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·          Book to buy:  Business Babble by David Olive, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,

      defined as “a cynic’s dictionary of corporate jargon” -- e.g., Bottomline: the figure
 representing hope minus reality

·         On not being the underdog, from Wilt Chamberlain:  “Nobody loves Goliath.”

·                     On the business of Modeling:  author Michael Gross:

No matter what you call it, the modeling business is all about selling the bodies of young girls       

·         From Memoirs of an Invisible Man: Daryl Hannah says to Chevy Chase as they make-out in the ladies room of a restaurant, “Let’s not do anything cheap and meaningless.”  Chevy asks, “how much do I owe you?”

·         From Picasso:

o    On Impressionism: It’s like eating sugar all day.

o    On Art: In art, you must kill your father.

o    On Art: Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

o    On the advent of photography in 1800’s -- Beaudelaire: Photography is the refuge of failed painters.

·         Degas on why he never married -- There is love and there is painting; we have only one heart.

·                     On drawing horses:  All four feet are off the ground only when they’re tucked under the horse.

·         On the mundane, from a movie review: “Return to Me” is the cinematic equivalent of meat loaf -- comfort food that’s reassuring in its utter lack of sophistication and surprises.

·                     On punctuation: “Punctuation is everything.  An English professor writes the words ‘a woman without her man is nothing’ on the blackboard.  The men then punctuated: ‘A woman, without her man, is nothing.’  The women wrote: A woman: without her, man is nothing.’”

·                     Cezanne said of Monet:  Monet is only an eye, but my god, what an eye.

·         On Frankie Coffee Cake Being A Jinx: (from A Bronx Tale) “He’d go to the track and the teller would give him his tickets already ripped up.”  (a tribute to my cousin Rick)

·         On Coaching from Tom Landry:  “Coaching is about getting players to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.”

·         From Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley:

·         Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

·         Only four shapes in a two-dimensional space can actually touch each other- therefore a mapmaker only needs five colors to make a map.

·         It's being "time to go" was a simple concept, in theory, if you didn't ask why.

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·         From Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley (cont’d):

·         The Tibetan Book of Thoroughbred Training

1. Do not pay attention or investigate; leave your mind in its own sphere

2. Do not see any fault anywhere

3. Do not take anything to heart

4. Do not hanker after signs of progress

5. Although this may be called inattention, do not fall prey to laziness

6. Be in a state of constant inspection

·         Plans were the worst.  They drained you of every bit of present life, until all you were was a containment building, and the ghost of yourself was lost on the vapors of the future, waiting to exist.

·         Now he was required to be patient, and, to be perfectly frank, there was a lot about patience that felt just like not caring much at all.  But that was a state you could take a little rest in, not a state you could live in.  It was too boring, and, most of the time, he hated being bored most of all.

·         If you want to know how to be a good mother, he had said to the "foundation mare" on the occasion of a memorable and not easily forgiven dispute, go out to the farm and stand among the mares and their foals and try to get it.  A bad mother was nervous but neglectful. A good mother was attentive and calm.  It was as simple as that, he had said.

·         "And the love of God will make me happy?"  "Here's how it works, Cousin.  First you admit it exists, then you admit you can see it, then you admit you can feel it, then you admit you want it, then you return it, and then it fills you.  Then you are happy."

·         Pandemonium shook the grandstand, that an obscure horse from California who had gone off at twenty-to-one odds should win the Arc!  Rosalind smiled.  Of course, Limitless had not known of his own obscurity.  The inability of horses to read the sports pages, Al had always said, was one of their advantages as a sports investment.

·         On Art from Robert Henri:

We are not here to do what's already been done. 

·         On actor Sir Alec Guinness: "I had countless first impressions of him," playwright Ronald Harwood once wrote.  "Each time I saw him, in films, later in the theatre, I had the uncanny feeling I had never before watched him act."

·         On Al Gore:  On ABC's Good Morning America, Charlie Gibson recently contributed a memorable oxymoron, promising "a live interview with Al Gore."

·         On the Virtue of Being Unreasonable:  “A reasonable man adapts to the world around him.  The unreasonable man expects the world to adapt to him.  Therefore, all progress is made by unreasonable men.”  -- George Bernard Shaw

·         On the Virtue of Being Alone:  "The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude." -- James Russell Lowell (1819-91), Columbus     

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·         Books: Baseball's Pivotal Era  Univ. Press of KY; Business Babble  David Olive - John Wiley& Sons; Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Christopher Alexander, system architect.   Alla Prima by artist Richard Schmid (Stove Prairie Press); A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-examined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease. -- Cintra Wilson (Viking)

·         On the Zen Qualities of Surfcasting from The Surfcaster's Quest:  “The rote process of casting and retrieving a plug satisfies the four basic requirements described by Eastern mystics for relaxing the mind and expanding the consciousness. 

First of all, surfcasting is carried out in a peaceful environment.  It matters not that the ocean itself can be thunderous, or that the honking of geese or plaintive cry of gulls wheeling overhead adds to the seaside cacophony.  There are no honking horns, screeching sirens or squealing brakes intruding on nature’s sounds to disturb the surfcaster’s serenity.

Second, concentrating on a plug soaring through the air and then hitting the water is similar to the archer's following of an arrow as it flies toward its target.  While the surfcaster’s eyes are riveted on this brightly painted lure, his mind is free to wander.

Third, the motions of casting create a passive attitude considered all-important in meditation.  That’s true at least 99 percent of the time when no fish is on the other end of the line.  Extraneous thoughts and mental images may drift in and out of the surfcaster’s awareness without interrupting the physical action.  Unless the monofilament line suddenly snarls into a tangled bird’s nest, one cast automatically follows another without interruption.

Fourth, it’s a comfortable activity.  There’s no strain involved in casting out or reeling in a plug.  It’s an easy rhythmic action that can be carried on for hours without much physical or mental fatigue.  But it’s the combination of all four of these elements that produces the transcendental state of mind considered essential for successful meditation.”

·         Funny exchange between two senile members of a staid old club:

“Good to see you again, old boy,” said the first member.

“Ah, wonderful to see you, too,” said the second

“But forgive me, I seem to have forgotten your name.”

“Quite all right, old boy, said the first.  How soon do you need to know?”

·         Henry David Thoreau on the importance of immersing ourselves in nature while the opportunity exists.

      Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.  

·         On Marriage and The Seven Year Itch:  "Every man in his middle thirties falls in love with his wife's opposite."               -- essayist Lewis Mumford               

·         On Aircraft Reliability from The Lion's Game: "She flies like a homesick angel."                   

 

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·         On Fate from Detective John Corey, The Lion's Game: "I don't believe in predestination, fate, chance, or luck.  I believe that a combination of free will and random chaos controls our destinies, that the world is sort of like a lady's garment sale at Loemann's.  In any case, you have to be awake and alert at all times, ready and able to exercise your free will amidst an increasingly chaotic and dangerous environment."

                       

·         Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

·         Only four shapes in a two-dimensional space can actually touch each other- therefore a mapmaker only needs five colors to make a map.

·         On the safety of anesthesia:  "Nowhere in life will you have someone watching your every breath and listening to your every heartbeat."

·         Gloria Steinem on Men and Marriage:

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."

It was the institution of marriage that was the problem, designed as she put it, "for a person and a half."

·         Bobbie Knight On Leaving Indiana (from U.S. News) - "I want to coach in the worst way."  Sometimes, it seems, he did.

·         Joe Leiberman blames Hollywood: for a "culture of carnage."

·         Terrone -the disparaging name for southern Italian peasants

·         Mammoni (Mammono sing.) - Italian - mama's boys

·         U.S. News 10/23 - On The Boy Scouts: "Akin to a hate group"?  Only if traditional morality is now a form of hate.  Boy Scouts are explicitly taught to respect all their fellow citizens.  The Scouts issue no anti-gay vitriol and have joined no political alliance to oppose gays.  The Scouts brief to the Supreme Court said simply, "We can respect the plea of many gay and lesbian Americans not to have the majority's morality imposed on them.  By the same token, we ask that a contrary morality not be forced upon private associations like the Boy Scouts..."

·         On souls from movie Bedazzled: "Souls are overrated", coos the devil as impersonated by Elizabeth Hurley (Princess of Darkness with offices in purgatory, hell and Los Angeles). "It's like your appendix -- you'll never miss it."

·         Connie Hawkins on Aging Athletes:  “The older we get, the better we used to be.”

 

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·         To become a BASE jumper you must leap off each of the four types of structures that form the sport's acronym-Buildings, Antennas, Spans (bridges) and Earth (cliffs).  Scientific formula- T=VF/S (Thrill equals Velocity times Fatality rate divided by Safety precautions).

·         In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe

Carl Sagan

·         No two people hear the same music.         Joe Jackson

·         On Wall Street and the effect of negative momentum: "You can't catch a falling knife." "It's a vicious cycle: the markets fall because the economy is slowing, consumers aren't spending because the markets are falling, the economy is slowing because consumers aren't spending."

·         On Wall Street and when a continued drop is likely: "Another reason the Nasdaq could continue to drop is that small investors have yet to give up.  Many experts believe a market has only seen its bottom when the little guy bails out and cuts his losses."

·         Joe Jackson bio p. 40, 41

·         Most people strive to be knowledgeable in the things that advance their self-interests.

·         Advertising is like baseball - its best years are behind us.

·         Politics Defined: Ambrose Bierce

“Politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”

·         On the Past: Professor John McCleod (Mel Gibson) from The Man Without a Face.

“People spend too much time thinking about the past.  Whatever else it is, it’s gone.”

·         Celebrity Trivia

·         Kate Winslet has titanic feet.  Size 10

·         Julia Stiles wants to be marooned on a desert island with Freddie Prinze Jr.                (We can only hope)

·         Nicole Kidman’s nickname in school was “Stalky”

·         Claudia Shiffer remembers every one of her 700 magazine covers

·         Natalie Portman was discovered in a NY pizzeria

·         Grace Kelly movies aren’t shown in Monaco.  Prince Rainier’s order

·         Paul Hogan used to work in a morgue

·         Andie MacDowell’s first name is Rosalie

·         Samuel L. Jackson’s “L” stands for Leroy

·         Bob Newhart used to be an accountant

·         Britney Spears is addicted to Pop Tarts (doesn’t she know about the nickname?)

Worth Noting Pages 46-51

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Civ:  How do art and commerce relate in today’s world?

TK:  Art has nothing to do with commerce and commerce has nothing to do with art.  But there are many functions in the world of commerce that are very artistic.  I am not an artist.  A filmmaker is not an artist.  A filmmaker is a storyteller who works with motion picture and sound.  I want to tell stories about people.

And I want as many people as to see them as possibly can.

BW:  Used properly, focus groups can help a film reach a wide audience, which Tony said is one of his goals.  If you use the focus group to figure out how to market the film effectively so that people give it a chance and get into the theater and are moved by it, that’s a wonderful use of focus groups.

·         On Labor Day:  Detail’s magazine Mark Golin complained in his editor’s letter that it’s “a holiday so lackluster that even Hallmark can’t figure a way to make a buck off it.”

·         On Society and the Boom in Child Chess Players, Civilization Oct./Nov. ‘99 p. 31 Pawns of Prepubescence

During the past decade, youth membership of the United States Chess Federation has increased elevenfold -- without any corollary increase in adult membership.  Children and teens of all backgrounds now comprise 40,000 of the USCF’s 86,000 total members.  Could we be witnessing a kiddie-culture grassroots movement?  Not exactly.  Chess was once a potent cold-war symbol.  But the new players -- dubbed the Bobby Fischer boom, because their parents thrilled to his exploits in the early 70’s -- seem to be playing less for God and country than for Mom and Dad.  Howard Gardner, a professor of education at Harvard University notes that, in general, “increasing knowledge about brain development has been misinterpreted as meaning that we have to force-feed kids information and skills.”  In a time of unparalleled affluence, status is no longer found in the material present; clothes and cars lose their power to differentiate.  We measure success in future purchase.  Thus an ancient game of cerebral warfare becomes an elixir of parental anxiety, giving comfort in the form of that classic archetype of potential: the chess prodigy. -- Lauren Schrock

·         On the Power of Networks: from Civilization Oct./Nov. ‘99 A Network of New Ideas p. 74

All networks --- whether physical distribution networks like the one Federal Express has built or electronic networks like the Internet and cellular telephony -- share a singular underlying advantage: A point-to-point network grows in value exponentially as the number of its endpoints grows.  You never know how all the points of commerce are going to intersect.  You can’t size a bridge by counting the swimmers; a bridge creates traffic; and so do networks.  Every endpoint that’s added can then be connected to all other endpoints, which makes networks uniquely powerful economic engines. 

The value of networks will become enormous as we continue to globalize and connect all points, both electronically and logistically.  Imagine the opportunities created as we hook uo billions of objects -- personal digital assistants, television, cars, telephones, even physical packages -- into networks in which very object can communicate with every other. 

These interconnected networks hold out the greatest promise for solving some of the seemingly insurmountable problems that our children and grandchildren will face -- problems ranging from global warming to world hunger to the need for economies to continue to grow if we are to raise standards of living throughout the world.  With both physical-distribution and telecommunications networks working together, we can provide such solutions as better education and training, better…

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understanding of each other’s needs and wants via improved communication, and new monetary and payment systems that will allow the economies of the world to mesh more smoothly.

During my time at Federal Express, I learned important lessons about the value of networks, and I applied those lessons in my work with two other networking companies: McCaw Cellular, the world’s largest cellular telephone company, which is now part of AT&T, and Netscape, the pioneering Internet media software company, which is now part of America Online.  At Netscape, the network we worked with was the Internet.  We provided products and services that allowed people to use this new point-to-point multimedia wonder with ease.  In the five and a half years since Netscape was founded by Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen, many other Internet start-ups have been  born and thrived in Silicon Valley.  Venture capital companies, including my own, are being inundated with exciting new ideas and business plans.  In fact, the region has been so influential in setting the tone and pace of technological and business innovation that it has spurred the development of similar hubs around the world, such as Silicon Alley in New York and Silicon Glen in Scotland.

Fifty years from now, we probably won’t even notice how everything is so connected.  We’ll take it for granted that we have high-speed multimedia conduits around the world.

Mostly, this mega-network will serve the good of society.  Certainly some thorny issues exist, such as privacy and regulation, but there’s no reason to believe we can’t work our way through them.  When we can communicate as instantaneously and easily as if we were sitting together on a park bench, we tend to solve problems.  The root of most conflicts and misunderstandings lies in the absence of communication.  The marvelous growth in the use of computers and microchips and telecommunications networks has resulted in a steady reduction in the frictions of commerce, education, and government.  -- James L. Barksdale

·         On the Power of Networks: from Civilization Oct./Nov. ‘99 Decentering Society p. 78

To make a more powerful computer chip, you use the computer to design new circuits, the roadmap of the new chip.  You run programs on the computer to simulate the circuits, to be sure that the signals pass through the chips’ intersections and turn the right things on at the right times.  If the simulations work, you build the faster chip.  That makes the computer faster, which allows you to run even more complicated simulations to help design even more complicated chips.  Positive feedback.

The same kind of cycle is driving the development of the Internet.  Having recently entered a period of exponential growth with no end in sight, the Net is increasingly quantity -- a huge quantity of information flowing around the world, already surpassing the total volume of information on the world’s telephone voice networks many times over, becoming the running sum and accretion of everything.

But the Internet is also a metaphor.  It represents ways of linking intelligent entities in various kinds of conversation.  The “Inter” in Internet conveys a sense of connection -- the crux of the metaphor.  The components of the Internet, however, are devices, people and programs, all communicating their conditions, wishes, and needs.  The connections are simply communication pathways, and are increasingly invisible and subliminal.

But I want to describe the unfamiliar -- the directions we’re headed and that aren’t conveyed by this metaphor, those transformations of what we do and what we can do that are only beginning to emerge. 

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It has been said before, but it bears repeating: The Internet links intelligent devices into one global computer -- the network is the computer.  The box containing transistors and a fan and an ugly bottle with air air pumped out of it sitting on your desk is doomed.  Its kind is already vanishing, just as electric motors disappeared into walls and ceilings and dashboards.

The Internet is us as well as our machines -- and, as a sum of interactions, a great deal more besides.  The devices are evanescent -- as indeed, are we; the Internet conversation creates an evolving permanence.

Today, Internet access devices cost a few hundred dollars each and reach maybe 10 percent of the population.  However, network capacities are doubling every 12 months; assume that information transport will soon be free and ubiquitous.  Storage capacity will increase by a factor of a thousand over the next five years; assume that storage will be virtually unlimited, and free.  Within a year or two, we will likely see movies stored on aspirin-sized devices, music stored on pinhead-sized CD’s, video cameras on slivers of silicon.  Tomorrow, with complete computer systems on a single chip, debates about cost will be over.  The devices will cost nothing.  With the advent of high-bandwidth wireless connectivity, linking them together will cost pennies. 

The debate, then, is no longer about when and how intelligent devices will create a worldwide conversation, but what is happening as they do.

This is a discussion of what our lives and society will be like, what new forms of power, of wealth, of domination will emerge, what forms of language will evolve -- and what being human will mean.

Again, the Internet is not a thing, place, a single technology, or a mode of governance: It is an agreement, sweeping across all arenas -- commerce, communications, and governance -- that rely on the exchange of symbols.

Why has this agreement spread so fast?  Industrial technology has traditionally created barriers to entry and difference for difference’s sake, allowing momentary proprietary advantage that can (with luck and ruthlessness) be converted into monopolies.  Each competitor seeks sameness from suppliers and difference from competitors.  For decades the computer industry has also profited from difference -- different plugs, wires, regulatory protections; different ways of doing similar things. 

But the economic and technical logic of agreement has won: Anyone can create and manipulate symbols, and the engines of creation are available worldwide.  The Internet is providing a framework for anonymous agreement.  I don’t need to know your name to use your creation, and you don’t need my permission to create it.  A student in Malaysia can formulate symbols that are incorporated into the design of my carburetor or video camera.  The industrial barrier to entry is more or less gone.  This worldwide innovation community is new -- not in spirit, but in reach.  The same values that have driven scientific advancement for more than 300 years -- open communication, sharing of results, intense conversation -- are now driving technological industry.

Traditionally, barriers to entry have protected investments; on the Internet, growth is being generated through the destruction of barriers to entry.  Students are developing innovations that become billion-dollar companies.  The conjunction of cheap, distributed innovation has occurred so rapidly that those institutions and forces most concerned with control and least capable of being distributed -- in word, governments -- have had little  time to react to its effects.

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But the reaction is coming.  For older, control-based institutions, this revolution is being taken as a threat to the foundations of order.  Governments love control -- enumeration, cadastral maps, tax rolls, boundaries.  Restricted to geographic limits, they are profoundly challenged by the distributed nature of new economic forces that are free to act globally.  Technologies of control are building apace.  If you are on the streets of New York or London, surveillance cameras are already taking your picture 30 times a day.  All wireless communications are monitorable -- today’s cell phone systems can be used to fix your location to within 50 feet.  Government is scrambling to keep up, but it clearly has abundant tools to work with.  Law enforcement has been relying on the gift of Alexander Graham Bell for some 120 years; clearly, wiretapping is now only the tip of the electronic-surveillance iceberg.  Meanwhile, the plunging costs and soaring economies of linking symbolic machines in global networks are creating the basis for new systems of human cooperation. 

This early in the game, such networks may more often seem to be pathways for the clever than supports for the poor.  But these new conversations allow new interactions; global microcredit -- instead of “each one teach one” it’s “each one reach one” -- and new communities of interest and social action.  These will be exciting and dynamic changes.  the Internet allows us to watch ourselves create new languages.  Language is the vector of culture, and culture is the foundation of human adaptability.  The Internet is creating a new language of distributed community, global sharing, and local adaptation.  Again: positive feedback loop.

·          On the Power of Networks: from Civilization Oct./Nov. ‘99 Working for the Perfect Score

Everybody goes for the Score.  At one time, Silicon Valley could be defined as the country’s most consistently successful breeding ground for new ideas in technology.  Now, it is better understood as the epicenter of the Equity Economy -- the new economic order in which every employee above the very lowest rungs is in for piece of the action.  Here’s how the Equity Economy works, just in case you don’t know.  Bill -- a successful engineer at a big company like Oracle, or the head of a company that just sold out, or a grad student with a big idea who is living in $400-a-month bedroom in a shared house -- starts a company.  Who Bill was doesn’t matter.  What matters is that Bill is now a “founder”.  He’s got ownership-- equity.  Investors come in; they get equity, too -- shares.  Then Bill hires employees; they get options (if they come in early enough, the price is nominal -- just pennies).  These shares or options aren’t really worth anything at first.  They’re virtually Monopoly money.  Now, let’s say the company succeeds.  Success may be shipping a blockbuster product, or selling out before anything is even produced, or just getting enough of the ultimate start-up commodity: buzz.  In any case, success, in the peculiar and comic parlance of the business world, means a “liquidity event” -- the climactic moment when stock becomes worth ... real money.  Dollars.  But that’s if -- if the company succeeds, if your product gets shipped, if the investors like your CEO’s voice, if one of the industry’s 700-pound gorillas doesn’t squash you first.  IF, if, if.  Sometimes that moment never comes.  For every degree of hope, there is an equal and opposite degree of fear.  This is what keeps everyone in the Valley on edge.  If, on the other hand, the stars do not align; if after 12 months your investors decide that you are burning money too fast; if your sales force quits to go to the competition; if your CEO collapses in a fit of nervous exhaustion -- then you are liable to find that a year sleeping under desk has yielded nothing more than an unfortunate line on your resume.

The risk is always there.  A couple of years ago, Rupert Murdoch wanted to buy PointCast, one of the early highfliers of the Internet, for $450 million.  Its prospects seemed unlimited, so its owners rebuffed Murdoch’s offer.  Then the company fizzled.  In the worst case, you find out that there’s suddenly no money to pay the rent, and the next week there’s no money to meet payroll. 

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And there’s no IPO -- only finger-pointing, rage, tears.  Sometimes the investors get a little money back.  Employees get next to nothing; their options will be play money forever.

All this is always in the background, but it rarely gets talked about.  The fear is what you wake up with every morning, but it’s not the bi picture, it’s not the driving force.  The driving force is the bright image of the best-case outcome: the IPO.  When that happens, the employees who got in the game early on with a strike price of say, 15 cents an option can trade them in for shares worth maybe $20 or $40 or $60.  Before the Equity Economy, there was the Gold Watch Economy.  The Gold Watch Economy is where you don’t want to be -- as in, “I don't want to work for 30 or 40 years to get a gold watch.”  That’s the way a man named Tom Evans put it to me.  He had left a job running a group of magazines for media mogul Mort Zuckerman to take the top job at an Internet company, GeoCities.  GeoCities lets any user put up a free home page on the web.  GeoCities went public, got listed on NASDAQ, and then got bought out by Yahoo!.  Evans made $38 million in nine months and soon moved on.  Huge score. 

The Score is the payoff in the Equity Economy.  It’s not a particular sum of money, but it’s always more than you deserve.  For a kid just out of college, it might mean a hundred grand; for the ambitious grad just out of Stanford business school, half a million dollars; for a marketing vice president, five million; for a big-deal corporate pooh-bah, it can mean eight figures or nine.  And it generally comes suddenly; one day you’re scraping to make the mortgage payments, the next day your company is sold to a competitor -- or even better, gets listed on NASDAQ.  You pay off your mortgage and accept congratulations all around.  Then -- and here’s the really funny thing -- it starts all over again.  Not always immediately; you might need to wait a while and watch your winnings pile up. Typically, an employee must stay at a company four years to become fully vested  -- to convert all options.  Some people are sitting on options so valuable that they are virtually impossible to lure away -- that’s a key measure of the really big Score.  But after a truly big bonanza, people sometimes walk away from millions in unvested options.  They talk vaguely about “looking at other opportunities” -- opportunities, that is, to take an even bigger Score.  A friend of mine, Oliver Muoto, co-founded a company in San Francisco called Epicentric.  He is tired of negotiating option packages: “It used to be that you told people they had options, and they said ‘Great!’  Now they want accelerated vesting -- one-trigger options, two-trigger options.”  (One-trigger options accelerate your vesting if the company is sold; almost nobody gets those.  Two-trigger options get acceleration if the company is sold and you are fired; some people do get those.)  I wonder if Oliver himself will get the Score.  He is brilliant, he knows everyone there is to know, and on top of that, he works so hard that he often does sleep at his office.  He needs The Score, too, as much as anyone in the Valley does: He wants his parents to immigrate from Nigeria, but they have virtually no chance in the visa lottery.  But if they can put up a million dollars to start a business -- instant U.S. residency.  I’m not sure anyone can be said to deserve the kind of wealth that the Equity Economy madly creates and haphazardly distributes.  I’m not sure even Oliver deserves the Score.  But I hope he gets it.  There is something peculiarly hopeful in the thought that it is possible to get more than you deserve -- especially when you really need it.     --   Mark Gimein        

 

·         On prayer from the movie, Rudy:  “Praying is something we do in our time; the answers come in god’s time.”

·         On aging:  “The worst part about being old is remembering when you were young”

·                     On priorities:  “Life’s about YOU.” – my friend Steve Makovsky

·                     On the foolishness of apportioning the last or your weed       

It’s better to get stoned once than to not get stoned twice – my friend B

Worth Noting Pages 41-45

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·         From The Sopranos:  “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

·         On Music’s inexplicable nature (Elvis Costello?):

            “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

·         On the manpower & resources dedicated to the Empire State Building (William Starrett,

            William Starrett Construction; completed the Empire State in a record 18 mos.!)

            “Building a skyscraper is the peacetime equivalent of war.”

·         On Sculpture & Architecture; from renowned 20th Century architect, I.M. Pei

            “Sculpture and Architecture are related.  Function is the only thing that prevents an            architect from being a sculptor.”

·         On addiction: An addict relies on a chemical to get rid of stress and uncomfortable emotions.  Pressure and stress triggers an addict to use their drug of choice.

On Impatience & Baseball, from SI p. 20 4/19/99 -- “Impatience is a virtue in America, where even fast food isn’t fast enough.  Americans once ate leisurely dinners but then discovered TV dinners, and then McDonald’s, and then drive-through McDonald’s, and finally the number-coded meal ordered through the drive-through window at McDonald’s.  The trouble with instant gratification is that it takes too long, a notion best expressed by comedian Steven Wright, who aspired to put instant coffee in the microwave oven and actually go back in time.

Baseball introduced “Wait till next year” into the public lexicon.  But who has time to wait anymore?  In its account of a recent Cubs victory, Associated Press declared, “Sammy Sosa remained homerless for the season ...” It was only the Cub’s third game, but already Sosa was

consigned to a homerless shelter, hopelessly behind a record pace.  Perhaps that’s a blessing.  If he or someone else take the nation on another joyride this summer, it will be one

in which members of the media shout daily from the backseat, “Are we there yet?  Are we there yet?”

During the Yankees’ hopelessly shower-soaked home opener last Friday, new Bombers TV analyst Tim McCarver suggested waiving the mandatory 45-minute waiting period before a game can be called due to rain.  It was an outrageous proposal.  For years the only upside to Braves games were the impromptu Sanford and Son marathons shown during Biblicallty long rain delays on the Superstation.

·         On Size & Effectiveness, from Wendy Schaetzel Lesko, head of the youth project Activism 2000, which encourages kids to participate in policy making

“If you ever think you’re too small to be effective, you’ve never been in bed with a mosquito.”

           

·         Pomobabble: The jargon of postmodernism, the intellectual movement that says truth doesn’t exist and that all values and knowledge are “socially constructed” -- made up to serve the interests of the powerful.  The obscurity of pomobabble “bullies the reader into granting that, since one cannot figure out what is going on, there must be something significant going on.”

WORTH NOTING PAGE 42

·         On Movie Poster Design from Civilization, Popcorn Psychology p. 35, April/May ‘99

Film advertisers will tell you that every poster has got to have a gun or a naked woman on it -- period.  It’s not that simple according to John Fahy, Miramax’s creative director and vice president of advertising, who says that least in the case of his studio, each poster is intended to tell you something substantive about the film it advertises.  He notes that one of the more subtle, but effective, techniques poster designers use in trying to show what a film is about is to show its stars looking in a particular direction or at something specific.  Horror movie posters, for example sometimes show actors looking off to one side, or over their shoulders, practically inviting you to help search for whatever’s about to get them.  Not surprisingly, a poster for a romantic film will often will often show  its two leads looking into one another’s eyes.  Posters for films about loftier subjects commonly show characters looking up and off in the distance, to let you know they’re thinking about something really important.  Lately, though, you may have noticed that many posters at the multiplex show the stars looking somewhere else: right at you.  You’ll most often see this in posters for films put out by the major Hollywood studios, but their smaller competitors do it also -- as in the poster for Miramax’s romantic comedy She’s All That, in which leading lady Rachel Leigh Cook stares straight ahead rather than toward co-star Freddie Prinze, Jr.  According to Mary Corliss, curator if the film poster collection at the Museum of Modern Art, this sort of thing was less common during Hollywood’s so-called golden days of the 1930’s and 40’s.  Back then, a poster was supposed to show characters interacting with one another, thereby conveying a sense of the film’s premise.  And although studios were just as interested as they are now in using stars to sell tickets, Corliss says poster designers were less likely to show stars looking at their fans because the actors were supposed to be larger than life -- aloof and unattainable.  Now that we know everything about every star’s personal affairs, those days are past, and this fact may be reflected in today’s movie poster designs.  Hollywood actors now are just like us, or at least a little like us; perhaps film advertisers are trying to lure us into the cinema by convincing us that we have a personal link to the people we pay to watch.  In posters, stars still sell tickets, but differently than before: they tell you very little about the movies they promote.  They simply show actors and actresses eyeing you so as to say, “Fork over for a ticket, and you get to spend two hours alone with me, in the dark.”

·         Stanley Kubrick on Schindler’s List:  “That was about success, wasn’t it?  The Holocaust is about six million people who get killed.  ‘Schindler’s List’ was about six hundred people who don’t.”

·         I think Life resembles Painting: Often we try to improve the overall picture by dabbing in small strokes -- until the whole thing is overworked, and the true colors of happiness are muddied.  Sometimes it’s best to plunge a brush into the paint, and change things with a broad stroke.    Me

·         From Psychedelic Furs’ The Ghost In Me:

            But falling over you is the news of the day.  Angels fall like rain.  And love is all of

            Heaven away.

·         Favorite Line From The Sopranos (HBO series first season viewers poll):

                       

“What?  No fuckin’ ziti?”  -- Anthony Jr. on seeing the table for a family party.

                                                                          

WORTH NOTING PAGE 43

·         On Cape Cod:  A man may stand here and put all America behind him.

·         On the assumed truth of the written word  (from Spencer’s Mountain, Henry Fonda) 

      “Just because somethin’s wrote down, don’t make it so.”        Clay Spencer

·         “Your Name”  (author unknown)

You got it from your father

It was all he had to give

So it’s yours to cherish

For as long as you may live.

If you lose the watch he gave you

It can always be replaced.

But a black mark on your name,

Can never be erased.

It was clean the day you took it

And a worthy name to bear

When he got it from his father,

There was no dishonor there.

So make sure you guard it wisely,

After all is said and done

You’ll be glad the name is spotless

When you give it to your son.

·         Hollywood’s Nastiest Insults

1.     “I knew her before she was a virgin.”  -- Groucho Marx on Doris Day

2.     “Lily Tomlin has been in and out of the closet more times than my hunting jacket.”

-- Rock Hudson

3.     “I wouldn’t sit on her toilet.” -- Bette Davis on Joan Crawford

4.     “Marilyn Monroe was the original good time had by all.”  -- Bette Davis

5.     “Oh sorry, I thought you were a fellow I knew.” -- Groucho Marx on Greta Garbo

·         Being a screenwriter in Hollywood is like being a eunuch at an orgy.

-- Albert Brooks in “The Muse”

·         Honor modesty more than your life.  -- Aeschylus

·         Teach us like men, treat us like women. -- Mia Hamm to her national team skipper, Tony DiCicco

·                     On the differences of coaching women (Tony DiCicco)

“There are actually more similarities than differences between men and women.  Women demand to be trained hard but they don’t like a coach to get in their face as a yelling, ranting, lunatic.  They prefer more direction.  One of the things that is most important to women is relationships with one another.  This is not to say that men are some lesser level of Homo Sapiens but with men it’s more like, ‘You can play a little bit so you can be on my team’, but women can’t easily make that transfer. They will discount for relationships more than anything else.

WORTH NOTING PAGE 44

·         On the differences of coaching women cont’d:  “Also, you have to talk to men players as individuals, you can talk to women as a group because they internalize everything.  You can say to a group of women, ‘We need to be fitter’, and each one thinks you’re talking about her, so they work on it.  With men, if you say that, each one is thinking, “Yeah, I’m the only fit one on this team.’

Response to George Will’s column: “Who needs public broadcasting?” (Richard Cohen 8/9/99 NYPost) “This morning, as I have done almost every morning for the last 20 years, I switched on the radio to listen to National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” Later, if I have time, I will listen to “All Things Considered”  These are the two best news shows on the air -- any air, radio or television -- and they are my answer to a headline The Washington Post put on  recent George Will column:  “Who needs Public Broadcasting?”   I do.  Will, clearly does not.  He says, as do others, that pubic broadcasting is vaguely socialistic, not to mention redundant.  The old network monopoly (ABC, CBS, NBC) is gone.  Now we have more networks and, of course, cable -- 500 or so channels.  Anything done on public television can be found on cable.  But not those two public radio shows.  Nothing like them exists anywhere else.  They are not on commercial radio and certainly not on commercial television.  You can surf those mythical 500 channels until your remote control unit gives you carpal tunnel syndrome and not find a commercial TV news program that comes close, in quality or reach, to what is done daily by “Morning Edition” or “All Things Considered.”  By and large, TV news is a joke.  The network news shows are now parodies of themselves -- anchors standing and anchors walking and anchors pretending to bring you an in-depth report when, half the time, they are rehashing that morning’s paper.  Compared to what they once were, these network news shows are to journalism what burlesque was to theater.  Once-proud news organizations now report to accountants.  Bureaus all over the world have been closed and great reporters talk like boobs -- simple sentences, simple words: simply awful.  The public-radio shows -- and PBS’s “News Hour with Jim Lehrer”-- are of a much higher quality.  They retain an interest in foreign news which the networks, short of war, mostly ignore.  These shows also cover America better than any newspaper I know, and while they are just goofy about space shots, Antarctica and regional cooking (Hi Linda), for public radio’s 29 million listeners, they help bind the nation.  They make us one community.  This is important.  If there is a single -- although unstated -- theme running through the Republican argument about why we deserve a tax break ($792 billion over the next 10 years), it’s that we don’t owe each other very much.  The GOP keeps saying the surplus belongs to each of us -- not, mind you, all of us -- and we ought to get it back.  It’s all about the indiviual.  It’s not about the collective.  But the collective -- a fusty term from a bygone era -- has certain legitimate demands.  For instance, it may be true that cable television has some dandy programming for children.  But “Sesame Street” comes free, and free is all that some people can afford.  In a different sphere, it may be true that the national parks have been improved since fees were instituted, but some people can’t afford those fees -- and the parks (or museums), by all rights, ought to be theirs to enjoy as well.  With PBS, with the national parks, with a whole lot of programs, we are not talking much money.  (Public broadcasting gets only 15 percent of its funds from the government anyway.)  But we are talking about the public realm, of the use of government funds to perpetuate something that otherwise would not exist.  No cable channel, no network -- no nobody -- is going to do what public broadcasting does.  Its market is too small, too old -- to uninterested in buying an SUV when a mere car will do just fine, thank you.  I could live without most public broadcasting -- even the classical music programs.  But Scott Simon on Saturday, “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” during the week -- these are essential listening.  I pay for them, contribute to my public radio stations, but like that my government contributes, too. 

WORTH NOTING PAGE 45

Response to George Will’s column: “Who needs public broadcasting?” cont’d

Otherwise, sooner or later, public broadcasting -- like its commercial counterpart -- will be dumbed down.  Already, PBS airs specials like Yanni’s “Live at the Acropolis” that make you cringe.  In the search for scratch, public broadcasting will find virtue in mediocrity.  One morning, if conservatives and the market have their way, I will wake to Howard Stern or rip-n’read all-news radio or, maybe, someone making a salad on the “Today” show.  I’ll hear nothing from the Balkans and nothing about culture and very little, even, about my own country.  I’ll crave radio reporting that sometimes has me sitting in the car, motor idling, afraid I’ll miss something precious just by running into the house.  Who needs public broadcasting?  We all do.

·         On the insecurity of artists

Asking someone if they like your painting is pretty much the same as asking if they like you.   Me

·         On Focus Groups: from Civilization, Oct./Nov. ‘99 In Defense of Focus Groups p. 33

These days, films, novels and musicians’ lyrics (as well as their looks) aren’t finalized until a group of “average age” citizens has had its say.  Has the reliance on focus groups compromised art?  We asked two men familiar with the process: Bill Weylock, a former president of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association who has led focus groups for NBC and Nickelodeon, and Tony Kaye, who built his reputation shooting ads for the likes of Volvo and Reebock -- and who publicly clashed with New Line Cinema over creative control of his film debut, American History X. 

Civilization:  Author James Patterson changed the ending of a recent novel because it tested poorly.  Are there limits to the power of the focus group?

Tony Kaye:  To take the advice of many and have the privilege to decide on your own -- I don’t find anything wrong with that.  However, it’s totally inappropriate if a publisher puts a novelist’s work in front of a focus group and then, based on the results, decides to tell the novelist to make a change. 

Bill Weylock:  I compare Patterson’s decision to the staged reading of a new play, when the playwright wants to hear his words in the air instead of being trapped in his head.  Focus group respondents are not there to collaborate on the creation; they’re there to explain their response to the creation so the creator can fine-tune. 

Civ:  Maybe it’s not the fault of marketers.  Do artists abdicate responsibility by accepting such a practice?

TK:  Not too many people are prepared to stand up for excellence.  It makes for a very difficult life.

BW: You can’t be an auteur and get along with everybody.  But getting along is a priority for most people.  I suppose it’s what keeps us from killing each other.

Civ:  Is there room for serendipity in the world we are devising, or is it inimical to commercial success?

BW:  You can always screw something up, using whatever tools, including focus groups, survey results, restrictive laws, or nasty social conventions.  If someone bleeds the inspiration out of their product because they want to please the muddy middle that they think they are in touch with through focus groups, they are going to fail.  Nobody will buy the stuff.  The audience won’t be fooled; they’ll always opt for inspiration.  Focus groups don’t yield truth.  They yield insight.

Civ:  Does peer pressure make focus groups conservative?

BW:  Questions implant answers.  If a horror film is put in front of an audience and the moderator asks, Were you scared by that,” then the focus group can only respond, “I was scared,” “I was not,” “I was somewhat scared.”  You’ve only given them three possible responses, as opposed to asking, “What was happening to you while you were watching?”  If you ask them what they think, they have a responsibility to pontificate.