Posted 3:17 PM by Blah blah

Hi everyone, I'm going on hiatus indefinitely. Have a lot of things to get done. Today, I talked to this guy in SF who gave me a TON of career ideas. He runs his own marketing consulting company. He talked EXTREMELY fast and was a baby factory of creativity.

By the way, a few weeks ago I produced and directed two more tapings of our political TV talk show. Our first guest was Elaine, this business lawyer who's the Democratic candidate for Congress for the 11th District. The election is next month! Second guest: Rosemary, a Mountain View City Councilwoman and former candidate for the California State Assembly. She came to discuss her trip to Afghanistan (see her photos) this May as part of a delegation of Afghan-Americans working on the country's post-war reconstruction. She met Afghani President Karzai. For both shows, we used Dolly as our host. She's a Cupertino City Councilwoman and former board member of the DeAnza-Foothill College District. She did an excellent job. We shot in DVCAM and used a round table and two mugs of water for the guests, with a black background. Our show looked very similar to Charlie Rose, my talk show idol.

Both Elaine's campaign manager in Pleasanton and the TV station in Morgan Hill (in her district) confirmed this week that they had received the completed tapes I mailed them. The interview will air in Morgan Hill on Oct. 19, once in the morning and once at night.

Got a letter from my old college friend Takuro this week. He studied philosophy at Berkeley and later the University of London. I described him here. He started a publishing company back home in Niigata, Japan called Taiyo Shobo. He writes:

I published a heavy literature, Siddhartha [Japanese title: Descendant of the Sun] last July, and now I'm writing a new novel, which is about Uesugi Kenshin, a samurai prince in Japan about 550 years ago.

I'm also reading novels by John Updike and Ken Ishiguro. Especially, I like the style of Updike, which has the real/rich taste of serious literature....

[For the novel I wrote, Siddhartha,] I am using a pseudonym, "Ryutaro Mizuno." As you would guess, the novel is about the historical figure Gautama Siddhartha [Buddha]. It is the first novel written about Siddhartha in the history of Japanese literature.

Congratulations, Takuro-san! Gambatte kudasai! I hope your novel becomes famous. In college, he asked me for help on his English essays! I remember we argued all night over one of his papers. Imagine that.

For Tiger Cafe, I've recruited two new, good writers. One girl and one guy. Both have been busy or unavailable to write. I will let them introduce themselves to you. Go ahead, you two.

My birthday is this Friday the 18th! See ya soon!