real estate mogul has full on double rainbow reading twilight
July 10, 2010 2:22 PM   Subscribe

Real-Estate Tycoon Deconstructs 'Twilight' "Barrack describes a lonely evening on a yacht in Turkey after a cancelled business meeting. In the yacht, Mr. Barrack writes, he came upon a book on which 'were written the words that strike terror in the hearts of every macho, red-blooded male... TWILIGHT'. He goes on..."
posted by kliuless (32 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
I am a woman and I will never read these books.
posted by emhutchinson at 2:32 PM on July 10, 2010 [6 favorites]


Women don’t just read these books, they live them. They become each paragraph.

Oh my God THIS GUY. One of those that think about women the way big-game hunters think about charismatic megafauna. Always praising them, paying good money to learn about them and to buy the best equipment for them, even saying they try to "think like them" -- but it's all just to get them stuffed and mounted.

On the other hand, he did read a book, which was time not actively devoted to ruining somebody's life in one form or fashion, so that's good.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:32 PM on July 10, 2010 [35 favorites]


Desperately macho isn't macho at all.
posted by ao4047 at 2:35 PM on July 10, 2010 [3 favorites]


You just know that email got forwarded around by his employees, and possibly printed up and posted anonymously on the break room bulletin board.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:37 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]


Desperately macho isn't macho at all.

Wanna fight about it?!
posted by joe lisboa at 2:43 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]


I read the books. They're vapid, not genius. Even Dan Brown (shiver) has more talent than Stephanie Meyer. He really needs to read better authors.
posted by arcticseal at 2:50 PM on July 10, 2010 [3 favorites]


I hadn't seen a picture of Double Rainbow Guy before.
I had, but he was English and went by the nom de guerre Giant Haystacks. There's some sort of cosmic convergence afoot reanimating the hirsute men mountains of yore, and I don't like 'e.
posted by Abiezer at 2:52 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]


I read the books. They're vapid, not genius. Even Dan Brown (shiver) has more talent than Stephanie Meyer. He really needs to read better authors.

He isn't saying "What a book!". He's saying "I took a thing I mocked and hated reflexively, I opened myself up to trying to understand it, and it was rewarding."

I don't care who does it, or what new point of view they decide to look like, but more like this please.
posted by jragon at 2:53 PM on July 10, 2010 [11 favorites]


*look through*
posted by jragon at 2:55 PM on July 10, 2010


Also, the WSJ keeps getting stupider under Murdoch ownership.

But definitely better at link whoring.
posted by delmoi at 2:56 PM on July 10, 2010


Hmm, this would be pretty stupid as an OpEd or something, but actually this is a leaked email he sent to his staff. So I guess we're expected to laugh at him, or something. Which makes this slightly less of black mark on the WSJ's taste. But more of a black mark on their reputation for, like, not being the same thing as a gawker blog.

(in fact this is a "WSJ Blog")
posted by delmoi at 2:59 PM on July 10, 2010


jragon nails it. I'm glad he and took the lesson of learning something new to heart so much so that he encourages his employees to do the same.
posted by dabitch at 3:00 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]


After reading his memo to his employees methinks he might have had a bit too much weed, hash or LSD that evening at the yacht in Turkish waters!
posted by ericb at 3:02 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]


*on the yacht ...*
posted by ericb at 3:05 PM on July 10, 2010


He and Double Rainbow Guy should get together and P-A-R-T-A-Y!
posted by ericb at 3:06 PM on July 10, 2010


For some reason I parsed this title as "Railroad tycoon deconstructs Twilight". And then started imagining an Atlas Shrugged/Twilight crossover.
posted by qvantamon at 3:12 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]


And now I'm thinking about making a Bella-and-Edward theme park in Rollercoaster Tycoon.
posted by subbes at 3:24 PM on July 10, 2010


Are you TEAM REARDEN or TEAM GALT?
posted by hattifattener at 3:27 PM on July 10, 2010 [9 favorites]


I like the whole "people choose the monsters they fear" theory : Ann Rice makes vampires into a metaphor for selling out. Werewolves are often used as a metaphor for jumping the couch. And zombies are big time since they capture our fear growing old & decay. Meyer's Twilight translates the victorian era fear of sex that originally made the vampire into unified fear of sex and choices. Yes, the victorians were dysfunctional lot, but this sounds worse.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:29 PM on July 10, 2010


I get the feeling from reading the email that working for this guy would alternately be the most exciting and terrifying thing in the world, based on whims and minor atmospheric shifts that no one could anticipate or ever possibly control.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:36 PM on July 10, 2010 [4 favorites]


some kind of unholy Obama/Edward Cullen slashfic.

If only!
posted by dersins at 3:38 PM on July 10, 2010


I donno, he sounds like any other CEO to me. ;)
posted by jeffburdges at 3:39 PM on July 10, 2010


You are the A Team and I am deeply grateful and proud of what all of you have “teamed” to our reality.

I made arrangements to have a bit of yacht time with them. When the meeting got cancelled I did the unthinkable for me, have a little down time all to myself. I boarded the gorgeous but stark Turkish Gulet right as the sun was setting.


Along with the lessons in genius that he's taken from Stephanie Meyer, he could use some basic writing lessons.
posted by blucevalo at 4:16 PM on July 10, 2010


Move your cheese!!!!
posted by speicus at 4:53 PM on July 10, 2010 [3 favorites]


Anyone offering advice who opens with "So I was sitting on my yacht near Turkey and" can go fuck themselves.
posted by basicchannel at 5:00 PM on July 10, 2010 [13 favorites]


I think it mostly illustrates that even highly successful and communicative people can struggle to relate personal emotional breakthroughs. I read this hoping it would inspire me to read the books, unfortunately it hasn't.
posted by meinvt at 5:11 PM on July 10, 2010


* « Previous Real Estate News: Mortgage Rates Hit New Low *
posted by sneebler at 6:39 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]


Book plumbs the depths of his soul. Doesn't need waterwings.
posted by Trochanter at 8:51 PM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]


He's right, though. The character (non)-description technique of Twilight is a repeatable process. I've been wondering when a raft of such extremely easily reader-insertable fiction, essentially book-based sexual role-playing games for a primarily female readership, will arrive on bookstore shelves.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 11:17 PM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]


What I realized is the genius of Stephanie was that she knew that by keeping the character generic, any and every woman could climb inside and picture herself in Bella’s shoes.

Curiously, I've read that the success of Mills and Boon is based on describing the protagonist and her feelings in great detail while keeping the male love interest shadowy, little more than a standard generic token of masculine desirability.
posted by Phanx at 3:01 AM on July 11, 2010


Also:

I feel renewed and refreshed, having gotten out of my comfort zone and experiencing something so totally out of my normal realm. I don’t get it…. but I feel it. Taking the agenda-less time to absorb a point of view that I had ignored while loved ones around me relished in it, was an oasis for my soul. Having been unwilling to investigate the cause of such a startling movement until now was ignorant.

I still, however, could not be arsed to get the author's name right.
posted by Phanx at 3:03 AM on July 11, 2010


I donno, he sounds like any other CEO to me. ;)

There's a lot in that. (Although I'd drop my chip butty if a similar memo leaked from Apple or Microsoft.)

No doubt this gentleman's life is led in questionable taste, and no doubt that he doesn't give a damn. You don't get to be CEO in that line of work by giving a damn what others think, unless they're the feds. So, no doubt that this is a genuine report of a genuine reaction someone of power and influence had to something they weren't expecting. I like those, even when I don't like what they say, and it's good to get something fun like that that is almost entirely devoid of irony.

I would expect, however, that this primal scream of epiphany will have zero effect in the long term, on him or anyone in his employ. It's an entertaining insight into the inner world of the alpha male, one who has a good analytical mind and uses it widely (for someone who probably doesn't read a lot of fiction, that was a good first cut on characterisation), but it surely wasn't dropping acid and touching the mind of God.
posted by Devonian at 6:39 AM on July 11, 2010


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