Posts

MEL GIBSON; THE MOVIE PRODUCTION MVP

Image
Mel Gibson spent $70M of his own money making two consecutive films in languages nobody on Earth speaks conversationally. They generated $733M at the box office. The Passion of the Christ. Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin. $30M self-financed after every studio in Hollywood passed. Gibson marketed and distributed it himself through Newmarket Films. It opened on Ash Wednesday 2004 and grossed $612M worldwide, held the domestic R-rated box office record for 20 years, and remains the highest-grossing self-financed film in cinema history. His personal take cleared $400M. Two years later he did it again. Apocalypto. Entirely in Yucatec Maya. $40M budget. Zero Hollywood actors. His lead, Rudy Youngblood, was working at a Lowe's in Texas when Gibson pulled him from a general casting call. Youngblood had less than a month to learn Yucatec Maya, performed every stunt himself including a 175-foot waterfall free fall and sprinting in front of a live 200-pound jaguar. The stunt coordinator called him...

TAKE A WALK, GO TOUCH SOME GRASS

Image
Charles Dickens fought his depression by walking through London at night. One October he set out at 2 in the morning and walked 30 miles, all the way to his country home in Kent. In 1860 he wrote about why it worked. It took psychology another 150 years to catch up. Dickens called his bad spells "spectres." They came back every time he started a new novel and sometimes hung on for months. His mood would fall apart, his sleep would collapse, and the only thing that pulled him out was walking. He explained his method in an essay called "Night Walks," published on July 21, 1860 in his weekly magazine All the Year Round. He had tried fighting his insomnia from bed and lost. So he changed the plan. The fix, he wrote, was "getting up directly after lying down, and going out, and coming home tired at sunrise." A worried mind cannot fix itself by worrying more in bed. You have to get up and move. Most nights he walked 12 to 20 miles. A friend called it "viole...

TO Y'ALL BRETHREN IN THE GULF

Image
“Is Gulf abroad?” My beloved, yes, most definitely. I’m often amazed when people speak of “Gulf” like it’s a single country, sweetheart, no! A kasmall Google search will show you the truth: The Gulf is a region, not a country. It consists of several nations, each with unique laws, cultures, and even different time zones! Let’s break it down like this: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are: 1. United Arab Emirates (UAE) – GMT+4 2. Oman – GMT+4 3. Qatar – GMT+3 4. Saudi Arabia – GMT+3 5. Kuwait – GMT+3 6. Bahrain – GMT+3 So, no, Gulf is not one big country. It’s a cluster of nations in the Middle East, each ruled by monarchs. There’s little room for diplomacy because these are not democratic states. It’s monarchy all the way, some more open, others more restricted. And just to make it clear: If you left your home country, flew out of your continent, crossed oceans and time zones you, my dear, are abroad. In the diaspora. In a foreign land. Next time someone says “uko Gulf” lik...

MUSINGS

Image
1. Bana g-strings can circumcise you but no one is saying anything. Then some lace panty is worse. It identifies a zone in your generous anatomy, grabs a chunk of your flesh and refuses to let go so you are now walking in zigzag 2. Dreams require delusion and audacity   3. Wamesema niwaambie mwache kusema harder harder, juu hawajawahi tuambia tighter tighter. 4. Grief has no shame nor does it adhere to schedules. It erupts in the most unconventional places. One day it caught up with me in a matatu; another time in the middle of a writing workshop. 5. When I started writing ten years ago, people here gave me so much psyche. Nowadays social media is a landmine. Watu ni wakali ajabu and it is like we have regressed to mchongoano.  Mammito put a gym photo recently and someone commented about her pelvis area, saying only serious inches can manage it, and he got 1000+ likes. How did we get to this level of comfortable with opening our mouths like that? I see comments on ...

SCIENCE OF ATHLETICS

Image
The average healthy adult, asked to run as hard as they can for one mile, finishes in about 9 minutes. That same speed, you’d guess, is roughly what your body can sustain. Sabastian Sawe just ran 26 of those miles back to back, and each one took him 4 minutes 33 seconds. That is not jogging speed. That is sprint speed for most of us. He held it for 1 hour and 59 minutes and 30 seconds, and he was actually getting faster at the end. Your body has three knobs that decide how fast you can run for a long time. The first is how much oxygen your lungs and heart can deliver to your muscles per minute. Scientists call this number VO2 max. A normal adult sits around 30 to 45. A fit recreational runner gets to 50 or 60. Elite marathoners are at 70-plus. Sawe’s is in that range. The interesting part isn’t the number itself, it’s what percentage of that ceiling he can hold for the full race. In a 2020 study of the 16 best male distance runners on earth (commissioned by Nike’s Breaking2...

Ai TOOLS FOR EFFICIENCY AND CONVENIENCY

Image
100+ AI Tools That Help You Get Hours of Work Done in Minutes ⏱️ 1. Presentation - Gamma AI - Decktopus - Beautiful AI - Slides AI - Designs AI 2. Ideas - Claude - ChatGPT - Bing Chat - Perplexity - Copilot 3. Website - Dora - 10Web - Framer - Unicorn - Style AI 4. Writing - Jasper - HIX AI - Longshot - Textblaze - Jenny AI 5. Meeting - Tldv - Krisp - Otter - Fathom - Noty AI 6. Chatbot - Droxy - Chatbase - Chatsimple - CustomGPT - Mutual Info 7. Automation - Make - Zapier - Xembly - Bardeen - Levity 8. UI/UX - Figma - UiMagic - Uizard - InstantAI - Photoshop 9. Image - Fotor - Leap AI - Midjourney - Stability AI - Microsoft Designer 10. Video - Klap - Opus - Eightify - InVideo - HeyGen 11. Design - Canva - Flair AI - Designify - Clipdrop - Magician Design 12. Prompts - FlowGPT - Alicent AI - PromptBox - Promptbase - Snack Prompt 13. Productivity - Notion - Merlin - Trello - Grammarly - TinyWow 14. Logo Generator - Looka - Brandmark - LogoMakr - Stockimg - Namecheap 15. Marketing - Pen...

THE 4 AGREEMENTS

Image
Read books.