I have three major hobbies – reading, running, and collecting art.  On my run today, I realized that I occasionally blog about reading and running, but I rarely blog about art.  I’m pretty sure this idea got lodged in my head yesterday while Amy and I were looking around the web for a new piece to “buy each other” as our anniversary gift.  While looking, we stumbled upon this incredible painting from Don Coen titled Prairie Rattler.

We are huge fans of Don’s and have a number of pieces of his work.  If you’ve ever been in the small conference room at Foundry Group, you’ve seen a version of Chairman of the Board that I commissioned for us after missing buying the original.  We’ve named the cow who looks over at Kelly during the day “Bessie”.

An important thing to realize about Don’s work is that his paintings are large.  Prairie Rattler is 6’ x 7’.  We talked about buying it for a few minutes but then decided that it didn’t feel right for a joint anniversary gift.  But we still both thought it was amazing and it inspired me to start periodically posting about some of the artist we love (in addition to my mom) and collect.

My partner Jason Mendelson (an ex-lawyer) has a dynamite post up titled Quick Ways To Get Fired as a Lawyer.  While some of my best friends are lawyers (or ex-lawyers), I’ve encountered most of the stupid lawyer tricks that Jason enumerates in his post. 

The big ones (immediate termination) are:

1. Screw around with redlines.
2. Endorse the chief competitor.
3. You provide little leadership and wait for someone else to come up with the answer.
4. You provide advice to the CEO adverse to the company’s interest. 

The medium ones (you’ll lose us over time) are:

1. Be lax in your advice and get it wrong. 
2. Being inefficient, getting lost in the woods, billing for small stuff that doesn’t matter.
3. Bait and switch.  You bring in the client, but you never show for board meetings, phone calls, etc. and send junior folks in your stead.
4. Not knowing who your client is.
5. Letting summer associates run wild on the account. 

But my favorite is “Being annoying.”  Jason enumerates these in more detail – if you are an entrepreneur or a lawyer the post is worth a close read.  If you are a comedian, it’s probably worth it also as you’ll get more ammunition for your standup routine.

Summer Glau just totally kicks ass.  So does xkcd – it’s my every other day dose of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

You’ll have to go to xkcd for the rest of them.  Race 2, Race 3, Race 4, and the grand finale – Race 5.  How could anyone possibly thing that it was a good idea to cancel this show.  Weren’t they afraid Summer might kill them?

I stayed at my parents’ house in Dallas on Tuesday night.  My mom has been going through a “clean all the shit out of the house” routine and keeps dumping piles of old stuff on me.  This trip, I got my high school prom album and my bar mitzvah album.  Following is my high school prom picture.

My partner Seth just informed me that my fundamental essence hasn’t changed since I was 17.  There’s 40 pounds more of it, but at my core I’m pretty much the same. 

Awesome video.  It’s worth two minutes and thirty six seconds of your life.

When I grow up, I want to work in the channel!

I’m serving up Spud’s tomorrow at Spud Bros between Noon and 2pm.  50% of all revenue goes to charity (The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County) so bring your appetite.  Location: the Corner of 10th and Pearl behind Pasta Jay’s in Boulder, Colorado.

I’m having a blast working with Mark Pincus on Zynga, his latest creation.  Mark embodies so many things to love about an entrepreneur, including relentless energy and an endless drive to move his business forward.

So, it was with glee that I found out that Ali, Mark’s new wife (still less than a year) was working on her own startup.  I figured it was good newlywed payback for Mark as he’d now have to split the “complain to spouse about pressures of creating a company” 50/50 with Ali.

Ali’s new business – One Kings Lane – launched last week.  One Kings Lane is an invitation-required, online shopping destination, featuring designer home goods at exclusive prices (up to 70% off retail). It offers members privileged access to home furnishings of the highest quality at incredible value.

Daily Candy digs it.  What more could you want out of life?

My friends at Highway 12 Ventures have started a blog.  The gang at Highway 12 is based in Boise, ID and has built a very interesting portfolio throughout the Rocky Mountain region.  Plus they are great guys.

Fortunately they put Lijit on their blog for search so I didn’t have to badger them about into using it and it made it easy for me to add them to the brand spanking new Venture Capital Bloggers Network powered by Lijit.

• #jetpack
• #faa

I have always wanted a jetpack.  From one of my favorite West Wing exchanges (among many) in "The West Wing: The Warfare of Genghis Khan (#5.13)" (2004):

Leo McGarry: My generation never got the future it was promised… Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don’t even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.
Josh Lyman: The personal computer…
Leo McGarry: A more efficient delivery system for gossip and pornography? Where’s my jet pack, my colonies on the Moon?

Our infamous friend the jetpack is explored in today’s WSJ in an article titled The Jetpack: An Idea Whose Time Has Never Come, but Won’t Go Away.  Buried down deep in the article is the insight that the FAA does not regulate jetpacks since, according to FAA spokesman Les Dorr “Thirty seconds is not sufficient to be considered a flight.”

My good friend Bruce Wyman pointed out to me that – according to Wikipedia – “The first flight, by Orville, of 120 feet (36.5 m) in 12 seconds, at a speed of only 6.8 mph over the ground, was recorded in a famous photograph.”  How ironic – I guess the FAA wouldn’t consider the first flight to be the first flight.

And – just to show that US inventors don’t have a non-monopoly on jetpacks, @tonybain pointed me to an article on a jetpack being invented in New Zealand by Glenn Martin.  Jetpack innovation apparently knows no geographic bounds, but per Leo McGarry, has been a long time coming.