Keeping up with news and ideas

The UK and Netherlands are both fortunate to have strong public broadcast news services in the BBC and the NOS (Nederlandse Omroep Stichting).  Both are chartered to produce regular and frequent pregular and frequent public service programming, including, full and impartial news service and coverage of parliamentary debates and other national events.  Both are criticized for somewhat right-of-center coverage, and for giving legitimacy to fringe points of view in their efforts to remain unbiased.  But in general, they are my go-to sources for news and commentary when in the country.

Newspapers in both countries are private and varied: I am a Volkskrant / Guardian sort of reader, and keep up with both, each day.  While the coverage is free online and through their app, I do agree that quality independent journalism requires financial support, and so make a monthly subscriber’s contribution to each.  There’s little in the way of premium content that comes back, but I appreciate the International and cultural content that a robust newspaper provides.

Most papers are retreating behind paywalls now, a pay-to-read scheme that has gotten more difficult in the past year.  My subscription to the British news weekly The Economist is the best,providing full access to current and historical content.  My New York Times subscription gives full and historical access online or via my tablet, but requires an additional fee if I want to read on my smartphone, a pointless distinction.  The Financial Times went further, a £1/day subscription gives only limited access to the day’s contents: tiers of higher, premium subscription are needed for access to popular articles, business commentary, and more.  At the same time, they have dropped weekend columnists who I really enjoyed, and their app is  burdensome and slow.  I dropped my subscription over the summer.

The Wall Street Journal has long been pay-to-view, but made their blog pages, including the wonderful WSJExpat, free to read.  In a double hit, they have now ended publication of the blog, moving it to Facebook, and have moved the archive of posts and advice behind their paywall.  Its a senseless loss.

Beyond these  go-to publications, I try to read across a spectrum of news and opinion.  I look in on Rush and Andrew just to see how the other side is thinking (and Brietbart has been ahead on several stories that were late in getting to the Guardian or the Times).  I like the World Edition of the Atlantic and the New Yorker, and occasionally Slate, for their essays and commentary.  For thoughtful pieces, I really like Aeon and Brain Pickings: they challenge me with insights, ideas, and pointers to authors that I might otherwise miss.

Finally, when I’m in the car and n the air as much as I am, it’s hard to keep up with the written word.   Podcast fill the gap: I tend towards more conversational formats covering politics and lifestyle.  Current favorites include:

• Sinica:  Recently moved to join the SupChina news site, Kaiser and Jeremy bring wonderful interviews about China that also speak to the expat experience more generally.  A recent episode with an expat’s months in a Chinese jail was wonderful.
• On Taking Pictures:  Part of the 5by5 network, Bill and Jeffrey talk about the creative process with nods to photography.  Good natured and wide ranging, it’s like having a beer with college friends, discussing ideas like which phases of life produce best creative work, or whether better tools make for better art.
• Petapixel:  Sharky brings twice-weekly updates on photography gear and techniques.  ‘sounds dull, but his running commentary is a lot of fun and he’s ahead of many stories about photojournalism and copyright issues.
• On the Media:  A seriously lefty  and political spin on the US media landscape.  Bob and Brooke trade a lot of solid truths during their interview segments with academics and journalists.  They’ve been relentlessly hard on coverage of Trump, a nice tonic in a toxic election.
• Here’s the Thing: Alec Baldwin spends a 1-1 hour with a leading actor, politician, or journalist.  People complain that there is too much Alec in the conversations, but it think that it gives his guests something to play off of, yielding a fun and relaxing talk.
• Big Ideas:  An Australian podcast, this show spends an hour exploring single issues drawn from politics and science.  Although half the shows are of primarily local interest, occasional gems like Is Love an Illusion? keep this at the top of my playlist.

National Treasures

Tracy Ulman has been having a gentle go at Judi Dench this season.  In each skit, Dame Dench raises antisocial havoc, then escapes by claiming that she is a National Treasure, obviously beyond reproach. 

It’s becoming my go-to excuse when things go wrong.

An actual national treasure, Simon Weston, was featured in an informal conversation in the Corn Exchange that we attended this evening.  It’s an inspirational story, a sailor on duty in the Falkland War whose ship was bombed while in harbour.  The ammunition exploded, killed many and leaving Mr. Weston horribly burned.  He struggled for years with 70 major operations, skin grafts and rehabilitation.  On recovery, he devoted himself to charitable causes and to being a living example of resilience in the face of overwhelming physical and mental hardship.

The evening was part of a tour titled My Life, My St0ry.  Guided by a long-standing friend and radio presenter, Mr Weston shares his biography, his memories of the attack (backed by news footage of the explosion), and his struggles with the long climb back to independent living and to finding a cause for his life.  His account is horrific and came to completely define him.  He keeps good humour throughout, sharing anecdotes and self-depreciating quips even through the worst painful doubting moments of his recovery.

In the end, though, the story tailed off to the reason for the tour, and felt that an inspiring lesson was missing.  I think that an American hero would have felt compelled to include an explicit moral message to emphasize the lesson learned.  None was offered here.

Long ago, when my company was struggling through a shutdown with no revenue, the president called us all into the management room for a lecture from Al Haynes. 

In 1989, Captain Haynes was pilot of United Flight 232, which suffered a catastrophic failure in a tail-mounted engine and loss of all flight controls.  Captain Haynes attempted an emergency landing in Sioux City which almost succeeded, but a drooping wingtip caused the plane to cartwheel down the runway, bursting into flames.  111 people perished, while 185 survived, a remarkable achievement credited entirely to the crew.

Al Haynes described the incident, his thoughts and actions, and his feelings  looking back on the incident. His total concern for his passengers and his lingering sadness at the lives lost was inspiring.  he concluded with a moral about the importance of  preparedness; not in calculating the risk that something might go wrong, but in knowing beforehand what to do when it did.

The debate among the managers afterwards was what message we were being asked to take from the lecture.  It was too late to be prepared for what had already happened to the company.  Should we see how to look back on events and learn, or ahead to being better prepared the next time?  Was our present predicament being foreshadowed as a catastrophic crash for the company?

Simon’s says that his message is one of single-minded determination, to not only accept what is, but to turn that to your advantage. Simon's own career clearly demonstrates how a positive mental attitude can achieve great business goals.  I didn’t hear that in the talk.  Most people commented that their take-away was inspiration to keep their own strength and resilience in the face of hardships much less than what he endured.

Maybe everyone finds their own meaning in stories like these, and an explicit moral only interrupts that process.  Maybe the connection is emotional rather than intellectual.  Maybe we have an evening of compassion for another person's suffering and courage.

It’s difficult listening, National Treasures so unlike the comedic satire.  But worthwhile listening, in measured doses (I’m a soft touch for having sympathetic pains).

Brand definition and clout (with a K)

There was a time when your maintaining your good name, your reputation, was an essential part of being in business.  Those were days of neighborhood storefronts and face-to-face customer contact: people came to know you over time and to build trust and affection for what you represented.  Businesses were based on family names.

The advent of mass media gave businesses much greater reach to find customers, and so reputation gave way to brand.  Companies became known for what they did rather than for who they were; names increasingly reflected function.  Public image, press relations, and ad presence fostered the “Know, like, trust” progression.

A parallel evolution happened with personal interactions: we were once know as neighbors, then as office colleagues, and now as Internet friends.  As we become increasingly distant from our contacts and the number of connections grew past our Dunbar number, frequent and sustained personal contact faded.  We needed branding.

What do you want to be known for?  Does your online search say that about you?  Are you appearing in the right contexts, so that you are known within the community?  Are you an influencer within that group?

These aren’t abstract questions.  As we define ourselves by our personal interests and activities, our business services and achievements, our scope for opportunity and reward, connection and referral, follows.  There are a growing number of channels for social and professional signaling that can consume ever more time to maintain.  Notions of productivity and return on invested time begin to sneak in.

Along with Klout.

I first heard about it on a Slate Culture Gabfest, and took it for a spin this week.  The service purports to scan your Internet presence and to rank you as a communicator and  influencer, 0 to 100.  20 is average, over 50 represents real power.  The algorithm (proprietary, changing)  looks at Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, and other social media to determine the reach of your connections and the responses you elicit (retweets, Likes).

My score?  A miserly 19.

In its present form, Klout probably isn’t very worthwhile. It misses a lot of social networks (TripAdvisor, ResearchGate) and overweights others (Facebook connections). There’s no Google-parsing.  It doesn’t rank professional publications, conferences, teaching, patents, or consultancies, arguably more important in my circle than raw social connections. 

Klout decided that I was an influencer for iPads (I don’t own one) and Religion (I don’t have one).  I’ve since convinced it that Travel, Entrepreneurship, and Science /Technology are a better fit.

On the whole, it seems to judge based on linked responses (comment, share) rather than on actions produced (go, buy). As such, I’m not sure what Klout is really measuring, or the value (relative or absolute) of a particular score or trajectory.

Still, Klout is likely a harbinger of the future.  Once you score and rank people, then people want to compare and manipulate scores.  I’m reminded of how Lenny’s life in Super Sad True Love Story was reduced to a set of scores based on his credit, personality, sex appeal, and social connections.  Will we come to be defined by algorithms that constantly assess our fitness and performance for the niches that we choose for ourselves (or that get chosen for us)?  There are rumors that Klout scores are already being touted by candidates for marketing and PR positions: at what point will these scores begin to carry real professional weight?  And can they be used prescriptively (identify a mentor; target who gets moved up the customer service queue)?

The only certainty is that it will happen. ‘ Gimmie a +K.

------

Oh, this can get addictive – my daughter and I are both at 38 as the algorithm gets traction on our networks.  A good article in Wired that puts a bit of perspective on it all, and three alternatives (none quite as good as the (still incomplete) Klout: Kred (of course), PeerIndex, and Traackr. 

<sigh> this is going to happen: it’s just aggregation…

It must be 2012 when…Thor arrives

Another busy week – patent filings underway, IRB submissions going in, pitch-training ahead of investor evenings. 

And on those occasions that I look to see what’s cooking on my Twitter-feed from Dutch Daily News, it’s looking bad:

Over 9.5 thousand Dutch bankruptcy filings in 2011 dutchdailynews.com/?p=9744

Ready, set, hike in Dutch property taxes dutchdailynews.com/?p=9693

The Netherlands lost 12 thousand millionaires in 2011 dutchdailynews.com/?p=9690

Dutch household wealth down 12% in 1 year dutchdailynews.com/?p=9688

And the Netherlands is one of the bright spots in Europe just now. 

A colleague of mine who specializes in creating computer models of complex systems released a new analysis of the world economy this week. He forecasts that the EU will break up in Q3 2013, while the US economy, “its structure weak and unable to absorb any increase in uncertainty or inefficiency”, will hold on only until 2018.

Similarly this week, a writer for the Times Higher Education magazine echoed the concern, suggesting that western economies are  facing a fundamental realignment:

All mighty historical upheavals are crises of belief and ideas. The present splitting open of neoliberal capitalism is no exception. What happens when an economic system and its political order reach their terminus is that governments will try anything, at whatever human cost, to retain the old system, fighting to the end and at other people's expense to retrieve a familiar world.

I’m afraid that I’m still in the optimist’s camp, though.

I see growing technology and knowledge as the fuel for vigorous innovation, enabling products and enterprises to emerge from vision, hard work, and execution, There are scores of talented people who can be fit together to staff projects; opportunities for any entrepreneur to win big through through insight, luck, and persistence.

Even in 2012.

I attended a talk given by Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson at the MIT Enterprise Forum in London this week.  Thor, a billionaire investor who was leading two of Iceland’s leading banks during the run-up to their 2008 collapse, spoke on Entrepreneurship in Challenging Times, and he was similarly optimistic.  You spot opportunities, take risks, build companies, exit, move on.  Sometimes you lose, but then you dust off and, again, push on to the next opportunity.  Overall, listen to your intuition and not to believe your own hype.

Good, but not enough, I was thinking between the lines of his talk.

He assumed that success in one area (his self-professed love of building factories) translated directly to another (banking).  But skills don’t leverage laterally, across domains, only radially within them.  In his case, both charismatic and successful, wealth brought hubris.  He did not have, and still does not have, and sense of his limits.

His immense wealth enabled him to gain immediate control of companies without any understanding of their business.  “Banks made money; banks were safe.  How could I go wrong?”  He admitted to feeling like it was all moving too fast, but “the smart people seemed to know what they were doing.”  He forgot that these are also people who want to please him, and perhaps catch crumbs from his table.

We’re in the middle of fundraising for CamStent now, and a big part of the process is engagement with investors.  They are rightly critical, challenging our assumptions, analyzing risks, and finding flaws in people and projections.  The tempering has made our processes stronger, and it’s a step that I think Thor, self-financed, never had to take.

What if large acquisitions could be vetted just like large mergers already are.  Maybe there should be oversight able to ask the basics: Can the buyer run the company competently; Do their plans make sense; Are there risks that extend beyond the company; Will their actions threaten customers or employees.

Perhaps buyers should be allowed only provisional control until they demonstrate their abilities; maybe they need to carry insurance or hold assets against unanticipated costs imposed on customers and employees.

‘Back to creating pitch slides…

More great moments in Dutch advertising

Famously, Dutch women are the happiest in the world.  This may be due to the lightened state of Dutch society, or to the ease of taking part-time work.  A cover story in a recent Dutch medical trade journal suggests that Prozac and it’s kin may also play a role?  It’s slightly reminiscent of Ms. Bachmann’s famous Newsweek cover – if I saw this facilitated smile, I’d probably steer clear.

Then there was this come-on-in as spread across the second story of my local car dealer.  It made me smile, but I wonder how long it would last if it were posted in Fort Worth or Minneapolis?

My favorites are still the Bavaria ads on television with Hugh Hefner and Mickey Rourke.  Or almost anything from Centraal Beheer, the insurance company.

  

Doing my civic duty

I’ve remained a registered voter in my native King Country, WA, following the instructions provided by Democrats Abroad when I first arrived as an absentee /expat . It really works well: I get notified of upcoming elections, review the on-line voter pamphlets, fill in an on-line ballot, then sign / scan / email to vote.  Makkelijk!

This year’s King County ballot has three initiatives, two resolutions,, and a dozen races ranging from judges and elections directors down to school board, fire, and water commissioners. ‘Twas time to settle in for an evening of long-distance research.

The hardest part is finding enough information about microscopically local races to make choices among candidates.  Maybe I’m over-sensitized by stories of stealth judges and school-board members with off-center agendas, but I really want to tick a box, not leave a blank, and to know what ticks inside the folks I’m ticking for.

The state guide covers the headline issues and county propositions, and I’ve always appreciated the way that Washington informs the voters. I never feel misled by double negatives or confused about the meaning of proposals in the guide, and can skim through this year’s transportation, caregiver certification, and liquor regulation proposals.  There’s an intriguing Senate resolution debating whether to use “extraordinary revenue spikes” to top off the state’s rainy day fund rather than to spend on new temporary services – that probably took the most thought.

The lower-level races didn’t have any obvious lunatics among the candidates, and I hate to just apply a simple rule (“vote against the incumbent”) – that’s not much better than picking the first name.  So, time do dig down.  Two good sources turned up.  The Bothell Reporter had a pretty good set of interviews with the school board candidates, the objective and subjective, soft and hard, philosophies shake out fairly quickly. 

The Woodinville Patch was even better, featuring a series of “Meet the candidate” profiles that really illuminated the candidates and issues.  I especially liked the Comments sections that followed – at best they allowed some give and take between candidates and their opponents that highlighted key issues and positions.  (Building the Brightwater sewage treatment plant was controversial ten years ago: it still is….)

I wrote to the Patch’s editor to say how helpful the series had been, she turns out to have Dutch connections (doesn’t everyone?) and a nice touch with the language.  It’s really nice (and reassuring) to find people committed to creating high-quality local content at a time when we are all worried about the death of big-city newspapers.

Milestone, and the bits that don’t fit

  CamStent Ltd, an emerging medical materials company, has announced today the results from a study which demonstrate that the Company’s first product from its surface coating platform exerts strong antimicrobial effects against the organisms primarily responsible for hospital-acquired urinary-tract infections. The Company also announced that it has closed £350K ($570K) of seed funding from a consortium of business angels. The funding will be used to optimise the Company’s product for licensing and clinical use.  http://t.co/osDfDaI

This one is kind of a big deal, as my daughter says.

This is our first major press release as a company: it went worldwide and it was gratifying to see the twittersphere light up with the news after it went out on BusinessWire.  Behind the announcement is 18 months of hard work by our university researchers, endless pitches by Clare and I , support from financial and service folks, and valued cash and ideas from our 16 angel investors.  I can’t overestimate the importance of attaching the coating to silastic substrates, and of demonstrating an antimicrobial effect on the relevant protozoa.  We’ve got a lot of work ahead, but a solid base of knowledge and funding to work from.

The press release took a month to finalize: this turns out to be one of those tasks that everyone feels competent to do.  And, when they all do, incompatible versions pile up and the whole exercise starts to circle.  I brought along a micro-business PR firm, Zyme Communications, and left it to Lorna, the professional objectivity helped and we got to a version that mostly everyone was mostly happy with.

The final, shipped version had one minor error, despite reviews and re-reviews.  Frustrating: it is really hard to achieve perfection, conveying the facts and being internally consistent.  In science, a bit of evidence that doesn’t fit a model generates new hypotheses.  Measurements are made, models are refined and knowledge revealed.  In procedural law (on television), that bit that doesn’t fit is the loose end that brings down the criminal.  Shows from Columbo to Suits challenge us to remember and correlate the a body of facts to find the thing that doesn’t belong, the telltale that the detective never misses.

I think that we have become oversensitized to the value of these inconsistencies, though.  Approaching the anniversary of 9/11, it’s striking how imperfections have become cast as inaccuracies, then as ground for conspiracies.  From Lone Gunmen to Birthers, fact-finding commissions that fail to be complete or consistent feed speculation. Wikipedia even keeps a list.

I try to be complete: I really try to be both correct and consistent.  But efforts fall short of perfection (perhaps intentionally –  a subconscious Persian Flaw?).  But often it’s just a simple mistake rather than a ‘tell.

My investigator quietly pointed it out and we quickly corrected it without developing a conspiracy about how it slipped in there.

And, in the end, that let us all keep the focus where it belonged: celebrating the moment.

Flikken Maastricht

Now in its fifth season, Flikken Maastricht is a Dutch police drama filmed, where else, here in Maastricht.  I have to admit that I was slow to catch onto this show; the occasional film crew or river chase didn’t tip me off.  Now, it’s sort of fun to watch the CSI-style adventures passing through the familiar streets until they turn a corner and, well, it’s some other street than what is supposed to be there.

I’m specially fond of this clip, which features Adam Curry’s girlfriend Micky Hoogendijk.  The terrace café where the scene is filmed is about 30 feet from my apartment window (I think the police camera may be in my living room).

Flikken Maastricht (from my window)

Cats and Jazz (a Liege)

I flipped through the heavily marked Articles, listening the to technical arguments wash back and forth on the telephone.  The answer is never clear when the sides are isolated on morally justified high ground.  We only want protection in worst-case conditions,  justifying veto rights over asset transfers and IP licensing.  We should be able to run the company without constant arguments, pointing to review clauses for contracts and remuneration.  I remember another investor who commented that strong rights and protections are necessary because he was the only one contributing something that could be lost.  I bit my tongue – time, opportunity, reputation, and wages could be lost by any of us, no less real.

It’s a complex negotiation, resolution shimmering just beyond the thicket of legal language.  And the way through is always to listen, be patient, look for common ground, and always to simplify.

Then a friend called to ask if I’d like to join him and his wife for a Bar-B-Q and jazz.  I almost said no: I couldn’t see how to get my head out of four hours of calls and back into some sociable form for the evening.  But it turned out to be just what I needed – two ways.

First, they are having an explosion of kittens at his home, and it’s charmingly simple to just watch them tumble through the late afternoon.  Then there’s something about stroking a purring feline that makes troubles seem very distant.

Then off to Jazz a Liege, an annual festival where bands, soloists, and combo groups fill the convention center until 1 am.  There’ something to sitting back and enjoying talented improvisational music in many forms for many hours, relaxing into complexity rather than wrestling with it.  Excellent music by the Igor Gehenot trio, the Belgium Jazz Big Band,  Thorbjorn Risager (I do love that name).  Sample music and links are all over the festival web site: I’ve attached some photos and a video of the Big Band and their lead sax player, below, to give some flavor of the event.

 

Building towards social networks

I was talking with a colleague today who is preparing to take on a new role as editor of a bimonthly (every two months, vs. semimonthly, twice a month) journal.  It’s been run as a traditional media product up to this point, paper stories mailed to subscribers.  The new management wants to create a more colorful and relevant publication, improving quality and involving readers more directly.  New media ideas such as online forums and social extensions are suggested.

 It seems to me, I started, leaning back as though preparing to light a pipe…Cambridge casts it’s spell…

It seems to me that the publication is a static entity at this point.  Every two months it touches it’s subscribers, then goes quiet for another two months.  Simply putting the journal online won’t change that: the content will still only be updated infrequently and there’s no motivation to look in.

Similarly, it seems like your not ready to push the online presence into social media, where your subscribers interact with one another.  There’s nothing for them to talk about, no community or tribe that draws them together.  Seeding a forum with surveys, provocative letters to the editor, and event notices may generate heat but not the sort of quality and light that the publication wants to build.

I think that there’s an intermediate step that needs to happen, creating dynamic content. 

First, the journal needs to offer simpler content that is updated more frequently.   Pre-publication, post story ideas, articles that didn’t make the cut to print, pointers to relevant news and events.  Post-publication, post article updates, links to enhanced content, audio or video follow-ups.

Second, offer interactive features.  Make the author available for discussion on-line, invite guest specialists to post perspectives and commentary for questions or comment, offer ways to get involved or to share stories within a short, moderated format that can be summarized in newsletters.

Third, make the subscribers special.   When an institution is featured, add special offers for admission, access to programs, or advance notice of events.  Collate information of interest to them; invite contributions and opportunities to make their special interest into a special feature.

In effect, the dynamic content draws together the writers and specialists with the subscribers and naturalists.  Once people are engaged, then they may be ready to interact.

Our local Meetup groups held a ‘Social media and Startups’ session recently,  emphasizing the need to see past the tools to the goal: creating self-organized communities of like-minded people.  Seth Godin made the same point in his discussions of Tribes, and I’ve seen it work (sometimes) on LinkedIn.

I think that the benefits of social networks, and their desirability as mediums for branding and marketing, are now  well understood (above). You have to learn to leverage the new medium.

But I think I’ve also learned that a growing community with vigorous conversation doesn’t start with a Facebook page.  Rather, it has to start with frequent, relevant, interactive content that generates (and shows) interest and engages audiences. 

Selling the transmitter

As a Vanderbilt Universtiy undergrad in 1972, I joined the campus radio station, WRVU, as a late night DJ.  Yes, that’s me, Dashing Dave, holding forth from the south tower of Neely Auditorium on the 10-watt powerhouse ‘Rock of Nashville’.

And, today, I got a note from the University asking how I felt about a proposal to sell the transmitter and broadcast spectrum, moving to an Internet-only format.

I feel…a bit weird about it all.

First, I’ve long believed that anyone who is still absorbed with their University teams and activities more than five years past their graduation needs to get a life.  Student activities exist for the students, not the alumni, and there’s no need to fossilize a radio station as a memorial to my formative experiences 40 years ago.  If the broadcast station no longer has relevance to, or interest from, the students, then it may be an anachronism that’s no longer needed.

At the same time, would the media board dump the student newspaper, the Hustler, and go to online format just because newspapers are dying?

The broadcast station never had a lot of listeners: that wasn’t it’s real value.  The signal was poked down into the public-service end of the FM spectrum, barely strong enough to cover the campus and surrounding neighborhood.  The student / educational value was in providing technical and management experience running a media outlet, getting an FCC license (credentials for a broadcasting career), learning the rules and etiquette of public media, and being a part of the broader Nashville radio station community.

The switch to Internet-only takes away those learning opportunities: I suppose that the real question is whether they are still relevant.

The University proposes to use the proceeds to “create an endowment to support innovative student media experiences, facilities and operations at Vanderbilt in perpetuity”.  I’m not sure what the educational mission of that is; it sounds like a concert fund.  And the wording sounds like they anticipate stiff alumni reaction to the proposal.

Already, the WRVU DJs group on Facebook is getting excited:  “WRVU may be up for sale!!! ONLY YOU CAN MAKE IT STOP!!”

I guess I’m a bit more sanguine.  If this is an asset that’s molding in the attic and losing value and student interest by the day, sure, sell it.  If it’s a fad to raise quick cash to hop the Social Media express, it’s probably ill-considered.

I feel….like it’s a long time ago but still an important part of me. I’m sad to see the station sold off and it makes me feel a little outdated along with it.

In perspective and out of touch

This was movie week and, as is the norm in my generation, I find life’s truths being played out up on the big screen.

I finally rented Up In The Air with George Clooney: I’d wanted to see it for a long time, anticipating personal connection and social commentary with my airborne lifestyle.  I got pulled into Sex and the City 2, my first exposure to the franchise.  There were only six men in the theater, and two were gay.  And I rented It’s Complicated, a more mature comedy with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin.  Along with Bill Murray and Robert Downey Jr., I enjoy watching Baldwin’s evolution in the way he plays increasingly mature roles.

The quality of the movies varied wildly.  I can’t say anything good about SITC2, which veered from bewildering to truly cringe-worthy. There must have been more to the series than the parade of excess goods and self-absorbed pouting that filled the bog screen.  UITA was mildly disappointing: the story was interesting but the characters never developed much depth.  I really wanted to know the moral behind Clooney’s self-improvement lectures: what did he fill his backpack with once he dropped his relationships and hit the road?   IC was jut the opposite: the story was a trifle but the characters spoke with genuinely interesting depth and honesty.

In all three, I found myself reflecting on two ideas afterwards: perspective and connection.

In each case, the main characters lost perspective on what matters in life, on how big their problems really are, on how they are perceived by others.  While each has made bold, independent lifestyle choices, they all were struggling with the  consequences, not seeing how their problems were, in fact, self-inflicted.  As the stories unfolded, the women of SITC2 never realized it, and that made it a worse movie.  Clooney finally did; Baldwin suspected it all along.

And, in all three, the main characters had each lost touch with the reality of life around them.  There were so many ways that encounters with culturally different women could have jarred the SITC girls back to life.  Instead, in it’s worst moments, the reverse happened: they ‘discovered’ that everyone else wasn’t so different from them (Muslim women wear designer fashion beneath their burquas).  Clooney purposefully cut himself out of touch with everyone around himself, then found that he couldn’t reconnect when he needed to.  Intriguingly, the displaced workers who he cut from their employers seemed to find their way better than he did.  Baldwin and Streep each have full lives that are, nonetheless, empty and out off touch: their professional and family relationships are achingly superficial and distant.  “We’ve each become what the other hoped we’d be,’ Baldwin observes, but the worlds feel created in isolation.  The children drive off, the bakeshop turns empty law partnership is meaningless.  The best moments are their dialog as they sit together and reflect on life’s turns, in touch with each other.

It’s been said that there are only two plots in movies: “A man goes on a journey” and “A stranger comes to town”. In fact, both are a reflection of the same story.  And here, despite there being three very different movies, I found only two underlying images: losing perspective and falling out of touch.  And each is just the inward and outward reflections of the other.