Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
February 2012
- Unfinished, But Inhabited
- The Success of Failure, via CNN
- Einstein Actually Had Excellent Grades
- The Physics of Discarded Paper
- The Power of Failing
January 2012
- Offensive Advertising, Increased Sales?
- I Sold Out For Millions, Then Worked At McDonald's
- Steve Jobs on Failure
- The Famous Western Failure
- Thank Goodness for Drug Addicts
December 2011
- It's a Wonderful Failure
- Stadium Destroyed, Reborn
- Failure to Trust the Astronauts
- Failure and the Baggy Pants Tradition
- Failure at The Happiest Place on Earth
- Saving What Was Lost
- FailureBank: A Social Learning Utility
November 2011
- A Thanksgiving Failure
- Harriet Tubman's Clever Lie
- The Failures of Lemieux
- Failed to Return a Text
- Admitting Failure
- A Leaders Job: Support Failure
October 2011
The Ridiculous Contract
When world-famous rock bands arrange to go on tour, they send ahead extremely long and complicated legal agreements. One of these contracts contained an absolutely ridiculous clause: “there must be a bowl of M&M’s candy in the green room, with all brown M&M’s removed.”
It’s easy to chalk this one up to the excesses of rock and roll. Surely these crazy, drug-addled musicians are making up nonsense ideas just for fun. But it turns out that this is a real story for a real reason. A
snopes.com article explains:
The legendary “no brown M&Ms” contract clause was indeed real, but the purported motivation for it was not. The M&Ms provision was included in Van Halen’s contracts not as an act of caprice, but because it served a practical purpose: to provide an easy way of determining whether the technical specifications of the contract had been thoroughly read (and complied with).
The bowl was sort of like a canary in a coal mine—it could be a signal of serious danger. Bands like Van Halen had all kinds of complex requirements about electricity, lighting, the size and strength of elements of the stage and so on. If the venue hadn’t read the contract in detail, lives could be at risk.
The lesson from the story is that Failure is the secret to success. It might sound crazy to include a clause about candy-covered chocolates in the legalese, but it could be the most straightforward way to help ensure a safe and enjoyable show. What seems like silliness could actually be profoundly important.
