Accompanied by an Australian photographer named Nigel Brennan, I’d gone to Somalia to work as a freelance journalist, on a trip that was meant to last only ten days.
‘One Minute Mentoring’ is written in the parable style Spencer Johnson and I popularized in ‘The One Minute Manager.’ It’s an entertaining story about the mentorship between a young salesperson, Josh, and a seasoned executive named Diane. As the characters learn about mentoring, so does the reader.
I like my name. My mom named me after a song by the 1970s group Bread. So, it’s meaningful, and I like the song. It’s a love song – kind of – but it’s kind of depressing and dark.
My very first story, I was around 5, and I really just wrote myself. When I was 5, I loved myself so much I gave myself a twin named Tomi. Everything started out fine. But then I didn’t write another black character until I was 18.
I’ve started a company, called Tall Girl Productions, and we’ve got our first project that is purely producing, not writing, with a writer named Evan Daugherty. It’s for NBC, it’s called ‘Afterthought,’ and it’s science fiction-ish. That’s fun.
I was hired at CNBC TV by a financial news anchor named Louis Rukeyser who had spent decades as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East. He told me I could learn the craft on the job. That was my first paid gig. Before that I was an unpaid intern at CNN in Atlanta.
I have an aunt named Ida. She’s the widow of my late Uncle Basil, nearly 100 years old, and very religious, and has managed to live her extremely long and virtuous life out of the pitiless public spotlight.
I think that, in all of my time, I got just one fan letter, from an NFL fullback named Darian Barnes. NFL players might not have enough time for my books.
People are all the time telling me stories: they named their son after me, or more than likely their dog. Or they got a tattoo.
It’s a great honor to be named to the Eastern Conference All-Star team as a starter. It’s great to earn respect from your teammates and coaches, but to also get that same respect from other players around the league and then the fans – that is special.
There’s a playwright named S.M. Berryman, Sam Berryman, who wrote these kinds of social comedies. They are actually extremely sharp and still quite provocative.
Surfers were the ones who named all my songs. They’d yell out the names, and we just kept ’em.
The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark. They brought many things that our people had never seen. They talked straight. These men were very kind.
I’m a Christian. I follow a guy named Jesus, you might have heard of him.
One of my heroes is a composer named James Bernard, and oh my God… I can still listen to his music today and be stirred and moved by it. But I think that you fall in love with… Well, again, when you’re young, it really is more powerful. Much more terrifying.
I was named Class Clown in the high school yearbook, so I was always turning to comedy and laughter to heal and to get me through things.
Back in high school, I wrote a novel about a character named Bart Simpson. I thought it was a very unusual name for a kid at the time. I had this idea of an angry father yelling ‘Bart,’ and Bart sounds kind of like bark – like a barking dog.
I learned Hebrew from a high school teacher named Mr. Cohen. We would drive down the highway to meet his car, and Jewish boys from these Massachusetts towns would sit in his car and learn the lessons.
When you see two writers named on a movie, one of them did some drafts and got the boot.
First time that I cried at a work of art was at a drum solo that I saw. A drummer named Winard Harper, part of the Billy Taylor Trio, gave back in – I would have been in high school – 2005 or something.
There was a band in Australia named Midnight Oil, and they were a very, very political, and they literally hit you over the head with a hammer. U2 sometimes can hit you over the head with a rubber hammer.
I am not a Starfleet commander, or T.J. Hooker. I don’t live on Starship NCC-1701, or own a phaser. And I don’t know anybody named Bones, Sulu, or Spock.
My first kiss was fourth grade, girl named Krista West. We’re walking out to the black top, and I throw my arm around her. I kiss her on the cheek.
Well, the teacher I studied with for nineteen and a half years was a man named Paul Gavert. He was a great lieder singer, so basically I’m a trained lieder singer because of that teacher. The teacher I currently study with – since 1995 – is Joan Lader, who also studied with Gavert.
My mom, grandma, great-grandma – we’re all named Mary, and we all play piano and sing.
The new disease was named chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and the NFL fervently and repeatedly denied that such a thing had anything to do with the league or its players.
Picture it in your mind’s nostril: you get in a cab in time to catch twin thugs named Vomit and Cologne assaulting a defenseless pine-tree air freshener.
Enron Field in Houston, the Trans World Dome in St. Louis and PSINet Stadium in Baltimore are just three of the modern-day coliseums named for companies that have found new homes in bankruptcy court.
I’m the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.
There is only one thing wrong about the Flo Hyman Award: it came to be named for the Old Lady of Volleyball much too soon.
I was definitely aptly named.
Never eat at a Chinese restaurant named Mama Teresa’s Trattoria.
I didn’t always spell my name Bil. My parents named me Bill, but when I started drawing cartoons on the wall, they knocked the ‘L’ out of me.
We then went through the audition process and picked a guy named Richard Campbell and he is no secret to L.A. players as he was with Natalie Cole for years and Three Dog Night.
I was born in 1968 and grew up in my grandmother’s house in suburban Connecticut, where I was convinced a ghost named Virgil lived in the attic.
Canada is a country of ingredients without a cuisine; we’re a country with musicians without an indigenous instrument; Toronto’s a city that doesn’t even have a dish named after it.
I was named Beekeeper of the Year by the Florida State Beekeeping Association.
It is true that I am a writer, and I was married to a composer, and I have lived in a small village in New England, but my children are not named Heracles and Persephone, and my daughter doesn’t disappear underground every six months and emerge in the spring.
It’s a huge privilege to be named England Twenty20 captain and form part of a leadership team that I’ve no doubt will work well together with a great deal of synergy.
Whether we live alone or with other people, few acknowledge the presence of another roommate. This roommate is named ‘Things’ and the space that ‘Things’ occupies is typically a lot larger than the space people have for themselves.
My favorite song used to be ‘The Nasty Song’ by this dude named Lil Ru. That was my jam!
Family lore says I was named after the song ‘Timothy’ by The Buoys, a lovely little ditty about three guys who get trapped in a cave-in and resort to cannibalism; they eat Timothy.
I’m honoured and delighted to be named the ‘Irish Times’/Irish Sports Council Sportswoman of the Year 2014. This has been an amazing year for me and for Irish women in sport, and I would like to congratulate all the finalists in their respective fields who have excelled at major sporting events.
Life is too short to have anybody named McMahon in mine.
The media named me Zeenie Babs, long long ago. I was even called Babushka.
I remember when I was a kid, I’d watch ‘Kung Fu Theater’ on TV, and all the movies would star guys named things like ‘Bruce Lai’ – you’d never get the real Bruce Lee films. So when I finally saw ‘Enter the Dragon,’ I was like, ‘Holy cow, who is this guy?’
The reason there is no noblesse oblige about Dubya is because he doesn’t admit to himself or anyone else that he owes his entire life to being named George W. Bush. He didn’t just get a head start by being his father’s son – it remained the single most salient fact about him for most of his life.
My son was named after my father, whose name was Ranbir Raj Kapoor.
Mom takes all the credit for my success. Now Mom says, ‘I read your face when you were a baby, and it said you were going to be a star. That’s why I named you Ming – because it’s all about the sun and the stars and enlightenment.’
I wanted to be a pro wrestler, but my mom didn’t let me. I used to make videos and stuff in the backyard. I had a buddy named Daniel Decker, and we used to have a tag team called the ‘Deck Garra Era.’ We used to make video after video. We were the tag team champions, but then we turned on each other.
My mala beads are very precious to me. A yoga teacher and friend named Leslie made them for me with love and intention. They are very grounding, and I love them.
Apart from ‘VIP’ being a blockbuster movie, the various characters such as mine, the Luna bike I use in the movie, the lovable amma and appa, a pet dog named Harry Potter, the innocent brother, etc., had a huge reach among the audiences.
‘The Lucky One’ features a young concentration camp survivor named Peter Rashkin – who’s about the age my dad was when he started at CBS – working at the Oyster Bar, trying to acclimate to his new country and outrun the memories of the daily he left behind.
