Author: fifteenkey (Page 69 of 95)

Why does Cardinal manager Tony LaRussa?

Speaking of Dark Horses, I’m getting ready to work on the Barack Obama for President campaign. I like what I’ve seen and heard so far, but Mr. Obama has some major hurdles to overcome in order to win enough votes in cretin-rich red states:

• He’s African-American
• He’s an athiest
• He’s got a highly functioning brain
• His name rhymes with “Osama”

So far, his forthrightness attracts me most. In an interview Monday with New Yorker editor David Remnick at the American Magazine Conference, Mr. Obama was asked if his admission of drug (pot) use might hurt his presidential chances:

Classic. He went on to quip that he wouldn’t fit in well with the Bushies because, “actually being informed is a good basis for policy.” Finally, with regard to religion, he was very direct. “Evolution is more grounded in my experience than angels.”

I like this guy. Of course after Fox News is finished with him, red state white women will be convinced he’s lurking outside their homes ready to murder them and steal their children.

It’s sad. Our decline as a nation is accelerating. It is led by George Bush.

Hey… How’s it going? I’ve been away most of the days and nights since October 9th on business. It’s not that I haven’t been thinking of you. I have. Really.

My trip to Chicago is now just a blur. A sweet Italian dinner one night with Barb’s new team was a highlight… After one night at home and dinner out with Kyle, I was back on a plane, this time to Wally World. I met Jack (4), Kaitlin (8) and their mom on the flight down to Orlando. Jack’s mom told me he was slightly autistic, but she was hopeful the trip would go well. Jack was cool on the plane. He fell asleep before we hit cruising altitude.

My dad was more than a bit surprised when he opened the door to me later that day. It was his 73rd birthday and I worked out the surprise visit with his wife, Caroline. We had dinner with a few friends of theirs at their favorite place at the Villages and then had cake and presents at their home. My dad loves horses and on a previous October 13th I had given him this Degas print. This year a Degas sculpture to match seemed to please the birthday boy.

25 years and a week passed between dad’s date of birth and mine. Some mornings when I see him in my mirror, it sure seems like many years less. After this now-73 year old man beat me at a round of golf here, I think it rejuvenated him a bit. He hadn’t been playing much lately and I sense he’s a little depressed over life gone by and chances not taken. Still, he was out there and still can go out there. As his friend Wendy said as she motioned toward the local hospital just behind some distant trees, “There are lots of people in there who which they could be out here hacking like us.”

Two days were too short, but it was time well spent for both of us. “Keep getting out there, Dad,” I implored before hugging him and saying, “I love you.”

After my 4-day work event was over I found myself sitting again in an aluminum tube. Alone with my thoughts and accompanying iPod soundtrack, I saw a familiar and smiling face coming toward me. As she got closer her smile widened, so I got to my feet to let her and Kaitlin in next to me. Jack and his dad were in the seats next to us. Jack’s mom said they had a wonderful trip and showed me all the pictures in a tiny LCD screen on her digital camera. We’d come full circle.

At the gate in Boston, I stood waiting to de-plane and noticed an attractive 40-ish woman in the seat behind me. After a brief hesitation, I asked if she was enjoying “Angels and Demons.” My conversation with Tina continued all the way to baggage claim. I wish I’d got her number, but initiating the conversation was good enough for now. This past Friday night I did the same thing with Kathy at the local grocery store. I’d seen her a few times before, but never had the chutzpah to approach her. I stood in the rain and introduced Kyle and myself. I asked her if I could meet her there next Friday. “Probably,” she said with a smile.

“That’s so random!” I hear that often from Megan and her friends. I’m really going to have that reviewed upstairs so I know what the hell it means. Maybe I’ll just ask her. Currently nestled in 20B on my way to Chicago, it’s break time from a Powerpoint for presentation next week. A Megan hand-me-down iPod Nano is on “shuffle,” so I can now shamelessly copy Jeff’s blog staple, “last ten shuffled songs on my iPod:”

1. Panic in Detroit – Aladdin Sane – David Bowie
2. Twilight – From a Basement on a Hill – Elliott Smith
3. Love the One You’re With – CSNY – Four Way Street
4. Ill Placed Trust – Sloan! – Never Hear the End of It (NEW!)
5. Meet Me On the Ledge – Varnaline – Varnaline
6. Youngstown – Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Live in NYC
7. Stage Fright – The Band – To Kingdom Come
8. Midnight Rambler – Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed
9. Come On Now – Anders Parker – Tell it to the Dust
10. Last Goodbye – Jeff Buckley – Grace

The off the chart popularity of the iPod and digital music, especially the free kind the youth of America prefer is laying waste to the music label, especially ill-advised new ones. Bob Lefsetz describes the phenomena perfectly: “But a NEW label has nothing. Only an excessive burn rate. So you spend all that money with the usual suspects, people who’ve been musical-chaired out of the major label system, paying for not only pressing, but distribution and promotion. Everybody blowing smoke up your ass as you try to get in the big box store, the only place where you can sell and make money anymore, purchasing an advertising campaign that is like throwing coins off a cliff since you’ve got no traction, because you can’t get on radio and MTV plays no videos.”

That paragraph tells much of the story of Tar Hut Records; well the part about getting smoke blown up our ass and throwing coins off a cliff. The Martin’s Folly record “Man’ It’s Cold” is a perfect example. We paid a couple grand to get a listening station in hundreds of Borders stores and a couple more to get an independent promoter to work it to radio. Well, pal Jeff happened to be in a radio studio talking to a program manager when said promoter called to “work” the records she was paid to. Funny thing is, she didn’t mention ours while squawking out of the speakerphone. That was the smoke up the ass part. Coins off a cliff came in the form of the many Borders I visited in California that not only didn’t have the record in a listening stations, but they didn’t have it period! The Borders thing did, in the end, produce a windfall for our little label: thousands of CD returns and splashing kerosene to accelerate the burn rate of the Tar Hut Records pyre.

…from the “Blog Ideas” document…

Video:

• This one goes to 11
• Athiest
• How Superman Should Have Ended

Fact:
The fact-masters at Wikipedia put this argument to rest: Hulk Hogan’s Real Height

Agreed:
The question is no longer “How do I manage people?” but rather “Am I the type of person that other people want to work with/around?” – Fast Company co-founder Bill Taylor:

“Not every company and organization needs to be innovative. Only the ones that want to be relevant and successful.” – Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway

Go:
“For Your Consideration” opens on November 17 and comes from the same folks whou brought us “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind,” and “Waiting for Guffman.” This time the spoof is on the promotion of films for academy awards.

I Don’t Like You:
Finally, a couple classic insults from long before “you suck” was all people could muster:

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend… if you have one.” George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

“Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second…if there is one.” Winston Churchill, in response.

Just 3 years after losing 119 games and then watching the Yankees beat the Red Sox in the ALCS, the Detroit Tigers beat the $200M team and will now dance at the ALCS themselves. It’ll be a great story if the Tigers can win it all, while the story in the Bronx is about as dire as the one at Fenway Park. I think each team could help themselves with one straight-up trade: Arod for Manny. I’m not sure if this was Alex’s reaction when he found out Joe Torre dropped him to 8th in the lineup today, but after 3 seasons of postseason futility, the $25M man simply can’t make it in NY. Manny, on the other hand, is oblivious to most everything around him and will dutifully put up his 40/120 for the pinstripes. Mr. Rodriguez could be the one guy who could come in and “protect” David Ortiz in the Red Sox lineup upon Manny’s departure, and the jovial “Big Papi” could be just what Arod needs to shake the dreariness he seemed to play under in New York. Lack of pitching is the problem for both clubs, so such a trade would be no panacea, but it would hopefully change chemistry enough to start moving these under-achieving teams in the right direction.

Within the first ten minutes of “Titanic,” Leo DiCaprio’s character Jack Dawson spoke the most ironic line of the film. Lives changed this week as reorganization ended the tenure of some people I now used to work with. Hopefully the buoyancy of severance packages and placement assistance will keep them afloat until the Carpathia of new employment appears on their horizon.

The bitter cold of that night in the North Atlantic is symbolic of the chilling decisions some had to make about who would live and who would die. Though not necessarily life and death, some friends of mine had to make some agonizing decisions over the past couple weeks that undoubtedly sank their hearts and those of the good people that received bad news.

Now what? Well, we must all look at this as an opportunity… a fresh start. One blog I’ve been reading lately is called the Creative Generalist. Over the past week, author Steve Hardy has been blogging from the BIF-2 Collaborative Innovation Summit in Providence, RI. As many struggle to cope with the change of the week, I hope they consider and embrace the positive. Our business landscape is changing and we have to move quickly and decisively to be ahead of it. At BIF-2, the words of InnoCentive founder Alph Bingham fit perfectly for us: “The biggest competitor is the status quo.”

This week’s change improves the organizational alignment of Sales and Service on paper, but just like in sports, competitions are not won and lost on paper; they’re decided in the trenches. To take full advantage of the new alignment, we all need to invest more in our internal relationships. Just think about it… Are you more apt to help a co-worker when you’ve got to know them as a person, or if you’ve kept them at arms length due to some pre-conceived prejudice or past conflict? Building our internal relationships and mutual respect will increase communication, understanding, and ultimately our collective success.

Megan is a right-brain woman. To illustrate, her mid-term progress report shows she has completed 100% of her homework (I’m so proud of her) and:

• Spanish – A
• English – A
• US History (AP) – B
• Religion – C+ (that’s a whole other discussion entirely…)
• Pre-Calc – C
• Physics – C-

Last year Megan struggled with Chemistry, yet breezed through the right-brain focused courses like English and History. I was the same way and this test confirms my right-brain rules by an 11/7 ratio. Yeah, I loved taking Ms. Robertson’s US History mid-terms and finals because they were essay exams and every question began with “Explain in detail…” In contrast, I didn’t enjoy any classes that required use of an abacus. Well, there was that freakish occurrence in college Statistics that changed my life forever, but that’s a story for another time…

Now, if you subscribe to the philosophy of Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, and I do, Megan should put extra effort into her areas of strength. So then, why does she have to take Chemistry and numbers, when clearly Megan’s future career success will be driven by her mastery of words and images? My answer to her is that those tough subjects help you learn to think and solve problems, with the added benefit of stimulating your right brain to help you extend its potential even farther. I believe anything that stimulates your brain, and especially those areas that are relatively untapped, benefit the whole brain and increase its capacity. I recall taking some courses at Bentley early in my career. I don’t remember much from the courses themselves, but I do recollect the experience unleashed all kind of new and creative thinking about my job, even when the courses had no direct relation to it.

So, if you’re a right-brainer, this will provide some insight about how best to approach learning. Oh, and here and here are a couple sites to help you excel in Chemistry. If you’re a left-brainer, I suggest going to a museum or a concert of some classical music to help you make more sense of all those zeroes and ones.

Here’s one last thing to ponder: Are the right-brained more inclined to lean left politically and vice-versa?

The father looked so broken; staring down at his son’s injured ankle. The high-top was loosened and white against his brown skin. The young man was maybe 14 and he didn’t seem in too much discomfort. The father though seemed silently suffering. A similar scene wheeled by on a stretcher. This handsome young man was even less concerned. His dad about equally unworried. A loud screaming from down the hall was rhythmic, almost chant-like with a steady timing like a woman being jarred by quickening labor pains. I strolled over to get a look and quickly saw the image of the obviously mentally challenged man wailing. A worried female friend or relative tried to usher him back into the examination room. Through a small seam in a curtain behind glass I sadly witnessed a very old woman being comforted by two other elderly folks. I wondered if the woman would ever leave the hospital alive. What an agonizing place, I thought. Every day and night it must be like this to some degree. A steady parade of sick and injured filing through the turnstiles of hope.

I was angry, and futilely trying to hide it. This was going to be expensive and she was driving home late from a boyfriend’s house I hadn’t even met! We were in the emergency room because wandering wildlife and a telephone pole got the best of Megan’s two month old car. Thanks to Mr. Breed, Megan was able to still laugh and cry, though not in that order, after climbing out the moon roof of her shattered Honda Civic. After about two hours of observation by those amazing people in the ER, Megan and I walked out of the hospital and back into life. When we got home I sent an email to some folks at work telling them I’d probably be a little late. I felt guilty that I tinged it with some humor. I guess I was looking to lighten the message a little. On my way to bed I went into Megan’s room and sat next to her on her bed. “I’m sorry I crashed my car, Dad.” I tried to speak, but couldn’t. When I finally did, I said something like “please don’t leave us. The world would be a much lesser place without you in it.” As a glass half-full kind of guy, I’ll note that I was able to skip a night of these before closing my eyes on another day in the life.

• 4 tickets to a Broadway show – $470.00
• Lodging for 2 nights in Manhattan – at least $800.00
• Seeing the look on Kyle’s face when Mary Poppins floats into the New Amsterdam Theatre – Priceless

Yeah, we’ll be there Veteran’s Day weekend and to say Kyle is excited is a gross understatement. He still doesn’t quite know what to think about “another woman” in the role Julie Andrews made immortal, but we’re getting there. While I made him dinner last night, we had this conversation:

Kyle: Who’s the actress that’s playing Mary Poppins?
Dad: I’m not sure, man.
Kyle: Not Julie Andrews, right?
Dad: No, not Julie Andrews. She was the best.
Kyle: She still is…

So, let’s see what else is in the bag for your tuppins today:

Ah… “La Luna.” My camera is currently at Canon for a free repair to this unpleasant phenomena and I’ve been researching for a possible upgrade. The Canon Powershot S3 IS seems a good deal that I believe will get even better once the PowerShot A710 IS is released any day now. During my research adventure, I found this incredible shot of the moon by Noel Carboni.

I spent quite a bit of time yesterday reading “Halting the Race to the Bottom” by John Sexton, president of New York University. I found the following paragraph on the arts right on the money.

We have seen the close to total evaporation of funding for research in the humanities and social sciences — work which has less measurable outcomes than scientific research, even as it expands the boundaries of understanding and insight. Though John Maeda could write in Science Magazine that he believed “the biggest breakthrough will be the realization that the arts, which are conventionally considered useless, will be recognized as the whole reason why we ever try to live longer or live more prosperously.” He could embrace the notion that “the arts are the science of enjoying life,” while our leaders (reflecting as they do society’s increasing impatience with soft values and subtle tones) have come close to abandoning the arts.

Now lets take a stroll to the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum where shameless whore Pete Rose is now selling $299.00 autographed baseballs that say “I’m sorry I bet on baseball.” It’s sad that the extraordinary on-the-field achievements of this guy will never be recognized in a Hall of Fame induction simply because he’s a jerk. If he just stepped up and apologized when it happened instead of denying and lying, he’d probably have a plaque in Cooperstown today.

Speaking of baseball players living in the land of Oz, Alex Rodriguez need to shut up and play if the Yankees have any hope of winning their 27th World Series. In a recent interview, the Scarecrow told Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post, “I can’t help that I’m a bright person.” He went on to prove that statement utterly preposterous by saying, “When people write bad things about me, I don’t know if it’s because I’m good-looking, I’m biracial, I make the most money, I play on the most popular team. . . .” How about you suck in the clutch, Alex? Get a few key hits (i.e. earn your money) and help deliver a championship and you’ll be amazed the nice things people will write about you. Not me, because I’m a bitter Red Sox fan, but some people will.

Tuesday night Jeff and I ventured down to Landsdown Street. I could see each individual raindrop as they cascaded down through the glow escaping from Fenway Park. A 6-0 deficit by the third inning had many a patron escaping too. After a street-vendor Italian sausage found and hit the gastronomical spot, we headed to Avalon to see the Drive-By Truckers. From the opening sonic blast to the last chord struck, they were phenomenal. Jeff described it as “the show of the year.” The year… That year. During the show I crowd watched like I’ve done at the 200-plus shows I’ve seen over the past 33 years. On this night as I scanned the mass of 20 and 30-somethings, I thought, “I’m almost 48 years old. How much longer will I be doing this?” I hope forever.

The top three worst years of my life were 1972, 1995 and 2005. In the two most recent downturns, music kept me afloat and live music lifted me up. In both years, Jeff was the guy tossing me the shiny musical life preservers. First there was the cutting sound of a chainsaw in 1995 that bore Tar Hut Records, followed by 4 nights at the “alt-country” altar that October. A couple years later Jeff wrote some angry shit about hating everyone on an AOL music message board. It was just before Christmas. I responded to that post with a play on “It’s a Wonderful Life” and what my life might have been like if Jeff hadn’t been there. I wish I still had that, but it’s lost somewhere out in the digital darkness. Fortunately, my friend Jeff isn’t.