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On The Set of Lost (November)in Haleiwa-- As Terry O'Quinn's Stand-In Body Double. |
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| MY SAAB! |
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| Michael Emerson and Ed Reif |
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| Here with "Vincent The Dog", and Michael Emerson |
2018 Cunard QM2 World Cruise
What a Voyage!
2011 Crystal World Cruise
Ill take things that I know for $20,000 Alex
2015 Holland America World Voyage
The Med, Norway And Beyond
2016 Seaborn The Mediterranean
So Much To sea
Suez Canal Crossing
Suez Spelt Backwards IS Zeus
Thursday, December 27, 2007
You Get Paid For The Waiting (Acting's Free)
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Headlines-Be Brave and Shave
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| With Terry O'Quinn |
In the beginning, there was Michael. Jordan was the poster guy for the perfectly bald man. He made shaving cutting edge. He took "the shaved skull" from social outcast to rock star chick magnet status. The follicly challenged started doing the numbers . Shaved head= Shiny, Smooth and Sexy. You could count on being noticed.Me no hair
Is bald beautiful? Perhaps. Is bald a high end haircut? Maybe. One thing for sure, Bald is a hair color. If you want to make the statement that says, I run my own life. Shave your head and join the Union!
Me no hair is a walking, breathing billboard and bullhorn that shouts, "I've got other plans"
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| Love Me. Love My Dog! |
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| With Michael Emerson |
Thursday, December 20, 2007
As Seen On TV-How I Got My SAG card
Outcomes
Informercials over pay its celebrities for success and underpay for failure. Those long-format 23 minute commercials had several meteoric stars: Juice Man Jay Kordish Juicers, and Susan Powter "Stop the Insanity!" before and after you bought their products were all about the call to action --your credit card and calling 1800 number. I had an action plan of my own. It wasn't about resources, but resourcefulness.
Jay would extol the virtues of raw live juices and their Christ like healing powers, while handing out the Eucharist (carrot juice) to audience members. Militant Susan, the self proclaimed Lenny Bruce of Wellness, with her platinum buzz haircut, turned water into wine with her fat to fit solution of eating less.
Jay would extol the virtues of raw live juices and their Christ like healing powers, while handing out the Eucharist (carrot juice) to audience members. Militant Susan, the self proclaimed Lenny Bruce of Wellness, with her platinum buzz haircut, turned water into wine with her fat to fit solution of eating less.
Yes I have a juicer, but the IN to my SANE is Tony Robbins, the guru of transformations and late night TV (Prime time is the worst time for these commercials) —that’s the guy “Tony” is not full of Baloney, he's full of red meat and bad to the bone--Awaken the Giant Within and Unlimited Power were reminders of these basic things-
"The quality of my life IS the quality of my communication"-YES. More importantly, "Success leaves clues. If I am committed, there is always a way. The past doesn't equal the future."
And in his TED speech of 2006, (click link or view below), Tony discusses the invisible forces that motivate us to action
“Decision is the ultimate power. Decisions shape destiny.”
Success Leaves Clues
Tony is his own best life coach, going from living in his car, to flying a helicopter. I can relate to his...
“In life you need either inspiration or desperation.”Preparing to change--- that takes time. Change itself occurs in an instant.
This is not some life-changing transformation, but change as a number of tiny actions that brings me immediate results. Sure it takes training for a marathon, and you spell love t.i.m.e. but in Hollywood things happen at the speed of trust. And only when you trust yourself can you begin to live at full power.
Knowledge isn’t power, applied knowledge is. At this point in my life, it was all about enthusiasm--Success is not continued enthusiasm despite failure after failure but outcome after outcome or results. There is no failure, only Outcomes. Or as Tony says, Results.
I had a 90 day plan, after moving to Hollywood in 1997, in the land of fruits and nuts Southern California, to get a SAG card.
What is a guild card, it is a Union card to work in the film and TV industry. It’s a classic catch-22. How do you get a role in a feature film? You need a SAG card. How do you get a SAG card? You need to get a role in a feature film. Just Ask Brad Pitt, OR Watch:
As John Lennon sang “Beautiful Boy” on the radio, He was right--- life is what happens as you are making other plans. I was hearing "Let It Be"- the magic of letting go....
As it turned out, I was approaching getting a SAG card by collecting Union vouchers as a Background Artist, but when things went south, and work dried up, I was two days work shy of achieving the goal, but only 3 weeks to go on my 90 Day Plan, I was frustrated- As Tony would say:
Aloha- If I am committed, there is always a way
As it turned out, I was approaching getting a SAG card by collecting Union vouchers as a Background Artist, but when things went south, and work dried up, I was two days work shy of achieving the goal, but only 3 weeks to go on my 90 Day Plan, I was frustrated- As Tony would say:
"Frustration is an action signal, it means you know that you could do better"
What could be better than a Brain Dump,going to Hawaii again, the place of recharge and inspiration. It was gonna be a break down or a break through. I took a chance on both-because as Tony says Focus Equals Feelings...and as the song goes ...feelings, nothing more than feelings.....
“All personal breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs.”
I needed a vacation! from my vacation! and my job of "looking for a job", and "efforting". It was time for the law of least effort and the strength of loose ties to come into play. ENTER Hawaii
Environment Creates Mood And Motion Creates Emotion
These were the types who didn't go to film school to learn how to make a film. They went to film schools to rent the equipment.
Real go getters. That's what production people are like. They can make it rain, tear down a set and make it snow.
Los Angry Cars
I flew back to LAX, Los Angry Cars (Los Angeles) thinking I needed to drive a truck to earn real consistent money and break the 40K barrier. But I was just grateful for a wonderful vacation, and when you are grateful, abundance has more than a chance to appear.
Shawn Mullins was my Bob Marley singing Lullaby "Everything is Gonna Be Alright"
"You’re Ed Reif…I worked with you on set last month”
“Steve”, yea, the AD (Assistant Director), you have a movie now,”
“Steve”, yea, the AD (Assistant Director), you have a movie now,”
“No Ed , this is a Kate Capshaw film, Steven Spielberg’s wife, I'm hustling just helping out the location scouts, but I’m shooting a film starting tomorrow “It’s an early call time 5AM, Just Show up and I'll see if I can get you a day or two”
“I live near there. I can walk over. I’ll be there”.
I returned for work on what was to be a Richard Elfman film , with a working title, The Revenant. Later it would be released as Modern Vampires.
On Day 88 I worked a Day as a Union Background Performer, On Day 89, I was given an audition, by Rick,(the Director) who asked “Can you act?” which I replied affirmatively, “Yes” and got upgraded as a day player, with a contract.
I switched my union background voucher with Actor John Fleck’s day player contract. John had another project in New York, and had to leave, as we were shooting over time.
Overtime to me was golden time- In the 12, 14 hours you can double and triple your money as a Union Gig. I was loving it..My own trailer, good food, lots of beautiful girls-living the dream. I got "Taft–Hartley-ed"
(The term Taft-Hartley has a special meaning in the entertainment industry. Specifically, for film and television actors, an actor not in the union who becomes a “principal performer” (says a line) is immediately eligible to join the Screen Actors Guild and is covered under the SAG contract with the production company for 30 days, at which point he or she must either join SAG or cease working on any union productions)
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| Modern Vampires (1998) Horror/Thriller Director:Richard Elfman Starring :Casper Van Dien, Natasha Gregson Wagner, John Fleck, Ed Reif, Kim Cattrall, Stephen Porter, Craig Ferguson, Jason Ross-Azikiwe, Udo Kier, Natalya Andreychenko, Rod Steiger, Boris Lee Krutonog, Marco Hofschneider, Robert Pastorelli, |
Taft–Hartley Act
I switched my union background voucher with Actor John Fleck’s day player contract. John had another project in New York, and had to leave, as we were shooting over time.
Overtime to me was golden time- In the 12, 14 hours you can double and triple your money as a Union Gig. I was loving it..My own trailer, good food, lots of beautiful girls-living the dream. I got "Taft–Hartley-ed"
(The term Taft-Hartley has a special meaning in the entertainment industry. Specifically, for film and television actors, an actor not in the union who becomes a “principal performer” (says a line) is immediately eligible to join the Screen Actors Guild and is covered under the SAG contract with the production company for 30 days, at which point he or she must either join SAG or cease working on any union productions)
Steve, the AD, I met the day before , who originally hooked me up with the gig, I remember to this day, with his clip board, and head set on just rolling his eyes, saying
"Lucky Dog. You Spec'ed a feature film, get a Union Voucer, and then upgraded to a Union Contract-I have never seen that".
The Shoot-The past doesn't equal the future (I never took an acting lesson)
These were the few lines in a feature film,
“I’m an attorney, you’ll never get away with this”
Then Vampires Kim Cattrall (before SITC) and Robert Pastorelli , chopped off my head and ate my brains. Yuck. As we shot my scenes, I was so excited and amped up on Craft's Services Espressos, that I got close ups and lines that I was smiling and screaming at the same time.
With no classical training, not even one single acting lesson, I was about to get my first from The Sound Man, his ears ringing, said,
But it is a Director's medium, as my regional accent kicked in, Rick, smoking an unlit cigar, said
Then Vampires Kim Cattrall (before SITC) and Robert Pastorelli , chopped off my head and ate my brains. Yuck. As we shot my scenes, I was so excited and amped up on Craft's Services Espressos, that I got close ups and lines that I was smiling and screaming at the same time.
With no classical training, not even one single acting lesson, I was about to get my first from The Sound Man, his ears ringing, said,
"Ed this is a microphone. if you whisper it will project more feelings in your face"
But it is a Director's medium, as my regional accent kicked in, Rick, smoking an unlit cigar, said
"Let's go again, less New York".
Konstantin Stanislavsky rule was Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art. I broke it! I loved myself in the art.
Now I had 30 days to pay the Union Dues! A New "feeling" But As Tony Robbins says, Focus equals feelings! I had a feeling I could sell my Super Bowl Ticket(s) (1997 Denver vs Green Bay in San Diego).
Read About American History X The Walla Group
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
American History X- The Walla Group
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| American History X is a 1998 American drama film directed by Tony Kaye and starring Edward Norton and Edward Furlong and (Ed)ward Reif |
In film and TV walla is a sound effect imitating the murmur of a crowd in the background.
A lot of Actor's don't like to shave their heads- Since I already do it, I have been getting a lot of prosthetic work on Galaxy Quest, and did a Mocumentary for the Sci Fi network; and a Series Regular as a Cro-Mag Soldier on Jerry O'Connell's Sliders.A group of actors are usually brought together in the post-production stage of film production to create this murmur is known as a walla group. We did it live.
Here I am as Nazi Buddy Storm Trooper #4. Check out the video for some Walla
"Hell No! F No!"
below at Venice High School in the badlands of Los Angeles
Monday, December 17, 2007
Double Negatives Are A No-No
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| I Got More Problems Than A Math Book. Maybe you're right 1+1 does equal infinity. |
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| Indiana University at Indianapolis was a bit buttoned down |
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| In 1994 |
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Math Atheists-Teaching By The Numbers
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| Barbie was right"Math is hard" |
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| A Pain in The English |
Hawaii is beautiful
The three reasons I became a teacher, June July and August are replaced by the four reasons I teach in Hawaii---Kauai, Maui, Oahu and The Big Island.
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| Maui |
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| Paradise Found |
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| Nature's Mirror |
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| Big Island |
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Shoveling Sunshine
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Starting off with an embarkation day at Aloha Towers in Honolulu, then a sea day, and we hit Kauai, Maui(Lahina and Kahalui) Hilo and Kona. It was the best!
The weather was always temperate and I had the most energizing and spirtually uplifting time, enjoying the weather, the people, the food, the culture and the OHANA-family atmosphere of Hawaii. I have been hooked ever since on these beautiful islands.
The definition of ecstasy is that you are not doing your ordinary everyday ho-hum existence. Shoveling sunshine in Hawaii beats a day at the office.Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Seafarers Academy
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| Fire Training was the most fun |
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| That hose nearly catapulted me back 1000 feet |
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| Some are born great. Some achieve greatness. Some get greatness as a graduation gift. We all got our SCTW Certifications and USCG Merchant Mariner Documents in June 2007, so we can work on Ships. NCLA was an all-American crew, flagged here in the USA, and "The Jones Act" of 1812 says that NCLA has to hire Americans. I did a short contract(8 weeks!) as a Head Waiter, but this ship life as a waiter is Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Midnight Snack. No time off and any time off, I just slept. In August I took a leap of faith(actually jumped ship in Maui)/ One good thing about Hawaii is that is still America-The money is the same, my t mobile phone works andI can hustle and find a job---which I did-- and started working as a Sub and plus, as an added bonus, have been a working Actor on the set of LOST as a body double and stand in. I have a SAG Union card from 1999, so that helps to get paid scale. |
Sunday, October 14, 2007
The Teaches Of Beaches-The Power Of New
Go away Picasso, I want to learn how to paint.AT first, I was a little hesitant to publish excerpts of The Teaches Of Beaches pro bono before it's book release, next year. Then, I thought this is not just another car in a parking lot:
Grand Theft Auto---A lot of cars are stolen in America, but not one US Mail Truck: because well,they are mail trucks. When I write, I kinda "go postal" in my own idiosyncratic Ed Reif way. It's my signature;a keen sense of the obvious.I like to challenge things that are taken for granted. Stuff that is obvious is below the radar. Therefore, I don't expect too much p
lagerism with ,The United States of Consciousness...
Cowboy French Fries, my thought(mare) virus , on the other hand, ---The Unted States of Unconscious Eating--- is up for grabs:you've got two eyes so plagiarize, and pass on the meme! Doing my part for the gift economy (free)dom...
lagerism with ,The United States of Consciousness...Cowboy French Fries, my thought(mare) virus , on the other hand, ---The Unted States of Unconscious Eating--- is up for grabs:you've got two eyes so plagiarize, and pass on the meme! Doing my part for the gift economy (free)dom...
"Remember to start at the bottom, preferably rock bottom. Relax and lower your standards. You're not keeping up with the Jones. You're draging them down to your level..." That's an excerpt from my post, The Sex of Poker.
Me puting the odd back into God.
I was in 6th grade Art class, Square peg round hole stuff...
Mr Clancy asked me,
" Nervous Gervous!What on earth are you drawing?"
"I'm drawing a picture of God Ole' Man Clacy"
They will in a minute". I schooled him.
If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original. Therefore---Always make new mistakes because you are not your mistakes. Doing things right the first time is an obsenity .
You must, however, be prepared to fail, yet being wrong is not creative, but you must be prepared to be wrong. We can't stigmatize mistakes. The result is we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Businesses that stigmatise mistakes kill creativity too.Go away Picasso, I want to learn how to paint...I like saying that when I find myself not willing to co-presence with the power of NEW, New is the new NOW.
Courage, is heart, and POker courage is doing it with heart, and it starts with the courage to create crisis. If a baseball game is a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings than, a NLH poker game is the in to your sane.
Losing holdem A.S.A.P. is about being normal. It is the ideal aim of the unsuccessful and unimaginative. Ask your mother. Normal is the setting on her washing machine. Normal isn't a virtue. It denotes a lack of poker courage. It’s a vast, conforming suburb of the soul. You don’t want to be normal. Normal people spend their lives avoiding tense situation, Poker Playahs spend their lives getting into them. The whole upshot of NLH is that it be a perpetual crisis that you create...
Well, Picasso said, "All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist when we grow up"--- Growing old AND growing up is option.
Education today is like strip mining, mining the mind for that one dimensional view from the neck up, the drill of standardized testing, the rote of ranking and yanking. "We live in our head" paradigm. and slightly to the left(brain). We do not know who we are until we know what we can do. That should be the job of education.
We want our kids to be 'change agents', as you say, but to teach means to force-feed them an unchanging meal. This too is your brain on french fries.T he real irony is that our true nature is to be creative it is who we are yet we are often quite successful at educating ourselves and others out of it. Therefore: an unlearning must take place---don't worry the brain has plasticity. Aging is not the side effect of being alive. Change that thought.
All easy people are easy in the same way, but uneasy people, each is dis-eased in his own way. I have the disease of teaching. It's more of an afflicition. Those who can't do teach, those who can't teach become poker playahs. Expressions of creativity is the meal that gets fed playing poker ... not just the appetizer or the dessert.
The End Of Aging
Like DNA,Genetics opens the door to human varability. and Medicine, you don't want to know about cancer, you want to know about YOUR cancer.
Cancer stem cells? Makes you think that stem cells are a trip wire when things go wrong, they go to work--- you smoke, you get a lung problem and the "healing" cancer goes to work.
Why does medicine concentrate on the elimination , the chemo-ing of cancer, instead of the manipulation of it. The heart is a muscle, and we are fifty percent muscle. Why are muscles not getting cancer, no heart cancer---Let's investigate.
Is surgery the best we can do as a species, since climbing out of a swamp? There's no0 such things as trash in digital fabrication--we have a kind of molecular lego, where we can resuse--making perfect things out of inperfect parts.
Biography is biography.But we are not our genes. Genes behave differently in different environments.So, it's never to late to have a good childhood. "My Gradfather had lung cancer" is a life sentence--- we're not the prisoners of our genetics: our cells are malleable, and we can mold them with what we believe. Belief controls biology. We see the world through our beliefs much like a set of glasses with a perscription. It's filtered.
Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles is an awareness that is currently rewriting the science of biology and medicine. Conventional science has held that genes control life, a concept known as genetic determinism. While this disempowering belief is still held as truth by the mainstream public, leading edge research in the exciting new field of epigenetics reveals a completely different truth. Genes do not control life. It is the environment, and more specifically, our perception of the environment that controls gene activity. In the end, it comes down to a simple case of “mind over matter” in controlling the fate of our lives.
The future of healing is not going to be a resolution of the past, it will be the emergence of the future moving in the present. Say you have a stroke--Does that make you a vegatarian, I mean vegetable--Is it all about making you "comfortable", a kind of resignation--Like breaking fine china whose beauty cannot be recovered, there's no way to recover brain function. Thatw as old school. Neurons that wire together fire together---You can make the connections again.
Aging is not a side effect of being alive. We can live to be 120 easily. There is robust rejuvenation out there and it starts in here, with what we think about all day , what we eat, what we eat all the time.
There are no universals in the YOUniverse---only variables.
There is nothing remarkable about walking the painted line. 1 plus1 equals 2. Yet "Normal" is the thing that keep us from living at 100%.
It's exile on main street but if you are a MATH ATHEIST , then 1 plus 1 equals infinity.
Our brains have been colonized by Suburbia, It is a cartoon...a 24/7 TV show broadcasting we are normal. we are normal...meanwhile little Clayton is loading his Glock 9 getting ready for homeroom, and his big sister Donna is turning tricks to support her drug habit.
Marinated in normal, the middle of the road is not the safest place to drive. You are now banished—as an exile from mainstream. Few things are harder to put up with than a good example .
The ability for our brains to change with experience is called plastisity. It's only too late if we don't start now. I used to eat meat and drink a case of beer every Friday night, back in college when I was majoring in Heineken. I know better.I killed so many brain cells! And joked about it.
Let's begin the ten second detox....
Things were so much better when things were so much worse--because there was less choice...The reality of our times is that we are all condemned to freedom- The freedom tochoose. Stay completely away from all things average, bland and safe. They are dangerous.
It's less about letting go, more about letting come. Don't let go of uncomfortable thoughts--question them, and then they let go of you.
Ask yourself, "What thought am I going to think of next" to slow things down.
Something is not moving--Everything is moving. There's no on/off switch to movement. We want to express our innate ability and desire to move. Movement is what we are, not something we do.
Lets move to interconnectedness and a deepening of consciousness.
Motion creates emotion and your life is matter in motion. Everybody and every BODY is a portal to something greater. It goes beyong gravational pull and all our so-called terrestrial limitations. How can we awaken the body's own biological intelligence.
The quest is in the questions: From a somatic point of view----Where are you experiencing this feeling in your body?
What are the specific sensations you are feelings?
What does this situation remind you of?
Can you conceive of yourself completely free of this issue?
The YOUniverse is not narcisism--the inability to think of another. It's EGOomics, the ability to service the needs of everybody so you can have anything.The Youniversity is a school of thought. SO is the earth school, but the earth school kills all of its students. Oh well (shrug).
The difference between depression and disappointment is your level of commitment.
Self-realization isn’t about more, it’s about less.The only construction required for awakening is demolition. Let’s take thewrecking ball.
Failure to construct future plans is depressing, and the imbalance between activity and stillness is stressing.
In the United States of Unconscious Eating, the food is terrible and the portions never enough. Yet we Star Strangled Bastards can’t get enough of what we don’t want, don’t need and don’t know. —S.A.D. the Standard American Diet, Uncle Sam’s unhappy default mode of eating the same stuff over and over again; and expecting a different result. That’s the in to our sane. Our state of enjoyable discomfort is a concept of citizenship framed around our diet. There is something so sociably acceptable---being obscene and not heard. Fatness is a kind of invisibility, a fashion statement OK fatso, what’s it gonna be---Are you an American or an American’t?
As part of the best entertained and least informed people on the face of the planet, our national id has A.D.D., We are free to change spouses, jobs, careers, neighborhoods; but the menu? Never!
The map may not be the territory, the statue may not be the saint; but The menu is not only the meal, the menu has replaced the meal. We eat what we are---- American. It has become the most powerful symbol of who we are. Meat and potatoes to a large extent is the glue that holds our country together. Our baseline “trance” of our everyday dining consists of this choice---riding the gravy train of Holy Beef USDA Prime, Choice or Select Beef: Take it or leave it. Or better yet, America, love it or leave it. Don’t eat the menu!
Give me life liberty and the pursuit of pleasure! The sex of eating meat is something more but nothing less than that, pleasurable. Good meat = good sex. We have on demand, anytime, anywhere menus, The American diet, however is pornographic-cheap and nasty, processed and dead.
Counting calories is like a hooker who looks at her watch. Right? We drive to fast to worry about cholesterol, Maybe ? Yet, amid the silence of our cloistered cars and cubicles come the license of the brothel---- the Paradox of Choice, and more of it, has brought less satisfaction. We conform to a false sense of normalcy In fact, meat now kills more Americans than tobacco. It has become the loophole that allowed the whore to climb into our diet.
Welcome to our shared hallucination of almost the right way to eat---This is our brain, wired and fired together, on French Fries: An American dream that is the American lie, but it is one of the most truly useful lies that inches we American dreamers closer to the truth----The true mystery of dining is the visible not the invisible. .. It is the naked truth. Doing things right the first time is an obscenity. No snowflake ever feels responsible for an avalanche, and we were given a snow job by the snowmen about the virtues of red meat. We didn’t know any better. Moving away from this, who would have thought that our storyline and personal history would provide a platform for growth and change. We became fat, overweight and out of shape. But we are about to change all that..
The right way to eat and almost the right way to eat is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Welcome to the user friendly universe of XE, Extreme Eating. It is lightning in a bottle. This bolt that’s about to come into your life is both striking and alarming, and it will leave the entire landscape changed-as you will find out, irrevocably.
The Last Resort days of paying for a ten-day vacation and arriving on day seven are over. Let me gladly share my experience and advice about the wisdom of Extreme Eating---XE, The Raw Vacation----for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so!
It might be easier to change our religion than our diet but we American heretics have put the ODD into God: Laziness has become the religion of the 21st Century. Therefore: It is easier to kill your diet than to change it. It’s not broke, but don’t just break it, break it before someone else does! If it works, it’s obsolete. Fat =laziness. Thin=strength. America is becoming marketing land where no real work is done!
Go East young man for that.or the not so far east of Hawaii...
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
I'm Studying Classical Ukulele!
I find it so much easier to think in Hawaiian since I only know, like four words:Aloha (Hello-Goodbye) -Mahalo (Thank You)-E komo mai (Welcome) and Ono (Delicious).
Sunday, September 30, 2007
I Don't Live Near A Starbucks-I Live In One!
Greetings from Caffeine Central, Bean and Nothingness: the 800 lb gorilla- Starbucks.I don't live near one, I live in one; a mad, mad, Starbucks world. It's tomorrow,and tomorrow is my permanent address!
Just like Seinfeld is a show about nothing---Starbucks has nothing to do with coffee. Starbucks is just like Seinfeld Every year I find myself watching a little more of it.
SBUX---America's favorite drug dealer is serving up, what Europeans call "Dirty Water"They have persuaded tens of millions of people to spend $4 for what had been a $1 product." That's an amazing-getting less for more value proposition. Drinking OK coffee and standing in line to buy it. The cult of the amateur, the army of one, patronizing the YOUniverse. Now that's EGOomics.
Thank you Kid Starbucks--open-minded, we-centric, candid, devoted to progress, personally accountable, curious, and confident ---Kid Starbucks, Thank you for taking some of the quo out of the status, and the way things were before. The Model T way -" you could have it in any color, as long as it's black".
The CNN Effect hit me hard--- the constant 24/7 news cycle. I stopped watching push TV. I pull my media from the web. The medium is the message means ou have to look beyond the obvious---Starbucks is so obvious-It's the coffee -NOT
I am waking up and smelling --- The Starbucks Effect--Everwhere and Forever has its gravitational pull on me---exerting almost cosmic influence on my life!
First and foremost, it is the Wi-Fi hot spot, the air-conditioning of the Internet age; in the spirit of the 20th century movie theatre-- where cold “advertising air” was deliberately blasted out the open doors to help sell tickets, knowing on every corner there is a SBUX and a WI-Fi connection is one step closer to being "always on".
Next, comes the numbers of possible choices available to the customer at the average Starbucks--it is amazing. The most referenced number is around 21,000, made based upon popular choices! But I'm fighting back---I am one of those drip customers!
Finally, The Sex of Starbucks is pleasure- I like going there, and I don't buy their coffee. I drink it. I love sitting in one of their epiphany chairs to self-reflect, write Hotel @nyware , or give in to a mood swing here or there. Do I even know what "venti" is? Oh yea, It's 20 in Italian!
From Starbucks To More Bucks
My Drug Dealer Starbucks is now pushing movies and music. Over the next 30 days, SBX is offering a free download from iTunes every day. Free iTunes Songs!
The Mug Life...Hanging Out And Starbucking is like love: it's s a verb not a noun. You Do it. It's a grammer of scorn and wonder... because there is no way of telling apart the espresso-sipping artist and the cappuccino-gulping banker and that means the democratization of providing anybody with an opportunity to create their identity by providing practically unlimited choice.
Location Saturation: I'm Getting Wet!
There is a Starbucks across the street from a Starbucks! It's a convenience experience. The AMEX card- Don't leave home without it, but when there's a Starbucks everywhere---Don't leave home--because there's a "Home Sweet Starbucks" just around the corner.
This ain't no third place. This is my first place. I live at Starbucks. I'm a free agent and this is my hub. Culture is not always popular, but Starbucks is.
Could I please have a cup of SHUT THE F*&$ UP!
I've been to three today. I didn't have three cups of coffee. I went to three different ones; and on the island of Oahu, that's not like NYC. Even here in "paradise"..Pearl Harbor, Ala Moana, Waikiki.
Make Coffee Not War
I can see it now. We consume about as much coffee as oil. It's creative destruction. It's global capitalism and yankee doodle dandy imperialism. Shatter!
I am applying for citizenship. I
am a patriot, just like those alpha geeks, Steve Jobs and passionate MAC (culture) users are.... I would go to war for Starbucks and Google.Did you know? In 1511 coffee, AKA The Devil's Cup, was banned in Mecca as being too similar to alcohol. The ban was overturned 14 years later. I couldn't help myself. I saw The Kingdom this weekend.
Caffeine is not (really) a drug, it's a vitamin. The chain is off the chain--- Starbucks has become the new McDonald's (44 million customers a week), and "The Google" has become a 24-hour global exercise in collective intelligence gathering. When I say I live at Starbucks, I mean I live in the environment of it. It the U word-- Ok I'll say it----ubiquitious, like Google.
Yet it's not hard to deal with everywhere all at once.
Too Little Too Latte?
Pimp My Google- It's their world We just live in it and, serve in it.
My drug dealer and my pimp, the one two punch that Makes My Day, the in to my sane. You complete me.
I really enjoy being inside a Starbucks; drinking from that paper coffee cup, sitting it in my car's cup holder to remind me of where I was, that shows "I voted" for Starbucks again. It's not about the coffee; it's about the lifestyle. Yea , I heard 7/11 and (DuDO's) Dunkin Donuts Coffee is cheaper, but it's not about the price---"Why pay less?" is my attitude. I don't buy coffee. I drink it. I love sitting in one of their epiphany chairs to self-reflect, write Hotel @nyware , or give in to a mood swing here or there.
Starbucks is a lot like Google. Starbucks is a network. And networks exist to bring people together... and to sell them stuff. No concept is too big and there can never be too many "hooks" into an (end) users life.
There is zero switiching cost involved in me "using" (Seattle's Best)Yahoo or (Pete's) Vivisimo or (Coffee Bean)MSN, but I don't care.Google has StartingPoint Power.It bestows alpha geek status on me, and, more than that, I believed in google before it believed in me. There was no start page on the internet, and I made Google mine.
Now, it is the industry standard, the default start page for everyone- It turns out that owning the starting point on the Internet is really, really valuable; and starting ones day out at Starbucks is too.
Google is my magnifying glass. Something good on Google looks great to me. Just like Starbucks, it's about the lifestyle , the value is on the search, not the content.
The Dogs of Kitsch went on a world tour ---to satisfy mass culture, by spinning and packaging the shared hallucination of everlasting uncertainty, fueled by the disease of "more". Hello and Buy Buy to Val(shorthand for Valley Girl) like totally: How do you say---Shop till you drop, in Chinese? (More on that below). In my other writings, The Teaches Of Beaches- I have an edict--ALWAYS MAKE NEW MISTAKES. Chairman Howard stole my playbook--with the Forbidden City foray and their general lack of interest in the beverage, I mean culture-because isn't that what SB was selling? He sinned bravely.
Real China replaces Starbucks
Go East Young Man! It was the mantra of simplicity Zero sum minus some.The further East the Dogs of Kitsch go, the further West they get. People are the only thing that make a difference. It's not about high tech machines or your nice buildings and logos anymore. Apparently, the Chinese got sick of Corporate America's Death By PowerPoint Venture third round funding dog and pony shows---"all we have to do is get 1% of the people in China to buy our product." Dim Sum and Then Sum...
Let's read the tea leaves: You can't teach an old dogma new tricks. Don’t mistake motion for progress.If you feel athletic, do you go to a sports bar? So, if you want to love things that can't love you back, go to a Starbucks It's the “democratisation” of boredom. Get your workout on, on the dehumanizing treadmill of materialism and consumption....
Starbucks is like, so prehistoric, and headed for extinction. Chinese like TEA not COFFEE--- Yet you wouldn't know it. The old wine is in a new bottle. The art of telling stories even when there is no story to tell.
The karaoke bar is singing the praises of Don't Worry Be Happy in Seattle. A cheap
imitation of the once glory days of the first SB.
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