Shopping offensive

Every Thursday, along with the regular mail, we get an inch-thick packet of ads for local supermarkets and drugstores. I like to look at these. We have 3 supermarkets chains whose stores I pass on a regular basis, and I always want to know who has cheap boneless chicken breasts, ice cream and produce. A couple of the supermarkets put a couple of mini-ads within their ads, and today, one of those was special.

I'm sure many of you know that February, which I think is soon, is Black History Month. I'm not sure exactly what that means and I doubt that it's important for me to do so. So it wasn't totally surprising to see a themed supermarket ad, titled, "A taste of Black History." I am now going to list the contents of this ad.

• Chicken pieces
• Fish filets
• Canned seasoned greens
• Oil
• Store brand frozen french fries
• Store brand Grape "Spread"
• Canned tomatoes
• Canned diced tomatoes
• Sweet potato pie
• Store brand mac and cheese
• Store brand oreos and graham crackers
• Store brand oatmeal
• Store brand refrigerated biscuits
• Fruit punch
• Store brand spaghetti-O's
• Orange soda and root beer
• Coke and Sprite
• Biotrue Multi-Purpose Solution (I have no idea...)
• Colgate toothpaste.

Yum yum, who wouldn't want a taste of that? Now I haven't really had many black friends since I was in high school, but something seemed a little odd about this. How about, well, "let's advertise fried chicken, cheap sides and desserts and sweet drinks! That should appeal to the demographic that will read this section of the Thursday ad pack."

Honestly though, I have to say I find this somewhere between dumb and intentionally offensive. I shop in this store regularly, and it's clear to me that the people running it have no clue about what they're doing, and now it's clear the marketing staff is in the same boat. They've been sold (again) recently. I can hardly wait to see what the new owners bring to the table.

Kuhrash

Yesterday, I had an appointment in the city and had to drive my car in. It was snowing and the roads were crazy slippery, but I've driven in the snow plenty and know how to handle myself. It just makes the part about keeping away from other cars all the more essential. No problems, in and out. Not even anything scary.

Today, on the other hand, I dropped my daughter off near the Kimmel Center, and then was headed over to Reading Terminal for some tasty beef jerky, when right through a red light comes a guy and bang, the years-without-accident streak is broken at 35. I guess it was bound to happen sometime, just by random chance. And no beef jerky for me today.

I was pissed, to be perfectly honest. I take this stuff really seriously and work my butt off trying to drive safely, but it shows you that even the best drivers are not 100% protected from anything. Odd as it is to use the work "fortunate" in a case like this, everything about this was as fortunate as it could have been considering the circumstance. First of all, nobody got hurt, even a little bit. Second, although both cars had significant damage- real body shop damage- they were driveable at least for the moment. Waiting for a tow truck would have been really unpleasant.

So back home I went, slowly. I decided I would try to go to a repair shop and see what they could do about the loose plastic stuff hanging off the side, but on the way I decided to swing by the local body shop on the off chance they were open on a Saturday. Almost shockingly, they were. The guy deemed the car undriveable, even though it was pretty clear that I had driven the car in order to get there, (I guess it only needs to be undriveablish). He called a rental car place and literally 3 minutes later someone came by to pick me up (because the rental car place is 4 blocks away). I am now driving a red Mini with a white roof. Very cute. I'll fully review it later.

So here it was, about an hour after the accident, and I was home, feeling just fine physically, with a cute red Mini parked in the driveway. And I can go about my business as if nothing happened. Life is not so bad, even when it's bad.

I'm insulted

How come nobody cares about my fake dead girlfriends? In fact, all of my fake friends, and even my fake acquaintances are dead. Don't I deserve a little sympathy too, knowing that all of those fake people who actually meant nothing to me because they didn't exist are gone forever? People (and I'm talking about actual people here) are so cruel. That's why fake friends are better. Plus you can just kill them and apparently nobody cares unless you're a famous football player.

Seriously though, I remember a long time ago some friends were visiting with their kids and we got a call after they'd left to report that their daughter had accidentally left her imaginary friend here.

Odds and ends

Whew, now that I know that it was probably just a minor store baking error that caused Subway's footlong sub to be only 11 inches long, I can move on with my life.

Overheard: "OK then, what do we know about the angles of a triangle?"  "There are three of them."

I haven't read a word of any article about the football player and his fictitious/kidnapped girlfriend but I already know it's one of my favorite stories of the year. What a coup for the age of social media! And the reporting! Breathless repeating of statements by interested parties, no probing questions and lack of independent thought, analysis or research. How did the Washington DC press corps get on this story?

Went on the school ski trip yesterday. The conditions weren't that good, so I didn't ski that much. Mostly I sat in the lodge and read and worked. I positioned myself the way all 21st century people must, near an electrical outlet. How do we find electrical outlets in a public place, class? Think like a cleaning person.

Because I was sitting there with charging apparati, I had visits from students who needed some juice for their devices. This was a nice way to socialize without having to go to any effort. These days, it's probably always best to be near a power source when you're wanting to be sociable. It's almost as useful as having a good personality.

How to not take the day off

For a variety of reasons I didn't go to work yesterday, and I was looking forward to a nice relaxing day, with only a doctor appointment in the morning to occupy me. I had a couple of nice, interesting projects to do, I was going to catch up on some soccer tv action, work out, maybe nap.

Once my kid was off to school, I read the paper and drank coffee, and then off to the doctor I went.

I know that doctors (and I presume nurses as well) take some kind of oath before they can practice, and this oath seems to include something about never apologizing for being late. I sat in the waiting room for 45 minutes past my appointment time and then, just as I was about to ask what was going on, I heard someone call out "sir, are you okay?" And people started scurrying everywhere.

I couldn't see anything, but people were dashing in and out of the examining rooms, followed a few minutes later by a security guy, then an orderly with a wheelchair, then 3 paramedic s with a gurney. Seems someone collapsed in the corridor on the way in or out of the examining room. They wheeled the guy out into the waiting room; he was conscious and as they started to leave the office I heard the nurse yell out, "I guess we'll wait to schedule your surgery Mr. Anthony!"

I sat in the waiting room for a while longer, listening to a couple of women tell an older gentleman how nice the retirement community they visited was and how he really ought to go visit himself. All I can say to that guy is, better go along while you still have some choices, otherwise these two are going to ship you out to a place that they like, and they might like Mah Jong, but maybe you'd prefer shuffleboard.

Finally a giant nurse came and fetched us. Maybe she wasn't technically a giant, but she was way taller than me and let's just say a bit rough around the edges. She grumbled a bit as she took the vitals, and then said something about a doctor coming and walked out. This woman did not go into nursing because she loved caring for and nurturing her baby dolls or little brother. She was clearly someone whose plan was to go to medical school, only to get a C in Organic Chemistry, the rocky outcropping on which many pre-professional dreams are wrecked. So she ended up an embittered nurse.

Then two doctors came in. One said "nice to meet you" and shook my hand, but neither introduced himself or used my name. I correctly assumed that he was the doctor I was the to see. The buzz in the medical profession is that the orthopedists are the least personable doctors. Other docs call them "nuts and bolts guys." But this non-orthopedic doctor had no appreciable personality and spoke in a low monotone. He wasn't dismissive or arrogant, just flat.

At the end of the consult, he said "sorry to say, it's kind of a long lead time to schedule the procedure." "How long?" I asked. "About 4 to 6 weeks." "That's only a bit longer than I was waiting this morning, so no worries." "We'll, someone collapsed in the examining room." Yes, but that was almost an hour after my appointment time."

And that was the end of that. A quick checkout and a blood test later, I headed home. Total elapsed time? Three hours and forty minutes.

The rest of the day? Got home, ran out to my kids' preschool to see if one of hem could do some volunteer work there, then to Starbucks to help a student who'd been sick and missed a bunch of classes. Then to the supermarket and then home. Presto! It's 5:30, dark out, the day is basically over and I'm exhausted. And that is how to not have a day off.

The last word (from me anyway) on the Hall of Fame nonsense

Like many other baseball fans, I've been struggling with how to deal with steroids and Hall of Fame. The strongest argument for admitting players who are suspected or reasonably known to have used performance-enhancing drugs is the idea that the Hall of Fame is a museum, not a shrine. 

Jumping off from that idea, How about having a special hall of drug users for players who used PED's during that age? I kind of like this idea. It's the Hall of Cheaters (TM). Sponsored by Pfizer or BALCo or Lance Armstrong. I think this opens up new avenues for including somebody like Barry Bonds, who certainly belongs in the hall of something. And maybe for players only suspected of cheating, like Jeff Bagwell or Mike Piazza they could be in a corridor between the main part of the museum and the hall of cheaters. I think, to quote, Jaffar, the idea has merit. By the way, how brilliant is Gilbert Gottfried in that movie as a parrot? 

I think the players would like it, And just not the ones who played clean. because it would open the hall to players who otherwise wouldn't be considered seriously, like Sammy Sosa, who was a serial cheater but a very colorful character. Don't you think people would want to see an exhibit about cheaters in baseball? You could have a video of Tony LaRussa explaining how to steal signs, along with a picture of the guy in the Phillies bullpen with the binoculars. You can put the binoculars in the case. Next to Bonds' vials of of the cream and the clear. And maybe a spectrographic analysis of the non-hat materials on Gaylord Perry's hat.

A bit more on the death of pop music

I think I sort of went off on current pop yesterday. Just to clarify, the point I was making is that pop music today is not just bad, but jaw-droppingly stupid as well. I understand that it is very hard to be original in a pop format at this point in time, but for God's sake, you can at least try. I listened to the hits station again today and had the same reaction- could we have even a shred of originality here?

One of the reasons, I think, why this is harder than it used to be, and if I may go further, one of the reasons that pop music is collapsing, is autotune. For those of you who don't know or care, autotune is software that can take a vocal performance and match it to the music. The simplest versions just takes whatever note is coming out of the singer's mouth and move it to the nearest actual note, sort of like rounding decimals. There are more subtle versions too, but they all use frequency analysis to match pitch.

The problem with this is that it makes everything sound the same. I was listening to a song by a guy named Glen Hansard, who was the lead and the actual songwriter of the movie (now a Broadway show) Once. He has a good, but not great voice and a huge vocal range, and as I listened something struck me, unconsciously at first but then more overtly. I could here notes where he was slightly subtly off-pitch. It wasn't anything that sounded bad, but a human voice is not a pure tone, and it's the impurities that make voices individual. And I realized I was listening to an actual human being singing, not a computer generated simulation. And it sounded great. And it connected to me. And it felt alive.

You can't say that about most everyone you hear on the radio. The only pop star I'm pretty sure doesn't use it is Pink, which is why she is awesome and why she connects with audiences in the way she does. You hear the slightly off 1% and it makes the other 99% sound better.

!!!!

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Not just a Christmas story

I really had a privileged upbringing. Not in a material way. We were quite poor when I was little and basic middle class until I was in high school and my father's career began to take off.

No, I was privileged in 3 major ways. First, I was born just in time to appreciate the growth and domination of rock music, starting around 1963 with the Beatles and their contemporaries. Second, although the 60's were a mixed bag for New York sports, I got to watch the Joe Namath Jets Super Bowl victory in 1968, experience the Mets winning the World Series in 1969, and live and breathe the Knicks winning the NBA championship in 1970, when I attended every single home playoff game up through and including game 7 against Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and the Lakers. This game is known simply as the "Willis Reed game." By far the most intense sports experience of my life and I've seen some good stuff.

And finally, I was lucky enough to live in New York during the time when a guy named Jean Shepard had an hour of radio time every evening at 10PM, just around when I'd normally go to bed. I'd get into bed, set my clock radio to shut off in an hour, and lie in bed and listen to one of the great monologists in radio history, uninterrupted (the commercials were all live reads).

You've all heard Jean Shepherd. He's the narrator of A Christmas Story. He should narrate it, since it's his story. Every night, Shepherd would tell rambling stories of his life growing up in the midwest during the Great Depression. These stories would be poignant and funny, and he would intersperse the story telling with Depression era music that he would play kazoo and Jew's harp along with. I just ordered some CDs that a guy recorded off the radio and burned onto disks.

Although there were many stories about his time in the Army, the best stuff was about when he was a kid. Many of his best stories were collected in a book called In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. I could not recommend this book more highly. If you like A Christmas Story, you'll love this. The whole movie is excerpted from this book, and there's lots more too. You get a real flavor for what it was like back then without having to read a history book, and it's all in the same wry, evocative language that you hear in the movie's narration.

Little answers and big questions

I've never listen to the morning DJs on music stations. There was always so much yackety-yack and not enough music to make it worthwhile for me. Now, however, I understand the wisdom of having that format. At least at this moment in time, the music that sells the most and is therefore what they would play on those shows is so f--king stupid that they're afraid if they play it that people will turn their radios off. I've been listening to the XM commercial-free top hits station (even that station does the morning DJ thing) and it's hard to avoid laughing or yelling at the radio.

This brings to mind the larger question of what can be done to fix the music business, which is completely broken at the moment for pretty much everyone except Apple and people like Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra, who have large successful catalogs and are dead.

I was already thinking about this when I saw this article in the New York Times, where they discuss how completely dysfunctional the copyright laws are in the modern age. Copyright is only one small piece of the mess (mess in the analytical sense, meaning a system of problems).

So here's the big question- Toss out everything about the way the music business works. All that stays the same is that artists write and perform songs. Then design it the way you want it to be, and can take into account the existing technology and whatever you think is coming in the near future. I haven't gone very far down the road on this, but how is it going to get fixed if we don't know what the ideal would be?

How is music sold and distributed? How does anyone make money, and how do the people who really deserve the money get it? How can good music get heard and bad music get sidelined? What happens to radio?

I think it's going to be one of those things where each thing you explore leads you to another unanswered question. Impossible, but kind of fun.

Quick fast and cheap

I don't have my own car at the moment. There are 4 drivers in my family and I'll be damned if we can't make do with fewer than 4 cars. My wife has her own car, my younger daughter drives what had been my car, mostly to and from school, and my older daughter has her own car. They range from 3 -7 years old and they're all decent cars, but none of them are my car. The only good side is, I'm the only one trusted enough to drive everyone else's car, so we can usually work it out. My older daughter goes to school in Manhattan, so she leaves her car here and I use it.

My former car, now in the hands of my younger daughter, has had a rough couple of years transporting a teenage driver. It's had its front end significantly repaired after a semi-serious accident, and more recently had a tire torn up, apparently by contact with a fire hydrant (no, I don't know how that happened either) and now, after being parked on a narrow street in Roxborough overnight, it has a dented door and a lot of scratched paint.

At this point, I've had it. I took the car to a body shop and the cheapest they could come up with was $1600, which just ain't happening. I told my daughter I am not really fixing the car until she's gone off to school and is 250 miles away from it. Later that day I drove that car into the city and when I picked it up from the garage one of the attendants (who I've been dealing with regularly for over a year) told me that his brother could fix the car. I said, huh? He told me that his brother fixes the dents that happening the parking lot and that he'd do a good job for a good price. The only other possibility is for me to sand off the cracked paint, spray it with primer, and leave it that way until September.

As enthusiastic I was about the spray paint idea, my daughter thinks it might be too ghetto, so I checked in today again with Moussa, my parking lot friend, and he told me to contact his brother Malik and that he's do a good job for a good price and he'll do it quick.

This violates every rule of production that I've lived by. The world of manufacturing, fixing, shipping, producing, whatever 'ing' you're talking about, is controlled by a triangular diagram. One side says good, one say fast, and one says cheap.  The absolute rule is that you can have any two of those three but not all three. You can get something fast and cheap, but it won't be good. You can get it good and cheap, but you won't get it quickly. Or you can get something good and fast, but it'll cost a fortune. I've seen this play out many times, and the triangle always rules.

So how can I trust this guy? Is it possible I'm about to meet the holder of some great secret? I actually haven't discounted the idea that maybe he could do something quickly for a few hundred dollars that would look better than gray spray paint. In that case, I'd tend to think that the triangle didn't fail- it's just that body shops overcharge horrifically because they deal with insurance companies and have an agreed on set of prices for things. We'll see, I'll keep you posted.