Just my kind of inspiration

Hollywood sure knows how to get you going...


(and yes, it's another VIDEO! Can't see it? Go straight to the source. Well, almost.)

Extra points if you get them all.

Seven hours flies by when...

...you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. Well that, or your own and your friend's life and romantic travails to solve.

In that case, seven hours seems like barely enough. We were still fighting for air time when we pulled into the driveway. It was a good drive.

There's nothing like spending hours upon hours driving through nothing to bring out the inner philosopher, sage, counselor and magi in all of us.

Here's to auto-therapy—Henry Ford style.

“One’s destination is never a place,
but a new way of seeing things.”

- Henry Miller

From the ridiculous to the sublime?

Diane Sawyer recently interviewed Randy Pausch on 60 Minutes - during which we saw this, an incredible experience in an incredible life, which sadly will be too short.


Can you see the video? Can you? If not, here's the link.

Luckily we have 23/6 to redress the maudlin and the mawkish:

...wait until every pompous idiot realizes America's insatiable hunger for inspirational advice and tries to copycat [Pausch's] success with a Last Lecture of their own.

And because the pompous idiots are not only pompous, they're idiots, 23/6 created the Last Lecture-o-Tron. Because that's just the kind of people they are.

If you need some inspiration

My dad forwarded this to me this morning. And by the way, along with some really, and I do mean really, lame jokes (though, to be fair, some pretty funny ones too), my parents send me the greatest things... go Mom and Dad!

My dad said he had nothing to add to the video. I, on the other hand...

Sometimes things come across the transom at such the exact right time that you've got to wonder who's managing things in the karmic post office. This is one of those times.

Are you going to be a Tigger or an Eeyore? Seriously, is that not the fundamental question? You can boil every day, every choice, every action down to that... Tigger/Eeyore? Tigger/Eeyore? Yup - that's it. And it gets pretty gloomy over in Eeyoreville, lemme tell ya -- not a lot of dreams there. Like I said, this video was scary timely.

I also watched the original lecture this guy gave at Carnegie Mellon. Different and the same. Love that.

Oh, my dad did have this to say in his email: "wow." I think that sums it up nicely.

Show off, do good

The better your vocabulary, the more rice these guys donate through the UN World Food Program.

Don't ask me how or why - but tell all your prolix, sesquipedalian friends about it.

They said this day would never come.

I can name a few of them. Peggy Noonan. Christopher Buckley. Ted Sorensen. (Not, obviously, in any particular order.) Their names may or may not live on in any real famy (there's "infamy" - why not "famy"? seriously, why not? Actually, I have a list of words I can ask that about, but another day...), but their words will...

Remember "a thousand points of light"? Courtesy Noonan.

Remember “uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.”? Vintage Sorensen.

So, anyway, until today, I had no idea who was writing Obama's speeches. And I think he or she is pretty damn good. Huh. And, as you know, there's nothing I like better than an unanswered question and a keyboard.

Turns out, it's a 26 year-old former member of John Kerry's staff, named Jon Favreau. (No, not that Jon Favreau.)



And I think we'll remember his words. For quite some time.


(Oh, and here's a good analysis from Slate of whether or not the "words? just words?" portion of this particular speech is plagiarism.)

My favorite Oscar speech EVER

1998.
Life Achievement.
Stanley Donen.


Who also had this to say about being a director that night: "You find yourself a great script and great actors. Then you show up -- and stay the hell out of the way. But you gotta show up or else you can't take the credit and win one of these guys."
'Nuff said.

not exactly equal time, but...

Ten thousand years? Yeah, we're probably not too concerned about that.

Here's hoping

Voltaire said, "I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it."
For the record, I don't care who you vote for, as long as you vote. Also for the record, my dad is going to be a regional delegate in WA for Barack Obama. I think that's pretty damn cool.

If you didn't catch it there, catch it here

I first read about Why We Write on Nikki Fink's blog, which, if you have even a passing interest in the entertainment industry, is a must read. I don't care if you hate blogs, if you don't have time to pee, if you know it all, if you already read the trades, I don't even care if you don't know how to read - read her (and, okay, I do care if you don't know how to read, but that's material for another day - or post). Anyway, back to my point - Why We Write:

WHY WE WRITE is a series of essays by prominent - and not so prominent - TV and Film writers… and by people like you: writers and those who hope someday to call themselves writers. Conceived by Charlie Craig and Thania St. John, the campaign hopes to inspire and inform all writers.

I haven't read all the essays, but the ones I have read... well, let me put it this way: at the same time I wanted to write about them, I also wanted to put down my pen (fold up my laptop?) in defeat, because, man, those guys can WRITE.

I read Damon Lindelof's today (Co-Creator and Executive Producer of Lost) - seriously, the Dual Plume Protocol? And can you email someone in space? That's a damn good question.

I remember when my imagination ran that way, like an unstoppable train careening down the tracks, passing possibility, whizzing by plausibility, only slowing down when glimpses of the improbable were just ahead.

Like Greg Berlanti (Executive Producer of Dirty Sexy Money and Brothers and Sisters) said in his great essay - the worst was when he stopped writing. I concur - the worst was when life seemed to conspire to sit on my imagination and flatten it into a whoopee cushion with no whoop left, while I "got a job." Without getting maudlin (after all, who wants to read a maudlin blog?), let's just say, life is better when you're writing. For sure, my life is better when I'm writing.

So, although these writers are mind-bogglingly intimidating, they are also quite inspiring. So... thanks.

The power of too

Eliza lesson #274: You're just right the way you are.
Yesterday, trying to impress upon my niece Eliza the danger of going out into the street on her own, her mom told Eliza that the cars couldn't see her because she was "too little." And Eliza, tears streaming down her face (more because both Mama and Papa had scolded her for going into the street), cried "I'm not too little. I'm very big!"
She's right - she's not too little. She's just the right size.
We could all do to remember that a bit more often - we're just right the way we are.

Can't you just feel the moon shine?

All right, this will (really) not be a surprise to anyone who knows me well, or even a little. I kind of have a thing for Carole King. Not really a small thing either. Kind of a big thing. I mean, I flew with my best friend to Tokyo earlier this month just to see her perform.

So last week, you can only imagine my state of alt when I saw Carole King perform with James Taylor in a venue the size of a shoebox. As my friend Melani put it – a Gillian-dream-come-true night. And it was.

The joke has always been “I want to be Carole when I grow up” – not that I wanted to be a songwriter or singer (a good thing, considering I can’t carry a note in bucket) – what I wanted to be was as thoroughly immersed in my talent, as astoundingly generous with it, and having as much fun as she always seems to be. And did she, and he, ever have fun back where they’d performed together 30 some odd years before (“evidently,” quipped JT, claiming not to remember much of that time period at all). 

Did you know that James calls Carole “baby grand?” Or that he heard, and remembers hearing despite earlier confessions, Carole sing “You’ve Got a Friend” right there in the Troubadour and asking her if he could put it on his album? “You did a good job with it,” she told him last week with a wink, RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. 

In my mind, I’m going to Carole King – can’t you just see the sunshine?