Category: Project L

Project L has been, for me, fascinating from many different aspects. More so than when it began. This idea was born at the beginning of 2018 as an evolution of my thinking that it is sad that so much is lost when a person dies. On the flip side, I wouldn’t ever consider anything as grand as an autobiography.

I sit here being 50 and nothing has changed since yesterday. We have new scales at home which are Bluetooth controlled from our phones. Before stepping on you need to start the app and pair the devices. The little screen says your name and age. This morning they said Craig 50. And I wondered why the fuck would they tell me my age? Kilos, fat percentage, muscle mass and body water are things I need to know and change daily (down 45kgs since March 2017). But age, I’m pretty aware of that one.

I’ve enjoyed this process. I haven’t done anything ever for 50 days in a row with the exception of bodily functions. Never been to the gym 50 days in a row. Never ate right 50 days in a row. Never ever done anything this long or consistently. It was fun and chorish and rewarding which is a word I hate and fascinating to see the ‘engagement’.

Those who know me too well know of my penchant for a nice chart. Everything in life can be graphed. I intended to collate the data from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and the blog then cross-reference to each post to determine which was the most engaged and analyse the data to determine which themes trended or were most responsive. Then Vanessa said, “Let’s go to the beach”, and all that shit went out the window. I’ll do the chart stuff later.

Likes, comments, shares and retweets only tell a fraction of the story. I heard from a ton of people (not that many but more than I thought) that other people had been reading my stuff but not engaging. Perhaps not liking my stuff. Perhaps not wanting to publicly like my stuff. Perhaps fuck them and I don’t care, this project wasn’t about them. It was about me putting something in the public domain (ie I will post every day for 50 days) and then doing it. At the beginning of Project L, I was reminded of a guy who Facebooked that he was going to daily document his new and improved health regime. He spent hours putting together a fuck-off website. Lasted 2 days. That spoke volumes about him.

Years ago one of my first advertising mentors, George Betis (ad legend, creator of The Swashbuckler’s Code and all-around nice guy) recounted a story about goal setting. If you want to compete in triathlons you need a specific kind of watch. But if you get one of those watches then don’t do triathlons, you’re a dick. Short version; do what you say you’re going to do. By making it public, you create accountability. I really should have rung that guy and asked, “Dude, what happened to your site? And your health goals?”
Accountability is hard to do yourself and I really mean ‘myself’. Perhaps I’m getting better at it. There was no impotence for me to complete Project L. There aren’t any dollars in it or fame or leverage from a business POV.

This project is over. But I’m going to continue (oh fuck) writing every weekday (fuckety fuck) about the progress of my primary startup, TheXpert.Network. (fucking hell!).

Thanks for following along and joining in.

And I’ll tell you why; when shit gets real, like when your wife says she doesn’t want to be your wife anymore and you find yourself with no home, and no job (because you were in a partnership) and no business (see the partnership bit again) and your car (unless you’ve gone full Weinstein) family and friends are all that is left. Not the 503 Facebook ‘friends’, I mean the ones who’ll bail you out at 4 AM, drive the getaway car or help bury a body.

I knew a woman who had friends coming out of her ass; Miss Popularity she was. Until her shit got real and all she was left with was three friends of which I was one.

Not just the shit times. Who wants to celebrate with strangers. They don’t know what the fuck you’ve gone through to get to that point where celebrating is required.

I remember at wedding #1 when my buddha-daughter (that’s the Goddaughter of a Buddhist), came running up to me before the ceremony to give me big hug. Brilliant. And at wedding #2 (which was billed as an engagement party but was actually a surprise wedding), she was the only one who really was surprised. Classic Ashleigh! And she shares my middle name but with the wrong spelling.

On the flip side, family and friends are the dudes I’d answer a 4 AM call from. Whom I’d bail out. Whom I’d rob a bank with. Whom I bury a body for. It’s a quid pro quo kind of thing. I like the vibe other cultures put on these relationships. With some, it’s formalised like motorcycle clubs (not gangs) or affiliations where brother- (or sister-) hood forged under immense pressure.

Some are because one of your ‘lations banged someone else’s ‘lation now you got to go bail out Nigel because he sure as shit ain’t got any friends. Some are because over a period of time you’ve discovered many similarities and been there for each other as shit got real. That’s how I got my brothers-from-other-mothers. They tend not to judge me. Or at least not post humiliating shit on Facebook. Which I (and you) appreciate.

There are two drivers here; my abhorrence of cowardice especially in men, and an experience of having a ‘friend’ desert me as shit was about to get very real. It happened at all places the Royal Easter Show. One of the carnies decided to debate me on the marital status of my parents prior to my birth. Apparently, he was none too happy that I could ring the bell several times in a row on the Strongman game, which cost him a small brass token – which I still have. The debate escalated quickly as I defended my parent’s honour. As the man dance continued I sensed that my wingman had bailed. A wingman has one job which must be upheld at his own peril. This was not a life v death situation however and the carnie was never really in grave danger. Sure enough, when I turned around I could see my friend running away. Twenty years later I stole his girlfriend – which I still have.

But why, Craig is everything else secondary to family and friends. Because, dear reader, no success, paid for with cash or bought with blood is worth anything if the spoils cannot be shared with those who love you. To quote Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock), quoting Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman, Die Hard), misquoting Plutarch (a real Greek dude writing about Al the Great), “And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. ”

How shit would that be.

This is a quote by Pharrell Williams, not a song lyric but from an interview. Mrs Russell chose this to be the penultimate lesson in Project L. I presume because she feels she experienced it first hand; I would not be so presumptions to assume from me.

This is about looking deeper into a person, discovering the real them and cutting through the bullshit charade we all put on to play our specific roles in society and life.

I think the same can be said for niche groups too. People with passions in the same area yet are from distinctly different geographic, socio-economic, age, gender ethnic and cultural backgrounds. How else can you explain music? Fans of a certain band or musical genre may have nothing more in common with each other than they are fans of that music.

On an interpersonal level ‘kissing her mind’ is nothing greater than showing utmost respect and listening without judging. Why are these two completely passive non-activities so fucking hard for most men to achieve. Our primal selves want to solve our women’s problems. Our women usually need no help in solving their problems. Usually, Mrs Russell is solving mine.

Now get happy mofos, here’s Pharell!

Not something I have ever been good at, and about to have to be very good at as TheXpert.Network evolves, develops and launches.

The phrase only came to me a couple of weeks ago listening to my newest favourite podcast,’Without Fail‘ hosted by Gimlet Media founder and CEO Alex Blumberg. In a recent episode he interviews Evan Marwell. He is the dude that put hi-speed wifi into every American school so the kids could play Fortnite. Not really but I bet they do.

The problem he faced was unbelievably massive. The thing that most people don’t get about America is why it’s called the USA. The United States of America is a collective of 50 states which have their own government, laws and taxes. Governors of states have far more power than is widely known and in many cases make presidential runs. So getting 50 state education departments and their associated school boards to agree on anything was going to take more than a smile. As Al Capone once said, “You get further with a smile and gun than just a smile.” He didn’t own a gun and neither do I. He did, however, have President Barrack Obama in his speed dial.

My approach to networking has been rather passive. I only get hit up on LinkedIn by spammers trying to scam me or scammers sending me spam. I’ve never been a ‘collector’ of LinkedIn contacts or Facebook friends. Speaking of which, the annual cull is fast approaching. I’ve never seen the point in filling my feeds with streams of irrelevant content simply time is too precious to waste looking at what I consider rubbish. This project is the first time I’ve created a consistent relevant series that could be considered strategically aligned with my core values. FFS!

And that all comes from a place of value; what value do I bring to the table? Some people believe they bring immense value to every interaction. I’ve met some who believe they are the most valuable of humans. I respectfully disagree with their fucked up self-analysis.

I hate putting people in boxes unless I murder them and the box is a coffin, but there seem to be two types when it comes to networking. Firstly, those who have so much self-confidence that their past pays no part in their future. They are most content when talking up what they are going to do, what they can do as opposed to what they have done. Then there are peeps like me. We think that future success is based on credibility born from past success or at least vast experience; runs on the board, wins etc. These things matter. I saw Gary Veynerchuk speak late last year. From the stage, he says, “If you’re a 21-year-old life coach get the fuck out of here…. please… what experience do you have.” Yet there are 21-year-olds out there claiming to be able to tell people what I’m doing wrong with my life. Which is fucking nothing, by the way.

Perhaps my takeout from Project L is that my value doesn’t have to be on display from the first moment. It can unfurl like a flower.

Oh fuck, I think I lose a man card for that.

The game is simple enough. Roll a dice and move your marker the prescribed number of squares. Land on the bottom rung of a ladder and move up the ladder. Land on the head of a snake and slide back down. Not even as strategic as tic-tac-toe. Pure luck.

In life, I’ve found things to be not so cut and dried. Often what looks like a fast track comes with a greater expense. The Stoics (the dudes who subscribe to Stoicism) have a phrase for this; they call it the tax. For everything, there is a tax. The mafia calls it the ‘price of doing business’. Or like Elliot Gould’s character, Reuben says in Ocean’s 11, “These kinds of things used to be civilised; you’d hit a guy, he’d whack you, done.“

The number of times I’ve taken a ‘ladder’ and ended up paying a massive tax is nothing short of embarrassing so please don’t tell anyone. It ends up being one step forward and two steps back. Luckily I haven’t done it with anything super important but I’ve fucked enough little things up so as to finally learn the lesson.

Most often I tend to look for the ladder when patience is required; like waiting for paint to dry before moving onto the next step, or not going to the garage to get the correct driver and ruining a screw head or clicking OK before reading the bit about erasing the hard drive. I’ve done it on photo shoots and film sets too. Again, nothing major, just annoying and/or embarrassing.

But it’s the waste or tax as the Stoics say that really pisses me off. The additional time, the further work or the extra expense which is required to get back to square one, the starting point, just makes me want to kill; usually myself.

Those round about my age will most likely be familiar with this line sung by the former Federal Minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett in his former life as the frontman of Midnight Oil in their seminal work ‘Power and the Passion’, an ode to the unofficial corporate takeover of Australia by multinationals, their transference of truth and pervasive influence of everyday life.

Powerful words indeed.

The quote has been attributed to many and used by even more but the last bastion of quality reference material, Wikipedia, says Emiliano Zapata coined the phrase. Being a leading figure in the Mexican revolution he would have said it in Spanish as ‘Mejor morir en tus pies que vivir en tus rodillas‘ (according to Google translate, Spanish friends, please correct me).

The fate of the oppressed is life without power in any form. I’ve longed held the belief that the true goal of banks is to take 90% of our wages through encouraging home ownership via mortgages (which literally means debt until death) and shiny trinkets via credit card and the associated crippling interest. The true evil is leaving us with 10% of our wages to provide the illusion of limited power. That’s where my conspiracy theories begin and end. I don’t believe in chemtrails, the Illuminati , Q Anon or Pizzagate.

I’ve lived the powerless life and it is less than fun. I think working inside the mass marketing machine opened my eyes to how manipulative advertising and PR can be. I don’t think I ever worked on anything truly evil (like a Trump campaign) but I have sold everything from fizzy water to life insurance. The only thing I haven’t sold is tobacco only because these guys have created a product more desirable to their market than heroin and advertising it is pretty pointless.

Human nature is towards comfort and away from pain. More often than not pleasure will lead to a false comfort with a delayed but ongoing cost. So it hardly hurts at first. By then it’s too late to get out easily.

Your gift for staying around is this work of art from the days when video editors had to use every tool in their box of tricks.

People, wasting away in paradise
Going backward, once in a while
Moving ahead, falling behind
What do you believe, what do you believe
What do you believe is true
Nothing they say makes a difference this way
Nothing they say will do
Take all the trouble that you can afford
At least you won’t have time to be bored
At least you won’t have time to be bored
Oh the power and the passion, oh the temper of the time
Oh the power and the passion
Sometimes you’ve got to take the hardest line
Sunburnt faces around, with skin so brown
Smiling zinc cream and crowds, Sundays the beach never a cloud
Breathing eucalypti, pushing panel vans
Stuff and munch junk food
Laughing at the truth, ’cause Gough was tough till he hit the rough
Uncle Sam and John were quite enough
Too much of sunshine too much of sky
It’s enough to make you want to cry
It’s enough to make you want to cry
Oh the power and the passion, oh the temper of the time
Oh the power and the passion
Sometimes you’ve got to take the hardest line
I see buildings, clothing the sky, in paradise
Sydney, nights are warm
Daytime telly, blue rinse dawn
Dad’s so bad he lives in the pub, it’s a underarms and football clubs
Flat chat, Pine Gap, in every home a Big Mac
And no one goes outback, that’s that
You take what you get and get what you please
It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees
It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees
Oh the power and the passion, oh the temper of the time
Oh the power and the passion
Sometimes you’ve got to take the hardest line

Songwriters: James Moginie / Martin Rotsey / Peter Garrett / Peter Gifford / Robert Hirst
Power and the Passion lyrics © O/B/O Apra Amcos

It’s the first rule of comedy. One of the other things comedians learn mostly through experience is to suffer through the soul-destroying chasm created by the silence of a bit not landing. That is to say; telling a joke that isn’t funny.

I’ve been there although not on stage performing. And never with a written or rehearsed gag. Usually with a smart ass comment in a meeting. Almost as bad as that time I forgot all my lines as the narrator of the Ryde East Primary School Year 6 Christmas Play. Walked out to stage centre, the spotlight came on, the audience started to applaud and I couldn’t even remember any of my names.

In those situations, a desire to fill the silent void immediately rises up. The skill (I’m aware of but yet to master) is to ride the silence. There’s always a chance the joke was so funny people are still processing the comedic genius they’ve just encountered. Wait for it, wait for it… until someone laughs or more often says, “So, on the next agenda should be…” making sure Craig isn’t invited?

I hold comedians and scientists in the same high esteem in that they both get to the unknown by going down unexpected paths. Is Jerry Seinfeld going to cure cancer? No. But Einstein wasn’t kept around at Princeton for his yuks either. Same same, but different.

Adam Spencer may be the exception to the rule. Brilliant mathematician and genius stand up comedian. I was shooting the red carpet at Tropfest 2009 and Spence was hosting. I stopped him and said ‘I wake up with you every morning’ (he was hosting mornings on 702ABC) Tumbleweeds. So I doubled down with, ‘I’m your biggest fan’. Ever had a death stare from a guy with a wonky eye? It’s like being lasered by a Darlek.

I’ve worked with some very funny people in my life; some seriously funny Australian comedians in advertising agencies and writing rooms. There’s a lot more science to the process than just sitting around telling gags. The business of comedy is as hard as any other.

What’s really going on here is ‘forcing’. It’s the idea of pushing something beyond its natural limitations. A contortionist is amazing, until they break a bone. A comedian ranting about school children becoming political advocates is ironic comedy until he mentions a mass school shooting <– true story, last weekend, Louis CK on his comeback tour. I think we all know what the C stands for now.

Bending and breaking require nuance, subtlety, context. Three hot nuns walk into a bar is hilarious, in a bar. Not so much in a convent. Three pedophile priests walk into anything isn’t funny anywhere anymore. Unless it’s a prison.

My mother used to say, “Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”

I never understood why she would say ‘Tis’.

Years and years ago I was chatting with my sister and she said, “Hey, so Mum thinks you’re a poof”. I was stunned. I had never considered that my mother spoke about me behind my back. When I asked big sister to repeat what she’d just said I had apparently misheard. Mum actually thought I was “…aloof.” And that I couldn’t argue with.

I recall thinking that it was the first time I ever knew that my actions were being observed. I honestly thought I was just bumbling through life, ricocheting off of everyone and everything like a pinball. Apparently not. For as much as I was watching and analysing other people (that sounds way creepier than it really is), others were paying attention to moi.

As recently as yesterday a former work colleague reminded me on Facebook of a story I oft told 20 years ago. What must have happened for that little story to stay with her for that long? I can assure you it was hardly Seinfeld-esque or involved life, death nor untold riches.

WARNING: HUMBLE BRAG FOLLOWS

Some of you may have already heard the now infamous “Car Door” story. The current Mrs Russell came to me fully optioned with a teenage son. For the purposes of this story and to protect his identity I will refer to him only by his full birth name, Ethan Keith Bow. (Google, do your worst). As a cutesy little ritual, before Mrs Russell became Mrs Russell, I would open the car door for her at every opportunity. Please, femo-nazis, I was not devaluing her feminity or trivialising her role as a powerful independent woman and life giver in society. It was just a nice thing to do which she enjoys. So one day on the school run Ethan Keith Bow climbs into the back seat, I open the driver’s door for Vanessa and walk around to the passenger side. The trip is completed and Ethan Keith Bow is delivered to school. As we’re departing the school Vanessa says, “While you were walking around to the passenger side Ethan told me he ‘didn’t know Craig was a gentleman’.” Take some time to laugh, I’ll wait ...

Finished? Then I’ll continue. So, in Ethan Keith Bow’s mind the mere act of opening a car door for a woman makes me a gentleman. If that zero sums the deplorable language I use around the house then that’s fine by me. The reality is I assumed that Ethan Keith Bow didn’t even know my name. Or as least pronounced it G-R-U-N-T. Not a far walk from how his bio-dad thinks of me. HINT: replace the GR with my first initial.

But then I started to wonder what else Ethan Keith Bow is taking notice of. It would be ignorant to assume it was only the ‘good’ stuff and not the ‘fucking awful’ stuff. I summised it was everything. And that has radically modified my behaviour in his presence.

“As individuals, we will be judged in our lives by the totality of our actions. Not one thing will stand out.” Rahm Emanuel 

That may be true at the end but on the way through I think we are constantly judged, reviewed, audited, perceived or compared and therefore every action becomes opportunity to illustrate, educate, encourage and support each other. Especially kids.

I can’t wait until Ethan Keith Bow reads this one.

Considering the day this is more a Public Service Announcement as much as one of the lessons I’ve learned in my life.

I’ve never been a big drinker so when at parties with people all around slowly (and sometimes very quickly) losing their sense of right and wrong, up and down, hot v not, I had the opportunity to listen to some very smart people saying some very, very dumb things before they’d pass out.

Upon arriving at one party hosted by a girl from school a group of blokes from another school who had started drinking much earlier, started asking me en mass if my name was ‘Norm’? This is the ’80’s. There was a health campaign called ‘Life, Be In It’ promoting exercise and delivered by a fat cartoon character called ‘Norm’. In these kids’ bleary-eyed world, as I was fat, I must be Norm. When I tried to rationally explain that I was not, in fact, a fat cartoon character from TV but a real-life human from another school christened Craig, they seemed to be very disappointed. So disappointed that they felt it necessary to surround me and began the man-dance. Hitting drunks for being drunk is not a sport in which I choose to participate so I patiently stood there trying to convince them I was not Norm. I think it would have been easier to convince them I wasn’t Mickey Mouse. A not-as-drunk friend suggested that the mob would be appeased if I did admit to being Norm for the night. I agreed and thus became Norm for that moment to great cheers from this bunch of fucking imbeciles. I did take some revenge two weeks later when our schools met on the rugby field. None of them walked off.

Fools are more of a challenge. Mostly because there are so many more of them. Lots of agreeing and ‘oh, is that the time? I really must get home to feed the cat’. I have no cat but fools seem to be understanding that for some reasons cats can’t live unless fed at the same time every day.

Anyways, the cat is calling. Happy New Year.