I have always known that some of my classmates from college and law school would own businesses, have powerful positions in government, and otherwise become notable. But I didn’t expect to see a 25 year old classmate of mine from law school start so quickly.

While the rest of his classmates are summering at firms or working for financial institutions this summer, Jared Kushner, who will graduate with a JD/MBA from NYU in 2007, decided to buy a company.

According to the New York Times, Kushner ponied up $10 million dollars to buy the New York Observer. This after a deal with Robert DeNiro and his team fell through.

Steely Dan and Owen Wilson have beef! Well not exactly. It looks like it was all a prank by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan. But it was hilarious.

Becker and Fagen wrote an open letter to Owen’s brother Luke on July 17th expressing outrage at what they perceived as Owen’s blatant rip-off of their 2000 hit Cousin Dupree about a couch surfing bum of a cousin. The rip-off, of course is Owen’s You, Me, and Dupree starring Matt Dillon, Kate Hudson, and Owen Wilson. Seeking an apology, they wrote the letter to Luke presuming that he could bring some older brother pressure to bear on Owen. Fagen and Becker mistakenly believed that Luke was the older brother. Upon learning that Luke was in fact younger, the duo remarked, “We’re now seeing that according to Wikipedia, Owen is older than you are. But you seem a lot more mature somehow… don’t you?”

After making their case and asking Luke to get Owen to apologize at one of their concerts, Becker and Fagen resort to some pretty awesome threats:

Otherwise, if this business goes unresolved, there are some pretty heavy people who are upset about this whole thing and we can’t guarantee what kind of heat little Owen may be bringing down on himself. When negative energy like this attaches itself to someone because they allow themselves to get involved in stuff that is not spiritually aligned for them on all levels, there can sometimes be some very harsh trips that go down. Your bro might be creating an extremely retrograde reality matrix for himself with his whole sellout moviestar game and there may be some righteous dues to pay, amen.

For example, there’s this guy that works for us sometimes, he’s not necessarily the kind of folks you want to know or hang with, but, if you happen to get in a bar fight or some kind of hassle in a foreign country, he’s your best fucking friend in the world. You guys must go to the movies a lot - you know what a Navy Seal is, right? Well, this dude’s like that, only he’s Russian. This particular guy - of course, he’s a big fan of ours, but he may not have ven heard of “Bottle Rocket” - hardly anybody has - I mean one time we saw this guy, WITH HIS BARE HANDS, do something so unspeakable that - but, hey man, let’s not even get that way, you know? Let’s just help Owen C. do what’s right…

Extremely retrograde reality matrix?

Owen’s response was equally funny. Through his publicist, Owen Wilson said:

I have never heard the song Cousin Dupree and I don’t even know who this gentleman, Mr. Steely Dan, is. I hope this helps to clear things up and I can get back to concentrating on my new movie, HEY 19.

On a side note, I am a huge Steely Dan fan but had no idea they were still making records. Cousin Dupree won a Grammy for best pop performance by a duo or group in 2001. The album that it was on, Two Against Nature, won album of the year.

Sound Advice has just mashed up Gnarls Barkely’s St. Elsewhere with Biggie.

Download the tracks before they disappear

The past few days have been an exercise in trying to remeber what I was like before law school.

Not that I can go back, but I am trying to remember how to have fun without the near contstant pang of guilt and worry that accompanied my attempts at leisure over the last three years.

I find myself saying yes more when people call and tell me that they are above 14th street and I should come join them. Though I frittered away a lot of time in law school, something about staying in the neighborhood, near my books and the library, made me feel secure. I am going to movies again. In general, I find that I am rarely dissastified, a feeling that pervaded my waking hours just a few months ago.

And I see changes in my friends too. They are complaining less. Smiling more. We are enjoying each other’s company and no longer worried about where that enjoyment occurs.

I am looking forward to the next few years as we shed the law school ethos and become normal again.

I finally made it up to the Shake Shack in Madison Square park on Tuesday (ok… and Wednesday). It is as good as promised.

Today, I found myself thrilled that composite sketches and eyewitness descriptions are so inaccurate. Why? Because when I opened up today’s New York Times Metro section and saw the picture of the hancuffed suspect in a recent local rape and murder case, I felt like I was looking at a picture of myself.

It is truly uncanny.

If statements and skectches were remotely accurate, I would be wondering why people were gripping up their children off the street and fleeing as I walked by.

The photo below is from a book entitled Plans For Other Days, a book by Janfamily. Janfamily was founded by Royal College of Art graduates Nina Jan Beier and Marie Jan Lund. They were then joined by Daniel Jan Mair, Chosil Jan Kil, and Makin Jan Ma. Based in London, the group creates art projects that take such varied forms as songs, clothes, photography, and film.

I haven’t bought the book, but loved this image

via Youngna Park

Watch Me Go by Sheila Griffin

My friend Sheila is an amazing photographer. I highly recommend taking some time to browse her photoblog.

I am sitting for the New York Bar Exam Tuesday and Wednesday this week. God help Manhattan on Wednesday night. They aren’t going to know what hit them when three thousand over ten thousand over-stressed aspiring lawyers hit the town to cut loose after a summer of memorizing mind-numbingly arcane legal rules.

Hilarious article in the New Yorker about the ongoing battle over 395 Hudson Street between Hot 97 and the The New York City District Council of Carpenters. There have been several high profile shootings infront of the building involving rival hip hop artists and their hangers on. The article starts with a brief profile of the aspiring hip-hop artist Gravy who was shot outside 395 Hudson while waiting for his interview and freestyle session with DJ Funk Master Flex. Unwilling to miss his shot at fame, Gravy went on with the interview and freestyled for nearly 2 hours on air without mentioning his wound. According to Gravy:

What was I supposed to tell a powerful influence like Flex, at Hot 97? ‘You know what, Flex? I’m sorry, man. I can’t do the show. I was standing downstairs—got shot in the ass.’ What, are you nuts? Right? It wouldn’t make any sense. So I had to do what I had to do.”

Many believed the shooting was staged to raise the profile of Gravy as his debut album comes to market. Gravy denied these accusations:

“I’m not really trying to promote this,” he said, again stroking his thigh. “That’s not what it’s about. What happened happened, and I’m still alive, God willing. You know, just like the name of my album, ‘God Willing.’

According to Kris, Zooomr will be launching tomorrow (7/16/06). As I mentioned in my previous post, Zooomr had a much hyped deadline on Friday that they missed due to a DOS attack.

I am writing this follow up post to express how impressed I am with Zooomr and specifically Thomas Hawk’s response to this mishap. Thomas Hawk is Zooomr’s Chief Evangelist, and he has earned his title (and salary) these past few days. Hawk found my post (I assume through Technorati) and responded within an hour of my posting comments on their missed deadline. More importantly, he followed up with another response today to let me know that the service would be launching tomorrow and to thank me for my earlier comments.

What Thomas did is simple and highly effective. It took him 30 seconds to personally let this potential customer know that the team was aware of the situation, that they appreciated the support of bloggers, and that they were rushing to solve the problem. The followup was even more key. By writing my initial post, I self-identified as an potential customer. Thomas went the next step and contacted me again to let me know that the worst was behind them and that launch was imminent. Had I read the blog post on Zooomr alerting me to this fact already? Of course. But the little extra step taken by Hawk was far more effective. Zooomr took what seemed like a negative situation and turned it into an opportunity to make meanigful connections with their potential customers.

This is the type of personal attention that wins hearts and minds.

Kudos to Thomas and the rest of the Zooomr team. You guys get it.

I look forward to seeing the finished product.

Update: Scoble explains my point above in three sentences (this in reference to a senior executive at Nestle replying to a negative blog post about his company):

Nestle just became a little more human due to a letter from George. I appreciate that a senior executive is fighting for his company’s reputation! I want to do business with people like that.

I guess that’s why they pay Scoble the big bucks.

Zooomr, a photosharing website a la Flickr went down for scheduled maintenance yesterday and was scheduled to launch its 2.0 version today at 5 PM EDT. Zooomr implemented a nifty countdown feature that showed how many hours, minutes, and seconds were left until launch. I was intrigued because almost nothing (especially in web development) goes off as planned. Having a timer takes guts - or perhaps youthful exuberance. After all, Kris Tate, the founder, is all of 17 years old.

Sure enough, the clock just hit zero and started ascending, mockingly counting each second by which the deadline was overrun. Now the site, which is stuck on 11:09 has the following message:

Worldwide release of the all new Zooomr

Officially launching ASAP!

Just to be clear, I am not making fun of Kris and the Zooomr team - just commenting on the nature of deadlines. The Zooomr team has done amazing work, and deserve no criticism even if they take another full day to get the site up and running.

I just hope for their sake that they can get it done by 8:00 o’clock so they can make the free beer

Update: Apparently Zooomr has been under an denial of service attack all day. Thomas Hawk says they should be up and running by 7pm.

We Old Dudes
by Joan Murray

We old dudes. We
White shoes. We

Golf ball. We
Eat mall. We

Soak teeth. We
Palm Beach; We

Vote red. We
Soon dead.

This is a remix of a famous poem by Gwendolyn Brooks.

We Real Cool
by Gwendolyn Brooks

[The Pool Players
Seven at the Golden Shovel]

We Real Cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk Late. We
Drive straight. We

Sing sin. We
Drink Gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

I just walked out onto my balcony in the village. You can still hear a dull roar coming from Little Italy…

Alas, I was rooting for Les Bleus.

And I have to say, that head butt by Zidane was the craziest thing I have ever seen at a sporting event.

Update: Here is the video.