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Mean

So today's my birthday. Usually a day that brings me nothing but joy, but today was peppered with downside. Wife went to be with the signoff, "You're just mean. Mean, mean, mean, mean."

This seems to be a theme this week. Something I'm learning about myself, and I'm OK with it to be honest. The challenge is that people confuse mean for bitter. I'm really not bitter.

Love life. Love my family. Just don't see the upside of being shiny happy all the time. Maybe any of the time.

I've always had a real joie de vivre. Maybe I just keep it hidden under the surface? As I get older, will I get crabbier and crabbier? On some level, I hope so, as it defines me a bit.

On the other, I worry I may just end up being unbearable to be around. Especially to her. Now granted, it was my birthday and I feel like if I'm upset, she should make the extra effort to ensure that's not the case, whether she thinks I'm an asshole or note. Maybe that's just me.

What set her off, after a few of my usual missteps were forgiven, including slamming the door in her face (accidentally) as I entered the restaurant holding our child. I couldn't hold the door and be my usual gentlemanly self, but I also didn't notice and that pissed her off.

The final straw, though, was my grumbling about Facebook. I don't know about you, but when people I barely know and never speak to wish me a happy birthday on FB, it strikes me as an odd outgrowth of this new form of communication.

She thinks I was actually got annoyed at these people. I just thought I was pointing out the irony, but these people all have the best intentions and I manage get it twisted... Maybe I should be pissed at my real friends who forgot!

There was a half-joking vote of the meanness level between me and a colleague in the office, and I won by a landslide. Note I say I won.

Anyone can be nice. But is being unapproachable really a victory. I guess only time will tell...

Good night and God bless.

Lying is encouraged

I'm starting to come to grips with the reality that lying is not only encouraged in this world, but rewarded.

I realize this as I return from the bagel place with breakfast and drinks for my family. I had been rung up (literally, you'll soon learn) for three mini-bagels at just over $6. The total for that plus the drinks seemed high, so I asked if he had rung up everything.

"Oh, no," he calmly replied. "Forgot the coffees."

He then proceeded to charge me $5.99 for two medium iced coffees. Fleeced for six dollars for brewed coffee. Nothing more than that!

Earlier in the weekend, I was reamed by a client for not reading the plan she had sent over late the day before. I was travelling and hadn't had time to review. I honestly don't feel this impacted the discussion whatsoever, but I can understand how it might seem insulting, particularly after she had invested a great deal of time into its development.

How much harm would it be if I had faked it? How much damage to the world economy would I do if I walked out with two cups of coffee, already paid for in the markup on my bagels...

"Karma Police," responds my wife with a Zen coolness.



Couldn't have said it better myself.

Dreamer in my Dreams

Wilco at Keyspan Park on Coney Island, early birthday treat from the amazing Ms. Jennifer Zelman Heit. What a beautiful way to spend an evening.

We had considered bringing our three year old, but as I noted in my previous post, she had the presence of mind to bow out late last night. We had been swimming three days straight. She was understandably exhausted.

Even so, her tiny little voice asked me as I was putting her to bed last night, myself eager with anticipation for her to join us for her first big concert, "is the concert during the daytime or at the nighttime?"

"Well, it's at night sweetie, but hopefully won't be too late. And if you're tired, we can just come home."

"I think I want to stay home," she said, sweet as you can imagine.

As much as I wanted to convince her she should come, as an early birthday present to me, it's incredible to me the maturity and presence of mind she has at such a young age.

This is more the ramblings of an idiot adult than the gushing of a proud poppa, but either way, I'm glad we didn't have her with us. Just a few weeks earlier, at a fireworks display in my wife's native Buffalo, my little one nearly lost her mind. Loud noises seem to cause her to scream hysterically, not unlike Rain Man faced with hot water.



Something from deep in her sub conscious makes her hate loud noises, maybe it's all the yelling me and the wife are capable of, but she sure does love those juice boxes too.

Not sure what I'm getting at any more, it's late and an Israeli woman next to me on the plane is making a mad land grab for the armrest we both share. As if this real estate can be claimed simply by being there...

Which, by the way, is another great Wilco album...

Night

First post from my iPhone

I could really get usd to this. Chilling on my deck, glass of chilled Pinot Grigio at. The ready.

It's my first iPod, really. So I spent the last two weeks jut filling it up with slngs.

It's amazing, really. I thought I could make do with a 16 Gig version, bit I was quickly shown the errror of my ways. I was scrambling. Grabbing page after page of my CD books. Looseleaf pages that hold eight discs each. Four in front four on back. I have five large books mostly filled A through Z I then have a small book (each page holds four discs front and back, filled with movie soundtracks and other compilations. The Q through Z book, as one might imagine, has some space at the end where some other mixes and compilations are held.

So I am literally like a meth head rushing from room to room adding discs to my iTunes.

Remember, I never even had an iPod, so this is all brand new to me.

It's so worth it though. The look and feel of the device is amazing! Love everything about it, and now I have a healthy portion of my music with me. Nowhere near all, mind you. Just a big ass chunk.

More to go, but to be able to buy Bruno tickets and listen to Rodrigo y Gabriela all while I work on the blog makes me glad to be alive!

And I can read it from here, which means so can you, dear reader. Now go out and get one so you can view more ads!

I think it should be easy to post pictures as well, right? Oh well, mayber not yet, but I'll figure it put. For now I'll just listen to Wilco, Box Full of Letters , great band, great iPhone app, excited for the concert tomorrow night! Didi bailed (she's three, and a lady, so this is her right) but I digress.

Late.

The call

The blackberry buzz. It can be an invitation, or it can be a leash.

As it starts to hum on your table, you grab it. Try to reduce the feedback. I look over at my brother, and he's furiously typing away. In all seriousness I can't tell for sure whether he is happily chirping to his beautiful wife that they'll be together momentarily, or putting the nag off for another hour.

That's the conundrum. The proximity of two such divergent emotions. Work and home. Play and responsibility.

How do you know when to pick it up? How do you know when to let it go?

The leash grabs you by the neck and won't let go. Circling round the table and interrupting conference calls with its insidious drone.



Sometimes I'm reminded of my failings as a human being by the sheer brilliance of others. The guy who invented the Blackberry is not one of them. OK, maybe the guy who invented it is, but not the guy who marketed it to he businessman. And sure as shit not the businessman who used it from there.

Drop the leash. Get out of my fucking face. We are young.

Don't you remember the old days?

Meeting RT and Punko down the shore.

Remembering idiotic memories of a night-time so far away. Streets of Fire blares, Penguins on the tee vee, Alex Rodriguez homer.

Kitty kat passes my way, time spent out on the lawn today. Place looks out over a body of water, and Artie reveals to me more of his evil plot to rule the world through Heresy.

But I Digress.

The latest phenomenon sweeping the nation is apparently the four-hour workweek.

"I'm totally Retardo Montalban," notes RT.

John and I watch the game, analyzing what happpened

"The only reason I watch NBA basketball is because of Brad."

I stop in my tracks.

"We're seeing Willie Nelson, Mellencamp, Neil Young," Punko stops. "What?"

"What the hell did you just say?" I ask.

"At the concert. Who the hell was the third guy?"

"I don't know, I'll look it up." I start tapping away at the computer, at which I had already started this blog post."

"You know that guy," Punko is frustrated.

"Dude, who the hell is Brad?"

"Brad Miller."

Seriously, Punko said this at least two more times. Artie and I could not believe such a fucking ridiculous joke. So bad you had to just ignore it.

"Dude," I finally break down and ask, "are you secretly gay for Brad Miller."

"The violent dry heaving was probably not a good thing," Artie says, wiping his mouth as he emerges from the bathroom.

He's a walking soundbite." says Punko.

So I continue on with my Bierman Elkin story.

Something good to write about

So I thought the last post was so goddamned clever I'd definitely get at least one comment. I begged for them for the love of God!

It was my first time running ads, so I may have been distracted, but no longer.

PHISH PHANS. UNITE!


You going to tell me this doesn't send shivers down your spine.

If you were alive in the nineties, it would. Breaking away from the world today, takes everything you got.

Got this e-mail from one of the bests.

From: dontejas@optonline.net [mailto:dontejas@optonline.net]
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 10:10 PM
To: Jonathan Heit
Subject:

Dude, check this out:

http://www.bonnaroo.com/365/phish/

Good times; definitely one of the best road trips, even if that third guy was freakin' Kane.

------

Kaner is a boner.


Long live Phish. The Dead of our generation, but even better in my mind. Mythology, stories and harmonies. An acquired taste, maybe, but once so... OH!!!

Enjoy, as I do....

Thomas P. Freydl, President

So an e-mail passed my desk this afternoon, I'll XXX out the names to protect the innocent.

Oh like hell I will. I'll hyperlink to their goddamned e-mail addresses!!

-----Original Message-----
From: Jordan Fischler
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 5:13 PM
To: Tim Black
Cc: Jonathan Heit

Subject: Emailing: PopTok Three Month Public Relations Plan August-November 2008

Tim - here's what I can find. I don’t have the pitch plan. Freydl wrote it, so god knows where it is.

==
Actually. if I can find some I'll post pictures of these two, though really only one is at fault. The other innocently on the receiving end. The last, me, sat unawares as a simple cc, drawn into the heart of the ire.

To be fair, Thomas P. Freydl's reign as President of Allison & Partners was bumpy at best. Lots of highs and some lows, but the timing of joining and leaving a startup is always a toss up. He's gone on to do some very interesting things, and has a long and storied career ahead of him.

Allison has continued to thrive as well, with many

HOLD ON, THE FUCKING NBA IS ON TWITTER.

I'm so goddamned sick of tw... ahh, I digress.

I just mean to draw attention to the fact that maybe Jordan shouldn't be so dismissive. Tom's work on the proposal did ultimately win us that business. But if anyone can complain about PopTok, it would be Jordan, that's for sure.

She did all the work on the business, until we hired Caitlin. Lord knows I didn't have the capacity and PopTok (as they'll attest) didn't have the budget. But I scorched Freydl in that department, hosting their launch PR blitz including a well-written piece by Matt Garrahan in the FT. Mickey Schulhoff's newest company was in business.

It was a tough row to hoe, ironically we ended up switching the strategy to Twitter and Facebook only. Kept the service running, aided them in developing a secondary incremental revenue generator.

And this is like a year ago. Now they are a case study, and an interesting one at that, because they are still making a go of it. The original concepts, send tiny snippets of video to friends through IM is a good one. Not unlike imeem's original model, but again I digress...

Tommy is a good man, and we all get down sometimes. He'll be back and better than ever, you can count on it.

Now, for my three guesses as to where that original plan may have ended up:
--On a flash drive that ended up on a bathroom floor in a swank club (think: Hyde)
--Printed and Bound in the pocket in the back seat of a luxury car (think: Mercedes E Class)
--Rolled up into a cylinder (think: nervous habit)

What do you think happened to it? Comments below:

We can't even agree on the same TV show

My brother-in-law Roger asked me today if Phil and I agreed on any teams.

"Oh, no," I answered. "I wouldn't know how to act if we did."

From the time we were young kids, we never agreed on anything. Especially sports teams. Not sure whether I liked the teams and he chose just not to like (but that's a little narcissistic) or if we just disagree on everything. Life will bear us out, but I still argue that he was just a bandwagon fan the entire time anyway.

The New York Mets in '86, Dallas Cowboys a year or two later. Cowboys were always our other brother Lowell's favorite team also, so that's less obvious. But equally obnoxious. Amazingly he doesn't still follow the Edmonton Oilers or even the Boston Celtics, who he fell in love with during that period as well. I actually liked the Islanders (another Lowell team) and the Philadelphia 76ers

But those sports never mattered. The Yankee/Mets and Cowboys/Giants. Those were natural opposites. Bitter arguments on each side. Arguments that follow us through each stage of our lives. Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, Births. We just fight, it's what we do.

This all became clear to me the other day when we were at my parents' place and Phil went on another one of his rants, this time about Friday Night Lights.

"Best show on TV!  How great is it?  Dad dutifully agrees, if not matching his enthusiasm.  I wistfully wish I had been watching the show from the beginning.  I'll catch up, heck, just linked to it on Hulu.

"It really is great," Dad notes.

"Oh," I add, realizing I had not had a chance to catch up with anyone on this, since nobody I now follows it but him, "did you see Rescue Me?"  

"Yes," he says, shaking his head.

"So?  What did you think?"

"Great.  Fantastic," he says.  "That could be the best show on TV, actually."  

Phil silently nods, but his face shows he doesn't believe there is any possible way this could be true, even though he has NEVER SEEN THE SHOW ONCE!

"It's amazing, dude," I say to him, in a much less zealous way than he pushes FNL on anyone who will listen, including a Facebook post.  "New York, firefighters, Denis Leary.  It's a good show."

The eerie thing is that the one show we DO agree on is 90210. The zip code where apparently everyone marries or has babies with their high school sweethearts. Kelly's son Sammy is staying with his dad Dylan at the same time a Japanese-speaking Donna Martin is still married to David Silver, making her the step-sister in law of Silver.

Maybe it's the song...

Original 90210 Theme Song - CW

Disney Deal More than Announced?

Riddle me this Batman...

Disney, one of the companies best known for vigilantly protecting copyrights and its closely held IP, just signed a long-awaited deal with YouTube. On its face, the deal is pretty mundane.

Dig deeper, though, and some interesting details start to emerge. First of all, unlike Hulu, YouTube is best known for user-uploads. From inception, much of the hullabaloo about this uploaded content was that it was so often copyrighted, like this classic three little pigs cartoon (which has been my daughter's favorite for months).



What many casual observers don't know is that when faced with the reality that their content has been detected on YouTube, the copyright holder has three options.

The first, and best-known option, is the "take-down."

This is when the copyright owner simply removes the content.

Second, the rights holder can simply "look the other way." They basically allow the content to stay up on YouTube, presumedly for the inherent promotional value of that many eyeballs, without taking any action.

Finally, there is the least-known "monetize" option. Essentially, YouTube (or content owner) can sell ads against the uploaded content and earn incremental revenue.

What the media companies cannot do, however, is claim ignorance that the clip exists online. The fact that the "Three Little Pigs" clip is among many Disney videos on YouTube, and that it was featured as "promoted" content, leads me to believe that specific elements of this Disney deal were in place long before today's announcement was confirmed.

It also leads me to believe that ultimately these copyright owners will smarten up and be in a position to profit from the engagement of their loyal fans, rather than work to have them persecuted.

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf, indeed.

March Madness

I started a twitter feed called BitterBill. I love it really. Allows me to get really pissed off and express it in 140 characters or less. I'll still be blogging here periodically, like what I've been doing wasn't already periodically.



But now, it's even more likely. When I'm so inspired, I can simply log on and post, "Why the fuck doesn't this $160 shirt just automatically fit me forever. Do I really need to outgrow it? I'm 36 goddamned years old. You'd think I'd be done growing. Apparently, I'm just starting though. Need to work out. Hate people that work out."


OK, apparently I'm just a fat load, and that's way more than 140 characters. But keep an eye out. My bitterness may dissipate in the Springtime, but it never disappears entirely.

Wondering how long I can keep this middle finger as my icon.

The TV is gelatin holding me fast

Saw an old friend this evening. Life goes on. He is working at a local wine store, but nevertheless has the old spirit he had when he ran a major operation. Used to cavort with the world's best known celebrities.

Couldn't care less anymore. Couldn't care more any less. Does it really matter? As long as he gets to live in the same house as his kid, he manages to cheer up. Might make you or me sad, but who are we to judge.

Phish puts their music out for free as Gene Simmons gets into fights with fucking bloggers. Phish is on tour, so life is good.

Here is the latest night. Peering out through your opacity...

Phish 3/8/09 Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, VA Click below to preview tracks from this show DOWNLOAD THIS SHOW

Yet even this is only :30 second clips. Absolute bummer. Enjoy it while you can!

Fantasy Biggie Playlist