John August

John

Mis-pinned

Geek Alert, Travel

mapI’m in New York for the second time in a week. This trip is for a director meeting on the studio’s dime.

While no one will confuse me for a native, I’ve become a lot more comfortable with the city in the past few years. When people give me cross-streets, I generally have some idea what area they’re talking about. I’m a fast walker and subway enthusiast, so a visit to New York City is an adventure.

The biggest challenge for me is that beginning with my first visit in 1994, I flipped Manhattan north-south in my head. I don’t know how it happened, but whatever map I first studied was 180 degrees wrong, and it’s taken every brain cell to get the city reoriented.It’s not unlike that damn [spinning dancer](http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=25642), which is strictly clockwise for me. I can’t even fathom her going the other way.

For years, I’ve been relying on my trusty laminated flat maps of the city. Nothing screams tourist like pulling one of these out while waiting at a crosswalk.

The advent of Google Maps on the iPhone changes all that. Quickly setting a few bookmarks, I can zoom in and out of the city. And if I have to refer to it at an intersection, I just look like everyone else checking email. But it’s not perfect.

1. **You can show where you are, or what you’re looking for, but not both.** At least a dozen times, I’ve searched and found what I wanted — only to forget where I was at the moment. Yes, you can bookmark both locations and pull up directions, but a persistent “I Am Here” flag would be a great addition for version 2.0.

2. **Don’t automatically trust the pins.** Upon arriving in the city, I searched for my hotel, and bookmarked it. However, it was four blocks wrong — a fact I only discovered when trying to get back to my room after a morning trip to Hamilton Heights. Fortunately, I remembered that I’m right next to the Directors Guild Theater, so it was simple to re-map.

3. **It always assumes you’re driving.** When you use the directions, a “walking” option would be a huge help, since it could ignore one-way streets and other restrictions.

Once Apple releases the SDK, I hope one of the first applications is an iPhone-native version of [Métro](http://nanika.net/Metro/). It’s a terrific mass-transit mapper for the Treo and other platforms, which I’ve used to get around New York, Paris, London and Tokyo. There’s a web version, but that’s not especially helpful when you’re underground and out of signal range.

New York, Africa

Africa

I’m in New York for a [U.S. Doctors for Africa](http://usdfa.org) benefit, during which I’ll be introducing the founders of [FOMO](http://www.fomo.co.uk/), the Malawian orphan group I [worked with this summer](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/home-from-africa).

Coordinating our small part of the event has been an interesting example of the flat-worldness of 2007. I’m American; the charity is British; the filmmakers who put together the video for tonight are from Abu Dhabi. Without email, it would have all been nearly impossible to organize.That Malawi is almost completely internet-inaccessible is not lost on me. I have ideas and hive-mind questions, but that’s another post.

The goal of tonight’s activities is to enlist USDFA into getting much-needed medical care to the Mulanje region of Southern Malawi. Most readers are probably more familiar with [Doctors Without Borders](http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/home.cfm), another terrific organization. The difference between the two groups is in approach. Doctors Without Borders goes into crisis locations. They’re firefighters. USDFA is much more about building sustainable, locally-centered programs — which is why Malawi (and FOMO) makes so much sense.

Underscoring the small-worldness meme, upon checking the schedule, I learned that one of the other presenters tonight is [Mia Kirshner](http://imdb.com/name/nm0000477/) — an actress from my very first TV pilot, whose departure from the series inspired a portion of The Nines. I don’t think she holds a grudge. But then, she is an actress, so would I know?

It’s uncomfortable to have aspects of my life crossing over. By and large, Africa John has been pretty autonomous. While there, I didn’t introduce myself as a screenwriter. They don’t have movies, so being the guy who writes movies is roughly the same as being the guy who paints unicorns. And outside of a small area of Los Angeles, I don’t have any measurable celebrity quotient. So I’ll be speaking tonight with only the authority of a guy who helped paint a mud-brick building. And I’ll be hoping the DVD intro plays correctly. Because I’m pretty sure they shot on PAL.

UPDATE (11:55 pm EDT)
—

* The video went off without a hitch.
* Cipriani is a beautiful space.
* I was apparently looking at some other event’s schedule, because there was no Mia Kirshner to be found. However, Brett Ratner was there to introduce Russell Simmons. After that, I was probably the next biggest celebrity. Which is alarming.
* If [Alex Band](http://alexband.net) were a tradable stock, I’d probably buy some shares. I’d never heard of him either, so it was smart for him to sing, “Wherever You Will Go” first for the “oh, yeah” factor.
* I ended up chucking my script, which is a bold choice for a screenwriter. But after a string of hold-my-award speeches and a soporific live auction, I thought it best to just speak from a place of emotional honesty. It cut through the post-dessert fog, which was all I could hope to do.
* The emcee introduced me by saying, “a man who needs no introduction,” which is patently false. The friend of the guy who was in The Brothers McMullenNo, not Ed Burns. The other one. — he knew who I was. Because he’d just finished a novel. And was looking for an agent.

Defeat keeps on going

Asides, Follow Up

“My Glorious Defeat,” the article I wrote for Men’s Health, is now up at MSN.com ((May 3, 2011 Update: MSN.com is link no longer active, but can be accessed at Men’s Health. )) (No, I don’t get residuals.)

Script Cops

So-Called Experts, Video

Script Cops, Ep 2: McKee Sting

One of three clips forwarded by [David Dean Bottrell](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Fname%2Fnm0098746%2F&ei=4LIPR-zjPJLCgQOqof2uCA&usg=AFQjCNFNNTXERpHHcXzJhVdttGvzak49cQ&sig2=zWLy68Hj3wduAAO1ltj-vw). You can see the other two [here](http://crackle.com/c/Moving_Targets/Script_Cops%2C_Ep_1%3A_Domestic_Disturbance/1997675#ml=fk%3Dwrite%2520good%26fx%3D%26o%3D7) and [here](http://crackle.com/c/Moving_Targets/Script_Cops%2C_Ep_3%3A_Traffic_Stop/2020260#ml=fk%3Dscript%2520cops%26fx%3D%26o%3D7).