Cavemen, pool sharks and green chemists

A work friend was in New York last week at PopTech, a conference of remarkable people working on innovative projects, which sounded super cool. I'm not sure why half of our department got to go and not the other half but there were a slew of interesting speakers and I just discovered - it's kind of like TED - that you can download their speeches online! (Oooh, I'm totally going to listen to these on the bus to work!)

Anyway, my colleague invited me for drinks to meet a bunch of cool people that she met there, all from San Francisco, at The 500 Club - a bar walking distance from my house that has a giant neon sign that makes it look like it's in Vegas. I think it's funny that "dive bar" has become an official classification but they had Guinness on tap so I have no complaints.


There was an old guy there with a really long white/grey beard and wearing an orange jumpsuit like he just got out of prison. He was clearing tables and playing pool with everyone - in a "you don't really have a choice" kind of way. One of the guys there said he's always there and he's a total shark. He'll let you just barely beat him on the first pool game and then ask you if you want to play again for a beer. All of a sudden he hands you a can of whoop-ass, knocking in all the balls in one or two turns. But all he gets is a beer! Not a very smart pool shark if you ask me.

I met a chemist who defected from Clorox to go to the green side and was now working with Method to make their products even more natural. I talked shop with a documentary filmmaker and met an engineer from a social networking site called High Five, which, he said, is very popular in Asia and is the most popular networking site in Kazakhstan, "the home of Borat!" When a group of us went to dinner at Luna Park after, he announced that was on the Paleo "eat like a caveman and lose weight" diet which he struggled to explain until he admitted that this was only his first day on the diet.

His roommate was a guy in business strategy (whatever the heck that is) and looked like he was about 14. He had an MBA and when I asked him why he went to business school he said he was burned out of the work he was doing and needed to regroup. I figure roughly half of MBA students are there because they can't think of anything better to do or are hoping it will somehow alleviate the malaise of working but I couldn't believe this kid had worked enough to be burned out of anything. He said the "burn out" was after working for four years at around 60 hours a week which sounds like what I was doing before I did something to shake things up - move to LA to pursue acting! I met the most interesting array of folks that night and it reminded me yet again, that San Francisco is way more stimulating than Los Angeles.

Mrs. Anything Can Happen

I am such a bundle of emotions these days, it's hard to even pinpoint what I'm feeling. Friday was my last day at the old job, after two days in meetings for the new job. Everyone was very sad to hear that I was leaving and I felt like someone who'd won the lottery and wasn't going to share with anyone. The absolute joy I'd felt for the past two days really hadn't changed my view of this current job. It's a fine job, it's just not one that I want. But it's become very clear that I was the best project manager they've had on the job yet and in a short three weeks, I'd already made an impact.

The account manager hired on contract for this job was out of town to a wedding and even thought it was impossible to get anything done, I felt obligated to accomplish something for her to come back to. We bonded and had become instant friends when we realized that we shared a philosophy on how to get work done. It's called creative project management. While most companies expect project managers to create and follow process, spending all day drafting status reports and updating project plans, the best ones are those who can creatively problem solve. Projects don't just hum along a set plan, there are always problems and difficulties and solving them, for me, is the best part of the job. Cracking the human code to discover how to make everyone happy is the only satisfying part of project management.

One moment, my head is swimming with the amazing ideas I get to work on and execute in the coming months in the new job, the next I'm overwhelmed with sadness over what I'm leaving. Good friends, a beautiful apartment by the beach, the pursuit of acting (for sure now) and the ability (that I was only just coming in to) to shoot a movie at a moment's notice. The irony, of course, is that this new job has just skyrocketed me to the top in terms of opportunity and connections. My chances of actually directing a feature film have just increased by a thousand. The catch is that I really have to do the work now, of writing and making films to prove that I have something to say. I think I've been lazy about it the past because I could see that no matter what a talented person creates in this town, if they don't have the right connections, success can and will probably still elude them.

This job is like marrying a dishy guy with money, connections and a name that opens doors who says "honey, do whatever you want, I support you completely." I just married opportunity so I better get busy doing what I want!

Pavement, it's what's for dinner

The three biggest issues of the next 50 years, as I see it, are clean drinking water, renewable resources and transportation. Although the rate of population growth has been on the decline since the late sixties (perhaps due to the women’s right to choose movement) the population is still increasing exponentially and is estimated to reach 10 billion worldwide by 2050, up from 6.6 million today.

The production for passenger vehicles is rapidly growing as well. Already half of the vehicles in the U.S. are SUVs and light trucks and, at this rate, it will be true worldwide by 2030. Increasing an estimated 9 million per year from 41 million in 2003, auto production is giving population growth a run for its money with the most demand coming from China.

While over half of the 539 million vehicles worldwide are registered in the U.S. (where there are 1.2 more cars than licensed drivers), China and other developing nations are anxious to catch up. Let’s do the math.

China has 1.3 billion people compared to 300 million in the U.S. and are projected to grow by 500 million people in the next 50 years. Their car ownership could easily triple that of the U.S. but unlike the U.S., China’s people and cropland share the same one third of the country’s land mass. Roads and freeways are typically built on farmland putting countries like China at risk of paving over their food supply. And pavement is permanent. As environmentalist Rupert Cutler once noted, “Asphalt is the land’s last crop.”

So why are our brightest minds working on transportation to space and stealth bombers that cost two billion dollars each? Why not spend that money building ways to move goods and people in a way that’s more attractive, efficient, enjoyable and better for the environment? I, for one, am tired of determining my social schedule by time spent in the car, sitting in traffic, looking at ugly pavement and wondering why most humans think they are capable of driving.

With the second highest population in America, The Greater Los Angeles Area has 18 million people over 500 square miles (compared to 18.8 million in the 330 square miles of The New York Metropolitan area). A patchwork of cities as dense as San Francisco and Paris, the majority of the population, jobs and businesses are clustered along the major corridors making the entire area (excluding the San Fernando Valley) dense enough for light rail.

Freeway expansion projects go on for years only to yield one or two more lanes and a UC Berkeley study showed 90 percent of new highway capacity fills up within five years of being built! Another new study showed that the only thing that keeps people off the roads is congestion. It seems like there’s never enough road, never enough parking, and never enough pavement. If our pavement were its own state, it would be the 24th largest at 61,000 square miles, beating out Georgia.

In the past 20 years the population of California’s metro areas increased 20 percent but the amount of driving increased 59 percent. We’re driving more because of the way we build our communities with affordable housing in one direction and jobs in another. In the years between 1950 and 1990, the population of urban areas grew by 92% but the land area used grew by 245%. Increased suburbanization has meant bigger houses, farther apart, taking up more farmland, requiring more roads and greater energy consumption. Suburbanites drive bigger cars and rack up many more miles.

Clearly, we have to think of something else. The solution, at least in Los Angeles, seems to be easy. The city was built around the streetcar. In the twenties, we had the largest electric trolley system in the country with 6,000 trains running on 144 routes in four counties. (If you want to know what happened to them, rent Who Framed Roger Rabbit?)

Los Angeles has actually been piecing together a public transportation system over the last twenty years and our mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, is committed to joining existing rail and subway lines and building new ones. Even though only 6.6% of Angelenos take public transportation to work, it’s higher than the national average of 4.7%. Nationwide, 9 out of 10 people drive to work, 77% by themselves. For many, it’s still the easiest way to travel but it isn’t cheapest. Not for the driver, not for the city.

One study put the annual cost of owning and operating a vehicle at $7,000 - $10,000 per year. That doesn't take into account the subsidized costs: highway patrol, traffic management, police work on auto accidents and theft, street maintenance, parking enforcement, and "free" parking paid by higher rents, property taxes and lower wages. We’re starting to pay for the invisible costs as well: air pollution, loss of open space and habitat, global warming, war in the Middle East. Conservative estimates put the cost of those subsidies at 22 cents a mile. If we had to pay for them, we’d pay a gas tax of $6.60 per gallon!

Over the last decade, the fastest-growing cities are suburbs while industrial cities, once the biggest in the country, are shrinking. Detroit, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cleveland, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Buffalo have steadily declining populations. New York and California are the only two major cities still growing, which is why a lot of cities are looking to Los Angeles for leadership on the mass transit issue.

But we’re still a long way off from a future where the majority of people use public transportation. As it is now, the buses use the same roads, take twice as long and are noisy as hell. We built a subway, but the most traveled east/west corridor has never been tunneled. If we’re really want to encourage drivers to use public transit, why are we digging under ground? Why not build light electric rail on the existing roads and highways, surrounded by trees and beautiful platforms for catching the train? Hey and while we’re at it, let’s build bike lanes along the same routes!

I got a request to send email to the governor about maintaining the budget for planning the high-speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles (an overwhelmingly obvious choice). Of course I sent it but then I wondered, why have we been PLANNING it for ten years? What's it going to take to get us into the future? Seriously, in every futuristic movie you've ever seen, were people taking mass transit or driving cars? Think about it.

It took me 5 years, 7 months and 4 days to read The Believer

Several years ago, while visiting a friend in San Francisco, I stumbled upon a pirate store in a hip district. Inside you feel like you've discovered something truly bizarre and authentic. There are trunks to look in, bureaus with lots of drawers and fun things inside all of them. Glass eyes, hooks for where hands used to be, eye patches, gold coins, maps, pirate flags and just about anything you think an aspiring pirate might need. In the middle of the store is a huge vat of lard - I think there's something in it you're supposed to look for in there.

It was the 826 Valencia store. The story is, author Dave Eggers wanted to start a place where writers could tutor kids after school and wanted it to be right in the city where the kids who needed it could have access to it. But as it was in a retail district, there had to be a store. Thus the first of many 826 locations and stores was born.


Today there's an 826 in Seattle that sells supplies for astronauts (above). 826 in Brooklyn sells superhero supplies, 826 Chicago sells spy supplies at The Boring Store (ha ha ha), and 826 Michigan provides monster supplies. (I still have not yet volunteered for 826 LA and we don't have a store. Bummer.)

Anyway, Egger's accompanying publishing company, McSweeney's, has long put out literary journals and other writings. A few Christmases ago, I bought as a gift, a book called Your Disgusting Head published by McSweeney's. With a made up PhD and hilarious illustrations, it was a spoof on kid's books except strange, gross and nonsensical. I bought a subscription of The Believer for a friend and bought myself the music edition of The Believer for the CD of interesting music but I never read the magazine. I thought everything in the world of McSweeney's was beautiful nonsense.

Then a few months ago I ordered for very cheap, ten old issues of The Believer just for the heck of it. I thumbed through them but the unorthodox layout and odd headlines baffled me again. They sat in an attractive pile in my house, untouched, while I read my other magazines. Then a friend came over, someone I didn't expect to know McSweeney's and excitedly told me how great Wholphin was, another one of their pubs. Really? Someone actually reads this stuff?

So one day I opened one and started reading and I absolutely love it. The articles are unique and completely fascinating, the kind of material I wish I was writing. Ginger Strand describes Virgil's epic, Aeneid, about the Roman empire, to illustrate how imperialism drives the absorption, destruction and use of natural resources as a way to shock and awe the enemy and those that they annex. Sailing a fleet of ships that each require 300 adult trees to build is a way of claiming ownership of land far beyond those of the ruling city. The empire she compares it to is of course, the United States.

In our quest for and refusal to reduce our dependence on oil, our leaders are saying "we claim all of the world's natural resources for ourselves." It made me wonder if environmental balance is possible as long as there are imperialist nations with as much power as the US and China. Consuming natural resources is a way of life in the States. It's what we do. Look at the cars we drive.

The largest SUVs are named after large expanses of land, mountains, huge trees, powerful rivers - Tundra, Sierra, Yukon, Tahoe, Sequoia - that will and must be conquered. Driving one is a display of that power. Look out, here comes an Avalanche! Durango is a coal mining town. Explorer, Expedition, Navigator, Mountaineer, and Trooper are the names of the types of people who conquer nature. An Armada is a fleet of warships! The favorite of Los Angeles, though, is the Escalade which describes scaling the walls of a fortress to attack. CHARGE!!!

Driver's Guide to Los Angeles

Driving is the only thing that everyone in Los Angeles complains about. Maybe it's just that life is so great OUTSIDE of the car - this is taken from my "daily" walk/run after work, for example - that being trapped in a traffic with mean people seems like a particular kind of torture.


To put it into perspective, just about anything you might need to do - go to work, go to the doctor, meet a friend, attend a show or event, work out - will require 20-40 minutes each way in soul-crushing traffic.

Here are the types of drivers you could expect to encounter:

Look out for the driver with the 20-car lead. This person is probably doing something stupid (like talking on the phone, brushing their teeth AND memorizing a script) and knows it. Driving for them is so easy, they can do thirty other things at the same time. Very efficient! Leaving a wide berth protects them from smashing into the car ahead but doesn't do much for you if you're following behind. The best place to be is in front of them.

The driver with the nose of their car sniffing another car's butt is doing something stupid and they don't care. These are the most dangerous people on the road. They aren't concerned for their own life so they certainly aren't concerned for yours. They weave, they swerve, they drive 20 miles faster than everyone else, they'll cut you off, flip you the bird, and generally act like arrogant jerks. The best place to be is as far away as possible. Do NOT engage this person. Don't make eye contact. Don't flip them off. Just get out of their way.

The type that can't multi-task is also the most likely to be on the phone. I don't know why that is. They'll arrive somewhere and have no memory of having driven, that's how distracted they are. They slow down anytime there are choices to be made: when they're changing lanes, taking another phone call, or even just if someone else (anywhere in the world) is also slowing down. They seem to go slower and slower when everyone else is trying to gain momentum. The best place to be is beside them. They'll never cut you off.

Ever see those drivers that brake at literally nothing? They've got a huge space in front of them and yet they're braking...why? These people are afraid of the raw power a 2-3 ton piece of machinery offers and are looking for a reason to stop. They stop at all yellow lights and might even stop at a green if it looks like it's about to turn yellow. These people are likely afraid of their own shadow. They should NOT be operating a vehicle at all and yet these people are usually in the biggest car available. When they accidentally drive into you or your house, they're going to do some major damage. Keep your distance and don't make any sudden moves, you might scare them into an accident.

Some people never think about the past. What's done is done. They live in the present. One minute they're going right, the next, "hey, let's go LEFT!" Must be fun to be so spontaneous. They look into the future a lot, someday I'll be an astronaut! These drivers don't know that the world behind them exists. They'll drive in between two lanes while they decide which they prefer to be in. They don't use turn signals because as long as they know what they're doing, who else needs to know? They never look in the rear view mirror because isn't that just for checking your face? They can make sudden moves so pay attention or steer clear.

This is my favorite. The church mouse. Always needing validation at a stop sign. Is it my turn? Oh no, you go, it's fine, I'll wait. They'll let two turns go by, unsure and not wanting to step on any one's toes. They're so NICE! Once they do go, they might stop again in the intersection, just to make sure no one's coming. These are the same people who won't go until EVERYONE comes to a full and complete stop (just in case). For as cautious as this type is, they're also the ones that will completely roll on through a red light that they didn't see, or almost hit a pedestrian in a cross-walk. They must be daydreaming about some good deeds they can do when they get home. The head-in-the-clouds drivers, unfortunately, seem to be the hardest to stay away from. You'll follow them for a mile in city traffic, finally break away only to find them in front of you again in another ten minutes. ARGH!

Slow and steady wins the race. There are a lot of this type and frankly, they're fairly innocuous. Driving just slightly slower than the posted speed limit, stopping at all yellow lights, looking before changing lanes, and always lining up when they're supposed to. They're never the jerk that drives straight to the front of the line to merge as if they're The Queen. They're polite and are generally paying attention. They nod and wave when you let them in, they stop for pedestrians and miraculously never lose their temper. They're a little slow for my tastes but I'd pay a lot of money to get whatever they're on.

Lastly, there are the drivers like me, trying to "figure it out." There must be a way around the traffic! We waste gas speeding off the line at a green light, only to stop with everyone else at the next intersection's red. We're usually going 5-10 miles over the speed limit, nothing excessive, but we expect that everyone else is in a hurry too. We follow the rules and expect others to do the same. We don't drive the same speed next to another car and we won't loiter in your blind spot but can startle and anger some folks with our quick movements. The church mouse is especially unhappy when we startle them out of their daydreams, sorry to make you pay attention! You want these folks in front of you, they'll carve a path for everyone else.

I have a theory that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they drive. It's one of my dating tests. If I can sit in the car with a person while they're driving and feel neither anxious, impatient or frightened, then they're driving in a way that's comfortable to me and we're probably a match on many levels. If I feel one of those things, chances are I'll feel that way in the relationship as well. That theory has yet to prove wrong!

I love Villaraigosa!

The last time I was this excited about a politician was 1992, working for the College Democrats. I registered voters at my college to help get Clinton elected. We were so enamored of that man. But that was a long time ago.

Antonia Villaraigosa is the first Latino mayor for a city that is almost half Hispanic. But besides that, he is just an all around cool guy. Not only is he handsome, young, personable, well-spoken and a genuinely nice person (yes, I have met him), he is doing some incredible things for this city.

I swear only a year before we elected him, I said to myself "This city has so much potential, it's a shame that we spend our days sitting in traffic, choking on smog and looking at ugly strip malls." Then Villaraigosa came along. He's made a promise to make LA a greener and more beautiful city with the Million Trees LA campaign and The LA River Revitalization Program (this takes a little while to download, it's the actual plans): Making our river a real river (with water), building beautiful bridges, creating bike paths and parks, and incentivizing retail businesses to open on the riverfront.

In addition, he's building support for dismantling gangs, committing to improve our failing education system, fighting to get the money we need to relieve traffic and wants to make the city wireless.

It's no wonder he's a very popular guy these days and according to The New York Times, he may be a critical part of the 2008 presidential race. They're doing a four-part interview with him and you can watch the first part here.