Legendary Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth has
stopped "runnin' with the devil" to do God's work - riding ambulances
in gritty neighborhoods throughout the city to become a paramedic.
The famed rocker has cut his trademark blond mane and dropped his
celebrity persona so he can ride unrecognized with ambulance crews in
The Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn several nights a week.
Several weeks ago, the charismatic crooner saved the life of a Bronx
woman who had a heart attack by shocking her back to life with a
defibrillator.
The Post caught up with Roth last week as the 1980s icon grabbed a
slice of pepperoni pizza after sitting for hours in an ambulance
waiting for a call.
Just three days earlier, he had played to an adoring rock-'n'-roll
crowd in Minnesota.
Roth, 49, initially expressed reservations about discussing his
latest endeavor because he felt publicity "would diminish what I am
trying to do here."
But the following day, he told The Post more about his new passion.
"I have been on over 200 individual rides now," Roth told The
Post. "Not once has anyone recognized me, which is perfect for me."
"It has been an eye-opening adventure," said Roth, who asked The Post
not to disclose which "very colorful neighborhoods" he works in
because he doesn't want to draw attention to himself or his
colleagues.
Linda Reissman, Roth's EMS consultant and tutor, said she didn't know
what to expect of her famous pupil at first, but "he has probably
turned out to be one of the best students I have ever had."
"I am amazed," said Reissman, who is training Roth for Brooklyn-based
company Emergency Care Programs Inc.
Reissman described Roth as very studious, punctual and hungry for
knowledge.
"He is very serious," she said. "You would never know you were
dealing with a rock-'n'-roll guy, his commitment really is touching.
He wants to help people."
The singer, who is used to being onstage in a packed arena, sees at
least one similarity in his two careers.
"I am a member of a team again, and that's what a rock band always
was," Roth said.
Thanks to ERIKA MARTINEZ, NY Post
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Monday, November 15, 2004
Art Is Not A Loaf Of Bread
Giving away an album online isn't the way most artists end up with gold records. But it worked out that way for Wilco.
After being dropped from Reprise Records in 2001 over creative conflicts surrounding Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the Chicago-based band committed what some thought would be suicide -- they streamed it online for free.
The album's subsequent release on Nonesuch debuted higher on the charts than any of their prior releases. That success gave both band and label confidence to try new internet forays: the first-ever MPEG-4 webcast with Apple, as well as more free online offerings of live shows and an EP's worth of fresh tracks. The band's 2004 release, A Ghost Is Born, hit No. 8 on the Billboard charts -- their highest position to date.
By conventional industry logic, file sharing hurts the odds for commercial success. Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy disagrees. Wired News caught up with him during his current tour to find out just what makes Wilco so wired.
Wired News: What sparked the idea of offering your music online for free?
Jeff Tweedy: Being dropped from Reprise in 2001. They weren't going to put out Yankee Hotel Foxtrot the way we'd created it. They wanted changes; we weren't willing to do that, so they rushed a contract through their legal department to let us go. It was the fastest I'd ever seen a record company work. Once they let us go, we were free to do with the album what we chose.
We'd been noticing how much more important the internet had become -- once information is out there in the world now, anyone can get it. Since that was beginning to happen with the record anyway, we figured, OK, let's just stream it for free ourselves.
WN: Did you minimize the quality of the files you offered online, so that people would be encouraged to pay for a higher-quality "real thing" when you signed to a new record label?
Tweedy: We didn't go out of our way to make it sound low-res. MP3s are poorer quality anyway. That's part of why the record industry's argument against file sharing is so ridiculous -- nothing out there on P2P networks sounds as good as the original CD or vinyl record.
WN: Did the free online release make it hard for you to find a new label home?
Tweedy: That's why we ended up with Nonesuch. They weren't intimidated by the fact that hundreds of thousands had already downloaded it.
WN: What was your reaction when copies of A Ghost Is Born started showing up online this year, before the official release?
Tweedy: Something interesting happened. We were contacted by fans who were excited about the fact that they found it on P2P networks, but wanted to give something back in good faith. They wanted to send money to express solidarity with the fact that we'd embraced the downloading community. We couldn't take the money ourselves, so they asked if we could pick a charity instead -- we pointed them to Doctors Without Borders, and they ended up receiving about $15,000.
WN: What are your thoughts on the RIAA's ongoing lawsuits against individual file sharers?
Tweedy: We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.
WN: You don't agree with the argument that file sharing hurts musicians' ability to earn a living?
Tweedy: I don't believe every download is a lost sale.
WN: What if the efforts to stop unauthorized music file sharing are successful? How would that change culture?
Tweedy: If they succeed, it will damage the culture and industry they say they're trying to save. What if there was a movement to shut down libraries because book publishers and authors were up in arms over the idea that people are reading books for free? It would send a message that books are only for the elite who can afford them.
Stop trying to treat music like it's a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can't be cheap, either.
WN: How do you feel about efforts to control how music flows through the online world with digital rights management technologies?
Tweedy: A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that's it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it's just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work.
Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.
People who look at music as commerce don't understand that. They are talking about pieces of plastic they want to sell, packages of intellectual property.
I'm not interested in selling pieces of plastic.
WN: Your critics might say that it's easy for you to say that, given that you're already a commercial success.
Tweedy: I'm grateful that I've sold enough to have a house, take care of my kids and live decently. But that's a gift, not an entitlement.
I don't want potential fans to be blocked because the choice to check out our music becomes a financial decision for them.
WN: How do you feel about some of the new kinds of rights management alternatives some are proposing, instead of our current copyright schemes -- for instance, Creative Commons licenses that would allow your fans to remix your material for personal, noncommercial use?
Tweedy: Commercial use is one thing, but I have no problem with fans tinkering with it on their laptops, then sharing it with their friends -- that's just a new way for them to listen.
WN: Wilco is involved in a lot of non-music projects -- you published a book of poetry called Adult Head this year, the band was the subject of a 2002 documentary film, and the band just released a new book of photos, art, essays and previously unreleased tracks on an accompanying CD -- The Wilco Book. Is there a link between all the multimedia exploration and the relaxed attitude you seem to have about what happens to your music in the digital realm?
Tweedy: We're a collective of people who live to create things. When we released A Ghost Is Born, we decided to do that in an enhanced format for a number of reasons. We get to deliver more art that way. It's also a concession to the fact that we're artists who do work within the industry infrastructure. This offers something more than a downloaded MP3 can.
WN: What's next from Wilco in the way of online experiments?
Tweedy: Every few months or so we put a new live show on our site for download. And between YHF and AGIB, we released some tracks exclusively on our site for free. We've been encouraged by the response.
This has just become part of the way the band interacts with our audience. It's part of what we do now, and I don't think we're going to stop anytime soon.
Thanks To Xeni Jardin
After being dropped from Reprise Records in 2001 over creative conflicts surrounding Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the Chicago-based band committed what some thought would be suicide -- they streamed it online for free.
The album's subsequent release on Nonesuch debuted higher on the charts than any of their prior releases. That success gave both band and label confidence to try new internet forays: the first-ever MPEG-4 webcast with Apple, as well as more free online offerings of live shows and an EP's worth of fresh tracks. The band's 2004 release, A Ghost Is Born, hit No. 8 on the Billboard charts -- their highest position to date.
By conventional industry logic, file sharing hurts the odds for commercial success. Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy disagrees. Wired News caught up with him during his current tour to find out just what makes Wilco so wired.
Wired News: What sparked the idea of offering your music online for free?
Jeff Tweedy: Being dropped from Reprise in 2001. They weren't going to put out Yankee Hotel Foxtrot the way we'd created it. They wanted changes; we weren't willing to do that, so they rushed a contract through their legal department to let us go. It was the fastest I'd ever seen a record company work. Once they let us go, we were free to do with the album what we chose.
We'd been noticing how much more important the internet had become -- once information is out there in the world now, anyone can get it. Since that was beginning to happen with the record anyway, we figured, OK, let's just stream it for free ourselves.
WN: Did you minimize the quality of the files you offered online, so that people would be encouraged to pay for a higher-quality "real thing" when you signed to a new record label?
Tweedy: We didn't go out of our way to make it sound low-res. MP3s are poorer quality anyway. That's part of why the record industry's argument against file sharing is so ridiculous -- nothing out there on P2P networks sounds as good as the original CD or vinyl record.
WN: Did the free online release make it hard for you to find a new label home?
Tweedy: That's why we ended up with Nonesuch. They weren't intimidated by the fact that hundreds of thousands had already downloaded it.
WN: What was your reaction when copies of A Ghost Is Born started showing up online this year, before the official release?
Tweedy: Something interesting happened. We were contacted by fans who were excited about the fact that they found it on P2P networks, but wanted to give something back in good faith. They wanted to send money to express solidarity with the fact that we'd embraced the downloading community. We couldn't take the money ourselves, so they asked if we could pick a charity instead -- we pointed them to Doctors Without Borders, and they ended up receiving about $15,000.
WN: What are your thoughts on the RIAA's ongoing lawsuits against individual file sharers?
Tweedy: We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.
WN: You don't agree with the argument that file sharing hurts musicians' ability to earn a living?
Tweedy: I don't believe every download is a lost sale.
WN: What if the efforts to stop unauthorized music file sharing are successful? How would that change culture?
Tweedy: If they succeed, it will damage the culture and industry they say they're trying to save. What if there was a movement to shut down libraries because book publishers and authors were up in arms over the idea that people are reading books for free? It would send a message that books are only for the elite who can afford them.
Stop trying to treat music like it's a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can't be cheap, either.
WN: How do you feel about efforts to control how music flows through the online world with digital rights management technologies?
Tweedy: A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that's it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it's just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work.
Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.
People who look at music as commerce don't understand that. They are talking about pieces of plastic they want to sell, packages of intellectual property.
I'm not interested in selling pieces of plastic.
WN: Your critics might say that it's easy for you to say that, given that you're already a commercial success.
Tweedy: I'm grateful that I've sold enough to have a house, take care of my kids and live decently. But that's a gift, not an entitlement.
I don't want potential fans to be blocked because the choice to check out our music becomes a financial decision for them.
WN: How do you feel about some of the new kinds of rights management alternatives some are proposing, instead of our current copyright schemes -- for instance, Creative Commons licenses that would allow your fans to remix your material for personal, noncommercial use?
Tweedy: Commercial use is one thing, but I have no problem with fans tinkering with it on their laptops, then sharing it with their friends -- that's just a new way for them to listen.
WN: Wilco is involved in a lot of non-music projects -- you published a book of poetry called Adult Head this year, the band was the subject of a 2002 documentary film, and the band just released a new book of photos, art, essays and previously unreleased tracks on an accompanying CD -- The Wilco Book. Is there a link between all the multimedia exploration and the relaxed attitude you seem to have about what happens to your music in the digital realm?
Tweedy: We're a collective of people who live to create things. When we released A Ghost Is Born, we decided to do that in an enhanced format for a number of reasons. We get to deliver more art that way. It's also a concession to the fact that we're artists who do work within the industry infrastructure. This offers something more than a downloaded MP3 can.
WN: What's next from Wilco in the way of online experiments?
Tweedy: Every few months or so we put a new live show on our site for download. And between YHF and AGIB, we released some tracks exclusively on our site for free. We've been encouraged by the response.
This has just become part of the way the band interacts with our audience. It's part of what we do now, and I don't think we're going to stop anytime soon.
Thanks To Xeni Jardin
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Hawaii 5-O Film Is Still On!
STAR-BULLETIN
Jack Lord was Steve McGarrett in TV's "Hawaii Five-O." The star of the movie version has yet to be named.
Thirty-six years after "Hawaii Five-O" debuted on CBS, Warner Bros. Pictures confirmed yesterday that it will co-produce the long-awaited feature film based on the hit series.
"After winning a highly competitive challenge for the (movie) rights, the studio will co-produce the film with George Litto (Productions)," said a Warner Bros. official who requested anonymity.
The tentatively titled "Hawaii Five-0 the Movie" "will be a gritty, realistic cop drama set in the lush tropical setting of the Hawaiian Islands," the official said.
Jeff Rubinov, Warner Bros. president of production, was "the powerful force in getting this project to Warner Bros," according to the official.
Litto, an agent for Leonard Freeman, who created the "Five-O" series, owns the rights to the title. The film, which is expected to cost about $100 million, will be executive-produced by Andria Litto, George Litto's daughter.
"Ocean's Twelve" screenwriter George Nolfi will write the story.
"Ocean's Twelve" -- also a Warner Bros. film -- stars George Clooney, who has long been rumored to be one of Litto's choices for lead character Steve McGarrett. Clooney has not spoken publicly about whether he has been offered the role. But Nolfi has "a close" personal and professional relationship with Clooney and "Ocean's Twelve" director Steven Soderbergh, a source said.
The film's star and director will not be selected until the script is completed and then approved by the studio and producers, which Litto hopes will occur this fall. If that happens on schedule, the 80-day Hawaii filming could begin late next spring for a summer 2006 release, Litto said.
"We are in discussions with a major director and have been in negotiations for some time with a major star, which will be ongoing until the script is finished," Litto said.
In earlier interviews, Litto said he could also see the McGarrett role played by Mel Gibson, Michael Douglas or Harrison Ford.
A Warner Bros. spokesman emphasized that while the project is considered "a hot property in Hollywood ... all there is now is a good idea."
After Nolfi's script has been accepted, a budget will be determined, then casting will take place, the spokesman said.
"Then the studio will determine whether the cost benefit works out in our favor," the spokesman said. "Is there a market for this film worldwide, and, if not, is there enough gross domestically to make it worth doing?
"If it comes out on the balance sheet, then we green-light the film and move forward to begin pre-production."
Roger Towne wrote the original screenplay, but Warner Bros. executives wanted to take "a different approach" that was approved by Litto.
Nolfi wrapped up a two-week Hawaii visit earlier this month after scouting locations. While here, Nolfi met with law enforcement officials on each island and visited several airports. According to sources, a major part of the film could be a statewide chase involving some neighbor islands.
Two islands certain to be locations are Oahu and the Big Island, though other islands might also be used, Litto said.
The producer said he had offers from "every studio" in Hollywood, including Dreamworks SKG and Spyglass Entertainment, to co-produce the film. Litto selected Warner Bros. after nearly five months of discussions with WB's Robinov, who initiated the partnership.
Litto, who hopes to create a franchise with "Hawaii Five-O" akin to the James Bond films, would not disclose the financial terms with Warner Bros., only saying they are "comparable to the other studios' offers."
"But there were other considerations as to how my company and the Freeman estate would have a meaningful voice in the film's creative elements," Litto said.
That's Hollywood jargon for script, director and casting approval, a source said.
Dan Lin, a Warner Bros. senior vice president of production, will oversee the "Five-O" project for the studio.
"Hawaii Five-O," the longest-running police show in the history of television -- 1968 to 1980 -- was the subject of a rights dispute between CBS and Freeman's estate. But producer Litto and Freeman's widow, Rose, prevailed in January 2000.
That's Right,
HMK
Thanks to Tim Ryan
Jack Lord was Steve McGarrett in TV's "Hawaii Five-O." The star of the movie version has yet to be named.
Thirty-six years after "Hawaii Five-O" debuted on CBS, Warner Bros. Pictures confirmed yesterday that it will co-produce the long-awaited feature film based on the hit series.
"After winning a highly competitive challenge for the (movie) rights, the studio will co-produce the film with George Litto (Productions)," said a Warner Bros. official who requested anonymity.
The tentatively titled "Hawaii Five-0 the Movie" "will be a gritty, realistic cop drama set in the lush tropical setting of the Hawaiian Islands," the official said.
Jeff Rubinov, Warner Bros. president of production, was "the powerful force in getting this project to Warner Bros," according to the official.
Litto, an agent for Leonard Freeman, who created the "Five-O" series, owns the rights to the title. The film, which is expected to cost about $100 million, will be executive-produced by Andria Litto, George Litto's daughter.
"Ocean's Twelve" screenwriter George Nolfi will write the story.
"Ocean's Twelve" -- also a Warner Bros. film -- stars George Clooney, who has long been rumored to be one of Litto's choices for lead character Steve McGarrett. Clooney has not spoken publicly about whether he has been offered the role. But Nolfi has "a close" personal and professional relationship with Clooney and "Ocean's Twelve" director Steven Soderbergh, a source said.
The film's star and director will not be selected until the script is completed and then approved by the studio and producers, which Litto hopes will occur this fall. If that happens on schedule, the 80-day Hawaii filming could begin late next spring for a summer 2006 release, Litto said.
"We are in discussions with a major director and have been in negotiations for some time with a major star, which will be ongoing until the script is finished," Litto said.
In earlier interviews, Litto said he could also see the McGarrett role played by Mel Gibson, Michael Douglas or Harrison Ford.
A Warner Bros. spokesman emphasized that while the project is considered "a hot property in Hollywood ... all there is now is a good idea."
After Nolfi's script has been accepted, a budget will be determined, then casting will take place, the spokesman said.
"Then the studio will determine whether the cost benefit works out in our favor," the spokesman said. "Is there a market for this film worldwide, and, if not, is there enough gross domestically to make it worth doing?
"If it comes out on the balance sheet, then we green-light the film and move forward to begin pre-production."
Roger Towne wrote the original screenplay, but Warner Bros. executives wanted to take "a different approach" that was approved by Litto.
Nolfi wrapped up a two-week Hawaii visit earlier this month after scouting locations. While here, Nolfi met with law enforcement officials on each island and visited several airports. According to sources, a major part of the film could be a statewide chase involving some neighbor islands.
Two islands certain to be locations are Oahu and the Big Island, though other islands might also be used, Litto said.
The producer said he had offers from "every studio" in Hollywood, including Dreamworks SKG and Spyglass Entertainment, to co-produce the film. Litto selected Warner Bros. after nearly five months of discussions with WB's Robinov, who initiated the partnership.
Litto, who hopes to create a franchise with "Hawaii Five-O" akin to the James Bond films, would not disclose the financial terms with Warner Bros., only saying they are "comparable to the other studios' offers."
"But there were other considerations as to how my company and the Freeman estate would have a meaningful voice in the film's creative elements," Litto said.
That's Hollywood jargon for script, director and casting approval, a source said.
Dan Lin, a Warner Bros. senior vice president of production, will oversee the "Five-O" project for the studio.
"Hawaii Five-O," the longest-running police show in the history of television -- 1968 to 1980 -- was the subject of a rights dispute between CBS and Freeman's estate. But producer Litto and Freeman's widow, Rose, prevailed in January 2000.
That's Right,
HMK
Thanks to Tim Ryan
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Monday, November 01, 2004
20 Ways to Monkey with Telemarketers
Some people have made an art of playing with the telemarketers and getting a few chuckles along the way. Here are a few of my favorites.
Have I got a deal for you
Interrupt the telemarketer's sales pitch and ask them if they would like to buy something from you (could be anything that you're selling). That will usually get them to end the call.
I do
Ask the telemarketer to marry you. Seriously, this will probably shock them and they won't know what to say.
You have reached my voicemail
Say: "Hello." (Wait on them to start talking.) "I'm sorry we can't come to the phone right now. Please leave a message. Beep."
Funny you called
"You know, I was just thinking about (doing, buying) just that very same thing. So, I said to myself, 'Self, why don't you just (do, buy) it and get over it.' To my amazement, self replied with a loud, 'GO FOR IT!'" (Keep talking to take control of the conversation, never letting the telemarketer speak so he or she can't actually try to sell you anything.) "Well, me and myself will discuss it more and we'll get back to you."
From a country song
"I'd love to, but my wife just left me, she cut the tires on my truck, I had to bury my dog, and I only have half a Bud Light bottle left. I'm not worried about the rest, but if you start selling beer, give me a call."
Have you planned for the future?
When I see "out of area" on the caller ID, I answer the phone with the name of a made-up insurance company. Then I try to sell the person life insurance. I'll ask questions like, "What if something happened to you?" or "Are you sure your final needs can be met?" Usually, they end up hanging up on me.
Reply in gibberish
Answer the phone in a pretend foreign language.
She's not … here
I have told people that the person they were asking for was hideously mangled in a train wreck. If they ask for my wife, I sometimes say that she recently left me, then tell the caller she sounds cute and ask her out.
And you are?
I'd love to hear more about why you are calling me, but I'm in the middle of dinner right now. Why don't you give me your home number so I can call and irritate you in the middle of your meal?
Keep talking
Rather than find creative ways in which to hang up on telemarketers, I decided many years ago that I could provide a public service by keeping them on the phone for as long as possible. The longer they spend with me, the less time they have to call other people. Often, they'll hang up on me before I can hang up on them!
What did I win?
Sometimes I'll act as if the sales call is one to inform me that I've won a prize. I'll exclaim, "I've never won anything in my life!" Then I'll ask for details on when and how my prize will be sent to me. And no matter how many times it's explained to me, I will never quite understand that I've won nothing and instead am being asked to buy something.
I'm already connected
If I'm being offered a loan or mortgage refinance, I'll ask if it can "fly under the radar," because I have a large loan at a very high interest rate from "family" who would become very upset if I obtained loans elsewhere. I'll suggest that we meet somewhere discreet to discuss details.
Phone flirting
I am big on the phone flirting. Use your best Joey voice from "Friends": "How you doin?" or, "You sound really attractive. Do you call here often?"
How long do you have?
Say: "Sorry to interrupt you. I really want to talk to you, but can you hold on for a few minutes? I just need to finish up the call from the last telemarketer. He called me about an hour ago."
What's it worth?
"Now before I listen to your pitch, there are a few things we need to cover. My minimum rate for listening is $35 an hour. Of course, I can offer you upgrades that give you additional benefits, as well as a greater chance that I may buy what you are selling. The deluxe package is $55 per hour and offers a 2 percent chance of purchase, and the super-deluxe package is $75 per hour, and offers a 3 percent chance of purchase. Now before we get to that, I will need you to send in an application as well as a minimal application fee of $55. You will also need to include with your payment a $35 payment for a credit report. Once your credit has been approved, I will be able to accept your non-refundable good-faith security deposit, which I require, of $100. After closing, and you have paid my standard closing costs of $250, we will then be able to proceed with your sales pitch. Can I sign you up?"
It's good enough for Cuba
I always get them to scream, "Show me the money!" like in "Jerry Maguire."
That's Right!
Thanks to Amy C. Fleitas • Bankrate.com
Have I got a deal for you
Interrupt the telemarketer's sales pitch and ask them if they would like to buy something from you (could be anything that you're selling). That will usually get them to end the call.
I do
Ask the telemarketer to marry you. Seriously, this will probably shock them and they won't know what to say.
You have reached my voicemail
Say: "Hello." (Wait on them to start talking.) "I'm sorry we can't come to the phone right now. Please leave a message. Beep."
Funny you called
"You know, I was just thinking about (doing, buying) just that very same thing. So, I said to myself, 'Self, why don't you just (do, buy) it and get over it.' To my amazement, self replied with a loud, 'GO FOR IT!'" (Keep talking to take control of the conversation, never letting the telemarketer speak so he or she can't actually try to sell you anything.) "Well, me and myself will discuss it more and we'll get back to you."
From a country song
"I'd love to, but my wife just left me, she cut the tires on my truck, I had to bury my dog, and I only have half a Bud Light bottle left. I'm not worried about the rest, but if you start selling beer, give me a call."
Have you planned for the future?
When I see "out of area" on the caller ID, I answer the phone with the name of a made-up insurance company. Then I try to sell the person life insurance. I'll ask questions like, "What if something happened to you?" or "Are you sure your final needs can be met?" Usually, they end up hanging up on me.
Reply in gibberish
Answer the phone in a pretend foreign language.
She's not … here
I have told people that the person they were asking for was hideously mangled in a train wreck. If they ask for my wife, I sometimes say that she recently left me, then tell the caller she sounds cute and ask her out.
And you are?
I'd love to hear more about why you are calling me, but I'm in the middle of dinner right now. Why don't you give me your home number so I can call and irritate you in the middle of your meal?
Keep talking
Rather than find creative ways in which to hang up on telemarketers, I decided many years ago that I could provide a public service by keeping them on the phone for as long as possible. The longer they spend with me, the less time they have to call other people. Often, they'll hang up on me before I can hang up on them!
What did I win?
Sometimes I'll act as if the sales call is one to inform me that I've won a prize. I'll exclaim, "I've never won anything in my life!" Then I'll ask for details on when and how my prize will be sent to me. And no matter how many times it's explained to me, I will never quite understand that I've won nothing and instead am being asked to buy something.
I'm already connected
If I'm being offered a loan or mortgage refinance, I'll ask if it can "fly under the radar," because I have a large loan at a very high interest rate from "family" who would become very upset if I obtained loans elsewhere. I'll suggest that we meet somewhere discreet to discuss details.
Phone flirting
I am big on the phone flirting. Use your best Joey voice from "Friends": "How you doin?" or, "You sound really attractive. Do you call here often?"
How long do you have?
Say: "Sorry to interrupt you. I really want to talk to you, but can you hold on for a few minutes? I just need to finish up the call from the last telemarketer. He called me about an hour ago."
What's it worth?
"Now before I listen to your pitch, there are a few things we need to cover. My minimum rate for listening is $35 an hour. Of course, I can offer you upgrades that give you additional benefits, as well as a greater chance that I may buy what you are selling. The deluxe package is $55 per hour and offers a 2 percent chance of purchase, and the super-deluxe package is $75 per hour, and offers a 3 percent chance of purchase. Now before we get to that, I will need you to send in an application as well as a minimal application fee of $55. You will also need to include with your payment a $35 payment for a credit report. Once your credit has been approved, I will be able to accept your non-refundable good-faith security deposit, which I require, of $100. After closing, and you have paid my standard closing costs of $250, we will then be able to proceed with your sales pitch. Can I sign you up?"
It's good enough for Cuba
I always get them to scream, "Show me the money!" like in "Jerry Maguire."
That's Right!
Thanks to Amy C. Fleitas • Bankrate.com
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Ha Ha NY
Curse? Whatever. The Cardinals are a great team and it looks like it's over considering we're up 3-0, but knocking the Yankees out of it was So Sweet!
That's Right - Ha Ha!
HMK
That's Right - Ha Ha!
HMK
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Go Sox!
SAN JOSE, Calif -- During Tuesday's U2 event in the California Theater, Apple CEO Steve Jobs not only anounced (at least in the abstract) that he too is a Boston Red Sox fan, he also announced Apple's first iPod accessory, the iPod Sock. The socks come five to a package, with one each in green, purple, orange, pink, and blue.
Packaged just like normal socks, the accessory is intended to keep your iPod warm, or so Mr. Jobs quipped during his presentation. Those in attendance offered Mr. Jobs a round of enthusiastic applause when it became clear that this was indeed a real product.
iPod socks will be priced at US$29, and are expected to ship in mid-November, well after the curse is reversed.
Go Sox!
That's Right,
HMK
Packaged just like normal socks, the accessory is intended to keep your iPod warm, or so Mr. Jobs quipped during his presentation. Those in attendance offered Mr. Jobs a round of enthusiastic applause when it became clear that this was indeed a real product.
iPod socks will be priced at US$29, and are expected to ship in mid-November, well after the curse is reversed.
Go Sox!
That's Right,
HMK
Monday, October 25, 2004
We're Going Streaking!
There’s no doubt the fact that the Red Sox have won six playoff games in a row is the most improbable October event since Black Tuesday crippled a nation. It is the streak that most folks have got first and foremost on their minds, with Boston just two wins away from its first World Series title in 86 years.
But this has truly been a postseason filled with streaks. Consider:
* St. Louis’ 6-2 loss last night in Game 2 was the Cardinals’ fifth straight road loss of the playoffs, in which they have lost six of seven games this month. The Cardinals were an NL-best 52-29 on the road during the regular season, but have had the challenge of playing the Astros at Minute Maid Park, where Houston never lost the last two months, and the Red Sox at Fenway, where Boston compiled the AL’s second-best home mark.
* While the attention was focused on the fact that Manny Ramirez went seven straight games in the ALCS without an RBI, everybody has missed the fact that he is in the midst of a 12-game postseason hitting streak, batting .346 for the month.
For the 12th straight media session, an out-of-town reporter asked Johnny Damon about his hair.
* Closer Keith Foulke, probably a close second to David Ortiz in the ALCS MVP voting, has made eight straight appearances these playoffs and has yet to be charged with an earned run over 10 2/3 innings.
* On the flip side of things for the Birds, they have won all six playoff games at Busch, where St. Louis had a mark of 53-28, just one game better than its away record. The Red Sox were 43-38 on the road, where they struggled for much of the first half of the season.
* Mark Bellhorn has not homered in one straight game.
* More remarkably, Mark Bellhorn has not struck out in two straight games.
* Oh, and that football team has won something like 21 in a row too. Not bad, eh?
That's Right!,
HMK
Thanks to Eric Wilbur of the Boston Globe
But this has truly been a postseason filled with streaks. Consider:
* St. Louis’ 6-2 loss last night in Game 2 was the Cardinals’ fifth straight road loss of the playoffs, in which they have lost six of seven games this month. The Cardinals were an NL-best 52-29 on the road during the regular season, but have had the challenge of playing the Astros at Minute Maid Park, where Houston never lost the last two months, and the Red Sox at Fenway, where Boston compiled the AL’s second-best home mark.
* While the attention was focused on the fact that Manny Ramirez went seven straight games in the ALCS without an RBI, everybody has missed the fact that he is in the midst of a 12-game postseason hitting streak, batting .346 for the month.
For the 12th straight media session, an out-of-town reporter asked Johnny Damon about his hair.
* Closer Keith Foulke, probably a close second to David Ortiz in the ALCS MVP voting, has made eight straight appearances these playoffs and has yet to be charged with an earned run over 10 2/3 innings.
* On the flip side of things for the Birds, they have won all six playoff games at Busch, where St. Louis had a mark of 53-28, just one game better than its away record. The Red Sox were 43-38 on the road, where they struggled for much of the first half of the season.
* Mark Bellhorn has not homered in one straight game.
* More remarkably, Mark Bellhorn has not struck out in two straight games.
* Oh, and that football team has won something like 21 in a row too. Not bad, eh?
That's Right!,
HMK
Thanks to Eric Wilbur of the Boston Globe
Thursday, October 21, 2004
iPod News Flash!
I've been saying this since the beginning of 2004 - The only thing missing from the iPod family is an inexpensive, groovy little flash drive micro-mini-pod: A 1-2 GB flash based music player about the size of a business card that holds 250-500 songs, comes with earbuds, fire-wire cable and dock. Price it at around $100US and nobody will be able to touch Apple's mp3 player domination. And why not? C'mon Steve - make it so. All I'm saying is if the Red Sox can make history by winning the World Series this year - then my wish for an Apple FlashPod in my stocking this Christmas should be really simple, right?
That's Right,
HMK
That's Right,
HMK
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Please God, show me a sign...
Taken from the centerfield bleachers at Fenway Park (Gabe Kapler is No. 19 and Johnny Damon is No. 18). Coincidence? I think not. Destiny is on our side. May the Force be with you, Boston Red Sox.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Black U2 iPod?
The infamous black iPod looks set to make a second appearance next month, when Apple ships a special edition digital music device to commemorate the arrival of rock band U2's newest long-player.
So claim a variety of web sites, including Forbes.com. Apple itself isn't commenting on the specifics of the rumour, but it has already sent out invites to a music-oriented event taking place on 26 October.
U2's new record, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, isn't due for release until a month after that, but lead singer Bono and axe man The Edge will join Steve Jobs on stage.
U2's fondness for Apple was seen most recently in the band's latest video, which pastiches Apple's iPod ads. Or is it an iPod ad that pastiches U2 - not sure. Either way, they both do nicely out of it, promoting the iPod and the single.
Sounds cool - I will follow up later...
That's Right,
HMK
So claim a variety of web sites, including Forbes.com. Apple itself isn't commenting on the specifics of the rumour, but it has already sent out invites to a music-oriented event taking place on 26 October.
U2's new record, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, isn't due for release until a month after that, but lead singer Bono and axe man The Edge will join Steve Jobs on stage.
U2's fondness for Apple was seen most recently in the band's latest video, which pastiches Apple's iPod ads. Or is it an iPod ad that pastiches U2 - not sure. Either way, they both do nicely out of it, promoting the iPod and the single.
Sounds cool - I will follow up later...
That's Right,
HMK
Thursday, October 14, 2004
All I Want For Christmas
Just when I thought my music/audio fetish "Must Have" list was complete, Griffin follows through with it's long promised and long delayed, RadioSHARK. It's the quintessential "product that you wish someone had invented ten or fifteen years ago." Requiring only a USB cable for PC or Mac connectivity and power, the seven-inch-tall white plastic shark's fin sits on a chrome base, picking up FM and AM radio signals whenever a computer's connected. With a few button presses, you can easily "time shift" radio programming in TiVo style, pausing and rewinding live broadcasts, while a few more button presses enable you to create VCR-style recordings of whatever's on your local airwaves. Three lights on each side of the RadioSHARK's fin glow blue to indicate power, and red to indicate recording.
And if you're reading this Chrissy, the best part is - it'll fit in my stocking!
Groove Me!
That's Right,
HMK
And if you're reading this Chrissy, the best part is - it'll fit in my stocking!
Groove Me!
That's Right,
HMK
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
WanderPort
WanderPod Brings Wi-Fi Anywhere
Dennis Stacey had one of the best seats at the Ansari X Prize launches, right alongside the taxiway where Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne rolled out to make history earlier this month. But the Montreal entrepreneur was at California's Mojave Airport not to catch a space launch, but to prove that he can bring internet access to people wherever they happen to be.
Stacey, 30, is CEO of WanderPort Wireless, a 2-year-old firm that's established itself as a provider of Wi-Fi hot spots in business, boutique and luxury hotels in Canada and the United States. Now Stacey and his 15-person firm want to take wireless connectivity where it's never gone before.
WanderPort sent a small crew to Mojave to unveil the WanderPod, a rolling Wi-Fi hot spot consisting of a small trailer tricked out with a diesel generator, an antenna, juiced-up access-point hardware and a satellite dish that serves as a broadband data link.
The target market: anyone who needs to get on the net from remote locations or places where infrastructure has been knocked out.
What Stacey has in mind is a place like Florida, in the wake of its recent series of hurricanes, or even Sudan, where the United Nations and aid groups are responding to the refugee crisis in Darfur. In other words, places well beyond conventional net access.
"We'd like to see this used by disaster-recovery groups like the Red Cross, like FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), or even engineering groups rebuilding infrastructure can use this sort of thing," Stacey said.
The pod could also be useful for film crews in the field as well as for providing connectivity at large-scale events in out-of-the-way places, like the X Prize race.
Until a month or so ago, though, the WanderPod was just an idea. That's when Jack Bader, of St. Louis-based network services company NetEffects and director of infrastructure for the X Prize event at Mojave Airport, went googling in search of backup Wi-Fi providers. "I contacted them with what I call one of my 'cold mails,'" Bader said. "And they agreed to show up." WanderPort got in touch with Wisp Gear, the Austin, Texas, company that handles most of its Wi-Fi deployments. Wisp got to work putting together the WanderPod trailer -- complete with a checkerboard floor and the WanderPort logo in neon -- and hauled it to the Southern California desert. By the time the WanderPort crew arrived, though, its job had gone from backup to essential.
A documentary film crew and a webcast team had set up camp next to the tarmac and needed Wi-Fi access, so the WanderPod was set up to serve them.
"We weren't planning to have Wi-Fi in this particular area," Bader said. "But when we got there, everyone wanted it. On an event like this, everything's in flux, everyone's got a laptop, and they just expect" to be able to get online.
Stacey said the WanderPod, designed to let anyone within 2,000 feet get on the net and which handled as many as 200 users at a time, performed well during its live-fire test in the desert. But he said Mojave was just the beginning of what his company hopes will turn into a significant business.
He said the pod trailers will cost about $50,000 apiece to produce, complete with heavy-duty tires and suspensions so they can be hauled into remote areas. WanderPort hopes to sell the units for $80,000 each, he said, adding that the company has full funding to go into production when it starts getting orders.
But it's unclear how big the market will be. The WanderPod has no apparent competition and the idea of using it in out-of-the-way places beyond the reach of cellular service makes sense, said Jupiter Research Wi-Fi analyst Julie Ask. But she said its usefulness could be limited by practical factors such as the performance of satellite broadband and the difficulty of hauling a trailer into truly remote places.
"Satellite is weak. If the weather's bad, if it's foggy, if it's pouring down rain, that'll hurt you," Ask said. "My gut reaction is that this sounds a little dreamy."
Stacey said his company plans to take the WanderPod on the road to show it off to surfers and potential customers in New York, Boston, Chicago, Toronto and Montreal.
Wi Fi Me
HMK
Dennis Stacey had one of the best seats at the Ansari X Prize launches, right alongside the taxiway where Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne rolled out to make history earlier this month. But the Montreal entrepreneur was at California's Mojave Airport not to catch a space launch, but to prove that he can bring internet access to people wherever they happen to be.
Stacey, 30, is CEO of WanderPort Wireless, a 2-year-old firm that's established itself as a provider of Wi-Fi hot spots in business, boutique and luxury hotels in Canada and the United States. Now Stacey and his 15-person firm want to take wireless connectivity where it's never gone before.
WanderPort sent a small crew to Mojave to unveil the WanderPod, a rolling Wi-Fi hot spot consisting of a small trailer tricked out with a diesel generator, an antenna, juiced-up access-point hardware and a satellite dish that serves as a broadband data link.
The target market: anyone who needs to get on the net from remote locations or places where infrastructure has been knocked out.
What Stacey has in mind is a place like Florida, in the wake of its recent series of hurricanes, or even Sudan, where the United Nations and aid groups are responding to the refugee crisis in Darfur. In other words, places well beyond conventional net access.
"We'd like to see this used by disaster-recovery groups like the Red Cross, like FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), or even engineering groups rebuilding infrastructure can use this sort of thing," Stacey said.
The pod could also be useful for film crews in the field as well as for providing connectivity at large-scale events in out-of-the-way places, like the X Prize race.
Until a month or so ago, though, the WanderPod was just an idea. That's when Jack Bader, of St. Louis-based network services company NetEffects and director of infrastructure for the X Prize event at Mojave Airport, went googling in search of backup Wi-Fi providers. "I contacted them with what I call one of my 'cold mails,'" Bader said. "And they agreed to show up." WanderPort got in touch with Wisp Gear, the Austin, Texas, company that handles most of its Wi-Fi deployments. Wisp got to work putting together the WanderPod trailer -- complete with a checkerboard floor and the WanderPort logo in neon -- and hauled it to the Southern California desert. By the time the WanderPort crew arrived, though, its job had gone from backup to essential.
A documentary film crew and a webcast team had set up camp next to the tarmac and needed Wi-Fi access, so the WanderPod was set up to serve them.
"We weren't planning to have Wi-Fi in this particular area," Bader said. "But when we got there, everyone wanted it. On an event like this, everything's in flux, everyone's got a laptop, and they just expect" to be able to get online.
Stacey said the WanderPod, designed to let anyone within 2,000 feet get on the net and which handled as many as 200 users at a time, performed well during its live-fire test in the desert. But he said Mojave was just the beginning of what his company hopes will turn into a significant business.
He said the pod trailers will cost about $50,000 apiece to produce, complete with heavy-duty tires and suspensions so they can be hauled into remote areas. WanderPort hopes to sell the units for $80,000 each, he said, adding that the company has full funding to go into production when it starts getting orders.
But it's unclear how big the market will be. The WanderPod has no apparent competition and the idea of using it in out-of-the-way places beyond the reach of cellular service makes sense, said Jupiter Research Wi-Fi analyst Julie Ask. But she said its usefulness could be limited by practical factors such as the performance of satellite broadband and the difficulty of hauling a trailer into truly remote places.
"Satellite is weak. If the weather's bad, if it's foggy, if it's pouring down rain, that'll hurt you," Ask said. "My gut reaction is that this sounds a little dreamy."
Stacey said his company plans to take the WanderPod on the road to show it off to surfers and potential customers in New York, Boston, Chicago, Toronto and Montreal.
Wi Fi Me
HMK
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Bonjour!
I shot this on our walk over to the Louvre from some other amazingly awesome place.
Beautiful city. But, can you believe we were charged 6.50 euro for a glass of tap water, and my beer was 2 euro less...
That's Right. That's Crazy.
HMK
Beautiful city. But, can you believe we were charged 6.50 euro for a glass of tap water, and my beer was 2 euro less...
That's Right. That's Crazy.
HMK
Saturday, October 02, 2004
5 Vital Steps
Discovery
+
Exploration
+
Development
+
Refinement
+
Implementation = Great Work
Solutions
Steps
We've done this before. These are the steps. The right people do the right things in the right order to consistently achieve the right results.
Discovery
Purpose: To understand the context in which the solution must work, and to articulate the strategy that underlies the creative direction.
What's really going on: At the beginning of this step, we tend to look at
documents (communications, business plans, studies, etc.). From there, we tend to engage in conversations, conduct interviews. The context includes the marketplace, the competition, and the company or brand itself. In gaining a detailed working understanding of the context, our goal is not to become more expert at our client's business than they are, which is not possible, but to become sufficiently grounded to ask the right questions.
Deliverables: Vary. At a minimum, a set of criteria to guide exploration (the next step) and to help evaluate results. Depending on the assignment, deliverables might also include audits, assessments, and competitive surveys various types of findings.
Exploration
Purpose: To chart the possible creative directions that might yield a solution.
What's really going on: During this step, we're essentially asking, "What if?" Drawing on inspirations. Making connections. Surveying the realm of possibilities. We try to remain open to anything, to edit nothing out. This is where it's helpful to have a broad range of experience and wide-ranging interests to draw upon.
Deliverables: Notes, scribbles, show-and-tell, found objects, things torn from magazines, pages marked in books, etc. Strictly speaking, these aren't always deliverables, since our clients don't always see them.
Development
Purpose: To develop the most promising creative directions in depth.
What's really going on: From the universe of possibilities, a handful emerge as the most promising — often because they hold the best hope of satisfying the criteria we developed in step one, or because they hold the richest potential for further development. At a minimum, we focus our attention on two or three of these directions, and develop multiple variations or interpretations for each.
Deliverables: A presentation of many ideas, possibilities or alternatives expressing multiple creative directions. Depending on the solution, this presentation can take a variety of forms.
Refinement
Purpose: To refine the most promising candidate(s) from the most promising direction(s).
What's really going on: Now we're really narrowing our focus. Step by step, our concerns have moved from the most strategic and conceptual to become increasingly formal. At this point, we've more or less committed to a limited number of solutions (knowing, of course, that we can always go back to explore other possibilities if we gain new insight or if the context changes). Now we're refining and modulating their specific features or qualities.
Deliverables: A presentation of a chosen solution (or a limited number of solutions) showing a higher level of resolution now that we have focused our attention on working it out.
Implementation
Purpose: To finish the solution, once agreement has been reached.
What's really going on: In this step and the one preceding it, care and attention to detail play a critical role. A good idea that's been poorly executed is not the same as a solution. "Finishing" the solution means "giving it a high level of finish" at least as much as it means "completing it."
Deliverable: The completed work in final form, ready for application and use or, depending on the assignment, replication and dissemination to its intended audience.
Afterwards
We care about our work. Above all, we sincerely want it to work for our clients. After completing an assignment, we actively seeks to stay in touch. We're eager to see how our solutions perform, to be available for any necessary refinements or updates, and to identify additional needs or opportunities, including next steps in the brand-building process. There's no greater satisfaction than helping our clients achieve their objectives —except helping them to attain their next set of objectives.
Thanks to Scott Mires.
+
Exploration
+
Development
+
Refinement
+
Implementation = Great Work
Solutions
Steps
We've done this before. These are the steps. The right people do the right things in the right order to consistently achieve the right results.
Discovery
Purpose: To understand the context in which the solution must work, and to articulate the strategy that underlies the creative direction.
What's really going on: At the beginning of this step, we tend to look at
documents (communications, business plans, studies, etc.). From there, we tend to engage in conversations, conduct interviews. The context includes the marketplace, the competition, and the company or brand itself. In gaining a detailed working understanding of the context, our goal is not to become more expert at our client's business than they are, which is not possible, but to become sufficiently grounded to ask the right questions.
Deliverables: Vary. At a minimum, a set of criteria to guide exploration (the next step) and to help evaluate results. Depending on the assignment, deliverables might also include audits, assessments, and competitive surveys various types of findings.
Exploration
Purpose: To chart the possible creative directions that might yield a solution.
What's really going on: During this step, we're essentially asking, "What if?" Drawing on inspirations. Making connections. Surveying the realm of possibilities. We try to remain open to anything, to edit nothing out. This is where it's helpful to have a broad range of experience and wide-ranging interests to draw upon.
Deliverables: Notes, scribbles, show-and-tell, found objects, things torn from magazines, pages marked in books, etc. Strictly speaking, these aren't always deliverables, since our clients don't always see them.
Development
Purpose: To develop the most promising creative directions in depth.
What's really going on: From the universe of possibilities, a handful emerge as the most promising — often because they hold the best hope of satisfying the criteria we developed in step one, or because they hold the richest potential for further development. At a minimum, we focus our attention on two or three of these directions, and develop multiple variations or interpretations for each.
Deliverables: A presentation of many ideas, possibilities or alternatives expressing multiple creative directions. Depending on the solution, this presentation can take a variety of forms.
Refinement
Purpose: To refine the most promising candidate(s) from the most promising direction(s).
What's really going on: Now we're really narrowing our focus. Step by step, our concerns have moved from the most strategic and conceptual to become increasingly formal. At this point, we've more or less committed to a limited number of solutions (knowing, of course, that we can always go back to explore other possibilities if we gain new insight or if the context changes). Now we're refining and modulating their specific features or qualities.
Deliverables: A presentation of a chosen solution (or a limited number of solutions) showing a higher level of resolution now that we have focused our attention on working it out.
Implementation
Purpose: To finish the solution, once agreement has been reached.
What's really going on: In this step and the one preceding it, care and attention to detail play a critical role. A good idea that's been poorly executed is not the same as a solution. "Finishing" the solution means "giving it a high level of finish" at least as much as it means "completing it."
Deliverable: The completed work in final form, ready for application and use or, depending on the assignment, replication and dissemination to its intended audience.
Afterwards
We care about our work. Above all, we sincerely want it to work for our clients. After completing an assignment, we actively seeks to stay in touch. We're eager to see how our solutions perform, to be available for any necessary refinements or updates, and to identify additional needs or opportunities, including next steps in the brand-building process. There's no greater satisfaction than helping our clients achieve their objectives —except helping them to attain their next set of objectives.
Thanks to Scott Mires.
Monday, September 27, 2004
Lost Hemingway Bullfight Tale Surfaces
LONDON, Sept. 26 - Eighty years after they were written, a previously unknown story and a handwritten letter ascribed to Ernest Hemingway have surfaced to stir a literary and legal dispute between people who want to see them published and people who don't.
At present, the opponents of publication - notably the custodians of the Hemingway estate - are winning, according to several people on both sides of the debate. But that has not detracted from the long, twisty tale of the documents themselves: a two-page letter and a five-page slapstick account of a bullfighting incident written in 1924. Not only do the documents offer an insight into the personality of a young Hemingway, scholars say, but they also illuminate the powerful appeal exerted by even modest discoveries of previously unknown writing by literary giants like Hemingway, who died in 1961.
The story - a thinly fictionalized sketch titled "My Life in the Bull Ring With Donald Ogden Stewart'' - and the letter cannot be published without the permission of the Hemingway estate, which has withheld it. But they can be sold, and will be auctioned in New York in December, according to Christie's, whose officials said the documents were expected to bring $12,000 to $18,000. None of the parties involved have raised questions about the documents' authenticity. The seller, who lives in Rome, is Donald Stewart, the son of Donald Ogden Stewart. What happens to the documents after the sale depends on whether the buyer is willing to permit access to the work by scholars or will try again to persuade the estate to permit their publication. What has happened to them in the past 80 years, though, seems an odd blend of history repeating itself and art mocking life.
"This is a piece of literary history, a wonderful find,'' Matthew J. Bruccoli, a scholar at the University of South Carolina who has written extensively about Hemingway, said in an interview. "It is lamentable that this very interesting piece of literary history is apparently interdicted from publication.''
The bullfighting episode was apparently inspired by an actual encounter in 1924 between Stewart, a well-known American author at the time, and an angry bull in Pamplona, Spain, where Hemingway had arranged for a group of friends to join him. Stewart was part of a literary set in the 1920's and 30's that included F. Scott Fitzgerald and others. He was a close friend of Hemingway during the 1920's and went on to write the Oscar-winning screenplay of "Philadelphia Story" in 1940. He was blacklisted in the McCarthy era and moved to London in 1950.
In 1924 he, John Dos Passos and others met up with Hemingway during the annual bullfighting fiesta, an event that would inspire Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises.'' The undated letter from Hemingway to Stewart, on stationery from the Hotel Perla in Pamplona, sets out the arrangements for the trip. It also hints of long, delicious meals: he writes with "great difficulty," he admits at one point. "It is still three hours after lunch."
In his 1975 autobiography, "By a Stroke of Luck!," Stewart recalled spending days "excited, drunk, hot, hungover" in Pamplona. At one point, he wrote, he was helped into a bullring and handed a red cloak. "I found myself standing alone in the midst of an audience of thousands with the bull glaring at me from a distance of six feet,'' Stewart wrote.
Twice the bull tossed him. "I had been hit by a bull, and it was nothing,'' he wrote. "I had shown that I could take it. Ernest clapped me on the back, and I felt as though I had scored a winning touchdown.''
Subsequently, according to Stewart's autobiography, Hemingway sent him a humorous account of the incident, prefaced by his address: "Ernest Hemingway, 113 Rue Notre Dame des Champs, Paris, France.''
But Stewart, himself a parodist and humorist, was not impressed. "When he had sent me a 'funny' piece about myself to submit to Vanity Fair, I had decided that written humor was not his dish and had done nothing about it,'' Stewart wrote.
What happened afterward is unclear. According to his family, Stewart may have put the short story aside and ignored it. In any event, the typescript - a carbon copy - seems to have gathered dust until last year, when his son discovered it.
Mr. Stewart, 72, said the documents had been in an envelope that he inherited after his father's death in 1980 and had left untouched. "I hadn't bothered with it because it represented to me the enormous burden of having a famous father,'' he said in a telephone interview from Rome. By last year, though, he felt reconciled with his father's memory, he said, and after rereading his father's autobiographical reference to an unpublished Hemingway work he "resolved to cheerily plunder this envelope'' to search for it.
He sought to publish the documents in the modern Vanity Fair, with an article of his own. The magazine agreed, only to discover that the Hemingway estate had refused permission for publication, Wayne Lawson, the executive literary editor of Vanity Fair, said. "So for us, that was the end of it,'' he said in a telephone interview from New York.
The documents fall into a quirk of copyright law. While the text may not be published without the permission of the Hemingway estate, the letter and typescript may be sold as artifacts, according to Patrick McGrath, a books and manuscripts specialist at Christie's in New York.
Mr. McGrath said the auction house had authenticated the letter as written in Hemingway's hand. The five-page carbon copy of the story has also been authenticated, he added, because of its provenance and because the words "The End" were in Hemingway's handwriting.
It is not clear why permission to publish the documents was withheld. According to Mr. Stewart, the Ernest Hemingway Foundation granted him permission to publish the story and the letter in return for $500. The foundation, representing scholars and enthusiasts, is a legal entity endowed with some rights over unpublished Hemingway material, said Prof. Gerald Kennedy, its vice president and an English professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
But under an agreement reached in 1983 after the death of the author's widow, Mary Hemingway, joint permission from the foundation and the estate is required for the use of any previously unpublished material.
Simon & Schuster, which has held the rights to Hemingway's published work since it took over his original publisher, Scribner's, in 1994, also acts as an intermediary between the estate and people seeking to publish his writings. In an e-mail message to Mr. Stewart on Sept. 10, Lydia Zelaya, a permissions editor at Simon & Schuster, wrote: "The estate does not permit such publication. Therefore publication of this material anywhere in the world is prohibited.'' The text of her message was made available by Mr. Stewart.
A Simon & Schuster executive said the publisher had merely relayed a decision by the Hemingway estate.
The estate's denial of permission effectively canceled Professor Kennedy's decision to approve publication of the documents. "We were happy with the prospect of some new work by Hemingway coming into the public view,'' he said. "But the family had other considerations, and I can't speak for them."
Professor Kennedy said he did not doubt the story's authenticity. "The piece surprised me because I had not known about it at all,'' he said.
He said the story was characteristic of the kind of humorous material that Hemingway was writing "on the side'' while he was in Paris in the mid-1920's. "It's very much in the spirit of tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top humor,'' he said.
Thanks To By Alan Cowell NYT
At present, the opponents of publication - notably the custodians of the Hemingway estate - are winning, according to several people on both sides of the debate. But that has not detracted from the long, twisty tale of the documents themselves: a two-page letter and a five-page slapstick account of a bullfighting incident written in 1924. Not only do the documents offer an insight into the personality of a young Hemingway, scholars say, but they also illuminate the powerful appeal exerted by even modest discoveries of previously unknown writing by literary giants like Hemingway, who died in 1961.
The story - a thinly fictionalized sketch titled "My Life in the Bull Ring With Donald Ogden Stewart'' - and the letter cannot be published without the permission of the Hemingway estate, which has withheld it. But they can be sold, and will be auctioned in New York in December, according to Christie's, whose officials said the documents were expected to bring $12,000 to $18,000. None of the parties involved have raised questions about the documents' authenticity. The seller, who lives in Rome, is Donald Stewart, the son of Donald Ogden Stewart. What happens to the documents after the sale depends on whether the buyer is willing to permit access to the work by scholars or will try again to persuade the estate to permit their publication. What has happened to them in the past 80 years, though, seems an odd blend of history repeating itself and art mocking life.
"This is a piece of literary history, a wonderful find,'' Matthew J. Bruccoli, a scholar at the University of South Carolina who has written extensively about Hemingway, said in an interview. "It is lamentable that this very interesting piece of literary history is apparently interdicted from publication.''
The bullfighting episode was apparently inspired by an actual encounter in 1924 between Stewart, a well-known American author at the time, and an angry bull in Pamplona, Spain, where Hemingway had arranged for a group of friends to join him. Stewart was part of a literary set in the 1920's and 30's that included F. Scott Fitzgerald and others. He was a close friend of Hemingway during the 1920's and went on to write the Oscar-winning screenplay of "Philadelphia Story" in 1940. He was blacklisted in the McCarthy era and moved to London in 1950.
In 1924 he, John Dos Passos and others met up with Hemingway during the annual bullfighting fiesta, an event that would inspire Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises.'' The undated letter from Hemingway to Stewart, on stationery from the Hotel Perla in Pamplona, sets out the arrangements for the trip. It also hints of long, delicious meals: he writes with "great difficulty," he admits at one point. "It is still three hours after lunch."
In his 1975 autobiography, "By a Stroke of Luck!," Stewart recalled spending days "excited, drunk, hot, hungover" in Pamplona. At one point, he wrote, he was helped into a bullring and handed a red cloak. "I found myself standing alone in the midst of an audience of thousands with the bull glaring at me from a distance of six feet,'' Stewart wrote.
Twice the bull tossed him. "I had been hit by a bull, and it was nothing,'' he wrote. "I had shown that I could take it. Ernest clapped me on the back, and I felt as though I had scored a winning touchdown.''
Subsequently, according to Stewart's autobiography, Hemingway sent him a humorous account of the incident, prefaced by his address: "Ernest Hemingway, 113 Rue Notre Dame des Champs, Paris, France.''
But Stewart, himself a parodist and humorist, was not impressed. "When he had sent me a 'funny' piece about myself to submit to Vanity Fair, I had decided that written humor was not his dish and had done nothing about it,'' Stewart wrote.
What happened afterward is unclear. According to his family, Stewart may have put the short story aside and ignored it. In any event, the typescript - a carbon copy - seems to have gathered dust until last year, when his son discovered it.
Mr. Stewart, 72, said the documents had been in an envelope that he inherited after his father's death in 1980 and had left untouched. "I hadn't bothered with it because it represented to me the enormous burden of having a famous father,'' he said in a telephone interview from Rome. By last year, though, he felt reconciled with his father's memory, he said, and after rereading his father's autobiographical reference to an unpublished Hemingway work he "resolved to cheerily plunder this envelope'' to search for it.
He sought to publish the documents in the modern Vanity Fair, with an article of his own. The magazine agreed, only to discover that the Hemingway estate had refused permission for publication, Wayne Lawson, the executive literary editor of Vanity Fair, said. "So for us, that was the end of it,'' he said in a telephone interview from New York.
The documents fall into a quirk of copyright law. While the text may not be published without the permission of the Hemingway estate, the letter and typescript may be sold as artifacts, according to Patrick McGrath, a books and manuscripts specialist at Christie's in New York.
Mr. McGrath said the auction house had authenticated the letter as written in Hemingway's hand. The five-page carbon copy of the story has also been authenticated, he added, because of its provenance and because the words "The End" were in Hemingway's handwriting.
It is not clear why permission to publish the documents was withheld. According to Mr. Stewart, the Ernest Hemingway Foundation granted him permission to publish the story and the letter in return for $500. The foundation, representing scholars and enthusiasts, is a legal entity endowed with some rights over unpublished Hemingway material, said Prof. Gerald Kennedy, its vice president and an English professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
But under an agreement reached in 1983 after the death of the author's widow, Mary Hemingway, joint permission from the foundation and the estate is required for the use of any previously unpublished material.
Simon & Schuster, which has held the rights to Hemingway's published work since it took over his original publisher, Scribner's, in 1994, also acts as an intermediary between the estate and people seeking to publish his writings. In an e-mail message to Mr. Stewart on Sept. 10, Lydia Zelaya, a permissions editor at Simon & Schuster, wrote: "The estate does not permit such publication. Therefore publication of this material anywhere in the world is prohibited.'' The text of her message was made available by Mr. Stewart.
A Simon & Schuster executive said the publisher had merely relayed a decision by the Hemingway estate.
The estate's denial of permission effectively canceled Professor Kennedy's decision to approve publication of the documents. "We were happy with the prospect of some new work by Hemingway coming into the public view,'' he said. "But the family had other considerations, and I can't speak for them."
Professor Kennedy said he did not doubt the story's authenticity. "The piece surprised me because I had not known about it at all,'' he said.
He said the story was characteristic of the kind of humorous material that Hemingway was writing "on the side'' while he was in Paris in the mid-1920's. "It's very much in the spirit of tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top humor,'' he said.
Thanks To By Alan Cowell NYT
Friday, September 24, 2004
Groovetube
Is it just me or does mood lighting seem to be the latest way to up the art vibe at home? Then, in steps the Groovetube: This groovy plastic box adheres to a television screen and diffuses the colors into a psychedelic, geometric color display. It's kinda like iTunes visuals for your TV - it also comes in 3 sizes.
Groove Me!
Have a great weekend!
That's Right,
HMK
Groove Me!
Have a great weekend!
That's Right,
HMK
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
All In: Good Fun
ATLANTIC CITY, Sept. 20 - Sunday night, three of the luckiest guys alive finally caught a break and headed up to a room at the Borgata casino here for a rest in the middle of a long day at the World Poker Tour. In the past few years these three have each won millions of dollars - the talk generally gets less specific when losses come up - playing Texas Hold 'Em, a card game that has stormed across television and computer screens and put poker in the middle of the table as never before.
The men are three of the kings of so-called no-limit poker, a format in which any player at any time can put all his money in the pot - all in, as they say. No-limit poker is as indigenous to America as jazz, and full of just as much improvisation. Apple pie is fine, and baseball is always good on a sunny day, but what could be more American than betting $1 million on the flop of single card?
Although pitiless when they sit across the table from one another for a game of Hold 'Em, the three, Doyle Brunson, T. J. Cloutier and Gus Hansen, are friends, as friendly as professional card players get. They had mixed results playing the seven-card game at the tables that day, in part because they had to play through a clutter of amateurs that the poker craze has created. Now that the pros finally had some time to themselves, give or take a reporter, they could unwind at last. And play some cards.
Away from the television cameras and clamoring fans, they opted for a change of pace, plopping down on the king-size bed as Mr. Hansen dealt 13 cards to each player. Chinese poker was the name of this game, and it required that they arrange three hands of poker out of the cards they were dealt, in progressively better hands. The room went silent for five seconds after the deal as each man clicked through mathematical possibilities measured in thousands. And then they played nickel poker, with the word "nickel" meaning $500 and "dime" meaning $1,000. Many thousands of dollars changed hands in a matter of minutes.
Mr. Hansen, a former top backgammon player who came out of nowhere or, more specifically, Denmark, in 1997 as a professional poker player, won the first hand. Mr. Brunson, an old-school rounder who came up the hard way - and won the World Series of Poker, twice - was gracious in defeat.
"You won it all as usual, which is something I will have to become accustomed to," he said.
He and Mr. Hansen have seen a lot of each other. This past summer they, with six other of the world's best card players, each anted up $400,000 for a professional death match on Fox Sports Net called the "Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament" - no amateurs or Internet players allowed. The last episode of the first round was broadcast on Sunday, with Mr. Hansen riding a hot hand to victory. A new round begins next Sunday.
In the game of Hold 'Em, each player receives two of his own cards and then bets progressively over the next five common cards on the table - three cards known as "the flop," a fourth known as "the turn" and then the fifth, "the river." Millions of new players are flooding virtual Hold 'Em games on the Internet and have stormed the casinos. The Borgata alone is in the midst of expanding its poker room to 85 tables, from 35.
But these pros aren't new to the game. They are all self-described degenerate gamblers who just happen to be better at the game than civilians. Their every waking minute is spent in pursuit of action, not always at the poker table. If the three of them came across two worms washed on a sidewalk after a rainstorm, they might be compelled to stop and bet on which one makes it back to the grass first.
Someone brought up the evening's National Football League game: Miami would square off against Cincinnati in a few hours. Mr. Brunson, who is famed for putting down as much as a $250,000 on any given day on sports events, asked Mr. Hansen who he liked in the game. Mr. Hansen said he had no strong preference, but Mr. Brunson told him to pick anyway. Mr. Hansen chose Cincinnati to beat the points and the under, which is a pick based on total points. And with that, the bet was down: $30,000. Who picked whom was clearly beside the point.
"We all like the action," Mr. Hansen said later at the casino's buffet, taking in mouthfuls of mashed potatoes off a butter knife as he spoke. "If nothing is at stake, what's the point?"
That does not explain why millions of people are sitting in front of their televisions watching other people play cards; the World Poker Tour was the Travel Channel's highest rated show last year. (Among the other shows now on the air are ESPN's "World Series of Poker" and Bravo's "Celebrity Poker Showdown.") Poker became television fodder when the toy mogul Henry Orenstein invented a camera technology that allowed viewers to see a poker player's cards through a window in the table. Mr. Orenstein is the creator and executive producer of "Poker Superstars."
"Before, you never knew who had what cards," he said in a telephone interview. "Now you can actually see the strategy in the middle of the game."
It was the Internet, however, that changed the odds in big-money tournaments. Last year an Internet player named Christopher Moneymaker - his actual name, by the way - won the World Series of Poker and $2.5 million. He had never played in a live tournament in his life, so his victory took a bit of the mystique out of poker, where it has long been held that reading the people is more important than reading the cards. There are no faces in Web card rooms, only players and lots of them. Last year, according to Christiansen Capital Advisors, a market research concern, Internet gambling revenue totaled almost $6.35 billion.
Mr. Orenstein reasoned that if people would spend billions sitting in front of their computers, they might want to see the game's royalty going head-to-head, and he sold the program idea to Fox; "Poker Superstars" made its debut in August.
The legendary player Johnny Chan, who appeared as himself in the movie "Rounders," is one of those kings. At the Borgata, he took a seat at a slot machine to chat.
"The amateurs are going to get lucky every once in a while, and I don't think it is bad for the game," he said. "I love this game. We all do. We want to be in the action all the time. The only time we aren't in the action is when we are sleeping.''
It can get pretty silly after a while. Howard Lederer, who has played chess for cash, is known as the Professor because of his command of poker's numerical whims. Even as he sat nursing a brutally small stack of chips in the poker room at the Borgata during the World Poker Tour, he was staring at a television screen above his head that was replaying a hand he had against Johnny Chan in Fox's "Poker Superstars." The hand in front of him did not look much better than the one on the screen.
"I know I'm in a tournament and going to lose and running bad on TV, too," he said.
"But you have to be in the moment," he added philosophically. "I was having a mediocre day of cards, but I was struggling to play my best. You can't think about the meta, about the past, about the bad beats. You have to play the cards in front of you."
The tournament ended after midnight and everyone, pros and amateurs alike, counted their chips and thought about the next day of play. But not everyone was done playing. At a $15 craps table just outside the B Bar on the main level of the Borgata, the guy chanting at the dice looked familiar. It was Mr. Cloutier, who has 57 titles in major tournaments and five World Series of Poker titles; he is poker's all-time leading money winner.
Mr. Cloutier is one guy you do not want to have sit down at your table, except that he is a complete gentleman, which means he will be nice to you after he takes all of your money. But he was playing craps right then. It was 1:26 on Monday morning. He made a promise, empty even as it was uttered, to stop by the bar when he was done.
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Upstairs - Downstairs
The Benefits of Living Above the Store
By Suzanne Hamlin NYT
There are very few ways to outwit the market and find a bargain.
But for those people who are adventurous and willing to look at buildings that don't fall into their preconceived ideas of residential space, there is a frontier, maybe the last one: the mixed use building, legally designated as part commercial and part residential.
Brokers say they are seeing intense interest in them from people who previously might have wanted only purely residential property. In some cases, the buyers are looking for places to both live and work. In others, the interest is driven by money, or rather the lack thereof.
As prices for apartments and brownstones zoom ever upward, mixed-use space is becoming more appealing. It often costs less per square foot, and a commercial tenant can provide rent to cover much of the mortgage.
"It's like the floodgates have opened," said Jackie Lew, a broker with the Corcoran Group in Brooklyn.
She said that she has had more calls about a recently listed mixed-use building on Third Avenue in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, for $650,000, than on any other property in the last several years. Quite quickly, the building was bought by a dentist who plans to have his office there and rent out the apartments above.
But many prospective buyers of mixed-use property are young and not-so-young professionals who want living space in the popular Brooklyn and Manhattan neighborhoods that appeal to them for their schools, green space, transportation and shopping.
The greatest number of mixed-use buildings in New York are on big commercial strips, often in what would be considered fringe residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. For those craving space and not fearful of living without a Starbucks within walking distance, these can be a great deal.
But even in more affluent neighborhoods, mixed-use buildings can be found, usually less expensive by a third or more than fully residential buildings. If the commercial space is not used by the owner, there is the potential for income from a tenant who will probably never give wild parties, or call the landlord in the middle of the night because of a clogged sink.
Another plus for many is that unlike most residential buildings, mixed-use properties often come with the legal right to build up or extend out in back. And for many mixed-use buyers, the buildings' lack of architectural detail or character is a good thing; owners can rip out and reconfigure at will. As for the usual lack of a yard, roof gardens and decks are compensation.
Over the last 29 years, Sue and Joel Wolfe have experienced the benefits of owning a mixed-use building. When they bought a three-story building on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn in 1975, they had no intention of living there; they already had a two-family brick house in Fort Greene.
But, "Joel wanted to open a restaurant," said Ms. Wolfe, who at the time was a merchandising executive and is now a real estate broker.
The 4,425-square-foot Atlantic Avenue building, between Nevins and Bond Streets, cost $38,000 in 1978, about a third of the total cost of renovations needed to create a ground-floor restaurant for Mr. Wolfe and upstairs, a spacious duplex and landscaped deck.
The upstairs duplex, meant originally as a rental, almost immediately became home for the Wolfes and their daughter, Lissa. "It didn't take long to figure out that if we were ever going to see Joel, we had to live in the building," Ms. Wolfe said.
The building, valued at around $1.4 million in today's market, looks right at home now in a tree-shaded block of clothing boutiques, art galleries, antique stores, a yoga studio, a garden center and restaurants.
Development plans for making Atlantic Avenue a three-mile grand boulevard, beginning with a riverside park and ending at a Frank Gehry-designed basketball stadium and shopping complex, are well under way.
But the Atlantic Avenue of 30 years ago was desolate, treeless and heavily traveled, a main thoroughfare for people on their way to somewhere else. Mr. Wolfe's restaurant, Restaurant Lisanne, was surrounded by manufacturing plants, wire-fence parking lots and low, anonymous storefront buildings.
It was considered a good restaurant, but even residents in Brooklyn Heights, less than a mile away, would not go there casually. Boerum Hill, the neighborhood directly behind the restaurant, where brownstones needing work now start at $1.5 million, was known locally as crack city, and best to be assiduously avoided after dark.
For the Wolfes, shopping for essentials was a long hike or a car trip, and casual neighborhood social life was nonexistent.
When Mr. Wolfe retired and closed Restaurant Lisanne in 1989, the space on the ground floor was rented to Cheryl Kleinman, the baker who has become well known not only for her wedding cakes and pastries but also for her celebrity clientele. It is a commercial kitchen, not a walk-in shop, and the Wolfes say they feel blessed to absorb so many seductive aromas without ingesting any calories.
Having a commercial tenant is like having a residential tenant except that in a commercial space, when there is a negotiated net income lease, the tenant pays a share of the building's taxes, as well as utilities and garbage pickup.
But there are downsides, and challenges, that buyers may not understand when they first start looking at mixed-use buildings. Ms. Lew, the broker, said those considering mixed-use property for the first time often don't know that the down payment is at least 25 percent of the purchase price.
This can be a substantial cash outlay, far greater than the average 10 percent down payment fairly standard now on residential properties purchased by buyers with large incomes who are considered good risks by mortgage lenders.
Banks consider that a mixed-use building, particularly for a live-work owner, carries a double risk. If a commercial business goes under, the odds of losing the house become greater. All eggs in one basket sets bankers' teeth on edge.
Traditionally, immigrants have been the most avid buyers of small live-work buildings. Chinatown and the Lower East Side remain vibrant examples, and recent immigrants also see this route as a way up, not down.
Eli Ickovic, a Corcoran broker who was born in Israel and is fluent in several languages, cited one of his clients, a woman from Poland, who moved here three years ago and bought a rental property in Sunset Park and then a mixed-use building in Park Slope. In contract now for those buildings, she is about to close on a mixed-use building on Atlantic Avenue that provides more income in a better location. Her teenage daughter and an older relative will move into an apartment in the building with her.
It's a scenario that still dumbfounds many Americans who can't figure how they can have good jobs and decent salaries and still not save a dime.
Hard work — very hard work — and a willingness to live in less-than-ideal quarters are the short answer. "Real estate is still the key to being able to afford to live here and achieve financial success," said Timothy D. King, the executive managing director of the Brooklyn office of Massey Knakal Realty Services, a commercial real estate firm with extensive listings across the city.
Nodding at the affable young Russian who was working as a technician and adjusting the interagency plasma TV screens, Mr. King said, "Trust me, with his kind of work ethic and intelligence, he's going to be a property owner soon."
People who understand the financial benefits often find the mixed-use route very compelling. One woman who is a stock market analyst for a Wall Street broker bought a mixed-use building in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, last year using money that might otherwise have gone into the stocks. "It's no secret," she said, "that a shrewd real estate investment is going to give a greater long-run return than the stock market."
Requesting anonymity for fear of biting the hand that feeds her, she said she has come to enjoy her new living situation. The deli downstairs is not only one-stop shopping, it's security. "As a single woman, it makes me feel safe knowing that they are there all day," she said.
But there is a sense that well-off people more appropriately choose to live in fancy co-ops. "My parents are probably turning over in their graves," she said. "Live above the store? That's what they did, so I could get my M.B.A. and get out."
By Suzanne Hamlin NYT
There are very few ways to outwit the market and find a bargain.
But for those people who are adventurous and willing to look at buildings that don't fall into their preconceived ideas of residential space, there is a frontier, maybe the last one: the mixed use building, legally designated as part commercial and part residential.
Brokers say they are seeing intense interest in them from people who previously might have wanted only purely residential property. In some cases, the buyers are looking for places to both live and work. In others, the interest is driven by money, or rather the lack thereof.
As prices for apartments and brownstones zoom ever upward, mixed-use space is becoming more appealing. It often costs less per square foot, and a commercial tenant can provide rent to cover much of the mortgage.
"It's like the floodgates have opened," said Jackie Lew, a broker with the Corcoran Group in Brooklyn.
She said that she has had more calls about a recently listed mixed-use building on Third Avenue in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, for $650,000, than on any other property in the last several years. Quite quickly, the building was bought by a dentist who plans to have his office there and rent out the apartments above.
But many prospective buyers of mixed-use property are young and not-so-young professionals who want living space in the popular Brooklyn and Manhattan neighborhoods that appeal to them for their schools, green space, transportation and shopping.
The greatest number of mixed-use buildings in New York are on big commercial strips, often in what would be considered fringe residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. For those craving space and not fearful of living without a Starbucks within walking distance, these can be a great deal.
But even in more affluent neighborhoods, mixed-use buildings can be found, usually less expensive by a third or more than fully residential buildings. If the commercial space is not used by the owner, there is the potential for income from a tenant who will probably never give wild parties, or call the landlord in the middle of the night because of a clogged sink.
Another plus for many is that unlike most residential buildings, mixed-use properties often come with the legal right to build up or extend out in back. And for many mixed-use buyers, the buildings' lack of architectural detail or character is a good thing; owners can rip out and reconfigure at will. As for the usual lack of a yard, roof gardens and decks are compensation.
Over the last 29 years, Sue and Joel Wolfe have experienced the benefits of owning a mixed-use building. When they bought a three-story building on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn in 1975, they had no intention of living there; they already had a two-family brick house in Fort Greene.
But, "Joel wanted to open a restaurant," said Ms. Wolfe, who at the time was a merchandising executive and is now a real estate broker.
The 4,425-square-foot Atlantic Avenue building, between Nevins and Bond Streets, cost $38,000 in 1978, about a third of the total cost of renovations needed to create a ground-floor restaurant for Mr. Wolfe and upstairs, a spacious duplex and landscaped deck.
The upstairs duplex, meant originally as a rental, almost immediately became home for the Wolfes and their daughter, Lissa. "It didn't take long to figure out that if we were ever going to see Joel, we had to live in the building," Ms. Wolfe said.
The building, valued at around $1.4 million in today's market, looks right at home now in a tree-shaded block of clothing boutiques, art galleries, antique stores, a yoga studio, a garden center and restaurants.
Development plans for making Atlantic Avenue a three-mile grand boulevard, beginning with a riverside park and ending at a Frank Gehry-designed basketball stadium and shopping complex, are well under way.
But the Atlantic Avenue of 30 years ago was desolate, treeless and heavily traveled, a main thoroughfare for people on their way to somewhere else. Mr. Wolfe's restaurant, Restaurant Lisanne, was surrounded by manufacturing plants, wire-fence parking lots and low, anonymous storefront buildings.
It was considered a good restaurant, but even residents in Brooklyn Heights, less than a mile away, would not go there casually. Boerum Hill, the neighborhood directly behind the restaurant, where brownstones needing work now start at $1.5 million, was known locally as crack city, and best to be assiduously avoided after dark.
For the Wolfes, shopping for essentials was a long hike or a car trip, and casual neighborhood social life was nonexistent.
When Mr. Wolfe retired and closed Restaurant Lisanne in 1989, the space on the ground floor was rented to Cheryl Kleinman, the baker who has become well known not only for her wedding cakes and pastries but also for her celebrity clientele. It is a commercial kitchen, not a walk-in shop, and the Wolfes say they feel blessed to absorb so many seductive aromas without ingesting any calories.
Having a commercial tenant is like having a residential tenant except that in a commercial space, when there is a negotiated net income lease, the tenant pays a share of the building's taxes, as well as utilities and garbage pickup.
But there are downsides, and challenges, that buyers may not understand when they first start looking at mixed-use buildings. Ms. Lew, the broker, said those considering mixed-use property for the first time often don't know that the down payment is at least 25 percent of the purchase price.
This can be a substantial cash outlay, far greater than the average 10 percent down payment fairly standard now on residential properties purchased by buyers with large incomes who are considered good risks by mortgage lenders.
Banks consider that a mixed-use building, particularly for a live-work owner, carries a double risk. If a commercial business goes under, the odds of losing the house become greater. All eggs in one basket sets bankers' teeth on edge.
Traditionally, immigrants have been the most avid buyers of small live-work buildings. Chinatown and the Lower East Side remain vibrant examples, and recent immigrants also see this route as a way up, not down.
Eli Ickovic, a Corcoran broker who was born in Israel and is fluent in several languages, cited one of his clients, a woman from Poland, who moved here three years ago and bought a rental property in Sunset Park and then a mixed-use building in Park Slope. In contract now for those buildings, she is about to close on a mixed-use building on Atlantic Avenue that provides more income in a better location. Her teenage daughter and an older relative will move into an apartment in the building with her.
It's a scenario that still dumbfounds many Americans who can't figure how they can have good jobs and decent salaries and still not save a dime.
Hard work — very hard work — and a willingness to live in less-than-ideal quarters are the short answer. "Real estate is still the key to being able to afford to live here and achieve financial success," said Timothy D. King, the executive managing director of the Brooklyn office of Massey Knakal Realty Services, a commercial real estate firm with extensive listings across the city.
Nodding at the affable young Russian who was working as a technician and adjusting the interagency plasma TV screens, Mr. King said, "Trust me, with his kind of work ethic and intelligence, he's going to be a property owner soon."
People who understand the financial benefits often find the mixed-use route very compelling. One woman who is a stock market analyst for a Wall Street broker bought a mixed-use building in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, last year using money that might otherwise have gone into the stocks. "It's no secret," she said, "that a shrewd real estate investment is going to give a greater long-run return than the stock market."
Requesting anonymity for fear of biting the hand that feeds her, she said she has come to enjoy her new living situation. The deli downstairs is not only one-stop shopping, it's security. "As a single woman, it makes me feel safe knowing that they are there all day," she said.
But there is a sense that well-off people more appropriately choose to live in fancy co-ops. "My parents are probably turning over in their graves," she said. "Live above the store? That's what they did, so I could get my M.B.A. and get out."
Monday, September 20, 2004
What If. Something From Nothing. The Anti NTAC Movement
It happens all the time. A client, maybe an old one, maybe a new prospect calls with what, at first glance, appears to be a totally lame or mundane project. Most designers roll their eyes, dish it off to an intern or even worse, crank out a ho-hum solution. Sound familiar? But, what if...
What if, instead of dismissing the project as a no-brainer, you actually put some brainpower into it. What if you approached the project as something that you yourself would actually pick up and read. What if you could turn this predictable, boring nothing into something cool, fun, interesting and possibly great or even collectible. What if you got off your ass, stepped away from the computer and took the tried and true old school approach. That' right, the paper and pencil approach. To me, a blank computer screen is intimidating. Sure, you can easily set up a document, pick a nice font, throw in a picture and call it done, but then what? Any No Talent Ass Clown can do that - just look at all the people calling themselves designers simply because they have a computer. Where's the concept? Where's the idea? Where's the beef?
The computer can be a great tool to enhance any idea but the idea needs to come first. And ideas are funny things - they don't work unless you do. Starting any project in front of your computer is the first step to joining the masses of the NTAC. It's lazy, it's predictable and the results are about as interesting as made for TV movie. What if you started a project with an idea, your brain, a pencil and a blank piece of paper? You know, the work part. And yes, the hard part. Ideas building upon ideas until you arrive upon something that truly works. Most successful projects and ventures start this way so it's really no mystery as to why some things work and others just, well, suck. There's really no better way to approach a project or task, old or new, and the results are almost always worth the effort of actually doing it right. Who knows, you might even exceeded both the client's expectations and yours as well! Even if your big idea gets shot down, at least you'll be stretching your creativity muscles and perhaps one step closer to discovering a gem of a project for future use - either way, it's never wasted time. It's all in how you approach it. Lowly production job, or meaningful project? Half empty or half full. It's your monkey.
HMK
In Ron Suskind's best-seller The Price of Loyalty, Paul O'Neill recounts his first meeting as U.S. Treasury Secretary with President George W. Bush. As their conversation progresses, O'Neill is confounded by the President's obvious lack of engagement.
Late in the meeting, O'Neill says, "All right, Mr. President, maybe to finish up we could talk about global climate change ...." O'Neill had provided a booklet titled "Science, Politics & Global Climate Change" to prep the President for this discussion. "... O'Neill had sent over a booklet Alcoa had produced in 1998 with the text of an extensive speech he had given—a thorough analysis of the issue .... Bush seemed to indicate with a tilt of the head that he had read it. But, again, O'Neill wasn't certain."
I felt a rush of surprise reading this—not to learn that G.W. wasn't on the ball, but to realize that I had designed the booklet that the President of the United States had ignored.
Well, heck! That's cool. But there's a more interesting story to "Science, Politics & Global Climate Change"—and a good design lesson, too.
The job didn't start out as anything like a design project. My longtime Alcoa client called to say that O'Neill, then Alcoa's chairman, had given an important speech on one of his most passionate interests: global climate change. O'Neill wanted the speech printed and distributed. Could I set the text in a nice typeface?
This was truly more a skilled production job than a design project. A few days later, I delivered what was requested: nice type, nice paper, 8 1/2 x11in. But I also prepared an alternative: a small, 32-page book with an illustrated cover. I was betting there might be a difference between what my client requested and what O'Neill really wanted.
What did O'Neill say he wanted? A speech reprint. But what did he actually want? He wanted the print equivalent of his speech: an eloquent, compelling call to action on an urgent issue, meant to engage the mind, expand the reader's understanding and inspire change.
I proposed a chunky, 6x7in., perfect-bound mini-book with a cover illustration by Rob Day. O'Neill's words, so energetic in person, received equal impact in print through bold typography, bright subheads and readable layouts. A business guru once said, "Satisfy the unexpressed wish." "Science, Politics & Global Climate Change" satisfied O'Neill's unexpressed wish. Hearing what the client really wanted created a design project for me—when before there was none.
I've had other experiences in creating a project from nothing, frequently enough to have formed a few conclusions. First: Don't think about the money. Not your fees, not the budget, not the print costs. If the solution answers the need in a way that delights and surprises, the money often works out.
Second: Be sure to also present a solution that responds to the client's request. If you disregard what he specified, your client might take offense. Do what is requested and do what it ought to be.
Third: Don't presume your brilliant solution will be accepted. If it never gets out of the gate, your client will appreciate the extra effort nonetheless. And finally: Cultivate a mindset that constantly goes beyond the client's stated needs. Listen carefully and critically, and dream on your client's behalf. Satisfy the unexpressed wish.
Thanks to Rick Landesberg
What if, instead of dismissing the project as a no-brainer, you actually put some brainpower into it. What if you approached the project as something that you yourself would actually pick up and read. What if you could turn this predictable, boring nothing into something cool, fun, interesting and possibly great or even collectible. What if you got off your ass, stepped away from the computer and took the tried and true old school approach. That' right, the paper and pencil approach. To me, a blank computer screen is intimidating. Sure, you can easily set up a document, pick a nice font, throw in a picture and call it done, but then what? Any No Talent Ass Clown can do that - just look at all the people calling themselves designers simply because they have a computer. Where's the concept? Where's the idea? Where's the beef?
The computer can be a great tool to enhance any idea but the idea needs to come first. And ideas are funny things - they don't work unless you do. Starting any project in front of your computer is the first step to joining the masses of the NTAC. It's lazy, it's predictable and the results are about as interesting as made for TV movie. What if you started a project with an idea, your brain, a pencil and a blank piece of paper? You know, the work part. And yes, the hard part. Ideas building upon ideas until you arrive upon something that truly works. Most successful projects and ventures start this way so it's really no mystery as to why some things work and others just, well, suck. There's really no better way to approach a project or task, old or new, and the results are almost always worth the effort of actually doing it right. Who knows, you might even exceeded both the client's expectations and yours as well! Even if your big idea gets shot down, at least you'll be stretching your creativity muscles and perhaps one step closer to discovering a gem of a project for future use - either way, it's never wasted time. It's all in how you approach it. Lowly production job, or meaningful project? Half empty or half full. It's your monkey.
HMK
In Ron Suskind's best-seller The Price of Loyalty, Paul O'Neill recounts his first meeting as U.S. Treasury Secretary with President George W. Bush. As their conversation progresses, O'Neill is confounded by the President's obvious lack of engagement.
Late in the meeting, O'Neill says, "All right, Mr. President, maybe to finish up we could talk about global climate change ...." O'Neill had provided a booklet titled "Science, Politics & Global Climate Change" to prep the President for this discussion. "... O'Neill had sent over a booklet Alcoa had produced in 1998 with the text of an extensive speech he had given—a thorough analysis of the issue .... Bush seemed to indicate with a tilt of the head that he had read it. But, again, O'Neill wasn't certain."
I felt a rush of surprise reading this—not to learn that G.W. wasn't on the ball, but to realize that I had designed the booklet that the President of the United States had ignored.
Well, heck! That's cool. But there's a more interesting story to "Science, Politics & Global Climate Change"—and a good design lesson, too.
The job didn't start out as anything like a design project. My longtime Alcoa client called to say that O'Neill, then Alcoa's chairman, had given an important speech on one of his most passionate interests: global climate change. O'Neill wanted the speech printed and distributed. Could I set the text in a nice typeface?
This was truly more a skilled production job than a design project. A few days later, I delivered what was requested: nice type, nice paper, 8 1/2 x11in. But I also prepared an alternative: a small, 32-page book with an illustrated cover. I was betting there might be a difference between what my client requested and what O'Neill really wanted.
What did O'Neill say he wanted? A speech reprint. But what did he actually want? He wanted the print equivalent of his speech: an eloquent, compelling call to action on an urgent issue, meant to engage the mind, expand the reader's understanding and inspire change.
I proposed a chunky, 6x7in., perfect-bound mini-book with a cover illustration by Rob Day. O'Neill's words, so energetic in person, received equal impact in print through bold typography, bright subheads and readable layouts. A business guru once said, "Satisfy the unexpressed wish." "Science, Politics & Global Climate Change" satisfied O'Neill's unexpressed wish. Hearing what the client really wanted created a design project for me—when before there was none.
I've had other experiences in creating a project from nothing, frequently enough to have formed a few conclusions. First: Don't think about the money. Not your fees, not the budget, not the print costs. If the solution answers the need in a way that delights and surprises, the money often works out.
Second: Be sure to also present a solution that responds to the client's request. If you disregard what he specified, your client might take offense. Do what is requested and do what it ought to be.
Third: Don't presume your brilliant solution will be accepted. If it never gets out of the gate, your client will appreciate the extra effort nonetheless. And finally: Cultivate a mindset that constantly goes beyond the client's stated needs. Listen carefully and critically, and dream on your client's behalf. Satisfy the unexpressed wish.
Thanks to Rick Landesberg
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Analog Your Ipod
Thanks to Nobuyuki Hayashia
In the back streets of Tokyo's upscale Aoyama district, there's a little antique store quite unlike all the others in the neighborhood. Located on the second floor of an old apartment building, And Up specializes in selling antique radios and, of all things, iPods.
The store's owner, 50-year-old Takeyuki Ishii, recommends plugging an iPod into an FM transmitter, such as Griffin Technology's iTrip, and listening to music through the speaker of an antique radio.
Ishii believes there is aural magic in the combination of the very old with the very new. Playing an iPod through an old radio or tube-driven amplifier gives it a special warmth and atmosphere, he says.
"What we are suggesting here is an old-and-new way to listen to music," Ishii said. "In electronics stores, you find the latest speakers with crisp, clear and accurate sounds. By contrast, most of the radios we have are not even stereo. The sounds are hardly clear. You might even hear some noises, and radios with tubes change their sounds as the tube warms up."
Ishii insists the antique equipment creates an atmosphere that has been forgotten. The softer tones ease listeners and make them feel warm and relaxed.
"Listening to their sounds, I can recall scenes from my childhood," he said.
Ishii also argues that the quality of CDs and today's speakers are so good, they simply reveal the limitations of poor recordings, especially older music.
By contrast, antique radios hide defects nicely with their vague but warm sounds.
Ishii, a former sculptor, wasn't always a fan of antique radios. He discovered their appeal when researching a way to listen to CDs in his classic Mercedes Benz.
Ishii didn't want to replace the original, aging audio system. A friend suggested he use an iPod with the iTrip transmitter. He loved how they worked, as well as the sound they produced.
He then tried the iPod/iTrip combination with his old stereo system and that was when he had the revelation. He loved it so much that he felt obliged to share the experience with more people.
In March, he opened And Up in Aoyama, a Tokyo neighborhood known for its many antiques stores. Ishii owns another Tokyo antiques shop selling Arita-yaki, a type of Japanese porcelain.
However, business at And Up has hardly been booming. Plenty of customers drop by the store, and despite loving the sound, few seem willing to buy the pricey antiques.
"It is hardly successful as a business," Ishii shrugged.
One customer listened intently to several antique radios but instead of buying one, asked Ishii where he could get his old stereo system repaired. Ishii promised to arrange it.
"That is only natural," said Ishii.
Ishii said instead of buying from him, some potential customers pick up bargain equipment on Internet auctions. Many of the shop's visitors are middlemen who prefer talking to buying, and will stay many hours telling stories of their favorite old radios. Ishii seems content with the arrangement.
"I am happy that they like the idea," he said.
Nonetheless, Ishii is hoping to attract a younger audience unfamiliar with the joys of his aural artifacts. He has a new tactic: pairing modern monitor speakers (the kind often used in recording studios) with antique amplifiers and iPods.
Younger customers, Ishii said, are greatly excited by the soft sounds and the glow of the tubes. It's all new to them, Ishii said.
"I want these kids to know the great culture we had as well as some of the great engineering and design work of the mid-20th century," he said. "The industrial goods of today become obsolete too fast. We aren't given enough time to digest them. I think now is a good time to stop, look back and learn from some of the great work we have begun to forget."
It may be working. Hiroaki Imai, a 30-something customer, said, "I like antique electronic stuff.... I think these radios have better aesthetics than today's gizmos."
That's Right,
HMK
In the back streets of Tokyo's upscale Aoyama district, there's a little antique store quite unlike all the others in the neighborhood. Located on the second floor of an old apartment building, And Up specializes in selling antique radios and, of all things, iPods.
The store's owner, 50-year-old Takeyuki Ishii, recommends plugging an iPod into an FM transmitter, such as Griffin Technology's iTrip, and listening to music through the speaker of an antique radio.
Ishii believes there is aural magic in the combination of the very old with the very new. Playing an iPod through an old radio or tube-driven amplifier gives it a special warmth and atmosphere, he says.
"What we are suggesting here is an old-and-new way to listen to music," Ishii said. "In electronics stores, you find the latest speakers with crisp, clear and accurate sounds. By contrast, most of the radios we have are not even stereo. The sounds are hardly clear. You might even hear some noises, and radios with tubes change their sounds as the tube warms up."
Ishii insists the antique equipment creates an atmosphere that has been forgotten. The softer tones ease listeners and make them feel warm and relaxed.
"Listening to their sounds, I can recall scenes from my childhood," he said.
Ishii also argues that the quality of CDs and today's speakers are so good, they simply reveal the limitations of poor recordings, especially older music.
By contrast, antique radios hide defects nicely with their vague but warm sounds.
Ishii, a former sculptor, wasn't always a fan of antique radios. He discovered their appeal when researching a way to listen to CDs in his classic Mercedes Benz.
Ishii didn't want to replace the original, aging audio system. A friend suggested he use an iPod with the iTrip transmitter. He loved how they worked, as well as the sound they produced.
He then tried the iPod/iTrip combination with his old stereo system and that was when he had the revelation. He loved it so much that he felt obliged to share the experience with more people.
In March, he opened And Up in Aoyama, a Tokyo neighborhood known for its many antiques stores. Ishii owns another Tokyo antiques shop selling Arita-yaki, a type of Japanese porcelain.
However, business at And Up has hardly been booming. Plenty of customers drop by the store, and despite loving the sound, few seem willing to buy the pricey antiques.
"It is hardly successful as a business," Ishii shrugged.
One customer listened intently to several antique radios but instead of buying one, asked Ishii where he could get his old stereo system repaired. Ishii promised to arrange it.
"That is only natural," said Ishii.
Ishii said instead of buying from him, some potential customers pick up bargain equipment on Internet auctions. Many of the shop's visitors are middlemen who prefer talking to buying, and will stay many hours telling stories of their favorite old radios. Ishii seems content with the arrangement.
"I am happy that they like the idea," he said.
Nonetheless, Ishii is hoping to attract a younger audience unfamiliar with the joys of his aural artifacts. He has a new tactic: pairing modern monitor speakers (the kind often used in recording studios) with antique amplifiers and iPods.
Younger customers, Ishii said, are greatly excited by the soft sounds and the glow of the tubes. It's all new to them, Ishii said.
"I want these kids to know the great culture we had as well as some of the great engineering and design work of the mid-20th century," he said. "The industrial goods of today become obsolete too fast. We aren't given enough time to digest them. I think now is a good time to stop, look back and learn from some of the great work we have begun to forget."
It may be working. Hiroaki Imai, a 30-something customer, said, "I like antique electronic stuff.... I think these radios have better aesthetics than today's gizmos."
That's Right,
HMK
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
