On Being A Woman.. In High Tech
On Being A Woman.. In High TechBiography by Washington Post editor,
Katherine Graham, that the 60s in business, cavorting with Kennedy and the ilk, you were essentially ignored if you were a woman, and not young and pretty. This reminds me of a pet peeve with the Dot Com era, namely recently,
Valleywag's adoration of
Marissa Mayer (and
here). The photographer on Flickr is
Esther Dyson, who has the chops, and the background, yet for some reason VW doesn't give her play, which is fine, I mean maybe she isn't doing anythign newsworthy or gossipworthy.
Are there others in the old ladies' club that should be getting better press or attention? Maybe the hotties of the world got their jobs because of youth & beauty? (there's some report somewhere that says this works for men too). Or is this just something about the world in general and not a plot of scheming misogynists (or agists, what have you.) It's not a big point I'm making , nor a small one really, just that once in a while I read these news gossipy sites, and I get tired of having to put on my "if I was a guy in tech" hat to read them. If instead they addressed me as a woman-in-tech, someone who didn't want to hear about every hot new thing in the workplace. Well, unless they were a guy. Nick, come on, spice it up. Stop acting more straight than you are.
OK I must go drink, but in wrap-up, in the 10 seconds I've given this deep thought, I just keep thinking of all the young women who had youth & beauty on their side and excelled, and it makes me sad for those with skills, yet have neither.
Open Letter to Ladies in Gym Locker Room
Open Letter to Ladies in Gym Locker RoomI go to the gym, and do a full workout. When I get back to the locker room, the same two people that were there from the start. That's an Hour. Lady #1: naked, doing soemthing to look busy but basically just nude. Lady #2. talking about the power dynamics of her landlord situation. When I come back from workout, Lady #1 is still nude and chatty Cathy is slightly quieter but continuing her tale of landlord woe.
So my question: was that some kind of Matrix moment? Or did Lady #1 stand there the entire time in the main passageway, nude? I think she did because her lotion was very strong, despite the large signs everywhere saying it's an odor-free zone (I know that's an impossible hope). So, dear lady, how come you came to the gym to hang out in the locker room? I hope you have some clothes. I don't mean to sound like a prude, if you can be naked anywhere, it should be the locker room. But in reality there's a few seconds where I'm nude inbetween bathing suit changing and that's about it. The whole "standing about in birthday suit" method of locker room loungitude has never been for me.
Lady #2: Landlord woes are usually about as fascinating to people as dreams. I know you feel the need to vent. My suggestion: get a blog!
Dot Com Style
Dot Com StyleI sit here, 7PM on a Friday, trapped in Emery-Bored, as a A's vs. Giants' game is clogging up
my Bay Bridge.
I'm faithfully reading Boing Boing, and this article in particular.
notes by
Paul De Filipp0 (taken from
Boing Boing link) regarding the editorial style of Wired:
* All references to "the little people" were eliminated.
* Ambiguity was minimized.
* Facts were cloaked in "hipness." I
* The past was dismissed as unimportant.
* Quotidian matters were de-emphasized.
* Drama was injected into basically undramatic situations.
(back to me)
This one set of bullet points leads me to an epiphany-like moment. It's a writer's diagnosis of Wired magazine's editorial style. To me, though, it seems like the general attitude of all people caught up in the dot-com, high-tech fueld enthusiasm of, I don't know what, hope for fame, lure of vast riches, or perhaps just recognition that they made this widget at this time. A desk blotter calendar hangs on the wall in the cafeteria here, covered in signatures. It marks the launch of a successful dot com (that has thus been absorbed by a large corporation) and everyone has signed their name as perhaps a fulfilling of the moment, but also, in my mind, as an insecure marker of "Hey! I was here! Really!"
Nostalgia
NostalgiaIt's over 75 degrees in San Francisco and you know it's headed for a scorcher in San Jose. How can places so close to each other vary in temperature, without an altitude difference? It's amazing. I headed down the peninsula this morning. Total clothing crisis: I just don't have summer clothes for SF. Because even if you do venture out in a tank top you have to layer so much, what's the point? I realized that freeways and the views from freeways are "the way we see things," in reference, at least to bringing back the memories. Sure, going to my old high school or elementary school would do it, but driving down the same curves in the highway bring it back a whole lot.
"This is where my car died and a stranger drove me to the offramp."
"This is where Brian See got a ticket for going 80 mph. We thought he was so cool."
"This is where the Loma Prieta put a huge crack in the Seminary's steeple."
"This is SLAC"
"This is the Dish"
"This is where I think I'm really close to SF."
"This is where I am really close to Cupertino."
"This is where I went to that crappy writing class." (Foothill)
etc. a monologue only interesting to myself.
Musical Pursuits
Musical PursuitsI had lunch today at a new contract,
RightRound- indie music from the inside. Fantastic vocalist and lead editor asked me the eternal question, "What instrument do you play?" and I had a long rambly answer. Basically I suck at them all, similar to my language abilities. Real lessons? Started with piano lessons, moved to cello. On my own time? Fiddled with the bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica, accordian, once a hammer dulcimer, and I have always owned a mouth harp and did not know what to do with it.
Recently I attended a
Blue Bear Music show of a friend's and after the gig(s), the instruments lay around. A few of us climbed up and took up different stuff, then rotated every few non-songs. My favorite bit was on the drums, where I was actually taking cues from the audience on how to
play the drums. Wow, drums are fun.
I have always admired people's aptitude with music- I haven't had the mesmerizing ability I've seen others have. Friend from high school came over one day after school and just played jazz. On our piano, playing stuff he made up. Family gathered around and we were all duly amazed. An
ex is a very talented jazz pianist and also had that ability to play that just doesn't sound like it's coming from him. He would direct the rest of his jazz trio from the keyboard, while playing this great stuff. A pianist in theater would play any bit from the play, on command, over and over again, and not really mind it, either. I lived with self-learned acoustic guitarists who taught themselves by simply listening to the radio.
Maybe there's one moment where I didn't completely suck at a given instrument. I had a band, Fingerhut, and we had a web site, haha. We never performed and only practiced a few times. It was the band where everyone played an instrument that they wanted to play, but weren't very good at. So the talented bassist played drums, another good bassist played guitar, and I played whatever was left (rhythm guitar and/or bass). At one point we had a keyboard and I had been listening to a lot of Beastie Boys, and they sample some
really good jazz organ (Jimmy Smith), so I guess I was riffing off of that. The two other band members were quiet, watching me, when I looked up, and realized, hey, I must not have completely sucked at that! Unfortunately when they asked me to play it again I had no idea what I had played. No control, so sad.
Avatars
AvatarsThat's me up there, in Whyville. Dare I ask: why? Read
this article about Toyota and
Whyville- an avatar based world where you can buy "face parts" and drive around in a car. It's got the graphic aptitude of that old Lemonade stand game. I can't believe how these things come around. Back in the early 90s an animation company I was working with (now defunct) was working on the same thing with a group of Stanford psychologists. It's just so lame, and had so much potential, and went nowhere, or at least, a Toyota ad, if that is somewhere. Am I not recognizing something exciting about to happen? Is what's about to happen my increasing jadedness?
Here's an unreal bit:
Your salary goes up when you play the games. Since you can't chat for the first three days, why not put that time to good use and check out the Spin Lab (X salary units) or the Hot Air Balloon (X salary units).
Social Muse
credit to:
phreddySocial MuseWhen you're not working, are you still working? I mean, could the interaction with interesting people and great artists and thinkers be "work" in itself? I don't pretend to have a bunch of fascinating things in my head erupting in a stead stream of brilliance: it's collaborative, or a pastiche, or something. This weekend was the "social muse" weekend- a series of fun events led to the culmination of a feeling of full of energy and creativeness.
I'm taking on another contract which will make me more busy, but hopefully happy busy. Friends are concerned re: the screenplay, including the producer, but several things have been in the works:
1. Figuring out what camcorder to buy
2. Got a casting director. Involves one event, getting actors in, showing them the relevant parts, getting a space to do the screen tests, and a wrap-up meeting where we decide "who to call." Sounds like a fun job? Not, it's hard telling people no.
3. Insights into the screenplay, which will fuel some good writing sessions tonight and tomorrow night.
4. I may enter a screenwriting contest with
Zoetrope to get funds and the attention of Gus Van Sant. I feel like I misspelled that.
Shot above is abalone- had dinner with some neighbors, one of which is a specialist. Nickname: Abby. Fun times, as the whole weekend was, and lots of interesting conversations.
Movie Update: Information Kills
Movie Update: Information KillsOne of the actors told me, "you need to figure out what this is
about." Another friend who read a bunch of male parts for me, despite being a woman, and that is an irrelevant fact anyways, she said: "You have so much going on, if you chose one thing and ran with it, that would be good." You can interpret that feedback various ways. I really like multi-layered texts. I also think that with Internet movies, because the audience can replay the bits over and over again, you can really pack in a lot. So in a way, I'm not going to reduce the layers of complexity. I think it's very valuable feedback, though. How I'm going to use it, is this way. They weren't getting a dominant narrative, or storyline, from the screenplay. So I need to make one dominant.
The title here, information kills, is about an idea I got on a walk around Aquatic Park tonight. I had just watched the lastest Battlestar Gallactica, well, latest for me, the one called "
Downloaded," In all the other episodes, this one human has a Cylon girlfriend in his head, showing up like a hallucination interacting with him all the time, like
Harvey the big rabbit movie. In this episode, you are in the Cylon perspective, and you have a neat reversal, where the Cylon has a human apparition interacting with her all the time. So what I'm thinking of doing is taking the other spy, the one that doesn't kill, and showing how her NSA ties with information does kill. The Chinese spy: an assassin, the American spy: an information hustler, which causes death. So yes, disseminating information, is it as deadly as real weapons?
Also, saw a film crew on the Pier, and realized they probably don't need a license out there since it's all pedestrian. Score!
Movie Update: Bilingual Screenplays
Bilingual ScreenplaysTrying to find the screenplay to
Pushing Hands online. I did get this
interview with James Schamus, which is quite good. He's the producer of two Lee movies, and works/owns Good Machine. He discusses working with Ang Lee on the Chinese and English movie screenplay. It went back and forth a lot, I take it. Schamus would write it in English, send it to the translator, then on to Anglee and sometimes another writer, Peng, then they would do their rewrites, then send it to another translator, getting it back into English, etc. This happened for Wedding Banquet too.
I borrowed the Chinese version of Pushing Hands from the library. that means half of it is in English, not dubbed thank god, and the rest is in Mandarin, with Chinese subtitltes. Tough, because I kept on putting the movie on pause so I could slowly work through the subtitles. My Chinese is not that good, oh no. So I thought I'd read the screenplay just to see what I missed.
I'm really tempted to take out my first scene with dialogue, that is all in Chinese. I also am working harder on different voices. Vincent is no longer silly flaming NSA supervisor, but now a succinct-talking, humorless one. I got tired of the camp and I couldn't go anywhere with it. I think that puts into relief nicely the sloppy spywork of the lead.
I read a review of John Rain's new book,
The Last Assassin, in his series about beinga mercenary in Tokyo. I learned that he is an ex-CIA operative. It's far trashier than mine, but his character's antics are very authentic feeling and quick in action. I guess I just am torn between making fun of the cold war/60s spy genre, and yet wanting to be in the world at the same time.
I'm really filling out the White Russian informant role.
Oh, so I had a week or so of hand injury and didn't write. That coincided with a huge un-excited feeling about the project. I had a big turnaround the other night talking to this guy about his novel that is about to be published. It sounds fun, and I'm eager to read it. Usually conversations with writers have the completely opposite result than this one. Not sure why. He was pretty burned out on rewrites, and we talked process for a while. Maybe the difference here is that he was entering postpartum and his novel was whimsical and funny, and I tend to identify strongly with both of those aspects. Not sure.
fabric and boobs
Think of that, on this:
Or, I may do a dark rose (dark pink) chenille.
That image is from this web site:
indias & polynesia, which I got to by going here
Pretty Pinks, Clever Cottons: 18th Century Fabrics. I'm really into period pieces. Not as much as my ex-roomie who ended up studying textile design. She started as a simple craft queen and erupted into a professional
textile designer/artist extraordinaire. But I really like period pieces, costumes, etc. I have some antique silk, French, at home. I'm so in love with it I'm afraid of using it to upholster the green chair. Recently during a historical trivia moment, I caught myself thinking: I could figure out what year Lindbergh's child was kidnapped if I could remember what his wife was wearing in the photograph.
I'm not kidding.
Also, I'm wearing a button down shirt and people keep looking at my boobs.
Jaudice vs. Jaundice, Take That
The infamous Naps, black dive bar owned by Napoleon Urbino, of Naps II and Naps III fame.
I wish I was in
this trial. It has all the makings of a true Greek tragedy, a
long Dickens novel, what have you. And yes, that is an intentional misspelling of a Dickens' character's name.
