Poets Day US

No, it is not a line that the lead guitarist uses to pick up young ladies at the Cedar Street Courtyard in Austin (well not that I know of, and if it isn’t, it should be) but more a question. Do you have some Spazmatic in you? I guess it would help if y’all knew who The Spazmatics are. Well you could Bing them (I now have Windows 10 and apparently I cannot write the G word any more) but instead let me take you on a journey of sight and sound using the wonderful medium of typed letters arranged into something that smart people call words. The Spazmatics are a 80s cover band based in Austin (but you can start a franchise in a city near you) that play every Wednesday night at Cedar Street and also have other gigs (one would presume). They dress thematically – bass player wears a skid lid, lead singer has a foam neck brace, lead guitar looks like a vertically challenged Bjorn Borg and the drummer dresses like an 80’s nerd (if he was to dress present-day nerd he would most lik...

I love Anthony Bourdain and his CNN show Parts Unknown. I am not a foodie by any stretch of the imagination so I am not watching it for the food, more the people he meets in the places he goes. Vicariously I have been places I might never visit, some that I have visited and some that I don’t particularly want to. The best part of the show to me is the journey he takes me on, not just geographically but also personally, meeting a variety of characters on the way including punk rock singers in Guam to fishermen in the Greek Islands. This week’s inspiration was from a recent show I watched about Greece where, whilst sitting around a table with some Greek political satirist singers, one of the ladies stated ‘Don’t tell me what you ate, tell me who you ate with’ (should that be whom, not sure, ask that kid on Alan Partridge, he probably knows). I added the dramatic pause at the end because, you know, it makes it funny (and a little dirty) :) So where are you taking us this week James...

Tell you what, those old Greeks were smart bastards (the current ones not so much) – not that good at rugby but they do get the whole team concept pretty well. I just returned from the latest Poets Day Roadshow and there are most likely a few new blog readers this week (there better be) so just a quick reminder about what it is you are wasting time on today. This blog is a bit like Sesame Street, a bit of fun with maybe a little bit of learning but with less dick jokes and way less subtext. It is the ramblings of a kiwi who might have been there and done that or might just be doing this as Obamacare doesn’t cover decent therapists. Anyway, to this weeks theme, and surprisingly enough it is about working as a team – in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Now for those of you who have read more than one of these blogs you might recall a brilliant (no ego issues here) blog from last year about changing team's cultures, starting with getting...