I love BriTANick. Love their work to no end. I saw them live this summer and my mind was litterally blown. This is a great little interview with the dynamic comedy-duo. The amount of golden nuggets of wisdom here are too numerous to count.
Here's the best bit:
If you're a kid and you want to do it, and you don't how to do it. Do it. That's the only advice.
But you should watch the whole thing.
(Paraphrasing here because I heard it on the radio)
"The internet is a lot like the American highway system. It's great for commerce and people can use it to take great adventures. But people also use it for illegal activity. That doesn't mean we're going to blow up the highways."
1. Be fully committed. Don't be a fence-sitter or a waffler. If you're going to be a chef [creative director] someday, be sure about it, single-minded in your determination to achieve victory at all costs. If you think you might find yourself standing in a cellar prep kitchen one day, after tournéeing two hundred potatoes, wondering if you made the right move; or if some busy night on a grill station you find yourself doubting the wisdom of your chosen path, then you will be a liability to yourself and others. You are, for all intents and purposes, entering the military. Be ready to follow orders, give orders when necessary and live with the outcome of those orders without complaint. Be ready to lead, follow or get out of the way.
5. Never make excuses or blame others.
7. Lazy, sloppy and slow are bad. Enterprising, crafty and hyperactive are good.
9. Assume the worst. About everybody. But don't let this poisoned outlook affect your job performance. Let it all roll off your back. Ignore it. Be amused by what you see and suspect. Just because someone you work with is miserable, treacherous, self-serving, capricious or corrupt asshole shouldn't prevent you from enjoying his company, working with him or finding him entertaining. This business grows assholes; it's our principal export. I'm an asshole. You should probably be an asshole, too.
10. Try not to lie. Remember, this is the restaurant business. No matter how bad it is , everybody probably has heard worse. Forget to place an produce order? Don't lie about it. You made a mistake. Admit it and move on. Just don't do it again. Ever.
13. Read! Read cookbooks, trade magazines—I recommend Food Arts, Saveur and Restaurant Business magazines. they are useful for staying abreast of industry trends, and for pinching recipes and concepts. Some awareness of the history of your business is useful, too. It allows you to put your own miserable circumstances in perspective when you've examined and appreciated the full sweep of culinary history. Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London is invaluable. As are Nicholas Freeling's The Kitchen, David Blum's Flash in the Pan...Read the old masters: Escoffier, Bocuse et al., as well as the Young Turks: Keller, Marco-Pierre White and more recent generations of innovators and craftsmen.
14. Have a sense of humor about things. You'll need it.
Who hasn't imagined a world like Minority Report? We are living in the future already.
I'm sure these will be prohibivitably expensive at first but imagine the possibilities! (via)
Education and learning are something I take very seriously. I love them without reason. For me reading a book can be a great afternoon/day.
What I abhor is structure and boundaries. Of course there is a need for some boundaries but I often find myself tearning down walls. Or trying to do something in a way that makes more sense to me.
That's why I'm such a big fan of this new effort called Born To Learn. It's rethinking education for young children but the thoughts are for adults. And uses a great cartoon style to do so.
Sure it's a very simplified explanation of what we need to do. But simple is often best.
It's certainly the most thought provoking.
(via FastCo Design)
There are quite a few things I love about this trailer:
Maybe I'm crazy, but this is possibly the movie I'm most excited for in 2012.
On a flight to Denver about a year ago I sat next to a Frontier Airlines executive on one of their flights. I was surprised to see that even as we took off he typed away on his laptop and sent messages from his blackberry.
Really surprised.So I asked him about it.
He explained to me that the rules exist for two reasons. First, people shouldn't be yapping away/listening to music while they flight attendants preform safety briefings. Takeoff and landing are about the only times that things go horribly wrong on flights.
Second, cell phone carriers hadn't yet figured out how to bill people properly for minutes used in flight. Due to your closer proximity to satellites and the quickness you move across towers it is near impossible for them to figure this out.
I appreciated his honesty. And I appreciated that he didn't make me turn off my electronics.
Contrast this with a recent experience I had on my most-frequented-least-favorite airline—American. The flight attendant, this is a small plane into Des Moines so we only got one, was militant in making sure that not a single person on the flight had an electronic device powered on at takeoff. Including innocuous devices like Kindles or a kid's gameboy.
When another individual on the flight asked why airplane mode wasn't good enough the flight attendant responded, "It's the rules. You have to obey the rules."
What we have, then, is an exercise in compliance. It's not safety that dictates whether or not we can use our devices, it's the will of the people you paid money to. For antiquated reasons.
What reminded me of this was an interesting NPR report about wireless devices and airplanes. Apparently it's not actually dangerous to have your device in airplane mode rather than all the way off. Even cell phones have a minisule chance of doing anything to airplane communication devices. This probably doesn't come as much of a shock, but it's interesting.
What was more interesting is that keeping a device in airplane mode is actually less dangerous than turning it off completely. When you turn a device on power surges through all the antennas. The exact effect the airlines are trying to minimize.
Is this a big deal? No*. But wouldn't it be easier to just let people keep their phones in airplane mode?
This relates to advertising on some larger level. People who espouse wisdom with no rhyme or reason. People who tell you to follow the "best practices" when the best practice for creativity is doing something different.
Never be afraid to ask why. Then make your own conclusions on what's right to do.
*This is not to say I want Gabby McGabster on a plane shouting into his phone about how big his deal with Tokyo is. But I'm always a fan of pragmatism and the current approach is anything but.
Yesterday I stumbled upon a few wonderful videos of Richard Feynman. They are interviews that were later put into the book "The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out," a book I happen to currently be making my way through.
The one that I found the most interesting contains his thoughts on Honors and Awards. When I read the section it made me rethink the importance of awards. It made me rethink what is we should work for. I blogged about that, but forgot to include any of the text from the book.
There was a time when I was really into awards. The walls of my room at home are a reminder of that. "Best This," "Outstanding That" for things that, looking back, don't mean much. It is the work that led to those awards that makes me much happier. And much more aware of what I can do.
Even after reading Feynman's book there is a certain amount of magic that comes from watching this clip and hearing his voice. With any luck it should help you remember (because we all have it at some point) what's really important in your life.
(The other two videos can be found after the jump)
Curiosity (a trait that I often think is the most important for anyone to possess).
Beauty (why a scientist can see the beauty in something as well as, or even better than, an artist).
I have to admit I found these wonderful videos thanks to @BrainPicker. Give her some love.
*Title shamelessly repurposed from George Tannenbaum's excellent post (which I happen to have written about before). He's the man who introduced me to Feynman.
I live in the moment. I like to live in the moment. You worry about yesterday, or last week, or 20 years ago it's not going to work out too good for you. You can't live in two places at one. You never forget but you don't have to keep living in the past.
-Buck "The Horse Whisperer"
Along with copious amounts of House Hunters I've been watching a few documentaries. Buck is about a man with a troubled past that gave him the incredible gift of empathy. It's a great documentary and this quote spoke to me.