Live From New York... Or, Roots Planted?

I was confused as the lady in Best Buy laughed when I dropped the overfull basket of DVDs on the counter in front of her. I saw the HD-DVD copy of Goodfellas fall out and I quoted the classic Pesce line from it, "You think I'm funny?" with a smile. "Yeah, a little bit," she answered without acknowledging my perhaps not-humorous reference. "Just how long were you in there?"

"Oh, 15 or 20 mins? Why?"

"I've never seen any one buy so many movies all at once."

And then it hit me. When it came to content ownership, I'd stepped out of what Dave Chappelle would call "the game" (Kelly and I kicked the summer off with a The Roots concert and Dave came out and told some funny stuff...) at some point.


It must have been somewhere right around the time -- maybe before, maybe during, maybe after and maybe all of the above and more -- right around the time I moved to NYC from ABQ back in 1996 that I quit consuming purchased entertainment. Perhaps it was one too many forced upgrades from the recording industry or Sony's Walkman or the home movie standards. But at some point I sat down with a pencil and realized that these content owners were sandbagging me. And here, the young lady's surprise, as it accurately conveyed how strange it must be to meet someone who plops down scores of DVDs at one time in a 15 minute frenzy on a random Monday night, reminded me of the process.

I leaned forward on the elbow high counter's arm rest as Joann, the nice young lady who helped me find The Godfather I and II and The Wizard of Oz, finished with her customer and turned to join the conversation. "Do you guys own any movies? You know, some that you've bought from stores like this?"

"Oh, yeah, of course," they both answered.


"I don't. I've bought three movies that I can think of in my adultlife: The three watch-able Star Wars, of course. You see, I've been waiting and I know what movies I want and now that I've designed the theatre of my dreams in my office down the street and I can go back and have all these movies burned to my G5's hard-drive and I can watch them on my couch or on this here cell phone or anywhere else, all on my terms -- well, I'm here buying a bunch of the movies and TV shows that I've always wanted to own, but you really do have to remember that I haven't spent a single dime on building a library of in the last ten years since I moved to this lovely, cold city. And you see, that $924 that I just spent in one shot right here leaves me, I'd be willing to bet, several hundred dollars still in cushion to catch your guys' video budget over the last ten years."

And I think I said it just like that -- all quick and fast like Gary Brown, the very nice news reporter from the Ruidoso News when I was a little leaguer.

They were each sorta giggling at and with me as they nodded in agreement. I had a point, they concurred.

So I was pumped when Isis described her vision of the office space the broker had shown to her to me, just a couple days after I'd described my vision to her. For the last ten years, I'd been dreaming of opening an office in Soho, in large part because --well, I have to admit I hate the cookie cutter corporate buildings and hedge fund hotels from whence I come. Not that there's anything wrong with being a cooker cutter, a corporate, a hedge fund or even with being a hotel, mind you (my grandpa, son of Lucky Lindsay whose ring I wear and business card I carry, and Grandma even ran a motel in Madison, KS), but I just wanted to get out into some different areas and into a different vibe. It didn't help that after I'd moved offices the first time a couple years ago, I had my single worst day ever as a hedge fund manager on the very day I moved into my other offices. I hated that new office. And I was jazzed when the place Isis showed me was every bit of what I had pictured in my mind for the last decade.


On the sixth story of a six-story in the area of downtown Manhattan (the NYC kind, not the KSU) known as Soho, I've moved into a corner office with two big windows and a fire escape outside. For those non-NYCer TV-lovers, as I told my sister it's just down the street from the "Grace Building" where Grace's offices are in "Will & Grace". The building's an old prewar building that's full of new media companies, film studios, graphics designs companies and what not. My floor's got an "older" (what a funny concept to call it old already, but that bubble's pretty much a distant memory by now, isn't it?) web media company on it and even a record label. Did I mention I'm excited?

Alas, it's now hit 1:14am on this long, hard, and stressful, but fun first day from these new offices, of which I've already spent a lot of time, energy and pride on, but in which I hope to spend a lot more long, hard, stressful, energetic and prideful days.

Tonight's Soundtrack:

Nick Drake -- Bryter Layter

Bob Dylan -- Planet Waves

(NMF on all these and much more coming soon)