Posts from — January 2008

In Almost Famous, the clairvoyant Estrella Strarr says:

Don’t worry William, I’ve seen the future and this all works out reasonably well.

That’s the plan for my story. It will work out reasonably well. Leave it up to professionals, as they say.

Moments before Estrella predicted the future, William is trying for the first time to write his Rolling Stone article on Stillwater. Penny Lane can’t yet allow that, and interrupts him to pee.

At that moment, William isn’t ready for journalism, and he hasn’t graduated to manhood either. Part of the problem is soon solved: he is deflowered. It has to be done.

Sapphire: Any other city in the world and you’d still be a virgin.

William Miller: Oh God. Oh God! I have never written anything more than a few pages in my whole life.

Animae like Penny Lane are tricky beasts, and almost never do the thing themselves. This scene was a particularly brilliant touch and it’s billiance had nothing to do with three ladies dancing around with feather boas in their skivvies. Honest.

In Almost Famous, William Miller is more interested in remaining a Stillwater fanboy - such an awesome Peter Pan, never age image - than in becoming a real man. He hasn’t yet made any genuine effort to write anything. The enticement to grow up has to be epic. He would rather run away, like his sister and his father before that (who ran away by dying).

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The story of the Halo Effect and the value of the web start emphatically with enticement. Enticement is a necessary tool in building or changing a relationship. Enticement is a request for permission. Enticement is the dark, mysterious Merlin Mann’s speciality.

Apple sells iPods and iPhones for full price. Those products cast a Halo Effect on the whole Macintosh computer line. They helped drive surging sales. Nothing free, or cut rate was involved.

Most potent enticements are different than freebies, or give-aways, or propositions. It’s easy to write, “give stuff away.” That’s the lazy way.

The Halo Effect is about seeking permission, about earning the right for a relationship at a different level. Asking someone to spend $15 and several hours reading a book is a lot of permission seeking.

Some lament the decline of books. Other forms are more efficient: they provide more reward and seek less permission. The inefficiency of books might account for some of the challenges faced by book authors. Web authors gather and use permission differently, and arguably more efficiently.

———
Below, I introduced Russell Hammond and Merlin Mann. Now I need to introduce the writer. I write for executives. When I pitch business, I will suggest to a potential client, “bring me a copy of the written work of one of your competitors. Either another company or someone who you’re competing against for the big promotion.”

Most bring me an internal memo and slide deck from a rival.

I do two things to that. I rework it so that it sparkles. I also tear it apart savagely. Most clients sign me up once I point out that I will only work for one executive per firm.

I use the contempt raygun of death. It’s the opposite of Merlin’s Halo.

———
Remember, Merlin Mann is Emily Rugburn.

According to unnamed associates, Merlin wants a twitter-duel - a 30-minute joust of wit against any self-styled, old-media pundit. That would be enticing.

———
Some points on Almost Famous:

Penny Lane takes William Miller’s pen early in their first scene when William is trying to get past the bouncer. Cameron Crowe wrote about a similar event in his life for Rolling Stone.

Since Penny has William’s pen (in all those entrendrelogical ways), he cannot write until he is released back into the real world.

Penny Lane carries a tool box / tackle box as a purse or perhaps a chest for the pen. When the prince finally kisses her, she falls to the floor near dead. So we can rule out that this is a faerie tale.

———
This concludes Part 4 of:

All I Needed To Know About The Value Of The Web I Learned From Russell Hammond

Or

Why Merlin Mann Should Write, Fear & Loathing At The Algonquin Round Table.

Earlier Parts:
The Halo Effect
Merlin mann Is Emily Rugburn
All Halo Merlin Mann

What’s reckless about condescension?

But no matter. Ben Dunlap’s TED lecture is remarkable. He tosses a clutch of disparate ideas out in the first five minutes of his lecture, and then stitches them back together, building to a breathtaking conclusion. Ben Dunlap is a master story teller, and his tale inspires.

There is beautiful subtlety with along the way. For example, Ben Dunlap’s mentor, Mr. Teszler, invented double knit fabric, and also devoted himself to the integration of the notoriously segregated textile industry of South Carolina. Maybe those two story elements - double knit and integration - were pure coincidence, but a great story teller has an amazing ability to find coincidences.

He works in music - Bartok. Music is a force of story telling, well used in this lecture.

He uses great words with great success - ‘perforce,’ ‘skein,’ and even ‘risible.’ He alludes to Mothra and Godzilla.

His inspiration: learn as if you will live forever.
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Penny Lane / Lady Goodman (a name that proves my Jung point) / Emily Rugburn is anima. She is the essential missing part of William Miller, Writer. In the movie, he incorporates her. She then dies away, as she has to (first, she tries suicide, then she flies to Morocco, which might as well be Nirvana).

After our hero’s transformation, he writes the killer Rolling Stone article. The scene at Rolling Stone Magazine:

Ben Fong-Torres: “‘I’m flying high over Tupelo Mississippi with America’s hottest band, and we’re all about to die…’ Mmmmmm.”

Unnamed Editor: “Mmmmmmm. Dark. Lively.”

Ben Fong-Torres: “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It gets better. Did this really happen?”

In my story, Merlin Mann is the embodiment of animus.

If there is something for sale, and Merlin starts talking about it, he will evoke a person’s inner fanboy. He doesn’t have a halo. He is the Halo. All Halo Merlin Mann.

Every artist would benefit from having a favorably disposed Merlin Mann as a side kick. He is a wizard after all. Since these characters are in short supply, they need to be created.

Also, Merlin Mann will be busy with a great book. Actually, he is in search of his own William Miller so a great book can be written. That’s another story.

———
Some points on Almost Famous:

The power of the anima is clear. Immediately after William Miller declares “I love her,” the plane engines restart. The band, and truly all of Rock & Roll, is saved.

William Miller’s sister - Anita - tells us very early on that the kids call William a ‘narc.’ At the end, what is he, but a narc? He writes a saw-all, kiss and tell story about Stillwater. He was an agent of truth. Almost Famous is a movie about art. Even though William is the movie’s hero, the movie isn’t about him.

Peter Travers review of Almost Famous.
———
This concludes Part 3 of:

All I Needed To Know About The Value Of The Web I Learned From Russell Hammond

Or

Why Merlin Mann Should Write, Fear & Loathing At The Algonquin Round Table.

Earlier Parts:
The Halo Effect
Merlin mann Is Emily Rugburn

More new things that I want from Apple.

More buttons for my iPhone home screen. I want a Favorites and Contacts button for the phone app, and I want a Playlists and Podcasts button for the music app. One button navigating, rather than the 3 or 4 ‘clicks’ - whatever it is you do with your figures - ‘gesture’ i guess - yes, I love ‘jestering’ at my phone.

Swiping in QuickTime. When I want to go forward or backwards in a video I’m watching, I want to do a two finger swipe on my MBP trackpad. I want to be swiping and jestering at my Apple products.

I like to act sophisticatedly.

Russell Hammond taught us what we need to know. Merlin Mann will write a book. I am going to blog the details past some typical point of relevance.

Last post, I introduced Russell Hammond with his iconic quote, “to begin with, everything!” This post, I introduce Merlin Mann. Actually, he probably needs no introduction - see 43folders.com.

What he needs is a context. The context, in this case, is provided by Elaine Miller, William Miller’s mother in Almost Famous. To quote her:

In Carl Jung’s opinion, we all have a sixth sense. Intuition. When you meet someone you suddenly feel like you can’t live without them. This could be the memory of a past love from the collective unconscious. Or it could be just hormones.

I’m sorry. I can’t concentrate. Rock stars have kidnapped my son.

If I were some over-involved English Lit major, I would use that quote as justification for 5,000 words on Almost Famous: A Jungian Hero’s Journey With Oedipal Overtones, At Least The Part Where The Hero Kills His Father. I’ll leave it to others to fill in those blanks.

Almost Famous is a movie about art. Merlin Mann is a character in my story. The two are rather connected. Merlin Mann is Emily Rugburn.

———
Comments on Almost Famous:

Immediately after meeting Penny Lane, William Miller channels Merlin Mann:

Russell Hammond: “We play for the fans, not the critics.”

Then Russell gives William Miller a snarky, bye-bye wave.

William Miller: “Russell, Jeff, Ed, Larry. I really love your band. I think the song Feverdog is a big step forward for you guys. And you guys producing it yourselves instead of Glen Johns, that was the right thing to do. And Russell. Russell. That guitar sound is incindiary. Incendiary.”

Almost Famous could be both about the collective unconscious and hormones.
———
This concludes Part 2 of,

All I Needed To Know About The Value Of The Web I Learned From Russell Hammond

Or

Why Merlin Mann Should Write, Fear & Loathing At The Algonquin Round Table.

[and make really stupid typos along the way]

What is the Halo Effect? A shining circle of light? A mandorla? Doesn’t ‘mandorla’ sound like a problem that the pharmaceutical companies are working on now that they have licked ED?

What is the Halo Effect?

I’m not going to answer that yet. Instead, I’m going to talk about Almost Famous. The ending dialog is exceptionally important:

William Miller: “We are going to do this one more time.”

He turns on his tape recorder, expecting to hear the truth, and asks, “So Russell, what do you love about music?”

Russell Hammond stops leaning back. He gets up. Turns the chair around. Sits back down, and leans forward into the microphone.

Russell Hammond: “To begin with, everything!”

At that point, everyone in the audience is wildly interested in Russell Hammond. If he were to come out with a double live album a week later, it would be high on the Billboard charts with a bullet.

There is something to be learned here.

———
A couple of observations. The final line is “to begin with, everything.” So the movie ends with a beginning. Well, except the bit about Morocco. Tangerine by Led Zeppelin never sounds better than after that statement.

———
Thus concludes Part 1 of,

All I Needed To Know About The Value Of The Web I Learned From Russell Hammond

Or

Why Merlin Mann Should Write, Fear & Loathing At The Algonquin Round Table.

My computer stuff is all Apple / Macintosh stuff. I have two requests of Apple, one small and one big.

1) I want to set up a least one space where nothing can grab the focus. In this space, my Twitterific app cannot pop up it’s cute little HUD, for example. This space would be where I can match my computer’s focus to my own, restricting distractibility. Other times and in other spaces, I welcome the distractions, but not in this one specific space where I restrict change of focus.

2) iTunes + .Mac. I want to push my purchased media to .Mac. I want to push my iTunes permissions to .Mac. I want to then be able to stream that media to any enabled iTunes. I could radically reduce the size of the hard drives in all my computers if iTunes + .Mac could effectively replicate the iTunes store. My media would be everywhere I had access to reasonably fast WiFi.

Addendum. 3) I want to put the iPhone contact button on my home page.

Imagine sitting in the audience, and someone on a big video screen says, “Suck It Out Of My Ass.” How can you not laugh? Being in the crowd makes that damn funny. Scoble writes:

The funniest thing at the Crunchies

So, who picked up the award? Fake Steve Jobs, of course, only he did it through a video. Beware of the language, if you’re going to play that around the kiddies this morning.

Michael Arrington commenting on Scoble’s blog post said:

“sorry I couldn’t show up in person…you’ll probably get some big names anyway…scoble will show up…scoble will show up for anything, he’d show up for a burger king opening.”

God I love that video.

My secret stalker sent me links to both articles. He also wrote, if that what you call this:

You arnt [sic] smart enough to be a freetard or borg. You’re sit [sic].

Personally, I found that funnier.

My post on FSJ Jumping The Shark sure got a quick reaction from the teaming masses. I received and e-mail from Dan Lyons. The e-mail address was dan dot lyons dot fsj at gmail. The full text:

The retaliating will be swift and severe. We will bring down you [sic] website. Mose [sic] will have you begging you f**khead. SIOMA [sic]

I would like to believe the e-mail is from the real Dan Lyons. The funny thing is that if he e-mailed me, I don’t know how I’d tell the difference between the real and the fake.

Many people interested in creating a web presence to interact with their audience can learn a lot from Fake Steve Jobs. Like any character sketch without a story, there is a point where it becomes stale. That happened about the time FSJ published his book. New concepts are uninteresting. The character is unchanged. We probably aren’t too far from self-mockery and self-parody. I wish to declare that Fake Steve Jobs has jumped the shark.

To quote wikipedia:

..the phrase has become a colloquialism[1] used by U.S. TV critics and fans to denote the point at which the characters or plot of a TV series veer into a ridiculous, out-of-the-ordinary storyline. Such a show is typically deemed to have passed its peak. Once a show has “jumped the shark” fans sense a noticeable decline in quality or feel the show has undergone too many changes to retain its original charm.

I watched Fake Steve Jobs perform a 2007 Crunchie Award. Writers shouldn’t act their material. The material wasn’t so remarkable either.

One really bad step can undo so much hard work. Authentic is the best antidote for this outcome. When your approach is parody and mockery, authentic is a hard tool to use.

Fake Steve Jobs has jumped the shark.
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