Coke is in a tailspin, McDonald’s is dying, a star football player retires after one year of play, Apple offers twenty five TV channels for $30-$40 and SXSW is now a tech, not a music, festival. Dude, what happened to my country?

If you’re expecting the past to come back, if you’re lamenting the loss of the way it used to be, you’re missing today’s big story, which is millennials have seized control of the country and their values are not the same as their parents’.

Let’s start with McDonald’s. Used to be the debate was whether they employed horse meat. But everybody agreed they had the best french fries. Their competition was Burger King, which promised customization, and Wendy’s, which offered a bigger burger and slightly better quality. What McDonald’s sold was consistency, it was the same everywhere, from Amsterdam to Austin.

But it turns out the younger generation wants fresh. Burger King had it right about customization, but its menu is out of date and too limited. Now it’s about where your food was grown and how and if it’s bland and boring customers avoid it. Hell, Whole Foods is challenged because their competition, the mainstream markets, have gone healthy and organic too, Whole Paycheck can’t charge the same high prices anymore.

And then there’s Coke. There was even a hit song based on a Coke commercial. And now not only is the flagship drink history, inroads are being made on Diet Coke. Turns out it makes you fat. And no one wants chemicals. They want water. They want healthy. And Coke is diversifying, but the company is struggling.

And then comes football. The media, controlled by oldsters, and the sport’s brain dead fans, would have you believe it’s impenetrable, a monolith that cannot be destroyed. But football will be marginalized in my lifetime. Look, boxing took a dive. Turns out someone has to play. And if people can rally to save animals, with PETA, they can certainly rally to save other human beings. Football is just too ugly, you get too hurt. Fans will be pariahs, just like those who still wear fur.

And Apple’s TV announcement… This is kind of like digital photography. We heard for over a decade that Kodak and film were going to be in trouble, then seemingly overnight digital photography took hold and the landscape was revolutionized. Photos were suddenly free to take, and everybody took zillions.  Which is kind of a good thing. Then again, how many TV networks are going to die. They’ve all been propped up by cable payments. That’s right, the cable companies pay those channels you don’t watch with your dollars, that’s why they’re so profitable. But they do get lousy ratings and people are pissed about their cable bills and…Viacom’s channels have already been kicked off a system. Do you really need MTV and VH1? And Nickelodeon’s ratings have tanked. As for Philippe Daumann, who replaced Tom Freston (who’s backing Vice, which is soon to own news), he’s one of America’s highest paid executives who’s overseeing a failing business. Put Les Moonves in that category too. Turns out Les is not prepared for the future. CBS is in a much better state than its sister company Viacom, but what happens when the payments evaporate, because people are sick of paying and only want the big channels? Like photography, they’ll be able to get free stuff in droves online. But the usual suspect cable channels are in trouble.

And then we’ve got SXSW. Where the big story is Meerkat, not a band. Brands have taken over South By. That’s what happens when you’re beholden to corporations, they eat your soul and leave you with nothing. A band hasn’t broken out of SXSW in eons. It’s all promotion. And there’s so much noise, you can’t hear the music. We need a new festival with fewer bands, but it won’t fly because the first thing the pricks in charge will do is sign up sponsors, and you’ve got death before you’ve begun.

Like the Firesign Theatre said, everything you know is wrong. Or at least up for grabs. The sands are shifting. He not busy being born is dying.

Challenge your precepts. Look for truth.

The CD is dead.

Vinyl is irrelevant.

People are listening to music, they just don’t know what to listen to.

The old guard keeps beating the drum of radio.

The techies are all about playlists and algorithms, thinking scale is everything.

But humanity is everything. Human curation. That’s the thread in all these stories. Not machine values, but personal values. Who you are, what you think, what you put in your body.

The world will be saved by people. Who think. And lead thereupon.

I love tech, but it’s soulless. The devices are just tools.

We need leaders, who embrace the human values that are transforming our landscape. Who use megaphones not to promote the products of sponsors, but their thoughts on what is right and wrong and how to live.

Coke rots your insides.

McDonald’s makes you sick and fat.

Football gives you brain damage.

Cable is far too expensive, and you’re paying for what you don’t watch.

And tech drives the culture more than music.

We find these truths to be self-evident.

Assuming you’ve got your head out of your ass, assuming you report to people, with feelings and emotions, as opposed to the dollar.

That’s right, while our whole country worshipped cash, its underlying values changed.

This is important.

“49ers’ Chris Borland, Citing Safety, Is Latest to Retire Early From N.F.L.”

“Apple Plans Web TV Service in Fall”

“How Meerkat conquered all at SXSW”

Who you marry is the most important decision you will make in your life.

Trust me, I did it wrong. My ex was a financial disaster. That’s another thing they don’t prepare you for, retirement. No one is sitting at home, telling you you’ve got to save because you’re gonna outlive your money and social security is not enough and even though you don’t think you’re gonna live forever, it’s gonna be close.

But this marriage thing… We’ve got this inane proposition in the States that you marry for love. What hogwash. I’m beginning to think the Indians have it right, with their arranged marriages. Would you go into the most important decision in your life running on emotion instead of utilizing cold, hard, calculation? If you’re running on your gut, if you make every decision based on how you feel, you’re gonna lose, guaranteed.

As for love… I hate to tell you, everybody can be replaced. Love is situational. And the best place to meet your betrothed is in college. Because graduates’ marriages sustain. That’s what the statistics tell us. So pull yourself up by your bootstraps, finish your higher education, and latch on to someone who takes life as seriously as you do, as opposed to the hottie who swaggers and plays good pool.

And I know all this now, but it’s reinforced by watching this year’s season of “House Of Cards.”

This is how it’s going to be in the future, dropping all the episodes at once, doling out material just doesn’t work in an instant on/on demand culture. We want it all, we want it now, and we want to go deep. That’s what’s so wrong about the pundits talking about a short attention span culture. No, the truth is we have incredible attention spans, if something is great.

And “House Of Cards” is great.

I wondered how they were going to switch it up, just not be repetitive. And they do this by having Frank and Claire not always win.

That’s the way life is. They serve you lemons, and they taste horrible. You’re swallowing and the tough, those who survive and make it, take their medicine but continue to slog on. If you think you can instantly make lemonade, you think you can read “Anna Karenina” in a day, and you can’t, and you should read it, because it’s the best book ever written.

Anyway, Frank and Claire are a team.

You can’t do it alone, no way. Forget your skills, let’s talk about emotions. You’ve got ’em, you need someone to confess to, bounce ideas off of. Someone who has your back and will not only conspire, but has the same interests, and I’m not talking about watching sports, I’m talking about achievement, accomplishment and the aforementioned retirement. There’s a reason spouses can’t testify against each other in court, or why they can exercise this privilege, more accurately, because…

Not that spouses don’t fight. That’s the mark of a great relationship, when you can have a knock-down, drag-out yet make peace thereafter and soldier on. As for those who claim they never argue, their relationships are a joke, that just means someone is not airing their complaints, and a person like this is no good as a partner, because it’s the yin and yang, the push and pull, the compromise that moves you forward. Life is about compromise. You make your argument, you lose some, you win some, and you know that you can cry all you want to but the only person who cares is your spouse, who will ultimately nurse you back to health and tell you to buck up.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t love your partner. But if you know what love is, you’re lying. Hell, at this point I think love is first and foremost commitment, knowing someone will be there for you through thick and thin, because without commitment, you’ve got nothing, no foundation. Sure, you can have fun screwing intermittently, but who are you going to confess to when you find out you’re HIV positive?

No one.

And the thing about marriages is they don’t necessarily end up at the perceived destination. They’re not bullets, or trains, you give it a go and adjust.

But we never hear this lesson.

We just hear about the “Bachelor” and Tinder and a bunch of other crap to take your mind off of what’s important. The truth is the successful don’t waste their time on gossip, unless they profit from it. I’m talking about TMZ/Kardashian gossip. As for business gossip, the world runs on it.

Sure, “House Of Cards” runs on plot twists. But even more it runs on truth, human truth. Little nuggets, aphorisms, are uttered regularly, and you see how the game is played.

And life is a game, get over it. Would you just run out on the baseball field without knowing the rules? Come on. Everybody can win at the game of life if you just hunker down and learn the rules and hone your skills. We hear every day from losers “I can’t do this” and “I can’t do that.” No, you choose not to do this or that and you’re afraid of falling on your face so you don’t put yourself in uncomfortable positions.

I live for art–well, skiing too, read Aleksandar Hemon’s article on the allure of the sport in today’s “New York Times” here:

Letter of Recommendation: Skiing

but somehow people have confused art with marketing and promotion. Sure, there’s a skill in being able to draw attention to something, but it’s the essence that allures. And we’ve now got television shows that will hook us better than any album, keep us paying attention for longer, because those who make them are shooting for the stars and those who pay for them are getting out of the way and letting the creators test limits.

That’s right, creating and paying are two different skills, never forget that.

And they go hand in hand, as a partnership.

So you don’t have to watch “House Of Cards.” If you do, I’d start with the first season, it’s more riveting.

But how are you planning to improve yourself? How are you planning to get ahead? How do you plan to win?

And we all want to win, we’ve all got goals. But very few of us get a manual, very few of get instructions, or we’re myopic or the lessons we receive are incomplete.

But we listen to the rabble-rousers tell us what’s important, we hone our bodies not our minds and get caught in eddies and riptides  and when we’re in our forties and our looks start to fade and our choices become prisons we start to have regrets.

Don’t let this happen to you.

She’s selling lingerie.

What do I know about lingerie…NOTHING!

But I do know something about people. And I know that smart is not everything. Nor is CV. The fact that you went to a good school and can crunch the numbers is worth something, but not everything.

Stunningly, the sharks know all this.

They’re just trying to get information. Catalina is arguing with the experts. Believing since she went to Stanford, got an MBA and a law degree, she knows what’s going on.

But Catalina is clueless.

The world has changed. Smart means something. But not as much as personality. People want to work with those who are warm and understanding and realistic, and that’s got nothing to do with what school you went to.

Now my point is not to denigrate education. Nor to say intelligence is irrelevant. But everything you need to know you cannot learn from books. And people can be really smart in some things, and totally ignorant in others.

Meanwhile, people are so busy trying to get rich that they’ve got no passion for the underlying product, they only care about money and success. The goal is to get VC cash more than to build a business. And I could say this is what’s wrong with America, but my point is really that just because you did not go to the best school, just because you’re not the smartest person on the block, that does not mean you can’t be successful and rich.

And happy.

The story of the last two decades is the traditional path no longer works. “Professional” is not the highest rank in our society. That’s right, you can work hard in high school, even grind your way through a good college to get into an even better graduate school, but that’ll just give you a ticket to the middle. Which is fine if that’s where you want to be. But if you want to win, if you want to dominate…

You have to learn so much that never is taught in schools.

Where do you learn it?

Primarily from your parents.

If you’re lucky, a mentor. Unfortunately that term is bandied about by the same creeps who believe education entitles them to win. In reality a mentor is someone you bump into who helps you out out of the goodness of their heart, who you have a relationship with who you don’t step on. How often do we see this? Very rarely. It’s a dog eat dog world. Few are altruistic.

So the truth is you’re on your own. And drive counts. But not as much as charisma, charm and the ability to get along.

I’ve got to give Mark Burnett credit. Just when I was about to give up on “Shark Tank,” because of the endless formula, he switched it up.

Catalina did not come in an outfit. She was not out of “Let’s Make A Deal.” But she couldn’t see the Sharks were not Monty Hall, that investors want to make money, they don’t do it out of the goodness of their heart, you’ve got to appeal to them.

And Catalina did not. Her numbers were insane. She believed since one person invested in her business at an obscene valuation, everyone else would. She’s been winning her whole life, she expected to win in the Tank, after all, she’s a bigger shark than they are.

But what she found out was no one was interested.

That’s what happens more often than not. You put your heart and soul into a product, a song, a business. You convince yourself you’re a winner. And when you hear no, you get angry, you double down, you believe in yourself even more, you’re gonna prove everybody wrong.

Good luck with that.

A true winner learns. Changes. Pivots. Realizes their mistakes.

It’s never too late for you to change your personality, to learn how to play the game of life.

But that would require you to acknowledge you’re wrong.

Are you up to it?

Probably not if you’ve won at the game of education.

But education is not the game of life.

Season 6 Episode 22 Week 21: Echo Valley Meats, EmazingLights, AquaVault, and Naja – Cable subscription verification required

Apple – Live- March 2015 Special Event

You’re gonna have an Apple Watch.

Just maybe not this one.

Christy Turlington Burns is the opposite of nerd culture, and models are only skin-deep, but I get it, you’ve got to appeal to the fashionistas if you’re gonna sell timepieces. Still, couldn’t you get someone younger who has something to say?

But what blew me away was the opening, the store in China in a place I’ve never heard of, called West Lake.

I wanna go there. China, that is. Oh, I know that the miracle has stalled, that the country is faced with so many issues, but it’s the bleeding edge of culture, transition is oh-so-fast, and the music business is ignoring it.

Oh, cut the crap with the piracy thing. Have you toured there? Where there are so many people it dwarfs America? Of course not, because you’re myopic.

Apple is not myopic.

That’s what impressed me. The ability to see beyond.

Kind of like the elimination of ports in the new MacBook.

How come Apple consistently gets this right when in the cultural industries we can’t stop lamenting the death of the past. Come on, from “Life” magazine to record stores everybody keeps bitching that we’re losing something as we go forward. But not only is Apple trashing the past, it’s jumping into the future. Come on, in a wireless device do you really need to plug stuff in? The news has been littered with stories of needing to purchase expensive adapters. But in time you will attach nothing to your laptop, you’ll even charge it wirelessly, that’s coming. But in music, we’re still focused on selling CDs because of the amount of revenue. How about encouraging people to sign up for music subscriptions? Oh yeah, Beats, or whatever they’re gonna call it, is gonna fail, just like it did in its initial, pre-Apple incarnation, because you can’t charge for what is available for free. When Doug Morris protests freemium, it’s like Grandpa Simpson yelling at the movie screen, he just doesn’t
get it, he looks ignorant, Daniel Ek runs circles around him. That’s the story of today’s internet, you hook them for free and then… Didn’t that cause the sky high valuation of WhatsApp and Snapchat? But count on the music industry to avoid this…believing if we can just go back to the past, we can win.

At least HBO is going into the future.

The real story is you can cancel the TV portion of your cable, but you’re gonna pay the same amount anyway, just for internet. Watching this presentation made me want to call Time Warner and cancel HBO, the new app is much more usable, but I know TW is gonna give me some bundle talk and will actually tell me my rate will go up if I drop HBO. Hell, my rate went down when I added voice-calling.

But at least HBO realizes it’s got to play to the customer, got to face reality, whereas even at this late date the music industry is about placating the middleman, i.e. physical retail.

As for the MacBook… How come Apple can hook us with “Making Of” videos and we don’t even do this in the music industry. That’s right, Apple is playing to the hard core fan, because that’s who spends the lion’s share of the money, that’s who the evangelist is. The hard core fan watches all the bootleg videos on YouTube, you can cut off the flow of information, but only to spite your face. Why can’t we learn how Pharrell wrote “Blurred Lines” without him having to testify in court?

As for the Apple Watch…

It’s about functionality. That’s what those in the entertainment industry cannot understand, usability comes first. This is why I must laud HBO and castigate its competitors. To protect your business model you’re making it difficult to consume…your customers, your lifeblood, revolt. The truth is the Apple Watch has so much functionality that you’re gonna be addicted to yours.

You didn’t need a smartphone.

Furthermore, the smartphone was bigger when cellphones had been shrinking.

The Apple Watch is geeky and too big, but that was the size they focused on for functionality.

Is this the final iteration?

OF COURSE NOT!

The original iPod held only 5 gigs, used a hard drive and had a scroll wheel that actually scrolled.

Mere months later they doubled the storage. They eventually shrunk it. They went to flash storage. Then they killed it with the iPhone.

This is just the beginning of the story. Apple has to see which model people want to buy. Remember the original iMac, which came in one color and then many and then was killed and only came in one flavor in a new design?

You make mistakes when you move forward and take risks. The pros adjust.

Apple will adjust.

And don’t you understand, the fact that you’ve got to use the Watch with the iPhone is a FEATURE! It’s about getting you into their ecosystem, locking you in, the same way iTunes locked you into the iPod/Apple system and its seamless sync/operation got you to purchase more Apple product. Of course there will be imitators, but Apple was there first! And there’s a first mover advantage.

Oh, that’s right, there was the Pebble and some Android watches… But their functionality was so low it’s laughable. Apple is about getting the category right.

But, 18 hours is too low for battery life. I frequently stay up longer than that in a day, I don’t want my watch to die.

But I’m gonna buy one. Because I’ve learned over time that the first iteration now works. And by delaying, I’m just gonna lose usage, lose happiness, be left out. So, I’ll throw down four hundred bucks and then throw down the same amount a year or two later, that’s the way it works, you get a new phone every two years, right?

And forget all that b.s. about the old phones being good enough. The iPhone 6 has Apple Pay, you want to be able to pay with your watch, right?

You do.

These are all things you’re gonna do in the future. Use your wristwatch like a Dick Tracy device, eliminate all that wasted energy removing your smartphone from your pocket…

Forget all the hogwash in the news. Those are jaded pricks who are all about finance. Who even cares if the Watch is a failure in its initial incarnation. So was the Mac, and one can argue the iPod was too. But then they were refined and took hold.

Steve Jobs’s genius was such that he got us to buy the first time out, upon announcement. This is a big change. Something the music business used to have, with bands, we bought the next record without hearing it first. Now we don’t even expect the next record to be any good.

But also like the bands of yore, Apple is in it for the long haul. And with a small seamless team, you can perform miracles.

Do they miss Steve Jobs?

OF COURSE!

There’s no charisma in the presentations. And I don’t have faith the company will continue to sustain its bleeding edge position.

But they’re trying.

And I applaud them for it.

And if you watch this presentation, you’ll be bored a bit, but you’ll also be wowed.

Steve Jobs may be dead, but the reality distortion field lives.

If you don’t want one of those MacBooks…

If you’re not thinking about a Watch…

You’re just an Apple-hating Luddite.

I get it, you’re smart and need to be an individual.

Or you’re cheap and believe in “good enough.”

But Apple has got a core audience so large, it’s made them the world’s most valuable company. Criticize all you want, but isn’t that what you’re looking for, world domination?

Bands used to achieve this.

But now they’re me-too operations whored out to corporations.

I’m cutting out the middleman, I’m going straight to the end goal, I’m a believer in Apple more than any of the musical acts.

Because I revere intelligence and the ability to risk.

I know these people. Some literally, most figuratively. The ones who weren’t the quarterback, weren’t popular, but stayed in school knowing it was their only way out.

They’re changing the world.

Remember when bands did this?