Why Didn’t I Think of That? Podcast – EPISODE 1: Groupon

How did a music major wind up founding the fastest growing start-up in history? In our very first Why Didn’t I Think of That? ® Podcast, Bob Smith and Greg Anastos look at the story of Andrew Mason and his tech start-up Groupon, an online daily deal service. Topics covered in this 27 minute podcast include:

-Andrew Mason’s initial inspiration for Groupon

-Controversy surrounding the company’s advertising and recent publicity with regard to its Initial Public Offering filing with the SEC

-Groupon’s plans for the future–including its new Groupon Now feature

-Some practical advice for other companies that are looking to use Groupon to help grow their own business.

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“I usually see husbands and wifes.”

This young boy meets his first gay couple at a swinging party. It takes a moment for his soft-eyes to process it, but it finally computes. “So that means you love each other.”

This kid needs an agent.

Courtesy of the Huffington Post:

“If only everyone had such a reasonable reaction to gay marriage. This kid meets his first gay couple, deconstructs what marriage means, is surprised but cool with it, then invites the guys to play ping pong with him. Foreign diplomats could learn a thing or two from this boy.”

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Dear Lord time goes by fast. July 4th is just about here. Some of us have plans. Some of us have no plans. Some of us will be with family or giving thanks for our country, some of us will be doing no such thing.

But there’s something we all have in common: We are all free, and we all like big robots and explosions.

I haven’t seen Transformers: Dark of the Moon yet. But I’m going to. Have I gotten amnesia? Have I forgotten the wasted hours and dollars I spent seeing the first two Transformers?

Yes, maybe I have. Because from the moment I saw the trailer for this flick, I just knew I had to see it. Word on the street is it’s the best of the bunch. Normally, I would give up on a team of “creative” people after they tried twice to make a good movie (the same movie). Maybe it’s because they spent so much darn money on them. Maybe it’s because they shot it in 3D–and the 3D action is being called far and away the best since Avatar. Maybe it’s the girl who’s replacing Megan Fox. But I’ll give Michael Bay his third and final chance to make a Transformers movie that doesn’t have me leading the movie theater with a wince or a headache.

/Film has reported on the great divide between critics and audience members when it comes to this latest movie, which opened on Tuesday in select 3D locations. I read the critics a lot. I don’t always agree with them, but we usually see eye to eye more than me and middle America do. (Speaking of critics, the other “big” movie opening this weekend is the Tom Hanks directed Larry Crowne, which he stars in with Miss Julia Roberts. I’ve read two reviews- LA Times savagely trashed the film, to the point where I knew I had to get a second opinion. Vulture had me covered. David Edelstein says of the “gentle” Larry Crowne, “I found it easy to understand why its trailer is so, so lame—the tagline might as well be ‘Come Smile Awhile.’” Tell your parents to let me know how it is).

But I digress. My point is, while I’m generally on the sides of critics (as opposed to the mass movie going public, or the bureaucratic, elitist, insider sludge of the Academy) I don’t really give a damn what the critics say about Transformers 3 (even the oft-reliable Peter Travers gave Tranformers 3 zero stars, claiming, “Watching it makes you die a little inside.” I hope that shows up on the Blu-ray sleeve). I’m sure the pain of a film like the second Transformers making soooo much money despite their critical warnings is still fresh in the minds of many film critics. I can understand their bitterness. But, while I might have forgotten the utter disappointment and hysterical unhappiness the first two Transformer films evoked in me, I have not forgotten why I saw those films in the first place.

I wanted a good action movie.

Not a good action movie like Die Hard, okay? A good action movie like a Michael Bay movie without… without all the terrible crap that comes along with most Michael Bay movies. And Transformers 3 looks like it can deliver. And when it comes to needing an honest man’s opinion about big, awesome, dumb action movies… there’s only one man I turn to.

That would be TPG of This La Life. Goessling’s no joke.  This guy blogged Stallone’s recent all-star action epic The Expendables with the kind of fervor and geeked out excitement that an NYU Film Student would reserve for a Terrance Malick film. The guy doesn’t use as many commas as I’d like him to, but he’s got me schooled when it comes to stylized feel-good cinema violence. So before heading out of town for the tail end of this Independence Day weekend, I headed over to This LA Life to see if TPG had the scoop. He did.

The headline reads:

Transformers 3 is a Patriotic Powerhouse of Summer Excitement!

That’s all I needed to hear. He continues:

Shot in 3D by action cinema God Michael Bay the film follows the friendly American Autobots as they fight another Decepticon attack. This new threat involves NASA cover ups, evil human counter-parts on earth, and the invasion of Chicago. Watching the incredible action in the film, it’s clear that Michael Bay saw “Avatar” and said…..”Ohhhh yeah that’s pretty cool Jim…but you know what audiences like better than blue aliens in 3D…Optimus Prime fighting Megatron in 3D!” Bay is already an incredible technical director and even though this is his first time directing in 3D…visually the film is breathtaking. The sound design is chest rattling as well.

What makes the film enjoyable though is the fact that Bay clearly took what didn’t work from the previous films and fixed them. Shia who in the past films was kind of passerby to robot insanity, now has to deal with another human who is on the decepticon side. The commandos who in the past just looked good and yelled now have some awesome sequences where they fight (and win) against the robots. And finally the robot battle scenes with the bots are easier to follow and have some real stakes with notable characters dying surprising deaths (lotta robot blood here).

Yep. To tell you the truth, I’d see the movie for the sake of watching Chicago decimated if nothing else. (It’s strange how much appeal watching a city you love get destroyed on the big screen has).

Well, while I’m out hustling to scrounge up the money for a 3D ticket, you enjoy this timely poem, courtesy of the demented Velvet Beard:

independence day

it took me all day but i made it to the ocean
i walked until my feet bled
i drank until i stumbled
at dusk i collapsed into the sand
with quiet explosions overhead

it took me all day but i made it to the water
with a flask and a skateboard and a taste
for independence
that stripper would have gone home with me too
you know, if things were different.

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Really, don’t worry about it. You’ve got some writing to do! Oh, you might want to give Verizon Wireless a call first. Get shoved around from representative to representative. No problem. It’s a go-with-the-flow day. Here. This woman is named Faye. She’ll help you.

Hi Faye. Um. Well, no. I don’t really need to set up a payment plan. Yes I know. The thing is- I just sent out an invoice and I’ll have the money soon. No. Faye, believe me, if I could pay 50 dollars right now, I totally would. Hell, I’d pay the whole 250 in a heartbeat if it was feasible. But I just bought water on credit. Not to be a defeatist or anything. It’s a beautiful day, after all. I just don’t have any… Yeah. Right. But I promise I can pay the past due amount next week. Yep. Yeah. Just please don’t disconnect my service. It’ll look bad. My next bill? Oh I’ll definitely pay that on time. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, thanks Faye! You’ve been super helpful!

Let it roll off like water, brah. It’s your day.

Coffee shop is good. Feeling the flow. That weird guy in the corner is sort of creeping you out. Yeah, he has headphones on, but surely he’s aware that he’s singing Ramstein’s seminal hit "Du Hast" out loud in a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except this chapter you’re working on.

Oh my. This isn’t exactly going where you thought it was going to go, is it? Just keep writing. It will all tie in with the story somehow. You’re going to be a famous author! And hey, that last "chapter" you wrote–the one that’s actually just a secondary character’s unfinished Philosophy term paper–even if that doesn’t have mass appeal, this new borderline-pedophilia story line is sure to win the hearts of Christian Book Clubs across the world. Just stick with your plan. Write a serial-like novel that can be sold in supermarkets. Let those handmaidens and housewives get their hands on it and gobble it up without realizing just how subversive and revolutionary it is. Change the system from the inside out, man. I really don’t see how pedophilia fits in with the titled bank heist though. Are you sure about that? Oh. I see you’ve written another five pages on the subject. Well now you kind of have to include it, I guess. It’ll all work out. This is your day. Your novel day.

Heading home. Coming down?That’s okay. Cheer up. I thought that stuff you wrote today was really original and compelling. Especially all of that philosophical stuff. Although, as we speak, I’m brushing up on my Jungian psychology and… Are you aware that everything you wrote is just a flowery version of this Wikipedia entry on Jungian archetypes? It’s okay. It’s cool. It’s totally you’re own thing. Just maybe… Maybe your book could be like an extended metaphor on Jung’s theories. But with pedophilia and a bank heist.

Tell you what- when you call Verizon Wireless next month to beg them not to shut off your service- just pitch the idea to them. Tell them the novel you’re working on. Tell them you’ll be cashing in on it big any day now and all your woes will evaporate. See what they say. They’ll probably love the idea. I know I do.

Good work today. You deserve a vacation.

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This is the first film I’ve seen branded as a “Tom Cruise / Bad Robot Production.” This opposed to a Cruise/Wagner Production (Wagner being Cruise’s ex-wife and [former?] producing partner Paula Wagner).

The entire IMF has been disavowed. Only Tom Cruise, the guy who made Lost, and a Pixar director can get to the bottom of it.

M:I 4, people. Lick. It. Up.

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What’s It Take To Be Number Four?

by Micah McCrary

In college I wrote a Young Adult, Sci-Fi novel about aliens.  It was actually a drafting I’d started at seventeen, but I did finish a novel.  I started thinking about agents.  About publishers.  About book tours and signings and fancy interviews where I’d get to talk about all my hard work.  I was ready to be a book star.

And this new term, the book star, is exactly what James Frey, author of the controversial “memoir” A Million Little Pieces, is willing to make you if you sign on with his new writing company.  The company, called Full Fathom Five, is one in which Frey signs on work-for-hire writers, for little or no pay, for the chance to become the next Twilight or Harry Potter-sized author.  As New York Magazine‘s Suzanne Mozes, an alum of Full Fathom Five, describes it in a recent feature on the company:

In exchange for delivering a finished book within a set number of months, the writer would receive $250 (some contracts allowed for another $250 upon completion), along with a percentage of all revenue generated by the project, including television, film, and merchandise rights—30 percent if the idea was originally Frey’s, 40 percent if it was originally the writer’s.  The writer would be financially responsible for any legal action brought against the book but would not own its copyright.  Full Fathom Five could use the writer’s name or a pseudonym without his or her permission, even if the writer was no longer involved with the series, and the company could substitute the writer’s full name for a pseudonym at any point in the future.  The writer was forbidden from signing contracts that would “conflict” with the project; what that might be wasn’t specified.  The writer would not have approval over his or her publicity, pictures, or biographical materials.  There was a $50,000 penalty if the writer publicly admitted to working with Full Fathom Five without permission.

Frey is currently touring, visiting MFA programs such as Princeton University and Mozes’ Columbia University writing programs, seeking writers to join his venture and “go to work and try to do cool things,” as he himself once put it.

“A lot of artists conceptualize a work and then collaborate with other artists to produce it,” Frey told a journalist in early 2010.  But is this the same as collaboration?  Collaboration, as most people understand it, is a democratic process through which open dialogue is more acceptable.  Here, though, Frey takes the reins himself, claiming quite sternly that he can (and will) brand your product as his own, providing you with the beginnings of limelight and leaving everything else to chance.

It isn’t a commerical democracy.  It’s a commercial dictatorship.

So I’ve asked Mozes herself what she thinks.  “It’s an opportunity,” she tells me, “but that opportunity can only be measured by each individual writer….There’s no way to quantify a writer’s chances in such an unpredictable market.  But I think one would have to go into the project with the expectation that their book wouldn’t sell, and the opportunity lies in understanding how your idea is created, drafted, published and marketed.”  Basically, there is no guarantee of a multi-million dollar deal for you, no guarantee of worldwide recognition, and no guarantee that, even if these things were in the cards, Frey would let you have them all.  He can publish your novel under a pseudonym and claim you had nothing to do with it.   If you argue, you’re in breach of contract and liable to pay a fine up to $50k.  There is one guarantee:  you’ll get a good-lookin’ $250.

The company’s largest success to date was is the Young Adult novel and feature film I Am Number Four, written under pseudonym Pittacus Lore (the name of a character in the book), and produced by Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay. The book was published in August, 2010, but its film rights were purchased over a year earlier by Spielberg’s DreamWorks Pictures. The film itself was released last February, with mixed reviews and moderate box office success.

The book’s actual author, a former Columbia University MFA student by the name of Jobie Hughes, had worked with Frey through Full Fathom Five to get his alien Y.A. action/suspense novel in the hands of hungry agents and producers.  After a long and private legal battle, Hughes left Frey with his lawyer requesting 20 percent of all future proceeds connected to “The Lorien Legacies,” the book series Frey proposed to Hughes to supplement the writing already done for I Am Number Four.

The big questions:  what’s really in it for the writers?  What would drive a writer, MFA student or not, to join Full Fathom Five for only a guarantee of $250?  Is it worth it?  “Yes and no,” Mozes chimes in.  “If a writer has nothing to lose, and (s)he has explored all other options, then it’s an opportunity for an opportunist.  Like any other, (s)he hopes it opens doors.”  But are these doors that we think can be opened by Frey and his own fearless opportunism?  How will students in nation-wide MFA programs prepare when Frey makes his way to Chicago, or Los Angeles, or Boston or Seattle?  And, equally importantly, will it stir debate in our writing circles about the worth of an advanced degree in writing when all we have to do is join Frey’s club?  His company currently has 28 writers all primed and ready for their contracts and advances and cashing in of literary gold.  With Frey’s help, will some of us be more desperate to “do anything to make anything” in a discipline with a visible line dividing commercialism and literary eminence?  Will it, in effect, change the efficacy of the writing program at-large?

“It’s in his best interest,” Mozes defends, “and frankly, it’s smart business to search out a rich vein of talent eager to succeed.”  And while she in no way believes students in graduate writing programs are more desperate than non-MFA writers, “these students (or most of them) have found [in Full Fathom Five] a community of like-minded individuals, and the solace that accompanies that.”  Solace, of course, found by signing away for the commercial over the academic.  Solace gained by an eagerness and willingness to not only be number one, but to be the next Number Four.

As for the future, Frey has his eye on the stars. Vampires and magic are done, he says. Aliens are the next logical phenomenon. What sort of extraterrestrial epics are currently being cooked up by his small army of unknown writers? It’s anybody’s guess. But a word of advice for all those students out there with great ideas about strangers from strange worlds, eager to become Frey’s next star protégé: Please remember to read all the fine print.

Micah McCrary is a freelance journalist, Adjunct Instructor and an MFA candidate in the Nonfiction Program at Columbia College Chicago. In addition to being a regular contributor to Bookslut and Chicago-based Newcity, his work has appeared inTimeOut Chicago, Examiner.com and SCREEN Magazine, and has received mention in the online edition of The New Yorker.

He is currently an Assistant Editor at Hotel Amerika, and has previously served as an editor at the Oyez Review. This is his first contribution to The Heated Forest.

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It’s finally here. After plenty of teaser trailers, we get our first real look at the new Muppet movie, titled simply The Muppets, written by and starring Jason Segel.

“That was something I wanted to do. The idea was born at the Jim Henson Studios. They designed the Sarah Marshall puppets. While I was there I asked if I could see a Kermit or a Miss Piggy and they said, “We don’t have them here anymore. We’ve sold them to Disney. Disney owns all the Kermit’s and Piggy’s.” That literally was the moment the idea was born, was that the Muppets weren’t at the Henson studios anymore. Then it grew from there.”

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In honor of their Dads, some of our writers have written up tributes, memoirs, anecdotes, memories, and Thank-You Letters for their Fathers.

As a general rule, we don’t like to get too mushy here at THF. But hell. We wouldn’t be who we were without these men. And we figured it was time to finally say thanks.

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What’s in a Name?

My Coach, My Dad, My Great Old Man

by Charles Nevsimal

He called me Champ.

My dad, perpetual coach and marketing Maharishi, called everyone by a nickname. As a coach, that’s what he did. He gave kids nicknames. It was his way of branding the individual to strengthen the gestalt. Well, that, or he couldn’t remember their actual names. Regardless, the kids loved having them for the simple sake of having them. Because they sounded cool. Case in point: For me, it was either Chuckie or Champ.

Which would you rather?

There was Slick and Flash and Hollywood and Tito. There was Speedy and Rings and Hondo and Hammer. There was Buck and Say Hey Willie, as in “The Say Hey Kid,” as in just plain old “Kid” (my youngest brother’s glorious epithet and all its incarnations, named after the Say Hey Kid himself). There was a nickname for every single kid on every single team my dad ever coached. And my dad coached a lot, particularly me.

I got mine the summer before 1^st grade, playing tee-ball for the Orioles. I spent the next 11 years trying to live it down. Champ, it turns out, while perfectly acceptable for a six-year-old playing tee-ball, is not all too appropriate for the captain of a varsity football team.

Who knew?

* * *

Nicknames became so ingrained in our family that my brothers gave one to the old man soon after they hit their early 20s. Retribution for the umpteen games he spent yelling from the sidelines: Eye on the ball, Slick! Eye on the ball! Atta boy! … and … C’mon, Say Hey, ducks on the pond! Ducks on the pond!

Papa Shango, they called him, an odd choice for a middle-age suburban white guy, considering the name Papa Shango was that of a skull carrying, spell casting, black Vodouisant who body slammed the whole of the World Wrestling Federation in the early 1990s. But the name stuck. And shortly thereafter, they dropped the Papa in favor of the abbreviated Shango. Today, it’s largely the name everyone still calls him. Everyone, that is, save for me. I’m the only one who still calls him Dad.

But in a flash, that changed too.

* * *

My dad – who first was Papa Shango and then simply Shango – is now Papa. Just plain Papa, sans the Shango. It’s a name he’s eagerly awaited since his sons grew up and became men. Papa, you see, was what we called his dad, my grandfather, the man after whom I was named.

I am Charles Joseph Nevsimal III. My dad is Charles Joseph Nevsimal Jr. And my papa was CJN Sr., the man who started it all. Sadly, it’s likely the CJN thread will end with me, as my wife and I have struggled with infertility issues since we got married in 2004. While it means we may be unable to give birth to a Charles IV, it didn’t stop us from turning Shango into Papa.

In 2008, my wife and I adopted a baby girl.

* * *

The two proudest moments of my Bildungsroman years centered around two devastating injuries to my right foot.  The first occurred in 1986, when I was 11 years old. A Class 3 gymnast competing at the year’s second-last meet, I stepped onto the mat to perform my floor routine, which built to a final pass of round-off, backhandspring, backhandspring, back tuck. The week prior, an orthopedic specialist determined I needed surgery on my foot to correct a congenital abnormality called Accessory Navicular Syndrome (an extra bone on the ball of each foot). The pain was tremendous as I entered the final pass. I landed the first backhandspring and collapsed. My foot raged in pain, but still I stood, attempted the crudest standing backhandspring I ever conducted, and collapsed again. Standing once more, without completing the back tuck, I saluted the judge and collapsed a third time.

My coach and father rushed the mat, and the two of them carried me off. Unexpectedly, the judge awarded me the highest overall score of the meet because, as he explained to my father, “I have the ability to judge according to courage. And that’s how I judged your son. I’ve never seen courage like that.”

Six years later, during my senior year of high school, I was five-foot-nothing, the captain of my varsity football team, a nose guard who thrived solely on quickness and heart. The week we played the best team in our conference, our starting center was sidelined due to a code violation, and I took his place on the offensive line. Across the ball from me, in a three-point stance was Monte Love, a six-and-a-half-foot, 240-pound monster of muscle who terrorized our conference and earned All State honors, going on to play D-1 ball in college. That Friday night, though, against me, he was useless. I held him to two assisted tackles and, more impressively, in a moment of miraculous and inconceivable prowess, I knocked him down.

It was the only game of my career I played iron man – both offense and defense and every special team. The only time I came off the field was during time outs. And I may have had the game of my life against the biggest, baddest competitor in the league, but I paid an awful price. Monte Love destroyed me. After the game, I couldn’t walk. The pressure he put on me and the physical demands of stopping him play after play literally tore my foot apart. Once again, my dad carried me off the field after the game. My arm around his shoulder, I limped back to the team bus a wounded man. Thanks to Monte Love, the foot I had surgery on six years prior required surgery again.

* * *

When the phone rang shortly after 6AM early one August morning, in 2001, I leapt from my bed sensing inherently something was wrong. On the other end was my dad’s voice, cracking: “My dad,” he said. “My dad died.”

“I’ll be right there,” I said, hanging up without waiting for his response.

That day, and the rest of the week, passed in a blur of sentiment and nostalgia. I don’t remember many details about that time. What I do remember is this: weeping, laughing, mourning, celebrating, the stories, the searching through boxes of sepia-tone photographs and old black-and-whites.

I remember hugging my dad.

It was a time when our roles briefly reversed. Off the mat when I was 11, off the field when I was 17, my father had carried me. Because that’s what dad’s do. They carry their sons and their daughters. As infants, as young adults, as men and women. In times when they are broken, in times when they are lost. When they’ve nowhere else to turn, they turn to Dad.

When my papa died, my father turned to me. And for a short while, as he had done for me so many times throughout my life, the Third carried Jr.

* * *

He taught me how to paint a garage. He taught me how to swing a hammer. He taught me how to change a tire. He taught me how to swing a bat and to dribble a ball and how to tackle the guy carrying the ball. He taught me the glory of winning and the inevitability of defeat. He taught me what it meant to be a champion. He taught me what it meant to be a clown. He taught me how to dance at a wedding (collar up, with a chair, in the middle of the dance floor, utterly shameless) and how to be a man of my word. He showed me humor and humility and dedication and pride. He taught me about work ethic and how to be a good salesman. He taught me no boy should undergo a home permanent (even if he asks for one), and especially not in the 7th grade.

My joy of storytelling grew from him, all those endless hours listening to him cast nets to see how far we’d suspend our disbelief.

My dad taught me the significance of honor and integrity, and he instilled in me the exigencies of character. It was because of my dad that I finished my floor routine when I was 11. It was because of my dad that I beat Monte Love.

The truth is: I am, in no small way, the man I am today because of my dad. I don’t know that I’ve ever thanked him for that. Maybe this is my way of doing just that.

* * *

“Come here, darling,” I say to my daughter, Gianna, now two-and-a-half. Sitting her on my lap, I say to her, “We’re gonna go play at Papa’s house today, Gianna. Do you want to go see your Papa?”

Her eyes light up the way I know my eyes once did when my own father asked me whether I wanted to go see my papa. Now he’s Papa. And now it’s my daughter’s eyes.

She nods an emphatic Yes, and I set her down, saying, “Okay, sweetheart. Let’s go see Papa!”

I look down at her sweet smiling face, and she throws up her arms in a gesture that means she wants me to pick her up, to carry her out to the car, to go, go, go.

My dad hasn’t given her a nickname yet. But he will.

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