Jane Goodall spent most of her life studying chimpanzees. But she was a pretty astute observer of bipedal primates too.
“The greatest danger to our future is apathy. We can’t all save the world in a dramatic way, but we can each make our small difference, and together those small differences add up. Every single person makes an impact on the planet every single day. The question is: What kind of impact do you want to make?” — Jane Goodall
Here’s to small differences, instead of indifference!
March Madness starts tonight. 68 teams vying for that “one shining moment.” But Steve Alford has already had his, and it was in a post-game press conference, speaking the truth to the NCAA powers that be.
Alford was a great college basketball player. And he recently won his 700th game as a college basketball coach. His entire adult life has been spent in the game. So we need to listen when he talks about how ridiculous the current NIL (name, image, and likeness) landscape is.
He’s exactly right. The athletes should be paid, but the way the system is set up right now, it’s at the expense of academics, life skills, and work ethic.
And he brings up a great point I’d never considered before. 18-year-olds can pull in six figures… sometimes seven… for their skills as an “amateur” athlete. But when their eligibility is up in a few short years, that money train goes away. Will they be prepared, at age 22 or 23, for the real world? Would you, if your “salary” went from $500K to zero in the blink of an eye, be able to adapt?
The NCAA and collegiate athletics should be about teaching life lessons. Period.
Steve alford
“Ball is life”… until it isn’t.
The NCAA doesn’t need to fix March Madness, but they do need to fix the NIL madness that’s year-round.
Howdy folks, “Honest Donny” here, and we’re really excited about the new car dealership I just opened at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C.
It’s easy to find – just look for the big white house! If that doesn’t work, maybe we’ll add one of those floppy people with no backbone. No, not the Republican members of Congress – although I understand your confusion. I mean one of these:
This month, we’ve got a great deal on some electric cars and tanks… er, I mean trucks.
These babies will really protect you when the rioting starts! (The bad kind, not the tourists visits the J6 folks did.)
Now I know in the past I’ve said some disparaging things about electric cars. Like:
“Electric cars are good if you have a towing company.”
And I said electric car makers “are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL.” And that President Joe Biden sold autoworkers “down the river with his ridiculous all Electric Car Hoax.” And promoting electric vehicles “was the idea of the Radical Left Fascists, Marxists, & Communists.”
But that was before I met this fascist. I want you to meet my new manager, Elon.
He’s a great American… well, he’s South African, but potato/po-tah-toe, right? And he’s making these Teslas – it’s a company he founded! (Oh, sorry, actually, he didn’t start the company, he just invested in it, then wrested control from the founders and tried to claim credit for starting it. Hmm, that’s a situation that could never happen with our government.)
Let me tell you more about these beauties… they’re red, of course, to match my tie, and my hat. And Elon took inspiration from the German automakers to design them. You know, he takes a lot of inspiration from Germany… you might even say he spends most of his time doing a German salute.
And if you put these automobiles into self-driving mode, they’ll take control of the wheel and do all the driving, so you can focus on putting on your orange tanner and combing your hair into a nice cotton candy shape that covers your bald spots.
And the tires, they’re fully inflated… because just like with the economy, inflation is good!
I can put you into one of these babies for just $35,000… or five dozen eggs. You’d better lock down this deal before you get locked up for saying anything bad about me.
We also take trade-ins. Just push, pull, or drag Chuck Schumer down here and we’ll give you a real sweetheart deal, without any sort of negotiations at all, just like Chuckie did for me.
And if you buy now, I’ll throw in a free* pair of gold sneakers. (*you’ll just need to pay the fealty fee of $400… it’s standard for deals like this).
Come on down to Honest Donny’s car lot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. You can take public transportation… wait, I probably defunded that because it’s “woke.” Maybe take a Cybertruck Uber. Unless it’s snowing.
AppleBoy Steve Jobs knew the not-so-secret secret to creativity:
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences… Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences…The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”
This concept applies even if you aren’t in the design realm.
Get out of your bubble. Get into something new. Read a lot – from a variety of sources.
It’s fine to dabble, and be a dilettante. You’re filling the creative well.
There’s an old Hollywood joke that pithily sums up an actor’s full-circle career arc:
Who is John Doe? Get me John Doe! Get me a John Doe-type. Get me a young John Doe. Who is John Doe?
There’s a similar arc for most musicians, and it can be based on their transportation:
Drive the van. Ride in the van. Ride in the bus. Ride on the plane. Ride on the bus. Ride in the van. Drive the van.
There was a big ol’ bus parked outside the tiny Green Lantern Bar in Lexington, Kentucky last night. MJ Lenderman is blowing up. And rightfully so — his music is great.
Six years ago, he was scooping ice cream at a shop in Asheville to support his musical efforts, which included playing guitar for a band called Wednesday (whose ’23 album Rat Saw God is one of my faves from that year).
Three years ago, he released an album called Boat Songs, and got in a van to do a tour that included tiny clubs like the Green Lantern Bar. By the end of the year, Boat Songs hadn’t move a lot of units, but it garnered critical acclaim.
Wikipedia: Lenderman contributed guitar and vocals to the album Tiger’s Blood by Waxahatchee, released in March 2024, and was listed as featured guest artist on the album’s lead single, “Right Back To It”. In March 2024, Lenderman performed “Right Back To It” with Waxahatchee on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.[14] Lenderman’s next album, Manning Fireworks, was released in September 2024.
The next leg of his U.S. tour will be at larger venues. And good luck getting tickets!
The Green Lantern is a tiny dive bar. But it’s very musician-friendly.
It would’ve been very easy for MJ Lenderman and his five-piece band to play a larger venue in Lexington on his current tour. Or skip Lexington altogether, for bigger clubs in bigger cities, for a bigger paycheck. (Diesel gas for the bus ain’t cheap.) Instead, he booked two shows at the Green Lantern.
I was lucky enough to be at last night’s show, thanks to my friend and neighbor Frank, who got tickets as soon as they went on sale… and before Lendermania (yeah, I’m gonna trademark that one!) reached a fever pitch.
Clearly the folks at the bar made an impression on MJ. And he was paying it backward. Because he knows what two sold-out shows means to a small club. And he still remembers what it’s like to scoop ice cream while following your dream.
“Once music and work and money all become the same thing, it gets hard to do it casually. But that was the reason I was able to do anything meaningful in the first place,” he admits. “You can see that through my whole life, just being able to go to a friend’s house and make something and not worry about what it is.”
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
You done said…