Author: Gil

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What It Is: 7/12/10

What I’m reading: Not a lot; just some Scott Pilgrim comics. I was kinda zonky all week with lack of sleep, pain from that root canal, etc.

What I’m listening to: Songs from the Capeman, Songs from Venice Beach, and some other songs.

What I’m watching: Shutter Island, some episodes of Louie (wow!), and The Horse’s Mouth and Up In The Air. I’m sorta astonished at the utter hollowness of Up In The Air, compared to the novel. The movie pays almost no attention to what The Traveling Life is really like, focusing instead on Firing People Is Soul-Destroying. The romance was inane, compared to the apocalypse of the narrator’s affair. And while Clooney’s starting to age, a man his age who travels that much should’ve been much sallower/puffier. The skin turns green from all that airplane air & light, people! But that’s nitpicking. The real problem is that the story they chose to tell was barely an echo of what made the novel a surprisingly good book, and instead became a George Clooney vehicle and a muddled statement about corporate America that couldn’t criticize any particular company because the studio relies on them for subsidies and product placement fees.

What I’m drinking: Bluecoat & Q-Tonic, but I didn’t drink too much last week; I was taking mega-ibuprofen to help treat that root canal, and didn’t want to risk stomach bleeding.

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Ru’s still getting over that blister on his paw-pad, so he didn’t go anywhere during the week. Otis has gone stir crazy and now runs up and down the hall at high speed, throwing his squeaky toys in the air and acting like they’re alive.

Where I’m going: Flying home on the redeye Wednesday/Thursday, and I hope to go nowhere else for a while.

What I’m happy about: Getting an iPad last Friday. Holy crap, is this a fantastic device. I decided to pick it up before the Portland trip to see if it could replace my laptop for a light work-week (that is, a trip in which I wouldn’t be doing heavy-duty “live from the conference” posts for my magazine’s website, or processing photos). I packed along a bluetooth keyboard for writing longer form stuff like this, but it’s just been fantastic so far. I watched Horse’s Mouth and Up in the Air on the flight out here, and only ran down about 12% of the battery. Go, future!

What I’m sad about: Something better will come along.

What I’m worried about: Whether I’ll have time to get to Powell’s, Stumptown, and Winn Perry while I’m in Portland. I’m also hoping I get to meet up with my various friends (that is, friends from all different portions of my life) who live out here.

What I’m pondering: Whether Spain is really better than the Netherlands. All I can say is, I had much more fun in my weekend in Amsterdam than I did in 5 days in Madrid.

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What It Is: 7/5/10

What I’m reading: Once I was done reading financial filings, press releases and analyst reports for my Top Companies ish, I was able to kick back, relax and celebrate the July 4th weekend by re-reading Heart of Darkness!

What I’m listening to: Night Work (Scissor Sisters), We Are Born (Sia), a new Mad Mix I’m putting together, and Big Boi’s Mixtape for Dummies.

What I’m watching: Jaws, The Sixth Sense, a documentary about plate lunch diners in southern Louisiana, and some Yankees baseball.

What I’m drinking: No. 209 & Q-Tonic, after an aborted attempt at making a G&T out of Ransom, an Old Tom (malted) gin. Blech.

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Well, Ru didn’t have a good weekend. He’s terrified of fireworks (and thunder, but we haven’t had that in a while), so he spent much of Saturday and Sunday nights curled up in the back corner of my home office. On Sunday, a late-day walk home from a neighbor’s party left him with a little blister on a front paw-pad, so he’s limping all over the place today. I bandaged it up, but that just makes him look more pathetic. Otis, on the other hand, got to take a solo trip to the Ridgewood dog park on Friday, where he met The Big Dog. He had an okay time, but consecutive days with “chasing squeaky tennis ball” sessions left him with a little tear on his carpal pad (the paw pad further up on the “wrist”, which they use for braking). I’m just a bad dogfather, I know.

Where I’m going: Portland, OR next week for the annual meeting of the wonderfully named Controlled Release Society (get yer mind outta the gutter; there’s nothing tantric about it).

What I’m happy about: I managed to finish that July/August issue in time and managed to squeeze a 30 Rock joke into my editorial (how an earlier feature went over about as well as NBC’s Salute to Fireworks). And getting out to see my pals John & Liz for a July 3rd party. And being rewarded for a 40-minute traffic jam on the way home on the NYThruway that evening; it turned out to have been caused by a bus fire. By the time we passed it, the bus had been so thoroughly scorched that its entire skin was gone. I haven’t seen any news items on it, so it’s likely no one was hurt; that means I’m allowed to consider it awesome.

What I’m sad about: The sight of a limping dog; Sia’s decision to cover Madonna’s Oh Father instead of its Like a Prayer companion song, Dear Jessie; my 68-year-old, somewhat-invalid neighbor’s accident that left her Saturn SUV rolling down the hill in the woods behind her house on Saturday morning. (She had gotten out of the car to move her walker, but left it in drive. She wasn’t hurt, and the Saturnstopped after 25 or 30 feet when it ran into a fallen tree.)

What I’m worried about: Today’s trip to the endodontist, in which I get to cap off 6 months of heavy duty work-stress by getting assessed for a root canal. Go, me!

What I’m pondering: Whether I should let my Sports Illustrated subscription lapse. I got a few renewal forms in the last month or two, and it occurred to me that I barely get around to reading SI or the ESPN mag nowadays. I still dig sports, but I’m more likely to read New York, Monocle, or the Paris Review when I’m in my, um, favorite reading location.

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What It Is: 6/28/10

What I’m reading: Imperial Bedrooms, by Bret Easton Ellis. Blech. Also, I read a really wonderful interview with Bob Colacello, the former editor of Interview. I’d like to it, but it’s from the new ish of Fantastic Man, and they don’t post content online. (!?) But Colacello was so interesting that I ordered a copy of Imperial Bedrooms, his book about Andy Warhol.

What I’m listening to: We Are Born, in which Sia goes adorably disco. Also, Blood Like Lemonade, in which Morcheeba was so happy to have Skye singing for them again that they made a record that sounds an awful lot like Skye’s 2 solo albums. Meh. And Walking Wounded. Guess I oughtta check out those Tracey Thorn solo records sometime.

What I’m watching: 44 Inch Chest (it’s no Sexy Beast), Michael Jackson: This is It, and Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage. The MJ pic was okay, but that Rush documentary was A-W-E-S-O-M-E. Go grab the DVD on Netflix. NownowNOW!

What I’m drinking: DH Krahn’s & Q-Tonic.

What I’m smoking: I had an Arturo Fuente Single Chateau during our company picnic on Friday (I had to get work done and showed up around 4 hours late, but I still got to spend 2-3 hours at the picnic). It was the first cigar I smoked in years and, boy, was it good.

What Rufus & Otis are up to: The usual: discovering a snake, charging a deer, and otherwise just trying to stay cool.

Where I’m going: A couple of July 4th weekend parties.

What I’m happy about: The end of my big-ass Top 20 Pharma / Top 10 Biopharma issue is in sight! Only 3 more profiles to write, after which I’ve gotta lay out all the pages, but it’s actually coming together! I think I’ll actually be able to finish it by Thursday! Whew!

What I’m sad about: The state of the pharma industry.

What I’m worried about: What effect the above is going to have on my livelihood in the next few years.

What I’m pondering: Why Rush isn’t in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That’s a goddamned embarrassment.

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What It Is: 6/21/10

What I’m reading: Imperial Bedrooms

What I’m listening to: Walking Wounded, You Could Start a Fight in an Empty Room, and High Violet

What I’m watching: Honeymoon in Vegas, Boondocks, and the end of the NBA finals. And then I watched these highlights from Ron Artest’s postgame press conference, which is one of the most joyous things I’ve ever seen:

(The full-length version is here, but I couldn’t get the embed to load properly. Grr.)

What I’m drinking: North Shore #6 & Q-Tonic

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Discovering a turtle, re-enacting Kung-Fu Hustle, and lounging around.

Where I’m going: Nowhere. Except for a visit or two to my office, I likely won’t leave the house much in the next two weeks, except for dog-walks and lunch-breaks.

IMG_2532What I’m happy about: Taking a break from Saturday’s work and going to the NJ Comics Expo (it was about 15 minutes from my home), where I met some older cartoonists and editors and saw a bazillion comics from my youth, now 50-cent fodder in longboxes. Oh, and I saw the Batmobile. I also met Irwin Hasen, the guy who created Wildcat and co-created Dondi, whose solid-black eyes made him the Antichrist of Little Orphan Annie’s world. Mr. Hasen looks about as 91 as he is.

What I’m sad about: How I basically give up the month of June every year. But that’s the job, and it’s preferable to the alternative.

What I’m worried about: Top Companies issue. I’m one profile off-schedule already.

What I’m pondering: Why I downloaded Imperial Bedrooms onto my Kindle. I mean, sure, it was only $9.99, but am I really that interested in how Bret Easton Ellis treats middle age for a bunch of rich Angelenos? Maybe I just need some mental decompression for the next week or so, while I’m writing around 2,000 words a day of pharma company profiles.

Also, I was catching up on past issues of Interview this weekend, and it struck me that there’s just about nobody who would be The Great Get nowadays, that interview subject whom no one else could reach. I mean, sure, there’s Thomas Pynchon, but how many people really care about his writing nowadays? So, I guess I’m wondering, is there one interview that you’d hear about and say, “Wow! I can’t believe they got [x] to sit down for an interview!”?