Furniture for introverts? Tell me more.

All I needed to do was see a subhead in an Economist article that read "Furniture for the introverted," and I was all in. I mean, after all these years living la vida introverta, I had never realized that we had our own furniture needs. 

I knew, of course, that we need privacy. And quiet. And "white space" in our lives where nothing, but nothing, intrudes. But, beyond something we can curl up in with a good book, do we really require our own furniture? Who knew? Not this introvert.

Not surprisingly, the concept is coming to fruition in Japan, where - from what I've heard - people are in general more reserved, and the living spaces tend to be smallish. In fact, while US homes have been supersizing, Japanese homes have been downsizing: shrinking from 70 square meters to 60 square meters over the last decade. This probably works better in part because of the simplicity of Japanese design: not a lot of hoo-hah involved. But, given the small spaces, it migh be hard to enjoy that zen garden room when everyone in the family rolls out their tatami mats alongside you. 

What some Japanese furniture makers have dreamed up is:

...an otoko no kakureya, or "hiding place for men," a tiny cockpit-like room with a desk, shelves and reclining chair. Sales are taking off. (Source: The Economist)

Of course sales are taking off! Who wouldn't want a hiding place. I just don't think they're FOR MEN ONLY. In fact, when I was a kid, growing up in house too small for the number of people it held, designing in my mind my very own hiding place, this was pretty much it. Except mine was an overstuffed armchair, not a recliner.

Even my inner introvert would take a pass on the Solo Theatre, "a cardboard box that users put over their heads, which has slot for Apple's iPhone."

I like small, contained spaces - no "open concept" for me - but this sounds just a wee bit claustrophobia-inducing.

The co-designer described it as "a selfish product that appeals to the need to get into a small womblike space of one's own and watch films and other content." Okay. I guess I just prefer my small spaces to be not quite so womblike.

Then there's the indoor tent. And the soundproof cardboard box for karaoke. (Hey, I thought the entire idea of karaoke was getting up and exposing yourself and your inner-warbler to a bunch of strangers who are, with luck, liquored up enough to not notice when you go flat, but not so liquored up that they'll boo you off the stage for it.)

Despite the fact that introverts are everywhere, there may not be much of an international market for these wares. They are considered a bit too eccentric, a bit too Japanese. Kind of like Hello Kitty for grownups, I guess.

Wayfair, you've got just what I need. (Too bad about the boxes it comes in.)

As anyone who’s ever done a reno project knows, renovation has plenty of begats beyond the backsplash, the fridge, and the vanity. There’s all the other stuff that you need to supplement the main events. So last fall, in the midst of my reno, I became acquainted with Wayfair.

And damned if, just as advertised, they had just what I need.

And just what I needed was a marble toothbrush holder, soap dish, and tray for towels. A mirror for the upstairs bathroom; a medicine chest for the downstairs bathroom. Sconces for the living room. New salad tossers

All of which came packaged up in cardboard cartons and oodles of packing materials. The recyclable materials got recycled; some of it went down the drain (those dissolvable foam peanuts); and some got trashed.

Wayfair was great: infinite choice, reasonable prices, and excellent service.

And I went on-beyond-Wayfair and shoped other online venues as well. (The rug for the den, a new double boiler, a new duvet cover, shams, cool registers with the same grapevine pattern as the plaster medallions and mantle in the living room...)

When ordering, I didn’t give a moment’s thought to the environmental impact of all the packaging and shipping. Or the repackaging and reshipping. Nor have I done so for the other stuff I order online in the course of my normal, non-reno-related consuming.

I’m not someone who only shops on the net. I like to shop in a real store. But sometimes what I want or even need isn’t readily available in a store. (You try shopping for a size 10 ½ triple A shoe, why don’t you.) And sometimes it’s just easier to find something online.

But all that cardboard…

I do, of course, religiously recycle it. Too bad that's not as saintly a practice as I tell myself it is.

Though recycling can make consumers think they are helping the environment, the process has its own costs, including the emissions from shipping it to recycling centers, which use a lot of energy and water. Don Fullerton, a professor of finance and an expert in economics and the environment at the University of Illinois, said one possible solution would be to make the retailers responsible for taking back the boxes. That would create incentives for them to come up with solutions for less packaging. “And maybe not put a box inside a box inside a box,” he said. (Source: NY Times)

Note to self: tell Zappo's to stop with the box-in-a-box.

But it's not just all that cardboard that's a problem:  

A handful of scientists and policy makers are circling the same question [as Ruchit Garg, an online shopper who’s been expressing his packaging concerns via Twitter], grappling with the long­term environmental effect of an economy that runs increasingly on gotta­have­it­now gratification. This cycle leads consumers to expect that even their modest wants can be satisfied like urgent needs, and not always feel so great about it. The new arms race for Internet retailers is speed, making the old Federal Express commercial, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight,” seem as quaint as delivery by horse and buggy.

And all that insta-delivery comes at an environmental cost: all those delivery trucks, delivery cars, and - coming soon - drones.

Of course, stuff gets delivered whether it's coming ASAP or through the standard, no hurry delivery times. And whether it's coming in two hours or two weeks, if stuff wasn't being delivered, most folks would be driving to the mall to pick it up. But when you're going to the mall, you're stopping in at mulitple stores. When you're ordering from Wayfair, you can just go ahead and get the toothbrush holder and wait for UPS to show up with it.

Anyway, whether it's coming two hours or two weeks, delivery is likely adding to greenhouse emissions.

Ardeshi Faghri, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Delaware, said the increase of various emissions — which he estimated at 20 percent from 2001 to 2011 — “could be due to a multitude of reasons, but we think that online shopping and more delivery trucks are really one of the primary reasons. Online shopping has not helped the environment,” he said. “It has made it worse.”

Glad I didn't read this before I'd ordered all those things from Wayfair.
 

On this day in history...

I’m a sucker for those “on this day in history” lists. And who was born, who died. Not that the specific day matters, one way or the other. And do we really believe that they were keeping such excellent track back in 1370, that we have great certainty that the Battle at Radau: Germany beats Lithuania – sounds like a soccer match, doesn’t it? – took place on that very day.

Fast forward a few centuries, and we find that Myles Standish was elected the first commander of the Plymouth Colony. Greater likelihood of accuracy, but is that Julian calendar February 17 or Gregorian calendar? 

I like that on this date, in 1776, the 1^st volume of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” was published.  And that 19 years later, Thomas Seddal harvested 8.3-kg potato from his garden Chester, England. Way to go, Thomas! That’s one mighty pratie.

Even more interesting, in 1801, the House broke an electoral college tie to pick Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr. (Good choice, but let’s hope they don’t get to be tie breakers come November…) And in 1836, Charles Darwin and HMS Beagle left Tasmania.

On the music front, Verdi’s “Masked Ball” debuted in 1859. February 17^th is apparently a good day for opera: in 1904, Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” premiered.

Opera’s not the only thing that debuts on February 17^th. In 1876, the first canned sardines were introduced, in Eastport, Maine, no less. (Thanks but no thanks. On behalf of my husband, I wish it had been canned anchovies.)In 1896, the London County Council began enforcing its muzzling order. (Hiss-boo. Did dogs bite more back in the day? Were there no rabies shots? I always feel terrible when I see a muzzled pooch.) 

On a more pleasant note, in 1913, Oregon put the US’s first minimum wage law in place. And in 1924, not-yet-Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller set the 100-yard freestyle record.  In 1933, happy days were, indeed, here again when Prohibition was lifted, in plenty of time for folks to enjoy the first color TV, which was demonstrated in 1938. Too bad there was nothing on…

Not much happened in the forties and fifties on this date, other than World War II battles and figure skating championships. But in 1962, the Beach Boys released their first song. Surf was up! More importantly – at least my husband would say so – Wilt Chamberlain scored 67 points in a game against the St. Louis Hawks. A few years later (1968), the Basketball Hall of Fame opened in Springfield. (Jim loved basketball. We were always going to get there someday when we were out visiting family in Southwick…) 

1964 was a biggie: the House voted in the Civil Rights Act and the Supremes ruled that on one man, one vote. (Seriously, it took that long????) 

And in 1972, President Nixon left for China, opening up a new era in Sino-American relations and, I believe, prompting someone (neither Verdi nor Puccini: both dead) to write an opera on the subject. Seriously, what is up with February 17^th and opera? 

Over the next couple of decades, a lot of what happened on February 17^th had to do with skating, cricket, or NBA All Star games. 

Other stuff happened on February 17^th.  For instance, many well-known people you never heard of were born. That includes French economist Pierre Le Pesant (1646). Not to mention Southern plantation owner, Haller Nutt (1816). At least I’ve heard of Montgomery Ward (1844), and Wally Pipp (1893). But Fyodor Sologub? Who curates these lists, anyway?

Football – and lacrosse – great Jim Brown was born on February 17, 1936. As was Gene Pitney (1941) who was born in Hartford, not, as one might have imagined, 24 Hours from Houston. Come to think of it, Hartford has always struck me as a town without pity. 

Rene Russo, an actress Jim had a crush on, was born on this day in 1954. Michael Jordan, a basketballer that Jim was not especially wild about – Jordan was no Bill Russell – checked in in 1963. Paris Hilton was born in 1981.

Many notables died on this day. Geronimo in 1909. Bruno Walter and the guy who played Mr. Wilson on Dennis the Menace both died in 1962.  Lee Strasberg, baseball umpire Nestor Chylak, and Thelonious Monk checked out in 1982. In 1994, Randy Shilts, who wrote And The Band Played On, a book that was turned into one of my husband’s favorite films, died of AIDS. In 2013, on this day, country signer Mindy McCready shot herself. And in 2014, Bob Casale, a musician I’d never heard of, died. 

Anyway, just as all politics is local, the real important history is personal.On February 2014, Bob Casale wasn’t the only one who died. So did my husband, Jim. 

Seems like just yesterday; seems like a million years ago.

Life is good. It’s just different. And it’s just plain not quite as entertaining and interesting as it was when Diggy was around. Sigh…

-------------------------------------------

Sources: onthisday.com, on-this-day.com

I hate to break this to you, [name withheld]

I spend a few minutes a day cruising the web, looking for topics for Pink Slip. Bloomberg is a frequent source. Friends and family occasionally suggest ideas. (Keep 'em coming.) And I do sometimes trip across something in Huff Po or the Daily Mail UK. (When the latter happens, I'm embarrassed to admit, I will generally look for another source, so that I don't have to admit that I browse Daily Mail UK.) To my web wanderings, I have added GoFundMe, not for its Pink Slip potential, which is limited, but for the human interest. 

And then, while grazing there the other day, I came across a two-fer. For there, amidst the house fires and funeral expenses and the general-purpose do-gooders and the Indian guy hoping to raise enough to make his Olympic luge dreams come true (think: Jamaican Bobsled Team), was a plea to help out a photographer whose specialty is taking pictures at band concerts. For which, alas, he doesn't make any money. 

His selflessness has allowed him to attend local, and national shows and festivals  in which he stands on stage, running back and forth dodging fans just to get pictures for bands. Most of the time these bands don't offer to pay him, but use his images for merchandise, social media, and press related items to gain exposure for their band. [Name withheld by Pink Slip to protect an innocent]  has never once asked for money to do any of this, he does this because he loves music and capturing the moments involved. This being said, taking pictures for bands is not just a hobby for [name withheld by Pink Slip to protect an innocent], this is a career. (Source: GoFundMe)

Okay. I just have to say it. Taking pictures at rock concerts is not exactly something I associate wtih selflessness. I'm equal opportunity here: I wouldn't associate writing a non-monetized blog with selflesssness either. Somethings you just do for fun. 

Skip to the end of the GFM para, where we're told that "running back and forth dodging fans" is "not just a hobby...this is a career." (Later on, the career is expanded to "career and dream.")

And yet [name withheld] has "never once asked for money" for providing bands with images that they then use for commercial purposes.

So now a friend is trying to shake the trees for enough money to get [name withheld] a used car and some photo equipment. The ask is modest, and if his friends want to pass the hat to keep this guy going, good for them. But there does seem to be a pervasive theme throughout GoFundMe pleas that free money solves all problems. And, for those fund-raising for dream-pursuing, there seems to be some sense of, hey, let's try this; it beats work.

Anyway, if [name withheld] is serious about making band photography a career, he may need to stop waiting for bands to offer to pay him. Instead, he might want to:

• Make sure he has a professional site, showcasing his rock band photos. [Name withheld] does have some band pics on FlickR, but you have to comb through a bunch of mood shots, presumably of [name withheld's] girlfriend, to get to them.
• Include a list of what bands can use his pictures for: social media, boring old media, merchandise. 
• Get some references from the bands he's done freebies for, attesting to the quality of his work, etc.
• Put together a price list. 
• Start approaching bands in a professional manner, and pitch what he can do for them.

And, finally, while all this plays or doesn't play out:

• Figure out how to support yourself with your photography (or, with something else, if needs be) while you pursue your dream career/career dream. 

Because, god knows, if you just sit around waiting for punk/grunge/garage bands to start paying you, you're not in for much of a career. Or much of a dream, either.

I have plenty of sympathy for someone who wants to make a living in the arts (however broadly defined). I know plenty of poets, and most of them get by because they have a spouse with a good job. That's just how it goes. [Name withheld] may end up becoming the greatest rock band photographer of all time. Maybe all he needs is a break. But, in my experience, breaks tend to happen to people who make their own breaks.

Not for a second did I consider making a GoFundMe donation to [name withheld]. But I did look around to see if there was some place where he sold his photos, thinking that I would consider buying something. I found him on Etsy, but what was there just seemed to be links to the stuff he likes, and the stuff his girlfriend likes. 

Maybe rock fans don't spend a lot of time on Etsy. What do they need with goat's wool snoods, dog tutus, and potato-print wrapping paper? But maybe there would be some interest there from people interested in an evocative, skilled photo of a rock concert. Stranger things have happened. If the price were right, I would have gotten something. I may never have hung it up, but I would have considered supporting someone taking his career seriously.

I hate to break this to you, [name withheld], but if you want a dream career taking pictures at rock concerts, you need to start paying more attention to the career elements than the dream. Shaking the tin cup on GoFundMe will only get you so far.

Baby, it's cold outside. Inside, too.

Especially when compared to last year's snowmageddon, this winter has been a balmy breeze. Two weeeks ago today, I was actually out and about in a sweater.

We've had very little snow, very little cold, and freakish appearances by forsythia buds and cherry blossoms. The squirrels on Boston Common, generally skinny, furtive and thin-tailed this time of year, are plump, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. They seem to be traveling in packs. And they'll stand there on the sidewalk, right in your path - bold as brass, as the nuns used to say - gnawing on an acorn they didn't even have to work for. They're the size of prairie dogs, and you forget for a moment that they're first cousins to the rat.

When, a few weeks back, we had a little cold snap - a few days of temps in the 20's - it was a shock to the heating system.

And then there was this weekend.

The temperature took a dive on Saturday afternoon, and the wind picked up. I had to run an errand on Charles Street, just around the corner, and it looked like 3 a.m. rather than 3 p.m. Few pedestrians on sidewalks that on a typical weekend are packed with locals running errands, tourists with their street maps, and twenty-somethings standing in line for breakfast or lunch at the Paramount. There weren't many cars around either.

Overnight on Saturday, it hit 7-below, the coldest temperature in Boston in nearly sixty years. Worcester, of course, outdid itself: 14-below.

Saturday night would have been a big Valentine's Day romantic dinner out evening. Last year, plans were ruined by a blizzard. This year, they were warning people about frostbite if they were out for more than 10 minutes. I spent a decidedly non-romantic evening avoiding the Republican debate, supping on PBJ and a clementine. A fellow owner popped in, and we discussed the latest building tsouris. It's a big one. More to follow on that, I'm quite sure.

One of the things about living in an old building is the heating challenges. I had the thermostat set at 70 degrees - I seldom go that high - and, overnight, the best it could maintain at was 63 degreees. Not bad for sleeping, but...

My condo is upside down: the living room and kitchen are on the upper level, the bedroom and den are downstairs. Hot air should rise, so 63 downstairs should translate to 65 upstairs. But that's until that hot air gets to the 12 foot ceilings in the living room, and the green-house window in the kitchen. At 7 a.m., the temperature in the kitchen was 55 degrees. Unfortunately, I needed to use the kitchen. Fortunately, I remembered that, when I reno'd, I'd cleverly had toe-kick heating installed. Now, when I first heard about toe-kick, I thought I would be able to kick it on. Not quite. You do have to pretty much go prone on the cold kitchen floor and do a commando-style crawl to switch it on. No matter. It does a very nice job of taking the chill off.

But baby, it's cold inside.

Sunday, the original plan was to take the train up to my sister's in Salem. Trish would pick me up at the train station, and we'd spend the day hanging out - maybe take the dog for a walk, maybe see a movie. That was before we heard the forecast, and that warning about frostbite after 10 minutes out. Plans changed: Trish would swing into Boston to pick me up, and our hanging out would be in her living room. Jack would be walking himself in the back yard if he so desired. If not, he could just hold it.

For the 2 second walk from my front door to Trish's front seat, I donned heavy cords, a wool turtleneck, heavy sweater, two pairs of socks, down coat, wool cap, scarf, and bunny-fur lined mittens. Brrrrrr....

The afternoon's event was sitting on the couch channel crusiing.

Dinner was frigid weather fare: chicken pot pie. I bought fancy cupcakes for dessert. What's Valentine's Day without a cupcake decorated in pink and red?

Today, Presidents' Day, the weather's warming up. We'll get the dog out to stretch his legs, and maybe get our wallets out to do a little shopping. After all, what's a holiday celebrating the great and not-so-great men who've led our country without a bit of shopping?

As for that bit o' frigid weather we just endured. The upside is that Arctic cold is good for keeping down the rat population. And I bet it wipes the smile off a couple of those bold as brass squirrels on the Common, blocking my way and taunting me with their acorns.

Enjoy the holiday. Stay warm!


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You didn't think I was going to get through a holiday post without acknowledging that today is Presidents' Day, did you?

Just think, next year at this time, we could have a president in place who is unfathomably terrible. A crude, nasty, bullying, nativist demagogue. George, Tom and Abe must be spinning in their graves.

Rather than repeat myself, repeat myself, repeat myself, here's a link to last year's take on the day.

Tote that engagement, lift that morale

Fortunately, whenever I get a bit wistful about no longer being a full time employee anywhere, I come across an article that reminds me just  how fortuante I fortunately am. The Bloomberg article I saw - grabbingly headlined "Companies Are Outsourcing Employee Morale Building" (I've always loved seeing the words "outsourcing" and "morale" juxtaposed) - had an intro paragraph that made me shudder:

On a recent Thursday evening, Erin McCulloch, 31, was in her New York City office's conference room balancing on her manager's shins. Nearby, another colleague lay on her back and lifted the chief executive officer into the air with her feet, airplane-style. (Source: Bloomberg)

I've made it this far in professional life in one piece by following a few pretty simple rules. One of those rules is never balance on my manager shins. And another one is never lift my CEO (or, for that matter, anyone over the age of 3 and/or weighing over over 32 pounds).

But I've never been a hip young thing working in a cool place in NYC. Nor have I ever been even vaguely interested in anything that promises to be a "fusion of acrobatics and yoga," even if it promises to "leverage the wisdom of AcroYoga and apply it to corporate America."

Both may indeed require coopration and communication, but that's really where I see the (strained) applicability ends.

Then again, I've never been a hip young thing, etc.

Anyway, hip young companies in the NYC area can outsource their morale building to an outfit called Wekudo (as in "we could do", not as in weh-coo-dough" which is how I mnentally pronounced it when I first say it).

Wekudo has a "BIG dream: to inspire happiness at work."

This happiness at work must be a Millennial notion.

I'd say that the Greatest Generation wanted a steady income (plus pension) at work. Us Boomers wanted a steady income, too, but since we weren't going to get a pension, we wanted to have work that was "interesting", if not inspiring. As far as I can tell, poor Gen X wants an income, but since they weren't going to get a steady one, let alone a pension, what they want is for the Boomers to leave and not let the door hit them on our way out. They want this in a desperate hope that they can have a few minutes to run the place before the Millennials come streaming in through the doors that the Boomers had just exited. And the Millennials apparently don't care about income, steady or not. They care about perks, and engagement, and happiness at work.

I generally found a fair amount of happiness at work. But it was deifinitely small-h happiness. For real, capital-H Happiness, I looked to friends (a number of whom I found at work), family (hey, come to think of it, I met my husband at work), the nearest bookstore, and the Boston Red Sox. (Happiness from the Sox was an up-and-down-er.)

Given what the Millennials are after, I think that Wekudo is on to something. So go check them out. Any place that features pets on their site is likely a place that does, indeed, inspire happiness. (Even though some of those pets are cats.)

And Wekudo is not all about the acro yoga. They do plenty of things that even I - loather of most corporate bonding functions, just on general principles - might have enjoyed.  Like trivia night and karaoke (which I actually did at a couple of corporate functions). Others, well, sometimes I'm just as glad that at Me, Inc. I get to build morale and inspire happiness doing whatever I damn well please, even if it's just a snow-day afternoon nap. No manager's balancing on my knees, thank you!

What's in a plaid?

For nearly a century, Burberry has kept tabs on its trademarked plaid, the "Burberry check" pattern that most of us are familiar with. It may not be on our backs - it's not on mine, that's for sure - but it's in our psyches. But on the outside chance that it's not embedded in your brain, thar' she (the Burberry check pattern) blows:

Burberry's pretty expensive - I mean, The Queen sports it - and I don't think that most J.C. Penney's shoppers would be buying it. But, according to Burberry, the company has "suffered 'substantial and irreparable injury.'" at the hands of Penney's.

The British fashion house said Penney had been illegally selling "quileted jackets" with the pattern, as well as "scarf coats" in which scarves with the pattern were sold with matching coats. Burberry claimed that Penney kept selling the items in question for two months after learning of its objections. (Source: Fortune)

I guess they've taken it off their shelves, because this is what the Penney plaid looks like these days:

Close, but....You know the rest.

Burberry acknowledges that Penney's "infringing products are of inferior quality." Even so, "they appear superficially similar to genuine Burberry products."

[Burberry] then said Penney had intended to "deceive and mislead consumers into believing that defendants or their products are authorized, sponsored by or connected to Burberry."

If, in fact, Penney is found to have violated Burberry's trademark, they could be out millions. They'll have to sell a lot of "inferior quality" products to make up for that kind of outlay.

But if all that Burberry's got on Penney is something like the scarf coat shown above, I don't know. Here's the Burberry scarf coat, for compare and contrast.

Can you trademark the colors that go into a plaid? Anything with camel, white, and black - with or without red - is owned by Burberry? Do they have trademarks for a slew of plaids? What's pictured for Penney's - at least what I could find - doesn't really look like the real thing at all.

Then there's the overall look and feel. Let's face it. That wholesome Penney's model, in the jacket with the slightly clunky cut, is probably not wearing pricey pumps. Or toting that bag. Look, she doesn't even have the cool loop around thing going. She's just got hers plain old draped over her shoulders. (Does Burberry's own the right to the looped scarf look? If so, I'm in trouble.) But seriously, the only connection someone wearing that Penney's coat is making to Burberry's is in the realm of fantasy.

I ought to know.

I may not have the J.C. Penney wannabe, but I do have in my possession an L.L. Bean quilted jacket with a lining that's somewhere on the plaid continuum between Penney and Burberry. Here's my Burberry-lite lining:

Even if I roll up the cuffs to show off that ritzy-ritz lining, I'm pretty sure that no one's looking at the boxy cut of my LL Bean quilted jacket and thinking Burberry. Oh, sure, I might make pretend that I'm out deer stalking with Lilibet and Philip. Grouse hunting with Charles and Camilla. Chilling with Kate and the kids while we watch Wills and Harry play polo. (Move over, Pippa.) That someone might mistake me for a Sloane Ranger.

Should I turn myself in? Turn LL Bean in? Am I doing Burberry irreparable harm? Or just myself, by trying to pass myself off as someone who rides to the hounds?

And what should I be doing about the pink plaid cotton scarf I got for $5 at a sidewalk sale on Charles Street. Now that's a Burberry knock-off, if ever.

But what's in a plaid?

We may be finding out soon enough...

Sunday Night at the Red Lobster

One of the best novels I've ever read about "real" working people, in a "real" no-collar job, was Stewart O'Nan's Last Night at the Lobster. If you haven't read O'Nan - my idea of THE Great American Novelist of our era - and you admire excellence in fiction, you can't go wrong picking up anything (make that everything) he's ever written. (Don't forget his non-fiction, either. He wrote a terrific book about the 1944 Hartford Circus Fire. And he co-authored (with Stephen King) a book about the magical Red Sox season of ought-four.)

What O'Nan captured so brilliantly was not just the bleak and depressing elements of working at a Red Lobster - any Red Lobster, let alone one that's about to go out of business. (On top of everything else, on that last night, there's a blizzard. And, oh, yeah, I may not have this right, but I think it's just before Christmas, too.) What he also gets spot on is the humor, the sexiness, the fun of working in a place like that. Plus the dignity that a good and hard working person like manager Manny DeLeon can bring to a job that so many of us would consider a "death trap...a suicide rap."*

I especially like Lobster because I could identify with it. Before I launched my brilliant professional career, I was a waitress. No, it was never going to be my life's pursuit - that I still haven't figured out yet - but I did spend three summers during college, and a year+ after that waiting tables. Two of those summers were at Big Boy's, a low-end chain. Kind of like a Red Lobster, only without the booze. 

In actuality, I've never eaten in one. But based on my time at Big Boy's, and the other joints I worked, I know the look, the feel, the smell. I know that it can be fun to flirt with the cooks and kid around with the busboys. To get the bartender to make you a Kahlua Sour. (That was at Dugin Park and the Union Oyster House. No alcohol at Big Boy's!) To bitch about the customers. To enjoy yacking with the customers. To sneak a bite or two off of a plate that's just sitting there under the heat lamp waiting to be picked up. To count the tips at the end of the night. To go home bone tired, with barely enough energy to wash out your stinking uniform so you can get up the next day and do it all over again.

So I'm sympathetic to folks who work at the Lobster, or any other restaurant, especially the chains. It's hard, unglamorous work. But someone's got to do it so that the rest of us can go out to eat. And I thank you.

Anyway, last Saturday must have been an exhilerating one for Red Lobster workers. Because that was the day Beyoncé, on the eve of her super-star turn at the Super Bowl halftime show, released a new song in which she talks about taking her boo to eat at a Red Lobster.

As a result of that big ol' shout out from Bey,

Red Lobster Chief Executive Officer Kim Lopdrup said sales jumped 33 percent on Sunday and increased "well into the double digits" on Monday after pop star Beyoncé mentioned the seafood chain in her new song, "Formation."

The song, which was released over the weekend, sent customers streaming into Red Lobster on Super Bowl Sunday, which is typically a slow day for the company, Lopdrup said in an interview. He declined to give a specific figure for the double-digit increase on Monday, which compares with the year-earlier day.(Source: Bloomberg)

This could be a big deal for the chain, which has not been faring all that well, and is plagued with the patronage of an undesirable, aging demographic. 

I'm fortunate that, when I want a red lobster, or any other seafood, I don't have to go to a Red Lobster. I live in New England where you just have to reach your arm into the Atlantic and pull one out. Well, not quite. But lobster is pretty easy to come by, in either of my preferred manifestations: boiled with drawn butter or in a lobster salad sandwich. 

But I hope that the turn in fortune for Red Lobster continues, and that Beyoncé's mention boosts their business for a good long while. Not to make the owners - a private equity firm - richer. But to put a few more bucks in the pockets of the waiters and bartenders. To put a smile on the face of all the Manny DeLeons - the hero of Last Night at the Lobster - and to keep a few more of them from having to go through the pain and sorrow of a last night.

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*And, yes, I'm quoting poet-rock-eate Bruce Springsteen here. I saw The River Concert at The Gah-den last week. Springsteen is the singer-songwriter equivalent of Stewart O'Nan, other than the fact I suspect that more people have heard of (and heard) Bruce Springsteen than have heard of (and read) Stewart O'Nan. 

Boomers aging into old age housing? Gimme shelter!

Right after my mother turned 80, she moved into a congregant living facility.

It was time to leave home, the house she’d live in for 44 years, where she’d raised her kids, seen my father through a long illness, and been a widow for nearly 30 years. Worrying about whether the lawn was mowed, the walk was shoveled was getting to be too much. The new folks next door were a bit difficult. They were sloppy about putting their trash out, and milk jugs, tampon cartons, and Styrofoam Dunk’s cups would blow onto my mother’s property, and those lazy, good for nothing neighbors would do nothing about it. You’d think that someone might be ashamed about letting an 80 year old woman trying to retrieve their trash from the steep rocky hill that abutted her yard, but apparently not.

Anyway, from everyone’s perspective it was time for her to move to a place where she didn’t have to worry about house stuff, and her kids – none still in Worcester – didn’t have to worry about her.

Her new digs were pretty darned ideal.

She had a generously-sized one-bedroom apartment with a full kitchen and plenty of storage. There was a balcony that fit a couple of chairs that looked out on a pond. (The official name of the pond was Curtis Pond, but we knew it as The Electric Pond because it was near an electrical substation. When I was a kid, I thought the water was electrified, and that you would be killed if you stepped toe in it.)  Even better than the view of The Electric Pond out back, the front of the building was directly across the street from her parish church, where she’d been a parishioner since she’d moved to Worcester more than 50 years earlier. It was the church where she’d baptized her kids and buried my father, and the place where much of her social life revolved around. Her home away from home.

My mother’s congregant living place was by no means luxurious. But it was well kept up and comfortable. The grounds were lovely, there were plenty of activities for the “congregants,” and the staff were wonderful. Residents got breakfast and dinner, light housekeeping, and someone to check on their whereabouts if they didn’t come down to breakfast. Bonus points: my mother had a couple of friends who already lived there. Further bonus points: it wasn’t crazily expensive, and my mother could easily afford it.

When we moved her in, my sisters and I kidded her that – having lived with her parents until she married – my mother was moving into her first “single gal pad.” We also raved about how much storage there was. (Less than a year later, when she died, we were cursing that way too ample storage.

All in all, my mother was very happy at Goddard House, and we were very happy to have her there. Part of our sadness at her death was regretting that she didn’t get to enjoy more years of life unencumbered by a too-big house with a too-big yard.

As my Chicago cousins go through the search process to find a place for my Aunt Mary who, nearing 90, is ready to move into an assisted living situation, I hope that they’re able to find a place as good for their mother.

Anyway, the day before my mother fully moved in, I was transferring her frozen food for her  when the woman in the apartment next door popped her head out and asked if I were the new resident.

It was my 51^st birthday. So my answer was, errrrrr, no.

Fast forward fifteen years, and I’m still not ready to start thinking senior living – independent, congregant, assisted, skilled nursing. Maybe another fifteen or twenty years from now, which seems to be about the time in someone’s life when they need to get themselves into a more supportive/assistive living situation. I’m in a great location, and, with my recent reno, I made a couple of senior-friendly improvements: the tub is now a walk-in shower with bench and grab bar; the steep and twisty stair case is now equipped with a railing. But there’s nothing I can do about the steep front steps to the building, and the puny landing at the top. I suppose that breaking my neck while toppling backwards down those steps wouldn’t be the worst way to go, I don’t intend to find out.

Whether we like it or not, us first wave boomers are embarking on the beginning of the end and, whether we like it or not, are having to figure out our end of life plans. Just think, only yesterday, as a high tech product manager, I was sitting around the table talking EOL strategies for products that needed to go. Any day now, I’ll be sitting down to figure out my person EOL strategy.

Anyway, when I do decide to move on (short term, not permanent move one…), there’ll apparently be plenty of choices.

I really don’t picture myself in a golden-ager community, but if I’m going to be staying in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I’ll have an increasing number of options. I’m already seeing – or perhaps, for the first time, paying attention to – ads for all these incredibly nice looking communities where incredibly well-dressed, incredibly fit older folks (mid 70’s?) seem to be just loving their new digs.

But do I want to live in a place where all the women where sweater sets and pearls? With perfectly coiffed heads? And perfectly coiffed and toothed husbands? Hell, no.

Regrettably, I have yet to see an ad for a place that looks really appealing, that looks like a place I’d fit in. I.e., one populated by a bunch of grey-hairs in jeans and “interesting” sweaters who look like they’re heading out to go door-to-door for Bernie Sanders. Where the main features of the place are the library and the geezer-ed center, not a lap pool and tennis courts.

But I suspect that there will be more choice as time goes by. After all:

…as the first baby boomers turn 70 this month, the number of “old old” is expected to nearly triple in coming decades, from 7.3 million in 2015 to more than 21 million by 2050. (Source: Boston Globe)

And those ads we see running? They really don’t think that us Boomers are going to be flocking in any time soon.

“Part of the marketing efforts you see today will help bmer. “Strong operators are basically constantly marketing because they have to keep that front door full with a line.”

In addition to being savvy marketers, I bet they have excellent models to predict when there’ll be an opening, too. Actuarially speaking.

Part of that marketing effort is promoting communities for the 62+ demographic, even if the residents are in the 80+ demographic. And part of the marketing and product management effort is putting in more and more amenities to appeal to us younger geezers. Kayaking! Wine lockers! Tai chi! Plus the ability to stay put as we need an escalated level of care if we ever decide to grow old and die. As if!

Much of what’s going up in Massachusetts is upscale, which is not surprising, given that there is a lot of money around here.

But the reality for most baby boomers is not going to be deciding whether to go kayaking or break open a bottle of Shiraz. It’s going to be figuring out how to retire on whatever it is we did or didn’t save. Hoping that Social Security and Medicare will still be around. Praying that we don’t get Alzheimer’s. Or that we do get Alzheimer’s and spend those final years grayed out, unaware.

There used to be a Clairol (I think) ad that went, “Hate that gray? Wash it away.”

The truth is, there’s only so much gray that we’ll be able to wash away and, if the boomers live long enough, our bulge of a demographic is going to need the ability to stay in our homes or move into places that are clean, comfortable, safe and affordable. Forget about tai chi. For a lot of us, it’s going to be gimme shelter.

Firing your customers? You can if you're Elon Musk.

In the later stages of my career, a new philosophy of "cusotmer management" started to take hold. And that philosophy was that all customers are not created equal, and that some were more profitable and desirable than others. So what you wanted to do was cull the unprofitable customers from the herd. And, while you were at it, you were supposed to jettison customers who were "off strategy."

The trick, of course, was to identify those unprofitable and/or ottherwise undesirable entities. We seldom had the systems in place to figure out who they were. But whether we could formally identify them, or just had a gut feeling that they were too expensive to hang onto, in any case we generally didn't have the will to part with them.

Most of my career was spent in companies that sold to "the enterprise" market. I.e., we had large, complex, complicated and expensive "systems". And, as it so often turned out in my experience, the customers that turned out to be the ones we were losing our shirt on were the big names. And nothing so dazzled the places I worked like a name that someone had heard of. And those big names knew it, so they extracted all sorts of concessions and extras for the pleasure of doing business with them. In return, we seldom got anything - they weren't willing to provide a reference, or do a customer story, or sometimes even let their name appear on the customer list. Sure, you could tell someone they were a customer, but that was about it.

But, at least in theory, it makes a lot of sense to figure out how to lop off those customers that don't make you money and/or those that are a distraction from the business you really want to be in. (A hosting provider I worked for had some legacy busienss with a major porn vendor. Readers may recall that the demand for porn was a major driver for the growth of the Internet. More bandwidth, please! Anyway, we decided that there was no benefit to have a porn provider sucking way too much bandwidth up, not to mention that it was just unsavory. So we did get rid of them. A story for another day...)

Mostly, it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to get rid of customers.

And that goes whether you're in the big old corporate B2B world I come from, or, it would seem, the consumer market.

Of course, if you go about cusotmer-elimination in a public, feudy kind of way, you do get some publicity out of it. And that might be good for business. Or maybe you just want to vent spleen, which sems to be what Elon Musk was up to when he decided not to sell a Tesla to VC Stewart Alsop after Alsop unloaded on Musk's company for putting on what he felt was a dreadful customer event.

The event was last fall, and was held to launch the Tesla Model X, which Alsop wanted to buy, to the tune that he signed up for one and put down a deposit. The Tesla Model X is a 90 MPG SUV that goes for about $80K. (Or about $130K - I've seen both prices mentioned.) So there won't be an unlimited audience for it. Counter balance that with the fact that anything Elon Musk does is going to generate plenty of interest, and the fact that the Tesla is hip and trendy. So maybe a debate on whether how well you need to treat your prospective customers would end in a draw.

Apparently Stewart Alsop didn't find the event to his liking - it didn't start on time, it was over-crowded and he didn't get the oportunity to test drive the car, the food was awful - and Alsop took to his blog, as bloggers do, to rant about what a waste of his time it was. And to crank of Musk for not even apologizing. He posted it as an open letter to Elon Musk.

Fast forward a few months, and Alsop found that Musk had canceled Alsop's order for the car.

British newspaper The Guardian has accused Musk of being "unbelievably petty" in his response to Alsop's moaning. Is it it teachable moment? The possible lesson here is you shouldn't criticize Musk or make him mad if you want to buy a Tesla, as The New York Post and The Silicon Valley Business Journal put it. (Source: Market Watch)

Quite naturally, Alsop just had to blog about the order cancel. And, Alsop being Alsop  - a former journalist turned investor, from a family of prominent journalists - a lot of folks in the tech and business media picked up on the story.

To which Musk responded with a snide tweet about it being a slow news day when his response to a "super rude customer" made the headlines.

But was Alsop being super rude?

I think not.

He was making some valid points, and he was directing them to a public figure - Elon Musk - rather than trashing the marketing folks running the event. He wasn't - IMHO - being a jerk about it. He was describing his experience from his persepctive. He was blogging. And there didn't seem to be anything untoward or particularly rude about it.

But there was Elon Musk, over-reacting. When maybe what he should have done after Alsop's first post was invite him to do a test drive.

A few years back, when the Red Sox were in their glory days and tickets were hard to come by, a wrote a humorous but out there post on my experience trying to buy tickets online. The system has been much improved. And the Red Sox have declined. So, overall, it's much easier to get tickets online these days.

But back in the day...

My screed did get a response from the Red Sox: an email from the head of marketing (which included an email he'd received from then-president Larry Lucchino about my post) saying that the Red Sox would try to improve the system and, in the meantime, offering to have someone in his office facilitate my ticket purchase. I didn't go haywire, but I was able to score tickets for a few games.

Needless to say, my next post about the Red Sox was a smilier-faced one.

But Elon Musk? I've generally been an admirer of his business and technological acumen, but I think he's out to lunch on this one. Maybe he's a marketing genius, and did it to amp up product awareness. Or maybe he was just being a jerk.

Anyway, if he wants to put me in the No Tesla Zone, he can have at it. But I really think if you're going to fire your customers, there should be a better reason than them ragging you about a crappy event your company put on.

More bookstores on the horizon?

The big buzz the other day was that Amazon - of all organizations - was planning on opening 300 to 400 bookstores. The source of the rumor was the head of an outfit that owns a bunch of malls. Sandeep Mathrani, CEO of General Growth Properties, dropped this good-for-the-mall-world bit of info on his company's earnings call.

As a result of Mathrani's comments, Barnes & Noble share price dropped.

(I suspect that there are plenty of B&N execs who are muttering Thanks, Sandeep and rethinking their location plans.)

Soon after, Mathrani was walking back his comments, "clarifying" that they were "'not intended' to represent the online retailer's plans." Which is not exactly the same as sayhing it's not going to happen. (Amazon wouldn't comment one way or the other.)

Anyway, I find this all very interesting, given the role that Amazon played in drving so many "brick and mortar" bookstores out of business. This happened to both chains (c.f., Borders) and those small, lovable indies we love to have on the corner but don't bother to shop at. (I'm fortunate to have a good indie, the Trident Bookstore Cafe, about 20 minutes away. It's not all that large, and a lot of their real estate is devoted to their cafe. But it's a great little bookstore, carries a good selection of literary fiction titles, has cashiers who seem to love reading, and will order anything for you. Plus the food's not bad.)

And now, having bulldozed their path clear, Amazon may - or may not - be jumping back into the physical bookstore fray.

What they have done already, however, is step toe in the water last fall, having opened a store in their hometown of Seattle in November.

Amazon's bookstore in Seattle carries boooks selected based on customer rating and their popularity on Amazon.com. The storefront also provides a space fo visitors to test-drive Amazon's Kindle, Fire TV and other devices. (Source: Reuters)

I'm by no means an Amazon basher.

I've ordered plenty of books - real books and Kindle downloads - not to mention other stuff from their site, and may well be heading over there when I finish this up to order a wrought iron banana hanger, an item that I couldn't find at Bed, Bath & Beyond when I was there the other day.

But that only carrying "books selected based on customer rating and their popularity on Amazon.com" gives me pause. I know that there are plenty of good reads that rise to the top, but, when it comes to books, I'm not all that big on the wisdom of crowds. Will the Amazon physical bookstores end up being like Walden or those other sad-sack chains of yore that primiarly carried Tom Clancy, Barbara Cartland, and low-end cookbooks?

After all, one of the great pleasures of being in a bookstore is grazing the "what's new" table, followed by some grazing on the off-price remainders table. One of the things I liked best about Boston's late, lamented downtown Borders was its tremendous grazing opportunities. Borders carried a good selection of high-qualilty fiction, and had a lot of excellent books on their bargain table, as well. (I understand this can also happen at Barnes & Noble, but the B&N in downtown Boston is not very good; definitely reading-lite.)

I also think it would be pretty amusing to see Amazon coming around to the merits of having "brick and mortar" estabishments. I know, I know, Amazon now has some same-day deliveries, and before we know it, there'll be instantaneous drone delivery. But there's really nothing like being able to just walk in and buy a couple of books. Instant gratification of the most high-brow order!

We'll see whether Amazon will soon be hanging out shingles in malls around the country.

Whether it happens or not, I'll be doing my bit to keep the Trident in business.

I may still order an occasional book from Amazon. And they're more than likely to get my banana hanger business. But I think I'll do a walkabout tomorrow, amble up Newbury Street, and see just what's up on the bargain table at Trident.

As If I Needed Another Reason to Despise the NFL

I will admit it: I’m a sports fan.

Not a rabid, crazed, live-or-die, obsessional nut case, mind you.

But, yes, I’m a bona fide sports fan. Largely a professional sports fan.

Mostly, I follow baseball. The Red Sox in particular, but baseball in general. I look forward to the opening day, and am especially happy that, for the first time in years (i.e., for the first time since the Red Sox got good, before they became bad again), I was able to score tickets to the game on Patriots Day. Much one of the best local sports event: a rare morning game so that the fans can stream out and catch some of the Marathon.

Although baseball’s my first sports love, I can get interested in basketball or hockey around the playoffs, if the Celtics or the Bruins are in. And I’m enough of a band-wagoner to admit that, once the Patriots started winning Super Bowls, I began more or less following them.

But I also have to admit that, when it comes to professional football, I’m a bit of a hypocrite.

There is much about it that I just flat-out don’t like, starting – but not ending with – the violence, the aura of militarism, the rigid authoritarian nature of it, the fighter jet flyover spectacle at the Super Bowl. Yet still I watch. Not all the time, and not religiously. But enough.

If I had to pick the one thing I most ardently dislike about the NFL, however, it would be the NFL itself.

Turning a blind eye to the brain damage that so many players endure. Their collusion with colleges and universities to exploit – chew up and spit out – so many largely poor and minority athletes. Their selective tolerance for bad behavior off the field. Their arbitrary prosecution of on-the-field infractions, real or perceived.

To this litany – and, trust me, I could go on – I will add NFL’s treatment of one Troy Haupt.

Just who is Troy Haupt?

No, he’s not a brain-shot former Heisman Trophy winner. There’s no reason you’d recognize his name.

But Troy Haupt has something that the NFL doesn’t, and that’s near-complete video tapes of the first Super Bowl game, which was played 49 years ago.

Super Bowl wasn’t such a big deal back in 1967. Fans weren’t yet as obsessional about it, and football wasn’t quite the lucrative sport it has become. The networks that broadcast the first Super Bowl didn’t bother to save the tapes. (Both CBS and NBC broadcast the game. I’m guessing there were two because, at that point in time, there were two separate leagues: the granddaddy NFL and the parvenu AFL. Each league no doubt had its own broadcasting agreement.)

Anyway, there’s a long and fairly interesting story about how Haupt came into possession of the tapes. (They were made by his father, whom Haupt never knew, but who gave the tapes to Haupt’s mother, suggesting she might be able to sell them for money for his kids’ education; they were long-forgotten and rotting in an attic). At some point about a decade or so ago, Haupt realized that he might have something that was worth something.

The figure that he had in mind was $1 million (which was the estimate of the sports press.)

Which seems reasonable, given that the NFL would have packaged them out and sold them fast and furious to the millions of fans who care about such things. What with Super Bowl 50 soon upon us, there would have been ample opportunities to market full collections. And/or onesies of the long lost first game. It’s easy enough to imagine that the NFL would have made tens – even hundreds – of millions of dollars merchandising this find.

But the NFL offered Haupt a measly $30K, which he turned down. (The league was able to piece together a video of Super Bowl 1, but it apparently lacks the authenticity and vintage quality – or lack thereof – of the Haupt tapes.)

Unfortunately for Haupt, he may own the tapes, but the NFL owns the content. So Haupt, who would like to sell his tapes to a collector, can’t do so. And as a sweetener, he’d like to donate some of the sale proceeds to charities. Here’s the shot that the NFL fired across his bow in a letter sent to Haupt’s lawyers:

“Since you have already indicated that your client is exploring opportunities for exploitation of the N.F.L.’s Super Bowl I copyrighted footage with yet ­unidentified third parties,” Dolores DiBella, a league counsel, wrote, “please be aware that any resulting copyright infringement will be considered intentional, subjecting your client and those parties to injunctive relief and special damages, among other remedies.” (Source: NY Times)

Haupt had an opportunity to make a little money - $25K, plus a couple of tickets – from CBS to appear in a pregame segment o talk about his story. The bully boys (and, I guess, girls) got wind of it and put the kibosh on it.

What could have been a feel good story – the lost tapes found, the “common man” lucking into a bit of money, a tremendous Super Bowl story, an opportunity for a fan lovefest – becomes another example of the NFL’s crap and crushing attitude toward everything and everyone who’s not them.

Sure, they need to protect their assets, their vaunted brand. But it’s not as if all kinds of other folks are going to come out of the woodwork with something of this value. This doesn’t set much of a dangerous precedent as far as I can tell.

Anyway, I didn’t really need another reason to despise the NFL, and here they went and dropkicked one right into my lap.

You really can't watch a sporting even without rooting for SOMEONE.

Despite my misgvings about the NFL - and there'll be more on that tomorrow - I'm going to a Super Bowl gatherng on Sunday.

Unless the Patriots are in, I usually don't watch it. But this is a social event, so I will.

And, since you really can't watch any sporting event without picking a side, I'm putting a bit of time in on deciding which team to root against. I feel a bit like a Martin O'Malley supporter at an Iowa caucus - only without having two interesting choices, either or which I could be happy with.

On the one hand, there are the - hiss-boo - Denver Broncos. What's not to root against? After all, they deprived New England sports fans of the one thing we've all been waiting for since the NFL dug in on the ridiculous "Deflate-gate Scandal": seeing the look on Emperor Roger Goodell's face when he gave the Super Bowl Trophy to Pats' owner Bob Kraft, and the game MVP award to Our Tom, whom the venal and spiteful Goodell, the venal and spiteful NFL owners, and the venal and spiteful minions who do their bidding, conspired against.

Another reason to root against the Broncos is, of course, Peyton Manning. He may well be a very fine individual, etc., etc. But all this palaver about how deserving he is of a Super Bowl win, how he deserves this as a retirement gift.

This "Peyton deserves it" is just so absurd. Let's face it, any fair-minded, objective individual would clearly recognize that the only quarterback in the entire history of the NFL who deserves to win any Super Bowl, especially this one, is Tom Brady.

And all this fawning over the sainted Manning family - what with paterfamilias Archie Manning's history as a star of yesteryear, and bro Eli, who's the quarterback of the NY Giants, they're NFL royalty if ever - is pretty nauseating. (I won't even go into the allegations of Manning's use of HGH, which so far don't appear to merit anywhere near the attention that spectacularly trivial infractions or non-infractions seem to demand.)

There's no special reason to root for the Carolina Panthers. They're loudmouths. They're showboaters. They've got really terrible uniforms, with a really terrible color scheme.

On the other hand, all of the pious, arse-licking, yes sir/yes ma'am = character, "defenders of the shield" in the media have been out in full force attacking Cam Newton, the Panthers' brash young loudmouth showboating quarterback because he had the gall to get off the team plane flying out to the Super Bowl wearing a pair of flamboyant Versace zebra print pants. Rather than the somber, "respect the league", boring old business suit that Saint Peyton of Manning had chosen.

I guess I'm talking myself into it.

Forget anything I said about showboating loudmouths. I think I've got to go wtih the Panthers, based solely on Cam Newton's crazy-legs pants. The more they irritate the NFL, the better.

So, I guess I've made my choice: GO, PANTHERS!

Cheater pants! Make that cheater bicycle pants.

Somehow, I suspect that since the first die was cast, cheating - big cheating, little cheating - has plagued sports. Let's face it. People want to win. And a lot of them will do anything to get a check mark in the W column.

Thus, we see corked bats and hair goop on baseballs. Deflated footballs and - thank you Aaron Rodgers - inflated footballs. Point shaving scandals, and hockey players hooking the other guys skates with their sticks. And, of course, junk that athletes put in their bodies to make them run faster, see clearer, jump higher, pedal faster...

Cheating is, of course, on a long continuum.

On one end, there's poor sportsmanship - like encouraging your fans to make a ruckus behind the net when someone on the opposing team's at the foul line.

Then there's small-c cheating as in breaking a rule, which may or may not cost you a penalty, and which may or may not even be considered cheating. The rule of thumb: if someone on the other team does it, it's cheating. If someone on your team does it, well, it's all in the game, and they came to play.

And then there's BIG-C Cheating, like throwing a game, taking a dive, bribing a judge.

We may just be hearing so much more about cheating these days because there's 24/7 demand for news. So 50 years ago, something might have been mentioned in a small half column, buried in the back pages of the sports section. Local edition only. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Back in the day, it would take something of the magnitude of the Chicago Black Sox or the college basketball point shaving scandals of the 1950's to make it onto the front page, screaming headlines, national coverage.

And we may also be hearing so much more about cheating these days because there is, in fact, more of it. And there may be more of it because the stakes are so high. There's an awful lot of $$$ on the line these days. Even in sports like professional cycling.

If it weren't for the Tour de France and/or the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong, I would hazard a guess that most Americans wouldn't even been aware that you could make a living as a bicyclist.

But, indeed, you can.

Thus, you hear the grumblings that, while Lance Armstrong may have been caught, there are plenty of others in the sport who try to get the racer's edge via doping.

But to me, the tawdriness of the doping scandals ain't nothing when compared to the latest tour de farce: motors hidden in bicycles  to give the riders an extra little oopmh.

The person who stands - or sits - accused is Femke Van den Driessche, a 19-year old Belgian women who was found to have a motorized bike among the multiple bikes she had with her.

She claims that she never rode it, it wasn't hers, it belongs to a friend, all blue bicycles look alike. Which may all be true, but I would guess that her future in professional cycling is not quite as shiny as it was a couple of weeks ago. You've come al ong way, baby. (Not!)

A motor in your bicycle? Wouldn't that make it a motorcycle? And don't they have a professional racing body of their own?

I don't know why having motor in your bicycle seems more heinous than other forms of cheating. Worse than bat-corking. Worse than PEDs. But it just does. 

I mean, isn't the entire point of bicycle racing about body as engine? Yes, I know that there's science and strategy and teams and pelotons and increasingly fancy-arsed equipment. But, but, but...isn't it kinda-sorta be "pure" sport. Like track. And decathalon. And stuff like that.

Shocked, I'm shocked that there's cheating going on here? Well, no I'm not. 

But there is something particularly nasty about putting a motor in your bike and pretending that pedal power is getting you where you want to go.

“Nostalgia Craving” Tourists? Not me...

The other day, in The Boston Globe, there was an article entitled “Nostalgia Craving baby boomers are driving tourism.”  Between that and the sub-head – “From Route 66 and Disneyland to Hawaii and Cuba, childhood memories beckon” – how could I resist a clickthrough?

According to the article, the boomers are looking for a return to a kinder, gentler time, when, apparently, people who weren’t us used to do vacation things like swan around the Cal Neva, watching our folks chill with the Rat Pack.

Well, I’d like to get my kicks on Route 66 with the best of them, but my childhood travel memories don’t beckon from places like Hawaii and Disneyland, let alone Cuba.

The family vacations for this baby boomer came in one of three varieties:

• Chicago to visit my mother's family
•  A week or two in the modest Cape Cod cottage of my parents’ friends Mae and Nemo
•  Day trips

I still head out to Chicago on occasion. It’s one of my very favorite places. But the way I experience Chicago now – and how I get there – is quite a distance from the biennial trips we made when I was I kid. Back in the day, there were two ways to get to Chicago: car or train. Car involved starting out at dawn, crammed in our car, my father doing all the driving, my mother riding shotgun, the latest kid in her lap in those days before seat belts. My first recall of this jaunt – I was 3 or 4 at the time – has my sister Kath and I laying down on the back seat with towels up to our chins so we could puke into them.

No wonder we took the train the next time.

We went steerage, on the Lake Shore Limited, sitting up in the regular car. My parents made some sort of shelf out of their suitcases, and some suitcases donated by our neighbors, so that Kath, Tom, and I could stretch out and get some sleep. (The trip was overnight. We left Worcester at 5 p.m. and pulled into LaSalle Street Station at about noon the next day.) My favorite part of the train trip was the chillier than chill water from the water cooler, that you drank in those flimsy little paper cone cups. Yum! (The not so favorite part was my mother packing tuna sandwiches for us to have for dinner. It was always a Friday. Something about a slightly aged, slightly chilled tuna sandwich has never quite done it for me…)

On our next couple of train trips, we upgraded to cabins, so at least we could sleep in something that resembled a bed. Plus our own toilets. On one of these incredible journeys, we were split up into a couple of different roomettes. My mother got to sleep in a single narrow bed with my brother Rick next to her, and my 1 year old sister Trish hanging over her in a webbed hammock. Great fun – at least for the kids. But there were still those tuna sandwiches.

The final trip we took to Chicago en full famille, we split up. My mother flew out with the two little guys, while my father drove with the Big Three. On Day One – in 90+ degree weather (un-airconditioned car, of course) – we had a flat outside of Buffalo. To make up for lost time, we didn’t stop for food on Day Two. My father bought a giant bag of orange marshmallow “circus peanuts” and a couple of bottles of (warm) Pepsi. I will say this about my dad. He had an excellent idea of how kids like to travel. Plus he let us blast the radio – and pick the station. The big songs that summer were Surf City and Danke Schoen.

Whatever the mode of transpo, once we got to Chicago, we did mostly family things: a few days in Grandma’s sweltering bungalow in the city, then out to “the country”, the lake house my grandparents had bought in the late 1930’s. It’s now part of Chicago’s suburbs, but at the time it was the real sticks: there was a duck farm across the street. As kids, we loved every minute of it, especially given that our cousins the Dineens – also 5 kids, roughly age parallel – were there, too.

In Chicago, we always did at least one city thing so, as a kid, I saw the Shedd Aquarium, the Art Institute, and Museum of Science and Industry.

These days, on my Chicago trips, I stay with one of those all-grown-up Dineens, my cousin Ellen, and get to see her mom and those of her sibs who are still local. But, fortunately, my visits to Ellen do not involve 20 people sharing one bathroom. It also involves eating out at nice restaurants, something we sure didn’t do as kids.

I love visiting Chicago, but nostalgia doesn’t have all that much to do with it. I love the city, and get to visit with my wonderful cousin Ellen.

Back in the day, in our non-Chicago years, we either went to the Cape or did day trips.

At the Cape, we stayed in a tiny little ranch house, but it was within walking distance of the beach, and within walking distance of the Barefoot Trader, a long-gone souvenir/gift shop. They sold a lot of barefoot-related crap, including a pinky-beige (a.k.a., “flesh”) ceramic ashtray, which I recall quite clearly, because my parents – who were, quite possibly, the couple least likely to spend any money on a souvenir – bought one, and it sat on a side table in the family room well after there were no longer any smokers around to use it. (Now that I think of it, maybe I bought it for my father for Christmas one year…)

I loved the Cape then, and I still do. Only these days, the ante’s been upped. Mostly when I’m there, I’m at my sister Kath’s in Wellfleet, where we can spread out and no one has to queue up for the bathroom, as there are 3.5 of them there.

Some years, we just did day trips. One of those day trips was always a trip to the beach – either Nantasket or Horseneck, neither of which I’m especially nostalgic for (although I do wish that Nantasket’s LeHage salt water taffy was still available – Oh, so good!) On one of the other days, we’d go somewhere – maybe drive to Bennington, Vermont to see a covered bridge or something, or go to Sturbridge Village (a recreated ye olde town) so we could thank God we didn’t live in 1820. And one day, we’d go take a dip in a local lake. Somedays, we’d just “take a spin” and stop for ice cream. Some days, we did nothing. (I.e., my father got to relax for a change.)

Anyway, I really don’t have any cool childhood travel that I feel nostalgic enough about to replicate.

I would like to visit Cuba, but nostalgia has nothing to do with it. (Okay, seeing all those old cars from the 1950’s might be fun.)

But, seriously, whose family vacationed in Havana? The farthest south anyone I knew got was Misquamicut Beach in Rhode Island.