nyc trip day 3
I spent most of today working.
That's the reason I came with Dad to New York in the first place. He's producing a preview video for his coworkers Kerry and Harley's book, Outside In. The company they all work for, Forrester, was running the convention this all happened at. Harley gave a speech that laid out the ideas in the book, and then we snagged some of the more influential people who'd come to the conference and I helped a young man named Nick film them. We duct taped a lot of things. Duct tape is pretty much the secret to filmmaking, as far as most things are concerned.
All of the Forrester employees were super nice. Not just passively nice, like thanking people for stuff, but actively nice, like buying each other coffee and offering to go get things for people. It made me thing about the difference between unassertiveness and actual kindness. There is a bigger difference than I remember thinking there was.
A lot of them had heard about me, because apparently my dad likes to brag about his children. I'd heard of some of them, like the guy in the teal shirt who was moving away from Amsterdam, and Kerry, who was ecstatic to see the first advance copies of her and Harley's book. They thought I was mature and sort of funny. I'll concede the funny, but not the mature. I'm not totally sure where they get that. I guess I'm just good at lying with my personality.
Nick was great, too. We talked about Hitler and facial expressions and writing (writing especially so) and movie theaters and Space and Carl Sagan and Monty Python and the Holy Grail and very briefly Star Trek. He listened very intently and had reddish hair and about a day's worth of beard and his forearms looked like they went to a gym.
All of the video was done with an SLR. There were two big rectangular lights with filters on. It was several steps up from the frequently broken cameras and desk lamps that my video group usually makes do with.
I wore mum's clothes to the conference, because I don't have any nice clothes and she and I are almost the same size. Emphasis on the almost. The shirt she lent me was too short, and the pants were loose through the ass and also too short. I felt really stupid and funny-shaped and awful wearing them. When I had a break in the middle of the day, I went back to the hotel and lay around half-naked and took pictures of myself, because usually that keeps me from having a body-hate meltdown.
(that last one is the inside of my knee, btw)
Then I changed and went back. Everything was pretty much uneventful from then on.
The hotel served food periodically. Most of it was terrible.
Dad and I ate dinner in the restaurant at the Marriott. It was stupid fake fancy (the butter had brown salt on it, what)
and the waiter got on my nerves for no good reason. He asked where we lived and made stupid jokes about the accents of the people next to us to their faces and he was just annoying okay?
I had a looooong skinny pizza. It was the first pizza I'd ever seen that I could take a perspective picture of.
There were flowers on the table, which added to the whole faux-posh thing the restaurant had going on.
Motherfucker my feet hurt like I borrowed them from the living dead and the goddamn
stupid
thigh
rub
But anyways. The New York trip is almost over. Tomorrow morning I'll wake up and help Nick out with more filming, and then dad and I will pack up our bags and get on a train to Westwood, where mom will pick us up and we'll go home.
I want to go home but I also want to stay for a long time, based out of this hotel room, sleeping on this couch and going to see everything Manhattan has to offer.
But I can't do that, and my feet and legs hurt so much, and I'm tired and lonely, so going home is very much okay.
I have a job interview and then oral surgery in the two days following the trip. I won't rest properly until the weekend, and then I'll be high on painkillers for a while. Um.
That's the reason I came with Dad to New York in the first place. He's producing a preview video for his coworkers Kerry and Harley's book, Outside In. The company they all work for, Forrester, was running the convention this all happened at. Harley gave a speech that laid out the ideas in the book, and then we snagged some of the more influential people who'd come to the conference and I helped a young man named Nick film them. We duct taped a lot of things. Duct tape is pretty much the secret to filmmaking, as far as most things are concerned.
All of the Forrester employees were super nice. Not just passively nice, like thanking people for stuff, but actively nice, like buying each other coffee and offering to go get things for people. It made me thing about the difference between unassertiveness and actual kindness. There is a bigger difference than I remember thinking there was.
A lot of them had heard about me, because apparently my dad likes to brag about his children. I'd heard of some of them, like the guy in the teal shirt who was moving away from Amsterdam, and Kerry, who was ecstatic to see the first advance copies of her and Harley's book. They thought I was mature and sort of funny. I'll concede the funny, but not the mature. I'm not totally sure where they get that. I guess I'm just good at lying with my personality.
Nick was great, too. We talked about Hitler and facial expressions and writing (writing especially so) and movie theaters and Space and Carl Sagan and Monty Python and the Holy Grail and very briefly Star Trek. He listened very intently and had reddish hair and about a day's worth of beard and his forearms looked like they went to a gym.
All of the video was done with an SLR. There were two big rectangular lights with filters on. It was several steps up from the frequently broken cameras and desk lamps that my video group usually makes do with.
I wore mum's clothes to the conference, because I don't have any nice clothes and she and I are almost the same size. Emphasis on the almost. The shirt she lent me was too short, and the pants were loose through the ass and also too short. I felt really stupid and funny-shaped and awful wearing them. When I had a break in the middle of the day, I went back to the hotel and lay around half-naked and took pictures of myself, because usually that keeps me from having a body-hate meltdown.
(that last one is the inside of my knee, btw)
Then I changed and went back. Everything was pretty much uneventful from then on.
The hotel served food periodically. Most of it was terrible.
Dad and I ate dinner in the restaurant at the Marriott. It was stupid fake fancy (the butter had brown salt on it, what)
and the waiter got on my nerves for no good reason. He asked where we lived and made stupid jokes about the accents of the people next to us to their faces and he was just annoying okay?
I had a looooong skinny pizza. It was the first pizza I'd ever seen that I could take a perspective picture of.
There were flowers on the table, which added to the whole faux-posh thing the restaurant had going on.
Motherfucker my feet hurt like I borrowed them from the living dead and the goddamn
stupid
thigh
rub
But anyways. The New York trip is almost over. Tomorrow morning I'll wake up and help Nick out with more filming, and then dad and I will pack up our bags and get on a train to Westwood, where mom will pick us up and we'll go home.
I want to go home but I also want to stay for a long time, based out of this hotel room, sleeping on this couch and going to see everything Manhattan has to offer.
But I can't do that, and my feet and legs hurt so much, and I'm tired and lonely, so going home is very much okay.
I have a job interview and then oral surgery in the two days following the trip. I won't rest properly until the weekend, and then I'll be high on painkillers for a while. Um.