Ol' Stanton.

Now here's a guy I always liked. I don't know if he was built for the gig or not, but the thing I liked about a fella like Stanton is, he worked. He worked hard, he stayed late, and he did what it takes to get shit done. He was one of the good ones. I remember when he first came on board, and I wasn't sure what his skill set would be. How refined his knowledge of the digital world was. Didn't know much about him, other than we needed a guy, and the guy who was out had made some pretty big fuck ups and suffered from a little of the negativity in the work place, and so here comes a guy without a whole lot of drama, and actually did a great job.

I liked how when he would type an email out to someone, he'd open his mail window the full way across his 23 inch display, just a huge sea of white, and there he'd be typing away in 11 point font, the words just kind of inching their way across that great big screen. I've never seen anyone else do that. I mean, It's like, if all the words you just read, took up only 1 line on a page. And it's a very big page. Plenty of more room for plenty of more lines. I can think of at least a few hundred nights, well past midnight when I would come out of the equipment room, and there he'd be typing a letter to a client, listening to System of a Down and just really burning the midnight oil for that company, no complaints, just getting it done, because in New York, that's what you do.

*NOTE: Even though that's Misho at Scott's desk, you get the idea. It's a guy. Sitting at the desk, and there's a big screen. And it's all white. (in this case because the screen is overexposed) So you know, it's like a photo illustration.

Well. You know how it goes when you're one of the good ones. It's simple. In business, there's no such thing as friends. You can say it over and over in your head until you think you understand it, but until someone you thought was a friend proves it to you, you just don't get it.

Kind of like that episode of The Family Guy, where Brian finds out he's got a kid. And he goes on that whole thing that parents will sometimes do, where they say, "Until you HAVE a kid, you don't KNOW." It's a life lesson. Not like saying to a kid, who can't seem to keep his hands away from the stove, "hey, those blue things moving around, kind of flickering under the pan, well. Those things are HOT." I suppose until you touch the blue flickering things, you don't really know. You THOUGHT you knew, but really get a much better sense of it when you touch 'em.

So anyway. Now he knows. That's how it goes. That's what happens. That's what you get.

For me, I was thinking about it again this morning. My lesson about that one. I was tossing a Q-Tip™ into the waste basket under the sink in my bathroom, and having another of my morning dialogues with Kevin Bacon about it, how you know, there's probably a hundred better ways to do a friend, if the guy's really your friend, and that ain't one of 'em. I wasn't thinking about Scott, I was thinking about me. I mean, sure. I'm different now. I do things very differently, and anyone who's out here and around me would not even know the me from NY I guess. They'd say, "Naaaa. not dan. he's not like that. I mean, maybe i can picture it, if i think about it, but naaaaa. He's too laid back. No way."

The thing is, it's one of those lessons that changes you. Because once you understand that there's "no such thing as friends in business", it's kind of like that thing that September 11 thing. You just, well. You just feel different. You think different. You ARE different.

Now most of you know I don't get too involved with the whole 911 thing anymore, mostly because nobody really gives a shit. And by the time people get around to actually giving a shit and doing something about it, it won't matter. It's already too late. The damage is done. It keeps getting done. It's getting more and more done every day. So there's no point in even thinking about it. It's out of your hands. Just buy yourself a hummer or a ski boat and go play. There's people much bigger than you and me moving the pieces on the board, and quite frankly, we're not invited to the table.

That's how it is with Ol' Stanton. I heard he learned about friends & business, and my immediate reaction was, "Of course! Why not?!" and then, my next thought was, "Well that's what you GET." And of course those thoughts were all laced with my trademark sarcasm, but really. It is what you get. That IS what happens. And in the end, someone else decides it's time for you to go somewhere else. You just pack up your little box and do the walk.

You work hard, you trade years of your life, you dedicate yourself to something or somebody else, and then you're expendable, and you are out, and that's life, so grow up. (How's it taste?)

Well I'll tell you what. It doesn't make me happy. And I feel bad about it. But now we have at least one more thing in common. We both KNOW. And for that, we're both a little wiser.

My hat's off to you Scott. I believe in you man. For all the nights we worked later than anyone else we knew, and for all the times we believed we were making a difference, I want you to know, in some small way, I appreciated your dedication, your commitment, and easy smile even when it wasn't always "smiling times", I'm glad to have been a part of it all while you were there too. Here's a picture that you might recognize. It's probably an expression you saw on my face more than once over the years, back when I didn't know any better either. Good Times.

Thank you for being a friend.

dTown | 12:07pm 63˚ and clear, nothing playing on the stereo.