There’s always something to howl about.

Month: December 2010 (page 1 of 3)

A film for New Year’s Eve: The Fabulous Baker Boys…

This is my all-time favorite New Year’s movie (Netflix link):

More than you know
More than you know
Man of my heart, I love you so
Lately I find
You’re on my mind
More than you know

Whether you’re right
Whether you’re wrong
Man of my heart, I’ll string along
You need me so
More than you’ll ever know

That’s Michelle Pfeiffer’s opening song from The Fabulous Baker Boys, (here is a clip of her singing it) and it rapturously encapsulates the very best of four distinct art forms. It’s gripping film-making, with great performances by all three principal players, Beau Bridges, Jeff Bridges and Pfeiffer. The piano, portrayed by Jeff Bridges, and and the song, actually sung by Pfeiffer, are very effective together. But the song itself exhibits in a very simple fashion the essence of lyrical song-writing: From the first verse to the second we change from ‘I need you’ to ‘you need me.’ And that in turn, like a page torn from Sophocles himself, provides the argument for the entire drama. This is what integrity means in art: Every different thing is the same one thing.

And the whole film is done brilliantly. It’s easy to get lost in Pfeiffer’s sultry performance, but I think Jeff Bridges’ laconic, sardonic, taciturn embodiment of Jack Baker is an excellent exploration of the practical consequences of self-loathing. The story is dark, almost seedy, but the plot is redemption, which is my favorite yarn. And despite a few short lapses into cheesiness, writer/director Steve Kloves delivers a gritty and credible resolution. There are no villains, nor any genuine heroes, but everyone is a better person by the time the credits roll. I score that a victory for the forces of the light.

The Fabulous Baker Boys is particularly appropriate for New Year’s Eve, because the timeline of the film runs from Christmas through New Year’s. Kloves uses this to the story’s huge advantage, which matters a lot to me. In particular, the big romantic blow-off of the movie occurs on New Year’s Eve. It starts when Michelle Pfeiffer’s Susie Diamond character sings a very provocative version of ‘Makin’ Whoopee’ to Jack Baker — (here is is Read more

Is THIS The Year You Grow A Pair And Finally Walk Your Talk?

If that title harshed your mellow in any way, you’re the target audience. Does it sound unfair? Make you feel like you’re being picked on? Poor baby. Compared to much of what’s published on these pages, I’m a relative Mr. Rogers. But the dark cloud messin’ up the mostly silver lining that was my 2010, was the talk/walk ratio with which I constantly was forced to deal. Isn’t shame possible any longer? Does nobody know how to blush? Has there been some sorta immunity from embarrassment pill on which I missed out?

I speak from painful experience. Many of the early years in the business my talk/walk ratio was maybe 8:2 or so. Talkin’ big time while walkin’ in clown shoes is something with which I’m no stranger. I know, cuz I’ve watched me do it.

Hey! I has an idear.

Do most of your talkin’ to yourself. Do most of your walkin’ makin’ things happen — quietly. Most of my mentors were lifetime members of Brutal Mentors Я Us. There were countless times I was ‘gang mentored’ in the truest modern sense of the phrase. They weren’t interested in why things couldn’t or didn’t get done. If you can’t walk your talk, maybe Von’s is hiring they’d say. Actually, they said a lotta stuff a whole lot different than that, but those gems won’t be repeated here. 🙂

Ever get tired of hearing your own empty words?

We all have more or less talent than the next agent. Same with experience and knowledge. Experience doesn’t happen a day at a time. It happens a transaction at a time. Every time you sit down and prospect. Each time you follow up. Every belly-to-belly with a potential client. Etc., etc. Knowledge increases cuz we seek it out, not cuz it gives a damn about us.

Whether or not you have more or less talent than the guy a desk over is literally not worth talkin’ about. Who’s working harder? Who’s learnin’ how to work smarter? Who’s grindin’ it out day after day after day? If the title pissed you off, you haven’t done that yet Read more

My New Years Resolution: To take care of today’s goals today, tomorrow’s tomorrow, and to track my progress every day.

Yikes! The end of the month is upon us. The end of the year is upon us. I have no good opinion of New Years Resolutions, by now, but I think the world of chipping away at your goals day-by-day. Here’s a calendar for January to get your New Year off to the right start. Set some goals and track your progress. You’ll be amazed at your results, if you will just follow through one day at a time.

The Ten Commandments of Buyer Side Representation

Merry Christmas.  Happy Hanukkah.  Happy Kwanzaa… Festivus… all that stuff.  Lovely… now let’s get down to business.  I’m buying a house.  Along the journey, I’ve paid close attention to how the average Real Estate Agent operates.  I’m sharing these thoughts with my fellow Bloodhounds at the risk of offending some – or perhaps all – of you.  But it all comes from the right place and I hope you enjoy…

Commandment #10:  Have a freaking take.

Are you the type of Real Estate Agent who likes to open doors for clients and then stand silently with a pleased expression as they walk through the home?  If so, I suggest you consider a new profession.  Look, I want to know what YOU think about a home too… that’s one of the reasons I hired you.  I might agree with you, I might not.  But when you have a take, you engage in critical dialogue with your clients.  In my case, I’d trust you more if you tell me what you don’t like about something.  It would make me feel like you’re looking out for me.

Commandment #9:  Don’t tell me you’re a Top Producer.

Because if you are, I probably know that already and all it sounds like is bragging (which most of the time… it is).  Just let your work do the talking for you.  Oh, and here’s just a bit of a peeve… if you’re in the “Million Dollar Club” is that really something worth crowing about anymore?  What is that… 3, 4, maybe 5 houses a year? 

Commandment #8:  Avoid this question:  “So what do you want to do?”

This commandment is closely associated with #10 above.  One agent I was working with loved to interrupt me with that magical question and eventually I told her what I wanted to do:  fire her.  Instead of asking what your client wants to do (which, by the way, they could easily figure out without your counsel)… you ought to continue tossing ideas/suggestions at them.  And if you REALLY want to impress your clients, give them the upside and downside with every suggestion you make.  Then listen.  Simple.

Commandment #7:  Read more

Merry Christmas, Princess Peach

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“Luigi!” The beautiful blonde girlchild tore her way across the packed airport corridor.

“Oh,” said her mother, a beautiful blonde womanchild. “Great…”

There is only one Christmas, isn’t there? Holly and mistletoe. A golden retriever by the fire. Mom bastes the bird while dad carols with the choir. Icicles cling to the branches of birch trees and fat, wet snowflakes tumble down, lit by the yellow glow of gaslights. Horses nicker and children giggle and lovers nestle and sigh. We’re all dreaming of a white Christmas — and we’re all dreaming.

And why not? Over the ghetto and through the industrial park doesn’t sound like a very nice way to get to Grandmother’s house, even though the highway really does go that way. There are no trails of tail-lights at Christmas, glinting and glowing in the drops of muddy drizzle on the windshield. The snow is white and windblown into drifts, not plow-piled and gray with soot. The children don’t squabble, the drunkards don’t wobble and the lovers don’t quarrel or cry.

Even at the airport there is only one Christmas, the Christmas-card Christmas of a world without airports.

Luigi was sitting across from me and he leapt up to meet the little girl as she crashed into him. She was seven or maybe eight, really too old to be picked up, but he picked her up anyway. She hugged him tightly and they both had a sudden wetness in their eyes.

He set the girl down as her mother approached. She nodded to him in a way that might have been curt, except the honey gold ringlets of her hair fell forward and robbed her of her haughtiness. She said, simply, “Brendan.”

He answered with a smile that was good-humored at the mouth and mocking in the eyes. “Best of the season to you, Chloe.”

The little girl shook her head furiously, her own white gold ringlets redeeming her mother’s haughtiness with an imperiousness of her own devising. “He’s not Brendan, he’s Luigi. And she’s not Chloe, she’s Princess Daisy. And I’m not Jennifer, I’m — ”

Luigi said, “This announcement wants herald trumpets, I Read more

Want Unvarnished Truth? See Who You Are Through The Telescope Of Decades

I bet you look back at the end of each year to review, tally wins/losses, etc., measuring results vs first of the year expectations. That’s no doubt a universal experience. Did we lose the weight? Do the business? Learn the new language? Master that new skill? Become a better whatever?

This year you may wanna try something different — something that may provide insight more useful than a year’s review. Liken it to comparing stargazing to seeing the night sky through a powerful telescope. Instead of scrutinizing the last 12 months, critically examine the last decade. In fact, begin with the first decade of your adult life, examining each succeeding 10 year period. You have the perspective of having lived it, which will help.

Dad did this on the advice of his father-in-law, back in the late 50’s or very early 60’s. He told me of the life changing realization that hit him like a shotgun blast at pointblank range.

(Paraphrased) “I suddenly realized, with almost terrifying lucidity and coherence, that I could literally accomplish anything I wanted. It had a paralyzing affect on me for days. Not long after, I sat down with pen and paper to set long term goals, and I’ve never looked back.”

You may have more than a few epiphanic moments. I know I sure have. 2010 completes the fourth decade for me, so I can crank up my mental telescope to full power, while conducting postmortems on each successive decade. Like the galaxy, we all have a mental picture of the paths our lives have taken — by choice or otherwise. Yet much as the night sky is orders of magnitude different through the lens of a powerful telescope, so is looking at galaxy-sized blocks of our lives.

It shows how we’ve grown — or haven’t. What lessons we’ve yet to learn, and wisdom we’ve successfully adopted. But most of all you’ll see the truth — in big picture form. Forensically dissecting a decade of your life, or better yet, more than one decade, is a potential goldmine of information about the most important person in the world Read more

A future more vivid

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“Salve, caudex,” the big little boy said to his father.

“Salve, caudex,” the father replied.

The boy turned to me, a stranger, and said, “Salve, caudex.” I smiled at him and he confided, “That means, ‘Hello, blockhead’.”

We were sharing a bench at the mall, as one must at Christmas. When I had sat down it was just the father and me at opposite ends of the bench. But then the big little boy — too young to be big, too tall to be little — had come bounding out of the toy store across the way.

He was his father in miniature, seven or eight years old but very tall, very lean. His hair was brown and a little shaggy and his eyes were gray and very bright. He had his father’s large hands and long fingers, and it won’t be long before he has his father’s prominent proboscis. He walked fast and talked fast and he moved his body with a blinding abruptness.

“You like it, don’t you?” his father asked.

“Boy, do I! I think that’s the best video game system ever! That’s what I want for Christmas!”

“How interesting.”

The boy spun to me and said, “That means, ‘I don’t care’.”

I said: “I’m sorry?”

“When he says ‘how interesting’, it means he doesn’t care.”

“What it means,” said the father, including me, I think, because he felt he had to, “is that you have said nothing to motivate me to act. You haven’t asked for anything, and you haven’t given me any reason why I should honor your request in any case.”

“It means he doesn’t care.”

“Attend me, sir,” the father said.

“That means, ‘Listen up’.”

Attend me, sir. I think you’re right. I think it is the best video game system ever. At least the best so far. Have I told you lately how much I despise video games?”

“He hates video games,” the boy confessed.

“I hate video games,” the father confirmed — to the boy, not to me. “And yet you love them. And a Christmas gift should be what you love, not what I love — what you love, even if I hate it. Read more

A Costco family Christmas

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“Okay, so one day we’re driving, and we’re just about to get on the freeway, and I look up and the sign says, ‘Squaw Peak Freeway.'”

The Kid said that. Maybe eleven years old, tall and thin. Tousled brown hair and the most beautiful gray eyes I’ve ever seen. He was talking to the Mom, mid-forties, fair and tall. She had long brown hair and eyes of a gentle, laughing green.

She said, “That’s what the sign says.”

“But my whole life I thought it was called the Pipsqueak Freeway. That’s what Dad always called it. That’s what he still calls it.”

The Mom was laughing silently, trying very hard not to laugh out loud.

“It’s not funny! I asked him why he called it that and he said he named it after the mayor.”

The Mom was still trying not to laugh.

“Oh, sure. Very funny. Every day after school we used to stop at the Post Office, and I was seven or eight before I found out that it’s not really called the Edgar Allan Poe Stoffice. I didn’t even know who Edgar Allan Poe was.”

The Mom was stopped short by her laughter. She stood there behind her shopping cart trying to catch her breath.

“You think it’s funny. I think it’s funny sometimes, too. But I never know when he tells me the name of something if that’s the real name, or if it’s just something he made up.”

“You have a lot of room to talk,” said the Mom. “The other day I said I needed to get four quarters and you spent the rest of the day telling people that I want to put warts on forks.”

“The Fork Warters, semi-notorious villains from the nether reaches. Or maybe they’re just a really bad rock band.”

“You see? You sound just like him. Where is your father, anyway?”

“He took off. He said he had Santaclaustrophobia.”

The Mom said nothing, just smiled and pushed her cart along the aisle.

They were Christmas shopping at Costco, which used to be called The Price Club before some genius decided that made too much sense.

Do you know about Costco? It’s Read more

Lawrence Reed of FEE.org lecturing in Southern California in January 2011

I wanted to make you all aware of a free lecture series, offered by Lawrence Reed of the Foundation for Economic Education, in early January, 2011:

I’ll be attending the San Diego lecture and have a friend attending the Los Angeles lecture.  I hope to have synopses of both, published here on Bloodhound Blog, by mid-January.