Kick Some Ass

Many years ago, my good friend Jon lent me The Pursuit of Wow! by Tom Peters. I was pretty new to the world of business books at the time (read: I was vaguely aware that there was section of them at Chapters). Jon (himself a business-school graduate) thought that I would get a kick out of Tom Peters' enthusiasm and passion, and he was right. While the book is business- and service-oriented, many of the tidbits of wisdom are applicable in one's personal life. (Take this review with a grain of salt; I haven't read the book in nearly 10 years. But it did leave an impression on me. Another grain of salt: I was 23, and particularly impressionable at the time that I read it.)

What I really took from reading Wow!, and another Tom Peters book, The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way To Greatness, was that no matter what I'm working on, there's some opportunity to do it in an outstanding way.

Last weekend I caught a TBS-showing of "School of Rock." (Note to TBS programming-type people: Thank you for the good movie weekend on TBS. Thank you for showing Legally Blonde and for not editing the part where Elle says "Did you see him? He's probably still scratching his head," and Paulette replies, "Yeah, which must be a nice vacation for his balls." I laugh aloud just reading that line. Awesome. Thanks also for showing Mean Girls, which reminded me of how much I loved La Lohan before she got all grody. DLang just came in and announced that CNN reports that she's going to AA, and is hilariously quoted as saying, "I haven't had a drink in seven days. Or anything. I'm not even legal to, so why would I?")

Anyway. "School of Rock." Right before the end of the movie, when the band is about to go on stage, Dewey Finn (Jack Black) leads the kids in a prayer:

God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. We are your humble servants. Please give us the power to blow people's minds with our high voltage rock. In your name we pray, Amen.

Awesome.

And might I be so bold as to suggest that we don't just use it before a rock concert - no! Because, as it turns out, every single day, the God of Rock gives us a chance to kick ass.

(I proposed to DLang that we adopt this as our morning prayer, and he enthusiastically agreed. Thanks, Dewey, for the reminder.)