The fine print of the dream

Aug. 4, 2014

"She's on the 11th date of her North American tour, with 90 or so shows to go, a number she doesn't like hearing out loud. She's both star and caller of nearly every shot, from wardrobe to the tiniest shift in backup harmonies. And being the boss, it emerges, is hard.

'I have a lot on my plate,' she says...'Things can get monotonous. Sometimes it gets overwhelming. A lot of people want things from you. But it's fine! It's called trade-offs.

You have this dream, and then the dream becomes reality, and what comes along with it is you run a company. It's the fine print of the dream that you didn't know was there.'"

-- a quip that's applicable to a lot of grownup life in general, from the more-interesting-than-you'd-think profile of Katy Perry in the latest issue of Rolling Stone Magazine 

Priorities in hiring

Feb. 25, 2014
"I love having talented people around me to help me... I'm not scared of talent. I'm scared of bitches, but I'm not scared of talent."

Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz had an Interview Magazine-style conversation with Dr. Sanjay Gupta in the March issue of Harper's Bazaar. I especially liked this part, where Elbaz talks about who he surrounds himself with at work.

I've blogged about Elbaz before -- the clothes he designs are pretty, and he always says interesting things.

"It's very difficult to know where to be."

Dec. 27, 2013
We find ourselves having that conversation about getting older and how much London has changed and how much New York City has changed. 

"But the world's changed," says Blanchett. "It's very difficult to know where to be. I used to live with people about whom I thought, Why have you completely pulled up stakes and gone to the coast? Couldn't you have just moved to the suburbs? Or quit your job? 

It's like going dry, I imagine. Because sometimes life is so fast and so absolute that the only way you can change things is by actually shifting your life utterly and totally to a different hemisphere. You can't partially change. There's no semi-revolution."

-- From a candid and refreshingly well-written interview (less focus on clothes, more on personality, culture, and atmosphere) with Cate Blanchett in the January 2014 issue of Vogue magazine.

"Some sort of anger"

Oct. 20, 2013

"When Obama brushed dirt off his shoulder during the 2008 presidential campaign in an obvious reference to Jay’s song ('Dirt Off Your Shoulder'), Jay was amazed. 'I was like, This is not happening in the world...growing up, if you had ever told a black person from the hood you can be president, they’d be like, I could never. If you had told me that as a kid, I’d be like, Are you out of your mind? How?' 

When I asked him if the only way black kids thought they could get out of the projects was by being a rapper or a basketball player, Jay said, 'Exactly. That’s the only thing we saw.' 

...But he added, 'The middle class has been eliminated; it’s so hard to make a living now. There’s a bigger gap between the haves and have-nots, and that’s what creates the problem. It’s going to bring some sort of anger, it’s going to boil over, and there’s going to be a conflict. Everyone has to participate in this American Dream, and if everyone’s not participating, then there’s a problem.'

'It’s not cool—the trajectory that this is going. We have to figure out how to include everyone.'"

-- The whole Jay-Z profile in the November 2013 issue of Vanity Fair is good, and fortunately it's all available to read online. This is just one standout bit.

(And you can see the video of President Obama dusting his shoulders off back in 2008 here.)

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