Dave Vockell

Ia orana (yo-rana) means Hello!

HONEYMOON IN TAHITI

Top Highlights

#6 - Rocking Wife. Riding on scooters in the dark, in the rain, wearing sunglasses.  Ordering a second 'fridge at the hotel to house our "supplies".  Asking to stay under longer because her husband breathes too heavy and uses up his tank too quickly.  Sunset cocktails.  Breakfast in the room.  Afternoon cocktails.  Finding a "shortcut" through the island.  Fun fun fun 24/7. 

#5 - Lucite floor in the over water bungalow

#4 - Hinano, the local beer

#3 - Great Sunsets

#2 - Kelly gets bit by a ray.  They are sweet like little puppies.  Swimming around, soft as velvet (although the tail is a little coarse), and if you've got a little raw fish, they are your best friend.  However, eyes on the top of the head and mouth on the bottom does not make for a graceful meal for these fellows.  They have little beaks for mouths that don't break the skin if they snap you, but certainly can give you a good startle.

#1 - Rocking Wife, Just Married

Tied the Knot!

It doesn’t get any better than this.

 

A wonderful woman, surrounded by great family and friends, locking down a lifetime of joy. 

The momentum began at around 1am late Friday night, when I found myself on my way to the only 24 hour Kinkos in SF – the programs weren’t quite finished and only the graveyard shift at the copy place could deliver me.  For anyone looking for work right now, the bar for landing a gig overnight at Kinkos could not be lower, but we got the job done.  My Dattilo cousins from Chicago came through in a time of need later than morning (after I had robust 90 minutes of sleep) and helped assemble the Programs.

 

The fellas stood and delivered on the Groomsmen duties.

 

 

The bridesmaids were stunning and created a beautiful bouquet alongside Kelly.

 

 

The ceremony, deeply personal and magical and largely crafted by Kelly (with my participation) captured the depth and gravity and devotion of our commitment.  Sharing the vows was a natural as breathing.

The reception was spectacular, views of the Bay from the Corinthian Yacht Club, followed by late night celebration at Sam’s.

Sydney Ad Astra

Today we lost Sydney.

We were making final preparations for the Rehearsal Dinner this evening, relatives were in town and the wedding energy was crackling.

Then we got a call from the dog walker in charge of Sydney for the weekend.  Sydney had slipped the leash and been hit by a car.

Devastating does not begin to capture this.

Her time with us was too brief, but filled Kelly and my days with immeasurable joy and love.

To enjoy some older pics, click here...

Journalistic breakthrough...

It's been a fun 2 1/2 years so far at sweet Yahoo!, and the hubbub has reached fever pitch.   Part of the agony and ecstasy of the gig is being in the middle of a zeitgeist flash point. 

In Silicon Valley we love to talk about ourselves and bathe in the sturm und drang of our industry through an infinite set of blogs, news sites and podcasts.  They are a wonderful mix of gold and drivel, and today a wonderful c|net reporter has blessed the interweb with her target list of Yahoos that Microsoft should target in the hypothetical event of an acquisition. 

I made the cut.  Check out the entire article here...

 

Holy Crap

 

John Updike on New York

"The true New Yorker secretly believes that anyone living anywhere else must somehow, in a sense, be kidding."

SURPRISE 40th BIRTHDAY

It started innocently enough... "Since we're going to be skiing on your actual birthday," Kelly said, "let's go away for the weekend and have our own celebration." 

I had spent most of the week in NY and would be hitting SFO around noon.  Almost exactly a year earlier I was trapped in New York - Kelly assured me that I had better find a reindeer if it looked like a repeat stranding.

She picked me up around 3p and we headed across the Golden Gate Bridge - all week long she had been previewing me with exciting "scented mud wraps" and "beautiful vineyard vistas".  I asked her if there would be sports playing during the mud wrap or if there were any other things we could do that remotely sounds like how I'd spend a birthday weekend.  "You'll love it once you get there," she assured me.

So we roll up to wine country and hit the Moon Mountain Vineyards -- Kelly says we have to stop by the main house to pick up the key for our little bungalow.  The porch was dark, we were running a little late, so I got out of the car with her and headed for the door. 

SURPRISE!

Friends from NYC, SF, Seattle and Chicago had made there way up for weekend surprise party!

I was 100% surprised.

It's hard to accurately capture how SPECTACULAR a job Kelly did in putting this together.  She had only ever met a couple of the attendees.  She had tracked down an even larger group that were detained by work or by children.  There was magnificent food at every meal, events planned throughout the weekend, and no detail was overlooked.

Magnificent, magnificent, magnificent!

Check out the great photo album Kelly made for the weekend!

Six Months with Kelly

January 16th, 2007

Today Kelly and I are celebrating a rockin' six months together -- from our first date at Tonic in Russian Hill, through Thailand, Thanksgiving and New Years in SF Bay it has been a spectacular ride that just keeps getting better and better.

She's survived two weeks of travel with me in Asia, meeting some relatives, meeting many of my friends, and the annual Get Dressed up to Get Messed Up party in NY -- and she keeps coming back for more.

If you haven't met her yet, let's set it up - click on a picture below to see the whole collection...

Sydney

In mid-October Kelly adopted a West Highland Terrier (Westie) puppy named Sydney.

These pictures are worth the thousand words.

More public drunkenness...

Back into the breach for Get Dressed up to Get Messed Up IV. 

Kelly and I made the journey to NYC for a little holiday thrill in the City and the fourth installment of Prom for Adults.  It was a little more tame than last year, but we had the full roster of attendees -- some new folks, some veterans.  We started the night celebrating Tom and Robin's engagement before climbing onto the party bus -- neon lights, big screen TV and open bar. 

The "enjoyment" began early in the evening, followed by champagne on the bus to the restaurant.  Then poor judgement and age kicked in.  Historically dinner was the warm-up spot before moving on to three to five bars before coming to rest in the Lower East Side sometime before dawn.  This year, the restaurant was more the place we warmed up and drank before...going home.

The evening was long on festivity, short on longevity.

Vacation in Siam

Two weeks in Thailand is about as therapeutic and beautiful as anyone could dream.  Kelly took advantage of some of her "time of leisure" and rocked a full three weeks.  She landed in Bangkok and then headed north to Chang Mai and the surrounding villages.  The highlight of her trip was the time she spent at the Elephant Preserve.  In addition to learning alot about the plight of the pachyderm, she got to spend time feeding, washing and caring for rescued adults and playful babies.

I joined Kelly for the final ten days.  We started up in Phuket...not that exciting.  Then, on to Koh Phi Phi.

We arrived on Koh Phi Phi amid light showers and high anticipation for our vacation to really kick in.  This was the part of the vacation we making up as we went along -- we roughly knew where on the island we planned to stay, so we just debarked at the port and looked for a long boat to take us to our destination.  There did end up being a couple of flaws in our plan.  First, it was low tide, which means I soon found myself about 100 yards off shore with the long boat captain signaling me to get out.  One of the two of us hadn't really planned for this particular situation. One of the two of us had an 80 pound bag with very nice rollers.  Notice they aren't called "aqua rollers". One of us soon found ourselves up to our thighs in water with a giant blue roller bag (with sweet pink "G" name tag) slung across their shoulders and trudging towards the shore.  The second flaw was that our first destination was not exactly what we were hoping for, and it was about a mile hike up and over a small ridge to get to the other place to stay.

We did eventually make it to a very nice place, for a shocking $18 a day.  Yes, $18. Koh Phi Phi has been the site of some of the worst tsunami damage a few years ago and the construction was stil in progress, although there was very little visible activity.  We had spectacular Thai food (yellow curry was my favorite) and got in some of the best diving of the trip.

Then we went high end.

We spent the last four days in Krabi, Thailand at the Rayavadee Resort.  Private two story bungalow, three beaches, four restaurants (where else but Thailand can you spend $45 on a $9 bottle of Napa Chardonnay) and about three staffers per guest.  It was nice.  We spent days on the beach, we snorkeled, we visited the island where Leonardo filmed "The Beach". 

Kelly and I had a beautful time and will cherish the meals, the sunsets and the sometimes ass-whupping-bone-chilling rain that was part of our "authentic" experience. 

One final highlight -- on the way back from Thailand I had a refreshing 27-hour transit that included 8 hours at Narita (Tokyo).  I rolled into the Admirals Club, popped open my laptop, and through the magic of Slingbox I began to watch Sunday Football being streamed from my Tivo at home in my apartment in San Francisco.  Technology is my friend, and that afternoon made me the most popular dude in the lounge.

Enjoy the Monkey Movie and full photo set (just click on pictures to see more).

 

New Orleans

Last weekend, bachelor party, New Orleans – over 90% survival rate.  We had emergency cards, shirts of the bachelor, great steak dinner, and I think they called in a priest to clean one of the rooms the next morning.

Keeping the world safe for makeup...

This past weekend was the magnificent crescendo of a great organization I have the great privelege to participate in this school year.  I work once a week with a spectacular trio of students from Sequoia High School who over the past eight months have put together a business plan to save the world from broken makeup.  “Frost” is made up of Ashleigh, Armando and Rodrigo, freshman in Redwood City, and they have put together a business plan to make cases for your purse to protect your makeup.  Through the BUILD organization these great students have learned the basics of launching a small business and last Saturday stood up in front on 300 people and delivered competitive assessments, manufacturing processes’ and cash flow statements. Two of the competition judges were fellow Yahoo!s Meg and Alan. 

BUILD teaches students the basics of launching a business, but its main goal is college enrollment.  At the end of the competition a number of the seniors shared their stories with the crowd.  One woman started with “I am typical BUILD student.” She went on to describe relatives in jail, parents who didn’t  graduate fifth grade, and with tears in her eyes, entering High School and being unable to read. Last semester she got a 3.7 GPA, and next year is going to Menlo College on a $45K Dean’s Scholarship.  If this sounds great to you, sign up to be a mentor.

She shoots...

Great weekend in Chicago , caught my young cousins’ soccer game – Jory was great and Tessa scored!

Crissy, Crissy, City Hall

Today was my best friend Paul’s birthday and we did a mini-bbq down at Crissy Field in the lovely shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge.  I don’t think I’ve missed his birthday in fifteen years, and this year was the first time it didn’t include a flight. Hanging with his lovely wife Colleen, chasing around their cold-fusion powered boys and enjoying some tasty burgers was a lovely window into SF domesticity. Quite nice.

I found myself back at Crissy Field a couple of hours later for the beginnings of the Global Night Commute – a social action to bring attention to the thousands of children that are continuously abducted and either conscripted into or tortured by the Ugandan army. Every night millions of Ugandan children walk miles to “safe houses” for the night so that marauding armies do not pull them from their homes. The group at Crissy Field was planning to simulate a night march and then spend the night outside. I couldn’t stay for the event, but I stopped and talked to a lot of the people as they were walking the length of Crissy Field to the meeting point. The crowd had an interesting mix of Dedicated Activist, College Enthusiast, and SF Hippie.

The DAs were positioned along the road to the meeting spot and had years of connection with the African cause, many having had spent significant time in Uganda and Rwanda – a couple of UN vets and some Peace Corp alums. The bulk of the attendees were the CEs – reminiscent of my college days when fellow-student-activists turned the Registrar’s office into “Mandela Center” complete with shanty town and community music sessions. Of the dozen folks I recall from those days, I can’t think of one still particularly engaged in that or any other world issue. I’m not discounting or dismissing the CEs – participation is an important coming-of-age activity that maybe I wish had greater longevity. Finally, the SFH’s – this group was my favorite. Some had hiked the bridge from Berkeley with their pre-teen children, seeking to teach the lessons of global connectivity. Others had made some jump to this side of the bridge and showed up in their Volvo’s and sub-zero sleeping bags, but still with the message to their children that they could make change in the world. Check out the site for info about a documentary on the Invisible Children.

In a strange juxtaposition to the GNC at Crissy Field, I soon after found myself at City Hall at GenArts emerging artist fashion showcase. I forget how ridiculous haute couture is until I attend one of these events. There was a good five percent of the fashion that was cool and you’d like to pick up a young lady decked out in the high end goods, but there were a lot more that we characterized more along the lines of “Peter Pan in chain mail.” Mostly we just were mesmerized by the stick figure models navigating the fifty marble stairs in the City Hall atrium in five inch heels.

A rockin’ overall Saturday. 

 

Tinkers to Evers to Chance

We had our first Yahoo! softball game today. We got second place in a seventh inning heartbreaker. I went four-for-five (fielder’s choice) and rattle the first baseman with a nice rocket shot that got him to back up the next few times I took the left side of the plate.

As I rolled out of Sunnyvale I found myself uncontrollably drawn to stop in at Wendy’s and pick up a Frosty. I don’t think I’ve had a Frosty in ten years and couldn’t imagine why I had the hankering – I’m not pregnant, Gatorade is my usual post-workout drink (although for softball it’s been mostly beer for the past ten years), and I wasn’t really that thirsty.

Cruising down the 101 towards SF, Kelly Clarkson on the box, and a Frosty in my lap, I was washed over by a wave of nostalgia. The milkshake trigger wasn’t just a pack of full counts and long ball run downs – I’d had those for more than a decade in NYC and can’t remember ever getting a post-game shake (see above beer reference). But I let my memory slide back to the last time I was riding in a car (not in a subway), still in full gear, glove on the seat, a little tired but electrified from hours on the field…and I saw my Dad next to me in the car, pulling into the United Dairy Farmers for two black-and-white shakes.

Sunday afternoons my Dad I and I used to hit the local high school fields for batting and infield practice, shag some flies and talk about game strategy. On the way home we always stopped for a shake at the UDF. The summer after freshman year we both played church softball, and it was always the same final stop before home – the UDF.

My history of baseball with my father is sprinkled with three enduring memories – our own Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance.

I can remember the first like it was yesterday…my dad pulled out a piece of pegboard and asked “what is this a picture of?” Actually, he never would have ended a sentence in a preposition, so he must have said "What is this picture?"  Over the next hours I had my introduction to the magical nine positions that mesmerize me to this day.

Number two additionally explains my current stellar eating habits. On the way to every Reds game my dad I hit, unencumbered by the ladies of the household, we would stop in at White Castle and grab a sack of sliders. To this day whenever I smell some raw onions on the grill with a lingering odor of searing beef, I am taken back to Riverfront and the Big Red Machine. 

Today I got to reconnect with the baseball of my youth and my dad. It was a great ride home.

AFRICA

I almost never think about Africa

I remember writing b-school application essays about the tragedies of sub-Saharan Africa.  I’ve watched the Eagles ignore the All-Black’s Haka with some Nigerian buddies, and I have a Ghanaian friend at work that sometimes calls me Nana Kojo (Chief Monday), but I met two people this weekend that shocked me back into some global reality. I went to a fundraiser for an organization that tries to get lawyers for Southern Hemisphere refugees. When I was first invited, I thought it sounded cruel to fund the export of lawyers, why subject the rest of the world to our own litigious plague?

Then I met Leon and Bridgette Nitenge.  

They were the recipients of legal support from this fundraising organization which eventually secured them refugee status in Africa and then the US.  Bridgette is half Tutsi and half Hutu, and in the Rwandan genocide was the only member of her family to survive. She told a heartbreaking tale of watching her family being killed and fleeing in the night. She and her husband fled to Uganda, where language barriers and overcrowding kept them from refugee status. They made their way to her husband’s homeland, The Congo, however since he had married a foreigner he was ostracized from his family and society.

There’s no finale or insight or what’s next to this post – just more ingredients for consideration on how I can make impact on our planet.

Success Envy

My friend Kristin Hoffmann was in town again last night and a crew from work rolled to catch her and the lovely Tina Dico. Kristin is about 25 and is currently battling with Interscope to physically release her album – her set was moving and the crowd called for a couple of encores.

Then one of my co-workers expressed “I’m so jealous of her, she’s done so much.” This was coming from a double-fancy-degree, very lovely, over-accomplished, wildly popular and no-limits-on-her-success woman on our team. What is the source of this success envy? Is there something in driven people that makes them constantly compare themselves to totally different types of accomplishment and feel inadequate? I saw an interview with Chris Rock talking about the ESPN Awards, which are half sports figures and half athletes. He said almost every entertainer is fawning over the athletes with admiration and insecurity – “I can teach A-Rod to tell a funny joke, he’ll never be able to get me to hit a 90 mph fastball. I’m funny, he’s talented.”

Why do we search for ways for happiness to elude us?

Sartorial Short Circuit

I had another prez to the Execs today and once again I kicked a wardrobe snafu – unnoticed (except by a co-worker), but signaling perhaps some deeper underlying issues. I’m hoping it has more to do with the dozens of minutes of slumber I tend to get the night before a big meeting rather than a flaw in my system in which clothes-clarity are the first to go under moments of duress.

The first event occurred the second week of December last year. It was my first time with the full complement of Execs and we were going to rapping about potential disruptions in Yahoo!’s future and potential offense/defense. It was December and pre-pres anxiety had me up early. Rather than shock my whole system I decided to get dressed in the semi-dark and let the sun eventually roll my pupils. Scrub-a-dub shower, brush-and-floss and I decided that it felt like a black suit morning. Now pretty much every day feels like a black suit morning, but that is not the general dress code de Y! But today I would give into my instincts. Pretty soon I’m fully dressed, but had the strange feeling that I had been transported back to 1990. I hadn’t heard Pearl Jam on the radio, the Cincinnati Reds weren’t world champs, I wasn’t working a night shift temp job in NYC…and yet…I was wearing pleated pants. Delirious from lack of sleep I flew into a panic – what could have happened, what could have made me pick up a pair of black pleated pants (whether they were half a Hugo Boss suit or not) and say “yes, you will be mine”? I may try to claim the high ground with some of my wardrobe whimsys – there will come a time for me to wear my seersucker suit, or green cords with dogs on them, or Thomas Jefferson puffy shirt…but I was at a loss over the suit pants. I turned on the bedroom light to shine more truth on my shame…and out of the corner of my eye I caught the shiny strip that would run from the crest of my iliac to my talus and relief washed over me. I was wearing my tuxedo pants. I decided not to rock vest-and-bow-tie and switched to the correct suit.

Number two was more embarrassing than alarming. I got up early (again the pre-pres agita) and decided that the gym was the best way to work out the adrenaline. I tossed some work clothes in a bag and headed off to Equinox. Later that afternoon, hours after the big meeting, co-worker Greg looked down at my shoes and suggested he was worried I had any influence whatsoever on Yahoo!'s strategy.

Somewhere between "The Big Chill" and "Beavis and Butthead"

So I’ve been playing in the same poker game for about ten years – although the line-up has changed over time as fellas went off to grad school, moved West, or got voted-off-the-island.

One of the greatest vintages of the core poker team was 1997/98 – Mark, Ankur, Marc, Jahan, and Chris – and this past weekend we did a reunion poker tourney in SF.  Three fellas rolled in from NYC and one up from L.A. for about twenty hours of cards over three days.

It was spectacular. Beer, cards, beer, smack talk, beer, steak, more cards…and more beer. 

We played four big tournaments (2-3 hours each) and a bunch of smaller power-poker-hours.  There were no big losers (except for a couple of visitors that joined for only one of the games), with everyone in the money from time to time, and everyone taking a bath every now and then. I book-ended with two bracelets, but took such an ass-whuppin’ in the other games that I may have finished third on the money board.

Tournament Results – Top Prize:

One – Dave

Two – Jahan (weekend money leader)

Three – Mark

Four – Dave

The whole weekend was rocking – dive bars, legit Mission Mexican, Senegalese food, reflection on ladies past-and-present, old school SF steak, and puerile humor that belied any real group maturation since last we all sat down to the felt octagon.  The crew is high end – Federal defender, psychiatrist, head of the math department at a fancy NYC high school, music exec, fancy civil lawyer, washed-up-internet guy (me) – but the weekend was full of “oh, sorry about that, I’ll open a window” and the Beavis put-down of the weekend seemed to be to call someone a merkin.  One guy even brought one.  It’s easy to look back on a weekend like this and know that you’re living right – great dudes that are great friends that picked up like we were all together a week ago. We’ve all got all the usual weight of gents in their 30s – work, the ladies, the 10+ years out-of-college reflection/evaluation – and for the weekend we just had the hang out.

Life is good.

Trapped in New York...

Long weekend in NYC...flights cancelled...no end in sight...

Bring on the Noise

Today a pack of us caught the 5th Annual Bringing the Noise for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a spoken word event put on by YouthSpeaks - the same group that put on the rocking  Friendraiser last November.   With pieces ranging from "The War at Home" to "A Letter to the Cool Kids", the teens spit fresh rhymes as they bared raw emotions of misapplied stereotypes (my Chinese grandparents are devastated that I can't play the violin), the defining and devastating influences of rap music (106.1 teaches us to celebrate and hate ourselves), and some anti-Iraq sentiments that came up just short of a little MLK-esque "we were bamboozled!"

The night started off with the ever-smooth Mayor Newsom taking the stage for a little well-rehearsed informality -- he delivered the greatest bumper-sticker-phrase of the night with "Martin Luther King day is not a day off, it's a day on.  Hizzoner did drop some of the fromage, and nestled in between some I-want-to-rock-it-on-a-national-level-type rants against the White House, praised the teens for turning their emotions into positive messages and urged them all to continue their impact through art and action. 

The event was sold out and we ended up with about fifteen extra tickets.  As we waded through the "I should have called ahead" mob we slipped singles and deuces to the ticket-less youth and ended up with a couple dozen homeboy handshakes, hugs and hella goods.

They have another event in March -- I'll post the details when it gets closer. 

It was a great way to spend MLK day.

YEAR IN REVIEW 2005

I think the turn of the calendar page, combined with the forced introspection of this online exposition, makes all site-owners feel they need a “Year in Review”, to give a totally uninterested public a window into the host’s psyche as they exit one year and embrace the potential of the next.

And so, the defining influences of 2005…

The Big Move West – committed but not yet integrated

 

-  

-    Still in the NYC-detox stage - why can't I get food at 2am?

-    Have connected locally with volunteer work, local art, local poker crew and local music

-     Went into and bought something last week in The North Face store

-     Got a 415 phone number

-     Have made six trips back to NYC in four months

-     Wear a black suit to work at least once a week

-     Still have my 917 number

-     Nothing beats New York

 

The Music – two unforgettable shows and lots of great music from people I know

-     The best indie show I have ever experienced was the Amy Miles CD release at The Mercury Lounge -- listen here to Kill to Know

-     All year long Kristin Hoffmann shows have been magnificent, and her upcoming release is great -- 3 O'Clock remains my favorite tune

-     Sam Bisbee has been active this year, but look for big stuff from him in early ’06 as he begins his Monday night showcase at The Living Room and puts out a new album.  Great '05 acoustic rendition of Cubicle Love Song and I never get enough of Miracle Car

-     Kanye West at the San Jose HP Pavilion was pure riggety-rockin’ entertainment

-     Thursday nigh BBQs and “Baby Hit Me One More Time” is an unbeatable combo

-     Early indications of good local music -- The 88 and Pig Winking

The Ladies – it was the worst of times, it was the best of times

-     It was the worst possible type of breakup – an indifferent parting

-     Crossed paths with two great ladies in SF that together have restored hope to keep the dream alive

-    Some nice girls in the interim

 

The Sports – one championship down, one to go

-     St. Xavier takes the Ohio State Football championship, although some competitive commentary was funny

-     Cincinnati Bengals make the playoffs for the first time since 1990 – Super Bowl victory assured!

-     Northwestern Wildcats finish #25 in the BCS

Great Friends – distance, evolution, events and miracles

-     Cripples my soul not be hanging most-regular in NY with Chuck, Utkarsh, Luke, Ankur, Marc and Mark

-     New West Coast joy in chilling with Paul, Hubs and Jahan

-     Telluride II – more great snow and four types of bacon

-     GDU2GMU III – black ties and blood shot eyes

-     Casey and Utkarsh engaged – two of the greatest people I know

-    Iva Worthington Larkin (1907-2005)

-     Fourth of July at the birthplace of Buffalo Wings for the Paul and Steph baptism

-     Colleen and Paul and baby Grace

-     Tony and Claudia and baby Cheeky

-     Marcy and Hunter and baby Ned

-     Catherine and Jeff and baby Foucher

-     Jahan and Micah walk the aisle

-     Disney with Sis

One final note: the SNL Chronicles of Narnia bit was among the funniest moments of the year.  And for the bulk of my friends, please click here for a definition you need to fully enjoy "The Chronic what-cles of Narnia"

What’s Next for '06 – more music, more friends, more fleece

Ahh, cathartic and rejuvenating – Happy New Year!

Prom for Adults...

...but without the corsages.

This weekend brought Get Dressed Up to Get Messed Up III, a black-tie Manhattan pub crawl in its third magnificent year.  The premise is simple -- a dozen plus folks roll to a high-end restaurant (year one was L'Ecole) and then limo-pub-crawl from fancy bar to normal bar to late night dive.  The brainchild of my-man-Utkarsh, the evening started with a cocktail hour at his and Casey's pad and then moved on to Megu for dinner.  Our limo/shuttle bus then carried us throughout the night, finally landing us as at Happy Ending sometime after 3am.  Mary Poppins was playing on the basement wall and I'm pretty sure the lyrics to "a spoonful of sugar" were replaced with "another round of shots".   

The night held a couple of records: first, it was the earliest that anyone's date "hit the dirt", when a certain out-of-towner's red-headed date/power drinker grabbed some floor around 11:30p.  I think it was also the latest ever reported occurrence of an "I love you man..." story, with the first outburst not happening until after 2am.  Our numbers swelled north of twenty-five at one point and a strong crew of eight went wire-to-wire (or at least I recall there being about eight of us).  We had a number of three-peaters on tap that night, along with plenty of first timers.  The fellows looked good, and the ladies looked magnificent.  Needless to say, I missed my 11am flight.  And the 1pm.

Keeping it "Real"

I saw my good friend Kristin Hoffmann in a cozy spot in Mill Valley tonight, performing songs from her new album "Real".  The music was soulful and stirring and the show was the kind of intimate artist/audience setting that makes live music great.  Her dad was there, as usual, selling CDs, lamenting the label, and drunk with his daughter's talent.  Check out her music page and then cruise iTunes and pick up Divided Heart or the just released Real.

Yahoo! Year End Party

Saturday night was the Yahoo! year end party.  A rockin' soiree at the San Mateo Expo center that started early at my pad for a small pre-party.  Big thanks to Carrie and Silvia for planning the festivities, and a couple of lessons/warnings for anyone making up a guest list.  Frisk Marcus at the door -- he brought tequila which started the night on a downward alcohol-fueled spiral for many.  Baked Goods + Icing + Hanna + Jim = Trouble + Cleanup ... you have to keep an eye on these two.  Other advice for next year -- get on the right bus headed back to SF, or you might find yourself back at the Expo Center a half hour after you left (this is just a hypothetical lesson).  This travel advice in no way can be connected to a time saving strategy of always ordering two drinks at the bar to limit line waiting. 

First Winning Season in 15 years!

Bengals 38 - Pittsburgh 31

Central Park in the Fall

There is a great site at www.joesnyc.com with daily stunning photos.  This picture will stir longing and nostalgia in people who have never set foot in New York.

Go Wildcats!

Number 25!

Theory #2: Pass/Seven/Twenty

I'm trying to establish some new vocabulary among the fellas in regards to how we talk about  ladies in the pipeline.  For my fallen brothers, I am referring to the flow of females through your personal dating gauntlet.  We get lost in the swamp of specificity ... she seems kind of cool, I could see something happening, she might be too intense, it's hard to imagine she could be showing less interest in me...blah, blah, blah, what's the bottom line my friend? 

The easiest one to grok is "Pass" -- this is the overarching category that includes good friend's fiance's mom inappropriate targets, reruns [i.e. girls just like girls you've dated before, unless it's Diane Court and you're just going to date-her-and-dump-her], extremely annoying girls, or friends of the girl you really want to smooch.

Category two is the "Seven".  This is the set of fine ladies that somewhere around date seven the novelty wears off and you start talking break-up smack to your friends.  This smack talk can last months.   And months.  Now if you're 23, these are the most magnificent of women, but once you cross an trente, it's mean to them and a waste for you. 

And that leads us to the "Twenty", good women with whom you can picture 20+ dates.  If you can convince them to go out with you, don't blow it.

Because nothing's so simple, I'm going to introduce one last female phyla -- the 2/20.  This is that wonderfully terrible group of ladies that are either good for two dates, or way past twenty.  You can easily imagine the first date, it's all where did you grow up, oh that sounds like a fun vacation, or yeah, I've also been to thirty weddings in the past twenty-four months.  Date number two rolls around, you're a little more relaxed, you start the night with a little bise between picking her up and opening her car door, and then somewhere between the inside-out avocado roll and your second Kirin Ichiban, something drops.  You tell her that LL Cool J is the voice of our generation, she tells you she thinks Lyndon Larouche is really on to something and either you're both repulsed or ensorceled.  The 2/20 can be the best of ladies, or they may just be an iceberg waiting for their Titanic.  Don't be a Titanic.

I've gone on too long, but will be working to get these into the next OED.  More vocab to come.

The Moving Voices of the Next Generation

Last night I attended the Youthspeaks 5th Annual Friendraiser - a teen poetry slam.  Youthspeaks is an arts group of teenagers from the greater SF area that teaches/celebrates the spoken word and expressed emotion.  It's 24 hours later and I am still blown away by what I saw and heard.  I'm not sure if it was the unbelievable composure of a dozen different teens spitting rhymes in front of hundreds, or the weight of the messages and the shockingly personal resonance of poetry. 

The opening artist was a 17 year girl who talked about the "two worlds of Berkeley".  Through tracing a relationship she had with a boy starting in first grade, she chronicled her evolution into the utopian idealist society of Berkeley, and his decline into the flipside of Berkeley, the underpriveleged, drug-addled, dystopian society that would gladly welcome the world she flatly rejects.  "By 3rd grade he was selling weed, and by 8th grade when I was screaming 'stolen election' he was selling crack." 

I'm a white Midwesterner -- if I'd had any ethnicity or emotions to tap into as a youth it would have been lost somewhere between soccer practice, my fast food shift, or general presbyterian repression.  That made the evening even more gripping.  They're going to have their next event during MLK weekend in January, I'll post the deets.  And yes, I had to look up the word dystopia. 

Pigwinking and The 88

I've been here less tha 90 days and have already had two rays of musical joy from my new city.  I've been making the circuit of indie music joints, hoping to find my 415-equivalent of the Merc Lounge or Living room, and have hit upon some good tunes.

The first was at the Boom Boom Room.  My buddy Jahan called me up and we rendezvoused to catch a band called The Wild Magnolias.  The name does not do these fellows justice.  Displaced from New Orleans, they are a rocking heavy-bass R&B band that dresses up as Mardi Gras Indians.  Yeah, I didn't know either that there was a special fluorescent tribe of indians that like to dress-it-up and whoop-it-up.  The two main dudes are dressed in bright, feathered warrior headdress and full regalia.  I asked, it's not a San Francisco gay indian thing.  Our man Big Chief Bo Dollis was head-to-toe in pink feathers and finery. With just his face poking out from ocean of pink, he looked like the backside of a pig.  And I think it winked at me.

The next night I was at The Independent and caught a riggety-rockin group called The 88.  Great pop tunes, spectacular musicians, and straight up fun.  They're coming back to the Utah Saloon in a couple of weeks.  Check out their video, one of the dudes looks just like Sideshow Bob.

This post was brought to you by the folks at Upcoming.org, a new member of the Yahoo! family and a great way to find out about shows.  I pick a show I know I want to see, like "Death Cab for Cutie" in a couple of weeks, and I mark myself as "Attending".  I can then look at the list of other people who are "Attending" or "Interested" and see what other shows they've tagged coming up.  This is how I found The 88 and I've seen a couple of other good bands.  Try it.

Who-dey, Who-dey...

7-3!

The Happiest Place on Earth

I just spent Halloween in Disneyworld with my sister, brother-in-law, and three nephews.  We had a universally spectacular time.  On the  31st the twins got little "Today is my Birthday" buttons.  The first phrase out of every Cast Member's mouth -- from the bus driver to the security dude -- was "Happy Birthday".  There were giraffes outside of my window and I think Jasmine winked at me.

Art for the Ladies

Went to a cool gallery exhibit benefit this afternoon for a group call Girlventures -- it had your general collection of artists who didn't get enough attention as youths, but also some eye-grabbing stuff with tiles and travel photo montages.  As I type it, it sounds stupid, but it was good.  I was actually duped into attending this hoo haa -- the beneficiaries of this philanthropy are inner-city girls who are sent on some character building outings, and I thought it was their art on display.  Instead, just your general SF artists.

Happy 4th Birthday Dexter

Where better to spend your magical fourth birthday than Train Town in Sonoma?  My good man Dexter Gormley rocked it out in the 1/12th scale train, a collection of roller coasters and a 70s vintage Scrambler.   Clearly,  I was the  life of the party.

You've got a one in ten chance...

When I hit a modern art exhibit, nine out of ten times I just look at the collection and wonder what the hell is going on here.  I can imagine the endless wedgies and swirlies the artist must have endured as a youth.  But then there is that tenth exhibit, that offbeat collection of images and words that resonates either with some emerging internal sensibility or slanted take on a societal issue that reminds you why you subject yourself seemingly endlessly to dreck you think would have received an "F" in your third grade art class.

This past week I hit an Edgar Arcenaux exhibit at the SFMoMA -- he spoke for about an hour and shared his creative process and take on everything from the connections between Alex Haley's Roots and Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, to a fascination with a picture of a four-year-old Michael Jackson getting out of a bathtub.  For sure, this dude is legit, a real artist, you totally believe him when he talks about how the art creates itself, and it was kind of cool to see the video of how some of his larger pieces were slowly created in the front yard of suburan neighborhood. However, it only took about twenty minutes of his self-absorbed "I am a man of constant evolution" ramblings to make you begin to plot your move to the free wine bar.  The draw for the night had high potential - Arceneaux has a cool collection of images in a series called Blocking out the Sun and a long resume of acclaim.  He lost me, however, when his work capturing the genocide of Yugoslavia was the sequential release of a series of letter balloons spelling out Old Man Hill (his father's nickname) in front of a blown out house in a battered war zone. 

As Arceneaux's half-hour-longer-than-promised drone came to an end and I began to imagine the now-room-temperature white wine and ice-cold mini-quiches, the Q&A began.  Holy crapoli.  It was a battle royale of obscure artist name dropping and battles-du-self-absorption.  Arceneaux did have a magnificently redeeming moment when posited with "now that we all have been given secret access to your inner psyche, do you think we we will better understand your work?  And how can a person without this window appreciate your commentaries?"  As I was beginning to check my calendar to schedule this guy's beating, Edgar rocked it back with "I don't know, do you feel now that you know more about Tom Cruise you are better able to appreciate Top Gun?"  Ahh, the fresh winds of reality.  Then he brought it home with "some of you out there can't appreciate works without thinking you know more than others -- and hopefully this session will contribute to your enjoyment of my installation.  Others just take the art as it comes and it's more about what it pulls out of you, and I hope tonight wasn't too boring."   All right, no wedgie for this guy, but also no rush to catch his work.

Theory #1: Pavlovian San Francisco

People here are nice.  Not the nice-without-thinking nice of the Midwest, but polite-type-nice.  I think it's conditioned into locals.  This city-of-hills is full of stop signs, I have to expect the life of my clutch is somewhere around six months.  I am constantly at a four-way-stop, waiting my turn, and deciding if it's time to go.  It's annoying when someone goes out of turn, but it's disturbing when you begin to pull into the intersection and someone else hits the gas at the same time and you both lurch to a stop.  Very disturbing.  And so, when many people are unsure or not sure the other guy knows who's next, they just let the other guy go first.  I think this deferential politeness (albeit one part civility, one part pain minimization) has flowed into other elements of how Bay residents interact -- opening doors for people, sincere "please" and "thank yous", the whole deal.  More as this theory develops.

Welcome to San Francisco

Had a great farewell party that easily exceeded the "100 Beers" goal of the evening.  Then out until 4am at a club, home at 7am in time to mop up a little spilled beer and grab a cab to JFK.

My new pad was waiting for me in a part of town called Noe Valley, up on a hill and out of the fog it has a great view of the East Bay.  Tomorrow, down to Yahoo!

Yahoo! Cover Story in Fortune

The cover article of the August 8th Fortune is about the future of advertising, the evolution of the interactive channel for marketing, and the role that Yahoo! is going to have in creating and defining that future. 

Star Power

My great friend Michael Teh just completed a promo for an upcoming A&E show "Inked".  Click the trio-shot to enjoy his normal role as international playboy.

Shut Up Make Out!

My buddy Will Carlough with his band The Hazzards (New York's baddest two-girl ukelele group) have just released a new video for their song Shut Up and Make Out! Click here to enjoy the lilting trumpet tapestry he lends this smoove tune.

Two Books on a Theme

I just read two books meant to bring the reader back to yesteryear and reminisce on the influences that have shaped their character. 

The first was Camp by Michael Eisner. I caught Mr. Mouse on Charlie Rose a couple of weeks ago and he was powerfully charismatic, so I grabbed his book.  It's a two element tale of his family's legacy of attendance at Camp Keewaydin and the bildungsroman journey of a pair of urban-L.A. youth he sponsored for the summer-of-a-lifetime.  Not great.  I think I was hoping for a book that evoked a Robert-Redford-esque voice over like in A River Runs Through It with images of "the Montana of my youth..."  Instead, it felt like a forced set of insights that were created more through a this-happened-and-so-it-means-this style rather than reader-drawn insights from beautifully painted images of youthful interactions to the rules of Keewaydin.  It did bring me back to my youth as a camp counselor at the YMCA Camp in the Pines. Summer months of archery, popsicle stick creations, songs in Council Ring, swimming and the seemingly never ending games of dodge ball shaped six of the greatest summers of my life (appropriately romanticized for life in my thirties). I won't launch into the great life lessons of those years among the trees, lest I commit a similar offense to Mr. Eisner and try to retrofit the shadow images of decades past to the self-image I want to project today. Camp might have been better as a less-veiled "everything I learned about business I learned at Keewaydin" revolving around the camp rules. 

The second book is Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life by Michael Lewis. Spectacular.  The setup is the current-day naming of a high school gym after baseball Coach Fitz - and the strong and contrasting feelings of the parents and players of Lewis' days on the team versus present day.  I'm not going to give anything away, but the juxtaposition of the two eras is a great allegory of the evolution of the role of sports in a kid's life and the increasingly negative pressure parents place on their children and their coaches.  The words fly off the page and capture the innocence of youth and elicit the real fear/respect combo that players feel for their coaches.  Different than Camp, Lewis lets you draw your own conclusions and leaves plenty of room to insert your own great memories within the lessons.  I remember like it was yesterday (again, appropriately romanticized by the years) the afternoon my father started to teach me about baseball. I can picture the brown peg-board on which my old man had painted a baseball diamond in preparation for my introduction to those magical nine positions. As I read the book I could hear the James Earl Jones voice over of "people will come" with its timeless "the one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers; it has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time."  To wrap up this post, which has already gone on much too long, skip Camp, pick up Coach, and then watch Ken Burns' history of Baseball, and breathe in the magic of a game played while soldiers waited to enter the Battle at Gettysburg that evolved into our national pastime.

The Journey to Mecca

My man Utkarsh has made the spiritual journey to the wellspring of life -- the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.  Who knew when Arthur Guinness staked his future on a rundown brewery at St. James's Gate in 1759 that he would bring forth such a plentitude of great times and non-rememberable blackouts.  It's no surprise that Utkarsh was immediately awarded "Master Brewer's Honorary Apprentice Status", if only for his great work on the annual "Get Dressed Up to Get Messed Up" festivities.

Corporate Challenge 2005

It was a beautiful night in Central Park -- and in a rag tag collection of Low Rider, Surfing, Turbo & High Tech Performance t-shirts the Primedia team delivered the goods.  Thanks to Eric Williams for the great tees and Cindy Karamitis for organizing the entire event.

Countdown to California...

 

In just about a month I will do the 415-relo and take my first home bound flight from JFK.  In a recent essay, Jonathan Franzen noted "What draws me back [to New York], again and again, is safety. Nowhere else am I safe from the question: why here?"  I want to pack my final Manhattan days with definitive moments of NYC, re-painting and illuminating my deep-rooted "safety" in New York City. 

How should I spend my time/what should I do for these thirty days?

I am looking for the right notes to bring this NYC coda to climax - what should I see, where should I visit, what should I eat - let me know the events that define your New York.  All suggestions are welcome - from a classic like sitting on a bench in Central Park reading E.B. White's "Here is New York" to an afternoon du fromage atop a double decker bus learning again about the struggles of Five Points on the LES.  Easy ones start the list - another run to the Corner Bistro, hitting Grimaldi's in Brooklyn, the Merc Lounge for Kristin, Sam or Amy, Gray's Papaya at 2am, softball in Central Park, the Palm II, homage at Barney's, homage at Shea, once more at Stephen Talkhouse, the Met's Rodin garden, another Pilobolus, lunch in the Amex cafeteria, a Bryant Park movie, pot-luck at TKTS, enjoying the ceiling in Grand Central, Florent at 3am, and of course, more homage at Shea. 

Anyone suggesting "frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity III" will receive a beating.  Also, anyone recommending a "visit to NYC's classic Turkish baths" is confused -- I'm leaving town, not Chuck.

Please add a comment with your suggestions for Thirty Days in Manhattan.

Heeding the call of Horace Greeley...

I am moving to California.   

Yesterday I got the call  - a job offer in lovely Sunnyvale.   And so, almost fifteen years to the date from when I loaded up the van and headed out of Chicago, I am now rolling West.

I am going to need help exiting NYC in style.