But the most common reaction, remember over beers, so it was one we never actually did, was “We should call his/her parents and tell them that no matter how much college cost them, they got S C R E W E D.”  Quite the laugh.

“My girlfriend lives in Baltimore and she told me she was going to Washington for the weekend to see the Smithsonian.  She is lying to me.  How could she drive across the country for the weekend??”

Clearly something has to be done.

Two buddies Nick Corcodilos and Steve Roesler, who know something about this topic, wrote complementary pieces yesterday about this.  Great minds.  Please jump over and read Steve’s “We Don’t Need As Many College Grads As People Think”  at his blog ALL THINGS WORKPLACE.

And Nick Corcodilos, the worldclass headhunter, wrote his piece “College Fail How” on his Ask The Headhunter blog here.

A New York family bought a ranch out West where they intended to raise cattle. Friends visited and asked if the ranch had a name. “Well,” said the would-be cattleman, “I wanted to name it the Bar-J. My wife favored Suzy-Q, one son liked the Flying-W, and the other wanted the Lazy-Y. So we’re calling it the Bar-J-Suzy-Q-Flying-W-Lazy-Y.” “But where are all your cattle?” the friends asked. “None survived the branding.”
— D.A.C. News

So true, so true, and thanks to my friend Steve Roesler who had this story up on his blog All Things Workplace today.

In a slightly off topic moment, this does remind me of the graphic artist who was proudly relating her brand development project for a local landscaping company, new logo, letterhead, website, etc, ETC. Said it cost about $25k if memory serves. When I asked how the new company was doing now, she said, “Out of business, they ran out of money, or something?”

When someone talks about your personal brand, just remember they are really only talking about reputation. That’s it.

Meet Steve Roesler, an organizational training expert and management theorist-coach who lives near Philadelphia.

Steve reads my blog and I read his. I found wordle.net today and as I working playing with it, I decided to run a few blogs through it…you know, for giggles. I cut and pasted some of these articles, then posted the ‘artwork’ which included one of Steve’s past blogs.

A couple of emails later, I say something about how back in the day, some comment about rock stars and Herman of Herman’s Hermits.

So, then Steve writes me this email:

Man, if we start down this path, we’re dogmeat for at least the weekend.

Ah, what the heck…

We have now entered the domain of Secret Steve, longtime performer, radio personality (my mother said I had one), and studio backup guy.

I grew up in the Philly area in the ’50s/’60s when all of the music was coming out of there thanks to Bandstand, on which I danced. I will deny that vigorously (unless it unearths one Carmella DeStefano, but that’s a whole other story.) GL, I actually earned a living and supported a family as a musician/singer for a number of years (while still doing management/PR stuff). It was a fascinating life but not one for a family guy. I recall seeing Peter Noone when the Hermits were just starting out and he was about 16 years old, bringing the act for free to the Steel Pier in Atlantic City.

A few years ago a producer decided he wanted to do a documentary on the streetcorner groups that started out in Philly. We ended up getting together again for the occasion wearing, naturally, suits that almost glowed in the dark (mandatory). I think we ended up with 4 cuts on a CD titled, aptly, Philadelphia Street Scene. It would be available at a retail outlet near you if there were still any retail outlets near anybody. At last count, I think we needed 987,000 more in sales to go gold. I will include a cut so that you can bask in what we in “Yo, Adrienne” land consider to be classical music. The one thing that served us well was our years in the business. I have the rights to the production and am literally thinking about “packaging” it online for download, including seeing what I can do with iTunes and other such services.

Well, that was way more than you wanted to hear after a simple Herman’s Hermits comment. I listen to all kinds of music and get the various musical genres. What I don’t get is having to close my eyes when the act comes on.

Here’s a little something from the Dukes of DooWopp. We are all unbelievably handsome.

18-false-alarm

Since I am on a roll, I ask Steve if he minded if I blogged about this, me thinking how cool it was to meet someone like this. Well, turns out, Steve’s brother coached Football at UPENN, when my son was playing there. But I had just finished the post when this email came in. Sorry, Steve, but this was just too funny.

Sure, man. Have fun. Perhaps one would want to 86 the reference to Carmella. As best I can tell, her husband is out on parole but still unhappy about the conviction.

It really is wonderful being a faux adult.

A wordle is a word game. Jonathan Feinberg, an IBM researcher, combined both of these into Wordle.net, a time killer that will take any group of words and create a cloud for you. Cool.

So, what I did, in like 15 minutes, was go to several bloggers who I read every day, and “wordled” them. The bloggers are Seth Godin, Dr. Ellen Weber, Robyn McMaster, Jacob Share, Steve Roesler, Jason Alba, Drew McLellan, and Dan Schawbel.

Hat Tip: Paul Epps.

The resulting artwork follows, try to match them up.