Sunday, December 17, 2017

Apres moi, le deluge, so many cultural icons notch their EXTRAORDINARY COMEdowns

After Weinstein: 45 Men Accused of Sexual Misconduct and Their Fall From Power - The New York Times

A breathtaking pageant, that continues to play out day by day.

Including now this female Congressional candidate, brought down, like many by charges only, nothing proved;  has society gone too far?

It is a veritable opera of human nature.  Every character has its time on the stage.

Some confess their crimes, others maintain their innocence. 

Others offer their advice on dressing modestly, and as that is not Politically Correct, are castigated on the Internet for venturing to make such (modest) proclamations.

Some are disingenuous and wish to have it both ways, as in, 'yes I had an affair, but I was a mere 24 years old, and, my partner was rich and powerful, and now it seems the thing to do is to renounce it, so I am, etc. etc. etc....."

Recalls the line:  full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Bottom line:  Overall, sociologically, The Great Purge is a positive, yes, and long overdue.  The weaker should be protected against the stronger.

Please don't ask how can women be "weaker" if the sexes are, in fact, equal, as per Feminism?  If you do, you are probably the type who would say the emperor has no clothes, and for that impudence, you would deserve to be incarcerated.  That is a sexist statement, of course, and again, not Politically Correct.  The main thing is to be Politically Correct.  No force on earth can resist an Idea Whose Time Has Come.


Friday, December 15, 2017

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Comedowns are the flip side of Comebacks

After Losing Millions To Nigerian Scammers, A Bankrupt Boris Becker Is Liquidating His Assets | Zero Hedge

He overcomes through music

Two days ago we happened into the middle of a work on classical WFMT;  it captured our imagination sufficiently to track it down when we returned home from the playlists.  It was Tobias Picker's Romances and Interludes.  

We found these program notes on it from an Indiana U performance:  "Romances and Interludes was inspired by Robert Schumann’s Drei Romanzen for oboe and piano. Composed by Schumann in 1849, Drei Romanzen is the only contribution of an original solo work by a major Romantic composer to the entire 19th-century oboe literature. Picker embedded these pieces in his own composition which flows breathlessly through a succession of romances and interludes introduced by a prelude."

We had not heard the name Tobias Picker before, and have started exploring his work.  Enroute, we came across his own comeback story, and share it here:

'How making music helped me fight Tourette's' - The Jewish Chronicle


Crohn's Patient Gets Something to Smile About

Crohn's Patient Gets Something to Smile About

Monday, September 4, 2017

Greatest tennis comeback

...is what ESPN's Darren Cahill just called Juan Martin del Potro's 5 set win over D. Thiem. Del Potro was down 2 sets, and later 2 match points. Buoyed by the fans, especially those wearing Argentine regalia, he never quit fighting, and defeated the talented 23-year-old. 

This is why we love tennis.

 Match of the 2017 tournament so far.

Re "greatest comeback ever." Perhaps. But calls to mind Pete Sampras' unforgettable 1996 win over Alex Corretja.

 

That and Jimmy Connors, 39, improbable 1991 run at the US Open.



Let's call them the three best tennis chills and thrills, how's that?

Small world dept. Tennis immortal Pete Sampras is a distant cousin of my hitting partner, Chicagoan Jeff Goby.

Monday, August 7, 2017

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Here's a list of "15 greatest comebacks"

What is your list of 5, or 10, or 15.....click here to get inspired....

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Book publishing 101 or: Riding the Waves of Rejection

A friend told me this week his wife is writing a book.  The topic is “human struggle.”  She is seeking a publisher.

Caused me to hearken back to my own simple, 23-step process to see Extraordinary Comebacks: 201 Inspiring Stories of Courage, Triumph and Success (EC) through publication.  While cleaning out files recently I found these notes on its history.  Here’s how it went:

2/1/2001
Concept for EC emerges during jogging.  I resist,  A still, small voice pushes me on.  Can't shake it, and I start to plow some ground.

9/1/2001
Lined up a noted self-help guru as co-author.  Why?  The magic of collaboration.  He already had success in the market, an audience and had a big-time agent.  So I started writing, wrote the first 25 of what would (ultimately) become 700 comeback stories.

9/30/2001
My guru, and his agent, renege.  I decide to go it alone.

11/16/2001
An editor as Crossing Press expresses interest, then never responds again.  Still, I settle in to write the actual book, it would take more than one year.

12/15/2002
Finished principal writing.  For the next 16 months or so, I research, rewrite.

4/26/2004
Still believing in the power of celebrity, for better or worse, I seek the support of luminaries for marketing reasons, to provide foreword, blurb or otherwise.  I gain the support of a very major luminary.  He agrees to provide material help, then reneges, and repeats this process twice more.  His paranoid PR people provide me with the shabbiest treatment in memory, accusing me of planning a hatchet job on their media star (!!!);   (my background is in PR, and I am astonished).

5/9/2004
Bought Publishers Guide, queried all appropriate tradtional publishers.

6/9/2004
A nibble.  An editor at a major independent agrees to see proposal.  Immediately sent.

7/8/2004
Editor misplaces, asks for a resend.

9/17/2004
Breakthrough:  editor requests the ms.

9/29/2004
Editor declines, citing derivative nature of stories.  Very deflating birthday present.  I go jogging to try to shake it off.  I resolve not to quit.

10/26/2004
Second effort contact with same editor, but no go, editor declines again.

10/26/2004
Same time I recontact major agent who had earlier expressed interest.  He sends one email re ms., never responds again. On follow up, no response.

1/1/2005
Extensive review of self-publishers, e.g. Author’s House, and many other such.   Not ready to capitulate.

3/8/2005
I go back to independent publisher with proposal on how I would make changes to satisfy them.  This time I write to president as well as editor.  President agrees to reconsider.

7/26/2005
Publisher accepts ms. for publication

10/25/2005
Date of publishing contract

3/10/2006
Editor requires major changes or says 'no publication'; I agree to rewrite every word.  I do.

12/11/2006
Publisher sends cover art 'with title Try, Try Again" vs. my working title “364 Great Comebacks.”  They had never bothered to inform me of the change.  I hate "Try, Try Again" on a visceral level.  It seems to me sing-song, exasperated and patronizing.  Title dispute goes on for five weeks.

1/19/2007
Publisher  relents, chooses instead a title created by my family member as a compromise:  “Extraordinary Comebacks: 201 Inspiring Stories of Courage, Triumph, and Success”

5/1/2007
Publication.  Border's buys large quantity, promotes in stores.  (Remember book stores?)

Publisher arranges successful “media tour,” radio interviews.  Extraordinary Comebacks: 201 Inspiring Stories of Courage, Triumph, and Success goes on to become a category best-seller on Amazon.

EC2, EC3, EC700 follow in subsequent years, as well as numerous other titles.

In subsequent years, life happens.  Our poster boy for great comebacks, Lance Armstrong, who beat cancer to win the Tour de France seven times, finally confesses to the doping allegations that dogged him for years.  I change my web site, accordingly.

Others of our stars fell from the firmament as well:  Bill Cosby, Paula Deen, most notably.  One notable symbol of male, Olympian athletic prowess switched genders, creating a media firestorm while winning a major award for his/her courage.

Some climbed even bigger mountains, like debt overcomer and now President, Donald Trump.  Some passed into eternity, like we all will some day.

How fragile this thing, life, and how easily a comeback can turn into a comedown.  And how fast the clock goes by.

And how long the steeplechase, littered with rejection hurdles, from concept to printed book, in this case, six and one-half years.

And so it is that we wish all prospective authors like our friend's wife only the best, and to keep their eye on the prize, no matter how serpentine the road becomes, and no matter how many tell you that you are lost on the way.

You are not lost.  You just have farther to go.....


Saturday, March 25, 2017

Review: THE SHACK

We wrote this eight years ago, when THE SHACK was a mere book, titled:  THE SHACK:  WHERE TRAGEDY CONFRONTS ETERNITY, not a full-grown movie.  The comeback story of its creation remains of interest.  Thought it might be a propos to repost:

This review is from: 
The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity (Paperback)
This is one of those extraordinary comebacks we keep our eye out for. A struggling Wm Paul Young juggles three jobs to make ends meet after going bankrupt, all the while fighting a squadron of demons of rage from sexual abuse as a missionary child, guilt from an extramarital affair as an adult and despair at losing three close family members. He takes solace by writing a short novel that he intends mostly for his children. Finishing it, he makes 15 copies at Office Depot and gives it to them for a Christmas gift. The few extra he passed out to friends. One very fateful copy went to Christian author and pastor Wayne Jacobsen, who, in turn, sends a copy to his co-host on a talk show, Brad Cummings. Seeing publishing potential, the trio reworked the basic story, experienced the rejection of 26! turndowns from established publishers, and then each kicked in $5,000 to publish the fiction themselves (one used 12 credit cards to keep things liquid, wow, take that Suze Orman). But big risks sometimes have big paybacks. THE SHACK goes viral. Giveaways at a trade show result in entire churches ordering enmasse. The June Forbes magazine says that Young is now $4 million richer than when he was sweating over the copier at Office Depot. So as a success story, as a comeback story, this is a dream come true. Hats off to these three who truly 'kept the dream alive.'

What about the book itself? The pain fairly drips off the page; if you've been roughed up or bounced around by life, you're going to connect with this one right away -- that's what accounts for the massive sales, imho. Writing-wise, this is not Cheever, or Hemingway, no, no, but it's more like Basquiat in the visual world, raw, powerful, in your face, fascinating in its oddness. You can't look away, even if you want to. Like Tony Soprano's sidekick Silvio Dante, who in turn was quoting Michael Corleone: "Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in", so, too, does THE SHACK pull you back in whenever you think you're out. Still, having said that, there are parts that rankle (we said this book was odd), that feel like a bone out of joint, notably the gender ambiguity (God is black female at the outset, changes gender later), and the consequent line of dialogue that seems at times, well, odd, and dare we say it, sometimes kind of metrosexual, kind of effeminate. Not in all passages, just occasionally. (Maybe we've spent too much time in the Old Testament and Revelation and have too much of such hyper-masculinity imagery in the brain, who knows?)

Theology-wise, Mr. Young wanders far, far off the reservation into a very strange land, as many have pointed out. Speaking of strange, strange that evangelical churches have bought the book by the semi-truckload for their members, this is not evangelical Christianity, it is universal salvation, open entry for people of all faiths, Islam, Hindu, whatever. Evangelicals have put their own playbook aside, so to speak, in favor of emotion, sentimentality, and story. And so it is that THE SHACK has become a battleground between the emergent church (Rick Warren, Willow Creek, and their ilk who love it), and the discernment movement (beaucoup websites and eager essayists, who are shocked and agitated by it). Who is winning? We think that's pretty clear by the sales figures. It is No. 1 in religious fiction.

So Amazon prospective buyer, what should you do here? The operative word may just be "fiction," after all.

My Rx: Read this book for the experience, to relate to the author's humanity and pain, and how he excises the pain, to stretch you out like a spiritual Pilates workout, but don't read THE SHACK for doctrine. For the strong drink of real truth, go back to the urtext, i.e. the Bible itself. As compelling as Mr. Young's fiction is, the Bible is still itself more powerful and efficacious for problem-solving, and for predicting how the Grand Game of Life actually plays itself out, and how God will actually make himself known to everyone. But that's another story.....

Tuesday, March 21, 2017