A Personal Letter From Steve Martin

From Letters of Note (thanks, Shaun Usher!): “Until very recently I’d heard numerous tales of Steve Martin‘s humorous responses to fan mail, but frustratingly had never seen such a letter; thankfully that situation was remedied the other week when I chanced upon the following note, apparently sent by Martin in the early-80s, post-Jerk (ahem), when he was at the top of his game. Written on his production company‘s letterhead to a fan named Jerry, this personalised form letter – in particular the post-script – is further confirmation that almost everything Steve Martin produced during that era was incredibly funny.

Transcript follows. Discovered via Letters of Note at Chattering Teeth.

Transcript

The Aspen Companies
Aspen Film Society
Aspen Recording Society
Aspen Merchandising
Aspen Artist Management

A PERSONAL LETTER FROM STEVE MARTIN

DEAR Jerry ,

WHAT A PLEASURE IT WAS TO RECEIVE A LETTER FROM YOU. ALTHOUGH MY SCHEDULE IS VERY BUSY, I DECIDED TO TAKE TIME OUT TO WRITE YOU A PERSONAL REPLY.

TOO OFTEN PERFORMERS LOSE CONTACT WITH THEIR AUDIENCE AND BEGIN TO TAKE THEM FOR GRANTED, BUT I DON’T THINK THAT WILL EVER HAPPEN TO ME, WILL IT Jerry? I DON’T KNOW WHEN I’LL BE APPEARING CLOSE TO YOU, BUT KEEP THAT EXTRA BUNK MADE UP IN CASE I GET TO Flint.

SINCERELY,

(Signed, ‘Steve Martin’)

STEVE MARTIN

P.S. I’LL ALWAYS CHERISH THAT AFTERNOON WE SPENT TOGETHER IN RIO, WALKING ALONG THE BEACH, LOOKING AT rocks.

A Personal Letter From Steve Martin.”

“The Girls of Gen X Say Goodbye to Favorite Angel”

This was a beautifully crafted tribute letter to Farrah Fawcett that I wanted to share with you.

(AP) Dear Farrah Fawcett,

I’m sure you understand why Michael Jackson’s death has taken over the airwaves and blogosphere, but the folks you’ve touched remember you, too. You might not be on the front page, but people are still talking.

People are talking about The Poster. People are talking about The Hair. People are saying you were a pretty face, but more than that, too. They’re praising your battle with the disease that finally killed you. And they’re talking about The Poster some more.

One swath of your adoring public is isn’t talking about The Poster so much. Gen-X women are talking about Jill Munroe, the character you played on “Charlie’s Angels,” and how you taught us to kick butt.

For an entire generation of girls, that was your legacy. And even some of the girls born later who are fans of Sigourney Weaver in the “Aliens” franchise, Carrie-Anne Moss in “The Matrix” and even “Xena,” know that Jill Munroe & Co. were the first soldiers on the female action hero front line.

The grown-up critics at the time derisively called the show “jiggle TV,” and maybe it was, but that was lost on us. To us girls, “Charlie’s Angels” was an exciting fantasyland where cool ladies in sweet outfits got to pack heat and run down the bad guys.

The feminist elders at the time dismissed the show as sexploitation, and it certainly may have been, but that went way over our heads. All we cared about was that now we had this fun game to play with each other after school. Some kids escaped into cops and robbers, but the girls of the ’70s played “Charlie’s Angels.”

It went down like this: Everyone would pick which Angel they wanted to be. Farrah, I hope you know that everyone fought over who got to be Jill Munroe. And then, we’d run around together, our fingers twisted into pistols, acting out all sorts of scenarios where we’d outsmart the criminals while flipping our hair.

It felt like true liberation to find this funnel for our energy: to run, jump, roll on the ground and have purpose in our play. We fed off of each other the way we saw the Angels do it: friends before all with a little sass for everyone else. It wasn’t lost on us how the Angels often used their feminine wiles to entrap clueless men. So who was being sexploited again?

Farrah, you only stayed on the show for one season, but your gift of Jill Munroe still lives on with the grown-up girls of the 1970s. They took to Twitter to offer homage, and they loved you even if they couldn’t spell your character’s name correctly.

“I was a Charlie’s Angels gal. In the neighborhood, I was Jill until Kris Monroe came along. I had the silk jacket,” said one. And another: “RIP Farrah! My 5th grade hair do was the Farrah and Jill Monroe taught me girls could be beautiful AND kick butt! Best hair toss ever!” And this one, too: “So sad that Farrah Fawcett lost her battle with cancer. Rest in peace Jill Monroe (I was totally her when we played Charlies Angels).”

Know that there are lots more just like it out there, Farrah. It’s not wrong to be remembered for The Poster, The Hair or The Battle, as long as it’s not forgotten that you’ve left a lasting legacy for something very different among a bunch of women who used to be little girls.

Yours forever,

Girls of the ’70s

Pioneering Presentations: Creating Art Through Technology

On the subject of public speaking and innovations to the mediums of presentation, a lot of focus has been given to David Byrne’s creative genius and artistry with the Microsoft application, PowerPoint. Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information, as he calls it, has been featured in many art exhibits since its debut several years ago and has now been reproduced in a DVD and companion book for purchase. His PowerPoint creations are particularly inventive for creating, in Jungian terms, a new neural pathway for our collective conscious…contriving a liaison between creating pure, specious art executed through a rational Microsoft application.  It’s so brilliant and unexpected, it’s almost an oxymoron in and of itself — creating abstruse, ethereal concepts within the boundaries of a defined executable script!!

Wow, breaking barriers in conceptual thought…I hope he rewarded himself with an afternoon off for having single-handedly reset the thresholds of Cartesian philosophy!  This is, of course, above and beyond his tremendous musical legacy, mind you. [In sharp contrast, sometimes I feel pleased with myself just if I make it over to Costco...or finish all of my laundry!]

But just as almost every new conceptual thought is constructed on the shoulders of our philosophical forefathers, David Byrne’s radical art nouveau opened a critical path to re-thinking the presentation of ideas and concepts through the platforms and applications of pc technology.  Enter Gapminder.org, founded in 2005, a Swedish organization that has re-engineered the presentation of statistics into beautiful, moving pictures. This powerful translation of statistics into an evolving story – right before your very eyes – not only translates statistics into language-based concepts, but imparts the lay spectator with access and a sense of ownership to the concepts and  – the story!

Let me phrase this in a different way: cast your mind back to high school, the English Literature class in your Senior year…what was the most difficult book you read? The one that was so hard for you to grasp…do you remember? The words, sentences, syntax and chapters were there, but it was just so hard to see the meaning behind it all!  Was is The Stranger by Camus, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera or Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky?  Then (Heavenly Father be praised), your teacher let you watch part of the movie adaptation – and all of a sudden, the emotions, the motivations, the sequence of events – i.e. the story – came flooding out of the TV and straight into your brain!  A bolt of lightning blazed through your mind and – presto!  The cerebellum processed all of the details in the novel, linked them to the center of your limbic system and emotional comprehension and…. you finally just GOT it!!

That’s what Gapminder’s proprietary technology does with statistical data, in almost the reverse-but-same method of David Byrne’s art-through-technology creation — the Gapminder group makes technology translate into moving art!  By taking the measured, defined data, inserting it into an executable technological application and revealing the art and story behind the statistics they have found a way to “unveil the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view” !

Here is a paragraph from their mission statement: Gapminder is a non-profit venture promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels. We are a modern “museum” that helps making the world understandable, using the Internet.

This video presentation by co-founder Hans Rosling is a must-see and it will completely transform your thoughts on effectively presenting statistical data.  Set aside several minutes and watch his video, entitled “Debunking Myths About the Third World.” Enjoy!

more about “Debunking myths about the “third worl…”, posted with vodpod

Condense Your Love Into Six Words

High school English classes have familiarized us with the oft-cited quote, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”  But when it comes to communicating degrees of emotional intensity and experience in relationships – it can be tough to limit your words.  We can all admit to watching at least a few episodes of Donahue, Geraldo, or Jerry Springer, right? The ENTIRE premise of shows such as these is to encourage people to vent, up to 43mn (+ commercial time), on the disgruntled state of their relationships!  Anytime people probe into potentially emotional subjects (they look more like emotional minefields on those shows), brevity – not to mention wit -  is nowhere near the studio!!

So we can all agree that it’s a challenge to express your relationship in a mere six words.  What could you express about your own love/marriage/relationship in just six words? Think of it as a relationship ‘brand’ that you’re advertising. Would you emphasize…perfection, as in “pure goodness to the last drop” ? Endurance, as in “still going after all these years”? Malcontent, as in “sucks the life out of me”? Or with a hackneyed phrase, such as “always the bridesmaid, never the bride”?

This new book review, Love Boiled Down to Just Six Words, in USA Today amused me to no end with its infinite possibilities for relationship branding, using sincerity and humor! I’ve included it to encourage you, the reader, to contribute your condensed love stories in the comments area below!  And in the spirit of encouraging you to share, I’ll go first:

• “True love doesn’t depend on drama.”

(And I’ll also share the one my husband wrote about how we first met – an unusual, but extremely memorable gift that he brought to my office: “A couch brought me true love.”)

Happy writing!!