My guest post for lauraroeder.com, “Improv Tips for Entrepreneurs”, dropped today. Use improv comedy skills to boost your creative output - even on your own!
Give it a read & let me know what you think.
- Jay
| — | Frank Barron |
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Randy Nelson, Pixar(via jonathanmoore) |
| — | Chauncey Depew |
I laughed mightily at this story of a 15 year-old beauty pageant winner who dyed her hair brunette (GASP!), and how the pageant organizer responded. http://yhoo.it/d4pRUb Any adult that would tell a 15 year-old they’ll never succeed in life should immediately report to my private ass-beating room.
When I was 15 photography was my only school sanctioned, socially acceptable extra-curricular activity. When it was announced that elections were being held for a new Arts Club president I jokingly remarked that I should run. A joke that was immediately greeted with “You would never win” from the entitled girl seated in front of me. Nothing gets my F**k You up faster than being told that I can’t do something. Either that I am incapable or not allowed. So I ran. And won. And that made even more people angry - the adults. I was taken aside by multiple faculty members and quizzed about what my real plan was. I wish I had devious plans at 15 years old.
I wasn’t a teenage Hell Raiser. At least I didn’t try to be. However, I was the type of teen that, when our photography teacher, Mrs. Deutsch, confronted the class about who pooped in a towel and hid it in a darkroom drawer, the whole class turned to look at me. The joke is on them, though, because I had a shy colon. If I needed to poop during school I walked all the way home! A cop once picked me up on my way and returned me to school. I immediately walked back out the door and went home. It’s quiet there and the toilet paper’s better.
I’m thankful for incidents like the above because they’ve helped me cultivate a sense of empathy towards those among us who are…slightly left of the dial. Their value might be a little less obvious, but it’s there. Yes it is. Look harder! The weirdoes among us are not any more prone to being great artists or hugely successful in whatever field they choose. But being a little out of step doesn’t preclude one from being a huge success either. Does it Mark Cuban, Steve Jobs, and Kanye West?
When discussing the aforementioned Teen Beauty Queen a close friend remarked, “Beauty Queen Rebel? *YAWN* She’s no feminist just a dumb kid.” To which I say, True - dying her blonde locks brown is hardly a fashion manifesto. She didn’t tell the Pageant Producer where she could shove her crown out of any deeply held ideological beliefs. She is neither a rebel nor a feminist icon. Yet, guess what dumb kids grow into…
- Jay
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”
“The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.”
Join me on Twitter: @jay_olson
