Family Guy, Hebrew School and Cancer
Yesterday morning I sat on the couch next to my mother and typed “Family Guy Scarejew Jon Stewart” into the YouTube search box and showed my mom a clip. She couldn’t hear so I got my headphones and then she laughed.
I entered “Family Guy DMV” and Mom smiled through the morphine haze that can overtake her in the late morning.
Later, we sat outside in the garden observing how few monarchs visit her butterfly bushes. 3 times she told me that hurricanes had wiped out the butterfly population, but she couldn’t recall the name of the hurricane that did it . “Katrina,” I reminded.
Mom I have new project for Dad. Want to hear?
When it comes to raising the kids with a Jewish historical and spiritual context, I’ve failed. My father steadily reminds me and his quiet, persistent, and constructive criticism is warranted.
I’d prefer to blame Nina (who looks, but is not Jewish) for this parental deficiency, but, while she has encouraged, suggested and even prodded me to take action my ambivalence has been paralyzing. On only our second date (Tomoe Sushi), I told Nina that the kids would have to be Jewish.
She said ok.
We got married 3 years later.
For reasons I can’t explain or feelings I’ve skillfully repressed, joining an organized Jewish community eludes me. My overt connection to faith, ethnicity, and ancestry start with my name (I’m making a film about it) and continue with my career (AnyClip is an Israeli company). But I struggle at home. I’m more successful choosing Christmas trees than synagogues.
Mom let’s face it. I’m not good at the “making my kids Jewish thing” so here’s my idea. Do you think Dad could be their formal Jewish educator? We’d be borrowing from the evangelical movement. Call it Hebrew Home School.
All of mom’s anxiety about death focuses on my father and her bookstore. 10 months into cancer, those remain her primary worries. Now Dad could have a new project that would distract him from the disease. She grew excited, pitched and sold him in 5 minutes. Perfect clarity for the moment. Naturally, Dad had to say yes.
You can learn a lot about marriage observing the twilight of my parents 52 years together. In the past 10 months, His only night away was for his granddaughter’s 7th birthday. Dad dutifully fills the pillbox and hands her syringes of morphine. He’s even learned to make milk shakes full of the calories she loathes, but must consume.
Meanwhile, she nudges him to think about life after her. She worries about Dad and the house and dad alone. He’s not ready to talk about any of these practicalities. My father’s support network is extensive, but when we go home he is often left alone in their enormous old house coping with my mother’s exhaustion, fear and confusion. This decline depletes vast reserves of my father’s once famous and still considerable energy.
Sometimes my mother’s condition can overwhelm. Yesterday, she had a long overdue appointment with the audiologist. Her hearing has deteriorated so much in the past month that Dad worried the disease had metastasized to her ears Doctors, have since reassured us that her hearing loss is not affected by her tumor.
As Mom got ready to go to her appointment, she couldn’t find her pocketbook. Long before cancer infected our family, purses, keys, and eyeglasses would wander off and hide somewhere in my parents house. Mom insisted she brought her bag home from the bookstore the day before. Dad agreed and was convinced that a thief penetrated our living room and stole this pocketbook while we watched the US Open Final.
We looked high and low until we spotted the small red purse on the back seat of the car. Dad’s frustration transformed into enormous relief as he realized he wouldn’t have to deal with new insurance and credit cards. Either way, she wasn’t going back to the DMV to replace that license.
As I stepped off the train at Penn Station, Dad called to report that Mom had an amazing day. With her hearing aids adjusted her alertness dramatically increased. Tomorrow morning she will attend the quarterly Politics and Prose staff meeting.
My New Dream Job
In November of 2009, I was walking on 5th Avenue back to the office when my phone vibrated. The weather was brisk and I stopped just in front of Mesa Grill.
“Aaron,” said my mother, “I just wanted you to know we are at Georgetown Hospital. As you know I’ve been so itchy and I was starting to turn yellow as if I had jaundice. Anyway, it appears that I have hepatitis,” she sighed with relief and continued, “I was getting nervous, but we seemed to have dodged a big bullet. Thank God.”
The diagnosis was wrong.
After 6 weeks of trips to Georgetown and Johns Hopkins, countless tests and pictures, we learned that my mother had cholangiocarcinoma, a rare, advanced, and difficult to treat cancer. The oldest of 6, my mother is exceptionally close to my grandmother who turned 100 in May. Understandably, my mother reacted to the news of her cancer with the admission that she assumed she would “live forever like (her mother) Deedee.” Anxiety prevailed at our large family holiday gathering. At my mother’s request, it was not discussed.
In January, my father, sister and I gathered in a townhouse for long-term visitors across the street from Hopkins to wait out my mother’s operation. There were 2 “everything’s going fine phone calls” (the surgery was scheduled to be 8 hours), and then my father’s cell phone rang a third time. This time the nurse requested we come to the Operating Room. This was not a good sign. My father, who strolls a New York City block in about half an hour, nearly sprinted to the room for families outside of the surgery.
Mom’s surgeon, Dr. Wolfgang, still wearing his operating green requested that we take a seat in a soothingly furnished conference room steps from where my mother lay anesthetized with her stomach still open. It was only 3 hours into the procedure. His explanation was comprehensive and clinical. He illustrated the bad news, pecking tiny dots with a ball point pen to indicate the metastases that he had found on her gall bladder. The cancer had begun to spread. Removing the tumor was no longer the prudent course of action.
My sister Eve, a hospice nurse and Hopkins alum, wept telling us this was the worst possible outcome. I finally understood what “ashen” looked like as I watched my father. My voice quaked as I asked, “how long?” Dr. Wolfgang spoke of chemotherapy, radiation and quality of life issues, but then he had to tell us. His inhalation was long and notable, “The median survival rate is 8 months from the time of discovery (November) for her inoperable cancer.
When I returned to New York, I called Mickey Schulhof a director at AnyClip and told him that my mother had terminal cancer and not very long to live. I had to consider stepping down from AnyClip. “Nonsense,” Mickey responded, “You will need the job more than ever. You need the distraction. And you’ll find time to be with her.” Perhaps he was right. And with that I started riding the BoltBus and the Amtrak very frequently.
In order to prolong my mother’s life the statistically intelligent course of action was chemotherapy. Doctors warned it would be rough, and would get worse as time wore on. However, this could (maybe, we think/but don’t know) buy her 6 or 12 extra months. My parents were determined to try it and so it began.
After 1 month and two treatments, my mother was far worse than exhausted. Catatonic, unable to eat, hold a conversation, or even smile she was unrecognizable. I called my sister to say that I thought Mom would not survive the chemotherapy.
Eve is the hospice nurse and, naturally, carries the most weight when it comes to medical decisions. Read Atul Gawande’s superb study of her job in last month’s New Yorker here. She’s exceptionally knowledgeable and has treated several patients with cholangiocarcinoma herself. When Eve returned to Washington and saw my mother, she agreed with me and lobbied my father the lobbyist to abruptly stop the chemo. It took another month for Mom to start reengaging with her world.
My mother started to get better in May and between travel to Israel and California I didn’t see her for a 4 week period. When I did, it was for her mother’s 100th birthday party. She rose to the occasion and gave a moving speech about my grandmother’s joie de vivre and resilience. In past years, these sibling speeches get deconstructed by various family members for their psychiatric meaning. Everybody is a closet novelist/psychiatrist. But not on the 100th birthday. The party was exciting, good-humored, and, amazingly, at least for me, not overshadowed by my mother’s cancer.
In June, word leaked to the media about her illness. My mother is a Washington celebrity because she and her partner, Barbara Meade, own a very famous bookstore called Politics and Prose. Both women are in their 70s and plenty of people had speculated as to what would happen to this Washington institution prior to my mother’s cancer. Now customer anxiety was surging and the Washington Post, New York Times, and New Yorker all wrote about the coming transition and my mother’s declining health.
Throughout the first 6 months of the year, I considered resigning several times. However, as any entrepreneur knows, it’s hard to leave what you begin. The love for my team and the company drew me back. For better or worse, AnyClip was now part of my soul and I struggled to abandon it.
In June, Mom spent nearly the whole month in the hospital on two separate visits because she contracted a life threatening infection. Her disposition was impressive and her bravery surprised and even inspired. Still, pain began to overwhelm her life. With her energy dipping to a lifetime low and her confusion increasing with each does of OxyCodone, I felt increasingly pessimistic. This was not the “quality time” we had hoped to have as a family in Paris (January), San Francisco (May), or even my parents’ garden (June).
The wireless networks are exceptional at the hospitals, but cell phones are discouraged. I instant messaged with my employees throughout the day, but I felt less present and, at times, disconnected. The feelings were familiar. Vastly over-committed, I was doing nothing to my standards.
In early August I stepped down as the CEO of AnyClip. It’s a complicated story and perhaps one day I will share more of it. For now, I’m no longer distracted by work. I can be in Washington every week. And I still advise the company. My email still works. I’m grateful to my team for continuing on. I believe deeply in AnyClip and its people.
Thanks to the highly competent, empathetic Home Hospice Care we are now receiving, my mother’s situation has stabilized in the past few weeks. She has looked the best she’s looked since her operation and has been to the store 2-3 times per week. She even managed two meals at our old local family spot, Parkway deli, with her grandson.
I love startups, teams, and this constantly reinvigorating digital revolution, but during my 15 year tenure in the internet industry, I frequently forgot that family trumps work. People tell me that my parents need me, but spending this time in this way is my current dream job.
Shanah Tovah and Happy New Year.
4 NYC startups, 3 Valley Firms = a New New York
It’s official: New York City is an Internet product town.
When Silicon Alley emerged in the mid-90s the idea that top tier West Coast venture firms would invest in New York City companies was as likely as Michael Arrington cracking a smile.
While Andressen Horowitz, which joined Union Square Ventures in funding Foursquare, has decades before they can catch up to the Sequoia or Kleiner Perkins track records, most internet pros would give them blue-chip status. Ditto for Vinod Khosla (See Khosla invests in Hunch, and ZocDoC) who is an ex-KP partner and was already a tech hall of famer in the 90s. Now word comes that Accel has joined Insight in SquareSpace.
During the Web 1.0 era, enormous investing lead to very little long-term value creation. Only Doubleclick lived to be a multi-billion dollar acquisition and that was after it was taken private at a fraction of its share price. iVillage managed to get a $600mm exit after trading for below cash through the early part of this century, but by comparison to the great Internet companies’ market caps, that’s a pittance. In any event, NBC probably overpaid. There were others (Tacoda and 24/7 come to mind), but for the most part venture investing in New York was futile and many, many first-time entrepreneurs left the industry.
The iconic internet companies that remain, Amazon (Kleiner), Ebay (Benchmark), Yahoo (Sequoia), Google (Sequoia and Kleiner) were funded and created on the West Coast. For a long time, under the genius leadership of Bob Pittman who was a kind of Jim Clarke of the media industry, AOL thrived, but then it too failed to see the emergence of the Web as the platform of choice and, eventually, was crushed by a combination of Yahoo, Google, and cable companies. Even the second tier of internet Hall of Famers — Facebook (Accel, Greylock), MySpace (Richard Rosenblatt), and YouTube (Sequoia) were California-based.
Historically, the West Coast VCs simply didn’t fund East Coast companies. Those were the rules. When the dotcom bubble burst, NYC was written off as terrible place to do business because Wall Street would always have the best engineering talent, Manhattan was too expensive, and (my favorite) the city life itself was too much of a distraction.
But then something happened about 6 or 7 years ago. The west coast style of investing started finding New York City based champions. It started with Fred Wilson reinventing his career at a fast and furious pace at USV. With Brad Burnham, he launched a small fund and immediately broke through with the sale of Delicious to Yahoo. Then they invested very early in Twitter, Zynga, Etsy, Tumblr, Boxee and now Foursquare. Meanwhile, John Borthwick and Andy Weissman were cooking up Betaworks to reestablish the incubator as a viable business model and they immediately hit it with Summize. John was early to tout the twitter ecosystem and they partnered up with RRE, who until Betaworks was considered reasonably old school. No longer. All of these firms are product-first investors. They chase the large user base.
That is a prominent investing thesis in Silicon Valley and, soon, the DNA started to cross-pollinate. Betaworks found kindred spirits in Jeff Clavier, AlphaTech, and Chris Sacca. Caterina Fake ended up in New York.
But the biggest change was the arrival of the first generation of Internet kids who wanted to be entrepreneurs. Sam Lessin (Drop.io), David Karp (Tumblr), Dennis Crowley (FourSquare), Michael Galpert (Aviary), Nate Westheimer (AnyClip), Andrew Kortina (Venmo), and the Blip.tv crew decided to live in New York.
It was unusual. Even Mark Zuckerberg had moved to Silicon Valley. This crop of entrepreneurs obsess about product. They don’t know what companies are going public and have not rushed to hire people before their IPO.
The 1.0 crowd focused on business models and public markets. We did stupid things like build cool offices, hire expensive PR firms, and try to drum up short-term revenue gimmicks. Ours was a prospectus-oriented strategy — designed for investment bankers, not the Internet consumer. That is how bubbles are created. When it became about the money, Silicon Alley, Silicon Valley (and the larger internet industry) was temporarily derailed. The most egregious sign of this banker-first mentality was Enron. Their implosion lead regulators to make changes.
Ironically, an unintended consequence of Sarbanes-Oxley was that it shut down the public markets to startups. Internet entrepreneurs stopped thinking about getting rich quickly. Instead, they built popular, useful, scaleable products.
Look, there have been no liquidity events for Boxee, GiltGroup, Tumblr, FourSquare or Bit.ly. Only time will tell if any of these companies can enter the Internet Hall of Fame. But New York has changed. It’s a product town.
Just ask the rock star vcs: Vinod, Mark, and Jim Breyer.
Israel Reinterpreted
While I was in Israel last week, a debate erupted in The Jerusalem Post and then the blogosphere about Ambassador Michael Oren’s invitation to be commencement speaker at Brandeis University. Apparently, some Brandeis University students objected to the selectionof Oren because they disagreed with the current Israeli government’s management of the ongoing conflict. Daniel Gordis, among the my most eloquent conservatives I have ever read, saw this as an opportunity to challenge the loyalty of jewish students on American campuses. It’s a pretty powerful piece. Of course, it took one day to find out that Gordis had massively overplayed his hand.
Enter Ilan Troen, the Chairman of the Israel Studies Program at Brandeis, to set the record straight. Turned out Gordis had hijacked the small protest at Brandeis to inflame the passions of Israelis and American Jews who have bought into the mistaken black and white narrative of us vs. them.
To be sure, I witness plenty of misguided anti-Israel sentiment in multiple political circles and have sensed some of these discussions to be tinged with anti-semitism. These incidents are more than unpleasant — they are frightening.
However, these periodic conversations obscure the reality of modern Israel and modern American Jewish life. Things are not black and white. They are gray. I think gray should be celebrated.
In my office in Jerusalem, there are 20 people who voted many different parties into the Knesset across Israel’s wide political spectrum. Some believe in a two state solution and some think the country will never have peace. But they are united in their efforts to make AnyClip a great company and in their loyalty towards each other. Despite Milluim (mandatory annual military reserve duty) their lives are not dominated by middle east conflict. They are trying to figure out how to improve search or create metadata for films. When they are not working, they hang out with their kids, play basketball, and go to the movies. To a large degree, my Israeli colleagues are just like us.
And increasingly so is Israel. Make no mistake, there is an intimacy among Israelis that must originate in that unique national purpose, the shared military service, and a society that lives through continuous wars. But despite those differences with American life, many, many Israelis have moved way beyond the simple Hatfield/McCoy narrative to see themselves as part of a broader global society.
At the annual JVP meeting last week, I met limited partners from Germany, Netherlands, and Belgium. Portfolio CEOs talked knowledgeably about doing business in India, China, Indonesia, and Brazil. This economic expansion can’t really happen if the whole world is trying to destroy Israel as some on the right would have us believe.
Recently, a friend of mine joined a delegation of Israeli officials and business people to open the Israel pavilion at the World Expo in China. He reported that China treated his colleagues as if they were heads of state stopping traffic for their motorcades and closing major tourist attractions so the Israelis could have private walk-throughs. This was not for security purposes, but done to show respect and a sign of Israel’s rise as a global economic power.
Lost in the bipolar coverage that portrays Israel as a militant, colonial power or as the place that protects Jews from the next genocide attempt is the reality that the country is growing, changing, adapting, and making a net contribution to global civilization. This should be explored and even celebrated. Those that stick to the ancient narrative do modern Israel and Israelis a disservice.
AnyClip One Year Later
A year ago, I flew to Israel to make some sweeping changes at AnyClip.
For starters, gone was the two year old company name PopTok along with 4 executives and a bunch of others who had been a part of the very family-oriented culture here. I’ll never forget that morning. Tough way to start a trip.
The next day my co-founder Nate Westheimer arrived and the mood abruptly changed. He was full of compassion for the team but determined to set a new course. We began work that day and when, after 10 more days, Nate departed Israel with the team full of enthusiasm and vitality. AnyClip was on its way.
Without question, AnyClip is the most exhilarating, challenging, and complex startup that I have ever managed. We set a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) to index the world’s entire film catalog. We dream that one day we will see and share any moment from any film.
Some of my most respected mentors told me that it was a naive, almost foolish vision. Pick your poison they claimed: it’s legally impossible, altogether too expensive, and technically overwhelming. To top it off, we would face the complexity of building a cohesive team with 2/3 of the employees separated by 7000 miles, 7 hours, and only sharing a 4 day work week (Israel is open Sunday and closed Friday).
Well, we’re still here.
We went to TechCrunch 50 with a prototype that was completed 4 months after Nate arrived in Israel and emerged a finalist. AnyClip is engaged in meaningful negotiations with almost every major studio. We have completed two still unannounced deals with major indies and are in final redlines with a handful of others. We launched our live product in March and passed 75k users in our first month — this before we have meaningful video content. Our traffic goals are ambitious: grow an order of magnitude every year for the next 3 years. 100 MM users by the end of 2013. Difficult? Sure. But not impossible — this is the movie business. We work here because we believe in the magic.
Credit for our early success reaches far and wide. The PopTok team never wavered in their enthusiasm. Morale could have plummeted and people could have gone through the motions. Instead, they worked their asses off to launch a new product from scratch. In particular my management team of Amit Kahn and Maor Gillerman kept the team together and focused. We were fortunate to add Eyal Gersht in time for the release of the prototype and eventually the product. But AnyClip is really a team effort and this includes Guy/Dima/Moti//Efrat/Avia/Kfir/Itai/Miriam/Or/Itai/Tania/Yulia and now Sagie. They are complemented by dozens of metadata creators too numerous to mention here.
In America, the Aaron Cohens (Chris and Fisher), Gabi (our hardcore, overworked designer) Greg, and my right hand Jenaveve have formed an amazing culture. We just finished a month in my apartment between office spaces and didn’t miss a beat despite Ry and Georgia wanting to play as with me, them, or their friends from 4pm on. Our itinerant office life now moves to Times Square for the summer and our downtown crowd sucked it up and moved in yesterday. We’re a block from Red Lobster.
Meanwhile we are professionally represented by Hollywood pros who understand their town. The High View Media crew (Rich Goldberg, Rob Jacobson, and Phil Schuman) together with Brad Sorensen (Indie Man) have provided me with an education and a chance to make this work. We’re following the Yellow Brick Road. And we’re aided by Fandango founder and former CEO Art Levitt who has made an enormous, positive impact on the company as an outside director. He’s a true mentor and he believes.
The most credit goes to our founding investors Erel Margalit from Jerusalem Venture Partners and Mickey Schulhof from GTI. They wooed me for 3 months prior to my arrival at Poptok. By then I had some visibility into the challenges of this turnaround. It would have been very easy for them to give up on this investment. Last Spring, the economy was a disaster and venture capitalists were pruning portfolios. Nate and I articulated the vision for AnyClip and on that alone they doubled down. It was a big risk, particularly given the fact that Nate and I were outsiders pitching a completely new company.
And that’s what I love about my investors — particularly JVP. The venture business is hit driven and the partners here know AnyClip could be huge. I always tell VCs we could return your fund. But investors prefer to pay up for more certainty. I get that. So we’ll see.
Finally, I want to single out Nate. He has lead a multi-national team and built the foundation of what we hope will become the standard for sharing film moments. Simply put, without Nate’s vision and leadership, we would not be here.
Startups have risks. Our job as entrepreneurs is often risk mitigation. AnyClip’s challenges are intensely daunting. We must navigate Hollywood, author incredibly complex search algorithms, scale a massive metadata creation factory, and release AnyClip products on many platforms. I should confess I have lost a little sleep this year.
But any moment from any film ever made. Are you kidding me? Now it’s our holy grail. Feels appropriate to have penned this post in Jerusalem.
The Faith Continuum
Exceptional entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have similar DNA. 15 years ago, I read a book by Jerry Kaplan called GO about a failed pen-based computing system. It starred a young venture capitalist named John Doerr who I recall being brazen and fearless. This was the early rennaissance and Doerr was the young Leonardo before anybody really knew who he was.
I spent the day with two of Nate’s colleagues at Flybridge Capital today: Jeff Bussgang and David Aronoff. Jeff was gracious enough to offer Nate and I a free strategic whiteboard session. The interplay showed that we occupied different positions on the AnyClip faith continuum. I was the most optimistic, and then each of the other players occupied a different place on the line.
I remember my first day of entrepreneurial faith. It happened in 1995 when I read the book Road Warriors by Dan Burstein and David Kline. Told the story of something called the information superhighway. They predicted everything would change. I believed them. This was my moment of faith.
Since then, I’ve had many such moments of faith. “Companies will need Websites — Concrete Media, Teens will need their own communities — Bolt, The world needs a service where your profile is created by others WikiYou.” I was lucky enough to run Greg Barton’s brilliantly conceived MenuPages — Every Menu in a given city. All of these had levels of success or fell flat on their face for a variety of reasons. None of them would have worked without faith.
But faith is not binary.You can be in different places on it at different times. Faith hinges on your beliefs, moods, accomplishments and failures. You and your company are what you believe and you do. That’s all there is. the belief part matters greatly. Without that, you never leave the starting line. Worse -you don’t continue on.
There are probably a dozen reasons to question AnyClip’s ability to succeed. I think about them every day. But in the end, I believe in any moment from any film ever made. I believe what we are doing is great for the film industry, artists, AnyClip employees/shareholders and every film lover in the world. I believe AnyClip can be a utility and even, dare I say it, a verb. This faith sustains me. It doesn’t mean we will succeed, but without it we would have never begun.
Pitching from a Jail Cell Pt. I
Had it only not rained. I would have biked.
I emerge from my garage on 25th street on my way down to my office on 17th when blaring lights in my rear view force me to the side. I am 50 yards from my building.
“Sir are you aware that your right tail light is out?”, said the stereotypically rotund police officer.
No I was not, Officer, but I am pleased to report that I have my license, registration, and proof of insurance. May I offer them to you?
You sound like you’ve done this before.
Well proof of insurance has often been my nemesis, but today I’m organized.
Officer K takes my documents and returned to his vehicle. I flip on WFAN to listen to the Schmooze’s soothing voice reassure me about the Mets. Wiping the rain off my arm rest and door, I lean back against the headrest (a first). A flashlight firmly knocks against my window.
Would you mind stepping out of the car?
I think he thinks I’ve been drinking. I will soon take my first DUI test in the pouring rain — a Carlos Beltran-throw from my apartment.
Step to the back of the car please and put your hands on the window and spread your legs. There were now two officers and they looked considerably more serious.
The younger of the two officers held a flashlight up while I was frisked and stripped of my keys, mobile, and wallet. Flashlight asked me about my phone.
“It’s an iphone,”
But it’s red.
Just a cover. I got it last week at the GDGT party at SXSW.
“Mr. Cohen,” said Officer K, “Are you aware that your license was suspended last week?”
No. For what?
Apparently you received a ticket in Clarkstown, NY in June of 2009.
I did?
Yes, are you not aware of this incident Mr. Cohen?
I can’t say that I remember.
Do you know you failed to answer a summons?
No.
Did you get anything in the mail? I’m sure the Clarkstown PD sent you something. Perhaps you failed to comply with their request?
I suppose that’s possible. So what do I do now?
Driving with a suspended license requires to arrest you. We’re going to have to take you in to the station.
Did he just say “arrest?” He must mean something else.
Ok, I’ll follow you.
No, sir you cannot drive your car.
Well we can’t leave it here
Sir, Officer S will drive your car to the station. Your wife can pick it up later tonight.
Officer K, it’s pouring out and my wife is home with the kids. Can’t I just follow you?
Mr. Cohen, I need you to place your hands behind your back.
I am handcuffed and told to climb into the back of a squad car that had very, very little leg room. Officer K told me to be careful positioning myself in the backseat. After some additional back and forth about my car, the officers agree to circle the block and return it to my garage. I think about my bike.
Officers, is this absolutely necessary to keep these cuffs on? I’m really not a flight risk and you know where I live.
Standard procedure. I’m sorry about this. Try not to move around because the cuffs just lock down more on you.
Yes, I think that’s already happened.
Well, we’ll take them off once you’re in the cell.
The cell?
Yes Mr. Cohen. Processing you takes time, you will be put in our holding pen.
I will?
Yes, standard procedure. Too bad this didn’t happen in New Jersey. They don’t arrest suspended licenses there. New York is tough, but you’ll probably avoid going downtown. You don’t want to be in central booking — know what I’m saying?
I am on my way to the slammer. Scenes from Cool Hand Luke, Oz, and Papillon race back into focus. Attica, Attica. I am Scared Straight.
On the way down to 20th and 8th the officers told me not to worry. They promise I will only be in for a few hours the time necessary to run my prints and mugshots through local, state, and federal databases. According to the veteran Officer K federal usually takes several hours.
The Po-Lice get a good parking space right in front of Cafe Grumpy and help me out of the car. The cuffs dig in more as I try to get out of the car.
When we roll in to the station, I thought I had just entered the Jets Offensive Line meeting room. The officers are huge. You grow up with all those Simpsons doughnut jokes, but you can’t appreciate them till you get processed at the 10th. For a moment, I wonder if I can check in on Foursquare.
Finally, they remove the cuffs and escort me to my cell.
Ok, Mr. Cohen the guy in your cell should be fine. He’s heading to central shortly. We’ll be able to hear you guys if there are any problems. Anyway, I think whatever he was on has largely worn off. You’ll probably be fine.
