Technicalities Dec 22, 2000 *) 'Tis The Season Brand me a communist - this is just not my favorite time of year. (Every year some of my fellow non-Christians get together and have our election of our most-hated Christmas carol. "The Little Drummer Boy" usually wins, but Burl Ives singing "Holly Jolly Christmas" always gives it a run for the money. I know I am not part of the mainstream or anything, but can someone explain to me why people find it appealing to spend 10% of their year listening to Bing Crosby sing "Silent Night" in malls and restaurants?) Anyway... this is the time of year when companies give their holiday parties. In principle this is an enjoyable thing for companies to do for their folks, but as a matter of practice I have long since given up going to new-media shindigs. Is it because I'm just not cool enough, or are they simply boring? Please tell me, but break it to me gently. Nonetheless I broke my rule and popped in to the Organic fest on Dec 7th. I know a few of those folks - I was invited by a former Spiral Media employee who left to become a Senior Associate Creative Director. I also know some of her colleagues and her boss, the Senior Group Creative Director. I was really there to see my former Spiral Media business partner, Art Williams, now Organic's Executive Vice President for Global Operations. The Organic affair was too sedate for my taste. Mostly it was people milling around, smoking cigarettes, and talking shop. No one was even dancing. There were the requisite number of new-media boys and babes, but if flirting was to be on the agenda I would have had to wheel out my new-media chatter - to feign deep knowledge as I meaningfully discuss the subtleties of the web palette. No way, dammit, I'm on vacation. I heard that Pud from http://www.fuckedcompany.com/ was there that night, but I didn't run into him. Art wasn't there either - he was at the home office in SF, I was told - so my time at the party was destined to be limited. When my coat was on and I was making my way back through the crowd toward the exit I was introduced to an attractive woman who told me that she had always wanted to date a physicist. As I was about to start explaining my Ph.D. thesis on Strongly Interacting Electroweak Symmetry Breaking my hostess hustled me out the door. *) Black-Tie Only Of course I was at the AGENCY party just a few days latter. I had read that the mood at the dotcoms' holiday fests was less than festive http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001213/tc/grim_holiday_parties_2.html While I didn't find anyone that way at our party, I can only guess that our choice of blues as the music of the night in some sort of subliminal way reflected the mood of the moment. I was, that evening, wearing my tuxedo. I'm not sure what I was thinking. It worked last year, but that party was much later at night. So, aside from Thor, who acted as the MC, I was the standout radically-overdressed dork. All told I thought it was a pretty good affair, though it didn't have any of those moments of sheer absurdity I find in so many of these situations. (Though afterwards, in the bar a bunch of us were hanging out in, Peter Gluck and I were greeted by a wall-sized hologram of a snarling Boyds Bear.) I thought the party would have been spiced up by a bit of accordian music. Don't you agree, Ralph? And let's get this straight: Eugenia was _not_ drunk. Stone cold. Can I be clearer? *) In Memoriam James McHugh was not at the party - he was at home alone, totally heartbroken over the death of his namesake, archbishop of Long Island, and the fact that he passed on without living to see the work of his anti-abortion crusade bear fruit: http://www.newsday.com/obits/passings/mchugh/libish11.htm *) Postscript: Doggerel For The End Of The Year Though I spent a fun eve at their blast, it seems that the good times went fast. The folks at Organic Went into a panic, One-fourth of their staff's in the past. In Avon they got a phone call: "We've decided for you it is all", As ACOM shares tumble, The stakeholders grumble, "There's a Y2K bug after all".