It sounds like a joke, but...

M&M's have been in the news lately, and - despite my affection for M&M's - I haven't paid a ton of attention to that bit of news. Something about M&M spokescandies. Was the green one too sexy? Not sexy enough? Is it a lesbian?

I really don't care one way or the other about spokescandies, other than to be annoyed by all the commotion, the ginned up outrage (likely faux, as a lot of the outrage comes out of Fox) over whether M&M's have gotten too woke.

All these outrageous outrages do is whip people into an even frothier state of culture war. And keep us from focusing on things that seem to me to matter a lot more. Like Ukraine. Like our faltering healthcare system. Like the environment. Like what happens to the indoor and outdoor environment when there are no regulations, or when regulations are ignored. As in the Norfolk Southern debacle in Palestine, Ohio. As in a 2022 incident in which two workers at at M&M/Mars factory in Pennsylvania fell into a vat of chocolate.

Sure, it sounds like a joke. Or a scene out of Willie Wonka. Or like something that might almost be fun, especially for a chocolate lover like myself.

Did I mention that I love M&M's? And I miss them.

I miss them because, a year or so ago, my blood sugar nudged me into the prediabetes domain. Because my diet - at least the sugar-free part of it - is largely healthy - lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, light on the red meat - I had been ignoring how much sugar I'd been consuming.

I've always had a sweet tooth - a day without something sweet is like a day without sunshine - but that sweet tooth had shifted over the years to sweet teeth.

Towards the end of my husband's life, one of my coping mechanisms was chocolate. I figured that self-medicating with Lindt - or a bag of M&M's - was healthier than alcohol or drugs. 

But even after Jim died, I kept keeping candy around the house. And things got worse during covid. 

What's the harm in keeping a 1 lb. bag of M&M's around, if all you're snacking on is a handful here and there.

Looking back on my sugar consumption, I realized that I was having a couple of cookies with lunch. A couple of cookies with my tea. Some ice cream for dessert with dinner. And a handful of candy when I settled in for an evening of making myself nuts watching MSNBC.

So I drastically cut back on my sugar consumption. 

I don't deprive myself entirely, but I've gone from something with sugar four times a day, to something with sugar once a day. 

Anyway, I don't miss sugar. (And I sure don't miss the 20 pounds I shed along the way.)

But I do miss M&M's, which I don't keep around anymore. I've had a couple of those little snack bags (fun sized, me arse) - the ones with six or seven M&M's in them - but not a real deal that is a big bag o' M&M's.

So when I read about the guys in the M&M/Mars chocolate vat, my first thought was not that they could have drowned, but that it might have been a good way to go. 

But, of course, it would have been a terrible way to go. Choking, gasping, panicking. Just terrifying. If you're lucky, you conk your head on the way down, or you die of a heart attack.

Fortunately, the two fellows at the M&M/Mars factory didn't have to find out. They were rescued by firefighters, who cut a hole in bottom of the vat and extracted the workers. They survived, little the worse for their wear. But their story illustrates what can happen when companies ignore the rules

In this case, the factory was fined $14.5K.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Mars Wrigley in the June accident at the Elizabethtown M&M/Mars factory, saying the workers were not authorized to work in the tanks and weren't trained on the proper safety procedures for the equipment.

Officials said two workers employed by an outside contracting firm fell into the partially filled chocolate tank while doing maintenance work. (Source: NPR)

So, if the workers weren't in over their heads in chocolate, they were in over their heads in terms of their training to safely and effectively do their job. 

Which is what so often happens when companies want to save money - in this case, by outsourcing maintenance to an outside firm. Time and again, we see that this arm's length approach to certain dirty tasks gives a company plausibility: we didn't know they were employing immigrants who weren't here legally, we didn't know they were illegally hiring children, we didn't know that they weren't training folks to do their jobs the right way.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. We didn't ignore the rules, those guys, who we trusted, were the bad guys. All we were trying to do was save money  bring in contractors to take care of these ancillary tasks that are not part of our core competency, enabling us to focus on our expertise, and where we provide unique value. Blah, di, blah.

As I said, fortunately the M&M workers were fine.

As I said, I really love M&M's.

For the record, the vat contained Dove chocolate.

Oops? I call BS!

Big little news in the art world the other day was the story about the cutesy cartoon balloon dog sculpture that an art fair attendee knocked off its perch. This wasn't just any old cutesy cartoon balloon dog sculpture. It was a Jeff Koons cutesy carton balloon dog sculpture. Valued at $42,000.

The shiny, electric blue sculpture was on display at Bel-Air Fine Art’s booth during the fair’s VIP Preview event. Once the sculpture shattered, the VIPs gathered. “When this thing fell to the ground, it was like how a car accident draws a huge crowd on the highway,” said Stephen Gamson, a Wynwood-based artist and art collector. (Source: Miami Herald)

Here's your before:

And here's your after:

Oopsie! 

Oopsie?

A large crowd gathered around the broken pieces with many people wondering if the incident was a performance art piece or another art fair stunt...

Not this time, Gamson said. Just a good ol’ fashioned accident...

Though he doesn’t know for certain, Gamson said he assumes that the woman tapped the sculpture because she was curious if it was a real balloon. It was not.

I call BS. Or, rather, I call DS (as in cutesy cartoon balloon Dog Shit).  

Because when was the last time a pricey, fragile object was left untethered and/or not encased in a clear plexiglass cube? I'm guessing that last time would be never.

But Jeff Koons is the past master of hype. Maybe not quite as extreme as Banksy (who famously shredded one of his works; the shredded work is "worth" over $25M). And that hype translates into insane prices for his works.  

Four years ago, Koons set a record for the most expensive work sold at an auction by a living artist: a rabbit sculpture that sold for $91.1 million. In 2013, another balloon dog sculpture of Koons sold for $58.4 million. (Source: NPR)

I haven't been to Encore, the splosh Boston casino, but it features a cutesy shiny stainless steel cartoon statue of Popeye. 

I yam what I yam, but I wouldn't have paid $28M for it. Maybe $2.80 for a greeting card that uses the image. But I'm not Encore owner Steve Winn now, am I?

And I yam not saying that the woman who oopsied the statue was in on anything. But when you leave something this fragile unguarded and unsecured, certainly you might have the expectation that it would get knocked over and smash to smithereens. And that this incident would garner a fair amount of press.

Interesting that it was a modestly priced cutesy cartoon balloon dog sculpture, and not the one that sold for $58.4M.

Anyway, word is that Koons might be selling the shards of this particular balloon dog. (For whatever reason, I'm zeroing in on the possibly true story of moviegoers at Chicago's Biograph Theater dipping their popcorn in the blood of FBI most wanted criminal John Dillinger way back in the 1930's.)

In any case, insurance will be covering the $42K. Oopsie or not, I guess all will be forbidden.

Arf! 

Looks like Eliminalia could use some reputation management

Over the course of my long blogging history, I've been contacted three times to take down a post. One was something to do with a controversy among Santa Clauses: full beard vs. non-full beard. Or something.

Another was about a social climber/lifestyle brander/"influencer"/bleach blonde/serial wife from NY who sued her kid's school because the school something-or-other to do with an auction, and who was perpetually getting pictures of her kids (in outlandish, non-kid-friendly outfits) in fringe society gossip rags. And who never, as far as I could tell, ever made it beyond the B-minus NY society list. (Okay: I just googled her. I saw on Page Six that she's now engaged to a billionaire who's big in the fashion biz. Billionaire smillionaire. Still not the A-list, as far as I can tell.)

The third was about some guy from Ohio who had been accused of financial fraud.

I am not a journalist. Obviously. What I do regularly, however, is comment (generally thoughtfully, but often enough snarkily) on items I see in the news. I mostly rely on reputable news sources to key my posts off, and if it's a source I don't know, I'll look for verification. I don't make things up. I don't libel. I comment. I snark.

When fewer people were blogging, and more people were interested in long-form blogs (as opposed to 280 character tweets), Pink Slip got a lot more traction. The Santa Claus post, got many comments, and it was a comment (as I recall) that one of the Santa Claus organizations felt maligned them. So they emailed me, and I took it down.

Was there a threat of legal action? Probably. 

The last thing I want from a non-monetized, Sunday-painter blog is having to pay a legal bill. 

So, gone.

Ditto the social climber whose lawyer threatened to sue me for something or other. (Is sarcasm a suit-worthy offense.) I believe in the First Amendment, but do I want to pay a lawyer, even though I do believe I would have prevailed in a court of law?

Quick answer: NO.

For the Ohio fraud case,  heard last year from a lawyer. Turns out the Ohio guy was exonerated, so would I take the post down? Turns out, the post was so old, and from an earlier platform, so I can't take it down. Instead, I added a comment stating that the man accused of fraud wasn't proven to be a fraud. And let the lawyer know I was doing so. But that, apparently, wasn't enough. So a couple of months ago, I got another email from the lawyer. Where did things stand with my removing the offending post?

I wrote them back that I had made a number of searches using variations of the guy's name and situation, and - going 12 pages deep - couldn't find the Pink Slip post come up in any search. I responded by pointing this out, and haven't heard anything else for them. If they come back again, I'll tell them I'm perfectly willing to have their client pay a techie to figure out how to remove the post. But if it's going to cost me anything, it is what it is and will remain so until the end of blogspot time.

Given these incidenteens, I was aware that there are entities devoted to helping those who want certain parts of their history to be expunged from the web. 

Most of them are on the up and up. They try to legitimately remove unflattering, untrue, or out of date stories about their clients. They develop strategies for getting their clients to do something or become part of something that's positive. They seed the media, social and other, with mentions of these things positive, so that the good news rises to the top when the search engines start searching.

Other of these reputation management firms are not quite so ethical.

As is the case with one such no-goodnik company:

They look at first glance like ordinary news outlets

serving up headlines from around the world. The hundreds of websites, seemingly unconnected to one another, come in six languages and purport to cover far-flung cities such as Paris, London and Chicago.

But beneath the surface, the sites have something in common: They host frothy stories about clients of a little-known reputation-management company that promises to remake the online images of its customers.

The network of fake news sites is one part of a complex apparatus the Spain-based firm Eliminalia uses to manipulate online information on behalf of a global roster of clients, an investigation by The Washington Post and other media partners found. The firm employs elaborate, deceptive tactics to remove or drown out unflattering news stories and other content, the investigation revealed. Eliminalia had close to 1,500 clients over six years, including businesses, minor celebrities, and suspected or convicted criminals. (Source: Washington Post)

One thing to get a "frothy" story placed on a legit site; quite anther to place it on a fake site. 

Then there's this tactic:

Between 2015 and 2021, Eliminalia sent thousands of bogus copyright-infringement complaints to search engines and web hosting companies, falsely claiming that negative articles about its clients had previously been published elsewhere and stolen, and so should be removed or hidden, the company records show. The firm sent the legal notices under made-up company names, the examination found.

Hmmm. Maybe I should check and see whether those legal notices I got were from made-up companies. If only I had any interest in doing so...

Without naming names, the WaPo article cites a few examples of clients that Eliminalia had worked for. I checked out the one that caught my eye, and I must say that I don't think that Eliminalia was especially effective in burying the sordid past:

...of a well-known traveling circus clown who had been convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Switzerland.

That is, unless there's more than one "well-known traveling circus clown who has been convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Switzerland." Maybe I got lucky and found the only other one. Maybe Eliminalia, despite its best/worst efforts, wasn't all that good.

Anyway, with this major story raining down on their parade, it sure looks like Eliminalia could use some reputation management of their own.

The Truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Until he decamped to the Brooklyn Nets in 2013, Paul Pierce was the heart and soul of the Boston Celtics. The Celtics last won the NBA championship in 2008, and Pierce was the finals MVP. That was a really fun team to watch - Pierce, Ray Allen (UConn's own!), Kevin Garnett - and Pierce was a fan favorite, including in my house. (My late husband was a big Celtics fan.)

Pierce had a wonderful nickname - The Truth - a name given to him by Shaquille O'Neal. The nickname was meant to convey that, on the court, Paul Pierce was the real deal. But if you're called The Truth, well, you might want to make sure you're the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 

Alas:

Paul Pierce has agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle US Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that he touted a crypto token without disclosing that he was paid for the promotions.

Pierce, who was nicknamed “The Truth” during his career, also made false and misleading statements about the token, according to the SEC. Pierce didn’t admit or deny the agency’s findings, the agency said. A lawyer for Pierce did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

...According to the SEC, Pierce failed to disclose that he was paid more than $244,000 to promote on Twitter the EMAX token, which is offered by EthereumMax. Source: Boston Globe)

Pierce wasn't the first celeb fined for promoting EMAX. Last October, Kim Kardashian agreed to a $1.3M fine to settle her EMAX kiss. Way back in 2018, boxer Floyd Mayweather was fined for hyping another bitcoin.

When I think about celebrity endorsements, or celebrities appearing in ads, I've always assumed they were paid. How much does it really matter if they don't actually use the product they're promoting? Does Jon Hamm use Hellman's mayo? Does Rob Gronkowski have a USAA policy? Does Ben Affleck run on Dunkin? (Yeah, I think in that case he actually does.)

But I guess you have to be a bit more careful if what you're banging the drum for is a security regulated by the SEC. 

“This case is yet another reminder to celebrities: The law requires you to disclose to the public from whom and how much you are getting paid to promote investment in securities, and you can’t lie to investors when you tout a security,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a statement.

And Pierce apparently didn't just tout EMAX, didn't just do the crypto version of a miniaturized Jon Hamm's standing in a fridge pushing the idea that mayo improves a ham sandwich. (Mayo actually does NOT improve a ham sandwich; mustard does. But this is a matter of opinion, and stating an opinion to the contrary is not an out and out lie.)

In addition to not disclosing that he was paid, Pierce ran afoul of the SEC by claiming that he had made more money with the EMAX token in May 2021 than he had in a year at ESPN. The SEC alleged in its complaint that the statement was “materially misleading.”

Pierce also tweeted his way into an untruth:

The SEC said one of the misleading actions Pierce took while being paid to promote EMAX tokens is tweeting a screenshot of "an account showing large holdings and profits without disclosing that his own personal holdings were in fact much lower than those in the screenshot." (Source: UPI)

Tweet, tweet.

It's exceedingly difficult for me to imagine anyone making a consumer choice, let alone an investment decision, based on something an athlete, actor, or other celebrity has to say about the product. Even if I'm actually familiar with the athlete, actor, or other celebrity. Honestly, does any eat at Taco Bell because Pete Davidson tells them to, let alone did anyone buy Alberto VO5 hairspray because Rula Lenska did their ads?

I'm a big subscriber to 'caveat emptor,' whether it's a generally well understood product  - like mayonnaise or hairspray - being touted, or a complex, little understood item like crypto. 

Companies using ads to mislead or outright lie about their products? Awful! Terrible! Fraud! A celebrity endorsement? Yawn...

But I guess you don't mess with the SEC, as Paul Pierce, The Truth, has found out.

Matt Damon, Larry David, Tom Brady, and Gisele Bundchen - all did ads promoting crypto. In this case, the notorious FTX scheme. Even though a million dollar fine will mean nothing to any of them, I still wouldn't want to be in their Air Jordans when the SEC comes around. 

Can't blame you, Nettie's. (Still gotta change your name on FB.)

 When I was a kid, my family rarely went out to eat.

Dining out wasn't a big thing way back then, and even if it had been, I can't imagine my family would have gone out very often. Why pay a restaurant when we could rely on my mother making three meals a day, seven days a week, pretty much from scratch? The only frozen meal we ever had was an occasional chicken pot pie. Probably when the little Banquet pot pies were on sale, ten for a buck.

On occasion, my parents did go out to dinner with friends, but these were grownup only events. Saturday night. My parents dressing up: my father in a suit, my mother in her good dress. We were happy to get the swizzle sticks they brought home.

We ate out as a family once a year, during the summer, heading to the Fox Lounge on Route 9 for open-face steak sandwiches and salad. Before we switched to the Fox Lounge, our annual dinner out was at Major's, a red-sauce Italian place, also on Route 9, but in the opposite direction.

Other than that, eating out was such a rare event, I could probably catalogue every time I was in a restaurant that wasn't a Friendly's until I was halfway through high school.

Even when the family was on vacation, we didn't eat out. Wherever we were vacationing - which would be either Chicago or the Cape for a couple of weeks - my mother cooked. Some vacation for her! (If we were taking the train to Chicago, my mother packed sandwiches for Friday dinner on the Lake Shore Limited overnighter. We did eat breakfast in the dining car. When we drove to Chicago, we picknicked, with breakfast on day two at whatever motel we were staying at. If we were on the Cape for our every-other-year there, my mother cooked every meal. No clam shack for us!)

But one thing I'm 100% sure of is that, when the Rogers family ate out, there were no kids making a lot of noise and/or running around the restaurant disturbing the peace of other diners and the staff.

I don't remember any scenes of any unruly kids back in the day. (Even Protestants, whom I always imagined got away with all sorts of terrible behavior.)

It just wasn't done.

O tempora, o mores...

Last summer, I ate with my brother and niece one Saturday night at a very upscale, decidedly non-red-sauce Italian restaurant in my neighborhood. A few times during the meal, Caroline and eye commented that it was fortunate that her father is hard of hearing, as this spared him having to put up with the LOUD MOUTH KID (4 or 5 years old) at the table next to us.

Sure, the kid may have been an obnoxious, spoiled little brat of a prince, but I blame the parents. 

They were out with another couple, and all any of them were interested in was chatting with each other or checking their phones. Not once was there any attempt to engage or distract this child, who was trying to attract their attention by loudly monologue-ing something or other, or singing some off-tune tune. Most of the time, the adults were blithely oblivious (or feigning blithe oblivion) to the noise this kid was making. 

At least he wasn't running around knocking over the waitstaff.

Which was apparently happening pretty regularly at Nettie's House of Spaghetti, a New Jersey eatery that recently came to a decision about hosting kiddos. Here's what they posted on their Facebook page:

We love kids. We really, truly, do. But lately, it’s been extremely challenging to accommodate children at Nettie’s. Between noise levels, lack of space for high chairs, cleaning up crazy messes, and the liability of kids running around the restaurant, we have decided that it’s time to take control of the situation. This wasn’t a decision that was made lightly, but some recent events have pushed us to implement this new policy. As of March 8, the day we return from our winter break, we will no longer allow children under 10 to dine in the restaurant.

We know that this is going to make some of you very upset, especially those of you with very well-behaved kids, but we believe this is the right decision for our business moving forward.

Thank you for understanding.

Based on the comments their post received, Nettie's Spaghetti met with plenty of understanding. And plenty of vituperation from those not willing or able to be understanding.

Sure, Nettie's had a few alternatives.

They could have continued to let kids run around, creating mayhem. (C.f., "recent events.") Which would have meant continuing to bother patrons looking for a nice quiet dinner, and staff hoping to be able to deliver a bunch of orders without getting knocked to the ground.

They could have restricted the hours they served families with kids. Which would have forewarned other diners when they were eating at Nettie's at risk of commotion, but which wouldn't have done much to help staff members who didn't want to be mowed down by scampering kiddos.

They could have spoken with the parents of the offending families, asking them to keep their children under control or leave. Which likely would have done no good whatsoever, given that the types of parents allowing their kids to act out and go haywire probably wouldn't take all that kindly to being told that their kids were behaving badly.

So kid-free Nettie's Spaghetti it is!

When I first came across this story, my reaction was "Mamma Mia, what's a joint called Nettie's House of Spaghetti doing banning kids?" If ever there were ever a name screaming families welcome to eat all the red sauce fare they want,

Nettie's House of Spaghetti would be it. 

And their FB tagline - Red sauce joint serving elevated nostalgia - would do nothing to dispel this notion. 

Shades of Major's on Route 9, with its red-checkered table cloth and grinning chef neon sign. 

But it seems as if Nettie's House of Spaghetti has been moving away from that image for a while, starting with changing their name to just plain Nettie's. 

They've tarted up their restaurant, toned down the red-sauce-y menu, and have been remaking the place as a date night, grownups-only place. 

They still gotta change their name on Facebook. And maybe that tag line. But other than that...

Personally, I wouldn't be happy in a world where kids were banned - even from restaurants where I want peace and quiet. As long as the kids are behaving themselves. (Pass given to crying babies or melt-downers whose parents whisk them away once they realize they're creating a disturbance.) But who can blame a small restaurant with some crappy clientele from just saying no to unruly kids? 

Let the Cheesecake Factories and spaghetti houses cater to the kid demographic.

This is, of course, unfair to families whose children know how to behave and who should be afforded the opportunity to dine out at a nice restaurant. The families who know enough to engage with their children and/or make sure the kids have some sort of something or other to entertain them. (Sadly, the era of a child being content with a paper placemat to color on with the red-green-blue-yellow crayons in the skimpy little package the restaurant provides is long over.) The families who know that sometimes the most well-behaved kid has a little meltdown, and who know enough to take that otherwise well-behaved kid out of the restaurant until they calm down. 

But there are plenty of other places to take your kids. Just. Not. Netties.

I hope that things work out for Nettie's. Buona fortuna. If I ever find myself in Tinton Falls, NJ, I'll be by.

What was this guy thinking?

Although I don't have any kids of my own, I can't imagine anything worse than losing a child. And within that non-imagining, I can't imagine anything worse than losing a child to suicide.

Yet it happens an awful lot, and it's been on the uptick.

The unimaginable recently happened to a family in New Jersey, whose 14 year old killed herself a couple of days after a video of her being violently beaten up in a school corridor started making the rounds on social media. 

To layer on to the unimagining about the death of your child to suicide, the superintendent of the area's schools chose not to "no comment." Chose not to make a comment - however banal, mealy-mouthed, and ass-covering - about what a terrible tragedy this child's death was. 

No, instead:

In astonishing emails to DailyMail.com, Triantafillos Parlapanides, the Superintendent of New Jersey's Central Regional School District who is paid $190,000-a-year, said Adriana [Kuch] - who killed herself in her bedroom closet on February 3 two days after being beaten - had been offered counseling 'for drugs'. 

He also made a shocking allegation against the girl's grieving father Michael, a 22-year Army veteran, claiming he 'had an affair' when Adriana was seven that drove her mother to commit suicide, and later 'moved the woman into the house'. (Source: Daily Mail)

Nothing to see here, folks. Just a seemingly grownup man, in a position of visibility and responsibility, trash talking a dead child and her grieving family. And doing it by emailing the Daily Mail, a British tabloid that notoriously traffics in sensationalism, celeb gossip, trash talking, right wing bluster, and smears.

What the ever-lovin' fuck was Triantafillos Parlapanides thinking?

Sure, he wanted to protect his realm, deflect blame for the school's response to the incident.

But, but, but...

In addition to his comments about the child who killed herself, Parlapanides continued to irk the overall community by trying to tamp down student protests, and by defending the school's decision to not call in the police, treating the beat down as a routine "girls-will-be-girls" hallway incident. (If you saw the video, the attack was pretty violent. This wasn't someone hip-chucking another kid into a locker and smirking an "excuse me" their way.) 

The footage itself lasts less than a minute. It shows Kuch walking down the hallway with her boyfriend as the kids recording the moment approach them going in the opposite direction. Suddenly, there's a quick movement from someone near the phone-holder and pink liquid sprays out of a cup, all over Kuch. She is then set upon by at least two people, the video shows, slammed into school lockers and surrounded by what is now a trio of attackers.

She crumples on the floor. The three classmates, backpacks swinging, fall over themselves a bit near the lockers, almost stepping on Kuch as she crawls around on the floor, trying to collect herself. Then they start shoving her, dragging her almost along the ground on her knees, raking her against the red school lockers, the white soles of her shoes the only part of her visible underneath her attackers at various points. Then one girl grabs her by the hair.

The violent attack continues for another few seconds before two adults run into the video frame and pull the attackers off Kuch. She is seen writhing on the ground, her hands holding either side of her head as a man stands over her. He then helps the bruised and bloodied girl up. The footage wraps. (Source: NY Times)

Parlapanides suggested that "it was up to the parents to press charges." (Charges have been brought against the students involved in the attack.) He claimed that it was quite enough to indefinitely suspend the students.

“We’re not going to double whammy a kid where they’re suspended and then police charges as well,” Mr. Parlapanides said.

I'm not a big fan of dragging cops into schools to drag kids out in situations that school personnel should be able to handle. (I'm thinking of the first grader who, a few years ago, was having a meltdown. So the school called the police, who took the kiddo out in cuffs.) But when there are obviously times when you need to bring the police into a school. And that's when criminal violence has taken place. As in the kids brutalizing Adriana Kuch. 

I don't know. Maybe if social media hadn't been involved, this incident - despite Adriana's bloodied face - wouldn't have been considered that big a deal, something worthy of police involvement. And, sure, kids need to be able to work out their differences. (There were plenty of fights - 99.9999% involved boys - when I was a kid. Most of them, in my recall, were one on one. Most involved pushing, shouting, and trash talking. I wasn't hanging around watching fights - I didn't fight; my friends didn't fight - but I don't remember kids actually getting beaten up. Maybe an occasional black eye or fat lip.) 

But, but, but...

If these thug kids had, say, beaten up someone who wasn't a fellow student, someone they set upon outside of school? They would have been arrested. They should have been arrested. Why is it any different if it happens in school?

Anyway, Triantafillos Parlapanides is no longer the school superintendent of NJ's Central Regional School District. He (wisely) resigned.

So he'll have plenty of time to think about how idiotic it was to make those comments to the Daily Mail. Hope he uses it well.

Talking 'bout my Presidents

When I was a growing up, we didn't have Presidents' Day. We had George Washington's Birthday. The day was a holiday, and it took place during a weeklong school vacation. There was also Abraham Lincoln's Birthday, on February 12th, which didn't involve a day off of school let alone a week. (Maybe if my parents had stayed put in my mother's hometown of Chicago, we'd have gotten a day off. But then we wouldn't have had our glorious Patriots' Day in April.)

Somewhere along the line, there was a shift to calling it Presidents' Day, and making it a shoutout to all those who have held this office. 

On the one hand, that's fair. On the other hand, making it a generic day is a bit like giving everyone a trophy, even if they don't deserve it. 

We have had some great presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt. FDR. And some very good ones. (Looking at you, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Barack Obama.) Some presidents that I just plain didn't care for: Andrew Jackson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George Bush. Plenty that I know zip about: John Tyler, Zachary Taylor - or is it Zachary Tyler and John Taylor?

Most Presidents are, of course, a mixed bag of good to great and god awful.

Take Lyndon Baines Johnson. Great on civil rights and trying to build the Great Society. And then there was the Vietnam War.

But there's only man among them who was the worst president ever. 

And that, of course, would be Donald Trump, a person singularly without redeeming attribute. Devoid of honesty, integrity, intelligence, knowledge, humility, curiosity, empathy, decency. Etc. The only thing he was good at was figuring out the message to market to his followers. I'll give him that rather feral brilliance.

I've lived long enough to have lived through fourteen presidents. Truman. Eisenhower. Kennedy. Johnson. Nixon. Ford. Carter. Reagan. Bush 1. Clinton. Bush 2. Obama. Trump. Biden. 

Definitely a mixed bag.

I have no recall of Truman. I had just turned three when the man from Independence went back to Independence.

But I certainly have strong impressions of the rest of them.

Local entertainer Big Brother Bob Emery had a noontime kiddy show that featured a toast (with a glass of milk) to the president of the United States. So I lifted my glass of milk and toasted Ike. My impressions of Eisenhower were largely formed by my reading of his leadership during World War II. Sure that was before my time, but that's mostly what I associate him with. And that association was greatness. Other than that, there was his heart attack his golf game, and his dowdy wife Mamie.

Then there was the glamorous John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I was about to turn 11 when JFK was elected, and you can imagine being a little Irish-Catholic in Massachusetts when that happened. And how it felt to an about-to-turn 14 year old when he was killed. I adored JFK, but from a more mature perspective, I recognize that policy and achievement-wise he was a mixed bag. That he was dog when it came to women. But  wit and glamor-wise, he was quite something. 

Bringing us to LBJ. As noted: thumbs up on Civil Rights, Medicare, and social consciousness - and his ability to get things through a factious Congress. Thumbs down on the Vietnam War. (Object of a protest chant that I uttered on a few occasions: Hey, hey, LBJ. How many kids did you kill today?) And thumbs down to his lifting his beagles by the ears.

And then there was Nixon. I have to give him a nod for opening up China and establishing the EPA. But the rest of it? It was a very good day for the country when he exited the White House for the last time and hopped on the helicopter that whisked him away. At long last, we really didn't have Dick Nixon, with all that paranoia and mendacity, to kick around anymore. 

We then had the calming, innocuous presence of Gerry Ford, which was pretty much what we needed at the time. (Impressions: football player, all those blond teenage kids, tripping over his own feet, excellent first lady in Bette Ford.)

I like and admire Jimmy Carter. I can't think of any president who was a better person. Honesty. Integrity. Empathy. Decency. Still building houses with Habitat for Humanity at the age of 98. As president, he was dealt a poor hand: inflation, oil crisis - I remember the long lines at the gas station - the hostages taken in Iraq. He did the best he could, and didn't deserve the vilification he's gotten during and well after the end of his presidency. But maybe not the best man for the job.

Unfortunately, that leads us to Ronald Reagan. If you can't say anything nice about someone...Well, here's the nice: he was charming, handsome, and a masterful communicator. He also stirred up an awful lot of pots with the thinly veiled racism of his "welfare queen" rhetoric and for paving the way for the emergence of the Tea Party anti-government, anti-taxation movement. (Then there were those adoring looks from his wife Nancy...) Even though he didn't seem to have much to do with any of his kids, he did have a daughter named Maureen...

George Herbert Walker Bush. The ultimate New England WASP gentleman, weirdly transplanted to Texas - and he just never seemed all that comfortable as a Texan. Much more of a Connecticut cocktail party kind of guy. Speed impressions: "Read my lips: no new taxes." A thousand points of light. Gulf War. Fairly impolite to Geraldine Ferraro when they were both running for VP. (Tsk, tsk. Your mother must have been ashamed of such callow behavior.) Cigarette boat. And an absolutely gorgeous vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine. (Having seen it at a distance a few times, I had serious house envy.) Lots of grandkids - and he seemed to actually know and like all of them. And even though his wife Barbara was, IMHO, a bee-otch, I liked the fact that she didn't seem to give a damn that she was a zaftig middle aged woman.

When I heard Bill Clinton deliver the keynote at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, my first, clearly-erroneous impression was that this guy's political career is done for. He droned on and on, more than doubling the time he'd been allotted. Just dreadful. And then there he was, just four years later, and we weren't going to stop thinking about tomorrow. As a president, he was reasonably good. A bit too Blue Dog Democrat for my liking, but reasonably good. Other than his zipper problem. Oh Bill, Bill, Bill. For all your brilliance, and obvious brilliance as a politician, you didn't have the force of will to not get it on with someone your daughter's age. In the Oval Office. While smoking a cigar. And all your 'depends on what you mean by the word the' parsing. Not to mention your definition of what constitutes sexual relations. Note to Bill Clinton: a BJ counts. 

For one brief shining moment or two after 9/11, I think George W. Bush did a good job rallying the nation. And props for his international work on AIDS. Other than that? Meh to god awful, letting Cheney and Rumsfeld - and his own determination to revenge Saddam Hussein's insult to his Daddy - run us into an endless, terrible war.  And the way that his minions ran roughshod in Florida during the vote count, and how he snuck in thanks to the Supreme Court. I'd a lot rather have had Al Gore. And, four years later, John Kerry.

Barack Obama was pretty good president, especially when it came to helping get the country out of the economic crisis he inherited. And he was a brilliant communicator, not to mention empathetic, humane, brilliant, and oozing charm. But I found him too timid a negotiator. Often, when seeking a compromise with Congress, I felt that he opened with what he thought was a fair deal - expecting everyone to recognize that what he offered was entirely reasonable - only to have it whittled away. I was always rooting for him to open high, going for something unachievable, and whittling down from there. Alas. Mostly, I think he was great, and I loved having him in office, and his family in the White House. 

My hope that at some point before I die, Donald Trump's name will have an asterisk next to it. I'm pretty sure that history will declare him the worst president ever, and he'll end up on the historical dung heap. Where he belongs.

Joe Biden was the right man for the time. He's a good man and has done a very creditable job as president. He knows what he's doing - a wily old pol - even though he may be a bit far gone in his belief that the Republicans actually want to do business with him. Way too much benefit of the doubt given there. While I think he's a good president, and will go down as a consequential one, I want him to be a one-term good, consequential president. He'll be 82 if he runs again; if he wins, he'll be 86 when his second term ends. Not to be agist, but that's way too old. Everyone slows down. The pressures of this job are tremendous. We'd be better served by someone younger and more vigorous. I don't buy the story line that Biden is demented. Still, I don't think he should run. If he declares now that he won't, it will give the Democrats time to figure out who's on the shortlist. Which won't happen as long as Joe says he's running.

This was going to be a short, holiday post. But, like Bill Clinton's convention speech in 1988, I went long. Probably too long.

If you're still reading, I'll leave you with this:

On Washington's birthday, my mother would bake a chocolate sheet cake, frost it with vanilla frosting, and decorate it with maraschino cherries. I won't be doing that, but I cannot tell a lie. I'm thinking of buying a pint of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia.

Happy Presidents' Day!

Thanks for the advice, Kevin O'Leary.

I've watched Shark Tank a couple of times. Often enough to know who Kevin O'Leary is.

If you don't know the show's plot, Shark Tank showcases entrepreneurs who come in and make a pitch for funding before a panel of business experts. The experts evaluate the pitch and decide whether to make an investment in each entrepreneur's company. (If you don't know the show's provenance, the producer behind it is Mark Burnett, whose dubious credentials include giving us The Apprentice. Enough said.

It you don't know who Kevin O'Leary is, he's a big blustery Canadian businessman who co-founded a software company and became a multi-millionaire when the company was acquired. Somewhere along the TV line, O'Leary acquired the nickname "Mr. Wonderful." It was given to him by a fellow panelist - presumably sardonically - and he adopted it. To the degree that on the homepage of his website, it says YOU CAN CALL ME MR. WONDERFUL.

Me? I choose not to call him Mr. Wonderful, especially after I tumbled across a recent tweet of his.

On Saturday, February 11th, it looks like O'Leary (or his designated twitter) had a few minutes of downtime - among other sites, O'Leary has a home in Boston; it was frigid that day in Boston, maybe he was here and going stir crazy. So he (or whoever does his tweeting for him) posted the following bit o' wisdom:

You may lose your wife, you may lose your dog, your mother may hate you. None of those things matter. What matters is that you achieve success and become free. Then you can do whatever you like.

The tweet (when I looked) had been viewed more than 10 million times and had nearly 12 thousand "likes." And quite a few comments that were royally ratioing O'Leary, letting him know that they found this sentiment anything but wonderful.

I don't even know where to begin on this one, but the most obvious is to ask what Kevin O'Leary's definition of success is. Because it sure looks like, to him, it's having made enough money to "become free." (And what does he mean by "free?" Free from having to worry about money? Free from given a rat's arse what anyone else thinks of you? Free to tell anyone to f the f off?)

I'm not a Bible toting, Bible quoting kind of gal, but I can't resist keying off of the Gospel According to Mark and asking yet another question:

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul wife, dog, and mother?

So what if you've achieved success if, along the way, you've jettisoned your family and friends? As likely as not, if you have an iota of introspection in your brain, you'll realize at some point that you're a miserable old Scrooge who's squelched the inner Tiny Tim that eventually released Ebenezer Scrooge from his soulless, miserly existence.

I had a middling career. No great success, but plenty enough for me. I was never mono-focused or just plain interested enough to claw my way further up the corporate ranks. I had interesting work at (mostly) screwed up companies with colleagues who were, for the most part, wonderful to work with. Some even became life friends. (Hi, V!)

Lack of mono-focus or interest aside, did I ever have what it would have taken to be a big success in business?

Maybe not.

The best part of working for me was always the relationships I built.

If I accept the definition of success as success = $$$, do I wish I'd made more money than I did? I did fine, but more money? Sure, that would have been great. Even if I just had a dollar for every worthless option I was granted by all those screwed up companies...

But my definition of success is broader than my interpretation of O'Leary's. It includes family, friends, dogs, volunteer work, travel, reading, and sitting around doing just plain nothing.

That's what matters to me.

Thanks for the advice, Kev. But I'm glad I took pass on taking it.

That's entertainment

The first movie I saw in a theater was Three Ring Circus, starring Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. It was showing at the Park Theater in Worcester's Webster Square, so in my

neighborhood. We didn't have to go downtown to the Capitol, the Plymouth, the Warner, the Lowe's Poli. My father took me and my sister Kathleen. It was 1954, so I was somewhere in my 4's. 

I found the movie hilarious, and absolutely adored Jerry Lewis.

My second trip to the theater was to see the Disney cartoon Cinderella. This was released in 1950, but it was either re-released or got to Worcester way late. From Cinderella, Kath and I glommed onto a nickname for our brother Tom: Gus, after Gus the mouse. (Tom is still known to his Worcester friends, and occasionally to the family, as Gus.)

While it was only occasional - and a really big deal that involved getting dressed in Sunday best and was always with my father - from the get go, I loved going to the movies. 

My movie going was heavy on the Disney, and by the time I was 9 or so, it no longer meant going with my father. (Unless it was a family adventure to the drive-in where, among other gems, we saw Jerry Lewis in The Bellboy. By this point - 1960 - I was no longer quite so enamored of Jerry Lewis.) When a new Disney opened in Worcester, my sister Kath and I, along with our friends, got dressed up and took the bus downtown to see films like Darby O'Gill and the Little People and The Parent Trap. 

By junior high, I was outgrowing pure Disney, and my movie repertoire expanded to include films like PT-109 and Ben Hur, and musicals: The Music Man, Bye Bye Birdie. I wanted to go see West Side Story, but - alas - my mother spied the Legion of Decency rating in the Catholic Free Press, which declared the film off limits ("morally objectionable in parts") for pre-teens. So, unlike everyone else I knew, whose mothers were more laissez faire, I couldn't go.

When I was in high school, I was an irregular movie goer, but always enjoyed the movies, and went to everything from popular "bestsellers" like Dr. Zhivago and Goldfinger, Georgy Girl and To Sir with Love, to Beatles flics: Hard Day's Night, Help. And artier fare like David and Lisa and Séance on a Wet Afternoon, which were shown at the Fine Arts Theater. Going to the Fine Arts made me feel very sophisticated. 

Onto college.

I didn't go to a ton of movies, but pretty much saw all the biggies: The Graduate, Love Story, the college student biggies like Zabriskie Point, Five Easy Pieces and the foreign biggies: brainy films from Bergman and Truffaut. 

I do remember that the very worst film I saw during college was A Walk with Love and Death, which starred a very young Angelica Houston and a very gorgeous (at the time, anyway) Assaf Dayan. 

During my twenties, I went to the movies all the time. For years, I didn't have a TV, so off to the movies I went. Sometimes even by myself. 

But over the decades, I went less and less frequently. Especially once you could rent videos. (By now I had a TV - and a VHS player.)

I went to a movie theater on occasion, but mostly I waited until something was available on video. My husband and I would hit one of the two close-by video stores on Friday night, and pick up a few movies for the weekend. 

Cable and streaming made trips to the theater even less frequent. 

During my twenties, I probably went to the movies once or twice a week. Now I probably go to the movies once or twice a year.

The last movie I saw in a movie theater was The Banshees of Inisheerin. (The last movies I saw in my den were Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis.)

What every one of my trips to the theater had in common was that, once I bought my ticket, I could sit anywhere I could find a seat. 

That's about to change. 

Profession sports does it. Broadway does it. Now AMC will ask movie viewers to pay a premium for the best seats in the house.

The movie theater chain, which runs some 950 theaters, announced this week that it will price tickets based on a seat’s location, charging less for seats in the front row and more for those coveted center seats. Prices won’t change from current standards for the remaining seats, AMC said. (Source: Washington Post)

Predictably, AMC's new initiative has met with hue and outcry.

Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood described it as undemocratic — a move that “would essentially penalize people for lower income and reward for higher income.” 

Well, yeah, Elijah's got a point. But the same goes for ballgames, concerts, and live theater. Life, as they say, is unfair.

If you have a bleacher budget, you don't get to sit in the box seats. (Unless the game is an undersold dud and you sneak your way into an upgrade.)

Here’s how the AMC plan will work.

Tickets will be priced in three tiers — value, standard and preferred. “Value” seats will be offered in the front row, cheaper than standard pricing priced at a discount and available to the members of the theater’s rewards program, including its free membership. Seats in the middle of the theater will be priced at a “slight premium” to standard prices unless a customer has a “Stubs A-List” membership, which can be used to book the preferred seats without an additional cost. The rest of the seats in a theater can be purchased at what AMC described as a “traditional” rate.

I'd pay extra to sit in the middle. And I can't imagine how steep the discount would have to be to get me to sit in the front row. 

It'll be interesting to see how this works out - other than that it will mean more work for ushers, unless or until they can use technology to "rope" sections off. 

Maybe by the time I make my annual foray to a movie theater, it will be in place in Boston and I'll be able to check it out.

Meanwhile, at home, I can sit on the loveseat OR in the recliner at no extra cost.

Whipping up a career change

Well, it looks like Mahty Walsh, Boston's former mayor, is leaving his job as Secretary of Labor and moving on to become head of the National Hockey League Players Association. This is something of a career change for someone who has been in political office - or, as Secretary of Labor, political office adjacent - since the late 1990's. 

It's a natural for Marty, of course. He's a union guy (before running for state rep, he was an official with the building trades union), and a sports guy. (This is Boston.)

Still, it's a pretty significant career change. If there's nothing else career-change-y about what Marty's doing, his pay will be going up by $3M a year. Not bad for a guy from Savin Hill in Dorchester, whose parents were native Irish speakers. 

So, congratulations to Marty Walsh. Don't forget to wear a helmet, and don't let any one of those big guys check you into the boards. 

Jack Lepiarz is also whipping up a career change. Like Marty's, at first glance, it looks like a radical departure. But when you take a closer look, it's a pretty logical extension. (I don't imagine Jack will be making the big bucks Marty's scored.)

Anyway, Jack has spent the last decade or so delivering the news on WBUR radio - a seemingly ideal gig for an Emerson grad in his 30's. But Jack also has long had another job, working as Jack the Whipper entertaining audiences with his whip skills, performing on weekends at the King Richard's Faire (a local Renaissance fair that I have absolutely no interest in whatsoever).

Other than having watched - and laughed at - Lash LaRue's swinging a bullwhip on the low-budget kiddie Western's that populated Saturday morning children's entertainment during the 1950's, I wasn't all that familiar with whipping as an art form.

Are they whippersnappers? Whip crackers? Something else?

I have a vague memory of seeing someone on TV - probably on Ed Sullivan - using a whip to cut paper into snowflake designs. Or something. 

The whole idea of whipping seems pretty kinky, but apparently the practice does have its fans, who enjoy whip tricks, rhythmic whipping, and slightly risqué jokes. (C.f., whipping as kinky.) 

Whatever you call it, Jack Lepiarz is leaving WBUR to ply his trade full time as Jack the Whipper. 

When it comes to whippery, Jack Lepiarz is no slouch, and his renown extends well beyond King Richard's Faire. 

His TikTok account has blown up since he first created it a couple of years ago, with 2.5 million followers watching him perform stunts, rate his props, and rehearse for shows. His national profile was boosted after appearing on “America’s Got Talent” last summer and wowing all three judges.

He also holds the Guinness World Record for the most bullwhip cracks in one minute: 298 as of 2020. He beat his own previous record of 289. (Source: Boston Globe)

I am reminded of something my father always asked when someone appeared on TV - most likely on the aforementioned Ed Sullivan Show - showing off some obscure skill, like balancing spinning plates or whipping up snowflake designs. "How do you find out you have a talent like this?"

Because it's easy to see how someone becomes a singer, dancer, or accordion player. But plate spinner? I was with my father on this.

In Lepiarz's case, he was born to it. He was a circus kid, son of a performer with the Big Apple Circus. "At 7, he learned how to crack a whip with speed and force."

At 7, I think I learned how to make my bed, and how to fake piety when I received my First Holy Communion. 

By the time he was in high school, being a circus kid was no longer as much fun as it had been when he was just a little guy. By high school, it was a bit too weirdball.

But when Jack got to Emerson, he found he could help pay his way through by working as a street performer. (I live near Emerson College, and all the downtown tourist attractions, so I'm amazed that I never caught his act. Maybe I'm just blocking it out.)

Jack Lepiarz was also embracing his weirdness. Because, whatever way you look at it, being a professional whipper is kinda sorta weird.

“When I was younger, I tried as much as I could to be normal. I think as you get older, realizing that what makes you weird is what makes you unique and different. It’s what makes you — you,” Lepiarz said.

And now, Lepiarz is quite literally running away to join the circus. He'll be launching his new career in Florida, but he'll be making his way up the coast and back to Boston.

I hope Jack Lepiarz has a lot of fun whipping his audiences up. 

As for Marty Walsh, may he avert any strikes and get the guys on ice the most lucrative and wonderful of contracts. 

It's Valentine's Day, so why not talk about safety coffins?

Well, it's Valentine's Day, when a young woman's fancy turns to love. And an old woman's fancy turns to....death?

I wasn't planning on writing about death on such a lovely day, but then I had to go and read about the 82-year-old New York woman who was pronounced dead in a nursing home. But who was still breathing three hours later. The funeral home ended up not being her final destination. She was transported to a local hospital, presumably in an ambulance and not a hearse.

As of this writing, it's not clear whether she is still among the living. 

I do hope she wasn't all that aware of her surroundings, and that she didn't wake up on a slab, staring down at her toe tag and watching the attendant hooking her up to the apparatus that would push the embalming fluid in and the blood out.  Hey, what's going on here? Wait a darn minute, why don't you... 

Last month, there was a similar incident in Iowa, where a woman receiving hospice care in an Alzheimer center was declared and zipped into a body bag. At the crematory, workers noticed that she was still breathing. They called 911. She was sent back to her hospice and died a few days later.

Sounds like this poor woman - likely out of it, and obviously at death's door - could have come to while enclosed in a body bad or, worse yet, been burned alive. Or at least quasi alive. 

I've seen a number of people shortly before they died, and a number after they've died (once the funeral parlor has done their thing). And I've been with two people - my husband and my mother - at the time of their death. 

In my mother's case, there was no question. She was wired up, and she flatlined. 

In Jim's case, he had been in hospice for all of 45 minute. I was sitting with him while the hospice folks figured out his meds. We were talking - a little. Jim had been actively dying all day. I'd heard the death rattle several times. He was drifting in and out. Mostly out. And then, while I sat there, holding his hand, he gasped and died. 

I waited a minute or so, then went to fetch the nurse, letting her know. "Are you sure?" she asked me. I remember telling her, "Yes. I'm sure. I'm Irish. I know what death looks like."

The nurse checked Jim out and agreed with me. 

I sat with the body, shortly joined by my sister Kath and her husband, until the fellows came from the funeral home. 

There was no more breathing. 

Dead, as they say, is dead.

But when death is near, breathing does become erratic, sporadic. Someone could call a death without waiting long enough to make sure that the last gasp was indeed the last gasp. 

These things, of course, occurred more often back in the good old days, when things medical were not as sophisticated as they are now. 

Worse, there were instances of people being buried alive, and stories - were any of them true? - about people trying to claw their way out of coffins and up through the six feet deep. (At least if you're embalmed, you can't get buried alive...)

The nuns would tell stories about exhuming the bodies of those who were being considered for sainthood. If scratch marks were found on the inner lid of the coffin, the decedent was no longer a candidate for canonization. If they had truly been a saint, they wouldn't have despaired and tried to escape. A real saint would have just stayed there in prayerful repose.

(Nothing cra about a Catholic school education.)

In the 19th century, perhaps thanks to the imagination of one Edgar Allen Poe, there was a flurry of inventions designed to take the worry out of being buried alive. One was a bell

apparatus that the not-quite-late person could ring to alert the cemetery watchman to come along with his shovel. The invention was improved on to make sure the bell wouldn't ring because there was a stiff breeze or because it was being pecked by a bird.

More complex inventions were in the works. (Here's a link to a fascinating article from the Smithsonian on safety coffins.)

And they're still coming up with ideas. In this century, patents have been applied for for coffins with AV equipment. One I saw (in the Smithsonian piece) was for something like posthumous Face Time, the other for eternally pumped in tunes. 

Well, it's Valentine's Day. So Happy Valentine's Day. And why not talk about safety coffins? Who wants a loved one - let alone their very own selves - to get buried alive? Not I.

And not that I'm looking forward to it, but let's hear it for cremation. As long as someone makes sure I've really stopped breathing.

Is it too late to learn Dutch?

There are plenty of good things about this country, but the way we treat those in need - the poor, the disabled, the homeless, the sick, the aged - is not among them. When you look at how we stack up against nations that are comparable in terms of development level and wealth, we don't.

Admittedly, the grass is always greener, etc., but when I look at the social welfare programs elsewhere, I mostly feel like the poor little match girl, shivering the cold, nose pressed up against the window, peering in and wistfully watching how the other half lives.

One place where the grass - or the tulips, or the windmills, or the wooden shoes - really does seem greener is the Netherlands, especially when it comes to looking for places where the olds are treated well.

On one list I found, they ranked third - behind Finland and Denmark - as the best place to grow old. (Criteria included longevity, health, security, and happiness.) The US came in 28th, nestled in there between Slovakia and Slovenia. (Or was it the other way around?).

Oh, even the Netherlands isn't perfect for the aged.

In a survey a few years back, more than half of those over 75 said that they were lonely.

This really isn't surprising. When you're older, you're not all that likely to be out working. Your kids are grown. Your grandkids may not be around. You may have physical problems that make it harder to get out and socialize - even to get out to wakes and funerals. Because, oh yeah, your peers are starting to die off and wakes and funerals are playing a larger part in your social life. Until they aren't.

So, yes, it wouldn't surprise me that the old folks - even in a good-for-the-old country like the Netherlands - experience a lot of loneliness.

But, because the Netherlands is a good-for-the-old country, they're trying to do something about it. Case in point:

A Dutch supermarket chain introduced slow checkouts for people who enjoy chatting, helping many people, especially the elderly, deal with loneliness. The move has proven so successful that they installed the slow checkouts in 200 stores. (Source: Dutch News)

The chain is Jumbo; the slow checkout is called a "Keltskassa", or chat checkout.

‘Many people, the elderly in particular, can feel lonely. As a family business and supermarket chain we have a central role in society. Our shops are a meeting place and that means we can do something to combat loneliness. The Kletskassa is just one of the things we can do,’ Jumbo CCO Colette Cloosterman-Van Eerd said...

‘We are proud our staff want to work the chat checkout, ‘Cloosterman-Van Eerd said. ‘They really want to help people and make contact with them. It’s a small gesture but it’s a valuable one, particularly in a world that is becoming more digital and faster.’  

This is a great idea.

Admittedly, when I'm at the grocery store, I just want to get in and out. Oh, I'll chat a bit - maybe - about the weather or whatever while I'm packing my groceries into my backpack and tote bags. And I've been known to make a tiny bit of small-talk convo with the folks at the local (indie) hardware store or the local (indie) drugstore or the local (indie) book store. 

Once in a while, I find myself making a remark to folks - complete strangers - I encounter on my walks. 

Especially on days when I haven't heard the sound of my own voice.

I live alone, and I'm fine with it. I've always liked my own company. I've always liked downtime, white space, me time. And I've always required a lot of it. 

And my days aren't communications-free. 

I text. I email. Sometimes I even get on the phone. 

And I do do things with actual real-live people. I volunteer. I go out to lunch or take walks or just hang out with friends and family. 

But I can see how people get lonely.

So I like the idea that there would be special lines in the supermarket - the anti-express checkout - where no one in the line behind you will be eye-rolling, snorting, foot tapping, or generally making impatient sounds and moves. 

Apart from the till, a number of Jumbo supermarkets also introduced a ‘chat corner’ where locals come to have a coffee and a natter.

What, me natter?

As a matter of fact...

And how's this for a natter? I think Kletskassa is a wonderful idea. Just lovely.

It's really not too late to learn Dutch. 

So, bravo en bedankt, nederland.

We could take a page or two from your book.

A superfan in wolf's clothing

Sunday the Super Bowl will be played between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs. 

Not that I would consider buying one, but I couldn't resist looking at tickets on StubHub. When I looked, even the nosebleeds were going for $5K. Each. 

You'd have to be some football lover, or some Eagles or Chiefs superfan, to pay that kind of moola to watch a football game. Which I am not.

Even if the Patriots were playing, I can't imagine wanting to go to the Super Bowl. 

I wouldn't mind watching the Red Sox play in a World Series game, but I sure wouldn't pay $5K to sit in the bleachers.

There's one Chiefs superfan who probably won't be in Atlanta rooting his team on, and that's Chiefsaholic. He won't be there because he's in jail for attempted bank robbery.

If you're wondering why the Chiefs have a wolf for a mascot, back in the 80's, the team sought to honor a group of rabid fans who called themselves the wolfpack. So they introduced a second mascot, a wolf. Over time, more fans adopted the wolf theme, especially as the team began phasing out the Native American related mascotry that was in keeping with the team's name, the Chiefs. So, while fans still do the tomahawk chop chanting, they can no longer come to Arrowhead (?) Stadium wearing warpaint and headdresses. And the old mascot - the horse Warpaint, which galloped around the field when the Chiefs scored - has been officially retired and replaced with KC Wolf.

Fans gotta fan, so superfans all pretty much come as wolves.

Chiefasholic was one of the more prominent among them. 

...Chiefsaholic attended nearly every game, home and away. N.F.L. broadcasts regularly featured him celebrating in the stands. He shared his adventures with more than 50,000 followers on social media, boasting about bets that would earn him tens of thousands of dollars if he won.

He had a good seat to see his team win the Super Bowl in Miami Gardens, Fla., in 2020, and took a selfie with the club’s general manager on the confetti-strewn field. He attended quarterback Patrick Mahomes’s annual fund-raising gala last month in Kansas City, and apparently won the painting that was featured onstage throughout the event.

The price tag must have been steep. A Super Bowl ticket like his would have fetched about $8,500, and an individual ticket to the Mahomes benefit goes for $1,250, to say nothing of travel costs. (Source: NY Times)

When fellow superfans asked how he could afford all this fandom, Chiefsaholic told them that he managed a bunch of warehouses. 

Anyway, Chiefsaholic was such presence, both in the stadium and on social media, that fans were concerned when he failed to show for or post about a Chiefs' win in Houston in December. Had something happened to him?

Well, yes, something had happened to Chiefsaholic. 

Those fellow superfans started asking around on Reddit and soon found that Chiefsaholic - whose real name is Xaviar Babudar - was cooling his wolf heels in a Tulsa jail, having been apprehended trying to rob a Tulsa credit union. 

Since Babudar couldn't post the bond ($200k), he missed out on the Big Game on January 29th where the Chiefs punched their ticket to the Bigger Game, the Super Bowl, which'll be played in Atlanta this Sunday.

Turns out that IRL, superfan Babudar was broke, homeless, and had last worked in 2020 (at a warehouse, so there's that). He came from a family with a fairly checkered past: abandonment, bankruptcy, trying to use fake gift certificates in a restaurant...

His Chiefsaholic persona was his reinvention.

The real Xaviar Babudar was a petty criminal.  

In Utah, the police said, Babudar stole spoon holders and snack bags from Target, and another time switched price tags on curtain rods and then attempted to return them for full price. There are still active warrants for his arrest in both cases. He also pleaded guilty to small offenses in Kansas and Missouri. In Champlin, Minn., he was fined $300 for driving without a license.

His license plates said “KCC4EVR.”

I get the license plate, but spoon holders? 

The New York Times wanted to interview him for their article, but he claimed that he was "currently in the process of selling my story rights." If the Times wanted Babudar to play, they were going to have to pay. 

People are scratching their heads wondering how Chiefsaholic - unemployed, living in his car - was able to afford his superfan lifestyle. Some are wondering whether he was a bank robber, although there's no evidence of that beyond the Tulsa caper. 

Was he a gambler? Did he fund his superfan habit by winning big bets? 

And, then there's the practical old me question. If he had been successful enough as either a bank robber or a gambler to support his fandom, why was he spending what he made on football, rather than on something more sensible. Like an apartment. 

Whether he was a serial bank robber or a regular gambler, there's evidence that Babudar has placed a couple of good sized bets. He's got $5K on Patrick Mahomes winning the NFL's MVP Award, and another $5K on Kansas City winning the Super Bowl. And he placed these bets early on, before it was known that Mahomes is a finalist for MVP, and that the Chiefs are going to the Superbowl.

If he wins those bets, Babudar will win $100K.

Maybe he can use it for a good lawyer. 

Ah, the life of a superfan in wolf's clothing.

I do hope that the Tulsa jail has a TV for the inmates, so that Babudar can catch the game, even if he has to watch wearing an orange jumpsuit, rather than his wolf gear. 

I'll be watching, too, at my sister Trish's, as is our tradition. (Looking forward to her excellent nachos.) 

As a non-fan - make that a super-non-fan - I don't really care much one way or the other which team wins. But you can't really watch a sporting event without picking a side. So I'm going with Philadelphia. 

My reasoning is simple: East Coast team, blue state.

Sorry, Chiefsaholic. 

Fly, Eagles, Fly.