Each of us must decide what we are in the business of. Some people are in the business of spreading joy and love. Some in the business of greed, or gaining attention. Some spend energy on being victims, or angry. Sinatra was in the business not of singing, but of bringing joy and an incredible style and confidence to the world. Leonardo wasn’t in the business of painting, he was in the business of teaching mankind how to dream and then build those dreams. Rosa Parks was not in the business of riding buses but of evolving her world.
A better question next time you meet a person at a fried shrimp bonanza or a Polo match, instead of “what do you do for a living?” is “what do you want you your legacy to be?”
What are you in the business of? Why are you really here?
Great Zamboni is in the business of showing people that inside, they are the true great zambonis. He do this through laughter and provoking thoughts.
This is a very good question Zamboni, and since you have asked yourself -me, the great zamboni, certainly we can come to a good and right answer.
Dreaming of Big Fish, appreciating my hard core or fans I have now! Ed, Linda, Eva, Ralph, Eli, Dash, Solia, (chesire isaacs photo)
You certainly have a long road ahead. You are currently what we call in Estonian show business parlance, “small goat nuts”. Last Thursday’s show at The Monkey House in Berkeley was no doubt rocking like a hurricane, but most people there were directly related to you, at least by blood or two degrees. Take your mom out of the equation?=crickets. So I take your question to really be, how can I expand my audience, my name, my reknown so that larger and larger doors open and the world can know and appreciate the who and what and how of Zamboni, is that it?
Yes, more or less Zamboni, you are insightful.
Okay, thank you, as I promised, even if it is myself asking the question, great zamboni can never be stumped. Here is what you must do.
Be everywhere. All the time. Doing Zamboni. Like my granny Priitik used to draw in the dirt, (she was mute): If you are trying to snag a moby dick, use a big god damn net.
Shirts, stickers, Internet virus video, talent shows, open mics, bar and bat mitzvahs, remember those books as a child, Lowly Worm, how that worm shows up everywhere? Be the worm!
Keep getting better Zamboni, keep your eyes on the big fish, even if you get pre-occupied with being a small fish- know where you wish to be headed and keep one eye on that. Yes its easy to get bitter because success isn’t served on platter to you, or this person never comes to your show, or no one seems to give a shit about developing solo artists in this damn town, etc- but as my drill sargeant in Estonian Special Forces liked to say “boo fucking hoo! now keep marching you partakers in goat ass!” ( hard to translate)
So Zamboni, be everywhere. Make your success an inevitable fact. Make Carnegie Hall too small a venue to fit your your fans, but do it anyway (have to add an 11:00 show) But only do this as long as it is fun.
Dear Great Zamboni- I find myself very often fantasizing about doing jobs that are very different from my own. I am not young, I do not have “my whole life before me” but being in my early 40’s, gods willing, I have some life before me, and I can’t help feeling that if I don’t change my course in life I will wake up tomorrow and I will be 65 saying, “what happened?” For the past 14 years I’ve been a teacher, and though I get much enjoyment and my daily bread from this noble calling, lately I have been seeing myself doing other things- being a football coach, working in the business world, etc. What do you think about someone like me making a radical shift this late in life, maybe to a field that I have little or no experience in? Is passion to learn something new enough to carry one into a new livelyhood?Thank you for considering this Great Z man. -JW
Zamboni will take time to contemplate this question, which is obviously coming from the human vessel which carries Zamboni into these times. Since this is a thorny one (this “JW” is the human body which the great spirits have chosen for Zamboni to use for spreading my wonder and wisdom slowly over the Globe like Sherwin-Williams paint) I must ruminate on this over night and consult my own great sages like the one below.
Thank you for this question, and it has come to Zamboni many times in many ways over the past few years. People ask me for tips and advice because everyone want to get rich quick and is waiting for the i.p.o. of Zamboni Inc Llc, etc.
First I should say that Great Zamboni not put money in stock market but only in Estonian Goat Futures. This is complicated system of betting on how much milk goats of different colored spots will yield. I do this until I lose 10,000 Krons last Monday. So now I just keep cash in suitcase. Not being American I do not hunger for riches in the Stock Market but I can explain this to you because on recent flight to Istanbul I read book by Suzanne Mcgee, “Chasing Goldman Sachs.”
better than pirate story!!
You see, the Stock market is like a public utility, like a power company. When you get home, you flip on switch and light come on. You turn faucet and water come. You no think about it. Stock Market is like this too. You want your city to build a bridge or hospital, it use stock market. You want to retire or borrow money to buy house, you use stock market grid of vast money- you don’t think about this sea of money, it just always seems to be there.
So a person puts money into this sea, the money goes to work building bridges or supporting new companies, and then when the money grows a little bit with those companies, the person takes back their money plus a little bit to reward their risk.
But for a while now, the big banks start to say “hey, forget about this little guy who wants to grow some money, lets start making some indecipherable’financial products’ made up of piles and piles of bad loans to people and sell this bad juju to other companies and make piles of money when no hospital is being built or company actually growing except our own company which is only growing fat because we are selling these piles of bad juju”. See, simple!
It didn’t help that in the 1970’s, the minimum fee to buy a stock, like 40 cents a share, is got rid of. Now people can buy stock for a penny on internet. Stockbroker must now be creative to make paycheck. Greed+Creativity=EVIL.
Here’s how crazy it get: The investment bankers give a little thank you fee to the people lending homeowners money to buy houses who probably won’t be able to pay these loans back- they need lots of these loans to bundle up!- they even can make money betting on all of us people not paying our loans. This like betting money on you getting hit by brick, then yelling “hooray” when you get hit by brick, and “ka-ching” sound of money. Maybe they throw brick too.
So this Stock Market, which once served people on Main St, now is serving people working in investment banks, on Wall St. But when house of cards come crashing down, we had to bail them out (Ha!) because, yes we’ll always need hospitals, houses and to retire, and they know this.
If you are still confused, perhaps buy the book, or just reflect of this old Estonian jargon, “if your town only has one butcher, and he grabs you by the testicles, either smile or become a vegetarian.”
Clear, no? Then get yourself a financial advisor, they still do the serving Main Street thing. It makes the world go round.
This question comes to me from Howard, who is perplexed by these “what happens in Vegas” advertisements.
at Mix Lounge, in the bay of Mandalay, everyone mixes, heirarchies get all mixed up.
Well my friend, Zamboni has spoken about the Las Vegas of Death afterworld, but not yet about the real one. In this Las Vegas, as you see above, you make a new best friend that you have never met before and will never, perhaps, ever see again. You meet this new best friend at bar and he is a banker and he is there for convention but none of this matters and after 4 pomegranate mojitos 6o floors above the desert you are now best friends. You then have a fifth with his boss who evidently has his own plane but at this moment is just another drunken idiot like you trying to charm married woman from Fresno. Everyone is equal.
What can this teach us about life back in the reality of our real homes? Perhaps that though we see ourselves as islands, as people that only a small group of folks appreciate and understand, that in fact we are mistaken. Perhaps there are really hundreds, thousands of people that we could see eye to eye with, but we just don’t see them. Of course there are. Are you really that different from anyone?
In Las Vegas, everyone is equal in the pursuit of pleasure. Hedonism? Yes, but equality nonetheless.
So I urge you, general public of readers of me Zamboni, it is not that you need to go to Las Vegas -though everyone should- but that more importantly, learn this, that in the words of mystic sixties rock n’ roll Jefferson Airplane:
In my endless travels throughout the world, I , the Zambonesman have done much listening, in addition to answering of questions. Though it may seem that my mission is of a selfless nature, I can assure you that great Zamboni is one very selfish person. That is how I and YOU should be. All your questions and comments teach me, and that is really my goal, to keep learning.
We must all take care of ourselves, after all, guess who was put on this earth to meet all your needs? Me? Your mom? Your therapist? Oprah? No , you!
So in this learning I have noticed several popular assumptions that in fact are very WRONG. The first one I will adress today is the popular wrongness of, “It’s Crowded at the Top“. People generally say this as if like they are saying, “well, good luck but it’s very tough to get there” etc.
See anyone taking a number?
I have been to the top of Mt. Everest and believe me, it is very not crowded up there. It’s very quiet. You can hear your lungs ache for oxygen and the snow crust on your mucus. Plenty of room, just some bones and initials carved into rock. You are not meeting heavy traffic there, or backstage at winners interviews for Oscars and Nobel Prize. Outside Oscars trying to get view of Nicole Kidman you are smack up against people, but on red carpet there never is traffic jam. Think about this.
People, it is the middle that is crowded. The middle ground where the average joes say, “well I like to do this with my life, but people keep saying how hard and crowded it is in this”etc…
People then say to me, “but Zamboni, what if I do not want to rat-race my way to top and struggle?” To them I say fine, but even staying in middle you have plenty of struggle, so why not set your course for where you wish to go? As Lao Tzu, and old friend once said who is now dead, “if you do not change direction you may end up where you are heading.”
Then another person recently said, “but is it lonely at the top Zamboni?”
No. Zamboni himself is at top of field off all knowing mindless sages and he is not lonely. I have the myspace!
We shepards in Estonia show their high school musical movie to goats and it induce lactation, useful and thanks you two!
great zamboni 