Do entertainers earn too much money?

This week’s writing task charged me with the instruction: you should spend about 40 minutes on this task. Write about the following topic:  Some people feel that entertainers (e.g. film stars, pop musicians or sports stars) are paid too much money. Do you agree or disagree?

My brains did overtime thinking about this writing task. First of all, since when exactly are sports stars entertaining people? I find nothing entertaining about sports, let alone soccer. The only thing that might be a little entertaining, are the comments after a disappointing match, and one of the soccer players says something like: ‘If you look at the chances we had then we didn’t have a lot of chances and although we had a lot of ball possession, that didn’t result in any more chances’ or ‘Yeah and then you were in the lead with 2-0 and then you  gave away that lead and then suddenly you have  2-2 on the scoreboard’.  Note that those soccer players always use the word ‘you’, but really, I didn’t do anything. But this is not entertaining, it’s embarrassing.  

This writing task at least brought me the insight of a paradox. The people I find entertaining, do not earn enough money. High quality stand-up comedians, like  Caroline Borgers,  Katinka Polderman and Kees Torn can hardly gather a good month salary with their ingenious songs and jokes. Circus artists have a hard time to get their pockets filled. Stage actors are usually poor people feeling the pinch, peddling with tickets for weeks and finally playing for three rows. But those people are entertainers.

So maybe we should drop the noun ‘entertainers’. Then the task will be about: Do I think that film stars, pop musician or sports stars are paid too much money? And what an indiscriminating question is that! A lot of pop musicians have side jobs like judging local talent scouts these days to feed their children, because all their songs are illegally distributed.  If we do not see a movie star for a long time, that is probably because he or she was in several b movies that were never shown on television, let alone in the movie theatres. And sports stars only earn a lot of money when they actually win a big tournament. All other days of the year they do tv commercials and wear ugly sponsor T-shirts to pay the mortgage.

So what is the question then? Do I think Wesley Sneijders earns too much money? Or Madonna? Or Oprah Winfrey? Look, I couldn’t care less. Those few have conquered the world, they influence people’s lives in a good way. So they are entitled to an amount of money in proportion to their impact. The more people know you, the more money you can ask for. That’s is the benefit of impact. The more impact you have, the more priceless you become. People who say that they are paid too much, will never have more impact than getting their son to do his homework. Which is a good thing, mind you, but if George Clooney said ‘Do your homework’ it might send hundreds of thousands sons all over the world behind their books. And that is why he should be paid a lot.

That leaves me with the question why bankers earn so much money. They are not famous, the only impact they have on people’s lives is that they make them feel robbed. And their level of entertainment is extremely low.

English lesson nr 3: Other effects of obesity

Last week, my writing task was to fill a page with 'Effects of obesity' or, if I would like 'Effects of childhood obesity'.  Now, we see the effects of obesity on every night on various tv channels, with or without stomach reduction surgery, peer pressure or fanatical fitness instructors. And to be honest: I never had any problems with my weight, so I can't speak from experience about it. But suddenly I realised that our family has a lot to do with it, but in a completely different way than I think this writing task wanted me to go. So I wrote this.

Other effects of obesity

Our nanny is probably the sweetest woman I know. She really loves our three daughters and they love her. Our nanny has been with us from the moment our youngest was born, for three years now and she’s at our home three days a week.  

Needless to say that the subject nanny is discussed a lot at home. But one aspect of our nanny will never be spoken of. We all pretend not to notice that she’s extremely obese. That’s peculiar, because we are used to make fun of all kinds of shapes; thin, tiny, short, long, bony, with fat arses or heavy bosom. But we’re silent about this aspect. I think that’s because we don’t want to put any ideas into the children’s  minds. I cannot imagine what would happen if one of them asks her: ‘Tell me, why are you so fat anyway, did you eat too many chocolates?’ Or even worse: ‘Maybe you shouldn’t eat so much, you’re fat already.’ She might quit her job. So we consistently avoid the subject. 

That’s not always easy. Last year, we bought a new couch. The purple colossus was delivered and that evening we were a happy family, watching television all together, inaugurating our new centre of the household. One day later, in the evening, I sat down on the couch again. But it didn’t feel comfortable at all. Strange, because the day before I had almost fallen asleep due to all its comfort. So I got up and inspected  the right side of the couch. While I was doing that, my eight year old daughter walked into the living room and said, in passing: ‘You shouldn’t use that part any more. That’s the spot the nanny likes to sit.’ 

It’s absolutely marvellous how our children picked up the code of not talking about it. They are always asking the most embarrassing things to anyone anywhere in the street but they never ask the nanny anything about her size. To be quite frank, I would like to know. How come she’s so obese? Was she like this when she got married? What happened? How does she feel about it herself? I even spied on her when she was eating. But I could never bust her on bulimic excesses. She never even eats candy. It’s a big mystery, literally. There was a time that I secretly hoped that one of the girls would ask her thé question, just out of curiosity. But they are never going to, programmed as they are by their parents. 

One day, we came home and one of the dinner chairs was broken. We asked the nanny what happened and immediately bit our tongues of because we put her in a compromising position. She explained that the chair had broken; she felt awful and asked her husband to come over to glue the parts together, in vain. In the week after that, another chair broke.  We hurried to a furniture store and bought new ones, heavy quality, to withhold another embarrassing situation from her. The next day, when she arrived, we ate our breakfast while we were all sitting on our new chairs and we felt a little awkward. Our ten year old - a girl that weighs not even 30 kilo - apparently felt our tension and said to the nanny: ‘Look, we bought new chairs, the others ones were of such bad quality. Yesterday I  sat down on one and I broke it completely.’ 

The same tall 30 kilo weighing ten year old might have a little problem with her weight herself. Sometimes, she stands in front of the mirror, counting the bones in the chest and it worries us that she seems to be proud of it. I’m encouraging her to eat more, but it is a struggle. One day, when we had an argument again over dinner, I was angry and  I broke the code. I asked her: ‘Why don’t you eat? Are you afraid that you are going to look like our nanny?’ She looked at me and said, furiously: ‘Are you suggesting our nanny is fat? Well, she’s not. She’s only curvaceous.’

English Lesson number 2: how to apply for a job

For this writing task, I could choose between 10 boring topics, from 'How to study a new language' (I am!) via 'How to settle a dispute between two friends' (can't write more about that than shut up and listen to each other) till 'How to plan for a vacation' (hate going on vacation and if I will, I won't plan it). I chose:  

How to apply for a job.

Applying for a job is a toe-curling experience. You find yourself in front of a recruiter,  repeating your cv over and over,  bleating that ‘it really sounds like fun!’,  while the recruiter is showing off how well he knows the company’s website by heart. Well, here is some aberrant advice when you need a job.

1.     

1. Tell the truth
2.  Don’t ever believe job descriptions
3.  Ask the questions yourself

1.       Tell the truth

A strange concept: truth. But you might consider it, that is if you’ve never stolen from your boss or raped the secretary. In your motivation letter: tell the truth. No one would believe a sentence like ‘this sounds like a job that really suits me’. Simply because you don’t have a clue what the job is about (see the next paragraph for that part). Your standard application letter is probably created during many try outs and now you’ve settled for the version that only needs two adjustments (the company’s name) , whatever job you apply for.

You may think you have been writing your cv. But actually, you were composing it, puzzling the years after another, trying to fix holes of illness with terms like ‘sabbatical’ and the period of unemployment with ‘backpacking around the world’.

Here’s is news. Your recruiter actually knows this. And the moment a totally different letter pops up in his pile of bla bla, he’ll ask you over. You have to realise that if the truth doesn’t win, you’ll never win, because it wasn’t you who was hired; it was the person you tried to be in your cv.

2.       

Don’t ever believe job descriptions 

Job descriptions never equal reality. Job descriptions never even tell the truth either. If you’re applying, for instance, for a job  as ‘Marketing Manager’, the job description could say: the company was founded in 1992 as a family-run business and offer a personal service to all types of organisation, large and small.  They provide health and safety, employment law and environmental solutions to businesses throughout the UK and Europe. 

Now, what do you know now? Of course: google it! And again: the company’s website is full of melodious lies. So, you will not know that a Marketing Manager in this particular case is a loner. That the job was created by the bosses sister, who had been climbing the walls of her one bedroom apartment after her husband had left her with a baby, and had arranged a little something for herself. ‘Manager’, in this case, does not mean that you get your team of ‘marketing dudes’ to bring this company to bigger sales (speaking of which, what on earth are they selling?!). It means that you’ll have to write press releases and correct the tenders from the sales department.

But how could you have known? And that brings us automatically to the next paragraph.

3.       Ask the questions yourself

Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? Is that guy a freelance recruiter or does he always recruit for this firm? Is he your predecessor on the job or is he going to be your boss? Is he the CEO and why is he talking to you? How long has he worked here and why is he still working here? What makes him tick, what disappoints him, what will make him happy? Ah.. .you didn’t find that on google, did you?

It’s really shocking how many people leave a job interview without having a clue who was talking. The only thing that helps is: ask the questions yourself. Show loads of interest in the person in front of you. And in the meantime, find out what the problems are. Because the more this persons is trying to convince you that the company you’re about to enter is like heaven, the more shit there’ll be. And finding that out when you’re already in, is too late.

English Lesson number 1

I'm a copywriter. A Dutch copywriter. There is not a day that I don't hate myself for choosing this occupation. The moment I started to study the language that I was born with, I should have realised that:
a. I was going to enter a world full of experts (because 15 million people know how to write in Dutch);
b. I was blocking every possibility to leave this small and narrow minded country ever;
c. on parties, I would always end up with people bleating something like 'O ... Dutch is so boring, French sounds so much prettier. And English had so much more expressions, synonyms and nuances'. Like those people had ever used any nuanced sentence in Dutch.

However, the pressure rose and now I've signed up for 30 lessons in English writing. My teacher is a native speaker, she's really nice and English and I'm afraid she handles me with too much care, but she makes me feel good about my improvements. She comes every week and leaves me with a writing assignment.

And a really funny thing happened. During the first assignment I wrote, I had a great time. I really loved to write something for myself, something I could single-handedly decide on, without any terrified client or customer panting in my neck (this is actually a Dutch expression, but I think it would work in English as well). I had so much fun that I decided to share my assignments with the world, that is, with the sole reader that accidently finds them on the internet.

So enjoy, and please come back. If you would like to leave any reaction, please don't hesitate to correct my English, after all, that was the whole point.