The excitement and the bustle and the lights and the crowds. The energy of the city. The city that never sleeps. All of that gets a little wearing after three weeks. Then you start to notice the trash on the streets, the graffitti on the walls (and doors and windows and mail boxes), and the blank stares of oppressed apathy on the daily train commuters. Nobody smiles in this city. You either adapt or the city devours you piece by piece. Or maybe that is adapting. Some people love it here.

The Onion did a radio news segment recently on AOL e-mail. And although it was a joke there was a lot of truth to it. It’s unfortunate but every time someone gives me an e-mail address that ends with @aol.com, a little alert goes off inside my head that says “warning: this person hasn’t yet left their internet training wheels behind.” I used AOL at one time. It’s fine for anyone who doesn’t want to venture out onto the internet or for folks just getting started. But do not get AOL confused with truly being connected online.

We should stop giving hurricanes human names. It is most unfortunate for the people who happen to have the names of these storms. You can bet for sure that Katrina was not a popular baby name last year. The American Indians believe that naming something gives power to it. Just as Hitler ruined the name Adolph for a lot of people, let’s stop giving these hurricanes names that could give them more power and ruin the day for the people who have those names. I wouldn’t mind using the Greek alphabet to start, instead of using them as a backup in case we run out of “regular” hurricane names.

Do not take your video camera in there without prior permission. They will quickly ask you to stop, drop, and leave. It’s worse than trying to shoot in New York parks with a tripod. But seriously folks, everyone who works there says it’s next to impossible to shoot there. They offered no explanation as to why. I guess it’s just corporate policy. It’s not like I had planned on getting anything interesting there: just Rachel sitting behind her desk answering phones. But that restrictive a corporate policy doesn’t foster warm and fuzzy feelings in my corporation.

You can read the official blog on the company’s web site, but personal posts will always remain within my realm. Unendorsed, unsponsored, and unauthorized. As my readership may or may not know (though I know not whether I may or may not have a readership), I’ve moved to Denver to start a production company. Our first order of business is to produce a short internet reality/documentary show presently called Living the Dream. It’s about my sister and her move to NYC in pursuit of her acting career. Right now I’m the middle of production for the first episodes: her life in Colorado before the move, the move, and her establishment in NYC.

I don’t get it. I understand that pro athletes have great abilities: speed, agility, stamina, whatever their particular sport demands. I’m not knocking that ability; I have a great respect for their discipline and determination. But when it comes to professional, televised sports, what’s the big deal? What benefit, besides great entertainment, are they providing to the world? How are their sports playing abilities contributing to a better future for mankind? It’s good entertainment, but I think pro athletes make way too much money for what they do. Why can’t we spend some of that money on medical research or public infrastructure or social services?

Every network TV promo I’ve ever seen included the Eastern and Central time zones. Like, “Tomorrow on NBC at 9, 8 Central.” The 9 of course stands for the Eastern and Pacific time zones. The East Coast and West Coast have separate network feeds, so when it’s 9 pm Eastern time, the people on the West Coast will have to wait three hours to watch the same show. That’s fine and dandy and I can live with that. I can even live with the fact that people living in the Central time zone watch the show off the East Coast feed, which is of course one hour earlier on their clocks.

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet: please go see it. It’s not a marvel of cinematic mastery. It does have an agenda, it does have a political view, and Al Gore is longwinded. It’s basically a spruced up version of a multimedia presentation he’s been doing for a long time. He talks too much. It’s not a lot of talking heads, but it is a lot of talking combined with other interesting visuals. But he makes a good point and the movie is not unnecissarily long or unnecissarily longwinded.