I just read about an influential writer and producer named Joe Bodolai who helped create Canadian comedy TV.

He was instrumental in the creation of The Comedy Network, shows like Kids in the Hall and Comics, and co-wrote the original Wayne’s World movie with Mike Myers. He also wrote for SNL.

Our paths crossed with some of the same people I knew when working in the media world in Toronto. I also met and regularly interacted with several members of the Kids in the Hall cast and crew over the years, since they worked in the same building.

But I never had the pleasure of meeting Joe.

A few days ago, he published a final farewell blog post on his Say It Ain’t So, Joe blog. He called the post “If This Was Your Last Day Alive, What Would You Do?”

It was nearly his last day alive, as I’m sad to say he apparently just took his own life.

I can understand the pain people go through when life throws curve balls. We’ve all walked through darkness, trying to find the light at the end of the tunnel.

I just find it such a blow when someone — a valuable, talented, creative, giving person (like we all are at the core) — finally succumbs to despair and seeks a different kind of light.

It seemed like Joe understood that life is a balance of good and bad, and that you need to fight for what you want. In business, and in the comedy world, he fought singlehandedly to save several projects that he believed in.

And after his last blog entry, he posted on Facebook that he’d be alone on Christmas and intended to volunteer to help the homeless.

But for all his accomplishments, the goodness in his heart, and all the value he gave to the rest of us — as radio veteran Gene Valaitis said, chances are Joe made you laugh, which is an incredible gift — he took the final curtain call.

I’d like to take this opportunity to dedicate a favorite video of mine to Joe. Joe, I resonate with the spirit of your final post, as I’ve also written before about the same topic. I like to reference this song when I do, because it says it all so well.

I only hope that this time, the soul-searching aspect of the subject inspires others to find the strength to create a better life. To count their blessings, be grateful for what they have, value what they offer, share with others, and express what they’re feeling in their hearts.

I like a lot of Nickelback’s music, but I think this is by far their best song, for the depth and meaning of the lyrics.

Listen, enjoy, ponder, heed… and may you find joy and thought-provoking inspiration here:

Keep Unwrapping the Mysteries of Life!

I just posted a video on the LWL blog that inspired me on multiple levels, and I’m sure it will do the same for you.

Read my article and watch the video here: Playing for Change in Japan.

Keep Unwrapping the Mysteries of Life!

Well, another season of America’s Got Talent has ended, with yet another disappointing (or shall we say Grimm?) ending.

Yes, that’s right: the results of the show, once again, are poppycock… but unfortunately not of the princely variety.

Last year the talent-challenged Kevin Skinner (who I prefer to call Boomhauer) won the competition. I’m not sure what he’s done since — he does have an official website, but doesn’t seem to have released any albums or singles.

It’s a continuation of the trend that the world loves an underdog… especially in these financial times.

Because this year’s winner, Michael Grimm, may be a good singer…

For his soulful-bluesy style, he stands at least on par with the many singers from that genre that I saw perform during 15 years of bartending in top entertainment venues.

But he didn’t have the skill or showmanship of his competitor, Prince Poppycock, and he didn’t have the Vegas-headline appeal of Poppycock or the blacklight theater group, Fighting Gravity.

He didn’t even have the awe-inspiring talent and heart of 10-year-old opera singer Jackie Evancho.

However… Grimm was the underdog in the final four.

And that’s just what America (and the world at large) loves…

>>> CONTINUE READING A Grimm Ending to America’s Got Talent…

As America’s Got Talent moves into the finals, there’s a group of young, funky, awe-inspiring performers called Fighting Gravity that could go all the way.

They’re Barry’s favorite act, and one of my faves too. They’re former college students — 13 brothers from the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at Virginia Tech — and they’ve mastered the art of blacklight theater.

They do a great job, and they could certainly pull off an entire Vegas show that has the potential to run for years.

As Barry says, “Move over, Blue Man Group!”

But I’m still surprised every time I hear AGT judge Howie Mandel say how unique they are. As a fellow Toronto native, I expect that Howie would have heard of the Toronto-based Famous People Players, who have been “fighting gravity” using blacklight for almost 40 years.

They’re a world-renowned act of learning-disabled adults who run a blacklight dinner theater, and have caught the attention of celebrities like Tom Cruise, Paul Newman, William Shatner, Alex Trebek, and the Rolling Stones.

I wrote about founder Diane Dupuy as one of our LWL Hidden Heroes just over a year ago, and I’ve interviewed her several times before that.

Here’s a clip of the Famous People Players at work:

Granted, the Famous People Players mostly use puppets, whereas Fighting Gravity turns several of their troupe members into the live puppets. That’s really cool.

But I just couldn’t help bringing some of the originators of the art into the spotlight, as the act that they may have inspired to some degree goes on to an undoubtedly fantastic career.

The message Diane Dupuy wants to give the world is that we should always strive for new heights of excellence, and achieve even the most impossible of our dreams.

Fighting Gravity has a similar motive; the group wants to “inspire others by showing that through hard work, determination, and some good lighting, anybody can accomplish their dreams.”

So go, guys, and get that dream!

Keep Unwrapping the Mysteries of Life!

As someone who was born painfully shy, with little self-esteem, I made friends with the “act as if” method (also known as “fake it ‘till you make it”) in high school. I went from a quiet sophomore to a confident, wildly-dressed junior, all thanks to my drama club and one very empowering exercise.

See, my drama teacher didn’t call it “acting as if.” But for a variety of circumstances, we had to write our own play that year, and it was based on characters that we all created one day. She had simply said, “Choose a character that’s a complete stretch for you — someone so far removed from yourself that you’ll have a tough time playing it.”

What she didn’t tell us was that we would be playing that character in the school play, not just for that day’s club meeting.

I chose a punk rocker, and they brought in a real punker to make sure my makeup and hair was authentic. She put me in extensive black eye makeup, black lip liner around bright red lips, and a pink faux-hawk. When I saw the girl in the mirror — the one that looked nothing like me — I was almost instantly transformed.

While in costume I met a guy who would become a good friend, and he showed me that I could access that confidence anytime. Suddenly I was spiking and bleaching my hair, wearing tight jeans and spiked belts. I wasn’t dressing like a punk anymore, but I was a full-out new waver (this was in the ‘80s, as you might be able to tell).

So I acted as if I was a confident, trendy chick instead of a shy, awkward mouse, and became that…

>>> CONTINUE READING Act As If You Have What You Want…

So a new season of America’s Got Talent has launched, and this time with American judges suspiciously absent.

It was strange enough that it previously featured two Brits — Piers Morgan and Sharon Osbourne, with heavy accents to prove it — but now the only previous American-born judge, David Hasselhoff, has been replaced by Canadian-born Howie Mandel.

Full Disclosure: I’m Canadian too (living in the U.S. like Howie), so I’m not complaining out of a personal sense of unfairness. I also happen to like Howie’s on-camera style, and his ability to improvise and have fun, and I’m glad he’s got the gig.

But don’t you find it strange that a show claiming to celebrate “American spirit,” and having the contestants vie to “win America’s hearts,” wouldn’t have at least ONE American judge?

Even the Executive Producer, Simon Cowell, is British.

Jus’ sayin’…

>>> CONTINUE READING Can’t Americans Judge American Talent?…

A couple of days ago, some anchors on Fox’s Good Day New York said Bret Michaels must have been faking his illnesses over the past few weeks, because nobody can recover that fast… and because Michaels has gotten some nationwide sympathy over his ordeals.

Here’s a video of the accusation:

I admit, I wanted Bret to win Celebrity Apprentice, and was glad he did. But I started calling it over a month ago when it became clear that this guy — who I, like many of his colleagues, had written off as a non-contender — was one of the most creative, ambitious people I had seen in some time.

Bottom line, he won my respect and admiration based on his actions and abilities.

So here’s the question: if somebody has a fighting spirit, and is able to overcome and conquer what life throws his way, does that make him a faker?

Only to naysayers who never like to see people pull off what they don’t believe they, personally, can do…

>>> CONTINUE READING Fighting Spirit = Fabrication or Inspiration?…

Last year I wrote a post about British singing sensation Susan Boyle called Why Does the World Love an Underdog?

It wasn’t picking on Susan — it was pointing out limiting patterns many people have, and why we need to provide value in order to receive it — but it caused quite an uproar from Susan fans who took it personally, and don’t understand the personal-development lessons that Barry and I offer by dissecting trends and actions.

(This blog is written by me, whereas our LWL blog has been written by both of us, but make no mistake… I discuss a lot of thoughts and feelings with Barry before writing posts like this, so parts of him are here too.)

Don’t go to that post looking for the flames, though, because most of them weren’t approved. I always welcome intelligent commentary, but not things without substance, like, “You’re evil! Susan rules!”

Again, I think Susan has a great singing voice — not my taste, but she’s certainly talented.

As for the winner of this season’s Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, I can’t say the same thing. What it proves is that some people still love underdogs, and can’t stand villains…

>>> CONTINUE READING Why People Love Underdogs… and Hate Villains…

There’s been a raging debate going on the past week or so about James Cameron’s movie Avatar.

Barry and I went to see it a week ago, and both agreed it was the best movie we’d ever seen… both visually and intellectually.

We chose the 3-D version, which has come a long way since the old green-and-red imagery they used to use, and it definitely enhanced the experience.

Extreme nutshell version: American military people are destroying the indigenous forests of the planet Pandora, in an effort to mine unobtainium (ha, ha) which is worth $20 million a kilogram. The Na’vi, the spiritual indigenous people, don’t want to lose their sacred land and trees. The hero falls in love with their culture, and one of their people, so ends up wanting to help them rather than destroy them.

We see all three classic storybook struggles: man vs. man, man vs. nature, and man vs. himself as the hero embraces the ways of the Na’vi and their Goddess, Eywa (sometimes spelled Ai’wa).

And all of a sudden, everyone’s analyzing the message(s) of the movie… which is fine, because there were a lot of messages to be mined from it, and it gives writers something to write about. But over-analyzing can cause some friction, just like in high school lit class where thousands of papers have been written about who’s the better Christ figure: Simon in Lord of the Flies, or Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea.

And just as back then, it’s pretty interesting to sit back and watch the sparks fly when people are talking about Avatar.

“(It’s about) pantheism — a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world,” wrote Ross Douthat in the New York Times. “The question is whether Nature actually deserves a religious response. Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering and death. Its harmonies require violence. Its ‘circle of life’ is really a cycle of mortality.” By contrast, he says,  at least Christianity gives us an “escape upward” after death…

… Which shows that he apparently completely missed the spiritual side of the movie’s message: that we are all connected through unseen energy, and that energy lives on forever, as do we in our spiritual form — whether to be “with Eywa” (as one main character is) or to be reincarnated into another body (as the hero is at the end).

“(No, no, no, it’s) a combination of pantheism and theism, a view scholars today call ‘panentheism,’” replied Jay Michaelson in the Huffington Post. “Like mystics here on Earth, the Na’Vi have an experience of unity of consciousness with other beings, all of which (themselves included) are really just manifestations of one Being, which they call Ai’wa.”

He points out that the (highly overused) Sanskrit greeting, Namaste, means, “I see you,” which is the greeting used by the Na’vi people. But it doesn’t just literally mean “I see you,” so much as it means, “The God (or in this case, Goddess) in me sees the God in you.”

“Strictly speaking, the Na’vi are not pantheists. They worship a Godness — a Nature Goddess, to be sure, but one who hears prayers and sometimes answers them,” added Mark Silk of Spiritual Politics. “(And in fact) I’d say that Cameron has married some good old Christian grace-and-redemption theology to his eco-anti-imperialist parable,” he says, pointing to the character name “Grace Augustine” and the hero being “born again.”

Ahh, but wait… he’s not “born again” simply the way a “born again Christian” is, with a new belief. He’s also literally born again, as in reincarnated, into a different body — something that’s no longer talked about in the Bible.

Word has it that at one time, reincarnation may have been part of Biblical teachings — after all, every other religion seems to talk about it — but that it got thrown aside during the hundreds of years of playing “broken telephone”… when stories were being passed along verbally instead of being written down.

Or maybe the people of the day analyzed that part of the story, just as today we analyze Avatar, and decided that it didn’t need to be included.

While Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the James Camerons of their day — the storytellers who got their parables across in the best way they could — they didn’t have the chance to painstakingly edit the final version the way Cameron does. The monks did that for them, much later.

Anyhow, the really funny part about the “is Avatar pantheist, or panantheist, or Christian?” debate is that nearly any human, of any religious background or belief, could see elements they relate to if we’d just strip back all the labels and accept it as a “spiritual” rather than “religious” movie.

And in fact, that’s the beauty in what’s known as the “Universal Approach” to spirituality…

>>> CONTINUE READING The Raging Debate on the Spiritual Side of Avatar…

… and Aerosmith calls for a recount.

But more on that story in a moment...

So another season of America’s Got Talent just came to an end, and with it came a lot of, “Holy $@*&!” and “You’ve GOT to be kidding me!” in our house.

It got so passionate around here that Barry thought about writing a blog post himself, but he knew it would just get him too angry, and the smoke was pouring out of his ears like a Detroit smokestack as it was. He decided it would be best just to walk away.

See, he hates injustice even more than I do (or at least, he’s more demonstrative about it)… and injustice was definitely served on AGT.

If “America” truly did vote for the winners, then “America” certainly is playing it safe these days, and going with the status quo, as well as predictably flocking to underdogs as usual. It’s pretty sad, really, but to be expected.

The winner is 35-year-old unemployed chicken catcher Kevin Skinner, a folksy backwoods kinda guy who tries real darned hard to sing.

He’s been compared to Susan Boyle from Britain’s Got Talent. And I can see why… after all, I wrote an article about Susan, and how people tried to keep her down even after she FINALLY started getting out of her comfort zone…

And when I used her as a perfect example of how people love underdogs, and don’t like people who go out and achieve things on their own, people from around the world called me cold and harsh.

It’s almost like they didn’t read the article, but let their emotions take over and cause an over-reaction, thinking I was putting Susan down when in fact I was commenting on people who wanted to keep her down. Completely different!

And I’m sure if Skinner starts slicking himself up, making himself over into a Garth Brooks or Dwight Yoakam, people will be up in arms again. “Stay like one of us, Kevin!” they’ll all cry, just like they did to Susan.

The thing is, Susan can actually sing… and sing well, regardless of what you think of her style of music.

Kevin Skinner can’t.

>>> CONTINUE READING Boomhauer Goes To Vegas…