One for the money...

ver the years my sister has told me, in no uncertain terms, that I have no control over my facial expressions and that eventually, if they hadn't already, they would get me in trouble. That there were so many of them that she, after all these years, still had a hard time interpreting each eye-brow raise, twist of lips and rapid eye movement.

Yesterday, I finally saw with my own eyes what she meant.

In the morning, Judson Matthews and I shot my portion of the forthcoming Kickstarter video proposal. The last time I had to do anything akin to acting was Shakespeare & Company in fourth grade. Fortunately, Jud's an old hand and after a few rounds of takes we closed it out. He now needs about a week to edit those takes with footage he took the previous two days of B roll (time with little kids and their families, shots of an illustrator sketching out dry-erase board images) before I can then submit the project to Kickstarter for their approval.

After the shoot, I caught some of our session's playback. Jud did a great job making the scene look crisp and professional. But man, I had no idea that the face had so many moving parts. I also noticed the big difference I felt as a viewer when watching the presenter smile as opposed to being serious. Needless to say, you are all right: I should smile more.

The other good news from yesterday is that I now have an illustrator, Claudia Santillan, who put together this sketch of my pseudonym, Hooey Savvy. I look forward to working with Claudia as Hooey starts to hover off the ground.

The Calm Before The Storm

log's been awfully quiet since leaving Corpus Christi, but that, hopefully, is about to change. In the next few days the Kickstarter video proposal will be in the can, I'll submit the entire project for approval and then around Tuesday, June 12th the project should go live to the public.

Since starting Hooey this past fall, I've set out on a journey of a thousand steps. Finally submitting the project to Kickstarter and then, hopefully, to the public are the next big steps. Ideally, they represent steps #76 or #77, not #998 or #999. The next six weeks or so will be tell-tale.

Moment of Clarity

y last post, about twenty hours ago, asserted that, "the way forward is clear." After writing those words and before falling asleep I figured within 24 hours something would come along and muddle everything up.

On the contrary, the way forward has become more clear and simple. Go figure.

I've been banging my head against the wall under the assumption that the next step required landing an illustrator before I could start Hooey's Kickstarter campaign. This fell under the idea that the book had to be completely done, or at least appear so, to shop it.

I am a fool.

The emphasis now puts the focus on the Kickstarter campaign as the way to complete the project. Of course, the Kickstarter campaign will hopefully answer an even more important question: Does this project have popular support?

So what now? Now I revisit the script I've written for the Kickstarter video, I talk to videographers, tighten up the choreography of the Budget Dance, find some eight year old talent and maybe even a band to play a little ditty. I focus on the video, get it rolling and continue to monitor the rest.

Project Update: In search of an English to Mexican-Spanish translator, I posted a project description on Guru and have already received one application. Getting the translation done while I work on the video et al should be a time saver.

Corpus Christi Chronicle #3

riving into Corpus Christi on May 1st I put the fate of Hooey in the hands of a friend of a friend from college. Driving out of Corpus on May 14th, the friend of a friend and his wife had become my friends and the fate of Hooey looked sound.

I left Corpus Christi yesterday morning and while it's good to be back in familiar environs and not grabbing lunch from a hotel vending machine any more, I have to admit I already miss Corpus. I had just started to make friends, to make in-roads in the elementary school community and a couple restaurants already knew me by name.

A couple nights before leaving, a pair of cards from Houston living in Corpus asked me what it was like coming from NYC to Corpus and how I'd been received. It took twelve days for someone to ask me that. While it did surprise people that someone would come from NYC to Corpus intentionally, I was always treated well. I attribute that to the project.

I spent little time talking about myself and a vast majority of the time talking about Hooey. Time and again I got positive feedback and constructive criticism from locals. What I did not leave Corpus with is a green light to bring Hooey to a Corpus elementary school classroom in the fall. That being said, I'm merely sitting at the intersection waiting for the lights to change, not pulled over, four way flashers on, a dated road map sprawled out over the driver's wheel.

As always, there's more work to do, but the way forward is clear.

Project Update: First and foremost, big thanks to Bro Krift, Elaine Marsilio Krift and Nancy Vera in Corpus for their hospitality, their local expertise and their pick-up-the-phone-and-get-'er-done ways. Thanks also to Michael Kruse for putting me in touch with Bro. Unfortunately, the search for an illustrator continues. This remains the biggest roadblock to advancing the project to its next big stage: Kickstarter. With renewed focus, I'm talking to a handful of illustrators, but if they're to have Hooey ready by the fall school year, shit's gotta start very soon. If I have to start drawing stick figures I'll do it.

Corpus Christi Chronicle #2

hile I wait to meet with an attorney at the Corpus Christi Independent School District (CCISD), the principal of a school in that district (depending on how the first conversation goes) and a member of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC),  I've spent the majority of my time lately praying for Mariano Rivera and building the case for Hooey Savvy's Cookie-Wise Pablo through the requirements of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS; pronounced teeks) for elementary school students from kindergarden through fourth grade. Now that Mo's assured us he'll be back, I can focus on the task at hand.

The TEKS identify what students should learn each year and what they should be capable of. On its own, Hooey addresses the former, but not the latter. To correct this, I'm drafting a book-affiliated list of activities for students in or out of class. Activities include drawing key scenes from a given story, recording a version of one of the book's songs, taping a kids version of the Budget Dance (akin to "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes", but with rent, food and transportation among other items); writing a book review of Hooey; asking one's parents about their first jobs; and polling fellow students on allowance dos and don't as well as allowance going rates.

Fortunately, the TEKS do a nice job of laying out what they're looking for. I just have to meet that need with a little Hooey for each grade level. The social studies TEKS in particular already include economics and taxation (government) so I can clearly say that this or that chapter of Hooey will meet this or that requirement for this or that grade level.

Nap time, lunch and recess aside, what were your favorite educational activities in elementary school?

Corpus Christi Chronicle #1

olks in Corpus Christi don't beat around the bush: And amen to that! Today I started knocking on doors, shaking hands and making my pitch to local school administrators. In return, I got two encouraging signs and two clear hurdles.

First, the good. Both school administrators, a director and a principal, approved of Hooey and the need for tools such as Hooey to address financial education.

Second, the hurdles. Both school administrators also made it clear that while they liked Hooey, it and the participation of students had to pass the legal smell test and the educational requirements of the state of Texas. Fortunately, the director walked me to the legal services office and the principal led me to the Texas Education Agency's Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), the backbone of the state's public education system.

The attorney was in a meeting, but I'll follow up with him. As for TEKS, I'm writing up a compliance report for the principal that clearly delineates how Hooey satisfies the state's requirements on a number of fronts with specific examples from the book.

In other news: I met a sister-team that is putting together a quote to illustrate Hooey. New York rapper Maslab looks to cut a track from Hooey.

Tomorrow: Follow-up with the attorney; the search for an illustrator continues at the Metro School of Design; and other games of phone tag continue.

Here's How It Works

he idea went like this: Pick a community with a low average credit score; give away copies of Hooey Savvy's Cookie-Wise Pablo to kids at one school; challenge another local community to see which could improve its credit score most in a year; winner gets local bragging rights and better lending rates.

Unfortunately, from the research I've done and the people I've spoken to, that's not how it works.

A couple years ago Consumer Reports (CR) ran a piece about credit score companies and which one to go to for one's score. Along the way, CR did a nice job of educating the reader about who creates credit scores (lots of folks it turns out including Ford and I'm sure other car companies) and who uses the scores (lenders such as banks for mortgages or car dealerships for financing). So what did CR conclude?

"These credit scores probably aren't worth your money."

Not only is that not reassuring, but a disclaimer that one of the scores isn't even sold to lenders and is "not an endorsement or guarantee of your credit worthiness as seen by lenders" is scary. This sounds a lot like the testimony given by rating agencies before Congress that only said they provided "opinions" on creditworthiness. In other words, at the end of the day, lenders are going to choose which of your scores they like best (read can take you for).

As CR learned, one person can have a variety of credit scores, say, from good to excellent. So if I'm a lender and I see someone who qualifies as excellent, I'll want to lend to them, but at the "good" score rate to make more money.

Consumers have the power to ask what score a lender is using, but if you really need that loan are you going to bust the lender's chops? If you're the lender, are you going to take any flak from someone who needs your money when there's another sucker being born in your waiting room?

Lenders picking whatever number they want is bad news for borrowers. What's inconceivably worse than that? A bank (GS Capital Partners, take a wild guess what the GS stands for) buying a credit scoring company (TransUnion). What's to keep them from making everyone pay through the nose?

If I can't promise people that better credit scores will directly lead to better lending rates, I won't. Fortunately, I've come up with another idea which I'll bounce off folks in Texas when I get there next week.

Your Community on Hooey

s I work on the Kickstarter proposal and marketing plan for Hooey Savvy's Cookie-Wise Pablo, my kids book on financial education, I really want to show that it can have an impact on a community. To that end, I'd like to quantify that impact by tracking one community that reads Hooey against another similar community that does not.

Unfortunately, I sincerely doubt a single kids book can improve the average credit scores of a community in one, three, six or twelve months. It may take years. But, hey, you never know. Long story short, I'd like to show folks the progress they've made in a tangible and/or quantifiable way. What I do know is that it shouldn't take millions of tax payer dollars to achieve.

In Nudge, a book about libertarian paternalism, the authors, economists at the University of Chicago, give numerous examples of clever government initiatives that yield big results at little cost. Competition and public humiliation always seem to go down well. In this case, we could pit two communities against each other to see who can improve their average credit scores the most in a year...with the scores updated monthly in the local paper or painted on a wall in a very public place for all to see. Throwing in a prize for the winner (other than better credit scores and lending rates) never hurts. Getting elected officials to line up behind an out-of-towner might hurt.

Project Updates: Got a rather uncompetitive quote from the L.A. illustrator and so the search continues. Am hoping folks in Texas will be up to the task. Floramay Holliday is interested in giving some of Hooey's songs a go. She's got a great voice, lots of experience and a natural way about her music. I'm excited to hear what she comes up with. Thank you, Dewey Ervin, for bringing her talent to my attention. Have a meeting with Equifax next week in Atlanta. Looking forward to learning more about the company. Early work on my baseball work of fiction, The Boston Squeeze, continues to come together a little everyday.

That Yankee Bastard

nce upon a time I played in a fantasy baseball league with a bunch of dudes from Georgia. My team name? That Yankee Bastard. TYB (or, in the rare week I had the upper hand, That Bastard) had its moments (Thank you, Justin Verlander, for that 86 point no-no in '07!). But having gone to school in the South, I have a good feeling for what flies and what hits the fan.

That being said, from what I've been told, Texas is not the South. I know Texans, I went to school with Texans, I like Texans. Believe it or not, I've found an odd kinship between New Yorkers and Texans. Both groups have a certain, "This is how we do things" mentality. (More explicitly, in NYC it's, "This is how we do things. Don't like it? Go fuck yourself." In Texas, I take the follow-up sentences to be implied.) Texas females are one of the few groups of newbies to NYC that I don't worry about.

But this time, I'll be on Texas turf.

Looking ahead, I've drafted a sketch of what I'd like to accomplish on this first trip:

1) It's important that I get a good feel for what financial education is being currently offered and how Hooey can complement that.

2) It's equally important to listen to folks in the community to make sure Hooey addresses the financial problems or gaps in learning that they say currently exist.

3) As a you-don't-even-have-to-open-your-mouth-'cause-we-already-know Yankee, I need to propose a simple, straight-forward, easily executable plan that will not get rejected out of hand. That plan, at this time, is to provide every public school third grader and every local public library in the chosen community with a free copy of Hooey Savvy's Cookie-Wise Pablo (in English or in Mexican-Spanish). I won't ask for it to become part of the curriculum and I won't ask for librarians to read it. I'd just like it to be available at home or in the local library.

4) I need to shake a lot of hands and arrange a lot of face time. I could easily email all the folks that I've built a database around, but they can just as easily drag and drop my ass into their trash cans. By making the trip I show I am interested in their community and that my ass, for as scrawny as it is, does not belong in the trash.

5) Thanks to the standards set by "No Child Left Behind" and the Texas Department of Education's buying power, it would behoove me to bring Hooey in line with these standards as best as possible.

Those are the broad strokes. Jamie Oliver didn't just show up in West Virginia and commandeer an elementary school kitchen. It takes time and trust. If I can put in the time and build the trust, hopefully I can accomplish a fraction of what he has.

Project Updates: The L.A. illustrator has looked at the text of Hooey, likes it and is putting together a budget proposal. To fill in other gaps in the budget, I've also reached out to a local video production guy about a short Kickstarter presentation, have put together a preliminary list of Kickstarter rewards to offer and have some musicians potentially interested in recording some of the songs from Hooey. The Boston Squeeze continues apace. Have finally found a format that will carry the story and, thanks to Mr. Patrick Jordan, I've staked out some possible locations for the Squeeze's fictional Boston-area stadium. It's not a Pettitte curve yet, but it sure ain't a hanging curve.