mwotw

I bought my first aquarium when I was 10 years old. It was one of those “everything” for $8.99 deals, where you got an Ambassador 10 gallon tank (trimmed in slick black plastic), an air pump, an inside filter, 2 feet of airline tubing, a packet of fish food and a plastic bag with 10 lucky souls paroled from the feeder goldfish tank. I remember it like it was yesterday. From the age of ten on, my obsession with the hobby grew rapidly. I think I graduated up to a 30-gallon six months later, and had already moved on to saltwater and reef tanks by the time I was fifteen. I had some sort of large, impressive display reef tank in my life pretty much continuously from fifteen to thirty. In 1998, I moved out to the Bay Area from New York, and the hobby was left behind.

About 2 years ago, on a whim and maybe because I was feeling a little optimistic, I dropped $80 on one of those “out of the box” 5 gallon kits, at Ocean Aquarium on Cedar. Justin and Aidie are just a few blocks from us, and have been a big part of my return to the hobby. I put the sweet, little tank on my desk (right beside my monitors), but it never thrived. For all my experience keeping fish back in NY, I was really not invested in it this time. I went with freshwater because I wanted it to be easy, you know. I wasn’t really interested in returning to the hobby in any fanatical sense. I just wanted to look at fish. As you would expect, I sacrificed many lives casually and carelessly in 2006. It wasn’t until a year ago, when my wife and I moved up a block higher on the slopes of Nob Hill (from Post to Sutter street), that I became interested in making my fish tank succeed.

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Charlie Kaufman has helped me to understand the (still grander) power of cinema, now that the formative conventions of theatre have begun to lose their effect.

The medium *film* is NOT like life.

Comparing books and movies is going to get even more absurd.

Previously, popular films begat novelizations.

Hereforward, keep yer eyes open for the effects of film upon the written word.

The concept “narrative” is in debate and up for grabs — interactive adds a new whole new dimension to story-telling. It’s called maybe.

For most of the history of cinema, movie “plots” have adhered to a narrative structure that derived straight from theater. And theater, with a few but notable exceptions, like Beckett, etc, has used the same form to tell a story for the last 3,000 years.

Gustav Freytag came up with his famous “triangle” to conveniently illustrate for us the traditional plot structure, which applies to most novels, most plays and most movies…

While experimental departures from the above have always been undertaken by the adventurous among all three mediums (stage plays, novels and movies), these were generally appreciated only by the narrow band of society comprising academics, intellectuals and media obsessisives. So, they’d never really been much to speak of at the box office. But, I am going to guesstimate here, in the mid-late 90’s or so we began to see some bigger budget movies that began to “flirt” with non-conventional narrative structure in a very exciting way.

In my mind, there is one writer that stands above all the others…

CHARLIE KAUFMAN

Shotgun Lesson in Marketing: How do you Sell something that doesn’t need to be Sold?

This question relates to a lot that is going on right now — so it is a timely answer to seek. The nearly-imponderable question phrased above suggests the following subsidiary questions, which may prove more approachable:

a — What is our role as Marketers of a product the demand for which awakens in every human being — like clockwork — in early life, and persists till death thereafter — ?

b — Is there a model somewhere for the optimal co-integration and balance of the Sex we have with other People and the Sexual Gratification we enjoy by ourselves, within the Sexuality of an Individual — ? — if so, what is it — ?

c — At a point in the life of every adolescent, his or her psychological orientation breaks away from the Parent Objects — descends into a Tunnel of Private Passage for several years — and emerges out the other side, determinedly fixed on lovers and spouses. The role of parents in shaping the Sexual Individuality of their children is undisputed, and it is an accepted truth in virtually all cultures of the world that the damage done to a child by a sexually transgressive parent is profound, irreparable, and disabling. Yet, why is there so little scrutiny and understanding (by the average parent) of the actual mechanics via which parents create their children sexually — ? — why is there so little effort given to, so little ability for, so much paralysis in the face of so important and vulnerable a phase in the development of a young human being — ? A failure of parenting at this time could completely nullify the parenting investment made in the child to that point. Arguably, EVERYTHING for the child is in jeopardy — but why do our parents always avert their eyes when we begin to sexualize? Why does this occur at the very same moment we first seek a deeper, more alone place in ourselves (a place never before discovered or visited)? Is this as it should be — ? — is this in our nature as Humans — ? Or, is it something we have learned in culture — ?
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