1983

In the spirit of Claude Raines {Casablanca), I am shocked! Shocked at the dearth of information about y'all this past month. On the other hand, the lack of news allows me to report that Alexandra, my 7-year-old daughter, has spent the last three months educating me about all things Pokemon. I imagine most of you with children have also run into this freight train. Whatever happened to Hot Wheels, Creepy Crawlers, and checkers?

John Adams, who's been with the management consulting firm Towers Perrin for several years, was promoted to principal not too long ago. Congratulations, John! There's also some news in the Silicon Valley Reporter about David Friedensohn. David was formerly president of a company called Sonic Net, then decided to "jump on die ecommerce bandwagon by launching Big Star, an online retailer of videos and DVDs." David apparendy didn't have too much trouble attracting venture capital to his new enterprise, and didn't appear intimidated at entering a pretty competitive market. Ecommerce! Dot com! Virtual bookstores! E-trade! E-music! E-yow! It's such a scrumptious lexicon...

I think I've mentioned Bill Robbins and his new, flourishing, cool-sounding company Convergent Ventures in this column before, but Bill consented to have dinner with me at a kind-of-happenin' spot in Venice, Calif, (which served seaweed salad and lots of other things that don't warrant mention here), in exchange for another plug in the Alumni Magazine. In between bites, Bill mentioned the possibility that Chip and Patty Greene, who moved to the Left Coast just a few months ago, were contemplating moving all the way back East. Bill didn't know much more than that, and—quite frankly seemed more interested in his salad than either Chip or Patty or me. Later, Bill served up the appetizing information that Neil Donnenfeld, "I think, lives in Swampscott, Mass.," and Mark D'Agostino, "I think, is somewhere in Indiana, or maybe Maryland." Still a newlywed, but just barely, Nick Roberts checked in several times from Atlanta, alerting a long list of people about changing his e-mail address and saying little else. God, it really is a slow news month. Howie Brick has a new job, at a technology company called Case Schiller Weiss Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. I know it sounds like a law firm but it's not and if you've made it this far in this paragraph and haven't lost interest, well, that's impressive.

Here's wishing everyone a happy, safe Thanksgiving. For those of you traveling, I heard a good airline story recently. XYZ airline made an exceedingly bumpy, frightening landing at O'Hare. The pilot and copilot decided to come out of the cockpit and greet the departing passengers. They were sure everyone would complain loudly, butsurprisingly—no one did. Until, finally, an elderly lady who had been sitting at the rear of the plane reached them. She peered at the pilot and asked, "Sonny, did we actually land or were we shot down?"

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