HOW LA BECAME MY WALKABLE NEIGHBORHOOD

Yesterday at work, a colleague of mine asked me a different take on a very standard question. (Lawyers always asked the most interesting questions). He asked me what was different about living in LA now versus the last time I lived here. The biggest difference is that I've successfully turned LA into my walkable neighborhood.

The last time I lived in LA, I lived up on Beverly Glen Blvd. for 5 years. If I wanted to do anything from that apartment, I had to get in the car to do it. If I needed milk, wanted to see a movie, go out clubbing, shopping, grab a meal at a restaurant.....I had to get in the car, drive, park, and drive back. That's very typical in LA, but I definitely wanted something different this time around.

I chose my apartment based not only on its amenities, but also because of its extreme walkability. The Grove and Farmer's Market are right around the corner: http://www.thegrovela.com/ The Grove is mini-city unto itself. Great restaurants, great shopping, and a big 14 screen cinema. (The best kept secret about The Grove is walking by the Abercrombie store and seeing the hot, shirtless model standing in the doorway. It's like a little extra amenities that they didn't tell me about when I moved in). I have 4 major grocery stores (2 Ralphs, 1 Whole Foods, and 1 organic grocery store on the street level of my apartment - Erewon: http://www.erewhonmarket.com/) within a 5 block radius. I get my haircut within walking distance on Beverly. Another great part of my new walkable neighborhood is the Farmer's Market: http://www.farmersmarketla.com/ Some of the best food in LA is at the FM.

There are a lot of good stand alone restaurants that are all walking distance. I refuse to drink and drive, so the West Hollywood bars I like are either a $10 cab ride or a 45 minute walk away and back. And now that I've been walking, I've been seeing a lot more of the city. I save money on gas, walk more, which is good cardio, and I get to listen to my IPhone music while I walk. Pan Pacific Park is across the street from my apartment building. My bank/ATM is a block and a half away, and the post office is right across the street.

My friend Tom has had this figured out for years. His entire life is all within a 15 minute drive. Very convenient. If you're going to live in LA, try to get a walkable neighborhood. It makes the what can be the exasperating experience of living in a whole lot better.

MY NEW DOCTOR & ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS

In the move to Los Angeles, I had to find a new Primary Care Physician. A friend of mine recommended his doctor, so I decided to try him. Now, I am a firm believer in doctor shopping. If I'm not comfortable with a doctor, for whatever reason, I will definitely go see another doctor the next time I need an appointment. I personally pay too much for healthcare to receive poor treatment and feel uncomfortable speaking about my body and my health for someone who is there to provide for my care. I do my research online on my insurance company website, as well as Google searching, the whole enchilada.

Also, I believe in finding someone who specializes in the areas of my greatest potential concern (immunology and virology) as well a connection to a world class hospital (I LOVE Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, but UCLA has a great hospital as well). I take my doctor shopping very seriously. For me, it's an interview.....do I feel comfortable naked in front of you talking about my body? Can I talk to you openly about gay health issues? What are your offices, facilities, and medical equipment like? Do you read the latest medical journals, go to medical conventions? It's important to be as upfront and honest as possible with your doctor and see how you feel about him/her.

With my new doctor, everything checked out AOK on the prelist, and now it was time to meet the doctor. The first thing he did was take an electronic medical history. This was my first time with an EMR (Electronic Medical Record), and I didn't know what to expect. Turns out, it's no big deal. Instead of the doctor sitting in front of you and writing everything down in the familiar manilla folder with black lined white paper, he simply sat at a computer and took my medical history. What might be off putting to some people, but wasn't for me, is that the doctor never looks at you while he's taking your medical history. He sat directly across from me, but was sideways so I couldn't read the monitor or see what he was typing while he was taking my history. It was no big deal, and actually kinda cool. Then we had a 45 minute conversation about my health history: What did I eat for foods? How many meals do I eat? What type of foods do I buy? Do I cook for myself? Did I workout or exercise? How often? Which types of exercises and for what result? What is my family's medical history? We didn't just talk about medicine, we talked about what I put into my body, how I treat my body, and what areas I'm concerned about relating to my family medical history.

We talked and after our medical conversation he basically told me that I was a good patient for him (little did I know I was also being interviewed). My new doctor said that his philosphy in medicine was preventative care. Like me, he had also lived in Miami, but during the go-go heyday partying of the late 90's. He told me how he was tired of seeing so many patients of his in Miami basically run their bodies into the ground (too much partying, too many drugs, not enough care about health, eating right, diet or exercise). He then told me that he considered leaving medicine altogether and go back to school and get his PHD in psychology and become a therapist and try to help people that way. (Only in LA do you have trained doctors who have the luxury to decide to leave medicine and oh, I don't know, get yet another masters and/or doctorate degree and just start a new, lucrative career they can be great at and make a lot of money in. Every so often I think I'm smart and then I run into someone like my new doctor and I get a huge reality check into what true intelligence really is). Instead he decided to move to Los Angeles, where he thought people actually cared about and wanted to take care of their bodies. He's been here ever since. He told me that I eat the right foods, I'm taking concrete steps to avoid potential family history problems (less salt intake), sleeping well, taking great care of my sexual health, and getting lots of great exercise with positive results. I'm getting a bit older now, so more areas need to be checked for potential cancers, but that's all a part of getting old.

At the end of our conversation, I was quite satisfied with the EMR, and he later emailed my prescritions to the pharmacy downstairs for me to pick up as I left. I like this electronic medical records and seeing the power of the internet come into the medical field.

THE FALL TV SEASON 2009

It's here!!! It's the most wonderful, and second busiest time of my year. This is my 16th new television season. I had seen every WB pilot back in May, but because of my job, I cannot release any information about the new TV shows until now....

Despite a lack of truly original ideas for TV shows, there are some good shows out there. The following is my list of shows not be missed and why (silent mental drum roll please....)

NEW ON MY DVR

1. FLASH FORWARD is the drama series I am most looking forward to. I'll write more after I see it, but it looks to be the most compelling drama of the new season.

2. If you liked Popular back in 1999 on the WB, then you will as thrilled as I am that writer/director Ryan Murphy is going back to high school with his songbook in GLEE. GLEE is a very funny show with a dark, biting sense of humor that has a laugh in almost every scene and is without a doubt the only TV show ever to work that features singing in it.

3. VAMPIRE DIARIES is my guilty pleasure show of the new season. Yeah, it's Twilight the TV series, and yes, both vampires are incredibly hot, but what I really like is the return of Kevin Williamson to network television. Dawson's Creek was one of my favorite shows of the late 90's/early 2000's. I tell you, no one writes good female dialogue that actually sounds like dialogue women would actually say. Women are very difficult to write for and write realistic female dialogue versus dialogue that a man writes that he thinks women would say are two very different types of dialogue. (Stay with me on this, it's a writer's thing....). Needless to say, the women in Kevin Williamson's shows are never victims, and they're always smart, insightful, witty, and romantic.

4. The funniest new show of the season is Modern Family. If the producers can keep up the sheer volume of laughs from the pilot into the rest of the episodes, this show is the new Arrested Development. It's getting a huge pitch from ABC and is anchoring their new 2 hour Wednesday comedy block.

And finally, my favorite TV show of the 1990's is back! MELROSE PLACE returns!!! So how is the reboot? It's still a little too soon to tell. I'm really not hooked into any of the new characters (except the bitchy blonde publicist), but I LOVED seeing Michael & Sydney in the pilot. Plus they're bringing back Jane and Jo, and the rest of the original cast that hasn't worked since MP went off the air in 1999. (Kimberly would be back too if it wasn't for Desperate Housewives - DAMMIT!).

But I'm definitely sticking with the new MP, since Heather Locklear will be back as the awesome Amanda Woodward. Mandy's back to rule the roost and LA will never be the same again! I hope she took D&D public, made a killing in the stock market and is a multi-millionairees.

You know what I was thinking about the other day.....how I used to get together with 6 or 7 friends on a weeknight, go over someone's apartment and drink while we were watching a TV show! Back in the day, there was only a VCR if you missed a TV show, otherwise you had to catch it in repeats later in the season. And FOX didn't repeat MP, because primetime soaps had terrible in repeats. My friend Tom would have a viewing party starting at 8PM on a Wednesday (where we would all talk and catch up while the original 90210 was on) and then we were all buzzed an hour later for MP at 9. The show would end at 10, we would chat for another hour and then either go out or go home. And Melrose Place wasn't the only show, we drank to Absolutely Fabulous, South Park, Popular......Ah, when I was young and living in LA in the 90's......

MAYBE, MAYBE NOT

I will definitley check out The Cleveland Show to see if it's as funny as Family Guy. I will watch a few episodes of The Good Wife, since I'm a huge fan of Juliana Marguiles acting. She's a major talent and definitely deserves her own show. I was surprisingly impressed with NCIS Los Angeles, so I'll watch a few episodes and add a procedural since I'm dropping C.S.I Miami from my playlist (it's too sad to see Miami every week when I'm not living there and they're running out of interesting cases).

SO OTHER THOUGHTS ON THE NEW SEASON

Jay Leno's move into primetime - a complete non-story. The most underreported story of the new season is the vacuum created when ER ended, leaving no hospital series in primetime. There are 3 new shows all trying to be the next ER are: Trauma on NBC, Three Rivers and Miami Trauma both on CBS (MIAMI TRAUMA is midseason).

SPORTS HAVE FIGURED OUT A PAY ONLINE VIDEO SUBSCRIPTION MODEL

Currently in the entertainment industry, there is a large internal debate going on about streaming online video. Right now, the studios are basically giving it way for free. Not really "free", but free in the Hulu sense, where you watch an advertisment and then you can watch your TV show online. What the broadcast networks have done is effectively moved their repeat business onto the internet, which is good for the broadcast networks since their airtime is more valuable and hardly anyone watches repeats anymore on TV. And for the broadcast networks, the online airing is net positive since its additional revenue without them even to have to host the content. The broadcast networks get a piece of the ad revenue from the stream.

As a content provider, Warner Bros. and the other studios have reason to be concerned. It does cost us money to make that content, and if we are simply giving it away for free (digital pennies), well, that cannot be good for future earnings. So what to do? Right now, since Warner Bros. still has its corporate cable roots, the current strategy is called TV Everywhere, which is cable authentication to watch online TV. This is fine, I get cable, so it's an additive step to authenticate, which is annoying, but consumers will do it to watch the TV they want to watch. The problem as I see it is that TV Everywhere will not be mainstream for 5 more years. And who can accurately predict how we the audience will be watching online TV in 2014? The biggest hurdle for cable is that their technology, both hardware and software, is terrible.

A TV drama today costs a studio about $2 million per episode. At $1.99 an episode for a TV show, we're not making money off of ITunes rentals or purchases. And there is no big slice of online TV advertising revenue either.

So while the entertaintment industry is still figuring it out, leave it to professional sports to successfully figure out a paid subscription model for online video. My own history with this business model was brought to my attention by none other than myBaby Boomer parents. I was quite suprised when I asked my Mom & Dad what they wanted for Father's Day, and they said they wanted a subscription to Major League Baseball's online TV. With MLBTV: http://www.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/index.jsp My parents are like most Baby Boomers, they have multiple homes in mulitple states, but they love their baseball. With MLB TV, they can watch the games either on their laptop, or my Dad will hook the computer up to the TV and watch the game that way. And my parents love it. For the MLB, it's a great deal, $20 per subscriber per year. Their demo is twofold, young techno savvy men 15-30 and Baby Boomers. For MLB, the still blackout games online when they are airing on TV in their home markets, thereby preserving their largest revenue stream, which is the TV broadcasts. And if you're an MLBTV subscriber outside of your home area, MLBTV knows your location and will stream the blackout game to you since you're not in your home area. The NFL Network (which also has it's own successful pay TV cable channel), also just announced its very own pay online subscription channel, RedZone TV.

My own personal belief is that online video can be a major revenue generator for the studios. But the devil is in the content. We could charge $500 a year subscription for an online TV video subscription site if you could, for example: 1. Get episodes 1 week before they premiere on TV. 2. Get major feature films 1 day before they open in theaters and continue to stream them thereafter. 3. Download episodes or movies onto a DVD. It all comes down to the quality of the content. No one is going to throw down $500 to see repeats of TV shows from the 90's.

Hollywood studios are in the windowing business, because we're selling the consumer the exact same content over and over again, just in different forms - in the cinema, on DVD, online, on TV. Will there be a huge number of people that will pay $500 per year to get this content, no. But $500 X 1 million subscribers is $500 million dollars and that's a couple of movies or a few seasons of a TV series. Now there's an online paid subscription model I can get behind.

LINEAR NOTES, THE ENCORE & TATTOO SLEEVES

It occurred to me last night as I was attending a concert at the House of Blues on Sunset Blvd. watching early 1990's guitar pop hair band Collective Soul, that I miss reading the linear notes that used to accompany CDs. I have not purchased a CD in years, but I remember when I would go CD shopping at Tower Records on Sunset (which is now gone....), that I would get home, pop the CD in my top loading CD player and read the linear notes as I would listen to each track. The linear notes had the lyrics, as well as who produced and wrote each song. But the best part of the linear notes was the "Thank You's" from the band or artist. These ranged from family members, girlfriends, boyfriends (sometimes celebrity boyfriends or girlfriends, who would not be thanked in subsequent CDs in the linear notes due to the inevitable break up). The linear notes were usually personal and funny, especially since I'm terrible with remembering lyrics (a trait I inherited from both my father & grandfather - both of whom make up their own lyrics to songs).

And later at that same concert, I was thinking about how utterly & completely stupid encores are at shows. I mean, what are they for? An artist or band finishes a set, leaves the stage for 5 minutes, everyone claps in the dark, and then they come back on and play 3 or 4 more songs?Let's be more efficient people, I have to get to bed early. Just play whatever your full set is and be done with it. And really, bands and artists work for 4-8 months touring and only work 3 or 4 hours a day. I work 9 hours a day, barely take a lunch and only occassionally take a 15 minute break. By encore standards, I should leave my desk for 2 1/2 hours and then come back and do an hours worth of work? WTF?

And then finally toward the end of the concert, I was thinking how sexy tattoo sleeves are. I myself have 1 modest tattoo, and I have always wanted to get more tattoos, but I am well past the age of further body art. But if I was going to get a tattoo, it would be the sleeve. It's so sexy. But I work in a senior management position at a Fortune 500 company, so tattoo sleeves are out of the question for me.

MY ULTIMATE NEW YORK FANTASY DREAM LIFE

On my recent trip to London I was asked what I thought the best city in the world. Although I haven't travelled the whole world, (my most notably omission is all of Asia). After much consideration and years of in depth research, I can honestly say that the best city in the world is New York City. I love New York City. No city in the world can match New York City. I have been travelling to NYC since I was 12 years old.

However, I have also have an ultimate New York City fantasy. I want to live, eat, work, shop, use the subway, and grocery shop all without leaving the same building. Can't be done i New York City? I give you the Timer Warner Center.

I can live in my own high end condo, work for Time Warner Corporate, grocery shop at the Whole Foods in the basement, use the subway without going outdoors, clothes shop, and eat in some of the best restaurants in New York City, all without leaving 1 building. That's something I am sure no New Yorker is currently doing. Dare to dream.....

LUCKY 13

On Sunday, August 16th, 2009 I celebrated my 13th anniversary of working for Warner Bros. International Television. I started at Warner Bros. as a Research Analyst in the Summer of 1996 and I was 25 years old. Warner Bros. has promoted me to Senior Research Analyst, Manager of Research, Director of Research, and now Vice President of Research.

Warner Bros. has moved me from Los Angeles to London for 8 months to cover a maternity leave. In 2004, Warner Bros. transferred me to Miami for 5 years. And in 2009, Warner Bros. moved me from Miami back to Los Angeles.

I have survived 3 recessions, including getting promoted during this Great Recession. I have survived the Turner & AOL mergers and at least 3 "downsizings". At Warner Bros., I have had or have 7 different direct supervisors. I have always worked for the same President of Warner Bros. International Television.

While I have certainly given Warner Bros. my blood, sweat and tears, they did create a Vice President of Research position for me without having to fire anyone. They carved Research out from Marketing, made it its own stand alone department, and I now have 3 direct reports in Los Angeles, 3 in Miami, and 2 in London.

I consider myself hard working and just a little bit lucky. And when I was working at Disney and Universal, I had always wanted to work for Warner Bros. I watched all the Looney Tunes as a kid. In my career I have had the priviledge of working on such historic entertainment projects such as ER, Friends, the Matrix films, the Harry Potter films, The Big Bang Theory, and countless other films and TV shows. Including Warner Bros., the 2009/2010 TV season (which gets underway next week) will by my 16th television season, which each one as exciting as the last.

Television, and Warner Bros. more directly have afforded me my car, my condo in Miami, to travel the world, and live the life I have been blessed to live. I think 13 is a very lucky anniversary year for me.