Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) on Los Angeles (via caughtupinsanity)
I quoted this to you last week… and then I actually moved to Los Angeles. Ha.
Umm… I want someone to make me a nest.
My best bud Andy moved up to Vermont for 6 weeks to work on one of these installation pieces. They’re pretty awesome. Brown also has one, which I walked through last fall when I was tooling around in Providence.
Conan O'Brien's Commencement Speech (2000)
This made me feel a lot better, reminding me that some of the most successful people were once taking odd jobs and wondering what’s next. Here’s an excerpt:
After graduating in May, I moved to Los Angeles and got a three week contract at a small cable show. I got a $380 a month apartment and bought a 1977 Isuzu Opel, a car Isuzu only manufactured for a year because they found out that, technically, it’s not a car. Here’s a quick tip, graduates: no four cylinder vehicle should have a racing stripe. I worked at that show for over a year, feeling pretty good about myself, when one day they told me they were letting me go. I was fired and, I hadn’t saved a lot of money. I tried to get another job in television but I couldn’t find one.
So, with nowhere else to turn, I went to a temp agency and filled out a questionnaire. I made damn sure they knew I had been to Harvard and that I expected the very best treatment. And so, the next day, I was sent to the Santa Monica branch of Wilson’s House of Suede and Leather. When you have a Harvard degree and you’re working at Wilson’s House of Suede and Leather, you are haunted by the ghostly images of your classmates who chose Graduate School. You see their faces everywhere: in coffee cups, in fish tanks, and they’re always laughing at you as you stack suede shirts no man, in good conscience, would ever wear. I tried a lot of things during this period: acting in corporate infomercials, serving drinks in a non-equity theatre, I even took a job entertaining at a seven year olds’ birthday party. In desperate need of work, I put together some sketches and scored a job at the fledgling Fox Network as a writer and performer for a new show called “The Wilton North Report.” I was finally on a network and really excited. The producer told me the show was going to revolutionize television. And, in a way, it did. The show was so hated and did so badly that when, four weeks later, news of its cancellation was announced to the Fox affiliates, they burst into applause.
This just reminded me of a fantastical accent Rob does… he switches into “Dolphy, the gay Hitler” and grooms his invisible mustache. Unfortunately, Rob won’t perform on demand… I’m always begging him to do Dolphy, or the nsync “Bye Bye Bye” dance (he came up with this shit all on his own), but he refuses to act gay in front of our friends. Rob, your secret is out now. Will you be Dolphy again? Please please please?
After the Civil War, controversial Ohio politician Clement Vallandigham became a highly successful lawyer who rarely lost a case. In 1871, he defended Thomas McGehan who was accused of shooting one Tom Myers during a barroom brawl. Vallandigham’s defense was that Myers had accidentally shot himself while drawing his pistol from a kneeling position. To convince the jury, Vallandigham decided to demonstrate his theory. Unfortunately, he grabbed a loaded gun by mistake and ended up shooting himself! By dying, Vallandigham succeeded in demonstrating the plausibility of the accidental shooting and got his client acquitted.
From the pig roast yesterday… yacht club members were also asked to drive their antique cars to the dinner.






