booknewb

Sometime in January I had set the following. 1. Focus on relationships, maintaining, strengthening and creating new ones 2. Get over yourself, Laugh about yourself 3. Do good work 4. Limit fast food 2x a week for lunch until February 5. Mend. Start again 6. Learn values of resilience and overcoming adversity 7. Be respectful, low-key and accessible 8. Get better overall Results: 1. Relationships - Fair, I feel quite content with my relationships right now. 2. Get over yourself - Yes! still work to be done. 3. Do good work - I hope I have 4. Limit fast food - Needs Improvement. 5. Mend. Start again - Yes! 6. Resilience/Overcoming Adversity - Yes, Very insightful year 7. Respectful, low-key, accessible - Yes, Fair, Fair 8. Get better overall - I would say yes.

"That is the defining moment of if you want to do this seriously or continue to do it, is the moment you get hurt. Do you love it so much that you're going to push through this and learn from your mistake? or is that the sign that you have to stop because you don't like getting hurt? From the very beginning one of my worst injuries was I got a concussion. I knocked my teeth out and I knew when I woke up literally in the pro shop of the skate park that I wanted to get back out there and do it. And it wasn't going to stop me even though I had this extremely tragic injury for the most part." -Tony Hawk This was part of an Art of Charm podcast episode with Tony Hawk.

Dreams do not have a chance to be realized if you don't schedule them. Lesson: Schedule them. The past year, the incoming year and all other years do not owe you anything. Lesson: You are merely a visitor in this time and space. You can't treat a person based solely on how they're treating you. AKA. The Golden Rule on steroids. Lesson: Be kind irregardless. I'm not entirely sure how grammar works for triple negatives, the point is be nice anyway. Lesson pt.2: Put your phone down and talk to your date. If you don't take the responsibility in your hands, If you don't fight back on the things you don't like, then who else will? It has to be you. Said a Serbian political activist. Lesson: Revolutions? Nobody's going to do it for you. Both hope and despair are self-fulfilling prophecies. Said two psychologists. Lesson: Choose your destiny wisely. Self-Love is a good thing. Self-awareness is more important. You have to go ...

J.J. Abrams: "I remember my whole life, since I was 8 or 9 wanting to be a film maker. And it was just this thing that I just knew if I was lucky enough to get the shot would be how i'd want to live my life. Whether I could or not, I didn't know, but it was the thing I wanted to do forever. And there's that thing that happened for me, and i'm sure we all have our versions of this, that you kind of think that somehow the finish line; that's the place you want to get to. And when you get there, you will have become that person, that thing. You will reach a certain level of insider evolution or whatever; that you will feel like i have become that person. And I remember when I was in my last year of college, and I ran into a friend. And we came up with an idea. And we ended up writing it and selling the pitch to Disney, [...] And i remember signing these documents and getting paid. And suddenly I was a professional screenwriter, and I remember the feeling of no...

I bought the book slightly out of an impulse. I wasn't expecting to see it in shelves and there it was. It's basically a collection of interviews Judd Apatow made with comedians when he was young and some more recently.  If he had the technology back then, he'd have probably turned them into podcasts. Aside from the current stand up comics, more than half of the people Judd interviews I've never heard of, which made it intriguing. A couple I realized I've seen their bodies of work, I just didn't know it came from them. One for example is Harold Ramis. That memory connection went when I googled and saw that he directed Groundhog Day. I may be oversimplifying something but it seems like the directors are pretty stable, happy and content. Some of the writers and stand up comics seem all over the place. Some are pretty dark and one could sense a bit of ego riding along. As a whole, I realized these comics are really just people. Some are born out of broken fam...

It's incredibly absurd; Hilarious.  Some comics say this movie cannot be made today. I got that now. It's basically a dark comedy in a western setting. The story revolves around a newly appointed black Sheriff in an all-white town. The final act was trippy. The movie gets away with a lot of edgy material for it's time.  This would be the first Mel Brooks movie I've ever seen. If it's representative of his comedy filmography. Much respect.

I've been around the sun twenty-six times now. I still get dizzy from the spin from time to time. But this is incredible that it's even possible. It's a privilege. Thank you Universe. Thank you God.

"I think there's a real good lie that goes around that many pseudo-intellectuals believe that misery has somehow got more intellectual value than joy. And that's a real problem because there's a lot of [...] people [that] think because they're miserable they're smarter than they are. [...] Also in the portrayal of tragedy and comedy, I have tried to do both in my life and I have watched many other people do it. It seems to me far easier to portray misery whether as an actor, or as a writer than it is to portray joy. Joy is difficult because there's much more resistant to it." [...] "I do believe the key, the meaning of life is live each moment as it arrives." This was part of a Nerdist podcast episode with Craig Ferguson