Dawn Patrol

The Cannibal

$3? I paid $4 yesterday...

Sydney Pollack, 1934-2008, R.i.P

Sydney Pollack was an Academy Award-winning director, producer, actor, writer and public figure, who directed and produced over 40 films.

He was born on July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Indiana, USA, to a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants. His mother, Rebecca Miller, was a homemaker. His father, David Pollack, was a professional boxer turned pharmacist. His parents divorced when he was young. His mother, an alcoholic, died at age 37, when Sydney Pollack was 16. He spent his formative years in Indiana, graduating from his HS in 1952, then moved to the New York City.

From 1952-1954 young Pollack studied acting with Sanford Meisner at The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York. He served two years in the army, and then returned to the Neighbourghood Playhouse and taught acting. In 1958, Pollack married his former student Claire Griswold. They had three children. Their son, Steven Pollack, died in a plane crash on November 26, 1993, in Santa Monica, California. Their daughter, Rebecca Pollack, served as vice president of film production at United Artists during the 1990s. Their youngest daughter, Rachel Pollack, was born in 1969.

Pollack began his acting career on stage, then made his name as television director in the early 1960s. He made his big screen acting debut in War Hunt (1962), where he met fellow actor Robert Redford, and the two co-stars established a life-long friendship. Pollack called on his good friend Redford to play opposite Natalie Wood in This Property Is Condemned (1966). Pollack and Redford worked together on six more films over the years. His biggest success came with Out of Africa (1985), starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. For this film he won two Oscars: one for Best Direction and one for Best Picture.

Pollack showed his best as a comedy director and actor in Tootsie (1982), where he brought feminist issues to public awareness using his remarkable wit and wisdom, and created a highly entertaining film, which was nominated for ten Academy Awards. Pollack's directing revealed Dustin Hoffman's range and nuanced acting in gender switching from a dominant boyfriend to a nurse in drag, a brilliant collaboration of director and actor that broadened public perception about sex roles. Pollack also made success in producing such films as The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), The Quiet American (2002) and Cold Mountain (2003). Pollack returned to the director's chair in 2004, when he directed The Interpreter (2005), the first film ever shot on location at the United Nations Headquarters and within the General Assembley in New York City.

Alternate 30 Mile Dover Route

Someday I'll Have a Custom Bike

Private Willard Jennings

Army, 45th Division, "Thunderbirds."

Killed in Action, Anzio, Italy, 1944.

R.i.P

Welcome to Dreamland

I wish it could be as easy as climbing up a mountain of people and staring through a hole...to see what its all about.

30 Miles

"Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so." -Shakespeare

Oliver Gillham, R.i.P

I met Oliver about a year ago. At the time his wife was in remission from cancer.

I found out this morning that Oliver took his own life on May 12. He relapsed just after his wife passed away about 6 months ago.

He was found dead in a room at the Newton Marriott of an apparent drug overdose.

I didn't know him well, but I knew him well enough.

He was an architect. He was articulate. He didn't have any children. He was a kind man.

I'm torn between seeing his suicide as an act of love or the result of his disease.

Maybe its both.

Some people try so hard to not feel emotion. Others can't live with their emotions.

New York

This video, directed by Sam Bayer, was one of the first projects I was involved with at H.S.I back in 2002. I remember sitting at this restaurant, I can't remember the name of, in Battery Park with my boss Billy Sandwick waiting for the Grucci's to kick off the fireworks. We had a table outside facing Liberty Park. The other people in the restaurant had no idea there was going to be this massive fireworks display at the Golden Hour.

Billy was on the phone with Sam who called 'Action!' Billy then spoke into his walkie to roll cameras and light the fireworks. The timing was perfect.

Sam was shooting aerials 'combat' style tied to the copter hand held from the door.

New York didn't win the bid but the video itself is such a love letter to the city. I love the shot of the Brooklyn Bridge and the flame being carried through Grand Central Station and Yoko Ono gave us permission to use 'Imagine.'

Happy Birthday Brooklyn Bridge!

The Commonwealth Cycling Club

The CCC

I'll be able to make a nice logo using the C's as wheels. I'm very excited to get this business plan developed.

Hopefully it will work.

1%

I'm looking for the other 99...

Thursday

One of those days when its grey outside, nothing is as it should be, the bike mechanic wasn't around to fix my rim, the office is very quiet, the songs on my iPod are beginning to feel stale. Sort of like The Shining sold as a family comedy...

Sadie is 2, going on 23

Unkle

Monty Montgomery (cowboy)

"Is this a 5 minute argument or the full half hour?"

whoa...

Le Grand Corniche

WashingtonPost.com Interview:

New York, N.Y.: Why would anyone want to read anything this fraud has to write? I only wish he left our good city and crawled under the rock from where he came.

James Frey: I hope we meet someday so I can shake your hand and give you a big hug.

Scorsese

Nice Promotion: Encyclopedias to Bunnies

Playboy Enlists Digital Marketing Chief

Dan Smith was most recently at Encyclopedia Britannica

NEW YORK Playboy Enterprises has hired Dan Smith as svp, marketing for its digital media group, a new position.

Smith will be responsible for marketing Playboy's premium products as well as stewardship of the overall brand across digital and mobile channels. He will also help guide strategy for Playboy's growing e-commerce business, which includes merchandise that can be purchased through catalogues or online.

"There is a need for our group to be very customer-centric. We want to create great products for people and ensure that we are fulfilling customer needs. Dan's role will be critical in connecting us to the consumer," said Tom Hagopian, evp and general manager of digital media, to whom Smith reports.

Smith, 40, was most recently at Encyclopedia Britannica, serving as svp, marketing for the consumer digital business. Prior to that, Smith was an evp at FTD.com, where he led the company's online direct-to-consumer floral and gift activities.

Playboy's digital group oversees its premium content delivered either a la carte or on a subscription basis. Ad-supported offers include Playboy.com and various mobile services.

"Dan combines the discipline of direct marketing with the creativity of brand development, and has a proven track record of building successful online ventures. I am confident that his experiences and skills will help us to accelerate the growth of Playboy's global and mobile businesses," added Hagopian.

Nike (again)

Little Pieces of Los Angeles, Done His Way

By JANET MASLIN

Published: May 12, 2008

He wrote a book but it was bad, liar bad, faker bad, it got him in trouble. A million little pieces. It was the name of the book. It was also how hard he got hit. He had to sit there on the couch. Everybody saw. The television celebrity book club woman got mad, she let him have it. He had to sit there on the couch. He squirmed, he cringed. Everybody watched, everybody blamed him. Then it was over. Then he was gone.

He waited. They forgot about him. He tried again.

In the 1930s Los Angeles is the film capital of the world. F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of “The Great Gatsby,” comes to live there. He tries to write movies. He fails. He writes a Hollywood novel, “The Last Tycoon.” He says there are no second acts in American lives. He turns out to be wrong.

The million little pieces guy was called James Frey. He got a second act. He got another chance. Look what he did with it. He stepped up to the plate and hit one out of the park. No more lying, no more melodrama, still run-on sentences still funny punctuation but so what. He became a furiously good storyteller this time.

He wrote a big book. He wrote about a city. Los Angeles. He made up a lot of characters, high low rich poor lucky not, every kind, the book threw them together. It was random but smart. Every now and then he would pause the story, switch to the present tense and throw in an urban fact.

Like this: The Los Angeles area has a museum devoted to the banana.

James Frey loved Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski and maybe even John Fante but he didn’t sound like them, he didn’t sound beat or cool. He sounded hopeful. He sounded unguarded, tender. He quit posturing. He stopped romanticizing squalor. He found new energy. He sounded more like Carl Sandburg in love hate thrall with great maddening Chicago than like the usual tough gritty moody chronicler of California’s broken dreams.

He wrote about people who were drawn to Los Angeles and who they were, why they came, what they wanted, whether they got it, if they didn’t get that, then what they got instead. He looked into their hearts. But he didn’t get sloppy, not maudlin. He just made up characters and wrote as if he cared about them desperately. Bright Shiny Morning. A new chance, real or illusory, that’s what they all wanted. Bright Shiny Morning. So he made that the name of the book.

His publisher called it a dazzling tour de force. (Look, somebody had to, if only to create a comeback drama.) But that wasn’t so far off the mark. Even if his publisher maybe could have asked more questions about what the banana museum had to do with anything.

Still, even the stray facts had their artistry. They helped turn this book into the captivating urban kaleidoscope that, most recently, Charles Bock’s “Beautiful Children” was supposed to be. Bright Shiny Morning was mobile and alert to layout, tempo, different voices, how words looked on the page. Different visual styles suited different characters. Some got long litanies of brisk, sharp dialogue. Others got dense, descriptive prose.

Even the one-sentence page had its use here.

The language got sleek and arch when the book described two superstars, Amberton and Casey. A man and a woman, married to each other, best friends both gay no secrets. Everything perfect, supposed to look that way. Prop children. Money houses cars personal assistants nannies yoga teacher everything perfect. Wearing vicuña. Eating ahi tuna. Still Amberton wanted more, got a crush on an ex-football player. All this captured with elegance, with wit. Movie stars. Not so original, so what? So what if the book always made poor people humble decent better than rich spoiled profligate ones?

So there were Maddie and Dylan, young and in love, eking out a living and traveling on a moped, he eventually got a job as a caddy she as a clerk. The book loved them. There was Old Man Joe, homeless guy, living in a bathroom in Venice, Calif., somehow stronger more decent more heroic than the star who plays movie heroes.

And Esperanza, Mexican-American, working as a maid for an old white lady so mean she threw her morning cup of coffee if Esperanza didn’t make it right. But the old lady turned out to have a son. He liked Esperanza, liked treating her like a human being. Maybe he liked needling his mother even better.

There were easy ways a cynical, sentimental crybaby like the million little pieces guy could have told Esperanza’s part of the story. Crisis, violence, redemption, whatever: that’s what he knew about. That’s what he wrote about. That’s what he passed off as nonfiction. That’s why he sounded as if he’d seen too many lousy movies.

So the Bright Shiny Morning guy did it differently. He let the little vignette play out against a big, gaudy, dangerous Southern California backdrop, full of drug-dealing gang-bangers, full of schemers, phonies, rich with a history of robber barons, all of it listed here, all of it stacking the deck against any generosity of spirit. The son steals the maid’s virtue? Been there, read that. They plot against the old lady? Been there too. This novelist wanted something else for Esperanza: he wanted to honor her, fall in love with her, do it with startling sincerity. He wanted to save her.

And it worked.

That’s how James Frey saved himself.

House of Cards

Keep it Comin!

Living Inside Myself!

Zoo Bombing!

Songs from This Morning's Ride

"Until the End of the World" - U2
"Time to Pretend" - MGMT
"Supernatural Superserious" - REM
"Shut Up and Let Me Go" - The Ting Tings
"Wonderwall" - Oasis
"Lazy Eye" - Silversun Pickups
"Pardon Me" - Incubus
"Destination Ursa Major" - Superdrag
"I Turn My Camera On" - Spoon
"Beetlebum" - Blur
"Babarabatiri" - Beny More

Mayonnaise

Most people don't know that back in 1912, Hellmann's mayonnaise was manufactured in England. In fact, the Titanic was carrying 12,000 jars of the condiment scheduled for delivery in Vera Cruz, Mexico, which was to be the next port of call for the great ship after its stop in New York.

This would have been the largest single shipment of mayonnaise ever delivered to Mexico. But as we know, the great ship did not make it to New York. The ship hit an iceberg and sank, and the cargo was forever lost.

The people of Mexico, who were crazy about mayonnaise, and were eagerly awaiting its delivery, were disconsolate at the loss. Their anguish was so great, that they declared a National Day of Mourning, which they still observe to this day.

The National Day of Mourning occurs each year on May 5th and is known, of course, as Sinko de Mayo.

The Eternal Andy Gibb