Rock the Vote
If you haven’t already, get off your lazy ass and head to the polls.
Or, conversely, forfeit your right to complain as this country continues to go to hell in a handbasket.
It’s one or the other, thanks.
Talk to Me
This Wednesday evening, I head off to Paris for a long weekend with Jess.
But, before I do, I train up to Connecticut to keynote the next stop of the Extreme Entrepreneur Tour, which brings “the world’s top young entrepreneurs to college campuses”. Ah, how disappointed these kids will be to get me instead.
(As an aside, the tour is spearheaded by Michael Simmons and his wife Sheena Lindahl, who were just named to this year’s BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25. The final ranking is vote-driven, and I personally vouch for these two as more than worthy of the top slot, so go cast your ballot in their favor.)
For the keynote, I’m apparently supposed to babble for forty-five minutes or so about how to start companies and take over the world. But, as of this evening, I don’t actually have anything prepared. So, armed with a legal pad, a fountain pen, my keen insights and biting wit, I’ve sat down to map out a rough outline of the wisdom I can pass along.
In the process, I flashed on a clear image of the last time I gave a similar talk, a few years back, to a group of Ivy League business school students. And I started out that talk by telling the students they were older and smarter and more experienced than I, and that they shouldn’t really even be listening to what someone like me was saying. During which, every single one of them was dutifully writing down in their notebooks “don’t listen to what this guy is saying…”
As my suggestions of skepticism seemed to have little impact then, this time through, I’m falling back on one of the wisest poets I know, Dr. Seuss, for a poem that should hopefully more clearly set the tone. As it’s one of my personal favorites, and a great one to keep in mind as you slog ahead through any life path, I’m copyimg it here below:
My Uncle Terwilliger on the Art of Eating Popovers
My uncle ordered popovers
From the restaurant bill of fare.
And, when they were served, he regarded them
with a penetrating stare…
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom
as he sat there on that chair:
“To eat these things,” said my uncle,
“You must exercise great care.
You may swallow down what’s solid…
BUT… you must spit out the air!”And… as you partake of the world’s bill of fare,
that’s darned good advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
And be careful what you swallow
Darned good advice to follow, indeed.
Shabbat Wisdom
“In a place where there is no man, be a man.”
– Ethics of the Fathers, 2:5
Techmology
For the past several years, I’ve had an account on Facebook. A good friend of mine was their head of biz dev, and another served a stint as the company’s president, so I signed up on their request, to provide some user interface feedback in the relatively early days of the site.
After which, I more or less forgot that I had even signed up in the first place. Being old and out of school and no longer even vaguely aware of what’s cool with the kids these days, I had no idea that I was supposed to be using the site obsessively, checking in several times each and every day (as the average user inexplicably does). Instead, my account lay largely fallow. Which was perfectly fine with me.
But then, a few months back, I started getting friend requests from anyone I’d ever met two to ten years younger than I. As a result, suddenly, at least a few times a week, I was logging into Facebook. And while I must admit I still don’t completely grasp the site’s appeal, I’m finally and undeniably on there, a real (albeit rather uncommitted) Facebook user.
Early this week, I took my Facebook-ship up a notch, having been added by my brother as an officer to my very first Facebook group: “I Live at the Russian Samovar”. (Which, as I do, how could I possibly refuse?)
And though I’m not really sure what that’s about either, I have the sense that I’m supposed to now be pimping the group out. I’m sure there’s some way to link to it, or to invite you all, or whatever. But as anyone likely to join on probably understands the site far better than I have the patience or desire to, I’m just going to say it’s out there, and that all of you young alcoholics should get in on it, whether you’ve actually been to Russian Samovar, or whether you’re just happy to support the undisputed category king for “New York Russian mafiosi vodka bar part-owned by Mikhail Baryshnikov.”
For those on the fence, I copy below our group’s manifesto:
Comrades!
Let us leave our plows to instead join arms in a unanimous decry of solidarity!
Let us lift high our glasses to toast the People’s Party of Inebriation!
Let us cast away the opressive yoke of capitalist early morning work hours!
Let us marinate like fine matjes herring in flavored vodka until we cannot speak our home addresses to impatient cab drivers who retrieve us on the nearby Broadway corner!
Let us honor mother Russia with shot and shot and shot of Russian Samovar’s fine fruit-infused vodka until we vomit on the poor out-of-town assholes waiting in line for Hairspray next door!
Long live the Party! Na zdorovje!
Join up. And add me as a friend, I guess. But don’t send me messages on the site, because fuck knows I’m not going to try to figure out how to pick those up.