Zach Braff is God.

I'm already blocking off 15 Sept. on my calendar. So should you.

Turn on the bright lights, pt. 2.

Times Square, for those who have never seen it at night, is amazing. It's actually quite small, but is the most incredible intersection of humanity and commercialism I've ever seen. I was already a committed capitalist, and while trying on Swatches, I knew I had joined the winning team.

Anyway, as impressive as that was, I'm still in love with the subway. I found a book last week at Strand called 'The Island at the Center of the World' about when the Dutch ruled New York, and now I want '722 Miles' about the building of this incredible system below the streets. I get the same feeling of excitement and wonderment watching the subway train roll toward me as I do when I stick my head out of our 9th floor bathroom windows to look up and down Broadway. I wonder if I'll ever lose that feeling. God I hope not.

And so it begins.

I just applied for what would be a great entry-level job, using my professionally-revised resumé. I'm going to Times Square to celebrate by looking at bright lights in this wet night.

Bracketology: On crack.

Dan Shanoff today has perhaps the greatest idea ever in all of sports, and maybe in all of anything. As the column is updated daily, I'll post the salient details for expanding the NCAA tourney to be truly perfect:

My only problem is that I think the floated proposal of doubling the field from 64 to 128 teams doesn't go far enough. My plan?

I call it "Ultimate Madness": Expand the field to include all teams.

Start with this: Modestly expand the current D-1 RPI listing of teams from 334 to 336 by promoting just two teams from Division 2. That makes the rest of the numbers work.

Then the fun begins, starting with the elimination of conference tournaments, replaced by something a lot more fun, exciting and fair:

Step 1: When the regular season ends, the top 32 teams in the country are seeded and given a bye into the classic 64-team "Big Dance." Earning a bye week is the incentive to play hard in the regular season.

(And we still have the drama of the "bubble" as teams jockey for a spot in this Top 32 field.)

Step 2: The leftover 304 teams are seeded into a "Little Dance," held during the 10 days previously reserved for Championship Week:

The weakest 64 play two preliminary games to find 16 teams to join the remaining 240, rounding out the 256-team "Little Dance" bracket. (Try that in your office pool!)

The benefits are obvious: Every fan enjoys a stake; smaller schools get way more exposure; big schools can prove they belong in the ultimate field of 64; revenue for TV partners and the NCAA would be astronomical.

Step 3: Within simply 3 games played over a week, this 256-team field is narrowed to 32, then seeded with the Top 32 teams into the conventional 64-team bracket we all know and love.

The Top 32 teams might be rested, but the "Other 32" have been battle-tested by anything from 3-5 games -- gaining momentum, generating fan buzz and finding chemistry that would lead to more Big Dance parity.

Step 4: Play the 64-team Big Dance as usual.

All of a sudden, every game is up for grabs: The traditional 16-vs.-1 game isn't the lock it used to be: Not when the 16th-seeded team is truly the 64th-best team in the country.

And because I'm in a cut-the-bullshit mood tonight.

The coolest guy on the planet. 'No Reservations' is the most refreshing show I've watched in a long, long time.

"A pretty grisly scenario."

John Updike in the New York Times Book Review. If you're not registered, you should be. [Courtesy of Mr. Chip Kidd.]

Chip Kidd. Even just the name is bad-ass.

"My problem with Andy Worhol is that this guy takes the fucking Campbell's soupcan or Brillo pad box, exactly, with every single detail the same, and just because he makes it Art with a capital 'a' can make a million fucking dollars and not give a cent to the guy who fucking made the soup can or box in the first fucking place. I mean, Jesus, think of the son of a bitch at Brillo, fucking Brillo, who designed the box and dies, penniless, in his unheated attic apartment!"

"I don't do much lawyering for my books. I go up to the editor in chief and show it to him. If I say 'You should like this, here's why' then I just sound like an asshole. And I can't stand next to the table in the store and tell those people why they should like it. It has to stand on its own legs."

"Jackets do not sell books. Bookstores sell books. Jackets, hopefully, get your attention for long enough to make you pick it up. After that, the jacket has to stand aside to the book and the author inside."

"My teacher said 'You have to eat the world with your eyes.' In New York, your eyes are burping all the time."

"Being Japanese, I think they're just too polite to reject anything I design."

"Either show or tell. To do both is treat the audience like they are fucking idiots."

"The lady said she was developing graphic novels to target the 12-16 year old girl market. Art Spiegelman responded 'I try not to think of my audience as targets to shoot at.' I agree with him totally."

"Whether you should go to grad school for design is based on natural talent. If you have the time and ability to learn it on your own, to study others, and to develop your own visual language, then fuck school. The most essential thing is to learn what's been done, and why it's been done."

Oranje crushed.

It would have been the best football match I've ever seen, had it not been the absolute worst one. The number of referees that FIFA will be looking at to call the final is dwindling down with every game, it seems. Bleh, watching that just leaves a pit in your stomach.

Bigger than my head.

I ate a slice of pizza tonight that was almost unimaginably huge. And almost impossibly cheap. For $2.75 I got a slice of cheese pizza that was 1/8th of the jumbo pizza, which means 'you don't want even want to know how big the entire pie is.' This is going to be a weekend fixture, I can already tell. Especially since everything else is rather pricey in this city.

Something else that's big? The bookstores. I took a trip down the 1 to 42nd St.-Times Square station, then got on the NR to Union Square. A few of us walked around in the drizzle until we got to the Strand Bookstore, famous for its 18 Miles of Shelves. I spent a good deal of time just looking through the sale boxes, let alone browsing through the history and political shelves (and I didn't even make it to the design books). Great deals and sales on these books too; I got a few books about NYC, and forgot to pick up a box of really nice postcards for the 2nd round of mailings back to Lawrence.

From there, we simply looked for the nearest place to eat as it was pouring heavily outside, and thus I had my first (and hopefully last) trip to Quizno's. Walking down Broadway, we crossed over through NYU and Washington Square Park, before coming back up 5th Avenue with the Empire State Building rising above us the whole time. Meeting up with a classmate, we went west at 14th St. at the upper edge of the Village, then headed north to the Chelsea Piers to watch the Argentina:Mexico match. After overtime, we came back along 23rd St. to the 7th Avenue station for the 1 back to Columbia, and then had our slices of heaven.

All in all, a good day to really get out into the city and start realizing just how big and yet how local New York is and can be. If only it hadn't been so damn wet; the entire week was perfect warm, sunny weather while we were stuck here for 'class', and on our free weekend, we get this shit. I think I'm gonna kick back in the lounge downstairs, watch some TV, rest my legs from traversing the city in wet flip-flops, and reconstruct my resumé in a new word processor since I don't have Office on my MacBook. This is gonna be a good summer.

Fifteen hundred miles..

To meet up with a friend from Kansas who's living in a Columbia dorm two blocks away while interning at MTV. Interesting how things work out.

Tonight was our first staff happy hour; drinking is very big here, or maybe just among people in publishing. Afterwards I came back and then went out with said friend from Kansas; we ventured down the block to a restaurant where I had spring rolls and a milkshake. Oh, and literally next door to my dorm, in the student union, is the Socialism 2006 convention. I love this place.

Tomorrow, I get lost downtown. I've been looking forward to this for years now.

Rule of thirds.

Okay, one more crack at the World Cup. Now that I've had a chance to see the teams in action (unlike the NCAA tourney, where you have an entire regular season, plus conference tourneys to see who's hot), I want to take the knockout teams and play it through, because matchups are sooo crucial to this thing.

Round of 16 Germany:Sweden, Argentina:Mexico, England:Ecuador, Holland:Portugal, Italy:Australia, Switzerland:Ukraine, Brazil:Ghana, Spain:France

Quarters Germany:Argentina, Australia:Switzerland, England:Holland, Brazil:Spain

Semis Argentina:Switzerland, Holland:Spain

Vice-Championship Switzerland:Spain

Championship of the World Argentina:Holland

Triple option.

I want to hate this. It just screams 'We are way too indebted to Nike to stop this now!' But the more I look at it and see the various options (Oh, I suppose the yellow helmet with the whites might not look too bad), the more I appreciate the ambition of the design. I still think the metal grating shoulder print only works on the whites, but I am glad they kept the Thunder Yellow; I might be like the one in every thousand people who like it, but I've long since gotten used to being 'that one'.

Observations.

I forgot to mention this last night, but I found the diner that was used on Seinfeld. It's actually called Tom's Restaurant, and the inside looks nothing like Monk's on the show, but the sign is very neon. Also, when crossing a street in New York, you do not stand on the curb, but instead about four feet out while hoping the driver coming toward you doesn't get all twitchy, as you really have only a few inches of space to spare. Oh, there are a lot of dogs and their owners out at 6:45am in the park. Just in case you were curious.

New York's Finest.

I saw my first two NYPD blue tonight. They happened to be standing at the corner of 108th and Broadway as I was jaywalking across.

Today was a good day, a transitional day of sorts. Today I started really paying attention to what is truly possible in publishing, and how I might get there while also dealing with the knowledge that I can really only do it in New York City. We met with a senior editor this afternoon in small groups to discuss the manuscript that got sent to us a month ago (I found out that mine is indeed being published, but it has an amazing, yet still probably embargoed story). Then we listened to a panel of all of the editors, then had 'Sherry Hour' of wine and crackers while gathered around the editor who most piqued our fancy. Then a short dinner led into another panel, this one of recent CPC alumni who are now working as editorial assistants all over NYC. Their advice – "Don't worry! The job will come! And living in NYC is do-able! Even though I had to live in a Days Inn for two weeks while finding an apartment! But you'll get it, and you'll find out your spending priorities quickly!'

I have no problem subsisting on a life of cereal in New York City: I've done it for five years now anyway, not because of money, but because I freaking like cereal that much. I can go without cable or even a TV, I don't drink Starbucks anyway, I don't wear Diesel jeans, and living in a small room with flatmates is not beyond my capabilities. As long as I have occasional access to the internet (outside of work) and a gym membership, I'm good. I'm taken care of, because most of my time will and must be spent on my career. The next two or three years of my life determines whether I can make this work: if I can't design, I'll know it soon enough. But I'm not going to crash out because I can't afford to live here. Could I make a living somewhere else? Possibly. But then we get into the meaning of 'living', and I'm not up for that tonight.

Anyway, I'm excited for the weekend. Tomorrow morning I'm getting up early and running in Riverside Park. I'm going to buy Chip Kidd's book (along with some Columbia t-shirts) and spend tomorrow night reading that and doing homework. Friday we have the evening off, so I'll probably go out with classmates. Saturday and Sunday we're on our own for meals, which was my rationale for taking a quick stroll on Broadway tonight, to see what little markets and bistros are there (and there are plenty, believe me). One of those days I want to go downtown to Chelsea or the Village and get lost for a few hours. I'll save Central Park for another weekend.

It's 10:21pm here and I'm listening to the sounds of New York. I'm ready for the rest of my life.

On owning my first laptop.

Seriously, trackpad? WTF?

Wisdom.

We listened to Robert Gottlieb tonight. He never speaks publicly. Ever. But he's a legend as an editor (Bill Clinton, Joseph Heller, Katharine Graham, Michael Crichton, John LeCarre, Robert A. Caro, Toni Morrison), and he gave me enough material to take three pages of notes, the most I've taken in a looong time. The verdict? I can't wait to get into this industry. And I've still yet to meet and listen to Chip Kidd, which happens Monday night; I'm going to be in the very front row for that one.

"What is publishing? Making public your enthusiasm for a specific book. It's that simple, and it is anything but simple."

"'I loved this book so much, but I couldn't tell anybody. So I made a cup of tea and sat down and told myself!' That's the publishing impulse. But now it's all marketing and chains."

"The rule in publishing is that you have to do everything right, because you don't know what will make the difference. Even then, sometimes it just doesn't work."

"Don't try to edit something you don't like. It only ends in tears. Your job is to make something better than what it is, not other than what it is."

"All of the executives left Simon & Schuster at that time. Six of us, of which I was the youngest, ran the house, because nobody told us we couldn't."

"Every editor's memoirs would begin with the same line: 'And so I said to Leo, don't just write about war, write about peace too.'"

"You hold the professional trust of the writer; you must tell him the things he himself knows, but is trying to deny."

"Editing Bill was great. I would write in the margin of the manuscript 'This is the single most boring page I've ever read.' And he would write in response 'No, page 311 is more boring.'"

"Book publishing is tedious, it takes years for the returns, and there are a hundred steps, any of which can go wrong, and all of which will."

"The hardest thing about reviewing ballet is How do you conveigh with words what uses no words? To say what is unsayable?"

"The more you read, the better an editor you should be. Don't be in awe of fiction; much of it is garbage. The most successful authors are often the best, and that is comforting. It has to be. After all, imagine the alternative."

"You have to have the attitude of 'We're here to publish the best. Let somebody else do the second best.'"

"None of you will ever have to deal with a Caro for as long as you live. The level of detail was almost inhuman."

"You're as good an editor on your first day as you are on your last. It's just an application of taste to words."

The words my mother never wanted to hear.

"I went downtown, on the subway, by myself. I love this city."

I told my mom that after I returned to the 116th St. stop for the 1 train from my mid-day excursion to the Apple Store. I took the train to Columbus Circle, which is an amazing sight to walk out from under, then traversed the width of Central Park along 59th St. to the corner of 5th Avenue and walked into and then beneath the huge glass cube. The kind lady at the store guided me along my purchase of a white MacBook (with accompanying free 2G iPod nano!) and the requisite software, and then I made the return trip. All of this happened in time for lunch at noon.

You may be asking yourself, How so? Because our morning session only lasted an hour and a half. This thing really is not living up to my expectations so far, but hey, it's New York, Fucking New York, and I'm getting over my fear (sorry mom and dad, that I broke my promise. But sooner or later I will be hitting up Times Square, at night, by myself. So brace yourself). Anyway, I can't say that this course isn't interesting, but there's not much of it; we listen to a guest speaker for an hour or two, then we have three hours (or more) of downtime until the next one. I know things will pick up when we get to the week-long workshops, and I really shouldn't be complaining. After all, it's more time to watch the World Cup.

Oh, the Rec center isn't nearly as good as the one at KU, there was still lukewarm water in the shower this morning, and the meals here are really hit or miss. But Riverside Park, just two blocks away, is amazing; I'm thinking I may take an early run Saturday morning, and then go down to Chelsea or the Village to spend the day walking about. This may turn out alright.

Second day in.

I have eight minutes until evening lecture, but I'd like to fill you in on vaunted Columbia University: it's tiny. Also, it sucks. The buildings are crap, we eat on paper plates (our one entree selection at lunch and dinner; breakfast is a continental buffet in the room where the Pulitzers are announced), there was no hot water in the showers this morning, and we just now got our computer lab. Which isn't stopping me from making an excursion to the Apple Store in midtown at my earliest convenience, which will probably be the three and a half hours of downtime we have tomorrow afternoon (we had nearly six hours total today for lunch and dinner; why not squeeze the schedule into five weeks instead of six, then?), so that I can get a MacBook. No witty closing line tonight; gotta go learn about book reviewing.

All that you can't leave behind.

I left my apartment this morning as the Campanile chimed 7am. I walked out and took a last look, suitcase in hand, tears on my cheeks, and listened to the bells ringing out over a silent, overcast Lawrence Sunday morning.

So I'm here, and I think it'll be fun, but I really fucking wish I had brought a computer with me. Every place that I've been told contains a computer lab, um, doesn't. I'll just have to flirt with somebody and use theirs shamelessly I guess.

It turns out that plane travel isn't as horrifying as I like to think it is. Though I've found that I have to keep my nose in my book during takeoff and ascent, else I start hyperventelating upon looking out the window.

People in New York City are the scariest drivers ever. The entire concept of the turn signal is completely foreign to this town.

My room smells. And the door is kinda broken.

I knew I was in NYC when the driver was bringing me through Harlem, and I saw the street sign for 'Malcolm X Blvd.'

That's it for now. I have to go find out what happened to my other suitcase. American Airlines hasn't called me yet, and that doesn't bode well for the person I'm gonna have to call.

Goodbye, pt. 2.

Soon soon they will be born again in the sun
Soon too soon they will be wonderfully done
with each other
She looks away from him now
into the great American night
and seems to see very far
unless it's just contact lenses
making her eyes
so shiny
There is a great crowded bluff
in Lawrence Kansas
that looks a long way
into the astonished heart
of America
–Lawrence Ferlinghetti