Not So Different

Not So Different: Like Barack Obama, let others be a part of your success story

By Mike Chin on May 7, 2012 in Not So Different

Life is full of lessons to be learned. When we’re thinking about how to best lead, promote, sing, or otherwise operate within the context of an a cappella group, it’s worth looking beyond the realm of a cappella itself to what other walks of life can teach us.

Leading up to the 2008 US presidential election, Barack Obama cultivated a political fervor like few presidential candidates in American history have ever provoked from the general public. Sure, you can attribute some of this to his skillful rhetoric about change and personal responsibility, and sure you can attribute it some of it to the color of the man’s skin, and his background. But I would argue Obama’s greatest tool in gathering popular support was the way in which he made others feel like a part of his success.

Consider what was, perhaps, Obama’s greatest catch slogan: “Yes we can.” Yes, we can—not I can; that’s an important message about the president as not just a leader, but a facilitator for democracy. It’s the kind of philosophy that lent individuals attachment to the Obama campaign, not just as the candidate whose platform best represented their interests, but as a man in whom they felt personal investment.

Not So Different: The Wire made us confront our fears. How is your group doing the same?

By Mike Chin on April 9, 2012 in Not So Different

Life is full of lessons to be learned. When we’re thinking about how to best lead, promote, sing, or otherwise operate within the context of an a cappella group, it’s worth looking beyond the realm of a cappella itself to what other walks of life can teach us.

HBO’s The Wire stood out as one of the great television shows of the 2000s. The show stood in stark contrast to other HBO success stories. It lacked the Mafioso chic or familial core of The Sopranos. It didn’t have the escapist quality of a show like Entourage. It didn’t indulge a particular gender audience like Sex & the City.

What The Wire did deliver was grim, frank reality. The show cast a critical lens on organized crime, law enforcement, the drug trade, the education system, the media and more. All the while it balanced social consciousness with a perspicacious eye for painting unique, individual, and profoundly flawed characters.

Not So Different: Make like "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Turn the Volume Up

By Mike Chin on March 29, 2012 in Not So Different

Life is full of lessons to be learned. When we’re thinking about how to best lead, promote, sing, or otherwise operate within the context of an a cappella group, it’s worth looking beyond the realm of a cappella itself to what other walks of life can teach us.

Whether you love professional wrestling or hate it, the odds are you have at least a passing familiarity with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. You know, the bald guy with black t-shirts who ran around beating people up through the late 1990s and early 2000s? The six-time world champion?

The thing that a lot of casual fans don’t realize about Austin, one of the biggest stars in wrestling history, is that he didn’t always play the same character, and wasn’t always a huge success. He had humble beginnings in the dying days of Texas-based World Class Championship Wrestling, before moving on the World Championship Wrestling, where “Stunning” Steve Austin was half of the pretty-boy Hollywood Blonds tag team. From there, he got fired via FedEx, as a reflection of what his bosses perceived as limited potential.

Not So Different: Watch Closely; Lessons from Mockingjay

By Mike Chin on March 23, 2012 in Not So Different

Life is full of lessons to be learned. When we’re thinking about how to best lead, promote, sing, or otherwise operate within the context of an a cappella group, it’s worth looking beyond the realm of a cappella itself to what other walks of life can teach us.

In this special, three-part series, we are working through the The Hunger Games trilogy, book by book, to discuss the lessons each book can teach a cappella groups. If you haven’t read the books before, beware—THIS SERIES OF ARTICLES INCLUDES SPOILERS.

In the first book of the Hunger Games trilogy, we learn the value of playing by our own rules. In the second book, we learn that there are no happy endings. The third book, Mockingjay teaches us what just might be most important lesson of all: watch closely.

Not So Different: There Are No Happily Ever Afters; Lessons from Catching Fire

By Mike Chin on March 22, 2012 in Not So Different

Life is full of lessons to be learned. When we’re thinking about how to best lead, promote, sing, or otherwise operate within the context of an a cappella group, it’s worth looking beyond the realm of a cappella itself to what other walks of life can teach us.

In this special, three-part series, we are working through the The Hunger Games trilogy, book by book, to discuss the lessons each book can teach a cappella groups. If you haven’t read the books before, beware—THIS SERIES OF ARTICLES INCLUDES SPOILERS.

You would think that surviving The Hunger Games would offer you some time for joyous celebration, or at least quiet reflection before you launch into your next challenge. The end of The Hunger Games, the first book in the trilogy, assures us this won’t be the case for Katniss Everdeen, who, hot on the heels of her experience in the arena, inadvertently opens a huge rift with ally/maybe-love-interest Peeta on the trip back home.

When Catching Fire picks up the story, the stakes are all the higher. President Snow visits our heroine to let her know he doesn’t appreciate her manipulating the end of the Games, and that if she doesn’t quell every doubt he has about her by the end of her victory tour, then there will be severe consequences. Subsequently, Snow cracks down on Katniss’s district with harsh new law enforcement and a re-electrified fence. Then he throws Katniss into her second Hunger Games—a sadistic tournament of champions that leaves her downtrodden enough to not even hope for her own survival, but rather to dedicate herself to protecting Peeta.

Not So Different: Play By Your Own Rules, Lessons from The Hunger Games

By Mike Chin on March 21, 2012 in Not So Different

Life is full of lessons to be learned. When we’re thinking about how to best lead, promote, sing, or otherwise operate within the context of an a cappella group, it’s worth looking beyond the realm of a cappella itself to what other walks of life can teach us.

In this special, three-part series, we are working through the The Hunger Games trilogy, book by book, to discuss the lessons each book can teach a cappella groups. If you haven’t read the books before, beware—THIS SERIES OF ARTICLES INCLUDES SPOILERS.

In The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins introduces readers to a cold, dark world in which districts submit their children to a lottery, out of which the chosen ones will fight to death while their families and friends look on.

The purpose of these “games?” To prove the absolute power of the people who run them.

Indeed the, concept of The Hunger Games may seem alien to plenty of readers, but in an age of progressively more ludicrous reality TV concepts, is it really so far-fetched to imagine a snuff show?

Not So Different: If your a cappella group is JD, who is (or what) is your Elliot?

By Mike Chin on March 15, 2012 in Not So Different

Life is full of lessons to be learned. When we’re thinking about how to best lead, promote, sing, or otherwise operate within the context of an a cappella group, it’s worth looking beyond the realm of a cappella itself to what other walks of life can teach us.

One of my all-time favorite TV romances is that between Scrubs characters JD and Elliot. Sure, there’s a taste of the Ross and Rachel on-again-off-again nonsense, but rather than the mind-numbing drama-for-drama’s sake that plagued the signature romance of Friends, when it came to JD and Elliot, I always got the sense that the two of them were in the process of figuring out who they were as people and just kept missing their right moment until late in the show’s run.

Life is full of decisions. While I rarely blog on the topic of my personal life, I will not here that one of the most profound decisions I’ve ever made came in my early 20s when I left the girlfriend I had loved for four years the new girl in my life whom I thought I could love more. A month later, that new relationship, too, was over.