I'm listening to the Pretenders on my iPod singing the theme from the Living Daylights, which is a Bond movie I'm always torn about, because it has no sex and Timothy Dalton, but it has one of the best car scenes. I could use skiis, tire spikes, and a rocket motor on my Mustang...that would counter the rear wheel drive. You know what I just realized? Old men whose pants keep creeping up their torso as they get older aren't buying longer and longer pants...they're shrinking into the same size they've always worn. They're pulling 'em up that high so their 34" lengths aren't bunching up at the bottom. It's not so much a fashion problem as it is a posture and calcium deficiency issue. The Godfather theme is now playing. There's a really tall woman standing next to me...she must be 6'3". She's the tallest person in the car except for this one up front. If you're a guy who is really tall, it's like you got to some level in a videogame that no one else can get to. This woman is like the secret bonus level that all us normal sized guys can never get to. I was 5'11" at the end of my freshman year of high school...figured I'd get at least another two inches...nada. Didn't grow an inch after that. One more would have been nice. I was also 152 pounds. I don't remember feeling like a skinny guy, but I guess I must have been. I've always weighed myself. My grandmother has a bathroom scale that I would rush to everytime I got to her house. Kids love growing. I remember distinctly weighing 77 pounds, 85 pounds, 115... Right before I got to Union Square I was 192, but that was before I started biking to work and playing in all these leagues. By the end of that summer, I was down to 176, which I didn't like. Now I'm about 185. David Byrne playing My Fair Lady now. Canal St. Everytime I pass Canal, I think of how cool the ATTAP (Riffs) offices are. I need to move back into the city...and work right next door to my apt. I stopped to look around to find some thumbing inspiration... No one looks or is doing anything interesting at the moment. Actually, it's a really unremarkable subway crowd this morning. Lots of su doku and sleeping. Just caught the cover of the News...didn't some high school kid dress as Hitler last year. Don't we go through this every year? Didn't someone get eggshell in the eye or something more newsworthy? Either way, whether he gets punished or not, the kid is an idiot and so are his parents. Now, when you Google his name, forever, he'll be the Hitler kid. Have fun getting a job, loser. Its chilly in this car...the a/c is on. I'm excited to go to the gym...really love the NYSC on 35th and Madison.
All in Random Stuff
Well, this is just bizzare... A small "general aviation" plane flew into a building on 72nd and York.
A few apartments in the building are on fire... details coming out. Hope no one was home.
It’s as if your id had a typewriter. In a world where everything is
instant, the delaying and censoring mechanisms that contributed to a
civilized life are gone." - Maureen Dowd, NY Times, Oct. 7, 2006
(I don't subscribe to Times Select... or get the actual paper copy, God forbid... my friend Alicia sent this to me.)
The senior members of our team here at Oddcast are Israeli, so today, we got a little culture for the office related to the Jewish New Year...
Little kid and his dad at Pier 40 this morning...
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Here's the rest of what the WTC site is supposed to look like. If we have to wait any longer, they'll have to retrofit parking on the roof for flying cars.
Two great comments by Gothamist readers:
"I, for one, welcome our new steel and glass monolithic overlords."
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Timeoutnewyork.tv is having a photo contest to have your NYC photos featured on the front page of their site. Just tag your best NYC photos (horizontal only) timeoutnewyork.tv on Flickr and you're automatically entered. There might be a free magazine subscription in there or something, too... not sure... the details aren't up yet. Technically, it starts tomorrow, but here's your chance to get a head start.
Check out their site, too.... its pretty cool.
GothamGal has a though provoking post up about the insanity of carefully crafting over acheivers and getting kids into college today. She says that we should drop the current system and look for a new way to screen students... fewer tests, less pressure.
I do think that what is going on is insane, but anytime there's insanity, you don't have to get caught up in it.
When I was in high school, the average graduating SAT score for my class was 1350. Now I hear its up over 1400... average... 1400! I was lucky because we all seemed to take a pretty healthy approach to it, but one could go nuts trying to test prep your way to a score like that.
If you need to take two test prep courses and hire a private tutor to get your kid to score a 1520, then, well, sorry, that kid just isn't a 1520 student. I remember this guy in my freshmen year of college who used to study in the lounge about 10 hours a day to get a 3.7 and I just remember heading out the door with my baseball glove to have a catch and enjoy a nice day while he was studying. If that was what it took to get the really high grades, well then I just wasn't going to be a great student... simple as that.
It was that kind of approach that I had in high school. In hindsight, I probably could have worked harder, I admit, but it was where my head was at the time. Pushing me wouldn't have helped.. .I had to push myself... which I did, big time, when I got to Fordham. Yeah, so I went to Fordham, which was a good school, but it wasn't Harvard or Yale or Princeton. However, I wouldn't be where I am today at another school. Being at Fordham, close to the city, enabled me to intern at the GM pension fund during school. It also meant that another Fordham grad who was at GM sort of took me under his wing, rather than the Harvard intern we had, because he felt like this guy would get everything he wanted anyway. That led directly to my job in the private equity group, which led to Union Square Ventures, which led to Oddcast.
If I was coming out of Harvard in '01, it wouldn't have been enough for me to just go to Harvard... I would have had to beat out all my own classmates for jobs. When you go to a top school, you almost have to be the best there, too, because there will already be 5 or 6 Harvard resumes in for a job, and they're not going to interview all of you.
You don't have to go to a top ten school and you don't have to be a Goldman Sachs investment banker to be successful either. Teach your kids to follow their own way at their own pace. Of course, give them all the tools and encouragement to be their best, but don't push them to be more than they're mentally ready to handle. I wasn't ready to take the lead in high school and I would have burned out very early had I tried. I'm lucky that my parents were just happy I was in a good school and supportive of whatever I did. They let me come around on my own terms.
Oh, and I wound up doing better than that kid who studied ten hours a day... and I really do owe it mostly to my mental health. In college, I really believe its really not about how hard you work, but more about how smart you work and how you handle stress. Oh, and networking, too. You'll never make good contacts in your field, which can take you a lot further than your GPA, if you're a big ball of stress that seems mentally unstable.
"Cingular Presents: The NYC Skyline. Get more bars with Cingular's All Over Network."
Hilarious.
Individually, I don't mind the designs. I always liked the exoskelatal concept and so I like Tower 3 the best. However, they absolutely look nothing like each other and seem sort of random. Hopefully, they'll gel a little better as the designs get tweaked.