A good friend and colleague of mine passed away last weekend in an incredibly tragic car accident. In an effort to both honor the memory of my friend Steve, and for me to personally cope, I’ve started this particular post at least a hundred times in my head. As result, I have composed a number of drafts of story after story about him, and all of the memories are great and good, and make me laugh. But none of those drafted posts truly convey the enormity of what I have felt over the past seven days. I seriously doubt that they ever will, and no matter how many times I type this, it will never come out right or be to my own satisfaction. I have to accept this, and just write it all out as best I can.

Below is my favorite picture of Steve, with his former bandmates from Exit Ocean. I took it at one of my favorite bars in New York City — Siberia — which no longer exists. Yes, you will notice that Saturday Night Live’s Jimmy Fallon is in the shot. Exit Ocean played that night at Siberia, and apparently Jimmy Fallon and Russell Crowe showed up (although we didn’t end up running into Russell Crowe). I think we all couldn’t stop talking about it at work or while hanging out with common friends in Williamsburg for what seemed like a month, but that was a fun time.

Left to right: Steve, Brad, Jimmy Fallon, Jon, and Chris

Following in line with my speechlessness, I’m directly taken back to a particular conversation with Steve from about seven years ago while we were working together, in which we debated brevity (his preferred methodology) over (my particularly exhausting) long-windedness (which is actually in my opinion my being “thorough”, but I digress). He used to tell me that “everyone needs an editor,” and was absolutely convinced that I should describe things “using the least possible words.” I laughed, because I’m usually anything but short. My counterpoint was that if you turn on the internal editor while you’re writing, you tend to lose the initial thought, idea, or feeling that was truest to the moment. This week has been no exception as I’ve been reflecting quite a bit, and I find myself putting into practice something he had said to me long ago. Of course, I learned this from Steve — I think being concise is cosmically appropriate to the situation somehow.

We challenged, sparred, bantered and joked on silly topics such as these occasionally while we were at work. Mostly, this would happen over IM while we were sitting in the same room — Steve used to have a pretty ridiculous chat icon that had an AOL IM buddy guy dressed like a gangsta rapper on it, that had big gold chains with gaudy, animated diamonds that would blink every couple of seconds, and it said (oh so eloquently) “Bling Bling.” It was because of this I remember always calling him “Steve to the Izzo” — he even used to say “BLING BLLLANNNG!!!” and then flash some Strong Island gang sign of some sort at me. He was anything BUT gangsta, which is why I found it so hysterical. I still laugh everytime I think about this.

It was funny to us how, as two English majors from the same university, who graduated a year apart (and had a lot of the same overlapping friend set), we had ended up working in the same industry on the same project at the same company. (And years later, we both ended up in San Francisco having moved months apart, doing Product Management in the same sector of technology.) I feel very fortunate to have met him and known him in different capacities. Given all the similarities between our backgrounds, it was really impossible for Steve and I to have not to have become friends within this lifetime, and I am grateful for that.

I also find it fitting that the Mets came out on top this weekend while playing the Yankees — Steve loved to talk smack with me about baseball, particularly when it came to any Subway Series and the Mets and Yankees crosstown rivalry. I know he is laughing and poking fun at me right now.

Steve’s colleagues set up a blog for him on WordPress.com the next day, after the accident. Upon seeing this, I decided to call in a favor. As a result, upgrades on the blog have been waived, and the domain http://stevewolkoff.com has been purchased and mapped to the blog. It is my hope that not only Steve’s name live on through this gift, but that it enables others to find the Foundation set up for him easily, and to express and communicate their feelings on how he touched all of our lives in many amazing and profound ways. I hope to relinquish the domain registration to his family in the near future.

To the Wolkoff family I offer my deepest and most heartfelt condolences, and for Cindy, I wish not only a speedy recovery, but peace and healing in both mind and spirit.

Rest in peace, Steve. I will miss you.

That sure is a loaded title up there, isn’t it? But now that no one is listening, it feels strangely OK to be myself around here. Now that that’s said, I wanted to dash off a quick post before I lose the moment.

Where shall I begin?

Today — June 18, 2008 — marks the fact that I’ve been maintaining Agendacide.com, my personal online journal, for 10 years. (Additionally, today also marks my one year anniversary at my current employer.)

When I started this site, I was in a drastically different place in my life, having been dropped off on the curb after college graduation with an English degree, hoping to make sense of it all from there. Obviously, lots of things have happened since then, and it would take a seriously exhaustive and intimidating post to fill you in.

I nursed a strange brand of emotional laryngitis that I couldn’t even wrap my head around for a period of years. In fact, I couldn’t even describe it and it was absolutely maddening and infuriating to me, until the point at which it devolved into apathy. Though it may seem in real life that I’m completely there and absolutely present — the picture, or expression of myself, wasn’t a whole one.

Maybe it was born out of a desire to remain private and incognito, or something deeper like shame or embarrassment, or the fear of rejection. Somewhere along the way, I became paralyzed by constant scrutiny, and suppressed my emotions and thoughts until this site was no longer was my therapy — it slowly grew into my equivalent of an online anxiety attack — a testament to, and a constant reminder of the things that I used to do growing up that hurt and stung, the idiotic things I’d done, and quite frankly, it exposed all the chinks in the armor I’d built up for so long.

There are many things I haven’t published sitting here in my draft folder. Maybe they require a second look, or should stay in various states of incompletion. To me though, when I read them again, the feelings are real and the emotion is there. I’ve just been wondering where I’ve been though. Maybe you have too, and I wish I had an answer for you. I’ll admit it in all honesty: I’m confused, and I’m figuring it out.

I’m a little rusty with the writing, but I hope you’ll bear with me. This is really hard for me, and I’m obviously out of practice. After 5 years in New York, and 5 years in California, equalling a decade’s worth of ideas and thoughts lost and tumbling in my head, I hopefully think that maybe I’ve learned something from it all, but we’ll see about that.

I’m really eager to begin and end this chapter of the site, and there’s so much I want to share: new designs, new stories, and even some experiments — I’m sure that I won’t be able to recall or implement it all for you in any sort of chronological manner or in one fell swoop. But I figured that without me thinking too much — and before my internal editor tells me to stop this — let’s hit the “Publish” button for the first time in a very long time.

And we start this off again, with no agenda… as it always was.

Originally uploaded by photomatt.

Matt and I literally crossed paths with Dave Chappelle tonight. The story of how we bumped into him is here, and the photo of the parking ticket that Chappelle handed back to me after I dropped it is here.

As I mentioned before, this year at South by Southwest, I was asked to do a presentation at 20×2, and my goal was to answer the question “What if?” in 2 minutes along with 19 other fellow speakers that had 2 minutes each of their own to take a swing at that same question.

I was on a panel at SXSWi this year (more on that later if you haven’t found it all over the internet by now), but nothing occupied my time more than prepping for 20×2. I must have reworked the concept of the presentation over and over in my head for days and weeks but couldn’t settle on anything. (The concept before this one for the record was: “What if Google wasn’t indexing everything I was writing?” Lame, I know, but a common problem for bloggers.)

Not having anything to work with, I proceeded to grossly take advantage of the torrential downpour the day before 20×2 to get to work on my presentation. After tinkering around with subject matter that I didn’t particularly feel very passionate about, I then scrapped everything I was working on and started fresh with 24 hours to go before showing my piece publicly.

For the record, the YouTube file above is not the original file that was shown at 20×2. In fact, I had to enlarge the fonts on several screens for that version to be readable. The actual presentation I showed is here, in its original form.

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My alma mater, Albany, is the No. 13 seed in the 2007 NCAA Division I Mens’ Basketball Tournament this year! This is the second year in a row they’ve made the tourney, and I’m absolutely thrilled to tell you the truth.

When I went to college, the UAlbany Great Danes were a Division III program and just about the only thing we were known for was the fact that the New York Giants used our fields for summer training. (Back then, I was a student athlete, but I did not go to college to participate in sports, though I could have and recieved scholarships for these things from other schools.) I thought as a student I’d never see the day that Albany would end up on ESPN as I sipped mojitos at a bar in Austin, Texas. That’s essentially how I found out this year. (more…)