Bears On Trikes

Once the sun’s set and the city streets have grown cold, long after I’ve burrowed deep under the covers and enshrouded myself within the shadows of online anonymity, I can maybe, just barely, muster the courage to admit the following: I saw Bob Dylan play the Beacon Theatre in 2005 and couldn’t place his final encore.  At least, not until he moved into the second chorus.  This in itself doesn’t seem so outrageous, as nobody can understand what the hell he’s been saying for a couple of decades now, but for the fact his final encore was ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ — which not only features one of the most famous couplets to kick off a song in the history of rock and roll, but also repeatedly showcases one of the most distinctive and confrontational refrains ever in the chorus.  Rolling Stone ranked the song as the #1 greatest song ever, and rock historian Greil Marcus spent an entire book extolling the song’s significance.  Yet at this particular show, Bob Dylan performed it, and I couldn’t recognize it until a couple of minutes in.  For the first few minutes I gamely played along, as if I did, but once the realization hit, I felt like a big fat phony… a fake… a tourist amongst tourists (which is saying a lot if you’ve been to a Bob Dylan concert over the last decade).  I had to remind myself that Bob Dylan live is a very different animal from the Bob Dylan I listen to at home.  The reason why is one of the most misunderstood, yet respectable things I know about Bob Dylan today.                 

A lot of people over the years have said that Bob Dylan has contempt for his fans as much as he does the press.  Popular logic draws from the following: 1) He doesn’t speak to the crowd. 2) He’s spent entire tours hiding behind an electric organ — at the back of the stage. 3) He plays set-lists that heavily feature newer material and otherwise favor deep cuts. 4) When he does play the classics, he renders them so unrecognizable that he practically nullifies their cultural importance or whatever personal significance the audience brings to bear.  But complaint #4 is kind of the point.  In terms of his aim or purpose onstage, he’s clearly stated “songs don’t come alive in a recording studio. You try your best, but there’s always something missing. What’s missing is a live audience.”  So aside from a simple affirmation that music requires an audience, Dylan’s also saying that what helps his art endure, is something that exists not in the original work but rather in the space between (the artist and the listener).  Which is pretty modest coming from a man who’s consistently a lock for any list that presents the most influential people of the 20th century.  After reading his surprisingly accessible autobiography, Chronicles, I got the sense that Bob Dylan’s actually the most modest performer ever.  Below are some great quotes from chapter 4 (‘Oh Mercy’):

It’s nice to be known as a legend, and people will pay to see one, but for most people, once is enough.  You have to deliver the goods, not waste your time and everybody else’s.  I hadn’t actually disappeared from the scene, but the road had narrowed, almost shut down and was supposed to be wide open. 

It had become monotonous. My performances were an act, and the rituals were boring me. I’d see the people in the crowd and they’d look like cutouts from a shooting gallery, there was no connection to them – just subjects at random… My own songs had become strangers to me, I didn’t have the skill to touch their raw nerves, couldn’t penetrate the surfaces. It wasn’t my moment of history anymore. There was a hollow singing in my heart and I couldn’t wait to retire and fold the tent.

I had no feelings for any of those songs and didn’t know how I could sing them with any intent. A lot of them might have been only sung once anyway, the time that they’d been recorded. There were so many that I couldn’t tell which was which – I might even get the words to some mixed up with others.  I needed sets of lyrics to understand what they were talking about, and when I saw the lyrics, especially to the older, more obscure songs, I couldn’t see how I could get this stuff off emotionally. 

A few pages deeper in that chapter, Dylan describes a spiritual and musical awakening, that came in the form of a pair of epiphanies: one while watching an anonymous jazz trio perform in a small club, and one on stage, in Locarno, Switzerland, 1987, when for a brief moment he completely lost his voice.  In these closely quartered experiences he discovered a new means of performing that helped him avoid “the repetition that makes even esteemed artists feel like frauds.”  He describes the mathematics of his performances as such:

Something out of the ordinary had occurred and I became aware of a certain set of dynamic principles by which my performances could be transformed.  By combining certain elements of technique which ignite each other I could shift the levels of perception, time-frame structures and systems of rhythm which would give my songs a brighter countenance, call them up from the grave – stretch out the stiffness in their bodies and straighten them out. 

In a Sept. 7, 2006 Rolling Stone cover story, he explained to Jonathan Lethem more specifically what’s happening onstage, which seems to infuriate so much of the audience:

We do keep the structures intact to some degree. But the dynamics of the song itself might change from one given night to another because the mathematical process we use allows that. As far as I know, no one else out there plays like this. Today, yesterday and probably tomorrow. I don’t think you’ll hear what I do ever again. It took a while to find this thing. But then again, I believe that things are handed to you when you’re ready to make use of them. You wouldn’t recognize them unless you’d come through certain experiences. I’m a strong believer that each man has a destiny.”

I’ve heard it said, you’ve probably heard it said, that all the arrangements change night after night. Well, that’s a bunch of bullshit, they don’t know what they’re talkin’ about. The arrangements don’t change night after night. The rhythmic structures are different, that’s all. You can’t change the arrangement night after night – it’s impossible.”

I find this to be the most interesting thing about Bob Dylan today.  While the quotes in ‘Chronicles’ clearly explain that he’s challenging his audience out of respect, in addition to his need to maintain relevance, it’s the explanation in Rolling Stone that describes exactly how he does this.  There’s a difference between rhythm, meter, and the arrangement of the song itself.  What we miss in these songs, as performed live, is the rhythmic structures that he’s changed, we miss what we’d otherwise call melody (vocal or instrumental).  Melodies are what we latch onto in pop music, but that’s where the logic breaks down: Bob Dylan’s never been a pop artist.  The Beatles were pop, and so their melodies are infectiously indelible.  But Dylan’s music is steeped in folk and R&B, neither of which aspires to be especially hummable, and throughout his career he’s incorporated strong elements of Country Blues and Bluegrass, Gospel, Rockabilly, British Beat, etc.  Sometimes music reviewers go even further, citing long-lost dialects like Appalacian Folk and Western Swing, which he’s definitely mined of late.  In this regard Bob Dylan’s become the preeminent archivist of musical Americana, incorporating the regional accents that existed long before cheap travel, urban migration and mass media homogenized the country (this also explains why his last few albums sound like they could be played on a Victrola). 

It’s been said that Bob Dylan writes songs that are meant to be covered by other artists.  Bands like The Byrds rode his coattails into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, while Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton found some of their biggest and most enduring hits within Dylan’s catalogue.  There’ve been plenty of compilations strictly devoted to Bob Dylan covers, from the 2007 soundtrack to ‘I’m Not There’, Todd Haynes’ series of ruminations on Dylan’s many incarnations, to last year’s ‘Chimes Of Freedom’, a massive compilation released to raise money for Amnesty International, which featured 75 artists covering and interpreting his music.  On stage, Bob Dylan is essentially doing to his own songs what other artists have been doing for 45 years: covering them.  Reinterpreting them.  Giving them new context, so as to keep their meaning fresh and relevant.  The point is that it’s always fun to hear your favorite songs with fresh ears, and any time another artist interprets those songs, you’re drawn closer to the music.  For whatever reason, Dylan fans clamor over the covers but don’t want to give Bob himself that same leniency to present a new vision of old text.  That’s ironic, and a bit unfortunate.  I’m a pretty sentimental guy, and spend plenty of time and money on nostalgia.  But the music of Bob Dylan is not where you go to find that nostalgia.  Some day he’ll be gone, and all we’ll have is a deep catalogue of (35 studio albums and 458 songs and counting).  There’ll be plenty of studio work to pore over, but what we’ll regret the most is that we didn’t appreciate the live performances.  And we’ll come back to what he said in that Rolling Stone interview:

“No one else out there plays like this. Today, yesterday and probably tomorrow. I don’t think you’ll hear what I do ever again” 

Bob Dylan: Respect.

I love Converse’s brand resurrection over this last decade.  Not just the way they embraced the Rock and Roll community’s affection for their 80 year-old Chuck Taylor All-Stars, but how they then extended that heritage by creating an imprint label with Rock and Roll fashion icon John Varvatos.  The collaboration’s become a cornerstone of both brands’ retail experience, and the redesigned line of Chuck Taylors have been ubiquitous in chains and boutiques over the last few years.  Back in September they launched at NYC’s flagship Bowery store (the old CBGBs) a modernized, street-casual redesign of the famous Weapon ’86 (if you were a fan of Magic or Bird’s back in the 80’s, you probably had a pair back in the day).  The new line had been streamlined with a slimmer outsole, a sleeker ankle rise, and distressed leather uppers that come in colors like “Faded Rose/Black” (deep crimson) and “Nightshade/Gold” (dark navy).  They were a great remix of the original, looked both modern and classic at the same time.  The only problem was, by time the Christmas shopping season hit, they’d already discontinued the line. 

My size (12) happens to be one of their most in-demand, which made it twice as difficult to track down a pair.  The brick and mortars had long sold out so I shifted my search online.  There I found some scattered inventory across various online retailers, but quickly saw the remaining size 12s sell out in the colors I didn’t want, while I held out for the colors I did want (Nightshade/Gold).  I stalked each brands’ website and checked for new inventory constantly, and spent a week searching Google and Bing Shopping as well as leading Comparative Shopping Engines (CSEs) like Bizrate and Nextag.  On Google.com I clicked 10 pages deep to uncover additional online retailers that might not come back within the CSEs.  Ultimately I did find sites that carried the line, but found less inventory and fewer available sizes each next day.  By the end of the week I’d begun to consider whether I could feasibly trade down a size, perpetually curling my toes or possibly binding them into a daintier size (which even the Chinese stopped doing in 1912).  Just when failure seemed a certainty, I found exactly what I was looking for at Thom Brown, a small mom and pop shoe store out of Boston.  They had it in the right color, in the right size, and they happened to have it cheaper than everyone else (bonus!)  But I didn’t discover them on Google, and the CSEs don’t seem to know that Thom Brown exists.  They’re not set-up within eBay Marketplaces and they’re not part of Amazon’s Market Place.  I ultimately discovered this vendor on Pinterest.

I found that so interesting, that Big Search failed me yet Thom Brown’s modest grassroots tactics provided for this discovery and ultimately, my wish fulfillment.  The bigger the Web gets, the more content Google will have to index, and by virtue of that, the more they’re bound to fail us as consumers.  The search algorithms still favor the larger websites, based on their link authority, which has become an enemy of genuine discovery…

Quick anecdote: In college I worked at an independent record store (back when there still existed a thing called “independent record stores”).  My employer was eventually put out of business by a brand within the Sam Goody chain, which set-up shop 3 doors down.  This conversation about mega-chains killing off mom-and-pops is nothing new, and now the big box retailers like Wal-Mart and Amazon are even killing off the biggest national chains.  I guess that’s the way it goes, only the fittest survive and in this day and age, biggest = fittest.  Except that’s not necessarily what’s in the consumers best interests.  In an age where price pressure creates vertical consolidation, the only way to fit in is to stand apart, and small mom-and-pops can do that just by being nimble, by spending time on new, emerging platforms like Pinterest. 

Pinterest hasn’t quite crystallized a commercial model, but they do host millions upon millions of passionate, highly engaged consumers — searching, surfing, desiring something new for their collections.  Pinterest was able to do something that the biggest Internet companies in the world couldn’t, which was bridge the gap between the virtual world and the real world, and connect me with a small retailer I’ve never heard of, in a city I haven’t been to in 4 years, to buy a product I obsessively desired but couldn’t find.  That’s something to think about. 

I just started reading Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections.  The following is a paragraph I encountered extremely early on in the book (e.g. page 11) that killed off any hope of quickly establishing some momentum.  It also happens to be one single, excruciatingly long, run-on sentence nearly 2,000 characters long.  I don’t know a whole lot about post-modern literary crit (though I’m abbreviating “criticism” to “crit” to make me sound both more post-modern and literary), but when I encounter this type of writing it makes me want to give up reading for the rest of my days.  The thought of encountering a sentence like this again is just too much to bear.  Though in all fairness, there are some writers that make Franzen look like Hemingway.  David Foster Wallace used to write long-winded asides and overwrought analogies that put this one to shame, just in the footnotes of his own sprawling novels.

He began a sentence: “I am—-” but when he was taken by surprise, every sentence became an adventure in the woods; as soon as he could no longer see the light of the clearing from which he’d entered, he would realize that the crumbs he’d dropped for bearings had been eaten by birds, silent deft darting things which he couldn’t quite see in the darkness but which were so numerous and swarming in their hunger that it seemed as if they were the darkness, as if the darkness weren’t uniform, weren’t an absence of light but a teeming and corpuscular thing, and indeed when as a studious teenager he’d encountered the word “crepuscular” in McKay’s Treasury of English Verse, the corpuscles of biology had bled into his understanding of the word, so that for his entire adult life he’d seen in twilight a corpuscularity, as of the graininess of the high-speed film necessary for photography under conditions of low ambient light, as of a kind of sinister decay; and hence the panic of a man betrayed deep in the woods whose darkness was the darkness of starlings blotting out the sunset or black ants storming a dead opossum, a darkness that didn’t just exist, but actively consumed the bearings that he’d sensibly established for himself, lest he be lost; but in the instant of realizing he was lost, time became marvelously slow and he discovered hitherto unguessed eternities in the space between one word and the next, or rather he became trapped in that space between words and could only stand and watch as time sped on without him, the thoughtless boyish part of him crashing on out of sight blindly through the woods while he, trapped, the grownup Al, watched in oddly impersonal suspense to see if the panic-stricken little boy might, despite no longer knowing where he was or at what point he’d entered the woods of this sentence, still manage to blunder into the clearing where Enid was waiting for him, unaware of any woods —- “packing my suitcase,” he heard himself say.

Reciprocating the mental fog the character finds himself in, I no longer know where I am or at what point I’d entered the woods (of this sentence)…

It’s getting harder to find an apartment in New York City. The following was an email response from a broker representing a building in Brooklyn, describing the kinds of dogs not allowed.  At some point it becomes easier to ask for a list of the dogs that are allowed. 

We will accept all breeds of dogs except the following or any combination of mixed breed that contain any of the following:  Afghan Hound, Akita, Australian Cattle Dog, Basenji, Basset Hound, Beddington Terrier, Bernese Mountain Dog, Bloodhound, Boxer, Bulldog, Chow, Dalmatian, Doberman, German Shepherd, Great Dane, Keeshond, Mastiff, Pointer, Pitt Bull Terriers*, Rottweiler, Saluki, Saint Bernard, Siberian Husky, and Weimaraner. We reserve the right to add additional breeds or families to this list of prohibited breeds at any time.  We allow a maximum of two (2) pets per apartment.  All cats must be spayed or neutered.

*Including all Pitt Bull breeds- American Putt Bull Terriers, American or Irish Staffordshire Terriers, Bull Terriers, Pitt Bulls, American Bull Dogs and Presa Canario.

As far as the weight limit is concerned we do not have one.  Let me know if you have any other questions or need any additional information.

Sometimes authority seems kind of random, no?

Dear Nora Ephron: You were a lone reed, standing tall, waving boldly in the corrupt sands of commerce.

Nora Ephron died of complications from Leukemia on June 26th.  It was a sad day.  For my generation she was nothing less than the architect of the modern romantic comedy.  She also wrote novels, essays and films as diverse as ‘Silkwood’, ’Michael’ and the hugely underrated ‘My Blue Heaven’… but her best films certainly fell into the chick-flick category.  ‘When Harry Met Sally’, ‘Sleepless In Seattle’ and ‘You’ve Got Mail’ were the golden triumvirate of her canon and they created the standard by which all other rom-coms would be judged.  Romantic comedies are like horror, in the sense that they’re easy to do poorly, but extremely difficult to do well.  She elevated the genre to something much greater.  

Nobody was as charming as Nora Ephron.  Her films were smart and clever and compulsively watchable.  Her characters were ingratiating beyond compare and she told stories that played out as pure wish fulfillment.  But her films didn’t simply deliver the formula, she filled in the space between plot and character arcs with great moments of life: small moments drawn from gestures, quips, serendipitous encounters. For me the most analogous modern filmmaker would be Cameron Crowe.  While Nora Ephron’s films seemed to start top-down as romantic comedies, and his bottom-up as observational comedic dramas, they both wound up in exactly the same place: as meticulous, fully-formed character pieces crafted with the lightest touch.  I’m sure its no coincidence that both writers began as journalists…  Their films have a spontaneous feel coupled with an exceptional eye for detail, and end up being much fuller than they seem.  Their charms only grow with each successive viewing.

I used to sit around in college and write broad, self-involved essays on how Nora Ephron killed love for an entire generation (more so than the divorce rates of the time), because she created this completely unrealistic standard that life couldn’t possibly live up to.  The essays were crap, but I had a highly romanticized view of the world and was trying to form my worldview from these second-hand pop-culture influences.  I think I was just trying to write my way into the same kind of winning, observant characterization she herself wrote so well.  After all, she’d soon have Meg Ryan’s character intone a similar sentiment in ‘You’ve Got Mail’:

“I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

I’ve watched “the golden triumvirate” more times than I can count, because they provide wonderfully vicarious living through characters I’d want to meet and experiences I’d want to own.  Whether I watch her films uncut on DVD or with commercial interruption on basic cable, at 2 in the afternoon or right before I go to bed, they never fail to provide the deepest comfort.  Because after you strip away what a phenomenal writer and director she was, you’re left with the simple fact that nobody had heart like Nora Ephron.  

Below’s a couple of my favorite quotes from ‘You’ve Got Mail’, which is for my money, her most charming script.

Kathleeen Kelly: My store is closing this week. I own a store, did I ever tell you that? It’s a lovely store, and in a week it’ll be something really depressing, like a Baby Gap.

Joe Fox: Matthew is my father’s son, Annabelle is my grandfather’s daughter. We are… an American family.

Kathleen Kelly: Once I read a story about a butterfly in the subway, and today, I saw one! It got on at 42nd and off at 59th, where, I assume, it was going to Bloomingdales to buy a hat that will turn out to be a mistake, as almost all hats are.

Joe Fox: The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino.

Frank Navasky: A HOTDOG is singing. You need quiet while a HOTDOG is singing??

Kathleen Kelly: ‘Joe. Just call me Joe.’ As if you were one of those stupid 22-year-old girls with no last name. ‘Hi, I’m Kimberley.’ ‘Hi, I’m Janice.’ Don’t they know you’re supposed to have a last name? It’s like they’re an entire generation of cocktail waitresses.

Joe Fox: I love Patricia. Patricia’s amazing. Patricia makes coffee nervous.

Nelson Fox: Perfect. Keep those West-Side liberal nuts, psudo-intellectuals…

Joe Fox: Readers, Dad. They’re called readers.

Nelson Fox: Don’t do that, son. Don’t romanticize them.

Joe Fox: Don’t cry, Shopgirl. Don’t cry.

“Once you get into baseball, other team sports just look like variations on a theme: dogs fighting over a rag doll.”

Steve Albini is a punk rock legend.  He founded the early 80s punk band Big Black and has been playing with Chicago-based Shellac for the past 20 years. To the mainstream his claim to fame is as a record producer and engineer, where he recorded seminal alt-rock albums like Pixies - Surfer Rosa, Breeders - Pod, PJ Harvey - Rid Of Me, and Nirvana - In Utero.  He has strong opinions about everything and is typically known as a curmudgeon, but I find him to be simply candid and forthright.  He’s very bright, thoughtful, and also happens to be a monster baseball fan.  He made a guest appearance on Episode 37 of Up and In: The Baseball Prospectus Podcast and draws a line in the sand between baseball and every other sport known to man (including Hurling):

What’s so unique about baseball is its not about pure athleticism, which is the dominion of jocks and assholes… being a big powerful guy won’t get you that far in baseball… it helps but that’s not the end of it.  A smart baseball player doesn’t have to be that great an athlete.  The management of baseball is structured in a way that makes it competitive like chess and poker, outsmarting people more than just physically overcoming them.  The smarter team, the smarter management, the smarter decisions tend to win long term.  There’s a long season, a long time for decisions to manifest, lots of iterations for every experiment that you want to try.

He then goes to categorize all other sports apart from baseball:

1. Mob Sports - There are 2 packs of people fighting over a ball or a puck, one team trying to push it into a goal and the other team trying to prevent it from going into a goal.  When the bell rings, the game is over and whoever has the most points wins. Soccer, Hockey, Football, Hurling… whatever.  They’re the same retarded stupid game

2. Palm Sports - You’re trying to defeat the return of a ball over a net or an obstacle – they’re all basically the same game.  Tennis, Badminton, Racquetball, Volleyball.

3. Strength and Endurance Contests - They’re not sports, they’re not even games, they’re straight contests.  Track and Field, Swimming, Archery, etc.

4. Baseball.

I love the distinction that mob sports are fundamentally trivial games.  This isn’t meant to undermine or belittle them, but the fact remains, those games are in fact trivial by nature.  But baseball is different.  It’s smarter, more strategic*, more evolved.  I personally find it boring as shit, but I think we can all agree it’s more evolved.

*note - football’s actually pretty strategic

The Steve Jobs biography was released late October 2011 and by January it seemed like everybody had read it.  In fact, the book was as ubiquitous in New York City as those white ear buds I saw everyone wearing on the subway not long after the iPod came out in 2001.  But what’s struck me the most is not how many people have read it, but how many people I‘ve heard marvel at how much they related to Steve Jobs while reading his biography.  I think what they meant is they were surprised by how much they understood him while reading the biography.  If the latter, the implication is that Walter Isaacson did a spectacular job building a portrait from his 40 interviews with Steve Jobs and 100+ interviews with family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues.  Which he really did; The book is perfectly paced for a mainstream audience and strikes the right balance recounting history and paraphrasing first-hand insights from the subject and those involved in Apple, NeXT, Pixar, and their seminal projects.  But if you were overwhelmed by a sense of connection, and insist that you genuinely related to Steve Jobs while reading his biography, you’re probably a complete asshole.

Yes, I just called you an asshole.  You may also be conceited and pretentious, but that’s not for me to say, I don’t know you.

There’s a moment in the book where his widow Laurene refers to him as a great man, while conceding that he was a deeply flawed family man.  It’s one of the more intimate moments in the book and left me wanting more from the homestead.  Granted his family life had nothing to do with his ideals, which is really what the book’s about, but it has everything to do with his reasons for cooperating with Isaacson. The motive behind this book was not ego: in one of their last meetings Walter Isaacson asked why had he been so eager, during close to 50 interviews and conversations over the course of two years, to open up so much for a book when he was usually so private? “I wanted my kids to know me,” he said. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”  It’s a rare moment of compassion and sensitivity from a man who seemed exceedingly intolerant, disrespectful, abusive, who exhibited complete antisocial behavior and wrote it off as part of his singular ambition and vision to serve the consumer (whom he also didn’t seem to hold in the highest of regard).

So back to the reason you’re an asshole for claiming you related to Steve Jobs — the book provides an unflinchingly balanced view of an uncompromising, sardonic, irascible codger who didn’t play well in the sandbox with anyone.  He had no sacred cows, felt he was without peer and was quick to deride all captains of industry (see the entertaining anecdote where he meets Wendell Weeks, the CEO of Corning).  Steve Jobs was a man so egotistical he put himself beside Einstein, Bob Dylan, Picasso and Gandhi in Apple’s 1997 Think Different ad campaign.  And that was long before he disrupted how we consume music, how we buy music, how the Internet sells content, how we consume print media, how we experience media convergence, the retail experience, the cloud, etc.  At the end of the day he was an exceedingly challenging man, a rare human being who bucked tradition, avoided common logic and showed a disregard for all social conventions and courtesies at every available opportunity.  Who finally succumbed to cancer because he chose his crackpot fruitarian diets over Western medicine.  But that iPhone sure is cool…   

Anyway, below are my favorite quotes from the book:

• “If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back much.  You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away”  p.190
•  “He was incredibly phony, a complete poseur.  He pretended to be interested in technology, but he wasn’t.  He was a marketing guy, and that is what marketing guys are: paid poseurs”   p.152
• “What’s the difference between Apple and the Boy Scouts? The Boy Scouts have adult supervision”  p.155
•  “For most things in life, the range between best and average is 30% or so.  The best airplane flight, the best meal, they may be 30% better than the average one”  p.363
• “I think you could make the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful” p. 397
• “Gobble, Gobble, Gobble, Gobble”  p.142

In ‘The Social Network’ there’s a scene where one of the Winklevi is on the phone with their father’s attorney and he quotes something Mark Zuckberg said in The Crimson.  He reads the quote aloud: “’Everyone’s been talking a lot about a universal facebook within Harvard’, he says”—he meaning Mark—”’I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do a classier job than they can and I did in a week.’”  The lawyer on the other end of the phone says something and Cameron responds “I know, that’s how he talks.” 

Some people just have a way with words.  I’ve seen interviews of Bruce Springsteen in the 70s where he sounds like Vinnie Barbarino from ‘Welcome Back Kotter’.  Maybe he wasn’t comfortable yet speaking to the media, or maybe it was just 1970’s Rocky Balboa-chic, but he sounded like a real mook.  But anybody who’d heard his lyrics knew the interviewer was getting short-changed.  Today Springsteen’s THE elder statesman for rock and roll, and bar none, the foremost keeper of the faith.  I love reading his interviews, specifically when he so articulately describes the connection a musician can have with their fans and their responsibility for how that should inform the live performance.  But to say Bruce has thoughts about things beyond rock and roll is an understatement.  He doesn’t just speak his thoughts, he speaks his ideals. ALL-OF-THE-TIME.  He’s totally eloquent and completely pure no matter what he speaks of.   Below’s an excerpt from his interview with Jon Stewart in last month’s Rolling Stone, where he addresses the paradox of how he continues to speak for the working man, 37 years after becoming one of the biggest rock stars in the world.  Simple metaphor, brilliant insight about how we all see the world through our own eyes:

I think people would look at it and go “Jeez, you have all the creature comforts, how do you understand that?” But its clearly something that was imprinted genetically on your soul.  It just doesn’t matter.

We talk, we write, we think, and even as late in the day as I am, we experience so much through the veil of the formative years of our life.  That never goes away.

I have a metaphor.  I say “Look, you’re in a car, your new selves can get in, but your old selves can’t get out. “  You can bring new vision and guidance to your life, but you can’t lose or forget who you’ve been and what you’ve seen.  New people can get in, but nobody ever gets out: The child from 1950, he doesn’t get out.  The teenager, the adolescent boy, no one can get out.  They are with you until the end of the ride, and you’re going to pass a certain amount of them on.

The key, of course, is who’s driving.  On any given day, you’re hoping that one of your better angels is at the wheel.

»Rolling Stone issue 1153, 3/29/12

A couple of years ago I took a job at a large agency and inherited a department of young people.  On my first day we had a meet-and-greet and near the end I opened up the floor to questions.  One of the team, a 24 year-old girl, asked me “what was dot-com like?”  It was a funny question, it felt like when people in my generation ask their parents what the 60s were like.  Anyway, that was 5 years ago and I don’t remember what I said.  If asked the same today, I’d say it wasn’t all that different, only there were far fewer people involved and there was far less money floating around than there is today.  But I worked with the biggest bombs of the dot-com era and when the bubble burst I braved 18 straight months of unemployment.  On the bright side, being cloaked in failure certainly builds character (don’t let anybody tell you different). 

Paul Rudd always pours Olde English in his Fruit Loops before he pisses in your Cheerios

Every generation has a moment, that all-galvanizing event that changes everything and lifts the veil of innocence and all we take for granted. For some it was Watergate, the Warren Commission or the Iran Contra scandal.  For a younger generation it may have been the ballot recounts of 2000, WMDs in Iraq or Too Big To Fail.  I’m talking about that solitary moment where you realize the game is fixed, the dice are loaded, and you’re being deceived and subjugated to serve the will of those in power.  It’s the heart of the 99 percent movement, that epiphany where we see the world as it really is, and realize our place within it.  For me that moment was the Nike Air Pump.

During the 1980s Nike and Reebok battled for market supremacy.  It was a two-party race and for one brief moment in history, there were only 2 kinds of people in the world: Nike people and Reebok people.  The brand you chose said something about who you were: Nike had history and heritage but Reebok had fashion and style.  And unlike the cola wars, this wasn’t simply about marketing - the sneaker industry was driven by genuine innovation, of design and technology.  Every new line of sneakers held the promise of better comfort and better performance.  Marketing was always a big part of the movement, and nobody does lifestyle marketing better than Nike (“Just Do It”) but for the first time in modern consumer culture, lifestyle marketing was driven by something tangible, something real.   There was a genuine ethos at play, and that ethos culminated with the Pump. 

Reebok released the first Pump sneaker in 1989 with what’s become known as the “Pump Bringback”.  It was a big, bulky high-top with an inflatable bladder embedded in an outsized tongue.  On the tongue you had a big, bulbous rubber ball, which you’d squeeze to pump air into the chambers, and around back there was a value to empty the air.  The Pump represented evolution, it was Homo sapien to Nike’s Waffle Trainer’s Homo erectus, and Reebok eventually incorporated this superior technology into all their lines, from basketball to soccer, football, tennis and track.  It was a better product, and they staked their future on it. 

Nike released their version of the Pump right on the heels of Reebok, with the Nike Air Pressure.  The original model had a giant cocoon grafted onto the back that looked like an alien laid eggs in your Achilles.  The shoe came with a separate inflation device you’d affix to the back, as if pumping a bicycle tire.  It didn’t sell very well.  The next edition, the super-excellent Air Command Force, improved on the design and provided an embedded solution that seemed easy, convenient and functional.  But ultimately the line only went one further with the less memorable Nike Air Force 180 Pump.  And that’s it.  No more pump for Nike.  They’ve never even re-released it as a retro edition (though they have brought back the abomination that is the Air Huarache Basketball, which is absurd).

Reebok’s rediscovered this technology over the years, shifting a manual pump and bladder in the tongue to a self-regulating pump in the heel, with the Pump 2.0 in 2005.  It was an ambitious design: with every five steps the pump actuator would be compressed, causing the shoe to automatically inflate, forming a custom fit around the runner’s foot.  The Pump 2.0 was said to be designed by engineers from NASA and MIT.  It was born in a laboratory where people study high-minded things like Applied Physics, Materials Science, and Kinesiology.  I’ve never bought the Reebok pump, but I do believe in it now as I believed in it then.  Because I believe in science.  But Nike doesn’t believe in the Pump, and ultimately buried the Pump as the next big thing that never was.  Which makes me feel like a sap… every time I think about it. 

I’ve recently developed a crippling fear of traveling back in time and contracting some antiquated disease that’s since been cured.  But seeing as how my time machine was irreparably damaged in transit, as they always are, I’m left to die of something unfortunate that House MD could’ve easily cured by popping a can of Coke Zero.  Which really sucks.

Even a 5 year-old can tell you why the chicken crossed the road: to get to the other side.  Seems pretty innocuous until you consider the joke as allegory.  The punchline tells us very specifically that the chicken crossed the road to get to the other side.  That was its motivation, to get to the other side.  Taking the “other side” to mean death and whatever it brings, and the chicken crossing the road as the means to get to the other side, we’re left at the scene of the crime with a chicken suicide, a couple of potential human casualties from the 5-car pile-up, and one bleak joke. 

“Because it was stapled to the armadillo” just became the humane punchline.