1: Show up at the party naked.
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The Three Stooges, Deconstructed
People Who Say “Back In The Day” Can Bite Me
First of all, the expression is “Back in my day” not “Back in the day”. I hope this doesn’t shock you but your day was not the day, it was simply your day, you daft, narcissistic prat. And another thing: you’re 30 years old, for crying out loud. When I was a kid – back in the day – this expression was reserved for old-timers who had played trombone in the army band during The Great War (that’s World War I to you), not thirty-something, energy-drink swilling posers. It was for men who bet on horses, travelled on coal trains and whose idea of casual wear was army-beige khakis, not factory-shredded jeans and an Ed Hardy tank top.
Having Watched “Les Misérable” I’ve Concluded My Wife Owes Me Much More Than Sex
Some films grow on you, and Les Misérable is no exception: with each passing minute I hated it more and more. You know how at an open mic the worst comics seem to have the most material? That’s how I felt watching this movie.
When I agreed to accompany my wife to see it at our local theater, I figured it to be a straightforward exchange: she watches the movie with me, I have sex with her. Little did I know that the winner of the Academy Award for “Longest Picture” would make me feel entitled to much, much more.
Leave it to “Les Mis” (even the title must be shortened, as if excessive length is the point of the film) to make you root against the underdog. At about halfway through the movie I thought that surely they must begin wrapping things up. A gentleman knows when to leave the room, right? Anyway, 45 minutes later I’m beginning to root for France’s aristocracy to acquire weapons of mass destruction – and to use them.
The problem with “Les Mis”, say its critics, is that it has “one good song”. This is giving it far more credit than it deserves. The “Master Of The House” melody rears its head throughout the movie. Indeed, several of the songs seem to appear multiple times, as if despite the rough-draft feel of the music they still felt compelled to recycle most of them. If each song appeared only once it might run the length of a normal feature film instead of an incredibly self-indulgent two-hours and thirty-eight minutes.
Like the lines at Disneyland, the story is structured to give the impression that it is, at all times, almost over. Alas, you enter the dome of Space Mountain in order to turn that “last corner”, or learn that the Anne Hathaway character finally dies, only to learn that you’re in for the most self-indulgent two hours and thirty seven minutes of your life.
At least at Disneyland you know you’re being taken for a ride.
How I Grew My YouTube Following
When I’m in Turkey there’s a barber I like to pop into in the coastal town of Kusadasi. He gives me what, in Turkey, I call “the standard”: haircut, shave, arm, hand, neck, ear, temple massage and wraps it all up my setting fire to stray clippings on my face and neck with an open flame.
This time, however, my wife videotaped the affair – I use the word advisedly – and as you can see he couldn’t resist giving me a little extra business. Anyway, I posted it to YouTube and it began spreading quite quickly – several thousand views right off the bat – and as of this writing is at around 40,000 views.
This is not the only humorous clip on my YouTube channel – I am a comedian after all – but the speed with which this clip spread was an order of magnitude faster than any of my others. I checked out Youtube’s handy analytics and quickly discovered the source of its popularity: someone had posted it to a fetish website catering to – I’m going out on a limb here – men who enjoy other men being tickled.
So my advice for success on YouTube is, unlike my Turkish barber, is to forget “playing to the balcony” and seek out a niche audience – kids obsessed with Star Wars, housewives aching for cute cat videos, men who crave to see other men being tickled with varying degrees of permission – and let them spread the good word for you.
Mass Marketing Is Suicide
Do you know anyone who can’t name a single song by one of the most-successful show-business acts of all time, The Rolling Stones? What about a song Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber?
If these performers don’t appeal to everybody – or even a majority – it’s not because they don’t market to everybody, it’s because no one appeals to everybody. Your Frank Sinatra fan is generally not your Elvis fan who is not generally your Led Zeppelin fan. Take a moment and imagine any of the above performers marketing themselves to the masses instead of a niche (young English blues fans from the ’60’s, gay male Manhattanites or pre- and early-teen girls, respectively). To the extent that these entities appeal to the masses is not because they were marketed to the masses but because they marketed themselves to a very small group of people who were pre-disposed and who couldn’t help themselves from spreading news of the object of their fanaticism.
Service providers like to tell you about their successes, giving the (deliberate) impression that that’s all they know: success. I hope this doesn’t shock you, but service providers are just like everyone else – they experience failure on average as much as everybody else (even more often, if they’re working hard). Once I received an email from one of my agents informing me that an upcoming two-week contract was being cancelled because of my performance for the same “international” demographic was not particularly well received. You and I know that “international audiences” really means two things: non-English speaking and lowest-common denominator appeal. Was I upset? You bet – if only because I was counting on the income. Did I (and, by extension, my agent) panic? Of course not: we learned something more valuable than the lost income: that my audience is Anglo. If you learned that your audiences was freckled, might you use this information and focus more marketing in Ireland?
Concluding from this experience that I’m probably not the best choice for international audiences is only half the lesson. In fact, it’s less than half the lesson. The main point is who DO I appeal to : the English-speaking world. Call me crazy, but somehow I think this is a sufficient fraction of the world’s population off whom one can earn a living. Indeed, more successful entrepreneurs have done very well marketing to a tiny fraction of that world. The next time a “mostly-Latin” or “international audience” or an “America’s Got Talent!” demographic (pre-teen girls) is in play I – and others – know that I’m not your guy. But that’s like knowing the earth is “mostly flat” – when the earth is, in fact, mostly round. When opportunities arise for an “entirely-English speaking” audience arises (one can whittle it down much, much narrower), who do you think they’ll go with: me or a unicyclist?
This is no put-down of “international performers” or anyone else who resonates with markets other than my own. That there are two sides of the coin is precisely the point. All things being equal, I would prefer to appeal more to the English-speaking world than the non-English speaking world, just as I would rather appeal to internet users than non-internet users; to loudmouths rather than to wallflowers; to early-adopters rather than the mass of wait-and-sees.
It’s tempting and perfectly understandable to market to the masses, but it is a waste of time and money. You’ll get a far better return on your investment going after those who are already receptive to what you have to offer.
When You Run Over A Deer In Germany You’re Supposed To Call A Hunter
A while ago, in Germany, I was driving home late at night as my wife slept in the passenger seat. Quick as lightning, the head of a deer pierced the beam of the driver’s side headlight followed by a weirdly satisfying “thump”. I’m not sure what woke my wife – the thump or my involuntary gasp – but I immediately told her what was obvious to me: that I had just hit a deer. My wife, characteristically, didn’t believe me. “But I saw it” I protested. “I hit it right in the head.” It was after midnight, we were tired, our young son was sleeping in the backseat and we were on the autobahn. These factors, along with my wife’s skepticism about what had occurred, contributed to our decision to continue driving through the night. Also, I didn’t know any better.
When we pulled into our driveway, I turned off the engine instead of making the white-knuckle, thread-the-needle maneuver that is parking your car in a middle-class German garage. I stepped out of the car, approached the driver’s-side headlight and there, sure enough, was a dent about the size of a basketball. It was hard to tell what amazed my wife more: that I had hit a deer or that I was correct in stating that I had hit a deer. Anyway, I pulled into the garage, we carried the kid and our things upstairs and decided we would deal with the details tomorrow.
My wife called her insurance company who sent out an agent. Having inspected our car he decided, to our surprise, that there was no evidence that we had hit a deer: no blood, no fur, etc. My wife took this personally, suggesting that it meant that the insurance company viewed her claim exactly as she had initially viewed mine: as “less than factual”.
Another contributing factor, she explained, was our failure to telephone, immediately after impact, either the correct government agency or an area hunter. With no confirmation that I had killed the deer outright, an injured deer can go a little nuts and pose a danger to others. This fascinated me no end. How does that work, exactly, at two in the morning?
“Hi, my name is David Deeble. I’m sorry to wake you but I just hit a deer out here on the A2. Anyway, it all happened so fast that I can’t be sure if I killed it outright and I thought maybe you could come out here and make sure the job gets finished. Can you help me out?”
When you reach the end zone, try to act as if you’ve been there before.
Christ, look at me. Why didn’t I take the advice of virtuallly every football coach in the country? You’d think that as an entertainer with decades of experience I’d have the presence of mind to flash my friendily-posing-for-a-picture-with-an-audience-member grin, not the I-cannot-believe-I-just-did-The-Tonight-Show smile.
It doesn’t help matters that I look small enough to be Jay’s puppet in a ventriloquist act. Let’s talk turkey – I’m a little man. Not short – little. I could be a jockey or one of those guys who assembles the sailboat inside the little bottle. I mean, look at the two of us: I could fit inside him, for crying out loud. (That’s not an offer, Jay). There’s not much I can do about the fact that I could easily represent the lollipop guild but would it have killed me to put on some kind of bulky jacket or something for the photo?
And why is Jay pointing at me? Am I supposed to be pointing too? And at who? That would have been nice – both of us pointing at me.
The producer, Steve Ridgeway, didn’t wait for me to ask what I should wear. “We’d like you to dress somewhere between church clothes and beach clothes. “You got it”, I said. I would have preferred my usual jacket and tie but when the producer tells you to dress between church and the beach, you dress between church and the beach.
On the set Jay asked me if I was married and I said “No” – true enough at the time. “Maybe it’s the 1950’s shirt” he said. I remember thinking “Not a good time and place to have a glass jaw”. The next time I’m asked on national tv if I”m married I’ll say “Yes – to a woman”. True enough at this time.
Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was originally scheduled to appear on the same episode but she had to reschedule in order to write some law which had to be passed so that we could read it or something. Actor William H. Macy took her place in the downstairs dressing room while John Mellencamp and I took the upstairs dressing rooms. Mellencamp looked like a real Marlboro Man, regularly stepping outside the studio to light up next to Jay’s parking space. This guy doesn’t have wrinkles in his face – he has crevices.
Anyway, Mellencamp’s dressing room was directly across from mine and with his door always open, I could plainly tell that his dressing room was identical to mine: nothing fancy, actually kind of plain, but perfectly serviceable. My dressing room had a nice fruit spread and a shower, although it appeared I wasn’t expected to use it: there were no towels. There was, however, a shriveled-up dirty bar of soap on the shower’s soap tray which I imagined was left over by George Gobel or somebody. Maybe I should have kept it as a souvenir. Instead I received some nice pictures of me and Jay, a not-terribly-fancy “Tonight Show” watch, a non-union paycheck for $400.
And the picture.
How To Use Social Media To Kill An Entire Afternoon
Maybe you’re one of those people who has only heard of the term “social media”. Or maybe you have already set-up an account (with the help of your teenager) on Facebook, Twitter, or social media platform. But the question remains: “How can I use these sites to waste an entire day?”First of all, don’t be intimidated: it’s not as difficult as it sounds. Once you learn the ropes, you’ll be wasting entire days of otherwise productive time sharing links to cat videos, taking pictures of your cappuccino and compulsively updating your status on everything from Google+ to Linkedin.
The tips below will be limited to the two most popular social media sites, Facebook and Twitter. The same principles applies to Pinterest, Google+ and other sites (the only difference being that on MySpace you’ll want to make sure your computers speakers are turned off).
One thing I like to do what I call “cycling”. Don’t be intimidated by the technical jargon! Cycling is simply moving from one social media platform to another over and over again in a cycle, compulsively posting and responding to the posts of others, then responding to the responses of those responses. Also sending out Farmville requests – people love that. This creates what I call a the “looping effect” and there is literally no end to it.
Let’s go over an example. Let’s say you wake up and take photograph of your navel on your mobile device. You then post the photo on Facebook, taking care to include the photo’s location, date, and a short, humorous text (i.e., “My navel!”). Once posted, login to Twitter (bookmark and remain logged-in to all your social media sites!). Post the same photo to your Twitter account (#mynavel!, @presidentbarackobama). Then return to Facebook and respond to those who have weighed in on your navel. Then repeat.
“But can I really kill an entire working day on just Facebook and Twitter?” you ask? I’m here to tell you the answer is an unqualified “Yes!” Let’s say, for example, that your friends aren’t weighing in sufficiently on your navel or you’re just building a following on Twitter. In that case, I strongly recommend you get into highly partisan, wonkish political debates on arcane public policy. “But who gets the last word?” you ask. Answer: “No one!” Respond to every point made and then make two more of your own. Believe me: you’ll never hear the end of it.
LinkedIn, in the popular imagination, is the true social networking portal for business people who are serious about seeking new professional opportunities. No pussyfooting on LinkedIn, right?! A short time on Linkedin will reveal, however, no shortage of opportunities for time-wasting activities, from making inane posts (“Experienced PhD Seeks Employment Opportunities”) to “updating” your “resumé” to reflect your professional “accomplishments”.
“Will these social media sites enable me to overcome pressure from my family and friends to spend time with them?” This is an understandable concern and let me assure you: once you get the hang of it you’ll find that relegating them to their proper place on your list of priorities practically becomes a habit.
There are money other opportunities to deny your employer the bang for his buck, of course. Between updating your Pinterest wall to submitting your weekly column to “The Economist”, there are enough social media opportunities to ensure that you never actually accomplish anything useful or of lasting value.
David Deeble is a consultant currently on hiatus between jobs. He is the author of “Drinking With Wine”, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Self-Esteem” and “Cough Your Way To Rock-Hard Abs”. Visit his website at www.daviddeeble.com.
Bustle: Work, Service And America’s Unambivalent Attitude Toward Doing Business
I live in Germany with my wife. When Germans ask me where I’m from I say “California”. They often respond with “It must be love”.
When people ask me how I enjoy life in Germany, I usually explain that it’s a mixed bag. Achieving escape velocity from stairwell living in Germany is much more difficult than in the U.S. And where I come from, entering someone’s kitchen doesn’t require that the other person vacate in order to make room. On the other hand, lawyers do not have nearly in the influence in Germany as they do in the U.S. so you’re basically treated like an adult: if there are no cars coming the other way you just sail through roundabout rather than sit at the red light. Kids actually learn to avoid injury on real jungle gyms and the doors of public transportation have even been known to open before coming to a complete stop.
Then there is the issue of energy. I’m not talking about windmills, fossil fuels or nuclear power. I’m talking about bustle. I’m talking about the energy one witness at a busy airport.
Last night my wife and I attended a kind-of seminar headed by the maternity ward of a hospital some distance from our home in Germany. It was considerably further than the hospital in which my wife delivered our first child but we she wanted to weigh our options and see what kind of impression this place would make.
We arrived about 15 minutes early and there were about 50 young couples in attendance. The evening consisted of a wordless, gauzy slide show of happy young couples with their newborn baby with a corresponding soundtrack followed by relatively short talks by three very pleasant women associated with the maternity ward. A few questions were asked and answered, followed by a group tour of the premises: various size birthing rooms, private waiting room replete with espresso machine, etc.
The whole thing ran between an hour and 90 minutes: excited, anxious and expectant couples gathered together over sparkling water to be sold on this particular hospital to give birth to their child.
Here’s the thing: I didn’t see a single couple interact with another the entire evening.
In the United States this would be unheard of: dozens of men in the prime of life attending with their wives a gathering of other pregnant couples and not using the downtime to get to know the other men, exchange pleasantries, even (gasp!) network? Young mothers-to-be surrounded by dozens of other pregnant women and none of them asking about due-dates and genders?
I’ve attended more social gatherings in Germany than I can remember and found them invariably pleasant: more pleasant, in some ways, than social gatherings in the U.S. But that’s the thing: in the U.S. everything is a social gathering. The energy there is palpable. Introducing yourself to a stranger in the setting described above strikes Germans a bit like handing out business cards during church services (note I say during church services: with the exception of the very pious, in the U.S. making contacts within a religious milieu is perfectly natural).
I read a book once by Rabbi Daniel Lapin called “Thou Shall Prosper: The Ten Commandments For Making Money“. The book explores the reasons why Jews and, by extension, the Americans, “get ahead”. The very words “get ahead” give many Europeans pause. It’s the tall-poppy syndrome: no poppy should grow conspicuously higher than the others. Nothing could be more alien to the American mindset.
But what about the person who lives only to get ahead? The man for whom networking substitutes for friendship? What about the man who gets more meaning pursuing his next raise than from raising his children? Is he to be admired? The American says “Of course not.” Most people intuitively understand the difference between someone who’s only trying to get in your pocket and someone who isn’t going to let the fact that you’re standing in the church parking lot prevent him from talking about how the service he provides can make your life better.
And that raises the fundamental difference. Americans have a much more profound sense of the value of one’s work to other people. There may be a way to earn money without making other people’s lives better, but I don’t believe it. Serving others is in no way diminished simply because it is remunerative. Every time you walk out of a department store with a new item of clothing you have played an essential role in a success story: the story of people getting what they want. (you a fleece, Nordstroms your money). It’s true for any economic interaction, whether it’s buying a book on Amazon or hiring the world’s funniest entertainer to perform at your next event.
Understanding that work, service and profit are inextricably interwoven is one of the many examples of American exceptionalism.