I saw a play/musical called The Drowsy Chaperone this past Friday with some friends at a local Austin theater called Zach (if you click that link you can even see a short video) and it was very good. The narrator was hilarious. He is an obviously gay guy who was married once but now is alone in his apartment listening to old vinyl records, one of which is of the musical The Drowsy Chaperone. He intervenes during the performance with his opinions of each scene with great commentary from his life experience. He is so excited about the musical, where most of the cast end up marrying each other (i.e., 4 weddings take place at the end), but also sad and lonely about his situation about not finding the right person to be with. Actors to me seem to be entrepreneurs, selling themselves for each show in the hopes of getting cast. I’m guessing that unless you are on Broadway in New York, acting is a tough life financially.
I also discovered a new restaurant called Paggi House. The food was great (except the mussels were too small) and they had half price drinks and appetizers until 7pm so we shared a bunch of interesting things including one of my favorite things: soft shell crab! Well, my friend isn’t a big fan of soft shell crab so she let me eat 95% of it (yummy) with a really interesting sweet/sour/vinegar house made sauce. She had a really interesting salad that I took a few bites of that had vanilla in the dressing!
Saturday and Sunday consisted of meals at homeand Chuy’s as well as seeing the movie Despicable Me with the kids. They had already seen it, but since I hadn’t. I used my strong persuasion skills (not hard) to get them to see it again. It had some pretty funny, but predictable scenes. The main character strives to be the best villain in the world and gets caught by surprise when he adopts 3 little girls as part of one of his schemes to be the best villain. His mother is never pleased with his attempts at villainy as a child and later in life which motivates him but also makes him sad. In the end his mother pays him probably the best and only compliment he’s received from her when she tells him that he is a great parent to the 3 little orphan girls he adopted…”probably even better than me.” You can tell he was pleased that she finally gave him credit for something and it wasn’t for any of his attempts to be a bad guy. Us mothers can cause so much joy and sadness in our kids lives…well according to movies anyway…oh and a few psychologists. I wonder where the dads are in these animated movies?!
I had planned to post this earlier, but my Internet has been down for the last couple of days because some squirrels chewed through some of the cabling…those darn squirrels!
As long time readers know, I write about business and parenting and sometimes how the two combine or don’t combine. Well, this post is about a little bit of both. My kids, age 8 and 5 1/2, have pretty much reached the age of reason — most days. Of course there are those times when the term ‘reason’ resonates with no one (including myself) around here, but on most days they are reasonable. I discovered recently, they have reached the age where they will play together. I mean, they have played together in the past but they’ve always wanted me involved, didn’t fully agree with what the other wanted to play, wanted to watch TV, or play the Wii. I’d get frustrated and just tell them to watch TV and then feel like a less than stellar mom for putting them in front of the TV after I’ve had a long day at work and needed some time to catch up with home stuff, organize stuff or even just sit down for a minute!
In the last few weeks, I’ve been able to go tell them to play cards or a board game while I cook, clean, check some emails, or lay down for a bit and they actually listen! On a couple of occasions, I’ve even had to tell them to wrap up playing if they wanted to watch a little TV before they went to bed. I don’t know why but I feel much less mom guilt when they play with each other even if they are chasing each other around the house playing tag and I happen to be home base (safety) while I’m trying to do the dishes. In a weird way, their aging is allowing me to have time to do more things because they entertain themselves. I knew there was a reason I had two kids because it certainly wasn’t a rational decision at the time given my son didn’t sleep more than a few hours in a row until he was over 4 years old! When I see them playing, hear them discussing the rules of the game they are about the play, and sorting out their disagreements, my heart smiles, my other troubles disappear for a while, and I think to myself how lucky I truly am.
I just got back from a week long part stay-cation and part away-cation with some friends who live in two different cities. We visited some local Austin famous places like the Oasis and Hamilton Pool. We also saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (nice movie). I always feel so blessed after I get to spend time with these particular friends because I’ve known them for 20+ years now. Our kids have virtually grown up together and at one point in each of their lives, they thought they were cousins. It didn’t matter that we looked different, to them they just felt like family. I feel lucky to have them in my and my kids lives.
During this time, I read a very interesting book (that most of the rest of the world already knows about because the movie is now out starring Julia Roberts) Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Amazon Link) by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was if the author was writing parts of my story! It got enough positive reviews to warrant a movie starring Julia Roberts but it certainly touched a nerve with some of the Amazon reviewers who decided it was self indulgent! One of the moms at a water park we went to saw I was reading it and told me how great it was and she loved it. She told me “just wait until you get to the part when she’s in India.” This is obviously a book that elicits very different responses from people depending where they are in their life/spiritual journey.
I won’t quote some of passages (that I desperately want to) here because my blog is read by many people…not just women age 30+ going through a mid-life awakening and search for meaning. This is a non-fiction account of the author’s experience of taking one year ‘off’ to find God/herself. She does not have kids and received a hefty book advance which makes this a much easier endeavor. She spends 4 months in Italy (eating), 4 months in India (praying), and 4 months in Indonesia, specifically Bali (loving). She writes about divorce, marriage, God, spirituality, crushes, love, food, different cultures, depression, not wanting to live, yoga, meditation, physical intimacy, soul mates, etc. The only character in India who the author says she uses his real name is Richard from Texas. Richard has an interesting take on soul mates (see quote below) and apparently he builds houses in Austin. I SO want to run into Richard from Texas some day! Given I live in Austin, it might happen. Now for some quotes:
“Sincere spiritual investigation is, and always has been, an endeavor of methodical discipline. Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of the spazzy free-for-all.” p. 2.
I’m not going to type it all here, but the top of p. 49 she talks about how she tried to make sense of her depression and why she would feel this way from chemical, diet, seasonal, to being an artist/writer, to her situation, to her parents, to xyz and she concluded it was probably a little bit of everything and things she didn’t even understand.
“Virginia Woolf wrote, ‘Across the broad continent of a woman’s life falls the shadow of a sword.’ On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where ‘all is correct.’ But on the other side of that sword, if you’re crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, ‘all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course.’ Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous.” p. 95
“The Bhagavad Gita – that ancient Indian Yogic text – says that is is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.” p. 95
“The classical Indian sages wrote that there are three factors which indicate whether a soul has been blessed with the highest and most auspicious luck in the universe: 1. To have been born a human being, capable of conscious inquiry. 2. To have been born with – or to have developed – a yearning to understand the nature of the universe. 3. To have found a living spiritual master.” p. 124
“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it….[they] shake you up…tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you [have] to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it.” p. 149
“To know God, you need only to renounce one thing – your sense of division from God. Otherwise, just stay as you were made, within your natural character.” p. 192
“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.” p. 260
“The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I’m a failure…I’m lonely…I’m a failure…I’m lonely…) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras.” p. 325
Yes, this is a great book to read for those of you on a journey ‘to understand the nature of the universe’ which is a means to understand yourself.
A long time Adviser/Mentor of mine, who also happens to be a very successful investor, sent me a link to the Venture Capital Human Capital (VCHC) report. The findings were interesting but not too surprising (except for possibly the average age of the founding team, given I founded my first company at the “didn’t know any better” age of 26) from my vantage point. I have embedded the report below so you should be able to scroll through the pages.
They say: “In part 1 of our first-ever Venture Capital Human Capital Report, we look at the race of founders, the racial composition of founding teams, age of founding teams and the # of founders of VC backed companies to see if there is any relationship between these characteristics and the VC funding received.” Some of their findings:
87% of Founders are White; All-Asian Teams Raise the Most Funding
Nationally, South Asian and East/Southeast Asians are funded to a similar extent
83% of Teams are all White. All Asian teams raise more money.
Average founding team is age 35 to 44 years old.
39% of founders were CEO/Founders before. Sales/Marketing and Product Management/Development were common previous roles.
Majority of companies have two or more founders, but a third are led by one founder.
Most people think the opposite of love is hate, but really it isn’t, and I think most people know this if they take the time to think about it. If people love your products, you do great. If you have a group of people who hate your products, you are still likely to do OK. Take for example the iPhone. People love it because Apple somehow convinced many of us of its greatness. Then there are those who hate it (see iPhone4 vs. HTC Evo YouTube video) and it still does great and its main competitor the Android phone is doing well because people love it. They just spread the word in a less visible/audible way. Another example is twitter or facebook. Some people love them and others think they are a complete waste of freaking time, but they are both doing well from an adoption if not a profitability standpoint.
The same is true of people. Some people love Steve Jobs (founder of Apple) and some hate him for his megalomaniac ways. More often than not people apparently hate Larry Ellison (founder of Oracle) but they still keep buying Oracle products. Some people love president Barack Obama but some hate him for the change he represents and for his sometimes questionable political decisions. The same goes for Rush Limbaugh and former president Bill Clinton for his promiscuous way. Everyone seemed to love Lady Diana and despise Prince Charles because he loved another woman not nearly as beautiful and sweet as Lady Di. The vast majority of people adored Mother Theresa and Gandhi. Some people love hard rock or country music and some can’t stand either. So the products, people, and genre’s that people don’t care about are the one’s that no one gets emotionally charged about either way, and they disappear or have a very small niche.
So the opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy. What kind of company, product, person are you or do you represent? One that people love or hate? Do they not care enough to pay attention? Do they care if you throw your products into the sea or a landfill? Do they care if you throw yourself into the sea or a landfill? Will they notice if you walk out the door? If they don’t care and you are feeling like furniture (song lyric alert), then maybe it’s time to build another product, start/join another company, transform yourself so people notice you/your products, change your life situation, and/or buy new furniture! All of these things are much easier said than done except, of course, for ‘buying new furniture.’
To me, a sense of humor is really important. But funny enough what some people think is funny others don’t. The best comedians appeal to a majority of people with their jokes because usually they pick on the insecurities many of us have. If you can’t laugh at yourself, your mistakes, or even others from time to time, you’ll go insane. In my opinion, a good sense of humor is important with friends, family, and in the workplace. I like to laugh and I like to make others laugh. I’m certainly not a comedian by any stretch of the imagination, but I tend to show my humor much more off blog than on blog because I really don’t know what will resonate with you hundreds upon hundreds of readers out there. (Are you still there? Feedburner, Google Analytics and WordPress stats say you are. )
There are two cartoons that I think are hilarious that my kids watch. I like to watch them too and my kids ask me (while they are laughing) why I think they are so funny and I tell them “I just do.” They are Penguins of Madagascar (based on the DreamWorks movie series Madagascar) and Emmy award winning Disney channel’s Phineas and Ferb. King Julien, the ring-tailed lemur, cracks me up in his self absorbed ways in Penguins of Madagascar. The crafty penguins with their dry wit, make me laugh out loud.
The creativity (and obliviousness) of the two little step brothers in Phineas and Ferb, their older classically teenage sister (Candace) who is always trying to BUST them in their over-the-top, dangerous projects, and Perry the Platypus who is always busting the evil Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, are so well ‘cast’ together. The brother’s Firecamp Girl (play on Girl Scouts) friend Isabella helps them with their projects and always greets them with a “Watcha doing?” when she sees them. According to the Wikipedia link, the creators of Phineas and Ferb pitched the concept for 16 freaking long years before Disney picked it up. Wow! To me, it’s pure genius.
I also just rented Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, Life of Brian, and The Holy Grail because a friend (Earl Lundquist – soccer blogger) mentioned that he and the family were watching Monty Python on one of his facebook updates. It reminded me that I hadn’t seen those movies in a really long time, and I think Monty Python is classic British wit that pokes fun of many sensitive subjects (religion, politics, personal relationships, gender) at its finest. I re-watched Meaning of Life last night and it still is so funny. The scene where Death comes to visit, or the scene where the professor is trying to teach sex-ed to a seemingly uninterested group of boys by going through the mechanical acts of procreation with his wife, or the scene where the Catholic mother is doing the dishes and gives birth to her 30th child and they sing about not being able to use protection, or the scene where they come to harvest a liver from a live donor are just classic.
I can’t wait until my kids are old enough to watch them with me. I think if they can laugh at themselves or find the humor in things, they will hopefully be happier individuals overall. [Although I do have a limit to the bodily functions humor they both seem to like.] I hope they find Monty Python funny too and don’t roll their eyes at me and think how embarrassing their mother is, but I’m prepared for the worst. Well, maybe my sense of humor is odd, but hey at least I can laugh at something (some people are so serious they can’t see the lighter side of things). Plus they say laughter is the best medicine and it can be just what you need to make a breakthrough in a tough project at home or work. <— that’s me Laughing Out Loud (LOL).
I often refer to my kids as little ventures (i.e. start-ups). They are so unique and the most important ventures in my life. This week has been a tough week because my daughter was home sick for 3 days. She was better the last day but considering she had a really high temperature the day before, I figured it best to keep her home one more day. Her dad and I juggled watching her so we could both make our important meetings. I even called the teenage girl who lives across the street who we’ve used for babysitting before to come watch her for a few hours today. Fortunately, it’s summer so she was able to come over on short notice and my daughter likes her.
My son has been going to summer camp while she has been sick and my daughter likes the camp so much that she wanted to go despite being sick. I was a little concerned about sending them to the YMCA summer camp because they wouldn’t know anyone there and they usually know someone. Turns out the first week they went, they did end up knowing someone…a boy from my son’s soccer team and his younger sister. Plus, they both were in the same section even though they are different ages so they knew each other although they hung out with different kids. I told them to look out for each other, and I think they both rolled their eyes at me and my son said in a partially whining tone something like ‘she’s not even going to be playing with the same friends I am!’ I told him it doesn’t matter and that he should keep an eye out for her and I told her the same. My guess is that she keeps more tabs on him that he does of her.
I’m now glad they are going because they are exposed to a different crowd of kids than the private school they go to. I was a public school kid myself (except for two years at a private Episcopalian school) and although my knowledge of geography is not great because the US public schools weren’t really into teaching much about other countries, I certainly got to know many kinds of people which I think helped me during my stint at one of the largest universities in the country, UT Austin, and in business working with different kinds of people from different walks of life. I made up a little for my lack of knowledge of geography by being born into an international family who traveled a lot.
I think being around and working with a diverse set of kids, helps them prepare for the real world (college, businesses, etc.) where there are so many different kinds of people. The diversity in the workforce is so much greater than even 20 years ago. School or summer camp aren’t the only place kids can experience diversity…when my kids are older I hope to travel with them to many fun and different places around the world.
At any rate, both my kids have enjoyed the camp and have said they have made so many friends that are younger and older than they are, which to me is great. To them every kid is their friend whether they remember their name or not. It’s kind of nice to live like that…too bad as adults we don’t consider all the new people we meet our friends.
I have sometimes wondered how a fad is created. In the tech/web world, there is all this talk about ‘viral’ this and ‘viral’ that about creating a gimmick that will cause adoption of your products/services to suddenly go through the roof. Us consumers are fickle and trying to predict what we will like in a mass scale is much more art & luck than science from my viewpoint.
My kids came home after a birthday party with these little plastic toys that mostly look like junk and a waste of petroleum based products to me. I asked them what they wanted to do with them and if I should recycle them or throw them away, but they both were like ‘no way, we need those!‘ Of course need and want in a child’s mind is the same thing. My son then proceeded to take them and line them up on top of the TV. For some reason I thought his enthusiasm and interest in doing something with them was cute so now they adorn the top of the TV and will probably be there for quite some time because that’s where they ‘need‘ to be. I have to admit that I smile when I see them mostly because in my mind I see his excitement of finding a place for them that made sense to him, and I remember him smiling while he was putting them up there. (See photos of these little toys to the left and right in this post.)
They are also into these things called Silly Bandz, which are basically colored rubber bands in all sorts of different shapes and sizes (e.g., dinosaurs, sea animals, princesses, pets, etc.). I don’t know where they first got them but my son just showed up with them one day and said he got them from a friend. I think their dad bought them a bunch more. My son is pretty good at getting more of them but my daughter ends up giving hers away to other kids and then gets upset and wants more from her brother.
They both have seemingly opposite ways of dealing with these things. I remember my son would come home with a bunch of Pokemon cards, and I’d ask him where he got them. He would say “they gave them to me.“ I would ask him who gave them to him and he would say some friends at school. I would then ask him what he gave them and he said “nothing.” I said how can that be that they just gave you these and you didn’t give them anything and he said “I dunno, they just wanted to give them to me.“ I was perplexed at that but I really couldn’t ask him anything else because I know that he gets along well with other kids. I find myself wondering if this is a talent of his I should encourage or not! Now my daughter is the one who wants to give her things to people and I’ve seen her give things to her brother when he asks, but I’ve also seen him give her stuff when she asks. If someone likes her Silly Bandz and asks her for them she’ll gladly give them away, but I don’t think she really wants too but feels she has to because later (as I mentioned) she will go try to get some from her brother because she thinks it’s unfair that he now has more than she does. I try to explain to her (she’s only 5) that it’s not her brother’s fault that she has less but she doesn’t get that and then eventually her brother will let her have a few of the ones he doesn’t want. The end result is that I’ve decided they can’t take the Silly Bandz to summer camp. We’ll see how long that lasts.
So I wonder how these fads are created and I wonder when these particular ones will subside. Us humans ebb and flow in our desire for things whether they be big, life changing things or silly things like rubber bands in the shape of a dolphin.
I saw the movie Salt yesterday with a friend and it was intense. A good action/thriller with Angelina Jolie as the main character. She plays a CIA agent who is set up by Russian agents to infiltrate American intelligence, but she doesn’t know this about herself until she’s much older. Of course the bad guys always underestimate the power of true love to destroy even the most evil plots and plans. The stunts and effects were really good. However, as skinny as Angelina is, some of those stunts and fights with men twice her size are even harder to believe…but hey, it’s just a movie. My friend and I left the theater pumped with adrenaline, and we both concluded that the way the movie ended there was probably going to be a Salt II.
We decided to grab some dinner and headed over to Baby Acapulco’s which is just across the street from the theater. We were pleasantly surprised with the band who was playing that night – The Brew. They play Latin Jazz music and they were really good. She had heard of them before and I wasn’t sure if I had. We both enjoyed a margarita and the show! They even had a free group salsa lesson that I participated in despite the fact I was wearing flip flops. I’d love to take salsa or almost any kind of dance lessons some day so it was a fun experience. A bunch of us lined up in front of the stage and my practice partner ended up being another woman who was there supporting the band so she already knew how to dance salsa. She was older than me and really sweet. She just got back from Hawaii and was wearing a pretty flower in her hair. We took turns being the man in the practice sessions as did others because it was mostly women who came up to participate in the free lesson.
The Brew has a sound similar to the Gipsy Kings so beautiful and romantic. Musicians are entrepreneurs and I’m always impressed when I see a band who is able to seemingly make a living sharing their talent. To me, hearing them after watching Salt was a nice way to calm the nerves after watching an intense movie! I look forward to hearing them again sometime soon.
The lions stand defiantly,
Overlooking the aging sea.
The ocean waves around my skin;
The quiet roar won’t let me be.
The plastic cages keep me bound,
Tightly, softly in a dew-like tether.
They move my mind to places I cannot go;
Which lead me to regions nether.
So I must wait until the time,
The rising sun will shine upon my heart.
And take me to a warmer clime;
Where love is appreciated like discriminating art.
But the beast that lives in all of us,
Is harshly judged by one and all.
And will never truly live without much fuss;
Until we can safely emerge from underneath the shawl.
I decided to share another poem on my blog. This one didn’t come as easy as the Streets of Barcelona. Well, I’d say 90% of the words came, but it took longer, and I had to do more editing before it felt right. I wrote most of this while sitting next to this statue of the lion in the photo. These statues were just across the street from a little port where they launched tourist boats to sea. I played with the visual presentation a little bit. If you look closely you’ll see that one line in each stanza is slightly longer than the longest line in the previous stanza. You’ll also see that the first and third lines in the first two stanzas don’t rhyme but they do in the second two stanzas. In a poem I wrote on the airplane flight from Madrid to Dallas, the last words of the 1st and 3rd lines of each stanza relate to each other but don’t rhyme. I didn’t realize that until after I had written that one which surprised me a bit.
This poem is about the majesty of lions and the beastliness of them as well, just like humans. Humans are so powerful and noble, yet we often forget that we are also made of animal/beastly stuff that surfaces from time to time. The lions and lionesses, fortunately, have no such rules to deny their beastly sides because they are free to be what they are unless they are captured and put in a zoo.
The reference to ‘shawl’ has to do with religions that require their women to be covered up so that men cannot see any of their flesh that might tempt the beast in them. In Western religions women don’t have the same rules to hide most of their body, but I’ve come to discover I/we hide other parts of ourselves: our true minds and thoughts. As women, moms, wives, proverbial keepers of the family, we hide behind those shawls for many reasons mainly because we were told in lore they would keep us safe. The trouble is they don’t keep us safe from our true selves and what’s hiding behind those shawls might be much more provocative to others (men or women) than mere flesh, which could explain why in some parts of the world a woman’s opinion/voice is just not heard.
I’ve seen other women cling to customs/behaviors and judge others based on them. Not because they believe them to be right or true but because that’s how they were taught, and they are too afraid of change and sometimes even freedom. I’ll be writing about a book I’m reading on the topic of choice. With choice comes more freedom but also a lot of anxiety and stress. The more options we have, the more knowledge we have about the ‘paths not taken.’
One of my favorite female singers is Sarah McLachlan. My lifestyle doesn’t really allow me to keep up with all the latest things going on in the world of music, but I picked up a copy of a recent M-Music & Musicians magazine at my voice teacher’s studio, Octave Higher, this Saturday because she was on the cover. The title of the article is called Resurfacing. She just released a new album after 7 years called Laws Of Illusion (Amazon link). At the bottom of this post is a video of one of her new songs called “Loving You Is Easy,” which is probably the most upbeat song that I’ve heard from her. She says “It was based on a new relationship, and on hope and excitement and the fact that it is possible to feel this way again. I didn’t think I could. It was about the thrill of possibility and, quite frankly, lust.“ She said she is 42 and that she’s going to have “fun” tattooed on her arm because she’s determined to have more of it! She also said (and I agree) that “Writing about happiness and giddy love is tricky. It’s not as easy to write about as sadness and heavier things….happiness is quite fleeting. It’s very light and it’s not something that you can pinpoint.”
She got divorced a couple of years ago and says her music reflects much of her emotional life. I think most singers/writers works reflect their emotional lives. I know my writing does. She has two daughters named India and Taja, whose father is Indian. It’s nice to see that she has been able to use her emotional experiences to write songs. She admits it’s harder now with two small kids because “being able to have long periods of time to focus on nothing but myself and writing is long over. I live in a pretty ADD world right now.”
She is also reviving the female musician focused Lilith Fair tour that she helped start many years ago. Successful musicians to me are the ultimate entrepreneurs. They are betting against the odds of making it big that are probably 100 times greater than a technology company making it big. There are so many more people trying to be successful singers (e.g., just look at American Idol) than there are business entrepreneurs. I was reading the article and wondering how it would be to go to a studio every day of the week to work with someone as talented as her musical partner, Pierre Marchand, who helps her complete her songs. I have to say I was day dreaming a bit while I was reading the article. She has the benefit of great successes behind her before she had kids and she can play the piano as well as the guitar. I can’t play either…but there’s hope! They also featured Ozzy Osbourne in the magazine and he says he can’t play any instruments either.
I sing one of her older songs called Ice Cream (you tube link) to my kids sometimes. I drop them on the couch during the part where she sings “It’s a long way down” and they laugh hysterically. It makes me laugh while I’m singing it to them. “Your love is better than ice cream…your love is better than chocolate.”
I wonder if it’s possible to find someone out there who could be my music partner who is looking for a lyricist/singer like me and if we could both take a month or so off and create music. A nice little dream…
It’s time for another movie post. I rented The Book of Eli, Hot Tub Time Machine, Cold Souls, and saw Knight and Day in the theater. A friend of mine made fun of me the other day because I still actually have a Blockbuster card and rent movies the ‘old fashioned’ way. I know I can probably get them On Demand via Time Warner or some other high tech way, but it’s easier for me to get them from Blockbuster. Plus I can pick up some sushi take out from a store nearby. As long as I get them back in 5 days time, it works out well. Anyway, here are some quick overviews:
The Book of Eli
Set in post apocalyptic earth, the main character, Eli, is played by Denzel Washington. He is responsible for taking a book – The Book – across the devastated American continent to the west coast where it can be reproduced. It was an interesting plot and of course Eli is virtually indestructible. He relies on faith and keen insight to guide him to his destination. Near the end of his journey a young woman helps him fulfill his destination. I happened to meet the guy, Armando Kirwin, who led the special effects team for this movie at a monthly event called Nerd Nite. He was presenting that night, and I chatted with him for a bit before he gave his entertaining talk. Turns out that Armando might be able to help one of our companies at the Austin Technology Incubator (one of our interns came to the event too) so it was a good random coincidence that we met. I thought the Book of Eli was a good movie. Even though the plot was somewhat predictable, it had a surprise ending and of course the special effects were cool.
Hot Tube Time Machine
Your life will be just fine if you never see this movie. A bunch of older dudes and a teenager travel back to the 80′s when some weird Russian beverage short circuits a hot tub at a hotel the older guys used to stay when they partied. The 80′s hair styles, clothes, and music was interesting but otherwise this was a very cheesy movie with way too many weird things happening, putting down of women, and unnecessary cursing.
Cold Souls
This movie was a little bit depressing as it’s based on a premise that you can harvest and store your soul. The main character, who is an actor, is tired of his soul. It’s weighing him down so he gets it extracted and feels better but empty. He rents another soul of a Russian poet who happens to be female and his performance as an actor improves. His soul gets stolen and taken to Russia and is placed inside a woman who wants to be a better actor. They try to insert some comedic moments (e.g., the way the souls look in the jars after extraction varies from chick peas to prunes, etc.) but it all seemed very serious. I have often wondered about our souls and how it is that our souls come to be in our bodies or really what unique interaction of neurons in our brains/minds display our unique souls. Anyway, that’s too existential a topic to go into here…
Knight and Day
This was an entertaining movie with neat special effects. I heard that Tom Cruise did all of his own stunts in this movie. The main characters were Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. The film’s plot was fairly predictable with Tom being the good/bad guy and Cameron being the sometimes scared out of her mind, dim witted gal. In the end, she’s the pro and saves him but in the beginning I sometimes wanted to wonder out loud why she just didn’t get her stuff together and act like a reasonable person. Anyway, it was fun to watch. Whenever I see a Tom Cruise movie, I wonder how they shoot the film to make him look as tall as the actresses he usually plays across.
I was reminded of a few other movies I had seen a while back when I saw the previews in in the beginning of the rentals. My memory of them has mostly faded but a couple of really good ones were:
A Single Man – An intense movie about a man trying to cope with the loss of his longtime partner. It seemed to be set in the 50′s or 60′s when being gay was not as accepted as it is now. He tries to find the courage to live and comes close to killing himself several times until a student of his connects with him and gives him hope. It has a tragic twist ending. The movie has several flashbacks to the main actor’s time with his partner and does a good job of illustrating the pain/feelings he is struggling with.
Cheri (with Michelle Pfeiffer) – a French courtesan and a young man, who is the son of another courtesan, have an affair and subsequently realize they are in love. The character played by Michelle has the advantage of age and experience on her side to help her mask her true pain and feelings when the young man gets married because that was what men his age were supposed to do. He being less experienced in the tumultuous, often painful experience of forbidden, unrealistic love cannot cope and is miserable until he finally kills himself. A powerful movie.
The Runaways – This movie is based on Joan Jett, famous female rock star, and her first band. This was also an intense, bizarre movie with more than enough footage about her sexual preferences and drug use. It’s a deep look inside the life of a rock star and how extra hard it was to make it as a female rock star in that day and age. It’s impressive that she and her other band members lived, but then again it’s impressive that most members of rock bands live given their stereotypical hard running lifestyles. I have to say this movie made me cringe a few times but at the same time I was proud of her and her female band members for having the guts to go all the way to fame-dom!
Tonight I had the honor of being invited to an exclusive look at photos taken by successful bio technology executive, Bruce Leander, at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. I invited my friend Michelle Ewalt (fabulous business/executive coach) to join me, and we both had a really nice time and met some interesting people. Bruce retired from a full time career in the business/bio tech world a few years ago.
We had Bruce out to the Austin Technology Incubator a while back to talk to our companies about building a great corporate culture. He has a strong reputation for focusing on company culture thereby making it a critical part of the success of the companies he was involved in. I wonder if flowers have their own little growing cultures…well we do know that if they are nourished properly and given the right amount of attention, they thrive better than those who aren’t given the same amount of resources and attention.
My good friend Sandy Blanchard, whose photos I have used on several occasions to accentuate my blog posts, also takes fabulous pictures of nature and has some fantastic pictures of flowers. Maybe one day, she’ll also be able to exhibit her photography in public.
At any rate, it’s always nice to see someone share their passion with the world. I’m working on sharing one of my passions - singing – with the world soon…even if it’s only online and not in person. I have almost finished recording one song, from the 70s I think, with my voice teacher. It’s not a completely professional recording but just as in the tech world, sometimes the best end products start out with a beautiful hack.
To the left is a photo taken by Bruce from the Wildflower Center website.
It’s a valuable book for any manager/leader/entrepreneur to read because it discusses in simple terms how many of us have challenges processing our emotions and using them as tools to get a better understanding of what is happening inside of us and outside of us. So many of us have been trained not to fully feel our emotions or stop them because we have been judged, place judgment on them, or simply feel we can’t deal with them right now. We are a bundle of feelings and they surface, just like thoughts, to give us data points to help us navigate this crazy world. I was speaking to one of our entrepreneurs at the Austin Technology Incubator recently and he said something like “I don’t have time to feel right now.“ I could relate to that statement because when I was running my companies, I put many things on the back burner and one of those things was my feelings. The same thing happens when you are parenting little kids who take so much of your mental and physical energy…you feel like you have to keep up a front of having it all together so the kids don’t see what you are processing. But you know what? Even if they don’t see it, they feel it. Of course your ‘gut feeling’ is always right there but sometimes we ignore it and defer to the ‘powers that be’ when if we had only listened to it earlier we might have taken action earlier and ended up in a better place earlier.
Dr. Frederick used very powerful examples based on his client’s stories that many people can relate to. It’s hard to summarize this book, so I’m just going to highlight some key quotes/takeaways:
He says that “in general the spectrum of our emotions is actually made up of eight primary feelings and their related shades and combinations,” which are Anger, Sadness, Happiness, Love, Fear, Guilt-Shame, Surprise, and Disgust. (p. 54-55). He lumps Guilt-Shame together as one category but makes a distinction that I found very enlightening. Guilt is feeling bad about something you did and shame is feeling as if you are a bad person.
The fear of feelings is apparently common. “In fact, most of us are afraid of our feelings. We’re afraid to feel the full extent of our emotions and afraid of being emotionally alive and present with others. We’re afraid of being vulnerable, of drawing attention to ourselves, of looking like a fool. We’re afraid of being overwhelmed, of losing control, of getting out of hand. We’re afraid of being seen for who we really are.” So “We distract ourselves, push our feelings aside, stuff them back in, and hope they’ll go away. But they don’t. They keep trying to get our attention, to be heard, to be responded to — that’s their nature. They reemerge as the sense that something is off, odd, or not right; as worry, irritability, restlessness, anxiety, or depression.” (p. xiv-xv).
In the last few years there have been many studies on emotions leading to a better understanding of how the brain works. “We now know that emotions can play a more powerful role than thoughts in bringing about well-being and lasting change. Our feelings can arise much faster and be more intense than our thoughts. At times, no matter what we do to suppress them or how hard we try to control them, they’ll have the edge. In addition, recent discoveries in the field of neuroplasticity…reveal that emotional experience actually has the power to rewire our brain!” (p. xvii). “In recent years, technological advances have enabled scientists to understand more precisely just how the brain functions. Joseph LeDoux, in his fascinating book The Emotional Brain, clearly illustrates how the neural connections that run from the emotional parts of the brain to the thinking parts of the brain are actually much stronger and more numerous than the connections that run in the other direction. This helps explain why at times emotions are able to overwhelm our thoughts and dominate our thinking and why it can be difficult to control strong emotions through rational thought alone.” (p. 18).
There are so many ways we avoid our feelings that I can’t type them all here but I recognized myself in many of the descriptions including things like “Overthinking issues, getting ‘stuck’ in your head. Having to be in control or being overly self-sufficient (otherwise, your strong facade might crack and allow your emotions to come through).” (p. 78)
The amygdala is a cluster of neural circuitry deep inside our brain and is a storehouse for significant emotional memories. It also gauges the emotional significance of events and it’s the place where fear originates so it has the ability to overwhelm rational thought and overlook reality. It has the ability to hijack the brain. (p. 90).
He discusses letting yourself actually feel the emotion through it’s entirety. When you don’t, it never gets really dealt with and you keep reliving it instead of letting the emotion come through like a wave to its natural conclusion. It’s a process and doesn’t happen overnight. Attaching a label to a feeling (e.g., anger, sadness, etc.) dampens the fear response and decreases emotional distress. (p. 94). He also gives tools to help you name and process the feeling.
As a business person and a parent, understanding and paying attention to your feelings about situations can help you make better decisions in all aspects of your life. I know so many entrepreneur’s who look back and wish they had listened to their ‘gut feelings’ during critical times but they were too afraid to do so. I’ve been there and done that! The maternal (parental) instinct (based on feelings) is strong and I’m not sure if there have been any studies done but I’m guessing that instinct has saved many a baby’s life.
We shouldn’t be afraid of our feelings because they “1. Impart information. 2. Provide insight. 3. Give us guidance.” (p. 135)
Here’s to your emotional health and well-being! I’ll end this post with a quote the author has on p. 131 that starts Chapter 7 of his book: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk to bloom.” – Anais Nin.
I saw the movie The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo this past weekend with a friend and it was way more intense than I thought it would be. It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen a dramatic, serial killer type movie. It got me so angry at the evil, sadistic criminals and what they did to those poor innocent girls. The movie was really well done and the plot was strong. It had such an interesting mix of characters in different phases of their lives (e.g., an 80 year old, a middle aged divorced guy, a 24 year old girl) with vastly different experiences. They intertwined with each other nicely. Although we are taught that it’s wrong to take justice into our own hands, you can’t help but be proud of the 24 year old girl/woman (Lisbeth) who didn’t sit back and let herself be the victim unlike the woman they were looking for who they thought was murdered but actually ran away 40 years ago from the people hurting her. Lisbeth didn’t run away from the people who hurt her, she paid them back in spades with a dose of their own medicine and made sure they wouldn’t hurt anyone else. It got her in trouble when she was little, but it made her hard and street smart as she got older. This movie is apparently the first in a set of three based on books written by Swedish author and journalist, Stieg Larsson, and the series was published after his death in 2004. I look forward to seeing the next one.
I’m reading a book right now that I plan on writing about soon. It’s a bit of a touchy/feel-y book but very powerful if you can absorb the concepts. Maybe I’ll add in brief movie reviews to my future blog posts. I’ve been renting movies and seen some in the theater over the last several months. I finally saw Avatar, but on DVD. I could tell I missed a lot of the stunning visual experience not watching it on the big screen. The plot was predictable in a Romeo & Juliet (i.e., different families, tribes, cultures, species, whatever) sort of way except for both Human & Blue Alien lovers live, don’t accidentally die, and the humans were defeated. I rented Valentine’s Day, kind of cute because of Ashton Kutcher but otherwise not a very strong plot and The Men Who Stare at Goats starring George Clooney (handsome!) which was good but apparently not as funny or good as the book. It was interesting to see Clooney play a character that is psychic.
I took the kids to see Toy Story 3 a couple of weekends ago and of that’s a great one. I started crying way more than I probably should have when the Lots ‘O Huggin’ Bear didn’t pay back the favor of Woody (the main toy character) saving his life and let all the toys go towards their death when he could have saved them. My daughter kept saying (because she was sitting on my lap) “Are you crying mommy?“ I just said “yes, because I was sad that Lotso the bear was so mean.” I couldn’t tell her that mommy is still working through a lot of unresolved issues and the reason for the overly abundant tears was far more complicated? I cried when I saw the Disney movie Up. My son even said he felt sad when he watched it. I didn’t used to cry that much but those damn Disney movie writers/animators sure know how to push those buttons in me. I think I need to rent more of them…
I saw a play/musical called The Drowsy Chaperone this past Friday with some friends at a local Austin theater called Zach (if you click that link you can even see a short video) and it was very good. The narrator was hilarious. He is an obviously gay guy who was married once but now is alone in his apartment listening to old vinyl records, one of which is of the musical The Drowsy Chaperone. He intervenes during the performance with his opinions of each scene with great commentary from his life experience. He is so excited about the musical, where most of the cast end up marrying each other (i.e., 4 weddings take place at the end), but also sad and lonely about his situation about not finding the right person to be with. Actors to me seem to be entrepreneurs, selling themselves for each show in the hopes of getting cast. I’m guessing that unless you are on Broadway in New York, acting is a tough life financially.
I wonder where the dads are in these animated movies?!
(Amazon Link) by 
<— that’s me Laughing Out Loud (LOL).
(Amazon link). At the bottom of this post is a video of one of her new songs called “Loving You Is Easy,” which is probably the most upbeat song that I’ve heard from her. She says “It was based on a new relationship, and on hope and excitement and the fact that it is possible to feel this way again. I didn’t think I could. It was about the thrill of possibility and, quite frankly, lust.“ She said she is 42 and that she’s going to have “fun” tattooed on her arm because she’s determined to have more of it! She also said (and I agree) that “Writing about happiness and giddy love is tricky. It’s not as easy to write about as sadness and heavier things….happiness is quite fleeting. It’s very light and it’s not something that you can pinpoint.”
(Amazon link) by Ronald J. Frederick, Ph.D.
