Subject: technicalities Resent-From: staff.newyork@agency.com Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2000 10:12:21 -0400 From: "Mitch Golden" To: nystaff@agency.com, woodbridge@agency.com, "I-Traffic (New York)" Technicalities August 21, 2000 *) What IS Going On? I don't believe in astrology, but there must be something about the alignment of the planets. I can't explain it any other way. Someone gave a laxative to the digestive track of karma. How else can we explain the _simultaneous_ disappearance of the shag pads and the opening of the cafeteria? And the cafeteria is really quite nice, and the food is pretty good. To top it off, there's a new vending machine on 13. Not one Rube Goldberg would be interested in to be sure, but at least it sells the usual chips and junk. While I don't hold to supernatural explanations, I now live in fear of some form of cosmic retribution. Something is going to happen to balance out the flow of recent events. I'm not being moved to 10, am I? *) That Party What can one say about the office's summer party? What interests me is the extent to which it is a barometer for what we've become. Take how we got there. Last time, when we had the Christmas party, I pretty much had to find my own way over to the far west side. Now that we're bigger, we got tour buses. These were, you might have noticed, the self same double deckers that were nearly delicensed by the city for having hit and killed a pedestrian not far from our office. Where does that fit in? And what were we to make of the tour guide, who, between asking for tips, regaled us with the sort of New York stories that amuse the yokels who usually take such conveyances? (My favorite was when he was failing to find some suitably coiffed wierdo as an example of a typical East Village denizen. Laurence Hill kept telling him to turn around and look at Traff.) There are probably still a few of us left who remember that our parties used to be on the circle line boat, at which the AGENCY.COM band played. The forbidding entrance to the club and the large bouncers checking our ID outside made it clear that this time it would be somewhat less homey. When I saw the physical space, a two-level open air ballroom presided over by a gigantic wet phallus, I knew I would have no choice but to take in the evening's festivities in a rather detached, postmodern mode. The establishment is clearly the weekly setting for the sort of debauchery that I had hitherto believed Rudy Giuliani successfully stamped out several years ago. When I went into the WC, I was struck with the thought, "I wonder how many hits of ecstasy have been consumed in this very space?" At any rate, I'm too old for such revelry, and besides my drug of preference for the evening was both legal, and thanks to the company's generosity, free. I partook of a few of the multicolored beverages arrayed around the bar at the base of the spritzing column, and I proceeded to mingle a bit. As the buzz began to take hold, I noticed further differences with prior events. Early on, I chatted with a few of the folks from i-traffic (an AGENCY.COM(tm) company). Unlike previous parties, people tended to cluster by company, or perhaps by team. In the past I used to tend to slum a bit with the strategists, but this time there was no obvious knot of them. At the evening ground on, the line that repeatedly came through my encroaching aura of disinterest and intoxication was "This better not make it into Technicalities!" Had I in fact recorded even a small fraction of these transactions these notes would be considerably longer than they are (and I'm up late enough already as it is). Besides, in nearly all of these cases, you just had to be there. Still, there were a few events that nonetheless seemed noteworthy: **) Early in the evening, when even Tony Ward was sober, he and a couple of female members of The People Organization engaged me in a conversation regarding my prior night's sleeping arrangements. I wish I could have told them something salacious, but unfortunately I had to disappoint. I then inquired of my questioners from TPO (who have, in the past, been somewhat critical readers of these missives) whether being asked such details of my private life might not in fact constitute grounds for a sexual harassment suit. "Only if the questions are unwanted" was the bold reply. (Later in the evening I saw my interrogator dancing on the bar. These People Org folks are a real mystery sometimes.) **) People kept coming up to me and telling me about all the carbohydrates Yuju Yen was eating. I learned that Kevin Rowe was on the Atkins diet too. (I was also informed that the country, in its rush to avoid carbohydrates, has latched on to a new health food - pork rinds. Sales are way up.) **) Aside from Merilee Schaffer, not a soul from Woodbridge showed up. I tried to regale her into trasferring to the NY office, away from all the nerds. Barbara Pjura (who, as I observed, is rather a party animal herself) has made the transition, to both her and our benefit. **) Towards the end of the evening, the intoxicants began to take their toll on certain of our younger members. Eugenia Antipas, who is supposed to be a mentor to the builders, had really failed to keep matters under control in certain cases. As I left, she and certain others were attempting to get someone vertical and out of the premises. **) Walking down the stairs, I ran into Jamil Ellis, who asked me nervously if anything he did that evening would make it into these notes. I replied that while I was not actually a witness, tales of his lap dancing had made their rounds to me. As the Y2K summer party passes into history, I'm wondering what the gathering will be like after another year of 30% quarter-to-quarter growth. Will we be renting the Staten Island Ferry?