kmazz

Had a rush trip to NYC last week. Flew out Thursday morning from PDX, arrived late afternoon in Newark. College roommate friend picked me up. Visited a couple of hours, then was on the New Jersey train into Penn Station. 7:10pm, checked into hotel. Met client for dinner and crashed around 11pm EDT. Up early Friday, joined my client at 7:30am, left for meetings at Strategy+Business, Business Week and American Craft. Strolled old stomping grounds on West Broadway, Houston, Bleecker and Thompson for a half hour, then crawled through 3pm traffic back to Newark.

Beat. Hot. Grimy. Eager to slump into my little airplane perch and let sleep and fatigue take over.

But nooooooo.

Just prior to boarding time, hear that our plane had been taken out of commission. We wait. Our senses are drummed into pain by the merciless, mindless TV, incessant boarding announcements, screaming children and other airport gate din.

I buy food and water. I change into shorts. Wash my face and hands a few times. Read my suspense novel to stay awake. Try to get online but Wi-Fi is not free. Wish I could lie down and sleep but the carpet is dreck and I might miss some important news about my flight.

I think: Why doesn’t some intrepid entrepreneur open up a super short term mini-hotel in airport terminals? Why aren’t there neck and shoulder massage stations all over? What about emulating the services of Asian and European airports and installing super clean showers in the most congested airports? Hey, a small movie theater showing short films is another idea. Especially if wi-fi isn’t free. (Which bonehead came up with that?)

We board three hours later, wait to get to the head of the runway line, then just prior to our turn a woman takes her two kids to the bathroom and we go to the end of the line again. No one yells. What a miracle. Another miracle: none of the babies on the plane cry during the flight.

The plane lands in PDX. I feel as though I’ve flown to Europe and back. Get home and take a soak and crash.

I think: “I don’t like travel. I never want to be on another airplane. I’m tearing up my mileage credit card and getting a cash-back reward card instead.”

It was said about the great painter Monet that in the partial blindness of his old age, “He only had one eye, but what an eye!”

I’ve never seen a photo or TV interview with the great Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai when he wasn’t wearing dark glasses, but I know this artist sees better than most. Maybe his sight is too piercing, too clear to go without shade. His images, like Monet’s, capture that fleeting moment, one that is so beautiful you want to grab at it, hold it, never let it go, but that, like time itself, poignantly escapes our permanent grasp. These moments can take place in dingy hotels and can be tragic or ineffable but they are rendered beautiful by Kar-Wai’s eye. They make up a celluloid canvas that is unlike any other and mark him as an old-fashioned auteur.

Who knew red-painted toenails on white skin could make such an artistic statement? Or that a wisp of a hem of a luxurious cheongsan in motion would stop the clock? Or that artificial light in a dim interior could vy with the sky for how it bestows beauty?

His work is flawed, perhaps because his appetite for the lush image is insatiable and difficult to balance with narrative. But any new Kar-Wai film is an occasion for cinephiles to get excited.

Speaking of narrative, there is not much there. “In the Mood for Love” was a series of scenes of brief encounters and the subject mostly unspoken longing. The characters in “2046” went farther than longing, but there wasn’t much in the way of dialogue and in the end, there was not much action to account for outside all the weeping despite its (excessive) length. But the visual esthetic was expansive and rich. No one makes use of color and composition like Kar-Wai.

So, I’m running to “Blueberry Nights” as soon as it gets here.

The lights are really going out in Jackson County, thanks to citizens like this. These are the kind of people who thrive on making the world a sorrier place.

Maybe Ashland will no longer be one of the “best places to retire” in the next annual survey. Culture, after all, adds value to a community. And culture starts with a cultured mind, not a closed one.

Melamine in the food chain got you scared?
A friend told me last night that her net bag of Gilroy garlic was not all that it seemed. The small print, if you cared to look for it, said “imported from China.”

I spent nine hours yesterday at BarCamp Portland, the local spinoff of the national unconference founded in Silicon Valley as a response to Foo Camp (to the best of my knowledge). BarCamp is free, supported by sponsors and volunteers, and brings together mostly young emerging tech entrepreneurs who are breaking rules. Because Open Source is so big in Portland, many of the sessions dealt with that issue. I learned a lot.

I also met loads of interesting locals that I don’t normally run into as a matter of course. Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki; Marshall Kirkpatrick, former TechCrunch blogger and now a strategist at cool Splashcast; Raven Zachary, an Open Source analyst for the451.com; Justin Kistner who has a real web 2.0 job where he roams around evangelizing, inspiring, soaking up data to use in company strategy, and socializing. I got to sit down and touch the $100 Laptop of Nick Negroponte fame, think about changing currency models (creativity, reputation are new currencies) and drink free bubble tea.

A few things I learned:
My daughter’s generation will be seeking jobs that are only now starting to be defined. Many more have not yet been invented. So, throw out the old school curriculum.
Twitter is the not the waste of time I thought it was. There are various ways of putting it to good use, including getting news out faster than wires can manage.
The human brain is programmed to care for no more than 200 people (results vary). But will social media create an empathy curve that will expand people’s capacity to care?
Video is the be all and end all.

I was really proud that Portland could carry such a great event, attracting 250 engaged and engaging people, and sponsors such as Wieden+Kenndy and Portland State University. Attendees were rockin’ from 7pm Friday to Saturday at 11pm.