Older, not necessarily wiser

My birthday was July 28. Charles jokes that God always orders hot, muggy weather on my birthday, because that’s what I like. "As requested," Saturday was pretty warm, and my friends were a glistening, sticky bunch. Had dinner and drinks at Satsko restaurant, and then we headed to a rooftop party near the Flatiron Building.

Partying in the shadow of the Empire State Building.


Me & Enda.


The party featured a few burlesque performances. This shot shows one of the women at the beginning of her act. It’s hard to see all the details, but I like the juxtaposition of the full moon, water tower, disco ball and singer in this photo.

Musically inclined

The Picture released their 2nd album last Friday, and they played a show at Mercury Lounge. The new songs sound great, and the guys all seem really happy to have completed this project.

Rob belts it out.

Returned to Coney Island Saturday for the Siren Music Festival. Couldn't turn down another chance to experience classic Coney before it disappears. Rode the Cyclone (every time I ride, it seems longer and rougher!) Saw/heard the Noisettes and We Are Scientists.

That first hill's a doozy!


Cornerstones of a good summer afternoon: PBR plus dogs of the hot and corn variety.


One of the stages around 3 pm (before it got crowded!)

Sunday was another beautiful day. Went to SummerStage in Central Park with Aimee. Heard the HIMALAYAS and Cat Empire perform. Had dinner with Charles and Howard in the garden of Employees Only.

Home sweet home

Flew back from Italy on July 14. Am so glad to be back in NY. I’m obviously appreciative for the opportunity to see and do some cool things (on an expense account). However the shoot was very grueling, and I am quite content to be back in my own apt.

Some fun activities week of July 15 to ease back into the groove:

• Sunday brunch at Mercadito with Rick, followed by wandering around the East Village and winding up on the roof of the Delancey
• Philharmonic in Central Park on Tuesday night (fireworks followed the performance, making up for the lack of them in Vienna on July 4th)
• Dinner at Extra Virgin Wed. with the DOG girls

Rick admires the flowers in the community garden at 6th & B.

My take on Sardinia

Here are my thoughts on Sardinia after spending a whopping 36 hours there:

• Pretty part of the world. Best enjoyed with your insanely wealthy significant other.
• The town near our hotel (Palau) didn't have a whole lot going on. Life revolves around resorts. So you need to pick a swank hotel with a restaurant, spa, pools and a private beach.
• The roads are windy and have 2 lanes, so travelling short distances takes a long time. Another reason to have a great hotel - exploring is kinda difficult.

Morning light is overrated

We leave the hotel at 5:30 am to start shooting at the beach. Dude. However, the location is spectacular. And besides, how often do I get to go to work in a bikini? We make the most of the situation. So glad our last day is "easy" compared to the last few ridiculous days in Vienna. It's nice to end the shoot on a very high note (on a sunny beach vs. shivering under a blanket).

Cove at Capriccioli beach.


Can you step into my office for a meeting?


Yacht parking lot.

Change of scenery

We fly to Sardinia via Rome. I haven't been to Italy in almost 6 years. It's nice to be back, even starting when we hit the airport in Rome. The flight to Olbia is only 50 minutes from Rome. The landscape in Sardinia reminds me of Cabo: arid with mountainous rock formations, desert scrub grass, and beautiful water. But that's about where the similarities end - no Orange County spring-breakers here; it's all well-heeled Europeans on summer holiday.

We check into the hotel, which is pretty sweet. My room has a large balcony with an ocean view. I forgot how slow the pace is in Italy. Between being in Italy and being at the beach, it's hard to not relax. We have a great dinner at the hotel restaurant, outside overlooking the water. Seafood was the name of the game: Had spicy baby octopus as antipasti, penne with sea urchin as the first course and swordfish as the second course. It was all excellent.

Reflections on Vienna

• Vienna was a pretty city, lots of ornate buildings and churches.
• Excellent coffee; they're not messing around with that.
• We made friends with our drivers and chaperones. They were really lovely people. We also connected with the folks in the restaurants/cafes we frequented. So I would say that Austrians are pretty reserved, but if you make an effort and scratch the surface they will warm up.
• There have to be a lot of tourists in Vienna, but we barely saw any. Maybe because of where we were/who we were hanging out with/what we were doing, we avoided the tourist crush.
• The city was a bit austere overall for my tastes, and unfortunately I never vibed with it. But it's definitely worth a visit.

The glamour continues

Slept in til about 1:30 pm. We left Vienna around 5 pm for the 3 hour bus ride to Gmunden. We see pretty countryside and farmland on the drive there. We eat dinner at a traditional restaurant in the village. I order the goulash, which is a paprika-based sauce with hunks of roast beef. On the side there's spatzle (noodles) to put into the sauce.

We shoot indoors til 2 am, drive to another location and set up to start shooting at daybreak. If I ever see another storyboard with video direction that says "open on a lake at sunrise" I will scream. The setting is beautiful, but it's cold and raining again. Miraculously we manage to get all the shots in. We leave the lake around 11 am for the bus ride back to Vienna. At this point, we don't know what day it is, what time it is, or where we are. We have dinner at the Italian restaurant by the church. We’re minor celebrities there, having eaten there like four times in 2 weeks.

Mountain near Gmunden. I think it's the beginning of the Austrian alps.


Watching playbacks huddled under blankets at the lake set.

What Monday was like for my team

You may not understand this clip unless you've done broadcast production before. But this was pretty much what was happening on set during Day 2 of shooting.

We're on location, not vacation

Shot outdoor scenes for over 12 hours Monday in miserable conditions: rain, wind, and bone-chilling temps. We got the necessary footage, but it was a pretty chaotic situation. At one point, the crew put everyone in production vans for about a hour because of a dangerous thunderstorm. We shot til about 1:30 am. Assaulted the mini-bar in Dave's room back at the hotel. Took a hot shower and crashed.

Scary sky. Not what you want to see when you're shooting outdoors all day.


Ferris wheel at Prater (the oldest amusement park in the world). You can't tell how lame the weather is from this picture.

Finally, we're rolling!

Sunday was very sunny and hot. Our first day of shooting went incredibly well, and we got some beautiful footage around the city. When I met Sammy (the stylist for the Austria portion of the shoot) on Saturday he was wearing an argyle sweater, and he reminded me of Farnsworth Bentley (P. Diddy's former butler). The likeness was reinforced on set Sunday when he acted as a PUH (personal umbrella handler) for the actors to shield them from the sun so they didn't get too hot and mess up their make-up and clothes.

Sammy and his assistant on the set.


My copywriter shaved my art director's head after dinner. God only knows how I wound up in the room watching and taking pictures during this event.

I lost my wallet

We did wardrobe sessions for all the actors in our spots on Saturday, and afterwards we went to the pool again. Apparently when I was paying to get in, I took my change but left my wallet at the cashier's window. I didn't realize my wallet was missing until I was back at the hotel getting ready to leave for dinner. I called the pool, and they confirmed they had my wallet so I went back to retrieve it. Everything was still in it: my debit card, 2 credit cards and 200 Euro. Thank you, honest people of Vienna!

Another inviting pool shot.

Time to get more serious

Clients arrived Friday. We went to lunch at an Italian place called Ottimo, had the pre-pro meeting with the director and then went to dinner at Plachutta. It reminded me of Smith and Wollensky. The house specialty was boiled beef. We all got this tasty beef broth soup that was served from big copper pots in the middle of the table. We ate a lot of soup, and while someone was poking around trying to ladel out more soup, they discovered steaks in the bottom of the pot. We were joking around about how funny it would be if those were the boiled beef dinners... And at about that time our waiter came over, scooped the steaks out and served them to the people who'd ordered boiled beef. Didn't expect that to happen! Since I ate steak the night before, I had ordered shrimp, which were great.

Heading into Week 2

After some meetings at the production company Thursday we went to a billiards place to shoot pool. Not sure if that's very Viennese, but whatever. We won the award for "most Blackberrys in use in a pool hall" award, hands down.

Conducting business in between shots.

On Enda's recommendation, Nicole and I went to Motto Thursday night. Fab, scenester crowd. The most NYC-like of anyplace we've been. I had "surf and turf" for dinner; was a really good steak. Chatted up the bartender/waiters who were smoking hot (they were both physically attractive and constantly smoking cigarettes). Drank too much wine.

...except maybe Joey Chesnut

I don’t follow competitive eating or anything, but when you live in NYC it’s hard to not be aware of Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating contest, held on Coney Island every July 4th. As 30,000 people watched in the streets, our boy Joey broke a world record today & beat the 6-time winner from Japan. Yeah, Joey!

It doesn’t get much more American than Bruce Willis

I think this is my first 4th of July outside the US. Weird, because it's just a normal Wednesday here in Vienna.

Was raining today so we checked out the Leopold Museum. I really wanted to see some Klimt paintings, but unfortunately there were not that many in the permanent collection. The big one was “Death and Life,” which was very arresting to view in person. I must say the other stuff in the museum was not that great. Of it all, I liked the abstract work by Holzel the best.

Klimt's "Death and Life."

After the museum we went to see “Die Hard 4.0: Live Free or Die Hard”. Not sure if I have even seen any of the previous installments in this series, but this one was awesome. I don’t particularly care for action flicks, but this has some really terrific camerawork and stunts. The movie theatre looked like an old school theatre (for plays, etc.), there was a full bar in the lobby, and tickets were about $6.

Had dinner at Bodega Marques, a Spanish tapas place. They had fab pan y tomate & churros, so I was pretty happy.

52 doesn't look so bad. Bruce still has mojo.

Do you have a pool?

Had to deal with casting at the production company Monday, then Nicole & I went to a Sri Lankan restaurant for dinner. I never expected to be eating dhal curry in Vienna! The restaurant has outdoor seating overlooking the Danube River. The spice in the dishes was definitely dialed down (probably because of where we are) but the food was good otherwise, very authentic.

My cousins had a pool in their backyard when I was growing up, but I can’t say I’m a “pool person.” My colleagues, however, have been desperate for some pool action since we got here. Our line producer overheard them complaining about the lack of pools in Vienna (there aren’t many pools in the city at all), and he mentioned a public pool we should check out. So we make our way to the pool Tuesday, and discover it’s adjacent to the Habsburgs’ summer palace Schonbrunn. And that the public pool basically looks like an upscale Long Island country club. Not too shabby.

The public pool. It sucks, right? Probably because you can't see the restaurant/bar, cafe, gym and spa in this photo.

We have dinner at an Italian place that serves meals in the courtyard of the church that’s adjacent to the place where we ate the first night we were in Vienna. We order lots of antipasta, pizza, pasta and wine. Another fab Italian meal. It's a little weird to be chowing down and boozing it up in front of a church.

God is watching over your appetizers.

Loving the wein

Our driver Viktor took us to Wienerwald (the Vienna Woods) where he grew up, and then drove us to Gumpoldskirchen, a famous wine-growing village south of Vienna. We walked around the vineyards and strolled through the town. A weinfest (summer wine festival) was underway, with live music and lots of outdoor drinking. We bought lunch from a food stand. I ate Kasekrainer (sausage filled with melted cheese) and an apfelstrudel. Both were fantastic. We settled into the garden of a Heuriger (rustic wine tavern). The Riesling was amazing. Super light and refreshing, and only about $1.75 a glass!

Our driver Viktor and our "chaperone" Marina.


Vineyards with the village in the background.


Lederhosen man keeps the crowd jumping.

All of my traveling companions are of Italian descent. So for dinner we headed to Lavaliere, an Italian restaurant. Really good, surprisingly authentic. I think the staff was shocked at how much we ate & drank; they gave us free shots of grappa before we left.

Great Saturday

I think all the travel caught up with me & I slept for a good 12 hours Friday night. Got up Saturday, went to a café down the street from the hotel. Then we went to Naschmarkt, a huge open-air food market (it goes on for about 2 miles). All sorts of different stalls, with cafes scattered along. Good for nibbling, shopping and people-watching.

Fruit stand at Naschmarkt.

Walked to the MQ (MuseumsQuartier), a large complex that includes several museums including MUMOK (the Museum of Modern Art). Apparently this used to be the site of the imperial palace stables, and there were actually a couple of real horses in the inner piazza (but I think this was an “art installation” for kids). The courtyard is actually a cool place to hang out; there are a few cafes and lots of little geometric-shaped loungers.

Yes, a real horse.


The boys take a break.

We stumbled upon the Rainbow parade, which is essentially Gay Pride. We’ve seen some public nods to the occasion (rainbow flags flying atop the public transportation trams) but otherwise the gay scene doesn’t seem to be very overt here.

Hey now. A float in the parade.

Had dinner outside at Le Bol, a French bistro. Went to the first night of the Film Festival am Rathausplatz. Kinda like the summer film series in Bryant Park, but the screen is actually at the base of the City Hall and the films being shown are of opera performances. There are probably 20 outdoor food & drink stalls, and tons of tables. It’s sort of like having a food court in the middle of Central Park. Really lovely setting. The Viennese seem a lot like NYers in the sense that if the weather’s nice, they’re all about being outside.

Vienna City Hall at night.


The bustling part of the food stall area.