Beep Beep!

Road Runner! A bird, a song by the Modern Lovers, and now also this.

When I was probably ten or maybe nine, I had a bully that would chase me home from school. It didn’t feel like I was special. I think other friends of mine had a bully. Maybe it was the neighborhood. Who knows. It’s not a bully story I’m telling you today. In fact, in order to show you how much it’s not a bully story, I do have a memory that my bully ended up being a friend. Not a friend for life. Or for even after we moved. That kind of friend you only have a couple of. And one of those friend-for-life friends reads this newsletter. Maybe Dave can remember who my bully was and comment. In any event, my bully became this kind of friend – if you were having a birthday party and mom said you could invite 9 people and then for some reason there was a chance to make it ten, this friend might be the tenth.

The bully is important to what I’m telling you today because of some wisdom I had dropped on me by my mom and dad.

“If you don’t run, he can’t chase you.”

It’s the kind of advice that makes some good sense. When I heard it the first time, I immediately had a picture in my head of one of my favorite cartoons, The Road Runner. Constantly being chased by the Wile. E. Coyote, Esq. This “don’t run and he can’t chase you” wisdom felt like some god damned Road Runner type genius. I could see Road Runner stopping and good ol’ Wile. E. also stopping. And being confused. Now what? Sure, when I’ve been chasing this fuckin’ Road Runner, I have occasionally been running at top speed, while also tying a napkin to my neck, and sharpening my fork and knife because I am going to eat this damn bird. And then, after tripping over that napkin at top speed and slamming into a fake tunnel painted on the side of a mountain had the sobering thought that I should probably only concentrate on one thing at a time. Chase. Then capture. Then eat.

“You can only have one priority.”

Come to think of it, you can boil down almost all things in The Road Runner to sound business advice and it would make a top selling book about business winning strategies.

Here’s a problem with the very smart and wise idea of:

“If you don’t run, he can’t chase you.”

It’s not exactly one hundred percent foolproof. It might have needed more testing in a research lab with some federal funding before being taken to market. There are some moments where the bully doesn’t trip over his napkin, causing his coyote legs to give out from under him and have his head slam into an anvil. There is a corollary statement at play here.

“If you don’t run, he will DEFINITELY catch you. (And most probably beat the living shit out of you.)”

Yeah. Some of you know what I’m talking about. You cannot always trust the stuff that happens in Saturday morning cartoons as, you know, hard science. Or psychology. Or sociology. You can trust them to be hilarious. Don’t want to bury all the uses of Saturday morning cartoons, cool?

Know what though? This isn’t about how dumb I was to think that my bully would not beat me up if I stopped running. Or that the advice from my parents wasn’t good. We were all doing the best we could with the information we had.

You grow up. You move on. You have kids. You try and teach them things. Some of them are good things and some of them are what I call “cartoon logic things” that aren’t great. But you’re moving along. The book you wrote on Cartoon Business Practices is in its tenth printing. You got Ryan Reynolds to read the audio book version because he’s used Cartoon Business Practices to buy a soccer team, a cellphone company, and he’s looking to prove his comedy bona fides beyond Deadpool and this is his shot.

And you wake up in your beautiful house, with your family and you make a bowl of cereal and fire up your TV and tune in for some good cartoon fun. But the streaming device is moving slow, and the remote won’t respond and so you’re stuck on the news channel that you left it on when you turned it off before going to sleep. And you get to see “Operation Trojan Horse.” A rental moving truck pulls into a parking lot and the door rolls up. The Penske Rental truck has twenty ICE agents inside it who pour out of it and start chasing everyone in the Home Depot parking lot. Raisin Bran drops into my goatee as I watch. Maybe you saw it. Maybe you didn’t. But the operation was called “Trojan Horse.” And we all know what that means – you hide soldiers in something and surprise attack someone who didn’t stop to think, “Why is there a giant wooden horse outside? Well, better bring it in, we can examine it once it’s inside the castle walls, right?”

And this isn’t even about that video. Or bullies. Or parental advice.

It’s about hearing from the folks that organized and executed “Operation Trojan Horse.” Here’s what they said:

“When they run, we chase.” And to those who always claim to be taken out of context, I’ll finish it. “When they run, we chase. When they hide, we find them.”

So, if you aren’t a criminal, if you have no reason to be concerned, the implication is, don’t run.

“If you don’t run, the bully can’t chase you.”

So, I ask you this. A U-Haul pulls into your Trader Joes parking lot and expels 20 armed, masked men who start running towards you. What does your nervous system do?

Flight or fight? They have automatic weapons. I think the instinct of flight wins out, right? Now you’re the road runner, and now, you’re also a suspect.

Cartoon logic is at play here.

It’s all in my new edition of my business book that has 20 new pages of material inspired by my TED talk. The only TED talk ever given with a giant mallet and an anvil on stage.

I talk about my story of success and my journey and how it relates to everyone in the world, when you stop and really think about it. All the while gesturing to the giant mallet and anvil as proof of the obstacles I overcame on my way to the top. And that there’s room at the top for EVERYONE. In fact, there’s so much room at the top for everyone, we may not even need a BOTTOM anymore. I end with the folksy story of my bully and then point to him at the back of the room, my longtime tenth best friend who went to six of my birthday parties when I could get one extra friend invited. He’s now my head of security. And then, all the catering people drop their trays and pull out automatic machine guns and run at the audience.

The ones that really listened to me for the whole TED talk? They stand still. VERY VERY STILL. This is some amazing stagecraft, and those CANNOT possibly be real machine guns. They are not running, so they cannot be chased. They get it.

Then why do they all look more scared than the people who didn’t listen to me?

Beads of sweat and panicked eyes dart about.

Me? I turn and confidently walk through the fake tunnel I had been painting on the back wall during my TED Talk, a successful author of a business strategy book.

And also:

The Most Important Chicano In Hollywood That You Don’t Know About.

Word of mouth is important. If you want to purchase my book, or just share my writing with anyone, this is how we grow this space. And you’re still doing it! Thank you. Play me out, Modern Lovers.