fama brain trust 2008

fama brain trust 2008
Originally uploaded by eharrison3

We enjoyed the 3rd Annual fama PR Summer Outing and Boating Festival of Whimsy (with Alcohol) today. The Blue Moon, or Half Moon, she was a fine vessel, except I don't recall her name. OK, I am off on the vacation tomorrow, and likely offline (TypePad, Twitter, Facebook) for a week. Oh my Lord, what will I do with my overactive sense of self-worth and my limitless desire to share the minutia of my life with "friends" whom I never speak with or see in person?

I hear they get the Internet on computers these days

The new fama PR site is up — and it’s pretty snazzy. Kudos to Greg and Brian at at Yogirt in San Jose for making it happen. I highly, highly recommend them.

I was outvoted on our secondary tag-line: "Built on a foundation of common sense," so I think I may either use it here on Harrison3 or sell it to the higher bidder. Perhaps I can trademark it, like John Calipari did with "refuse to lose."

Misdirected

I am here in Atlanta at a client’s global sales kickoff until tomorrow night. It is not nearly as warm as I had hoped, although to be fair I will likely only be leaving the Hyatt Regency Atlanta for my morning coffee (done) and dinner (not for 13 hours).

Last night, went out for dinner with a gaggle (14) of clients. Went to a very cool place called Two urban licks, an oddly-named eatery set in a nondescript, former industrial space, perhaps at one time a box factory, lead-paint manufacturer or the like.

The entrance actually appeared to be that of an abandoned warehouse and I was certain I was being taken there to be whacked. To my relief, no one tried to kill me.

In an effort to chat with those around me, and being not particularly creative or adept at the art of small talk, I turned to sports. I had the first-ever conversation with a woman who *hated* Tom Brady. Wow.

I am so used to the unversal adoration toward The Tom (as football player, hunky gossip magazine subject, object of forbidden mancrush) that it took me aback — the only previous negative reaction I had ever heard in re: to Mr. Brady was related to his dealings with his ex, particularly the short period of time between ending that relationship and commencing to canoodle with that super model, whatshername, Elle McPherson or Twiggy or whatever, while his ex was carrying his love child.

But no, after some discussion and probing questions I learned that these women actually hated Brady due to their beloved Carolina Panthers’ loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVIII.

Further questions led me to the fact that they were actually more angry at Panthers kicker John Kasay for botching his late-4th quarter kickoff out-of-bounds, giving Tom Terrific the ball at the 40. (I had to piece a lot of this together by doing some reading, given that Jacob was around 9 days old at this point and not sleeping well.)

Today, I am going to work on getting these women to stop projecting their anger with Kasay toward Brady. Not because I care that much, but mostly because I need some other sort of project to keep myself from dozing during the upcoming 10 hours of meetings.

X-man Factor

I will be spending some 33 hours in Seattle this coming Wednesday-Thursday. I would love to salute 1992 by wearing flannel and an X-Man jersey, listening to some Screaming Trees and searching for a Starbucks. But I think I’ll have about 10 minutes free while I’m there after my meetings before heading back on the redeye Thursday night.

I look forward to the excruciating ear pain my ENT specialist promised on each of the three landings on the trip (we stop in Detroit on the way out, and take the redeye back to Boston, giving me enough time to land at 6:15, get in the car, come home and take the boys to school; I shouldn’t complain, as two members of my traveling party have a 10 a.m. pitch that morning). My hearing is still pretty dulled in my right ear; in new developments, there is an odd effect now where, for some reason, music sounds out-of-tune, alternately a touch too high or too low. It’s freaking me out.

All that said, it’s not the worst trip involving a redeye flight in my 12 years of tech PR; that would have to be the two trips in which I’ve done layover redeyes — one from San Francisco in 2001 and the "rancid pork burrito" trip to Scottsdale for DEMO in 2003, each involving a middle coach seat and a 5 a.m. stop at Chicago-Midway.

What about drinking a redeye (coffee with a shot of espresso) on the redeye? Woah.

Weird dream at the nexus of sports and work

In this dream, I was doing PR for Major League Baseball. And I had a hot scoop that I wanted to share with an important reporter — we were going to pre-brief everyone but were offering up the news to 1 or 2 key writers first. I insisted we go with Hall of Famer Peter Gammons, but my colleagues outvoted me. Then later I was walking down the hall at my office and I saw Peter Gammons, and he was royally pissed at me. I told him, "Mr. Gammons, it wasn’t my idea, I swear. I am a huge fan," and he just looked at me and said, "How could you do this to me?" Those words have haunted me throughout the morning. Clearly some work-related anxiety, as I have a busy January ahead, as well as my attempt to deal with my unresolved feelings toward Mr. Gammons.

I love the 70′s

So back from the weekend’s many journeys and we have moved into temporary office space here on the 3rd Floor of the Badger Building (while fama’s offices are being repaired from the Great Indoor Flood of 2007) which used to house Raytheon in the early 1970s. Apparently, MIT (our landlord’s landlord) has chosen to go with a museum-quality recreation of what offices for big, heartless defense contractors were like in 1973. Which is to say, not very nice.

In order to get into the spirit of ’73 here in our nearly windowless, concrete bunker, I am:

Smoking in my office
Eschewing a necktie for an open-collar suit of leisure
Drinking TAB
Asking each of my female colleagues to "take a letter" for me
Planning a key party for the weekend
Volunteering for McGovern (he might surprise you!)
Having not one, not two, but three martinis at lunch
Enjoying Folger’s Crystals (unless I’m jittery, then I switch to Sanka or Brim)

“Now, let’s see…this’ll make three Christmases I saved versus eight I ruined…two were kind of a draw…”

For the fifth year, I am in charge of coordinating the fama PR Non-Denominational Intra-Employee Gift Exchange and Cavalcade of Whimsy, aka "Secret Santos," named after the legendary voice of the Patriots, Gil Santos. Unfortunately, for the first year, I screwed up the names and somehow one person ended up not drawing a name, meaning one person won’t get a gift. So one of the important tasks I’ve done this morning (other than a few calls and reading up on the films of Jean-Luc Godard) is trying to reconstruct the drawing to determine who was left out. The downside, which I hadn’t realized, was that I forced the person who drew me to admit that she was, in fact, my Secret Santos. Oh well.

A few things I’ve learned in coordinating swaps:

• Yankee Gift Swaps are nothing but trouble
• You don’t need an even number of people to do a swap (a common misconception!); it’s not like, say, the NFL, wherein you need an even number of teams so there are no teams forced to have byes; sure, when Cleveland plays Seattle, Seattle plays Cleveland; but if there was, say, a leaguewide gift swap, Cleveland could pick Seattle, Seattle could pick Dallas, Dallas could pick New Orleans, etc. There’s no need for a 1-1 connection between gift swappers that there is between opponents. Sadly, I spent about 2 hours back in 2003 trying to figure that out.
• That story about the Yankee pitchers who swapped families in 1973 is pretty crazy.
  

1 Broadway: Celebrating 003 Days Without a Major Accident

Our offices are a mess. It was a mad rush this morning though as our landlord neglected to have alternate space set up for us. Six people don’t have workspaces; luckily, there are enough folks out sick and traveling that we’ve been able to squeeze everyone in. Beyond the fires and floods, today half the parking lot is inexplicably blocked off with police tape (perhaps they are expecting some other disaster and want to make certain no one’s car gets crushed?).

Apropos of Nothing:

• Lately, I find myself misusing the word "ironic" when I should be using "coincidentally," as in, "It was quite a coincidence that we met with our realtors the day that our office flooded." Ironic, as we all know, means something that is the opposite of what is expected; unless you’re Alanis Morisette, in which case it means things that suck, like a black fly in your chardonnay.
• The Boss was pretty damn boss last night.

Now batting — pestilence!

Remember the time our office caught on fire in 2005 and 2007? And the big flood on Broadway in 2004? Today, a water tank on the roof burst and flooded most of the office. Mine is fine but there are about 6 offices that got absolutely clobbered. One Broadway, the former Badger Building, is not in a good way.

Straight Outta Mattapan

Friday I headed down to Providence for another new-business meeting. It was a discussion rife with presentations on some really heavy mathematical and computational technology that, as far as I could tell, could crate really cool dioramas of cars smashing into walls.

On the drive home with colleague Jeff, I turned to my new Garmin GPS receiver (its ad, a tale of unrequited love set to Bonnie Tyler’s "Total Eclipse of the Heart," is the only commercial during the playoffs that has made me want to buy the product or service being advertised; you’ll note I haven’t bought a Chevy, Nacholes BelGrande or Dane Cook yet) to help us avoid I-93, which was horribly backed up as it is wont to be on a rainy Friday afternoon.

So Garmin had me leave at Exit 2 and go through Milton. Then it had me take Blue Hill Avenue up through Mattapan and then criss-cross through Roxbury until crossing over the river at Mass. Ave.

A few things:

• These neighborhoods form the nexus of Boston’s African-American and Haitian-American communities. That said, I can’t believe I’ve lived here for 10 years and have driven through Mattapan maybe once. Does that happen in other cities? Or is Boston really that racially stratified?
• I didn’t feel uncomfortable. I certainly felt out of my element (not even sure what my element is, but that wasn’t it) but not uncomfortable or scared. Of course, it was daytime.
• There were many wig shops, independent food stands and groceries, and liquor stores — in particular, a place called ODB Liquors II. Is that named after the late Old Dirty Bastard? Was it a sequel to a previous store?
• There were a glaring lack of chain stores — is that a good thing or a bad thing? Nary a Starbucks or major grocery chain to be had. If there were adequate independent businesses supporting the neighborhoods, I’m guessing it’s a good thing; it appeared there were not, and instead, these chains had just systematically avoided the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare. It does stand in stark contrast to 125th Street in New York, though.