In Which I Return from the Wilderness

Hey there, Lon-atics...Sorry for the unannounced sabbatical. I'm sure all 8 of you regular readers have been obsessively hitting refresh every three minutes for, like, weeks now. Not much that could be done, I'm afraid - it has been a fairly ludicrous August here at CBI Central. Some of it was spent balled up in the corner in the fetal position...other parts, not as much. I'm sure, in six months, there'll be a good blog post in there somewhere.

But for now, let's just cover a few things about which I didn't get a chance to opine:

(1) Joe Biden has silly hair and a history of being kind of an asshat, but old people like him

Near as I can tell, what happened was, Obama noticed that a lot of old people, even Democrats, don't really want to vote for him. Now, I'm not going to go ahead and say that this is just because he's a black guy and a lot of old people are racists...I'm sure there are plenty of other possibilities. His repeated calls to criminalize pre-5 pm dinner times, for example. Or his constant efforts to get "NCIS" canceled.

Anyway, here's this guy who has run for president a bunch of times, so if there were anything REALLY BAD about him we'd know it already. And this guy's been around forever, so all the old people recognize him and forget that he's not some avuncular celebrity from a bygone era, such as George Peppard...Then, feeling comfortable again, they agree to vote for the black guy. At least, that was probably the what the Obama camp was thinking.

I personally think it's an adequate but uninspired choice, which is a shame, because a lot of Obama's other choices have been inspired. I would have preferred a few of the suggested VP's, but then again, I'd have really hated to pull a lever or punch a hole or whatever the fuck California's going to have us do for a Sam Nunn or an Evan Bayh, people who stand for 94% of what I loathe about America. (Beating McCain's tight 97%!)

(2) If you've ever expressed any solidarity with liberalism, progressivism or the Democratic Party, you're not allowed to not vote for Obama because you dislike one relatively unimportant thing about him

For real. I don't care what that one thing is. Don't like Joe Biden? Not good enough. Pissed off about his betrayal on the FISA issue? Too bad. Angry that he's backed by a certain industry or lobbying group? They all are. Upset that he once said something not-very-nice about illegal file-traders? No one cares.

This election is really important. Like, seriously really intensely important. Here are some things that matter that will be at least partially decided by the outcome of the vote this November:

- Multiple horrifyingly violent conflicts around the world
- The future direction of the US economy
- More than one Supreme Court Justice, who will make major decisions on a whole host of crucial issues relating to daily life in America

If you look at those considerations but then say, "Yeah, but his former pastor once said that God should do bad stuff to America! And he doesn't like to wear pieces of flair with the American flag on them!," this means you are stupid. Hey, I'm just trying to help you out. Maybe you didn't know you were stupid. Now you do! Congrats, buddy!

This goes quadruple for you Twitter people reading this post. I'm really tired of hearing "I can't vote for Obama...he wants to raise taxes on exceptionally rich guys!" I forgot that you hate health care, reproductive rights and wars that end eventually.

(3) Tropic Thunder was much more funny than Pineapple Express

Both movies had parts that made me laugh. But I was very underwhelmed by Pineapple Express, considering the collaborators. Like every Judd Apatow movie, it was way too long, but I was just generally disappointed by the action. The whole final 30 minutes felt pointless. The action itself isn't particularly compelling or intense, so it just feels obligatory, unsuccessfully tacked on to the end of what is otherwise an amiable-enough stoner comedy. James Franco, however, does a really nice job, and I thought Craig Robinson, Danny McBride and Ed Begley Jr. were effective.

Tropic Thunder is actually pretty poorly assembled. It's really chaotic and frenzied, and I think that, had director Ben Stiller slowed down and let some of the situations/characters develop more, the whole enterprise would have worked much better. But even in its current form, Tropic Thunder is really funny and worth seeing. Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise are, of course, the standouts, but the whole cast works together really well, and it's just so far out there, willing to do absolutely anything to get a laugh, that I just kind of gave myself over to the spirit of the enterprise and enjoyed the hell out of it. Not sure if it would hold up on repeat viewings...but who cares? It worked well once, and that was enough.

(4) I really like the new Walkmen album

You & Me is a stupid title for an album (much in the same way that She & Him is a stupid name for a musical duo), but it sounds like kind of a return to form for me. (I didn't like A Hundred Miles Off or that Nilsson tribute nearly as much as Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone.) These guys are just interesting to listen to in a way most bands are not. Wish I could be more specific than that, but long-time readers will recall I suck at describing what I like about songs. Just a weird blind spot for me.

(5) I got into a car accident

It was really stupid and all my fault. One of things that happen and it just ruins your whole week, cause you keep playing your momentary stupidity over and over in your mind, and it's too late to do anything about it.

Right after I hit the back of this lady's car, I pulled over, as did she, and I walked up to her car to make sure everyone was okay. She said, really mean, "What were you thinking?"

I get why she'd be upset. But, I mean, obviously I was thinking something totally unrelated to crashing my car into someone. If I were thinking about crashing my car, that would mean I had foreseen the accident, which would probably cause me to hit the brakes before colliding with anything. Unless I run into other people's cars intentionally, like I'm in a Cronenberg movie. But if I'm the kind of dude who's ramming into other people's cars in the hopes of having eventually having sex, Spader-style, with the ensuing stump, I'm not necessarily going to admit that when questioned.

What I'm saying is, basically, I hit her car for absolutely no good reason...but she asked me a stupid question. So, in a very real sense, we're now even.

(6) Flight attendants will soon have the World's Most Embarrassing Job

According to Fox News, a reliable source for information and perspectives about world news if ever there was one, flight attendants will be expected to monitor customer use of the in-flight wireless Internet service. And you know what that means:

If the person sitting next to you or your child is viewing explicit porn and you're not happy about it, feel free to direct your complaint to the flight attendant.

"Um, yes, pardon me Mr., um, Thompson...I hate to disturb you. Some of the other customers have complained about your loud and repetitive viewing of what appears, from this distance, to be a video entitled 'Cake Farts.' If you wouldn't mind safely stowing your laptop and genitals in their proper, upright position, we won't have to go and get the Taser. Can I get you some tomato juice, perhaps? Or a second complimentary vacuum-sealed packet containing 2.7 peanuts?"

[NOTE: I'm not linking to Cake Farts, you sick bastard. Look it up yourself.]

Import Nights Are So Hot Right Now

Just got back from the Hot Import Nights automotive lifestyle show at the LA Convention Center. I was there for Mahalo Daily, mind you, not because I have any particular interest in cars. Although I do have a particular interest in scantily-clad models, so it wasn't a complete wash.

We had a really good time and captured some great footage that you'll all be seeing next week. But it did get me thinking about this whole notion of "subcultures" and how people define themselves. Several people whom I interviewed today explained to me that they "trick out" or modify their cars as a mode of self-expression.

It doesn't really make a car that much more useful to, say, lower it, or add a blacklight, or even put a Nintendo Wii in the trunk, they explained. (How often would you play a Trunk Wii? When is that going to be useful? When you're stuck in the parking lot after a Dodger game? When you want to keep the girl you've just kidnapped occupied while you plan your next move?) It's not about functionality - it's just a way to give other people a sense of who you are and what you're all about.

I gotta be honest here...I don't understand this. I mean, self-expression is great. I'm not trying to knock people who want to be individuals and put themselves out there for the world to see. I am, after all, writing a blog post this very moment, and I spent all day being filmed for a podcast. So it would be pretty hypocritical of me to turn around and belittle others for trying to do essentially the same thing.

But how is modifying your car saying anything to anyone about you personally? Doesn't it instead reflect on the individuals who designed the car or the customization? If you spend money to get people to pimp your ride, are you expressing yourself or are you paying them to express themselves?

I mean, even if you did all the work yourself, and designed all the parts yourself, it's still fairly inadequate as a format for expressing yourself. Writing, taking photographs, making art, performing, filming something...those are all cheaper and, it seems to me anyway, more vital and telling and informative. What's the most compelling insight into your nature that someone could glean from looking at your car?

(1) I like cars

(2) I like green cars

(3) I like fast cars

(4) I like decals

(5) I could kick your ass at Super Smash Bros. Brawl

(I'd like to point out that I'm not trying to be cynical or mean-spirited here. I'm genuinely interested in answers to this question. If you're a big fan of styling cars and feel it is a perfectly valid way to speak to others about who you are, please do leave a comment below. I'd love to start a discussion on this.)

The other weird thing about Hot Import Nights is the way these models were displayed. I mean, I like looking at a sexy girl in a skimpy outfit. Believe me, I do.

But there was such novelty attached to it at the show, like it was an exhibit designed for aliens who had never before seen an attractive human female. There was a line to get a photo taken in between a Pontiac Solstice and a girl who was half-naked and cute. (Of course I waited in it...The picture will be online within 72 hours, I'm told...You'll just have to wait until then to see it.)

A line! To get a picture taken with a cute girl and a car? What, am I going to be able to fool my friends with this later? "Hey, dude, check out this picture of me with my new car and girlfriend! No, you can't meet her, and I can't show you the car. They're in, um, Canada."

At a booth where they were giving away this energy drink called NOS, a bevy of buxom models were on-hand to chat up losers and drive sales, but none of them could even tell me anything about the drink, or seemed even vaguely interested in talking about it. The one girl I interviewed on camera told me she never drank energy drinks because caffeine makes her jittery. I mean, hey, boobs are neat, I think we can all agree on that point. But in this situation, I'm not sure they're actually going to move any NOS units. Someone who could actually endorse the product might have a bit more luck...

Around this point, I really needed the NOS boost, because I was utterly exhausted. I wound up ducking out of the show kind of early (I didn't even get to see The Game perform!), but I still think it will make an interesting podcast. Such a strange new kind of environment for me...It's cool that filming some of these Daily episodes is allowing me to experience all these events going on right under my nose that I would otherwise never get a chance to see.

The Obligatory Post-Vegas Wrap-Up

So I decided not to drive to Vegas after all, but to take a relatively inexpensive Southwest flight leaving Friday afternoon.

LAX Security has become, at this point, a cruel and degrading experience. People are constantly barking orders at you which make little to no practical sense. "Empty your pockets! Don't touch the sides! Show me your boarding pass!" Everyone's shuffling around holding out their shoes and ID's. The interior contents of people's luggage are displayed prominently in 3D on oversized color monitors. It's like Terry Gilliam designed an airport.

Once you're through Security, though, it's alright, cause there's plenty of magazines, Cinnabon and overpriced fruity tequila drinks for everybody. I was there maybe 2.75 hours ahead of time because I'm an idiot and I thought there'd be traffic on the 405. So I drained 3/4 of my iPod battery listening to the Michael Ian Black and Paul F. Tompkins comedy albums.

(Quick reviews: I saw MIB do most of these jokes in person not long ago, and I think they work a lot better in person. His material's only so-so, and it's largely about the performance and semi-interaction with the crowd. Much of the first track is taken up with Black chanting "Yay!" I actually attended a show at the Largo that's used on the Paul F. Tompkins album. I thought at the time that it was one of the best sets of comedy I had ever seen, and I found it just as hilarious hearing it again recorded. Tompkins is a genius. The highlight: his extended deconstruction of the "snakes in a can of peanut brittle" novelty item. This must be heard to be believed. I was cackling in the middle of LAX.)

Okay, so the flight's completely uneventful, I land in Vegas and meet up with my friend Dave at the airport purely by coincidence. We wait in a 12-hour Disneyland-esque queue for a taxi to the Strip.

My friend Matt, you see, is a chef, and he used to work for a guy who's now the executive chef at David Burke, a very nice restaurant inside the Venetian. (Don't actually go to the David Burke site, because it automatically starts playing really loud, tinny, irritating rock and roll. It's hard for me to believe that such a classy establishment would have such a garish Web presence.) So we decided to stay there, albeit packing more dudes into a single $200/night suite than it was initially meant to hold. It turns out, by the way, that one of these five men, who I'd like to stress was not me, decided to sleep in the nude, which hardly strikes me as appropriate.

All together, there must have been a dozen old college friends meeting up for this weekend in Vegas. I was amazed that we were able to organize such a significant gathering of people so easily, which is kind of depressing when you think about it. It's not all that hard to arrange meetings with old friends or to do fun things you've always wanted to do; we're just usually too lazy to bother. It was really great to see everyone; some of these guys, I haven't seen in years.

So we all met up and went to the Imperial Palace to gamble. I can't gamble at the Venetian. They want you to play $50 minimum bet blackjack. Are you insane? Don't you people read TechCrunch? I work for Jacob Marley in a blazer. I got $50 to blow on a hand of blackjack like I got Elon Musk's home number.

So we go to the Imperial Palace, which is more expensive than I remember it being, but still reasonable enough to satisfy my gaming needs. I end up in a game of Texas Hold 'Em, 1-2-no -limit. I had started by playing 2-4-limit, but it's almost impossible to play that way, because you can't really scare anyone off. The most they stand to lose is, like, $12, so people stay in with total shit and then suck out on you all the time. It's lame.

In the no-limit game, you stand to lose all your chips on a single hand, but it's much more like real poker in that you're actually trying to fake out your opponent, not just take as many chips as the rules will allow. I was playing incredibly conservatively, as I always do in Vegas and usually do in Los Angeles. It's a psychological thing with me in Las Vegas - even though I never bring more money than I can afford to lose, I'm always paranoid about going bankrupt. I think it's the fact that you're always being hustled in that city - by advertising, by aggressive guys on the street with fliers, by cab drivers, by massive 50-ft pictures of Rita Rudner. I overcompensate by being excessively on-my-guard.

So I'm barely betting unless I have, like, one of Phil Helmuth's 10 hands worth actually keeping. I actually got a straight flush at one point, if you can believe it, and managed to take a pretty reasonably-sized pot. (As I'd been playing conservatively all night, everyone but one guy was on to me from the beginning, but he stayed in right until the end.) My brother told me today that most casinos have payouts if you get four of a kind or a straight flush, but I didn't see any additional action on that. Maybe the dealers just noticed that I didn't expect anything and saved their corporate masters the expense. It was still kind of exciting.

The next day, I didn't really do much. We watched the UCLA game in the Sports Book, where a lot of people were excited that the Bruins won and a lot of other people were dumbfounded the Bruins won. A few of us went to Caeser's Palace and ate at the Stage Deli. We couldn't help but notice that everywhere around the Strip, you see posters for this guy named Danny Gans, who performs at the Mirage. "Entertainer of the Year!" the signs advertise. "The Best Show in Vegas!"

But it's just some guy no one has ever heard of named Danny Gans. Based on the ads they run on a loop on the Mirage sign, it looks like he does impressions of celebrities from the '70s and '80s. There's George Burns and Michael Jackson...this is the greatest show in Vegas? I mean, I'm not the biggest Blue Man Group fan either, and I find it hard to believe Louie Anderson is still alive let alone headlining at casinos, but Danny Gans is the best entertainer these guys can come up with? All that money sunk into decorating these casinos...you can't convince Don Rickles to haul his ancient ass up on a stage to insult the people?

The Sahara's got goddamn Roseanne Barr headlining on their mainstage! Roseanne! You know what would be more entertaining than that? Spending an evening in the actual fucking Sahara. Say, Bedouins, you're not going to go on any extended rants about how Barack Obama's in league with the UFO's to make us forget our past lives, right? Just checking...

(More on the sad state of affairs at the Sahara later!)

While the rest of the gang then watched the UNC-Duke game, I wandered up the Strip and played some single-deck blackjack at the Casino Royale. At one table, my dealer was a rather intense Serbian guy named, I believe, Hladen. He would get very upset whenever anyone would pick up their face-down cards with both hands, which happened pretty often. I'm not sure I've ever seen a dealer just yell at players like this...Some of these guys are surly; it's part of the atmosphere. But this was just blatant hostility. "No! You do not pick up the cards! This is cheating! I show you one more time!" It was pretty awesome.

Saturday night, a bunch of the crew split off to go to Fremont Street in Downtown Vegas in search of more discount gambling. Matt, Dave and I stayed behind to grab dinner with Matt's chef friend, Todd. We met up at David Burke, a very interesting restaurant decorated with rock salt shaped to look like brick walls. Todd bought himself time to finish up in the kitchen by preparing us a two-course "snack": first, we had a scallop topped with foie gras, my first-ever taste of the stuff. It's pretty amazing...sorry you can't have any, people who live in Chicago! Nyah, nyah. We followed that up with some lamb.

I could pretty much have stopped right there and been satisfied, but we then ventured to Cut, the Wolfgang Puck-owned high-end steakhouse that just opened in the Palazzo, the new hotel/casino that's attached to the Venetian. What followed might be the most ludicrous, amazing orgy of food I have ever experienced. Finding out that one of our party was a chef at another Venetian restaurant was all these guys needed to hear; they began sending out wave after wave of delicious, intensely rich meats.

Seriously, little mini hamburger sliders followed by steak and tuna tartare followed by pork belly and veal tongue followed by a perfectly-cooked steak the size of pudgy housecat. "Excuse me, I believe I ordered the Rib-Eye, not the Entire-Back-End-Of-The-Steer-Eye." Chef Todd tried to talk me into trying bone marrow...but I'm sorry, that just sounds wrong to me. Oh, yeah, and then warm date cake. The one thing I ate that night that never had a soul.

Matt and Todd treated to the orgy meal, and for that I am eternally grateful. And also still somewhat bloated.

Sunday in Vegas is not really much of a day at all. Everyone's all panicked about getting out of town and avoiding the surging crowds, you're most likely hungover and broke, etc. But I'm pretty sure my Vegas Sunday was worse than most other people's.

We checked out of the Venetian at 11. Lots of people had made early flight arrangements, so we said some goodbyes. I was left essentially on my own at the Venetian by noon, about four hours before my flight and two hours before I needed to get to the airport. I decided to walk to the Sahara, which is where Nathan and Chris were staying, to get some lunch before I caught my plane. It's not a particularly long walk (I'd guess maybe 1.5 miles) from the Venetian to the Sahara, but it was hot and I was carrying a duffel bag, so I was pretty tired.

On the way, I stopped by this big mall on the Strip and bought a book for the airport/flight back. I had brought the book I've been working on, Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum," but to be honest, I think I'm giving up on it. I can't get through it. There are too many digressions and arcane Medieval references...The cover sells it as a sort of "Indiana Jones for Smart People," or "Da Vinci Code for Non-Morons" if you prefer, but I don't remember Indy doing quite this much contemplating and using this many Old English phrases. And if Dan Brown even considered writing something like this, they'd run him out of the publishing business so fast, it'd make James Frey's career look like Tom fucking Clancy's.

I'm so lost with this book, Dave Eggers should hold a fundraiser for me. It's just not enjoyable any more. And because I don't have to take a test on it, I think I'll skip the next 400 pages. This is my first attempt at Eco...maybe it's just not my thing.

So I bought this book called "Absurdistan," which I had read a review for a while back, and it's hilarious and awesome. It's about a morbidly obese, spoiled Russian Jew who wants to return to America but can't because of his gangster father. I can't remember the last novel I read that was this entertaining...perhaps "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates"?

At the Sahara, the three of us decided to just grab a quick bite at the coffee shop. So I'm drinking my coffee and waiting for my omelette when Chris sees a big cockroach skitter underneath our booth. We're, understandably, disgusted. We get up from the booth and another customer brushes a roach off his face. Then we see an ENORMOUS cockroach on one of the other tables. They were everywhere. It was revolting. I can't believe I even drank a half-cup of their coffee. NEVER EAT AT THE SAHARA COFFEE SHOP. Or pretty much anywhere in the Sahara.

I was off food pretty much the rest of the day.

Then, flight back to LA, cab ride home, sleep. The end.

You Build 16 Stubs, What Do You Get?

Ironically, while I was enjoying a lovely three-day weekend in Vegas, the Internet got angry with my boss for working me too hard.

Now, don't me wrong. I work hard for the money. So much so, in fact, that people occasionally treat me right.

It all started when Jason, the CEO of Mahalo, wrote this post discussing some of the principles he has employed in running the company. I would say this post very accurately reflects the culture at Mahalo.

Buy second monitors for everyone, they will save at least 30 minutes a day, which is 100 hours a year... which is at least $2,000 a year.... which is $6,000 over three years. A second monitor cost $300-500 depending on which one you get. That means you're getting 10-20x return on your investment... and you've got a happy team member.

I have three monitors at work. It's like starring in my own Michael Bay film. "Abort! Abort! Get 'em outta there!"

Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are a complete rip off. We buy stainless steel restaurant tables that are $100 and $600 Areon chairs.

We do have excellent chairs.

Here's the segment that got controversial:

Fire people who are not workaholics. don't love their work... come on folks, this is startup life, it's not a game. don't work at a startup if you're not into it--go work at the post office or stabucks if you're not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.

The strikethroughs are in the original. Jason changed the language after the strong Internet reaction. I'm really not clear as to why "it's not a game" is crossed out, though. Mahalo is no game - we're all busting our ass around there. There's no playtime on this guy's watch.

As for the stuff about "balance" in one's life, I have two responses:

(1) It's entirely possible to work at Mahalo and still have some kind of balance in your life. Many Mahalo guides and developers have strong passions outside of work - there are numerous authors, screenwriters, musicians, athletes, bloggers, podcasters, actors, even feature film directors. Numerous guides and developers are married; some have children. Sounds like balance to me. Oh, but they work hard for a guy with high expectations, so that doesn't count as having a life. Now, going to tech industry conferences every weekend...THAT'S LIVING! WOOOOO-EEEEEEE!

(2) Jason was right the first time. Balance is overrated. Obsessiveness is not rewarded nearly enough in this world. The only way to get truly amazingly good at something is to obsess over it. There are things in this world that rely heavily on natural ability and can't be achieved through extensive experience, practice or investigation...but not too many.

When I worked at Laser Blazer, I would estimate that I watched, on average, 1 movie I had never seen before each day. Some days, I would watch movies at work, then come home and watch 2 or 3 more movies. That's obsessive behavior. But I bet I know more about movies than you, unless you have also kept up a regimen like this for an extended period of time.

Not everyone's personality works this way. Some people need to focus for 6-8 hours and then get the hell away and focus elsewhere. I get that. They should just find a job that fits this lifestyle and rhythm. Mahalo is so not that job. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't be able to work there. If my post-production job had required this level of dedication, I would have quit inside a week. (Wisely, they worked me just hard enough to dampen my spirits and keep me quiet for 3 years, but not so hard that I'd actually come to my senses and quit. My revenge was not really giving a shit and sometimes getting drunk at lunch.)

But these days, I care about what I'm doing and I enjoy my job, so I get obsessive about it, because that's just how I am. It's not really about the salary.

Some of the responses to Jason's post were, in my mind, ludicrously naive. Most ludicrous? This one from 37signals titled "Fire the Workaholics." Good luck with all that...

People who are workaholics are likely to attempt to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at the problem. If you’re dealing with people working with anything creatively that’s a deadbeat way to get great work done.

Time and concentrated effort won't necessarily solve every problem alone...but you've got to admit that it really helps, right? Perhaps this is why, immediately after a homicide has happened, they start scouring the crime scene and questioning witnesses rather than, say, catching up on last week's "House." Building a company from scratch takes a lot of work, and that means a lot of hours. If you have someone who's passionate enough about the job to work long hours for you solving problems...you're gonna tell me that's a bad thing, because they're not being creative enough?

If all you do is work, your value judgements [sic] are unlikely to be sound. Making good calls on “is it worth it?” is absolutely critical to great work. Missing out on life in general to put more hours in at the office screams “misguided values”.

I fail to see how working hard and utilizing good judgment are mutually exclusive.

But still, just for the sake of argument, let's consider a scenario: Two employees both come up with the same idea and the boss hates it. "That's a terrible idea!" the hypothetical boss who is absolutely not based on any real boss says. So one employee goes, "Crap, he didn't like my idea, what a big meanie" and goes home while the other hangs out for 4 hours trying to improve his or her idea. You're telling me the latter employee has "misguided values"? Isn't this usually called "trying"? Or "giving a shit"?

Working with interesting people is more interesting than just working. If all you got going for your life is work, work, work, the good team-gelling lunches are going to be some pretty boring straight shop talk. Yawn. I’d much rather hear more about your whittling project, your last trek, how your garden is doing, or when you’ll get your flight certificate.

You'd rather your employees talk about goddamn whittling than the vital task at hand? REALLY? I mean, there's no need to be a Nazi, and I think it's fine to allow people to be people and to gab occasionally during the day (and Mahalo, like all workplaces, has its share of socializing, and more of its fair share of Rick Rolling). But it's not a bad thing if a lot of people who work on a big project want to talk about the project. We can talk about what books we're enjoying on GoodReads and go see monster movies on opening night, but that's hardly the top priority.

I mean, regardless of what you personally think of Mahalo, the fact is that the people who work on it believe in what we're doing. So once you start from that assumption, not wanting to take 2 hour coffee breaks to discuss whittling makes more sense. (Not that it doesn't sound riveting.)

Writing About Las Vegas While Avoiding the Phrase "Vegas Baby"

After this sentence, I will attempt to keep the words "Vegas" and "baby" a minimum of four words apart...

So, I'm going to Vegas next weekend to meet up with a bunch of college friends, many of whom live in far-flung locations and whom I get to see rarely. It promises to be a lot of fun, and as if the reunion aspect weren't enough, I'm getting an excellent rate on a suite at the Venetian. So a good time will hopefully be had by all.

I always drive to Vegas. I hate everything about air travel, for starters, and would almost always prefer to just control my own itinerary by driving myself. Not having to subject myself to ritual humiliation at the hands of TSA employees (us Semitic bearded guys tend to get a bit of extra attention these days) is an added bonus. Also, it just seems silly to spend hundreds of dollars on a flight when it's only 4-5 hours away by car.

My only concern is this: several years ago, I drove back from Vegas on a Sunday night at it took forever. Granted, that was a holiday weekend (Thanksgiving), but still...I'd prefer to not have to inch through several hundred miles of desert for 8+ hours again if at all possible.

There is nothing in this world more frustrating and depressing than sitting in traffic in the middle of the desert. (It took us about an hour to get through Baker! Population: 12 if you include the Bun Boy!) It made me feel so predictable, like a robot. This massive expanse of land all around me, and I'm waiting in a workday-length line to follow the identical single path everyone else is following, towards our mutual destination. Plus, it's not like you can just pull off the road and wait it out, unless you'd enjoy the company of salamanders and meth labs for the evening. (I don't even want to know what's down Zzyzx Road).

So I'll either have to leave Vegas way way early on Sunday to beat the crowds (an unappealing option, as I'm only arriving late on Friday), or I'll have to wait until way way late on Sunday to avoid the crowds. I'll probably go for the latter and just show up late for work the next day, but then there's the question of how late I should wait? 8 p.m.? 10 p.m.? Midnight? It's just a shitty situation to be in, trying to outguess my fellow LA visitors to Vegas.

If only we could organize it somehow...Like, everyone who will be driving to Vegas this weekend signs up on a website and picks their three favored departure times, and then they get an e-mail telling them when they've been assigned to leave for LA to allow for maximum traffic dispersal. I guess it's unenforceable, but at least people would have some kind of clue. This way, I'll just end up falling asleep at the wheel before I can hit Barstow, or foregoing the return trip altogether in favor of a new life as a slot jockey. Anything's better than sitting in one of those Vegas-to-LA traffic jams.

When I Was 29...It Wasn't a Particularly Good Year...

It wasn't a particularly good year...for city girls...

And, I don't know any more words to that song.

So, today was my 29th birthday, which is one of those birthdays where nothing good happens but a lot of depressing things happen. You get no new privileges or rights at 29. In fact, I don't really get any new rights or privileges ever again, excepting perhaps AARP membership privileges and handicapped parking privileges. But it is a none-too-subtle reminder that I'm fast approaching the age that's pretty much universally regarded as the End of Fun and Youth.

I try not to be too morose about birthdays, of course. There is the whole "free shit" concept that makes the Countdown to Mortality a bit more tolerable. And I haven't reached an age yet where things have become totally bleak. My health hasn't completely faded. I still have SOME hair, though I won't be able to say that for too many more birthdays. Essentially, there's still some promise and hope left for my life. I could still turn things around. This coming one is really the decisive decade. If I haven't made a go of things by 39, I'm in deep deep trouble.

So, facing down an ugly truth like that one, I simply had to indulge in some pointless consumerism. It's the American way, after all. Think about something unpleasant, fill the newly-created emotional void with SHOPPING! (It worked after 9/11. "The terrorists DON'T want you to buy lots of stuff, so you'd better do it or else they win!") So I bought myself an Xbox 360.

I haven't had a video game system since I bought a used PlayStation 2 and wore it out within a few months. (Apparently, even though they function as DVD players, the PS2's weren't really designed for that purpose in mind long-term, which is a pretty massive design flaw if you ask me...) Before that, I'm pretty sure I hadn't had one since the Super Nintendo. I really like video games, but I suck at them, and I found that, over time, my desire to play them for more than 15 minutes at a go has dwindled.

But ever since Mahalo focused seriously on being the best source for video game information on the Intar-Web, I've had a chance to check out a bunch of Xbox games while at work. (I don't actually get to play any games during office hours - that's what Sunday afternoons are for - but they are being played by well-trained, serious professionals at all times, all around me.)

After being vivisected at "Halo 3" a few weekends back by a few fellow guides, I've also had a chance to try out "Assassin's Creed" and "The Simpsons Game." But the real clincher for me was this past weekend, when a small group of enthusiasts gathered at Mahalo HQ to play the new "Rock Band."

Holy crap, this game is AWESOME. I decided to buy the Xbox on the spot. (Yeah, I know it's also on the PS3, but my roommate already has a PS3.) I was actually on vocals for a while, and did surprisingly well. (100% on "Wave of Mutilation," biotches.) Quite possibly the most fun "party" video game ever.

So that was Birthday Weekend 2007. Oh, plus I saw a shitload of movies that I haven't gotten around to reviewing yet, including the postmodern Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There and the ridiculous, entertaining, ridiculously entertaining Beowulf. Also, sleeping.

Should You Wash Your Hands After Going #1?

Oliver Willis says yes. Before going any further, I'd like to state for the record that, regardless of the argument I'm about to advance, I actually do wash my hands after I urinate. It's just force of habit at this point.

There's just a few things I'd like to point out.

(1) There is no reason my penis should be any more dirty than any other part of my body, and it certainly ought to be cleaner than my hands, provided I haven't been using it recently. My hands touch all kinds of dirty things all day - far far worse than my genitals - from pocket change to shoes to the floor to the exterior of my car. So why is it mandatory that I wash my hands every time I touch my penis? The thing's not radioactive.

(2) If you're getting pee on your hand when you go #1, you're doing it wrong.

In the course of making his point - that it's icky not to wash after you piss - Oliver links to this USA Today column. But they don't really make his case for him very well:

...the experts still recommend washing, for two reasons.

Reason one: You may pick up more germs than you think, from doors, flush handles and other surfaces, and from your own body. "Your gastrointestinal tract is close by," Daly says. "It all fits together, and you can't see where the microorganisms are."

Okay, see, but...that's just stupid. My gastrointestinal tract is close to my penis? I mean, speaking globally, yes, it is closer than, say, New York and The Hague. But the small of my back is also relatively close to my gastrointestinal tract, and I don't run to the washroom every time I reach back there to scratch an itch.

Let's add an addendum to the end of observation #2 above. If you're getting doody on your hand when you go #1, you're seriously doing it wrong. Like, holy shit, are you doing it wrong! Wow! If you ever find poo on your hand, for any reason, wash that fucker immediately, without hesitation.

Reason two: The restroom, stocked with sinks, soap and water, is a convenient place to wash off bacteria and viruses your hands accumulate elsewhere during the day. Studies do show groups of people who wash their hands regularly get fewer gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses.

But this has nothing to do with washing after you go #1. This is just stating, quite obviously, that it's a decent idea to wash your hands a few times a day. Because live is messy and germs are everywhere. I can get behind that message. And I'm not even saying you shouldn't wash your hands whenever you exit a bathroom. (The "germs on the door handle" argument is fairly compelling.) But let's not go nuts here. There's far more gross things that people do each day than rush out of the bathroom after a nice tinkle without washing.

A Considerable Weekend

Did lots of stuff I had no chance to blog about this weekend. So here we go, in brief form:

American Gangster

Okay, so I watched this last week...um...illegally. But I didn't get a chance to review it. It's a pretty good flick, with some solid performances and a great soundtrack full of '70s soul. (I knew Jay-Z's latest album is a tie-in with the movie, but none of those songs actually appear in the film. It's weird from a marketing standpoint, but the decision not to go with anachronistic hip-hop in the background was a smart one.) I think the only thing that kept me from loving the movie was its familiarity.



There have been a lot of other movies about real-life drug dealers from this era, and all the stories are fairly similar. Resourceful criminal finds a way to obtain cheap narcotics from a foreign supplier, quickly rises to the top of his profession and eventually falls from grace, with the very ambition and aggressiveness that initially won him a fortune bringing about his downfall. There's nothing American Gangster really brings to that formula, and its one kind of unique element - the switching of perspectives between kingpin Frank Lucas (Washington) and the policeman chasing him (Russell Crowe) - kind of bogs the film down rather than adding anything new to the mix. It also could stand to be a bit more entertaining; the movie starts slow, and never really finds its rhythm, exactly.

Neil Young at the Nokia Theater

Caught Neil's show on Friday night with my brother and father. His wife Pegi opened with kind of a bland collection of throwback country songs. Granted, this isn't really my genre to begin with, but the set was, I hate to say it, kind of boring.

Neil then came on stage alone and played about a 45 minute acoustic set that was pretty stellar. The highlight? "A Man Needs a Maid." I never really imagined he'd pull that one out, and the performance kind of blew me away. There was this obnoxious hillbilly couple sitting directly behind me (they must have driven in from somewhere in Central California, because they had that drawl you just don't get from Los Angelinos) talking through the entire show (and always with ridiculously folksy, stupid comments), and even they shut up during "Man Needs a Maid." Although immediately afterwards, they had to comment. "I think he's got two keyboards on that stage. Sounded like two keyboards." "What was he talking about in that song? Gettin' a maid? That's hee-larious." Ugh.

Then, Neil returned for a 90 minute electric set, which includes about a half-hour's worth of jamming on "No Hidden Path," one of the songs off his new record, Chrome Dreams II. It may have gone on a bit too long, and my brother absolutely loathed this portion of the performance, but I enjoyed seeing the band get deep into spaced-out jam mode. I used to see a lot more jammy kind of bands (including, yes, Phish), and I guess I'm just not bothered it the way others seem to be. For me, the music isn't more or less boring because there's no vocals and it lacks traditional structure. If it sounds good, I'm fine with it. Not trying to put down people who don't see it that way, and there are certainly jams I've seen that have gone on way too long. (Built to Spill once played a version of "Randy Describes Eternity" that was so long, I had time to forget what song they were even playing, then remember, then forget again.)

Here's the full setlist:

From Hank To Hendrix / Ambulance Blues / Sad Movies / A Man Needs A Maid / No One Seems To Know / Harvest / Love In Mind / After The Gold Rush / Mellow My Mind / Love Art Blues / Love Is A Rose / Heart Of Gold // The Loner / Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere / Dirty Old Man / Spirit Road / Bad Fog Of Loneliness / Winterlong / Oh, Lonesome Me / The Believer / No Hidden Path // Cinnamon Girl / Cortez The Killer /Tonight's The Night

I mean, "After the Gold Rush"? "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere"? "Cortez the Killer"? No complaints here...

Here's playlist from some of the best Neil songs I could find on Seeqpod:



V Lounge

So, that was Friday night. I went to work Saturday for a few hours. Hey, somebody's got to cover the "Dog the Bounty Hunter is a Racist/Moron/Obnoxious Star of a Terrible Reality Show" case, am I right? Right? Am I right?

Then, Saturday night, I headed out with Adam from Mahalo to the birthday party of our co-worker, Jenny at V Lounge, which is a Hollywood-style nightclub in Santa Monica. Which, in case you're not from LA, is kind of strange. Anyway, we had to wait about 45 minutes outside V Lounge to get in, and during that time I actually saw one of my few close friends, randomly. (She, having boobs, naturally walked right in.) This was highly awesome, because nothing makes you look cooler in front of people you don't know that well than running into random friends outside of nightclubs. Like a Man About Town or something.

I know this may be hard for all of you to imagine, but nightclubs are actually not my scene at all. In a bar, I actually have a chance of possibly getting to know someone. That place encapsulates all the benefits of inebriation (like confidence and seeming a lot more witty) without the thunderously loud music or need to demonstrate some level of physical coordination you get in a nightclub. A club simultaneously robs my of the ability to converse (my only real asset in these kind of social situations) AND provides me with a primary activity - dancing - that's essentially an invitation to make a serious asshole out of myself. Bad news. (Also, I don't own any real club-appropriate clothing. There was a guy there wearing a half-opened shimmery black shirt with a dragon embroidered over the left shoulder. I couldn't live with myself if I paid money for something like that.)

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Went and saw this today in Long Beach. This is the second movie in a row I've seen in a theater in Long Beach where the sound was fucked up. When I saw The Kingdom at the Marina Pacifica 12, there was a blown speaker that messed up all the low-end rumble (considerable in the film's action-heavy final act.) Today, during Elizabeth: The Golden Age at the UA Marketplace, one speaker would randomly cut in and out, totally screwing with the surround sound. It got really bad during the climactic battle versus the Spanish Armada. Seriously, am I just spoiled living in a film-conscious town like LA? Are most movie theaters around the country incapable of screening a film without these kinds of irritating technical glitches? No wonder people are just illegally downloading this shit and watching it on the computers. Relatively little chance that a quality DVD rip is going to have screwy sound issues.



As for the film, it's pretty entertaining and slickly made. I haven't seen the original Elizabeth in a while, but I recall being kind of bored during that film's midsection, so I'm tempted to say this one's better paced. Blanchett and Rush are great as always in surprisingly physical performances. (Blanchett performs a lot of the film in extreme close-up, which can't be easy to do, and Rush believably plays a weakened and frail old man). Samantha Morton was perfectly cast as Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and has a few terrifically imperious, almost frightening scenes in which to shine. (If she had just a bit more screen time, I'd think her a natural pick for a Supporting Actress nod.)

The conclusion of the film - the 1588 attack of the Spanish Armada on England - feels a lot like a throwback historical adventure-romance with Clive Owen (playing Sir Walter Raleigh) in the Errol Flynn role. These scenes are actually kind of fun, and rather inadvertently highlights the staid dryness of the film's earlier passages.

Golden Age is also teeming with historical inaccuracy. I'm not particularly well versed on this period of English history, but even I could tell they were straining to retell all the major events of the Anglo-Spanish War within 2 hours with a minimum of excess characters. This is a shame, because I sense that most Americans know very little about the events portrayed, and they will most likely fill in these gaps in their knowledge with the inaccuracies of the movie. (A guy sitting behind me at the theater talked a lot during the film, and seemed to have very little background on any of these figures. It took him a good long while to even get his bearings. I sense wouldn't have been able to identify the country in which the movie took place if it hadn't appeared on screen at the beginning.)

It didn't really hurt my enjoyment of the movie as a movie, and I understand why a little unrequited love may have been needed for the sake of drama.

But the story of the Tudor/Stuart showdown, of the Spanish fleet's attack on England's significantly weaker Navy, of the clash between Protestantism and Catholicism that essentially defined hundreds of years of European history, has some innate drama as well, right? Do we really need to change so much to make this story work?

NaNoWriMo-ing

So I've decided to take the plunge and participate in NaNoWriMo this November. That little bit of shorthand stands for National Novel Writing Month, 30 days in which a bunch of random strangers take a not-particularly-serious oath to complete a 50,000 word novel. (50,000 counts as a novel, I suppose, and not a novella, but just barely. It's about 175 pages.)

The site asks you to choose a "genre" for your profile, which was the first point at which it occurred to me that, here it is, November 2nd, and I don't even know what I'm going to write about. I'm sure I'll come up with something (I already have a few ideas), but just to lock myself in, I selected "Horror & Thriller" as my genre. So this should be interesting...

Anyone who has a lot of time on his or her hands and wants to take part in this thing should sign up as my buddy here!

Yes, Idea Man! Creator! Innovator! Cerebrator! Tycoon!

Yes, the Idea Man! What're his hopes and dreams, his desires and aspirations? Does he think all the time or does he set aside a certain portion of the day? How tall is he and what's his shoe size? Where does he sleep and what does he eat for breakfast? Does he put jam on his toast or doesn't he put jam on his toast, and if not why not and since when?

-- The Hudsucker Proxy, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, and Sam Raimi

Back in January, I answered a mysterious Craig's List ad for researchers. No information on what would be researched. No office to report to. No company name provided. I responded anyway, if only to find out what the hell was going on.

A few days later, I found myself walking around a stranger's home in Brentwood. I had been told to appear at this address, but there were no signs, no instructions, no people waiting around to guide my way. I walked through a gate and into a backyard. In a guest house next to a pool, a few people were busily working on brand new iMacs, but they were consumed in their work and not looking my way. No one else was around. The thought occurred to me that I should leave, that this could be a scam. An inscrutable scam, one that involved fraudulently luring in job applications, but a scam all the same. ("Okay, where's Ashton? Oh, right, I'm not famous...")

It was not a scam. I soon thereafter met Mark Jeffrey and he pitched to me the basics of Mahalo, what was to be the latest venture from entrepreneur Jason Calacanis. Two thoughts crossed my mind simultaneously:

(1) This sounds like a fun and interesting job!

and

(2) This idea will probably not work!

I assumed, quite naturally, that because the Internet is composed of millions of pages about millions of topics, any one of which could be of interest to anyone at any time, there would be no reasonable way for human beings to neatly organize all available information. This is the reasonable conclusion to reach. Anyone who has spent any amount of time online would understand this point.

After 5 months on the project, I am now quite confident that this is not a major concern. Not because Mahalo will be able to respond to any potential query anyone could have, but because the actual range of commonly-searched queries is quite manageable for a large enough staff of Internet "guides."

Let's take a look at this Donald Trump page. Now, people talk about Donald Trump all the time, everyday, all of the Intra-t00bz. That's his job. He says or does pretty much anything he can think of to ensure that people will talk about him. If I personally have hundreds of Mahalo pages to update, create and oversee, there's no way I could possibly find the time to put a new link on this Donald Trump page every time he insults Rosie O'Donnell. Honestly, even if I was only in charge of updating the Donald Trump page for 8 hours a day, I still wouldn't manage to get all of his Rosie insults on there. The guy's a machine.

If you'll skip down to the Gossip and Blogs section, you'll notice that we have syndicated the 3 most recent Gawker posts. Doing this in both the Gossip and News sections of the page make it, essentially, self-updating.

Naturally, someone will have to check in with the page now and again, to clear out dead links and find new articles and videos of special significance. Say, if Trump gets a new TV show, or starts picking on a different daytime television host. (Might I recommend Rachael Ray?) But even if we don't get to it for a week or two at a time, new news and information from quality sites without spam will always be available on Mahalo, 24/7. (Not to mention the fact that users can suggest their own links, which get immediately e-mailed to the guide who created the page, allowing us to update and incorporate new links at any time quickly.)

I didn't just want to brag about my involvement with Jason's remarkable invention; I'm actually building to a point here. See, the idea itself for Mahalo, no offense meant to Jason...it's not that hard to come up with. You don't have to be some crazy futurist visionary to imagine a version of Google that's compiled by people, so it doesn't suck quite so bad.

A lot of search engines have even come fairly close to the same idea. This one pairs you with a live guide in a chat room, who does your search for you in real time. (It doesn't really work all that well.) This one clusters your searches for you, making them more organized and easier to scan than many Google results. This one organizes sets of sites for you before you search, allowing for more exact, targeted results. (It does appear to limit the number of sources you can search, though, instead of giving you a taste of everything that's out there.) And the guy behind Wikipedia is working on a somewhat similar concept as well, sort of a Search/Wikipedia hybrid allowing individuals to create website-portals about any topic.

But anyway, my point is, what made Jason's Mahalo concept so special wasn't the idea itself but that he's insane enough to actually attempt to make it work. Had I come up with the idea of human-powered search, I would dismiss it out of hand immediately. Couldn't be done. Too many searches. It would take too many people. You'd have to outsource the work and would get crummy results. Spammers would get through.

Of course, Team Mahalo has still found a way to make it work. It wasn't always easy, and not everything we all theoretically want to do with the site is possible, but you can go check it out for yourself. We're off to an amazing start and it's only going to keep getting better as we go.

People have this very strange idea about ideas, as if brilliant innovations just shoot out of the foreheads of geniuses, Athena-style, who and complete. It's nonsense. The great breakthroughs are all assembled slowly over time, building on mistakes and improving gradually, because solving problems is much easier if you're willing to leave them unsolved for a while.

Is this obvious to everyone else, and has only taken me 28 years to figure out?

Because my instinct is the exact polar 180 degree opposite of this philosophy. When I encounter a problem - any kind of problem, really, personal or professional - I want to solve it immediately, right away, or I get all antsy and upset. C.K. has actually called me on this pretty recently; I meet with some difficulty, and I can't stop obsessing about it until it's taken care of, one way or another. This is, to put it simply, not how things work in the real world. Sometimes, things don't work quite right, and you take the time to figure it out, and then you fix it.

When we were first building these Mahalo pages, we had no idea what we were doing. There was no template for a human-designed search results page (or SeRP, to get all insider-y on you). A few of us guides invented it, and then scrapped that design and went with a new one, and then scrapped it again. We had all sorts of ideas that didn't come to fruition: massive cartoon graphics charting celebrity hookups, interactive maps of the "Lost" island and on and on and on. It's been an enlightening experience to make mistakes and keep making them, knowing that you'll figure them out later. It's...I don't know...relaxing.

Anyway, there's a major life lesson in all this somewhere, but damned if I can see my way through to it, exactly. Something about having the courage to actually believe that something might work, that one idea might actually be worth trying. It's not arrogance, exactly, although it can resemble arrogance. More like a particularly aggressive strain of confidence. And I can teach you all about it for the low low low price of only $39.95. Call today.

LA Whinin'

This is my eleventh year living in Los Angeles. Traffic has always been a problem. It's the number one complaint of just about every LA resident, except maybe those unfortunate individuals who reside in the direct flight path of LAX. Or Van Nuys. For some reason, I have known, like, eight different people who have personally related horror stories of life in Van Nuys. I have no idea what's going on over there in the Porn Capital, but if you can manage to avoid settling there, I would highly recommend doing so.

Anyway, I know that it's difficult to be impartial when gauging such things, but I think LA's traffic problem has grown considerably worse in the past year or so. It used to take 45 minutes to an hour in heavy traffic to get across town. I can distinctly recall, as a UCLA student, leaving Westwood at 5 pm to get to a 6:30 screening at the Paramount lot in Hollywood, and having enough time upon arriving to get through the front gate, park and walk to the screening room. If I were making that same drive today, I would leave no later than 4 pm to make sure I had adequate time.

Don't believe me? The other day, I had to travel from my new office (all part of the SMPWCNBN, which I'll actually be able to de-M-ify here in a few weeks) in Santa Monica to the Arclight in Hollywood for the Zodiac screening. 1 hour, 45 minutes it took. The 10 was completely shut down and every single surface street I tried (large and small) was at a standstill. There was no way to go North, South or East.

Lewis Black does a comedy routine about visiting Los Angeles. Eventually, he predicts, the traffic will be so bad, the roads will simply shut down. You will just sit stationary in your driveway forever waiting for nonexistent space to clear for your automobile. He's joking, but it's actually not that far off. It's 6 pm right now and I'm essentially locked in my immediate neighborhood until 8. It's not that it would take a long time or be generally irritating to try and venture any further. It's simply not possible. I would just sit, essentially stationary, in my car on Venice or Overland or the 405 or the 10 until around 7:30.

Last night, my father and brother went to go see the Mighty Ducks play in Orange County. (Don't ask me why, but they're both quite taken with the spectacle of large, toothless Canucks slamming into one another at high speeds in frigid, tightly-packed arenas.) My brother left Santa Monica (I may work there now, but I'll never use the familiar form, San Mo) at 4 in order to make a 7 o'clock hockey game. Now, bear in mind, that's 3 hours. To go less than 50 miles. 3 hours, folks. With open roads, you can get to Vegas in around 4. He was still considerably late to the game, by the way.

My question is...what's the flaw in Black's humorous logic? If the population continues to explode, not only in Los Angeles but every major US city, will we not eventually reach a point where there's just no more room for the excess people? And I don't mean figuratively, like we'll all get a bit more crowded and it will be noisier and more unpleasant and living conditions will worsen. I mean, won't we physically run out of room soon? Will we all just have to start sharing rooms? Is now a good time to invest in bunk bed futures?

And before anyone tries to twist this into a lame right-wing anti-immigration thing, I don't blame an influx of Mexicans into California for this problem. They have as much a right to be here as anybody, and this is a problem all LA residents are facing, not just the poor and disenfranchised.

So here's what I suggest. We have to be practical about this thing. Why do so many people move to Los Angeles? Here are my theories:

(1) The entertainment industry

Not only to talentless morons hoping to be the next Gwen Stefani move to LA, but so do all the Business School and Management assholes hoping to be the next Ari Emanuel or Sherry Lansing. It's fucking scary out there. You can usually tell these people immediately because they will only discuss workout routines or film industry gossip. Often at the same time.

The solution? Legally mandate 1/2 of all entertainment-related companies to Holbrook, Arizona. I've been to Holbrook, and I can tell you, that is a charming little community. While there, I ate at a small diner and met a desert dweller breathing out of an oxygen tank who had come inside to escape the dust storm that had completely shut down the only road out of town!

Anyway, what with Blackberriess and such, all these industry assholes don't need to occupy the same 10 square blocks any more (plus the unwashed masses who have been banished to Burbank). Why not ship half of them to lovely, sparsely populated AZ? let them video conference about the first-weekend grosses of Primeval instead of meeting for six-hour lunches at The Counter?

(2) The beautiful weather

Give climate change a few years and this isn't even going to matter any more. For forward looking investors, might I recommend Duluth and Fargo? A decade or two from now, they'll be downright balmy.

(3) The vibrant culture and sense of community

Nah, I'm just kidding

(4) Scientology

Let's face it...Hollywood is not an appropriate headquarters for a major world religion. If the Hubbardites want us to take them more seriously, they should relocate to somewhere that feels more sacred and holy. Jerusalem, perhaps? Medina? I'm just throwing ideas out there.

(5) UCLA and USC

This is what brought me to Los Angeles (though I grew up just south of here in Irvine). I had a great time at UCLA, and I learned a few things I suppose, but I couldn't in good conscience recommend the school now to an incoming freshman. UCLA (and, to a lesser extent, USC) are simply too crowded.

And not even in a "you'll get lost in the shuffle" kind of way. I sort of think that the need to make a mark in order to separate myself from the teeming crowds drove me to do more with my time at UCLA than I might have otherwise. Right away after arriving there, I joined the school paper, just out of a need to meet some people and develop some kind of stable, familiar strucutre for my life in that chaotic maelstrom.

No, I just mean that it's too goddamn crowded. When I was a student there, approximately one-third of my waking life was spent parking my car, walking back to my dorm from parking my car or worrying about where I was going to park. The student population has exploded since I graduated in 2000, so I can only imagine how much worse it must be now. Likewise, I can recall many days in which I would be unable to find a seat in a common area or student union during a break between classes. Morning walks to class, that might otherwise be pleasant strolls, instead become grim mass marches, with thousands of students proceeding down the same narrow paths in lockstep. Forget finding the library book you need, or even any space to study in the library. And students live absolutely on top of one another. When I was a student, over a decade ago, the school ran out of dorm rooms and forced groups of students to live in open, common rooms that had been set aside for socializing. Six, eight people, squatting in what is essentially a den.

The solution? These schools should accept less kids. Hey, I'm sorry, I know lots of kids want UCLA diplomas and want to come to Los Angeles to study. I did. But no one's getting the most out of these universities under these conditions. I'm sure UC Davis could use a little uptick in admissions. Send some of the underachievers there (particularly if they're passionate about, you know, cows).

Finally, I think it's clear that LA needs some kind of futuristic, super-mass-transit system. Perhaps the magnetic highway from Minority Report? You're telling me that shit's not possible? We've had magnets for centuries already! Or what about some kind of underground bullet train dealie? Just as long as it doesn't run under Paramount studios. That's where they keep the hideous radioactive bloodthirsty cannibal freaks.