I didn’t actually have any jokes, and I didn’t even know how to submit the joke — I probably thought it was enough to write “Saturday Night Live” on an envelope and the mailman would take care of the rest — but I always just assumed it would be easy to come up with one killer joke.

Turns out it might not be so easy to get a joke on TV…shocking, I know.

On Marc Maron’s podcast, comedian Anthony Jeselnik told a story about when he was a writer for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Each day, in preparation for the show, Jeselnik said he would write 70 jokes a day.

Hardly any of them were used,” Jeselnik said. “But I had to write 70 jokes a day.”

70 jokes a day! That sounds impossible. And what’s even more, knowing that 99% of them probably will just be thrown away and never seen on the show, that has to be intimidating.

Jeselnik didn’t say it, but I doubt Jimmy Fallon gave him an assignment of writing 70 jokes a day. More likely, Jeselnik knew that was what it took to improve at his craft and stay competitive at work.

According to IMDB, he was a writer for Jimmy Fallon for 145 shows. That is about 10,150 jokes that Jeselnik came up with, roughly 10,000 jokes that never saw the light of day.

After a stint as the host of Last Comic Standing, and the release of his second Netfix comedy special, it is clear that Jelselnik’s hard work has paid off.

Want to get good at writing jokes? Try writing more than 10,000 jokes in half a year. You won’t help but become a  better writer

The post Here’s What It Takes To Get 1 Joke On TV appeared first on Attention Land.

In December 2010, one of Johnny Cash’s to-do list sold at auction for $6,250.

It is fun to see the things he had on his list. Some are funny, like “pee.” Some are surprising, like “practice piano.” I guess even the great ones need to be reminded to practice their craft (and go to the bathroom).

What stood out to me was #8 “worry.”

I can’t be sure why Cash put worry on his list of things to do, so I am going to speculate for a minute. Perhaps Johnny Cash agreed with Max Lucado’s sentiment from my recent post (found here). Suppose Cash knew that in the course of his day it would be inevitable that he would worry about something. By adding “worry” to his to do list, he may have been creating a preemptive strike.

He wasn’t going to let worry creep up on him. He was going to schedule it into his day and then be done. Maybe he thought that if he had it on his to do list, it would be easier to check it off and move on to something more important, like visiting his mother.

Again, I don’t know why “worry” was on his list, anymore than I know why “cough” was on the list. But maybe, just maybe, Cash was telling himself to worry about today, today and save tomorrow’s worries for tomorrow.

The post What Johnny Cash Can Teach Us About Worrying appeared first on Attention Land.

After watching the trailer, people were wondering many things: where is Luke, what’s up with Han and Leia, and what planet is being blown up?

I too started wondering after watching the trailer, but my question had nothing to do with The Force or lightsabers. Here’s what I was wondering…

What Was The First Movie Trailer Ever?

Movie trailers are big business these days, but that wasn’t always the case. In fact, most of the early trailers were not even seen by moviegoers.

Trailers got their name because they were initially played after the movie. They “trailed” the feature film. However, this practice was not effective because most audiences left right after the movie and ignored the trailer all together. To fix this, the trailers were moved to be shown before the movie, where they remain to this day.

The first trailer shown in a theater in the United Stated took place in November 1913. The Marcus Loew theater chain’s advertising manager, Nils Granlund, created a short promo for the musical The Pleasure Seekers which was opening at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway. When the promo was shown, the Daily Star in Lincoln, Nebraska described the event as “an entirely new and unique stunt”, and that “moving pictures of the rehearsals and other incidents connected with the production will be sent out in advance of the show, to be presented to the Loew’s picture houses and will take the place of much of the bill board advertising”.

With this new and unique stunt, trailers were born.

Granlund is also credited with creating the first trailer to promote an upcoming motion picture when he used a slide technique to promote an upcoming film featuring Charlie Chaplin at Loew’s Seventh Avenue Theatre in Harlem in 1914.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Source: Wikipedia

The post Wonder Why Wednesday: What Was The First Movie Trailer Ever? appeared first on Attention Land.

Let’s find out…

What Was The First Ever TV Commercial?

On July 1, 1941, the Brooklyn Dodgers were taking on the Philadelphia Phillies at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. The game was televised on NBC affiliate WNBT-TV. Before the game began, history was made when TV viewers saw the following 10-second advertisement for Bulova clocks and watches.

Technically TV broadcasting started in the U.S. in 1928, but the FCC didn’t grant commercial licenses to TV stations until May 2, 1941. On July 1st, those licenses went into effect and at 2:29 p.m the Bulova commercial aired.

Roughly 4,000 people saw the birth of commercialized television, which cost Bulova all of $9: $4 for airtime and $5 for station charges.

Source: Mashable

The post What Was The First Ever TV Commercial? appeared first on Attention Land.

Very rarely do I wonder about something that can’t be answered.

This week, however, I thought I just might be stumped.

As a kid, I used to love collecting autographs. Whether it be famous sports stars or Disney characters, I had a drawer full of signed memorabilia. I still look fondly on the collection, mostly because it reminds me of my childhood, but now that I am older, these signed items seem a little odd.

When you really think about it, my collection is just a bunch of pieces of paper with random people’s names on them. I guess it is proof that I really met the person, but why do we get so excited about seeing someone’s name written down on something?

That led me to today’s Wonder Why Wednesday–the one I didn’t think would have an answer.

I want to know who signed the first autograph. That seemed like a pretty steep request and I didn’t expect to find an actual answer. But low and behold I was wrong. All it took was a quick Google search. That will teach me to underestimate the power of the Internet.

Who Signed The First Autograph?

According to Guinness World Records, “the earliest surviving examples of autographs are those made by scribes on cuneiform clay tablets from Tell Abu Salãbikh, Iraq, dated to the early Dynastic III A period c. 2600 BC.” The signer was named ‘a-du’ and he added ‘dub-sar’ after his name, thus translating to ‘Adu, scribe’.

The oldest signature on a papyrus is that of the scribe Amen’aa, which dates back to the Egyptian middle kingdom, in 2130 BC. This autograph is held in the Leningrad (St Petersburg) Museum, Russia.

No word on who those autographs were originally signed for.

The post Who Signed The First Autograph? appeared first on Attention Land.

You do not have to look far to see his success in the entertainment industry. But this wasn’t always the case.

Segel’s broke into the industry in 1999 on NBC show Freeks and Geeks. However, the show was canceled after just 12 episodes and Segel was suddenly out of a job. He spent the next 3 years looking for work, with his only acting credit occurring on an un-aired pilot titled North Hollywood.

We may never have heard from Segel again if not for the following advice from director Judd Apatow…

Segel listened to Apatow’s advice and has written or produced nearly half of the major roles he has landed in the past 10 years. He has become successful in large part because he is creating his own opportunities.

Like Segel, many of us are out there trying to find our way in very competitive markets. We are often considered “weird” and our goals and dreams probably look funny to others.

Based on Segel’s experience, we have a couple of choices…We can sit around looking for people to give us an opportunity. Or we can start creating our own material and make it happen.

Photo credit: Flickr

The post Judd Apatow’s Advice For Jason Segel appeared first on Attention Land.

There have been a number of tributes to Letterman this week (you can find some here or here). I would not call this post a tribute, but I would like to share one thing we can all learn from the long time talk show host.

When I first started a blog a couple of years ago, my plan was to post 7 days a week. I was going to take the blogosphere by storm with my thought-provoking and hilarious writing. Before I launched my site, I prepared 7 days of content. I figured that would be enough to start and the ideas would come easily after that.

I was wrong.

After using up my first 7 days, I was stuck. My content well ran dry immediately. I quickly reduced my plans from posting every day to 6 days a week.

Then it became 5 days a week. Then 4.

I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to come up with content every single day.

Over the course of his career, David Letterman logged more than 6,000 hours on late night television. I am not sure where in the timeline of those 6,000 hours he too realized how difficult it is to come up with content on a nightly basis, but I am sure it happened.

Or at least it happened to his team of writers.

Somewhere along the line, Dave and his writers came up with the Top Ten list. The list became the show’s way of offering an hilarious take on anything from the Top Ten Signs Your Kid Had A Bad First Day At School to the Top Ten Rejected James Bond Gadgets.

They created a fun way to talk about current events. But they also created something just as important to the success of the show.

They created a segment.

With the Top Ten list, they had now a structure to follow that made crafting jokes for the show much easier. They developed an easier way to create content.

It is one thing to be dealt the task of having to come up with a show full of jokes on current events. That task is ambiguous and daunting. It is a much easier thing to come up with 10 jokes on the New England Patriots Deflategate. That task is concrete and manageable.

By creating a segment, the Late Show writers had a cheat code in the game of content creation. The segment became extremely popular and allowed for their job to be done very fast.

In a 1990 article in People Magazine Late Show head writer Steve O’Donnell (the innovator of the Top Ten list) said, “The whole thing gets done in the course of an hour and a half. Fast. We pick the subject. We write them, we run them past Dave, he picks what he likes, he sometimes adds more, we edit some out. It’s pretty simple, when you think about it.”

Looking back on the beginning of my blog, it comes as no surprise that I ran out of content so quickly. I thought by making my blog open to any topic I would expand my capacity for potential articles.

But actually, I was doing just the opposite.

I was staring down an ambiguous and daunting task.

I needed something more concrete and manageable. I needed a segment.

So I took Dave’s lead and created one.

Yes, that is right, I have the gumption to compare Wonder Why Wednesday to David Letterman’s Top Ten list. Not in the sense of popularity of hilarity, the Top Ten list destroys my segment in that comparison.

But they are similar in one way. Both are cheat codes. Both allow for an easier way to tackle the difficult task of creating content on a frequent basis.

If you are a blogger, a podcaster or anyone else who needs to come up with fresh material, I’d recommend you follow Dave’s lead and come up with a segment.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

The post What David Letterman Taught Me About Blogging appeared first on Attention Land.

Yes, I know that is incredibly loud and obnoxious. But that is why I chose it. It is so annoying that I couldn’t wait to get up and turn it off.

It served its purpose.

That is until recently.

A few weeks ago I changed my alarm clock sound on my phone. I started becoming too familiar with the annoying alarm. I became so used to it that it sort of worked its way into being a part of my dreams.

For those who know me, you know I am a sleepwalker. Waking up in the morning is always a new adventure to see if I changed clothes or moved anything around my room. Because of this, I started to fear what I might do with the alarm sound. The sound sort of resembles a launch sequence for a rocket. I figured if I became too comfortable with it, my sleepwalking self might just think a rocket is going off in my room.

So I decided to change it to something a little less rocket-y.

I came up with the perfect choice…

That’s right, every morning I wake up to the opening song from the Lion King, Circle of Life.

If you watch the music video above, you see the sun rise and a new day begin. What a perfect song to start a day to.

It is loud enough to wake me up and then immediately calms down to where I won’t sleep-destroy my room. (Although I am a little afraid I may climb up to the edge of my desk and hold a pillow above my head for the who room full of imaginary animals to see).

But now each morning I also wake up with a question…What the heck are they saying in that song?

It sort of sounds like NAAA-SATAINYA-BADDABEACHYBADDA. But that can’t be right, can it?

Let’s find out…

Wonder Why Wednesday: What Are They Saying In The Circle of Life?

The intro lines of The Circle of Life are Zulu, which is one of the official languages of South Africa and is a member of the Bantu/Nguni family of languages. My guess of NAAA-SATAINYA-BADDABEACHYBADD is way off. What is actually said is,

Nants ingonyama bagithi baba”

That translates to “Here comes a lion, Father.”

The next line in Zulu is, “Sithi uhm ingonyama” [Oh yes, it’s a lion].

The song then repeats, “Nants ingonyama bagithi baba” [Here comes a lion, Father], “Sithi uhm ingonyama” [Oh yes, it’s a lion], which is followed again by, “Ingonyama” [It’s a lion], and “Siyo Nqoba” [We’re going to conquer], “Ingonyama Ingonyama nengw’ enamabala” [A lion and a leopard come to this open place].

So there you have it. Each morning I wake up to someone yelling “Here comes a lion, Father!” This would be a whole lot scarier if my alarm was someone yelling that in English.

For those interested in the complete lyrics from the song, you can check them out here.

(Photo credit: Flickr)

The post What Are They Saying In The “Circle of Life”? appeared first on Attention Land.

Before I knew it, I was looking at a list of the top grossing movies of all time. That was when I noticed something. I have not seen 5 of the top 10 grossing movies of all time. There have been nearly 10 billion dollars worth of movies that I have not seen, that basically everyone else has seen.

That actually wasn’t that surprising. I’m the guy who doesn’t have a Facebook account, so I will never be asked to be the spokesman for popular culture.

That being said, my look at the top grossing movies of all time did get me wondering about the history of film. In particular, the very early history…

Wonder Why Wednesday: What was the first movie ever made?

The question of the first ever movie turns out to be a complicate one. It all boils down to what we consider a movie. Is it the first motion picture ever recorded? Is it the first thing every shown on a projector? Or is it the first film ever copyrighted?

Each question has a different answer. Let’s look at each.

The First Motion Picture Ever Made – The Horse In Motion (1878)

In 1878, California senator Leland Stanford asked Englishman Eadweard Muybridge to use technology to settle a bet between horse owners: when a horse runs, does it ever have all four hooves off the ground at the same time? Muybridge used 24 cameras to take separate photographs. He then assembled them into a stop-motion movie, creating the first “motion picture.”

The First Copyrighted Movie Ever Made – Fred Ott’s Sneeze (1893-4)

This is reportedly the first movie ever made at Thomas Edison’s Black Maria rooftop studio. The actual name of this movie is Record of a Sneeze, which was made in late 1893 and copyrighted on January 7, 1894.

First Movie Ever Made for Projection — Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895)

This is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made because it was filmed by the Lumiere Brothers with a the Cinématographe, or an all-in-one camera. A private screening of the projected movie was held on March 22, 1895. The Lumiere’s then held their first paid, public screening of movies on December 28, 1895 in the basement the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris.

No matter what you consider the first movie ever made, one thing is clear…movies have come a long way. What began with horses running and mustached-men sneezing has turned into cars parachuting out of airplanes.

Sources: Wikipedia, Yahoo, Wonderopolis

Photo credit: Wikipedia

The post Wonder Why Wednesday: First Movie Ever appeared first on Attention Land.

Easter. The Final Four. And the release of the latest Fast and The Furious movie.

I can’t remember a more jam packed weekend since November 1996 when both Thanksgiving and Space Jam happened.

If you don’t think that the Fast and The Furious movie is a big event in America, think again. A combination of fast cars, The Rock & non-stop action. What is more American than that? People loves those things. As evidence by the sheer number of movies in this franchise.

Seven.

That is how many Fast and the Furious movies have been made. The number of Fast and the Furious movies almost equals the total number of people who have walked on the moon.

As I said earlier, people love these movies. They wouldn’t keep making these movies unless people were watching. That got me wondering…Just how much money has the Fast and the Furious franchise made? Let’s find out in today’s Wonder Why Wednesday.

How Much Money Has the Fast and the Furious Franchise Made?

For those unfamiliar with The Fast and the Furious franchise, I will give you a brief recap, courtesy of Wikipedia.

The Fast and the Furious is an American franchise including a series of action films, which center on illegal street racing and heists, and various other media portraying the characters and situations from the films. Distributed by Universal Pictures, the series was established with the 2001 film titled The Fast and the Furious; followed by six sequels, two short films that tie into the series, and a video game series.”

Following of the release of the 6^th movie, the franchise has earned $2.3 billion at the worldwide box office, becoming Universal’s biggest franchise of all time.

That is a lot of money.

Here is a screen shot from The-numbers.com that shows the amount of money each installment has earned.

As you can see, the box office totals range from just over $150 million to nearly $800 million. And I’d guess that Furious 7 will top all of those numbers. It might even surpass $1 billion. The total budget for the previous six moves has been nearly $600 million. That is more than the yearly gross domestic product of Tonga. In fact is greater than the GDP of 12 countries.

Side note, I also tried to find the annual number of car races in Tonga because I suspect that the amount of races in Furious 7 will top that number. Sadly I couldn’t find anything.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

The post Wonder Why Wednesday: Fast & Furious appeared first on Attention Land.