Heroes, Role Models, and Nike Ad Campaigns

At the beginning of the second “act”—calling it that feels a little inaccurate; then again, how else could one refer to our forced disembark/reembark as anything other than an “intermission” in the most literal sense—one of our audience members brought up having attended a talk given by legendary composer Steven Sondheim and having been captivated by Sondheim’s charisma. He described Sondheim as almost radiating genius, of being calm and confident and magnetic.

This moved our conversation to a discussion of the most charismatic/famous people various of us had seen or met or interacted with. Before we moved onto that though, the same audience member made another, altogether different observation about Sondheim. Sondheim is widely regarded, especially among died-in-the-wool musical afficianadoes, as one of the greatest composers ever, if not the greatest; this audience member is himself a composer, which makes Sondheim someone he idolizes.  But our audience member noted that Sondheim didn’t seem to be very happy, and in fact seemed to be suffering under the burdensome notion that he could never again match the feats of genius he’d accomplished earlier in his life. Evidently Sondheim seemed to be a rather bitter person as a result.

Our audience member’s conclusion, then, was that while Sondheim was a hero of his, he didn’t seem like someone he wanted to be or be like—that he might be a hero, but he wasn’t a role model.

Law is ALWAYS fun…

Just posted a link about obsolete laws, which, upon further scrutiny of the context, appears to be an attempt to ‘lighten up’ a divorce and family law website.   Nothing takes the edge off a vicious custody battle like knowing that lollipops are banned in Washington.

Poll:  Based on this list, which state seems like the most fun?

All Deboard!

There are no uninterrupted round trips on the Staten Island ferry. In other words, if you take the ferry from Manhattan to Staten island with no intention of spending any time on Staten Island and every intention of turning around and sailing right back to Manhattan, you still have to disembark before boarding a return ferry, even if this returning ship departs immediately after your arrival on Staten Island and is the exact same vessel you just deboarded.

What could explain this rule? Why not just let those interested in returning stay on the boat? I mean, you know that some of them are portly Midwestern tourists who aren’t exactly game for extraneous walking. Are the ferries cleaned during this brief turnaround? Are the lines for the ferry ever so long that there would be a full boatload of people waiting when the ferry arrived and this is a policy to ensure the waiting passengers are accommodated first? Is it some attempt at encouraging shopping and tourism on the island itself–like, kick people off the boat and hope they’ll buy a Staten Island Yankees hat on the walk to their next ship?

Does anyone know (or care to speculate) as to the thinking behind this rule? Or is it just another arbitrary regulation like the kind we talked about on Saturday?

How Was The Ferry? See For Yourself!

Check out photos of our most recent show—which convened on the Staten Island Ferry in New York City—by checking out the latest album on Symposium’s Picasa page!

Symposium Asea Live on the Staten Island Ferry January 16, 2010

Land, ho!

Our first sea-faring show has pulled into port a great success. It was a gorgeous day in the Upper Bay—don’t believe me? just check the photographic evidence!—and the conversation moved right along with us.

After such a rich conversation—one that touched on everything from the origins of circumcision to the most charismatic people we’ve ever met—there’ll be plenty for us to follow up with in the coming days.

For now, though, one quick loose end we can definitely tie up:

No, It’s Not Going To Be Cold

I guess I learned two things this week:

1. Nobody’s ever been on the Staten Island Ferry; and
2. When people here the word “ferry,” they think of this.

 

The Staten Island ferry is largely enclosed. Wind chill’s not going to be a problem here, people; don’t let that deter you.

See you tomorrow at 1pm at South Ferry…

Avast: Symposium Weighs Anchor This Saturday!

Ahoy, maties!

Since nothing helps keep a conversation moving better than motion, Symposium will convene for the first time ever on a moving vehicle this Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 1pm.

Our vehicle of choice? The Staten Island Ferry.

(The plan: We’ll meet at 1pm at the Whitehall/South Ferry terminal (here). As you approach the terminal, keep right–we’ll meet outside (or, in case of inclement whether, just inside) the terminal building on the right. Drop us a line (get it?) at symposiumshow@gmail.com if you’d like to “make a reservation,” i.e., make sure we don’t push off without you.)

We’ve been talking for a while about holding Symposium in a moving venue, but let’s face it: A party bus would be too loud, a fleet of Razors would be too dangerous, and neither Kobi nor I has the time this week to invent time travel so we can take advantage of affordable space tourism.

But the ferry? The ferry is free, huge, awesome, enclosed/non-elements-exposed, and free. Seriously, it’s free as anything.

We’ll take the ferry to Staten Island, disembark (but only because we have to…), continue the conversation in the SI terminal, and then reembark (now officially a word) and return to Manhattan. Total run time should be about 90 minutes.

All aboard.

Mission: Unwatchable.

At our last show, during a larger thread of conversation about our consumption of popular culture, the subject of guilty pleasures came up. You know what this means: the things you consume even though you know you shouldn’t, even though you know they’re frivolous wastes of time.

Everybody does this (except productive people, but whatever, fuck them) and it isn’t hard to figure out why. Most of us spend our days with Big Important Things on our minds—whether we will have enough money to live the lives we crave; whether we have the affection and approval of the people we care about; whether we will accomplish whatever we’ve decided we hope will be our life’s work; etc.—and we deserve a break from all that self-imposed sturm und drang. Sometimes we want to consume something we don’t care about, something from which we demand nothing, because in turn we want nothing to be demanded of us. Call this the Guilty Pleasure Principle.

Most of our audience’s guilty pleasures were TV shows and many of them were reality TV shows. And one in particular—MTV’s newest televised cesspool, Jersey Shore—received a boisterous endorsement from several corners of the crowd. And I have to say, I’d been meaning to tune in myself; after a ringing endorsement from one of my favorite writers alive, ESPN columnist Bill Simmons, I figured that, despite my general aversion to TV shows in which the pitch could well be imagined to contain the phrase “film them acting like degenerate idiots,” Jersey Shore might be so absurd, so over-the-top, that it would allow me to transcend the feelings of revulsion I usually experience when watching a pig of a show adorned with the lipstick of slick post-production.

I was wrong.

Great Minds…

Two shows ago we had a gentleman in the audience who worked in venture capital–his job was to yentl people with good ideas and the funders who love them. (Or is that funders and the people with good ideas who love them? Whatever, you get it.)

Naturally this led us to try out some ideas on him. Although he seemed relatively unimpressed by mine–the post-hangover recovery center, complete with steam rooms, massages, smoothies, and IVs!–one of our audience members had a pretty good idea: A service that aggregates sales/special deals/discounts/etc. from businesses and displays them searchably and in map form.

Turns out someone’s done it.

(NB: This isn’t an endorsement of the above site, called Postabon, nor is it a not-endorsement. Never used the thing. In fact, I’ve barely even perused their website; I was just so tickled that there was a connection to our November conversation that I just had to get all WordPress about it.)

One last aside on the subject of business ideas:

That’s What Friends Are For

Since posting about the Wait—You Actually Haven’t Seen That? phenomenon—about the peer pressure to absorb an unmanageable amount of culture—I’ve gotten a number of responses from people who know me. These range from the subtly nuanced—the thoughtful comments on the post itself—to the extremely simple—an email with the subject line “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN GONE WITH THE WIND?!“.

Now I haven’t, I felt I should respond, and frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

When I first got that particular email—it was one of several on the subject—I was a little blown away. Had my friend (who, by the way, just wanted to drop a line, and did so rather fondly) not grasped the eventual point of the post, which was to question that we aren’t a bit kinder with one another about each others’ inevitable gaps in cultural consumption? Had my writing been unclear? It seems to me that there is simply more cultural output to be absorbed, and more high-quality cultural output to be absorbed, than there are conscious minutes in the day. And since we’ve all been on the uncomfortable end of the Wait—You Actually Haven’t Seen That? phenomenon it seemed to me there was some Golden Rule potential here. How could someone as thoughtful as this particular friend read the post and still lead with a subject line that was such a paradigmatic example of such needless shaming?

I got my answer the next day.