2.18.2009

And now I am off to visit a little baby.

I got up early this morning. Something inside of my head said, “get up girl! You have to email Malcolm Gladwell!” I spent fifteen minutes thinking about my Fall Drive Project video that I HAVE To finish by mail cut off time tomorrow. Thinking about video naturally led me to thinking about my Dogumentary work and how much there is to do before the Detroit Dog Show next weekend. Then I thought about the m*th*r fuc**in students that were talking in class last night when I was trying to lecture.

Then I wrote a short email to Malcolm Gladwell about his book – Outliers which is quite interesting and confirms all kinds of things like yeah, Bill Gates is a genius but it kind of helped that his parents were well-to-do, concerned parents that bought his school a computer in 1968 when most college professors didn’t have access to computers. It confirms stuff like "you have to practice if you want to be great at something" which is as inspiring to hear as "you have to eat less if you want to be thin." I like paraphrasing things like that because I get 50% of it wrong. But I was compelled to write him because in the audio book version - I listened to the audio version on the way to and from Chicago (tells you what a zippy drive Fowlerville to Chicago is) – he gives an interview on the last track and the line of questioning leads to his Canadian citizenship which leads to him talking about why Canadians make great comedians. His theory is that most successful comics are minorities (black or jewish) -- from “the outside” – so it is safe for them to make fun of the dominant culture. I think this is an interesting theory but I wonder – why about female comedians? They are a minority and people hate on them for being, or trying to be as the haters say, funny. Deep thoughts. Dear Mr. Gladwell, How are you? I am fine. My boyfriend thinks you look funny.

I then spent five minutes adding on a Gmail feature that lets people know where I’m sending email from. Then I thought about the implications of that for ten minutes and then I remembered I am not working for corporate USA anymore and nobody is watching me (that hasn’t already been watching – Hello KGB!). And now I am off to visit a little baby.

2 comments:

Wade said...

One time I asked Drew why he had that Gladwell book and everybody in the room fucking flipped their shit at me. It was the most scared I've ever been. They started to tie a rope around the rafters and I was fucking out of there.

S K said...

Ha. Awesome. I want to hear more. Gladwell really stirs something in us.