BOOK THOUGHTS: OUTLIERS

I am, as you probably know from reading this blog, a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell. His first book, The Tipping Point, about how "viral" change occurs, was revolutionary and paradigm-shaking, and I return to it often.

His second book, Blink, about how intuition works, was fascinating, but not nearly as groundbreaking. I am, however, happy to report that his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success" is much closer to The Tipping Point, and probably even more provocative.

Outliers poses a question which underlies so many self-help books, but which they never ask: Why do some people succeed and others don't?


We think we know the answer, don't we? The myth of the "self-made man" is so ingrained in American culture, as is the idea that if you have enough raw talent, you will succeed, or be discovered ("You're going out there a nobody, but you're coming back a star!")

But Gladwell quickly puts our misconceptions to rest with one well-told example after another. Success, he posits, comes when someone with "just enough" talent puts in enough hard work so that when a (necessary-for-success) unique opportunity comes along, he's ready to take advantage of it... and when that person is supported by the culture in which he grew up.

The first half of the book focuses on "Opportunity," the second on "Legacy," and the examples Gladwell takes us through are fascinating and varied. (Yes, it would be nice from a scientific point of view to have more statistics and less anecdotal evidence for the points he makes, but it would be infinitely less readable.)

For me, the most interesting concept, and the most useful, was the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in any area. In our fast-food culture, where we want everything now, and we want it easy, this is an uncomfortable claim. I used to see it in my students, who would come to Hollywood expecting to be rich and famous any moment now. (I'm happy to say that this is not the case with my students at USC, who really do put in the hours!)

One of the most delightful things about reading a Gladwell book is how well-written it is. Outliers, like Gladwell's other books and like his New Yorker articles, is just a pleasure to read. And it's easy to read: Easy enough that we are reading it together as a family right now, and my kids are having no trouble at all following any of it. (In fact, Cory wowed a high school interviewer just yesterday by rattling off all sorts of stories from the book.)

Do you want to know the secret of being a star hockey player in Canada? What the common factor is behind The Beatles' and Bill Gates's success? Why Asians tend to be good at math? What unexpected factor figures into plane crashes? And how to put it all together to spell out the secrets of success? Then Outliers is the book for you.

Outliers is a must-read. Get it now.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS 2009

If you've been reading this blog for a while (like for over a year), you know that New Year's resolutions are important to me. As I've told the story before, I realized the power of New Year's resolutions after Cory was born.

He was born in June and for the next six months, I struggled through my exhaustion to keep up with my pre-child schedule, which included, at that time, lots and lots of people asking me to do things for them (read my script! talk at my group! come to my party!). I tried to say no. I really did. But people wouldn't accept my "no," and somehow the "no" usually got twisted around to a "yes."

And then, when Cory was about 7 months old, right after New Year's, I half-jokingly responded to someone's request by saying I'd made a New Year's resolution to say "no." And that was it! No more cajoling, no long explanations of why it was really important that I say yes-- the words "New Year's resolution" was the clincher that made people stop asking!

I realized at that point that if my (phony) New Year's resolution had that much power over other people, I could let it have that much power for me as well. And I have taken my New Year's resolutions seriously ever since.

So let me look back first at my resolutions for 2008. (Actually, I was in such a miserable spot as of New Year's 2008, I'm surprised I even mustered up the energy to make resolutions -- but I did.)


I resolved to read my way through Madeleine L'Engle's works, in honor of her death in late 2007. I've been working on that, as you can see from my "Books of the Quarter" posts -- though halfway through the year I realized I needed to keep reading other things as well. So I will continue for 2009, and probably, I'm guessing, into 2010. An enjoyable resolution.

I resolved to revamp the way I handle my bookkeeping. That lasted about a month and failed utterly. Maybe I realized that the way I was doing it wasn't that bad.

I resolved to start saying "yes" to things rather than "no" ( feeling I had taken that original resolution too far). I think I've done pretty well on this. I've certainly said yes to some things I normally would have passed on, though trying to keep up with my work schedule and my kids' schedule hasn't allowed me to say yes to everything. But I think, on balance, that one was a succeess.

And I resolved to continue 2007's resolution to cook "real food" for my family -- and I certainly did follow through on that! (Cereal-coated orange roughy last night... everyone's out tonight... and breakfast burritos for dinner tomorrow night.)

Okay, so on to New Year's resolutions for 2009!

One resolution I won't be able to take action on for a couple of months, when we move, but here it is: I resolve to entertain in my (new) home on a weekly basis (on average).... Now, by "entertain," I include when my kids have friends over (and this house is great for teenagers and tweens to have friends over) -- otherwise I'd definitely be biting off more than I could chew. But we haven't been able to entertain for a year or so, and we miss it. We want to have people over for dinner! We want to have parties! We want to host meetings! And we want to just hang with friends. Looking forward to kicking this resolution into gear as soon as we start unpacking boxes.


I also resolve (at the heavy insistence of Cory) to get myself on Facebook. Now, I feel a bit reluctant about this. I realize what a massive time-suck Facebook can be, and I certainly don't need more of those in my life! Yet I also hear friends my age talking about getting back together with old high school or college friends through Facebook, and I see how wonderfully Cory has stayed in virtual touch with kids he's no longer in school with. And Cory is really pressing me to let him help me set up my own Facebook (maybe he just wants to show off his own FB skills!). So I hereby resolve. And I will post here when I actually do it. (Now I just have to find a photo of myself I can stand to look at!)

Last year along with the resolutions, I also picked 5 prayer requests to focus on for the year. I wrote them down, and then often forgot about them. But sometimes I remembered. And when I checked at the end of the year, 4 of them had been beautifully answered. So this year I have picked 5 new prayers (including the leftover one from last year), and will add them to my morning prayer list.

Sabrina and I also have a joint resolution to work on certain behaviors together. So far, not going so well, as we don't seem focused. But we will try to encourage each other.

Finally, I from time to time find myself thinking of a couple of people who have really done me dirt over the last few years, who have been nasty and have truly damaged me and my family. My resolution this year is, whenever I think of those people, to try to pray for their forgiveness. This may seem the easiest, but I suspect it will be the hardest.

Okay! Those are my resolutions and now I'm ready for 2009 to begin!

TV THOUGHTS: LOST

Last season's Lost went a long way, I thought, to picking up the momentum that seemed to be getting, um, well, lost in the increasingly convoluted plotting and the overwhelming "conspiracy theory" feel of the show (the same swamp Heroes has been finding itself in).

It helped a lot that we watched the thoughtfully-replayed season finale from last season a couple of days before seeing the premiere -- and also helped that the season finale was full of pop-ups explaining what was going on. As I'm not really a "Lostie," keeping track of every clue, I sort of wish they'd give us the option of pop-ups every week! Be that as it may, I thought the premiere episode really worked.


I liked the use of the flashforwards, replacing the flashbacks -- and particularly liked, in that episode with Desmond on the freighter, the use of the "flashnows."

Turns out the sense of the show finding its way back was not a fluke -- or at least we have reason to hope so. Last week's season premiere was, I thought, nicely written and acted, and helped me feel (somewhat) confident that the writers will indeed answer all our questions.

I liked the alternate time lines going on, liked seeing Locke again (which we had reason to suspect might not happen), liked the increased role of Faraday, really liked Sun's increased confidence in the future storylines, found it absolutely appropriate that Hurley's father was Cheech Marin (did we already know that?).

But overall, what I appreciated the most was the sense that the show once again knows where it's going, and is ready to answer questions rather just raise them.

No spoilers here -- I'm not going to recap because either (a) you've seen the show and don't need the recap; (b) you're not a fan and are probably skimming this post anyway; or (c) you've got it saved on Tivo and you're planning to watch it tonight or tomorrow and don't want to read spoilers. But if it's (c), rest assured that you've got something worth watching on that hard drive.

I was disappointed to see that Lost's numbers were down last week. I'm guessing that the combination of the Writers-Guild-strike-caused delay of the show, plus the spinning-its-wheels season three really caused the audience to fall away. If you're among that crowd, you should consider coming back to the show. It's back on track, and I think you can probably more or less pick up what you've missed (I'm really one of those people who lets the show wash over me, and doesn't worry about what I've missed).

Glad to see Lost has found its way. Now let's cross our fingers for the rest of the season for Heroes.

BELATED THOUGHTS ON THE INAUGURATION

On 9/11/2002, when Cory was 8, I found myself glued to the TV, watching the one-year-anniversary shows about 9/11. Cory was peeved that he couldn't turn on SpongeBob or whatever he was watching that year. He couldn't figure out why they were showing the World Trade Center fall again and again and again, when we'd seen it a zillion times already.

I tried to explain to him, in the best 8-year-old language I could muster, that 9/11 was a very significant and sad day for our country, and that I felt I had to acknowledge its anniversary.

"So will they stop showing it after the next terrorist attack?" he asked

And I went to my room and just wept at his presupposition, because my children would never know a world in which it was inconceivable for the U.S. to be attacked by terrorists.


This Tuesday, 1/20/2009, I cuddled up with Sabrina on the sofa to watch the inauguration (Cory was watching it at school; Sabrina was home because she had a middle school interview immediately after the inauguration). We agreed that Michelle Obama's outfit was so much better than the one she wore election night, we looked for people we recognized in the crowd, we wondered why Jill Biden was introduced as "Mrs." rather than "Dr.".... And we listened to President Obama's speech, stern and eloquent. (And then winced at the poem that followed.)

And then we all went back to life as usual. Sabrina did her interview (beautifully, may I add), then went back to school just in time for English, and Cory went off to class at his school. And life proceeded as normal.

And I realized that my children would never grow up in a world in which it was inconceivable that a black man could be elected President of the United States. Would never grow up in a world in which they would hear, "In America, anyone can grow up to be President," and realize, then or later, that it was a lie.

And I rejoiced.

THE BOOKS OF THE FOURTH QUARTER

Because I was writing for much of the last quarter of 2008, I didn't get much reading done. But here are the few books I did read.

(Actually, I read one more book, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. But that deserves, and will get, its own separate write-up.)

Dragons in the Waters by Madeleine L'Engle. I remember not liking Dragons much the first time I read it, but this time I really enjoyed it. Young Simon Renier, traveling to Venezuela to return a family portrait, is joined by Polly (now spelling her name conventionally) and Charles O'Keefe and their dad, who help Simon unravel a deeply-buried family mystery and save him from danger. The plot is somewhat ludicrous, and I have never really enjoyed Madeleine's South American storylines, but somehow the characters really carried me through this time.

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. This was the second time I've tried to read Emotional Intelligence. As you probably know, it was, about 10 years ago, a groundbreaking book popularizing the concept that there are more types of intelligence that that measured by IQ. But now, 10 years later, that idea's not so radical, and many people have written about it more interestingly than Goleman's original book. I found it a slog to get through.



A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle. . Absolutely lovely. Vicky Austin (of Meet the Austins) meets Adam Eddington (of The Arm of the Starfish), helps him with his summer project studying dolphin communication and intuition, and falls for him, even while dealing with interest from Zach (of The Moon by Night and a local boy, Leo). Adam and the dolphins help Vicky come to grips with the death that seems to be all around her this particular summer. A lyrical and beautiful story, really one of Madeleine's best (and a Newberry Honor book for its year). Madeleine does a particularly good job of getting inside Vicky's emotions, and helps us feel and see what it's like to play with dolphins. Lovely.

The Source by Michael Cordy. I had to read this book for work; someone was thinking of making it into a movie. It posits, more or less, that the mysterious Voynich manuscript actually leads to something akin to the Garden of Eden. That's an idea I think would be fun to play with. But apart from that idea, nothing in this book is enjoyable or well-done at all. A wanna-be "Da Vinci Code," The Source is torture to read.

Troubling A Star by Madeleine L'Engle. Sigh. I was so happy to get one more Austin Family Chronicle to read... and then it had to be this one. Basically, Madeleine went to Antarctica, took a lot of notes, then transcribed them into this story. It's Vicky and Adam again, but Adam's "offscreen" for virtually the entire story, and the mystery that's sandwiched into the travelogue just isn't strong enough to be believable. So sad this is how we say good-bye to Vicky Austin.

...Sadly, that's it for now. I've read more while sick, so will have a better list in April... And my thoughts on Outliers will come soon....

HOW TO TELL IF YOUR TEENAGE SON IS CUTE

So we're in the middle of a tour of one of the schools our kids are applying to. We're standing on the soccer field. And a girls' team, in uniform, is starting to run laps.

And one of them notices us. "Hi, Cory!" she chirps out as she runs by. It's a girl he went to school with two years ago, but hasn't seen in a while.

And as they pass, that girl says breathlessly to her friend, "Did you see? That was Cory!"

And the friend -- who also hasn't seen Cory since he grew a good five inches and a mustache -- turns and starts squealing, "Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!" Then trips and falls over.

And the girls disappear in a cavalcade of giggles.

And that's how you might have an idea that your kid is pretty cute.

TV THOUGHTS: THE GOLDEN GLOBES

I wish I could say something trenchant about the Golden Globes. But I fell asleep.

I did see Kate Winslet's first win, saw Sally Hawkins equally tear up and ramble on foolishly, saw Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise with exactly the right demeanor when the late Heath Ledger beat them for Supporting Actor (they are actors, after all, and played the moment perfectly). I did see Ricky Gervais chew out the audience for being rude, and wish I'd seen Tina Fey (we needed an actress with a good acceptance speech).


Other that that, I don't feel I missed much. And with the economy in the tank, we didn't even get much to look at in the way of snazzy dresses and jewelry -- all those bare necks say "Recession!" louder than the headlines.

Maybe it's just that the WGA strike last year having canceled the 2008 Globes really showed how utterly unimportant they are. Eighty-some foreign journalists, none of them from publications you've ever heard of? Eh.... It does appear that Slumdog Millionaire is firmly the front runner for the Oscar now, but I don't think we needed the Globes to tell us that.

But I don't feel that bad about not paying attention to the Globes. Because whenever they cut to a wide shot of the audience, it was clear no one else was paying attention either.

...Looking forward to the Oscars, though.

A PAEAN TO MY iPHONE

I am still very sick, I'm afraid. I'm back on steroids, back on an inhaler, waiting for more Vicodin, and on a heavy-duty antibiotic ($25 a pill is in my mind what qualifies it as heavy-duty -- thank God for insurance!). So that's why I haven't caught up on the blogging -- the books of the fourth quarter, for instance. Also why I haven't had any movies to blog about -- I simply haven't gone out to see any. (Yes, I have stacks of screeners to go through, but always would rather see a movie on the big screen.)

But I have been having fun with my new iPhone.

It wasn't exactly a surprise. For several months, Sabrina has been saying, "I know what you're getting for Christmas, Mommy, and it begins with an 'I'." (Something tells me Sabrina should not be aiming for a career in the CIA.)

Yet, in some ways, it was a surprise. I knew it would be cool and convenient and easy. What I didn't realize was how astonishingly cool and convenient and easy.


In fact, the Quote of the Month for January is part of my paean to my iPhone: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" (courtesy of the late Arthur C. Clarke)... because my iPhone is magic.

I haven't done everything I possibly can with it. I haven't bought any cute little apps (though Cory is pushing me to get the "beer" app and the "cigarette lighter" app), and I haven't downloaded any songs yet.

But I've done a lot. I've set my calendar with reminders for the next three months. I've taken photos and e-mailed them to people. I've watched YouTube videos. I've tracked alternate routes to places and checked traffic while on the road (in the passenger's seat, I hasten to add). I've checked the weather for home, for the mountains when we were there, for Disneyland when we were there. I've used the calculator. I've taken notes from phone conversations and started writing my syllabus for my new class this spring. I've changed the wallpaper, changed the ringtones. I've loaded up my phone book and set my speed dial. I've surfed the web, forwarded web sites to other people, posted comments on people's blogs. I've paid my American Express bill and ordered my daughter's school lunches.

And I've done this all without opening a manual. Because there isn't one.

A friend of mine bought an iPhone over Christmas vacation. He asked the guy at the cash register where the manual was. "You don't need one," said the kid behind the counter. My friend laughed. "You're 21 years old," he said. "You don't need one. But I do." The kid just shook his head. "Whatever you want your phone to do, just do whatever seems the most natural, and that's what'll work," he said.

And he was right.

"Intuitive" is not a word I like to use about gadgets. People are intuitive. Machines aren't. But the iPhone is intuitive. It knows what word I meant to type when I mess up on the one-fingered typing, and drops the right word in. It lets me skip putting the period at the end of sentences, lets me skip the apostrophe in contractions, handles it all so I can focus on what I want to say and still spell and punctuate everything correctly. (It even makes sure the word "iPhone" is capitalized correctly each time.)

It knows what I've been working on, and returns me to those screens when I want them. It knows when I'm done with a phone conversation and pops up the screen to end the call instantly. Even putting a phone call on speakerphone is easy. With my old phone (which called itself a smart phone), I had to read a tiny legend on screen that said "speaker," then press a tiny button, then get another note on the screen that asked "Speaker on?" then press yet another (different) tiny button, and then, most of the time, the speakerphone would activate (by which time someone would have answered and wondered why I wasn't talking yet). With my iPhone, every time I dial a number, a large display comes up including the word "Speaker," I tap it, and the speakerphone is on instantly.

I've had it for two weeks, and it has already changed my day to day life. When I was too sick to go on roller coasters and the like at Disneyland, instead of sitting out in the cold fuming because I was missing out on something, I just found myself a cozy spot, pulled out my iPhone and read through Malcolm Gladwell's archived articles, and I was more than perfectly happy. When my co-Girl Scout leaders needed to plan a meeting, but wanted to make sure we'd be at a place where we could have internet access, I said, "Don't worry. We can have internet access anywhere we want to go. I'll bring my iPhone."

It's not just the ease of having the world at my (literal) fingertips. It's the sheer elegance with which it all happens. Simple. Easy. Beautiful. And yes, intuitive.

I love my iPhone.

ON BEING DECIDUOUS IN WINTER

I'm back from the mountains, back from vacation, but still very sick. (The doctor today didn't renew my Vicodin, but re-upped my Prednisone... sigh... would that it were the other way round!)

But while I was in the mountains, I had a lot of time to stare out my window at the lake, the trees, the snow... Pale-blooded native-Californian that I am, it was the first time I'd ever been fully surrounded by snow, so a vista I didn't tire of gazing at.

The pines and spruces were magnificent, green with their snowy tinsel. But I found myself drawn to the rather pathetic deciduous trees spotting our backyard. They were small and bare, just a mess of branches sticking out of the snow. None of them were attractive in any way.


I found myself feeling sorry for them. The pine trees could be equally unattractive if stripped down like this, yet the evergreens never have to suffer the embarrassment of appearing naked in public. No one ever gets to see their bare branches and point a finger and laugh at them.

I guess that's what winter does. It reveals what's underneath the ever-merciful covering of needles or leaves, reveals it for the world to see. It reveals the underlying structure, for better or for worse.

Winter has come to a lot of people this year. People who had enough money to keep themselves nicely and greenly covered are suddenly exposed for what lies underneath. And sometimes it's not that pretty.

Winter comes more often to those of us in the entertainment industry than it does to everyone else. What everyone else seems to be suffering right now with the financial meltdowns is fairly commonplace to us in the biz.

A noted film producer who has gone through a winter or two of his own once said, "In this town you prove who you are by how you behave when nothing is happening for you." And that's what winter is, isn't it? The time when nothing is happening. It's just hard when that nothing is exposed to the world. The world, so very evergreen, most of it, points a finger and laughs, never having had the experience of having its own faulty structure exposed.

But winter doesn't last. We know that in the biz, and everyone else who is suffering through being stripped bare right now will find it out. A time will come when leaves will start to bud, when daffodils will poke their heads above the ground.

Evergreens never have to suffer the ignominy of winter, wrapped warm and stately in their greenery. But they never get to experience the startling joy of spring.

Winter is hard. But spring is coming.