
College dropout makes  $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek - peter123
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/18/AR2006011801434_pf.html
======
brandnewlow
This is a somewhat old article.

It's also very, very long.

It's also one of the greatest newspaper feature stories I've ever read. It was
passed around the writers' circles I was part of when the Post ran it years
ago.

Here's the gist (from memory):

1\. Guy has a gift for connecting with little kids.

2\. Guy has good sense of humor.

3\. Guy decides to do magic shows at pre-school birthday parties for a living.

4\. Guy targets the richest community of clients for his service.

5\. Guy figures out what people are charging for pre-school birthday party
magic shows and charges DOUBLE their price.

6\. Guy markets his shows by hanging out around shopping malls where parents
and kids wandered by, having fake conversations on his cell phone about non-
existent work.

7\. Guy works 10 birthday parties a weekend, charging $200 for a 30-minute
magic show.

8\. Parents feel guilty about dropping $200 on a 30-minute preschool magic
show, but the kids ADORE the guy's funny act and tricks that blow up in his
face. He's got a gift.

There's a great subplot about the magicians deep, dark secret, in fact it's
what prompted the Washington Post reporter to shadow the guy for a few months.
Parents were wondering why the magician kept showing up unshaven, with dark
circles under his eyes, and why his gear was so beat up if he was making so
much money.

I'll leave the surprises to those curious enough to read the whole thing.

~~~
decode
The author of the article also won the Pulitzer for writing this brilliant
piece about skill, art, and modern life:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/04...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html)

~~~
biohacker42
_... their son had strung rubber bands across his dresser drawers and was
replicating classical tunes by ear, moving drawers in and out to vary the
pitch._

Damn, I guess that answers the question: Would he still play music if he had
been born to an illiterate family in a desolate rural part of a third world
country? Yep, he still would.

~~~
h34t
Except many people in those parts are so malnourished that their minds don't
develop properly.

~~~
kragen
Or they die before reaching 5 years old.

------
akikuchi
I actually enjoy many of the posts about the creative (or at least somewhat
non-traditional) things people do as solo entrepreneurs. After reading the
entire article though, I do find it funny how this tagline was used to
position the article for the HN community. The article is actually much more
of a character study than a discussion of a business, and it takes a
significant change in content after the first thousand words.

~~~
dasil003
Brilliant article, brilliant HN positioning, brilliant _page partitioning_.
Best thing I've read on HN this year.

~~~
jibiki
The way the article totally changes course on the last page is brilliant. This
might be the only news article I've seen that used the hypertext format that
well.

~~~
palish
I always click 'print this article', then click my Readability bookmarklet (
<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/> ). Works 9/10 times and gives
a nice speed boost to reading articles. The page partitioning sounds well-done
though. I guess writers put a lot of thought into that. (Edit: ... and then I
read brandnewlow's comment above mine which refutes that theory. 'Print this
article' links rock.)

~~~
dasil003
who says editors have no outlet for creative genius...

------
tptacek
And of course, this is the same writer who just got the "leaving babies to die
in the car" story published, which just made the rounds:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/02...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701549.html)

There's definitely a rhythm and a way of developing characters in common with
all the stuff I've read from him so far.

Or how about this:

 _THE BEST-INFORMED PERSON I EVER KNEW was a friend of my grandfather's back
in the Bronx, where I grew up. Every morning of every day of his life, this
elderly man -- his name, as I recall, was Boris -- would dress impeccably in a
suit and waistcoat and shuffle to the public library, where more than a dozen
of the day's local and out-of-town newspapers were threaded through bamboo
poles and hung from racks. One by one, Boris would read them all, front to
back; at dusk, he would walk home alone. This daily pilgrimage was conducted
with ecclesiastic solemnity, a quiet, dignified homage to the majesty of
knowledge. Even as a little boy, in that intuitive if primitive way that
children comprehend important things, I understood the fundamental truth that
Boris was, in some clear but compelling way, a douche bag._

This guy is a genius.

------
jacoblyles
"You could just have a party where you all played pin the tail on the donkey
or musical chairs or something. But that is just not done in this part of D.C.
If you did that, you would be talked about."

That's a microcosm of what I didn't like about DC. The culture is very status
oriented and judgmental.

~~~
shard
I think that humans in general are very status oriented and judgmental. Hacker
culture is the same, we just focus on a different set of status indicators and
pass judgment on a different set of criteria. Other cultures' values and
judgments look unpleasant and silly to us, just as ours look unpleasant and
silly to them.

~~~
jacoblyles
You have a point. Maybe I just didn't like the city because it didn't share my
values.

------
tptacek
I like how careful he is with the tone he's writing. For instance, the story
about the people across the hall; he doesn't let it blow up in your face, and
he doesn't just let the air out of it either; he reels it in like a fisherman,
letting a key detail out early, but still landing it with a climax.

Thanks for posting this. I had no idea about this guy, now I'm trying to track
down everything he's written.

------
spoiledtechie
Brilliant article. Prob one of the best things I have read all year long.

WOW! Should make a movie about it.

~~~
jlees
I'm already visualising Tom Hanks in the feature role. What a vivid story. We
just need a happy ending, no? :)

------
justlearning
The title was misleading in the sense that the article in itself is much more
than about creativity. I thought it had more to do with emotions, psychology
and effects. After reading the whole article, I am in awe of how he knows kids
so well! I feel sorry that creative professor mother + phd math father did
only so much for their son, putting their own pursuits first instead. But I
guess that is how today's world is and will be.

~~~
tptacek
You can read it like that, or you can read it as a story about a guy who could
be leading a completely charmed life, except for the fact that the personality
traits that give him instantaneous connections with 4 year olds also make it
hard for him to lead a normal life --- the same way genetic mutations can make
us more attractive and more susceptible to specific diseases, or the same way
that David Foster Wallace's brain could ricochet through a thousand ideas in a
couple pages, but also get so tangled up and hopeless that he was compelled to
kill himself. As in, a story about how things that seem simple --- let's write
an ebook, how to make $100,000 a year with a 2 hour work week! --- are
actually really complex, because we're humans and not 300 word business model
posts on Hacker News.

Is what I think you could think of it, is all.

------
peter123
here's the Great Zucchini in action:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVjB4f_nBvQ&fmt=18](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVjB4f_nBvQ&fmt=18)

~~~
look_lookatme
That is amazing.

------
PaulMorgan
I'm curious where this guy is now after three years. Is he still doing this
gig or have his flaws caught up with him?

~~~
PaulMorgan
Answered my own question. He's still in business:

<http://www.thegreatzucchini.com/index.html>

~~~
brandnewlow
What's interesting about his page is that it doesn't even show his face on the
front, just dozens of happy, delighted pre-schoolers.

The man knows what he's really selling to parents.

~~~
chops
He does show his face on the "More Info" page, though.

<http://www.thegreatzucchini.com/about.htm>

------
plinkplonk
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/02...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701549_pf.html)

another article by the same writer. A very sad one this time, but great
writing.

------
mkuhn
One of the best written stories I have ever read. Intriguing, funny and sad!

------
blueben
We rarely see a case of attention deficit disorder as obvious as this.

------
omnivore
Great article. He did his homework, targeted his audience and finally sees a
payoff. But it took him 10 years of working in a nursery school and
babysitting and party hosting at DZ for him to manage to get there. But good
on him for recognizing that he had a gift and that he could make a living
doing it.

------
there
is "college dropout" really anything special these days?

~~~
quizbiz
society tells me that if I want to make anything out of my life, college is
the place to go. One poster in my High School flaunts that I will make one
million dollars more in my lifetime if I go to college.

------
ananthrk
Pretty moving story wonderfully written!!

------
ciupicri
He and Seinfeld :-)

------
gnaritas
Excellent article and excellent writing. Anyone complaining about this being
too long has some ADD issues of their own; they should especially make the
effort to read this as a warning what happens when such tendencies are allowed
to take over their life.

------
erlanger
I remember when this came out in the Post mag a couple years ago here. I still
don't get why they had to take a nice light-hearted story and dig up all of
that dirt about the guy's gambling problem...it seemed sensationalist and
completely irrelevant.

~~~
shard
It makes the person three-dimensional, as opposed to a light hearted human-
interest story. A story about a clown that 4-year-olds love, I will forget in
an hour. A story about a clown who gave up adulthood because of his past, that
I will remember for many years.

------
Alex3917
Flagged. Come on, really?

~~~
critic
The fact that you were downmodded tells me that the bozos are now the majority
of HN. Time for a new digg clone?

~~~
tjmc
Ok - it's a story about a clown. But does that mean it only satisfies the
intellectual curiosity of bozos?

I'll take this article over another tawdry analysis of the financial crisis
any day.

------
squidbot
3 years ago suburbanites were swimming in money and had nothing better to do
with it. I doubt this guy is still pulling in a full weekend of @$300 shows.

~~~
Retric
Some DC suburbs are still under 3% unemployment. Government consulting in one
form or another is vary stable work when you can get it.

EX: I work for a multi-billion dollar company that grew over 10% last year
while being vary profitable. Many people I work with have a combined family
income over 250k/year, young children, and little free time.

------
apstuff
When I read this article all I could think about was Raffi singing 'Banana
Phone.' Now I can't get it out of my head.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-LbvFPLpeo&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-LbvFPLpeo&feature=player_embedded)

------
mitchellh
I really dislike these posts, which are all the same "Person who skips college
retires at 24" or "College really needed? This man makes 400,000 a year!"

Of course college doesn't guarantee that you'll come out making $100k a year
or more, but also NOT going to college is the same.

As happy as I am for this person, I hope no one gets the wrong idea from these
posts and just drops out. Having an idea is one thing, putting it together and
having it be a success is another. If anything, I would say the YouTube and
Facebook guys had it right, they made the product during college, released it
during college, succeeded during college, and subsequently left college. Thats
the way to do it IF ANY.

And for some people, school just isn't there thing. Anyways I'm rambling, I
think my point has been made.

~~~
tptacek
Wow are you ever missing the point of this story.

~~~
tjmc
You're assuming he read it

