I’m doing a lot of sales lately for my new venture, and I’m rediscovering something I learned before, both selling and being sold to. It’s an important lesson — one that made me more successful in sales in the past — but it’s easy to forget, because it’s so counter-intuitive. That lesson is to just keep my yap shut.
I don’t see many movies these days. Sure, there are a bunch that look good — heck, even _Ghost Rider_ has my girlfriend “Eva Mendes”:http://imstars.aufeminin.com/stars/fan/D20050516/1914_884147285_eva_mendes_018_H220502_L.jpg in it — but I never seem to get around to seeing them. Not only are movies too expensive, but they’re in the the theaters for such a short time, and so many of them are complete crap. Expensive, hard-to-find crap is no good. So, the highest praise for a movie might be that it makes me want to see another, specific movie. On that scale, “Letters From Iwo Jima”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498380/ scores quite high — if “Flags of Our Fathers”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418689/, which I had intentionally skipped seeing before, were still in theaters, I’d rush over to see it.
_Letters from Iwo Jima_ must have been, as everyone will point out, a challenging movie to make. It’s almost all in Japanese (a few, brief, scenes are in English). The heroes are all people who we fought against in World War II; the guys they kill are all American. The heroes must lose at the end of the movie. It’s not like you see this kind of thing on the big screen all the time; not only was there a need for high-quality execution, but even the conception of the movie must’ve been difficult.
The payoff was big. There were real, sympathetic Japanese characters — we understood what many were feeling and why. Of course, there were also unsympathetic characters, because the war was filled with reckless Japanese militarists who followed a perverse death cult, but at least these stereotypical characters were portrayed accurately. At any rate, it was easy to truly care for a number of the characters.
The plot moved well also. It steadily built to the invasion and tough island fighting, with each scene showing a higher level of strain than the last. We understood the fractured relationship between some of the characters, saw the strength of the island’s defenses grow, and then saw it all smashed by the Americans. My only complaint was that we really did not see a passage of time during the battle itself; most viewers would probably guess that the fighting lasted a few days, rather than the 35 it actually did.
In the end, _Letters From Iwo Jima_ was a real movie, not just a movie in a foreign language. That shows a lot of skill. As real movies go, it was very much a war movie, which is fine, because who actually wants to see someone attempt another _Pearl Harbor_? Keeping this movie simple probably kept it good. Ken Watanabe deserves the recognition he’s getting in his leading role, Eastwood deserves his nomination for best director — heck, the cinematographer deserved his CFCA nomination.
I’d like to see more movies like this — small, targeted, efficient, effective, cheap, interesting, expanding. It seems like a good shtick. I suggest somebody script-ize “Hell in a Very Small Place”:http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/030681157X/ref=nosim/wadearmstrong-20. Heck, these days, you could shoot that on location too. In the meantime, I guess I have to go rent _Flags of our Fathers_.
I’ve been tagged to do a meme like twice before, and I always say I’ll write something for it, but then I never do. Maybe I should start. So, as much as I hate “Milla”:http://millatimes.com for tagging me,[1] well, maybe it’s good for me too. Well, good or a source of relatively free writing ideas. So, without further ado, five things that I think none of my regular readers knows about me.
# When I was in fifth grade, I carried a notebook around with me everywhere outside of school. Inside, I wrote an entire science fiction novel. It’s easy to write a novel when each chapter is less than a page and consists of entirely exposition. I guess that Isaac Asimov was my hero.
# One semester in college, I had romantic opportunities with three brunettes from Chicago; I picked just one. The next semester, I had romantic opportunities with three blondes from Massachusetts; I picked just one there as well. In fact, all through college, I only dated one girl from California. I’m not sure how that happened, and I’m particularly not sure how one semester was all about Chicago and the other all about Massachusetts.
# One day in junior high I taped _Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan_ off of the TV. I watched that tape over and over again on weekends until it wore out and skipped incessantly. Now, I own both versions of that move on DVD.
# I didn’t listen to music at all until 9th grade, when I got a “Kix”:http://www.kix-band.com/ tape as a gift. I think my parents got me a cheap stereo to play it on. Well, with just one tape, that sure got a lot of listening! (Fortunately I liked Kix. This was before they got a little crazy and wondered, in an article in the Sun, why they weren’t bigger than Led Zeppelin, since they were better. I guess having Poison steal your show and then get famous off it would drive anyone insane.)
# I once made out with one of my college newspaper’s photographers in the darkroom. We managed not to screw up any film processing! I was very happy, as I’d had a big crush on her for a long time, but it took me about six weeks to kiss her again, and that never did go anywhere.
You know, that wasn’t so bad; I’d even do it again for another meme. I think I’m supposed to tag somebody. Ummm…. Mary and Auros, you’re it!
fn1. I plan to get back at her by pronouncing her name “Mill-uh” rather than “Mee-la” the next time I see her.
It’s not a good time to be an American automaker. Ford is undergoing yet another restructuring, only two years after starting their last one. GM is about to become the #2 in the industry — passed, embarrassingly enough, by Toyota. And Chrysler may be sold by Daimler-Benz’s for the fire sale price of $5 billion.[1] It’s like the ‘80s again, this time without Lee Iacocca and his K-Car or Michael Keaton running a US auto plant in _Gung Ho_. How did they blow it so quickly after saving US car companies once? The surprising truth seems to be: sales were too good. And, even more surprisingly, good sales can be trouble for all of us, especially entrepreneurs like me (and maybe you).
I need new clothes for the new season coming up. To be frank, I needed new clothes for the last season, but, in true LA fashion, summer seems to have come already and obviated the need for sweaters and layering. Nonetheless, I need new clothes for the new season. And I’d like it if some weren’t blue, although most often that’s the color I end up wearing.
It’s really just that I look good in blue. It brings out my eyes, and the chicks (almost) always dig that. Plus, blue includes both the default casual look of denim and the default business casual look of blue oxford and khakis. So, it’s kind of an invaluable color for a guy. Nonetheless, I’m not the biggest fan of the color. That’s kind of illegal for a guy to say, but there it is — blue is nothing special to me.
My room as a child was painted in a nice gender-neutral yellow, not a stereotypical light blue, robbing me of that obivous association. I can’t remember the first blue clothes I had, but I do remember hating the first blue clothes that I could remember. They were my gym clothes in elementary school, and they were the worst thing in the world. First of all, being a geek, I hated gym. Second of all, “gym class didn’t always go the best for me”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/001811.html. Third of all, this outfit had truly disastrous shorts. Not only were they short, as was the style at the time, but they were poofy. Gathered at the waist by a tight elastic band, they flared out by a full inch in every direction as soon as that band terminated. This look only enhanced the stick-like-ness of my legs, which admittedly were scrawny, just like the rest of me. It also made me look like some 19th-centrury matron. I was not a fan.
Instead, I loved the color red. This was the color of my special blanket, a woolen red tartan. It was also the color of my first sportcoat, which also sported a jaunty tartan.[1] Heck, even my first cat[2] was red. But I was never brave enough to wear my red Michael Jackson-style mesh t-shirt.[3]
I also liked green. I had this pen set with this really awesome emerald green that I’d draw with all the time. At the time, I had an imaginary country[4] named Wadeland and it had a green flag with three triangles on it. Later, when I was in fifth grade, I coveted the “red”:http://www.toyarchive.com/Macross/AlphaRed8inch1.html Robotech Alpha fighter but instead got the “green”:http://www.toyarchive.com/Macross/AlphaGreen8inch1.html.[5]
I thought I hit the jackpot in 9th grade when I got a shirt that was olive-green on the outside and red on the inside. I felt rugged in the lined sailcloth, but, somehow, the girls just didn’t dig that look.
I have a lot of blue in my house now. Some, like my carpet, is unintentional. I have a blue Ikea chair that I sit on a lot, but I do wish that Ikea made it easy for me to change the cushions on it, because blue is just not an inviting furniture color. And I’ve learned that inviting is key in furniture.
But still I look good in blue. Better, even, than in green, and blue is also more verstaile. It’s a tough world I live in. Maybe if I wait yet another season to buy new clothes I can put off making any color-related decisions for a few months.[6]
fn1. My parents liked to dress me in my lederhosen and red plaid sportcoat, probably something of a first in looks for a Jew.
fn2. Oh, he was a mean cat; he used to sleep under the covers in my bed and bite my toes all night long.
fn3. I’m shocked I can’t find a picture of a shirt like this online, but adding in the word “Michael Jackson” gives me a selection of snarky t-shirts about child molestation. What I’m talking about, and what was all the rage when the Great Gloved One was bigger than Oprah is now (and V: The Final Battle ruled primetime), is a red t-shirt, the front of which had a layer of black mesh on top of the shirt. Said shirt was also available in black with red mesh. Of course, the day after I got my black-on-red shirt, Matt showed up with his red-on-black shirt and stole my thunder.
fn4. Of course I had an imaginary country, I needed friends ==*somewhere*==
fn5. This is one of those toys that I had that would probably be worth something these days. The other was the original Transformers Jetfire character; Jetfire was a rebranded Robotech Macross VF-1 and I got, totally unintentionally, one of the original series that literally was a repainted VF-1, with Macross insigina and all. eBay has a “buy it now” price of $75, not bad if I still had the thing.
fn6. Except insofar as I need to design a Web site and collateral for my company. But these will contain — get this — green! Yay! Victory at last.
Mark Cuban “thinks that the music labels should get together and start a company to stand against Apple’s iTunes and Microsoft”:http://www.blogmaverick.com/2007/02/07/what-should-the-music-biz-do-next. I agree that the music labels, and, for good measure, the movie and tv studios need to get out from under the thumb of the tech industry, which so far has controlled the next-generation distribution channels. But for the music industry to start its own company is risky and expensive. Instead, the music industry needs to leverage this country’s great capital markets and reservoir of mobile knowledge workers to get someone else to do the hard work for them. That is, they need to outsource their risk, and they – and the movie industry – can do this without losing their returns.
Darn. Well, the Colts won. Evil has triumphed in the world, not least because good appears to have been incompetent. What else is new? Thanks to the magic of gin and barbecue, I was able to make it through all three-and-some hours of depressing football, interspersed with remarkably mediocre ads[1]. It’ll be ok. Actually, the whole Super Bowl experience kind of showed me where I need to set my expectations and plans in life.
Really, I knew the Colts would win. It was kind of like that last second before a car accident, when the other car has already pulled out in front of you but there’s no time to stop, so all you can see is that other car getting bigger and bigger and brace yourself for the crash and maybe you already smell that acrid “ouch I got hit!” smell in your nose, prepratory to the actual pain. I think I smelled that for the last two weeks. Good fuel for a smile of resignation, it was.
And then the game was just sad. With the opening kickoff return for a TD and the early interceptions, I actually got hope. That, I will say, was just not fair. Then the Bears got both outcoached and outplayed. “Bad Rex”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101817.html, “Tony Eason”:http://espn.go.com/page2/s/list/superbowl/worst.html. Tony Eason, Bad Rex. Here’s a few bucks, have a burger on me, boys.
So, as I said, this game showed me what I need to do in life. Those of you who know me well know that I’ve been planning to make enough to get my revenge on some who deserve it.[2] Well, that list has now been lengthened. I now know what my goal needs to be: I need to make enough money to buy the Colts, send the uniforms and records back to Baltimore, and move the team to the “Coliseum”:http://www.lacoliseum.com/. It’s good to have goals, and even better to have a little bile to drive you to them.
fn1. Was Salesgenie actually serious about “that ad”:http://sb.salesgenie.com/LandingAdSB.aspx?bas_vendor=68331? I mean, really? No, seriously? Um, wow.
fn2. If you don’t know who, I’m not telling you on this blog, sorry.
Well, today’s the big day. We have the “forces of evil”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/003087.html against the forces of… Chicago. We all know what side I come down on! I’ll be rooting hard the whole game, and I believe that Da Bears! can win. I do! They’ve got the tough defense, and Manning crumbled against Baltimore’s D. They’ve also got the tough running attack, with a good up-the-middle runner and a competent edge runner too, which Baltimore didn’t have. It’ll be a tough game, but the Bears will win in the end. We all need to get on the bandwagon and root for good over evil, and I know just the thing to get you there:
I am Annoyed Consumer. The people at Blue Cross — normally I would say fine people, but not in this case — have raised my rates. Now, I’m aware that there’s this thing called “inflation” and this other thing called “progress” and that, sometimes, these conspire to make health insurance premiums go up. But somehow I don’t think that a 20% increase is representative of the core health care inflation rate.
In fact, apparently, in 2006, “healthcare rates for businesses increased by 7.7%”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15014332/. Why is the rate increase for me nearly three times the rate increase for businesses? It doesn’t make sense — in fact, I’d think it should be the opposite. For plans provided to businesses, insurance companies must accept some members who aren’t in good health, just because of who they work for. In contrast, when choosing individual plan members, the insurance companies have shown a preference to “cherry”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-insure28nov28,0,2548282,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines-”pick”:http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-reject8jan08,0,6430685,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines. While I’m in no way in favor of this practice — in fact, I think it’s best for everyone if insurers cover the largest risk pools possible — logically, it should result in the ultra-exclusive inidividual insurance being the cheapest of all.
And it’s not as if I’ve moved into some big new risk pool. I’m closer to 32, sure, but I don’t know that 31 1/2 is some famous dividing line between “young and resilient” and “old and fragile.” I haven’t gotten sick, haven’t gotten any medical treatments lately, all I did in the last six months was get a checkup and an immunization booster. That’s not cost-increase-worthy.
Anyway, I’m not a big fan of my 20% boost. In fact, I really don’t want to pay it. And I don’t think that it’s reasonable that I should accept worse coverage. My ideal outcome is that I’d pay 7-10% more this year than I did last, which seems to be in line with overall health cost inflation, and is a fair rate increase.
So, who can I complain to about this to fight my increase? Insurance commissioner? City councilperson? Congressman? ‘Cause I’m ready to fight.
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