Buy Quality Stuff... it lasts longer and makes less waste

I wrestle with the battle between buying good quality stuff vs buying cheap stuff all the time.  I love quality made things.  But the temptation to buy "what I can afford at the moment" is always there.  It's there because... I'm a business guy.   Buying an item as cheaply as possible saves money which allows me to purchase other business items I need.  But the old saying... "Quality Cost Less In The Long Run" is true.   It's true for both the cost to your bottom line and the cost to the environment.  Ultimately we use fewer resources and waste fewer resources, when we choose to buy quality items.  Here's a fascinating blog post in the New York Times by  Carl Richards that supports a personal rationale for buying quality stuff that lasts a long long time. Buying quality products reduces waste. If you can't afford the quality item right now... just hold on until you can... then buy it. Maybe if we did this... repair shops would pop up all over (driven by the market) to service these high quality items. This in turn would produce even less waste... and that would be awesome!

Why Entertainers Are Magic...

One of the things great entertainers do is create magic. It's not necessarily magic that involves a trick or an illusion. It's the creation of warmth and genuine connection with a large or small group of people. Everyone in the room shares a brief moment of happiness and joy, and they do it together. This glass (with a broken egg in it) is all that's left of such a performance. It's a single broken egg in a long stemmed glass. Mark and Nani Wilson left it behind after a magical performance a few nights ago. The performance - in Ventura California - was momentary... fleeting... But the shared magic and the beauty of the moment... will linger as long as memory does. Every day good entertainers do this. They connect. They make the heaviness of life less heavy. As far as I'm concerned... that's a real good thing.

It's true!

This wonderful front page - of the Weekly World News - is framed and displayed prominently on the wall of my Frog Pond,  Alabama office.  I framed it because, the headlines make me giggle each and every time I read them.  Having said that... there are millions of people that bought this magazine and actually believed every word of it was true.  This leads me to conclude that we are a very interesting species.  Not that sharp... but... interesting.

Random Play...

My laptop tunes are regularly set on "random play". I like the surprise of a song coming up that I didn't expect.  Honky Tonk Woman by The Rolling Stones just played... followed immediately by The Chicken Dance... I'm reconsidering the whole "surprise thing". 

Organizing is a Meditation

One of the greatest things about my life as a professional entertainer is that I get to spend the end of each year and the first part of each new year... organizing things.  I organize my office.  I organize my studio.  I organize my storage spaces.  I organize my computer files.  It always makes me feel wonderful.  For some reason, it fills up my creative tanks to make sure magic props, funny ideas, movie making tools, illusions, and all the weapons of entertainment are easily accessed and at my disposal.  It's sooo easy for the tornado of life and tsunami of creation to scatter everything to the wind, that it makes me happy to set it all back in order.  It's almost a meditation for me.  Oh yeah.  It also allows me to clean out Jelly Beans from a prop box that's been stored since 2009.  Does it bother anyone else that they still look okay?  Sheeeeesh... that's scary.

Great Minds Discuss Ideas

Here's something fun to consider today. The famous and oft-quoted Eleanor Roosevelt quote goes something like this... "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." I'm gonna think about that. ###

Makin' Music Makes Me... Happy

It's hard to describe the enjoyment and pleasure that making music has brought me over the past couple of years.  To put it mildly, I've been bitten by the "bug".  I've always been a music lover, but the desire to "make music" has only hit me in the last couple of years.  Teaming up with the amazing Kelvin Holly to make this cool green song - The Green Houdini - was such an artistic pleasure.  I hope we get to do it again and I hope you like it.  The amazing Muscle Shoals Sound "Swamper" - David Hood - just told me yesterday (at a party) that he'd like to play bass on any new tracks we make.  Woohoooo!  I've love that.  So here it is kiddies.  I re-edited the music video for higher quality.  Hope you enjoy it.   Let me know.  Peace, Love, Understanding