I am a dick.  I screw people's hopes and dreams.  Often someone will come to me with a vision for a case and I enthusastically walk with them and talk about their vision.  I get caught up in thinking about how their case would look and promise to make it.  

The problem is that my enthusiasm oversteps my ability.  Since I can't say no I try to take on everyone's requests and almost always I find myself at the center of many such conversations where I promised to make someone's dream come true but am failing to deliver.  It's not because I can't do the work.  Hell I have 10 people working for me who can make just about any cue case that can be conceived of.  It's precisely because we often turn out work that other case makers can't do that I am approached.

And I want to make all these great cases that my customers and myself envision.  But the nature of reality is that things get built in the imaginary space far easier than in the real world.  In the real world people have sore fingers, leather is inconsistent, people get in bad moods, people are lazy and uninspired, artists can't translate your fantasies, mistakes are made and just life in general conspires against the best of intentions.  It takes hard work to be consistently creative and cut through life's clutter.  I am a lazy dick who doesn't want to put in that amount of work.  I want to have ideas and sit on a hill top and communicate those ideas to a bunch of hardworking folks who will carry out my ideas faithfully and flawlessly.  Sounds a bit familiar doesn't it?  In any event any artist likes to hear praise like this;

Jack,, from my very first case 2×4, to my second 2×4 Andy Stevens tooled, to the third 3×6, to this ross tooled 3×6 beauty being my fourth, and meeting you this year at SBE i love your work. I dont have any of the first three cases any longer, the tooled extreme 3×6 by you and Mr. Ross is what I have of yoursand truly charish. You are great to talk to via email, the phone, and in person, you also make a promise on things that you keep. You do what ya say and say what ya do!,period and i respect that alot. Your work is excellent and prices are fair.

Id never sell this case, its not for sale, and will only be in my old days when I give up pool for good, so so give it 20years +lol

Thanks Jack and Ron
P.S. Cant wait for the 2×4 gray elephant with black ross tooled accents/pockets!

It is in reference to this case:  http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=233384

Which is an absolutely stunning piece of work done by master tooler Ron Ross and assembled by cue case maker Jack Justis.  The owner heaps praise on both men deservedly so.  But he is also heaping criticism on me for failing to deliver on making a case he ordered a long time ago.  We had agreed to trade for a Justis 3×6 and I had agreed to make him a very nice case.  Nothing to hard but I completely let him down.  So as much as Jack and Ron deserve praise for this case I deserve every bit of criticism contained in this passage.

The proverb goes "be careful what you wish for because you may get it".  I have longed to have a shop capable of producing cases of this caliber and beyond.  This case represents an amazing marriage of 40 years of solid leather tooling mastery and 20 years of solid cue case making.  Our shop now is capable of doing all the technical aspects of making cases that go far beyond what Mr. Justis chooses to do.  Not a knock on him as he has settled for a particular well-defined style and limited options to make his cases.  We have chosen to be fairly unlimited in our approach to case making.  This has it's advantages as we are able to make each case to the customer's desire with little compromise on the customer's side.  And the disadvantage is that we have many details to contend with that our competition does not.  Get one wrong and we are taking the case apart and rebuilding it.  Obviously this slows down the process considerably.  So anyway I have what I wished for and now I have to learn to control it.

My wife, who deserves a ticker tape parade down Wall Street for putting up with me, is helping me to herd these cats and organize our little workshop into a super-efficient machine that turns desire into reality without me gumming up the works.  My friend Sean Leinen calls the IT wizards pizza-under-the-door guys.  People who sit in their super-cooled environments and work tech-magic and don't want to be bothered except by a pizza slid under the door every couple days.  That's my next wish.  I love making cases.  I love making people happy.  I don't like pissing people off and dashing their expectations.  So if I have been a dick to you or your order through a heavy flirting session followed by neglect, I am sorry.  I can't promise to get much better about it but I can promise that as a team we are all working to make your cases.  I hope that I don't get any more of these backhanded rebukes which I deserved.

The case however is now for sale if someone else wants to own this masterpiece: http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=242332

I doubt that the current owner is looking to order from me but if he does this time we are ready to rock it.

Sincerely,

John Barton – crazy case maker.

And what are they worth to you?

If you asked a craftsman or an artist to make you an absolutely unique piece for you that they would never reproduce at all in anything even close what would that be worth to you?  To have the only one of it's kind made by that person or shop?

And what do you consider to be unique?

Recently I had a rather sad experience that should have been a good one.  

A few years ago we built this case for a collector in Germany,

I called it the Palace Garden.  

 

It has been the centerpiece of our creativity for a while.  We worked on it for nearly a year with revisions and requests from the customer.  It's fair to say that while we charged a good amount for the case that when the time spent is added in then we didn't really get rich off of it.  We charged a fair price for the work and put more into it than we charged for.  In addition I invented a few new ways to construct a leather case along the way.

So this year we were approached about building a similar case for another client.  I told them the same thing I tell everyone which is that I will not duplicate a case exactly.  With the exception of the basic patterns we use I will not duplicate the decorative design of a case.  Sometimes when the case is so simple there isn't any way around it as when someone asks for their name inside a circle.  But for a case of this level we will do a unique hand drawn pattern based on the same general theme.  The German collector was into orchids so we did all orchids for the color flowers except for the lotus which was taken from a tattoo on his neck and the bottom which is the peony being the closest to a national flower that China has.

So when asked to do a similar themed case for a Chinese customer I chose to make it more Chinese with the inlay on the back and the flower choices and the layout of the pattern.  I kept some construction elements the same so as to get the same overall feeling with two different cases.

 

And actually the whole "Garden" theme was started with this case I called "A Garden Day"  back in 2007.

 

So my question to you dear readers is who owns the growth of art?  I can certainly understand when a customer buys an expensive piece of art and does not want to see that art reproduced in any fashion.  The German collector was upset that I produced another case that looked anything like his.  But I have to ask why?  The case is not an exact reproduction nor is there any decoration on it that was taken from the first one.  It is a sister to the first one by the fact that both share my artistic DNA.  

I ask who owns the GROWTH of art because that is how I see it when I take something I did before and I build on it to make another piece.  I see it as an expansion of an idea rather than a simple copy.  Who says that concepts in art have to end with one piece and that the artist is forever forbidden by the sale of that piece from further exploring that concept?  Did Georgia O"Keefe paint one giant flower and stop or did she paint dozens?  

So on looking at these cases what price would you have offered me never to make another one?  I am curious as to what value you would place on buying a man's soul?

 

I have been posting on billiards forums for 15 years.  I can still remember how excited I was back in 1996 to find Rec.Sport.Billiards on the internet.  Wow, really cool, a place where people from all over the world can hang out and talk pool.  I jumped right in with helpful advice and reporting about pool where I lived which was Germany at the time.  

Then at some point not too long after I had been there I was embroiled in my first argument.  If I remember right it was over the way that Adams Balabushka brand cues were being advertised.  Adams had chosen to use the line "the way George would have made them if he had lived" or something close to that.  I felt like this was really over the line in some way and voiced my opposition to it.  Someone insulted me personally or maybe I did the insulting first and just like that I discovered the dark side of internet forums.

Namely that anyone can be a dick at any time for any reason.  No one gets a free pass and if you become someone's target then they will do everything they can to antagonize you, bully you, push your buttons and generally get a rise out of you.  They do this for two main reasons, one is for the pleasure or the LOLs (lulz as the trolls call them) and two because the chances of them actually having to face the people they torment is practically zero.

Over the years I have discovered that there are various levels of trolls.  While most are anonymous and much more apt to be extremely hateful when protected by a veil of anonymity there are some who will happily tell you who they are and dare you to "do something" about it knowing that the odds are highly unlikely that they will be confronted in reality.

Basically anyone who is disagreed with can turn into a troll.  While there are those who do it primarily for the sport the ones who are worse for forums are the members who can't handle being told that they are wrong.  And this is where industry people will stay away from forums.  There is a tremendous amount of misinformation and speculation bandied about on Internet forums.  When someone from the industry who does have the facts comes in to communicate those facts it is often the case that someone will disagree with them to the point of argument.  Then it escalates into personal slurs and hateful accusations.  Most industry people have the good sense to withdraw at that point and either not return or be very very selective when they post and very careful to not offend anyone.

Not me.

I am a troll magnet.  My personality is such that I will not allow people to bully me.  Which means I fight back just as hard or harder.  And this has created a loyal fan base of trolls for me across a few message boards.  It has taken me a long long long time to finally understand the dynamic at play here.  These people have nothing to lose while I have everything to lose.  While they are stealing time from their employers to troll me I am stealing it from my customers when I play into it and respond.  My energy validates them in their eyes and they can lose nothing by continuing the insults and outright lying.  

Do not feed the trolls is now an old internet adage.  And it's never been more true.  Unfortunately this means that the internet kind of belongs to the ignorant and the trolls because the true professionals withhold their participation from message boards due to trolling behavior.  People with a lot of great writing skills and experience to write about simply stay away from places where they can be personally attacked.  Oh sure, you can find places where good writers and pros hang out but those places are generally well moderated and some cost money to get into.  Two things that work like bug spray to kill troll activity.

Unmoderated and undermoderated forums like AZB tend to attract trolls.  As such the forum remains much less than it could be.

So anyway where is this going?  If you are in the industry and you read this my advice is to be very selective when you post and remain as neutral as you can.  Don't respond to personal attacks and slurs because the response is what feeds them.  In other words don't do what I have done for 14 years which is to take it all personally and spend at least a whole year typing responses to people who aren't fit to drink my toilet water.  Don't give them a second of your time and ignore their comments as if they were as inconsequential as a dead leaf blowing past you.   And maintain at least two accounts, one for your professional face to handle company business and one for your personal interaction if you really want to participate without someone being able to use your professional and personal life against you.  Keep that account anonymous.

Then you will never find yourself using your personal blog to rant about them like this.

 

Update:

You know how people talk about being on someone's shit list?  You never actually see one though do you?  Well for a while I think I am going to keep one here just for the fun of it.  This has no value except to be therapeutic for myself.  The forum name, real name and reason are listed.  

Michael Lalumiere – mlalum – stalker, instigator, and liar and likely perjurer since he said he would report me to homeland security as a terrorist for telling him I'd kick him in the nuts.
Jamie Wormsman – Worminator – instigator, defamer and jealous cue seller.
Lou Figueroa – antagonist and defamer
Jim Brennan – Jimbo – liar, instigator, hypocrite, defamer.
Lenny Marshall – instigator
Eric Hu – internet bully, instigator, liar, antagonist
Mia (only know forum name) – stalker, instigator, defamer
MonsterMash (Tom??) – liar, stalker, instigator, defamer
Hierovision – Zachary Nichols – instigator, stalker

These are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head.  Probably all cool dudes in person except for Lalumiere who I hear is as much of a dick in person as he is online.  He got himself banned from AZ for life though and hopefully it stays that way.  Most people are cool in person because the innate fear of getting their ass kicked keeps them civil.  (me too).  But as it is these people are on my shit list for whatever that is worth.  

And the moral of this story is if one keeps their activity to a bare minimum and goes out of their way to be congenial as Dale Carnegie advises then one doesn't end up with a shit list full of trolling antagonizing lying defamers and the need to list them publicly.