A Few Debacles to Consider

Alas. Friday. Friday came quickly as hoped for. I had a solid week that was actually a lot more fulfilling than weeks past. I will still forever maintain that draft day was THE BEST day, but we've been helping our supervisor with the publicity book and that has been very time-consuming. A publicity book is like one big color hard clips bound with pretty plastic and held together by the hopes and dreams of petty interns. Blood, sweat, tears, and epic battles with the copy machine smolder together in a smoking cauldron only to eventually form this publicity book. Actually... no. I just like words a lot. Basically we just have to make clean copies of every publicity clipping from magazines, websites, newspapers, weeklies, etc. and put them together in categories of national, weekly, local, community, etc. In the end, you have one book that has every photography, every major mention, and every magazine feature that pertained to the knicks during the previous season. It's actually pretty and I bet you could sell it to an anxious, memory-loss fearing fan. The thing is, it takes time and FINALLY my time can be spent on something other than freetetris.org (check it out if you dare), gawker.com, the drudge report, perez hilton, twitter, and facebook. Yes, those are my rounds. Oh... solitaire and freecell have also become a major part of the daily routine. Yet today something different happened as well. I found myself thinking about things of importance... Well, not of IMPORTANCE necessarily, but I was thinking about ideas, quandaries. It was great. So I wanted to share with you and perhaps get some feedback... since so many people read this.

First, the idea of ESPN taking over the world. I've always had a little violin in my heart that played the sweet sobs of private industry, small businesses, family-owned enterprises. Yet, I love ESPN more than some of my distant family members and I don't hate the idea that ESPN might take over. Rewind... essentially, last week, ESPN announced that they are beginning to open up local websites to keep track of local sports from the professional level to little league games. ESPN would have small offices all over the country with a few extra employees who focus on the smaller scale athletic occurrences in a certain area. The smaller businesses, most specifically the local papers, are quivering and shaking their little italian boots because they're afraid that ESPN's coverage will be more desirable and therefore will take over the sports section of their papers. They believe this because apparently sports pages are what keep people buying the papers that have become irrelevant since the explosion of all things internet. I mean... yes I see their point. It would be sad for the local papers to die, but I mean... if ESPN was a terrible network with terrible motives and terrible reporting and terrible investigative skills and terrible writing, well, we wouldn't have this problem. However, ESPN is the bee's knees, the chocolate to my chip, the sunshine to my dreams and OF COURSE I would look at ESPN local sports coverage before my local newspaper. I mean, let's be real... how many people REALLY care about Joseph Smith jr.'s 12 points in a junior varsity basketball game? Not enough to keep a local paper running! I don't really know what my point is here... I guess we should all wonder if the integrity of local sports writing would be compromised by the big league writers of ESPN. Yet, I have a lot of faith in ESPN and its ability to hold my interest on any level of athletic discourse. I've even found myself to enjoy ESPN Magazine writing a little better than that of Sports Illustrated sometimes. I've shed countless tears over ESPN's outside the lines features or whatever their called... well... I can't do anything about it other than try to get a job with them.... but yea... sit on that.

Second... three words: Obama beer summit? Really though? I saw this shiz going down when I was running on the treadmill yesterday and actually started laughing... partially because of the terrible quality of cameramanning that was going on, but also because of how AWKWARD that had to have been for everyone involved. NO ONE should be giving VP Biden any form of mind-altering substance.... he's already drunk off his own general mindset and could be potentially dangerous to mankind as a whole. Then there's this Harvard professor chillin' next to the police officer who arrested him??? Racial profiling or not, innocent or guilty, who wants to be sitting next to the person who tried to put them behind bars? I mean really people!! OH and did anyone notice the way they were sitting. It was white, black, white, white/black. I don't mean to be politically incorrect and I know they HAD to do it that way because otherwise it would be too symbolic of team dark-skinned vs. team light-skinned, but I just felt like I was watching a really weird girl scouts meets president meets original thanksgiving reenactment meeting. I guess that kind of is what it was. And everyone keeps talking about the deeper issues going on in this situation, but I really can't see myself quizzing my children on the Obama Beer Summit 20 years from now. Though that would be fitting since we are the generation of the damned, generation stimulus package, generation DEMOCRACY NOW.

Third, that guy from the Daily News should file a defamation suit against Omar Minaya. I know he's over it, but he shouldn't be. Everyone's always going to associate him with that now and whether or not he's 'guilty', the conflict of interest that he could even be suspected of is enough to damage a journalist's rep for lyfe. Yea I know... weird spelling... I'm just getting bored with my own writing.

Well, I'm out of thoughts for now, but it's 3:12 pm on a Friday and there are way too many minutes left until weekend. Perhaps I will grace the internets with more of my genius blabber in the next hour and 48 minutes. Only if you're lucky though.

The Best Monday Ever (Not that that means much...)

After a kind, lovely, eye-opening weekend in East Hampton (a first and most likely a last considering how JUDGED I felt... I mean come on people, if I can survive Spartanburg, SC debutatante balls, I should be able to survive the Hamptons. This says something), I have returned for my last two and a half weeks working in the New York Knicks public relations department. As the title of this post dictates, yesterday was probably the best Monday I have had all summer here. Why? Well, clips took a decent amount of time because we had to gather all of our clippings from the weekend and Monday to be distributed in the hard clips. Then, we had a nice two hour or so lull before escaping to one of the restaurants in Madison Square Garden for the first annual intern luncheon with President of MSG Sports Scott O'Neill. First we ate the free lunch, something I have come to embrace if not aspire to achieve on a daily basis, though this is probably the first free lunch I've had all summer. Then, Mr. O'Neill spoke to us for a while and answered questions about his journey to the top, why he ended up pursuing a career in sports and how he went about his education. I found the talk to be really beneficial because we were basically getting insider advice from the man who could be hiring us one day. I mean, not him particularly, but he is in the position of this franchise that makes decisions in every franchise, so his perspective is probably pertinent to every team/company. I especially appreciated his explanation of why one should work for a few years before going to graduate school after college. He explained that when you go to business school or law school or graduate school, you want real experiences from working to look back on and apply what you learn to and that if you go right from college, all you have is other information you've learned in the past. This scares me because the job market is less than viable and I was kind of banking on delaying the whole real world thing until after grad school/law school. However, at the same time, I kind of like the idea of working for a few years then going because, as Mr. O'Neill said, then you know that you are doing what you want/should be doing. I need to work at a law firm or in sports management or something before I decide to go through with law school. Otherwise, it could end up being a waste of time and money. Same with graduate school - I should probably try to work for a newspaper or broadcasting company and see if that's really what I want to do before going to journalism school. And the list goes on.
Anyway, after that nice luncheon (which may have been the best simply because it killed a solid two hours of our day... and the free food duh), I worked on a small project that my supervisor gave me. She had all of the major clips from the past season up until now in a folder and wanted to make sure they were all documents on the word document she had. So I went through the folder, article by article, and made sure that each one was on her list. There were actually quite a few of them that had not been documented, but these were all of the most recent ones. This project was great because it was time-consuming and required a lot of focus. It ended up taking until it was time for me to leave to monitor sports radio from my apartment so it was awesome. Then, after sports radio, Rachel/Rock (my college roommate) came into the city from her home in New Jersey and we went to a barbecue restaurant. Hushpuppies - finally. I love hushpuppies more than many things. They made me happy. They made me nauseous (well, something made me nauseous, sleeping was made harder by that), but they were delicious. And still are delicious! I had ordered a pork platter and the hushpuppies and it was so much food that I was able to put it all in a box and bring it to work today to eat. Woohoo two meals in one! GAH the Jew within has really revealed itself this summer. Well, I apologize for not updating as frequently, but this way, you have more substance to read. I'm going to see The Ugly Truth movie tonight for an exorbitant price, but that's ok it will (hopefully) be worth it. Then tomorrow my sweet Steve is coming in. My worry for now is getting these workouts in. I've been so good every week about making time, but as the end of the summer nears and I try to fit everything in, including my fair share of radio and my trips out of the city, it is getting harder to rationalize the need to exercise. I need to though. I will tonight. Maybe tomorrow too. Definitely Thursday. And then I guess I will Sunday if I can't get the third in tomorrow before Steve comes. Of all of the reasons why I wish I didn't start work until 9 am, the main one is that I would be able to get up and go to the gym before work every morning instead of have to fit it in at night. Then again, I don't think the NYU gym opens up until 8:30 anyway... I guess it would be cool enough to run outside at 730 though? Well... no need to fixate on the impossible. Right? I have a feeling I'll blodge again later today... I mean it's never a good sign when I'm running out of things to do before 10 am hits. Until then... adios.

We Are

I have not met much darkened fate
Upon which my breath has been lost
Nor have I seen the greatest great
By which stars transmute, aimless to crossed.
Yet what I have found in my plights
Which grants me faith for what’s to come
Is the awareness of cavernous lights
That reveal themselves once all is done.
The world has tipped, yet will not cave
For my life is not compelled enough,
But what my minor trials gave
To me is the knowledge of all that is love.
For through the calmness of my path
I’ve found the heart of other minds
To be as strong as those who have
Surpassed moments of great compromise.
Never forget that all can heal
And all can be without suffering through,
And those who have donned a lighter appeal
Must not be overlooked as spoiled or untrue.
With breathing we share the burden we bare
And although we tend to so deny,
There will never be a human impair
That rests upon one single eye.
Thus, join hands and raise thy lids,
Take note, the world has not collapsed,
For the binding force by which we spin
Will hold us together, will forever last.

I'm Learned

Well I realize now that I have been forgetting to document the non-work oriented adventures I've been having. And you know, those may actually be more important considering that now that the free-agent period is dying down, the draft is over and the Knicks City Dancers have their final 18, there really isn't all that much to do around here. I'm having trouble balancing happy/fun time with sleep/workingout/being a healthy human being time. Oh and that whole money thing is kind of a bust too. Yet, as my pseudo-aunt said this past weekend, money, time, and distance should never be your sole reasons for not doing something. I decided to twist that a little bit and add exercise in there too because to be honest, I don't think the other girls on the dance team who are supposed to be taking the time out of their day to run a timed mile are also working 10 hours a day during the week and at least 2 on the weekends. So there. Hmph. Anyway, Monday I did my share of monitoring sports radio then went to the gym and the grocery store and passed out immediately after showering. Every day life is exhausting in NYC. Tuesday after work I met up with my friend from home whom I've gone to school with since I was a wee lad and we went to see the Philharmonic in Central Park. It was nice to sit outside in the park and hear the music, but to be honest, it was far too crowded to really get the feel of being at a concert and we were too far away from the stage to even be able to pay attention to the music we were hearing. I got to meet some of my friend's sister's friends though (you follow?) and they were all nice. Also it was nice to catch up with my friend from home because she too is working here in the city this summer and is enduring the same emotions and trials as I am. She loves the city and is enjoying her internship, but agrees on the lonely and exhausting factors. That comforts me. Another friend, who I went to middle school with and now attend Wake Forest with, is up in NY for the week to visit family so I've gotten to spend time with him as well. We went to dinner on Wednesday then took the L all the way west and walked the High Line park, my new favorite, along the Hudson. We then wandered Chelsea, my favorite area of NYC for sure, before parting ways. We met up again yesterday too, but not after I watched the Obama brigade speed down 54th street toward the NAACP. When the real people of the real city were allowed to continue their real life traffic/walking efforts on 5th ave, my friend, who I might as well say is Alex, and I met up and went to the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. I was actually quite surprised at how much I enjoyed the museum. I was far too tired to really get the full effect and, to be honest, I really invest a lot of energy in museum visits because of how much thought I put into everything I see. Yet, Alex and I did make our rounds and see some pretty great things. I have the photos below so you should check them out. A little performance art, some Chinese pack-ratting, some Van Gogh, and some Warhol. I was especially pumped to see a painting depicting a Mexican revolutionary scene because of how closely we studied revolutionary art in my Latin American Politics class this past semester. I was so excited upon seeing the painting dubbed Zapatistas that I begged Alex to let me ask one of the curators (are they called curators at museums?) if they had Chilean folk art like the pieces Dr. Siavelis had brought to class. Yet, to my dismay I was deferred to the regular Metropolitan Museum which doesn't really make sense since the fabric creations made by the women during the repressive revolutionary Chilean era should in fact be considered modern. Tomayto, tomawto. Here are the pics... I'm at work so I'm using the versions from my facebook album, but they should still look good.

<-- I think this one was called The Sleeping Gypsy... or something to that extent. I liked it because of the kitty, obviously.

The two below are of the performance art piece called Height of the World I believe. It was a whole room, blank white, only with the height of the world wrapping the four walls like a border. Actually really cool. Except it kind of made me mad when I saw really short measurements because I mean OBVIOUSLY no one is a foot tall. Unless they held their baby there. In which case that's weird. I digress.

I liked this one because of the colors. Then I saw the face and was mildly creeped out. Still intriguing though.

The one below was probably my favorite. It's a Picasso piece called The Girl In The Mirror. I actually just understood it when I looked at it because I could tell how the girl was looking at a shadier version of herself, reflecting on a vision of herself that is tainted with the grimy filter of personal perception. I want a print of it for my apartment when I return from abroad.

I just liked this next one because of the pretty colors.

The next one doesn't need a caption. Van Gogh's Starry Night. Duh.

This one below was a personal favorite. It had a really unnecessarily long name referring to the beat of music or something in the background which I normally would have liked, but it was a little too obnoxiously esoteric for me to document.

RIP John Lennon... and decent rock and roll... and lyrics that represent all people, not just love-sick cocaine peddling skinny people.

The last one I liked before realizing that I was far too hungry and tired to continue feasting my eyes on morally compromising splats of paint.

I'd say in the end, I've been cultural. I plan on continuing to be cultural. And though I may not be travelling Morocco, as my dear friend Kate has (and her blog is so amazing, it made me feel like I was there... and wish I had gone with her), I am on my own kind of adventure in a far off land. Just the far off land doesn't go much further than the dimensions of my skull.

A Day Uptown... Like REALLY Uptown.

So yesterday at 1230 I went with one of my supervisors to the Bronx for a photoshoot for a WNBA Liberty player. Her name is Kia Vaughn and she is the only native New Yorker playing for New York's WNBA team, the Garden will be showing a feature story on her during one of the Liberty games. The Liberty staff is apparently very small, too small to have people in the office and out doing things hands-on at the same time, so they asked the Knicks PR department for some help on monitoring the video/photo shoot. Since the other two PR interns got to go to the Knicks summer camps with our supervisor, I got to go to this shoot. It was only painful because I was hungry and it was 90 something degrees out in the Bronx. Yet, it was a lot of fun to see the area that my dad grew up in and it was a great experience to watch a feature actually be shot. I already know some things about shooting a package because of hat I've done as a reporter for WakeTV. Actually, I was shocked to find that it was quite similar to what I do for WakeTV. I mean, the producer who was there had a pretty good idea of what she was looking for in her piece, just as I have when I'm shooting for a package for Wake. Yet, it was also just as candid and spontaneous as our shoots because you never know what you're going to have to deal with weather wise, lighting wise, crowd wise. So I would say I learned a lot yesterday. I also got to talk to said supervisor a little about how he ended up at the Knicks and it was really helpful. He recommended a few people within the company to get in touch with so I can have some contacts. What I really want to do is get in touch with the Wake grad who started ISP because I'd really like to do that next summer. I miss college sports!

Slowing Down

Well as one of our supervisors predicted on Friday, things are slwoing down for us here at MSG. This past Friday night, we got to work at the Knicks City Dancer reveal party at The Hill in the Gramercy area. That was fun because it was something other than the normal office pace. However, they didn't really have that much for us to do. I wish things were busier, that there was more of a rush to get things done. Not only would it make the day fly by faster, but it would give us a sense of accomplishment and purpose. I have a meeting tomorrow with one of the VP's here and I'm secretly hoping she asks me what I think of the internship. I mean, it has no doubt been a valuable experience. Yet, we sit here and do nothing other than surf the net patiently waiting for google to show ANYTHING that pertains to the Knicks. Sure, we answer the phones, but if they want us to get a good experience out of this then they either need to give us more projects and responsibility or they need to let us have some time away from the office on days where there's nothing to do. It's just pointless for us to sit here all day reading the news when we could be doing something else. I don't want to come off as overly ambitious or ungrateful. I am so grateful for this experience and I value the relaxed pace of the office. However, at the end of the day it is very rare that I feel as though I've really done something of worth. That's why it is hard for me to write in this blog a lot of the time because every day tends to be the same. Hopefully Wednesday will be a little change of pace because I am accompanying one of my supervisors when he goes to monitor a photo and video shoot of one of the Liberty WNBA players. Also, there are very few weeks left of this. It's just that I wonder if they really need to keep us hidden in the pit long after we finish our work for the day, which is usually by 9 a.m.

Thursday

One of the better days of the week, simply because I got to leave the office for a while. I've been working on a piece for Dance Spirit magazine on one of the girls who was trying out for the Knicks City Dancers. Today was the final day of tryouts, the final day of 'boot camp' where only the best and the hottest survive. And they did... well at least some of them, but that's beside the point. I've been using a tape recorder and recording brief little interviews with Christy, the girl that I've been following. She made the team and was very excited. It kind of made me jealous because even though there's no way that at this point in time I could do what they all did to be on that team, I know the feeling they felt. The chosen feeling. I miss it sometimes? Or really I just miss the dancing aspect, but that's the sacrifice I make to succeed in the world of futureness. Speaking of futureness, I received an email this morning telling me that I have been approved for a parliament internship for while I'm in London. Now THAT will be an amazing experience especially considering the political environment of 2009. Everything is turmoil and although that's awful, I'm going to be able to capitalize on the misery of the world by witnessing how the most important governing body in the history of Great Britain opreates and deals with it. EXCITEMENT! Though this is a blog about my internship, so let's not digress too much. Although the days have been slow, the lights have been bright, and the mornings have been... mornings... I'm happy I've done this. I'm sticking to the idea still that I do not want to do PR as much anymore. I think working in a boutique firm would be one thing. But this is just so monotonous and tedious... staring down blog entries, stalking cameras, praying before bedtime that a player doesn't make a gaffe... I want to be the guy catching the player making the gaffe... not the one picking up the pieces. Maybe things will change and as the second half of my internship falls into place I'll realize my place in the sports PR world. I just think that the marketing aspect, like what ISP Sports does in Winston, or the journalist aspect, like what my beloved Erin Andrews does, is what I want. I need to be there, not here picking up after what happened there. You know?

Back to reality

After a lovely fourth of July weekend in Connecticut, I am back to the white lights of the pit and the incriminating brightness of the computer screen. Have I ranted lately about how there is absolutely no way I would be able to maintain a constantly behind-the-desk job for the rest of my life? I hope so, because it's true. I know now I need to put in my time in the cubicle, in front of the PC, so I can prove my worthiness as a typing extraordinaire. Yet, having this internship is helped me realize a lot about what I don't want to do for a living... perhaps a lot more than what I do want to do. The former is just as valuable as the latter though, in my opinion. So today has gone by relatively fast actually. This morning we had to get all of the press clippings from Friday through today since Friday was an official holiday. I proof-read something for one of the people in our department and I also got to use the label making machine for the first time to help her make a binder. She's moving to a different department next week so she is putting together an info binder for the person who takes over for her. I wish I could say I really learned something today, but other than the wonders of a label maker, everything is pretty much the same as it was in the past few weeks. I'm excited though because this coming Friday there is a party to reveal the new Knicks City Dancers since the auditions are finishing this week. We're working at it so I should have the opportunity to learn a little more about event execution. If I don't do broadcast journalism, event planning in the athletic realm is what I want to do for sure. I know that would require behind-the-desk work as well... I mean EVERYTHING does in a sense, but it would also provide an opportunity to get out and about and do some more hands-on things rather than typing and reading and staring at computer screens. I finally finished reading Into the Wild last week and I really liked it. I think that if I was ever asked in an interview about a person I'd like to have dinner/lunch/coffee with, it would be Alex/Chris McCandless. He had to be an intriguing person with a lot to say about the world around him. Surely he was a cynic, but cynics are healthy. Cynics teach you to love the things that they hate or to realize the need for hate for the things they love. If that makes sense... Anyway, I hope at some point this week I get some more to share on my blodge because I'm running low. I could go on a rant about Sarah Palin, but I'll pass. I'm still burnt out from arguing against her in my Pol. Comm. class.