This & That, Platanos & Collard Greens

Catchup blog:
Saw the off-Bway play Platanos & Collard Greens yesterday. One of my friends is in it from law school, and was a lot more complex than I expected. Recommended.

The teams were reshuffled into co-ed teams on the Apprentice after 4 successive losses by the boy’s team. The two companies were each given $1,000 to buy stuff to be sold at a flea market; the team with the most profit wins. Getting a heads-up on future sleezyness, $200 is “lost” (aka embezzled) by one of the teams and they lose.

I find out that YC’s ex lives directly above P–‘s apartment. Major world wide disbelief ensues. Everyone’s ok about this, though, I think.

Read The Passport, reading The Tipping Point. Titles of books nowadays tend to be physical nouns rather than verbs or gerunds. Why is that?

Mission impossible: I’m going to run to Chelsea Market, buy a dozen roses, and deliver them to P– before 10 am. Let’s see if this can happen.

What’s with lawyers?

I’m in the middle of reading a fascinating historical mystery (taking place in medieval England); I’ll probably blog about it later, when I’m done – but I think it’s funny that the author is a tax attorney in her other life. This other mystery series I’ve read (coincidentally also taking place in medieval Europe) is written by a Legal Aid attorney from Queens. Apparently, I’ve read somewhere that historical mysteries are particularly popular lawyer-novelists, for not only the historical context but also because they give the lawyer-authors (or mystery writers in general) a chance to write about eras before warrants and other items, which may or may not impede investigations. Leave it to lawyers to enjoy that.

NY’s Channel 11 (WPIX) news had an interesting story for its 2/12/04 broadcast – this corporate attorney who is taking a leave of absence from his firm and six-figure-salary to be a Lego Master Builder at Legoland in San Diego. His work is amazing (ex., a several thousand pieces Lego sculpture of Han Solo in carbonite, straight out of Star Wars Episode 5 or 6). It’s like a kid’s dream – and one man is doing it, figuring he’s young enough to do it (in his 30’s or so, it seems), and his girlfriend’s letting him do it, and he loves Legos (it surely doesn’t hurt that he doesn’t have a family to raise yet). The reporter asks soon-to-be-ex-corporate-lawyer what his plans were down the line, and the story closes with the reporter reporting that Lego guy hasn’t abandoned the law; Lego guy figures that maybe down the line he can go back to his firm with Lego as a client.

Talk about a rainmaking/networking opportunity; I don’t doubt that Lego would be an amazing client to have – with its global business probably making plenty of income or possible billable hours for transactional attorneys. (I grew up loving Legos like anyone else, so nice to see a lawyer trying to keep both his interests intact – but not like I’d make Legos my life).

The Apprentice

Breast for Success

I don’t know if anyone is catching this latest “reality” TV show but I think in terms of “reality” it has much more of it than the others. Before I left, I caught the one episode where they were dressed in airline stewardess uniforms and kicked the mens’ ass with it. Yeah, sure, sex sells.

The telling statement is this: “These guys have nothing—not power, not sex.” It’s even more true when you consider women make up more than half the work force and the mid-level managers are also probably staffed at that level. Anecdotally, of the people who are out of work, here in Silicon Valley, it’s the men who are out of work and falling back on their wive’s job.

On a side note, my Taiwan trip hit a glitch. I ate a really bad (super hot) chili at a Thai place in 101 Taipei Center and it knocked me out for a whole day. Slowly recovering….

=YC