Heather Gold

Poem: You are safer than you know

In the interconnected moments that make up our lives/
Nodes and joints are built solid to take the weight of our now/
Before we know they’re there.

We live /
We take the step /
That the religious call faith/
That writers call arc /
That scientists measure as tendency/
That we all call living /

And the weight is held/
By all of them
And then we know Love

 

I wrote this for Dr. Leonard Schlain a physician, writer and father of my friend Tiffany when she emailed me along with many colleagues and friends to ask for help visualizing healing for Dr Schlain during his surgery for brain cancer.

 I was just reading a Fritjof Capra book this summer about Capra’s Journey writing the Tao of Physics.  Dr Schlain played a significant part in Capra’s coming together with a group of people at Esalen to work on the ideas, including the physicians who created mind body visualization work with cancer.

All About Sarah

I was watching a bit of Sarah Palin’s speech tonight and thought, “Wow. This chick is as uninformed as W. but way, way tougher and hungrier. And smarter. Those old dudes might think they can ride her the way they rode him but they are fooling themselves.”

The Republicans have been using their new Christianist base without delivering much that’s really, really important to them. They’ve been all about the ends justifying the means. But what if they have to actually make core decisions as the Christianist base demands?

Palin may be the first to really do this. I sense a spectacular 3rd act for her. She will go all the way. Whether that means following through on legislating Christian evangelism and thereby walking that walk, or finding she enjoys the taste of the life of “cosmopolitan elites” that it will be in her interests to mock (until it’s not), whomever thought they could use this woman for their own purposes has another thing coming.

Eve Harrington: I will regard this great honor not so much as an award for what I have achieved, but a standard to hold against what I have yet to accomplish.

Lloyd Richards: I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they’re HER words she’s speaking and HER thoughts she’s expressing?
Margo Channing: Usually at the point where she has to rewrite and rethink them, to keep the audience from leaving the theatre!

Eve Harrington: I’ll never forget this night as long as I live, and I’ll never forget you for making it possible.
Karen Richards: A part in a play. You’d do all that just for a part in a play?
Eve Harrington: I’d do much more for a part that good.

All About Eve – Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Harvey Korman is gone and so is comedy with heart

He died at 81. This is very sad news. I loved Harvey Korman. He was brilliant comedic performer with a pitch perfect sense of camp.

My favourite memory of him is as the (Jewish) Fairy Godmother in a Carol Burnett sketch asking the knight in white armor, “You vanta blintz prince?” As one of the only Jewish kids in a small town, this scene would send me into its of giggles anytime anyone in our family quoted it. It was a fast love affair with the ridiculous, camp, comedic large life that felt right to me and that I saw almost nowhere else.

His passing has prompted me to watch a whole lotta video clips of him on the Carol Burnett Show and in Mel Brooks movies. Mel Brooksis one of my few heroes (I pour a kiddish cup for him at Seder).

I had two, no three feelings (these may seem like thoughts, but I assure you I felt em :-):

1) Damn, Harvey Korman was brilliant and why didn’t I get to see him in much these last 30 years?
2) There were so many more women that these guys performed with (Carol Burnet, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman) and so much more togetherness in that supposedly more sexist time than i see now
(insert avg. TV sitcom or summer Ferrell/Sandler/Stiller movie here)
3) Wow our comedy (the comedy of MSM) seems less silly, good-hearted and campy than the Mel Brooks/Burnett/Korman era. It’s really distant and snarky-guy based or childish without being childlike.
The stuff of the Harvey Korman era is why I wanted to do comedy in the first place. Time for more fun and comedy with heart!

My first employer New Line Cinema is dead.

Yesterday Time Warner announced that New Line would stop operating as a stand-along unit within the company and that lots of people would be leaving, including the company founder Bob Shaye.

My first full-time job (beyond summers) was at New Line. It was an experience that changed my life. Continue reading…

Live tweeting the Oscars

Follow me.

In case you want to do a solo show

Daily Epigram: Remember yourself

Much comedy is about helping you forget yourself. I am interested in helping you remember yourself.

The former is called entertainment. I’m not sure what the latter is called.

Does Art Change Anything? (audio podcast)

Heather conversates and games with game designer Jane McGonigal, author Kirk Read, star beatboxer Kid Beyond and the whole room spurred by KB’s soul searching about his own work.

Looks like your typical chat show doesn’t it?

Scrambling with Scrabble, originally uploaded by subvert.com.

Give it a listen. (about 90 minutes)

The guts of the start-up moment: faith, confidence or stupidity?

With my bank account shrinking, but everything on The Heather Gold Show zooming I’ve felt torn the last few days. I have a great, growing team, a growing audience, super content, a solid track record, a clear vision, good timing, many well-positioned advisors and friends who want to see me succeed, all kinds of momentum and the feeling in my heart and gut that I am absolutely doing the right thing.

But for the last few days a part of my head and self has been consumed with the bank account, constantly hearing a tick tick tick and doing the math and then worrying about it. None of that is helping me. I am working 12+ hour days and loving it. But I was raised in a “show me the money” environment and that worry was leading to some paralysis which was helping neither my show, start-up nor my bank account. But I don’t want to quit or get off the path I’m on.

Fortuitously an old, older friend called today. He started his own business some time ago. I outlined my money worries and he didn’t seem to know what to say. But once I asked him if this was what it was like when he started his business. He said,

“Absolutely, not 100% but 1000.”

I said, “When you started your business did you have a spreadsheet that proved exactly when everything would get above water financially and did that give you relief and confidence?”

“No. I never look at spreadsheets. I guess you could say that I winged it.”

And as we continued to talk my whole day and insides turned around. This moment, this is what it is. That moment when successful people look back and tell you about all the hamburgers they ate (as my friend did). I used to hear that as “Oh I sacrificed, you have to sacrifice too.” But that’s not it. What he was saying is that even though things aren’t proven on the outside (ie. the spreadsheet, the bank account) you know yourself, you know your momentum. It’s the not knowing and moving forward anyway. No hesitation.

I had and still have an image of a ship in waters you don’t know. But it’s full steam ahead.

To quote my friend, whose words are now on my wall

“Somehow, someway, it works out.”

daily epigram: done is better

–Fran Preve