Oooooh. Aaaaah. Yesterday, I saw a beautiful RAINBOW on my way to the Premiere Screening of “The Social Network” hosted by New York Tech Meetup. I could see all the plasma colors at both ends of the arch. ^^ clearly.
When I arrived at the screening totally intoxicated by the rainbow colors, the theater was full of many geeky techies. My intoxication smoothly transferred to the geeky mode. Thereon, I intoxicatingly enjoyed the geeky, nerdy energy that filled the entire screening. I was on top of rainbow the entire night~*
If I dare to summarize in one phrase, it would be “A Fantasy Trip to the Futuristic Past!” or “Retro to the Future!”
Steam Punk used to be underground culture here in New York. It has become more embraced by a large population.
But still… There are many New Yorkers who lead secret underground steam punk lives in the city. Traveling to the futuristic past, dressing up like a cutting-edgy science fiction novelist or a Victorian romantic idealist or a mad scientist who just invented an insane gadget that’s gonna change the world forever… These underground parties unbeknownst to many people in the city… When it’s getting dark at night… traveling farthest to the Brooklyn land…
A good friend of mine is one of the steam punk New Yorkers. (I would give him this credit even though he abandoned M-land and moved to Brooklyn-land and even though he claims he is Rochesterian, not a New Yorker)
His name is Andrew, a smart and creative IP lawyer. If you happen to be a mad scientist who invented the coolest gadget in the world or in trouble being chased by evil dictators, give him a telegraph call. He’s gonna be a smart ally for you. Check out his website @ SteamLawyer.com.
I see serious creative flows in many different areas, music, film, fashion, new media…
It feels like European (because it is), but edgier and a bit darker. Cool, edgy, innovative, creative, sentimental, high-quality, dark, punk and funky… These are the descriptive words I can come up with when I think about the recent Scandinavian faves of mine, like Trentemoller’s music whose link I posted below.
My recent Scandinavian obsession includes (but not limited to, like lawyers would say ^^) Acne, By Malene Birger, Royksopp, Trentemoller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (a very interesting thriller, soon to be released as a Hollywood remake next year), etc. I hear their voices are getting louder in the cultural sectors and their big creative waves are being perceived as cool.
Sitting in my small Manhattan APT, I’m wondering what is happening in Scandinavia. There must be something going on in their cities…
There are many good restaurants in the City. Sometimes too many to choose from.
Many of these attractions are enticing and luring me to their decorated and aromatic dens on a daily basis while walking by, like the Sirens from Greek Mythology.
Despite these restaurants’ attractive group sing-alongs, I always feel like nothing is more delicious and satisfactory than cooking at home.
I grew up in an environment where my mom always cooked three meals a day starting from scratch everyday, always with fresh ingredients. My mom always used freshly squeezed homemade sesame oil from the best organic sesame available and she also made soy sauce and spicy pepper paste (so-called “gochujang”) herself, cooking without using sugar or any artificial ingredients. She even grew some fresh organic vegetables in the garden. And my grandmother always sent us boxes of juicy fruits harvested from her back-yard orchard every year. I still remember the sweet taste of all the apples, figs, pears, and persimmons around the harvest time each year.
Living and working busy in the city, surrounded by countless restaurants, is the kind of environment that pulls me back away from my childhood experience as farthest as possible. But there is one thing that keeps me on the ground and pushes me back to appetizing home cooking. It’s the farmers market that opens every week all over the city. My favorite usual destination is the Union Square Farmers Market which opens every Wednesday and Saturday, which encourages me to undertake more than 20 blocks of traveling northbound every Saturday. Since saving time is important to me, it has become my key strategy(?) to buy fresh ingredients at the Market as much as possible like mushrooms, apples, apple cider, fresh plain yogurt, vegetables, eggs, etc. and to cook a large amount of food during the weekend. I shamelessly admit that I don’t have many cooking skills and recipes, so I just cook a large amount of stew whatever I feel like making that weekend. If I have the cooked meal stored during the week, I always feel like very safe and sound, perhaps on cloud nine over the whole week, just by peeking inside my big refrigerator everyday.
I happened to know one New Yorker with a similar growing up experience of mine, whose name is Rocco Dispirito, a well known chef living in the city. I saw him at the 53rd New York Emmy Awards Gala earlier this year, who happened to take pictures and have interviews right next to my table. But frankly, I had no idea who he was at that time (sorry, Rocco~). Later I realized that he’s a famous chef who promotes healthy home cooking. I think it’s a real good thing to encourage people to do more home cooking and to have healthier lifestyle. I think I’m gonna say some good words to him when I see him next time, thanking him for his endeavors in promoting home cooking. Every human being really needs that kind of home cooking experience everyday like all moms would do for their kids~ ^^
Hope that you could explore locally grown fresh ingredients for your home cooking experiments this coming weekend…
His name is Jerry. He is a super lawyer, also my advisor, my mentor and my friend. One day at his firm’s networking event, he told me a very interesting story about the first social networking services online.
Once upon a time in 1980s, when the internet barely started…
There was a client for Jerry’s firm, whose business was unknown and puzzling to everybody at the firm. In order to understand their business and help them out with their legal matters, Jerry went down to their office on Broadway. When he entered their office, there were a bunch of Apple computers perching on the desks and a bunch of people were busy working on the computers. During the visit, the client was trying to explain to Jerry about what they were doing. Even though it was a new new thing to understand at first, Jerry quickly figured it out and helped them out with the first “IT hosting services agreement.” The company’s name was Baseline and it was the first online entertainment database service company. They were basically building up a movie database for their big Hollywood clients. Let’s say, it was a 1980′s version of IMDB.
Around that time, one of the Baseline’s clients was Penthouse. Basically their services were to provide online chatting services through mysterious and fantastic new French gadgets called “MINITEL,” which is a ‘videotext online service accessible through the telephone lines’ (Definition source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel) and which was by no means that ‘mini.’ Anyway, the service was charging people service fees per minute for the online chatting services. The chatting partners giving responses to customers were called “Butterflies,” who were actually all beer and smoke drenched middle aged men on the other side of the terminal, and who were fantastically and fantasizably(?) perceived as beautiful Penthouse pinup girls. Fools. Anyway, after all the interesting detailed episodes (it’s gonna be too much to reiterate everything here) and after pretty successful business operations, for some reason, the service was abruptly canceled by Penthouse. Jerry himself got one free minitel from the client for free communication tools with the client. After he discovered that the forgotten machine placed somewhere in his household was rediscovered and secretly played by his early teen son, he quickly got rid of the machine. And that was the end of the Minitel story in his memory.
The story was amazingly interesting. This is why I love New York. It’s always full of interesting stories like these… The mystique of history… Seeing how online social networking all started and how some services and technologies disappear as new comers emerge. And it also loosely proved an old theory again that the adult entertainment industry has been the big drive for technology and people pay online services only for 4Gs (Girls, Games, Gambling and God). ^^
Several days ago. I got an email from my friend, Ray Beckerman, a well-known attorney fighting against the music industry, representing people being chased by RIAA..
The email said:
“Ha ha ha ha ha. RIAA paid its lawyers more than $16,000,000 in 2008 to recover only $391,000!!!” (Further Details: Recording Industry vs. The People – http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/)
What is wrong with this picture? What has happened to the music industry?
I remember several years ago an attorney told me that recording companies seriously consider suing its customers as a viable business model for the music industry (let’s say, several thousand dollars for each case settled). What a joke. But it was not a joke.
Why do I hear more news about RIAA suing people or organizations, rather than about some recording companies coming up with innovative products or services that are gonna amuse music lovers and change the future. Instead, they are suing John does, Jane does, dead people, computer-illiterate grandmas, Napster, Grokster, now Limewire, etc..
My friend Nicolas, who once got actively involved in the 90′s music scenes in the city, said “Napster was the best thing that ever happened to the music industry!” What?! Somebody from RIAA might try to kill him for saying that because Napster literally killed their once steady business model. Steady but probably was not that sustainable. Frankly, in some ways Napster was one of the very innovative music services we hadn’t seen quite in a while. It’s unfortunate that the music industry didn’t try hard (or didn’t know how) to turn that into new business opportunities.
So making a 9-year-old-free-downloader boy a criminal would be the only aid to resuscitate the music industry? Do you think it’s that simple? Think again.
How about the music video I accidentally posted below? Ok. Let’s talk about that. Let’s say I want to post music on my blog or want to use some music for my video to post online, how much I should pay for it? If I use the music I downloaded legally (so I paid for it and I own it), is it okay? Otherwise, Is it gonna be insanely expensive? Who should I contact to license? Is it even possible to license the music even if I find somebody to license it? A lot of people nowadays may not be that interested in downloading or physically owning the music. So it may not be about downloading any more. Then, do you know what kind of license is it required? Do you know that there are several different types of licensing: Mechanical Licensing, Performance Licensing, Synch Licensing, Blanket Licensing… Do you know what to get for what you wanna do? Do you know who to contact for each different kind of licensing? Do you know the difference among ASCAP, BMI, Harry Fox Agency, Publishers, Recording Companies, Sound Exchange? Do you know the difference in their licensing roles? Hmmmm… If you have no clue, then the music industry has no clue that you have no clue.
I once had a brunch with a well-known music licensing attorney. He whispered that if anybody tries, they are gonna demand a large sum to scare people away. Also, when I visited an office of a big music publisher before, they had a very complex licensing map that was divided into certain percentages depending on the regions. But how can you deal with that? Nowadays, when you put it up online, that’s instantly global. How come you have very meticulous, complex, incomprehensible division in the licensing rights and then expect people to geniusly figure out how to comply? How are you gonna solve that? How and when are you gonna return the pleasure of enjoying music back to people? I wanna know the answer.
Oh, how about this?: the music industry can give me a portion of the money spent on or to be wasted on the law suits. Let’s say, $3 million. Then, I’m gonna turn that into a very interesting business that could change the future. How about that? Are you interested?
Anyway, the service was charging people service fees per minute for the online chatting services. The chatting partners giving responses to customers were called “Butterflies,” who were actually all beer and smoke drenched middle aged men on the other side of the terminal, and who were fantastically and fantasizably(?) perceived as beautiful Penthouse pinup girls. Fools. Anyway, after all the interesting detailed episodes (it’s gonna be too much to reiterate everything here) and after pretty successful business operations, for some reason, the service was abruptly canceled by Penthouse. Jerry himself got one free minitel from the client for free communication tools with the client. After he discovered that the forgotten machine placed somewhere in his household was rediscovered and secretly played by his early teen son, he quickly got rid of the machine. And that was the end of the Minitel story in his memory. 