Always stay humble. It's the only way you can't get humiliated.

Meaning of Life, my fave! Personally, I liked last year's better, overall. But there's good stuff in this one too. And it's a good theme ("the other guys" sans George Clooney). A few:

George Clooney
"There's ten of us, we've been best friends for thirty years. Ten guys. And their wives, and their kids, are all family now. I'm not big on keeping up on the phone, none of us are. Some guys I won't talk to for two months and then you pick up the phone and hear, "So, anyway." There's no guilt or where have you been? or what's been going on? or why haven't we talked? There's an ease to it.
I remember when Richard Kind's dad suddenly died. This was about seven or eight years ago--maybe more. Richard's a really wonderful character actor. He loved his dad, and he was very grown-up about passing on the news. He called and left a message: My dad died, I'm in Chicago, the funeral's going to be in New Jersey tomorrow morning. I'll talk to you when I get back. This was five o'clock at night. I was in L.A. Rick is a Jew. They bury the next day. They don't screw around. They get you right in the ground. So I called up Michael, Grant's brother, and told him Richard's dad died. He said, "We should be there." The guys were all around the country. One was in Denver. One was in San Diego.
So I got a jet and we spent the whole night flying around the country. San Diego, Denver. We landed in Trenton, New Jersey. Richard didn't know anything about it.
We got to the synagogue, this giant synagogue, with the people up front. And Richard didn't know we were going to be there. We're sitting there, the nine of us in the back row. And Richard gets up to speak about his dad and he sees his nine best friends there. And what I loved about it was that all of us understood that there are moments in your life that are real passages. Your father dying is a very big one. Because you are now the man of the family. We understood how important that was at that time."

Joe Biden
"My dad used to say, "You know you're a success when you look at your kids and realize they turned out better than you." I am a success. But I should have had one Republican who wanted to be an investment banker and make a lot of money so that when they put me in a home, I get a window with a view."

Gary Oldman
""Fuck 'em." Shortest prayer in the world."

Vanna White
"People don't know the real you unless you tell them."

Jon Cryer
"Critics can say horrible things. It only hurts when I agree with them."

Jeffrey Tambor
"The secret of life is to be surrounded by people who get you--just the people who get you."

Scottie Pippen ; Really liked this one, hard to pinpoint one quote, you've got to read 'em all together. It starts with:
"The first NBA game I ever saw in person was the one I played in."

Charlie Murphy
"I was sitting in this mogul's house. My brother was there, and they were having lunch. It was real nice, going down to the beach and everything. And then we see this woman walking on the beach. It's Diana Ross. I ran down there and got her. So now we're sitting in this room. Diana Ross is sitting with Eddie in the mogul's section. I'm with some common folk on the other side. We're talking, having fun. One guy happens to use the f word. And Diana Ross comes all the way across the room and says, "Excuse me, I don't know who you gentlemen are, but I don't tolerate any profanity in my vicinity." Now, we're not at Diana Ross's house. We're in another house. We don't work for her. That's what we were all thinking. And one guy goes, "Fuck you, Diana." She was stunned. Her face, it looked like pieces of it were falling off. No one was sorry. Because what sticks out in this story for me is: Why are people kissing Diana Ross's ass? Is she God? No. She sang on some records and did a good job! I give her her props. But that doesn't make you more of an adult than me. That doesn't give you any more rights than me. Being your fan is optional. If you forget that, because everybody's been blowing sunshine up your ass, you're putting yourself in the position to take a fall. That's the moral of the story. Always stay humble. It's the only way you can't get humiliated."

"For me, it was an instant. The first night I met Tisha was on a boat. She was having dinner with her friends. She didn't know who I was, and I asked her to come with me. Her friends told her not to go. But she did. We drove straight to my brother's house. My mother was there. My stepfather was there. Eddie was there. They were all in the kitchen. I walked in and said, "This is my future wife."

"We fit. I don't believe that you can meet another person that fits just like that. She wasn't even another person. She's a mirror, you know what I mean. It was like that for twenty years."

"I come home and she's in the kids' room, crying. That's when she told me. Cervical cancer. You don't really grasp it. When the person tells you they're going to die, you go crazy. You become a different person from the moment you hear those words. A young woman like that--don't drink, don't smoke, don't do drugs. I know people that's ninety who do all of that. She's a very organized woman. When she died, all the arrangements had been made. She made her own arrangements."

Allison Janney
"I got to know Paul Newman. I played ping-pong with him. He once told me, "If you ever need a favor, let me know." I never called him on that favor. I used to carry his favor around in my pocket like it was a Valium. Just knowing I had it in my pocket made me feel really confident."

"We joke in my family that my father learned to play the piano so he wouldn't have to talk to anybody. I wish I could play the way he did so I could go to parties and be present but not have to be called upon for small talk. Everybody loves the person playing the piano."

"I don't trust people who don't like dogs."

Slash
"I used to think Les Paul was a guitar. I didn't know he was a real guy. When I got to know him, I found out that if you're really obsessed, he was the guy you'd want to be like. He was always trying to find an answer for what he was looking for in his mind."

"It's not something you can find. There's a moment you arrive at--there's no words for it. A bunch of people come together at this place where a note hits your heart and your brain tells your finger where to go. It's an otherworldly thing, like when a painter gets the right combination of colors together."

I train in Krav Maga, do or die, so that way I'm prepared for any situation.

I've written before about how much I love when the sources tell the story so I absolutely loved the latest issue's "The Classifieds: A Workplace Confidential." Had no idea this was in the works. Some heartbreaking, funny, unusual, others disturbing, all honest. All worth reading. Excerpts from some of my favorites:

The Plastic Surgeon

"You could ask, "Did Michael Jackson need a rhinoplasty?" Probably not. But he wanted one. If you look at his first rhinoplasty, it was very nice, restrained. But your client is Michael Jackson, and he keeps coming back to your office, so you keep going and all of a sudden it looks like a disaster. 

So when you ask, Is it Heidi Montag's fault or Michael Jackson's fault--or is it the surgeon's fault for not telling them?--you're in a gray area. My personal opinion is, it's always on you. You did it. 

As for my own views on physical beauty? You know, breast augmentation can be done well, and it can look very good, and it can feel good. And I guess the knowledge of that has changed me a little. Once you do it all the time, you get desensitized to it. When I walk down the street now, I look at people and think, "I can do this, I can do that." That's a curse. You become hypercritical. My wife--when I'm just standing there looking at her, if I'm not saying anything for a while, she'll be like, "What? What? You're trying to...!" I'll say, "No, I'm not!" But that does sort of happen."

The Bronx High-School Teacher

"And of course there's the drug culture. It filters down in the most interesting ways. The kids sell Pop-Tarts in school like they're drug dealers. This one kid would go to Costco and buy in bulk and then sell Pop-Tarts in the morning. He actually made enough money selling Pop-Tarts to buy a car. So one day he got busted by security with a huge bag full of Pop-Tarts, and they asked him, "What is this?" He said: "They're my snack." And they were like, "No, they aren't." So he sat down and ate them all. He graduated and went back to Africa."

The Doorman

"We can tell a lot. We can tell if someone's a shopaholic or when they drink too much. The always order liquor--like daily. Drug deals, the dealers come in, they say "Um, I'm here to see...," and they say the wrong name. They go in and get out quickly. We can tell if a couple's divorcing. Usually, they're screaming and hollering in the lobby, like we're not even here. The husband or wife will apologize later, but still. Sometimes one of them will try to get us to take their side, but we can't really do or say anything. Cheating, we see plenty. But we never tell. This one woman, she had regulars every time her husband was away. Different guys. I felt bad for him, but it's none of my business. Sometimes I see things I shouldn't see on the cameras, like couples getting intimate in the laundry room. We like to watch." 

The Met

"It's really sad to see what the Mets have become: A great franchise, on the biggest stage in sports, is now a laughingstock. Ownership is trying to turn the Mets, a big-market franchise, into a small-market franchise. That's not just sad, it's disgusting. You know what I think when I read about the Mets nowadays? We've become the Oakland A's. We're the Pittsburgh Pirates. Our fans deserve better than that."

"Reyes and David Wright were the heart of that team. Those were the guy the Mets had to build around. But now that Reyes is in Miami, Wright will be traded by the All-Star break. If they're going to run this like a small-market team, that's the way it's going to fold. If I'm David Wright, I'd want to be gone."

"What makes it worse is being in the same market as the Yankees. Obviously they have more money, but there used to be a time when the Mets and Yankees were equals. Today, it's totally lopsided. But that's not to say I have a problem with the Yankees--I don't. I'm not jealous of them. They've given New York a product their fans can be proud of, like it's supposed to be. I like Derek Jeter, I think he's a class act. I read some of the good and the bad things that were said when he was renegotiating, but he ended up having a pretty decent year. Is he overpaid now? Sure, but he earned it when he was younger. The Yankees took care of him, the way you're supposed to. I'm waiting for the day when the Mets get back to doing things the right way. In the meantime, it's a disaster."

The Transsexual Escort

"Thank God for peepholes. You can see craziness at the door. That's one reason I decided to train in martial arts heavily. I train in Krav Maga, do or die, so that way I'm prepared for any situation."

"I've had guys last 30 seconds. I've had other clients who get really nervous and can't get it up. That happens a lot. It can be a little bit overwhelming at times for them, which I understand. Sometimes there's a client who has to inject his penis with something to get it up. There are some who are in wheelchairs. Money is money; sometimes you gotta grin and bear it, but it's not really the most enjoyable experience. It takes a lot out of you, actually, to make believe you are having a good time."

The ER Pediatrics Doctor

"Some people say they could never go into pediatrics because they couldn't stand the parents. But that's one of the best parts of my job for me. If you're taking care of an elderly patient, you walk into the room and it's just the two of you. With pediatrics, oftentimes, there's not only the mom and dad, sisters and brothers, but sometimes there's grandparents--it's like an audience. And I enjoy that the patient has other people there caring about the child ... But in pediatrics there's usually a very caring parent. Especially in Manhattan, you have the overbearing mothers--I love them. I understand them; I have one myself." 

The Per Se Waiter

"There's nothing more fun than to wait on someone who is genuinely interested in the food. You'll get a couple that comes in, and this is their one time a year, and they're just so happy to be at the restaurant. There was this kid blogger, he was like 16 or 17, and he had blogged about how he was saving up his allowance to come to Per Se. And he did. He came by himself and had lunch."

"Most of the VIP guests get to be VIPs because they spend money and tip well. The wait staff fight over the VIPs because of the way the system works. Basically, there's a service charge, so everyone gets an hourly rate, which is fantastic because that means the kitchen all get more money, paid vacation--all these other benefits come from that. Then, if people leave any money on top of that, which they normally do, the head server keeps half of it and the other half goes in the tip pool. So the captains will fight over the people that are ballers and spend a lot of money. The more senior captains can make anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000 a night. That's very rare, like once every two years. But there was a private party where these people left like $8,000 as a tip, so the captain walked with $4,000."

"There's a hierarchy based on position, so there's servers, bussers, back servers, runners. Then there's an ethnic hierarchy. There's a huge Bengali population that works in restaurants, and they all have their own hierarchy. You'll have the Spanish-speaking--Dominicans, Mexicans, and Guatemalans. They'll kind of get along, and within each group they'll have their own hierarchy. There's usually one key person who has hired everyone else or who has gotten their friends or family members to come work there. The staff is incestuous. I think half the staff is dating the other half of the staff right now. I mean, you spend 60 hours a week with these people, so what do you think is going to happen?"

After the slow introduction, the violins unfurl a gently swelling theme, made piquant by syncopations.

Adam Platt's list is cool, but I can't afford to dine at any of the places listed so I skimmed. But Justin Davidson's What Does A Conductor Do? is wonderfully written and provides great insight to an underrated, difficult profession.

"I have been wondering what, exactly, a conductor does since around 1980, when I led a JVC boom box in a phenomenal performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony in my bedroom. I was bewitched by the music--the poignant plod of the second movement, the crazed gallop of the fourth--and fascinated by the sorcery. In college, I took a conducting course, presided over a few performances of my own compositions, and led the pit orchestra for a modern-dance program. Those crumbs of experience left me in awe of the constellation of skills and talents required of a conductor--and also made me somewhat skeptical that waving a stick creates a coherent interpretation."

"I've chosen the Don Giovanni overture because it distills almost everything I adore in music: darkness, humor, violent emotions elegantly expressed, the subtle play of human interactions. In the opera, virtually every conversation is an argument. The Don bickers with his complaining servant Leporello, fends off the grasping Donna Elvira, humiliates the peasant Masetto, and seduces the young bride Zerlina. Mozart weaves this banter into the overture, developing a rhetoric of interruptions and contradictions. After the slow introduction, the violins unfurl a gently swelling theme, made piquant by syncopations. The phrase breaks off in mid-thought and skitters impishly back down for a couple of measures before being interrupted by fanfare full of bravado. Mozart, the showbiz professional, has introduced three moods, personalities, and styles in eight bars, all with seamless charm. How to translate this into movement? Will I just wind up exaggerating the contrasts with silly pantomime?"

"As I get deeper into the score, I focus on one crucial but difficult aspect of the job: preparing a moment before it arrives. Gilbert urges his students to stop living in the moment; giving a Get ready! cue just one beat head of a Now! creates a little shiver of panic. A conductor has to be simultaneously ahead of the music and with it, experiencing and expecting at the same time--manufacturing an extended déjà vu. When Gilbert works, you can see the pulse thrumming through his body, diggadiggadiggadiggadigga, yet he also projects a commanding serenity."

"In Italian, the word maestro also means teacher. As we power toward the final cadence and I exchange glance after glance with the young musicians, it occurs to me that they are bombarding me with unspoken questions and it's my job to convey answers. That's what a conductor does: mold an interpretation by filtering the thousands of decisions packed into every minute of symphonic music. The clarinetist inclined to add a little gleam to a brief solo by slowing down slightly, the tuba player preparing a fortissimo blast after twenty minutes of nothing--each will look to the podium for a split-second shot of guidance, and the conductor who meets those fleeting inquiries with clarity and assurance will get a more nuanced performance. My efforts haven't made me a good conductor, or even a mediocre one, but they have given me the glimmerings of competence--an intoxicating taste of what it might feel like to realize the fantasy of my boom-box days."

Amazing.

Reasons to love New York & Bread

I wasn't super impressed with the "Reasons to Love New York" list but there were a few items I liked. Not because I liked the reasons, but because I thought they were well-written, including: 4) After 64 Years Together, Louis Halsey and John Spofford Morgan Finally Got Hitched 7) There's Nothing Like a Great Old New York Hack (Except a Great New York Hack) 10) The Best Tabloid Story Was the One About the Owner 13) To Hell With the NBA. Go, St. Francis! 21) To Us, a Natural Disaster Is Just Another Excuse to Say Who's Better Than Whom 25) It Turns Out You Meet the Nicest People Huddled Outside in the Cold Trying to Kill Yourself and 26) The Skyline Is Soaring Again

What impressed me most from this issue, what I loved, was the BREAD package. Oh my god. Seriously, props to every single person who worked on it because it is fabulously executed. The Breads of New York slideshow = amazing. Props to Danny Kim (staff photographer) for taking all of the photos. I was pretty disappointed to learn I missed the day when they let staff have a taste of the samples.

History often emerges only in retrospect.

TIME did an excellent job of encompassing the crazy, eventful, tumultuous year 2011 has been in its "Person of the Year" issue. The person: the protester. Great infographics in the front of book that feature some of the year's most viral images, buzzwords (i.e. "occupy" and "planking"), best tweets, things of the year (i.e. percentage 99% and the 7th billion person born), how forces of nature have affected the world, and so on. It seriously blows my mind when I think of all that has happened. The cover story of protesters around the world features powerful portraits and words from some of the people who fought this year for their freedoms and beliefs. Also includes short profiles of Admiral William McRaven (led the Osama bin Laden raid), Chinese activist Ai Weiwei, Paul Ryan, and Kate Middleton. Finally, a farewell to some prominent people who died this year (Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Taylor, Gil Scott-Heron, Betty Ford, Joe Frazier, etc). Concludes with a Joel Stein piece about Ryan Gosling (<3!).

"History often emerges only in retrospect. Events become significant only when looked back on. No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square in a town barely on a map, he would spark protests that would bring down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and rattle regimes in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. Or that that spirit of dissent would spur Mexicans to rise up against the terror of drug cartels, Greeks to march against unaccountable leaders, Americans to occupy public spaces to protest income inequality, and Russians to marshal themselves against a corrupt autocracy. Protests have now occurred in countries whose populations total at least 3 billion people, and the word protest has appeared in newspapers and online exponentially more this past year than at any other time in history.

Is there a global tipping point for frustration? Everywhere, it seems, people said they'd had enough. They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when the answers came back in a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. They literally embodied the idea that individual action can bring collective, colossal change. And although it was understood differently in different places, the idea of democracy was present in every gathering. The root of the word democracy is demos, "the people," and the meaning of democracy is "the people rule." And they did, if not at the ballot box, then in the streets. America is a nation conceived in protest, and protest is in some ways the source code for democracy — and evidence of the lack of it.

The protests have marked the rise of a new generation. In Egypt 60% of the population is under the age of 25. Technology mattered, but this was not a technological revolution. Social networks did not cause these movements, but they kept them alive and connected. Technology allowed us to watch, and it spread the virus of protest, but this was not a wired revolution; it was a human one, of hearts and minds, the oldest technology of all.

Everywhere this year, people have complained about the failure of traditional leadership and the fecklessness of institutions. Politicians cannot look beyond the next election, and they refuse to make hard choices. That's one reason we did not select an individual this year. But leadership has come from the bottom of the pyramid, not the top. For capturing and highlighting a global sense of restless promise, for upending governments and conventional wisdom, for combining the oldest of techniques with the newest of technologies to shine a light on human dignity and, finally, for steering the planet on a more democratic though sometimes more dangerous path for the 21st century, the Protester is TIME's 2011 Person of the Year. -- Rick Stengel"

"I don't want to blow shit up. I want to get stuff done."

2012=1968? by John Heilemann

"In such an environment, formal claims to leadership are invariably and forcefully rejected, leaving the processes for accomplishing anything in a state of near chaos, while at the same time opening the door to (indeed compelling) ad hoc reins-taking by those with the force of personality to gain ratification for their deas about how to proceed. "In reality," says Yotam Marom, one of the key OWS organizers, "movements like this are most conducive to being led by people already most conditioned to lead.""

"Capitalizing on this support is the central issue facing OWS, and its ability to do so will depend on myriad factors, including the behavior of plutocrats, politicians, and police. (In terms of presenting shocking and morally clarifying imagery, the recent pepper-spraying incident at the University of California, Davis, struck many as reminiscent of Bull Connor's goons dousing civil-rights protesters with fire hoses in 1963). But it will also depend on which of two broad strains within OWS turns out to be dominant: the radical reformism of social democrats such as Berger, who want to see a more humane and egalitarian form of capitalism and a government less corrupted by money, or the radical utopianism of the movement's anarchists and Marxists, who seek to replace our current economic and political arrangements with ... who knows what? "My fear is that we become the worst of the New Left," Berger says. "I don't want to live in a fucking commune. I don't want to blow shit up. I want to get stuff done.""

"Teichberg is a 39-year-old Russian immigrant with stooped shoulders and a mop of brown hair who grew up in Rego Park and is so jacked in to the electronic grid that he comes across like a character out of Neuromancer. But what makes him so interesting is that you could just as easily imagine him making a cameo in The Big Short. A math prodigy who was a Westinghouse Science Talent Search finalist before matriculating at Princeton, he left college (temporarily) after his sophomore year and went to work for Bankers Trust, the first in a string of Wall Street gigs at firms including Deutsche Bank, Swiss Reinsurance Corp., and HSBC. And what did he do in those places? He created, modeled, and traded derivatives, including some of the first synthetic CDOs. And he told the London Times, he was "one of the people [who] built that bomb that blew up the whole economy.""

"Like Teichberg's, their criticisms of that system are more sophisticated and precise than those of many of their comrades. But their politics, also like Teichberg's, are the opposite: earnest and idealistic, for sure, but also vague and half-formed."

I could never quite align myself with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and I can't quite articulate why; I don't know why. One might think I might be a little more sympathetic (I have less than $1,000 to my name, about $25,000 in debt, no job, living with a single mother who got laid off a few months ago...). At the same time though, I'm really confident in my potential to succeed in the career I've chosen, I have an awesome internship, I'm optimistic that my mom will find a job soon, I'm lucky enough to be able to live at home in NYC. I don't quite feel screwed over by the system just yet. I don't know. I also met a lot of the protesters; interns headed down there in September to help with polling, and I don't know, I just wasn't impressed. I didn't get the idea many of them knew what they were talking about. Anyway, I liked that John Heilemann evaluated how this movement can and whether it will, influence politics next year. And especially loved that he spoke to some of the more intelligent leaders (though the movement claims to be leaderless) who have identified some of the problems I've had with the movement and their ideas on how to improve it and make it effective. And it's not that I don't think there aren't fundamental things that need to change. I just never thought camping out in a park and yelling was the best way to address the problem. I think they (we?) have to be smarter about our approaches if we want to make any real differences ... meh, that's all I have to say about it for now.

The efforts all share the upscale New York brand identity.

And Another Fifty Million People Just Got Off of The Plane, by Michael Idov

Really interesting feature (and package) that covers New York City's booming tourism industry. Fifty million tourists will have visited by the end of this year, breaking a record. Apparently the milestone has been reached because of Michael Bloomberg's and NYC & Company's (a marketing type agency) initiatives, connections, outreach, etc. Read and you'll see. Anyway, thought the way their niche-marketing/advertising/PR strategies for potential tourists from the U.S. and abroad was interesting. And how they've been able to convince hotels, airlines, and other members of the industry to join them in their efforts.

"Among travelers from the top foreign markets, Australians are the most adventurous. They are the most likely to attend a sporting event, go dancing, shop, buy tickets to a concert or a play--anything, really. The French are the likeliest to attend an art gallery or a museum. The British, Irish, and Arab Middle Easterners are the least interested in art. Brazilians are emphatically anti-guided tours. The Japanese are seriously into Harlem, crowding gospel brunches and church tours (it is an open secret among New York's jazz community that our jazz clubs are, at this point, all but subsidized by older Japanese men). The Norwegians, Danes, Finns, and the Dutch are the wealthiest, with 18 percent of the arrivals earning more than $200,000. Indians are the thriftiest, in a sense--because they often stay with friends or relatives and avoid hotels, they spend only $88 a person a day. But they also tend to stay longer than other groups, spending $1,000 per trip. The "Russian oligarch" stereotype, statistically speaking, is fiction. 

    Our visiting compatriots, meanwhile, have their own quirks. Their behavior patterns fall into two main categories: day-trippers who tend to come from relatively nearby and get in and out quickly for a specific purpose, and overnighters, who swarm in from farther away and stay longer. While just about every day-tripper who comes to New York shops here, guests from D.C. are almost twice as likely as the average tourist to name that as their main reason to visit. Among overnighters, Angelenos do the most shopping, Miamians are the most inclined to hit an art gallery, and Bostonians tend to favor our nightclubs. 

    To capitalize on those and other differences, NYC & Company has launched niche-marketing campaigns for different places. While the efforts all share the upscale New York brand identity, they are tailored in unique ways. Asian ads focus on our main icons to entice first-time visitors. European markets get bombarded with messages meant to encourage repeat visits and a "live like a local" experience. In Italy and Germany, NYC & Company has been selling the notion of the city's "energy" and "vibrancy," as opposed to any specific sites. It's less Broadway and more Bedford Avenue--a place where you go to be cool. In the domestic market, the sales pitch stays largely the same: The ads for New York that appear in Texas are the same as those running in Connecticut."

"As their economy grew like never before, middle-class Brazilians abandoned traditional vacation destinations like Argentina for New York. NYC & Company quickly influenced American Airlines to create discount fares. After observing the Brazilians' consumer behavior and realizing they are disproportionately taken with Broadway theater, NYC & Company sent five musicals to Sao Paulo. "Nobody's paying for anything--AA is flying them in," says Fertitta, practically giddy. Between 2009 and 2010 alone, the number of Brazilian tourists in the city increased by an incredible 77 percent. And the typical Brazilian drops $415 a day here, about double the international average."

*For a few weeks this year I worked in a watch/jewelry store in midtown Manhattan that largely attracts tourists and I definitely noticed that many more than the last time (I also worked there in 2009) stemmed from Brazil. 

Also, I loved Tourist Profiling and I thought Geotagging the Tourists was really cool. And I really, really want to have some oysters at Grand Central Oyster Bar one day soon!