The Urban Man

Another Big Finish

Last Friday, I was slaving cheerfully at my laptop, IM'ing a colleague about many important things — when my calendar popped up to remind me that the world was coming to an end in 15 minutes. "Hey," I thought, "nothing's more important than the end of the world." So I typed in, "sorry, gotta run" and dashed to my classic ‘99 Taurus — a car purchased just before the last time the world ended...

Nobody Does Obsession Like the Japanese

Last week, I found myself at a 35th anniversary celebration for Hello Kitty. No kidding, Hello Kitty: that unspeakably cute Japanese cartoon figure with the round eyes, button nose, red bow, and three whiskers each side. In Japan, Hello Kitty is a national obsession, and more than 25,000 different products feature that face: purses, clocks, radios, towels, toasters, tea sets, you name it. I hear it’s socially acceptable for a Tokyo executive to have a Hello Kitty startup screen on his cell phone. The licensing company makes billions...

Happy in Your Work

Like everyone in L.A., I try never to be content. I know it's crucial never to succumb to job satisfaction or a general sense of happiness. That would be a crime against ambition. Worse, to be content would be to agree to type-casting: you know, where an actor has to play the same character over and over again...

The Arrow of Logic

I don't know about you, but I have never actually won a political argument. No one has ever said to me, "You know what? Now that you put it so clearly, I see I was wrong." Not once. Not ever. Not when I marshal facts, not when I quote Jefferson, not by Socratic inquiry or blunt force of will. Even though, you know, I am often right...

The Mathematics of Beauty

 Here in L.A., everyone thinks they understand the mathematics of beauty. You know, Clothes. Faces. Legs. Our eyes expertly rove an afternoon mall or a midnight bar, evaluating the smooth, the tight...or at least, the fashionable Tonight the Urban Man finds himself standing in line outside a dance club just off Hollywood Boulevard. It's about 11:30, and the line is composed mostly of women 22 to 26, all trying hard to look beautiful...

City Noir

Figuring It All Out

The other morning, as I sat in Starbucks with a friend, the Urban Man suddenly became unduly optimistic. It happened as I was surveying a large throng of latte-drinkers bent over their glowing laptops. "Remember The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," I asked my friend, "where that woman is sitting by herself in a café, and she comes up with the answer '42,' just before the earth is wiped out?"

Owning Up

I don't know about you, but the Urban Man tries hard to take responsibility for his mistakes. You know, like all the therapists and self-help books say, "Don't blame fate, don't blame your mother. Don't lay your problems on mysterious forces beyond your control...not even on your friend Pete..."

Heading Home

I don't know about you, but even after living several decades in L.A., I wonder if I'm really, you know, home. I'll be driving down a particularly random boulevard or crossing a beat patch of desert, and I'll think: "No way. Stop kidding around. This can't really be my home..."

Hardly Working

Special for Labor Day, 2009
Today is Labor Day, intended as a holiday of rest for working folks, and a celebration of labor itself. It's a quaint relic from a crazy time when Americans thought of work as a good thing. No kidding, they really did. For a while, they thought there was some kind of human dignity and even spiritual reward to be derived from road building, tractor driving, or pipe fitting. You can read about this brief romantic period in a history book...some people claim it accounts for our early success...

The Organizing Principle

Don't tell anyone, but the Urban Man often tries to organize real life into a music video. It's a bad habit, I know — but I'll be sitting, say, in a vegan Asian fusion restaurant, listening with apparent close attention to the important conversation of a lunchtime companion, when the background track on the sound system, barely audible above the general hubbub, suddenly catches my ear...

All the Way Back to Nature

Sigmund Freud wrote a famous book called Civilization and Its Discontents in which he said people could never be happy: not with civilization and not without it.  Sure enough, most folks will tell you they're pretty discontent with civilization. They claim they've had it with restless freeways and tall glass buildings...

Broken Field Running

Like most Angelenos, the Urban Man is the master of many games not played at the Olympics. I drive the 405 Freeway at 5:04. I deliver 30 second pitches during 20 second elevator rides. And yes, I can move as deftly as an NFL tackle among the round crowded tables of a large fundraising dinner.

The Housewife Uncertainty Principle

After all, it applies to everyone you meet. Your turbaned taxi driver may actually hold a PhD in biochemistry or have a hot Punjab memoir already in the can. That dapper exec may actually be betting his last nickel. That shining star may yesterday have started her descent....

Dogmatism

I don't own a dog. It's true. I resist owning a dog despite the urging of friends who insist it's more gratifying than raising a family, or embracing a lover, or maintaining close relatives. It's a mass trend. I read that both Seattle and San Francisco now have more dogs than children; that 80% of dog owners now refer to themselves as their pooch's "mommy" or "daddy;" and some 45 percent say that having a dog is a superior experience to having a child...