In the early-aughts, I worked at a firm called Phase Two Tragedies Strategies. Like many firms, we had a monthly award for exemplary work. Ours was called The Golden Shrimp, reflecting the crustacean’s status at the time as a deluxe buffet offering at press events.
As often happens, teams that were staffed to well-funded anchor clients tended to win the award far more often than those staffed to smaller ones. The latter had excellent engines underneath them but little budgetary fuel to make them truly effective, which meant less gosh-and-wow during recognition time even if the work was top-notch. Since the tendency was to reward scale rather than shrewdness, this had an effect on the morale of smaller teams.
The head of the company’s New York office had an idea — increase the frequency of the award from monthly and be better about celebrating smaller wins.
“Shrimp is great,” he advised. “But people love popcorn shrimp too.”
So, when I started this newsletter, my thought was that I’d always lead off with an opinion piece, share some links of interest, drop in a humorous item, and send.
This was sustainable during a period when:
I had most Saturday mornings to myself, as I would write A Penny Ahead while my daughter was in music school for two hours.
I had fewer responsibilities at work.
I wasn’t yet preparing to move to a different country, where I’ve been living for a little more than a year now.
So, I’m going the popcorn-shrimp route. Will try to be better about sending items that I find interesting, keeping this newsletter’s mission the same: To provide content for marketing, communications, and media professionals who are serious about their careers by aspiring to be more than their careers.
And, occasionally, I’ll have something Golden-Shrimp scale.
Recommendations
“She Invented Being an Influencer — And Was Vilified for It”, Rolling Stone — As you can tell by now, I’m not really a fan of the whole influencer racket. Back in the day, Julia Allison and that early influencer scene stayed well outside of my area of personal or professional interest. What I did recognize at the time — the misogyny, the double standards, the catty envy from a media struggling with self-publishing — is amply crystallized in this piece.
“Can We Talk to Whales?”, The New Yorker — As an exploration of communicating with non-humans, this piece reminded me of the excellent film Arrival or the top-ten episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Darmok.” The difference, of course, is that this is real and taking place in our oceans. This piece is an insightful, accessible examination of how scientists and A.I. are attempting to decode sperm whales’ communication.
“When Wizards and Orcs Came to Death Row”, The Marshall Project — Call it geekdom in the gray-bar hotel. “And because they were locked behind bars rather than solid doors, they could call out to one another and talk. That was how, one day, Ford caught familiar words drifting down from the cells above him, phrases like, ‘I’ll cast a spell!’ ‘Aren’t there too many of them?’ and ‘I think you have to roll.’ It was the sound of Dungeons & Dragons.”
“Jason Becker opens up on his heroes old and new, career regrets and unreleased music”, Guitar World — If you’re not moved by Jason Becker’s story then, I’m sorry, we will never be friends. About thirty years ago, guitarist Jason Becker was on the cusp of superstardom… and given five years to live. Though Lou Gehrig’s Disease has robbed him of his body, he still communicates and even composes music using an eye-movement system his father devised.
I'm not much of a fan of popcorn shrimp but I do like popcorn, does that count?
I liked your recommendations. I had not heard of Allison before, but I skimmed the Rolling Stone article & can sympathize. In her spirit of self-promotion, here's a guest post I wrote for Jane Friedman's blog on my 23 years as a self-publishing novelist. https://janefriedman.com/lessons-from-23-years-as-a-self-publishing-novelist/
I'm a fan of 'Arrival' (I recently wrote a substack essay about it (among other things) -- in fact I'm a fan of all things Ted Chiang. So we're in sync on that.
And I wasn't aware of Jason Becker either, but I did lose my beloved brother Paul to ALS, so I'll certainly read that Guitar World story as soon as I can find the courage to do so.
Hope things are well in your new home. If you ever get out my way, stop and say hello. You'll feel at home. We have a large & vibrant Brazilian community on Martha's Vineyard.