A Muse with a View

It is more apparent to me than ever that I lead an unbelievably stressful life at home. Since arriving in Paris I have been getting a minimum of eight hours of sleep a night. The last time I got this much sleep at home was when I had the flu five years ago.

I am ensconced in a small charming apartment in Canal St.-Martin, the 10th arrondissement northeast of Paris. This trip wouldn’t have been possible without my generous friend giving me the keys to her home for a week. Thank you.

Although I’m terrified to speak French, because it’s been so long, I can read a lot of it and understand some, and not embarrass myself when ordering lunch. Everyone here has been more than understanding when I pop out with a Spanish word when I can’t think of the word in French or English!

It is difficult to totally disconnect from my life back in Portland for a week when I have so many responsibilities there, but I’m sure trying.

My goal on my first day in Paris: stay awake until 8pm.

The only possible way to achieve this goal when arriving in a new time zone is to throw your luggage down, head outside and start walking immediately until you find the nearest espresso vendor. But we didn’t get very far, because the best baker in Paris has a bakery across the street from the apartment where we are staying, and the scent of freshly-baked pastries was just too enticing to pass up. The bakery is called Du Pain et des Idées, and there is a line out the front door all day every day. We waited in line and it was worth it.

Mouthwatering galletes and croissants that are nothing like you ever get back home.

We also found a Monop on our street, which is like an upscale quick mart that sells everything from champagne and chocolate to eggs and milk. We bought some groceries, and dropped them back at the apartment.

We spent the next few hours exploring the neighborhood, drinking espressos and cappuccinos  until we couldn’t stand it anymore. We headed back to the apartment at about 5pm, snacked on some Brie and bread, and somehow managed to stay awake until 8pm.

When I woke up the next morning, 11 hours later, I was ready to take on Paris for my first full day of sightseeing. But first some espresso…

I am sitting here in a charming apartment in Paris, drinking espresso and enjoying the peace and quiet, which has absolutely nothing to do with Twitter. However, my journey to Paris began yesterday with the following tweet to @Delta:

To which Delta replied:

I was already settled into my seat on my flight from Portland to Salt Lake City when I received this tweet from @DeltaAssist and had just enough time to send a message with my confirmation number before the crew told us to turn off our phones.

I settled into a fascinating conversation with my seatmate, who was headed to Athens via the same Paris connection I was worried about missing. We were two cocktails in and deep into a political conversation when a flight attendant came up to me with a little sheet of paper and said, “You will make your connection. You’ll have plenty of time.”

And this is the power of Twitter.

I tweeted an issue when I was sitting at the gate in Portland. Delta customer service answered me as I boarded the plane. I sent them my confirmation number so they knew exactly who I was and what flight I was on. They sent a message to the flight attendant on my flight, who then relayed the message to me.

That my friends is brilliant customer service.

The Interactive Media Peer Group is the fastest growing peer group in the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), which is no surprise to those of us in the business of interactive. There are 450 active members of the Interactive Media Peer Group, and I am proud to say I am one of them.

This year I was privileged to be a part of the “Blue Ribbon Panel” that selected the 2011 Primetime Emmy® winner for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media. I brought Crowd Factory CEO Sanjay Dholakia along to be my +1 for the experience.

The event was hosted at ATAS in North Hollywood on Thursday August 25th, and MC’d by Rhett & Link, hosts of IFC’s “Commercial Kings” . The theme of this year’s event was “New Orleans,” and you would have thought the party planners had paid off Mother Nature to cooperate with the theme, because the thermometer topped 103 degrees that day. Sanjay and I arrived at the venue at 4pm and had a chance to do a little mingling with the rest of the attendees before heading into the auditorium to score this year’s top five contenders for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media. This year’s nominees:

• ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy Sync; ABC.com, Nielsen, Gravity Mobile, Shondaland
• Conan O’Brien Presents: Team Coco; TBS.com: Team Coco Digital
• Fringe: Division; Fox.com: Warner Bros. Television, Bad Robot Productions
• Late Night With Jimmy Fallon; NBC.com: Gavin Purcell, Producer; Sara Schaefer, Producer; Jimmy Fallon, Producer; Robert Angelo, Producer
• Oscar Digital Experience; ABC.com: Disney ABC Television Group; Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Each team presented a narrated video showcasing their entry, and then Rhett & Link asked some hard-hitting questions like, “Does that high-pitched sync technology freak out all of the dogs in the neighborhood?”

When the presentations were over, those of us on the voting panel scored each entry in each of these five categories:

• Creative Achievement
• User Experience
• Visual Design
• Enhancing the Story
• Advancing Interactive Media

And yes, there really were people from Ernst & Young in the back of the room with brief cases collecting our ballots when we finished scoring.

Once the business portion of the evening was out of the way we were all invited to toast the nominees with a signature “Digitini” cocktail created by sponsor Grey Goose Vodka just for the occasion. I don’t know what was in it, but it was a cool and refreshing respite from the heat of the day. We then made our way through the crowd congratulating the nominees, and exchanging business cards as we went. Sanjay had to run to catch a plane back to San Francisco, but I stayed to enjoy the Cajun food and catch up with my ATAS buddies.

And who ended up winning the Emmy?  The Creative Arts Emmys were held on September 10, 2011, in Hollywood and the Primetime Emmy® for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media was awarded to the Oscar Digital Experience.

People often say age is just a number.  However, there are two things I know to be true about online dating: men often lie about their height and women often lie about their age. And when you get into the 50-55 age bracket the men start lying about their age as often as the women do.

So if age is really just a number, why do so many people lie about it?

Middle aged women lie about their age because most middle aged men won’t date someone their age or older. Period.

Men lie so the younger women will find them when they search the dating sites. We all know the big 5-0 is the death knell in all online dating search engines. It’s rare to see a 50-year old man who’s dating range includes women 50 and over. In general the only men searching in the over-50 range are the ones who are over 60.

To all of the men and women out there who are lying about their age on their profiles, know this: if there’s one thing most people are looking for in a relationship it’s honesty and integrity, and you just blew it. If you lie about your age it makes your potential match wonder what else you may be lying about.

I list my true age on my online profile, and if the men my age don’t find me in a search it’s their loss.

And guess what, not everyone who’s near 50 looks like the Crypt Keeper or your Grandma Celia.

When a girlfriend asks you to run a half marathon on her “birthday weekend” you can’t refuse. When she tells you it’s kind of hilly, but there’s a great after party, you just have to suck it up and sign up.

July 10th 2011, marked the second annual Fueled by Fine Wine One-Half Marathon held in Dundee, Oregon in the heart of wine country, and Team Bubbles was there to suffer and celebrate.

I picked up the Team Bubbles Captain (the birthday girl) at 5:30am to make the drive from Portland to Dundee, and we arrived with just enough time to drop off our post-race paraphernalia at a friend’s house, meet up with the other members of Team Bubbles and head to the park down the street for the 7am start. I knew I was in trouble when the first turn across the start line was straight up a 45-degree hill into a Dundee neighborhood. The paved road quickly turned into gravel when we turned off into a winery at Mile 2.

Then the fun began.

Running along dusty dirt paths between rows of vines reminds me of the fact that picking up the rear on a dusty road is never a desirable position to be in. I used the water at Mile 3 to wash the grit out of my mouth.

And Miles 4-12 weren’t much better. Some of the terrain was so steep that I could power walk it faster than I could run it. I heard more F Bombs uttered in this race than I have in any other race, including the three marathons I’ve run.

“Are you f*cking kidding me?! Another f*cking hill?!” was the mantra of the day.

At some point between Mile 12 and 13 we turned onto a paved road and encountered one of the few downhill portions of the entire route. Thankfully I still had a good kick left and sprinted the last mile of downhill to the finish line where the rest of Team Bubbles was already standing in line to collect their wine glasses for the after party. We quickly grabbed our glasses and went straight to the Argyle table for a glass of what else but bubbles.

I pity the poor people who chose this race as their very first half marathon. They have probably all hung up their running shoes and decided this whole half marathon thing just isn’t for them. Don’t give up! The Fueled by Fine Wine Half Marathon is just some crazy person’s idea of seeing how much torture runners will endure if there’s free wine at the end.  Apparently the answer is “a lot.”

We worked our way through the post-race nosh of salami, bread, cheese and brownies, and sampled plenty of wine. In the end we raised our glasses of bubbles in a toast to surviving the crazy course, and swore we’d never run this race again.

Epilogue

The day after the race I drove 647 miles to Lake Tahoe. When I stopped to get gas after four hours of driving I could barely get out of the car, let alone walk. I have been running for 30 years, and I felt like I had just run a marathon for the first time. I lived on Advil for three days after this race. But like childbirth, you forget the pain, and even though we all said we would never do it again I’m sure you’ll see us standing in line at the wine tent after the race next year with dirt on our shoes and smiles on our faces.

I love pugs. I do. And when I see one on the street I will always stop to pet the pug and chat with the owner, because Pug People are usually a bit crazy.

Case in point. I was at the mall yesterday with my kids: one who was spending his allowance at GameStop, the other who was spending hers at Victoria’s Secret (that’s another blog). I was just the appendage with the car keys.

We were walking through the mall when I spotted an older woman with a pug on a leash at the entrance to Macy’s. Now I’ve seen plenty of  service dogs in the mall with their trainers, and plenty of purse dogs being smuggled about, but I’ve never seen anyone get away with walking a pug in the mall!

I had to go talk to this woman (let’s call her Doris).

Doris was about 80, and the pug looked every bit as old. It was resting on its haunches while its owner chatted up another older couple.

“Excuse me. May I say hello to your pug?” I said. “I have a pug.”

Those are the four magic words: “I have a pug.” Say that to a pug owner and be prepared to be chatted up like you’ve been best friends for 20 years.

“This is Precious,” said Doris as I bent down to pet her pug (all 25 pounds of her).

As I was petting Precious I noticed something odd. She had a harness that said “Service Dog.”

I looked up at Doris and said, “She’s wearing a service dog harness,”  knowing full well what was coming next.

“Oh yes. It’s the only way I can get her into the mall,” she said with a wink. And then without missing a beat she reached into her small clutch and pulled out an old faded picture of  her siblings and their pugs, and pointed to each one, telling me their names as if they were her grandchildren.

She then carefully tucked the treasured pug picture back into her clutch and pulled out another faded photo. This one of herself and her husband dressed int heir finest at a formal dinner.

“This is my husband. He was friends with him.”  The “him” in the photo? Johnny Carson!  THE Johnny Carson having dinner with Doris and her husband. “They worked together,” she said as she slipped the photo back into her purse. And then the topic went right back to pugs.

I stood there and shared pug stories with Doris and the older couple (also pug people of course) for a few minutes more while my kids rolled their eyes with embarrassment.

We finally said our goodbyes, and as I walked off with my kids I thought to myself, who puts a service dog harness on a pug and carries around pictures of pugs and Johnny Carson in their purse? Pug People, that’s who.