According to an interpretation of a clip of a remastered version of "You're So Vain," Carly Simon named David Geffen as the target of the song.
When the song is played backwards, at least as heard in the clip, a voice whispers "David."
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February 26, 2010
February 25, 2010
JFK
My name is Mike Farrell. I'm an actor.
Many years ago, I was lucky enough to realize an ambition to portray John F. Kennedy, the first US President I was old enough to vote for. Made for PBS, the project was "JFK, A One-Man Show," produced by David Susskind, written by David and Sidney Carroll and directed by Frank Perry.
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Many years ago, I was lucky enough to realize an ambition to portray John F. Kennedy, the first US President I was old enough to vote for. Made for PBS, the project was "JFK, A One-Man Show," produced by David Susskind, written by David and Sidney Carroll and directed by Frank Perry.
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February 23, 2010
February 18, 2010
SONA at Seven is Superb
Last night Angelina and Brad were dining with Penelope and Javiar at Sona. No, I was not there, but I do read the gossip columns every day. I have been there three times in the past six weeks to look anew at this startling good restaurant. It hardly seems possible that seven years have passed since David Myers opened his extraordinary fine-dining restaurant, SONA (401 N. La Cienega Blvd., 310-659-7708, south of Melrose at Westmount).
Some months ago there was a management change in the parent company and rumors surfaced that the restaurant was closing, but fortunately it was untrue and all remains as before... in fact, even better! David is one of the original subjects of my "Follow the Chef" memo, where you find a truly talented young chef, follow their career and support him or her in their endeavors. I first encountered the 35-year old wunderkind when he was Executive Sous Chef at Patina, knowing that he had been forged in the crucible of Charlie Trotter and Daniel Boulud. My initial reviews of David's food were at the Jaan Restaurant at the Raffles L'Ermitage Hotel on Burton Way, and in late 2001 I wrote that my meal there was "as good as it ever gets."
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Some months ago there was a management change in the parent company and rumors surfaced that the restaurant was closing, but fortunately it was untrue and all remains as before... in fact, even better! David is one of the original subjects of my "Follow the Chef" memo, where you find a truly talented young chef, follow their career and support him or her in their endeavors. I first encountered the 35-year old wunderkind when he was Executive Sous Chef at Patina, knowing that he had been forged in the crucible of Charlie Trotter and Daniel Boulud. My initial reviews of David's food were at the Jaan Restaurant at the Raffles L'Ermitage Hotel on Burton Way, and in late 2001 I wrote that my meal there was "as good as it ever gets."
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February 1, 2010
Cable’s Lost Generation
They called it the "Battle Royale" of media and entertainment. This year's CES pitted Internet video upstarts like Hulu, Roku, and Boxee in a cage match against industry stalwarts such as Comcast and Time Warner. At stake: the hearts and minds of millions.
It was spun as a victor-versus-vanquished battle. It was either going to be Internet video's David hoisting aloft the head of the Goliath that is cable TV, or cable mowing down Hulu and the others like so much other Internet roadkill.
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It was spun as a victor-versus-vanquished battle. It was either going to be Internet video's David hoisting aloft the head of the Goliath that is cable TV, or cable mowing down Hulu and the others like so much other Internet roadkill.
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January 30, 2010
Reading Obits: Some Reflections
Since being diagnosed with prostate cancer a month ago, I find myself reading newspaper obituaries with greater interest. I'm paying particular attention to the lives of those who died in their prime. People, I guess, much like me.
Robert D. Joffe, a leading New York lawyer and partner at Cravath, Swain & Moore who played a critical role in Time Inc.'s $14 billion merger with Warner Communications, died in Manhattan on Thursday. He was 66. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his son, David.
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Robert D. Joffe, a leading New York lawyer and partner at Cravath, Swain & Moore who played a critical role in Time Inc.'s $14 billion merger with Warner Communications, died in Manhattan on Thursday. He was 66. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his son, David.
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January 27, 2010
Digital Book World: The Piracy, Social Media, And Will Publishers Ever Understand New Technology? Conference
The Founders
About seven months ago David Nussbaum and Sara Domville of F & W Media approached the publishing industry's top tech guru, Mike Shatzkin, about putting together a new kind of conference on digital change, one that would address immediate business challenges instead of long-term development issues. The result of that conversation, and much intervening effort, is the Digital Book World conference, a two-day affair that launched yesterday (January 26, 2010) at the Sheraton Hotel in midtown Manhattan to a packed audience representing the wide community of publishers and agents.
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About seven months ago David Nussbaum and Sara Domville of F & W Media approached the publishing industry's top tech guru, Mike Shatzkin, about putting together a new kind of conference on digital change, one that would address immediate business challenges instead of long-term development issues. The result of that conversation, and much intervening effort, is the Digital Book World conference, a two-day affair that launched yesterday (January 26, 2010) at the Sheraton Hotel in midtown Manhattan to a packed audience representing the wide community of publishers and agents.
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January 21, 2010
The Supreme Court’s Citizen United Decision Is Terrifying
If you're looking for a concise way of capturing today's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, how about: "We are all royally, hopelessly fucked for the rest of recorded time"? It's coarse, I know, but it really does the trick.
As you may have heard, in a 5-4 decision, the SCOTUS essentially went at the teeth of McCain-Feingold reform with hammer and tongs, leaving America in a "David After Dentist" state, wailing, "What's happening? Is this going to be forever?" Except that its not the anesthetic talking -- it's the very real, excruciating pain.
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As you may have heard, in a 5-4 decision, the SCOTUS essentially went at the teeth of McCain-Feingold reform with hammer and tongs, leaving America in a "David After Dentist" state, wailing, "What's happening? Is this going to be forever?" Except that its not the anesthetic talking -- it's the very real, excruciating pain.
More...
December 28, 2009
It’s Paying for an Interview – No Matter What You Call It
You would have to have a heart of stone not to tear up a little when you see David Goldman finally getting his 9-year-old son Sean back from Brazil. It is admirable that this man of limited means waged a five-year international war to retrieve his son from his wife's well-to-do and prominent Brazilian family. And what a relief to finish off 2009 knowing that justice has been done, at least in the case of one small family.
However, NBC's decision to pay for a chartered plane to fly David and Sean back to the United States smacks of bribery not justice. Particularly since NBC won the first-interview rights on this morning's Today show as a result of its incredibly "generous" gesture. It has been a solid rule of journalistic ethics that you don't pay for news interviews. The newly renamed Radio Television Digital News Association's Code of Ethical and Professional Conduct cautions: "Professional electronic journalists should not pay news sources who have a vested interest in a story."
Why is this rule important? First, because paid sources (like paid informants) often tailor their answers to fit what they think their benefactors want to hear, not necessarily the unvarnished truth. The notion is that if you pay someone, particularly someone who needs the money badly enough, they will say anything. And this doesn't consequently make for accurate and fair news stories.
Second, the theory is that sources choose to speak to reporters or interviewers for a variety of reasons -- they think they'll get a fair shake, they like this particular show, they've built up a trust relationship with a reporter, they think they'll get the most air time, someone got to them first... a million different reasons or any combination thereof -- but not who's offering them the fanciest hotel room, most expensive meals, or biggest expense allowance.
David Goldman's "exclusive" interview with Meredith Vieira this morning was not paid for... exactly. That is, cash didn't change hands directly for access. But NBC did charter a jet to take the newly reunited duo from Brazil to Florida, at a cost estimated by TVNewser to be between $50,000 and $70,000. NBC's response to the blog? "The Goldmans were invited on a jet NBC News chartered to fly home to the U.S." Also on the plane? NBC News correspondent Jeff Rossen. The network gets the first interview, exclusively, with footage and audio from the plane ride, and, maybe even most important, gets to keep the competition away. What happened to the level playing field?
It's hard to be perplexed as to why journalists have fallen as low as they have in the estimation of the American public when we engage in a bidding war emanating from the tragic kidnapping of a four-year-old. Even as the industry is falling apart, it would be nice to think we still adhere to the most basic of standards.
However, NBC's decision to pay for a chartered plane to fly David and Sean back to the United States smacks of bribery not justice. Particularly since NBC won the first-interview rights on this morning's Today show as a result of its incredibly "generous" gesture. It has been a solid rule of journalistic ethics that you don't pay for news interviews. The newly renamed Radio Television Digital News Association's Code of Ethical and Professional Conduct cautions: "Professional electronic journalists should not pay news sources who have a vested interest in a story."
Why is this rule important? First, because paid sources (like paid informants) often tailor their answers to fit what they think their benefactors want to hear, not necessarily the unvarnished truth. The notion is that if you pay someone, particularly someone who needs the money badly enough, they will say anything. And this doesn't consequently make for accurate and fair news stories.
Second, the theory is that sources choose to speak to reporters or interviewers for a variety of reasons -- they think they'll get a fair shake, they like this particular show, they've built up a trust relationship with a reporter, they think they'll get the most air time, someone got to them first... a million different reasons or any combination thereof -- but not who's offering them the fanciest hotel room, most expensive meals, or biggest expense allowance.
David Goldman's "exclusive" interview with Meredith Vieira this morning was not paid for... exactly. That is, cash didn't change hands directly for access. But NBC did charter a jet to take the newly reunited duo from Brazil to Florida, at a cost estimated by TVNewser to be between $50,000 and $70,000. NBC's response to the blog? "The Goldmans were invited on a jet NBC News chartered to fly home to the U.S." Also on the plane? NBC News correspondent Jeff Rossen. The network gets the first interview, exclusively, with footage and audio from the plane ride, and, maybe even most important, gets to keep the competition away. What happened to the level playing field?
It's hard to be perplexed as to why journalists have fallen as low as they have in the estimation of the American public when we engage in a bidding war emanating from the tragic kidnapping of a four-year-old. Even as the industry is falling apart, it would be nice to think we still adhere to the most basic of standards.
December 25, 2009
What’s Keeping Us From The Cushion?
I think it's fair to ask ourselves early on, why are we afraid of just sitting still? Why are we terrified of that? Or irritated by it? Actually it's for you to find out. But I would like to suggest the possibility that we are afraid of ourselves. We are quite literally afraid of ourselves.
In the teachings of Buddha, and particularly the Shambhala Buddhist teachings, one thing that's said is that you don't have to be afraid of yourself. You can be at ease with yourself and your mind. You don't actually have to fill it with all kinds of activities and plans and ambitions to feel wholesome and together, and you can develop a good sense of being present and enjoying the moment and appreciating your life.
But we're not used to that. We're really not used to that. We're used to projects and fulfilling them and succeeding and failing and commenting and etc. etc. etc. Our minds, as you will soon see, have become a run-on sentence -- a James Joyce novel with no punctuation in sight. We'd give our right arm for a semi-colon. A period would be such a relief, a paragraph -- a space between two thoughts.
The beginning point of this practice is what we call making friends with ourselves. That is obviously the ground for making friends with somebody else. You have to have some relationship with yourself to start with before you can communicate skillfully and compassionately with others. This approach is clearly presented in the example of Buddha.
There have been some wonderful moments in my studies when I got to spend time with some truly great lamas (teachers). They were so inspiring just by being who they were. My wife, Cyndi Lee, has this thing she says, "I'll have what she's having," or "I'll have what he's having" -- that's what good teachers should feel like. You should get a direct transmission straight from who that person is. So regarding these wonderful teachers, one of their best aspects is just that you are magnetized by their sense of being. It's royal in a way -- true royalty, not based on wealth and power -- just based on true nobility of spirit.
But once you've found such a teacher, even then they send you off to be with yourself most of the time. There's no Buddhist teacher worth his or her salt who's going to sit there and hold your hand. It just doesn't happen. You get a transmission from this person and they're saying "you can do it". That's one of the things my teacher, Trungpa Rinpoche, used to say repeatedly -- "you can do it!" He had this little squeaky high voice, "you can do it!". But even in the programs where he was present, maybe for eight hours a day or more, people were just doing meditation practice on their own.
So the whole notion of finding mama, who's gonna spiritually milkfeed you, and that somehow by feeding off that person's divinity and accomplishment you can skip the step of developing yourself, is possibly wishful thinking. We do have to go home and we have to pay the bills and we have to relate to our mind. Everything's reminding us of our minds -- it's so annoying. We're late for this thing or that thing, and it reminds us of our mind, and someone's irritating us and it reminds us of our mind, and we fall in love and it reminds us of our mind.
So meditation practice is like saying, "let's get right at it, let's see what's under the hood. Let's stop driving the car around hither and yon and let's just have a look under the hood" -- a friendly look. We need to have a merciful attitude. Sometimes we're too hard on ourselves in a non-productive way. It's very common. And sometimes we're too lazy, also very common. So our approach is learning to find a middle way between being too lazy and being too hard on ourselves -- not too tight and not too loose.
----
Follow David on his website (www.davidnichtern.com), Facebook (www.facebook.com/David-Nichtern), or twitter (http://twitter.com/davidnichtern).
In the teachings of Buddha, and particularly the Shambhala Buddhist teachings, one thing that's said is that you don't have to be afraid of yourself. You can be at ease with yourself and your mind. You don't actually have to fill it with all kinds of activities and plans and ambitions to feel wholesome and together, and you can develop a good sense of being present and enjoying the moment and appreciating your life.
But we're not used to that. We're really not used to that. We're used to projects and fulfilling them and succeeding and failing and commenting and etc. etc. etc. Our minds, as you will soon see, have become a run-on sentence -- a James Joyce novel with no punctuation in sight. We'd give our right arm for a semi-colon. A period would be such a relief, a paragraph -- a space between two thoughts.
The beginning point of this practice is what we call making friends with ourselves. That is obviously the ground for making friends with somebody else. You have to have some relationship with yourself to start with before you can communicate skillfully and compassionately with others. This approach is clearly presented in the example of Buddha.
There have been some wonderful moments in my studies when I got to spend time with some truly great lamas (teachers). They were so inspiring just by being who they were. My wife, Cyndi Lee, has this thing she says, "I'll have what she's having," or "I'll have what he's having" -- that's what good teachers should feel like. You should get a direct transmission straight from who that person is. So regarding these wonderful teachers, one of their best aspects is just that you are magnetized by their sense of being. It's royal in a way -- true royalty, not based on wealth and power -- just based on true nobility of spirit.
But once you've found such a teacher, even then they send you off to be with yourself most of the time. There's no Buddhist teacher worth his or her salt who's going to sit there and hold your hand. It just doesn't happen. You get a transmission from this person and they're saying "you can do it". That's one of the things my teacher, Trungpa Rinpoche, used to say repeatedly -- "you can do it!" He had this little squeaky high voice, "you can do it!". But even in the programs where he was present, maybe for eight hours a day or more, people were just doing meditation practice on their own.
So the whole notion of finding mama, who's gonna spiritually milkfeed you, and that somehow by feeding off that person's divinity and accomplishment you can skip the step of developing yourself, is possibly wishful thinking. We do have to go home and we have to pay the bills and we have to relate to our mind. Everything's reminding us of our minds -- it's so annoying. We're late for this thing or that thing, and it reminds us of our mind, and someone's irritating us and it reminds us of our mind, and we fall in love and it reminds us of our mind.
So meditation practice is like saying, "let's get right at it, let's see what's under the hood. Let's stop driving the car around hither and yon and let's just have a look under the hood" -- a friendly look. We need to have a merciful attitude. Sometimes we're too hard on ourselves in a non-productive way. It's very common. And sometimes we're too lazy, also very common. So our approach is learning to find a middle way between being too lazy and being too hard on ourselves -- not too tight and not too loose.
----
Follow David on his website (www.davidnichtern.com), Facebook (www.facebook.com/David-Nichtern), or twitter (http://twitter.com/davidnichtern).