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My Friends Mocked Me

I'm quoted in a Reuters article.

New Yorker Matthew Rodriguez, a marketing professional with a video-game firm and a blogger, frequently sketched maps to get around his East Village neighborhood.

"My friends mocked me," he said, for being a digital professional who lacked a GPS smartphone.

He got a smartphone. But when he knows he will be in an area with poor reception, he will map his route on paper.

Previously, I was mentioned in a New York Times article about Gilt Groupe. Next stop: US Magazine.

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How Bouncers Decide Who Gets In

Kellogg School of Management professor Lauren Rivera went undercover and got herself hired at an exclusive Manhattan nightclub to study how bouncers determine who gets past the velvet ropes and who gets excluded.

Sometimes the final call boiled down to details as minor as the type of watch that adorned a man’s wrist. Bouncers weighed each cue differently. Social network mattered most, gender followed. For example, a young woman in jeans stood a higher chance of entrance than a well-dressed man. And an elegantly dressed black man stood little chance of getting in unless he knew someone special.

[Via]

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Eau de Nerd

I used to be that dork who worked at the circulation desk of the campus library while a student at Brown. This meant I checked in and out the books  needed by my fellow studious students and faculty. I worked the midnight hour shifts, which was great because we had minimal supervision, although it's not as if we could get into that much trouble. We were in a library after all and I liked books. However I would occasionally take my 30 minute break by sprinting over to a local bar to meet a few friends and drink as much $2 beer as I could, then I would dash back for the last hour or so of my shift looking a little more jolly than I was before the break.

The evening supervisor was this incredibly sweet, warm, older librarian who would chat with us about her then-new PT Cruiser. I became good friends with nigh time security guard. He educated me on massively multiplayer online games that he was obsessed with.

Some shifts, my fellow library circulation work-study mates and I would wear "silly hats" the entire evening to amuse ourselves: He in a Russian faux-fur hat, me in a straw cowboy hat. I think we were the only ones who found it hysterical. One of the girls I shared shifts with for a couple years recently became pregnant.

One quiet night, a girl I always admired from afar approached me while I sat behind the circulation counter. She was that girl we all knew in college: perfectly gorgeous, dressed like she stepped out of a fashion magazine, wealthy, and spoke four different languages. She stood in front of me holding what we in the Brown library business called an "oversize art book," which could not be checked out and could only be viewed inside the library. In a well practiced voice and look (ah, those eyes!) that was one-half flirtatious, one-half pleading, and underscored by a sureness that I would do her bidding, she asked if I could bend the rules and check out this book to her as a "favor" because it was an "emergency" and she would "return it the very next day." I've always regretted my decision. What do you think it was?

Why am I talking about this boring library stuff? Oh yeah, it's because Perfumer Christopher Brosius makes a scent that makes you smell like a library.

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Wonderwall Cover

[audio http://mrod.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/03-wonderwall-oasis.mp3] Ryan Adams covers "Wonderwall" (originally by Oasis).

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Still Life with Steak

It appears to be a painting at first glance, but Sharon Core's "Still Life with Steak" is a meticulously composed photograph, which is inspired by 19th-century American artist Raphaelle Peale's painting of the same name.

"Everything is built on a pyramid,” Core said, "so it appears very solid and aesthetically whole, but the details of the objects belie a more grotesque reality”: the visual assault of a bloody piece of raw meat (and the contrastingly wan, fingerlike asparagus), the tension between painterliness and photographic precision. Heightening the impression of assault, a dry, purplish carrot emerges from the glistening flesh, leading the eye to an unwashed beet lurking behind the fat at right."

I want to grill and then eat that photograph.

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New Pants for Jeff

My friend Jeff's pursuit of the perfect pair of trousers is an ongoing crusade and documented here on this blog.

Jeff, they say that fashion is cyclical and merely just a derivative of trends from the past. So how about these pants from 1926? They would add quite a dapper swagger to your jaunts around the Harvard Yard.

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Weekend Update

Thursday was the monthly supper club with Tony and Stan. As always, great conversation, great (new) food, a bottle of red, and a split bill.

Friday was the opening night of the new documentary Catfish, which I saw with Lynda. After the screening, the director Ariel Schulman and the executive producer, Brett Ratner held a Q&A session with an enthusiastic audience. This is a fantastic film. I highly recommend it, especially for those of you actively plugged into the digital grid.

2010-09-17_10-35-41_655 Saturday night I suited up.

Drinks from the 44th floor for the start of Kenny's big 3-0 birthday party. The 30 bus is pretty crowded now.

Cyrus, Kumar, and Kenny looking composed before it got too hectic. And for the rest of the night, I got my celebration and dancing on. Thank you to the blond later at the club whose name I misplaced.

Sunday, I nursed my hangover, wrote a few thank you letters, and rewarded myself for a hard week of work and play with some Halo Reach.

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