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Stop looking only north

This happened 15 years ago maybe?

Her: Who’s out there that could possibly overtake Yahoo now that AltaVisa, Excite, and Snap are gone?
Me: It’s gonna be someone we never heard of, doing stuff we never thought of, making things we’ve never seen.

There’s a story I’ve told for decades: For thousands of years, the Chinese have been invaded by the north.

  • The Xiongnu (aka Attila the Hun) invaded from the north regularly
  • The Jurchen invaded from the north and controlled China for over a century.
  • The Manchus invaded from the north and controlled China for over three centuries

It goes on.

In any case, they hit on the idea to build a wall. And for the next 1,800 years, they kept an eye on that wall.

Then in 1839, the Opium Wars start – in the south – which led China into the civil wars, WWII, more civil wars, Communism, and now China making Olympic clothing for the US.

My point is that they’d trained themselves to respond automatically to a set stimulus: Blitzkrieg attacks from the north.

But they no idea that they could be attacked – slowly and both militarily and economically – from the south.

By people they’d never heard of, doing stuff they never thought of, with things they’d never seen.

The hardest lesson to learn in wrasslin and in fencing – one I’m still struggling with – is how to stop going for a closed path and see the open paths.

Anywho, tell this story cause I got some interesting news the other day: The guy that made it into that law school just got a pretty good gig somewhere else. He’s super psyched. I remember telling him this story on the phone.

Me: The moral of the story’s this: Stop looking north. You spend all your time and energy looking at this one direction and your threats and opportunities are potentially – and probably – somewhere else completely.
Him: So stop looking north?
Me: Well, stop looking only north.

 

Location: my steamy room
Mood: hot as balls
Music: Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head
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Sleepy Logan and Bachelor Cooking


Last night was particularly rough in terms of the insomnia.

Don’t write much about it any more because if I did, this blog would be one endless post about my not being able to sleep peppered with occasional mentions of rum, wrasslin, fencing, and dropping something. Managed to get about three hours of sleep last night with a client meeting this morning at 9:30.

And I think I’m coming down with something.

When I was younger, used to get a lot done when I couldn’t sleep. Had a separate persona I called Sleepy Logan who did all sortsa stuff for me.

For example, on more than one occasion, I’d wake up and there’d be a pot of chili sitting on my stove and I’d think, “Ah, Sleepy Logan made some chili.” Amongst other things, he’d also learned German, organized my books by colour, and renamed my files to “subject – year.month.day.”

Now I just lie still and hope to catch just a little more sleep.

I’m told it’s the better way to go but on nights like last night, wonder if it’s just not better for Sleepy Logan to visit.

———-

On a somewhat related point, my brother asked me about the old Bachelor Cooking episodes Rain and I did and realized they weren’t up any longer. So I’m reposting episode one. Rain’s probably got a better quality version somewhere.

Partly because of this video, made a concerted effort not to talk so much with my hands.

It’s not been all that successful. Even less so when I get no sleep.

Location: somewhere between kinda awake and kinda asleep
Mood: exhausted
Music: nothing to do waiting for the sun to rise
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It’s only Wednesday but it’s been a good week so far

Her: I’ve changed a lot as I’ve gotten older. Before, I used to procrastinate all the time, now I just want unpleasant things over with as soon as possible.
Me: (laughing) Like marrying me?
Her: Well, that goes without saying.

Was supposed to go to Washington DC again this morning but the trip was cancelled last minute. Just as well, got slammed with more work.

Did have some downtime earlier on in the week so I caught up with Skinny, who just got back from Japan after all these years, PB, and Cain. Was supposed to be a quick get together but, as these things go, turned into a four-pitcher-of-beer night.

No rum just because I’m trying to switch it up, but that’s another story.

The very next day, met up with Johnny who didn’t punch me this time. He was in town to close a major deal in midtown and wanted to take me out for lunch; he showed up in a tee shirt, shorts, and flip-flops.

Me: You’re dressed like a kid!
Him: (shrugging) I’m the boss so I can dress how I want. Also, I’m a kid at heart, Logan.

Ended up a Japanese joint that made fresh soba noodles. When I got back to my desk, found out a client finally sent in a check.

It’s only Wednesday but it’s been pretty good so far.

The fact it’s not 108 degrees in the shade helps, also.

Location: getting ready to get to the bank
Mood: upbeat
Music: take advantage of tonight, cause tomorrow I’m off to do battle
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Honesty and politeness are (very) different things

Me: Do you want me to be honest or polite?
Him: Honest.
Me: If that’s the case, then the truth is that: Unless you make it to an ivy league or top tier one, it just doesn’t pay to go to law school any more.

Hazel asked me to chat with a friend of her’s the other day.

What a lotta people don’t realize is that honesty and politeness are two very different – and usually, opposite – things. Consider some scenarios:

You’re rushing out the door and someone’s walking in.
Honest: If you’re honest with yourself, you’d want to head out first.
Polite: You let the other person in first.

Your friend’s in a play and you think it’s terrible.
Honest: You tell him he should stick to accounting.
Polite: You tell him that he has promise.

As for the conversation I had, it wasn’t the most pleasant one I’ve had in my life. He just got out of a messy marriage, lost his job, and law school was one of the few bright spots in his horizon.

But it was just a bright spot in his mind.

It wasn’t a first, second, or even a third tier law school. Moreover, he was getting zero financial aid. It would be a $150,000, three-year black hole.

Me: I once fought tooth-and-nail to get this company started – after two rejections – so that I could do it with a close family friend. I finally got it and I was so psyched.
Him: And?
Me: Well, the family friend ended up stealing all my scratch and I spent the next three years of my life just to end up at zero. Sometimes you spend all your time fighting for something without realizing what you’re actually fighting for.

Conversations with strangers remind me that I’m barely running close to schedule.

 

Location: in front of spreadsheets
Mood: slightly cooler
Music: If you ask me how I’m doing I would say I’m doing just fine
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You don’t look a day over 100

Her: Are you still eating?
Me: (nodding)
Her: (three hours later) You’ve been eating for hours, stop eating!
Me: (opening bag of chips) Just one more thing…

Adolf Hitler, when informed that the Americans might join the war efforts, scoffed: What is America but beauty queens, millionaires, stupid records, and Hollywood?

By the time it entered the war, US factories built one war plane every five minutes. In other words, Hitler only saw the superficial and not the substantial.

Think that it’s true even now, that people only see the superficial and not the substantial.

A short little story before I stuff my face with burgers and coleslaw with a pretty lady.

Happy B-day to my corner of the world!

Location: home, making cole slaw
Mood: grateful
Music: work and prayers of centuries have brought us to this day
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In defense of lawyers: To do evil things, first kill all the lawyers

There’s this popular quote going around attributed to Will Smith:

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.

However, that saying’s been around forever (most attribute it to Will Rogers). I personally like the variation that goes: It’s crazy to work at jobs you hate, to buy things you don’t need, to impress those you don’t know.

It’s yet another onea those sayings that people think they know but they don’t know at all; although, unlike these sayings, it has more than just the air of truth.

But there’s this joke that I’m tired of hearing that has only the air of truth:

Him: You know, Shakespeare said, First, kill all the lawyers.
Me: Really, when did he say that?
Him: (thinking) I don’t know.

Shakespeare wrote the line in Henry VI, Part 2. (Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78)

In it, a fella named Jack Cade is bragging that the world’d be a wonderful place if he were king cause:

  • you could buy seven half-penny loaves for a penny
  • get ten pots of soup for the price of three
  • it would be illegal to drink a small beer

If only the Jack Cade could get people to “worship me as their lord.”

It’s at this point that a villain named Dick the Butcher laughs and says, The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. To which, Jack Cade goes, Yup, that I mean to do.

Why? Cause that would mean killing the people that ask the questions. Kill the people that protect the little guy.

(“How y’gonna make people sell ten pots of soup for the same price as three pots?” and “Why should you be king?”)

This is true even now: The most dangerous profession in China is a lawyer. It’s why it was such a big deal earlier in spring with the blind dissident, Chen Guangcheng. He was beaten and tortured for trying to make authorities follow their own laws.

Me: So basically, you’re quoting a villain – who’s also a Dick – who’s saying that to be a good and proper dictator, you have to kill the people that think and protect the little guy from empty promises. And the actual line is: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

We’ll add this to the list of things that have the air of truth, but no real truth at all.

Of course, only a lawyer like me would parse out every bit of meaning behind a fella trying to say something funny.

Some days, y’just can’t win.

Location: home, eying the AC
Mood: irritated
Music: funny the way it is, if you think about it
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Chivalry’s dead

Woman after I hold door for her: Good to see chivalry’s not dead in NYC.
Me: I wasn’t being chivalrous, ma’am. I was being polite.

integrity means that you’re the same person in public as y’are in private. In other words, it’s being internally consistent. And consistent with my concept of what a real man is, I feel that chivalry’s an outdated concept.

Its basic tenet’s that women are weak, different, and need special treatment.

I disagree. It’s the same reason that I won’t buy a woman a drink but I’ll buy my friends drinks.

There’s this woman I know who’s ultra-feminist but feels men should always hold the door for women.

Me: Why? Because they’re weak?
Her: No, just because they’re supposed to.
Me: So they should stay home and take care care of the kids? Because they’re supposed to?
Her: That’s different.

Put another way: I don’t believe that we should lower our behaviour for half the population so much as we should raise our behaviour for all of the population.

One should hold doors for others because it’s the polite thing to do, not because someone has two X-chromosomes insteada one.

But it cuts both ways. That same friend is incensed by wage differences between men and women but doesn’t feel a woman should fight in the army.

I think that when a woman is held up to the same standards of men, they rise to the occasion.

For better or worse.

Coach: Don’t be easy on her, she’s tough!
Me (beginning to wrestle with female teammate): I won’t be…
Her: (slams knee on my stomach)

Location: looking out at the rain
Mood: relaxed
Music: She can do the same thing to the clique you know
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Jiro dreams of greatness in unexpected places

To get three Michelin stars – the highest offered – is supposed to mean that it’s worth taking a trip to a country to try that restaurant’s food.

While it seems pretty biased towards French food, it’s interesting to note that a small sushi restaurant in a Toyko subway station received three stars.

We pause this blog entry to let that fact sink in:

  • It’s a Michelin three star restaurant.
  • In a subway station.

Should also mention that there’s no bathroom.

Couldn’t see my dad for father’s day so instead got together with him this week and we caught a showing of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a documentary about the restaurant.

Both of us thought it was pretty good although, like some other reviewers, thought it spent too much time talking about how great the sushi was rather than showing it. Minor quibble though.

When you’re a kid, because of what you’ve been told and seen on Disney, y’expect things and people to look the part. The hero’s always handsome, the monster’s always monstrous.

Then as you get older, you find out that some monsters are handsome and some heroes are quite plain.

Here’s my takeaway from it: You can find greatness everywhere, oftentimes, in the most unexpected places. And things are never as they seem

———-

My fencing instructor’s out for a month or more. So I taught the class after all.

The first class was last night and I found that my key to the classroom didn’t work. Luckily someone let me in. After some minor mishaps, we got into a groove.

Am pretty sure I’m not ready to teach the class.

But he thinks I am so I’ll do it and hope that I do as good a job as he has. I’m grateful for the confidence.

Location: yesterday night, fiddling with keys on West 72nd
Mood: ambitious
Music: too close to the edge. Let’s see if I know the ledge
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Real men watch sports

Slaughtered Lamb in NYC

Me: (eyeing wife) You look really good this morning.
Her: (walking out door) Logan. It’s Monday morning. It’s not happening…

Work’s been so busy that I’ve neglected friends so last week finally met up with a number of them. While out, however, I was reminded that – after all these years – Tequila is not my friend.

Stupid tequila.

The other thing I did this past weekend was catch up on some television. This segment aired yesterday about the changing views of what it means to be a man. Found it interesting cause what I think makes a man differs greatly from a number of people around me.

For example, a fella I work with said “Real men watch sports.” Another person said that men curse, it’s what they do. Yet another one says that men don’t order drinks with umbrellas in them.

Alla which I find misses the point.

Since the beginning of time, because of our physical advantages, a man’s role’s been physical. This meant that we were the providers and protectors. This served us well historically cause mosta human existence’s hinged on our ability to push or pull something.

Providing for and protecting our 13 square feet of the world.

But consider Facebook and Google. Here’re companies where 99.99% of their worth are  assets that cannot be pushed or pulled. It’s imagined.

Ditto with most work – consider the number of people you know that make money pushing or pulling something versus people that spend their times thinking up stuff.

So what’s a man’s role in this modern world where physical strength’s been supplanted by mental acuity?

  • There’re those that ignore the physical. That’s not good, we’re still physical creatures.
  • Then there’re those that ignore the mental. That’s not good either cause survival in today’s modern world requires mental acumen.

If I gotta guess, it requires both. It always has. Sports are sanitized violence. Some less sanitized than others. It’s true that I don’t watch any sports, but I hit the gym (almost) daily.

These other things – like watching sports or cursing – have the veneer of manhood but nothing to do with it actually. As with most things, it has an air of truth to it but no real truth it.

If it has nuthin to do with providing or protecting, I say it’s got a lot more to do with mental masturbation than being a man.

Although even I draw the line at an Appletini.

That’s mostly true.

Location: my old chair, waiting for my new chair
Mood: rejuvenated
Music: no end to the lengths I’ll go to. Hunting high and low
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The only thing constant in life is change

A storefront in Tribeca, NYC

Admin note: Thanks for being on my side.

———

Him: Well, Logan could show up and teach the class. (thinking) Actually, never mind.
Me: No one would show up!

A constant in my life for the past seven years or so is my fencing class. It’s strange how I ended up there; was taking a wrasslin class maybe a dozen years ago when some numbskull practically tore my arm outta my socket.

Got tired of the rehab so someone mentioned swordplay as an alternative. Turned out there was a class around the corner so I’d been taking it ever since. Despite late nights, injuries, hospital stays due to those injuries, etc – Tuesday nights from 8:30-10:00 was one constant.

The instructor just announced that we’re switching to Thursday nights. It’s weird. It’s just a change of two days but that throws me off. It’s funny what we get used to in life.

Speaking of getting used to, for those of you that’ve been reading me for years, y’know that I used to date. A lot. And the strangest thing about my dating life was that, if I walked into a room, and there was a lacto-ovo pescatarian from NJ, she would find her way to me.

Even met one once on my way out of my fencing class.

Think I dated about 20 of them in that time and met probably double that. Must give off some sorta pheromone.

When I got married, assumed it was just some weird aberration. Until recently.

Her: I’ve decided to be a vegetarian.
Me: But you eat fish and eggs.
Her: Yes, so I’m technically a lacto-ovo pescatarian.
Me: Of course you are.

She’s from Jersey too.

At least some things are constant.

Location: my old chair
Mood: amused
Music: What is broken falls into place once again.
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