Everyone has heard of The Information Super Highway, aka the Internet. You are on it right this very moment. How many people really use it for information, though? I don’t mean price checking Look Around You (available now on dvd, finally) or seeing how many episodes of Battle Bots aired. I’m talking about real information. Life saving information.

I woke up the other morning to my roommate, Mike, crying outside my door for help. Since he doesn’t have insurance, the hospital wanted to charge him over $200 to remove his stitches. I wouldn’t stand for it. I see myself as a protector of the people, so I offered my assistance in exchange for a free meal at the Souplantation. He wiped his tears, sucked up his snot, and agreed. Thanks to Google, you can now call me MB M.D.

It didn’t take me long to figure out the complexities of cutting some threads and pulling them through human flesh. Lacing your shoes is harder. Without any troubles, I found an abundance of free tips written by real doctors, who, to the best of my knowledge, don’t travel through time. Their knowledge now filed into my mental trapper keeper, I sterilized my tools and got to work.

I quickly realized that wearing a SARS mask would fog my glasses. A choice needed to be made: the glasses or my mask. The mask won. Mike couldn’t really wash his foot for a week so it smelled like the inside of a tauntaun.

Two minutes in and I was halfway done. I could have charged $50 per minute at this point. Dumb move on my part. He even used a coupon at Souplantation. I got hustled.

Speaking of Souplantation, I needed a snack.

After snacking, I decided to play through a chapter of Alan Wake.

Mike didn’t think I was taking it seriously. He’s the one who turns down the music at the party. I gave him a glass of milk to calm down and got back to it.

A few minutes later and I was done. Simple. I saved the day and got my soup buffet. All is well. No need for amputation. Although, I wonder if Google could have taught me that too?

The moral of this story is to use the Internet to discover new, useful information and help people. Oh! Also, doctors suck and overcharge for ridiculously easy procedures. OH! Aaand I need to shower and shave before I let someone take pictures of me.

Got a story of Google heroism or day-saving intelligence? Share it already.

Digital hugs.

Metaphors! I love ‘em. A metaphor is like a simile.

This particular metaphor is intended to get you to accomplish your most grueling task first thing in the morning so the rest of your day tastes like birthday cake. Watch my brainiac pal Gina Trapani explain it much more betterer.

You can also read the full article at Fast Company if you have a text fetish or feel that captured moving images are a form of dark magick.

I get the “How does one go about being a comic” question a lot, so I thought it would be groovy to address that in post-form for the damaged masses of n00b joke-slingers. Before I get to the Bill Hicks of it all, here’s my tuppence on the matter: There’s no special trick to it. In fact, the answer is mind-numbingly simple: you just do it. Get on stage wherever you are as much as possible. This will not only make you better through repetition, but will also help you handle your bombings better. If you only perform once a month, and that show sucks a shitpile, you’re going to mentally record your stand-up as 100% failure that month. If you go up 30 times, some will be good and some will be bad but you will at least have a tangible success rate.

About those bombings–it will happen. And it will hurt you will question your existence. The true test of whether or not you have the comic gene is whether or not you keep doing it in spite of that. I’m not even sure it’s much of a choice. When I started I could eat it in a room with a “crowd” of four people and yet somehow I still wanted to go up again as soon as possible–it might be a behavioral defect or an uncontrollable need for attention. Either way, if you have the same compulsion,  it will ensure that you stay on the talkie side of a mic in front of other humans.

Once you start getting really comfortable in your own community (probably around 100 shows) go perform other places. I can’t tell you exactly how to do this but if you want it bad enough, you’ll figure it out. It’s important for your creative engine to go up in front of foreign tribes. It will help you get a better sense for what works globally and break you of the trap of coasting by on your own local references, not to mention that a different backdrop means new experiences and new data which will express itself as new jokes.

Don’t be overly concerned about finding your voice right away. Just get up and do your comedy. I once asked Lewis Black how long it took him to find his comedy voice. He replied without hesitation, “Twelve years.” I’m not saying it will take you that long, but it’ll take a while. The point is embrace the journey and not the destination. Comedy is a never-ending process and you will shed many skins during its lifetime. Above all, go easy on yourself (if you can). I’m not being Pollyanna when I say it should be fun, because it should.

So that’s my big ol’ pitch for the “hows” and “whys” of getting your smarmy butt on a stage. The “whats” of what you should do once you are actually up there were so eloquently laid out by Bill Hicks, who was like an angry salmon fighting against the vanilla current that was the prevalent comedy of his day, that it would be pointless for me to try to top them. These were printed out and posted on the wall at the Laughing Skull in Atlanta and after reading them I felt compelled to post them for anyone who asks the question, “How do I become a comic?”

BILL HICKS’S PRINCIPLES OF COMEDY

1. If you can be yourself on stage nobody else can be you and you have the law of supply and demand covered.

2. The act is something you fall back on if you can’t think of anything else to say.

3. Only do what you think is funny, never just what you think they will like, even though it’s not that funny to you.

4. Never ask them is this funny – you tell them this is funny.

5. You are not married to any of this shit – if something happens, taking you off on a tangent, NEVER go back and finish a bit, just move on.

6. NEVER ask the audience “How You Doing?” People who do that can’t think of an opening line. They came to see you to tell them how they’re doing, asking that stupid question up front just digs a hole. This is The Most Common Mistake made by performers. I want to leave as soon as they say that.

7. Write what entertains you. If you can’t be funny be interesting. You haven’t lost the crowd. Have something to say and then do it in a funny way.

8. I close my eyes and walk out there and that’s where I start, Honest.

9. Listen to what you are saying, ask yourself, “Why am I saying it and is it Necessary?” (This will filter all your material and cut the unnecessary words, economy of words)

10. Play to the top of the intelligence of the room. There aren’t any bad crowds, just wrong choices.

11. Remember this is the hardest thing there is to do. If you can do this you can do anything.

12. I love my cracker roots. Get to know your family, be friends with them.

Bill Hicks can be easily located on iTunes. Rant in E Minor, Flying Saucer Tour and Dangerous are great comedy homework. And remember that what he was doing was being done when most comedy was about “ladies going to the bathroom in groups.” Don’t try to copy him, but rather use the principles to develop your own style. As a side effect, you may actually get to know yourself better while doing it.

Now quit fucking around.

My life used to be a mess. I had accumulated a seemingly limitless assortment of toys, books, inoperative gadgets and of course, faded newspapers. With each move I managed to collect more and more boxes, like debris caught in a gravitational field of pointlessness…that is, until I discovered the organizational trick known as “Trashing.” Trashing is a process by which you take things that are in your house and place them somewhere else, where you have no responsibility for them anymore. The cornerstones of The Trashing Technique are government sponsored bins that are somehow emptied of their contents on a weekly basis. No one knows for sure exactly how it works, they just knows it works.

After years of personal research on hoarding, it turns out that old magazines serve no observable purpose; the information retrieval process on a stack of magazines is sucktarded at best, and uneven weight distribution makes them less than ideal for in-home fort-building. I could give them to my neighbor but, he’s a stuck up jerk. You know who has no taste boundaries? The Department of Sanitation. They’ll take anything I can cram in their cans (that sounds weird, but go with it).

So the next time you think about putting those extra unusable dock adapters that came with your new cell phone into a drawer simply because, “You never know,” you do know. You’ll never use them. And the novelty bobble head Bin Laden that someone gave you for your birthday is only fun the first second you see it. After that, it’s another miniature roommate to deal with. Just because you have space doesn’t mean you have to fill it. You don’t
jam old pennies and phone cords into your mouth and nose just because
they’ll fit there, do you? Well, do you??? ANSWER ME.

So stop being a filthy gypsy. Take all the stuff you don’t normally use and Trash It. You will feel lighter and more in control. Think of it as “filing it into forever” or at least “wiping the excess poo off your brain’s bum.”

Trashing uses the latest in landfill technology to streamline your home or workplace.

I’ve been traveling an ungodly amount lately and when I’m unable to affix myself to the Webs I just drift off into random thought. Sometimes I think about things I have to do, other times I’ll re-live frustrating situations and get re-pissed about them and still other times I create fractious, hypothetical situations out of thin air wherein I mentally argue with made up people in public settings. Recently, however, I somehow fell into a constructive thought-river and started contemplating the concept of confidence. What is it REALLY? How do people get it? Why do some people crumble so easily while others persevere and succeed? Nothing original there, but I had an uncanny feeling that maybe there was more to it than what’s on the surface.

Then, while desperately trying to find a cab in another city, it hit me. Confidence in any scenario isn’t about trying to convince yourself, “Hey! I’m awesome-squared!” It’s about feeling like you have options. Whenever you have at least one other option in life, you feel relaxed, safe and cool because if the one thing doesn’t work out, you’re not going to die. Literally. It’s all that limbic system/survival mechanism shit. The brain is more like an onion than an apple. In other words, layers and layers of higher evolution still clamp down onto a primitive brain stem and the core of everything we do gets processed the way a lizard would.

Using the taxi example, if there were tons of them readily available I would take my time and casually grab whichever one happen to suit me. With only one or even an absence of them altogether, I feel desperate and needy. That one damned cab suddenly becomes very important because I believe it to be my only option for moving toward what I want. Next comes the “what if” game: What if I can’t find another one? What if I can’t get to where I’m going? The “what if” game is largely pointless and stems from panic & irrational fear, i.e., Lizard T. Brainworth. How many “what if” worst-case scenarios actually come true? My guess is almost none of them.

“Well how do I get options if they don’t seem apparent?” might be your next question if you bothered to read this far. It’s simple: Strive for excellence in something you love. When you commit yourself to a higher principle of excellence, that will always be at least one other option for you to fall back on. When you’re learning how to do something you enjoy and ultimately doing it well, that becomes mental currency that you can use as armor for a variety of seemingly unrelated situations, and therein lies the cool mind sorcery of it all: the options you create DO NOT have to relate to the situations in which you want to be confident. You don’t have to be an ace with the ladies to pick up more ladies—you can excel at something entirely different and still get the action you so richly deserve. The key is for you to feel safe and comfortable.

Options→Safety→Comfort→Confidence

For me, when I have a run of particularly good stand-up shows I feel like I have that as a cushion no matter how else I get rejected anywhere else.  The mere option of being able to do comedy fuels my confidence in virtually every other aspect of my life whether it be in professional or social situations.

Why is this important? Because the more confidence you are able to cram into your heart, the more you attract good stuff in life. It’s kind of a cold economy of Nature to reward those who don’t seem to need it. I think it stems from the idea that if an organism is strong, it’s worthy of passing on its genes. If said organism is desperate and needy, it must be flawed and its spreading must be limited.

So find a thing! Learn it, like it, live it. Give yourself the gift of options. Then bask in the warming cascade of feeling comfortable in your own skin and the good things that await you! Exclamation points!!!!

Do you have that one poisonous friend who seems to THRIVE on delivering bad news? Just like the very first Debbie Downer sketch on SNL (ONLY the first one–you can delete the subsequent ones from your mental file tree). People LOVE giving bad news. They love it. This is because negative information GREATLY empowers the giver and makes them feel important. Why? Because we listen. It affects us. We pay more attention to bad news because it feels more real for some reason. (Also, it’s rude to respond to someone who’s just told you about something terrible with, “…Aaaaaaand?”)

So then what starts to happen? We expect more bad news. When we do that we start to see more bad news. Once we get used to seeing more bad news we begin to actively seek it out. Sunshine is boring to us. You know how younger girls tend to screw the grease-enhanced jerkwads who blow them off rather than the nice guys who show up on time with flowers? That’s how we are with news: the more awful it is, the more we want to get it inside us. And when we build our world view around the idea that we live in this fucked up Matrix of despair, it weighs on us even when we don’t realize it. The response to my recent panic attack post was overwhelming. As I sifted through the comments and emails I received, I felt like I noticed a recurring theme of “I don’t know why but I’ve been getting more panic attacks lately.”  Naturally, I have an unsolicited theory: I think the present “Mondo Apocolypto” P.O.V. in our country is largely to blame, and it’s fired into our faces EVERY DAMN DAY by the tragedy whores of the News Media.

WE GET IT. THERE’S AN ECONOMIC CRISIS. WE’RE IN A DEPRESSION. They even went as far as to inform us, “Hey, remember 2007? We didn’t know it then, but that was a Depression too!” just to make sure that any recent memories were also charred in the magma of  despondency. WAR, DEATH, NATURAL DISASTERS: The manna of the Media. You think all of that blackness running in the background of our emotional desktop isn’t going to have a profound affect on our mental state? OF COURSE IT IS. Yes, it’s important to be informed about the world, but it’s ALSO important to keep in mind that it’s not all horrifying. NEVER forget that news shows and newspapers are run by companies that survive on ad sales driven by ratings, and the best way to achieve that is to keep you shitting in your Dockers so you’ll tune in. (That part’s actually ok. You should’ve gotten rid of the Dockers in ’99.)

It is therefore entirely your responsibility to make yourself feel better. No one’s going to do it for you. That sucks but sometimes you gottta work for things worth having. That is why it is imperative that you do the following: LOOK FOR GOOD NEWS. I know it’s campy and hokey but I believe it to be vital to your emotional survival. You don’t have to go on some kind of doe-eyed Pollyanna bender; just start out by taking five minutes a day to find something about the world to feel good and/or hopeful about. I Googled “happy” and found happynews.com, a site devoted solely to positive news stories (if you Google “good news” you may accidentally enroll in Bible college). As I tooled around the site, I swear to you I felt better inside–and I’m normally one of those cynical comedian types.

Read good news. Hug a flower. Look at a bunny. Doesn’t matter. Just create a space in your soul for hope. The reality you experience is almost wholly shaped by your perception of it. I’m not saying you have to believe that everything is awesome all of the time, but at least start to open the drapes in your brain and let some light in. Once you do you’ll get addicted to it and you’ll start to see the good in things (a good skill to have). That isn’t New Agey crap, that’s brain science, people! If I said to you, “Hey! Wingtips!” you would start to notice wingtip shoes everywhere and wonder if they were always there or if they coincidentally just started popping up. (I would then ask you why you lived in a 30s gangster movie where wingtips are so plentiful.)

I’d go even further to assert that if the media started reporting that the economy was turning around, people would start to unconsciously make it happen. Tensions would relax and consumer confidence would begin to increase because they would start to look for reasons to do so. I’m not advocating living in denial, but I am saying that there must be SOME good stuff happening. Why can’t we throw some focus on that? It would CERTAINLY help put us back on the right path. Things being as they are, however, that may not happen anytime soon so the onus is on you.

If you try this with some consistency, I guarantee it will ultimately affect you in ways you cannot imagine. It’ll be like pouring smiles on your brain. But be patient! You may not change overnight! A fast-moving plane can’t just flip a bitch–it has to turn into an arc and slowly make its way around to go the other direction. The same is true for your perception. Shape your reality. Don’t be a pawn for the darkness. YOU are in control.  Your brain works for you, not the other way around. Find the good news.

P.S. – I heart you.

If you frequent this site I’m going to guess that at one time or another you may have enjoyed the crippling embrace of a panic attack. How could I predict such a thing??? Because people who suffer from anxiety tend to be smarty-pants-creative types, aka NERDISTS. Folks not blessed with the gift of hyper-self-awareness don’t really understand the rush of liquid fear that floods the body. They just think we’re being “kooky.” I have a joke in my act about trying to describe the feeling of a full-blown panic attack: “Imagine being F*CKED in the HEART.”

I had my very first panic attack at about age 10. Adorable! For some reason or other I thought I had eaten rat poison and was convinced that the flush I felt running through me was, in fact, poison-related. Fortunately I’m here to say that it was not poison, or at least INCREDIBLY slow-acting poison (maybe I should call my doctor). After that episode I didn’t get them again until college. Unaware of the concept of a panic attack, I was convinced that something was horribly wrong with me and I couldn’t leave my apartment for a month. The prospect of having it happen in public kept me under emotional house-arrest. It wasn’t until a friend of mine pointed out, “Oh yeah, that’s a thing. Lots of people have those.” The sheer knowledge that I wasn’t a freak helped ebb the panic tide for a while but every now and again I’d still get the hilariously familiar, “No…wait…THIS time it’s something fatal.” I’m here to tell you that not only are panic attacks NOT fatal, but I don’t get them anymore. THAT CAN ABSOLUTELY HAPPEN FOR YOU. In this article I’d like to share a few tips that I’ve learned over the years while navigating the anxiety steeplechase.

KEEP YOUR HEARTRATE DOWN
This could be the single most important thing to remember. It’s easy to believe that panic is purely emotional, but it’s not. It’s physiological. Emotions may set it off, but once the trigger has been pulled it’s “100% pure adrenaline!” as Point Break would say. (It would also say, “Ayeee am an FBI AyyyGENT!!!” and then we would hold Point Break while rocking and patting it and saying, “Shhhhh…of course you are….”) What your body is ACTUALLY plunging into is survival mode, or the classic Fight or Flight response. This explains is why you want to punch the air or run yourself into a wall like a 28 Days Later chimp. This impulse is left over from our forest dwelling days and is usually reserved for actual life or death situations. Think of it as an evolutionary gift that keeps on giving. And giving.

I’m not purporting to have a complete grasp of neuroscience, but if I were to take a guess I would say that our brain isn’t some wonder-organ that all of the sudden just appeared from the Ether and existed in harmonious wholeness (sorry, Creation Museum). It is the result of millions of years of more and more complex layers lumping over our lizard stems like a bad spackle job. When you feel that first twinge of panic your body is asking itself, “Am I in danger?” and for panic sufferers the answer is usually, “WHY, IN FACT I AM!!!” even though they’re not really—the brain is just misfiring, bless it. It means well. It’s just trying to protect us REAL HARD. The body then takes us down the adrenaline river ride that we all know and love, shedding our higher brain functions along the way until we end up a heap of panting flesh not knowing which way to run, reduced to LOLcat syntax as our means of communication: “Me wan tare skin noff!” It’s a survival mechanism with abject terror as a delightful side-effect.

Let’s examine that first point of entry, “Am I in danger?” Sometimes it might be enough to gently say, “No,” or at least acknowledge, “OK, I know what this is…” But if that don’t cut the cerebral mustard try to remind yourself how adrenaline gets through your body: though a fast-pumping heart. That is why it is CRUCIAL to keep your heart rate down. If your heart is slow and normal, you cannot experience anxiety. It is impossible to exist in both states. Remember, this is a chemical thing. Rather than focusing on how “You might really be dying this time,” focus on the SCIENCE of what’s happening to you. Your instinct may be to fight, but that just makes it worse. Focus on actually making your heart beat SLOWER. Pretend it’s a game and first prize is sanity.

AVOID CAFFEINE
As you probably know, panic & caffeine have an electrical sexual chemistry: the former comes right after the latter (terrible pun mostly not intended). About eight years ago my attacks flared up again after having been dormant for some time. “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING AGAIN???!” I pondered over a nice hot cup of coffee one day about five minutes before another one hit. When I went over the timetable of events in my head, there seemed to be a connection. Just for the hell of it, I Googled “coffee & panic attacks” and proceeded to enjoy the two million pages that popped up, warning of the atomic dangers of caffeine to the panic-stricken. I know, coffee is a bitchin’ dominatrix that kicks your ass through the day with a 20 oz. boot, but at what cost? If you can let it go, you should. You will experience almost instant results. Like not thinking you’re dying.

BREATHE, MAN, BREATHE!
Just think, if you had a panic attack 500 years ago they’d have thought you were possessed by some manner of dark spirit and you’d’ve had the panic burned or bled out of you! Stupid Middle Ages! Today, we know that simple yet proper breathing techniques are helpful with no loss of blood necessary. At the onset of an attack it will feel counter-intuitive but you have to trust that it works. Take slow breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth and let the oxygen fill your lungs as you push your tummy out (yes, I am a grown man who uses ‘tummy.’ I find it more palatable than ‘food bag’ or ‘shit garage’.) This process will help you in two ways: 1) A slowed heart can’t pump fear through your body, and 2) The very act of focusing on a measured activity will take your thoughts away from your panic.

Most people breathe very shallowly, up in their chest, and this is very true of panicky-types. Especially when you feel that chest tighten. When you take a good, productive breath your stomach should extend outward because you’re getting air all the way into your lungs. When you exhale, your stomach will go back in, pushing the air out. If you can sit quietly for a few minutes while doing this, you will start to feel your chest relax and warm, tingly bits in the pit of your tummy. Imagine those are spreading though your body. You will feel all keen. Remember, you need oxygen to live so get that stuff into you. Take a yoga class…learn to meditate…buy some new age-y book on breathing…play a sitar…whatever it takes. It’s worth it because you’re worth it.

EPILOGUE

Welp, I hope you’ve gained some insight today and that, if you are a panic sufferer, you know that you have hope, which sometimes by itself is enough to make the panic dragons stop dining on your soul. But keeping that heart rate below “NASCAR” isn’t just for panic attacks anymore! It’s also good for quelling anger, hysteria and just plain old stress (the vanilla of neuroses). Why share my failures and deeply personal experiences with you? Because I want you to feel better. No one should have to live in fear of oneself ESPECIALLY when the threat isn’t real. Don’t let your body trick you. It is possible to ignore your brain. It’s a process but you can do it. If you forget any of this stuff in the middle of the night, you can always bookmark this page and come back to it because the Internet is FOREVER. Now please get out of my head!!!

Recently I took on a side project that resulted in utter failure. I was brought in to lay down guide vocals for a film so that the actors would have tracks to choreograph their scenes to. I was given six days to learn ten songs which they wanted to record all in one day. That should have been my first *abort* clue, but sometimes I see red flags more as pretty decorations than as signs that should be heeded. I was really busy working on a few other things but I reasoned that I could learn the tracks in the car, grouted in between the tiles of my life. That was a fat stack of wrong. The day came where I stood in a recording studio and proceeded to waste both hard drive space and tape (they were recording analog as well for some reason). Eight hours later, I left the studio with a kind of grime on my body that you almost convince yourself can only be scraped off with tree bark peeling off your skin after you run your car into a tree. It’s hard to admit to failing at something–failing people, their time and yourself. But that’s exactly what happened.

Fortunately, failure has a way of teaching valuable lessons. So where did I go wrong? I never should have taken the project on to begin with. I knew deep down that I was too busy to give it the attention it deserved but the fat guy that is my ego sat right down on those doubts to silence their warning yaps. As a freelancer, it’s very difficult for me to say no to things. Not only do I enjoy new challenges but there seems to be a script running in the root file system of my brain that says that the only way to succeed is to always take on everything. Also, I think a lot of us have that “Hero Syndrome,” where we want to come to the rescue because we want people to like us and then tell other people, “Hey, that dude/lady is COOL!” Then everyone high fives you. Then Rodney Dangerfield shouts, “We’re all gonna get laid!” and “I’m Alright” plays as the gopher starts dancing. Needlesstosay, this is all terarded. Taking on too much not only stresses you out more but eventually dips your energy scales into “Diminishing Returns Land,” a land where failure-dragons swoop in and burn all the crops of your labor, and the saline content of the water supply causes your kidneys to harden because your are drinking from RIVERS OF YOUR OWN TEARS. That’s not metaphorical–those things actually happen.

The trick to avoiding Diminishing Returns Land (again, this is an awful place: termites of impotency devour your chewy productivity centers from the inside out) is to stifle (or at least, ignore) the knee-jerk response to try to please everyone. When presented with a project, ask these three questions:

1. Is this in the wheelhouse of things I normally do?
NO! - Not a deal breaker, but definitely see questions 2 & 3.
YES! – Well, that’s a start.

2. Would taking on this project REALLY change my life?
EH, NOT SO MUCH – The longer I live the more I find that it’s rare that any one thing or job will change your life. Real,
long-term success seems to be the aggregate sum of your tapestry of work.
DAMN SKIPPY! – You will know on a deep level if you’re ultimately being offered the keys to a pile of success and better-looking sex mates.

3. As objectively as possible, do I really have the time to give this project the attention it deserves?
NEIN! – Then why are we still talking to ourselves about this? Do we have multiple personality disorder? Maybe we do…oh shut up. No, YOU shut up!
YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES! – Then spread your wings and fly! Fly free, you delicious bastard!

I know, I know…we’re all still basting in the affirmation juices of Yes Man, but learning to be honest with people and say, “I would really love to take this on but I’m afraid my current workload wouldn’t provide me with the time and energy to do your project the justice it deserves,” will not only spare you the self-flagellation usually reserved for religious types but the job-offerers will also appreciate your sparing them a failure that could also affect their jobs. This also goes for the pro bono work that many of us freelancers do for our broke friends. It’s good to help out others, but not at the expense of your mental health and career. You can use the aforementioned line. If they get mad at you anyway, well, then they’re dicks. The other tasty side benefit to turning down work is that it makes you more attractive. Just like dating, people want what they can’t have and not what’s too available. It’s like my good friend Alex (a high-powered Entertainment Industry fat-cat with a tiger’s heart and moxie where his blood should be) always says: “No” is a very powerful word.