"The Vampires Are Coming, but Only After Months of Warnings"

I read about this new show with a mixture of feelings. The primary one was "How cool Alan Ball took (well took is the wrong word clearly) my idea of vampires trying to fit in society and made a HBO series out of it."

The next was "very cool marketing campaign! I wish i thought of it, and wouldn't it be fun to do that kind of advertising work? I never should have left the business!"

Feelings of ingratitude washed over me.

But then I looked at the title (also the subject of this email), which is funny.

"The Vampires Are Coming, but Only After Months of Warnings"

Usually vampires prefer to be anonymous and sneak up on you. but "months of warnings" refers to the folks at HBO are spending lots of money to "warn" you - and began to think about how advertising is - as we know

"trying to get people to do stuff"

I am dabbling in that with my youtube videos (will share them in the future with you but still experimenting now), how to package things to get more interest from folks, but I really don't want to do that any more - and I think if you don't want to convince people or feel the need to convince people of anything that is great from a Buddhist perspective, but not so great for a filmmaker or marketer.

Eckhart Tolle, Genpo Roshi, Ken Wilber all those guys (especially the $%**^# who made up "The Secret") have to be focused on sales. Even if they have a great staff helping them, it has to effect them.

And sure, Genpo would never have come up with "big mind" and "shadow voices" and "the triangle" if he hadn't been driven by the ego - and he would say the "Ego keeps you meditation cushion" -

BUT my instincts are telling me once you put your face on the book cover, you invite the ego to take over the show and you are shooting your practice in the foot. maybe they have more objectivity and think (rightly or wrongly) they can more effectively observe the ego at work than others, but do I want to take that risk myself?

So I want to be creative without too much thought about popularity/ego - and when i do dabble with it I want to do so with a sense of humor and poking fun at it.

My point - an an insight pot gave me once (need to give credit where credit is due) - ego is fine but only if you can laugh at it as it tries to run the show. (or run the company that is you as Genpo analogizes)

once you start taking it and yourself too seriously, then you are back into illusion.

anyway, sorry for the diatribe, here is the link:
http://www.hbo.com/events/trueblood/

I am sure I will watch this on DVD one day and just like I am GRATEFUL for Genpo and his triangle concept , I will be glad ego drove the team to create and market this show so that I can get to watch.