09, 14, 39, 42, 44 and 11

i interviewed Oliver Willis of SportsFilter last night. i had read oliver on metafilter for some time, and then I met him at the LA Blogger party at Brian’s house. im not really one to go to mixers of any sort, but it was such a friendly invite and lots of my friends were already going, so i went and i met some very cool folks including oliver, and i hope you enjoy our conversation that took place last night.

this weekend i got to spend a lot of time with my friends that i barely see enough of and i had a chance to see “Black Hawk Down” which I really loved. i am such a pacifist, but some really good war movies can have me buzzing for days and i will say that i am still thinking about how good that movie is. at one point my date turned to me with tears in her eyes saying, “i dont want to watch this any more,” and that’s when you know you have something powerful.

best part about it: they never once play “The Space Between,” the Dave Matthews Band hit that they use in the commercials. I’ve always admired you, Ridley, but what was up with “G.I. Jane?”

I only missed one birthday this weekend, two really. My good pals Hiram and Mark both celebrated their birthdays on Sunday, but I was too beat and I had no ride to make it over to the wessside. If Karisa hadn’t been in NYC on business, I would have gone with her, but I hope they understand. Such fine gentlemen. Hiram and I hired the first 100 eReps at PeopleSupport and Mark ended up being my boss after the company laid me off and then was forced to hire me back. All of that was so wild, and now that I am removed from it a tad, perhaps a lot of the dot-coms were being run by a bunch of people that should have stayed in the fields that they had come from.

But Hiram and I were both very mellow, very idealistic, very interested in hiring the right mix of generally excellent non-assholes who got it about respect and intelligence and fun. Plus it was great to hire some amazingly hot chicks every now and then and then giggle about it later. Only once were we unsure about a hire, and she turned out to be pretty good too, so we were lucky.

Mark had the unfortunate duty of trying to manage a guy who had hired him. He did a good job, kept me happy, kept me on a team that I ended up loving almost right away. Here’s what I have to say about Mark: if you can get a guy to come in to work at 6am after he had been coming in to work Whenever He Damn Well Pleased, and do it at half his salary and stripped of any real power, and keep that fool working for you for nearly six months, you’ve acheived a miraculous feat.

So I hope your birthdays were good, my friends, and I hope the booze went down smoothly.