use’. In pictures and gory written detail, the booklet laid out the risks of ‘serious eye infection’ and ‘abnormal corneal blood vessel growth’. It is the second that most plagues my imagination, as the line between vodka-induced harmlessly bloodshot and slept-in-contacts-induced abnormal blood vessel growth is a distinction admittedly beyond my abilities of accurate self-diagnosis.

Fortunately, unlike in the case of goiter, femoral hernia, or any of the other afflictions I might woefully cast upon myself, shaking slept-in-contacts fears should be rather easy – if I’m not actually wearing the contacts as I sleep, I’m fine. Less fortunately, my contacts-less vision is good enough that, in a darkened room without any distant objects to stare at, I’m often unable to decide whether I am, in fact, wearing them or not, at least without repeatedly poking myself in the eyeball.

Because my contacts are one day disposables, I’ve now stumbled upon a workable solution: after removing them, I leave them on my night-stand. Waking up at three in the morning, then, I’m able to simply look over at them, slowly drying out, to relieve my worries and put myself back to sleep. Gross perhaps, but certainly better than abnormal corneal blood vessel growth. Or, at least, better than fears of it. As is the case with most of my hypochondriacal self-diagnoses, I happily doubt I’ll ever have the chance to experience the real thing.

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on the internets

I am an information addict. For all of my life, I’ve loved ideas: facts and theories, concepts and conjectures, knowledge and wisdom. In short, anything I can pack into my brain. Which makes the internet a dangerous place for me. I can – and often do – waste hour upon hour, exploring, reading, surfing from verbose site to equally verbose site.

This morning, for example, my carousing took me from fractal geometry to the biological evolution of morality, from the feng shui of desk layout to the history of electoral math. And, frankly, it didn’t take me there quickly. Were I simply to click my browser closed, I’d easily free up hours each day, cross far more of my lengthy to do list.

But I don’t. And, for that, I’ve always harbored more than a bit of guilt. Oh weak-willed self! Oh procrastinating spirit!

Today, though, in between surfing stretches, I set out to write the start of yet another chapter of Radical Entrepreneurship, the unorthodox business book I’ve been slowly and steadily piecing together over the past months. The chapter was on ideas, and, particularly, on how and where to find good ones. Though I’d outlined most of the other chapters to a disturbing degree, this one was – to put it mildly – still a bit vague. Where, exactly, do ideas come from? And what, if anything, can we do to make more good ones?

Pondering that question, I flashed back to a point made by David Gelernter, an eccentric Yale computer science professor who – among other things – revolutionized parallel computing, got Unabombed, and penned a book proclaiming the 1939 World’s Fair as the height of world civilization. Gelernter, I remember, once pointed out that great ideas rarely come from people deeply entrenched in a single field. Instead, paradigm shifts depend on ‘top view’ – the ability to look down across multiple disciplines, to connect together disparate ideas that neatly interlock in ways nobody previously considered.

Starting a company, it’s remarkably easy to get pulled deeper and deeper into the minutiae of operations, to look no further than the balance sheets and business plans piled up on desktop. Which, frankly, is a huge mistake. It’s exactly that laser focus, that lack of step back and think things through with the new perspective of new ideas, that gets businesses into trouble, cuts off innovation before it even begins to take root.

And, with that in mind, as I pulled up pages on bookbinding and calligraphy this afternoon, for the first time I didn’t scold myself for time wasted. I didn’t even press to find links between the new thoughts packing my mind and any of my more day-to-day pursuits. I simply let the information sink in, confident that, somewhere, somehow, I’d be able to put it to good use.

As Da Vinci once observed, “men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.” Despite the name of the site, I certainly won’t lay claim to lofty genius. But least work? That, I think, I’ve got down pat.

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no comment

As comment spam has been raging out of control, and as, of the slightly less than three thousand unique visitors over the past week, exactly seven have actually commented, I’m heading back (at least temporarily) to the years of commentlessness that characterized this site.

If you don’t like it, leave a comment.

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whatever

Four years ago, when America didn’t get the President it voted for, I was angry with the system. Now, on the verge of America getting exactly the President it’s voting for, I’m angry with Americans.

And only in part because more of them voted for Bush, despite the counter-endorsement of literally every single intelligent individual and organization (the neo-con Economist!?!) in the country and across the globe. But also because, even in an election that was a Really Big Deal, an election that most people conceded would be the Most Important in a Very Long Time, an election that featured the best funded, most heavily manned get-out-the-vote campaign on both sides, most Americans apparently couldn’t be bothered to give a shit.

Observe the rough numbers:

  • KERRY: 56 million
  • BUSH: 60 million
  • WHATEVER: 120 million

WHATEVER wins again!

Next time through, it’s likely Whatever will only broaden it’s lead; as I said in my last post, this may be my generation’s last gasp in the game of Big Politics, before they all transfer to the Whatever column for good.

Scary as that sounds, after a few days of thought, I’m less worried about it than I was before. Because, to be honest, I’m not so sure that Big Politics works. In an environment that’s so deeply divided along partisan lines, one where the majority apparently don’t care even vaguely about what’s happening, and where the majority of the rest are willing to vote for an administration that proudly flaunts unwavering stupidity as its prime virtue, I have trouble believing that the major change we need in the world will be pumped out of Washington any time soon.

Which doesn’t, for a minute, mean I don’t think it can’t begin elsewhere. If I’ve learned anything from running companies and spending time with countless entrepreneurs, it’s that a small, passionate group of people who understand the power of outside-the-box-thinking, the leverage of technology, and the thrust of the market can get amazingly disproportionate things done.

There’s strong precedent for it already in the political world. Solve homelessness? Common Ground will do it long before HUD. Quell soaring prescription prices without preventing drug company innovation? New PBM’s have a vastly better chance than any current FDA proposal might.

So, as was the case until just a few short months back, I’ll be reclaiming this blog from the realm of politics, giving up the guilty pleasure of shaking my fist at the heavens and the red states, to get back to how I’ve operated before, and how I’d suggest you do as well: when you see a problem, search out innovative groups and individuals already doing something extraordinary about it – they’ll doubtless be thrilled to have your help.

And, of course, if you can’t find a group doing something smart already, then start tossing ideas around in your own brain, looking at the problem from different angles, asking questions – smart ones and stupid ones. Sooner or later, when you least expect it – bam – an idea, and a good one. Then, regardless of who’s sitting in the White House, regardless of how little the rest of America appears to care, start doing what it takes to make the idea a reality. By now, you’re the only hope we’ve got.

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money, where mouth is

Before I go back to my happily a-political blogging life, I’m putting it on the line and calling the election in advance:

Kerry wins, 271 electoral votes to Bush’s 267. Kerry picks up Ohio and Pennsylvania, Bush wins New Mexico and New Hampshire and ‘wins’ Florida in a dicey outcome that – because it doesn’t sway the election – fortunately doesn’t hold anyone’s attention as legal battles rage on there for several months. Also, the popular vote pushes Kerry to nearly 52%, with no real effect except that pollsters everywhere start thinking that maybe counting cell-phone only voters and overseas absentee voters might be a good idea after all.

Am I confident Kerry wins? Fairly. Am I still wet-my-pants nerve-wracked about the election? Without a doubt. And only in part because I can only begin to imagine the creative ways in which Bush can run the country into the ground given four more years. Mainly because, for the first time in their lives, my peers have thrown themselves headlong into the political process, have worked tirelessly on this election, have staked their hearts and souls on its outcome. I’m terrified that – if it all comes to naught – it’ll be the last time my generation really tries to make this whole ‘democracy’ thing work. I’m not really sure, long-term, what that disengagement would lead to, but I’m pretty certain it’s even worse than four more years of G. W. Bush.

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