Celebrity Product Endorsements – Why Wolfgang Puck Deserves to be Dismembered and Stoned to Death

Becoming an overnight A-list celebrity, while cool, would probably be stressful. A little bit of advance planning would, I imagine, go a long way in making the transition less traumatic. One of the things all major celebrities have to grapple with is what products they will endorse. So, in case I wake up one morning to discover that I’ve become a megastar and the whole world wants to know what I eat for breakfast, I’ve given some thought to the best way to shape the parameters of my product endorsement portfolio.

It’s impossible to discuss anything relating to product endorsements without considering Tiger Woods. The Tiger Woods brand is an industry unto itself. Tiger Woods could very possibly be the single most marketable individual ever in the history of the universe. And that’s not an exaggeration. The things about Tiger that marketers seem to like are that: 1) he is one of the greatest athletes in history; 2) he is a perfect, racially ambiguous, super-humanly fit specimen of human beauty; 3) he either really does not do, or is incredibly adept at hiding doing, anything even remotely controversial or non-mainstream; and 4) he is appealing to every demographic between, and including, toddlers and vegetables. And for those reasons, Tiger is compensated with more endorsement money than God. The several million annual dollars Tiger earns from actually winning golf tournaments are Frappuccino money for his swimsuit model wife compared to his endorsement earnings, which are approaching the $100 million per year mark.

I’m not necessarily trying to compare myself to Tiger Woods (though, upon some reflection, we do actually have quite a bit in common, in my opinion). But you never know. Being a fit, beautiful sports megastar is in vogue today. But come next fall, will that still be the case? Or could it be that the new rage will be short Jewish guys with slightly hairy backs who weigh 135, of which 35 is beer gut? Who am I to say.

The perfect embodiment of what not to do when choosing products to endorse is Wolfgang Puck. Wolfgang Puck is a chef who, way back when, was a legit player in the culinary world. He became somewhat of a name brand and used his new cache to expand the reach of his restaurants. My hometown, Ithaca, NY is one of four remaining towns in the civilized world whose airport does not now have a Wolfgang Puck Express restaurant. No problem yet. Brand, expand, bring in the bucks. Good for Wolfgang. But then, Wolfgang decided he needed to expand into the sexy world of corporate office coffee supplies, including the coffee pods and coffee machine in my very own law firm office.

When I get into work at 8:25 every morning, I drop off my briefcase, boot up my computer and trudge down the hall to the employee break room. And at that moment, when I'm standing – tired, confused, listless, vulnerable – in front of the coffee machine, the one single thing I want from the universe is a simple paper cup full of hot coffee. And at 8:25 in the morning, pre-coffee, I don't have the emotional wherewithal to read the office manager’s illustrated 10,000 word treatise on how not to screw up the coffee brewing process. And so I put the pod in the slot and push the button and watch as coffee grinds and murky sludge leak out of the side of the coffee maker and listen to the horrible, unnatural sound of metal on metal and stuck, motorized whining and wheezing and think about whether it’s really even worth it to go on living. And when I look over at the machine and the stacks of coffee pod boxes, whose smug, happy, smiling face do I see plastered all over all of them? Wolfgang. Fucking. Puck. And while I’ve never met or talked to or even seen Wolfgang Puck in person, at that moment every morning, I want to hunt him down and drag him into an alley and beat him with a metal pipe, and dismember him and stone him to death and watch as buzzards rip the organs from his dead bloody corpse.

And when you’re thinking about what reaction you want people to have when they see your photo on a product you’ve endorsed, that is not the one.

Exhibit B to the “are you sure this is really the image you want” chapter of the celebrity endorsement textbook is the licensing by the Allman Brothers of their beautiful, enduring-throughout-the-years song “Blue Sky.” The Allman Brothers have a sort of complex image. They’re clearly good ol’ boy southern redneck bikers. But they also have very solid musical roots in jazz, a loyal hippy following and more than a few in-touch-with-their-feelings sensitive guy tunes. So they’ve got some pretty broad licensing options, and their tunes have been used to endorse all kinds of products over the years. But I really had to scratch my head when I flipped on the TV one day to hear one of the nice licks from “Blue Sky” being played in an ad for – and, sometimes I need to specify this: I am seriously, truly not making this up – the menopause awareness website knowmenopause.com. Of course, if you have a business that provides helpful information about menopause, that’s great, and there’s nothing wrong with spreading the word. And there’s nothing wrong with the Allmans making a buck. But, well, I’m really not sure what to even say here. You get the idea. To their credit, at least they were just playing part of a tune. I would have packed up my possessions and wandered off into the forest forever if the ad had included Gregg Allman talking to the camera about how, whenever he had any menopause informational needs, the first resource he always turned to was knowmenopause.com.

Getting back to Tiger Woods, he’s picked some winners and some duds. Here is a quick rundown of a few of them. Nike golf equipment and clothes: No brainer. This is the stuff he actually uses, and I think Nike has a whole factory devoted just to making Tiger the stuff he wants. Hanes: Sure. Even if you’re a multi-mega-gazillionaire, it’s probably nice to get free cotton briefs. Gillette: Why not. It’s hard to have a real emotional opinion one way or the other about what kind of disposable razor you use. If someone offered me eight figures to switch my brand, I believe I’d accept. Buick: Horrific. The average person who buys a Buick has already been dead for 6.5 years. It hurts me a little to watch Tiger smile as he hops into a some geriatric boat of a GM car in the ad. The amount of money they must have given him for that, even in public company dollar terms, must have been extraordinary. Hopefully enough for Tiger to buy his own television network, which would never play those ads, so he’d never have to see them.

So, in light of all this background, what products would I endorse? My first choices would be products I already use and like. If Calvin Klein, Sony and Sam Adams wanted to do a spread of me sitting around on the couch on a Sunday afternoon in my tighty whities drinking beer and watching golf on TV, that would be cool. Or even products I don’t use but like. Rolex? Ferrari? The Ritz on Maui? I’d be game for that. Second choice would be products that, even if don’t particularly like, I have nothing against. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes? Ryobi power sanders? HP high gloss, no jam laser printer paper? That would be fine. And, actually, who am I kidding? If Wolfgang Puck wanted to cut me in on a piece of the action, or if knowmenopause.com came knocking, and if the price was right? Yeah, I could probably be convinced.

My Four Word Solution to All That’s Wrong With Religion

Since shortly after the dawn of time through today, the major religions of the world have provided benefits to billions of members of humankind but have also caused some pretty serious problems. And, while it's maybe a little presumptuous for me to say so, I think I've figured out how to fix religion. You never know where inspiration will come from. My epiphany in this case came from a bumper sticker on the back window of a pickup truck (not the first time this has happened - see this previous post). Plain white font. Black background. Four words (a major plus in bumper stickers; while I like the sentiment behind "it will be a wonderful day when schools get all the funding they need and the military has to have a bake sale to buy a new bomber," I wonder how many people are killed every year when their cars veer off the road while trying to read the tiny font required for such a ridiculously long statement).

The bumper sticker I saw said - "Don't Be A Dick"

There is was. Shockingly brilliant in its simplicity, this teaching, if applied to all world religions, could revolutionize the conduct of adherents to organized religion and fundamentally reshape how individuals and whole populations treat one another.

I'm not religious myself, but I've read enough Newsweek articles to understand that organized religion has been somewhat important in shaping world history. The purposes of religion, it seems, can be broken down into three primary components: 1) helping people find meaning and purpose in a world that is confusing, scary and sometimes horrible; 2) providing a sense of identity, culture and community; and 3) setting forth guidelines about how people should treat one another. Components 1 and 2 are all well and good so long as they don't create negative externalities that harm other people. 1 and 2 are OK if there’s enough number 3 in the mix. The problem is, that's not always the case. Some moderately annoying things and some truly horrific things have been done in the name of religion. Colonialism, not letting a Jewish guy into your country club, genocide, being mean to your interfaith daughter-in-law, bombing your neighbors into a parking lot, rape-n-pillage, etc. can too often be justified as being ordained by whoever wrote the religious text in question. And in these cases, the sometimes extensive rules that comprise component 3 can be twisted around so as to somehow not be technically violated.

It may be that most of the horrible things done in the name of religion were the result of cynical individuals tricking their followers / subjects into believing that religion justified the bad things they wanted to do. I think most serious religious scholars would tell you that the "Don't Be A Dick" principal is nothing new, and that Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha and whichever other icons I'm forgetting would all agree that this principal is exactly what they were trying to get at in their teachings. That the teachings were intended to be, in essence, a comprehensive set of rules demonstrating how not to be a dick. Maybe all that's needed is an overarching clarification that would make it harder for such aforementioned cynical individuals to follow what we lawyers like to call "the letter but not the spirit of the law." How hard could it be to chisel out a retroactive 11th commandment - "thou shalt not be a dick" - or to slap an appending sticker onto the last page of all of the holy texts saying something like "notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in pages 1-7892 hereof, the point of this text is to remind you, Don't Be A Dick" (bold / ital / underline)? If I'm right about the original intent of all the best selling religious writings, this clarification wouldn't have any effect on all of the people who use religion as an agent for positive change while at the same time putting the kabosh on people who have been engaging in assorted nastiness that surely would have been frowned upon by all the original prophets. Sheltering tsunami victims and disinfecting lepers? Not being a dick. Smiting first born children of another race and claiming that you have been ordained by God as a ruthless dictator? Being a dick.

What's more, the "Don't Be A Dick" concept applies just as readily to non-religious life. Even if you're a strident non-believer, you could measure each component of your personal conduct against this simple and easy to remember standard. It would be perfectly logical to incorporate the concept into civic life, i.e., a social contract based upon which it is understood that I will refrain from acting like a dick if, in turn, I can enjoy a reasonable degree of certitude that my fellow countrymen will not act like a dick back to me. "E Pluribus Unum and Donotus Beist Dickunium" (I never studied Latin, but this is probably close enough).

You might recognize the "Don't Be A Dick" concept as an offshoot of the "Golden Rule" - do unto others as you would have them do unto you. There's nothing wrong with that incarnation, but when advocating for massive social change, I find it's always best to try to avoid using the word "unto." Also, there has been some confusion in recent decades because of the newer Murphy's Law version of the Golden Rule - the one with the gold makes the rules. "Don't Be A Dick" is just sort of the Golden Rule for the new millennium.

For those who think a little dose of capitalism might be required to effectively spread the word, think of all the "Don't Be A Dick" crap you could merchandise. Just look at the whole line of "Life Is Good" junk that's managed to remain on the scene for all these years. Or chastity rings. Or No Fear / Fear This stuff. Maybe it would become as popular as WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) merchandise and we could start hawking DBAD jewelry and coffee mugs and henna tattoos. "Mean People Suck" paraphernalia was popular for a while, but that was more of an observation than a command. To turn that concept into an action item, you'd have to say something like "mean people suck, and you're being mean, so you suck, so stop being mean, then you won't suck." And that's too cumbersome.

The "Don't Be A Dick" credo would have to be somewhat custom tailored to make sense in different languages. As part of the extensive research conducted in connection with this posting (thank you Brenda, Mitra, Guy, Epaminontas and Ora), it came to my attention that calling someone a dick doesn't make sense in a lot of languages. In Hebrew, it would be more common to call someone a "bastard." An "asshole" in Mandarin. In Greek, there are even different words for "dick" depending on whether you really mean it or not. But no worries here. I would bet my life that there does not exist a single language in the world that does not recognize the concept of a person being something akin to what is referred to in the American English dialect as a "dick."

As you may have learned from a number of my earlier postings, the world is going to hell in a hand basket. But at least on the personal interface front, there could be hope. Diminishing worldwide dickishness would be self-reinforcing. The more times a person leaves the house and interacts with a stranger would who is not a dick, the more likely it is that that person will himself choose not to act like a dick. This will explode exponentially and, before we know it, a new wave of non-dickitude will wash across the globe. Society as we know it will be kindler and gentler.

What can you do to help crusade for this worthy cause? Get yourself a "Don't Be A Dick" sticker and slap it on your car, or, if you don't have one, on some other possession. Repeat the mantra to yourself throughout your day. Internalize the message. And, if you've been being a dick, knock it off.

The Running of the Pasty Accountants – JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge 2009

Last week, I participated for the third time in the Boston leg of the annual JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge - a 3.5 mile run / walk that now takes place in 12 cities around the globe. Here is my analysis:

The JPMorgan Corporate Challenge raises a little money for charities and, by my quick calculations, a pile of money for JPMorgan Chase (it's possible that, in the current banking environment, the race is JPMorgan's most profitable arm). 12,000 people took part in this year's Boston event. The idea behind the corporate challenge is that, for one hour a year, it's fun to coax a bunch of the city's pasty professionals from out of their cubicles, see their reaction to the sun, and watch them try to trudge up and down Back Bay. Watching this race is probably every bit as entertaining as watching the Boston Marathon, albeit for different reasons.

Finish times this year ranged from just over 17 minutes to a bit under a week. Some participants always walk the whole course, which is fine, but those taking up the extreme rear of the group have to keep an eye on the ambulance that follows the last person. It's hard to drive a motorized vehicle that slowly, and the slightest spasm of big toe on accelerator can cause an ambulance driver to run over the very people he's supposed to be looking out for.

There are always some hardcore runners that take part in the race, but there are a lot more people who, for the 364 days between the last race and the current one, have not burned more calories in any one day than it takes to flick on the power switch of a dictaphone. Going from that to self-locomoting their own bodies over 3.5 miles of asphalt has to be a shock, and I am positive that there are hundreds, possibly thousands of fatal heart attacks during the race each year. Yet I've never heard a report of a single person dying during the race. My guess is that JPMorgan uses some of the funds raised in connection with the race to "disappear" the victims like they used to do in South America. Maybe agents, dressed up as cheering fans, run out to the victims and, pretending to give them big supporting hugs, pull them off the course, Weekend-At-Bernie's-style, and dump the carcasses into some discretely circulating sanitation vehicle. If a lot of families are curious mid-June of every year as to whatever happened to that guy who used to be at the breakfast table every morning, maybe they just never got around to asking any questions and realizing that similar things were happening all over town.

As implied by the name of the race, only employees of companies can participate; no individual stragglers are allowed. There are detailed rules about who is considered an employee, and minimum sizes for the teams. The quest to come up with the best, funniest, most stylish and most pithy company tee shirt is a major component of the race. What better way could there be to build company team spirit and get people to sign up for an after-hours work event than to promise a free, colorful, all-cotton tee shirt! The main categories of tee shirt hilarity are: post-race beer drinking jokes ("if found, return me to 222 Berkeley St., and please settle my tab"); industry-specific references (Superman glyph that says "New England Properties - able to lease tall buildings in a single bound!"); and plain old boring ("Acme Accounting - running for a brighter tomorrow"). It's not a surprise that most of the shirts are so milquetoast. Whatever strengths big companies may have, coming up with edgy, amusing tag lines is not usually one of them. And so it is also not surprising that the best tee shirt I have ever seen at the Corporate Challenge, hands down, looked like it was homemade and was worn by what may have been a vigilante non-corporate-affiliated runner. It said: "pass me and our intern loses a finger." Now that is funny, but most definitely not something you're going to see make it through a law firm vetting process.

The Corporate Challenge does not differentiate between types of corporate participants, which is, of course, highly unfair. The winners are always people who work at Nike or City Sports or Healthworks. For those types, whose corporate culture encourages going out and doing an Ironman triathlon at lunch, running 3.5 miles is about the law firm equivalent of making a copy or sticking a label on a file folder. On the other hand, bragging to other runners about kicking ass in the corporate challenge is, I imagine, about like bragging to rival gang members in the prison exercise yard about beating up a kindergartner and stealing his lunch. Not something that wows crowds.

Overall, it's great to see - and the whole point of the corporate orientation of the race is to promote - people out there getting some exercise who otherwise wouldn't. That being said, there is a reason we dress our executives in full suits and ties - so that we only have to see about eight square inches of their flesh. It's good to bond with your coworkers, but there's something to be said for making it through your whole career without ever having to see a skimpy pair of running shorts riding up the top of your boss' pale, hairy, naked thigh. Never mind. Try to forget that thought.

A Plug for Environmental Living from an Environmental Fatalist

If, in the past, you had asked me when I became an environmentalist, I would have told you, never; I’m not one. It’s not that I’ve got anything against the environment. I love the Earth. Seriously. I love the outdoors. I love parks and hiking and walks in the woods. I love clean water and babbling brooks and swimming in a gorge. And I think it would be tragic if people didn’t have access to all the wonderful things that can be experienced out in the natural world. It’s just that I am, depending on your point of view, a fatalist or a realist. I think Al Gore is awesome, and more power to him for spreading the environmental message. But I also think that we are so far past the point of no return that the sum total of all worldwide environmental efforts are just rearranging the furniture on the deck of the Titanic. From all that I’ve read, it seems like some of the most informed environmental scientists out there basically agree that even if, overnight, we could zap every Denali into a Prius and squish every McMansion into a tiny energy-efficient, public transport-accessible LEED certified condo, the best case scenario would be that the environmental apocalypse would take place on a Thursday instead of a Tuesday.

All of the current residents of planet Earth can do their part to cut down on their own consumption, but the fundamental source of what we’re up against is exponential population growth and expanding industrialization. Unless we can institute a worldwide ban on procreation and a prohibition on any further industrialization (i.e. moving up from poverty and starvation to the first rung of first world living), we’re going to continue to move faster and faster down the path of destruction. An anti-naysayer might argue that fatalists throughout history have been proven wrong by new technologies. And that’s true. Even if we seem irrevocably screwed at the moment, it’s always possible that some fundamentally game-changing new development will emerge – like the ability to convert dirt into water or poop into food – but I’ll believe that when I see it. And the clock is ticking.

OK. That’s the end of my rant. But not the end of my story. There’s a twist. Despite my belief in the utter futility of the environmental movement, it turns out that I do almost all of the things a good environmentalist is supposed to do. To wit: I live in a small condo in a dense, urban neighborhood within walking distance to everything I need; I don’t have a car; I commute using public transportation; I recycle; and, for good measure, I even bring my own reusable shopping bag with me when I go (on foot) grocery shopping. (I’ll never be able to live up to the true pinnacle of environmental living – Cheryl Crow’s suggestion that people should use just one square of toilet paper per bathroom visit. I am a huge fan of Cheryl’s music, but, for the sake of digestive tract discretion, let’s just say that Cheryl and I must have very different diets.)

Ignore for the moment the fact that none of the reasons for my righteous environmental lifestyle is based on any conscious attempt at being environmental – that I live in a small condo in a dense, urban neighborhood because, in Boston, that’s what I can afford; that I don’t have a car because my wife lives in a different city for the time being and has exclusive custody of our one car; that my office just happens to be on a subway line that goes right to my front door; that the re-usable grocery bag was given to me by REI for free because I bought so much shit there over the course of a year. If you’re doing all the right stuff, the reason shouldn’t matter. And so, because being environmental is hip and stylish, because Cheryl Crow might be more likely to ask me to come jam with her band if she knew that I used reusable shopping bags, and because I think a neutral observer would judge my lifestyle to be pretty solidly environmental, I hereby declare myself an environmentalist.

And just because I don’t really believe in the environmental components of all the environmental things I’m doing these days doesn’t mean that I can’t start being all evangelical about it. No, I am ready to spread the word. But my angle is this: environmental living is fun. Not so much the recycling and re-using grocery bags part. Those aren’t bad, but they’re not fun per se. What’s fun is living in a small condo in a dense neighborhood, walking to the main strip to run errands and taking the subway to work. What all of these things have in common is the simple fact that they lead to interaction with other people. And even with other people I might not otherwise run into on a regular basis. When I walk down the street to run errands, I see neighbors. Sometimes, they are walking around too! Same thing if I sit out on the front stoop with a beer and a book. Because lots of other condos are packed into my dense street, there are usually living breathing human beings out on the sidewalk. And the subway is full of gangstas and geeks and hipsters and businessmen. I might not be best friends with them all, but I see them roving around and talking and reading their magazines and doing the things people do. And that, to me, makes life more fun. If most of my life were spent shuffling between my Denali, my McMansion and my office, I don’t think I’d have the same kinds of interactions as my environmental existence encourages.

But wait; there’s more! Walking is good for you. I haven’t seen the actual statistics yet, but I’m sure there’s research out there that shows that people who walk to the grocery store are 38% healthier, happier and more fulfilled than people who drive Denalis to the grocery store. Oh, and stores that service mostly smaller, pedestrian-accessible areas are more likely to be independently owned. And giving your money to people you know instead of to faceless shareholders is fun too! Who knew being environmental would be such a blast?

So here’s my plug: If for no other reason than demonstrating your keen sense of irony, become an environmentalist! When, in the next few decades, the world ecosystem collapses and the Earth is sucked back into the sun, why not increase the chance that it all goes down in the middle of a neighborhood block party? The apocalypse will be at least a little more fun if you have a few extra friends by your side.

For your further edification, take a look at this terrific 20 minute video by Annie Leonard called The Story of Stuff - a wonderful take on production, consumption, the environment and happiness in the modern world.

Pink Slips on Sesame Street

Just about everyone has been affected by these hard fiscal times. No business or organization has been spared. Like every other non-profit, PBS has been hit hard. It has instituted a recent hiring freeze and the future looks dire. And just because you happen to be a cute, fuzzy monster doesn't mean you're going to be immune from feeling the pain. With staffing cuts looming, it is inevitable that, in addition to their human colleagues, some of the Sesame Street muppets are going to have to be shown the door. Here is my analysis of who should stay and who should go.

The Count

The Count seems like he could serve an important accounting function. Being a bean counter is not stylish, but every nickel these days needs to be accounted for. Reporting requirements are going to proliferate. Someone's got to be in the trenches paying attention to what resources are going where. My concern is that, first of all, I've never seen The Count count to higher than ten. Second, just getting to ten seems to take him an awful long time ("ONE... one federal subsidy dollar, ah ahh ahhhhh. TWO... two federal subsidy dollars, ah ahh ahhhhh"). If PBS were to end up getting, say, a $100 million federal cash infusion, it would take The Count like a thousand years just to verify that the wire transfer had hit. So, while The Count may have some useful skills, they're not going to be of much help unless someone can light a bit of a fire under his ass.

Ernie and Bert

I don't know what kind of don't-ask-don't-tell policy Sesame Street has, but Ernie and Bert are obviously gay and have apparently been in a committed relationship since the late 60s. If PBS had to choose one of them to let go, it's a no-brainer that it would have to be Bert. Everyone likes Ernie better, and Burt's really just been Ernie's (no pun intended) straight man for the duration. If one but not the other got canned, it's not clear what kinds of benefits, as a life partner, he would be entitled to. Could Bert stay on Ernie's health insurance policy? What state is Sesame Street in (it’s hard to tell – probably by design, to keep the paparazzi at bay)? Maybe Vermont or New Hampshire. Wherever it is, someone would have to figure out the nuances of the rules on same-sex partner benefits in whatever the relevant jurisdiction is. I'm sure health insurance would be important to Ernie and Bert. Bert's always seemed right on the verge of getting an ulcer and Ernie's probably got no small amount of liver damage from his days of fast livin' and hard drinkin'.

Snuffleupagus

I have never understood just what exactly Snuffleupagus does, other than mope around and waste all of Big Bird's time. Does he contribute anything at all to Sesame Street's bottom line? He is an obvious candidate for a pink slip. My sole reservation is that he might be clinically depressed - a pre-existing medical condition - and PBS should probably get their employment lawyers involved to make sure there's no risk here of a discrimination claim.

Big Bird

What I’d like to know about Big Bird is how he ever got hired in the first place. “Bird brain” is not a complimentary expression (isn’t there some kind of bird that supposedly drowns itself staring up when it’s raining?). Big Bird’s got a pretty good attitude – seems to generally go with the flow – but, while I don’t think he’d bring the company down during the good times, I also can’t see him really stepping up to the plate during the hard times. He just doesn’t strike me as a go-getter with good initiative. If there were some specific need that would make sense for Big Bird to fill, I’d say keep him around. Otherwise, I think he gets a few months worth of bird seed and told to go find another nest.

Oscar

Oscar is indeed a grouch, but I get the feeling that, at the end of the day, he's the workhorse of the group. And I'd rather have someone on my team who's rough around the edges but who actually gets shit done than a lot of the other fuzzy little prima donnas who would probably fall over and die if they actually had to put in a full day's work. Is Oscar really even employed? Is the Sesame Street pay scale so twisted that he can have a full-time job and still have to live in a trash can? Or is there something we don't know about that is sucking up all of Oscar's cash? Is Oscar cooking up crystal meth or something on his days off? I would recommend some further investigation. If there are no skeletons in his closet, I'd lean towards keeping Oscar on. On the other hand, it would be sort of funny (ironic too?) to bang on the side of his can and tell him he was canned.

Cookie Monster

I like Cookie Monster. I really do. But the fact is, he is irresponsible and seems to have obsessive tendencies and zero self control. All of us would like to eat cookies all day long, but we learn not to let our base desires take over. I would worry about how Cookie Monster would fare if he lost the structure of having a steady job. He could be pushed to the limit and have nothing but his cookie crumbs to turn to. That's sad, but it's not the concern of PBS. They're trying to keep a business afloat and having a maniacal beast with a bizarre eating disorder in the ranks is not going to help. And cookies aren't cheap either.

Elmo

Elmo is the toughest call for me. He's obviously the rock star du jour, and he's clearly got the skills to pay the bills. Licensing revenues from the ten billion tickle-me-Elmos that were sold at Christmastime a few years ago are probably one of the main reasons PBS is still around at all today. But fans are fickle and fame is fleeting. I am not convinced that Elmo has any staying power. I think he's already past his prime and that pretty soon you're going to start seeing 3AM infomercials with Elmo hawking crappy exercise equipment or swamp land in Florida. OK, full disclosure here. I'm biased, and a part of me can't wait to see Elmo crash and burn. Why? Because Elmo is a total jive-ass, sell-out Grover rip off. How Elmo ever managed to so completely upstage Grover, who is the very embodiment of all that is awesome and cute, is beyond me. Shameless. Grover’s got too much class to go around bitching about it in public, but I can tell it's just eating away at him. My personal opinion is that the potential damage to PBS’ ongoing integrity if it keeps pandering to this red little poseur far outweighs whatever short term financial hit PBS would take if it shit-canned Elmo.

Grover

If Grover were to get the axe, the apocalypse would be near. Sesame Street without Grover? Game over. I have nothing further to say about this except, rock on, Grover. You've always got a place to stay with me.

Why Non-Profits Have Turned Me Into an Asshole

I worry that I’ve become more of an asshole recently. Some people might tell you that this is nothing new, that I’ve been an asshole for as long as they can remember. But I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s a recent development. And who is to blame? Non-profit organization fundraisers.

To clarify, when I say "asshole," I mean a "callous, unsympathetic, cold-hearted jerk who is generally less inclined to do unto others as he would have others do unto him." At my core, I think I’m as caring as the next guy. But when I consider how adept I’ve become at ignoring people with real problems, I have to wonder.

Coming across a lot of homeless people begging for spare change may have been the start of it all. And coming across a lot of homeless people is a city thing. If you live in a little town, you just don't encounter that many homeless people. There may be one, but he's most likely the cute, friendly drunk type who everyone likes. He probably gets taken in every night by the good townsfolk who give him a hot meal and a place to sleep until, one day, he mends his ways, sobers up, gets a steady job, becomes a generally productive member of society and maybe even marries the wholesome daughter of one of said townsfolk. In a city, you come across a lot more folks in need of some spare change. Maybe you drop a few quarters in some of their cups, but for every one person you help out, you have to pass by a whole lot more. If you tried to lend a hand to every homeless person you passed, you'd never make it to work. And then you'd probably end up homeless yourself. And to pass by one after another person who is experiencing such hardship and who needs your help, and to still live with yourself as a person, you have to develop some mechanism to cope. And that mechanism is tuning out. Ignoring another human being in need.

The more of a connection you have with a person, the harder it is to ignore him. It's easier to walk right past a person who's just jiggling a cup, a little harder to ignore someone who asks you for something directly. It really hurts to brush off a "hey champ, you got my dollar today?" or even a good old fashioned "God bless."

Non-profit street fundraisers have learned a lot from the business strategies of the homeless and have taken it to a whole new level. The fundraising strategy du jour - not a new one, but one that seems to have gotten a lot more prevalent recently – is to send out swarms of cute, young, perky college kids to follow you down the sidewalk and harass you in the most charming way possible. They walk beside you and start off by saying things like "sir, I have to tell you, that is the nicest tie I have seen all day" or "wow, you have got to tell me your secret for achieving such firmly toned pectoral muscles." And if you let slide any single response, make one millisecond of eye contact, they’ve got you. Then they’re off telling lurid tales of environmental degradation and tortured puppies and bald, cancer-infested toddlers and, next thing you know, you’re bawling your eyes out and hemorrhaging cash, begging them to stay put for a few more minutes while you run to an ATM machine to empty your savings account in support of their cause.

And so, if you’re going to have any chance at all of making it from the subway to your office with dry eyes and a dime in your bank account, your ability to stave off people in need has to evolve at pace with the guerilla tactics of the non-profit world. You can try the old classics: frothing at the mouth, talking to yourself, making them think you’re crazy; flashing a gun; vomiting next to them; screaming horrible, violent threats ("I swear to God if you take one more step towards me I will rip your f-ing head off and shit down your neck"). But that takes a lot of energy / profanity / bodily fluid and is generally not how you want to start your day (and, if you’re like me, you don’t have a gun).

So you develop the stone-faced shtick, the ability to walk right past someone who’s talking to you as if you can’t hear a word he is saying. It’s effective, but it’s hard. Especially when someone is saying such lovely, wonderful things to you. When someone compliments your tie or pectoral muscles, every molecule in your body wants to smile and say "thanks!" and tell them where you shop and what gym you work out at. Even if you know they utterly don’t mean what they’re saying, and have been saying the exact same thing to every schlubby, overweight accountant / lawyer that has crossed the street in the past month, it’s hard to ignore. And here’s the point: if you can ignore a cute, young, perky college kid who’s saying lovely things to you, you can ignore just about anyone in the world, no matter how dire their circumstances or how powerful their plea. And, per my previously articulated definition, that makes you an asshole.

So what now? How do I get back in touch with my sympathetic, human side? I could move to a small town where, as discussed, there would just be one homeless guy, who was fun and friendly, and take care of him. But I like taking the subway to work, and small towns don’t have subways. I could lock myself in the house and never leave. But that might create some problems of its own. Maybe some legislation outlawing compliments that are not genuine, or outlawing non-profit fundraising altogether. That might work. But that might lead to more homeless people, and they’d probably adopt the non-profit strategies pretty quickly.

Maybe, in the end, I’ll just have to live with being an asshole.

Meatfest 2009

Our neighbors signed up for a meat-share service. Every month, a load of assorted meat was delivered to their door. But they couldn't handle it. Soon their freezer was overflowing with meat. Meat was everywhere. So they rounded up their neighbors to help. Here is a seven minute video documenting what happened when a community came together. To eat. Meat.

High- and low-resolution versions of the video are available. The low resolution version is grainy but can be viewed instantly. The high resolution version is of much better quality, but takes about five minutes to download.

MEATFEST 2009 - HIGH RESOLUTION - CLICK HERE

MEATFEST 2009 - LOW RESOLUTION (click play button on box below).

Keno and the Shitfaced Gambling Addict Junior High School

There was a big night in Boston sports last week. The Celtics and the Bruins were both in the playoffs, and both games were being broadcast at the same time. So I went to my favorite bar down the street (I still don’t have a TV) to check out the action. 40% of the bar was focused on the TVs showing the basketball game, about an equal percentage was staring and yelling at the TVs with the hockey game, and the last bunch was transfixed by the colorful, bouncing balls on a smaller TV tucked away in the corner – the Keno screen. Keno is a Massachusetts lottery game piped into bars across the state. Every four minutes from 5AM until 1AM, you can choose numbers by filling in bubbles on a card, which you give to the bartender, along with some cash, to process. The more numbers you’ve chosen that correspond with the numbers on which the bouncy balls on the TV land, the more you win.

So I’m still on the fence about whether this next story makes me a kind, public-service oriented good Samaritan or a horrible, despicable bastard. I’d be interested to get your input. Suppose two women sitting next to you at a bar have been obsessing for hours over Keno, one gets up to go out for a smoke, and the other asks you for help filling in the bubbles on her Keno card because she’s too wasted to do it herself. Do you lend her the benefit of your relatively unimpaired motor skills and help her chase the dream of riches and fame? Or do say, “lady, you know, you might be kinda throwing away your money here, and maybe you should just go home.” I ended up helping her out (not to brag, but after the SAT, LSAT and bar exam, I'm a pretty damn competent filler-inner of no. 2 pencil scantron bubbles). But I couldn’t help but think that this whole setup was just so, so wrong.

Here’s why it’s so wrong. It’s not just the gambling part. That gambling, while sometimes a genuinely rational, fun way to spend time, is often way over on the other end of the manipulating-human-psychological-frailty end of the spectrum, egging people on to make irrational decisions that they know deep down (or maybe they don’t) are really not in their best interests. And it’s not even the gambling combined with drinking part. That however rational or irrational gambling may be on its own, I’m pretty sure people don’t generally become increasingly appreciative of the odds of the game when they have the benefit of 15 Bud Lights on their side. What, to me, makes it so, so wrong is the fact that the whole thing is run by the very institution that’s supposed to be taking care of us – the government.

I know that, very often, when you hear people start talking about the government trying to manipulate us, you’re getting into that nutty (though sometimes quite amusing) conspiracy theory realm. If you think the government is listening to your phone calls or brainwashing you with chemicals in the drinking water, there’s a pretty good chance that the issue is actually based on just a wee tiny bit of your own emotional baggage. But the Massachusetts government conspiracy to take away peoples’ money through lottery games is all spelled out very matter-of-factly, and with nice color slides to boot, in the 2008 Massachusetts State Lottery Commission Information Packet.

The information packet notes that over the past three decades, the Mass lottery, which is charged with coming up with “innovative games with entertainment value to players in order to further grow revenues available to the Commonwealth’s cities and towns,” has “returned” over $15.3 billion dollars to the Commonwealth. The returned dollars were used for “everything from improving roads and schools to hiring police and firefighters.” The bar where I helped my shitfaced compatriot fill out her Keno card had a colorful certificate from the lottery commission hanging on the wall congratulating the bar patrons for having won a total of over $260,000 from Keno last year.

So what what’s so horrible about the government providing entertainment, which returns money to the Commonwealth to be used for hiring firefighters? What’s wrong is the how and the who. The how is by taking advantage of people who are drinking and gambling. Whatever you think about why people gamble, as any psychologist, sociologist or addiction counselor will tell you, it is almost never simply because people simply enjoy innocent “innovative games with entertainment value.” The who, in a nutshell, is poor drunk people. There are, of course, hoards of rich, non-alcoholics who go to bars and play Keno, but I know from my years of extensive research – sitting in bars and checking out what the folks around me are up to – that the affluent, sober crowd is not, by and large, the one “returning” its money to the firefighters.

The crux of the main argument in support of taking money from poor drunk people is that it’s their choice, they’re going to spend it anyway, and if the government doesn’t do it, someone else will. And this may well be true. But there is a fundamental difference between the government and other people. As individual actors in a capitalist society, we’re all playing the same game with one another: trying to come up with clever ways to get other people to give their hard earned dollars to us while, at the same time, being vigilant in not giving up our own dollars except for the things we think will provide the most value to us. We know that other people want our money and that we have to be careful not to give it to them irrationally. The government is different. Reasonable people can disagree about how much government is the right amount of government or how active or passive the government should be. But I don’t think anyone would agree that the government should be in the role of preying upon human frailties to manipulate people into giving away their money. Old ladies who walk around bad neighborhoods at night may get mugged. If it’s going to happen anyway, maybe the government should mug old ladies itself so that at least the money will be put to good use.

The lottery certificate at the bar talking about how much people won last year is a manipulative statistical lie – a purposeful substitution of top line for bottom line, gross for net. People at the bar “won” $260,000 in the same way General Motors “earned” $149 million in fiscal 2008 – i.e., by spending exponentially more in order to bring in that amount. I understand why the lottery would not want to highlight how much was spent to “win” the $260,000, but the $15 billion “returned” to the Commonwealth was not made from net winnings at every bar.

If this is really how we want our government to treat our fellow citizens, then so be it. Voters in a democracy can decide to tax whoever they want and redistribute wealth in any way they like. But if this structure is really what we want as a society, then the concept should be explicit and voted into the tax code. Describing Keno in friendly, market-driven terms and decorating bars with purposefully misleading numbers is not the way to go. If we want more good things like schools and firefighters, and we want the poor, the drunk and the gambling addicted to pay for them, we at least need to be clear about it (maybe even name things after them: Shitfaced Gambling Addict Junior High School). Then, at least the next time the person on the stool next to me wants to “return” some cash to the Commonwealth but is too trashed to do so on her own, I’ll be able to help out with a clear conscience.

The Debate Over the Debate Over Twitter

I sometimes think it would be nice if people stopped complaining. But then, upon further reflection, it occurs to me that if people stopped complaining, there would be very little to talk about. The opposable thumb. The ability to make use of tools. Complaining. These are the very essence of what makes human beings human. So, OK, complaining stays. But maybe some limitations on what people complain about. Here's a suggestion: how about if people tried to complain about only things that had some actual bearing on their lives?

One particular, recent hot button issue is Twitter. In case you haven't opened a newspaper or web browser in the past six months, Twitter is a website where people can post short messages that can then be followed by readers who have signed up to follow the writers. The messages - "tweets" - are usually of either the "does anyone know how to do some thing I want to do" variety, the "holy shit; I'm trapped in a burning building" variety, or, probably most commonly, the "I am considering scratching myself" / "what I ate for breakfast" variety.

A lot of people love Twitter and a lot of people hate Twitter. No big deal. A lot of people also love and hate collecting porcelain pony figurines. But while you can go for years - decades sometimes - without reading a single op-ed about porcelain pony figurine collecting, an incomprehensibly huge number of people seem to feel the need to write, voluminously and passionately, about why, and the extent to which, they love or hate Twitter (and just to be clear, I am not going to write here about why I love or hate Twitter, but rather about what I think about people writing about what they love or hate about Twitter).

I understand the natural tendency to want to blather and gush about the things you’re into. If you love something, you want to spread the word (see, e.g., why I love running). And I understand the equally powerful need to rant and huff about things you don't like that, for whatever reason, are a part of your life. Like mosquitoes. Or taxes. Or when the minimum wage-earning high school kid at Taco Bell gives you a chalupa, all slathered in guacamole, instead of the gordita, with guacamole on the side, that you ordered. When you’re confronted with something that bothers you, it feels good to get it off your chest.

But something about Twitter really hits a nerve. In editorials and newspaper columns, and just in talking to people, I have seen people get so worked up about Twitter you'd think they were talking about a new government plan to tax toilet paper or to require people to tattoo their infants. For some, the idea that someone would want to read about what someone else just had for breakfast is somehow deeply offensive and blisteringly infuriating. And while I understand completely why people need to rant about mosquitoes and taxes and messed up Taco Bell orders and the infinite variety of life’s other impositions, what confounds me is why people bother to spend the time and effort to rant about things they have the power to completely ignore.

The power to ignore is what makes Twitter different than mosquitoes and taxes and messed up Taco Bell orders. While there is almost no way of escaping these other irritants (short of staying in the house, living off the grid and renouncing fast food – obviously not tenable options for most of us), all you have to do in order to live the entire rest of your life without ever having to read one single tweet is to: NOT open your web browser and go to Twitter.com; NOT choose a unique user ID and twelve character password; NOT enter a bunch of personal information; NOT agree to the terms and conditions; NOT choose all of the fellow Twitterers whose posts you want to follow; and then NOT check back to the website every day to see what new updates have been posted. Not doing all of this is very, very easy. By way of demonstration, try closing your eyes and counting to three. See? Just like that, you have NOT enrolled in Twitter and will never, ever see a single tweet.

So, if Twitter can be completely shut off, and if no taxpayer dollars are being used to subsidize it, and if no one is being bound and gagged and dragged from his home and forced to set up an account, then why all the fuss? There are only two ways I can fathom why you might feel like Twitter was imposing on you even if you have successfully NOT followed the enrollment steps described above.

First, maybe you feel like the reason your Taco Bell order got all screwed up in the first place, and the reason you are now back at your cubicle with a guacamole-soaked chalupa you don’t want, is that instead of giving your order the benefit of her undivided attention, the kid behind the counter at Taco Bell was busy Twittering her friends (perhaps about how lame it is to spend all day hawking chalupas to luddites). But Twitter, in this scenario, is an unfair bogeyman. Since the dawn of human commerce, customers at counters have been receiving sub-par service from underpaid employees on the other side of said counters because said employees were preoccupied with something else. 50 years ago, when guys wanted help buying, say, fedoras from the fedora counter, the fedora seller guys were probably reading the horse racing pages and talking to little kids about getting their 2 cent bets over to the bookies. 11 million years ago when Neanderthals were trying the exchange piles of rocks for ripped off hunks of antelope meat, the kids at the antelope meat cave (this was before counters were invented) were probably busy flirting with Neanderthal-ettes or trying to start fires. And, in the not too distant future, when Twitter has been long forgotten and when kids all have wifi connections hooked up directly to their brains, while it may be less obvious what exactly it is that the kid behind the counter is distracted by, rest assured that he will not be giving you his undivided attention.

The second way in which Twitter may affect people who do not read tweets is just having to hear incessantly about how much people love or hate Twitter. If this is what is getting people so upset, all I can say is that it’s the people who hate Twitter who started it.

So here is my two cents on the debate over the debate over Twitter. If you’re a big fan, then right on. Good for you. Tweet your days away to your heart’s content. Perhaps compose some tweets about the joy of Twittering. And if Twitter is not your bag, do not sign up for Twitter and do not spend any further time recounting to anyone the reasons you are not interested in Twitter. Go get interested in something else, and spend time on that. Come to think of it, it might not be a bad idea to apply this concept to just about every other issue in the world. If someone else likes it, and if it’s no skin off your back, maybe just let it slide. I know I’m not the first person to come up with the live-and-let-live idea. Maybe it just needs to be reiterated. Maybe I’ll tweet about it.

Long-Distance Relationships - the New, New Thing

A number of people have asked me why my wife Leslie and I have decided to live apart. I am living in Boston and, at least until the end of the year, she is in Washington, DC. Those of you who have read my scientific study demonstrating that Boston is a 200% better city to live in than DC might have assumed that our decision was based solely on my paradigm-busting findings, that moving back to Boston would increase my happiness and well-being correspondingly. But that's not the whole story. Aside from the fact that being involved in a long-distance relationship is, flat out, the hippest, coolest thing a couple can do these days, there were a number of quite complex factors that went into the decision. Primary among them were as follows:

Aesthetics

Honestly, living with your spouse and falling asleep every night in a comfy bed, snuggled up against the person you love most in the world is a pretty effete, bourgeois, hedonistic thing to do. In terms of artistic creativity and street creds, monkish bohemianism is going to trump effete, bourgeois hedonism one hundred percent of the time. Plus, if you believe in heaven and hell, my understanding (granted, I'm getting a bit out of my element here) is that just about all the governing literature has it that the former is more accessible to the monkish types and the latter more likely for the hedonists. Leslie and I have been called a lot of things in our lives, but never once has anyone ever called us (at least to our faces) effete, bourgeois hedonists. But, just to be sure, lest there be any doubt, we have opted in favor of a more monk-ish, bohemian-ish existence by splitting our one, warm, comfortable home into a stripped down convent and an equally inconvenient abbey. In my new solo kitchen, for example, you'll find only the barest of monkish essentials: beer, baking soda, a frozen burrito and some sliced provolone cheese. And in my uninviting living room, I can sit on a borrowed couch and stare into the corner where the TV used to be. And my living room will be even more monk-ish bohemian-ish when my friend who's lent me the couch takes it back. Then I'll be able to sit on the floor and stare at the corner where the TV used to be. All of this is terrific cosmic training. The next time anyone gives either one of us the what-do-you-know-what-kind-of-hardship-have-you-ever-had-to-endure eye roll, we can respond with a kind Dalai Lama-ish smile and a deep breath of tranquility, knowing that our astonishingly un-hedonistic lifestyle has led us to be at one with the universe.

Community service

The epicenter of federal government, Washington, DC is, of course, where you need to live if you want to have any meaningful impact on national and international policy. Boston, on the other hand, is the second largest hub of venture capital activity in the nation. So it's hard to shape the future of technology and innovation if you're too far from there. It seems like not a day goes by when one or another Congressional sub-committee or banking consortium isn’t trying to drag Leslie or me in for a debrief. You can see the conundrum. By living in only one place, we figured, we might be less readily available to swing by for impromptu Ways and Means Committee rap sessions, participate in nights out with the federal reserve boys, that sort of thing. We were concerned that we might be depriving Congress and the venture capital community of the benefit of our full attention. And in these tough economic times, when knowledgeable people with a cool head and clear vision are so desperately needed to keep the world economy on track, that just seemed almost unconscionably selfish.

Glamour

When we decided to live apart, we wondered if we would be able to afford any real vacations. That became a moot point when we realized that travel between Boston and DC on the USAir shuttle was itself better than any vacation we could ever hope for. I've often heard the USAir shuttle described as a sort of combination of the Orient Express, the QE2 and the Concorde. The luxury and service afforded the elite slice of the population lucky enough to hold a Boston / DC shuttle ticket is so unparalleled that people sometimes book shuttle flights even if they have no reason to travel between these two cities. There is an audible gasp of anticipation when the cabin door clicks shut, all of the passengers knowing that, for a brief hour and a half, all of life's worries and pressures will melt away as they decompress in a cocoon of luxurious tranquility. The only downside to a shuttle trip is that it always seems to go by too fast. By the time you've had a few appletinis and passed hors d'oeuvres and pulled the cucumbers off your eyes after your heated stone massage, there's almost no time left to mingle with the movie stars, business elites, senators and professional athletes socializing their way through the cabin.

Investment Strategy

In today's volatile economic climate, a good investment vehicle is one that performs predictably. I have two words for you: household appliances. When I moved back to Boston, I had to make serious capital expenditures on such big ticket items as a toast-r-oven, a hair dryer and an iron. Investments in household appliances, despite lingering outside the spotlight of the popular press, have, since the advent of electricity, been plodding along at a rock solid pace. With an average lifespan of seven years, a household appliance will generate an annual return of about -14%. In today's market, where chasing positive returns on investments seems downright childish, a negative 14% return is quite robust. If you invested all your money in a stock index fund, based on the current trajectory of around 35% annual loss, it would take just under three years to lose all your money. Had you invested in household appliances instead, it would take almost three times as long before you were broke. Having parked our liquid capital in the aforementioned toast-r-oven, hair dryer and iron, for the fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2009 we outperformed the market by approximately 21%. Any hedge fund manager who pulled off a feat like would be bronzed and hoisted up to the roof of the NASDAQ. Plus, with this type of tangible investment vehicle, I've been able to take advantage of such positive externalities as looking sharp and being able to broil food. Some might call me a financial genius. I just think of myself as a man who loves toast.

In Conclusion

People who complain that living apart from their spouses “sucks” or is the “worst period ever in the history of their relationship” are obviously sorely mistaken. Sure, living five hundred miles away from your sweetie may make you lonely and bored, and, yeah, you may have to cry yourself to sleep five or six nights a week, but the upside is immeasurable. Leslie and I will be back together sometime soon and we’ll be richer, sexier, bohemian-er and more politically influential than ever.

The Raging Coupon Cutting Debate: Why We Should Be More Like the French

My apartment building puts out a monthly newsletter – a glossy thing with some stock photos of smiling, racially ambiguous people and a few brain dead articles that could probably have been written by an algorithm. If the newsletter were an animal, it would have about the lifespan of a fruit fly. 12 – 24 hours maximum from the time the ink dries to the time it is returned to nature via the building recycling bin. Perusing the main newsletter headlines usually doesn’t take more than about ten seconds of my monthly time so, after spending another ten seconds muttering a few derogatory comments about the thing, I can get on with my life without too much anguish.

But then this month I discovered a disclaimer in the corner of the second page. Maybe it had been there every month and I just now noticed it for the first time. Or maybe it was new. Here’s what it said: “the views expressed herein are not necessarily those of [the management company] and neither [the management company] nor its affiliates… assumes responsibility for any materials submitted for publication or for any loss or injury arising out of the publication of such materials.” Additionally, “any action taken in reliance on the views contained herein is taken at the risk of the reader.” The disclaimer piqued my interest. Why would something like that be necessary unless there was going to be some good risqué stuff? Maybe management had found some new writers and finally decided to replace the usual drivel with some more interesting articles – something along the lines of “KABOOM! How to make a powerful bomb out of everyday bathroom supplies!” Or maybe a piece on how to buy a kidney or beat a drug test or operate a slim jim.

But, alas, the two most prominent features were a recipe for caprese pizzas and an article entitled “Can clipping coupons save you money?” The coupon article concluded with this Pulitzer prize-worthy insight: “Whether clipping coupons is worth it depends on your situation. If your life’s responsibilities are weighing on your wallet, then the time invested is probably worth it. If, however, your time is in shorter supply than your money, you’ll probably find the effort is too consuming to maintain.” I understand that a publication like this, distributed to a diffuse audience with varying tastes and interests, has to be fairly middle of the road. But, at some point, inoffensiveness can itself be so extreme as to actually become offensive. The combination of such milquetoast writing with such a paranoid disclaimer almost made my head explode.

I tried to imagine a situation in which the articles in the newsletter could actually result in the kind of damages contemplated by the disclaimer. Unwitting resident gives the caprese pizza recipe a shot only to have one of her guests be so disgusted with it that she gouges out the hostess’ eyes with her salad fork and then throws herself off the 12th floor balcony? Hostess sues, only to have judge rule that she had implicitly consented to the elegantly worded disclaimer and had thus assumed the risk of any such potential outcome, absolving management company of any liability it may otherwise have had (and that, further, management company was justified in retaining hostess’ security deposit to replace bloodstained / eyeball residue-covered carpet in dining alcove)? Old man who had been using coupons his entire life became so distraught over the thought that doing so may not actually have been the best use of his time that he has nervous breakdown and now requires full-time home care and monitoring?

How is it that we’ve gotten to the point where we have to disclaim all responsibility for offering opinions on coupons and caprese pizzas? Frivolous lawsuits made possible by sometimes quirky tort laws may be part of the explanation. And a general refusal to take any responsibility when things go wrong – a possible byproduct of out of control personal empowerment – must have something to do with it. But, on a more fundamental level, I think we’ve all just become a little too afraid of a good argument. This, I believe, is a uniquely American phenomenon. In moving beyond our oversensitivity to contradictory points of view, I would suggest that we could learn a little something from the French.

Some of the qualities – self-assuredness, confrontativeness and argumentativeness – that make the French so obnoxious are the same qualities that make their culture so vibrant and dynamic. If you’ve ever used the term “freedom fries” seriously, you’re probably more inclined to focus on the obnoxious side of the coin; if you’ve ever heard yourself refer to your college years as a “liberal arts” education (and if you were entirely unemployable when you graduated), you may have a slightly greater appreciation for the vibrant component. Every French citizen is a renowned expert on every subject ever to have been contemplated by mankind, loves to argue and will never hesitate to explain to another person why he is absolutely, unconditionally right. If a French apartment management company ever put out a newsletter, its disclaimer would most likely say something like “the views contained herein are unequivocally correct and anyone who disagrees with them is poorly educated and of ill repute and questionable moral character.” And that’s why it’s fun to be in France. The French thrive on engaging conversations, which can only exist when people are willing to confront and be confronted, and when confrontation is not viewed as a personal assault.

For most Americans, cultural diversity is a point of pride. And, for the most part (there are a lot of obvious exceptions, but that’s a conversation for another time), the acceptance of diversity in the US is real and commendable. But the US brand of multiculturalism is more often based on a live-and-let-live philosophy than on a proclivity to engage one another – to probe, learn, question and, ultimately, understand. The general expectation that others will let us live in whatever way we choose has conditioned us to interpret being questioned as being affronted, which, in turn, completes the loop of non-confrontation and lack of discussion.

I know this isn’t a sentiment that is voiced all that often in the US, but I’d like to suggest that we all try to be a bit more like the French. Discussion is fun! Arguing does not have to be a bad thing! If we were all just a bit more inclined to say frankly what we think, even while in the company of non-like-minded people, and to listen genuinely to what other people think, we might just end up having a jolly ol’ good time. And then, once robust debate became more fundamentally woven into the fabric of our society, maybe just maybe (and don’t get me wrong here; I enjoy a good caprese pizza and clipped coupon as much as the next guy) my apartment newsletter could lose the disclaimer and tackle some just slightly more engaging subjects.

My First Gun Show (What I Did Last Weekend)

For whatever reason – my New York City Jewish heritage? my upbringing in a liberal college town? – guns have just never been a part of my life. I shot a few BB guns at camp in Kentucky when I was a kid. I know a few people who hunt. But most of what I know about guns and gun culture comes from what could pretty objectively be called the liberal magazines I read and websites I frequent. So, when I saw an ad in the paper last week for a gun show in Manassas, Virginia, half an hour from where I live, I figured, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in Virginia, go to a gun show.

I thought I’d broaden my horizons a bit, but what I really, secretly wanted was to whip out my little video camera go rock some good Michael Moore action on my unwitting subjects. (see video below) I thought maybe I’d meet some real frothing-at-the-mouth, militia peddling nut jobs talking about the government slipping brainwashing drugs in the water supply, capture it all on video and put together an exposé so outrageous that no one would believe my stories until they watched the footage.

So I paid my six dollar entrance fee and walked past the hot dog vendor and into a not very big, slightly run down fairground building, ready to be morbidly shocked and appalled. But, alas, it just wasn’t meant to be. My maiden gun show turned out not to be all that crazy. In fact, if you replaced the military fatigues with North Face jackets, the ammo boxes with sleeves of Titleist Pro V1s and the sniper rifles with pitching wedges, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between this and any one of the golf expos I used to frequent. In both places, most of what you hear is people talking obsessively about the mind-numbingly dull minutiae of some product. Whether it’s club head speed or recoil, if it’s not your bag, it’s just not that interesting.

Also, it turns out I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to trapping people into exposing their lunatic, anti-social tendencies in front of my probing video camera. Whatever you think about Michael Moore, you have to admit the guy’s got some balls. I ended up just sneaking my camera out a few times and taking some quick shots of the room, hoping nobody would notice (nobody did). This place was full of guns, after all. Probably best not to cause a scene.

I saw a few things that were a little nutty. A sign at the entrance noted that no loaded or concealed weapons were allowed. But then, of course, guns and ammo were being sold at every table, and a booth in the back was selling “The Ultimate Conceal Carry Holster.” Was this meant to be ironic? Maybe just good business. Like, if you want to have a loaded, concealed weapon inside the pavilion, you at least have to spend some cash. Speaking of which, guns are not cheap. Most of the regular-looking handguns were in the $500 to $750 range, and one of those Rambo-ass fully automatic sniper-looking things would set you back over two grand. I still can’t quite fathom what an upstanding, law abiding citizen would do with one of those things. It would be hard to have one of those in your hands and pull off the “I’m just a good ol’ hunter boy who learned to shoot from my dead grand papi” story with a straight face. Anyway, the crowd at the show was not what you’d call particularly affluent looking. And so, at the very least, I think most of the folks there would probably have to save up for a while before taking one of those babies home.

There was some pretty rich literature for sale. A whole assortment of books on protecting yourself in the event of a school / office / chain-restaurant-where-you’re-just-trying-to-enjoy-your-unlimited-bread-sticks shooting. A few pretty paranoid kinds of titles like “The Policeman is Your Friend and Other Lies.” Some things that were just weird, like “Sneak It Through: Smuggling Made Easier” and “Drink as Much as You Want and Live Longer” (not sure what this one has to do with guns, but I’d be interested in learning about that in any case). And a lot of books focusing on various levels of off-the-grid living. I learned a few good tips from some of the selections in this last category. Like figuring out what kind of RV would be best for my needs. And that mainstream society frowns upon gaps in your resume, which I know personally to be one hundred percent correct from several HR-types who almost died of ecstasy when they “exposed” the missing one year in my work history (my brief career at the bagel store). I realized that some of the gun nuts’ conspiracy theories are not all that different than my own. Mostly just a difference of opinion as to who we think The Man is. They seem to think it’s the government; I think it’s big corporations. You say tomato; I say tomato (how do you write that?).

So, all things told, my first gun show was a bit disappointing. The folks I encountered were, sadly, pretty ho hum looking. Maybe if I had worked a little harder, dug a little deeper, I would have exposed some of the wingnuts I was sure would be lurking around there. Maybe I exude such profound yuppiedom that, like what Eddie Murphy suspected when he dressed up as Mr. White, people knew not to say anything juicy to me. Or maybe I’ve got a ways to go to become the muckraker I aspire to be.

Here's the video:

Democratic Discourse: Nuke Their Ass and Take Their Gas?

I was in northern Florida last week and saw a beat up old pickup truck go by with a bumper sticker that said “Nuke Their Ass; Take Their Gas” (don’t recall for sure whether there was actually a semicolon; my guess is no). Dang, I thought, that’s pretty harsh. In my native lands of Ithaca and Jamaica Plain, you’re more likely to come across bumper stickers of the “No-one is free when others are oppressed” or “If you love somebody, set them free. If they don’t come back, they were never yours” variety. Well, I guess each of us is entitled to our own opinion. And, in this democratic country we live in, we get one vote apiece. And that’s all good. Right? I think so. Still, Nuke Their Ass; Take Their Gas? Maybe I’m just thinking like one of those liberal elite types I keep hearing about, but man, is that really an opinion that should get as much consideration as my own?

First off, let me deconstruct the bumper sticker to be sure I’m correctly interpreting what this guy is advocating. Who exactly is it we should nuke and take their gas? Gas is what you find at a service station. Maybe this guy had some kind of beef with the night manager at the Pump-N-Go over on Elm and 22nd Street and just wants revenge? Maybe the night manager gave him the wrong change or looked at his girlfriend funny? If that’s the case, nuking the guy seems a little overkill. The whole town and all its residents would be obliterated. The earth in the surrounding hundred square miles would be radioactive for centuries. Seems like it would be easier to go shoot the gas station manager in the face with a shotgun or something. Or just give him an old-fashioned ass whooping. So that’s probably not it. I’ve got to assume then that “gas” is supposed to mean “oil” – the tasty-sounding “light, sweet, crude” whose trading price you always hear about – and that gas just rhymed better with ass (“Nuke Their Soil; Take Their Oil” comes across as a bit highbrow).

Assuming it’s oil we’re talking about, then who should be nuked? Alaska maybe? With its big pipeline and negative income tax? That sounds weird. You don’t usually hear even the most off the chart domestic whackjobs talking about dropping a nuclear bomb on their own country. Brazil? They have a lot of oil. I don’t know. That doesn’t sound right either. Everyone likes Brazilians. They’re just fun and musical and always dancing or laying around topless on the beach. I don’t think folks generally want to nuke them and take their oil. By process of elimination, that leaves the OPEC nations. I’m guessing that’s who bumper sticker guy is talking about. The Arab world does control a lot of oil, and they get a lot of press whenever oil is being discussed.

It is my hypothesis, therefore, that had I had the opportunity to engage in a dialog with the driver of the Nuke Their Ass; Take Their Gas truck, he would have articulated a proposed U.S. foreign policy paradigm whereby this country would drop nuclear warheads on the primary oil-producing nations in the middle east and, upon extermination of all inhabitants of the region, we would assert control over the land and expropriate any oil extracted thereafter.

I believe this strategy to be flawed. I am generally opposed to killing people and stealing. Just on principle alone, I don’t think we should take anyone’s oil, much less nuke them. I’ve even met people from middle eastern oil-producing countries. They were nice. I wouldn’t want them to be vaporized. Plus, there are some treaties out there that I learned about in a college international relations class – the names escape me at the moment – that I’m pretty sure would be violated by this kind of thing. There would probably be some ramifications, even with our allies, in the political realm. Distilled down its essence, you could summarize my opinion on this issue as: We Should Neither Nuke Their Ass Nor Take Their Gas.

So, the scene is set. There are two schools of thought. To nuke and take gas or not to nuke and take gas? How are we to resolve this difference of opinion, this interesting subject upon which reasonable people can disagree? In this country, we all get to vote. Our forefathers fought hard to give us the right to vote without a poll tax or a literacy test. And that’s the way it should be. You shouldn’t have to be rich or educated to have your opinion considered. But what about the unavoidable reality that money and education are powerful ingredients in having a broader understanding of the world? Should my opinion, based on a college education and on reading The Economist, that we should not bomb asses and take gas, carry more weight than a contrary opinion that is based solely on some kind of general feeling and maybe a little urging by Rush Limbaugh?

Maybe the answer is that, yes, everyone should get to weigh in equally, but that particularly extreme points of view will be mitigated by the relatively blunt instrument of electing a handful of individuals who are tasked with representing their constituents on a wide range of issues. Nuking a country is, I assume, one of those government actions that can’t be done without complying with a whole big set of protocols. So even if bumper sticker guy were able to organize all his friends and elect a guy running on the Nuke Their Ass; Take Their Gas platform into office, that rep would still have to do some maneuvering through the political channels.

Or maybe, even before the issue made it up into the ranks of elected officials, our difference of opinion could be hashed out in a dialogue. If there were something inherently better about my Neither Nuke Ass Nor Steal Gas platform, I should be able to state my argument and convince a rational individual in the competing camp of its superiority. Having emerged from the marketplace of ideas as the more worthy philosophy, such philosophy will be even stronger yet, tested and proven to all. And the newly enlightened convert will be able to proceed on his way and disseminate the idea to even more people.

OK, never mind all the intellectual angst. I guess it’s all good. I think I’m on the right side of this issue. And I’ll rest better knowing that my more worthy opinion on this subject will, in the end, prevail. And next time I see a big scummy mean-looking dude with an offensive bumper sticker, I’ll make sure to flag him down and engage him in a principled discussion of the merits of our respective points of view – a battle of the minds, a stimulating intellectual discourse.

Hmm. Or maybe I should just keep on driving.

Yes, I Am Ready For Full-Service Living

I was driving past a big not-quite-completed building in Boston’s très chic South End last year when a sign on the construction fence caught my attention. It said “Are You Ready For Full-Service Living?” If so, you were supposed to check out the developer’s web site or “call now for details.” I reflected for a moment and thought, well, hmm, yes actually, now that you mention it, I am in fact ready for Full-Service Living. The ad turned out to be for a very fancy residential development. Full-Service Living for yuppies, apparently, at what was a substantially higher price point than my current means (or future prospects, in all likelihood) could support. So Full-Service Living in the South End wasn’t going to work out. But the seed had been planted. I had to figure out a way. Then, an obvious solution: maybe I could move into an old age home. Geriatric facilities are all about Full-Service Living. I’d just need to figure out how, as a 35 year-old, I could make that work.

First, a few clarifications in my defense. Just because I want to move into an old folks home at the age of 35 doesn’t mean I am lazy or lacking in ambition. I just feel that the pace of things at a convalescent facility very closely mirrors the simpler, slower-paced kind of existence I’ve been striving for. Kind of a Zen thing. Life in a modern city is too fast and materialistic. Too often, we multi-task away the ability to appreciate life’s simple pleasures, like a slow walk in a park, or soup. Old people don’t generally have much of a choice but to slow down. Slow is the default pace when a broken hip is lurking around every corner. So, while you can always try to find moments of tranquility in the zip zap hubbub of the electronic world, it seems like it would be a lot easier when everyone surrounding you was shuffling around at a few thousand RPMs slower.

I envision a typical day of Full-Service Living as looking something like this: wake up with the sunrise, stand on balcony looking at birds, be served oatmeal, attend guided, in-chair stretching class, nap, be served soup, bus trip to a park, nap, read newspaper, be served more soup, crossword puzzle, go to sleep at sunset. All much more in tune with humankind’s natural rhythm. And I think most retirement homes offer maid services and on-site dry-cleaning too. Some may even have turn-down service, but I could do without that.

Also, mind you, I’m not talking about being a freeloader here. I know that the typical convalescent home resident doesn’t move in until after having toiled away in the working world for half a century or so, and probably has some sense of having earned the right to be pushed around in a wheelchair by a young nurse and to have another person cut his food. As consideration for what some may view as my “unconventional” status as a geriatric resident, I would be willing to take on more responsibilities than those of the typical resident. Perhaps I could lead the stretching class, or maybe drive the bus to the park. I suppose I could even import some of the skills from my prior life and spend a few hours per week offering pro bono estate planning services or, if anyone were interested, giving funk bass lessons.

I would hope that other residents would be accepting of me, but I would understand if there were some degree of resentment, some feeling that I was a “lazy degenerate” or some kind of “sociopath who couldn’t fit in with the rest of normal society.” Maybe the gents would resent my catching the attention of some of the choicest elderly ladies. I know that every group has its own particular pecking order and turf wars. If necessary, I could embellish my age a bit. Tell people that I was 89 years old. Have good skin because I always wore sunscreen and because people from my country (some made up place that sounded familiar enough that nobody would call me on it, maybe Tribecastan or something) tend to age exceptionally well. I could probably play the part well enough too. I do genuinely hate winter more every year and have started to notice that kids today are just not as respectful as they used to be. And, though I certainly hope it would never come to this, if some resident just had to be all up in my business and couldn’t step off, chances are I could probably take him.

I recognize that I may not have reached the age yet where falling asleep at the table or being a pervert are excused as cute, but I still feel that I could transition nicely into the geriatric realm, a more economical means of Full-Service Living. Being young is just a state of mind. I am old and crotchety beyond my years, and that’s what counts.

Dispositional Forecast – Rising Levels of Global Humility

I’m generally an optimist and so have been trying to keep an eye out for some of the upsides to the giant toilet flush that is today’s global economy. Not a whole lot to work with, but here’s one: I predict, for the foreseeable future, rising levels of global humility.

Humility – that intangible inclination to suspect that one’s successes are caused less by individual actions than by larger forces out there in the universe – is a good thing. And just a tiny little bit (one part per million?) goes a long way. Wouldn’t the world be nicer if we could all unleash a bit of our inner Yoda / Dali Lama and be just one notch less sure that we Have It All Figured Out?

Fortunately, I have reason to believe that the aggregate global humility level moves in direct, inverse proportion to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. And so, as the markets continue to plummet, I predict that that humility will rise to levels not seen since the Great Depression. All populations will be affected, in particular those that have historically been in the very the lowest quadrant of humility – the masters of the universe, financial titan types. So we’ve got that going for us, which (speaking of the Dali Lama) is nice. There’s probably a scientific way to measure individual humility levels – some kind of blood test or airport security-like scanning booth – but a loose, Justice-Potter-Stewart-looking-at-pornography approach (“I know it when I see it”) is usually quite accurate. One quick look at a person’s gait / posture / cock of the eyebrow can tell you how on top of the word he thinks he is.

The scientific explanation for macro-level shifts in humility has to do with internal versus external attribution of, respectively, good times and bad times. When good things happen, we think we’re the cause – the captain of the ship in full command of the seas. What Mollie Ivins said about George W. Bush, that “he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple,” could apply to just about anyone when things are all working out swimmingly. And when bad things happen, it’s crystal clear that bad weather or bad timing or an asshole brother-in-law are somehow to blame. When things go south, we’re just a cork being tossed around in the ocean. And all of this is nothing but natural. It’s the product of our hard wiring, smartly engineered to keep us from crawling back into bed every time the sun comes up in this tumultuous world.

What’s nice about humility is that it opens the door to inquiry and exploration. If you think that larger external forces have led to you where you are, you’re more apt to want to learn about those forces – the plate tectonics that heaved your hemisphere into an area with predictable annual rainfall, which caused big populations to stay put and form farms and then cities, which led to industrialization and specialization, which paved the way for a stable government and higher education and strong currencies – and all the other bricks in the pyramid upon which you found yourself perched upon exiting the womb. Without an awareness of all of those forces, with you yourself being front and center, ground zero of personal accomplishment, there’s no reason to look any further than your own self for an explanation of how you got to where you are. And then, of course, you’ve got to educate the world about the exalted path you took. And really, who wants to hear about all that? I bet, at some point over the course of his long life, Yoda “swung through Chicago and picked up his MBA” (exact words, I swear, used by a lecturer I heard at a continuing legal education seminar, describing his bio), but just chooses to focus on the bigger picture when approached for advice by the Luke Skywalkers of the world. Notwithstanding the fat autobiography advances ladled upon the likes of Jack Welch, Steve Jobs or Donald Trump, it’s usually just a lot more interesting to learn about the world outside than one guy’s individual road to becoming king.


All of that being said, let me now tell you about what I am going to do, and what you should do too, to achieve fame and fortune in the very short term. If you see a trend that is about to snowball, you have to capitalize on it (says Louis Winthorpe III to Coleman in Trading Places, “Pork bellies… I have a hunch something exciting is going to happen in the pork belly market this morning”). Humility clearly being the next blockbuster about to arrive on the scene, I just need to figure out a way to securitize it, slice it and dice it, package it up nicely and sell it on the market. SMUG now trading on the NASDAQ. It’s no more abstract, and probably a lot more sustainable, than a lot of the mortgage-backed products that everyone was clamoring to fold into their 401(k)s until the end of the last year. Humility futures are going to be a good, solid, counter-cyclical product offering a robust return on investment! This is an opportunity you do not want to miss! Supplies are limited! Call now to get in on the ground floor (prospectus and schedule of broker fees provided upon request)!