Author: colter

Recent Videos

Here are a few brief videos of things I’ve done and seen in the last few weeks.

“Home”

All year I’ve been saying that by October I’d have some clearer idea about whether or not I would stay in New York. Here we are halfway through October and I’m still at an impasse. For me, Little Rock and New York are essentially the same in terms of net appeal. There are things each has that the other does not. I guess my only option is to give it more time and see if something comes up to pull me strongly in one direction or the other.

That said, I had a great time being back in Arkansas. I caught up with a few friends, had a small family reunion at my uncle’s birthday gathering, and attended a wedding (Jessie and Tiffany’s pictures are better than mine).

One side effect of being stuck on where I belong is that I haven’t been motivated to write or play guitar much. Limbo does not lend itself to creativity. Most days when I get home from work I just watch a DVD and goof off on the web[1]. I haven’t even gotten much reading done.

As of tomorrow I will have been working at American Express for one year. I don’t want to procrastinate on a decision, because time is moving ever faster these days. One thing I can say is that I should stick with the job until I’ve paid off the heating/cooling unit that Trey had installed earlier this year. I’ve got a few more thousand to go on my Amex card to do that. Then I’d like to have something saved up for travel if/when I move back, so really, I’m going to put off a decision until early next year.

1.) I actually spent an hour or so last night looking at photos of streetlights, traffic lights and power lines. I find this level of esoterica endlessly fascinating. I think I’m becoming addicted to information.

For Everything We Gain, We Lose Something

So my division has moved up to the 43rd floor, and the views are amazing. But my new cubicle is half the size of my old one. Contractors are assigned smaller cubes because the assumption is they work part-time, but I’m a full-time contractor, so we’ve put in a request to move me to a larger space. There’s an empty one right across from me. I’m thinking of moving in and seeing if anybody cares.

I’m also excited to have a new computer whose processing speed doesn’t make we want to drill rusty nails through my eyelids, even if it is a smaller laptop. I can now run Photoshop, Excel, Firefox and Lotus Notes at the same time without generating memory leaks or “virtual memory is too low” messages. I’m glad I saw the slow demise coming; it took almost two months to get the new computer delivered.

Tall Manhattan Buildings That Aren’t Offices, Or Why I’m a Complete Idiot

After working at American Express for almost a year now, I’ve discovered something about our view to the north. When we look out the window, we see what looks like a large brick deco building with two antennae on top. What we are actually seeing is a brick deco building with a near-identical yet larger brick deco building directly behind it with two antennae.

I discovered this on Saturday when I attended a rooftop gathering in Tribeca, a charity fundraiser for XKCD.com‘s new comic strip compilation. Here is the view of the same building from the back. Note my office in the back on the right, and the lack of antennae. The building we see is 60 Hudson St. The building behind it is 32 Avenue of the Americas.

Looking at google maps, I see that the sightline from our office to both buildings is a completely straight line.

This drove me nuts for quite some time. I could never be sure if I was looking at 60 Hudson or 32 Avenue of the Americas. Turns out, it was both.

The fun part is the 60 Hudson is the old Western Union building, but has been converted into a carrier hotel, meaning that it primarily houses telecommunications hardware – fiber optic lines, switches, servers, etc. There’s very little office space in there. In a similar fashion, 33 Thomas Street is a massive telephone exchange building. I had often wondered what the story was with this scary, monolithic, windowless building. Who would want to work in there? Well, very few people do. In fact, the top section is mostly empty space for ventilation.

A similar purpose is served by Verizon’s 374 Pearl St. So that’s a total of four buildings in lower Manhattan that serve mainly as technology and telecommunications hubs. 60 Hudson, in fact, has so much diesel fuel in it for the emergency generators that it’s making the now-residential Tribeca neighbors very nervous, post 9/11.

UK Trip 2009

I’ve lived in New York for a year and a half now and still haven’t really taken advantage of the fact that I live near three major airports. I’ve had to play catch-up on finances, so I haven’t really been able to afford much in the way of vacationing. But that finally changed, sort of, and since it’s been more than 5 years since I was last in the UK, I figured that needed addressing. So I booked a flight with little to no planning beyond the purchase of tickets.

In addition to the many important lessons learned on my last voyage, this trip gave me still more opportunity for informative error. The first was booking a flight out of Newark at 8:00 a.m. I had debated taking the subway to Penn to Newark Liberty, but rail travel so early in the day is fraught with unknowns. So I took a car service. This was fortuitous because, while I had dutifully set my phone’s alarm for 4 a.m., I had neglected to remember that my alarm is set only to go off on weekdays. My wake-up call was the car service at 5 a.m. Fortunately for me, in the wisdom that only comes as one drifts off into sleep, I had decided I should take a shower in the evening rather than the morning. I was up and out the door in five minutes.

Continue reading UK Trip 2009

My Cousin the Soccer Hooligan

I could have sworn I posted this back in July, but apparently not…

My cousin David has been quoted in a few prominent media outlets recently, namely, the New York Times and Yahoo Sports. He’s a rabid fan of the LA Galaxy soccer club, and is a regular fixture with the team’s superfans, The Riot Squad, in the southeast corner of the stadium at every game. I always kind of figured David would be famous some day, but I never in a million years thought it would be for dissing the name amongst names, David Beckham.

The David-on-David action began when cousin David and another member of the squad got into a heated exchange with Beckham after last Sunday’s game. The die hard, bleed-Galaxy-blue fans were severely miffed that Beckham has recently been on loan to an Italian team, and that Beckham may be giving up his job with the Galaxy. Foul words were exchanged. Cousin David’s associate on the squad was arrested for jumping onto the field.

You might think this would reflect poorly on my cousin, but in his defense, soccer has a unique tradition of drunken, abusive buffoonery from the crowd. Soccer hooliganism has a rich and colorful history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_hooliganism

In a way, he’s excelling at that particular position. Just as hockey has made fights an essential part of the action, so soccer has made hooliganism an integral part of the game, taking what should by all rights be the most boring spectator sport in the world[1], and making it into something altogether more participatory.

It’s not like he did it at a baseball, basketball or football game. That’s where it would be wholly inappropriate.

1.) And most likely is, short of golf.

Exercising Perspective

Kottke mentioned a hilarious site that lists uncomfortable plot summaries of popular movies. It’s a great example of how perspective works. There are any number of ways to describe something based on personal bias. My favorite example on the site is, naturally, the one for Star Wars:

STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE: Religious extremist terrorists destroy government installation, killing thousands.

This got me thinking about how even the simplest and most harmless things can be described in ways that are disturbing:

  • Buying ice cream: “Cow exploitation causes thousands to gain weight.”
  • Watching a movie: “Man sits motionless for hours watching colored lights.”
  • Going to church: “Hundreds practice ritualized cannibalism in front of large torture device.”
  • Mowing the lawn: “Innocent creatures slaughtered and landscape devastated in mid-morning carnage.”

“A Crimson Grail”

The weather was impossibly perfect. We loaded in at 11:30 a.m. and made our way up to Lincoln Center to set up. A fine day to stand around waiting. Although my search for a quick bite to eat was fruitless (not much in the way of to-go food in that neighborhood so I had to settle for a sandwich from Starbucks), I did enjoy relaxing and chatting with the other 199 guitarists at Damrosch Park. We took our seats around 6:30 and the crowd started filing in. And kept coming. And coming. I did not expect thousands of people.

Fortunately I was on the end of my section, right by the gate, so it was easy for me to catch Amy, Alllie, Caroline and Matt. They took up a spot right next to me. My boss, Marya, also stopped by to say hi. The crowd eventually had to be turned back because there were no more chairs.

Our hour-long composition started around 7:45, slowly building, section by section, into the final climax. Toward the end, the sounds became so huge and otherworldly that people started standing up to receive it.

We finished to a long ovation. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

UPDATE: The New York Times estimates 10,000 people showed up.

Sad Shire Horses Walking Home

As the weather has gotten warmer, I’ve started changing into my work clothes at the office. Fortunately for me, I work 10 to 6, so fewer folks see me do this, and the bathroom is usually empty when I need to change. I’m doing this because my body is not well adapted to walking around in warm weather for long periods of time without producing prodigious amounts of moisture. I ruin shirts in the summer. Getting to the train, walking up and down all the stairs, standing immobile on the hot, stuffy platforms…it’s too much for my Scottish physiology. If I were to do this in slacks and a nice shirt every day I would be a disheveled mess by the time I got to work.

Walking to work in sandals, shorts and a t-shirt still doesn’t entirely prevent me from sweating up a storm, but it’s a definite improvement from the alternative. Plus when I leave work I feel freer, less constricted. I can more easily go do things without having to run home and change clothes.

So I do my dry cleaning near the office, usually on Mondays. I have to remember to pack socks and undershirts for the week in my satchel or laptop bag. I feel a little bit like Michael J. Fox in “Secret of My Success,” carrying a briefcase full of clothing to the office.

And speaking of odd feelings at work, often I find myself looking out the window at the economic epicenter of the modern world and trying to remind myself just how the hell I got here. A couple times a week as I walk home I’m still struck by the strangeness of it all: some fool from smalltown Arkansas works in this building, in this part of the city? He doesn’t belong here; who let this guy in?

I’m Going to Play Guitar at Lincoln Center

I’ve been accepted as one of 200 guitarists scheduled to perform at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park next month. It’s a volunteer position, but it will be really cool to be able to say I’ve played Lincoln Center. Let’s hope the weather doesn’t cancel it like last year.

Details:
In 2005, the New York composer Rhys Chatham was commissioned by the city of Paris to write a piece of music. The result was A Crimson Grail, a work for 400 electric guitars, which premiered at the basilica of Sacré-Coeur for La Nuit Blanche, an all-night arts festival. For its first U.S. performance, the work has been extensively revised by the composer for an outdoor performance at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park, to suit the dynamics of the park’s outdoor acoustics. A Crimson Grail will call on the talents of 200 guitarists (including 16 electric bassists), who will be selected from an applicant pool drawing on the many talents of musicians in New York City and beyond. The piece was rehearsed and soundchecked in August 2008, but inclement weather forced its cancellation. We are looking forward to its long-awaited World Premiere on August 8, 2009.

The link to Lincoln Center’s page is here. Warning: it doesn’t look good on my version of Firefox.