The Dead in Spring

I was driving back from the gym, when I stopped at the intersection of Gervais and Harden.  It was a beautiful spring morning, and "Going Down the Road Feelin' Bad"was playing with the windows down.  The music was loud appropriately.  I was lost in thought when a cop pulled up beside me.  His windows were also down, and I did not notice him until he extended his hand across the space that separated our cars and pointed at me.  I looked over and watched him through my sunglasses.  He brought in his finger, turned his fist, and gave me a thumbs-up.  I smiled.  The light turned green.

Quick updates: Pandoodle is one sponsor of the Indie Grits film festival in Columbia.  It's been a great success personally and professionally.  I've had the opportunity to meet many interesting, artistic people that I would have never met with my old network.  There is a great deal of energy in Columbia that has yet to be exhumed, and I am pleased to realize it.  For awhile, plotting an escape seemed the only way to deal with this town.

Pandoodle is working with a few filmmakers now to incorporate our technology into their next films.  The filmmakers seem excited about the AdHere system, as it enables them to incorporate advertisements into their films dynamically.  Whether a film is being show in Columbia, Austin, or New York, local ads can be embedded, and filmmakers can use the resulting revenue to fund their art.  If indie films wax in popularity, like Napoleon Dynamite or Paranormal Activity, advertisements from larger sponsors can replace the earlier ones, generating more money from the film.

It's taken awhile, but filmmakers are starting to realize the advantages of this strategy, and a few innovative ones are chomping at the bit to produce the first film that employs Pandoodle technology.  My goal is for that first film to recover its full production cost within one year.  If Pandoodle can demonstrate that, there will be no doubt left as to the power of this technology to reshape the media industry.

I love independent films, and I hope that Pandoodle will officiate a happy marriage between amateur filmmakers and local businesses who may both thrive off stories told and a visions produced.

Still living at home.  Broke as mud.  Chasing deals.  Might be in San Francisco this summer selling and raising VC funding.  It seems likely, but it's still contingent on many factors.

A friend's death

Matt, a friend from my days at IBM, passed away.  He was forty years old.  While I was a rookie salesman, he was constantly willing to lend advice, help, and his greatest skill, humor to any situation.  His magnanimity and zeal for life were infectious.  I learned much from Matt and shared many good times with him.  I am deeply saddened by his departure.  Matt leaves behind his two sons, eight and three, and his widow, who is due to deliver their third son in three weeks.  God help that family.


Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:

in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,

and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low;

also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:

or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; all is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 12:1-8

Pencils down... almost

Over the weekend, I finished the latest and, I hope, last draft of my Master's thesis.  I also finished the latest but certainly not the last draft of my Bronzino paper.  These are the last remains of a stillborn career in art history.  I went through the labor only to find the corpus devoid of breath.  Nevertheless, I have taken pleasure in writing again and inserting things into my paper that will upset academics.  For example, capitalizing He when using the pronoun for Jesus Christ.  I like putting in minute points of style or content like this to which academics are often more attune than the greater patterns of human heart and history. In a university, you could say, "My foreskin needs liberating!" and an academic would nod their head knowingly, but if you capitalize He for Christ, they might rupture a sphincter.

Mermaids

A lesson in entrepreneurship:

Two fishermen are at sea casting their nets.  Near the end of the day, they catch something heavy and haul it up to the boat.  In the net, they find a mermaid so beautiful that she'd make a man's heart melt.  As they stare at her, one of the fishermen lifts her into his arms and releases her back into the sea.

Blankly, his partner asks, "Why?"

"How?" responds the first.

Loose ends and next steps

It's Saturday and raining, and I am tying up loose ends and preparing for the next steps in my career.  I am first finishing the last two academic papers that I hope to write.  One is my Master's thesis, the other a paper I gave last December at the British Institute in Florence that is being published in a volume about Bronzino.  I will send them off on Monday morning.

Every week, Pandoodle gains more momentum, interested investors, potential clients, and strategies for going forward.  We are meeting today to discuss the company's business plan, and I plan to recruit interns and sales people this quarter.  It will be my first experience managing people directly, which is exciting.  I wanted to teach art history primarily to assist young people develop their thinking and potential, and managing a team of sharp marketers and sales people will present that opportunity with perks that academia does not support.  I can choose whom I will work with and directly support them, and if we are all doing our jobs correctly, then we all get paid accordingly to our efforts.  This should be great fun.

I recommend seeing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  I don't recommend drinking heavily beforehand and grumbling your boozy observations to your sober date in the front row of an independent theater while swigging a Fat Tire tall boy.  Make sure she's at least as drunk as you first.

Bravo, Fry

The British six-part series Stephen Fry in America is amazing.  Fry's analysis of the differences between the South and North, in which he rightfully includes Florida, and the complexity and often hypocrisy of American culture, ideals, and history are spot on.  It does not surprise me that an Englishman felt most at home "culturally and spiritually" in the Southeast.  If you have Netflix, I recommend watching it.

Enjoying meeting with independent filmmakers and studios throughout the state -- interesting, creative people.

Oh, Cola Town

Starting to grow bored with Columbia -- surprise, surprise.  Threw a dinner party with a friend on Saturday.  We ate gumbo and grilled doves on the back porch, while the most people planted themselves on the couch inside to watch football.  Then it was bars, binge drinking, and drama.  Same conversations, same concerns, same nonsense.  Although I'm growing frustrated with my it environment, this discontent could be a good thing.  Having exhausted Columbia's unchanging and unchangeable social scene, there's nothing to distract me from work, the gym, and books.

The weekend was not a total wash.  Spent the warm Saturday afternoon working on a paper that I'm publishing.  I found a booth in a coffee shop, watched the flow of busy people, and turned and molded phrases in my mind.  I believed that academia had beaten any pleasure I might take in writing out of me, but I truly enjoyed the exercise.  Still don't want to teach.

On Sunday afternoon, with a slight hangover, I shot doves (or at least shot at them) out on the small track that's left of my late grandfather's farm.  The rest was sold last year.  Not much was flying, but it was a warm, beautiful afternoon.  After the hunt, I went home and wrote for the rest of the evening.

The Pandoodle team is back in town, and we're developing strategies for selling our technology.  Work is good.