Let me tell you about Bob Beamon and his incredibly long jump in the 1968 Olympics. Do record setters’ lives change when they run out of things to strive for?
Tomorrow is my last day at Variety. Today, I was going to write about sensing the melatonin-draining properties of Variety and the innate self-preservation instinct my scalp must have. Instead, as I was saying final, final keepsies goodbyes at Variety, something special happened.
Last night, I went to a firing party for Sandra Loh, a radio personality at KCRW in Los Angeles who was dismissed because she accidently let the word “fuck” get on the air. The party was put on by the L.A. Press Club, and was fun and festival and fabulous at the Hotel Figueroa. I met more than the usual amount of interesting people.
“Almost every American I know does trade large portions of his life for entertainment, hour by weeknight hour, binge by Saturday binge, Facebook check by Facebook check. I’m one of them. In the course of writing this I’ve watched all 13 episodes of House of Cards and who knows how many more West Wing episodes, and I’ve spent any number of blurred hours falling down internet rabbit holes. All instead of reading, or writing, or working, or spending real time with people I love.”
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
You can scroll right easily by holding down the SHIFT key and using your scroll wheel. (Firefox users trying this will end up jumping to old Web pages until a) Firefox releases a fix, b) they change their settings like so.)