Ladies and Gentleman, Diana Ross and the ...

Oh, boy, here we come! Time to make room on the DVR hard drive and schedule up the CSPAN because tomorrow starts Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing time in our nation's capital! I for one am fascinated by the process. Kind of for me like the Olympics is for normal folks. Call me sick but you can keep your 'Lost's and '24's and whatnot - give me the cast of characters that make up the Senate Judiciary Committee and the twists and turns of the plot (er, proceedings) as their egos and agendas clash with the professional life of the wise Latina jurist extraordinaire Sonia Sotomayor. Oh and they'll likely drag in her personal life as well for a good soaking. But let's be clear: it's not about her. It's about them.

I was working as a consultant in late 2005/early 2006 and between gigs the last two times the circus rolled into town with the Roberts and Alito confirmations, so I got to watch them both 'live'. I was rooting against them and will be rooting for Sotomayor, but that doesn't matter because the entertainment factor is the same and so in general is the outcome: ya gotta be a pretty extreme wack-job to not get confirmed at this point in the process. The handlers have already ensured you are a citizen, have no illegal help working for you or any unpaid taxes, the obvious stuff.

You're generally pretty assured of confirmation at this point, short of demonstrated habitual bestiality ('hiking the Appalachian Trail' with farm animals on more than one occasion, for instance), or proof of current status as a grand wizard in the KKK (the past is the past and being a mere 'member' can be forgiven, though there might be hard questions as to why you never got promoted to wizard). Christ, look at Clarence Thomas with his porn addiction and ass-pitching compulsion and Scalia, who's so far to the right that he probably struggles mightily to control himself from goose stepping and 'sig heil'ing in public (though he probably does both under the robe).

So it's the preening and prancing and dancing of the Senators that provides the kicks and I'll be enjoying every last minute of the experience. Let the games begin!

Burbing Bubbles, Freeing Willy and Resting in Peace (Ben, the two of us need look no more)

Holy Having-Fun-With-Elvis-Onstage, Batman - Has it really come to this?

I joked a couple of days ago that perhaps Michael Jackson would go on with his London Shows despite coming down with a bad case of death. I guess there's no joke as funny/sad as real life because as it turns out, 'he' is planning to do just that. The vultures are currently working overtime picking his bones clean while the name value is at its peak earning power (it tends to start to decay for celebs, much like the body, not all that long after death). But it takes massive balls to say that video footage of rehearsals for what would have been the London concerts are his 'Last Masterpiece' and to build some circus around this, charging real concert prices.

Sure, with Elvis they were picking clean his corpse many years before he actually died ('having fun' having come out a few years prior to the King keeling over on the john), but this was only because he mostly died after his 1968 television special (the last great thing he did). Say what you will about him, at least 'the Colonel' had the decorum to wait a couple of month before letting the feeding frenzy of shit flow forth. No such luck with MJ.

Somewhere, even Ben's descendants are scurrying through the gutter rolling their eyes and saying 'enough' already.

What we've got here is failure to communicate

There's a line from a novel or a book or something that I (and apparently Google) can't recall which goes something like "Typical WASP - loves animals but hates people."

That's me on a Sunday morning (well, on many mornings but especially 'the day of our lord').

I'm out early getting my usual coffee and am invariably stuck behind gaggle of 'hatbrakes' - more on this later - that only seem to drive when going to church on Sunday. That old used car salesman line apparently must sometimes be true. I'm left crawling along block after block, cornered with no way past them (they proceed in swarms like a Hell's Angels chapter out on a run).

After 10 minutes or so, I swear I see floats ahead of me, circus music fills my ears and big balloons in the sky blot out the sun. I have the urge to roll down the window and wave to the invisible crowds along my route - perhaps I should throw them candy. I must, after all, be in a parade for otherwise why would we be going so mother*!@! slow?!?

I'm not a bat-shit crazy driver - I obey(ish) the speed limits and traffic laws. And it's not like there are sights to see - it's the same boring neighborhood - no Christmas lights up (and its daytime anyway). Move! Don't keep God waiting - Bad enough you make him get up early on his Day Of Rest and haul his ass into some cramped building you constructed so you can feel less guilty the other six days of the week. I feel bad for him. And I'm an agnostic.

• Term: hatbrake
• Definition: See a brimmed 'hat' poking up from the driver's seat (but no head), prepare to brake.
• Origin: My sister and her friends circa early 70s. Stereotype that only older people wear brimmed hats that were popular during the earlier part of the 20th century and that they get shorter as they age. Also stereotypes them as driving slower.

I'm not fond of stereotypes as a rule - in fact I have seen plenty of tall, hatless older drivers that have laid on the horn because I was moving too slow for them - but I always liked the name and when you do see a brimmed hat popping up ahead of you, like as not you'll have to brake.

Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya ... he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes.

I've been bouncing back and forth between Jaws and West Side Story and it's kind of surreal. They're two of my favorite movies. They both involve sharks. Only one involves jets. The better songs are in WSS (but the jams on Quint's boat aren't bad, and Quint has a way with the sea shanties). I give the nod to Jaws because of Quint:

• "I'm not talkin' 'bout pleasure boatin' or day sailin'. I'm talkin' 'bout workin' for a livin'. I'm talkin' 'bout sharkin'!"
• "Cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water. Our shark. [sings] Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies..."
  
• "Y'all know me. Know how I earn a livin'. I'll catch this bird for you, but it ain't gonna be easy. Bad fish. Not like going down the pond chasin' bluegills and tommycods. This shark, swallow you whole. Little shakin', little tenderizin', an' down you go ... Ten thousand dollars for me by myself. For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing."

When you're a jet you're a jet all the way - but I'm talkin 'bout workin' for a livin' - I'm talkin' about sharkin'

The rain falls down on last year's man

I see Vince of "ShamWow!" Infomercial fame is now hawking a new product, the "Slap Chop". On the surface he looks the same here - better certainly than he looked in his mug shot in March after getting busted for beating up a hooker in South Beach, FLA. But wait just a second. Turn up the sound a bit. Inch closer to the screen. Is there just a hint of a plaintive cry in his obnoxious cackle? Is there just a shadow of a tear rolling down his weasel-like cheekbone? Does he maybe look like he'd rather just curl up in a snuggie and have a good sob?

It could just be the onion that Vince is slap-chopping up but I think it's somehow more than that. He lost a couple of brother shit-slingers after all: pure-play pitchman Billy Mays and part time shills Ed McMahon and Karl Malden (apologies here to Karl, Oscar-winning actor of such classics as On The Water Front and Streetcar Named Desire, but the Amex ads overshadowed his earlier work).

Vince is only human and I'm sure there is a hole in his black heart right now.

Chin up, Vince!

The world needs pitchmen more than ever now to fill that void at 3 in the morning for those that don't have satellite or cable or DVDs or VHS or books or a life or a drug habit.

Put. That. Coffee. Down. Coffee's for closers only.

The 'motivational pep-talk' Alex Baldwin's character Blake gives to the sad sack realty sales office in Glengarry Glen Ross has been on my mind of late. It's a great performance, Baldwin's only scene in the movie (character and scene don't even exist in the original David Mamet stage play). The words are even better. Mamet, who wrote the screenplay as well, is one of my literary heroes (one of the few who ply their trade in the world of screen and stage plays rather than books). But I digress. The reason that the speech has been resonating with me lately is because despite the vitriol tone, it is a motivational speech and I've been attempting to try and understand all of the ways that individuals can be and are motivated.

"We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired."

Now that's motivation.

Keeping your job might be a very primal motivation, but it's not a very uplifting one. Still, variations on Blake's talk likely took place in offices the world over this past week and sometimes for good reasons. Blake hammered home the overriding priorities in case there was confusion ("Always Be Closing" because "it's 'fuck' or 'walk'"). Sometimes it takes a punch in the stomach to wake a person up. God knows there are people where I work that I'd like to stick in a room with Blake and let him loose.

I'm looking more for the empowering, want-to-take-ownership kinds of motivation and how to instill that at the grass-roots level in an organization.

Time to look beyond Blake. I've poured through most of the "motivation" and "leadership" literature out there (Jack Walsh, Fearless Change, and 20 others not worth mentioning). Like most things in life, no silver bullet. Also like most things in life, I think it boils down to something much more simple: just find out what motivates you and then go to the employee directory and find out the same for each one of them. Probably the best thing I've read in this area is Andy Hunt's Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: he' talks about the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition and what motivates an Expert in a particular skill is not the same thing in general that motivates a Novice.

Quick, favorite "one scene" movie characters:

1. Winston Wolfe, Pulp Fiction
2. Captain Koons, Pulp Fiction
   
3. Blake, Glengarry Glen Ross
4. Vincenzo Cocotti, True Romance
5. Drexl Spivey, True Romance
   
6. Bunny Lebowski, The Big Lebowski
7. Harry Lime, The Third Man

Always Be Closing

We definitely live in at least two realities on this planet these days - the real world and the surreal world. In the real world, the Prez makes nice with Russia and works the G8 in Italy while Lil' Kim Jong-Il launches Cyber warfare against mankind. In the surreal world, meanwhile, the headlines are screaming as to the whereabouts of the Corpse of Pop as we shake our collective heads over the sordid double life and grisly death of Steve McNair and his Dave and Buster's wack-job side dish.

MJ it seems can elude the paparazzi even in death, more mobile than Bernie on the weekend as he sneaks out of his own memorial, gold casket and all sliding through the tunnel under the Staples Center and onward to what we can only imagine is his final reward. Maybe he's decided to do those 50 shows over in England after all. The show must go on.

I'm not sure why the 'dark lifestyle' of Steve McNair is any surprise - the do-gooders of the world are always the ones with a graveyard full of skeletons in their closets. From Thomas Jefferson to Martin Luther King to Bill Clinton, the guys who could get things done - who are natural leaders - and who are able to do the most good in the world seem to be the ones who have a huge appetite for the forbidden and sometimes just the tawdry.

Obviously, MLK is in another league with regard to his influence on history, and Clinton was a pretty darn successful president. McNair, in the end, was simply a not-quite-hall-of-fame-caliber NFL football player. But he did do a lot for his community and for charity. He liked to drink and he liked the ladies and he had some piss-poor judgment that killed him. And we'll no doubt be slammed over the head with the details of that via an endless parade of 20/20, E True Hollywood Story, 48 Hours, Lifetime TV Movies, and probably lots more.

Hopefully not too many kids lost a hero this week. Me, my heroes were always the ones with their skeletons in plain sight - Give me Hunter Thompson, Robert Downey, Jr. and William Burroughs and you can have Albert Schweitzer, Mother Theresa and Mahatma Ghandi. And Bono for that matter. I can only hope for the sake of our country that smoking is not Obama's biggest vice. I supported and voted for you, Mr. President - I'm counting on something more. :-)

As for comments related to the real world? Ahh - I don't know what to think (the Daily Show is in reruns this week - I'll think again come Monday).