By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Feb 5, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET My grandfather Brown’s favorite poem was “If” by Rudyard Kipling.
He memorized it and quoted from it often, especially when encouraging someone to seek wisdom and perspective in the midst of a difficult situation.
When I turned 13 my father gave me a framed copy of the poem for my birthday present. Like most boys on their 13th birthday, a framed copy of the poem “If” wasn’t what I was hoping for…. But I’m glad now I got it –and
I still have it. I hung it in my bedroom through high school and college and as an adult hung the poem in my office.
When my son was about 13, I gave it to him and it is now hanging in his bedroom. It’s a pretty good poem. With some excellent life advice:
IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master; If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;
 If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Feb 4, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET After much deep and reflective thought, I have decided not to sign up to use the widely advertised online IQ enhancer, Luminosity.
Luminosity apparently trains your brain and makes you much smarter. Well, that sounded pretty good to me. And Lord knows I could use a few extra IQ points.
But after thinking it through with my God-given brain, I have concluded that if I use Luminosity to improve my brain and IQ, I will lose all my friends with less than genius IQs (and that would be all my friends, except one, who I frankly don’t care much for). These friends I would lose like me because I am forgetful and disorganized and earnest and apologetic and hapless and like joke about it all.
I fear I will lose all my friends and they won’t like me anymore if I become some super-brainy guy who knows all the answers to Jeopardy —and seems to be much smarter than all the other people (who don’t use Luminosity).
I wonder if anyone has done a study on the impact of the alienation from friends that Luminosity has caused its users?
I am not waiting around for such a study. Common sense tells me it’s not worth the trade-off. I’d rather not be a Luminosity super-genius than lose all my friends! And I am not changing my simple non-luminous mind about that!
I sure hope my friends appreciate this sacrifice when I tell them about it….and don’t all start using Luminosity themselves and leave me behind!
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Feb 3, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET  In 4 weeks I have lost 11 lbs and started doing light daily workouts.
Several friends have asked me what diet am I on.
My answer is “The disgust diet.” Which means that I have no real methodical diet at the moment– beyond eating less (and healthier) and exercising more—but that I am simply fortified with a personal disgust at how far I let myself go.
My wife and kids have been chiding me for a long time to drop some weight and get in better shape but, through a potent combination of denial and self-delusion, I was able to ignore their suggestions.
Until this picture above was taken of me on Jan 1 this year.
A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words. And I didn’t like the sound of any of the words I heard in my mind when I looked at this picture of me standing outside the restaurant woofing down the remainder of my lunch from the “carry out” container as my family waited for me to catch up.
It’s enough to make any self-respecting fella to make some changes. And hopefully keep the “disgust diet plan” going for another month. And maybe a lot longer.
===
My mind on a diet.
“Ok, but how many calories would the other dish have if I only ate, like, one-third of it?”
“Or just one-fourth?”
“Or just one-fourth of both of them?”
By John Y. Brown III, on Sun Feb 2, 2014 at 4:05 PM ET Phillip Seymour Hoffman mesmerized me every time his character walked onto the screen.
He was, in my opinion, one of the greatest actors in my lifetime, and I am sad he is gone from us.
He died of a drug overdose with a needle stuck in his arm at the young age of 46.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman in addition to being one of our greatest artists was also a garden variety drug addict who got help in his early 20s and stayed clean for 23 years before falling of the wagon last year.
He thought he could pull off the performance of a lifetime by using drugs again even though he was an addict.
All addicts are actors, of course. They have to be to juggle their double-life until they get help or time runs out.
And that applies to even one of the very greatest actors among us. And today time ran out on him.
I am sad Phillip Seymour Hoffman died. I never got to meet him but he meant something to me. My heart went out to him every time he appeared on screen. His presence would remind me of something missing in me and I would be reassured that I would be alright since he seemed to be.
But that scary something missing in him –and missing in so many of us–can sometimes get the best of us. If we don’t know what to try to fill that void with.
===
My favorite role ever for Phillip Seymour Hoffman was, ironically, Owning Mahowny, based on a true story about a mild-mannered banker who is a gambling addict who stealthily gambles away $22M he embezzles.
He gets clean in the end and in the final scene with a therapist is asked, “How would you rate the thrill you got from gambling on a scale of 1-100?” Mahowny (Hoffman’s character) answers, “100.”
Then the therapist asks “And what about the biggest thrill you’ve had outside of gambling?” Mahowny answers “20.”
The therapist then asks the deadeningly piercing question all addicts, I believe, have to ask themselves, “How do you feel about living the rest of your life with a max of 20?” Hoffman answers resignedly, “OK. 20 is OK.”
Apparently, Hoffman answered his own version of that question with an “OK” for 23 years. Until “20” –or whatever the number was for him– was no longer enough.
I felt Hoffman’s performance as a gambling addict was Oscar-worthy. Better than even James Caan in The Gambler, which I thought was impossible to ever top.
Perhaps because Hoffman knew his character too well.
Here is the movie trailer followed below by the final scene:
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Jan 31, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET Negotiation Tactics
Sometimes when you are in a negotiation you can feel like the Washington Generals basketball team (the exhibition team whose record against the Harlem Globetrotters is 6 wins and over 1300 losses).
You aren’t asking for parity or for something that will help you win more games. You just want to persuasively plead with the Globetrotters not to run up the score so much in future games.
In such instances, you are not negotiating from a place of strength; but rather a place of pity.
When you find yourself in this negotiating situation, at least try to get an autographed ball from the opposing team.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jan 30, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET Why I love YouTube.
Not because it can capture funny home video clips, or humorous gags or sports highlight or memorable musical clips or an embarrassing public moment or a truly newsworthy current event.
Although I enjoy all of those things, too.
Rather, it is because from time to time, a rare gem of a video clip gets formatted to YouTube and shared with the world.
Like, for example, this 1963 interview with Peter O’Toole and Orson Wells discussing Hamlet that reveals the day-to-day personalities of both these extraordinary gentleman.
It’s not just educational; not just entertaining. It’s mesmerizing and magical in its own mundane way.
And that is why I love YouTube.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jan 29, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET Sales techniques: connecting with the customer.
It is important, sales people are taught, to find ways to identify with the customer to help build rapport.
Last night I had an experience with a sales clerk who tried this technique on me–but it didn’t have quite the intended effect.
I was shopping for a plain blue dress shirt. The sales rep was a heavy roundish fellow who was very affable and extremely helpful.
We found my size but I learned there were three different tailoring styles within my size.
The sales clerk explained, “This shirt has a taper on it and is for men who, you know, still have the wide shoulders and narrow waist (he used his hands to illustrate a small waist). And the shirt you are holding is for guys who, well, who are just really skinny and always will be and have narrow shoulders (he made hand gesture for narrow shoulders). These guys will never have much meat on them.”
He then reached over and grabbed a third blue dress shirt and proceeded, “And then this shirt is for guys like you and me.”
Hmmmm. I guess we sorta connected with that observation but I didn’t care for it personally. Just wasn’t expecting it and almost asked for the tapered shirt because I’m on this new diet.
But didn’t.
I bought the shirt. And the hell of it is that the shirt fits perfectly.
By Artur Davis, on Wed Jan 29, 2014 at 10:00 AM ET A second week into Chris Christie’s soap opera, one sign of trouble is pretty hard to dispute: subpoenas and inquiries from federal prosecutors almost never end well for politicians, and the newest allegation, of conditioning access to federal grant money on a political favor, fits the four corners of federal criminal statutes much more neatly than the traffic tie-up element of the affair. And of course, if the legal side of the equation unravels, the political side collapses with it.
Assuming that the worst case doesn’t transpire, the Christie camp ought to still fear something else, and it goes beyond the conventional wisdom that Christie looks petty, vindictive, and guilty of fostering a culture of retaliation. That risk is obviously real enough, but probably more likely to rub off on insiders than Republican caucus and primary voters, and may not ultimately prove more damaging to voters than Ted Cruz’s embrace of obstructionism or the more exotic pieces of Rand Paul’s profile.
In fact, there are already early signs that Christie is being insulated with Republicans for the simple reason that his sharpest inquisitors are a left-wing cable network and the ever disreputable beast in Republican circles, the mainstream media.
And therein lies the more subtle danger to Christie—the possibility that his effort to armor himself by donning the hardware of conservative resentment remakes the governor into the partisan warrior he has so assiduously avoided becoming. To put this in perspective, consider that the general election promise of a Christie candidacy has always had two related components: (1) that he is not the kind of Republican who revels in pseudo theories about socialist conspiracies being cooked up in Washington and (2) that his best (and shrewdest) critique of Barack Obama has arisen from a high ground that is not terribly partisan, namely that five years of liberal ascension have contributed to rather than softened the country’s divisions.
 That profile explains how Christie has so effectively assailed liberal interest group politics in New Jersey as a threat to the common good without seeming overly ideological. It is also what enabled Christie to practice a genuinely coalitional reelection strategy last year, which was stunningly effective in splintering the Democratic voting base, from Latinos to blacks to suburban female professionals.
It is hardly that Christie is some anodyne, passionless figure who keeps votes in play by saying little and offending no sacred cows. Instead, the Christie persona has been that he is the rare Republican whose anger seems less directed at lost cultural ground, or Obama’s presumptions, or dark fantasies about diminished liberty, and more at the dysfunction and smallness of the current political landscape.
Can that image survive if Christie’s mainline of defense is that he is just another Republican under siege by the left? How much is left of Christie’s national appeal if he is about to morph into another Fox Republican? And even in the context of the Republican nomination, just how sustainable is the path of conservative warrior for a politician who has been known to bristle at right-wing orthodoxy on guns, the environment, and healthcare?
Assuming that Christie’s fingerprints aren’t found any places that they shouldn’t be, I would still bet that the verdict on the governor’s character and political style will end up being rendered by the primary voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, not the thirty-somethings at MSNBC and Politico, much less a handful of government lawyers. But Christie’s center-right admirers ought to worry that the tactics of survival don’t end up erasing what made Christie worth admiring in the first place.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jan 28, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET We all want our kids to learn how to handle success and to strive to achieve and excel.
But that’s only half the equation. Maybe less. Learning to fail….learning to cope with disappointment, disillusionment and downright depression whenever you try hard for something and coming up short—maybe way short–is indispensable to being a thriving and resilient human being.
Oh,… I’ve had my share of experiences with failure– but one experience in particular that comes to mind is something that happened my sophomore year at Bellarmine College (now Bellarmine University)
Bellarmine had a student essay contest and offered prizes for first, second and third place. I fancied myself a good writer and wanted to give it a shot. It was the first time I’d entered a competition like this and I worked late into the night several nights in a row writing, editing, rewriting and refining my essay. When I finished, I felt I had a mini-masterpiece. I was just sure my little five page essay would get the attention of the judges and stand out enough, I hoped, to somehow place.
The judging took several weeks. I found out which professors were on the judging committee and asked them when the winners would be announced. I was really hoping they’d offer some tidbit about how much they liked my essay, too. One did, Professor Wade Hall. The other, whose name escapes me, was in the men’s room when I ran into him and awkwardly asked him when he expected the winner’s to be announced. He turned his head and said, “Not long. There were only three entrants so it shouldn’t be much longer.”
“Only three entrants?!” I was “in.” I was guaranteed to “place.” I was ecstatic. Of course, I’d rather be able to say I placed among, say, fifty entrants. But placing among just three was OK with me–as long as it didn’t leak out that there were only three competing.
Another week passed and nothing. I worked in a tutoring center in the afternoons and while there late in the afternoon I called Bellarmine and was told the winners had been posted next to the cafeteria.
I was so eager to see where I had placed I was about to burst with excitement. Maybe I had won. If so, I could put that on my resume and law school application. Maybe I could go to Harvard law school. Or at least Vandy or Georgetown. The possibilities were endless. Heck, I didn’t care if I finished third. At least I placed!
I called my sister, Sissy, and asked her to drive over to Bellarmine since I was at work and to please check the posting outside the cafeteria that listed the the three winners of the essay contest. She said she would and would call me with the winners as soon as she could.
I waited and waited….pacing excitedly back and forth. I imagined what it would feel like to officially be one of the winners of a “college essay contest.” I had arrived in academia. I wondered if I’d have to give a speech or thank you address. That would be fine. I’d be ready.
The phone rang at the learning center and I grabbed it. It was my sister Sissy.
“John,” she said, “It’s kinda weird. It says they decided to only award two winners and your name isn’t one of them. I guess because there was only three entrants they only awarded two winners. I’m sorry.”
I was devastated. I asked Sissy to go back and check again. And make sure she read the list correctly and was reading the right list. She did and she was.
And so there you have it. One moment, writing my ticket to an elite law school. The next humbled and humiliated that my third place essay was so weak the judges dropped the third place
award.
But I let it sink in and decided it was a good learning experience and would try to pick my spots better in the future but to keep trying–and to be grateful for the opportunity to compete and even more grateful when I achieved any small level of successes.
The footnote to this story is I ended up an UK law school and loved it. I graduated with honors. And entered an essay contest on criminal law my second year in law school. The paper had to be about 25 pages and contain about 100 footnotes. About 50 second and third year law students entered the contest.
I won.
Actually, I was a co-winner. The auditorium was filled with the entrants when they announced the winner. Professor Welling addressed us and said, “We didn’t have any one essay that really “wowed” us but we had two essays that were really solid so we are splitting the award between two students” and she named me and another student.
OK, it was an unenthusiastic announcement and I had to split the scholarship money. But I got the award. And it’s hanging in my law office today.
But the far more valuable lesson I learned in my essay competition experiences was how to humiliatingly lose, accept it, and learn to bounce back and try harder next time.
Because I had learned the important life lesson that life isn’t about winning. It’s about playing your best and playing honorably and doing so day after day and being grateful for the opportunity —regardless of the outcome.
And I learned that important life lesson not from being a successful winner but by learning how to be a successful loser. Which is even more important to learn how to do if you want to be a winner in the game of life.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jan 27, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET Here a photo someone took of me today leaving my workout –after just three weeks of training.
I am as surprised as you. But it really is me.
Seriously. It is.
What? Don’t believe me?
The water in the background? Oh, that’s, um, that’s the Ohio River. I go to a gym in front of the Ohio River.
The tattoo? Oh, easy. That’s a washable I put on just joking around this morning…that’s all that is.
The bracelet? It….It…is a family heirloom, or something, I just wear sometimes and happened to put it on today before heading to the gym.That’s all.
The necklace? Um….That…the necklace. I wear that to work out in….for, um, just because it is important to for reasons that are hard to explain precisely to people who don’t work out a lot.
But, yeah, that is definitely me….
It is…really.
Um, OK, Ok. Fine!
Maybe not entirely me—just yet.
I mean, not me, really, per se.
Um, OK. I’m lying.
You happy now!?
It’s some picture I got off the internet.
But could be a picture of me in the future.
Maybe in another lifetime, if nothing else.
===
I started a new workout regiment today. And it lasted only 3 minutes.
Say what you want to about my light and low-stress exercise routine, but at least I am steroid free.
===
Exciting Diet Conversations.
Friend: “Well, John, what are you doing right now?”
Me: “Just sitting here, patiently, doing nothing, waiting to lose more weight… ”
===
 “Diet Face”
This is me after making a healthy order at Vietnam Kitchen (great restaurant, by the way).
I am not happy. And making my order begrudgingly. But it is working.
Down 9 llbs in 3 weeks.
===
Score after 3 weeks:
John Brown: 6 6 7
Apple Fritters: 1 1 0
Game. Set. Match.
Lost 10 lbs
===
A side benefit of successfully staying on a diet:
No longer viewing a haircut, clipping my nails or shaving as activities that will reduce my weight.
===
I have been informed facetiously by a friend that there is bodybuilding competition for men ages 50-59.
I let my friend know that I believed I could put together a compelling posing routine –but the muscle mass, body tone, muscular definition, vascularity and ripped abs parts just weren’t there for me and never would be.
===
 This is my scale.
After it gives me my weight, it calculates my BMI category –“Fat”
Lovely way to start the day. At least it doesn’t say or shout “Fat!” out loud or make sarcastic remarks to me or sigh with disgust.
On the positive side, if I can lose another pound and a half, I move from the BMI category of “Fat” to just being “Overweight.”
Take that! You dreadful, silently mocking scales!
===
Now that I have thinned down from “Fat” to bordering on merely “Overweight” according to the BMI chart, my taste in music has changed.
I find that now I can only listen to bands with really skinny lead singers like Chris Robinson of Black Crowes or Mick Jagger and all of the Rolling Stones.
I guess we skinny and soon-to-be-merely-“Overweight” guys just need to stick together.
|
|
