Some random stuff...
The guitar playing is going along reasonably well. There was a point about a month ago when the very thing I'd predicted happened: my usual learning curve curved when it should, and suddenly the things I'd been doing badly just kinda got better. It was definitely sudden: one day I was as bad as I'd always been, and the next day I picked up the guitar and started playing as if I'd been doing it for years. The trick is, the stuff I was good at was only the stuff I'd been practicing--so now I've added a couple more chords to learn, and I still haven't got any single song all the way down, so there are still miles and miles to go before I begin to feel any sort of real competence. Still--when I pick up the guitar, something resembling music does actually happen. This is the first great step. Now comes the trick of keeping up my enthusiasm over the long haul...
Sales of Incorporation for Artists are going along reasonably well--I'd made back the expenses of putting it together in just a couple hours on the first day--but it hasn't quite taken off yet. It's just a question of figuring out the advertising--I was at the big Screenwriters' Expo for the last few days, and when I mentioned the book to some people they got very enthusiastic, so I'm pretty sure it's just a question of getting it in front of the right people. The very definition of advertising.
The skies are slowly turning blue again. And I can pretty well breathe again. The fires aren't out, not by a long shot, but the Malibu fire is contained and the bad ones down south, by San Diego, are slowly being brought under control. Even a couple days ago, the skies were still yellow, and the air quality was decidedly awful. But it's getting better, each day a little better than the one before. This is a decidedly good thing.
Plus the Red Sox won the World Series again, and that's just great all over. Maybe next time I'll tell my version of the Bill Buckner story...
Monday, October 29, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Not on Fire
As bad as it is, it could be worse. The pictures from Southern California these past couple days have looked literally hellish, but the fires are not universal. Geography has everything to do with it.
L.A. proper sits in a bowl, surrounded by mountains on three sides (the Santa Monicas, the San Gabriels), with the Pacific Ocean on the fourth side. The fires are in the mountains and canyons, to the north and south. Malibu is to to the north, a case where canyons essentially run right down to the sea, which is how residents get those spectacular views. There are canyon communities all over the area, and they are, most of the time, spectacular places to live (when I first came here, I stayed for three months with some friends in Topanga Canyon, immediately south of Malibu, and loved it). But if there's a fire, those canyons becomes rivers of flame, with results that have been seen time and again.
So if you live there, it can get very bad very fast, because the geography of the canyons provides channels that essentially funnel the flames in a specific direction. At the same time, the mountains doing the funnelling typically protect other areas, unless the flames climb to a ridgeline and flying embers set another area on fire. (Which has in fact been happening quite a lot, which is why three fires became thirteen so quickly.)
But I live in the bowl that is L.A. proper. The mountains are visibly in every direction, and I live toward the northern end of the bowl--on my bike, I can start climbing the Sepulveda Pass into the Santa Monica Mountains in about twenty minutes. (And a mighty workout it is, although the trip back is fabulous--three miles without peddling!) But the only scenario by which my place could catch fire would be the true nightmare: a Chicago-in-1871 conflagration where the whole city is aflame, embers leaping from rooftop to rooftop. It's not impossible, but it is unlikely.
In fact, just standing outside, I can barely see any evidence of the fires. The sky to the west is a little yellow, but to the east it's a lovely blue. My throat has been burning since late Sunday night, and my breathing seems a little shallow sometimes, but that's it. The same Santa Ana winds that caused all of this are blowing most of the smoke due west, out over the ocean. So that's something, at least.
But for now, no real problems here. (Note the qualifier...)
L.A. proper sits in a bowl, surrounded by mountains on three sides (the Santa Monicas, the San Gabriels), with the Pacific Ocean on the fourth side. The fires are in the mountains and canyons, to the north and south. Malibu is to to the north, a case where canyons essentially run right down to the sea, which is how residents get those spectacular views. There are canyon communities all over the area, and they are, most of the time, spectacular places to live (when I first came here, I stayed for three months with some friends in Topanga Canyon, immediately south of Malibu, and loved it). But if there's a fire, those canyons becomes rivers of flame, with results that have been seen time and again.
So if you live there, it can get very bad very fast, because the geography of the canyons provides channels that essentially funnel the flames in a specific direction. At the same time, the mountains doing the funnelling typically protect other areas, unless the flames climb to a ridgeline and flying embers set another area on fire. (Which has in fact been happening quite a lot, which is why three fires became thirteen so quickly.)
But I live in the bowl that is L.A. proper. The mountains are visibly in every direction, and I live toward the northern end of the bowl--on my bike, I can start climbing the Sepulveda Pass into the Santa Monica Mountains in about twenty minutes. (And a mighty workout it is, although the trip back is fabulous--three miles without peddling!) But the only scenario by which my place could catch fire would be the true nightmare: a Chicago-in-1871 conflagration where the whole city is aflame, embers leaping from rooftop to rooftop. It's not impossible, but it is unlikely.
In fact, just standing outside, I can barely see any evidence of the fires. The sky to the west is a little yellow, but to the east it's a lovely blue. My throat has been burning since late Sunday night, and my breathing seems a little shallow sometimes, but that's it. The same Santa Ana winds that caused all of this are blowing most of the smoke due west, out over the ocean. So that's something, at least.
But for now, no real problems here. (Note the qualifier...)
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Family and Funerals
Here's why last weekend I flew to Pittsburgh on a Friday and back to L.A. the next day. Hint: it ain't because I love the good people with the TSA so damn much.
The story requires a boatload of exposition. My dad and my step-mother have for the last several years taken care of my step-mother's mother, Marian (universally known, even by her children, as "Grandma"). She was a very sweet, very gentle, very quiet woman who, since her husband died more than 25 years ago, always seemed to be one of those people left behind in a different era. Never really adjusted to the modern world, but it didn't much matter: she had a lot of family, she did some traveling, and she was, it turns out, tougher than she looked--on a skiing trip she was riding behind Dad on a snowmobile that he flipped, and she popped right up, laughing. So it was agonizing when, a couple years ago, she developed Alzheimer's. Her hearing went, too, so that even when she knew where she was, she couldn't hear anything you said and communication became nearly impossible. Eventually she became a walking ghost in her daughter's house, needing constant care. On October 5, in what can only be considered a relief to everyone, herself included, she passed on.
The world being what it is, there are odd coincidences. Dad, at an age when most men would be retiring, has just sold the house because his job needs to move him to Dallas. My brother and sister have moved into their own places, and everyone else was about to pick up and move to Dallas--but the night before the move, Grandma died. You can't tell me that people don't know when the right moment comes.
Now, Dad is one of the world's great stoics. When something happens, he becomes a no-muss no-fuss get-things-done sort of guy, which makes him a great guy to have around in a crisis. For something like this, though, it's not necessarily an ideal approach. His initial take on the whole situation was that he and my step-mother and her brothers would fly to Pittsburgh for the funeral, but that no one else should stop their lives to attend. He was considering all sorts of factors, like my siblings' new financial constraints now that they're living on their own, and figured it made eminent fiscal sense for them not to go. Which of course it did. But the kids were born late enough that they only ever had one living grandparent, and Grandma was it. I knew after ten seconds of talking to them that they needed to go, and the way to make sure that happened was for me to go myself. (And it didn't take long for Dad to figure all of this out as well, at which point he swung into action, arranging hotel rooms and rental cars.)
Hence four airports in two days. Because of course nothing was flying direct from L.A. to Pittsburgh, so I had to go through Detroit on the outbound leg, and Minneapolis on the way back. (Wondering, the whole time I was that particular airport, "I wonder which bathroom it was?" A friend joked "Keep your feet inside the stall at all times!")
Our planes got in last, so by the time we reached the Comfort Inn in Penn Hills, the rest of the family had a good loud wake going on in the hotel lounge. Tears and tales as the liquor flowed, and we were up till 3:00 a.m. with a 6:30 wakeup call.
Now 3:00 a.m. wasn't a big deal--it was only midnight, L.A. time. But that 6:30 wakeup, that one was a killer. Particularly because (a) our non-smoking room had just had a smoker in it, so everything reeked of cigarette, and (b) my brother, with whom I shared the room, loves cold weather even more than I do, so on a cold night he opened the sliding glass door, and by the time 6:30 rolled around I could barely move what with being near frozen to death. Hands shaking, I immediately started a very hot shower and stood under it for a long long time.
And when my brother woke up? He was frozen too. And we still hadn't managed to clear out the cigarette stench.
The service was quiet and small. And the funeral home was running things at peak efficiency, so that once we reached the cemetery, we didn't have a graveside ceremony at all, we simply filed into a covered room with a nice view for a few words; and as soon as we were done, another family swooped in for their own ceremony. I very nearly served as a pallbearer, but one of Marian's sons appeared at the last moment and I happily gave my space to him.
We ended up graveside anyway. Marian was to be buried next to her husband Walter, and we found the space just as the backhoe arrived. So a slightly macabre scene followed as some family members did (and others decidedly did not) stand around, watching, as Marian was in fact laid to rest. Gorgeous view, right at the top of a hill, with trees and a great big sky all around.
And then back again. The kids and I went into Pittsburgh, which we discovered is one of those cities that rolls up the sidewalks on weekends, then we found ourselves a bar at the airport, watched a college football game, and spent just a little bit of time with each other before getting on planes and planes and going our separate ways again.
The story requires a boatload of exposition. My dad and my step-mother have for the last several years taken care of my step-mother's mother, Marian (universally known, even by her children, as "Grandma"). She was a very sweet, very gentle, very quiet woman who, since her husband died more than 25 years ago, always seemed to be one of those people left behind in a different era. Never really adjusted to the modern world, but it didn't much matter: she had a lot of family, she did some traveling, and she was, it turns out, tougher than she looked--on a skiing trip she was riding behind Dad on a snowmobile that he flipped, and she popped right up, laughing. So it was agonizing when, a couple years ago, she developed Alzheimer's. Her hearing went, too, so that even when she knew where she was, she couldn't hear anything you said and communication became nearly impossible. Eventually she became a walking ghost in her daughter's house, needing constant care. On October 5, in what can only be considered a relief to everyone, herself included, she passed on.
The world being what it is, there are odd coincidences. Dad, at an age when most men would be retiring, has just sold the house because his job needs to move him to Dallas. My brother and sister have moved into their own places, and everyone else was about to pick up and move to Dallas--but the night before the move, Grandma died. You can't tell me that people don't know when the right moment comes.
Now, Dad is one of the world's great stoics. When something happens, he becomes a no-muss no-fuss get-things-done sort of guy, which makes him a great guy to have around in a crisis. For something like this, though, it's not necessarily an ideal approach. His initial take on the whole situation was that he and my step-mother and her brothers would fly to Pittsburgh for the funeral, but that no one else should stop their lives to attend. He was considering all sorts of factors, like my siblings' new financial constraints now that they're living on their own, and figured it made eminent fiscal sense for them not to go. Which of course it did. But the kids were born late enough that they only ever had one living grandparent, and Grandma was it. I knew after ten seconds of talking to them that they needed to go, and the way to make sure that happened was for me to go myself. (And it didn't take long for Dad to figure all of this out as well, at which point he swung into action, arranging hotel rooms and rental cars.)
Hence four airports in two days. Because of course nothing was flying direct from L.A. to Pittsburgh, so I had to go through Detroit on the outbound leg, and Minneapolis on the way back. (Wondering, the whole time I was that particular airport, "I wonder which bathroom it was?" A friend joked "Keep your feet inside the stall at all times!")
Our planes got in last, so by the time we reached the Comfort Inn in Penn Hills, the rest of the family had a good loud wake going on in the hotel lounge. Tears and tales as the liquor flowed, and we were up till 3:00 a.m. with a 6:30 wakeup call.
Now 3:00 a.m. wasn't a big deal--it was only midnight, L.A. time. But that 6:30 wakeup, that one was a killer. Particularly because (a) our non-smoking room had just had a smoker in it, so everything reeked of cigarette, and (b) my brother, with whom I shared the room, loves cold weather even more than I do, so on a cold night he opened the sliding glass door, and by the time 6:30 rolled around I could barely move what with being near frozen to death. Hands shaking, I immediately started a very hot shower and stood under it for a long long time.
And when my brother woke up? He was frozen too. And we still hadn't managed to clear out the cigarette stench.
The service was quiet and small. And the funeral home was running things at peak efficiency, so that once we reached the cemetery, we didn't have a graveside ceremony at all, we simply filed into a covered room with a nice view for a few words; and as soon as we were done, another family swooped in for their own ceremony. I very nearly served as a pallbearer, but one of Marian's sons appeared at the last moment and I happily gave my space to him.
We ended up graveside anyway. Marian was to be buried next to her husband Walter, and we found the space just as the backhoe arrived. So a slightly macabre scene followed as some family members did (and others decidedly did not) stand around, watching, as Marian was in fact laid to rest. Gorgeous view, right at the top of a hill, with trees and a great big sky all around.
And then back again. The kids and I went into Pittsburgh, which we discovered is one of those cities that rolls up the sidewalks on weekends, then we found ourselves a bar at the airport, watched a college football game, and spent just a little bit of time with each other before getting on planes and planes and going our separate ways again.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Not Launching
Twenty minutes, that's all. The email ad for the incorporation book was about to go out, and twenty minutes before it was supposed to happen, our server crashed. The site became inaccessible. Since you really don't want any of your customers to find a dead site, particularly not your first and perhaps largest wave of customers, the motivated ones who see the ad and say to themselves "Hey, that's exactly what I've been wanting!," a dead site for even a brief time is no good at all.
So we pushed it to tomorrow morning. The site is back up, the email happens in the morning, and then we see how things go.
Good thing I'm not a believer in omens.
So we pushed it to tomorrow morning. The site is back up, the email happens in the morning, and then we see how things go.
Good thing I'm not a believer in omens.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Launching
Launching tomorrow: www.incorporationforartists.com
It's really truly amazing how long it takes to put up a simple website. Or at least, how long it takes to put up a simple commercial website. Because as much time as we spent creating the site itself, we spent more time doing the invisible behind-the-scenes stuff that will allow us to actually sell a product online.
A lot of that time, for example, was spent putting together bonuses, like an email series that will be sent on the first day of each month to everyone who buys the book, reminding them of what documents are due that month. Had to compile the information, write twelve emails, set up an auto-responder, and schedule each "broadcast" individually. An enormous amount of very tedious, repetitive work--but the goal of it is to have everything automated. So I spent a lot of time up front, but now I shouldn't need to spend too much time at all. Once a year I'll have to update the emails, looking for changed due dates and new documents and so forth, but that should be it--otherwise, everything now just kinda happens by itself. (In fact my October email just arrived this morning, and for a moment I looked at it, thinking "Incorporation for Artists? Who are they and why are they sending me email? Oh, wait--yeah, it's me. Well whattaya know.")
The harder part was getting testimonials from people. I'm lousy at asking for something for nothing--I have no trouble asking for things when I've got something to offer in return, but here I really could offer nothing except my enormous gratitude and an unspecifiable "huge favor" back, someday. And yet a lot of people took the time to read the whole book, and some even were able to offer really useful comments that have helped the book a lot. (A friend of mine from college, Melissa Klein, who I haven't actually seen in something like twenty years--we say howdy on MySpace from time to time--lives in New York and was really helpful on the sections that deal with the requirements in that state. How nice is that?)
So it's all ready now, finally. We'll take just a little time today to test all the links and processes, then we'll swap out the "Coming Soon!" page with the real thing and see what happens. Upon which we immediately turn our attention to doing exactly the same stuff with Marc's internet-marketing online course, which we hope will move along a little faster since we've now been through the process so recently.
Next--actual progress is made on the guitar.
It's really truly amazing how long it takes to put up a simple website. Or at least, how long it takes to put up a simple commercial website. Because as much time as we spent creating the site itself, we spent more time doing the invisible behind-the-scenes stuff that will allow us to actually sell a product online.
A lot of that time, for example, was spent putting together bonuses, like an email series that will be sent on the first day of each month to everyone who buys the book, reminding them of what documents are due that month. Had to compile the information, write twelve emails, set up an auto-responder, and schedule each "broadcast" individually. An enormous amount of very tedious, repetitive work--but the goal of it is to have everything automated. So I spent a lot of time up front, but now I shouldn't need to spend too much time at all. Once a year I'll have to update the emails, looking for changed due dates and new documents and so forth, but that should be it--otherwise, everything now just kinda happens by itself. (In fact my October email just arrived this morning, and for a moment I looked at it, thinking "Incorporation for Artists? Who are they and why are they sending me email? Oh, wait--yeah, it's me. Well whattaya know.")
The harder part was getting testimonials from people. I'm lousy at asking for something for nothing--I have no trouble asking for things when I've got something to offer in return, but here I really could offer nothing except my enormous gratitude and an unspecifiable "huge favor" back, someday. And yet a lot of people took the time to read the whole book, and some even were able to offer really useful comments that have helped the book a lot. (A friend of mine from college, Melissa Klein, who I haven't actually seen in something like twenty years--we say howdy on MySpace from time to time--lives in New York and was really helpful on the sections that deal with the requirements in that state. How nice is that?)
So it's all ready now, finally. We'll take just a little time today to test all the links and processes, then we'll swap out the "Coming Soon!" page with the real thing and see what happens. Upon which we immediately turn our attention to doing exactly the same stuff with Marc's internet-marketing online course, which we hope will move along a little faster since we've now been through the process so recently.
Next--actual progress is made on the guitar.
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