Seal Boy

A special congratulations to our Robin Joseph and his first published work, Seal Boy. It's always a milestone when an artist gets their first published work. In classic Robin style he was embarrassed to show his work, but I'm not so here it is.

O' Canada - #$@%!

A rant about my country.

House of Cool has a show that has Royal Canadian Mounted Police in it. As it turns out, the RCMP or Mounties own the rights to their image. We observed this right, so we sent them a script and designs for them to review. In classic Canadian style our request was denied but very politely.

As this denial sunk in I became very angry. The idea that a Canadian company could not use an iconic symbol of Canada but any number of productions outside Canada use the Mounties with impunity is unfair and completely ridiculous. It would be like the Americans clamping down on Uncle Sam or the Statue of Liberty to other Americans. What's next? The Canadian government should limit the use of the maple leaf because it appears on the flag. They might as well copyright the colour red while they're at it.

Arm And A Leg

One thing the world is never short of: A good expensive lawyer. Everyone knows the, “this guy will charge you an arm and a leg, but he’s really good” lawyer. Every lawyer is really good if you don’t know any better.

So it was refreshing when we met Suzie from SDW Venture Law (which incidentally also boasts her initials on the firm’s name – only good lawyers can get away with that). She is one of those invaluable lawyers who understand the constraints of start up business and doesn’t have the punch clock ticking the minute you walk in the door. A good lawyer can help a company in business development, financing options and the always dreaded, contractual agreement negotiations. A good lawyer understands helping a company grow will only lead to more legal work for the law firm. Sometimes an investment of time is worth more then sending a huge bill for each email sent to and from your lawyer.

If anyone is ever looking for a good lawyer check out: www.venturelaw.blogspot.com. SDW Venture law has an excellent program for start up business’ to access a number of top lawyers on a variety of business related topics. It’s called the Venture Law Line; really cool concept to help business' of all sizes.

Revisions

How to deal with revisions over revisions over tweaking of half-revisions? My advice to me: "Get on with it."