You know what I saw at the bookstore this afternoon? A 35th anniversary edition of Robert Townsend’s Up the Organization! If I’ve ever read a better business book, I can’t remember what it was. Townsend was way, way ahead of the curve in both style and content . . . Highly recommended! Read more →
May 2007
A Day at LACMA
We drove out to LACMA last weekend to see The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890-1950, and Re-SITE-ing the West: Contemporary Photographs from the Permanent Collection. I love exhibits like this . . . I’ve lived in California my whole life and I feel like these Western landscapes are part of my DNA. While we were there, we also took in the Dan Flavin retrospective. Flavin’s work consists of standard fluorescent tubes arranged in patterns not beyond the imagination of the average six-year-old. I tried viewing them up close, far away, from the side . . . I couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it. LACMA helpfully provided a detailed theory of Flavin’s work in the form of a fold-out brochure with a lot of small print, but I didn’t read it. Isn’t art supposed to provide some sort of pleasure and/or illumination — pardon the pun — on… Read more →
Pug Photos from Flickr
Originally uploaded by Velvet_. Originally uploaded by Pinkpollyanna. Originally uploaded by gina64. Read more →
Greta Garbo at USC
From Scott Wolf Inside USC: In 1926, MGM called USC and sent actress Greta Garbo down to pose for some publicity photos with the track team. Garbo initially refused until MGM deducted $25 from her salary, which convinced her to head to campus and don a USC track singlet. Read more →
Choices
From xkcd: Read more →
Flamethrowers
The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, “You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.” — George Carlin Read more →
The Left’s Iraq Muddle
Bob Kerrey’s WSJ opinion piece is the best thinking I’ve seen lately by a Democratic politician on the war in Iraq . . . Read more →
Animusic – Pipe Dream
The Daily Puppy / Dudley the Puggle
Puggles are cute, but a puggle is still not as good as a pug . . . Read more →
Another Reason I Never Put My Kid in Day Care
A day care worker in Tulsa, Okla., was looking after eight children ages 7 and younger. One of the kids, a 2-year-old boy, would not be quiet for nap time, so she bound his hands and covered his mouth with masking tape. That silenced him — permanently. The boy died after several days on life support. I never did trust people enough to have them raise my kid. Never did. Now if you were to respond that the average day care worker is no less capable than the average American mom of raising a child without killing it, I’d say — you’re probably right! I’m just talking about my kid . . . Read more →
The Family and the Traditions and the Band
I thought the corniest thing I’d ever heard when I got here was when they kept talking about this family that we had and I’d been at several other universities and I said, look they’re all the same. But they really believe it, they mean it and they live it and I’ve gotten caught up in that and the traditions and the band and I really don’t want to coach anyplace else. This is where I’d like to finish my career. — USC basketball coach Tim Floyd Fight On! Read more →
How Much I Care
We’re having dinner at Chili’s, and long before the food arrives, my kid has already informed me that I should have ordered meat instead of a salad, and that he can’t believe how quickly I ordered a refill on my soda. “Are you going to micromanage the whole meal for me?” I ask. “I can’t see how it makes any difference to you what I order or how fast I drink my soda, but somehow it does.” “It shows how much I care,” he says. Read more →
So Much for Dominating the White, Black and Hispanic Kids
My son and I are watching a Citibank commercial in which a woman in Japan drops her son off for his first day of school. As his mom starts to walk away, the boy looks back anxiously . . . “What’s the Asian kid nervous about?” my son says. “He’s going to get better grades than the rest of the kids anyway. Oh wait, all the other kids are Asian too. Ouch.” Read more →
Foundations of Mediocrity: Scheduling
My primary complaint about scheduling is simple: that people are willing to proceed as if they can look into a crystal ball about the future. They act as if they can plan out the future. As if they can control the future. It’s the control part that really gets to me. It bugs me because it’s a false belief. It’s simply not true. You can not control the future, and the belief you can is just so destructive of creativity, teamwork, spontaneity and interaction among one another. This false belief is just a complete energy zapper, an unwholesome energy sink. — Michele McCarthy This transcript of a Jim and Michele McCarthy podcast is the best discussion of scheduling I’ve read today, maybe ever . . . Read more →
Self-Reliance
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Speak what you think now… Read more →
The Old Game
I came up with a new game-show idea recently. It’s called The Old Game. You got three old guys with loaded guns onstage. They look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. The winner is the one who doesn’t blow his brains out. He gets a refrigerator. — Confessions of a Dangerous Mind Read more →
You Are Free to Choose
At the time the book [Brave New World] was written this idea, that human beings are given free will in order to choose between insanity on the one hand and lunacy on the other, was one that I found amusing and regarded as quite possibly true. — Aldous Huxley Read more →
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, 1933-2007
In memory of the Rev. Falwell, here’s one of my favorite Woody Allen quotes, from Hannah and Her Sisters But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Third-rate con men telling the poor suckers that they speak with Jesus. And to please send in money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back and saw what is going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up. Farewell, Falwell! Read more →
It Can’t Hurt That Much
I was telling my son about a woman in Arkansas who’s about to give birth to her 17th child. Her oldest is 19. “Doesn’t that hurt?” the boy asked. “I wouldn’t know,” I said, “but it can’t hurt that much if you’re willing to do it 17 times. It can’t hurt as much as, say, a kick in the groin, because after I took one kick in the groin, I wouldn’t sign up to take 16 more.” “The pain goes away, you know.” “Are you suggesting that I would be willing to take 17 kicks in the groin?” “Over a 19-year period, yeah.” “Agree to disagree.” Read more →
Inspiration Point, Laguna Beach
Originally uploaded by david888lee. Read more →