Top Thatch

I hit Central Park this morning at 9:00am, for [Crossfit’s][] brutal monthly NYC group workout. Afterwards, over brunch at a nearby diner, one fellow athlete asked me what I could possibly use in my hair, to make it spike up stylishly even after an hour or two of sweaty abuse.

[crossfit’s]: http://www.crossfit.com

My answer: nothing. When cut short enough (as it recently was, a few days back), my hair naturally stands up on its own. I do, on occasion, use pommade, but I do it solely to make the spiking look intentional. Even without it, Tintin has nothing on me.

Surveying my mane’s misbegotten past, I realize that it always seems to gravitate, naturally and pre-emptively, to whatever new ‘do is about to come into style. Bowl cut? Rat tail? Floppy eye-covering surfer shag? Yes, yes and yes – each time, my hair simply started self-arranging that way, even before the looks came (regrettably) into broader fashion.

Which, by now, leaves me blissfully zen when it comes to the future life of my locks. Though I’ve fortunately yet to start losing my hair, even if I did, I wouldn’t much worry; at that point, a Male Pattern Baldness craze would no doubt kick in, leaving my shiny pate – naturally, preemptively – in full haute coiffure style.

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Table-Setting Hack

As I always have trouble remembering whether the forks go on the left or right side of the plate, I was particularly thrilled to note over dinner last night that, when properly placed, the utensils are in alphabetical order: **f**orks, **k**nife and **s**poon.

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Two Long Nights

**Thursday**

Though exact details are hazy, the night definitely involved karaoke, four bars, and drinking champagne direct from pilfered bottles in the conference room of the Union Square W Hotel, with Colin and Sarah.

From their emails the following morning:

Colin:

> I am still drunk. And at work.
>
> My memory of Lemon Bar is a little fuzzy, but I remember we closed the
> place. I passed out on the subway home and woke up in Long Island City.
>
> I just want to be the first to say that last night was, unparallelled.

Sarah:

> Oh my god, best night ever.
>
> We are invincible.

And Colin’s response to Sarah:

> I am feeling very vincible.
>
> I think I may yet throw up.

**Friday**

Came up to New Haven late afternoon for dinner at the Chai Society. Wandered around Yale’s campus for a bit, marvelling at how beautiful it is, and trying to convince myself that I actually lived here for four years. Post-dinner, walked back to the train station, and discovered I’d missed the last train out for the night by about fifteen minutes, leaving me more than five hours off from the next train at 4:40am.

Spent those hours huddled on a bench of the quiet, cavernous New Haven train station, as I and three other poor saps who similarly missed the last train home sureptitiously eyed each other, mentally calculating the odds that one of the other three might rob us all blind if we drifted off to sleep.

Nonetheless, did manage to get some neck-crink-inducing naptime on the train ride itself, feeling safe under the conductor’s watchful eye. Pulled into Grand Central at 6:30am, and pulled my bed covers over my head at 7:00am.

Sadly, after too many days of work-driven early rising, by 10:00am, I was up again and nominally ready to face the world.

Now, at 5:00pm, I’m ready to rock out Florida style: early-bird special for dinner, asleep by 7:00pm.

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Step Aside, Phil Smith

While nobody but trumpet-playing readers are likely to understand: just started rehearsals for two orchestras’ next concert cycles; the programs include Tchaik 5, Pictures, Dvorak 8 and the Mozart Requiem. I haven’t had that many notes in my parts over the last two years combined.

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Burn Baby Burn

Prior to launching Long Tail, I’d begun to forget what it’s like to run a startup.

Sure, I’ve been slogging ahead non-stop with Cyan for a couple of years, but in many ways that’s been a markedly different experience. Because movie production largely works on a project-by-project basis, nearly all of my mental energy has been focused on the details of individual films, rather than on Cyan as a whole.

That’s especially true with fundraising, as – aside from a small chunk of seed capital at the very start – we haven’t raised money for Cyan itself, instead working to align financing directly for the films Cyan produces.

As a result, fundraising is a fairly static, separate phase of each Cyan project. Knowing a film costs $2m, we can push ahead with courting investors until that $2m is in the bank, then switch over to operations, to actually making the movie.

With Long Tail – as with most startups – fundraising is instead ongoing, simultaneous to actually running the company, alongside acquiring and releasing and marketing films. It’s a bit like bailing water from a leaky ship, constantly trying to stay one step ahead of a rising puddle of costs.

That puddle – and the speed with which it accumulates – is known in the business world as the burn rate. In short, a company’s burn rate is the amount of cash needed to fund operations for one additional day. With at least that much in the bank, the startup pushes ahead for another 24 hours; below it, and it’s game over, no matter how well things are going otherwise.

Which is why, as a startup’s CEO, no matter what else your job description entails, you’re first and foremost a fundraiser. You line up incoming investment money, and watch it flow back out, ideally watching it flow ever more slowly as the company’s revenue picks up the slack and pushes to break-even, to the point where revenue alone is enough to cover the burn.

Which makes startup fundraising doubly frustrating; you’re not just concerned about the amount of money raised, but also about the speed at which it rolls in.

Over the last two weeks, Long Tail has signed on another $60k of investments, bringing us close to closing out our seed round. But while that new money is there on paper, it’s not yet in the bank. And without feeling the urgency of burn first hand, the investors behind the cash inevitably take their own sweet time in actually sending out their wires.

So, for most of this week, instead of blogging, I’ve been obsessively checking bank balances online to note any incoming fund arrivals, and paraphrasing Popeye’s Wimpy to vendors – we’ll gladly pay them Tuesday for DVD duplication today.

It isn’t much fun. Particularly because it’s all so very close to working, and yet so very far, all at once. And because letting it stop us now would be a bit like surviving a long open-ocean swim towards dry land, and then drowning in the last two feet of water.

We don’t even need to swim this last little bit; we should be able to walk it. Stand up. One foot forward. Then another. Make it out one little waterlogged step at a time.

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Back-Handed Compliment

“There was nothing not to like.”
– Anne Midgette, in her New York Times review of the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony concert I played in Friday night.

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JP Toto: How You Like Them Apples?

Mashing guest blogging up with service journalism, I’m today posting long-standing S-A reader JP Toto’s open letter to the Dolly Madison Bakery Company.

To whom it may concern:

I am the most recent victim of the label on your Dolly Madison APPLE Sweet Rolls.

You’ll notice I capitalized the word APPLE. This is to approximate, however inaccurately, the prominence with which the word apple is displayed on the packaging of your Dolly Madison Apple Sweet Rolls.

That prominence would suggest to me and, I suspect, many other helpless vending machine patrons, that the average Dolly Madison Apple Sweet Roll contains a modestly generous portion of (albeit almost certainly highly processed and enriched) apple filling.

This, I discovered, is not the case at all. In fact, the amount of apple filling contained within the baked doughy “roll” is a paltry sum when compared to the overall mass of the pastry. When considered critically, I think you’ll therefore agree that calling your Dolly Madison Apple Sweet Rolls, such as they are, “APPLE sweet rolls”, is a bit of a misnomer.

I cannot provide physical evidence of my claim, having already eaten such. Please let this warning serve as notice, though, that we consumers of pre-packaged vending machine fare will not stand for such poorly conceived confections, no matter how low our standards already are for your run-of-the-mill ninety-cent treat.

—

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IOU

One thing I’ve learned through years of full-contact martial arts is, the best time to punch somebody in the face is when they aren’t expecting to get punched in the face.

Which, in short, is the problem with April Fool’s Day. Because people have their guards up, April Fool’s pranks almost never actually ‘fool’ anybody. And, as a result, most trouble-makers have stopped even really trying, allowing their attempts to veer out of the realm of true pranking, and into the world of satire.

Granted, there’s an excellent array of such April Fool’s Day 2005 satire currently floating the Internets. And, granted, in year’s past, I’ve pepetrated such digital shenanigans myself. But, this year, I’m not pulling anything today. Honest.

I am, however, throwing down an April Fool’s I.O.U.: an obligation to pull a prank, a real prank, later this month. Though the one I have in mind will take place in the real world, over the course of several weeks, I promise I’ll journal it all up online as soon as it’s done. And I promise it’ll be way better than whatever one-page wonder I might have otherwise made out of s-a.com.

This will be good. No fooling.

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