The James Brown Commentary

In a recent interview, Han Solo himself, the legendary actor Harrison Ford, said something that I can't help but think a lot about these days.

When asked what advice he'd give himself as a young man, he said, show up.

It's harder than you think.

“It's going to be a while,” said Ford. ”One thing I noticed when I was first starting acting is that most of the people that were on that Greyhound bus from wherever else you come from to get to Los Angeles gave up and went home.”

"And sometimes the reason you get the job is because you're the only one left,” Ford laughs” So I didn't make a living until I was 35 years old. I had other jobs and so on and so forth, but tenacity is critical.”

Ford's words make me think of another famous phrase.

This one from Jim Valvano, a famed college basketball coach who was awarded a Courage Award from ESPN as he fought cancer.

When he gave his acceptance speech he said, “Don't give up. Don't you ever give up.”

What do you think?

And what advice would you give a younger you?

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Time as an experience is something I've thought about a lot.

The closer I get to 40, the shorter the years seem.

When I was in my 20s, the days and weeks seemed like forever.

In a recent appearance on The Jim Rutt Show, Neil Howe, the historian and demographer, expressed a theory that he laid out in his new book, The Fourth Turning Is Here.

He argues that throughout human history, time has come in one of three flavors.

Number one, chaotic.

“As William James once said, a whirligig succession of events meaning nothing. They haven't yet been in the world long enough to know what's going to happen,” said Howe.

He said this is akin to seeing time through a child's eyes or perhaps a Buddhist master.

Number two, cyclical time, or time shaped by the events we experience over and over and over.

“There's birthing, there's dying, there's eating, there's gestating, there's harvesting, there's reaping, there's... right? I mean, you get the idea,” continued Howe. “There's chanting, there's dancing, there... things have a rhythm in life.”

Howe suggests that today we often look at time as linear.

“The definitive break with cyclical time was the birth of the great monotheisms in the West,” continued Howe. “And this was the birth of Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Islam, most of these being religions of the book, but they reconstrue time as a linear progress. The world is created out of nothing. Time began at that moment. It did not go back into the infinite past as Aristotle might have suggested. It began at a certain moment and it was going to end at a certain moment.”

How do you see time and does Neil have a point?

Let me know what you think in the comments at jamesbrowntv.substack.com

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A recent poll from YouGov shows that America's view of journalists and the companies they work for is highly polarized.

The pollsters gave some American news consumers a group of news outlets and asked which of them they trust, distrust or somewhere in the middle.

A graph of the polling data showed a steep contrast to no one's surprise.

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

Both Republicans and Democrats alike prefer getting news from places that confirm their worldview.

For instance, the highest scores for Republicans include conservative-leaning outlets like Fox News, Newsmax, and Breitbart.com.

Meanwhile, Democrats in the poll gave high marks to left-leaning outlets like The New York Times, PBS, and MSNBC.

The combined sentiment among Republicans and Democrats about major networks like ABC and NBC and CBS landed, them clustered with about an approval rating of around 40%.

That's all pretty bleak.

But there was one piece of data in the poll that argues that Republicans, Democrats, and independents like me can maybe sometimes get our news from the same place.

More than half of the people polled trusted one outlet: The Weather Channel

What do you think?

And which news outlets do you prefer?

Let me know what you think in the comments at jamesbrowntv.substack.com

Email: [email protected]

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Have you heard of tipflation?

According to a new Pew survey, a solid majority of Adult Americans know what tipflation is, even if they don't know the term.

I'm one of them, so I'll explain.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, the girlfriend and I were eating out.

Our lives have been in more muck and drama than you or my friends or even most of my family know. The drive there seemed like an exhale.

We headed to this new fast casual place, you know, one of those places where there are no waiters, and you stand in line to order food behind a glass, and you watch it be prepared.

This experiment in modern capitalism is centered on baked potatoes.

The vast majority of the meals that these baked potato experts served are smothered with your choice of vegetables, eggs, pepperoni, sausage, and chicken and such.

If you didn't see the potato at the beginning of the process, you wouldn't know it was there at the end.

The cost of this adventure?

Forty-ish dollars.

The total shocked me as did the expectation of a tip.

I begrudgingly paid 20% because they're a new small business and for some reason I felt guilty, so I walked away with a great baked potato while feeling violated by this rampant act of tipflation.

It's my hope that unlike actual inflation, that tipflation is transitory.

In restaurants that don't offer table service, stop requesting tips.

It's ruining the experience.

What do you think?

When should we tip and when shouldn't we?et me know what you think in the comments at jamesbrowntv.substack.com

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In which James addresses the current state of late night comedy shows.

Let me know what you think in the comments at jamesbrowntv.substack.com or email me at [email protected]. You can also leave me a message at 585-484-0339.

In which James discusses the shortage in civil engineers in America.

Let me know what you think in the comments at jamesbrowntv.substack.com or email me at [email protected]. You can also leave me a message at 585-484-0339.

In which James explains why he's increasingly an optimist about the world today.

Let me know what you think in the comments at jamesbrowntv.substack.com or email me at [email protected]. You can also leave me a message at 585-484-0339.

In which James asks ChatGPT to tell him a story about third parties.

Let me know what you think in the comments at jamesbrowntv.substack.com or email me at [email protected]. You can also leave me a message at 585-484-0339.

In which James grapples with the idea of a shorter workweek.

"While the biggest issue on the table is pay (the union proposed 40% hourly pay increases over the next four years), another proposal is adopting an emerging buzzy benefit: The UAW is calling for the introduction of a four-day, 32-hour workweek, at the same rate of pay, and overtime pay for anything beyond that.

“Our members are working 60, 70, even 80 hours a week just to make ends meet,” said UAW president Shawn Fain on a Facebook Live event last month. “That’s not a living. That’s barely surviving, and it needs to stop.”

Calls for a 32-hour workweek may seem lofty, but autoworkers have a long history of driving change in the structure of the American workweek.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/19/why-uaw-auto-workers-want-a-32-hour-workweek.html

https://fortune.com/2023/09/15/why-uaw-on-strike-detroit-big-3-automakers-ford-gm-stellantis/

Let me know what you think in the comments at jamesbrowntv.substack.com or email me at [email protected]. You can also leave me a message at 585-484-0339.

In which, James revisits the pilot of the 1990's sitcom Dharma and Greg.

Let me know what you think in the comments at jamesbrowntv.substack.com or email me at [email protected]. You can also leave me a message at 585-484-0339.