Good morning! Hello there. How are you? I am good, thanks. I have returned to North Carolina. I am in quarantine at the house next door. I saw a lot of people in New York. Hundreds of people. Hopefully I don’t get Covid. Didn’t seem like anyone else was particularly worried about it, so I suppose that’ll work out just fine. That is the normal course of human events, right? Things generally work out great for humanity if they just don’t worry about things.
Posted part 3 of the fiction yesterday. Did just great on Substack but got absolutely zero comments on Facebook which was very odd. I posted it late, a quick copy/paste job on my phone, no photos attached. Maybe the lack of photo disturbed the algorithm gods. Maybe people are sick of Dottie. That’s fine. I’ve probably only got maybe… three, four more episodes written. It’ll all be over soon, I promise.
New York was great in certain ways and annoying in certain ways. The weather was lovely, traffic was totally fine, my hotel room was fantastic. It was the big room at the Nomo Soho with the balcony that overlooks the restaurant, the room I had when I (probably? maybe?) got Covid in late February 2020. Can’t get Covid in the same hotel room twice, right? That’s how things work, right? Seeing a bunch of friends was fantastic, going to weird work conferences was decidedly less so.
Okay but let’s do it in order. Landed, got to the hotel, checked in, regrouped, walked to the Timehop Nimbus office, first time I’d been in the office in, oh, three years almost exactly? They were out of Diet Coke and M&Ms. It was good to see the people who were in there. Good to walk around and, you know, reminisce about this nostalgia company. Then I left and walked to Fraunces Tavern, George Washington RIP, and met up with Flood for a bit before we hit the Webby Awards.
Webby Awards were great. Got to sit with Flood and Eva and Emma (Webby Emma not Emma Webb two different people) and Allison (not Flood another Allison it is all very confusing) and there were a lot of winners I’d never heard of but some I had and then Laurie Anderson came out and did an introductory speech to Anderson Cooper and it was the goddamn weirdest thing hearing Laurie Anderson give this speech because she delivered it just like a Laurie Anderson spoken word performance and it made my brain explode. I was very confused and excited.
Somewhere in all of this I met a young dude from Oakland who won a Webby for an activist viral video and he talked about how he left advertising and went and followed his dream to make a difference and he has never looked back and never been happier and I was very happy for him and did not feel particularly good about myself for a moment.
Then there was a segment about the Iranian protest women. I was sitting next to a very nice Iranian woman I had just met and she cried during the segment and I get the impression she was involved in its presentation and production. We had been chatting lot during the show and when she was crying I put my hand on her shoulder even though didn’t know her and I am a weird white dude but she seemed to appreciate the comfort? I don’t know. Human interactions are weird where is my garden.
The other weird thing about this segment was that they were talking about how we can help, by using our voice and… I felt many things at once. One, it was a call to action of the old internet of yore when Twitter could topple dictators instead of coddle to them. It also felt utterly useless to raise your voice about these things on the internet. But also with the Iranian situation in particular what the fuck else are we supposed to do? It’s not like we can fund groups that are helping or something. So, in a way it was also… kind of reassuring? Like Oh, I am doing all I can on that front.
So, you know, here is me using my voice to tell you that the other thing that struck me is that this video said the protests were still going on. Is that true? Have they just completely fallen off the radar of western news but are still happening? I need to investigate this, will use my voice and report back.
Then Flood and I did an interlude and went to some place called COMODO and met up with Nick who was in from Portland and I hadn’t seen in ages, and Graydon and Anita, who I’d seen in December when I got covid but you can’t get covid with the same people twice right that’d just be weird. It was great to see them all and we endeavored our best to get them to come to the Webby afterparty with us but they were wise and went home like responsible adults.
Then Flood and I went to the afterparty which was pretty fun, DJ Jazzy Jeff did this amazing mashup of the Rihanna Calvin Harris jam “We Found Love” with “I wanna Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston and I am pleased to report that I can still dance like a normal adult when at a nightclub and DJDP has not ruined me for adult dancing.
There were many awesome people to see and talk to like DMD and Steve and Stella and Neil and I met the Garbage Day guy and we had many good talks and we both acted like we were actually going to go talk to Michael Steel but we did not, at least I did not maybe he did later.
Then I left at a responsible hour without being drunk and I was incredibly proud of myself I really didn’t know how any of this was going to work. I texted my wife on the way back to the hotel to reassure her I was alive and well and got a decent nine hours of sleep.
The next day I had breakfast with my coworker David and we went to the same Cafe where I once had a board member of Twitter tell me all about the then-still-fresh boardroom shenanigans involving Jack and Ev and Dick and also the same cafe where I had an intense conversation with a boss after I had walked out on the job. Lotta memories at that cafe whose name I can never remember. It was the first time I’d seen David in person in three years. We work together very well and we did it remote for that long. Very proud of us. Was good to see him in person.
Then I walked up to the West Village for a tentatively scheduled meeting that ended up not panning out because the guy was sick, but I was compensated with a surprise lunch with my old friend Stephanie, former head of accounts at Barbarian Group, who has gone on to do great things. That was just awesome I hadn’t seen her in years. She also asked about my cofounder Keith whom I hadn’t seen in years but had heard news about. This is foreshadowing.
Then I went down to Wall Street for an AdTech conference that I did not enjoy at all. I went because my bankers were throwing it, but right before the conference my banker called me to tell me he wouldn’t be there, that he had quit working at the firm. So.. great. I would have just bailed but I had scheduled a bunch of meetings around this with clients and partners. So I did all the meetings, except one who stood me up. I spent a lot of time watching depressing panels and looking at people in navy sport coats and kakis and checked dress shirts and I felt very out of place in all black with my 4AD t-shirt. But the most disturbing thing about an adtech conference took me a while to put my finger on, but eventually I noticed the utter lack of actual intellectual interest in the industry, in the tech. I don’t like adtech particularly but I find it interesting, and I don’t mind talking about it. But everything was deals deals deals with no personal life no academic or intellectual discussions about it or anything.
So, meetings out of the way, flight not for five hours, I went up to Madison Square and caught the tail end of Noah Brier’s new conference Marketing and AI conference. I am not a fan of AI but I am a fan of the people at that conference. Sadly I missed the entire thing except a portion of Noah’s closing talk, but I got to see the people and that was great. I spent about 90 minutes at the bar with them after the conference. Got to see Graydon and Anita again, got to see Rex and Noah and Noah’s dad, whom I used to work with, and and a bunch of other people and (bah dum bump) Keith Butters, who I’d not seen in years and years and it was so nice to see him and catch up with him and my god his oldest kid is going into high school. Just amazing. Time time time see what’s become of me.
It really was weird. Noah’s conference was also an advertising and marketing conference. Two advertising and marketing conferences in a day. But the people, the energy, the curiousity couldn’t have been different. Also plenty of people had black on, in New York, gasp, and I did not feel like a complete alien. It was the breath of fresh air I needed.
Also, hilariously, I got an adtech deal done there, probably more important and useful than anything I actually got done at the AdTech conference, so, you know, there’s that.
Then I went to the airport and spent $30 on a hamburger and tweeted about it, which I would embed here but Twitter and Substack are still fighting it is so, so dumb, it’s all so dumb. Laguardia answered me, like they always do when I tweet a complaint about the prices, which I do once every four years or so. Then you reply and nothing happens because they don’t care, they think $30 for a hamburger (okay, a hamburger and fries) is totally reasonable.
Then I flew home with some horrible entitled rich people next to me who were treating the black woman from Portsmouth England who was are light attendant like some sort of Victorian circus curiosity. They genuinely thought they were being kind you could tell.
Then I drove my amazing truck home in the most insane lightning storm I had ever seen, everyone was driving 30 on the interstate and I swear to god I felt like I was on the Fury Road in the dust storm hightailing it to the Green Place, which I suppose in a way I was.
It was a good trip as trips go. Trips are a pain and never worth it but usually worth it. People are things that you talk to and they say things back and sometimes it is all robotic but sometimes it is sublime and makes your life better. Everywhere you visit is different from where you are but they are also all the same and we exoticize them when they’re just folks trying to get by in the world.
I got to see my wife when I arrived home that was nice. We did air hugs and she handed me some supplies for my quarantine. I’m hoping to see my daughter at lunch or dinner today, that would be lovely. But Emma sent me this photo of Jane happy at lunch after she enjoyed her second swim lesson which was, by all accounts, a far more successful affair than the first, so that is nice.
Here is a noise and metal playlist for you. I was thinking on the trip about how much noise and metal I listen to and it really is pretty crazy. I don’t know when or how or why this happened but it really does calm my nerves. Kinda like church or a massage or a sensory deprivation tank or something. I would recommend it but maybe it is not your cup of tea.
Anyway I hope you were all well and I will see you tomorrow.