I’ve been out with the adults lately. A whole bunch of ‘em. Old ones. Round ones. Ones with big heads and ones with skinny necks that flip around when they see someone exciting and with whom they’d like to share their business card. I don’t know how I would remember their names, or what they did for a living, without them: the business cards. (Don’t even get me started on the QR code CV’s…) Sometimes everyones canned schtick tastes the same. Most of these people will never buy me a drink in earnest. They want my money. The punchline reads: I want theirs, too.
Cheap but true. The marked floor we dance.
I am in the fast-moving, blurry part of a career that’s often dismissed by older adults as the beginning. What they do not know is that I am actually in the comedown after the aptly coined honeymoon phase. Reality has now set in - there are such things as dead ends, and not every left turn is an adventure. Sometimes it’s just plain work.
I sound exhausted but I am not. This is just getting fun. I am the realest I know and all the time now I think I see through some of this B.S. The punchline reads: Get a load of this guy.
I have nothing figured out beyond staying set on figuring out who else has nothing figured out. The figured out folks are either inaccessible, impossible, or fools.
I went to a tradeshow last week. I make it sound dreary and boring but it’s just kinda meh. The real guts of any industry takes place in dusty rooms with crummy lighting. Tradeshows are all veneer - vapid, suffocating.
I took a break halfway through day two and ate lunch with a brand owner who seemed, like me, in need of some fresh air. The punchline reads: we went to a deli.
We ate at S & P. You may have heard of it. Josh Safdie xyz. This place was formerly Eisenberg’s - and while I won’t claim to be a New York City deli historian, I know that Eisenberg’s has a legacy. Clout. One of those places that exists in the cultural zeitgeist of New York eateries. Having said that, it's nothing special, which is exactly what makes it a place worth going. Paper menus. Drab wallpaper. Lopsided tables and crammed in seating. It’s hard to be comfortable at S & P. Once you find your footing, the food, which could be described as nostalgia on rye, becomes the focal point. In a world of shiny happy corporate joints this one has an edge.
But I’m not here to talk about edge or X factor or anything buzzy. I’m going to talk about how nice it was to eat with someone who enjoyed a thick cut of pastrami, spicy mustard and a can of Black Cherry Dr. Brown soda. This is going to sound crass but in the world of networking it is remarkably refreshing to find someone who might just be a little like you. This man - who will remain as anonymous to you as he was to me when we met - restored, to a small degree, my faith in society. Not in the ways that he was similar to me but in the ways that he made me feel less different. The best part is that I’m not even sure that he liked me.
Work lunch can be clunky. Let the record show that I have no qualms with specific dietary needs - rather, expressing that my lack-there-of pits me as either uninformed or hegemonic. But I can’t help but feel out of place out to lunch at the tradeshow, as a sports-infused, narrative focused coffee addict (with half-and-half). I follow trends via Instagram meme accounts. I do not own Elder Statesmen sweaters. I almost feel gross using a brand name there. I work in this industry because I get to write. It is not hard for me to fit in, but it is hard to feel understood.
We split latkes and each ordered our own house classics - I had The Mel Brooks. The splitting of the latkes was a simple gesture but I appreciated it. In hindsight I may have overdipped (as in overstep/different than a double dip) into the sour cream when I should have used my knife to spread it onto the latke.
But he didn’t mind - and I believe we spoke freely.
We talked about people we knew and people we didn’t really know. There’s lower stakes in the latter. Either way it’s gossip. I call “a good dip” - my perspective - what others could call judgment. I guess it’s only judging when your opinions are negative. Maybe I’m just a guy who wants the space to have a take.
I told him that I didn’t know how I felt about people whose personalities were what they did for work. Like would you ever want to be just a salesman. Nobody says those things, but some people do them. The irony being that I ultimately tell people that I’m a writer - and most people never actually see you doing the writing. You have to take them at their word, whether they say so or not. Maybe I am in the beginning part of my career and I don’t know better. I could have missed a chance to land something like a job but I wasn’t in the mood to make a deal.
At lunch you can’t answer life’s big questions - you just take a little dip. Business is best talked at dinner - I eat a sandwich with my hands.
A few things to add…
Happy One Year to the Seam.
This year I’m hoping to open the floor to submissions from (loose) experts on topics about which I know little (cars, jewelry, food, dating apps.) If you’re interested email me at brianhamlin@me.com
Triangle of Sadness was the best movie I saw in 2022. I’m going to bet it as a Best Picture winner although this is some recency bias. I bet Parasite to win Best Picture in 2019. It won the Palm d’Or in May and Best Picture nearly 10 months later. I’m following the same logic here. I don’t think Triangle will win but I like the odds and I think it’s sexier than any of the top dogs right now. Also it just…. wasn’t boring. It did not feature aliens and it was not based on an intellectual property from 1986. It was on the nose like The Wolf of Wall Street and tragically obvious like Don’t Look Up, but Triangle’s funnier - if not a bit meaner.
Chiefs beat the Eagles in Super Bowl LVII.
The Steelers will make the playoffs next year.
Someone I Know Now
As long as you didn’t go back in for another dip, totally legal move regarding the latke imo
Triangle of sadness was not boring but I don’t think it was anything special either.