The Frustrated CFO

CFO Folklore: A Male Applicant with a Banker's Resume? No, Thank You.

Sometimes when you open a certain topic, it becomes hard to move on to the next one.  So, again about bankers and genders...

When we hear the word "discrimination," the first thought that comes to our mind is "unfair."  Indeed, in it's most common definition of the last 150 years, discrimination is understood to be an unfairly different treatment of a specific group of people.  We think: race, ethnicity, gender, social class, origin, sexual orientation, wealth, etc.  This is the type of discrimination that I just fucking hate.  And I am not saying this to be politically correct: I truly am a serious opponent of an inequality based on anything other than talent and merit (please keep this in mind as you read on).

People forget, though, that the word "discrimination" has a much older meaning and can be defined generally as a "recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another;" frequently even more specific: "the ability to discern what is of high quality."  Truth be told, under this definition I have discriminating tastes - in many things, but especially when it comes to judgments of people.  Particularly, when I have to act as a hiring manager.  

I discriminate against dullness, stupidity, and narrow-mindedness.  I've mentioned it many times in this blog's posts and I spelled it out in the Human Resources section of CFO Techniques: what I really look for in the eyes of a job applicant is a sparkle of intelligence. 

Because of that, I find myself discriminating against a very specific group of people, namely men with a banking background.  I try to refrain from generalizing - it could be my own unfortunate experience with this occupation, but, from my point of view, it is largely populated by male bankers who are limited, slow, and intellectually lazy.

Nowadays, the term "banking" signifies so many different things - every major institution dabbles in several "satellite" industries: investment banking, all sorts of trading brokerage, insurance, etc., etc.  So, to avoid the confusion let me clarify that I'm talking about the plain old conventional bankers, whose job is to keep the excess of your funds in their "vaults" and to sell you money when your needs exceed your availability.  These are your commercial loan officers, relationship managers (RMs), business development VPs.

And, of course, these are primarily men, who are not motivated to rise above their genotype.  Why should they?  They've got the upper hand by default. Women must claw themselves into the tight boy's club.  If they succeed in doing so, they are not only eager to do a good job, they also move to the more sophisticated areas and specialties: treasury management, foreign exchange, trade finance operations, investment banking, etc.

Back in the day I used to blame the inertia of male bankers on liquid lunches: 20-25 years ago they literally worked from 9 am to 12 pm in the office.  Then they would go out for lunches, with clients or with each other, order martinis, and from that moment on the drinking wouldn't stop until evening.  Being intoxicated obviously doesn't make anybody more alert, expedient, or add urgency to one's attitude.  But this banking trait was squashed long time ago - the liquid lunches went away, yet the quality of work remained the same.  Maybe they stopped drinking on the job, but the productive hours remained the same - and it's just so much you can do between 9 and 12.  But are they awake even during those three hours?  

I went with one of my clients (a wiry, fast-talking businessman, who still wins sprinting competitions in his age category) to a meeting with his RM from PNC Bank.  I swear to God, this banker exceeded even my expectations: he epitomized the idea of an "empty space" and he seemed to be half-asleep.  I got a distinct impression that whatever we were saying to him literally entered his left ear and immediately flew out of the right one.  After the meeting I tried to warn my client - I said, "Your Credit Agreement just started.  Before it's too late, please try to ask for the RM's replacement.  You will not be able to work with this guy.  You are going to hate him."  He didn't think that he needed to bother with such "trifle things."  Now, two years later, at least once a week I hear, "Oh, my God!  I cannot stand that guy!  I cannot deal with him - it's like he is in a coma." 

Coma!  That's even worth than half or fully asleep!  Yet, it is true.  I always complain about the lack of urgency in the majority of workforce everywhere, but for this group of institutional employees it's an epidemic.  Here is something from an email exchange between my other client and his RM (with copy to me):  "We initiated this matter with you last summer, almost 6 month ago, and it is mind boggling to me that you could write today that you 'are still in process of writing up the formal approval.'  Ironically, the only related matter for which the bank had no hesitation to proceed post-haste was to deduct legal fees that appear unjustifiable from our account."  Do you sense the level of frustration? 

But lethargy is not even the worst of their traits.  Sometimes I wonder if these people are specifically picked to be so, for the lack of a better word, unimaginative.  I was talking to this one banker recently about his client, explaining how important it is for the company, which deals in bulk liquids, to lease tanks near Georgian ports: when a shipment arrives a hose can be hooked directly from the tank to the vessel and the product can be pumped out at a minimal cost.  A couple of days later he writes to me: "I remember you said they had a tank in Atlanta..."  Atlanta?  I laughed out loud.  It's fucking 250 miles inland!  Some hose would that be!  On the other hand, he is a banker in NYC - Atlanta is probably the only city in Georgia he remembers from his geography classes.      

It couldn't possibly have always been like that.  In the old times conventional banking was entrepreneurial, risky, dangerous business.  A banker who took your money into his safe kept his gun in the holster under the jacket at all times and used his shrewdness and guts in determining whether you worth a loan or not.  And yes, he would hire a meek dude for the back to count money and keep books.  And that guy needed to be meek, so that he would be too afraid to steal.  But even that quiet mouse had to be nimble with his fingers to count money and he had to have quick reflexes to be able to duck for safety when the shooting ensued.      

That's it, isn't it?  It's the cancerous growth of the banking business into these giant monsters that we, corporate financial executives, are forced to deal with now.  They are too fucking big and they need to fill all the seats, so they hire entry levels straight out of colleges (out of specific colleges on their specific lists) as long as they meet the GPA and internships criteria.  And nobody is looking into their eyes: are there any sparks, or they are just good at memorizing textbooks for a hot second and taking tests?  After that it's a hit-or-miss game: the brightest go for stars and big money, but more routine tasks go to the dullest contingent.  And they do that for years: sitting in the same positions, performing the same limited tasks; without the necessity to develop new skills or mental abilities; slowly crawling up the long ladder according to their tenure, never reaching real intellectual heights before their retirements.

It seems, however, that some of the more entrepreneurial banks have finally started realizing that they are being drowned by the incapable, half-asleep, idiots, and they are trying to correct the situation.  As I said in my February 20th post, the number of women in the relationship management is increasing exponentially, and I just met two people who came into institutional finance from M&A.  Well, good for the banks then.  But if they don't want to hire (or keep) the industry-grown nincompoops, why should I? 

Social Media Bewilderment

Forgive me for being inattentive to such extra-accommodating bells and whistles, but I only noticed it yesterday night: after you finish watching a TV show's episode or a movie on Hulu Plus, a little window with both facebook and Twitter logos/links appears in the middle of your screen.  I take it that this is Hulu's offer to its subscribers to share the news of just procured entertainment experience with their personal social network.

My God!  Do people actually do that?  Like in self-admiring way, or something?  I just watched an episode of "Brooklyn 99" on Hulu Plus.  So fucking cool!  Or: "Persona" on Hulu Plus, just now.  Fucking rad! Attention seeking much?  How boring are these people's lives? How heartbreakingly pathetic!     

Snippets from a Corporate Party: Disappearance of Secure Professions

The Frustrated CFO goes to a corporate party and during cocktails mingles with bankers, all kinds of brokers, execs from various industries, business owners, etc.  Everyone exchanges cards, handshakes, hugs, or cheek-pecks depending on the length and the warmth of the relationships.  Some people talk shop, some solicit business and/or advice, some boast about themselves and/or their children, some discuss the Super Bowl without much enthusiasm (it's NYC after all - we only got excited when we saw our very own Eli Manning in the stands watching the event turning miserably for his brother).  Many, of course, discuss the weather - it has been an appropriately cold winter, which makes the clueless schmucks unhappy.

The Frustrated CFO does her duty of actively participating in this business-social hubbub.  She doesn't even have her cards out, because in this room everyone knows her and she knows everyone.  This is great - no pressure, no awkwardness, no need for ice-breaking: she freely rotates herself around the space joining a conversation here and there, mostly listening to others chattering away. 

The party is not very large - just 60 people.  So, it is a testimony to the prevalence of the trend that  she catches two independent dialogues, which support one of her it's-only-gonna-get-worth observations: that there is no such thing anymore as a "secure" profession.

A VP of Acquisition and Investment from a Commercial Real Estate Brokerage humorously tells a story how at a recent RE conference she met a middle-aged gentlemen with a double-sided business card.  One side introduced him as a licensed commercial property broker and another... as a cardiologist.  He told her that he'd been a practicing heart specialist for 25 years before getting into selling corner delis, Korean restaurants, and warehouses.  People didn't know how to react and, therefore, they snickered - a typical response.  Someone said, "I wouldn't trust that guy with my heart."

Well, I've been saying for some time now that HMO's together with malpractice insurers did a pretty thorough job of downgrading the medical profession from one of the highest-earning trades to a regular struggling-to-survive occupation.  This is why it's so hard to find a good primary physician nowadays: the insurance pays $8-$25 monthly allowance for PP patients and the only appointment you are allowed to bill to the provider is the annual full physical.  Every single privately practicing doctor that I know, including specialists, feels obligated to tell me how he is about to lose everything and how he cannot afford his kids' tuition anymore.  But I have to be honest: A cardiologist going into real estate?  That was surprising even to me.               

In another conversation The Frustrated CFO's corporate attorney was explaining how they had to push one of the partners out because "he wasn't bringing enough business."  His arrangement gave him rights to share in the combined profits, while the other partners didn't feel that he was pulling his weight.  So, they simply didn't renew his contract.  Now, the attorney said, the ousted ex-partner went to work for a law firm that kept all attorneys strictly on the eat-what-you-kill basis.  No more sharing in each other's efforts - if you don't bring any business on your own, you don't earn anything at all. 

Well, this has been a shift in many partnership-based professions: not just law firms, but also accounting, managerial consulting, architecture & design, web development, advertising, and some-such companies.  It's not that important anymore whether you are a good lawyer - it's all about the salesmanship, the "rolodex," the ability to snatch a new client.  I keep waiting for the time when these entities start hiring sales execs without the required professional backgrounds and pay them humongous bonuses for selling services fulfilled by someone else.  

As recently as 10 years ago parents still thought that as long as they force their children into being a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or a money manager (regardless of the kids' actual talents and dreams), they did their "duty" of making sure that these young men and women were financially comfortable and could provide for themselves and their future families.  But it's not true anymore: there are no more cushy jobs, no security in any profession, no guarantees. 

Social Networking May Still Redeem Itself as an Instrument of Commercial Quality Control

 Today, our minds automatically go to facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. when someone uses the words "social network." The Rudin/Sorkin/Fincher team made a movie about Mark "I-violate-your-constitutional-rights"  Zuckerberg and used those words as a title!  

And it's absolutely ridiculous, because establishing and maintaining connections with friends and "the right people" have been vital for the human species since, like, forever.  Folks have always built their settlements, villages, towns, and cities with designated places for meetings.  Back in the day (and I don't mean the 1980s), households accepted visitors on certain days of the week; and even on a random day one could come by and leave a calling card with the family's help.  And who can deny that, ever since the first Industrial Revolution, the patterns of commercial and financial developments were determined by the who-knows-who principle.  It's just that the outreach was far more limited.   

Of course, the magnitude of Internet networking is breathtaking.  In the early 1990s, when the Internet has connected all seven continents, the miracle of instant world-wide access to knowledge, culture, entertainment, or people was the most important and alluring aspect of this new technology for me.  I still experience a thrill every time I look at this blog's dashboard and see that during the last 24 hours my posts have been read not just at home, but also in Denmark, Canada, Germany, South Africa, UK, Vietnam, Australia, Portugal, Spain, India, France, and Taiwan.  I love it.

Yet, I hate facebook and Twitter.  Okay, push your eyebrows back down and let me explain. I don't hate social networking per se: It's convenient to receive updates on your favorite artists and it's important for business: I've been on LinkedIn since the times it operated exclusively on the basis of professional invitations.  But I abhor the contemporary "social network" phenomenon and what it represents: the unrestrained hunger for attention, the vile combination of pathological exhibitionism and a sickly kind of voyeurism; the violation of privacy and the desire to be violated.  I cannot stand the stalking by exes, the spying by employers, the snooping by the government agencies - all that shit.

That said, there are some companies with one or another form of social networking at their cores, which I consider not only healthy, but also greatly important due to their positive impact on the commercial environment, especially the consumer sector.  I'm not naive and I don't think that any of the entrepreneurs behind these businesses consciously elected to influence the quality of goods and services.  Most likely they simply shaped their business models utilizing the exploding patterns of collective participation in the Internet experience, but in the process they unwittingly created an influential force that has a power of strengthening and weakening businesses.       

In 1979, Tim and Nina Zagat started imploring their friends into scoring restaurants they visited, eventually turning their social pastime into a ranking business, which was bought by Google in 2011 for a reported $151 million.  Being an old-fashioned medium from the start, however, it remained the same under the new high-tech ownership: It's still unclear how the rankings are formulated.

It was Pierre Omidyar's hobby-project turned international conglomerate with an annual revenue of $14 billion, aka eBay that pioneered the concept of building market-place reputations based on the fully-disclosed opinions of the "community members," i.e. users of the eBay services.  While everyone was screaming (understandably so) that people will cheat, lie and steal, eBay founders stuck to the most fundamental of the commercial principles: in order to succeed you need to keep your ratings high, because one unresolved accusation of unsavory practices may kill your future transactions for good.  It's like what G.W. Bush said, "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me - you can't get fooled again."

Today, thanks to rating algorithms utilized by various online businesses, we came to rely on communal ratings and individual opinions whenever we buy electronics, computers, household appliances, books, or select entertainment on Netflix, or order food delivery on Seamless, or pick a hotel on TripAdvisor, or make decisions about telecommunications providers.  Many of us not only peruse the viewpoints of others, but also actively participate in the polling process by sharing our own thoughts about this or that product, service, establishment, thus affecting a new system of commercial quality control.     

It is safe to say, in my opinion, that Yelp has become a flagship of the communal marketing model.  Again, not because the ideas of commercial quality control and merit-based rewards are so important to them, but for the sake of the advertising income ($138 million in 2012).  Nevertheless, assessing performance and assigning rewards (aka ratings) is exactly what "yelpers" (members expressing their opinions) do.  

A few unique traits place Yelp, Inc. in the avant-garde of this movement.  They encompass a wide spectrum of consumer services.  Right now you can find referrals on businesses in 20 main categories - from restaurants to religious organizations, further subdivided into specialties.  In less than 10 years they have achieved an international magnitude.  The listings are essentially combined efforts: detailed information about the business is provided by the commercial participants themselves (for a fee) and consumers supply their reviews, photos, and ratings.  The search engine is geographically oriented allowing users to find what's around them on the map. 

Also, Yelp, Inc. claims that they use an "aggressive" reviews filter, which rejects posts that are suspected to be biased or false.  As a result, according to their public releases, about 25% of entries are being dismissed.  And I can appreciate that. Like I said, rendering communal judgments on commercial establishments is a serious matter: ultimately it has a power of affecting the livelihood of individual businessmen.  So, the filtering is great as long as Yelp conducts their selections, rejections, and other manipulations fairly and without prejudice. 

Unfortunately, as with everything touched by greed, the communal quality control as executed by Yelp, Inc. may be seriously misused.  While I was writing this piece, TypePad's "related-posts" function has presented me with a few reports (including the one attached below) accusing Yelp of manipulating reviews in exchange for business clients' participation in the site's advertising programs (you can also read about it on Wikipedia).  And that's criminal.  Not only because it's nothing short of blackmail, but also because, by using individual consumers' personal and freely expressed opinions in this unsavory process, Yelp corrupts the participants' intellectual property and constitutional rights.  I sure as hell hope that these accusations are not true.  If they are, yelpers should file a class-action suit to bar Yelp, Inc. from using their reviews as the means of racketeering.    

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Inside Yelp's Wasp Nest: When Social Networking Meets Extortion

HBO's "Girls" Still Play with "Tiny Furniture" - Part V: What Is to Be Done?

Continued from the Previous Post

There is a moment of truth (actually, two truths) at the end of "Tiny Furniture." Aura (Lena Dunham) tells her mother, "I want to be as successful as you are." And that's all it is about: not the Story, not the characters, not the message, not the art; it's about fame and recognition. If you ever watch her talk-show interviews, notice how she never looks at the audience. She doesn't care what their reaction to her is. She is intent on the celebrity host in front of her - always ready with some statement of admiration.

In response to Aura's (Lena's) admission, her mother (Lena Dunham's real mother) says, "Oh, you will be more successful than I am. Really, believe me." And that's, ladies and gentlemen, is a promise made by someone who knows a full power of her influence. Many mothers are ready to sacrifice their lives for their children, but only a few, have means to part the Red Sea of obstacles in the way of their offspring's march to success.

Some people, I am sure, will be surprised by the extent of this five-part "feature article." Well, what can I say? Nepotism is one of my themes. It happens everywhere and pretty much in the same manner, but an entertainment case is easy to breakdown into crucial components for everyone to understand.

Lena Dunham is not a talentless person. She is apparently an intelligent and well-read cinephile. Most likely, if I met her casually, I would enjoy talking to her. But she did benefited from nepotism unfairly - her output did not deserve all the noise around her. Maybe eventually she would arrive there anyway, with more mature and important material. Instead, she got ahead of other talented and brilliant young people, who are deprived of the ability to deliver their important messages to the world because they have no connections and no funds to produce their projects or hire PR firms.

And that's, boys and girls, where your already hopeless economic predicament becomes even more hopeless. The resources that could've been used for worthier projects (or jobs that could've been filled by worthier candidates) go to those who have connections. Some Internet writers predict "Lena Dunham's inevitable world domination," and they are absolutely correct - the connected people will always know how to work the world machine to their advantage.

So, 150 years after Chernyshevsky, I have to ask the same question, "What is it to be done?" Well, I am not claiming to be a revolutionary. As a matter of fact, I always say that Compromise is my middle name. You don't get to have any career at all if you don't play along at least to some degree.

So, the only advice I can render is this. If you have a real talent and desire to succeed, don't give up. Work hard and produce deliverable products; fight your fears and insecurities; build your own connections; keep people in your iPhone, even if you don't like them; knock at all doors and use whatever resources you can gather to help you reach your targets. I cannot promise that it will work, but if you don't keep trying, only lena-dunhams will always win.

The End

HBO's "Girls" Still Play with "Tiny Furniture" - Part IV: What's the Big Deal?

Continued from the Previous Post

So, why "Girls" are lauded as unique, original, ballsy, even revolutionary?

Is the writing that astonishingly good? Well, for me good writing means story and character development; the more layers, the better. And as hard as I tried, I have not seen any of that in "Tiny Furniture" or in "Girls." In fact, the most fitting description of the situational comedy that came off Lena Dunham's printer so far would be sketches, sticky notes transplanted from a mac-book onto the proverbial silver screen. I've seen 90-second student movies with more story substance. Yet, what else can we expect from someone who experiences "a joy of writing." Let me give you a quote from Thomas Mann: "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." But, of course, the great Noble Prize laureate was talking about REAL WRITING.

Is it the recognizable dialogue plucked straight from today's conversations? The use of the momentary phraseology that is on everyone's lips today and completely forgotten tomorrow? But I thought Diablo Cody has already been improbably celebrated and rewarded with an Oscar for that.

Is it the fantastic directing skills? Seriously? Some of the shot choices make me dizzy. Acting? Ms. Dunham's acting is limited to changing her real-life masks (you know, cheerful buddy one minute, snooty bitch - another), but acting out a scripted emotion - so far it comes off wooden. The whole hire-who-you-know method didn't work too well for the rest of the cast either, except for maybe Jemima Kirke, who is a natural.

Is it because the creator is 26? Well, we've been blessed by young filmmakers before. The brilliant and defiant Harmony Korine was 22 when he wrote astonishingly raw "Kids," 24 when he wrote and directed "Gummo," and 26 when his heart-breaking "Julien Donkey-Boy" came out.

Is it because the creator of the show is naked a lot? Apparently Ms. Dunham thinks it's groundbreaking - she talked about it in many interviews. But let me tell you: every cultured kid from New York, regardless whether her/his parents are artists or financial execs, have been exposed to truly revolutionary artists who used their naked bodies as artistic media: Matthew Barney and Marina Abramovic come to mind first and foremost. These people already broke the ground and the young creators who've seen them have stepped over the naked barrier.

Is it sex? Oh, excuse me, the awkward sex? Common, the show is on the cable channel that brought us Real Sex series.

And who can seriously claim that it's edgy, when we have "Homeland" and "Nurse Jackie" on Showtime?

So, you see, there is nothing special or unique about it. It's just a carefully designed media campaign. But it works, it always does. It managed to create the hype, to convince viewers that Lena Dunham, through her personal experiences, represents the entire generation. 3.8 million people watched the first three episode.

In reality, Lena Dunham's personal experience and power of imagination are so limited that every time the situtation goes outside of her immediate surroundings, she needs a co-writer. But it doesn't matter. That three-episode viewing statistic was enough for HBO to renew the show for the second season even before the 4-th episode aired. As Hannah's boyfriend says in that crucial third episode, "We are only as blind as we want to be."

To be Concluded

HBO's "Girls" Still Play with "Tiny Furniture" - Part III: This Is How It's Done

Continued from the Previous Post

Lena Dunham is unabashedly bold about her position in the world. She provides a straightforward example of how it's done in "Tiny Furniture": you have a friend with an art-dealing father who cannot say no and puts up your horrible, stupid video in his gallery.

In the sixth episode of "Girls" Ms. Dunham throws hapless Hannah Horvath's mask away (who cares about the inconsistent characterization?), fixes a bewildered look on a Michigan girl with a plan to go to Hollywood, and asks if this person has connections, people who can arrange auditions, ways to get in. Because in Ms. Dunham's mind, the only people who have rights to be in the entertainment world are people like her, the ones supported by a network of contacts.

And why would she think differently? Life comes with very specific benefits when your mother's photos are displayed at the Met, the MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney, among other places.  Did Laurie Simmons ventured into making a musical short starring Meryl Streep in 2006 for the pure purpose of getting her foot into the filmmaking business?  The same year she produces Lena's first short "Dealing," which somehow gets accepted at Slamdance, while thousands of much stronger films from all around the world are rejected. 

Three years later Lena graduates from college and now it's time for things to start really happening.  I can just picture Ms. Simmons telling the curators at Guggenheim, "Did you see my daughter's web series Delusional Downtown Divas'?  It's all about the art phonies!  It's hilarious!" And before you know it, Lena is commissioned by the museum to produce another 10 episodes of tedious sketches, set in a plethora of Tribeca wealth, to be projected at the first annual Art Awards.  She is also invited to host the event.  Isn't it awesome to have that on your bio and resume? 

Still, I don't understand how "Creative Nonfiction" got accepted at 2009 SXSW.  I've seen much better movies with real stories and characters, written, directed, and shot by young aspiring filmmakers, who sent their work in and got "sorry, you were rejected" emails.  Then again, it's very possible that Lena Dunham's first feature got sent directly to Janet Pierson (head of the festival).  After all, when written in four days "Tiny Furniture" was finished, the writer/director/star managed to get a post-deadline waiver, enter in January 2010 and win 2010 SXSW Best Narrative Feature Award in early March.     

Here is a challenge for my readers: how many independent film festival's winners get to have multiple gala-premiers in places such as Brooklyn Academy of Music and MoMa?  I found only one - the one that stars a famous artist, "Tiny Furniture."

And then, of course, there are publicists (check out ID Public Relations). For all we know, Lena has been their client since nursery school (both Dunham and Jemima Kirke were featured in Vogue as preteens). Let me explain for the uninitiated.  If you can afford to pay steep PR fees, publicists will be the ones responsible for putting together smart websites for all your opuses, writing press releases and bios, contacting publications, etc. 

They will get you on 25 Independent Filmmakers list (Ms. Dunham was featured in 2009, right after "Creative Nonfiction").  They will make sure you are featured on one or another talk show.  Through their personal connections (again!) with writers and editors, they will get you a NY Times profile (03/19/2010) and a movie review (11/11/2010) after your big win at SXSW.  No publicist?  You are shit outta luck.  Robbie Pickering won the Best Narrative Feature this year. The Gray Lady completely ignored his existence. 

It just a fact of my life that I came to know someone who worked in the entertainment PR and explained this to me, but for those who want a second opinion I recommend to watch "Nurse Jackie," episode 2.3.

We may never know how exactly the mechanics of personal connections worked for Lena Dunham, but we do know for a fact that thirty-something Jenni Konner, who's been working on various TV projects since 2001 and now happily serves as an executive producer on "Girls," was outfitted with a box of "Tiny Furniture" DVDs she pushed into hands of every single person she knew in Hollywood, including her "Undeclared" boss Judd Apatow.

The uber-successful Hollywood tsar of awkward comedy seems to be on a mission to show the world that life sucks for everyone, but everything going to be Ok at the end. A privileged girl having an unhappy moment in a huge Tribeca loft - how could he possibly resist?  Keep in mind, the man does have two pre-teen daughters, whose acting "talents" he promotes in his own movies. He simply had to offer Lena Dunham millions of dollars to plow her shallow-themed field on television.

To Be Continued

HBO's "Girls" Still Play with "Tiny Furniture" - Part II: Psychological Nepotism

Continued from the Previous Post

But Lena Dunham is not a "regular" person. Far from it. Her parents have enveloped her entire being into nepotistic shroud of cultural connections. More importantly, however, they bestowed upon her, what I call, the psychological nepotism - a phenomenon specific to wealthy families with no worries for the children's material wellbeing in the future. The ability to provide for their children far beyond their own graves turns these parents into blind believers that whatever their daughters and sons poop out are unmatchable manifestations of incredible talents.

Let me give you an example.  I remember many years ago Alec Baldwin telling David Letterman how him and his then-wife Kim Basinger were playing tennis and their three-year-old daughter touched a racquet. Kim started talking incessantly about the child's "being drawn" to the sport and a possibility of John McEnroe "taking a look." Are you catching my drift?

I believe that Ms. Dunham herself is somewhat aware of impact the psychological nepotism has on privileged children. In the third episode of "Girls," when Jessa is introduced to her babysitting charges by their mom, a filmmaker, we learn that the little girls (I think 6 and 9) have several "incredible" projects in the making: painting a toy animal, a mosaic project, a novel that requires editing...

My readers may think I am a "material" bitch stifling "normal" children's creative aspirations. That's laughably far from the truth. I firmly believe that real talents should be encouraged to go the distance no matter how hard the road ahead is. However, my standards are pretty high. On the other hand, "connected" parents turn everything into a tightly managed "artistic" output and treat every piece of a mediocre crap as a fucking masterpiece. 

Judd Apatow keeps saying in different interviews that for him writing is an extension of his struggle for self-esteem, while Lena just goes and enjoys herself, merrily banging at the keyboard. And it makes perfect sense: no matter how much success he will achieve, Judd will always need to prove his worth to himself, while Lena Dunham was born with the idea that everything she does - every nursery school drawing, every little story for the English class, every small part she had in a school play, is absolutely, indisputably precious. As it frequently happens, when nepotism is at play, the quality is irrelevant - the products get pushed through all available channels anyway.

To Be Continued

HBO's "Girls" Still Play with "Tiny Furniture" - Part I: The Predicament

I frequently talk about the hopelessness of life prospects for most people in their twenties. In my post Futurenomics of Higher Education, I wrote about practical uselessness of college degrees for the majority of these kids. Anyone with half a brain can see that a staggering number of recent grads will never be able to buy houses in the same neighborhoods their parents did, enjoy nice vacations, pay for their children's education or elderly care.

And it's unfair, because on average the generation in question stands on much higher ethical grounds than, us - their parents: they are more open-minded, more accepting of diversity, more environmentally aware. At least the kids in their twenties that I personally know deserve a better future than we've set up for them. For years now, I've been like, "Hello! These young college grads have nowhere to go! Can we start talking about this issue?"

Be careful what you wish for! Better yet, try to define your wishes more accurately, because it does matter who talks and what they say. There are speakers with trite messages who have access to the channels unavailable to others. They confuse the eager audiences into seeing what they want to see and hear what they want to hear.  When Lena Dunham's movie "Tiny Furniture" was propelled into their view by an inadequately strong PR campaign, they mistook the depiction of someone's feeling momentarily insecure for an introspective statement relevant to the entire generation.

In truth, the movie is nothing more than a photograph (it's ironic that it was shot on an SLR camera) of a bad moment in a life of a privileged girl, whose existence has nothing to do with the reality experienced by the majority of people. As such, it does have some bits of stark vulnerability familiar to many unattractive people. However, as the cinema critic for New York Magazine David Edelstein pointed out "Lena Dunham is so much smaller than life."

In that, she essentially upholds a fine family tradition by following in her mother's (a renown photo-artist Laurie Simmons) footsteps: playing with toys, showing ersatz characters in artificial surroundings, miniaturizing settings and issues to the point of irrelevance. For me, the smallness of the subject matter combined with the repetitiveness of self-pitying incidents turned "Tiny Furniture" into a lack-luster drag. If Lena Dunham were a "regular" person this film would have never been made, won Best Feature at SXSW, and led to the HBO's new series "Girls" bankrolled by Judd Apatow and created by Ms. Dunham, who also stars as a central character.  She also wrote and directed most of the first season's episodes.

To Be Continued

Respect Your Audience: Reflections Triggered by Matthew Good's Concert at Mercury Lounge

Let's face it - most of business professionals, including CFO's and controllers, like hearing themselves talk. Frequently, we cannot stop ourselves, going on and on about some business matter, or bitching about some subordinate, or superior, or peer. Presentations are too long to hold listeners' attention, pitches are unfocused, emails look like novellas, and meeting speeches are self-aggrandizing. There is no denying - that pervasive affliction of humanity, narcissism, is inescapable.

The sad truth is that by doing this we depreciate ourselves - people see it as overcompensation for hidden insecurities. Moreover, such behavioral tendencies give the listeners a good reason to be dismissive. They will feel disrespected and resist to be receptive.

However, even with that affliction sometimes obstructing our way to successful communications, most of us have enough common sense and professional experience not to offend our audience with outright insults. The nature of our positions forces us to be diplomatic. We are in the business of dealing with brash bosses, prima-donna sales people, sensitive customers, important bankers, strategic suppliers, valuable subordinates, and whoever else the job brings into our habitats. The words we use and thoughts we express have a potential of affecting our company's business in a positive or negative way. So, we'd better be respectful, and, most of the time, we are.

These thoughts kept popping into my head last week during Matthew Good's concert at Mercury Lounge. The whole experience was a bit strange. I've been listening to this Canadian rocker's beautiful music, channeled through his amazing vocal and guitar skills, since the 90s (God bless them!). Now, standing right in front of the tiny stage, I've observed a 40-year-old (looking over 50), kinda balding, kinda pudgy, unkempt man, who managed to down three large glasses of gin in a span of 90 minutes. 

It was unexpected, but I really-really don't care what people look like as long as they do their job well. And I've got to say, when Mr. Good sang, it made you forget everything: his age, your age, what he looks like, and what you look like now, and all the shit that happened in 20 years since you first heard him. The trouble was the man sang only half the time.

Dana Carvey once said that all comedians want to be rock stars; apparently, and vice versa. Matthew talked after every song (literally): SNL sketches, whooping cough epidemic in Vancouver, one of his kids being a bastard, postnasal drip, Lance (his guitar Dobby/drinks server/on-the-road chef), hot dogs - what have you. I was standing there thinking, "Dude, do your job, sing. Have some fucking respect - it's midnight on a Wednesday night, some of us worked all day and have to work tomorrow."

It got worse: as the blood alcohol level was rising, his widely known political side started coming out. When he began throwing accusations regarding American government's shadiness mixed with condescending remarks like, "You should know what your government is doing" into the audience (thanks, dude, without your Canadian ass I wouldn't know how to form political opinions!), someone else voiced, "What about your government?"

But at the end, it was an issue related to his own music, with which he hit the ultimate low of disrespect. The exhausted, but still forgiving fans started throwing song requests at him; some from The Matthew Good Band's first album "Last of the Ghetto Astronauts." "There is a better chance for my starting chewing crack than for your forcing me to sing anything from that album. Common, people, admit it - that was crap written by a 24-year-old." This is to those who bought the album and listened to it since 1995, plus many members of the audience who are in their 20s now, yet know every word of lyrics you wrote when they were wearing pampers? How offensive is that?

Essentially, touring musicians are in business of selling their albums and solidifying their fan base, thus making sure that people will buy tickets again and again. In that, they are not much different from other business professionals.  The way I see it, they should be afraid to lose their paying customers the same way we do. Alas, Matthew Good thinks differently. Well, I'm not buying next time.