sick day
As I’m temporarily down for the count with a belated case of the winter cold, updates and excitement – both digital and analog – will be briefly delayed.
Looks like it’s time to whip up a second pot of that aforementioned chicken soup.
remainders
1. Oddly enough, the ‘chicken and egg’ post generated a lot of peer-review email, with people positing other explanations for which, in fact, came first, based on lexical arguments from the phrasing of the question, or on details of where the cut-off on ‘egg’ and ‘chicken’ might or might not be drawn, evolutionarily speaking. As my transition from neuroscience to computer science to making movies has slowly nulled and voided any evolutionary street-cred I may once have possessed, instead of directly answering such criticisms, I’ve decided instead to focus on such crucial areas of inquest as the sound of one hand clapping, or perhaps trees falling in the woods when nobody is around.
2. Also, regarding the Sip & Shave: yes, that was a joke. If you didn’t grasp that fact, please remove this site from your bookmark list, as it only goes downhill from here.
3. Relatedly, one astute reader suggested that a better business plan might be for a combo bar and abortion clinic, as it would likely become an unparalleled hotspot for picking up girls on the rebound.
4. Back to chickens: I’m a huge fan of soup, but have always, for whatever reason, thought of it as a rather time-consuming meal to prepare. Apparently, I couldn’t be more wrong, as earlier this week I cooked up an excellent and ridiculously easy pot of chicken vegetable. In short: toss enough olive oil into a pot to coat the bottom, then throw in some chopped onions and garlic, heating until slightly softened. Then add in diced chicken, whatever vegetables happen to be populating the refrigerator (dill and carrots are great flavor-drivers), and a bunch of water, letting simmer for about an hour and a half. Voila: several deliciously healthful meals, ripe for the re-heating.
5. Nothing to do with chickens: Like most guys, I carry my wallet in my back pocket. And, like most guys, I slowly wear little holes in the back pockets of my jeans, where the corner of the wallet rubs against the fabric with each step. My new pre-emptive solution: picked up a two-dollar pack of iron-on patches, and reinforced the inside of the pockets of my jean in the spot I’m likely to wear through.
6. A cause to take the wallet out of my back pocket: just found out that Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince comes out on my birthday, this July, 16th. Which, I’m embarrassed to say, seems to me a really excellent celebratory coincidence.
7. Next, a cause to take me (or anyone else) out of the NYC: if anyone is looking to briefly escape the city, I’d lobby heavily for A Butler’s Manor, a great little bed & breakfast in Southampton. Off-season (i.e., now), rates are less than a third of where they stand mid-summer, and the place is empty enough to ensure attentive, personal service, and some remarkably good breakfast cooking. Dragged Abigail (a.k.a. ‘The Girl’) along for an evening, and have only good things to say about the house, and about the proprietors, Chris and Kim.
8. And, finally, from that last paragraph: yes, amazingly enough, contrary to friends and family’s ongoing expectations, I’ve yet to screw this relationship up.
quick update
After what’s seemed like years (though is actually not particularly long in the world of film distribution), I Love Your Work is finally going to be released later this spring. More details as they emerge.
which came first
There are some questions that, by long enough vexing thinkers, become known as impossible paradoxes. Yet, as science rolls ahead, answers to these questions often become clear. In the popular imagination, however, the questions remain, philosophical koans defining the limits of our knowledge.
Take, for example, the proverbial chicken and egg.
Sure, it sounds impossible. But, given Darwin’s century-old insights, we can easily come up with a definitive answer.
First, what is an egg? According to most scientific texts, and echoed by Webster’s, it’s “the hard-shelled reproductive body produced by a bird.” That’s a key insight, as it defines an egg as something that comes out of a bird, rather than vice versa.
So imagine, if you will, a long line of bird-like organisms slowly evolving over time. One day, a new baby bird is born, a bird that combines its parent birds’ genes with new random mutations. This new bird is, in short, a chicken. It’s parents, however, weren’t chickens yet; they were close, but not quite. (And it doesn’t matter where, exactly, we draw that biological chicken/pre-chicken cutoff, so long as we know that it, definitionally, must exist.)
The mother, not being a chicken, didn’t produce a chicken egg – remember a chicken egg is an egg produced by a chicken. But her non-chicken egg held the first chicken nonetheless. A chicken who, in fact, might even ostensibly go on to lay her own first eggs – her own chicken eggs.
Which is to say, the chicken came first. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
pure genius
As I’ve mentioned before, the back burner of my brain churns out ideas for startups all the time. And, by and large, I don’t follow up on them myself, instead floating them out to would-be entrepreneurs I run across more likely to actually execute. Every so often, however, I come up with something really, remarkably good, something I’m tempted to hang onto myself. Such is the case with one business that popped out in conversation with my younger brother David a few years back, which has become a perennial favorite topic of late-night strategizing ever since. Realizing I’m far too deeply ensconced in Cyan and Long Tail to take advantage of it at any point in the next couple of years, however, I’m finally throwing it out in the hopes that someone will follow it through to untold billions.
By way of introduction, a quick question: what are the two things that everyone does regularly? Yes, you guessed it! People go to bars, and people get haircuts. Now, imagine if you will, bringing them both together. No, no, not by taking the easy way out with a combination salon & lounge, but rather with a bar you can go to with friends and cut each other’s hair!
Brilliant, I know, but it gets better! The Sip & Shave (as we’ve christened this baby) is the ultimate viral marketing concept. Imagine further that you head on out to the West Village branch for a few rounds of tequila and some turns with the scissors one weekday evening. Then imagine, the next day, heading in to work. “What the hell happened to your hair?” your colleagues would doubtless ask. “Why,” you’d reply, “we hit the Sip & Shave, of course.” Word about this baby would spread like wildfire.
Savvy entrepreneur as I am, however, I know that building a market for a new product or service from scratch can be remarkably tough. Take the world of fast food, where McDonalds didn’t really take off until competitors like Wendy’s and Burger King jumped in to help collectively redefine how the world overdoses on saturated fat. So, to that end, the plan would necessarily include also launching a couple of wholly-owned subsidiaries as apparent competitors (perhaps, say, the Shoot & Snip, and the Chug & Clip) to really get things rolling.
Just think of it! A business that capitalizes on people’s regular needs, with a built in viral marketing angle and a chance to build from scratch and then completely own a whole new market. Yes, kids, I’ve got this one all figured out. Take it and run with it if you’d like, though with only one small request if you do: grant me a lifetime tab and the first Flowbeed whack at your pate. Other than that, this sucker is all yours.
the law
When I was a little kid, say seven or eight years old, my internal alarm clock was completely broken. At four in the morning, while even most roosters snoozed, I’d pop out of bed, wide awake and ready to hit the day.
Obviously, my parents were less than thrilled with this. So, while our household normally had rather tightly controlled television rules (no watching on school days, etc.), that early in the morning, all bets were off. I was, in fact, even actively encourage to plop myself down on the couch, to watch (quietly!) whatever might be playing.
Unfortunately, ‘whatever might be playing’ at four in the morning is, well, not much. Mostly shows like that perennial favorite, “Modern Farmer”. Still, things only seriously ran into a hitch when, one morning, at 7:00 (the earliest acceptable parent wake-up time), I dashed into my parents room to wake the slugabeds with a quick bit of mattress bouncing.
Groggily, my father asked what I had been watching that morning. One of my favorites, I replied: The Law.
The law, he asked?
Yes, I replied. You know, Jesus is the Law.
It was at about that point, I seem to recall, that my parents started stocking up on video tapes and taught me to use the VCR.