I have yet to make a 2010 post, but I figure this is a good way to open the year. Besides, who doesn’t love Nick Jonas 
. Plus this song is way catchy.
“I want someone to love me, for who I am
I want someone to need me, is that so bad?
I wanna break all the madness, but it’s all I have
I want someone to love me, for who I am”
Thanks Xinerz!!
A Sundance movie with Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.
Ok, so he is, like, the single most charming man on Earth. Watch this. I laughed so hard:
A TED talk by David Logan, from USC’s Marshall School of Business.
His presentation is on the idea of tribal leadership. People segregate into groups called “tribes” that share similar cultures and values. The 5 tribe stages, or categories, are:
1. Stage I: “Life Sucks”
2. Stage II: “My Life Sucks”
3. Stage III: “I’m Great, and You’re Not”
4. Stage IV: “We’re Great”
5. Stage V: “Life is Great”
These are not meant to sound vain or superficial – there’s actually a lot of substance behind them, so just watch the video to learn more.
This idea is really cool, especially when he talks about the transition that people make from Stage III to IV. This movement happens when people unite with other individuals who share similar values, work ethics, and motivation, but make those things go beyond individual advancement to be a part of a group or collective that is aware of its own existence.
According to him, we are all part of tribes, whether we know it or not. Part of the significance of leadership, and tribal leadership in particular, is to facilitate connections between individuals, and subsequently between tribes. Logan’s ending thoughts:
What kind of impact are the tribes you are in making? Will your tribes change the world?
Just recently watched this movie, the Havana Nights version. OMG. Watch this video – it’s smokin’ (you’ll have to click the link since embedding’s disabled, and quality’s not great, but still OMG):
Another video link from the Huffington Post for today, this one titled “Whisper Chain Proposal.”
Jake sets the record for longest whisper chain (passed across 59 people), with a proposal to his girlfriend, Kristina. My first reaction was that this is kind of lame (“will you marry me” is not exactly the most challenging phrase to play telephone with…) but the girl’s reaction is awesome. (If you’re impatient, you can scroll to 3:10 on the video.)
The best part? It actually takes the girl a few moments to realize what’s going on – at first she shakes her head in response to the random stranger passing along the proposal…haha.
For the sake of attempting a psuedo-discussion thread: What’s the best proposal you’ve ever witnessed/heard about?
Courtesy of a Guy Kawasaki tweet and the Huffington Post.
No hard data presented, but this one news program clip reports that women are evolving to be more beautiful than men. Prettier women on average have more children. They’re also more likely to have more girls, who are subsequently more pretty, and so on. Attractiveness is not a petty quality…from the perspective of evolution, of course 
. Men, however, have remained….the same.
Don’t know if I believe it, necessarily, but I find this video highly entertaining. First, they flash pictures of gorgeously toned beach models. And then there’s a picture of a scruffy man sporting a beer belly.
I quote: “…it’s like world domination…”
Hell yeah.
I watched the slew of the last five episodes of House season 5 earlier in the summer. Major spoilers in the promo anyway, so I’ll just give it away: House, MD is officially crazy and checked into a psychiatric hospital after hallucinations, in one of which he slept with his boss. (Past season finale plot lines have included him being shot and him almost dying in a bus crash that killed his best friend’s girlfriend…) Don’t know how I feel about the short hair yet…
Music: Grounds for Divorce, by Elbow
(PS: post 500!)
Spent some time on Conan O’Brien related media today. I haven’t watched him on The Tonight Show , but I’m starting to like him more and more.
I’m not a big fan of people who are TOO funny. Including Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Jim Carrey….I just can’t handle too much humor, especially when every other sentence is an over-the-top joke. But I really enjoyed his Class Day speech that Kshen posted about earlier found here. His timing is great, it’s well thought-out, and very well delivered (obviously – he’s been doing this stuff for so long). He manages to be serious when appropriate, but coats that seriousness in humor that defines the person he is and the career that he has.
Some great quotes: …”an insane, inexplicable opportunity came my way. A chance to audition for the new Late Night Show. I took the opportunity seriously, but, at the same time, I had the relaxed confidence of someone who knew he had no real shot. I couldn’t fear losing a job I had never really had. And, I think that attitude made the difference….
“…I’ve dwelled on my failures today because, as graduates of Harvard, your biggest liability is your need to succeed. Your need to always find yourself on the sweet side of the bell curve. Because success is a lot like a bright, white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you’re desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it in any way.“
I love these words. There’s not one part his speech that’s excess or unneeded drabble.
I always used to think he was just goofy and overly extroverted and just had all this energy that needed to be released (which, as a comedian, is appropriate). But today I watched an interview done earlier in February on Inside the Actor’s Studio. It’s a show on HBO hosted by James Lipton, the Dean of Pace University, and art school in NYC. They generally invite well known and big time actors to talk about their childhood, training, and their art, not just their fame or celebrity. The questions are serious and get to the meat of each actor’s work – and the interviews overall are poignant and reveal a lot about each person and what it’s taken to get where they are.
I guess this is the first interview OF Conan, rather than BY him, that I’ve seen. I love seeing the serious side of people who are comedians or meant to be funny all the time. I mean, practically speaking, you can’t be cracking jokes ALL the time – there’s got to be something underneath it right?
I was so impressed by what he said about his experience in comedy. There’s a seriousness behind it that audiences don’t necessarily see. While good comedy is often spontaneous, as he says that his favorite moments are often when things go wrong and improvisation falls into place, there is structure behind it as well. There’s a lot of thought and preparation that goes into trying to analyze what kinds of things will be funny. Clearly he’s a smart person (his father’s a doctor at HMS through Brigham and Women’s and his mom is a lawyer) and he’s worked hard to get to where he is, but I think that’s often masked in his jokes. We just see him as a funny man, rather than an intellectual, which, I would argue, he actually is.
A couple of wonderful things he said in his interview:
Here’s the first of 9 videos of that interview. You can find the rest on that page, though videos 4, 6, and 7 are missing, unfortunately.
Conan O’Brien is great – I’m a huge fan.
