Steve the Owl's Blog

A gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.- Irving Blitzer, played by John Candy in Cool Runnings (1993)

Hi, everyone. This weekend, I was checking the listings on TV, and I saw that one of the local channels was rerunning Cool Runnings, the 1993 movie based somewhat loosely on the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team, the Caribbean country’s first entry in the Winter Olympics, this one in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. While it is true that some of the events are fictionalized (such as the tension between the Jamaicans and the other countries in the competition, having Olympic-caliber sprinters rather than members of the army track team, and the role of the coach as a single individual rather than a team), there is a lot that this movie can teach about determination and what it means to truly compete with honor.

Training for Winter without Snow?

One thing that the movie did get right is the fact that before they began to prepare for the Olympic bobsled, none of the members of the team had ever seen snow before, and they were getting ready to ride at 70 or 80 mph down a hill in a sport where, “Bones don’t break, they shatter.” (I’ve heard of luge participants who say that the real question of the sport isn’t if your bones will be broken, but how many will be broken.) Needless to say, it is very difficult to find people who are willing to go through this when they were in a warm climate. The movie solves this problem for the purposes of the story by having one of the future bobsledders trip and fall during the finals of the 100-meter Olympic trials and taking out two other runners, including the team captain and driver, the son of an Olympic gold medalist. In the movie, the lead character, Derice Bannick, refuses to give up on his Olympic dream, and knowing that four years is an eternity for a sprinter, he decides to focus his efforts on the Winter Olympics instead, and he seeks out his father’s friend, Irv Blitzer, who was disqualified from the 1972 Olympics and wants to get away from the sport.

In the movie, the four finally come together, battling the elements, each other (one of the bobsledders has not yet forgiven the one who tripped him), and the doubters, to finally qualify for the Olympics. Along the way, there are three very important lessons learned. One of the bobsledders, named Yul Brenner (remember, this is a fictionalized account; the character probably got his name from the shaved head of the actor as a reference and tribute to the actor) decries the attitude of people who seem content for a life of poverty where they are “going nowhere and you’re thrilled to death about it.” He then takes out a picture and says that this is where he wants to live, revealing a picture of Buckingham Palace. Here is the scene, which is one that moves me:

Another comes in the form of the actual races. At first, Derice sees the Swiss team, ranked #1 in the world, and decides to emulate them. However, this does not work for the team, and they struggle in the first run down the hill in the competition. For the next one, they decide to be livelier and find their own style. The result is that they become contenders in the race.

The most important lesson, and the one at the heart of the movie, is about what it truly means to be a great person. Even though the character is fictitious, in the movie, John Candy (in one of his final roles before dying of a heart attack at the age of 43) plays a down-and-out two-time gold medalist who decides to add excessive weight to his sled in an effort to get an edge over the competition. He was discovered and had to give up his gold medals. His young protege dreams of Olympic glory, but Blitzer had the hard-earned life lesson at the bottom of the quote at the top of this entry. The instant that you only start to think about winning, you lose all perspective in life. I have seen this with people in network marketing who get so obsessed with getting that close or getting that sale that all of their friends stop coming around for fear that they will be pitched. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t want success, but I am saying that if you end up alienating everyone along the way to trying to earn a fortune, you’ll probably end up with neither friends nor money.

To me, that is the heart of the movie. It is about the desire not only to be the best, but to be the best person as well, and the pride that comes with earning a place at the top of your field, no matter how you finish when you get there.

In what ways do you seek to become a better person, even when the rest of the world thinks you are crazy?

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Hi, everyone. This weekend, I noticed the documentary Catching Hell, about Steve Bartman and the 2003 National League Championship Series, aired on ESPN as part of their 30 for 30 series. I was in Iraq in the fall of 2003, and I’d heard that the Chicago Cubs, the team with baseball’s longest futility streak (no World Series appearance since 1945; no championship since 1908) had a 3-1 series lead against the Florida Marlins, and they had a real chance to win one of the remaining three games to get into the World Series. As a Yankee fan, I honestly wanted to see the futility come to an end, and I wouldn’t have felt bad about the World Series if the Cubs beat the Yankees.

A Curse, or an Excuse?

However, it was not to be. The Cubs lost Game Five in Florida, but this meant that they were playing at home for Game Six and a chance to win in front of their fans. They had a 3-0 lead in the top of the eighth inning, but things would soon fall off the wheels. With one out and runners on first and second, a Florida Marlin hit a foul ball, and the ball went toward the left field foul seats. Moises Alou, the team’s left fielder, jumped to catch the ball, but several fans were reaching for the ball. One of them, Steve Bartman, touched the ball before Alou did, and Alou freaked out. Then, on the very next pitch, Alex Gonzales, the sure-handed shortstop, missed what was surely a double-play ball to end the inning, and an eight-run Florida inning erupted. The next day, after coming back to gain the lead, the Cubs blew that game as well, and the futility continued. Here’s a little bit about that moment:

When I heard the story at the time, I didn’t know anything about the Bartman incident, but I read about the Cubs’ collapse online, and I was shocked that they blew it again. Then, later, I found out about the horrible treatment Bartman received because of the incident. Plenty of fans reached for the ball, but he touched it. His “friends” who attended the game with him pretended that they didn’t know him, people threw beer and other things at him, and one “fan” even walked from the nosebleed seats to threaten Bartman and throw stuff at him. Finally, the security escorted him out for his own safety, he took off his sweatshirt, Cubs hat, and headphones (which, thanks to replay, has been seen over and over again for the last eight years) and tried to blend in with the crowd. Failing that, he hid out at the house of one of the security guards, went home the next day, and slipped into obscurity (even refusing to use credit cards so he doesn’t get recognized).

However, as I watched the movie, I began to feel more and more for this young man who was blamed for the Cubs’ loss, even though they had plenty of chances to win, and the way he was treated. Many people joked about his glasses, headphones, and green sweatshirt, and how nerdy he seemed, and the way he sat there like someone shell shocked. What else shocked me, and made me feel more for him, was the sweatshirt that he wore. He wore a sweatshirt with the name “Renegades,” the Little League team he coached. Everything about him suggested someone with a wholesome love for the game, who was trying to act in dignity after what happened. Instead, his life was completely changed.

Dignity Amongst Evil

Before you think that the word “evil” is hyperbolic, imagine yourself in Bartman’s shoes. He was a Cubs fan, like so many of the others there. Like one of dozens of people, he was reaching for a foul ball. He had names chanted at him, and was assaulted. He has tried to live his life over the last eight years, but he has had to face obstacles few of us can ever imagine. In short, his life has been ruined.

However, he handled himself as well as anyone could. He didn’t try to get into any fights, and he didn’t try to cash in on his 15 minutes of fame (or infamy). There were a lot of people who made some money in really bad ways (selling threatening T-shirts, etc.) but he did everything right. He made a statement and apologized even when he had nothing to apologize for, and he lived his life.

Scapegoats

One of the interesting things about the movie is the way it talks about the role of scapegoats, an ancient ritual found in the Bible where a goat is said to bear the sins of the people, who jeer him on his way out of town as a way of absolving their own sins. Doesn’t this sound familiar?

Some have argued that the Chicago Cubs have been the victim of curses, beginning in 1945 when a man with a billy goat was refused admission on what has, to this day, been the last World Series game the Cubs have played. 24 years later, when the Cubs seemed unstoppable in their journey to the first National League Championship Series (this being the year the Major Leagues added divisions). Then, a black cat ran in front of Ron Santos, and the team started a collapse. Maybe things like this simply get reinforced over the years because people think they are cursed.

This might help people vent, but it doesn’t change the fact that Gonzales bobbled the next ball, which would’ve rendered the whole incident moot. If you’d like to see some of the reaction to the incident, you can find a trailer for the movie, and some of his treatment, here:

Have you used a scapegoat? What happened when you did?

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Hi, everyone. I hope you are having a good day today. Over the past few days, I have been thinking about the legacy of co-founder and former CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, who died of complications from cancer at the age of 56. There are a lot of people who have talked about his brilliant work with the products that begin with the letter “i” (iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad) since his return to the company in the mid-1990′s. However, I thought about the nature of foresight and how it made Apple’s success possible to build his legacy.

Finding Smarter People

Steve Jobs was so admired at one point that plenty of people have referred to Apple fanatics as the “cult of Jobs.” However, those who may have fallen victim to this thought process seem not to realize that Apple would’ve never existed without the other co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak. The man affectionately known as The Woz was part of a computer club that started based on learning signals that made it possible to make free long distance phone calls in the early 1970′s (the Phone Phreaks). Eventually, the two (with Wozniak taking the lead) built the Apple I for their friends at the club, and they worked on a product that could be marketed to the masses, the Apple II, which is considered by many to be the world’s first personal computer.

Finding Opportunity

Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985. He sold his stock (ironically, if he had simply kept all of the stock he owned in 1985, he would’ve been the fifth-richest man in the world, rather than 110) and started Next Computers. However, his true resurrection in the world of business came when he bought the computer arm of LucasFilms, which he renamed Pixar, in 1986. Eventually, Pixar began to work on the first full-length computer animated movie, Toy Story. This was an idea that many thought was impossible, but we have now reached a point where hand-drawn animation is so rare that one of the working titles for The Simpsons Movie was The Simpsons in 2-D, to demonstrate its insistence on staying true to the show’s roots.

However, before Toy Story, the rap on computer animation was that it could not match the feeling of the world of hand-drawn animation. A scene from my favorite Pixar movie, WALL-E, puts that to rest in my opinion, as evidenced by this scene where WALL-E and EVE dance in space with the help of a fire extinguisher:

Steve Jobs ultimately had his biggest financial success through Pixar, and its subsequent sale to Disney. However, his legacy is mainly based on his journey from a 20-year-old working out of his parents’ basement with a friend that changed the way we communicate. So, as I write this on an Apple, I salute Steve Jobs for everything his work has meant to the world over the last 40 years.

How do you work to build your legacy?

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Hi, everyone. I hope you are having a great day today. Lately, I have been thinking about the world of sports.

As some of my regular readers may remember, I love sports, and all of the lessons it teaches. However, one thing that you may not realize is that I am a huge fan of boxing. Now that all of the big fights are on Pay-Per-View, I don’t get to watch it like I used to, but I’ve spent many a day watching some of the great fighters and great fights on ESPN Classic, including its in-depth series Ringside, with noted boxing historian Bert Sugar. I think a lot of my fan-dom in the world of boxing comes from being a little boy, and my dad would let me stay up late with him when one of the big fights came on HBO.

This was in the late 1980′s, so the featured fighter was usually Mike Tyson, the self-proclaimed “Baddest Man on the Planet.” Tyson was the youngest heavyweight champion in history at the age of 20, and over the course of three years, he successfully defended his title ten times and unified the belts (which have been divided ever since 1992), perhaps reaching his peak days before his 22nd birthday, knocking out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds.

It was with this backdrop in February 1990 that Tyson went to Tokyo to fight James “Buster” Douglas, a lightly-regarded fighter who was expected to be another pushover. Tyson had won his first 37 fights, including 33 by knockout, at the time the second-best knockout percentage of any heavyweight champion (George Foreman held the record). He was so favored that no oddsmakers in Vegas even put odds on the fight. (One newspaper put the odds at 42-to-1, so that stuck in the minds of fight fans.) Douglas’ mother died days before the fight, so a lot of people expected this to be another first-round knockout.

Fight Night

However, what happened was anything other than a typical Mike Tyson fight from the previous decade. Buster Douglas fought an inspired fight, and unlike so many of Tyson’s previous opponents, refused to be intimidated. He continued to put the pressure on Tyson, and like most bullies, Tyson was ill-equipped to fight someone who stood up to him.

Tyson got a huge break in the closing seconds of the eighth round, landing an uppercut that sent Douglas to the canvas. This was the end for a lot of people. However, Douglas pounded the ring in frustration, watched the referee count, took a few extra seconds to rest, and got up at nine, just before the bell sounded.

Douglas was a little wobbly getting up, but he had clearly recovered in the minute between rounds, and fought a tremendous ninth and tenth round. Here is a video of the end of the fight, beginning seconds before Tyson knocked Douglas down:

The Aftermath

This still stands as the biggest heavyweight championship upset ever. Before the fight, Mike Tyson was easily the most feared boxer of his day. However, he was exposed after that, losing eight of his last 21 fights (including the Douglas fight), being knocked out seven of those eight times (and disqualified in the other after infamously biting Evander Holyfield’s ear). Interestingly, except for one time when the referee ruled Tyson down when his weight went to his knees but he remained upright (seconds before he ended up flat on his back), every single time he was knocked down, he didn’t make the count, and whether looking for his mouthpiece when knocked down by Douglas, or putting his arm over his eyes against Lennox Lewis in 2002, it was often an embarrassing display for the once “Baddest Man on the Planet.”

Unfortunately, Buster Douglas got complacent after winning the title, gaining weight and losing the title in his first defense against Evander Holyfield seven months later. As Bert Sugar reminded us, “Buster Douglas was never that great before, and he would never be that great again, but for one night, he was nearly perfect.” He ultimately won because he wanted it more.

Tyson apologists have since made several excuses for their fighter, such as a “slow count” for Douglas (who was clearly waiting until the count got higher, and would’ve gotten up faster had the count been faster), bad trainers who forgot the EndSwell (a metal device that keeps a fighter’s eyes from getting puffy) and were forced to use a latex glove filled with ice, and Tyson not preparing.

However, is the last one really a good excuse? If he was truly the better fighter, he should’ve cherished the greatest individual title in sports enough to fight for real. Buster Douglas won because he was the better fighter that night, and he clearly wanted it more. Some sports are more filled with upsets than others (they are extremely rare in the world of track once you get into distance running, because it takes so much effort to improve by that key second or two at the top), but boxing is one that has had its fair share, and this one is on the short list of the biggest, and I salute Buster Douglas for his greatness, even if it was short lived.

How has your desire helped you accomplish something others thought was impossible?

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It’s not that I disagree with affirmations, but I believe that whatever you affirm must be the truth. If you’re broke, affirm “I’m broke!” If you want more, say, “I’m 40 and broke!” Jim Rohn

Hi, everyone. I hope that you are getting ready to enjoy a great weekend and you look back on this September as one of accomplishment. Lately, I’ve noticed that The Money Class by Suze Orman has been re-airing a lot on the local PBS stations here, and I’ve watched a few episodes of her eponymous weekend show on CNBC. There are a lot of financial experts out there who want to tell you a lot of different things, but I would say that she and David Bach are definitely my favorites.

Both present their information in a way that is easy to understand, and it helps you to become more savvy about the investing world, to the point where I’ve even tried a couple of stock-picking contests. (I used the same principles and picked similar stocks for each. I’m doing very well in one [gaining nearly 2% in the month since I started while the market has been largely flat], and not as well in another, but I am excited about learning about discipline and patience necessary to be a great investor.) It is with this in mind that I come over and over to Suze Orman’s famous catchphrase, “Stand in your truth.”

What It Means

Stand in your truth basically means that you must be completely honest about your financial situation if you want to see success. If you are broke, that is your truth; if you are in debt, that is your truth; if you are spending too much, that is your truth; if everything is going wonderfully for you, that is your truth.

What I think is so powerful about this phrase is that it opens up everything else for you. If you are spending $4000 a month, but you’re only bringing home paychecks that say $3000 a month, the key is to stop digging wherever possible. If you can’t quite get your financial situation in order with cutting spending, this means earning more money, whether by increasing your abilities as an employee to set yourself up for a promotion and a raise because you are indispensable to the company, or through increasing the profits in your business.

“Standing in your truth” leads to another simple fact. Living above your means is bad, but living within your means doesn’t help, either. Why is that? As Suze Orman, David Bach, Jim Rohn, George Clason, and a host of others have noted, living within your means leads to insecurity. Once we learn to live below our means, we can start to build for our future. I’ve seen formulas that recommend living off of anywhere from 50-70% of income, and using the rest of that money to build your future, donate to charity, and pay off debt, or any combination thereof.

What It Does

One of the things that standing in your truth does is give you peace of mind. While I am currently in a situation where long-term employment meant a pretty big hole to climb out of, knowing that I am able to climb out, even if it isn’t necessarily as fast as I would like, tells me that I am doing something right. Back before the long-term unemployment set in, I was saving 10% of every paycheck and 50% of my tax refund check. I didn’t know about investment at the time, so I used it as a rainy day fund. There were a couple of times I had to withdraw from it over the course of just under twenty months, namely to pay for things when I knew a lump-sum payment was coming but I didn’t have the money yet. Rather than treating it as money gone from my account, I treated it as a loan to myself, and immediately used the lump sum payment to repay myself. As Brian Tracy points out, when you start saving, you start to feed the creative energy, and you will find more saving than you thought possible once you stick to your plan.

The results of this effort? In just under twenty months, I’d saved up enough money to not only have a two-month emergency fund, but enough money to pay for a wedding and a honeymoon. (Admittedly, it wasn’t the most expensive of either in the world, but for someone fresh out of seminary, it wasn’t bad.) And think: this was without even knowing anything about investing or setting up a retirement account. If the discipline was there with the knowledge I had then, who knows what will happen now that I have more investment knowledge to go with it.

What do you do to stand in your truth?

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Hi, everyone! I hope this has been a very enjoyable day for you. I write today thinking about one of the major events for my generation: the release of Nevermind, Nirvana’s major-label debut and second overall studio album (they released Bleach on indie label Sub Pop in 1989), 20 years ago this past Saturday. For those of you who were born from 1965-1980, this statement might make you feel a little bit older, but there is a lot to learn about one of the greatest albums of all time and how it came to be.

Practice Like a Job

Nevermind was a record that was treated by many as an overnight success story, with a band coming out of the Northwest and having next-to-no commercial success whatsoever (in limited release, Bleach sold 35,000 copies in its first two years) and making a record (and perhaps just as importantly, a video) that completely shook the foundation of Eighties Hair Metal (still the dominant hard rock in 1991) to its core, and changing the face of music forever.

However, this “overnight success story” was the result of almost fanatical work ethic by the band, especially its lead vocalist/guitarist/main songwriter Kurt Cobain. While Kurt Cobain and bandmate Krist Novoselic, who played bass, seemed to have nothing but trouble landing and keeping a regular job, they practiced for several hours a day. Krist Novoselic compared it to a job, and said that they “worked as hard on it as you would any job. We were just obsessed with rehearsal.” This obsession meant practices that could easily last for ten or twelve hours at a time, as the band worked and worked and worked to refine its sound and its songs. (You can hear a lot of the songwriting process at work on With the Lights Out, the band’s four-disc CD/DVD box set, where some songs are almost unrecognizable compared to the final form.)

A Message for Its Time

The early 1990′s were not a good time for American youth. The economy was in a recession, the current political order only seemed to disappoint, and small towns were dying all over America as companies outsourced work overseas. The hair metal that ruled the airwaves was an escapist form of music that had very little musical style.

It was in this atmosphere that Nirvana, drawing from hard rock, punk, and even pop influences, crafted their masterpiece. This was not a music for happy talk, but it was definitely the music for you if you wanted someone to express the frustration that you felt when looking at some of the things going on in the world around you. For a generation that was overshadowed by its predecessor, the baby boomers, Generation X was still looking for its voice. In its search, it found them in the wail and distorted guitars of 24-year-old Kurt Cobain. He was not making a political statement per se, but he was expressing the feelings of his generation, as he got such powerful sounds from his frail 5’7, 110 lb. frame that seemed to belie his physical size.

Appreciate It for What It Is

In the twenty years since its release, this record, and its first single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” have taken on a life of its own. It was seen as the voice of a generation, even when it didn’t know what to say (as evidenced by the fact that some of the lyrics are very difficult understand on first listen). Sadly, the pressure became too much for its leader, and he died less than three years after its release. However, I encourage you to listen to this song with fresh ears, as you may have in 1991 or sometime after that (I first heard it in its entirety in 1993) and feel the raw power as you know what it is like to truly experience greatness, something that happens far too little in this world.

How do you work to build your defining moment?

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Hi, everyone. I hope you have enjoyed your Labor Day today. Earlier, I posted about my job as a graduate student teacher at Temple University. Last year, while examining the movie The Wrestler, I looked at the ways that this shows the need for unions for a group of people who are often derided as greedy for making a lot of money, even though their work makes even more money for owners. I think of this as I hear one of the common complaints about unions being that they “were once necessary, but we don’t need them any more.” Do these people have a point?

My Union

As I mentioned in my post earlier today, the student teachers at Temple University, who formed the TUGSA (a member union of the American Federation of Teachers, which is itself a member of the AFL-CIO), fought a four-year battle with the administration who pulled delay after delay to postpone a vote for certification. When the adjuncts (both graduate students who aren’t in the union and those who already have their Ph.D.) tried to unionize, Temple did everything in its power to fight this, including prohibiting any efforts to organize on campus. (In one particularly insulting move, the administration argued that the union gave everyone the same pay, whereas non-union teachers could negotiate for even more than the union gets, even though they aren’t even close.)

Well, what were the results of this union for the student teachers? Before the unionization, health care costs were prohibitive, and student teachers received less than $2750 per course with very little fringe benefits other than tuition payment. The union won its right to exist in 2001, and the next year, the first contract was finalized, and the pay increased to $3500 per course with annual cost of living adjustments, full tuition and health care for those who teach two courses per semester, and a limit to the number of hours required per course, thus ensuring that student teachers will be able to prepare for their courses and research for dissertations.

A Matter of Life or Death

One of the worst tragedies in the workplace in recent memory was the Upper Big Branch Coal Mine, run by Massey Energy, with its then-CEO, the almost cartoonishly villainous Don Blankenship, who made a huge effort to bust unions when he took over the company, and he ordered his miners to stop inspecting for safety and start digging for coal. This came to a head at Upper Big Branch in 2010, with 29 workers dead, and Massey insisting that it really did run a safe shop.

However, everyone who I know who worked in coal mines both union and non-union told me that something like this would never happen at a union coal mine, because the union will fight for workers’ safety, and if conditions are that unsafe, they will make sure that the mine gets shut down until the gas level makes conditions safe.

We have come a long way thanks to unions, but before unions were legal (and even after), non-union shops were little more than slaveowners, forcing miners to pay for their own equipment, and refusing to pay miners in cash, paying them instead with company scrip (a process that continued in many non-union mines well into the 1950′s, which Homer Hickham describes in his memoir, October Sky) and owning all of the houses. When miners tried to fight for their rights, they were kicked out of their homes and their property was seized.

I do not write this to say that unions are perfect, but to point out that they have done a lot of good. Thanks to unions fighting for working people, we have 40-hour workweeks, minimum wage laws, overtime, and worker safety laws. Unfortunately, many of these laws that were literally won by blood are now under fire. As a member of a teachers’ union, I know that I couldn’t be a part of a union if not for those who fought and died for the right to organize, so I stand with all unions that are trying to make things better for their workers.

Probably the movie that best explains this is Matewan, a story based on one of the key events in the Coal Wars in West Virginia in the 1920′s, where workers who wanted to unionize were met with violence. Here is a scene from the movie that shows Chris Cooper as union organizer demonstrating a union at its best (his speech begins at the 2:08 mark; NOTE: this scene has some language that may be NSFW, including racial slurs):

How do you remember the people who have paved the way for you?

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Hi, everyone. I hope you are enjoying your day. Recently, I turned on the Hallmark Channel to find that they were running a weekend marathon of I Love Lucy in order to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lucille Ball. This got me thinking about why it seems that everyone loves Lucy.

Standing by a Vision

In 1951, Lucille Ball was known, to the extent that she was known, as a B-movie actress who occasionally had bit roles in bigger movies. At this point, she was offered a sitcom on CBS. She wanted to have her real life husband, Desi Arnaz, as her co-star. However, CBS did not think that the American people of that time were ready to embrace a show where an all-American girl was married to a Cuban bandleader.

The network brass also wanted to shoot I Love Lucy live in New York with a single-camera system. However, because of her time in Hollywood in movies, and the fact that she had a newborn daughter at the time, Lucy had no desire to move to New York. Desi Arnaz also had no desire to move to New York, so he told the executives that he could shoot the show using film. No one had ever done this at the time for a television show, and he later admitted that he didn’t know how it would work, but he figured that movies were shot on film, so he thought that it was certainly possible.

Ahead of Its Time

Watching I Love Lucy 60 years after its premiere, it still stands the test of time. While some of the plotlines are clearly products of its time, there is a lot about the show that is still relevant today. Rather than accept her fate as a housewife, a lot of episodes centered around Lucy’s desire to break into show business. In an era where home was seen as “the woman’s place,” Lucy continued to look for independence, and she defined herself on her own terms, rather than simply Mrs. Ricky Ricardo. One of the most famous examples of this comes from what to me is the greatest moment in the series: when she and Ethel tried to find a job outside the house (while Ricky and Fred try to work around the house), they get a job at a chocolate factory. They are told that they are going to be fired if they miss one piece of chocolate. Things seem to go well early on, but eventually they find that they just can’t keep up no matter how hard they try:

The three-camera method was something that worked very well for the show, as it meant that they could cover the physical comedy from several angles, including overhead, which was previously unheard of. It also signified the first time that a show could be preserved, inventing reruns, which ultimately made syndication possible, which meant that people could watch the show for generations to come, to the point where it is now seen halfway across the world by people who weren’t even born when the last of the four leads died.

We all love Lucy because she was truly an American original, and she did television comedy in a way that no one thought possible, and that no one has been able to equal since.

How has knowing your path helped you along the way?

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Hi, everyone. I hope this has been a good day for you. Lately, I have been thinking about what really makes success. One of the ways that people tend to look at success is looking at the numbers. This is perfectly understandable because these are things that are easy to examine and easy to understand. However, there are some times when numbers don’t tell the whole story, or they can miss what could even be considered the more important measures of success. This was evidenced to me by looking at the life of Dan Peek, who died last week at the age of 60.

Getting Out to a Big Start

If you are not familiar with the name Dan Peek, chances are that you are familiar with his music, especially his early work. Peek was a member of the folk rock band America, which rocketed to fame in the 1970′s, with hits such as “Horse with No Name,” “Ventura Highway,” and “Lonely People,” singing lead vocals on the last of these. The band was known for its layered three-guitar sound and vocal harmonies. At this point in his life, he had everything that he ever asked for. He had fame, fortune, and with a Grammy for Best New Artist, recognition from his peers. Here is Dan Peek in his younger days with America performing “Lonely People” for a TV broadcast:

At Least He Thought He Had Everything He Wanted

However, by the middle of the 1970′s, Dan Peek began to tire of the rock-and-roll lifestyle, and the dark side associated with it, wasn’t working for him. He admitted to trying everything in that lifestyle, but he felt an emptiness that all of the success and earthly trappings of fame could not fill.

So, in 1977, Dan Peek decided that it was time to change his path. At that point, he became a born-again Christian and cleaned up his act. Unfortunately, he began to see that he couldn’t continue in America and pursue the life of service that he wanted to. In what was described as a largely amicable move, Peek decided to leave America and begin a solo career as a Christian musician. This was one of the songs that he recorded after beginning this new direction in his life:

I am not saying that everyone should have to make the same decision Dan Peek did with his career. After all, U2 very nearly broke up after three of the four members of the band (all except for bassist Adam Clayton) had a similar born-again experience early in their career. However, I think that the key thing was that he decided that this was the best path for himself after examining his life. I saw a profile on Dan Peek after his death that pointed out that he did not achieve nearly as much commercial success as a solo artist as he did with America (one could also argue that America hasn’t enjoyed the same success over the last 34 years, either, but that’s a topic for another day). Would Dan Peek argue that the last half of his life was a disappointment? I think that this interview tells me that he was at peace with how his life turned out, and he definitely had success that belied the number of units sold:

How have you seen success on your own terms when others might not have seen it?

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This is the West. When the legend becomes fact, you print the legend.- from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Hi, everyone. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the question of authenticity in life. One of the popular sentences in the world of network marketing is, “Fake it until you make it.” However, I think that Jim Rohn is far more on base whenever he says that it is better to live an authentic life, and that whatever you affirm should be the truth. However, I’ve wondered about what happens when some of the people who actually live an inauthentic life seem to have success in the world where they travel. This made me think about the Great American Male, John Wayne, and how his life did not match the one in his movies.

This is a Tough Guy?

I will be the first to admit that I do not fit the stereotypical image veteran. I stand 5’5 and I have a small frame. (However, this does put me at roughly the same size as Army Airborne veteran who served during World War II, Rod Serling, of later fame as the creator of The Twilight Zone.) So, needless to say, I can understand that someone with my size and build would not be a major figure in movies as a war hero. John Wayne, who was 6’4, and wore lifts to look even taller, became known for his work in Westerns and war movies playing the tough guy. He was 34 years old at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, younger or of a similar age to many Hollywood stars who left for war (Clark Gable was 41 when he enlisted in the Army and volunteered for combat), but this tough guy never served a day in the military.

The Consequences of an Inauthentic Life

So, why does John Wayne have this image as the Great American Male? It is clearly because of the roles he played in movies. Ironically, the man who was a frequent director of movies with John Wayne as the leading man, John Ford, filmed documentaries during World War II (many including actual scenes of battle) for the precursor of the CIA. As you could imagine, John Ford was not happy about this, and he frequently berated Wayne for, among other things, not knowing how to salute. During World War II, when Wayne did USO shows, he was often greeted with silence by actual servicemembers, and he got into frequent fistfights with actual military members who questioned him for refusing to enlist.

What is the even sadder consequence of someone like John Wayne is the real-world consequences of the stereotypical tough guy whose only experience being a hero was on celluloid who later became known as a “superpatriot.” The image of Wayne as a hero was used to rally military engagement in movies such as The Green Berets, which even the Army wanted toned town because they saw it as nothing more than a cheap propaganda piece. Wayne was an ardent supporter of wars and he regularly called into question the courage and the masculinity of anyone who opposed sending others to war, even those who had actually been to war. Because of his past, almost everyone around him knew (and said that he probably would’ve admitted in rare moments of honesty) that he was wracked with guilt over his avoidance of military service. However, if that is the case, wouldn’t his penance have been to not try to send others to something he wasn’t willing to do himself, especially considering that World War II is still considered the most justified war ever entered into by the United States (anyone whose ever gone to seminary can tell you that this is the war that is most commonly cited by defenders of the just war theory) was one that he was too busy making movies to serve in?

Ironically, the most decorated Hollywood actor (not including Audie Murphy, who was a highly-decorated veteran who became an actor later) was not the stereotypical hero. Jimmy Stewart, who stood 6’3 and weighed all of 138 lbs. (five pounds under the limit, he convinced the doctor to ignore his low weight) enlisted at the age of 32, a year before Pearl Harbor, because he saw the war coming, and he eventually earned the rank of colonel in the Army Air Force during the war and brigadier (one-star) general in the Air Force Reserve, flying in 23 combat missions. He was not the kind to brag about his service, although some noticed the darker tinge to some of his later roles. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Stewart entered into a role reversal with Wayne’s real life personality, getting to great fame as a pretend hero. However, even though he saw some horrible things and didn’t want to talk about it, he had no need to prove himself because he did when he had the chance. I mention this not as a political argument (both were conservative Republicans), but as a defense of authenticity.

What things do you do to make sure that you live an authentic life?

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