That’s how we make it. That’s your food.

When my niece Molly was in her waitress-playing stage – she was age three or so, but by that point had already eaten out often enough to know how to take and deliver an order – her restaurant had a somewhat limit menu. It served something called “shambooey” and desert was either raspberry or chocolate “tinoconti”. When Molly put your order down in front of you, she always informed her patrons, “That’s how we make it. That’s your food.”

As I read through last week’s New York Times article on so-called “Puritan Chefs,” Molly’s restaurant came back to mind.

Apparently in New York City, and other fine dining precincts, some restaurants are going beyond “we don’t serve” and “it’s not on the menu” to an iron-chef, tough yez, hard-line approach to what might seem a fairly modest and non-aberrational request.

For one thing, some restaurants don’t allow you to make any substitutes.

Which, to some extent, makes sense. If you’re a fancy-ass establishment, you probably only purchase enough Brussels sprouts to take care of the number of Brussels sprouts accompanying dishes you expect to serve. Someone asking for, say, pea tendrils instead could really set the plats spinning in the kitchen.

And I suppose that in factory restaurants, where a robotic vernier caliper allots the precise number of French fries to accompany the rib eye steak, you could upset the Applebees cart by asking for something green.

Still, in my go-to restaurants – which are in the middle of the continuum between fancy-ass and factory -  I’ve been known to ask for swap-outs, and appreciate being accommodated.

For one thing, I don’t like stand-alone cooked carrots.

Raw carrots, I love. Carrots in soups, stews, and chicken pot pies: yum! But, for whatever reason, I am generally not a big fan of cooked carrots as veg. I’m not a fanatic here. It’s not a matter of give me broccoli or give me death, but, hey, ask and you shall receive.

Unless you’re in some snooty joint in New York, where the “customer is not always right.”

One place won’t serve de-caff coffee. Which is probably not that big a deal, since half of them will slip you caff as de-caff, anyway, as I saw with my own two eyes as my waitress pour my de-caff from the same pot from whence she poured my dining companion’s caff. When I called her on it, she denied everything.

Another place mentioned in the article had a two-fer going fer it. They wouldn’t serve take out espresso unless you bought or brought your own ceramic cup, since, in their view, espresso was meant to be drunk hot and fast, not taken to go in a heat-dissipating paper cup. You might well ask, what’s it to them if you down a cold espresso in your office. I sure did.

This same place once “refused to grind two pounds of espresso beans at once because he was concerned that the coffee would lose its freshness before [the customer] could brew it.

Putting me in mind of a restaurant in Maine where the waiter informed us, after my husband order a steak well-done, that “the chef might not do that to a beautiful piece of meat.” Well, the cattle’s past caring, so you might well ask, what’s it to them if you want to saw through a tough, grey well-done steak. I sure did. (As did my husband.)

At some places, there’s no accounting for taste. They won’t let you request a varying degree of spiciness. Or they won’t serve ketchup with their fries (wonder what they’d do if you slipped in a couple of packets from Mickey D’s and furtively ripped and dripped). Others don’t put out salt and pepper because the chef is a perfectionist who apparently knows the right way to eat, even if you don’t.

Then there was this:

New York has a hallowed history of persnickety cooks: Kenny Shopsin became something of a cult figure for the litany of rules — including no parties bigger than four and no more than one order of any particular dish per table — enforced for years at Shopsin’s diner in the West Village, now a small outpost at the Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side.

“No more than one order of any particular dish per table”?

What’s that about?

And note to those suffering from peanut, shell-fish and citrus allergies. If you’re heading out to a David Chang restaurant, don’t forget your epi-pen, since in Mr. Chang’s “personal opinion” you might be fibbing just a tiny bit:

“To do this ‘Can I get this with no olives, can I get the salad chopped, sauce on the side’ — some of those special requests are ridiculous. My personal opinion is that a lot of people say they have a special allergy or they don’t like something so they can get better service.”

In my personal opinion, people say that they have a special allergy or that they don’t like something because they actually have a special allergy or don’t like something.

I’ve known several folks with very severe food allergies. One was to anything with citric acid in it – and you’d be amazed how many things have citric acid in them – and another to shellfish.

Both of these guys had near misses, brushes with death by anaphylaxis, even after they’d been assured that the food they ordered was allergen-free. And neither was looking for the better service provided by an EMS with a gurney.

My favorite fuss-budget restaurant mention was this one:

At Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte, a Parisian import in East Midtown that offers a set menu of salad and steak frites, diners are asked a single question: Would they like their meat cooked well, medium, rare or bleu (extra rare). Woe unto those who want it medium rare.

“We have no medium rare in France, and we are copying the French way,” said Darin Nathan, a partner in the restaurant, adding that French rare is a close alternative. (A request for guidance from a waitress at a recent lunch elicited only the curt statement, “Rare is red, medium is pink.”)

Mais, oui. Why bother to kindly note that “rare is red and medium is pink” when you can snottily put that fauve of a patron down with a curt snarl.

Perhaps the waitress was not aware that, in Paris, they may not have medium rare, but they don’t give 20% tips either.

Galliano on the rocks

Frankly, until I started reading about the brouhaha stirred up by his execrable (and video’d) comments, I don’t believe that I’d ever even heard of John Galliano.

My only word-association with Galliano was “liqueur” – the yellow stuff in the skinny, tapering bottle. Tastes kind of like Sambuca – licorice-y. Ingredient in a Harvey Wallbanger.

As for John Galliano, the Dior designer, well: I am not now, never have been, and – at this point in my life – am unlikely to ever become, a fashionista. Look no further than a look that could be no further from my dull and pedestrian sense of style….

Galliano – and, by the way, that’s Sir John Galliano to you, if you’re someone who keeps up with the Queen’s Honours and all that  - was fired as creative director for Christian Dior last week. This was in the wake of his having been suspended after his involvement in an allegedly anti-Semitic incident during Paris Fashion Week. The coup de grace that turned “suspended” into “fired” was the posting online of a video that showed Galliano in earlier action, blathering:

“I love Hitler," and, "People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f**king gassed."

Needless to say, there are few brands out there that would want to be associated with this sort of behavior, and Christian Dior is apparently not one of those few. CEO Sydney Toledano had this to say:

It has been deeply painful to see the Dior name associated with the disgraceful statements attributed to its designer, however brilliant he may be. Such statements are intolerable because of our collective duty to never forget the Holocaust and its victims, and because of the respect for human dignity that is owed to each person and to all peoples.

Having played a version of career Russian roulette with one too many bullets in the chambers, John Galliano is supposedly off to some fancy and expensive somewhere, sobering up. Stay tuned for tears, remorse, “I was drunk,” “I thought I was being funny,” “Of course I don’t feel this way” “This is being taken completely out of context”…  Followed by a long period during which Galliano attempts to rebuild his career while serving as “anathema of the year” to decent people everywhere. This year’s Mel Gibson – the person we’d never be, saying the things we’d never say,doing the things we’d never do.

I’m not condoning Galliano’s statements, of course. I suspect that he’s an a-hole, a creep, and – let’s face it – words like “people like you would be dead” don’t tend to surface out of nowhere.

But every time one of these extreme cases of anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, or whatever-ism, emerges, we all rush in to condemn and to distance ourselves from “it”. (Well, most of us do, anyway. Apparently one Patricia Field, a fellow-fashionista friend of Galliano, has leapt to his defense, yelping that Galliano’s statements were clearly “farce,” akin to Mel Brooks’ The Producers.  Note to Ms. Field: I haven’t seen the movie in a while, and I’ve never seen the play, but I don’t exactly remember any lines along the lines of ‘f**king gassed’ in “Springtime for Hitler.”)

Anyway, whatever “it” is, it’s an aberration, one in a million, something that we would never think/do/utter.

And, thus, we conveniently let ourselves off the hook of any sort of honest conversation or personal reflection (or, as we used to say in my old Catholic school days, examination of conscience) about our own deep-seated feelings about the “other.” Where these feelings come from, how we frame them, what it means to (and about) “us” and “them”.

What’s permissible? What’s over the line?

As it happens, Academy Award winner and Harvard grad Natalie Portman, has an endorsement contract with Dior perfume. The Israel-born daughter of an Israeli and an American, Portman is also the great-granddaughter of a couple killed at Auschwitz. Here’s Portman on the Galliano incident:

“I am deeply shocked and disgusted by the video of John Galliano’s comments that surfaced today...I hope at the very least, these terrible comments remind us to reflect and act upon combating these still-existing prejudices that are the opposite of all that is beautiful.”

Beautiful, talented, and smart. (I suppose I should hate her for that, but can’t bring myself to. Maybe after I see the Black Swan I’ll feel differently.)

I’m sure that Galliano is crushed that Natalie Portman - who should be wearing one of his creations on the red carpet at the next awards show – is out there saying she’s disgusted by his comments. After all, he didn’t mean her when he uttered his “farcical” words to those folks in the Parisian café.

But that’s just it, isn’t it. The ones we know - -gays, blacks, Jews, liberals, Republicans, union members, Southerners -  tend to be okay. It’s the rest of them out there that are, you know… Well, you know.

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Sources:  Yahoo, Reuters, Wikipedia – lost track of what came from where, I’m afraid.

Moammar Khadafy’s “theories on democracy”

It may not be quite as white-shoe a management consulting firm as Bain, BCG, or McKinsey, but Monitor is right up there in terms of pedigree and prestige. Monitor was founded in the early 1980’s by a group of Harvard Business School related thinkers and doers, most notably Professor Michael Porter – certainly one of the primo management gurus the world has ever known. I’m guessing that everyone who’s even glanced at the GMAT practice-test books on the shelf of Borders, let alone ended up taking the GMAT, let alone actually gotten an MBA, has heard of Porter. (I’m quite sure I have at least one of his books gathering dust on a shelf somewhere.)

Monitor works with the world’s leading corporations, governments, and social sector organization as their integrated resource for growth.

Well, I’m not quite sure what “integrated resource for growth” means, but I get from the first part that they don’t just work with Fortune/Global 500’s to further their takeover-the-world strategies, but with governments, too. Don’t know whether the word “leading” is intended as a modifier for “government.” Makes me kind of wonder what constitutes a “leading government,” beyond the obvious USA! USA! After all, even the government of Burundi is the leading government in Burundi. And the same goes for the relationship between Liechtenstein’s government and Liechtenstein (and all the little Liecthtensteiners).

But whether Libya’s considered a “leading government” or just a “government”, Monitor’s in the news these days, much to their chagrin, for its work as an “integrated resource for growth” for Libya between 2006 and 2008.

Monitor’s not backing down from its “main effort [which] was designed to help Khadafy’s dictatorship bring about change.” (Source for information on Monitor and its work with Libya: Boston Globe.)

And they’re cool with the role they played bringing household word (at least in some households) intellectuals to hang out with Moammar. As one of the household world (at least in some households) responded when asked:

“I’m sure Khadafy thought having intellectuals like [Francis] Fukuyama and Joe Nye and [Anthony] Giddens and myself there was a way of proving to the world that he wasn’t stupid,’’ said [Benjamin] Barber... “What he gained was some glamour from interaction with the West, but what we gained was protection for people who were pushing for reforms.’’

(Khadafy apparently can’t get enough of that Western glamour, by the way. His family’s been entertained by a whole posse of glamour-pusses, if not exactly of the intellectual glamour-ati variety -  Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, and Nelly Furtado.)

But Monitor is somewhat apologetic about a couple of murkier roles it played.

Yesterday, Monitor Group acknowledged in a statement that its paid work included helping Khadafy’s son Saif with his doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics.

The firm said that assistance and the book proposal were mistakes.

Helping Daddy’s boy with his dissertation is one thing – Saif is supposedly a “good” Khadafy, i.e., one who’s somewhat benevolently disposed towards the West and is not likely to, say, blow up a commercial flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. And I’m quite sure that, odious as it might be, this isn’t the first time that someone with a lot of money has paid someone with a lot of brainpower to help polish their offspring’s academic star. After all, Saif had more important things to do – like go to Mariah Carey concerts.

Then there’s “the proposal,” which is quite something else. “The proposal” was for a book to puff up Khadafy – for which Monitor was hoping to make $2M plus expenses.

“The book will allow the reader to hear Khadafy elaborate in his own words, and in conversation with renowned international experts,’’ the proposal states. It said that Barber would “clarify several questions from previous conversations with Khadafy’’ while [Anthony] Giddens [London School of Economics] “will visit to deepen understanding of the merits and problems of direct democracy vs. representative democracy.’’

Barber, who is described in Monitor memos as a “subcontractor,’’ said he refused to work on the book, which was later abandoned by Monitor.

Elaborate on what questions aside, am I the only one thinking: and we think that ghosted, self-serving, history-warping presidential memoirs are useless and well-deserving of every minute they languish on the remainder table?

Of course, I do wonder what Khadafy’s got to say about direct democracy, of the in-the-streets variety, these days.

I guess this is what vanity press is for. And when you’ve got all that oil money burning a hole in your pocket, not to mention in your country, you can take the full print run and gift all your “friends”, including all the visiting intellectuals who lent their aura of glamour to Khadafy. You can put it in the bedside tables in all the bedrooms in the palace. You can give them out at Nelly Furtado concerts.

Anyway, it’s certainly shameful that Monitor had anything to do with a proposal to help elevate Khadafy’s stature by writing a book for him. Let him write his own damned book, or get one of his toadying minions to do it for him.  Bet old Moammar knows how to enforce publish or perish.

But, no, that wouldn’t have had the legitimacy conferred on it that a book that included conversations with respected intellectuals would have.

How would you like to have been the junior consultant, the summer intern, the writer in marketing who usually does the web-site copy, and get asked to work on this one?

After all, Monitor only hires really smart people, no?

All Monitor people are problem solvers, who care deeply about their clients, and who want things to happen…Our people join Monitor because they want to help organizations grow, because they want to have an impact on the world, and because they value the unique skills and insights they will develop from the diverse career paths available in our firm.

So if you’re an employee – maybe relatively junior, maybe relatively new – how do you express your feelings about working on a book about Khadafy, a client that you may not, in truth, care deeply for? Do you push back – Like, isn’t he a mad man or something? or Didn’t Khadafy have something to do with Lockerbie?

Or do  you just do what you’re asked to do: another day at the office, deferring to the judgment of those who are more senior, have snazzier vitae, who run the place

And how and where do those with the snazzier vitae draw the line? Hey, we’re trying to bring about reform here, guys. or It’s not like we’re ghosting Mein Kampf for Hitler – we’re using real intellectuals here.

I sure would have liked to have been privy to the meeting when someone decided that working on this book was a big, bad idea. Maybe, just maybe, there are times when it isn’t all about the Benjamins…

Now I know why people Tweet

Overheard - The Foundry, Davis Square: “All men want to be Charlie Sheen.” (One thirtyish guy to his pal, standing in the bar.)

Sailing, Sailing, over the bounding main (just not off the coast of Somalia, please)

For those of us drawing our knowledge of pirates from Captain Hook (and Smee) in Peter Pan; kids trick-or-treating in bandanas and eye patches; black and white  Errol Flynn movies rerun on Turner Classic; the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland; and the second line of the Marine Corps Hymn, the deadly news about Somali piracy that’s been coming our way for the past several years is unsettling.

Last month, it was the murder of a group of well-to-do West Coast yachters, doubling as missionaries (they handed out bibles along their way), who were shot by trigger-happy Somali pirates when the U.S. Navy got a bit too close.

This week, it’s the Dutch couple saved; the Danish family captured.

Whatever the root cause of piracy off the coast of Somalia – some claim its payback for foreign commercial fishermen encroaching on Somali waters, or for illegal dumping of hazardous waste in those waters -  it’s certainly taking a terrible toll on international merchant shipping and international pleasure boating.

But one of these, it seems to me, is pretty much purely and entirely optional and avoidable.

And that would include both the pleasure-boating Dutch couple who were rescued yesterday, and the pleasure-boating Danish family that was taken hostage earlier this week, bringing the family’s dream vacation sail around the world to an abrupt end. The Johansen family, which includes 3 children between the ages of 12 and 16, have been removed from their personal yacht and placed on hold, on shore or in a moored pirate ship, along with over 600 hostages  in what I’m quite sure can most accurately described as hellholes.

Hostages languish in these hellholes until a ransom deal is worked out.

Which typically takes a while.

A pleasure-boating British couple was held for over a year until they were finally freed last fall, a $1M ransom having been paid.

It’s not as if any of these folks weren’t aware of the dangers.

In the case of the two American couples killed during February, I read that the yacht owner had considered shipping his yacht through the danger zone, but decided against it.

The Danes also weren’t sailing blind. They were sending daily updates to naval authorities – presumably the same naval authorities that had warned “I am the master of my fate” vacationers to stay the F out of the Arabian Sea -  and:

On Feb. 19, the Johansens blogged that they had drawn up "a piracy plan for who does what if we are attacked." They gave no details of the plan. A day later, the family members wrote that they spotted counter-piracy patrol planes, and added: "It is reassuring that they look after us."

I realize that there are times when we all suffer from a surfeit of self-absorption, but there’s surfeit and then there’s SURFEIT. Just why did these folks think that counter-piracy patrol planes were looking after them? And did they think to ask themselves why the counter-piracy patrol planes – presumably at a cost to someone (taxpayer, consumer) – would be looking after little old them?

The Johansens were aware of the American yachters, if not their fate:

"Of course, we talked quite a lot about it (the American hijacking) but this is far over thousands of kilometers away and the Arabian Sea that we sail in is the size of Europe," the family said in a posting Feb. 20 -- two days before the Americans were killed. (Source: CBS News.)

I know, I know, folks should be able to sail in international waters without having any unnatural harm come to them. Sure, if they go under with a rogue wave, or get attacked by a school of great whites, that’s one thing. But to be captured by pirates? Agreed: this should not happen.

But it did.

And it seems to me that, at this stage in the game, the risks have been pretty well known for a pretty long while. So if someone decides to delude themselves that the sea is so vast and their boat is so small that pirates won’t spy them, well… I’m not saying it serves them right, or that they deserve to die (especially the Johansen children, who certainly didn’t engineer themselves into this mess; but not the parents, either).  But I am saying that anyone setting sail off the shores of Somali for the hell of it is imprudent, feckless, reckless, and guilty of the very worst in judgment.

Yes, they should have the right to sail unfettered. But, as the Johansens themselves acknowledged on their blog: there’s a lot of ocean out there. Surely they could have found other places to sail.

During World War II, I’m assuming that yachtsmen everywhere decided it probably wasn’t worth yachting across the North Atlantic hoping that a convoy would protect them from a U-Boat. Maybe they had to content themselves with paltry lake sailing, or ship-in-a-bathtub, for the duration.

Me, if I see a sign on the beach that says Warning: Rip Tide – no lifeguard on duty – stay out, I’m staying on the blanket.

If I read in the news that for three nights in a row, a 5’7” blond wearing a green parka had her throat slashed in Pi Alley at 8 p.m., guess what? I’m not going to count on the BPD to protect me. I’m staying home.

Skull and crossbones on the container? Guess what? I’m not drinking it, even if I’m thirsty and it looks just like Polar Diet Orange Dry.

And I’m not heading to Mogadishu on vacation anytime soon, either.

I certainly hope that the Johansen family is freed.

What they’re feeling now has to be sheer terror, compounded in the case of the parents, I’m sure, by the abject guilt they must be suffering at the thought that they have exposed their children to such profound risk.

As for anyone else with a sail boat and a hankering for adventure, why don’t you do yourselves a favor and stay away from the Somali Coast. (I hear Lake Michigan’s nice this time of year: no pirates.)

 

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Happy Birthday, Jack – you cutie pie little wonder-dog.

Gaudeamus Igitur: The University of Redwood’s accepting applications. (And rejecting them.)

This link will take you to the Reed College website.

And here’s a screenshot that I nabbed from that Reed College website.

Looks mighty pleasant, no? Makes me want to apply, so I can go hang out on the lawn outside my dorm, discussing Great Books, Big Ideas, Charlie Sheen, and whatever else students do during bull sessions these days. Leafy, laid back, lambent- ah, a word I’ve always wanted to use, even though the light may not be quite right for it.  Anyway, these kids don’t appear to be sitting there texting each other.  They’re actually hanging out together.

So, yep. I’d like to apply to Reed.

If only I had to do it all over again. If this time around I had some guts, Reed would definitely be on my short list: small, liberal arts, liberal, cool, funky, and far away from home.

Guess I’ll have to see if they have Elderhostel. And whether they keep students on hand to help the eldergeezers up from the sward after we creak-out after a bull session discussion Great Books, Big Ideas, Charlie Sheen, and hip replacements.

I can definitely see the Reed appeal.

In fact, it’s so darned appealing that another institution of higher learning “entity” pretty much appropriated the look, feel, list of faculty, local canyon, trees, art gallery, and founders. And made it their own.

That would be the “University of Redwood”, which may still have its site here.  That is, if Reed’s attorneys have not yet prevailed and gotten GoDaddy to sever its old school ties with this scrim school.

Reed College officials found University of Redwood not in the US World Report, or in the Princeton Guide, but when they googled the names of their faculty members and lo and behold they found that their tenured faculty were also tenured at U of R. Quite a coincidence, no? 

Officials at Reed suspect the site is part of a scheme to collect application fees from prospective students in Hong Kong and Asia. After collecting a fee, "a shrewd scammer could wait several weeks, then issue a rejection letter, and the student would never know," said Martin Ringle, chief technology officer at Reed.

A spokesman for Reed also found “serious mention of the University of Redwood on Asian higher-education blogs.” But, hey, you can’t expect those education bloggers to ask Dad and Mom to take them on a summer tour to visit campuses of interest, can you?

Of course, if they’d looked closely, they would have seen a few hints that something was amiss at old Redwood U.

For one thing, if you roam around their site, as I did, you’ll find a few peculiarities. Like information on Portland, Oregon. Which is helpful if you’re going to Reed College, because that’s where Reed is. But not so helpful if you’re going to school in Torrance, California, Redwood’s supposed home.

But if you’re applying from China, you might not pick up on the fine points like the difference (or distance) between Portland, Oregon, and Torrance, California, anymore than the average American student would pick up on the difference (or distance) between Wuhan and Harbin. (Let alone between 武 汉 and 哈 尔 滨 – hope these characters get published.) Heck, the average American high school student, from what I hear, probably wouldn’t be able to locate Oregon on a fill-in-the blanks map of the U.S.  

As scams go, this one is pretty darned good – and nicely closed-loop: get students to apply and send in their application fee, wait a bit to “review” their application, then send them a “skinny envelope” (or skinny e-mail). If the scammers hadn’t gotten lazy and appropriated Reed College’s IP, they might never have been caught out. They could have easily created their very own Whattsamatta U and gone on for years. (What’s stock photo for, anyway?)

Meanwhile, all those kids who didn’t get in had to lick their wounds for a bit, then shrug it off. Maybe some of them actually got a real acceptance from Reed, which, they might be telling themselves, looks quite a bit like the University of Redwood – those jerks! So recklessly and foolishly selective that’s they’d reject me.

My guess is that within a day or so, University of Redwood will be GoDaddy history.

Meanwhile, talk about the virtual classroom. And a degree that’s not worth the paper it’s written (or not) on.

Wicked Laser: you could poke somebody’s eye out with that

Some days, I feel like I’m only a few minutes away from gumming out my own personal version of “My name’s Jack Crabb. And I am the sole white survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn.”* Only mine would be more prosaic: “My name’s Maureen Rogers. And I am the sole person who remembers when teachers used a rubber tipped wooden pointer to focus our attention on something they’d written on the blackboard.”

Actually, what I just wrote was the third thing that came to mind after I read an article in The New York Times on the dangers of laser pointers.

My first thought was who the heck needs a laser pointer that’s so powerful it can damage someone’s retina. (And my second thought was that I can’t imagine many things that would be worse than losing your eyesight.)

As for who needs a laser pointer, what’s so all fired important in a Power Point presentation that you need to go beyond the simple and relatively harmless red laser pointers to rivet the audience’s attention on the bullet point of “interest”? (Personally, my true feeling is that there’s damned little in any ppt/pptx I’ve ever suffered through and/or delivered that’s so important that even the simple and relatively harmless red laser pointer is warranted.)

But green’s brighter and altogether better than red, don’t you know, and you can order a green laser pointer on the Internet for the low-low price of $29.95. And now:

… eye doctors around the world are warning that recent cases of teenagers who suffered eye damage while playing with high-powered green laser pointers are likely to be just the first of many.

And bad enough they’re blinding teenagers – ah, think of the innocent, Jack Crabb days of yore when it was believed that playing with yourself caused blindness – green laser pointers:

…have also been implicated in a ninefold increase over five years in reports of lasers’ being aimed at airplanes.

Which could cause a real problem if one got focused on the retina of Captain Bob. I know, I know, there’s autopilot and instrument landing and all that, but I for one would feel a lot better if teenaged boys went back to playing with themselves, rather than damaging their eye sight and endangering air traffic with laser pointers.

So far, the evidence on the laser harm to teenaged eyes is anecdotal, but doctors are very wary about how easy it is to get your hands (and eyes) on high-powered lasers, and many such doctors are providing the anecdotal evidence on laser harm.

One doctor who questioned whether kids could get a hold of a laser powerful enough to do the sort of eye damage he saw in one patient went on line and bought one that was 10 times greater than the FDA limit.

“I kept waiting for the error message telling me I could not complete the purchase,” [Dr. Robert Josephberg] said.

Naturally, those purveying these weapons of eye destruction are weaselly about it:

Sam Liu, chief executive of Wicked Lasers, said in an interview that its products did not violate the F.D.A. restrictions because those over the five-milliwatt limit were not called pointers.

Moreover, he added, “we make it extremely clear on our Web pages that these lasers are not only eye hazards but fire hazards.”

So I had to trip on over to Wicked Lasers to see if Mr. Liu was a weasel man of his word.

Yes, indeed, from the info on the S3 Spyder III Arctic – “the world's most powerful laser you can legally own” (emphasis theirs), which can be had for $299.95, we learn that it’s:

…able to burn through balloons, plastic, and much more. You won't believe all this power is FDA approved and completely legal in the US.

Am I missing something here? Who on God’s green-laser (or blue-laser) earth needs a three-hundred dollar instrument to burn through balloons? Is this what clowns do at kiddie parties these days? No more of those boring ‘let’s make a dachshund out of balloons’ entertainment. Let’s beam us some holes through those suckers.

I’m sure there are plenty of legitimate users for this sort of laser – the Spyder’s not a pointer, by the way; just wanted to make sure you knew – and I suppose that if lasers are outlawed, only outlaws will have lasers. Still, what do we make of this caveat:

Note: This laser is too powerful to be used as a gun sight. Never point it at another person, animal, or vehicle.

Too powerful to be used in conjunction with an assault rifle. Wow.

But most parents, other than the ritziest of the ritz, probably don’t have to worry about Junior ordering an expensive laser that’s too powerful to be used as a gun sight. No, Junior will be plunking down that $29.95 for a laser that has twice to five times as much power as the measly laser pointers who can get at a big box retailers which are, apparently, for weak-kneed, scaredy-cat laser pointer users. Wicked Laser’s CORE gets “more attention exactly where you want it…” For Power Pointers, I guess that’s the hockey-stick sales projection. For reckless youth, I guess it means focusing the attention on your best bud’s eyeball, or beaming it at yourself in the mirror.

The CORE  lets you “grab the attention of the entire room with a captivating green laser light.”  For business presenters, that would be captivating the audience with the “miracle occurs here” assumption contained in bullet point three. (‘Our projection is based on the assumption that our competitors will go out of business, and that we’ll meet our planned product-ship date for the first time in seventeen years.’} As for the room that teenagers will be captivating, I guess that’s the ophthalmologist’s waiting room. (Grumble, grumble. Hair-brained kid. Grumble, grumble. Irresponsible parents. Grumble, grumble. In my day...)

A safe attention-getter. As a class 3R laser it's perfectly safe for presentations and star gazing (as long as you're responsible - don't point it at eyes, planes, and vehicles).

“As long as you’re responsible.” 

Yep, that would pretty much sum up the average teenager ordering a super-cool laser pointer online, wouldn’t it?

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Lines uttered by Dustin Hoffman’s character in ancient movie Little Big Man – so old it’s barely a talkie.

Cobbler, cobbler, mend my shoe

I’m fortunate to live in one of those urban neighborhoods that has its very own cobbler.

A couple of times a year – spring and fall – I bring in a bunch o’ shoes for new heels, and for the polish-up that Ares throws in for free. He does a great job, and I’m hoping he can help me out with my upcoming shoe extravaganza.

As luck (and aging) would have it, my foot seems to have pushed up half a size in the last year or so.

It seems colossally unfair that someone who has a long foot to begin with – I was wearing a 10 – has to acquire even longer feet in her old age. But so be it. (My feet have also widened a bit, but this is something of a blessing. I no longer have to scrounge around the web looking for AAAA width, as I can now fit comfortably into most AA’s, which are far more common.)

So, I’ll be asking Ares if he can stretch a few pairs of shoes out for me. This is assuming that a cobbler can lengthen a shoe, not just widen it.

Anyway, Ares is an older guy. Not much of a conversationalist, but I have got it out of him that he’s an Armenian immigrant. As yet, there’s no sign that he’s got an apprentice up his sleeve. But if and when Ares hangs up his awl, I can always go to Santacross, which is a fabulous cobbler just a bit further out of my way.

Ah, one of the great joys of city life is that there are still folks who’ll mend your shoes around.

I actually love visiting the shoe repair shop, just for the shoe-polish smell of it. Close my eyes and I’m back at McEachern’s in Webster Square Worcester, neighborhood cobbler of my childhood.

Mr. McEachern – generally pronounced, at least in Worcester,*  Mc-geck-rin, accent on the geck, but sometimes pronounced Mc-urchin – was, like Ares, an immigrant. He was quite tall (at least to a kid), quite old (at least to a kid) and, at least in my recall, always wore a pinstriped navy wool suit with a buttoned-up shirt with no tie, and a scally cap. He could have stepped right off the set as an extra in The Quiet Man.

In addition to repairing shoes, Mr. McEachern sold work boots, men’s rubbers, and sneakers. I always wore PF Flyers as a kid, rather than Keds, because that was the brand that McEachern’s carried.

Not that Mr. McEachern drove to his customers to pick up shoes– my guess is that he probably didn’t even drive; he lived pretty near his shop – but he came to mind when I read an article on Boston.com a few days ago about a Boston cobbler who makes house calls.

Unlike Ares and Mr. McEachern, George Triantafillidis isn’t an immigrant. But his father was, and his father ran a shoe repair shop for decades.

Like many working-man immigrants, John Triantafillidis wanted his son to be a college boy, and George started out studying architecture.

But the lure of the shoe repair shop – where, of course, of course – he’d worked as a kid, was too much for George, and in 2001, when his father retired, he took over the business.

In 2007, his landlord asked him to vacate the premises – must have needed that 91 square feet for something mighty lucrative and mighty important. Which didn’t stop George.

He figured he could fix shoes at home, in the basement — at 91 square feet, the shop wasn’t any bigger — but he had to get the shoes somehow. So he printed business cards with his phone number, handed them out to his regulars, and started offering free pickup and dropoff.

When George started out in the house-call shoe biz, he couldn’t understand how he was acquiring new customers. He didn’t advertise and, since he was working out of his own basement, he didn’t have a storefront to attract passers-by in the ‘hood. But awareness of George was growing, thanks to word-of-mouse.

At first George was baffled by the spike in business. An infrequent Internet browser, he had never heard of Yelp. When he learned, by asking new customers, that his business had been reviewed on the website, his first concern was that he would be billed. “I called them up and said, ‘Sorry to bother you, but I don’t want to be liable for charges,’ and they explained that it was free,’’ he said.

Not that I’ll be abandoning Ares any time soon. And not that I don’t have plenty of other options in walking distance. But I love the idea of a cobbler who makes house calls. (Even though I would absolutely miss the wonderful shoe repair shop smell.) And you’ve got a love a guy who loves his calling.

“It’s a dirty job, but you have your quiet, and you’re not cooped up,’’ he said. “I let luck take over and it worked out well.’’

Quiet. Not cooped up. Luck taking over. Working out well.

Hmmmm. Absent the dirty fingernails, George could be talking about my work.

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*Where, in my day, McCarthy was pronounced McCarty, and McGrath was pronounced McGrah.

Swag Bag 2011

By now, you probably know who this year’s Oscar winners and losers are. At least you’ll know if you care to know.

So far, I haven’t seen any of the nominated movies.

Not that I don’t like the movies. It’s just that I don’t actually go to the movies more than once or twice a year (if that). I just wait around for them to come on Pay Per View or On Demand, by which time I’ve already forgotten whether I wanted to see them or not. I do get around to seeing some of them. Eventually. Thus, I celebrated Oscar weekend by finally watching the multiply-nominated – in 2003, that is -  Lost In Translation. Which was okay. Certainly, I liked Sofia Copolla better on the other side of the camera, as the director, than I did as an actor (Godfather III). My main take-away: Never noticed before how much Bill Murray resembles my late Uncle Ted. 

While I used to go the movies all the time, even in my movie-going prime I was never a major fan of watching the Oscars. Something about the smiley-faced falsity of the whole thing, the we’re all buddies out here crap, the self-congratulatory what-ever, and the fact that it always struck me as one major collective self-ass-kiss.

How I know all this I’m not quite sure because, if memory serves, I’ve only watched it in its entirety once (when Hugh Jackman – or was it Hugh Laurie? or Hugh Grant? – hosted it a couple of years ago). I was entertained, but not enough to turn the viewing dial to whatever network it was on the following year.

Not that I don’t watch plenty-o-crap on TV, but awards ceremonies have never held a lot of appeal to me for some reason.

Nonetheless, ever since Christopher Moltisanti mugged Lauren Bacall for hers on an episode of The Sopranos, I’ve been intrigued by the notion of the swag bag, which all nominees are given, and the existence of gifting suites, where celebrities can come and collect all sorts of goodies – kind of like an upscale version of the trade show floor.

And why wouldn’t we expect that the rich and famous would want to cadge free stuff?

After all, haven’t we had it hammered into our heads often enough over the years that “Celebrities: They’re Just Like Us.”

Or so US Magazine tells me. (Honestly: I only read it at the hairdressers. Now People is another story.)

So, just like us, they have an inner-child with a greedy, trembling hand poised to lunge for any handout available.

Thus,just as in my trade-show going days I’d grab pens, notepads, thumb drives, tee-shirts, caps, visors, key chains, candy, mouse pads, frisbees, glow-in-the-dark yo-yos, squeeze balls, mugs, and other paraphernalia that was being given away in the booths, celebrities graze on what’s available in the gifting suites.

And because the goodies on offer to the rich and famous are worth a bit more than a leaking logo-pen, the rich and famous probably don’t end up with all that much grabber’s remorse. (Think of all the stuff left behind in hotel rooms after a grade show – not only all the swag that’s not worth packing and schlepping, but all those brochures….)  Instead of leaking logo pens, celebrities get to nab stuff like Dell tablet computers and gold-plated iPhones. And so continues the inexorable march of the rich getting richer.

Not that trade show swag was all leaking pens, of course. I saw plenty of good stuff at trade shows over the years, mostly being raffled off. At one tech show I attended, a company was raffling off a bright orange HumVee. I didn’t win but, of course, in these types of raffles, the business cards of non-prospects do tend to find themselves glued to the sides of the fishbowl. That said, I did win a video camera in a competitor’s booth at iWorld when that was the business tech event. They clearly didn’t know the “rule” about eligibility for qualified prospects only.

Anyway, in addition to what’s available in the invitation-only gifting suites that surround the Oscars (and other awards shows), there are swag bags for the nominees, which contain:

Here is a complete list of what is in the 2011 Oscar swag bag:

• StemSational Skin Regeneration Serum
• Body Wrap Sheer Iridescent fashion-forward shapewear
• blu Cigs special edition electronic cigarettes
• Cookies by Joey
• An all-inclusive stay at the Winvian Luxury Hotel
• Full split-level Load Runner duffels
• earthpawz pet safe + toxic free cleaning products
• Total Indulgence Skin Trio by LaVigne Organic Skincare
• Nulo natural & nutritious pet food
• It’s a 10 Haircare
• Chocolatines’ Chocouture Jewelry Box
• BlacMéra couture tunics/earrings/neckties
• Kiwaii True Spring Water
• The Kim Kardashian Signature Watch Collection by The Brissmor Company
• Huntley Drive Fitness personal training packages
• MILLIANNA python cuffs
• complimentary services from The Salon by Maxime
• Dreams by Neihulé Nail Polish
• Slimware portion-control plates
• J. Holly International featuring Mon Platin Natural Dead Sea Mud Pack
• KimzHollywoodList.com Positive Only Celebrity News
• XTI Active-Shield 360 and Nano Facemask
• Leg Luxury hosiery
• sugar-free low-carb Bonita’s Mixes
• JulAir odor eliminator
• R.A.T.S. Atelier men’s apparel
• Kosanka anti-aging açai beverages
• Virgin Galactic limited edition sub-orbital space craft scale model
• Lalo Fitness, 1 month unlimited training sessions with Lalo Fuentes
• 6-month unlimited Executive Membership to Circuit Works
• Nozin nasal products
• Notebook and Persian medallion from Shokoufeh Malekkiani benefiting the United Nations World Food Programme in Iran
• A $5,000 all-inclusive week-long fitness retreat from Live In Fitness Enterprise, Barradoro VIP Luxury Lifestyle Experience
• Slimming Act body contouring cream from Dr. Jules Nabet
• A $12,000 Belize getaway at Cayo Espanto – A Private Island
• A $16,000 all-inclusive getaway to Huvafen Fushi luxury resort in the Maldives compliments of Premier Tours

Source: Gather; the blogger didn’t source this info…

Whether any celebrity actually uses what’s in the swag bag or not, just being in the annual bag is probably worth something in terms of the publicity that surrounds it. After all, I’ve now heard of Nozin nasal products, Nulo natural and nutritious pet food, and Slimware portion control plates (LOL, if not ROTFLMAO, to this one).

And if Annette Bening is actually photographed in a BlacMéra couture tunic, well, all the better.

I say Annette Bening here because, while she’s not all that old, she’s the only Best Actress nominee north of 50, and I can’t see Natalie Portman or Michelle Williams wearing something called a tunic. Now if Bea Arthur were around to be nominated, or Annette’s sister-in-law, Shirley Maclaine, we might be talking. (I suppose James Franco could find a use for it.)

Interesting, isn’t it, how many of the swag items are vanity related: shapeware, regeneration serum, mudpack, body contouring cream, anti-aging beverage. Then there’s the one month unlimited fitness work with Lalo Fuentes.

Anyway, body contouring cream and tunics aside, I can’t see anyone nominated for anything wearing a Kim Kardashian inspired watch.

I suspect that today, all over Hollywood, personal assistants, maids, nannies and gardeners are wondering what to do with python cuffs and Persian medallions.

Or asking themselves whether it’s okay to light up a blu Cigs electronic cigarette while on the property. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!

So many choices…

I may be one of the last folks in this country who can make this statement, but I have a neighborhood pharmacy.

No, I don’t go there all the time.

Although Gary Drug is a lot closer than one of the, oh, three-hundred-seventy-four CVS’s within walking distance, Gary isn’t on my usual path. So I’m more likely to be passing a CVS on my day to day rounds. So I do stop and shop there.

But I do prefer Gary Drug.

It’s one of those great little local stores where you can get your apothecary, cosmeticky stuff, Dr. Scholl’s whatever, stationery essentials (like little spiral notebooks and manila envelopes), papers and magazines, candy bars… Plus they send and receive faxes for you. Plus the people who work there are incredibly helpful and friendly. An altogether wonderful little drug store. If they had room for a soda fountain with a couple of swirl-around chrome and leatherette stools, it’d be perfect. (Also, while they do sell mini-packs of Chiclets, they don’t have a gumball machine.)

But one of the absolute best things about it is that, since it’s about 200 square feet in size, there’s a relatively limited number of choices you have to make when it comes to toothpaste and cough syrup. Not that there are no choices to be made. Given the size of the store, it has incredible variety - breadth and depth. (It helps that the shelves go all the way to the ceiling, and the one and only aisle is about 18-inches wide.) So you do get to pick and choose among the cough-cold-stuffy nose-scratching throat-watery eyes variety of cold elixirs.

It’s just that the choice is not anywhere near as overwhelming as it is in CVS. Not to mention that the Gary Drug folks are right there at your elbow to help you work through the decision process.

But at CVS, with those rows upon rows of choice:

Choice = (all possible combinations) x (multiple delivery modes x multiple brands)

Pill. Capsule. Liquid. Spray.

Delsym. Robitussin. NyQuil. DayQuil. TheraFlu. Zi-Cam.

They’re all pretty much the same, aren’t they?  (Other than Zi-Cam, which has its own little weirdness thing going for it.)

Anyway: Oy!

At least most (although not all) of the cold medicine choices are relevant to your particular condition: sneezing? wheezing? hacking? spitting? stuffed? runny?

Of course, you may not be able to find your particular symptom relievers in combo.

Still, the choices seem more meaningful than some of those you get when it comes to toothpaste:

Mint? Gel? Cream? Mixed-striped mint gel/white cream? With or without baking soda? Standard squeeze tube? Upright harder-sided mustard-container type?

Crest.  Gleem. Arm and Hammer. Sensodyne. Tom’s of Maine (when I’m feeling virtuous).

Alas, I haven’t seen Bucky Beaver’s Ipana in years.

Actually, strike that “alas”. Good that there’s one less brand choice to worry about.

Still, all those choices.

For some reason, I never remember from toothpaste purchase to toothpaste purchase whether I like the gel.  Let alone whether I want or need tartar control or breath freshening.

Apparently, I’m not alone.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day – aptly titled “Whitens, Brightens and Confuses” on how annoying, how bewildering, some people find shopping for toothpaste has become.

An explosion of specialized pastes and gels brag about their powers to whiten teeth, reduce plaque, curb sensitivity and fight gingivitis, sometimes all at the same time. Add in all the flavors and sizes, plus ever-rising prices, and the simple errand turns into sensory overload.

Or is it Sensodyne overload?

Not that I’ve noticed, but manufacturers have realized that they’ve been overwhelming us, and are reining in the urge to keep adding to the dizzying array of toothpaste choices.

Last year, 69 new toothpastes hit store shelves, down from 102 in 2007, according to market-research firm Mintel International Group.

Procter & Gamble Co., in fact, has decided that less, if notexactly more, is better. They’re de-introducing some of their variations on a “Look, Ma, no cavities” theme.

Thanks to P&G and other toothpaste makers there are currently only “352 distinct types or sizes of toothpaste” retailed in the U.S.  Down from 412 just three years ago.

Oh, what a relief it is!

Out of sight…

We like shiny. We like new. We like techie. And we like stuff where, heck, we don’t have to fret about too much of the price we pay going into boring things like paying much of anything to the workers who make the shiny, new, techie stuff we crave.

That’s globalization, and that’s a) mostly inexorable, and b) mostly okay. (Although surely we could have been a bit more plan-full as an economy before we so gleefully lobbed so many manufacturing jobs overseas without thinking through some of the implications.)

And it means I can jettison what starts to feel like a sluggish laptop by year two and get something better,cheaper, faster.

Of course, we don’t actually like it when the stuff we crave poisons us – like when the kids got sick from poison-painted toys and trinkets. But, hey, who asked the kids to gum and suck on those toys, anyway?

Okay. So even if they shouldn’t be gumming and sucking on toys, those little darlings are ours.

Unlike the factory workers in China who produce the stuff we crave, who are theirs. If they suffer a few bouts of poisoning… Well, as long as what happens in China, stays in China.

Not that Apple takes this posture.

They’re actually a pretty stand-up outfit, one that tries to enforce health standards in the factories that are part of its supply chain. And they’re not just stand-up; they’re up-front. So we know about the workers who’ve gotten seriously sick at the plant that makes the iPhone screens because it appeared on Apple’s annual report on labor conditions among its suppliers. (Source: NY Times.)

…137 workers at a factory here had been seriously injured by a toxic chemical used in making the signature slick glass screens of the iPhone.

Apple, describing it as a “core violation” of worker safety, said that it had ordered the contractor to stop using the chemical and to improve safety conditions at the plant. Apple also said that it would monitor the medical conditions of those workers.

On further reading, maybe, like most of us, they’re stand-up, up-front wannabes..

…in interviews last weekend, nearly a dozen employees who say they were harmed by the chemical said they had never heard from anyone at Apple.

The workers claim that Wintek, the Apple supplier (which is Taiwanese-owned), has been putting the full court press on the affected employees to accept a cash payout, in exchange for waiving their rights to go back for more in damages.

Wintek, denies that they’re pressuring workers. (Sur-prise!)

“Wintek’s policy of handling this is to put workers’ benefit as the first priority,” [a company spokesman] said.

And who am I to doubt what Wintek’s number one priority is?

Anyway, the chemical that’s sickening so many workers is something called n-hexane.  Even the name sounds evil. And evil it is, purportedly causing limb-soreness, extreme weakness, body thermometer malfunction, fatigue, headaches, dizziness, and all the other symptoms we’ve come to associate with chemical poisoning. All suffered in return for a cool $200/month, which includes overtime.

This $200 is, of course, a lot more than the monthly take of your average Chinese peasant living in a rural area whose sole possessions are likely the clothes on his back, a bucket, and a hoe. Which is precisely why so much manufacturing has migrated there. And Chinese factory conditions - Triangle Shirtwaist, anyone? -  not to mention environmental depredations, are probably not a whole hell of a lot more miserable than they were in American factories of yore. 

But does that have to mean that it’s a stage that every economy has to pass through on their way from sub-subsistence existence in a hovel, to something where there are a few more creature comforts, a few more opportunities for personal enrichment and enjoyment? Couldn’t they jump to reasonably safe, if not still crappily paid? Even if it means we have to pay another $5 for an iPhone, or $20 for a laptop?

Anyway, the good news is that n-hexane is no longer being used at the factory.

Still, it’s one more cautionary tale, one more hint at the trade-offs in our perhaps to zestful and blind-eyed embrace of the glories and wonders of globalization.

But, hey, now that I think of it, we could have factories like this, too. In fact we used to, before all those pesky regulators started nosing around. We can have this again, couldn’t we? What are we waiting for?  Let’s go!

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And as for all those baby dolphins dying in the Gulf. Well, survival of the fittest, no?

How not to get the job

There was yet another one of those time-wasting “Top X Something-or-others” non-articles on Boston.com the other day – this one being ‘How not to fail the job interview’ -  and I let myself do a bit of time wasting by clicking through it.

Honestly, the biggest downside of reading the newspaper online is spotting a headline of some interest, only to realize it’s not really an article. It’s a series of captioned pictures – stock photo that somewhat illustrates the point – accompanied by a couple of sentences of content supporting the point. Grrrrr. I may be part of the incredibly shrinking coterie of folks who actually like to read entire paragraphs. Or even articles. That you have to turn the page (physically or virtually) to complete. But there are still some of us out there who are so not looking forward to the day when the Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to someone whose oeuvre is a collection of tweets. (Not that you can’t compact an awful lot of good writing into short form. After all, even the brilliant and classic lead in - It was a dark and stormy night. –consumes a mere 31 characters.)

Second worst downside of online newspaper reading is spotting a headline of some interest, only to realize it’s a video.

I am so not wired for the time when writing and reading as we once knew it are completely obsolete.

But, as I am wont to do, I digress.

Here, paraphrased, is the list of ten ways to flunk a job interview and, hence, not get the job.

Show up too early or too late.

I definitely get the late, but why would it aggravate someone so mightily if the job candidate showed up early? A couple of hours, I can see, but the recommended time frame in the non-article was 20 minutes. I suppose you could sit in your car, or stand in the lobby, or find a nearby coffee shop, but what’s so terrible about 30 minutes? It doesn’t mean the interviewer needs to stop what they’re doing and bound out to meet you. And isn’t that what reception areas are for? You know, the ones stocked with back-issues of Technology Whatever – the one that features the company’s advertorial spread. Speaking of reception areas, I can never figure out whether it’s okay to help yourself to the candy bowl on the receptionist’s desk. I always want to, but am held back by fear of looking inner-child, or piggy. And who wants the evil-eye from the receptionist who reserves the Bull’s Eyes for the cute guy in AP? Sometimes I will nab something small and neutral – one of those red and white peppermint swirl candies, or a butterscotch.  And note to receptionists everywhere: you can keep those Jolly Ranchers. Might as well set out unwrapped ribbon candy.

Pick the wrong network contact

Here you were thinking it’s just hunky-dory to get your résumé pulled from the pile because your college roommate’s brother-in-law plays golf with the guy in AP who likes Bull’s Eyes and -  forget the receptionist; she’s not that cute – is dating the cute gal in HR. Come to find out that his name is anathema, that he’s known for stuffing the résumé box with paper from anyone he even tangentially knows, in hopes of occasionally bagging a bounty of $1K per hire that will save the company twenty times that on a head-hunter fee.

On the one hand, it makes perfect sense not to have a bad node in your network. It certainly won’t help your cause if the biggest jerk in the place, who compound’s his biggest jerk-hood by having no juice, puts in a kind word for you. On the other hand, how are you going to know that this is the case. And if he’s that big a jerk, why’d they call you in for an interview, huh?

So, this one isn’t all that clear. Yes, to finding the most relevant and well-positioned contact? No, to relying on the kindness of near strangers?

All I know is that, with one exception, every professional job I’ve ever held – including freelance – has come through my network. Maybe I just have some inner genius for picking the right network contacts. Or for picking the right friends, which is pretty much who my network contacts are.

Be unable to come up with any situation in which you made a mistake

Personally, I always hated that ‘what are your weakness?’ question. My inclination was to say ‘I don’t suffer fools gladly,’ but for most jobs that would have been a deal-breaker, of course. By now, everyone knows the trick of coming up with a real fake weakness. (“Sometimes I allow my colleagues to take all the credit.”)

Everyone also needs to have a mistakes-were-made problem situation in their back pocket. They just need to make sure that it’s not an “I always”, but, rather, an “I learned from” mistake.

And it goes without saying that the mistake (even if you learned from it) shouldn’t be one that  reflects on any deep-seated professional or moral failing. As in, “I used to pad my expense account, but I got caught so I don’t do that anymore.”

Say something non-PC (“culturally insensitive”)

On surface, this one is duh obvious, but you never know what’s going to set off someone’s dudgeon-o-meter, do you?

I have no idea whether I’ve ever set someone’s off during an interview, but I sure had mine set off at least once.

We were interviewing a fellow for VP of Development at a small software company I worked for. He came in guns-a-blazing, criticizing our web site and collateral. Which was both amazing and amusing to me – and I’ll admit, a bit annoying – given that he knew I was the VP of Marketing and, thus, might have had just a teensy-tiny bit to do with them. But what really got me to torpedo this guy’s candidacy was the mention on his résumé that one of his foremost attributes was his ability to resolve conflicts among warring parties. Harrumph to that. Maybe he got good at this by stirring the conflict pots to begin with. Anyway, I made sure he didn’t get the job.

Talk about another job – the one you really want

As the hiring manager, this has happened to me a couple of times.

In one instance, I was interviewing someone for an internship. What we wanted the intern to do was clean up and manage our prospect data base, and then pitch in on any other marketing task we needed to get done, which, on our small team, was pretty much how we rolled. The prospective intern explained to me what she was looking for. Which was pretty much my job, without the pitch in on any other marketing task aspects. She didn’t get the job (mine or the internship).

In the other instance, I was interviewing an internal candidate for a position that, it became immediately clear, he had no interest in or affinity for. He really and truly wanted to be somewhere else, in an entirely different career. The job on offer was assistant product manager for a product that presented and analyzed near real-time stock market data (when this was a big deal). The candidate was quite upfront that he really didn’t want to be a tech product management dweeb, and that his only interest in the position was access to the data, as he really wanted to be a money manager. I told my boss that I was taking a pass on this fellow, only to have it explained that, if I didn’t hire him, I would lose the job req. Foolishly, I took him on, only to find that all he did all day was play with the data. As a result, we laid him off and he went on to become – ta-da – a successful money manager.

Stifle your personality

This may seem at odds with the suggestion that you should never be non-PC, but, in truth, the worst thing you can possibly do on an interview is repress the real you. If you have a sense of humor, do you really want to work with a bunch of dour gloomiacs? If you really are someone who works best on your own, should you be swooning and yelping for joy when the hiring manager explains that everything is done on teams?

I worked for one small company that had a pretty casual atmosphere with a ton of back and forth. Before we hired anyone, we invited them to “Friday Lunch”, when everyone in the company got together. We figured that anyone who couldn’t take the give-and-take of a Friday Lunch would pretty much self-select out of working there. And we were mostly right. But, occasionally, someone took the job despite the fact that they were too uptight, humorless, and sensitive to go with that company’s particular flow. They all left eventually.

Have a phone interview at a time when you’re not in a quiet place without distractions

Talk about duh obvious.

That said, here’s a phone interview tip I read somewhere: stand up while you’re talking. You’ll be more energized and engaged. For whatever reason, it works. (Don’t know if the current phone interview expectation is that you’ll be on video as well as audio, which would completely change the dynamics – luckily, in my book.)

Meanwhile, if someone calls for an impromptu interview, you need to gracefully propose a time-change when you will be prepared, and in a quiet place without distractions.

Keep harping on the same accomplishment, rather than have a diverse set of  bragging-rights across multiple jobs

Seems pretty straightforward, although difficult for us shrinking violet types who don’t like to put ourselves forward. Then again, given the way the world’s going, the only people who get interviews will be the pushy “brand me” narcissists, for whom this will present no problema. Us introverts will have to take in laundry, I suppose….

Assume that everyone will recognize the name of the companies you’ve worked for

I, for one, have never been able to make that particular assumption, and have generally had a couple of words to place the company (e.g., small, defunct, dysfunctional – prior to its becoming defunct – B2T (that’s business-to-techie) software company).

I guess if you work for a Google or an IBM or some other household name-ish outfit, you might want to slot in the division or something.

Misspellings and grammos in written communications

I used to be a real stickler here, but, now that I’m a blogger.   Wheeeeee. Standards have fallen, and I’m pretty sure I could overlook the odd typo or spello, perhaps even a grammo. But an out and out dumb-o.

No way.

Hedging your bets

They were the best of friends, they were the worst of friends…

Best man caliber best friends.

That was until insider trading made a mess of their BFF-hood, and the Feds played an opening round of prisoner’s dilemma with Noah Freeman. Freeman made the rational, yet slimy, move of ratting out the best man at his last year’s wedding, Donald Longueuil. Of course, it wasn’t really much of a prisoner’s dilemma, as Longueuil hadn’t yet been invited to play.

In this game, first in apparently gets the advantage, and Freeman has likely parlayed his willingness to wear a wire to get his friend (perhaps ex-friend is the better term) to agree that they had both traded on insider information into what will likely be a lesser sentence.

As attorney Solomon Wisenberg explains in his blog post on Freeman’s guilty plea, Freeman doesn’t yet know what sentence he will receive in return for his plea and for co-operating with the Feds. (He is theoretically facing 25 years in the stir, which will cut quite a swath in his career path and life. Freeman’s 35.) But, as Wisenberg notes, this is a tactic that will allow Freeman, when he’s on the witness stand against Longueuil, to say he co-operated without any guarantees in return – when, in all wink-wink, nudge-nudge likelihood, he will get off with greatly reduced prison time, and perhaps even probation. Thus, Freeman may be the eponymous free-man, not to mention a Noah who was pretty darned quick to hoist the gangplank to his own personal ark.

But what are friends for, when it comes to facing jail time?

Which is certainly likely what will happen to Longueuil, unless he coughs up an even bigger fish for this fish-fry.

While he was doing buddy talk with Freeman, Longueuil also detailed how, after he’d read a Wall Street Journal article on a widening (or narrowing, depending on whose neck’s being fitted for the noose) investigation that was starting to get a little too darned close, he panicked:

Using two pairs of pliers, he destroyed the computer hard drives where the government said he kept inside information, according to last week's complaint.

At 2 a.m., a few hours after the Journal article was published, Mr. Longueuil left his New York apartment with another person, according to the complaint against him. He walked 20 blocks and dumped mangled pieces of computer drives in four separate garbage trucks, according to the complaint. (Source: Wall Street Journal.)

What makes this story more interesting than most every-day insider trading scandals is the back story. If Wall Street (the original, anyway) made for good Hollywood, what will they be able to make of the story lines here?

• Both Freeman and Longueuil were competitive speed-skaters, which is how they met. (Longueuil had been a 2002 Olympic hopeful.)
• Several years back, Longueuil talked Freeman off the metaphorical ledge after his (apparently prescient) fiancée dumped him. (“'I needed Don to get me out of bed this morning,’ he said at one point, according to the person familiar with the situation.”)
• Freeman, whose broken heart recovered, proposed to his now wife in the midst of a triathlon.
• Freeman worked out with a triathlon team called "Team Psycho," but they turned down his membership application because “he didn't always support others with what the club describes as positive ‘psycho karma.’” Bet the Team Psychos are feeling pretty good about that decision.
• Longueuil’s fiancée, a Princeton crewmate of Freeman’s wife, has the wondrously preppy name of P. Mackenzie Mudgett. (The couple, meanwhile, has postponed their nuptials, which had been scheduled for this coming weekend. And at which Freeman had been slated to act as best man – one stand up guy standing up for another. Any takers on whether this wedding ever goes through? Could have been worse. Insider trading’s bad, but it’s not like Longueuil turned out to be the Craigslist killer.)
• Mudgett, while not charged with anything, was apparently the second party who accompanied Longueuil on his 2 a.m. Manhattan reverse dumpster dive. Wonder how he explained that to her. “Hey, honey, I’ve got to run out for a few minutes. Wanna come help me toss baggies full of incriminating evidence into some garbage trucks?”
• Mudgett and Longueuil had served as volunteer bellringers for the Salvation Army this past Christmas. (Awwwwwwwwww. Bet they even wore matching Santa hats.) (Source: UK Daily Mail.)
• Then there’s the rabbi who’s in prison because he tried to shakedown SAC Capital, where Freeman and Longueuil traded, for money to fund a school he runs, but claiming that he’d blow the whistle on insider trading there if he didn’t get the mega-donation he was soliciting. (That’s another whole story.)

Meanwhile, Freeman has been given permission, while he awaits his sentencing, to jet off to St. Croix and Puerto Rico to compete in triathlons there. The St. Croix event is where he proposed to his wife a few years back. Sentimental guy. Have I said “awwwwwwww” already? Or maybe he’s thinking that he better get his last couple of Iron-man’s in, just in case he does end up doing some time. Which, god knows, he ought to. Jeez. If Martha Stewart goes to prison for making chump change on an insider-info inspired trade, someone whose hedge fund comped him 20% on his trades – which were a whole lot bigger than Martha’s – ought to wear the orange jumpsuit for a bit.

While it’s hard to expend much sympathy on a couple of greedy hedgies who got caught with their yellow suspenders down, it’s hard not to cough up a smidgeon of inter-personal sympathy for Longueuil.

Not only is he looking at a hefty prison sentence, he has to live with the fact that his best man – for all his big, strong triathlon-ism – dimed him. Sure, Longueuil might well have done the same thing if the bread crumbs had led to his door first, instead of to Freeman’s. But they didn’t.

As for the plea non-bargain that Freeman struck, if it turns out that they were equally culpable, it really won’t seem fair if he gets off with zippo, while Longueuil does hard time.

How about they split the difference, and give them both 12.5 years?

Maybe they can even be cell-mates.

Justice served!

“Don’t Know Much About History…”

Before we had Presidents’ Day, we had George Washington’s Birthday.

Even as a child I always thought that Abraham Lincoln got short shrift when it came to presidential birthday celebration – you didn’t, after all, get Lincoln’s February 12th birthday off, at least not if you lived in Massachusetts. (We were no doubt saving ourselves for the better weather, Boston Marathon holiday that is Patriots’ Day.)

So, on behalf of Abe, and a couple of other presidents that I liked an admired – any guesses? -  I didn’t mind so much when George Washington’s Birthday kinda-sorta morphed into Presidents’ Day, even though, in Massachusetts, it still goes by GW B-day.

Good, bad, or indifferent – and we’ve had plenty of all kinds – I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to celebrate the men who've, in the course of human events, taken on the onerous and colossally difficult (not to mention dangerous) job of leading our decidedly flawed but amazingly (so far, anyway) resilient and fortunate nation.

Anyway, this holiday has gotten me to think about history, which, although I don’t consider myself a buff of any sort, I have always enjoyed. And do read about, if not obsessively, at least with some regularity. Mainly, I read U.S. history, mostly, and my “likes” are the Civil War, the Depression, and World War II.

I just made a bet with myself that I could rattle off the names of all of the presidents. I lost – but not by much – and if I’d given myself a bit more time than the 90 seconds I allotted to the task, I’m sure I would have gotten Buchanan, Arthur, and Garfield. (How could I have forgotten Garfield, who was assassinated. Talk about a hazardous job, by the way: 4 out of 44 presidents have been killed in office, which must rank right up there in terms of on the job mortality.) I will admit I was a bit mushy on the order between Jackson and Lincoln, and clearly late 19th century is not my sweet spot. But I did pretty good.

I also know lots of other things about history, and I started thinking about that not just because it’s Presidents’ Day, but because of a bit of fractured history I overheard yesterday while walking through Boston Common.

Just as I was ambling by the Founders Memorial, which commemorates the city’s founding in 1630, I passed a mother with her young son, and overheard her giving the boy – who was about 4 or 5 – an ignorance-is-bliss history lesson.

Although I was some distance from the pair, I could not help overhearing her, because she was using that self-conscious, officious voice that some parents deploy when speaking to their children in public places. (God, I hope they don’t use those voices in private, as well.) You know the ones. They’re from the look at me, hear-ye-hear-ye school of parenting that seeks to draw attention to the fact that while schlubby, run of the mill, every day parents might be telling their kid to hurry it up or stop licking the snot off their top lip, they are taking the time to impart knowledge to their children. Carpe diem: this here is a teaching moment.

What this mother was doing was explaining something about Christopher Columbus to her son.

Now, I’m not accusing her of confusing John Winthrop with Christopher Columbus. Just because she was walking by the Founders Memorial doesn’t mean that her kid was asking her what it was. They could just have been having one of those mid-winter Christopher Columbus  conversations that come up every now and then, even when it’s not October 12th.

No, my problem was what she was telling the boy.

“Christopher Columbus,” she declaimed in her very bestest outdoor voice, “Sailed to America on the Santa and the Maria.”

I thought about hollering out that he sailed over with the Buchanan, the Garfield, and the Arthur the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, but I was moving too fast, I was too stunned, and I just didn’t have it in me to use my officious, pedantic, cranky old lady voice to show her up in front of her child.

And I bet all you had been worrying about on this holiday was whether U.S. children don’t know much biology, don’t know much trigonometry, don’t know much about algebra, don’t know what a slide rule is for.

If their parents are telling them that Columbus sailed the ocean blue on the Santa and the Maria, they ain’t going to know much about history, either.

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Photo from Wally Gobetz’s FlickR site.

Playing a corpse: it’s a living

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m a cop show junkie.

I mean it’s not like I have withdrawal symptoms if I go a month or so without seeing one. And I don’t wake up every morning jonesing for a show featuring a man in uniform.

Still, if I feel like watching TV, and one of the options is a cop show, there’s a pretty high likelihood that this is the option I’ll go with.

Even as a kid, I liked cop shows: Naked City, 87th Precinct, The Untouchables, and, for a change of pace, Car-54 Where Are You? Over the years, I’ve been a big fan of Hill Street, NYPD Blue, and the many manifestations of Law and Order (none more so than the late, lamented original and still the greatest). Not exactly “must watch” TV, but I am apt to turn on Law and Order: SVU (even though I find the plots increasingly preposterous) and Detroit 1-8-7 (if only to watch the marvelous Michael Imperioli, who having played Mafiosi Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos, has made the shift from bad guy to good guy; and the marvelous James McDaniel, who used to play Lt. Fancy on NYPD Blue.)

Given my fondness for cop shows, I was interested in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal on one of the few job growth areas for actors: playing a corpse. On a cop show.

As reality TV has forced out what is referred to as scripted TV - as if, ahem, reality TV weren’t scripted – there are fewer and fewer roles for the legions of actors who eke out a living on bit parts. Thus, we have the likes of Snookie, The Situation, and The “Real” Housewives of Wherever edging out real actors. As is the case with so many call centers that ended up back in the States, this is yet another instance of outsourcing at its not so finest: we’re turning our entertainment over to those whose only credentials are narcissism and pushiness, and whose only talent, as it were, is a stunning lack of shame.

Not that life has ever been all that rosy for actors. Most actors (painters, musicians, writers…) have always had to keep their day jobs. Years ago, I was walking down Charles Street when I saw a painter – as in house painter – going into a building carrying a ladder. He looked familiar, and it took me a moment to realize that I had seen him in a Súgán Theatre production a few nights before. Good he kept his day job – the Súgán has been out of biz for a while now.

Anyway, there’s a reasonably decent (casting) call for those who can play a dead body.

In the past few years, TV dramas have responded to feature-film trends and HDTV, which shows everything in more realistic detail, by upping the violence and delivering more shock value on the autopsy table.

The Screen Actors Guild doesn't keep figures on corpse roles, but currently, seven of the top 10 most-watched TV dramas use corpse actors, including CBS's "CSI," "NCIS" and spinoff "NCIS: Los Angeles." …

It all means more work for extras, casting agents and makeup artists who supply corpses in various stages of decomposition.

The Journal journalist got to play a shooting vic on Law and Order: Los Angeles. She was told that she was lucky to play a fresh kill.

A body that is "morgue dead" requires an actor to be still for three hours or more to get into chalky-white full-body makeup and a "Y incision" across the chest.

Cop shows also use mannequins, but that’s apparently only when an actor with more of a role than playing a victim is involved. Mannequins cost about $8K to produce.

Which is a lot more than the going rate for an actor playing a stiff, who, by the way, has only to demonstrate that they can lie still and control their breathing in order to secure a part. They get paid about $139 for an eight hour day, plus OT. Plus they get fed. They can also make an extra $100 if they have to pose for stills of the victim in the good old days, when they were alive. And if you end up floating face down in the East River for your part, you can earn a whopping extra $14 to $18 per diem. There may also be “hardship” pay associated with having to play a dead body in bad weather, as happened to one extra on Law & Order: SVU . She had to hang out in 14 degree weather with little by way of clothing on.

Hardship pay or no, it pays something approximating crap to play a dead body. Especially when you take into consideration that you can’t count on the crappy pay from one week to the next. Plus it doesn’t exactly liven up a résumé to have rolled over and played dead:

Playing dead on a TV show makes it hard to return to the living in another part.

Oh, yeah, and you get treated like crap, too, by the “stars”:

A production assistant who herds us around during the 11-hour day warns us that "people treat background actors like trash, walking props."

And yet it’s apparently one of the few jobs for actors that’s growing.

Sounds an awful lot like the general paradigm for the economy: a lot of decent paying jobs going bye-bye, replaced (if that) by the dregs.

Westminster Doggy Style

The Westminster Dog Show was held this week, and the winner was a Scottish Deerhound named Hickory. (Full nom d’dog show: GCH Foxcliffe Hickory Wind.) I’d never heard of a Scottish Deerhound, but that doesn’t mean much. I’d never heard of a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, a Kuvasz, or a Petit Bassetts Griffon Vendeen, either.

I like the looks of this year’s winner. I’d rather see a full-frontal face picture, rather than this tail between the legs shot, but Hickory appears to have a dog look I find quite appealing, that of an FFM (Fur-Faced Mutt).

Hickory, of course, is no mutt.

Mutts may the the most common dog out and about, but the Westminster Kennel Club is strictly NMNA – No Mutts Need Apply. Pure-breds, only. Which matters, because in competition they score them on all sorts of breed-specific markers that only folks obsessing about breed perfection need to know about. (Ratio of tan to black, width of chest, droopiness of ears, pointiness of snout, alignment of teeth [perfect dog bite]…) How they compare breed to breed to come up with Best in Show must be another story.

Still, this bitch looks mighty cute – and here I’m using the official doggy gender designation. Under “sex”, dogs are listed as “bitch” or “dog” rather than F and M. Another indication that it’s a man’s world – male dogs get the good name; females get the pejorative. Those curs!

Anyway, on the news the other night, someone interviewed at the dog show said that you need to invest about $50K in your show pup in order to win a ribbon, even for the canine equivalent of Miss Congeniality. (Bitch Tailwagger?)

But to win the Best in Show, this person claimed, you’d have to drop about $1M. That’s an awful lot of Milk Bones.

There are plenty of reasons why it costs an arm and a leg a paw and a tail to win The Big One.

David Frei, director of communications for the Westminster Kennel Club, said preparing a dog to compete at the highest level would cost an owner upwards of six figures annually.

The bulk of that price comes from enlisting a professional handler, Frei said.

“At the heart and soul of this sport are the owner/handlers,” Frei said. “They have dogs living with them full-time as members of their families. Campaigning a dog as a top 20 potential is probably going to cost you six figures between handling fees, boarding for the handler, grooming, travel, show entries and advertising.” (Source: Fox Business News.)

Advertising? Huh? It must be like the studios that take the ads out in Variety to plump for their stars to win an Oscar.

Advertising aside, I find it kind of sad that the owners actually don’t have their doggies living with them. Instead, they farm them out to breeders who get all the love and face licks – do show dogs even lick facess? – but who are, essentially, providing a love-for-sale kind of service. This seems like sending a seven year old off to boarding school. Why’d you have them if you don’t want them around?

But the primo-dog show circuit is big time, and those who invest in it as a hobby are, apparently, not that interested in the face lick, tail wag, and hop in bed aspects of dog ownership. (Here we’ll ignore the dog-fart, poop-scooping, shoe-chewing aspects of dog ownership.)

So owners pay the big bucks to have the dogs groomed, handled, and trained for show – not for fun, companionship, amusement, and affection.

They are, after all, owners, so they can do whatever they want with their property.

In this, they are unlike most dog owners I know who, in fact, are not really dog owners, as they are a part of a family with a canine member or two. Which – since that first brave and canny person decided that a wolf puppy might be fun to have around - has pretty much been what dogs have become.

At the bottom line, owning a show dog is kind of like owning a race horse. Except that no one wrestles with a horse, or feeds one from a bowl on the kitchen floor. And the stud fees for the big dog show winners aren’t quite up to the level commanded by a Kentucky Derby stud.

The individuals (and syndicates) who own show dogs don’t get much of a payback.

“It doesn’t … touch what you spend,” Frei said.

As I said up-front, I was happy to see a cute-faced dog win, not to mention a dog that wasn’t all frou-frou’d up.

The dogs I feel really bad for are the standard poodles, which are nice, smart, cute old pooches. But you’d never know this to see the ones who take home the non-doggy bowl at Westminster.

This poor bitch was this year’s Best of Breed.

Yikes! This is kind of like dressing your two-year old up to look like Lady Gaga. Some things are just not right. And, most assuredly, no standard poodle would choose this look for itself.

Bad enough when it’s done for a bitch, but they do it for boy dogs, too.

How can this poor bastard look a mutt in the eye?

Not all show dogs look ridiculous, of course. C.f., Hickory.

But they all do seem to have grandiose names. No Fido. No Rex. No Prince.

In honor of my dog-nephew, plain old Jack, I thought I’d check out the names of some of the black lab entrants at Westminster.

Camelot’s Dragon Toy. Tabatha’s Glacieridge Briar. Ghoststone’s Otterly Fantastic Hollywood Kid.

Jack would have to have a more resplendent moniker in order to compete. North Shore Animal Shelter Pound Puppy Jack? Cutie Pie Kong-Mowing Lay-about Jack? Dog-bed Chewing Let Me Sleep Poop Already Jack?

Nah. Just plain Jack is good enough- it’s all the style that doggy needs.