By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Apr 1, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Biblical interpretation. (My all-time favorite)
When my daughter Maggie was about 6 or 7 years old, I tried reading portions of the Children’s Bible to her.
The first story, of course, was Adam and Eve.
… Always multitasking and preoccupied, Maggie was only half-listening until I mentioned both Adam and Eve were “naked.”
“Naked?!” Maggie’s questioned incredulously as her head whipped around and eye brows furrowed.
“I know, right?” I said. And trying to teach her to think for herself added, “So what’s up with that? Why do you think they would be, you know, naked?”
Maggie squinted her eyes as she pondered the question and then shot back an answer I wasn’t expecting.
She shrugged, and explained, “Maybe they hadn’t invented looking down yet.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Apr 1, 2013 at 10:30 AM ET
Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis, and US Senator Mitch McConnell are teaming up for the sequel to the romantic comedy hit “Friends With Benefits” titled “Friends with Benefits and Super PACs”
Here’s a clip of a video from the new movie with a cameos from JayZ and Sen McConnell.
See if you can pick out which back up dancer is a US Senator.
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Mar 29, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
I don’t like to brag and it really is against my nature to do so…but I just couldn’t resist.
After several days of promoting my new eBook, not only have I broken through the almost impenetrable sales threshold of selling into the doubledigits (10 or more), I have actually skyrocketed all the way up to the highest teen number (19!) as of an hour ago.
Now, yeah, sure…that counts my own purchase and my mom’s.
But that doesn’t take away from these staggering runaway sales numbers that now seemed to have leveled off —but fortunately for now anyway– seem to be holding steady and not dropping.
Which means…maybe, just maybe, I should hold on to my day job.
On the other hand, the report below tells the tale.
What kind of tale? I’m not so sure. Just a tale where the number 19 is becoming increasingly my favorite new number and a number I haven’t ever given enough of a chance.
Hey, and look at the irony. Even my favorite band, Steely Dan, sang an entire song about the number 19. You and I both know it wasn’t about my eBook sales. But the fact that it could have been, means a lot to me. And makes me really proud in that mysterious, magical, low sales, Karma kind of way…. Very cool. And, again, forgive my hubris! ; )
“Latest report: # Net Units Sold Musings from the Middle 19”
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Mar 27, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Is my bank in trouble and trying to tell me something
I just made a deposit at my bank and noticed the sign above the teller
“We were here for you yesterday
We are here for you today
We will be here for you tomorrow”
Ok. Ok. That’s great and all. But what about the day after tomorrow? Or early or mid next week? Does this mean next Friday I am on my own and without a bank?
Or am I just reading too much into this?
Regardless, there seems to be an opening in the Louisville market that will be here “The day after tomorrow…and all of next week.” Granted, not a great sounding tag line but the opening seems to be there.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Mar 26, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
If Nicolo Machiavelli had been born several hundred years later and written a TV series, he would have written House of Cards
If you are a political junkie and worry that you may fall into the political abyss and want to know how to survive (at least according to Hollywood’s version), you can’t do much better than the new Netflix series House of Cards.
Is it a true reflection of the rough-and-tumble, all too human, sausage-making political and policy process in DC? The answer I would offer up is, Not as much as the series would have you believe. But more than DC’s real players would want you to believe.
It isn’t art reflecting reality as much as an artful presentation of the high drama of DC’s inner workings. And as dramatic TV goes, it’s about as good as it gets.
The morale of the series? I’m only a few episodes in but would say that it’s a play on the idea of a House of Cards. Sure, it means an unstable structure that could collapse at any moment. But according to the series, it’s not the structural problems that are of primary interest. But how one plays the hand of the cards they hold. In hopes of surviving regardless of what happens to the house itself.
It’s not a drama that captures politics as it is– but captures the caricature of politics shrewdly and subtly.
It’s a drama that, if you aren’t politically inclined, is hard to watch and impossible to look away from. And if you are politically inclined, easy to watch and you won’t want to look away.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Mar 26, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
About once or twice a year I go through a full service car wash
The first time I knew they existed I was a small boy with my mom and she explained what was going on as I watched on with wonder from the lobby area.
I much prefer the self-service car washes because you don’t have to get out of your car and wait 10–15 min in a wait area.
Which can be awkward
I am in the waiting area now and have watched two grown men (one about 60 and the other mid 40s) stand with their back to the rest of us pretending to watch the car wash process with the wonder of a small boy
I have to assume they aren’t really entranced by this process which –though still remarkable in many ways—losses much of its mystery by ones teen years
I suspect instead it is a defense mechanism to the awkward waiting room. What do you talk about to fellow customers?
“So, have a dirty car today, do ya?
Me too”
So instead we pretend to watch the washing process like we did as children
But I am different. I don’t have the need to pretend to be busy so I don’t have to make conversation. Oh, wait a minute. A new customer just sat down next to me. I need to walk outside and pretend like I am making a phone call.
By Artur Davis, on Tue Mar 26, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
You know, something kept occurring to me as I saw some of the, shall we say, unpleasant commentary about this conference and about this movement.
Isn’t it interesting that the same establishment that claims so piously that it wants more civility and tolerance in our politics has no problem degrading and demonizing Americans who just happen to be conservative?
They want desperately to put this cause in some graveyard; I’m told the president’s inaugural speech had the working title “the country I would build if half of America would just disappear”. They try so hard to paint the beliefs in this room as some quaint, outmoded brand of ignorance.
So this needs to be said: there are about 43 million of us who answer to the name “conservative”; we don’t own any Hollywood studios, the mainstream media may think we are out of fashion, but this is the single biggest voting bloc, this is our America too and we are not going anywhere.
Deriding conservatives may be the last acceptable prejudice, but sneers can’t erase the truth: first, you don’t lift up people at the bottom by pulling other people down, and every place that has tried that path has turned out its own moral lights and gone down into the darkness.
We cannot own our future when we live off the credit of countries who want to dominate us; and freedom is neither tired nor exhausted: it is just tired of not being defended.
So, can we bring to a close this season of pundits who don’t want Republicans to win telling Republicans how to fix this party?
Now that does not mean that we don’t need to be frank with each other. So, I want to be blunt about what we did and did not do in this last race: first, for voters who look at the world the way we do, we made an impeccable argument.
For most people who have had the blessing of building a business from nothing, or who have found a way to punch through Washington’s obstacles to make their companies work, we made an effective case that no government in the modern era has ever fought harder to put a penalty on success.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Mar 25, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Working, working, working.
Almost there , almost there.
But forgetting “there” is only an idea and not a location—it is only a guidepost and figment of our imagination that keeps us moving.
What if we woke up this morning and instead of “closer” to our dreams, we had “arrived”?
Me?
I would go back to bed
Which is why, I suppose, our reach should always exceed our grasp. But not by too much.
As long as we are living, we are merely “in transit” —at times forward; at times backwards; and often just sideways or adrift. And at other times we simply standstill
In this journey oflife we “arrive” not at a final destination –but the moment we realize that life is an endless journey –with maps, and GPS-es and Sherpas and guideposts
But no guarantees.
And, as the sign in the mall says, “You are here” –now.
But not for long.
And we try, for today, not to run in place or swim against the tide
But hopefully to float toward our destiny –which we know when we are doing because it feels like flying.
When my daughter Maggie was about 6 or 7 years old, I tried reading portions of the Children’s Bible to her.
“I know, right?” I said. And trying to teach her to think for herself added, “So what’s up with that? Why do you think they would be, you know, naked?”
