Swamp Media Group discusses release of Space Detective film part two

This article is part two of my interview with the Swamp Media Group regarding the upcoming release of its new independent film, Space Detective. In part one, founders Antonio “Tony” Llapur and Matt Sjafiroeddin discussed how they started the Swamp Media Group, their backgrounds and love for Science Fiction (Sci-Fi), and finally, their full length production, Space Detective. In part two, Antonio and Matt continue their discussion of Space Detective, in addition to lessons learned, and future creative aspirations.

Anwar Dunbar: So Matt, you said Space Detective is a Noir story?

Matt Sjafiroeddin: Yes, it’s very Noir, a very classic conventional Noir.

Antonio Llapur: Film Noir was a movement in cinema in the 1940s and 50s to make dark films. The themes are usually dark and involve a femme fatale – a lady who is going to screw over, or do harm to, or mess up the life of the protagonist which is usually a cop, district attorney or detective. So Space Detective literally took all of the elements and added outer space and aliens – it’s pretty much a Humphrey Bogart movie from the 1940s – like The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep, a Sam Spade or a Phillip Marlow movie; along those lines.

We added this crazy element of it being in the future, essentially in a galactic community. So rather than our story taking place in some hard-boiled American city, it takes place on this space station called ‘Carina Dawn’ which is floating out in the middle of nowhere close to the Carina Nebula, which is a real Nebula by the way. It’s like a domed Las Vegas-like pleasure center. We re-interpreted and inverted the tropes of the Noir detective movies and put it in an outer space environment much like what Ridley Scott did with Blade Runner; that involved detectives and took place in Cyber-Punk reality. But Space Detective isn’t as dire as Blade Runner. Space Detective is a hilarious fun movie. It’s serious and it’s funny, and there are all kinds of crazy things going on in it.

MS: There’s also a lot of mystery going on because the Space Detective is human and he’s in this galaxy, a galactic community of aliens. He’s a rare breed because humans haven’t been spread out in the galaxies. There’s a mystery about him. Why is this human out here in the middle of the galaxy? He’s got these weird, special alien powers, and so one question is where did he get those powers from? Some of the questions are answered by the end of the movie and some of them are left unanswered for possible follow up stories, just to keep people interested. So there’s the possibility of this movie moving forward in other serials, or other sequels, or even a television show that we hope people will be interested in.

AL: But the basic plot of the movie is that Shiro (the protagonist) gets a phone call from his ex-girlfriend. She says, “Come back to Carina Dawn. I need some help getting away from my gangster husband. He’s not good.” And essentially that’s it. He’s going to help this girl get away from her gangster husband and he gets mixed up in a crazy plot involving space terrorists, mobsters and the fate of the galaxy.

AD: Tony, give me the name of the Nebula again.

AL: It’s the Carina Nebula. It’s actually pronounced Car-I-na, but we pronounce it Car-EE-na. So what we did for the special effects is went on the Hubble website, and I downloaded a bunch of their free use images. Their policy is, “Use whatever you want, but just make sure to give us credit for it.” I think Hubble is the greatest thing in the universe. Our Nebula is actually based on a Hubble image. We basically photo-shopped in some of the colors, which allowed us to include some semi real geography.

AD: That’s really interesting because you guys know that whenever a Sci-Fi movie or show comes out, whether its something like Prometheus or The Martian, there are always Sci-Fi groups who rip the science in that particular production. Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson does a lot of that. So it sounds like you did your research on what’s known about our natural world and universe in the production of Space Detective.

AL: Yes, a little bit. We tried to do that. Let’s face it, it’s a silly space movie-cartoon. You’re going to hear lasers when they’re flying in space. We obviously know that sound doesn’t work in space, but we don’t care. We grew up watching Star Wars movies and when we can throw something at someone and it’s legitimate, I think it lends something to the movie and it enriches the universe a little bit. I understand Dr. Tyson’s frustration when he sees something and he says, “Obviously that constellation isn’t there that time of the year”, whatever – and I think that’s cool that he does that. I don’t hate on him for it.

Matt’s like that too. I’ll want to do something because it looks pretty and he’ll say, “That planet won’t have rings around it for this reason, this reason and this reason,” and I’ll say, “Dammit Matt. Curse you and your Vulcan logic (laughing).”

MS: I’m really big on astronomy, so while making this movie I did want to make sure some of the science was on par. I’ll watch science fiction movies and I’ll say, “Wait a minute, that’s not how that happens.” But making a movie and telling a story, there are certain things you just have to bend sometimes, like sound in space for example. If you watch Star Wars movies when the ships are fighting each other in outer space and you do it with no sound, it’s boring. There are just certain rules you have to bend sometimes in terms of telling the story. But if you try to keep things as scientifically accurate as possible, then people will enjoy it. People like Tyson will enjoy it if he knows this and that don’t happen. He’ll at least know this is right and that’s right.

AL: But don’t get me wrong. I wanted to experiment with some stuff with sound too. In certain parts I’ll say, “Let’s make this a little more realistic. Let’s make it muffled.” I’m a big fan of Battlestar Galactica, the new show. They tried to do stuff like that – muffle the sound when the ships were out in space, but that didn’t work with Space Detective either because it’s so bright and colorful and cartoony that it begged for those engines and those super loud explosions in space. It was like it said, “No, please treat me silly”. But things like the nebula and having the movie take place geographically on the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, we incorporated into the back story. We tried to give it some semblance of reality, but ultimately we just want the audience to have some fun with it.

AD: Yes you can really see how all of the effects come together in the trailer.

AD: You used real life actors in the movie, and from the snippets that I’ve seen, it has a really unique look. Has this technique been done before, or are you pioneering this look?

AL: Oh yes, this is all us, man. That’s something that we cooked up. There’s a similar technique they use called roto-scoping where they will trace over actors to creates an animated look. We didn’t do that. We did everything in camera. We put makeup on our actors – almost kabuki style. The style of film is very striking – we shot it in front of a green screen and then we put that in the computer and processed it a little bit. We adjusted the contrast, the black and white levels, but its still actors and we didn’t change it that much. We’re just doing a visual crunch, if you will, on their images. We use a lot of puppets too.

MS: It’s funny because some people look at it and it reminds them of Sin City. And it is like Sin City in space, a detective film which is really dark and Noir. They say its funny because Sin City is one of the inspirations for this movie, and the actual Sin City comic book illustrations are really high contrast black and white whereas if you watch the movie it’s more shades of gray. So it’s unusual that people will look at this and say, “Oh, it looks like Sin City in space”. Making it in this particular style allowed us to get away with so much. I built a lot of the props and-.

AL: What do you mean you built a lot of them? You built all of them.

MS: Okay yes, I built all of them. In this black and white style I was able to get away with a lot because I built a lot of things with cardboard and trash bags, but it doesn’t look like it. That’s one of the things about a lot of the Indie Sci-Fi films being made out there. They’re really expensive to make which is why a lot of Indie film makers make dramas and comedies. When they do make Sci-Fi it actually looks like it’s made out of cardboard and trash bags. What’s unique about our movie is that it doesn’t look like it was made of cardboard and trash bags and in actuality, it is. We were able to get away with so much and cut so many corners that that square turned into a circle, and people are really going to enjoy it I think.

AL: I was more in charge of the visual effects so I did a lot of computer imaging and it allowed me to get away with a lot too. Like I said, Amahl Dunbar, who created the 3-D animation of our ships, was able to populate one of the scenes with hundreds and hundreds of characters in the background. The fact that he didn’t have to render different textures and colors and shading, saved him a lot of time and he was able to do the work of ten dudes.

MS: Yes, a lot of Amahl’s 3-D models and spaceships are awesome. When you do special effects, a lot of time is taken up with the skins of it – making sure it looks metallic, making sure there are proper shadows, reflections, etc. But with this movie we didn’t need any of that. We just needed it to be black and white and that’s it. Amahl was able to make designs and not worry about making shadows or reflections. We just needed the baseline model and it works.

AL: Yes, so to describe the visual aesthetic of the movie, everything in Space Detective is black and white – high contrast black and white with no shades of gray. And then the rest of the movie is literally splashed with color. However, it’s splashed with purpose so anything that generates energy in the universe, that’s a color. If you see a laser gun, the beam is going to be a bright orange or a blue. If you see an exhaust from a ship, it’s going to be a bright color. If you see lights on buildings, they’re each going to be different colors. The movie has its own unique look. I remember Matt mentioned the Sin City comic book because I was obsessed with that comic book, especially in college. I grew up worshipping Frank Miller and his work. One of the first comics I ever read was Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, for God’s sake. Anyway, the color has a purpose in it. Everything found a purpose, not just to cheat, but man did it help us cheat.

MS: The movie ended up being more colorful than we realized. It was one of our biggest concerns when we started – if it was going to be black and white and hurt people’s eyes. Now we’re at a point where we realize how colorful it is.

AL: There was a French movie called Renaissance which did a similar thing with black and white, and it’s hard to watch. They don’t have any color in it.

MS: But that was all animated and they had no live action actors.

AD: So ballpark, your goal for releasing Space Detective is the next month, two months, half a year?

MS: We are having our world premiere at the Miami International Science Fiction Film Festival in January 2017. We’re so thrilled about it. It’s so exciting.

AL: I really think we have something special and the festivals are really going to enjoy us and want us to be a part of them. It’s a really unique movie. It’s a different kind of movie. The story is fun. It’s intriguing and it’s funny. The characters are rich and original and look completely different than anything you’ve ever seen. It sounds amazing – thanks to the music that Matt’s older brother, Marcus, composed for it.

MS: My brother, Marcus, is a classically trained musician. He played in the Las Vegas Philharmonic. He has been in bands since he was a kid, and he’s got two decades of recording experience in studios.

AL: He’s a great rock and roller.

MS: He really elevated this movie in terms of sound, and a lot of people will tell you that half of a movie is what you hear, so my brother is really responsible for half of this movie. He helped to record all of the dialogue. He helped to create all of the sound effects and he helped compose all of the music. It’s just fantastic. The quality of the audio and the music is just so amazing that it really elevates this movie to professional levels I think.

AL: Yeah, and as the director and the producer, it really makes Matt and me look good. Matt plays the main character Shiro, and it really looks cool when he’s beating up a bad guy and leaping through the air. I’m like, “Oooh, that’s cool. We’ve made a real movie here.”

AD: I’ve heard that before about films and their scores/soundtracks. I watched a documentary where James Horner discussed composing the music for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. He described how some of the most memorable films are perfect marriages between the film and the music, and so what you remember is the two together and not separately.

I know that you probably already have sequels in mind, but I won’t ask you about that. Discuss the major learning points in the production of Space Detective?

MS: I learned that we could make a feature film. To be honest, I learned what it means to be a producer. I went through college learning all kind of things and you know what an actor, writer, and editor do, but it’s hard to know what a producer does. I’ve learned that a producer produces, and that’s what I’ve been able to do over the years whether it’s been producing practical effects, make up, wardrobe or anything like that. Just to get things done as the producer, you have to be on the ball and get it done. That’s probably the biggest thing I’ve learned is how to produce.

AL: I agree with Matt. We learned that we can do it. I was always scared of directing growing up. I would say, “I can’t come up with all of these shots. I don’t know what I’m doing.” But I actually do know what I’m doing. I’m pretty good at it, and Matt’s pretty good at it. I’ve learned that I think directing is probably the hardest thing that anyone can possibly do. It is the playing soccer of art making. It is all about endurance. It is all about not giving up. It’s about trying to con your friends into doing insane things, and then trusting them. It’s about leadership and a lot of other things.

MS: I think the biggest thing we learned is that we can make a movie on our own for freaking nothing. We can do it ourselves and we can make it look good. So I try to think that if we can do it on our own with nothing but chicken scratch, imagine what we could do if someone gave us a real budget, a multi-million dollar budget. You can imagine what we could do with the actual resources to get things done.

AL: And I’m not even talking about Marvel money, or Batman and Superman money. I’m talking about ten million bucks (laughing). I mean what could I do with ten million bucks? I could change the world with ten million bucks. We could change movie making with that, and yeah, I’m not going to lie, I think one day Matt and me should be able to tackle a Batman movie or something like that because hey at the end of the day, it’s just more expensive and it’s just the same stuff we did with Space Detective. There’s a bad guy, some colorful villains and there’s a town that he has to protect. And there’s a crap-load of special effects going on in there. We can handle that.

AD: Is that what you would like to tackle some day? A Batman movie?

AL: Sure, a Batman movie, an X-Men movie, any of those. We’re both comic book nerds so we love that genre. Anytime one of those big movies comes out, we’re there. We’re like excited 11 year olds. That’s not to say that we’re not influenced by other things. I’m a big George Lucas fan. He’s my hero. I love Akira Kurosawa. I love Terry Gilliam. Orson Welles – I was just reading a bunch of articles today on Citizen Kane. It’s the 75^th anniversary of its release and it’s probably my favorite movie. That being said, capes and laser guns are where it’s at man. It’s so much fun and I think those types of movies and those types of stories are great mirrors on society and humanity. They show the things that we can accomplish in the future, or things that we can do today as far as – I’m just rambling, but I just think that popular entertainment is more important, more artistic than people give it credit for. And with Space Detective, I think we tried to make a popcorn film that would reflect that kind of movie.

AD: Well gentleman, thank you both for this interview. I look forward to seeing Space Detective and your future productions.

AL: Thank you, Anwar. This is our first interview.

MS: Thank you, Anwar.

AD: No problem guys. I suspect it will be the first of many interviews that you will do, and I’m honored to be a part of the first one.

Visit the Swamp Media Group website to learn more their current projects and upcoming productions. Thank you to the Swamp Media Group for generously sharing their trailer, and or the photos used in this post.

Thank you for taking the time to read this interview. If you enjoyed it, you may also enjoy:

• A review of Solo: A Star Wars Story
• A review of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
• A review of Marvel’s Avengers Infinity War
• A review of Marvel’s Black Panther
• A review of Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok
• A review of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Homecoming
• A review of Marvel’s Dr. Strange

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Swamp Media Group discusses release of Space Detective film part one

In May of 2016 I conducted my very first interview related to Science Fiction and Cinema. I talked with Antonio Llapur and Matt Sjafiroeddin, founders of the Swamp Media group about their upcoming independent production The Space Detective – a film created independently with no outside assistance. The only reason I knew about this project is because my brother Amahl Dunbar worked very closely with the Swamp Media Group to produce the film. I’m thus also one of the lucky few to have seen the movie, and I must say it is quite impressive. Part one of this interview was actually published prior to the Examiner closing down its operations, so part two was never published.

At the time of the interview Antonio and Matt were finishing up production of the film, and they are currently actively submitting the film to festivals and looking for a distribution home. They’re also looking to do a local screening in 2017 in Las Vegas where the Swamp Media Group is based. The three of us had a lot of fun discussing Space Detective, the Science Fiction genre, and our favorite Heroes, Franchises and TV series growing up, so we covered a lot of ground. Enjoy.

Science Fiction has long been a vehicle for entertainment – whether through books, television or cinema. The popular genre serves as an escape from real life; a vehicle to look at science and the cosmos, and a means of speculating on where science is going. It further serves as a canvas for commentary on humanity and the current social, spiritual and political issues of the times. Lastly, Science Fiction can simply be a vehicle for storytelling and a means to take part in spectacular and other world adventures. On May 2, the founders of the Swamp Media Group, Antonio “Tony” Llapur and Matt Sjafiroeddin, granted an interview to discuss their backgrounds and the upcoming release of their new independent Science Fiction movie, Space Detective.

Anwar Dunbar: First, Tony and Matt, thank you for this opportunity to interview you guys and to help promote Space Detective. I write for the Examiner on literacy and in many instances Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) related topics. I also volunteer at the David M. Brown Arlington Planetarium here in the Washington, DC metro area. With our full dome shows and guest speakers, we promote STEM education and we actually have a Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) weekend every year in the spring focusing on the genre. At this year’s weekend we had some guests from the Star Wars films including Storm Troopers, an Imperial Commander, and a Jawa. Sci-Fi is something I grew up with and even now as an adult, I am still consumed by it to a large degree.

When I saw some of the promotional media for Space Detective, I thought the images were very compelling and that it would be exciting to talk to you both about what you’re doing and how you created the movie. So with that, let’s get started. Where are you from originally and how did you start the Swamp Media Group?

Antonio Llapur: I grew up here in Las Vegas. I was born in New Jersey and we moved here when I was a little kid, when I was four or something. I met Matt in a production class at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV). We shared a cigarette and started talking about Batman comics and have been friends ever since.

Matt Sjafiroeddin: I grew up in Oklahoma and I moved to Las Vegas to go to college. I followed my brothers out here and that’s where I met Tony, at film school at the UNLV.

AD: What’s the significance of the name ‘Swamp Media Group’?

MS: It’s funny because we’ve been roommates for a while. We live in a house now and we used to live in an apartment. We used to call our place ‘The Swamp’. Do you remember the Television show MASH? Hawkeye and BJ used to call their tent ‘The Swamp’. So we started calling our place the Swamp as well, and it just kind of went from there. The ‘Media Group’ is our production company. We didn’t want to be called ‘Swamp Films’ because that’s just dumb, so we went with ‘Media Group’ because that involves things beyond just movies.

AL: The Swamp makes a reference to MASH – whacky doctors and Media Group makes it sound kind of important I guess (laughing).

AD: What are you backgrounds? It sounds like both of you have backgrounds in media, production and writing screenplays.

MS: Both of us have a background in theater as actors. I was originally a theater major before I switched to film. Through film, we learned all of the processes of film making: production, editing, and screenwriting. I think we both fell in love with screenwriting. We’ve written several things together and it just kind of grew from there.

AD: What in particular did you like about screenwriting? Was it the whole creative process or something else?

MS: I’ve always loved stories and telling stories. My dad was a big story teller and it was good to be able to finally write my ideas down. Being able to take a class to learn the format of screenwriting really helped open the doors for me personally to be able to write stories and get things down on paper.

AL: I’ve wanted to be a movie director since I was a little kid. I would see things and say, ‘Okay I would do that different and do that different’. I learned a little bit at a time. My first thing was drawing, then I learned acting, and then I learned writing and then it all coalesced into directing. I was born with a pencil in my hand so my stuff is always very visual and it compliments Matt because he’s a strong writer, and we play off each other really well.

AD: So you said you were born with a pencil in your hand. Does that mean you grew up drawing and illustrating?

AL: We both did.

MS: Yes we both did. We had a lot in common before we met. We both drew and we both loved movies. We both loved Batman, and we were both the weird kids in school and were thus both really connected since day one.

AL: I think we were both the youngest in our families too.

AD: You both have a love for Batman. What superhero or science fiction series had the biggest impact on you? Was it cartoon series like Robotech or Voltron, or was it movie franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars?

AL: The earliest memory I have is going to see Star Wars at the movie theater as a little kid. Star Wars was big for me, but the Star Trek movies were what drove me growing up. I think Matt and I battled over Star Trek a lot in film school. I think we were the only two Star Trek nerds in our film school. Generally speaking, Star Trek and Star Wars were my biggest influences.

MS: I’m a total Trekkie. I mean I love Star Wars, but I’m nowhere near as big a Star Wars fan as Tony. I grew up with Star Trek, and as far as Sci-Fi goes, we’re from that 80s generation so I grew up with the Transformers, G.I. Joe, Thundercats and all of that.

AL: Robotech was pretty big too. I remember Robotech being that first cartoon I saw as a kid and thinking, ‘Wow this isn’t necessarily meant for an eight year old. This is a little bit more intelligent’. In the 80s there was a lot of really good Sci-Fi, a lot of good Space Opera, and a lot of the laser gun stuff.

MS: My biggest influence growing up wasn’t Sci-Fi. It was actually a comic book called Elfquest. That’s where I get a lot of my inspiration for stories and characters. I’ve been reading it since I was ten. That’s been the biggest influence for me.

AL: They’re really beautiful books if you ever get the chance to read them. They’re really, really striking.

MS: It’s got nothing to do with Sci-Fi though.

AD: There’s a writer’s center here in Washington, DC where I’ve taken some classes myself and those two genres, Science Fiction and Fantasy, are always grouped together.

AL: I read a lot of Vertigo comics in high school and college. I always gravitated towards stuff that was a little weird and a little out there. What I really loved about comics was that they always gave the chance to be out there and really do some crazy things like multi-verse and have things like clones. They it brings you back and it presents it in this silly caped form of simple morality tales – good guys and bad guys. I’m a big fan of Jack Kirby. That was a big influence on me and the look of Space Detective; the same with Frank Miller and a whole bunch of other guys like that.

AD: Now before we move on, the thing I remember about Robotech was that there were a lot of mature themes in it. I think Robotech and Voltron were originally Japanese cartoons which they took and dubbed over and created different plot lines for the United States market.

AL: They rewrote them for essentially American audiences. The Power Rangers, which is essentially after our generation, were originally Japanese shows that were reworked for American audiences as well.

AD: We had the Voltron toys and I remember there was a Voltron II. My brother and I looked at one another and wondered where it came from because no cartoon was released for it in the United States.

AL: The Voltron with the cars?

AD: No, that was Voltron I. With Voltron II when you put the robots together it had multiple arms because it had-.

AL: Yeah, yeah, yeah! It was the three dude robots and they stacked into each other.

AD: Yes, and Voltron III was the lions.

So let’s move on and talk about what you guys have been working so hard on, Space Detective. First of all, I’ve seen bits and pieces of the concept art and it looks really cool. The official trailer is pretty hot too.

AD: Let me know how much detail you want to give about it because I know you probably don’t want to give the whole plot away before people see it. Talk about the concepts behind Space Detective. How did you come up the ideas for this production?

MS: Well, we had just recently finished production of one of our other short films called, Joker Does Shakespeare!, which you can see on YouTube. And we were looking to do something new, another short. We were actually going to do a short for Heavy Metal Magazine which is ironic because when a lot of people see Space Detective it reminds them something they would see on that particular publication. This heavy metal short was black and white and it was Sci-Fi, and the guys in it had ray guns. It was just a single guy running around in an industrial complex getting chased by cops and it was all very Noir-ish. It was very dark and there was no dialogue, just voice over.

We were going to make it a short, but somewhere down the line we’re writers and we realized that we like to write so we said, “Let’s just drop this concept.” But we kept the idea of the black and white Sci-Fi Noir story, so we ran with that, and then we said, “Let’s add a little bit of color and some lasers, and some exhaust and robots.” Then it just started to blow up from there. So this ten minute short then turned into this feature length film.

AL: Yes, we just kept running with it. We read our script and it was 40 pages. So we said, “Let’s just shoot it. It’s going to run about 20 minutes anyway. So we got our first cut and it went about an hour and we said, “I guess we have a feature film”. So we added to it and made it a little longer. It’s a disadvantage that it took so long, but it was also an advantage. We spent about a decade on it, but it grew a lot, so we just started shooting it and said to heck with it, we’ll just learn as we go. It just ballooned and over the years we’ve gotten a little more sophisticated and we added some things to it, enriched the universe a little bit, and went with it. It’s been a long time.

MS: We’ve joked that this film has been like our graduate school education in that we’ve had to do so much of it ourselves from the writing, to the acting, to the directing, the special effects, the practical effects, the sound, the music – we had to do so much of it ourselves in this tight group of us. It felt like graduate school you know because we learned some of this stuff in college, but until you actually apply it to something, it’s all theory. So making this movie has really helped us hone our skills as film makers and storytellers.

AD: Well, you know when you build something from the ground up, there is a little bit of trial and error, and figuring things out. It’s definitely not something for people with no staying power.

You know, listening to you guys talk about it reminds me of the documentary, The Making of Alien, where Dan O’Bannon and Ron Shusett discuss how they came up with the ideas for the movie, and then how they had to shop it around quite a bit before Fox agreed to make the film. So when you build something from the ground up for the first time, sometimes it can take a while, but it sounds like you stuck with it and its going to bloom pretty soon.

AL: When we started, we had a pretty cool little ‘short’- a proof of concept video. Around that time I was writing for a local magazine and I was covering night clubs and stuff. I wrote under the moniker ‘Digital Tony’, so I spent a lot of time in the night club industry. I knew a lot of dudes with money and I knew a lot of guys who might be willing to make the investment in a picture. No one gave us a dime. I think the most we got out of someone was a broken computer. We just said, “Screw it,” and kept shooting for a few years until we had another set of stuff to show off. We found some people who were interested in financing it, but the housing market crashed and the economy went in the toilet and no one had any money to give us.

So we just said, “Okay, let’s just keep at it”. We got to point where people said, “Hey, we’d like to invest”, but we had come so far and we’re going to finish it ourselves (laughing). So we own all of it. We paid for all of it and now we have an executive producer to help us with the Post and the Film Festival. He was our cameraman, Aaron Goodwin. He’s on the show Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel. He started off as the cameraman and has been with us a number of years and he continues to help Matt and me out. For the most part it’s been Matt, his older brother, Marcus, is handling music, Amahl Dunbar has been handling the 3-D animation, our homeboy Charlie Wilson has been our assistant animator and handling all of the lasers you saw, and myself. Our buddy Rico Lee, Jr. played Zyzzo (the villain) in the movie. He helped out with the music and all of the other cool stuff. It’s been a small team and a family affair, but it’s just us.

MS: Yes, we started this so long ago that it was before Crowd Funding and Kickstarter. There wasn’t any money anywhere. Most people who try to start Indie-films today start on Kickstarter or they’ll start trying to crowd fund money. We started so long ago that it wasn’t in existence so we just did it ourselves.

AD: I’ll let you guys choose how you do this, but without giving the plot-line away, in general terms, what’s Space Detective about? I’ve seen some of the footage and I’m looking at one of the promotional pieces right now and it has a kind of Blade Runner look. So are we in a Blade Runner type of thing or is it something else in terms of the main character and the story?

MS: It’s funny, because people would always ask us, “What is this about?” And the title tells you. Space Detective is about a detective in space. The title is so simple. It’s like the Vermeer painting – The Girl with Pearl Earring — that’s what it’s about. We took this really straight forward conventional approach to a Noir story. It’s a very classic Noir story – this brooding detective gets hired by a femme fatale that walks through the door and hires him for a case to get her out of some ugly marriage, but then the case turns into something bigger. The visual style is very basic – it’s black and white. We took this basic approach to telling a detective story.

This interview will be continued Swamp Media Group discusses release of Space Detective film part two. Follow the Swamp Media Group on Twitter or visit the Swamp Media Group website to learn more their current projects and upcoming productions. I want to thank the Swamp Media group for generously sharing the photos used in this post.

Thank you for taking the time to read this interview. If you enjoyed it, you may also enjoy:

If you’ve found value here and think it would benefit others, please share it and leave a comment. To receive all of the most up to date content from the Big Words Blog Site, subscribe using the subscription box in the right hand column in this post and throughout this site. Lastly follow me on Twitter at @BWArePowerful, on Instagram at @anwaryusef 76, and at the Big Words Blog Site Facebook page. While my main areas of focus are Education, STEM, and Financial Literacy, there are other blogs/sites I endorse which can be found on that particular page of my site.

On the shoulders of giants

20161119_193757 From November 18-20, the Friends of Arlington’s David M. Brown Planetarium hosted their third weekend of programming for the 2016-17 school year titled, “On the Shoulders of Giants”. The weekend was dedicated to the most notable astronomers in the 20th Century, and their contributions to science. As per usual the weekend featured a stellar lineup of digital shows in addition to an interactive panel discussion highlighting scientists and astronomers who laid the groundwork for modern astronomy and space exploration.

On Friday November 18, there were viewings of the full dome shows Two Small Pieces of Glass and Cosmos: Harmony of Worlds. On Saturday November 19, there was a viewing of the full dome show Natural Selection followed by a panel discussion titled, “On the Shoulders of Giants”. On Sunday November 20, there were showings of the full dome shows Astronaut, and Accidental Astronauts.

Saturday’s discussion featured three very notable and knowledgeable speakers in the world of astronomy. The discussion was started by Dr. Seth-Ann Howard who previously gave a talk at a Friends’ weekend titled, “4000 Years of Women in Science”. She was followed by retired NASA scientist Steven Dick, and David DaVorkin who serves as a curator at the Smithsonian National Air & Space museum. The panel’s discussion involved a host of visual images and simulations and was a “Who’s Who” of the astronomy world highlighting its most notable pioneers and their contributions to the field. Some of the names included:

· Cecelia Payne- Discovered what stars are comprised of in terms of chemistry;

· Bertil Linblad- Discovered how the Milky Way rotates;

· Karly Jansky- Detected radio signals from the Milky Way;

· Joceylyn Bell- Discovered Pulsars;

· Percival Lowell- Discovered the canals on Mars and;

· George Elory Hale- Built the largest telescopes of his time.

20161119_210154 Some of the more well-known names often used in entertainment world’s references to science were also mentioned. Albert Einstein is frequently referred to in Science Fiction media for his Law of Relativity, and has been portrayed in various TV shows and movies. Edwin Hubble had a telescope named after him. Carl Sagan who is most known the TV series Cosmos, was also a writer (Contact which was adapted into a film), in addition to his research in astronomy, cosmology, astrophysics and astrobiology. The interactive discussion was followed by a question and answer session from the audience.

The Friends will host special events at the David M. Brown Planetarium one weekend every month until the end of the school year. Each weekend will be geared towards increasing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education/awareness for all ages and will feature a specific theme. For more information, visit the Friends’ website. The theme for December’s weekend will be, “Finding the Christmas Star”.

Chris Brown discusses true stewardship and financial peace

Around 2012, two friends introduced me to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University – a faith based curriculum for managing one’s finances and achieving financial security and stability. I had heard of Dave Ramsey before and knew that he had a radio show, and maybe had written some books. I admittedly was suspicious that it was potentially another Multi-Level Network Marketing business proposal.

It turned out to be something very different, and four years later it has changed my own finances and life, and I also help out with the Financial Peace Ministry at the Alfred Street Baptist Church. The following interview was published on the Examiner shortly after Dave Ramsey’s Washington, DC Smart Money Tour stop in the spring of 2016. There I met Chris Brown who took the stage along with Dave that night, and was subsequently granted an interview.

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On April 21, 2016, talk show host Dave Ramsey and his team visited Washington DC for one of his many Smart Money Tour stops. That evening, Ramsey shared the stage with a member of his team, Chris Brown. This Chris Brown, however, is not the controversial recording artist who shares the same name as they joked that night, but instead he is the host of the True Stewardship talk show. Shortly after the tour stop Chris granted an interview to talk about his background, his True Stewardship talk show, and Financial Peace.

Anwar Dunbar: Hello Chris. We met briefly just after the Washington DC tour stop when you took the time out to talk to all of the current and prospective Financial Peace University (FPU) coordinators in the audience. I really appreciate the opportunity to follow up with you and talk a little bit more.

Just a little bit about me for some context here. I’m a coordinator in the Financial Peace Ministry at the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, VA. When I start with a group these days, as part of my personal story, I tell them first and foremost that I have a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Michigan. I share that at one point in my life I thought being a “Dr.” would be the key to having a good comfortable life.

In the sciences, a Ph.D. typically commands a significant income. It wasn’t until after I completed my doctorate, got my first job and made some money mistakes that I realized the degree by itself, while definitely an accomplishment, didn’t put me where I wanted to be in life. There were a lot of aspects to the financial world and money that I just didn’t understand, and several lessons that I hadn’t been taught.

At the end of the DC Tour Stop, you took some time to acknowledge the FPU coordinators in the audience. Did you start off as a coordinator yourself? How did you get to your current position where you’re working with Dave Ramsey and hosting your own talk show?

Chris Brown: Yes, I remember meeting you. Well, I think it was important that I had a background in Financial Peace University, and whether or not I was a coordinator or had been to a class, I think that it’s important that whenever you’re going to be representing a philosophy and a way of life – you’ve got to know that you’re behind it and living out what you say. So I think that’s important.

Whether or not I was a coordinator, I don’t think that would’ve mattered. I’ve never personally coordinated a class. I’ve been in several of them. I’ve actually led at a church and my role was to make sure that we had several coordinators and that they felt equipped. So for me, I went from attending a couple of Financial Peace classes to making sure that several of them happened at my church. I kind of skipped over the coordinator piece.

AD: So you must of have distinguished yourself in such a way that you got to meet and work with Dave Ramsey. How did that all come about?

CB: Yes. I view my role at Dave Ramsey Solutions not as a platform thing. It’s more of a calling. We lead out, Dave and myself in particular, with our mistakes, not necessarily as experts. It’s more of a vulnerability of saying we have been successful, but more than that what people are actually relating to is that we have failed, and that’s what people are resonating with the most. We’ve applied biblical principles and they’ve worked, and we’ve applied non-biblical principles and they haven’t worked. And so we’ve seen both worlds, so we lead out with our vulnerabilities and our huge mistakes.

AD: How long have you been doing your True Stewardship talk show? When did that start?

CB: It’s been about a year. Dave has always had a passion for stewardship which is managing God’s blessing, God’s way for God’s glory. It’s deeper than just financial principals, the Xs and Os, and the mathematics. It’s more of we’ve been entrusted with resources, our time and our talents. And how do we manage those things for those who have lived by faith as believers? And we wanted to make sure that we ministered to that particular demographic.

Dave is obviously serving everybody whether you’re a person of faith for not. But he wanted to make sure that we had a branch of our organization that just ministered to those people of faith, and broke down what the Bible says about money. There are 2,350 verses in the Bible all about how to handle wealth and possessions. We want listeners to not only be educated, but empowered, and that they feel a little bit of encouragement and hope wherever they find themselves in their stewardship financial journey – when they apply themselves they can find themselves being successful on the other side.

It’s a twenty-five minute show, and just like Dave’s it’s a call-in show. Dave Ramsey has a call-in show Monday thru Friday. It’s a three-hour call in show in 550 plus markets around the country. Mine is a twenty-five minute show. It’s also call-in. I occasionally have a guest, or I occasionally do a full teaching myself, but it’s on Monday thru Friday, as well in 20 different markets and both of us have podcasts that are associated with the show, and also we stream on our websites.

AD: With so many financial gurus out there with their own systems for wealth building, do you find that some people perceive Financial Peace University to be a hustle or is it perceived the way you guys intend it to be?

CB: I’ve never really thought about it that way because we’re really focused in on what we’re trying to do. We like to say that we’re on a crusade. We’re really trying to enhance a movement that’s already started so we’re more focused in on what we’re doing. I don’t know about what all of the other gurus are doing. I don’t know if there are any, if they’re twisted or if they’re shady. I’m actually not familiar with any of that, but I do know that we have a very loyal tribe, and I also know that there are a lot of results, and people will follow where there are a lot of results.

Over the last twenty years there have been over four million people who have gone through this class and have experienced an average $8,000 swing in their finances in just the first 90 days. And so for around $100 for you to enroll in Financial Peace University and have a kit and some resources, and a book and all of that kind of stuff – after 90 days to have an $8,000 swing in your finances, for me the value of that is so big. There’s never been a question about the value added to society. So I really feel that way. We give away a bunch of stuff for free on our websites and podcasts and radio shows. It’s our way to serve the community.

AD: From your testimony at the tour stop, it sounds as you were pretty deep into the real estate investing world and experienced a lot of success, which is a lot of further than I ever got. I did some learning, but never got any deals done. Based upon your experience, once someone’s life becomes “Financially Peaceful”, would you recommend that arena for someone else? Once you get out to Baby Steps Five and Six and you’ve got money in the bank and no debt; you’ve got your 15% retirement savings going, and you’re saving for your kid’s college funds, would you recommend someone going into the real estate investing arena to acquire properties, flipping homes, and similar things?

CB: Let me just say that investing in real estate is great. So there are a couple of factors. First you have to make sure that you’re already diversified. What we teach in Baby Step Four, which starts getting into investing, is to start with 15% of your household income going towards long-term investments – things with tax advantages.

You want to think long-term so you want to make sure you’re diversified: mutual funds, 401-Ks, Roth IRAs, 403-Bs, 457s, those kinds of things first. Then you’re going to go to Baby Steps Five and Six; pay off your primary mortgage first – that primary has to be paid off first, and then you can get into rental homes, flipping homes, but only with cash so you’re not borrowing anything for that to happen.

So let’s say you go out and buy a $100,000 house with cash and two and a half years later you sell it for $175,000 – that’s really good. You get cash, you use that $175,000 and then you go buy two properties for $70,000 each, and then clean them all up, and then two years later you sell them both for $200,000 each, or $150,000, whatever it is, but it’s always with cash. You also want to buy investment properties where you have a local intelligence where you are, and where you can feel it. You don’t ever want be a landlord if you’re living out of town. You want to do it in your town.

AD: As a literacy Examiner, from time to time I’ve written about money, not telling people what to do or trying to sound judgmental myself, because I’m not rich and have made my share of money mistakes. However, I think the principles of Financial Peace University and money lessons in general are important to talk about. With the exception of one or two pieces I’ve written, many of my financial articles have gotten little to moderate reaction. Have you found money to be a sensitive topic in your experience, and if so, why do you think that is?

CB: I’ve personally seen more traction on articles, and videos and teachings when they have a personal, emotional or a relational component in them. So it’s not really just about the facts because we live in Google society where you can look up the information. You need the inspiration with the information – some kind of personal or vulnerable moment whenever you’re explaining anything financially or some kind of personal anecdote. Those pieces tend to be shared and liked a little more often because, yes you’re right, it’s a sensitive topic.

It’s taboo to talk about money and there are lots of opinions out there and nobody can argue with your experience. For me, I deal with the faith-based side and on the faith-based side you can’t argue with the scriptures. So I lead out with the scriptures and my experience and that’s a lot better than if I do a cold article that says, “Here are the three steps to budgeting”. You can find that stuff on a lot of different websites, but what you can’t find is your story.

AD: You’re right, I wrote a piece called, The Difference Between Being Cheap and Frugal, and it got a lot reaction I think first because I told a story with it in a humorous way, and also because it’s something a lot of people have been personally faced with.

When you were coming up, did your folks talk to you about a lot of this stuff or did you have to find it all out on your own?

CB: I have an interesting story. This is pretty cool. I did not have a dad growing up. I actually had four fathers who were all violent and we were always running away from them, from abuse shelter to abuse shelter. So I didn’t have a dad and my Mom, because she was a single, Mom was always working three jobs and was never home. So I really raised myself, but I say that liberally because I’d be sitting in an apartment with no food and no furniture for days at a time completely bored stiff, but the one thing I did have was my Yellow Sony Walkman; if you remember from all the way back in the day before the Sony Discman.

I was listening to the radio and I was never a really big music guy at the ages of 11, 12 and 13 years old. I was always more intrigued by learning because to that point, I had just been sitting around the house by myself and bored, and we didn’t really have TV and cable or anything like that, so I was just intrigued by things that would get me to think. So I would listen to guys like: Charles Stanley, James Dobson and Larry Burkett, and then later on Dave Ramsey.

Pretty much the radio raised me. I mixed that in with some pastors, some teachers and coaches – there ended up being some bosses later on that really walked me through life and taught me these principles. Then I found out about Financial Peace University which made it more formalized. But for me, I was never taught this stuff other than listening to the radio, and no one ever sat me down in a formal setting and taught me these things. For me it just clicked and as soon as I knew that it was God’s way of handling money, it made sense to me.

I actually didn’t make a lot of money mistakes in middle school, high school or college. I did great financially starting off as an adult. I was the man. I was rocking and thinking that what I was doing at the time really worked. And then one day I decided I was going to get cocky. I was flipping homes and I said, ‘Why am I flipping homes one at a time? This is great. This is fun. This is awesome. I’ll flip eight at a time. I’ll go borrow a million dollars and I’m going to expedite this thing. I’m going to get rich quick.’

The year was 2007 (the start of the bursting of the housing bubble) and for the next 36 months I couldn’t put a renter in any of my properties and I couldn’t sell any of them, so I was paying out $10,000 a month on vacant homes all of the way to January 2011 when I had to walk into a filled courtroom, look a Trustee in the eye and I had to file bankruptcy. So it was a major fall because of one month of getting greedy and getting cocky. So I was never taught, but I learned more from that big mistake than I learned all of the rest of the time. I will never go borrow again, not even for a house. I will never borrow money again period.

AD: So at the DC Smart Money Tour stop you told us the funny story about your sons and the garage door. As an education writer and a science tutor, I’m always fascinated by what resources some kids have access to early in their lives versus others, because what you learn at a young age can greatly impact your life as an adult. Are these lessons you’re going to teach them gradually? Or are you going to sit them down one day and say, “Okay guys, we’re going to sit down and watch Financial Peace University today and then we’re going to debrief afterwards”? How are you planning to do that?

CB: The best thing I can do is teach them the world view and the heart behind good financial management. I don’t want to manage their behavior, I want to manage their heart and so every day from the time they’ve been able to retain a thought – so four, five, and maybe six years old – anytime anything happens with relationships or anything else, there’s a great teaching opportunity to say, ‘That relationship, that brother of yours, God has put that relationship in your life trusting you to make sure you handle that relationship well and for His glory.’ And they’re not going to get it right away, but I’m planting seeds all of the way throughout their childhood.

Now as far as formal guidance, they’re already getting that. They actually love it because kids are sponges. We have what we call Financial Peace Junior. It’s a great curriculum and age appropriate for my kids and they actually love it. They’ve got this savings jar and it’s got three different compartments where you: give, save, and spend.

They have a chore chart where they get commissions for their chores. Two of my three have bank accounts where they save and we go out to the mall and they save their saving part, give their giving part, and spend their spending part. So it’s been great and when its time they’ll go to the next curriculum for middle-schoolers and high schoolers; Generation Change and then Financial Peace University. I don’t ever want to make them do anything. I want them to want to, and I’m never going to force them.

I think the only thing I would do if they were rebellious and looking to get married at 23 years old, I think about six months before they got married, if they hadn’t done it yet, I would probably bribe them to make sure they’ve got it in their brain first. I’d say, ‘I’ll give you $200 to watch this class just so that I know that you did,’ and just so that I know that I equipped them on my side as a parent. I would say, ‘You’ve got to listen to this. This is going to save you thousands and thousands of dollars, maybe even millions if you sit down and watch this.’ So I would make sure that before they got married they did it, but I don’t think I’m going to have that problem so far.

AD: And once again Chris, when does your show come on? You have a livestream broadcast right?

CB: In DC we’re on at 3:30 pm on 780 AM-WAVA. And, of course, we’re on in 20 different markets at all different times from noon to 8 pm depending on the market all of the way from Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Washington DC, Detroit, all over the place. We also have iTunes podcasts and we’re on Google Play and we’re also at Stewardship.com. So there are lots of different places people can connect with us.

AD: Well Chris, those are all of the questions that I have.

CB: Thank you, Anwar, we appreciate all of your work.

A special thanks for this interview goes out to: Chris Brown, Dave Ramsey Solutions, to the Alfred Street Baptist Church, and finally to Tommy and Erica Walker, founders of the Financial Peace University Ministry at the Alfred Street Baptist Church.

Thank you for taking the time out to read this post. If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy:

• The difference between being cheap and frugal
• We should’ve bought Facebook and Bitcoin stock: An investing story
• Your net worth, your gross salary and what they mean
• Simone Griffin discusses homeownership and the African American community part one (also parts two and three)
• Mother’s Day 2017: one of my mother’s greatest gifts, getting engaged and avoiding my own personal fiscal cliff
• Father’s Day 2017: reflections on some of Dad’s money and life lessons

If you’ve found value here and think it would benefit others, please share it and or leave a comment. To receive all of the most up to date content from the Big Words Blog Site, subscribe using the subscription box in the right hand column in this post and throughout the site. Please visit my YouTube channel entitled, Big Discussions76. Lastly follow me on Twitter at @BWArePowerful, on Instagram at @anwaryusef76 and at the Big Words Blog Site Facebook page. While my main areas of focus are Education, STEM and Financial Literacy, there are other blog/sites I endorse which can be found on that particular page of my site.

Challenging Misconceptions And Stereotypes In Academic Achievement

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The following piece was my second piece published on the Examiner back in November of 2012. It was based upon an actual conversation between me and my father during my youth growing up on the Buffalo’s east side. Early on I developed misconceptions and stereotypes about peers from various ethnic groups and what they were and were not good at – Asians in particular.

My father challenged those stereotypes which is something that empowered me later on in life and helped change my academic paradigm and world view. The visual for this piece is a playground for young children, because at a young age before we get socialized and develop racial biases and ideas, we all start off with the same potential to learn and achieve. It’s what happens to us as we grow up in our unique environments that determine how our lives turn out, our successes, our achievements, and our failures.

* * *

“Those Asian kids are smarter than everyone else and they’re on the honor roll every quarter,” the son said to his father. His statement was partially true. At his school there were students of Asian descent who were on the honor roll every quarter and consistently had grade point averages of 90% or greater.

He was an average student from the inner city. Like many young people, his views of the world were shaped by what he saw in his community, his peers, the media and ignorance. His older brother and his best friend, both of whom he spent most of his time with, were not honor roll students either.

The father challenged his son’s statement saying, “They’re not necessarily smarter than you; they just spend more time in their books than you do consistently after school every week.”

“A study showed that Asian students study an average of 12 hours a week or more after school. For Caucasian students the number is six hours, and for African American and Latino students the number is four hours,” the father said citing a study he had read. The study suggested that academic performance was a function of time invested, not the intelligence of one race over another.

The conversation changed the son’s educational paradigms allowing him to become an honor roll student himself later on. This true story demonstrates the importance of both parenting and mentoring. With limited experience and wisdom, young people don’t always understand the world around them and can make conclusions that aren’t accurate.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People the late Stephen Covey describes paradigms as mental road maps that guide our behaviors. These paradigms direct us and tell us how to react in certain situations. Paradigms largely influence perceptions of academic achievement.

Dr. Ralph G. Perrino, of the Northern Virginia Tutoring Service, describes in The Socialization Process and Its Impact on Children and Learning, that a student’s academic performance is influenced by family, school, peers, mass media, public opinion, work, volunteer groups and religion/spirituality. In summary, the expectations and culture students are exposed to, affects their performance.

The counties in northern Virginia, for example, are inhabited by families with highly educated parents. “These parents are willing to invest their financial resources to make sure their children do well and go to college,” said Dr. Perrino. The 90% college matriculation rate in these counties is thus a function of values and resources, and not necessarily an innate superior ability over other students such as those within the neighboring District of Columbia.

In Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol argues that the quality of education available in any community is strongly affected by economics and politics. These two factors directly impact not only educational and neighborhood environments, but also the culture, expectations and long term goals of the parents and children within communities.

Circling back to the opening of this article, at the University of Michigan and similar research institutions, a trend started in the early 21^st Century. Many of the research labs, particularly in the biomedical sciences, were employing large populations of Asian scientists.

It wasn’t magic though. A professor noted that these scientists were “extremely hardworking, dedicated, and not concerned with things that their American counterparts are preoccupied with things such as having social lives and lots of leisure time.”

“Not everyone in China is smart. Similar to America, there are a lot of people who aren’t smart and successful,” said Dr. Cheng Fang, a talented scientist from China, discussing the stereotypes about his people and his country. Simply put, some of China’s most motivated and successful families come to the United States seeking the opportunities for advancement that this country has to offer, many in the sciences, and those are the ones that are seen most often.

Interestingly, Cheng further revealed that there are no second chances in China academically. In the Asian countries if you don’t excel early in school, numerous doors and opportunities permanently slam shut. In the United States you can under achieve in the lower grade levels and still positively make something of yourself through higher education or other avenues such as the military, entrepreneurship or entertainment.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post. If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy:

• The benefits and challenges of using articulate speech
• Challenging misconceptions and stereotypes in class, household income, wealth and privilege
• Your net worth, your gross salary and what they mean
• We should’ve bought Facebook and Bitcoin stock: An investing story
• Who will benefit from Apple’s $350 billion investment?

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Your personal information and privacy will be protected. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. Regards.

The Difference Between Being Cheap and Frugal

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“Hell yeah I’m cheap and proud of it too. I want to save every single penny that I can! I don’t mind getting perfectly good stuff for free either. My wife’s family frequently gets rid of really good stuff, and I willingly take it.”

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The following piece was originally published on the Examiner back in December of 2013, and actually turned out to be one of my most popular compositions. It visited something very emotional; one’s money management and how it is perceived by others – families, friends, significant others, etc. It discusses how two groups of people are classified in terms of their money management; those who are cheap and those who are frugal.

It was in part inspired by the late Deborah Aguiar-Vélez, founder of Escuchame who came to my job and gave a discussion about wealth building. Prior to publishing this piece she granted me permission to use a slide from her talk as the accompanying visual for this article. Lastly it falls under my “Financial Literacy” principle.

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“The difference between envy and jealousy Anwar is that there is no malice attached to envy,” my mentor and friend Mark told me in a recent meeting. “When someone is jealous of you, you have something that they want which upsets them and they will go to great lengths to make sure you don’t have it anymore or don’t even get it in the first place. They may even go as far as to cause you harm. Envy is simply when someone wishes they had what you have with no malice attached. Envy and jealousy are two different words that most people confuse.”

Mark and I frequently have discussions like this spanning numerous areas/topics. This one reminded me of another confusion of words; the definitions of cheap and frugal, two very important concepts in the worlds of financial literacy and intelligence, and thus the basis of this article.

“Hell yeah I’m cheap and proud of it too. I want to save every single penny that I can,” a coworker named Hardy said smiling during a random conversation at work a couple of years ago. “I don’t mind getting perfectly good stuff for free either. My wife’s family frequently gets rid of really good stuff, and I willingly take it.”

“You’re proud of being cheap?” was my question to Hardy after hearing him revel in his self-diagnosis. Cheap was not a flattering word in my vernacular. The word had recently been pinned on me by a girlfriend leaving me feeling snake bitten and sickened by just hearing someone say it. This conversation with Hardy gave me a new perspective on the matter and actually made me laugh at the word.

Another word that was assigned to me years ago by another female during graduate school was frugal, which is actually an important attribute to have when you are in school but also later in life. It wasn’t exactly clear to me at that point what that word meant as my behavior was simply the recapitulation of the spending habits of my mother and father who themselves were frugal.

During Hispanic Heritage Month almost a year after my discussion with Hardy, entrepreneur Deborah Aguiar-Vélez, owner and founder of the company Escuchame visited my job and gave a really good seminar on wealth building. Much of her talk discussed sound financial decision making, living within one’s means and saving money which sound like common sense ideas but for many people are not. Interestingly a couple of her slides described the differences between being frugal and being cheap.

Mrs. Vélez eloquently described being frugal as:

Living within your means
Careful management of anything valuable which expends nothing unnecessarily, and applies what is used to a profitable purpose
Finding ways to save money
A conscious decision and you are therefore in control of your actions towards a goal

That slide was followed up with a description of what frugal is not:

Cheapness
Meanness
Bizarre behavior
Suffering
Difficult

Her talk helped me to see that there is in fact nothing wrong with being frugal, and re-enforced why it’s a good idea to be this way versus the alternatives; impulsive, frivolous and wasteful. My discussions with Hardy described above and Mrs. Velez’s seminar also reminded me that labels and titles that we assign to each other are often subject to one’s point of view.

Though this post was written partially in a humorous way, these are important and serious lessons for everyone, especially in our society which actively promotes consumerism to all economic classes poor and rich, and attaches self-worth to material objects and luxuries of all kinds.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

The benefits and challenges of using articulate speech

articulate-speech The following article was my inaugural submission for the Examiner back in November of 2012, and it’s very appropriate for my inaugural post on the Big Words Blog Site. It hit upon one of the main themes of this site; the use of articulate speech. One of the major rules for contributing to the Examiner was not writing in the first person point of view, something the publication policed very closely. Hence in the piece, I’m not referring to myself directly.

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“Why do you use those big words all of the time?” a middle school student was asked by his classmates in the late 1980s. It was a diverse school, but these particular students were from Buffalo’s East side which, for the most part, consisted of African American families.

Articulate speech, and big words were normal in his home. Both of his parents were college educated. His mother encouraged learning professional skills such as using proper typing techniques, though the importance of such skills were not well understood at the time by her sons. There were also plenty of books to read in the house. Public speaking was also encouraged at Sunday School every week at church.

Using big words helped him to earn his Ph.D. from a world renowned university. They allowed him to make very technical presentations, publish research articles, and to present himself well on job interviews.

As a scientist within the federal government, he made decisions that affected the health of the entire United States population. Articulate speech, the use of big words, and proper grammar were a part of his job performance; whether it was setting new policies, preparing documents, making presentations, and even collaborating with colleagues in foreign nations.

Ultimately being a major part of his success, his articulate speech caused difficulties throughout his life, particularly as a youth where it made him stand out from his peers, causing him to be perceived as different. He later found that being different was actually okay. As an adult, people continued to form opinions about him, positive or negative, based upon the way that he spoke. Nevertheless, his articulate speech ultimately opened several doors for him as he grew older.

The United States faces several challenges in the 21st century, one being the competition with other countries in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). A strong command of the English language is key for success in these fields. Asia’s brightest scientists, for example, spend considerable time and energy learning the English language in order to establish their careers in the United States.

Speaking and writing often go hand in hand. In his book, Inside American Education, Thomas Sowell writes that the educational system in the United States needs to get back to the basics of teaching children how to read, write and how to do mathematics. The late Dr. Joseph Fail, Jr., of Johnson C. Smith University, published numerous articles encouraging students to be able to write effectively, particularly students of color.

In some communities speaking articulately is viewed as speaking proper or “white”. It also represents not having “street credibility”, which can be very important at an early age and even in adulthood, depending upon the social circle. This can be devastating for young people, ultimately locking them out of opportunities later in life.

In the Rich Dad Poor Dad series by Robert Kiyosaki, several compelling arguments are made for expanding one’s vocabulary, and ultimately speaking correctly. Even though financial literacy is the focus of the book, the importance of words is discussed as well. Robert eloquently describes words as important tools that unlock doors to life’s multiple possibilities.

Young people (and adults) need encouragement to the extent that a large vocabulary and articulate speech are valuable assets. They need affirmations that it is okay to read books and to speak well, even though it may make them feel different than their peers. They need confirmation that having a strong command of the English language is important in that it creates opportunities, opens doors, and builds bridges no matter what the professional field or discipline.

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