The Great Telectroscope of Brooklyn

From the creators:

Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel has finally been completed. An extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope has been installed at both ends which miraculously allows people to see right through the Earth from London to New York and vice versa.

A letter from myself to the inventors of the telectroscope:

Good sirs and madams,

I have been enchanted by early accounts of your exceedingly fine device, and would like to request the privilege of viewing the wondrous "telectroscope" posthaste.

I will be visiting the renowned municipality of Brooklyn soon, and it is my intention to behold the countenances of my old schoolmate chum and his beloved female progeny of six years; both live in London, and I have not seen the young lady since the Lichtenstein parliamentary elections of three years ago. Accompanying me will be another former colleague of mine from my days in university; she is, like myself, captivated by your commendable efforts.

The four of us endeavor to send each other greetings and salutations by means of your technology, and hope to complete a legally binding business transaction. Thanks to the "telectroscope", we will no longer have to rely on the woefully archaic semaphore to trade our rare specimens of tulips. A tip of the cap to your industrious engineers.

With Warmest Regards,

Robert

An Eight-Year-Old’s Secrets

Here’s how you get an eight-year-old girl to reveal all of her secrets. You just shut up and wait for her to volunteer things.

This is something I learned shortly after a touching and picturesque wedding ceremony in Ryetown, New York. Afterwards, I found myself riding in a Prius into Manhattan, arriving in the afternoon. The day was spent roaming around Manhattan with my friends George and Stefanie - visiting the Uniqlo flagship, eating red velvet cupcakes, and then, unpredictably, playing at a local playground.

At the playground, Stefanie’s friend Ting showed up with her eight-year-old sister Nancy in tow. Nancy is a dancer/gymnast, and showed off some incredibly impressive high kicks and splits. And then I saw her perform a physical movement I found very familiar - a pose I’ve learned as Upward Facing Bow - a backwards-bending arch formed with the hands and feet as the foundation.

“Hey!” I said. “I can do that!”

So I threw my bag down to the ground, laid on my back, bent my knees, and pushed up into the pose.

“You’re cheating!” said Nancy.

“What?” I thought it was a pretty decent UFB, if a bit sloppy.

“Look, she said. And she stood upright, and fell backwards into the pose, which is of course something I cannot do unless I want to severely injure myself.

“Oh,” I said. “Okay. IT’S ON.”

And that’s how I found myself playing follow the leader with an eight-year-old, something I hadn’t done in decades. I did camel pose for her, as well as swung through the monkey bars without letting my feet touch the ground. Somehow, these feats earned her grudging respect.

Which allowed me to sit down with Nancy for a chat, which was something I felt would be extremely useful for Pillow Crisis research.

“Do you like Pokemon?”

“No,” she said. “I like DIGIMON.” As if the distinction were the most important one in the universe.

Later, she quizzed my Chinese.

“Do you know da?

“No.”

She smacked her forehead. “Do you know siaw?”

“Nope.”

“Da means big, siaw means small. I’m small, you’re big.”

“I know the word for automobile.” I proceeded to butcher the word. She looked at me.

“You’re Japanese.”

“No! I’m Chinese! It’s just been a long time, dude.”

From there I learned the most intimate details of the internecine politics of best friendship in elementary school, which is mainly a task of balancing multiple demands for playtime from various suitors.

What was interesting about Nancy’s monologue on the perils of friendship was how utterly serious it was. Not once did I think that her problems were diminutive or cute - I felt very much in the presence of someone who was struggling to make sense of the various ends of her life.

Much like myself.

This Is The Way!

5/24-5/28: NEW YORK, NEW YORK


5/28-6/5: LONDON, ENGLAND


6/6-6/9: EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

The Plaster Conundrum

My room is so cluttered with stuff right now, I can't even think.

The concrete floor in the apartment is coated with a difficult-to-remove-plaster, which sloppy contractors spilled everywhere during the construction of the building. GP and I have attacked the plaster from several different fronts. We've poured water on the floor to soften it, we've scraped at it with trowels, we've scrubbed it with brushes. The plaster slowly erodes away under the force of our efforts, like a wind-carved canyon. Unfortunately, the plaster, which should have taken a couple of hours to remove, became a multi-day project.

Which means I'm leaving town before the job is done.

After I leave, GP and the apartment super are going to SAND THE FLOOR WITH POWER TOOLS. I'm kind of sad that I will miss my initiation rite into the use of power tools. It's quite possible that GP and the super will go on to acid-stain the concrete floors, finishing the common areas before I return.

After that, it's bedroom carpets, curtain installation, kitchen cabinet repainting, door repainting, and furniture acquisition. And then Operation: Apartment Pimp-Out will be complete.

This Just Got Real

Strips of carpet and carpet foam, cut and rolled.

For this renovation project, I am wearing a twenty-dollar pair of jeans from the Gap, knowing that they will most likely be destroyed by the process. In fact, they are appreciating in value. Thanks to random paint spots and indigo dye distressing, they now look like a two-hundred-dollar pair.

Something strange happens to your sense of time when you spend all day doing manual labor. The days seem much longer, and tend to run together. I wake up, I work, I eat a big dinner, I go to sleep, and then I do it again.



Our living arrangements have been thrown into disarray by the renovation project. My room turned into a makeshift staging area for my stuff, belongings ready to relocate at a moment's notice.

When I open my bedroom door into the hall, I am greeted by what looks like an archaeological dig: dust, debris, tools, work lamps. We wear gloves and filtration masks. We are uncovering details of the original construction of our apartment building, circa the late seventies: green shag carpet, original off-white paint.


The living room, de-carpeted. Note the brighter and lighter wall color, as well as my Hello Kitty calendar.

We keep hoping that our apartment super will decide that a given task is too difficult for us to complete, and that he will do it for us, or even better, call in professionals. This never happens.

Instead, he provides us with a quick five-minute tutorial on the task at hand, and then returns a few hours later to note our progress.

Cutting out carpet with knives? Easy! Prying carpet staples and tack strips from the concrete floor? Easy! Repairing huge fault-line cracks in the concrete with Cement-All? Easy!

Every day, a new unforeseen task, a new lesson in DIY. Exhausting, but also empowering.

Now I know what you're thinking: this had better be a really hot girl.

That's what I'm saying.

My To-Do List is Sick, Dude

During the next few months, I will:

1) Convert apartment into loft: paint walls, tear out carpets, stain and seal concrete floors.

2) Go to New York for a friend's wedding.

3) While in New York, begin work on new radio project with Stefanie. Work meaning spend lots of time with her, insult her, make her laugh. But this time, get it on tape. (More on this in a bit.)

4) From New York, fly to London and visit Huili. Discuss Pillow Crisis.

5) From London, take train into Scotland.

6) Write the first draft of Pillow Crisis: A Novel.

7) Finish the second draft of Lobsters vs. Butterflies: The Movie.

8) Go running, do yoga, lift weights, hike.

9) Prepare for glory.

This is the kind of list that makes even the most hardened overachiever cry. As recently as a couple years ago, I would never have been able to even consider taking on responsibilities of this number and magnitude. But I've learned something very important during this experiment in self-determination: how to optimize my own workflow.

This is how fast I move now.

How To Convert Your Apartment Into A Loft

The end of Citizen Kane, or our apartment before the painting commences.

1) Residents complain loudly about decade-old carpet and a landlord who refuses to replace it.

2) Building super comes up with the idea of ripping all the carpets out in the common areas, staining and sealing the concrete beneath, offers to pay for the materials. Residents will pay for new carpet in bedrooms, landlord will pay for installation.

3) Residents counter with idea of painting walls before ripping out carpets, which will be used as a dropcloth.

4) Super thinks this a fantastic idea, happens to moonlight as a professional housepainter, offers the use of his equipment, and provides color guidance.

5) Residents choose between two completely indistinguishable hues: "Swiss Coffee" and "White Dove". The avian shade prevails over the neutral (heh) one.

6) Super wants to know when the painting will start. Residents realize that they do not, in fact, have day jobs, and can, in fact, start painting in the next thirty minutes.

7) Super immediately calls Sherman Williams, orders a five-gallon drum of "White Dove" with his professional discount. Residents pick up the paint, a roller, and a pan.



8) Residents disassemble shelving units, move furniture, start painting. Residents start at 1 pm, finish about half the entire apartment by midnight.

The crazy thing is, most of these steps happened in a single day. I'm in a real hurry to finish this job, because a) I'm about to start writing my first novel (more on this in a bit), not to mention leaving for New York and London, and b) I'm hoping that I can finish the renovation before certain individuals visit my apartment.

Let's put it this way: I've certainly cleaned my apartment for special guests, but I've never RENOVATED my apartment for them. Draw your own conclusions.

SF Girls Versus LA Girls

I was eating a chocolate croissant at Tartine Bakery near Dolores Park, when I caught a girl wearing fake cowboy boots making eyes at me from behind her Macbook. (Again, it is difficult to write about San Francisco and not set a new record for yuppieness in a single sentence.)

She was a pretty girl, well-dressed. But this is the thing:

If she were an artist, she'd be living in Los Angeles.

If she were an actress, she'd be living in Los Angeles.

If she were a musician, she'd be living in Los Angeles.

If she were a stripper, she'd be living in Los Angeles. (Or, admittedly, Las Vegas.)

That leaves me here at Tartine Bakery with: a girl who can write me a sweet press release? Someone who can sell me an awesome text ad? Maybe walk me through a kickass Powerpoint presentation?

The comparison I draw between the female populations of the two cities might easily be expanded into an allegory of the differences between the cities themselves.

(San Francisco apologists will insist with some shrillness that there are also writers and doctors and such in their fair city. But Los Angeles also has such individuals. And so the allegory is extended even further, because everything SF has, LA has as well. Sadly, the converse is not true. )

San Francisco is a charming, elegant, and pretty little town, but spend enough time there and it's hard to shake the feeling that all the truly interesting, hot, and unique entities (things, events, people) are happening somewhere else. Somewhere far away.

Somewhere, perhaps, four hundred miles south on the 5 freeway.

What I Did In San Francisco

1) Attempted to prevent the stench of the cattle slaughterhouse (you know the one I'm talking about) on the 5 freeway between LA and SF, by pressing the recirculate air button in time. Completely, utterly, miserably failed.

2) Decided to write Pillow Crisis as a novel. More on this in a bit.

3) Posed as an design school applicant in order to trick a security guard into admitting me into a design college's building. Was told to visit Admissions on the fifth floor, disregarded these instructions, and headed directly to the roof to take in a view of Union Square from above. I am a NINJA.

4) Ate at Burma Superstar and The House (two old favorites).

5) Visited the W hotel, and was offered a free limo ride to the San Francisco symphony hall, courtesy of the all-new 2009 Acura MDX, the finest sports utility automobile on the road today. (As you can see, it is impossible to write about San Francisco without mentioning at least three yuppie institutions per sentence.)

6) Repeatedly encountered the San Franciscan custom of offering unsolicited help from strangers, as people threw themselves at us to offer directions, restaurant recommendations, and holistic friendliness. Believe it or not, this was neither cloying nor annoying, but in fact, rather appreciated. San Francisco is much less militant about being nice than say, Santa Monica.

7) Visited the observation deck at the De Young Museum,which is oxidizing quite nicely, and will achieve a nice green patina within a matter of years, I hope.

8) Returned to Dolores Park, the site of two crucial scenes in Pillow Crisis. Took in a very lovely view of the city from the perfectly placed bench in the southwest corner of the park, recently installed by some very prudent and wise park officials.

9) Experienced the startling coincidence of standing directly across from a couple on the Muni that I stood across from on my last trip to San Francisco, over a year ago. Given the size of the city (and the fact that I was riding the same line, the N Judah), it may not have been such a staggering serendipity. But in Los Angeles, this occurrence would be considered an act of god.

10) Considered actually moving to San Francisco when I get older and slower and more boring, and need to raise my offspring, which sounds like heresy until you realize that Pillow Crisis is about the relationship between parents and children, and the story is set in the city for a reason. (Then again, moving to San Francisco means being prepared to lose everything you own in an earthquake. And if you think that's what insurance is for, I'd like to introduce you to some New Orleans residents.)

I've Been Away For A Whole Month

And not a single day passed that I didn't think about writing a new post, but I simply couldn't make the time. That's how busy my April was.

The short story is that I was preparing my new screenplay, Lobsters vs. Butterflies, for entry in the open screenwriting competition held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. I was also submitting new design documents for the Princeton overfishing experiment - I have designed a new video game in which players feed cookies to hungry beached whales trapped on an iceberg.

I was writing and being creative seven hours a day, which is the equivalent of a fourteen-hour day at my old job. And in order to help relieve the stress, I was running twenty miles a week, going to yoga six times a week, weight training twice a week, and hiking in Runyon Canyon once a week. My abdominals are starting to go six-pack on me. This is a good thing.

And then Huili, my writing partner from London, visited for a week, during which we drove up to San Francisco to begin work on Pillow Crisis.

There wasn't a whole lot of time left over for blogging, as you might imagine.

And there still isn't. As I type this, I'm packing my bags for Dallas, to help my mother deliver flowers for Mother's Day. And then at the end of the month, it's off to New York (for a friend's wedding), London (to visit Huili and continue work on Pillow Crisis), and Edinburgh (because I can).

But I'm back and posting regularly again. And I have plenty to discuss: my trip to San Francisco, future installments of A Crash Course in Women, a possible small adventure involving the most frequent female guest star on this blog, and my journeys in the United Kingdom.