A child's laugh and an adult's gullibility

A child laughs 400 times a day, but adults only 15.

This is one of those factoids that is brought up in discussions of well-being, thrown about via email and repeated in columns and books. I heard it tonight during a presentation on 'humour in the workplace'. Invariably, the message is that we adults take things too seriously and need to lighten up a little. That something happened to us to make us lose that joy for life.

I have a different interpretation.

Personally, I think it all comes down to this. We've heard the joke before.

For the kids, the world is brand new. Everything is being seen and experienced for the first time and it's awfully hilarious. We adults are going through our umpteen thousandth repetition of events, and it just isn't as amusing as it was the first time.

- - -

Actually, come to think of it – the factoid seems way out of whack. Kids would have to be laughing once every 100 seconds to fill that quota. What kid laughs every other minute?

Let me Google this and see what comes up...

one dozen googles later

...it would seem that there is no actual research or evidence to back this factoid. What's even more interesting is that the factoid began with the kids laughing 150 times a day, and has slowly inflated to 400 times a day. My searches also turned up sites quoting 500 times a day. 500 times! That would have these children laughing once a minute, every minute, for 12 hours a day. Yet this factoid is continues to make the rounds.

How ridiculously high does the number have to reach before people actually question the factoid?

Graphic Novel Review

I've said this in casual conversation numerous times, but I don't think I've ever put it in print. Joey Manley is the best thing to happen to comics since Scott McCloud.

You can tell, when Joey talks about comics, that he truly and deeply loves the artform. And you can see that he shares the same frustration that many of us feel - that comics in America are stuck as a bottom of the barrel, niche market. Lucky for comics, Joey is one of those individuals who is willing to roll up his sleeves and fix the problems he sees.

Joey, and the Modern Tales family of artists, writers, and editors are slowly working to elevate comics from 'hobby' to 'industry'. If anyone can succeed, it will be them.

The newest addition to the Modern Tales group of sites is Graphic Novel Review. GNR will be a journalistic publication dedicated to shining a spotlight on the "literary mainstream" in the field of book-length comics.

What will make GNR stand out from the other review sites is that it is aimed at the casual reader of graphic novels. Joey says, "Comics-related publications, both 'alternative' and 'mainstream,' expect their readers to be masters of arcane tribal knowledge and ritual; most comic book stores seem about as disreputable as porn shops to literary readers; and the graphic novel shelves at big box bookstores are clogged with gaudy melodrama, from both sides of the Pacific. Beyond the one or two literary graphic novels that get attention in the general press every year, the kinds of books we are spotlighting have been mostly hidden from the view of their ideal audience, racked alongside superhero adventures and pre-teen romance books on shelves where the average Anne Tyler or John Irving reader, for example, is loathe to tread."

Editor Alexander Danner has put together a great first issue of GNR that features reviews of a wide range of topics. Alexander says, "Most people don't limit their reading to a single niche genre, so neither will Graphic Novel Review. The books discussed in the first issue alone range from political satire to epic fantasy, crossing through crime thriller and Egyptian mythology along the way--not to mention an in-depth interview with one of the most respected autobiographers working in the medium today. The goal is to provide a resource that will help even the most casual readers of graphic novels find books to suit their tastes. To accomplish this, we've tapped reviewers who are more than just comics enthusiasts; these are literature enthusiasts with an appreciation for the graphic novel form and everything it can accomplish. It's an ambitious project, and one that I'm thrilled to be a part of."

The first issue of GNR features an interview with Eddie Campbell, reviews of Jeff Smith's 'Bone' and Joe Chiappetta's 'Silly Daddy', and a preview of 'Gutsman' a graphic novel slated for release in January, 2005.

Free Advice to Blockbuster

Rented a couple of flicks the other day from the video store and I couldn't help but think that the traditional video store is a business model headed down a one-way street with a brick wall at the end...

The first bite into the video store's market share is undoubtedly going to come from subscription based companies like Netflix. These companies give a larger selection and give you the opportunity to watch at your leisure – keep the films as long as you'd like without fear of late fees.

The next, and likely largest bite will come from the low cost of actually purchasing a DVD. Go to Wal Mart, Best Buy or Amazon and you can find new DVDs for as low as ten bucks. When the difference between renting and owning is so slim, which do you think will win out?

The kid down the street is able to download a bootleg over the course of a day or two. In a few years he'll likely be able to download a legit copy in just a matter of minutes. The internet is slowly changing the market for music – it's not long before it does the same for film.

There's no way for the video store to combat technological changes. The only thing to be done there is to keep an eye on the developments and unload the business for a reasonable price before you're obsolete. The time to sell your buggy whip store is when the Ford is in development, not when the car dealership opens in town. However, I do have three suggestions of how the video store can compete in the years before technology gives a hammer blow to the entire video distribution industry.

Suggestion the first - The Trip is Half The Fun
Enhance the experience of actually going to the video store. Half the fun of movies is the experience of it – standing in line, munching on the popcorn and sipping the pop, sitting in a darkened theatre with an audience of strangers. Even the kid down the street who downloads the bootlegs is going to shell out the money for the experience of the theatre.

So what can we do to enhance the video store? Well, first I'd introduce food of some sort. Enhance that visual stimulus with some smell and taste. The StarBucks kiosks certainly work for the book stores, they can probably work just as well at the video store. Event based events can turn the store into a destination. Get local celebrities in. Okay, you won't get Harrison Ford in, but you may be able to get the fellow who was the Storm Trooper in scene 18. You won't get Spielberg in, but you can get a Film Professor from the local university who would be glad to talk to a crowd about what makes a good film. Host mini-filmfests. Make every Thursday night a film fest at your store. Pick a theme and pull together three or four gems that fit that theme and run them throughout the night.

Do whatever you can do to make your store a destination – and not just a stop.

Suggestion the second – Be The Expert
Every member of staff should be a film geek. They may not of watched every film in your store, but they sure as heck should certainly be trying. I want my store clerk to be able to steer me towards films I might not otherwise have watched, but will doubtless enjoy. I want the clerk to be able to tell me if a film is so bad it's good, or just plain bad. I want a clerk who can pick up on the cues of what I'm renting and recommend additional films.

Okay – so maybe we can't make every clerk an expert. But we can use the tools at hand to make them one. Likely each of your customers have an individual member card with a unique id code. Why not make use of that and start building unique profiles of your clients? Add into your database your customer's preferences. Try to find out if they enjoyed the movies they rented. Develop your own recommendation system based on the trends you see with your clients.

This should be the added value of going to a video store. An expert who knows my tastes and will cater to them.

Suggestion the third – Try and then Buy
Strange as it would seem – the video store is not the place we go to buy movies. When we think of the video store, we think of a one time rental. As far as I'm concerned, this is an opportunity that's being completely missed. If I owned a video store, I would want to be the one and only place my customers thought of when they think of buying films. And it would be so easy to use the existing video store model to drive sales of new videos.

Renting a video should be seen as a test drive. Not sure if you want to spend $27.95 on a video? Rent it for $2.99. If at the time of returning your DVD you've decided you want to buy it, you'll receive a discount equal to the rental fee.

Yes – Wal Mart and Best Buy will almost always be able to offer a lower price, but you are the one who's got the customer in your store at the moment they're most likely to purchase. All it would take is for your clerk to say “if you enjoyed that film, we'd be glad to credit your rental fee from the purchase price.”

Watch your sales jump.

A new look...

They say a website is never finished, it just gets updated. Well, I have to say, that was one heck of an update.

A good deal of the changes are under the surface, so you'd never know the lines and lines of code that have gone into placing the comics archive into a MySql database, or the wrestling I did with stylesheets so that it would look good regardless of resolution or browser. But believe me, all the backend changes will make this site much easier to handle in future.

The biggest addition, you'll note, is the Professional Services section. I've been doing the freelance illustration and web development for a while now, mostly by word of mouth. Getting set to launch my latest site, I decided it's high time to hang a shingle out and let the world know that Tragic's for hire.

But I've also been able to add the Gallery I've long wanted on this site. For now, The Night Gallery will be showcasing my works, but I'm hoping to one day pull together an actual exhibition or two of some artists I'm fond of, maybe a jurried show or two. We'll have to see.

There's a few more items that need migrating over to the database and a few tweaks needed here and there, but all in all, I'd say the site's finally ready for prime time. Please drop on into the forums and let me know what you think of the Elusive Fish v3.0