Seattle, Washington Anniversaries

Three years ago today, I uploaded this video to YouTube.

One year ago, I posted this one.

I watched it recently for the first time in a while. I'd been loafing around the house and feeling like a shut-in. It put me in a good mood, as it always does, and reminded me of some good times. That was actually the intended purpose when I started all this -- something I could look back on to remind me of the places I'd been.

And that it is.

This being an odd-numbered year, I've got nothing to show you today.

I did put out a book recently, though. If you read this blog, you might've heard me mention it once or twice.

Here's a sample chapter for download.

I'm working on putting up a little store on this site with a sales page. I'm going to include a custom inscription for anyone who orders from me. I won't be able to match Amazon's price, so I figure it's the least I can do.

It's not on Kindle, in case you were wondering. The book has several hundred photos inside, which makes that a tricky proposition, but not something I'd altogether rule out.

I got a call from my publisher on Thursday. They said it's not selling great on the tables at Barnes & Noble and Borders. The stores will return copies if things don't turn around.

Apparently the world is not clamoring for my life story.

I'm more or less unphased by that. I put out a book I'm proud of, minus a few details here and there. No one has told me to my face that it's bad -- or emailed it to my face for that matter. Everyone who's read it seems mildly amused, which was all I was aiming for. I'd like for it to be successful, and I'll do what I can to move copies, but the feeling of contentment remains either way.

There was a CNN interview brewing, but that went out the window when the Iranian people got all cranky about their totally legitimate and not-at-all-rigged election. For some reason CNN feels the need to provide round-the-clock coverage, which leaves me no time to promote my book. Some folks just have their priorities all out of whack. What can you do?

Plus, ya know, the publishing industry isn't exactly going through a renaissance. Might as well say it. In switching from the newest medium to one of the oldest, a certain moribund quality seeps in.

Maybe I should've just blogged the book, or broken it into 2000 separate tweets to stay hip with what the young people are into. I just really wanted to write a book...or rather, to have written one.

And I did.

If you feel like buying it, that would make my publisher very happy. They would feel less regret over signing a YouTube star to a book deal, and that, by extension, would make me happy.

Ketchikan, Alaska Set a Course for Adventure...Then Head to the Buffet

I got an email today with this image attached.

 

That's the 2008 video playing on the laptop. Have a look at the guy watching the screen in the bottom left corner.

...take your time. I can wait.

The photo was taken by a reporter on the campaign trail during the election last year. She said the press corps are fans of the video and one day on the plane they insisted he watch it.

He.

The email came during a phantom burst of cell phone reception while out at sea. I managed to forward it to Melissa before the signal died. She was home alone at the time. She felt similarly compelled to pass it on, so she showed it to Sydney, our dog, who was wholly unimpressed.

What's almost as cool as him watching the video is that I have proof he watched it. If someone just told me this happened, I'd have a hard time believing it.

Melissa says the reporter who sent the photo is from Fox News. I was invited on various Fox News shows about half a dozen times when the last video came out. Each time, I replied that I'd be happy to come on their network as soon as they stop trying to turn us into a nation of frightened monkeys. I feel a little bit bad about that now.

A little bit.

I'm finishing up a week long cruise of the southern Alaska coast aboard the Norwegian Pearl with my dad, my sister, and my one-year-old niece, Jillian. I've never had much of an itch to go on cruises, but seeing as my current means of income provides about 40 weeks of vacation each year, I try not to pass on any major family outings. Also, I was baby back-up.

I've now been on a bona fide "Cruise," and my take on it is pretty much what you'd expect. I think it's great that cruising allows some people to go to places they would never otherwise go...I also think it's unfortunate that our society turns out people who find this a satisfying way to visit a place.

Cruise ships process experiences into freeze-dried goods. They shave off the gnarly bits and reheat what's left for bulk consumption. To put it another way, if the 2500 passengers who deboard for the shore excursions were replaced with, say, over-sized bean bag chairs, the procedure would remain largely unchanged. They have, in effect, turned travel into entertainment.

Incidentally, yes, many of the passengers actually do resemble over-sized bean bag chairs.

That's the condensed version of my mean-spirited rant. By halfway through the trip, my sister was done listening. She had a much rosier outlook on the whole enterprise, and a fair point that my long hours spent playing Half-Life 2 in my cabin didn't really qualify me to call anyone complacent.

It is what it is, I suppose. Comparing cruise ship travel to the sort of thing I get a kick out of isn't entirely fair.

Apples and oranges.

In any case, the ship itself is a spectacular monstrosity. I will now undertake a brief survey.

Length: 965 feet

Weight: 93,000 tons

Cruising Speed: 24 knots

Fuel Consumption: 11 tons per hour (that's 6 pounds every second)

The sun deck

Fitness center

Stardust theater

Bowling alley

Two-story Wii Sports jumbo screen

Soccer/basketball/tennis court

Rock-climbing wall

So, ya know, just the basics. Nothing you wouldn't expect to have access to while floating through the Arctic Sea.

To me, the most fascinating thing about the ship is actually the crew of somewhere near a thousand men and women. They are truly an international assortment. Near the bridge, a wall chart shows all the officers on board. The captain hails from Sweden. His first officer is Croatian. The second officers are Filipino. The navigator is Indian. The head cook is Jamaican. And so on and so on. In all, I'd be surprised if less than fifty nationalities are represented.

I get the sense that's nothing new in the nautical world. The practice of assembling a crew from around the globe goes back centuries and requires no diversity initiative. Ships move all over the place and they pick people up as they go. If someone can do the job and they'll accept the pay, not much else really matters. The lifestyle kind of demands egalitarian hiring.

During our stop in Juneau, my dad and I took off on an optional shore excursion that, honestly, made the entire week worthwhile. We took a bus out to a helipad with about twenty other passengers. They split us into smaller groups and put us on five separate helicopters, all of which took off simultaneously (which was awesome).

Flying in a line formation at low altitude, we whizzed through the Alaskan wilderness until we came upon a particularly massive glacier.

We rose up along its face, getting a close view into its deep crevasses.

We came up over the top and into a vast ice field nestled between the mountains.

A distant speck at the base of one mountain grew larger as we began to descend.

In seconds, we were on the ground and surrounded by over two hundred Alaskan huskies.

The dogs go nuts when the helicopters land, cause it means they get to go running, which is clearly their favorite thing in the universe.

A quick orientation and we were on our sleds. My dad took the seated position while I stood on the rear frame.

Our driver was named Cam, a college student from Colorado who came up three weeks ago for a summer job. She was new to the whole sled dog thing, but seemed pretty competent. She rode on a separate sled in front of ours that we were tied onto.

We had a false start when our leader tried to eat the dog behind him. It ended quickly in a ball of tangled rope and dog. We were given a new leader, a sturdy and mature six-year-old named Hagler.

And off we went on a two mile loop of the camp site.

It only lasted ten minutes, which was plenty for us. My dad and I spent most of that time grilling Cam on details of the operation, collecting factoids and statistics, as is our shared habit. Conversation was surprisingly easy between the sleds, since dog sledding is a whole lot quieter than you might imagine.

When we returned to camp, we were introduced to each of the dogs.

Most of them were pretty skittish. The friendliest was named Soy.

Dog teams are often named in themed groups. Soy's group was evidently named after condiments.

We watched a glacier calving in Glacier Bay and took a float plane ride here in Ketchikan. Those were the highlights. Aside from that the trip was mostly about eating large quantities of mediocre food.

We stop on Vancouver Island tomorrow, which I hear is lovely, and then I have six hours in Seattle before departing on a second, entirely unrelated expedition.

Palm Springs, California We Now Resume Our Regular Programming

Apologies to those who could not access my site over the last week. It's stored on a server that crashes every once in a while and evidently there's no one at the controls over at my site host, so the site stays down until someone reads my service requests and restarts the machine. I'm getting ready to migrate over to a more reliable hosting service.

I've been at the TED conference all week. I was invited to give a talk. Well, mostly they wanted me to dance, but they were nice enough to let me talk for a few minutes first.

Once the conference got started, it finally fully dawned on me how big an honor it is to stand in front of that audience. Seeing Bill Gates and Al Gore in the Long Beach audience (I was at the smaller satellite event in Palm Springs) worked me into such a nervous frenzy that I marched back to my room and, for the first time, actually memorized what I wanted to say.

It was not a disaster. A video of the talk should go up in a month or two. I'll post it when it does.

Still clawing my way through the first draft. Writing books is hard!

Got an iPhone and it changed my life.

I've never been an Apple person. I find both Macs and PCs maddening for different reasons, but the PC's quirks are more familiar. I haven't yet made the switch, though I may do so eventually. Anyway, it's definitely not the inherent Apple-ness of the iPhone that appeals to me. What gets me is the infinite possibilities that are created when you combine a touch screen, GPS, an accelerometer, 3G, wi-fi, bluetooth, a camera, a speaker, and a microphone. The App Store is a wonderland of crazy/brilliant utilizations of these features.

I looked at the G1, which has all those bells and whistles plus a real keyboard. Android phones may yet pose a threat to the iPhone, but the first attempt is too clunky.

I just learned the 2008 video has been playing in Times Square since the beginning of the month.

It plays every hour in its entirety. Some folks who run one of the screens asked if they could put it up and I said sure. I hope I can catch it in person before it stops.

Seattle, Washington Not to Dwell, But...

One of the nicest parts about attending EG last month was meeting David Pogue, the technology columnist for the New York Times. He's smart, he's funny, he's nice, and he's connected.

David hosted a talk show style presentation at MacWorld this week. He invited me to come on his "show" and talk about whatever, and it just so happened I had a big whatever that I was aching to get off my chest.

Skip to around the 4 minute mark if you already know the basics of who I am and what I do.

Thanks, David, for giving me a forum to straighten things out. And thanks to the MacWorld folks for letting me put this video up.

San Francisco, California Here's a Little Clue for You All, The Walrus is Animatronic

I've gone and made a mess for myself and now I have to clean it up.

Before I get started, let me state it front and center for those who don't want to read a lot: the dancing video is not a hoax. It was not made with a green screen. It was not "photoshopped." I really did travel to all those places.

Now, moving on...

About a month ago I went to a conference in Monterey called EG; short for Entertainment Gathering.

It's sort of a spin-off of TED, founded by the same guy, Richard Wurman, and organized by Michael Hawley. It shares a similar format and venue, and brings things back to how TED initially started, which is an intimate gathering of nerds with diverse backgrounds.

I was invited to talk for a few minutes, and then bring everyone up on stage to dance with me. Here is what I did.

I haven't spotted him myself, but I'm told if you look closely you can see Steve Wozniak dancing up there at the end, as well as several other luminary eggheads.

The idea for this talk came a couple weeks prior, when a video called Bike Hero came out. It showed a kid riding his bicycle on a street with Guitar Hero note tracking etched in chalk onto the ground.

The chalk marks are in perfect time with the music, and at first glance it appeared that some enterprising youngster had put a tremendous amount of time and effort into creating something genuinely clever and cool.

The next day the internet was abuzz with word that it was a hoax, created by some viral marketing ad agency. Turns out it was done the cheesy way, with a whole lot of CG. I found that incredibly depressing, and of course got to thinking: What if MY video turned out to be an elaborate hoax? And if it was, to what extent would that devalue the end result?

I asked my friend, Elan, for his opinion, as he's somewhat of an expert on pulling off stunts. His sage advice was to make it totally absurd or else people would wind up believing it. And so I made up a story involving an airplane in a swimming pool and an army of animatronic puppets.

Turns out I didn't make it absurd enough.

The video was posted online on January 2nd. Within hours a post appeared on Digg with this title.

Confession: Where the Hell is Matt? An Elaborate Hoax

MetaFilter ran this one.

Matt Harding Comes Clean

I'm pretty sure the people who posted both those links had watched the lecture and were aware it was a prank. They crafted attention-grabbing headlines that avoided spoiling the joke, so that others could go through the same process of irritation followed by relief. Unfortunately, a whole lot of people simply read the headline, took it as fact, and ran with it.

Within days, the story had filtered through a series of increasingly credible sources into a legitimate news article (which has since been removed) that appears on wire services and makes no mention of the blatant ridiculiciousness of the claims.

I did not foresee this. I am surprised, ever-so-slightly annoyed, but mostly amused.

Had I given it any thought, I would've assumed that any journalist who failed to get the joke would've done a little research. Maybe they would've checked to see if "Buzz!Brain" is a real company. Maybe they would've IMDb'd my claim of being a corpse actor on CSI. Maybe they would've glanced at the six years' worth of detailed travelogues on my site. But all that aside...seriously, did the "army of animatronic puppets" not set off any credibility alarms?

If my delivery seems a little stilted and unrehearsed, it's because I scribbled the whole thing on notecards the night before and I was terrified out of my mind. I got up in front of an audience of people I admire a great deal and spouted complete nonsense at them.

In the minutes before I went onstage, Melissa saw me sweating profusely and shaking in my seat. To help me through my panic, she asked "What can you do if this isn't working? What's your escape hatch?"

It did not help with the sweating and the shaking.

And by the way, if I was really an actor, wouldn't I have bothered to memorize my lines?

At the end of the talk, I show a final budget for the make-believe version of the video. Unfortunately, I used a small font on the pie chart and you can't read the budget items without switching to high quality mode on YouTube. The budget was intended to seal things up for anyone who still wasn't sure it was a joke. My favorite was the "Robot Uprising Insurance." That got lost in compression.

I get the feeling this is going to follow me around for a while. I'm going to be hearing a lot of, "Wasn't your video a hoax? Someone told me it was a hoax."

Now I have my own little "Paul is Dead," and the kicker is it's my fault. But it's a bit of intrigue and it's all good fun.

When things went pear-shaped today with the news article, I asked Elan for advice again. He told me to set the record straight on my site to give folks in the talkbacks something they can link to.

So here it is, stated definitively once more for the people in the back row:

The dancing video is not a hoax. The EG lecture announcing a hoax is itself a hoax. I did not make the video by dancing in front of a green screen. I did travel to all those places. No swimming pools were used to simulate weightlessness. No one (that I'm aware of) built an army of animatronic robots in order to fake a viral video. And Walt Disney never (to my knowledge) said that thing about puppets knowing how to keep their damn mouths shut. I don't think he'd really talk that way.

San Francisco, California Praan Unplugged

I had the weirdest dream last night. I was at MC Hammer's party with Tay Zonday and Dax Flame. We left and wandered the streets of San Francisco in the middle of the night; this big wad of internet pseudo-celebrity. Tay got annoyed at me cause I kept asking him to say "This is CNN," and Dax just seemed perpetually uncomfortable.

I parted ways with Tay and Dax to meet up with Free Hugs guy. We went to get a drink, but neither of us wanted to drink so we just kept on wandering through the city. We discovered our lives have basically mirrored one another's for the last several years. It turns out he is also a cranky misanthrope who would rather be playing Xbox than spreading peace and love and joy to millions.

I have said some not-nice things about Free Hugs guy in this journal. I may even, in a moment of heightened crankiness, have suggested that Free Hugs guy ought to get kicked in the balls. I hope he would find that more amusing than offensive.

I no longer think Juan should get kicked in the balls. Maybe some of the more zealous disciples of his movement, but not Juan. I really like Juan.

Okay, so it wasn't a dream. It was an event called YouTube Live, which the YouTube folks were nice enough to bring me down for. It was an attempt to recreate some of the most popular YouTube videos as live performances. Now of course this sounds like an unbelievably terrible idea. But for reasons I still can't quite grasp, it wasn't.

It wound up feeling somewhat like an old-timey variety show. There was song and dance for the most part, but also comedy, a Parkour demonstration, some egregious hugging, and projectile paint courtesy of the Mythbusters.

Ultimately though, this was the only essential performance of the evening.

Bo sat directly in front of me, which meant I had the opportunity to congratulate him on a brilliant song and also inspect him up close for any sign that he was lying about being 18 freaking years old.

I watched him standing mournfully outside the afterparties, so I'm pretty sure he's less than 21.

At one point the YouTube folks asked me to perform on stage with Palbasha. That plan dissolved. It would've been nice to get her up there, but what I do isn't all that conducive to the occasion. As I often say, my schtick is fun for about 10 seconds, then it starts getting weird. Personally, I was much happier spectating in obscurity.

Anyway, the experience planted the seed in my head that it'd be cool to hear Palbasha perform Praan outside of a recording studio. Then I saw this video...

...and realized Garry needs to get in on the act and create a piano arrangement to accompany her. Until now I thought that would just be a reduced version of what already exists, but I'm coming around to the idea that an acoustic version might have merit as its own entity.

Garry seems up for it. I haven't even spoken to Palbasha, but I'd love to see it come together at some point.

Back in October I was prancing around Asia and being coy about what I was up to. It's out now, so I'm free to talk about it. I did a TV ad for Visa in the Asia-Pacific territory.

I've only gotten emails about it from Australia and Hong Kong, so as far as I know, those are the only places it's airing right now. They may expand it at some point to a few other nearby regions.

This project was a departure from how I usually work. There was a crew with camera people and lighting people. They picked the locations and set up the shots. There was even a guy who stood in my spot until they were ready for me. They took care of the music and editing and all that. It mostly just felt like a very very nice vacation for both Melissa and me.

If I were to ever pick up and start working on another video, the production wouldn't be anything like that. It'd still pretty much be me and a backpack stuffed with gear. But I was happy to try things a different way and learn what I could from some very talented, experienced, professionals.

The response to my introspective book rant has awakened me to the fact that there are thoughtful, articulate people reading this and I'd probably be wise to utilize them somehow in my process. I'm thinking of how I can do that in a productive way that doesn't expose my anxieties and insecurities.

I guess one way you folks can help me is to comment on which specific stories and places from my existing journal are of interest to you, and which ones are not-so-interesting. What I'm doing right now is going through old entries and trying to extract the funny and engaging from the tedious and self-involved.

Any input will be read and appreciated.

Orcas Island, Washington Because Calling It "Procrastination Bay" Would Be Too on the Nose

So last Tuesday went pretty much according to plan. It seemed once the outcome was clear, many on the other side were still able to appreciate the magnitude of what happened; allegiances swayed overwhelmingly, if momentarily, in celebration -- sort of like the ending to Rocky IV.

I've been discussing the historicalocity of Obama's victory with those around me whose memories stretch a bit farther back. It's hard to name a recent event on this scale that wasn't somehow disastrous. I have to go back to the fall of the Berlin Wall to find something truly world-changing that didn't involve a massive body count.

I asked my dad if election night felt anything like the moon landing, thinking surely it would pale in comparison. He said no one cried when man first set foot on the moon. It was an awesome accomplishment; inspiring, courageous, but not as emotional -- at least not for him. That surprised me.

Another surprise: in an effort to capture the mood of that night, The Daily Show chose a familiar reference.

I got a text message from a friend a few minutes after it aired on the east coast. It was the first I'd heard about them using footage and music from the dancing video.

I've been asked many times if they contacted me in advance for permission. My answer: "you'd think so, wouldn't you?"

But there are no hard feelings. Good God, no. I've had a lot of amazing things happen to me in my life. Seeing myself appear out of the blue on my favorite TV show is near the top.

I'm on Orcas Island right now working on the book.

I got a single-room cabin to ween myself of distractions and finally get cracking on it.

It's not going well.

Writing this journal has always been hard for me. I manage to cover, at best, about half the stuff that goes on with me. The rest goes undocumented as a combined result of laziness and intimidation at the prospect of stringing together suitable words. I'm finding both of these obstacles amplified by the advent of print.

I'm a highly self-critical writer, and like a lot of writers, I find the activity itself to be an unpleasant step on the way to the reward of having written. Lately I seem to have passed a theshold that's taken me from self-criticism to self-loathing. Feelings of inadequacy lead to feelings of futility, which lead toward inaction, which fuels the very same feelings of inadequacy.

Objectively, I recognize this as a depression spiral.

And I'd like to think it's just a part of the process; a necessary step on the way to getting this goddam book done -- or at least started. Hopefully, once I hate myself enough, I'll bully myself into writing something no matter how bad it is.

And that's how sausage is made.

Orcas Island is the largest in the San Juans. It sits in the belly of Puget Sound, about a dozen miles from the Canadian border.

I flew here on a small, local airline that operates out of Boeing airfield. I was going to fly out on a float plane, but the weight restrictions were too low to bring my bike, so I switched to a Cessna Caravan. The flight itself was stunning, with sweeping views passing over the city and surrounding region. Melissa got me an introductory flying lesson for my birthday, so that stuff is all suddenly even more fascinating than usual.

We landed at sunset on the north end of the island and my cabin is near the southern tip, about seven miles away. There are no grocery stores near the cabin, so in addition to 35 pounds of luggage, I had to carry food for five days on my back, which added another 15 or so pounds. I crammed everything into my giant Osprey bag, put the GPS in my jacket pocket, and set sail.

Here's a thing I learned: going up hills is a lot harder with 50 pounds on my back. I ended up having to get off my bike and walk at the slightest hint of incline, so the long trek became less like cycling and more like cross-country skiing. Slog up a hill, roll down. Slog up a hill. Roll down.

My cabin is in the not-at-all disturbingly-named region of Massacre Bay. I'm sure it's not called that because of some guy who breaks into secluded cabins at night and hacks tourists into pieces. It's probably just some terrible thing that happened to an indigenous tribe centuries ago.

Water under the bridge.

I've learned to enjoy my wood-burning furnace. My earliest attempts didn't pan out and the rain has made the kindling a bit less accommodating, but I've sorted it now. While I do have automatic heating at the twist of a dial, I prefer the kind that you have to cultivate and maintain. A fireplace is a satisfying blend of creation and destruction.

...so the book is basically a collection of anecdotes about making the videos. Each chapter starts with a big still image of a particular clip and then goes into a story either directly or peripherally related to shooting it. Between all the different dancing videos, I've put out about 150 different clips. I'm hovering around 80 right now that I have something worthwhile to say about, and expecting to hone that down to around 50. I'm pulling what I can from the journal and tightening it up, but a lot of material will have to be written fresh.

One issue I'm struggling with is whether to cap each section at about 500 words; a nice two-page spread with some accompanying photos, or to let things flow more like the journal and allow some stories to stretch on for a dozen pages or more. I want the book to be light and accessible -- something you'd pick up in Urban Outfitters and flip through casually without really thinking about a beginning or an end. That inclines me toward a short, rigid format. But the temptation to prattle persists.

My site is down right now. If you're reading this, it probably means I got it working again. I've been writing to my host every day and they're saying it's not their fault. Still diagnosing.

Seattle, Washington Who the Hell Do You Think I'm Voting For?

I got locked out of a parking garage after hours the other day. Melissa and I had to go down the block to find a cashier at a neighboring garage who could give us the key to get out. The guy was reading Dreams from My Father. He spoke in accented English. If I had to guess, given Seattle's ethnic makeup, I'd say he was from Ethiopia.

I commented on the book. He said nothing, but he got a big smile on his face.

At the risk of sounding puerile, I keep thinking about what this time we're in must mean to a guy in his situation. A great promise is on the verge of deliverance -- one that few expected to see in their lifetime.

After so many years of lowered expectations and reinforced cynicism, it's a humbling reminder of what's possible.

And after so many months of reducing the significance of this candidacy and this candidate, here we are.

Step back. Take it in.

As for what it means to me: I believe it forwards the central narrative of this country as much as anything in my lifetime. It brings our best and worst qualities to the surface, forcing us to examine. It speaks to the very first words ever written to define us and what separates us from all that came before. It takes a half-truth; that we believe ourselves equal to one another, and renders it, at the very least, three-quarters true.

I'm nervous about what'll happen tomorrow, but very hopeful. As a traveler, I'm looking forward to identifying my nationality without feeling like I should apologize for it. As a citizen, I'm looking forward to a renewal -- even a fleeting one -- of this bruised and battered system.

Tokyo, Japan Kenny G on a Plane

Kenny G is a really nice guy. I mean like ridiculously nice. He makes wilted flowers bloom with his aura.

Melissa and I sat behind him yesterday on our flight from LA to Tokyo. Nick, our traveling companion, chatted him up without having any idea who he was. Nick somehow managed to slip in that I am "famous."

"You're famous?" asked Kenny G.
"Wait a minute. Aren't you Kenny G?" I asked Kenny G.
"Yeah. Who are you?"
I told him who I am.
"You're kidding. You're that guy!?"

I've had the good fortune to fly first class once or twice. I've never been able to do it with someone. Kenny G helped Melissa and me get seats next to each other.

He also helped the flight attendant pass out drinks, and later bathed the cabin in smooth adult contemporary jazz.

Hancock and Baby Mama were both way better than I thought they'd be.

They gave us free earplugs in our little kit things, so guess what happened there.

I went to Minneapolis last month for a speaking engagement. It was a gathering of animal feed salespeople from around the world. I talked for a few minutes then invited everyone up to dance on stage. That seems to go over well. Speaking has become an unanticipated side occupation that I very much enjoy. I'm not very good at it, but I'm learning a lot.

Flew out to New York for a Google event. They gave me a Garmin GPS device, which I cherish and hold close to my bosom. Also met with my publisher. Still shooting for May with the book.

From New York I flew straight to LA. Had dinner with my friend Courtney, who's working on that Christian Slater show that premieres in a couple days. After that I picked Melissa up at the airport. It was getting close to midnight, but she's seen very little of LA, so I got us a convertible and took her on a wee-hours driving tour.

We drove from LAX to Santa Monica, up the PCH to Malibu, then inland through the valley and down to Mulholland. We came out on Sunset, drove through Bel Air and Beverly Hills, then along Hollywood Boulevard, down to Melrose, West Hollywood, Rodeo Drive to Wilshire, through Westwood, onto the 405 and back to the hotel.

The drive would've taken 8 hours during the day. It took us about 2.

Morning flight to Tokyo and here we are. They gave us robes in our hotel room. Guess what happened there.

I'm looking forward to a break from this damn election. I'll be home for the last few days of it, then I can vote and be done with it.

Some fun facts about Kenny G, courtesy of Wikipedia:

- Kenny G has sold over 48 million albums.
- Kenny G is a founding investor in Starbucks.
- Kenny G holds the Guinness record for longest note ever recorded on a saxophone. He played an E-flat for 45 minutes and 12 seconds.

Someone created an annotated version of the 2008 video highlighting details that often go unnoticed. Some of them I've never even noticed. It's pretty funny.

Seattle, Washington Tyra and Tesla

The 2008 video passed the 10 million mark on YouTube today.

It took 83 days to get there. The 2006 video took a little over 2 years to hit that number.

Seems as good a reason as any to post.

It's been over a month since I've done a real update. So, let's see. Where did I leave off?...

Flew back from Michigan and had less than 10 hours in Seattle to sleep and say hi to my girlfriend before I had to fly down to LA for the Jiminy Kimmel show.

I called Melissa from the green room before going on, but the reception was terrible, so I wandered out into the alley off Hollywood Boulevard.

As we talked, I noticed three men with enormous cameras taking pictures about fifty yards away.

"Who are those guys taking pictures of?...Oh. They're taking pictures of me. Why are they taking pictures of me?...Holy crap. They're paparazzi. Why are paparazzi taking pictures of me? Oh, right. They think I might be famous...They're still thinking I might be famous. Wait. One of them is dropping his camera. He realized I'm not famous...Hold on! He's taking pictures again. I might still turn out to be famous. No. No. He's changed his mind. I'm definitely not famous at all."

Melissa was enthralled.

By the way, I had no idea about the falling off the rock thing. It really did shake me up a bit. It was, after all, like witnessing one's own death.

Speaking of witnessing one's own death, the following week I was invited out to New York to go on The Tyra Banks Show.

There was, I assure you, a probing, meticulously researched, and ultimately revelatory interview, but all I can scrounge off the internet is this tense, awkward bit at the end.

I like the part where she commands her audience to dance by saying, "Do it, audience!" She actually refers to her audience as "audience."

I can't say I spent any time with her that wasn't in front of a camera, and even that was very brief, but I did come away with some personal impressions. The crux of the show seems to be that every fathomable subject is somehow actually all about Tyra. My episode was ostensibly on popular YouTube videos, but it was really about Tyra's favorite videos, with occasional digressions into the inexplicable popularity of videos Tyra doesn't like.

I found it telling when she mentioned she's allergic to cats, then appeared confounded that people enjoy watching cat videos on YouTube, as if the two things were related. It seemed she was saying: "Don't you people understand? I'm allergic to cats!"

I'm not sure the term self-involved even covers it. It's not narcissism. It's solipsism.

Also, when did it become okay to ask someone how much money they make?

...but lest I should sound like I'm talking trash, I recognize that while boorishness and vanity are off-putting traits in person, they're also enormously advantageous on television -- especially when you've got a show named after you. I can't imagine she's encouraged to behave in a thoughtful or modest fashion.

And I suppose I should acknowledge that I have a web site named after myself and it's basically about how every place in the world somehow ties back to me. So maybe I'm just projecting.

One cool bit from the show: they had the couple that made the Wii Fit video on. I seem to be unable to embed it here because of its "objectionable" content. Basically, a guy recorded his girlfriend playing the hula hoop game on Wii Fit. It was a lazy Sunday morning, she was in her panties, and she is truly a gifted hula hooper.

By way of comeupance, they had the boyfriend play the hula hoop game onstage while the girlfriend filmed. Then Tyra commanded him to do it again in his underpants. And since it's television and the rules are you have to do whatever Tyra says, he did.

I was backstage and I can confirm he had no idea that was going to happen. But the girlfriend did. It was good TV.

The Tyra folks put me up in the New Yorker Hotel, which appears dumpy today, but in its time it was an art deco landmark and a destination of choice for noteworthy figures. Few were more noteworthy than Nikola Tesla, who spent the last 10 years of his life in the hotel.

The inventor of both electricity and wireless technology stayed in 3327, in keeping with his habit of occupying rooms that are divisible by 3. There he lived, forgotten and unappreciated, dreaming of time travel, teleportation, spacecrafts, death rays, and doing a whole lot of bitching about Einstein.

I poked around before leaving for the show.

Tesla died in this room in 1943.

There's a default Kubrickian creepiness to any long hallway with a door at the end. The spooky factor increases dramatically when you hear whispers coming from the other side. I squealed and scurried back to the elevator like a frightened little girl.

The next week I followed Melissa down to Mountain View for her business trip to Google. While there, I followed up on an invite to give a "Tech Talk" on campus.

There's an excrutiatingly unabridged version on YouTube, but I'm going to try to edit it down and put it up separately without any of my pointless tangents.

At the end of that same week, I came back home and gave a 5 minute Ignite talk at the Gnomedex conference.

As intense and stressful as it was, the Ignite format is a brilliant way to rein in speakers who have a hard time getting to the point. With five minutes, you really don't have time for anything that isn't the point.

That was a few weeks ago now and I haven't had any more trips away from Seattle since. This is the longest I've stayed put all year. It's bliss.

Oh, also, I got a book deal. I'm told it's due out in May.