If you are struggling with whether The Gates is true art, I recommend the following test sent to me by Dave Jilk.  I got a 75% – which means I’m merely a pretty good guesser.

Several friends have been raving about The Gates.  My mom – the artist – just sent me an email saying it was an amazing installation and I had to look at the web site.  I love Christo and HUGE art pieces – they overwhelm me in a weird emotional way (Amy and I have a large installation of Jerry Wingren’s The Visitors outside our bedroom window that I wake up to everyone morning.)  As a kid, I could sit and stare at the Claes Oldenberg sculpture in the Dallas Museum of Art forever.

Amy’s in San Francisco with her artist friend Theresa Chong looking at the amazing Lichtenstein exhibit at SFMOMA and playing up in Napa with collectors of Theresa’s art, so I’m home alone tonight and could take my time looking at the web site for The Gates.

It’s awesome.  I’ve decided to make a special trip to NY in the next month just to wander around and soak it up.

I decided to add a new category to my blog called “Pet Peeves.”  Like most compulsive people, I have my share of these and I’m confident my therapist – if I had one – would suggest I share these with the world to get them out of my head.

I wrote recently about the NY Times falling prey to using the word “freaking” instead of “fucking.”  It’s depressing to me that the editors at this venerable institution would allow this to happen. Even if they were quoting someone (as they were) they should have said “freaking (sic)” to indicate they were aware of the erroneous word substitution.

This morning, I awoke to an email from Chris Wand with the eleven acceptable times in history to use the “F” word (which his email fondly responds to as @#$% – I’ll go ahead an use that usage below to try to avoid spam filters – oops, RSS doesn’t have spam filters yet, oh well – freedom of speech.)  Of course, I think it’s acceptable in virtually every fucking sentence, but I thought Chris’s eleven times were priceless enough to pass on.  If you disagree with any of these usages, please feel free to take it up with Chris.

11. “What the @#$% do you mean, we are sinking?” – Capt. E.J. Smith of RMS Titanic, 1912
10. “What the @#$% was that?” – Mayor of Hiroshima, 1945
9. “Where did all those @#$%ing Indians come from?” – Custer, 1877
8. “Any @#$%ing idoit could understand that.” – Einstein, 1938
7. “It does so @#$%ing look like her!” – Picasso, 1926
6. “How the @#$% did you work that out?” – Pythagoras, 126 BC
5. “You want WHAT on the @#$%in ceiling?” – Michelangelo, 1566
4. “Where the @#$% are we?” – Amelia Earhart, 1937
3. “Scattered @#$% showers, my ass!” – Noah, 4314 BC
2. “Aw c’mon.  Who the @#$% is going to find out?” – Bill Clinton, 1998
1. “Geez, I didn’t think they’d get this @#$%^ing mad.” – Saddam Hussein, 2003

So – next time – use the real thing – some of the greats in history have.

When I run, my vision of myself is a lumbering hulk going “clomp clomp” down the road.  Whenever Amy and I are driving over a road that I recently ran, I often cannot resist adding “clomp clomp” sound effects to our driving experience.  In appreciation for my enunciating skills, Amy emailed me the following haiku from her Zen Page-A-Day Calendar 2005.

Clomp clomp the monk’s feet
through ice and dark
drawing sweet water.

by Basho

I stumbled upon references to two new bloggers today that are must reads for anyone interested in technology, venture capital, and entrepreneurship.

• Roger McNamee – a hugely successful public market and venture capital investor – has started a blog called The New Normal (after a book he just published).
• Tom Evslin – founder, chairman, and CEO of ITXC.  I remember meeting Tom at Fred Wilson’s office at Flatiron when Fred was considering funding ITXC.  We (Softbank) passed – Fred went on to fund Tom and made plenty of money as a result.  My recollection of Tom was super-high energy, great thinker, and incredibly passionate about what he was up to.  Tom rode out the bubble with style, creating a successful business that was acquired last year by Teleglobe.

Happy reading.

Fortunately for my wife Amy, she’s aware that I’m a 15 year old boy trapped in a 39 year old’s body.  So – when Netflix delivers Caddyshack to us, she let me watch it on a Friday night after I’ve worked much too hard, exercised too much (and still struggled to get all the weight off), and been entirely too serious for the past five days (ok – as serious as I get about anything – which isn’t that serious since I am really a 15 year old after all.)

In 1980, I saw Caddyshack about 10 times (I think the only movie I saw more frequently was Star Wars, but I was only 12 then so I can be forgiven since I hadn’t yet matured enough to have perspective.)  God only knows (and he’s the only one I’ll ever tell) how many times I’ve seen Caddyshack since, although it totals a number close to my current age.  I hadn’t seen it in a while (where “a while” is obviously relative) and it was a delight.  I even noticed Amy sneaking looks and laughing at the antics of Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, and Chevy Chase (wow – what a cast for 1980 comedy.)

I feel much better (and younger) then I did at 5:30 this evening.

My NewsGator Keyword Search Feeds picked up a couple of new blogs from employees of two of my portfolio companies.  I posted recently about a few new Mobius VC bloggers – it’s fascinating to see the spread of blogging to our portfolio companies.

First up is Sandy Hamilton.  I’ve known Sandy for several years – he’s worked at a couple of my portfolio companies.  He’s currently the SVP of Sales and Business Development at NewsGator where he’s kicking butt.  He just started two blogs – the first on his personal musings on business and life and the second on corporate applications of RSS.

Next up is Jason Groshart, one of the software engineers at Gold Systems.  Gold Systems CEO – Terry Gold – recently started blogging.  It’s neat to see Jason follow.

Welcome guys!

BusinessWeek Online just launched a blog called Deal Flow – Inside the World of Venture Capital and Startups.  It’s fun to see Main Stream Media get in the blog game.

I just watched two Tarantino movies from 1994 that have held up incredibly well.

Friday night’s bloodfest was Natural Born Killers.  I had forgotten Tarantino wrote the story – Oliver Stone got all the glory on this one.  Woody Harrelson is unbelievable and – a decade later – the movie matches the evening news more than I’d ever care to have imagined.

Tonight, we watched Pulp Fiction.  I’ve only seen this movie about 30 times (a few less then Caddyshack) and I was delighted to find the script on the Internet.  My favorite scene is the the one when Butch (the boxer played by Bruce Willis) has finally reconciled with Marsellus after blowing away Zed and Maynard and is trying to get Fabian on the chopper to get out of town.  Fabian starts to cry and the following dialogue ensues.

BUTCH: I’m sorry, baby-love.

FABIAN: (crying) You were gone so long, I started to think dreadful thoughts.

BUTCH: I’m sorry I worried you, sweetie.  Everything’s fine.  Hey, how was breakfast?

FABIAN: (waterworks drying a little) It was good —

BUTCH: — did you get the blueberry pancakes?

FABIAN: No, they didn’t have blueberry pancakes, I had to get buttermilk — are you sure you’re okay?

BUTCH: Baby-love, from the moment I left you, this has been without a doubt the single weirdest day of my entire life.  Climb on an’ I’ll tell ya about it.

Fabian does climb on.  Butch STARTS her up.

FABIAN: Butch, whose motorcycle is this?

BUTCH: It’s a chopper.

FABIAN: Whose chopper is this?

BUTCH: Zed’s.

FABIAN: Who’s Zed?

BUTCH: Zed’s dead, baby, Zed’s dead.

And with that, the two lovebirds PEEL AWAY on Grace, as the SONG on the BOOM BOX RISES.

I empathize with Butch.

While I always have thought I wanted to be The Wolf when I grew up, I turned out to be Marsellus when I took the “What Pulp Fiction Character Are You?” survey.