Journal entries in 'Miscellaneous' for May, 2005

When you call someone on the phone, after identifying yourself, do you go right on talking, or do you stop and give them a second to process that and acknowledge you? Lately I've been doing the latter, since I know I tend to talk fast, and when you first pick up the phone you usually aren't concentrating and giving it your full attention and ready to process things. But when I say "Hey, it's Dan," and then pause, people always seem to go, "...Hi," as if they were expecting me to keep talking and are surprised they're expected to respond before I actually communicate anything. So I'm puzzled and I wonder what other people do.

This article filled me with revulsion. It's complaining about Tom Cruise's "foolish" antics of late regarding his relationship with Katie Holmes. People seem to believe it's just a PR stunt. I don't know or care about that, but I hate how it is written with the assumption that there is a "right" way to act when you're famous, and if you do otherwise you are stupid and don't know what you're doing.

"Stay away from that Scientology stuff. How does talking about Brooke Shields drive people to the movie theater?" says Ronn Torossian, CEO of 5WPR, who has repped Lil' Kim and Ja Rule. Why does every word Cruise utters have to be carefully crafted to win him the most possible popularity per unit time?

"I don't think anyone is going to coach him," says publicist Lizzie Grubman. "He's clearly not taking p.r. advice from [his sister, Lee Anne DeVette, whom he recently hired as his publicist]. He's taking p.r. advice from himself."

And the audience gasped. Behaving as yourself, and not the carefully crafted image your publicist puts together for you? Someone stop this man before his deviant "independent thought" spreads through Hollywood like a devastating plague.

When I walk down the hallway to the bathroom at work, some of the tiles in the false ceiling pop up and sometimes vibrate noisily as I walk past. I assume it has something to do with a vacuum created by the air conditioning system, and a pressure differential caused by my approach. But I can't help imagining it's an upside-down version of those creepy little things (apparently called Snatter Goblins) that rotate the paving stones when Sarah draws lipstick arrows on them in Labyrinth. And I don't like it.

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