Olympic Torched

Posted: July 25, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: digital media, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The London Olympiad is upon us, and I for one am thrilled. In a ‘win at any cost’ sports culture that mimics our larger society whether we want to admit that or not, the Olympics somehow float high above the grit despite the sponsorships, despite the doping, and despite the professionalization that’s foundationally changed the Olympics over the past few decades.

Underpinning it all is a wonderful set of tenets we could all do worse than to strive to achieve in our everyday lives:

Not to win but to take part.

Not the triumph but the struggle.

Not to have conquered but to have fought well.

So here are a few ideas I think merit recognition for their ‘going for gold’ if not ever achieving it.

Gold: Huffington Post
HuffPo may not have vanquished traditional News formats across media, but it certainly has made its presence known– and quickly. In just seven years it’s been bought, become one of the most visited News sites, and won a Pulitzer Prize. Not bad. What I like most about it is that it’s the proverbial box of chocolates. It’s got hard news and gossip, syndication/aggregation and original reporting, national and hyper-local news, liberal and conservative points of view. There’s something for everyone without being just completely vanilla, as in the USA Today. Rather than saying nothing, HuffPo says seemingly everything. Cool.

Runner-up: Facebook

Like The Dream Team, people love to hate. But, Facebook is bringing lots of the best parts of the web together under one blue roof. Acquisition of Instagram, integration of Spotify, and many other land grabs continue to make The Facebook the shiniest site on Earth for most folks.

Silver: MobileMe
What if all your stuff was synched and stored in the Cloud? Wouldn’t that be awesome?! Yes. It is. Before iCloud and other services made that de rigueur, there was MobileMe, Apple’s Hindenburg meets Pinto blemish. A great idea that just never worked, MobileMe was tantamount to asking all of your stuff to stop working. It effectively shut down all conversation between devices like a third martini over dinner with your in-laws. Undaunted, Big Mac came back strong and MobileMe is all but forgotten. I like that Apple makes computers but isn’t a computer itself. This was the ultimate feet of clay demonstration of that. Happens.

Runner-up: RIM/Blackberry

Seeing Blackberry’s struggles is like the opening sequence of The Agony of Defeat. I’m not even sure if that epic tumble was from the Olympics, but it was Ski Jumping, so close enough. Blackberry pioneered the multi-purpose mobile space, blazed the trail, was run over by an iTank, dusted itself off only to get speed bumped by a speeding ‘droidmobile’. They brought their 400m game to the Marathon with predictable results.

Bronze: Napster
In so many ways Napster was the ‘straw that stirs the drink’ for so much of what we have today. Before getting squashed like a bug, it egged the Music Industrial Complex, ushering in the likes of Spotify, Pandora, SoundCloud and others who crossed the chasm from traditional to digital delivery on a bridge fashioned from the charred bones of Napster. P2P got rolling in earnest with Napster. “Don’t own it, share it” became the mantra for a whole generation, second only to “don’t buy it when you can burn it.” While its reach did exceed its grasp legally and ethically, Napster began the process of people looking to each other and not to corporations for answers, ideas, and of course, music. Rock on.

Runner-Up: Samsung

Apple and Samsung need to get a room already. These two remind me of the Harding-Kerrigan soap opera. Engaged in an Olympic-sized pissing contest over patents, Made-in-the-USA (by way of China) Apple stares down the “menace from the East” with global Gold in the balance. Sorry, that was the made-for-TV Olympic-hype version. But don’t sleep on Samsung. They could very definitely medal in the Handset 400. My money’s on Apple to nip them at the tape.

None of these products won it all and that’s precisely the point. They strived. They tried. They pushed themselves and their competition to the limit. Isn’t that what we all should aspire to do? Not competing against anyone but competing for someone. For ourselves, our ideals, our ideas. The Olympics are about Personal Best, not destroy everyone in your path.

Prediction Time
It wouldn’t be a Sporting event if we didn’t have wages on it.

Gold
All of us. That’s right. I think over the next fortnight or so we’re going to get a glimpse into how multiple technologies, multiple screens, can be used in a complementary way for regular folks, not just the Adderall-with-a-Mountain-Dew-chaser gamers. Use the web to learn more about events, contestants, venues…while also providing your own color commentary on your social web. With the apps out there and the anticipated coverage London will receive, it will be easier and more fun than ever.

Silver
Chicago. The City of Broad Shoulders wanted the Summer Olympics. When they see what an enormous cluster it is for Londoners, they’ll thank Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow they lost the bid. It’s not like they’re not used to losing.

Bronze
Innocence. I think the Olympic flame stirs something in even the most jaded hipster among us. What it stands for deep down at its core is pretty good stuff. While the McOlympification continues to dismay and disappoint, I think there’ll be enough genuine passion, genuine appreciation, and genuine sportsmanship and camaraderie to keep the flame aflicker.

Let your Games begin.

Goohoo!

Posted: July 19, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

As you’ve probably heard, Yahoo just hired ex-Googler Marissa Mayer as its new CEO. She is the company’s fifth CEO in five years. But can yet another CEO change the fate of the struggling company? It got me thinking.

I get sad when I see “paperboys” (themselves now in their forties) literally throwing a rolled up log of dead tree at “customers” before peeling off. Really? Dinosaurs no longer roam the earth. Equally, though, I cringe at the gilded turd sites and applications that so beautifully say nothing in their perfectly developed pointlessness.

These folks need one another. Here’s a case in point.

I had a great lunch with a good friend and super smart guy recently. He was mentioning that in his particular company “the cavalry is always coming.” Mind you, his is a phenomenal company and very venerable, but it’s always had a bit of envy hardwired in its DNA. They’ve always been one person away from MEGA success in their collective mind.

Finally, at a recent meeting someone finally stepped up and said what some of the newer management had been thinking. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We have everything and everyone we need right here.” Crickets. Crickets. One muted ‘harrumph.’ Then the meeting continued.

This is all too common in most organizations. Most of us envy and fantasize about what we don’t have because it’s easier than really focusing and digging in on making what we do have great. At the risk of going all Dr. Phil on you, I’m pretty sure this is why so many relationships fail. Marriages. Jobs. Friendships. Working at them is hard stuff. A clean sheet of paper is so much easier.

Except it isn’t.

Mr. Clean Doesn’t Always Get the Job Done

The Cleaning House solution very seldom works in my experience. It looks good. It’s accompanied by lots of optimistic, confident proclamations about a new lease on life, fresh takes, and infusions of vim and vigor. It’s got to be better than the tired limp-along that preceded it, right? Not usually. New people, however brilliant and talented (which by the way they all are on paper or in the abstract) rarely know very much about you and your particular situation. They require significant ramp-up time. They bring new flavor to the cultural stew — some of it good and some bitter. It generally takes them a long time to get productive. Some never do. Such is life.

Would you actually be going faster with the limp-alongs you had prior? Probably. They presumably knew your business and their roles within it or they wouldn’t have been there in the first place. If they were bad from the get-go, perhaps it’s you who should be packing.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for turning the page on individuals or en masse depending on the situation. Some people are incorrigible and cancerous. Some just aren’t good enough or don’t do what you need done now. I would just never start there. To me, that speaks to ego more than anything else. “New Sheriff in Town” syndrome. Kicking ass and taking names… so much cliched babble from people who read too many books ghost-written for ex-coaches. If you’re looking to sports analogies look at Bill Parcells. He took over a NY Jets team that was 1-15 and with essentially the same personnel he turned it into a 9-7 team the very next season and a 12-4 team two years later.

The secret? There is no secret. He worked with what he had. He got people aligned around a goal. He put them in positions to succeed. He held them accountable.

Contrast that to so much cleaning house that happens in industry today. In retail Sears, JC Penny, and a host of venerable giants routinely clean house, yet their downward trajectory doesn’t change. In addition to Yahoo, AOL, MySpace, and other tech companies have turned over everything except a new leaf.

The key question is: is there enough talent? If there is but it’s unmotivated, uninvested (often literally), or has ‘personality quirks’ that make it thorny, it’s a management problem. The answer? Manage. Lead.

Old + New is Better than Old vs. New

As so many “old” media properties are joined with or taken over by “new” media companies this is playing out in exquisite detail. The New think the Old knows nothing about technology or how the media landscape works these days. Old media types snicker at these skinny jeans who only know content distribution and nothing of how to actually create it. Venus meets Mars– only it’s not chocolate meets peanut-butter but kerosene meets water.

The fact is that technology properly applied to rock-solid content creation makes magic. Push combines with Pull. Collective enjoyment and personal paths both flourish. Three companies that demonstrate this to perfection are Discovery Networks, NPR, and ESPN. They all have rich traditions, but all have (early) adopted technology without throwing the content baby out with the technical bath water. They’ve brought the brands along and the audiences with them.

So with all due respect, good luck Ms. Mayer. But perhaps Y! should think carefully before entirely jettisoning the old for the new. Take an honest inventory of what you have and what you need. You might have more than you think. Only time will tell.

This originally appeared in iMedia.

America’s “Math” Problem

Posted: July 13, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments

You are sitting in row 18 of a commercial airplane. Passengers are asked to exit from the front of the aircraft. Rows 1-4 deplane, then 5-10, and so on. There are 6 passengers in row 17. They’re standing to move forward down the carefully illuminated aisle. How can it be that someone from row 19 is already in the aisle queuing?

You are departing a commuter ferry. 2 lines form to cross a single-file gangway. A person from Lane 1 steps forward. A person from Lane 2 follows. This continues. Just before you make the giant step from Lane 1 to the gangway, a heavily perfumed woman from Lane 2 bum rushes a dapper older gent also from Lane 2.

WTF? See what I mean? If we can’t answer the question of “what number logically follows (row) 17?” or complete the following infinite sequence ‘1212121212’ what chance do we really have to beat the Indians or Chinese?

The world of transportation is not the only venue our lack of facility with numbers is exposed. Just this morning I received two reports. One showed our industry growing by 3% versus the same month last year. The second report showed it shrinking by -2.4% over that same period.

Banks and businesses routinely claim to be on the precipice of going under yet pay out incredible bonuses to key employees with perfect hair. “They had great years” the bosses say.

Seems the numbers today are in the eye of the beholder.

I went to Catholic school and was an average student. Math was actually my worst subject. This was the late seventies and early eighties before advances in pharmacology. I’m pretty sure I had a terrible undiagnosed case of Notgivingashit, but that’s neither here nor there. I do, however, clearly recall something about Math being objective. 2+2=4. Maybe I was sick that day, but it wasn’t “unless 5 is the number you’re shooting for” or “…this month.” Sister Droningon was pretty clear that these were as absolute as the Pope’s infallible fingertip on the pulse of pubescent urban youths.

I’m not really sure what to do to remediate this problem. Obviously, people wouldn’t do Math in an intentionally non-linear fashion. Intentionally reaching the wrong conclusion is unthinkable in a civilized society. Right?

So, it can’t be “will” to follow the most atomic law of the universe, but “skill.”

My suggestion is we create a “Jazzersize-esque” Arithmetic Fitness movement where 2+2=4 for most of the people most of the time except payday, tax day, and St. Patrick’s Day. We could make cool hipster tees from Brooklyn with interesting, discreet use of the Pi symbol. Ryan Seacrest could host a reality show about struggling MIT mathematician wannabes called “Carry the One.”

I’m telling you, this thing has legs. Two of them. Unless there are good reasons for it to have more or less.

Happy Friday the 13th to all of you. Unless it’s Leap Year or you’re in the Southern Hemisphere.

What the Zuck?

Posted: June 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dear Mark Zuckerberg,

I know the stock price is way down and you just got married. Look, times are tough. I’ve been there. I was a young newlywed once too. So let me give you $10 to get you through. If things don’t pick up, no problem. Come see me next month and I’ll give you $10 more. Just ‘paying it forward’ as they say.

Let me explain a bit about myself first.

I never, ever wanted my children to be named after me. I don’t want them to go where I went to school. Most importantly, I don’t want them to follow in my professional footsteps. It’s not just that I want them to forge their own unique paths. On the professional front, I’m retracing my footsteps myself. They’ve lead to a cliff. Now I’m walking backward to try to find a way around.

The assumptions I held dear – like ‘good creativity trumps the interruption that is part and parcel of advertising’ – are becoming more and more patently false every day.

Pecked to Death by (Aflac) Ducks

Last week I was awoken by the vibration of my phone on the nightstand. It was 3:12AM. I had received a text. I had won a contest. I had never entered. “Winning.”

Charlie Ergen, former client, former professional gambler, current CEO of satellite giant Dish Network, recently launched a commercial-skipping service. Why? He had to. The jig is up.

“Ultimately, broadcasters and advertisers have to change the way they do business or they run the risk of linear TV becoming obsolete,” he told the Wall Street Journal. The same is true for Radio. Web. Mobile. Outdoor. You name it. I’d mention newspapers but that would just be piling on.

More proof: Pandora is lapping the traditional field on a monthly basis. If it was a fight, they’d stop it. Why? Either zero or very few ads. Ahh, the sounds of silence.

At a minimum, unchecked interruptive advertising is on its last legs. Not some slow growing cancer that folks used to call “old age.” Fast-moving, get-your-affairs-in-order kind of cancer. While it took me around the world, made me life-long friends with many great people, and treated me like gold, I’ll join you in dancing on its grave. Enough is enough.

“The dream is over.” – John Lennon

I remember vividly celebrating and even parroting Alex Bogusky’s proclamation (perhaps apocryphal), “Everything is an advertising opportunity.”

I wanted to believe it because that was my business. I was an ad guy. I wanted to believe there was nothing but blue ocean ahead.

Alas, like the ocean itself, we’ve polluted it to the point where prolonged exposure is dangerous.

Everything is not an advertising opportunity. I half expect to go to Mass Sunday and find the Host has a Nike swoosh and the Consecration sponsored by Dunkin’ Donuts.

Let’s go back to Facebook for a minute. Unlike the haters, I love (the) Facebook. It serves an incredibly useful purpose. It connects. I value few things as I do connections. Sure, some are superficial at best. While I am connected to a girl I revered in the fifth grade, I’d hardly call that connection meaningful. On the other hand, I can keep apprised of the goings on of good friends near and far as we’re all running our separate courses. I can see their kids. I can share playlists like the ’80s never left. It’s useful and I’m grateful for it.

But it’s a failure, right? I mean, it sucks as an ad delivery venue. The little banner ads are lame. The “sponsored posts” by creepy anthropomorphic brands leave me either cold or enraged. (As an aside, I don’t care that “Dallas” is coming back with the remaining “living” cast. What did I do or say to lead Facebook to believe I would?)

Mobile is even worse.

So they’re failures, all those hoodied coders, because they built something that adds value to its users lives but sucks as an ad vehicle. Really? Is that where we are?

I hope not, but think so.

Ask for the (New) Order

Don’t get me wrong. If they want to collect a paycheck, they need a plan to make money. So here is my modest proposal.

Ask.

Go ahead, Zuck. Tell us what you must have known all along. People are gong to have to actually pay for a service or else live through a whoreified, horrifying user experience. We can take it. YouTube announced the other day they’re getting ready to ask for my money too. It’s OK.

Five bucks a month, no problem. Ten? Grudgingly. More than that? I’ll check out Path or any one of the raft of competitors you will be creating. You see, asking people to pay for quality goods in a free marketplace makes even Democrats and Republicans smile. It’s this faux free that is killing us.

There’s plenty of precedents. We pay for HBO. It has no commercials. We pay for apps. Same. I pay for Spotify. Ditto. I want to give you money. Please take it. Don’t compromise your vision or change my experience for Aunt Jemimah or Orville Reddenbocker.

Old Math Still Works

Here’s a little back of the napkin math: there are supposedly 835,525,280 Facebook users globally. Charge us each $10 a month and you get $8,355,252,800 per month! That’s $100,263,033,600 annually. Am I missing something? OK, there are a lot of “light” users in there. Lot’s of them just won’t pay. Period. So cut that in half and you get $50,131,516,800. I’ve never proclaimed to be a math wizard, but this seems pretty straightforward to me.

Everything Old is New Again

What would they do with all that revenue? It would be a little bit like the wayback machine. Monies now poured into catchy copy, peel-backs and jingles would actually be allocated to making products better and servicing them better. People would find out about products through friends and acquaintances, both in-person and virtual. I think Google would have a huge role, obviously, but I think peer-to-peer referrals and recommendations (Foursquare, Yelp…) would increasingly gain traction too. When people want or need something they’ll seek it out from both the ‘God’s Eye’ and peer perspectives.

Will we go through the looking glass and come to miss our ads? God no. But in the event we do, we can toggle the levers a bit. That’s the balance most of us will find. Pay less per month or per content chunk, get a few (more) ads. Poor people or tightwads? Sorry. Release the ad hounds.

For those who can afford to pay, content creators will compete for dollars not unlike in a grand European market. There’s a skinned lamb, beside a rutabaga, next to fresh-roasted almonds and cured olives. I’ve got a fixed budget, so decisions have to be made. I’ll end up buying less, but more purposefully. What I pay for I’ll invariably use, unlike the free stuff that usually ends up in the compost heap. I don’t know about you, but I think we need to move back to the time when we paid for things based on our perceived value of them, not our perceived value to the merchant. What’s been sold to us as “free” isn’t free at all. It comes at an immeasurable cost in terms of time and stress as we struggle to keep our noses above the junk (mail).

That Faustian bargain was no bargain at all as it turns out.

This article is available online at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/06/26/an-open-letter-to-zuck-forget-ads-make-us-pay-for-facebook/

Curly Was Wrong

Posted: March 26, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Curly Was Wrong

I was reading Fast Company’s list of “Most Innovative Companies” when it struck me: Curly was wrong.

You know– leather-faced Curly from City Slickers. Specifically when he (played by all-time badass Jack Palance) was imparting his cowboy wisdom on hapless (and now similarly leather-faced Oscar host) Billy Crystal that the key to life was ‘just one thing.’

All apologies, but wrong.

Life is about a bunch of things. Big things. Smaller things. But “things” plural. Fast Company’s top four most innovative companies—Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon—have this decidedly in common. In a seemingly ‘there’s an app for that world’ where ‘do one thing and do it better than anyone else’ is the mantra, they stand in contrast to a degree. Their utility is not one-dimensional or limited in any way. Their future seems wider, not deeper.

I won’t belabor the Applification of America. Apple is pervasive, thanks largely to ease of use and enormous utility. Apple works like you think it should and does a bunch of stuff that makes your life better or more enjoyable—even if you didn’t know it prior. What started with the iconic Mac has ballooned into something much, much more—a mix of hardware and software wrapped around an elegant experiential core. Even now, Apple seems nearer to its beginning than its end. Don’t delude yourself. We’ll all be driving Apple cars soon and asking Siri where the best place to beat the meter is.

Facebook began as a great way to keep in touch with friends new and old, to share some pictures, and blow off a little steam and time. Now it’s a way to share music, is on its way to becoming the prevalent Search venue, and will soon be all of our personal valet. It will know what we want—from turkey sandwich to Turkey vacation—before we do. Its key is that it’s so outwardly anthropomorphic. It doesn’t feel like software or layered databases. It feels like the corner pub, the high school reunion, or Aunt Gertrude’s parlor. Eight-hundred million people and counting stick with Facebook and all its foibles because we’re deeply engaged with it and have too much invested to unplug from it and move to Google+ or any of the other suitors for our social pursuits. In time, I have every reason to believe the Pinterests of the world will be bought or buried, reincarnated inside THE Facebook as it further solidifies its position as the place people digitally commune with one another for a long, long time.

Google, in contrast to Facebook’s warm and fuzzy human qualities, was the icily efficient box you typed search terms into. Remember that? Now it is email, calendars, maps, hardware, and the single best way to visualize a 3D rendering of the ulnar nerve. We all feed it more and use it more because it works—usually quickly and efficiently. Honestly, we’d all be reduced to nose-picking mouth-breathers if it went away one day. It is the undisputed champion of moving information into our heads. Think about it. Its utility and inroads into our lives (and soon our wallets) will grow unabated for the foreseeable future. Google it. You’ll see.

Amazon was a place to buy books. Now you can get Hugo Boss jeans (I’m told), organic pickles, or authentic MG (the iconic British convertible) cufflinks. Oh, and you could even get a Kindle, arguably doing more to promote reading than Harry Potter. With a significant share of hardware, software, and content sales, Amazon is not just transforming retail, but virtually all industries. It works. People like it. It’s simple. Why change?

Ultimately, I’ll give Curly this—they all began with ‘just one thing.’ From there, they consolidated their bases and built upon them vast, diverse enterprises that give us all more and more reason to use them. And use them. And use them some more. If it aint broke, don’t fix it, most of us say.

In a world increasingly thin-sliced, these four (with Foursquare hot on their heels) are becoming less specialized and more generally utilitarian. One and done competitors should take care. These all-in-one giants are not quite monopolies, but they’ve clearly got hotels on the green and yellow properties. They’re so hard to avoid because no one really wants to.

There’s a time for the new and a time for the familiar. And as these familiars are proving, there’s profit in bringing the new inside a familiar trusted source environment.

Don’t tell Curly. He’s packing.

 

 

(This post originally appeared in iMedia http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2012/03/26/curly-was-wrong/)

shift-control

Posted: February 12, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

I’m lucky. I have two great kids. But they’re kids. Sometimes their minds take a step back just before their bodies take two steps forward. (I got a C+ in my one Education class, so I’m pretty qualified here.)

My son recently had such an episode. So we decided to put a moat around him—the old ‘put him on an island.’ No mobile, iPad, iPod, television, or computer– other than for schoolwork. Isolate him so he can think of his err in solitude. Sounded like a solid plan.

Useless. I checked in on his Facebook. Pretty active for someone without access to it. Maybe he’d discovered (or invented!) a literal form of cloud computing. What I do know is this: despite our worst intentions, life moved on fine for him– a bit less elegantly perhaps, but he was far from the monk’s incommunicado we were shooting for.

I felt like Wile E. Coyote. So close, yet so far.

The bottom line is, the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to content. In fact the genie has made the bottle her bitch for daring to think it was content itself. It isn’t.

Whether it’s the bad prose of a lovesick thirteen year old, the call to courage from a rebel leader on some chaotic front line, or a song the big labels didn’t think would climb the charts, it will find its mark as surely as if it was shot from Apollo’s bow. Every time.

You can restrict people’s movement but not their content, their communication. Jail them. Kill them. (Both of which I briefly considered) but their voice, their content, is completely fungible in a connected world. It slips passed any guard, under any door, out any window.

Iran “turned off the Internet” last week. Good luck with that. They can kill rebels, but they can’t quiet them. Technology now favors the many, not the one. Fortune once favored the puppeteer. Now she favors the wireless.

Feral Kids

Posted: December 18, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: | Leave a comment

They’re slinking down alleys and rummaging through your trash. They’re problems and they’ve got to be dealt with.

Feral kids.

They’re now loose in the streets just like the parents who should be supervising them. The only difference is the kids don’t know any better. Scratch that. There is no difference.

Taken from their parents because they were born drug addicted, left unattended, or otherwise passively endangered, they now find themselves reunited with often well-intentioned but seldom equipped parents who still aren’t in a position to care for them.

You know, I keep saying, “parents” but let’s face it: I’m talking Moms. Dads are so far gone literally and figuratively that they’re not worth talking about. So, Mom-in-name-only is left holding a bag clearly too heavy to be hers.

‘Why are they returned then?’ you might ask. Because that feels good. To the State.

You see the State has what’s called a “Reunification Policy.” Simply put, it means families should be kept together barring extraordinary circumstance. Sounds OK, right? I mean, who could argue it’s better to keep families together than to rip them apart?

But isn’t the reason we’re having this debate is because Mom’s done something to lose her kid in the first place? ‘There but for the grace of God’ you’re thinking. People make mistakes. But we can change. Grow. Learn. Let’s stay positive.

OK. Let’s say Mom is working on pulling it together. She’s committed and trying. But have her circumstances really changed for the better? How’s her housing? Employment? What about her other children? When we give them all back (often all at once) with their dirty diapers, hacking coughs, and piercing cries in the middle of the night how will she hold up?

You might speculate that there are five-to-one odds she’ll be able to handle it. (That is a very, very generous estimate in my opinion.) You could look at it like one in six children will face some further problems, while the other five will do just fine. Most folks would say that’s the best we can realistically hope for. It’s an “acceptable outcome.”

That’s one way to look at it. But couldn’t you also look at it like there are six chambers in the gun. One has a bullet. Literally. Now you’re putting that gun in an eight-month-old baby’s hands and “helping” him squeeze the trigger. It’s DeNiro and Walken in The Deer Hunter.

How’d that feel? Not good?

So, what to do?

Option 1, pull down the blinds, turn up the music, pour a big glass of Super Tuscan and hope they find someone else to haunt.

Option 2, track down the Moms and ensure they have no more kids.
But how? I guess on one extreme there’s forced sterilization. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

On the other extreme we could continue to ask them to please, please refrain from having more children they can’t care for. That sentence felt better. A little.

And if they refuse?

Hmm. Yes. That’s where it gets tricky doesn’t it.

So if your Christmas carols are interrupted from the shadows, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

“Mao! Mao!”

So close, and yet…

Posted: December 6, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

If I said the name to you aloud you’d probably think, “nice Jewish boy.” In fact, Michal Friedman was a girl. And a Buddhist girl at that. Such are the pitfalls of nominal profiling.

Michal worked for us. That was a part of who she was. A very small part as it turns out. She was also an accomplished professional musician. Under the oh-so-appropriate moniker “Michal the Girl” she released multiple albums and reached a worldwide audience. Her sound is lush and moody– like a combination of Robbie Robertson and Fiona Apple. Very cool. Definitely check it out on iTunes, Rhapsody or what have you. Additionally, she did voice-over work. Amazing voice-overs in fact. I’d wager nobody else on the planet could pull off the seldom attempted “Speed Racer” cartoon VO and an ad VO of a teenager with tampon-angst on the same reel! That’s range, people.

These are but a few of her many accomplishments. The craziest thing about them? I just learned of them over the past couple of days. You see, despite the fact that Michal and I worked for the same company for years, I didn’t know her. Now, she was in our New York office and I’m in Boston, but I’ve been to that office dozens of times. There were opportunities. There is no doubt I’ve walked by her on multiple occasions.

And did not take notice. And did not see. And did not pick up on the fountain of talent right in my midst.

Too busy. Too focused. Too distracted by things that ultimately don’t mean shit to notice things that do.

And I’ll never get a chance to. Michal the Girl Friedman died last week while giving birth to picture-perfect twins. Though Michal was small in stature, she’s left a titanic-sized hole in the life of her husband Jay and her twins that will never know her.

That’s it and that’s all, folks.

So, do me a favor. Carve out some time to take the headphones off, put the mobile down, and clear your mind for a bit– almost like a Buddhist meditation you might say. Then try to take notice of things around you, people mainly, that are familiar but only on a superficial level. Learn more about people you ‘know’ but not really. Discover what’s right there beneath the surface if you only work at it a bit.

Start today. See what you’ve been missing.

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”– The Buddha

You can help by going to http://thesnydertwins.com/.

Newer Entries →