The road and back blog - I'm home again from a really long work trip to Manhattan. I love Manhattan (he says, if only to avoid sounding like a T-shirt) and this trip actually afforded some time to see the city in precisely the way I always say work trips never do. I flew out Monday to prep for a client demo in the corner conference room that overlooks the Brooklyn Bridge and then was turned loose for some free time that stretched into Wednesday morning. I was staying in an apartment instead of a hotel on this one so I was without the usual amenities this time around, which was sometimes great and sometimes a huge pain in the ass.
Monday was mellow, had some sushi and got rained on. There's an art film just waiting to be made.
Tuesday I got to see Larry, drank WAY too much coffee so I could get online at the local coffee shop and saw Harold night at the Upright Citizens Brigade before turning in for a day of actual work beginning on Wednesday.
Wednesday I was joined by Shawn and we loaded in to the photo studio to instruct the people using our technology on how to use the gear, which loosely translated on this show to "sit around photo studio with lots and lots of beautiful people waiting for the judges, who never show up" and then back to the apartment, more sushi, caught some time to read and forgot to keep my phone on me so I had an accidental quiet night reading and laying around the oversized closet I was sleeping in with the car horns and yelling in the background. I was apparently becoming a native New Yorker at alarming speed.
I walked out to find a line of squad cars a block long, all lit up.
Thursday was the long day, showtime.
The show we were running was the Stella Artois World Draught Master Championship, the contestants came from all over the globe to demonstrate perfection in the 9-step ritual that Stella demands - the winner gets to represent their brand around the world for several months, basically being a glorified traveling bartender. Still, given the meetings we run most of the time, this is pretty high on the fun scale.
The show we were running was the Stella Artois World Draught Master Championship, the contestants came from all over the globe to demonstrate perfection in the 9-step ritual that Stella demands - the winner gets to represent their brand around the world for several months, basically being a glorified traveling bartender. Still, given the meetings we run most of the time, this is pretty high on the fun scale.
We ran the scoring part of the show so their weird little fates were in our crafty little hands.
I'm looking at you, Dubai....
Afterward, plenty of Stella was poured and we humped our gear out of the NY Public Library well into the next morning to mark the end of a long day that really didn't have an end since I went straight from the gig to the airport, slept on the floor at La Guardia and then dragged my tired ass onto the plane and slept the whole flight home.
The Grand Central clock said "Time to go to sleep, stupid" - we ignored it
Just like NYC - the whole thing was made up of a million pretty cool things you can't see or do anywhere else but the scale and speed of it all just blurs it all together into one massive, exhausting experience.
I love Manhattan but I'm glad as hell to be home
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