Stereotypes

I spent the week in San Antonio at my company's annual sales meeting. We call it ASM, because we're clever. I got to my house at 12:45 am this morning after flying through Chicago to get to Dulles from Texas. Could be worse, I guess, as the weather was good and my flights were on time - never a given this time of year. Just don't ask me to make any important decisions today.

My company is generally very good at production values across the board, and ASM is no exception. Our kickoff session was held in the very cool Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, and featured Soledad O'Brien telling several very provocative stories about race, class and gender to a mostly white, mostly relatively affluent audience. Check your privilege is an interesting theme for a sales conference, to be sure.

But I'm here today to hip you to the act that played before and after Ms. O'Brien. Black Violin may well be sui generis, in that I'm not aware of any other acts that feature two violins, a drummer, and a DJ.

For a moment in time, we were a hip, hip bunch of salesmen and marketers. Except for the fact that nobody really listened to the band, except for me and a handful of others. Missed opportunity for my colleagues, but I get to pretend that I'm superior. Which is nice.