Week of March 26, Things I've Noticed

1) Dudes, have you noticed...
...that every time there is some altercation on a flight, like a person goes crazy and insults a crew member, there's an off-duty deputy-like-being that just so happens to be there to restrain the crazy person? How lucky is that?


2) Facebook Behavior
I've noticed that the biggest impetus for changed Facebook behavior is a life-changing event. For instance, when I start seeing someone who usually posts seldomly, post like, a lot, especially photos of themselves, I know something's up. They're going through somethin', I don't know what it is, but it ain't good. Conversely, when someone has been truly humbled by an event, that person disappears. In both cases, it ain't good.


3) Have you noticed that there is always an overturned tractor trailer in traffic reports?
Isn't that kind of a big deal?


4) New York
New York as a character has been covered ad nauseum in films and books, songs and documentaries. Not that I'm complaining. Except when it's bad. But I have the good fortune of walking through Central Park everyday to work, and on occasion I think of stuff. The way people perceive New York City with all its frenetic energy and diversity is true but I wonder why is New York the way it is? Why is it that special of a city? And so I came up with some musings on that subject.


First and foremost, this city runs at the pace it does thanks to the sweat of immigrant labor. This has been the case since the Dutch settled here and through the various subsequent immigrant waves. If you go to a third world city, the pace is even more overwhelming than here, that's the pace of survival, strife and striving. It's because you can get a manicure at midnight that you do get a manicure at midnight. It's because you can ride the subway late that you actually do it, it's because Mexican cooks work fast and well that you expect it from them, etc. Not the other way around. We've been conditioned by strivers, it doesn't necessarily mean that we ourselves are strivers, it just means that we benefit from the ambition and survival tactics of others. 


Secondly, and this is a little out of date, but still relevant is Wall Street. Wall Street funds our fun, our service culture and our real estate. Without the money of Wall Street you wouldn't have people flocking here to serve them. Wall Street underwrites New York City, and inflates its real estate prices. It attracts people from all different parts of the world and (attempts) to employ them. We have "sophisticated diversity" here. Let's face it, we don't live in America, we live in New York City, The Singapore of the United States.


And third, Central Park. It's a forrest in the middle of a city. Most people want to live downtown and for that, I thank them, because they don't realize how special Central Park makes this place. True New Yorkers who know a good thing live uptown, whilst taking advantage of downtown. Lucky me.

Week of March 19, The Animalest of Animal Kingdoms

1) Frozen Planet on Discovery Channel

Thank god for online advertising. If I hadn't seen the myriad of ads for Frozen Planet on Sunday, I would not have seen the first episode of this insanely awesome series. I don't really know what to say except that this is a beautifully made documentary with amazing photography and intriguing wild-life scenarios. For every Killer Whale hunt, how many days, weeks, months did the crew have to wait? But wait, there's more! This Sunday...

2) Chimpanzee

Thank God for cross-promotion. If I hadn't watched Frozen Planet on Sunday, then I wouldn't have heard about this new movie coming out in April called "Chimpanzee" brought to us by the makers of said frozen planet. What a coinci-dance! The film crew followed little Oscar for three years in the wild. As they were doing so, his mother perished in what appears to be an attack. What happens next is a lesson in life--- oh wait, wrong movie. What happens next is that the elder male of the family starts to take care of Oscar. And it's the awesomest thing in the world. And here's the trailer.


3) American Experience: Into The Deep: America, Whaling and The World

This is a fascinating story about the oil before oil: whale oil. Ric Burns (brother of Ken) brings us another great American Experience with Into The Deep. And I mean, whaling is fascinating. That's all there is to it. It is quite literally what fueled the American economy and industrial revolution in its early beginnings. Now, to think that our economy was once so dependent on the genocide of an entire animal species is in and of itself interesting enough, but then you add to it all the other aspects, the dark mysteries of the sea, the larger than life creature, the hunt and the competition and you've got one of the most complete stories ever created. No wonder it inspired the greatest American novel of them all, Moby Dick. That the American people, and especially the Quakers, became the greatest whalers in the world is very telling about the American "character", at least, what it was back then. 

4) The Deadliest Catch

Thank God for Taxi Top advertising, for without it, I would not have known that the Deadliest Catch is coming back with a new season on April 10. It inspired a bunch of spin-offs but those are all boring and bad. This is the best reality show on television, hands down.

Week of March 12, We Look Fast

1) Mo' Mountains

 While I don't necessarily understand why people run marathons, I do most certainly understand those people who want climb to Everest. Mountains. They rock. The higher I go, the higher I want to go. I totally inherently get Man's desire to be on top of the world. I was in Switzerland skiing during my vacation and I went to the resort's highest ski point, a glacier at 3,000 meters. The views were amazing, I could see all the great Alpine peaks in the distance, including Mont Blanc, but I wanted to go higher still. I once went trekking for 8 days in the Himalayas where my highest-ever point was 5,400 meters. The air was thin and it was tough to walk up to the pass, but once I made it, I felt a huge sense of accomplishment. Also, how great are these photos taken with my iPhone 4S?


2) Senna

I took to renting movies on iTunes on my iPhone while I was away. I watched a documentary about the Brazilian Formula 1 racing champion,  Ayrton Senna. He, very tragically, died in a crash during a race in 1994. What makes it more tragic is that he was actually quite an advocate for safety. He took risks because he wanted to win, obviously, but experts agree that this crash would not have happened unless there was something wrong with his car -- which he had been complaining about earlier. So Senna is the hero, the anti-hero of the film is Alain Prost, his nemesis and teammate. Also, Prost is French. Every sport has a whole world surrounding it that we know little about as mere observers, but like every man-made world, politics and money are involved, making it all just a little dirty. Such is life.


3) Racing Dreams

 Speaking of racing documentaries, another great one is Racing Dreams, a movie that was made by my great friend's brother in law's brother. How's that for a degree of separation? It follows the trajectory of three young karting racers with aspirations to become NASCAR drivers. It's a very touching movie about kids growing up with a dream, their families' sacrifices to support them and the tribulations of just being young. I've noticed that kids who have passions, whether they pursue them as adults or not, have a little something extra in the confidence department. It's not a boastful confidence, because they don't seem to realize that they're special, so it just comes across to the average observer as maturity. 


4) Ski To Die: The Bill Johnson Story

This is a book about Bill Johnson, the first American to win an Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing. Apparently there is also a documentary based on the book. Bill was an atypical ski champion, he came from a messed up family, moved around Oregon and Wisconsin without any kind of stable home life, but somehow adopted a skiing style that was his own and came out of nowhere to win the 1984 Gold medal in Sarajevo. He was talented, destructive and brash, and unfortunately, during a comeback race in the early 2000s, he crashed big time and nearly died. He ended up surviving, but has permanent damage from the accident. But let's remember the good times shall we? He did us proud.


5) Steep

Another documentary I rented whilst on vacation. It's about the birth and evolution of Extreme skiing. Much of it takes place in Alaska and France. Now, these guys (and some gals) are insane. There is a lot of death in this one, the irony being that the thing that makes them feel most alive is what kills them. But I have the utmost respect for this breed who seeks out this kind of adventure and spiritual experience with nature. They're just on an entirely different level of being from us humans.


This week's blog post sponsored by Apple.