No dead fish

Had a morning conversation with Michael Johnson. That's Dr. Michael Johnson, a Pixar resident Media Arts Technologist, SMVS (Master of Science, Visual Studies),PhD, whiz at all things that only people born with that extra lobe in their brain and flaunts it with glee, blah blah blah--he loves comics and is a board member of the Cartoon Museum in the city I believe blah blah blah. Anyway, he was talking about the vagaries of navigating the social psychology of going after fun projects in a studio system and why that can be perceived as someone glory hounding. He posits that that may be the perception but anyone who goes after the high visibility challenge has to hit it out of the park or that project is not so glorious after all. And it can't be like shooting fish in a barrel either. That would be too easy and then no one can say it was quite the feat you pulled off.

And yet there are those who come up to the barrel with much sturm und drang and...no dead fish. We laughed that this can now be our code for an understaking that was so easy and yet provided no appreciable results.

You can riff like so (accompanying gesture with hands palm up showing them empty):

"He took his shot and...no dead fish."
"People were drenched. Waterlogged production. But no dead fish."
"After much deliberation everybody agreed that in his project 'no fish died of gunshot wounds,'"
"Spent shells. Soggy paperwork everywhere. But there was the barrel and the distinct sound of laughing fish."

Oh, the fun that was had. Sigh.