Water Enhancer. (O, Dio MiO, do we really need this now that ZaRex is back)

The other day, I was flipping through People (a.k.a., devouring every word about Kate Middleton, and mentally critiquing the Academy Awards gowns) when I saw an ad for something called “water enhancer.”

Water enhancer?

Isn’t water actually something that – as long as you don’t live in a place where it tastes and smells like sulfur, causes typhoid, or comes from poisoned ground wells – is already pretty well enhanced by your local water company?

Not that I haven’t been imbibing water enhancers for years…

There’s tea – I’m a cuppa day girl.  And Polar Orange Dry (Diet) Soda which is water that’s enhanced its way into soda. But I guess that doesn’t count, because, in the case of soda, someone else is doing the enhancing for you.

ZaRex probably would be considered a “water enhancer.” However, when ZaRex was a pup (or a baby Zebra, the ZaRex mascot), there was no such concept, so it uses the more pedestrian descriptor of “flavored drink concentrate.”

For readers who were not fortunate enough to have grown up in New England, ZaRex syrup was one of those odd-ball local food- and bev-stuffs (think Moxie) that, unlike the estimable Marshmallow Fluff never made it national.

ZaRex was mixed with water to make a sweet, vaguely fruit flavored summer drink. It was used by mothers too cheap or too principled to buy soda, and too cheap or too weird to buy Kool-Aid, which was what every child of my era craved, and which the non-cheap, non-weird, likely unprincipled mothers of my era made for their kids. Naturally, I do not have to state here into which category my mother fell.

Ah, Kool-Aid!

I longed, just one time, to drag my sweaty and thirsty little body into the kitchen to find a round, clear glass pitcher full of freshly mixed Kool-Aid sitting there, just waiting for me to draw the tubby little Kool-Aid guy’s face in the condensation. Alas, it was far more likely that what would be on offer would be unenhanced tap-water, or an aluminum pitcher of red, purple, or orange ZaRex.

We would argue with my mother that, at a nickel a package, Kool-Aid was cheaper than a jug of ZaRex, however much it went for at Morris Market.

Shrewdy that my mother was, possessor of business acumen far more advanced than that of the average 1950’s stay-at-home mom, she would point out that a) you got more servings out of a jug of ZaRex than you did out of a packet of Kool-Aid; and b) even when you divided the cost by the total yield of servings, ZaRex would prove to be the more cost-effective thirst solution. Even if you didn’t factor in – which my mother never failed to do – that, with Kool-Aid, you had to add sugar, which pushed the cost of Kool-Aid so sky-high that only the toniest of families could afford it.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Even if they lived in New England, I couldn’t imagine June Cleaver, or Margaret Anderson, or Donna Stone forcing ZaRex down the gullets of Wally and The Beav; Princess, Bud, and Kitten; or Mary and Jeff.

Nope!

TV mothers were nice to their kids. They would have served Kool-Aid, all the way.

But Kool-Aid is not really all that cool. Plus it’s powdered.

So Kraft Brands, maker of Kool-Aid, got the urge to bring to market something that we’d apparently been waiting for all along: liquid water enhancer which, unlike ZaRex, you don’t have to haul around in a clumsy jug.

Thus, just one short year ago – where was I on this momentous day – Kraft gave us MiO.

Start with something simple like a glass of water. Grab your favorite liquid water enhancer. Squirt and watch your entire life become amazing. Every boring beverage needs a life coach, and MIO is the best way to create the flavor you strive to taste.

Well, as someone who wasn’t born amazing, hasn’t achieved amazing, and is still waiting for amazingness to be thrust upon me, I do feel the MiO is at least quietly calling my name – even though I must confess I have never actually strived to taste any particular flavor.

Water is superb. Except in your glass. The stuff that makes cannonballs and waterfalls loses its mojo when it comes out of the tap. So, help your water get awesome again. Let’s shake things up and have a crazy good time.

Seriously, folks?

Well, of course not.

You really can’t flog something like liquid water enhancer without a bit of the hipster snark about you.

Hey, I know that capitalism and marketing are all about creating needs for stuff you don’t need, desires for stuff you never knew existed. If this weren’t the case, the march of mankind may well have stopped with indoor plumbing. There’d be no yo-yos, no TVs, no Oreos.

Still, liquid water enhancer seems a bit more superfluous than most new products, doesn’t it?

From the tweets about MiO, consumers are somewhat split, with something of a tilt on the side of negativity, but isn’t that always the way:

Put this MiO-ENERGY shit in my water it better work fck!

Be careful with that "Mio Liquid Water Enhancer"; you add a little and it tastes great. Add too much and it tastes like donkey piss.

How would one know?

just spilled water out of my bottle cuz I wanted to shake it with the Mio and I forgot to put the lid on. I got laughed at lmao

that mio shit sucks. You owe me a water

Smart water, MIO, and captain crunch... Friday morning is getting owned.

Not a big Cap’n Crunch fan, but I do believe that cereal tastes better with milk than with water, however smart and enhanced that water may be. Perhaps this tweeter just left out this key ingredient of the Friday morning mix.

The Mio commercials kind of bug me. WHAT KIND OF MANIAC OBJECTS TO DRINKING WATER? ._.

this shit ruins water! waste of $4!

oh dios mio ! i fell in love with this water

This Mio water enhancer shat is a HUSTLE

There you have it: one man’s shat is a a HUSTLE is another’s falling in love.

Mostly, I think I’ll stick with water qua water. Or water enhanced the way we used to do it.

They do say that time heels all wounds, even those dealt by early childhood Kool-Aid deprivation.

Thus, I do not feel the least bit nostalgic for Kool-Aid.

ZaRex, on the other hand…

I am pleased that, after its original producers cut it from their product line, someone else picked it up, and ZaRex is now available at some of the finest local purveyors of food. This roster includes Johnnie’s Foodmaster in Charlestown, where my brother Rick R. shops, and at the South Wellfleet Country Store, near the Cape home of my sister Kath and her husband, Rick T.

Enhanced water, enhanced the old fashioned way, from a jug of ZaRex. All the more reason to look forward to the summer.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Perhaps it is because I am secretly, deep in the heart of Maureen, a naturally mean and nasty, spiteful and envious, individual. Or maybe it’s that I just flat out enjoy making fun of wretched excess. And as The Gilded Age: Part II – The Saga Continues after that Lovely  and Lucky Middle-Classian Interlude of the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century is making a run in the theater of the mind that will surpass that of King of Hearts at the Central Square Cinema*, I suspect that there’s going to be more and more wretched excess to make fun of.

Alan and Shirley Goldfield have been trying to unload their eponymous (if you translate Goldfield into French) Champ D’Or estate for a good long time – despite swell features like its proximity to DFW – a 30 minute drive – and a neighborhood Walmart that’s a mere 5 minute hop, skip and a jump away.

But the Goldfields are retired, empty nesters, and six bedrooms, six full baths, and eight half-baths is a lot to keep up. Especially if it’s encased of 48,000 square feet of gold, marble, ormolu, and other yi-hah hoo-hah.

A decade ago, when all systems were go, the “house” was on the market for $69.9 million without takers. A year ago the asking price was $35M. In a few weeks, it’s on the auction block with a reserve price of $10.3.  (As the ads for Christmas Tree Shops used to have it: don’t you just love a bargain?)

Even at $10.3M, this one’s not for the faint of heart (or pocketbook). However, given the cost of building the manse of their dreams (an estimated $46M) , the Goldfields are, financially speaking, underwater and up Hickory Creek – where Champ D’Or is located – but probably not completely without a paddle. I don’t think they’ll be foreclosed and find themselves driving a U-Haul containing their earthly goods to a storage facility.

Here’s the details on the house:

The owners spent one year designing and five years building this French château, completed in 2000. The center dome was inspired by the one at Vaux Le Vicomte, the 17th-century château outside Paris built by Louis XIV's superintendent of finances. The wife's two-story closet features a curved staircase modeled on the one at the Chanel boutique on the Rue Cambon in Paris. Trips to New York's Tavern on the Green restaurant led to the design of the tea room. The house also has two elevators, a two-lane bowling alley, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a pool house, a hair salon, a racquetball court and a tennis court. The third-floor ballroom, which is lined with mirrors in a nod to the hall of mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, has its own catering kitchen and can easily accommodate 150 guests. The owners say you can host 450 people on the veranda.  (Source: WSJ Online.)

Your very own bowling alley? Talk about bowling alone!

Real estate taxes’ll set you back $189K this year – but that’s tax deductible. For now, anyway.

But it’s not those Texas-sized taxes that have nudged the Goldfields into sell mode:

"I want a quiet lifestyle," says Mrs. Goldfield. She notes that the house was built for entertaining and while they had some memorable parties, she now prefers spending time at their condominium in Colorado... I won't miss the responsibility of taking care of it. The more you have in life, the more you have to take care of."

The Goldfields have tried to give it away to a non-profit, but the costs of maintaining it put it beyond the reach of most/all. (I’m flashing on Champ D’Or as a homeless shelter.)

What the Goldfields may lack in restrained, old money taste – remember, I live in Boston, where restrained, old money taste was, if not invented, then perfected – they make up in heart:

The ceiling of the dome holds incredible significance. With the construction of the estate around the September 11, 2001 attacks, Shirley wanted to paint a sky-blue color and doves spreading roses for peace in America. (Source: JohnB0127, a couple of years ago.)

I actually feel a bit sorry for the Goldfields. It seems that, right after they finished construction, they began having builders’ remorse. In 2003, The Dallas News had an article on it:

"It was a dream, and it probably should have stayed a dream," she said. "I was being a bad steward of God's funds. I probably wouldn't do it again…That $45 million is kind of an unrealistic price tag," Mrs. Goldfield said. "The market for this house is so minute that if it sells, I'll know it's a God thing."

Whether Shirley Goldfield is right about the “God thing” or not, as it turns out, she was spot-on about the price point.

Nearly 10 years on the market!

Is this going to end up being a teardown? Sub-divided into condos?

Forget Champ D’or. This one sounds more like Champ D’oh.

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*This cult film, as anyone who was young and in the Boston area during the late sixties/early seventies will remember, that played non-stop for years and years and years. My guess is that at least 50% of the area’s college students saw this flick. Which, by the way, hasn’t aged all that well. My husband and I tried to watch it a few years ago. Yawn, yawn, yawn. I’d rather take a virtual tour of Champ D’or.

Snake massage? It’s only a sideline.

Always on the lookout for Pink Slip topics, I grabbed at a recent Smart Money article on “10 Bizarre Spa Treatments.”

I’ll admit up front that I don’t have a lot of spa experience. I’ve had a couple of facials. And when I got a free trip to Hawaii as a Genuity “iLeader” in 2001, spa treatments were on the list of goodies. I don’t have 100% recall of what I signed up for, but I believe it involved seaweed and hot rocks. It was quite nice, although it was a bit odd to be strolling around paradise with nothing on other than a terry shorty-robe and flip-flops and running into your like-garbed colleagues. Not quite a nudist colony, but almost. (The “iLeader” awards trip took place at a fabulous resort on Lanai. No expense was spared. We got (among other things): a concert by Doobie Brother Michael McDonald, followed by fireworks; a side trip to Maui; a raft of gift items, Fed-Exed home for us, just in case you needed that serving bowl or sarong by Monday; and someone handing you a drink every time you sat down or stood up. Whatever else you want to say about it, the dot.com era was fun.)

Mostly my spa-type “stuff” is the occasional mani-pedi from one of several Vietnamese-run nail joints on Charles Street. (Who provided manicures and pedicures before the Vietnamese immigrated?)

There’s no doubt in my mind, however, that if I had more money and more opportunity, I would avail myself of more spa treatments.

Of the list in the Smart Money article, the “Artic Ice Room” at Qua in Las Vegas holds zero appeal. Even though this has been an almost tediously mild winter, no one who lives in New England needs to be chilling in a 55-degree room “where tiny ice crystals fall from the ceiling,” even if you factor in the mint-scent and heated benches. Brrrrr.

The “hula wave” massage, in which 10 therapists circle a couple while giving them perpetual massage, struck me as just plain weird. And, for $2,000, I’d rather spend a long weekend in New York, thank you. Or in Paris, where you can get a rubdown from a blind massage therapist working in a pitch-black room. (Only $120 an hour.)

The Liquidrom heated saltwater pool in Berlin sounds appealing – other than the fact that it also has a bar. Frankly, I’m always a bit wary of any venue were people can be sitting in a pool while drinking. The ocean is one thing, but a small, contained pool? Too much temptation for “ewwww” behavior on the part of others.

The Womb Room in the Canary Islands goes beyond just plain weird:

…a one-of-a-kind journey to the start of life with a low-lit room designed to evoke memories of the womb. Guests lie on "blood-colored," draped waterbeds as the pink-and-red-carpeted floor slowly revolves.

“Evoke memories of the womb”? Huh? Talk about hokum.This one just sounds like a bad trip.

And speaking of blood-colored, there’s a spa in Japan that features a “wine bath.”

Red wine flows from a 12-foot fountain in the shape of a wine bottle. According to the spa, these unique baths rejuvenate the body and beautify the skin.

And leave you smelling like a wino, without having gotten there the old fashioned way, by imbibing. I do wonder whether they use expense vintage wine or plonk. (Waddaya think?)

The topper for me was the spa in Israel where, for $80 a session:

Thrill-seeking clients let snakes of the nonvenomous variety slither across their bare skin. Reportedly, the creatures' varying weights and cool temperature make for a relaxing kneading sensation as they slide down the spine.

I suspect that this one would give me enough nightmares to last a lifetime.

Take it away, Dr. Freud!

But the best side-note on this “one-woman massage parlor” was that it’s:

…a sideshow to the owner's primary business: cultivating rodent-eating plants.

I guess that this is old news. Time Magazine was slithering all over Ada Barak’s Carnivorous Plant Farm as far back as September 2008.

Barak makes most of her income by showing off her plants, which eat everything from insects and reptiles to small mammals and schnitzel. She started grabbing one of the little snakes slithering in and out of the hungry plants' jaws and passing it around to visitors at the end of her act. And that was how she hit on the snakes' therapeutic value. "Some people said that holding the snakes made them feel better, relaxed," she says. "One old lady said it was soothing, like a cold compress."

Okay, this tells me who Ada Barak got into her sideline massage business.  But how, pray (prey?) tell does one some decide they want to run a carnivorous plant farm?

My feeble little mind is boggling.

Dog TV: when you’re sitting in front of the tube, nobody knows you’re a dog

As someone who grew up in the long-ago world of three television networks, and who remembers how wonderful it was when our viewing universe expanded with PBS, and those fabulous UHF stations that broadcast reruns, sports, and the world’s worst local shows.

And then came the cable explosion, which means that, at any given time, I can be watching House reruns, or Property Virgins, or Morgan Freeman on The Wormhole, or Hitler’s Henchmen, or a replay of a 1981 Celtics game (go, Larry Bird), or The Rachel Maddow Show, or Toddlers and Tiaras, or Downton Abbey, or any one of a plethora of shows on all sorts of mainstream and niche channels.

Hurray for Hollywood (and beyond), alright!

But in looking across the TV spectrum, as rich and varied as it is, some savvy entrepreneurs noticed that there was something missing, a demographic that’s entirely underserved.

That would be our canine population.

Now, thanks to Gilad Neumann and his pals, man’s best friend is no longer vox bark clamantis in deserto. While the unarticulated needs and desires for entertainment on the part of our pups may have been as a dog whistle to most of us, some ears were capable of hearing their arfs.

Presenting Dog TV.

“Veterinary associations like the Humane Society and the ASPCA have been recommending for dog owners to leave the TV or radio on when they leave their dog home alone for many hours,” says Neumann, Dog TV’s founder and chief executive officer. However, “not every video that you leave your dog with is appropriate,” he says. “[Anything that contains] fireworks or gunfire could scare your dog and create more stress than no TV.” Dog TV’s programming, on the other hand, is meant to soothe your dog’s abandonment anxiety—and spare your furniture—while he or she is alone. (Source: Business Week.)

So far it’s being test marketed in San Diego, where the pups have all the luck. You’d think they’d have focused on areas where there’s lousy weather, and where dogs, like most humans, are sensible enough to just stay in out of the sleet and snow. But by year’s end – hopefully in time for the gifting season – it hopes to go national. For $4.99 a month, I believe I know what I’ll be getting my dog nephew Jack next Christmas. (Too bad I already got him his birthday present. Shhhh. Don’t tell him. I want him to be surprised: a navy blue and white Thundershirt.)

DOGTV can get away with this low-low price because:

The content is relatively cheap to produce: Videos are shot largely in San Diego and Israel, canine actors don’t need to be paid, there are no elaborate sets, and the veterinarian-approved music is written and performed in-house.

Dog TV has been running focus groups for dogs, so there’ll be no barking. Which pretty much leaves out old black and white Lassies and Rin Tin Tins.

Short segments play throughout the day and are designed to alternately soothe and stimulate the viewer.

And, by the way, the reason there are no lengthy dog-oriented sitcoms, police dog shoes, or dogudramas is not because dogs couldn’t follow the plot. It’s that the creators don’t want the dogs to get hooked. Or, I suppose, upset. How old would your dog have to be before you’d allow him to watch Old Yeller without a grownup with him? (Sniff, sniff.)

The channel’s creators are planning to attract advertising, but aren’t yet sure how to integrate it into the programming. “The advertising is mostly going to be on our digital [platforms], because we know it’s difficult to advertise on the channel for the dogs because it’s not really effective.”

Well, I’m sure the geniuses who figured out how to subliminally market to infants will be able to crack the code on making sure your dog is “brand aware” when it comes to dog chews, kibble, and treats. I can just see the whining dogs at the check-out counter at PetCo., straining at the leash to get Mommy and Daddy to throw in the pricey antler horn they saw advertised.

Naturally, I had to pad on over to DOGTV and take a look for myself.

DOGTV’s 24/7 programing helps stimulate, entertain, relax and habituate dogs with shows that expose them to various movements, sounds, objects, experiences and behavior patterns, all from a dog’s point of view.

As with any self-respecting website, there’s an FAQ  which assures us that dogs do, indeed, watch TV, especially since the advent of the flat screen. (Discerning creatures, aren’t they?) They also tell us that, unlike the warnings about not making the TV your kids’ babysitter, DOGTV “is designed as the perfect babysitter for dogs who have to stay home alone.” The content, by the way, is tuned to doggy vision and hearing. (Hey, if they could get smell in there, you wouldn’t be able to drag your dog away from it.)

There are three types of content shown in the viewing day: relaxation, stimulation, and exposure (to habituate your dog to certain things, like the mailman, I guess).

I rather like the relaxation teaser…

Chill-axin’ with DOGTV

I am going to conduct my own bit of market research here, and will be showing this to Jack next time I see him. Maybe he’ll give it two paws up, or a couple of arfs!

Who said television is a wasteland?

Heaven only knows what possesses some people…

A couple of months back, there was a terrific short story in The New Yorker (“Expectations”, by John Lanchester) about a London banker who was banking on a big bonus that didn’t quite pan out. Life, as he knew it, went instantaneously and completely to hell.

I thought of this story the other day when I saw an article on Bloomberg about how Wall Streeters are coming to grips with the measly pay-outs that so many of them are getting these days.

The Bloomberg article reported on the woes of one Andrew Schiff, who is the director of marketing for a broker-dealer firm run by his brother.

Although he earns $350K a year – which, I have news for him, is a lot more than most directors of marketing make, and is about 7-times America’s median income – this year’s skinny bonus means he won’t be able to cover his nut.

“I’m not Zen at all, and when I’m freaking out about the situation, …it’s very hard.”

Now, other than his parents, in-laws, wife, kids, and – possibly  - the brother – ain’t no one is going to be losing any sleep over someone who can’t make in on $350K per year. Even for someone working in New York, this remains a pretty darned tidy sum.

It just doesn’t cover a nut where the nut includes private school tuition, a four-month summer rental, and other expensive niceties:

“I feel stuck,” Schiff said. “The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach.”

Well, there are plenty of things that are beyond my reach, too. And, short of winning the lottery (note to self: buy ticket), they’ll remain there. But this doesn’t preclude me from living a decent better-than-average life. And, hey, it’s actually fun to take books out of the library. Kind of like shopping, only free.

So oh, boo-hoo. If something’s beyond your reach, you live within your reach while trying to get to the above and beyond. And if your reach exceeds your grasp, well…tough ya!

Schiff’d also like to get out of his 1,200 square foot rental, where his kids – girl 10, boy 7 – have to share a room. And where,

“I don’t have a dishwasher. We do all our dishes by hand.”

Oh, no! Maybe you should just eat out of cans!

He wants 1,800 square feet -- “a room for each kid, three bedrooms, maybe four,” he said. “Imagine four bedrooms. You have the luxury of a guest room, how crazy is that?”

Not crazy at all, Mr. Schiff. And, while it may not be the New York you wanted, I’m betting that on $350K a year you can swing a pretty decent 4-BR house on Long Island, New Jersey, or Westchester County – probably even in a community with decent public schools. And, by the way, your kids are getting well past the stage where a boy and a girl should be sharing a room. Your son may not need privacy yet, but your daughter’s sure on the cusp of absolutely needing it. No little girl this close to wearing a bra and getting her period should be sharing a bedroom with her little bro, unless there’s a divider down the middle of it.

“I wouldn’t want to whine,” Schiff said. “All I want is the stuff that I always thought, growing up, that successful parents had.”

Pink Slip to Mr. Schiff: If you wouldn’t want to whine, then don’t.

And Pink Slip to Mr. Schiff: As a marketing professional, didn’t it occur to you that it might not be the best idea in the world to be interviewed for a story – in this climate – on the struggle to make do on a pittance salary of $350K. A story that makes you look like an unrealistic, babyish whiner, a complete and utter tool who we’re supposed to feel sorry for because he is only going to be able to swing one month in the summer rental this year.

Heaven only knows what possesses some people, but this interview is, IMHO, not the most professionally astute move that Andrew Schiff has made.

Now, I get that this lack of a bonus is personally devastating and dashing of dreams.

But there are plenty of “successful parents” who parent successfully in a more modest fashion – a fashion they can afford, not just dream about.

There is, of course, an element of sadness to Schiff’s belief that “successful parents” do the Brooklyn brownstone, the private school tuition, the pricey summer rental. If material things, if acquisition, is so much a part of your self-definition, your notion of good parenting, then the loss is far deeper than just being about The Benjamins. Sad…

Anyways, Schiff is not the only beleaguered non-bonus baby:

Facing a slump in revenue from investment banking and trading, Wall Street firms have trimmed 2011 discretionary pay. At Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Barclays Capital, the cuts were at least 25 percent. Morgan Stanley (MS) capped cash bonuses at $125,000, and Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) increased the percentage of deferred pay.

Earth to Wall Street: it’s not very smart to count on your bonus for your “regular” expenses, however lavish and outlandish those expenses may be. How about you wait and see what your bonus is, save half of it – even if it’s the measly Morgan Stanley $125K – and blow the rest on something: family vacation, new car, divider for the kids’ bedroom.

Schiff was not the only one whose trials and tribulations were aired in the article.

There’s the Wall Street headhunter who drove to a Fairway in Brooklyn to nab some salmon on sale and combs through the supermarket circulars hoping to find a bargain on Wheat Chex, and is going to forego his annual ski jaunt to the Western slopes. (Oh, the humanity!)

But at least Daniel Arbeeny is a bit reflective on how he used to roll back in the day:

“Wow, did I waste a lot of money,” Arbeeny said.

I understand that the reversal of fortune caused by a lack of bonus is as crushing to these folks as it would be to me if, say, I had to move into a shared flat in a tenement in Chelsea. I wouldn’t like that one little bit. But unless the world goes completely to hell, it’s not going to happen.

All I can say is if there are so many Wall Streeter’s who were living so large that they can’t sustain themselves on $350K a year, then it’s no wonder we’re in the economic trouble we’re in. And no wonder there are so many one-percenters who don’t want to pay any taxes!

Pinball wizard Steve Kordek

Not everyone gets a half-page/three-column obit in The New York Times. But Steve Kordek did.

Not a household name in your household? Mine, neither.

But he invented something that was pretty darned important, and that was putting two flippers/two buttons at the bottom of the pinball machine. Which meant you no longer had to use body English – whacking the machine back and forth – to keep the ball rolling.

Mr. Kordek died a few weeks back, at the age of 100, and his life story reads like one of those All American, apocryphal-but-true sagas that we don’t seem to hear enough of these days.

He was a Polish guy from Chicago, son of a Polish guy who worked in the steel mills, and the oldest of ten kids – in case you can’t hear it, let me note that what was just written was done in a full-blown Chicago accent – and, if he hadn’t gone ahead and married a Polish girl, he might have married my mother. (Not that she knew him or anything. But they were both Northside ethnic Catholics, so it could have happened. Maybe the Polish girl Steve did marry went to Alvernia High School with my mother, too.)

During the Depression, Mr. Kordek went to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps, doing stuff like planting trees and building lookout towers for fires – the stuff we used to do in the way back when we still believed in investing in infrastructure.

As the story (or the obit) goes – as I mentioned, this has all the elements of apocryphal-but-true -

…in 1937, he was walking down the street without an umbrella,  when a torrential rain forced him into the lobby of a building he was passing. It was the Genco Company [one of – get this – the “more than two dozen pinball manufacturers in Chicago at that time”]. A receptionist asked if he was looking for a job.

Wasn’t there a song about this during the Depression? Something along the lines of “I Met My Million Dollar Baby in the Five and Ten Cent Store”?

And how interesting that the name Genco figured prominently in another All American story, this one pure fiction: it was the name of Vito Corleone’s olive oil company in The Godfather.

Anyway, Mr. Kordek started working as a 45 cents an hour solderer, went to night school to learn about electronics, and started working his way up through the Genco ranks. Where, in the late 1940’s, he improved on a six flipper/side button design with his simple two-by-two.

The rest, as they say, is revolutionary history.

There was also an obit in Vending Times, which even fewer folks get than one in the NY Times.

In pinball circles, Kordek became a legend, and well into his nineties he would get mobbed at pinball events. "Every year he would go to Pinball Expo in Chicago, no matter what, and everybody would want to hear him talk and listen to his history -- because it was the history of pinball," [David} Silverman [of the  National Pinball Museum said.

He continued designing pinball games into his 90’s.

I’m not someone who grew up playing pinball. It was a boy thing. It was a bigger city thing. It was an old-fashioned thing. It was a smoke-filled room thing.

Kids in madras shorts – at least in my world – didn’t play pinball.

Still, when I’m in an arcade, I gravitate towards the old-fashioned, flipper-based  pinball machines, not the electronic whiz-banger gizmos. I live the simplicity of them, the modesty, the lack of score inflation, the lack of flash. I wouldn’t mind having one in my home (even though there’s no room for one.)

Anyway, I enjoyed reading about Mr. Kordek’s life and times for a lot of reasons.

• It’s a blue-collar, ethnic Chicago story.
• He stayed put – living in a Chicago suburb when he died.
• He’s from my parents’ generation.
• All hail the New Deal!
• It’s about a country where folks invented and manufactured things that were tangible and useful, yet also had brio and cool, even.
• It’s about finding something you’re good at and really like.
• It’s about working well past the increasingly arbitrary age of 65, which is what you get to do if you find something that  you’re good at and really like (as long as what you’re good at and really like isn’t completely physically taxing – I get why a lot of workers have to pack it in by the time they’re in their sixties).

Here’s what Mr. Kordek had to say a couple of years ago to The Chicago Tribune (taken from The Times obit):

“I had more fun in this business than anyone could believe.”

As business epitaphs go, not a bad one.

Opening an online business in Greece. Opah? Nopah!

I believe in regulation.

Maybe it’s all those years in Catholic school absorbing from teachers who were no doubt closet Jansenists that human beings are inherently evil, but – while I do so want to believe in the perfectibility of man – I have to come down on the side of this: without regulation, every waterway would be the Love Canal, every factory the Triangle Shirtwaist, and every airline Value Jet.

I will acknowledge that there are no doubt countless completely dumb-ass regulations on the books, and all sorts of ‘what-ifs’ concocted by bureaucrats with nothing better to do than to lard on tons of crazy, picayune nonsense to otherwise worthy (or at least well-intentioned) regulations. (Sarbanes-Oxley, anyone?)

Still, there’s all those Love Canals, Triangle Shirtwaists, and Value Jets that suggest that, left to their own devices, many folks would do what is most expedient and/or cut every corner they can to save a few bucks, trading off the short term for the long.

And sometimes, in the long run, by the time the market corrects things, we’re all dead. (Obvious nod to that market interventionist Keynes…)

So I don’t hold that all regulation is all bad, all the time. Or that American business is so over-burdened by regulations that they can manage to extract only the most meager of profits. (Again, this is not to say that our regulations couldn’t be culled and streamlined.)

But, when it comes to regulation, we’ve apparently got nothing on Greece.

This should not, of course, surprise us, given how their economy has nearly run itself into the ground for a varied array of reason, depending on who you want to listen to. But early retirement, cronyism, tax-avoidance, and stupid bankers (both their own and in the Euro zone) all seem to be part of the mix.

So, apparently, is dumb-ass regulation.

As reported in the Libertarian blog Acting Man, in Greece, getting an online business going is a “nightmare:”

As is the case elsewhere in the world, online business is growing fast in Greece. It is one of the areas of the economy that has experienced brisk growth in spite of the economic downturn. Ekathimerini recently published an article about the difficulties involved in starting such a business in Greece. To just name one point: the approval for the application to the FDA in the US was received by this business within 24 hours. It took 10 months to get exactly the same approval in Greece.

So much for the over arduous FDA approval process, at least when it comes to Olive Shop “which sells olive oil-based products such as cosmetics, mostly to foreign markets.”

As an olive oil fan, I wish them luck – especially with the cosmetics. A few years ago, I bought some olive oil based skin cream in an OO shop on Newbury Street, and it was great. (An earlier venture with olive oil cosmetic-ry did not end as well. When I was in 8th grade, I suffered a bout of dandruff. Rather than do what 99% of American mothers would do – i.e., go out and buy some Head ‘n Shoulders – my mother told me to use olive oil on my scalp. She neglected to point out that I needed to wash it out. And I was too stupid to realize that until, 8 hours after massaging a couple of tablespoons of olive oil into my scalp, I woke up smelling like a salad and with greasy dripping hair. Rather than do what 99% of American mothers would do – i.e., let me skip school and spend the day washing the olive oil out of my hair – my mother let me make one shampoo-pass, and then made me go to school with my smelly, dripping hair. I must say it was the most miserable day of my grammar school experience – an experience which, I assure you, had many days that were quite miserable. But I digress…)

Acting Man included an excerpt from the article linked above which highlighted a number of gems:

• The Greek bank they tried to do business with had a requirement that their website be entirely in Greek, which wouldn’t exactly have aided their overseas commerce much. The Olive Oil founders decided to do business with PayPal, instead. Which is why we can do business with their online store without scratching our (dandruffy) heads and saying, ‘It’s all Greek to me.’
• I may not have read the article correctly, but it appears that they also had to have “obligatory headquarters” that they paid rent on, even before they were up and running. (Let alone that they’re an online business with no need for bricks and mortar.)
• The shareholders of the company were required by their local health department to provide chest x-rays and stool samples.

Say WHAT?????

If this is what the bureaucracy is like, no wonder everyone in the country tries to retire at 50. By that point, they must be completely worn out.

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The nom de blog for Acting Man is Pater Tenebrarum, father of darkness for those of you who took Greek rather than Latin.

Thus, I will borrow from the Latin to tip my Greek fisherman’s cap to Rick T, my frater-in-legem (that would be brother-in-law), for sending me the link to this blog.

Cindy Sherman: but is it art-art?

In truth, until I’d seen the article in The Economist on her, I’d never even heard of Cindy Sherman. It’s not as if I’m a complete Philistine. There are plenty of contemporary artists that I’m familiar with I’ve heard of: Julian Schnabel, Lucian Freud (okay, I think he’s dead), David Hockney (love the swimming pool!), Keith Haring (he’s dead, too), Shepard Fairey. And if you’re thinking I’m only familiar with I’ve only heard of dead and living white men: Georgia O’Keeffe (admittedly, dead), Judy Chicago, Maya Lin, and Betsey Nelson (my sister-in-law).

Nonetheless, when I read the name Cindy Sherman, I thought she was an actress who played one of the kids in The Brady Bunch. (Maybe I am a Philistine, after all. Sigh.)

Since I wasn’t familiar with Cindy Sherman, I wasn’t familiar with her subject matter, either. It’s not swimming pools, table place settings, or politicos. What Cindy Sherman does is take  photographs of herself.  Which sell for an awful lot of money.

Last year one of the 1981 “Centrefold” series (pictured) made $3.9M, then a record for a photograph at auction.

This record has since been eclipsed  - in November an Andreas Gursky photograph sold for $4.3M. But by anyone’s accounting, $3.9M is a lot of moola.

Hey, I don’t think photographers can’t be artists, and that artists can’t be photographers. And I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with self-portrait of the artist as art. It’s not as if The Greats didn’t all do it. Furthermore, I would certainly pay $3.9M for the portrait of this artist as a suburban teenage before I’d shell out that much for one of Sherman’s clowns (which I find particularly disturbing for reasons that have more to do with clowns than with photography as art or with Cindy Sherman).

Still, while it can’t be argued that something is worth what someone’s willing to pay for it. And while it can’t be argued that art – at this level – is an investment, with the buyer gambling that the price will increase over time, it does seem a bit odd to pay that much for a photograph which, unlike a painting, can be easily replicated.

Art-art  - i.e., paintings – are one of a kind. Whether the artist took months to render the work, or dashed it off in an afternoon, it is unique. Yes, someone can turn it into a poster or a postcard. A forger can copy it. And I believe that it’s possible to buy replicas that have texture – you can see the brushstrokes, etc.

But  - even while acknowledging that there are high quality reproductions and low quality reproductions - what’s in a photograph that prevents it from being copied infinitely? What makes your Ansel Adams better than mine?

I get why there’s a qualitative difference between the Matisse poster that hangs over the dryer in the condo laundry room and the real deal. All the Matisse poster can do is remind me of why I love the original (and the artist). But if I had a copy of the Cindy Sherman centerfold, isn’t it possible that a skilled reproduction would be pretty much exactly the same as the one that cost $3.9M? (While on the subject of that $3.9M, I would hope that it went to Ms. Sherman and her gallery, not to a prior investor. I do like the idea of a woman artist commanding that kind of money.)

Maybe if someone paid that amount for a Steichen or a Steiglitz – the only remaining copy, with the original plates or negatives or whatever they were having been destroyed, I would understand the price point better. Maybe part of Cindy Sherman’s modus operandi is to make sure that the original can’t be duplicated, let alone Sorcerer’s Apprentice mass reproduced. Still, wouldn’t a photo of the photo pretty much be the same thing, showing off the photographer’s skill in composing/posing, choice of subject (c’est mo!), etc.?

But what do I know? She’s the MacArthur Foundation genius with a retrospective show at MoMA, not me.

Sherman is not without her critics – here’s Lance Esplund, an art critic for Bloomberg/Businessweek, reviewing the MoMA show.

Ambiguity is mistaken for art. Revealing virtually nothing in her photographs, Sherman turns self-portraiture on its head.

As with Pink Slip, we of course must take Mr. Esplund with a grain of salt. The very notion of a Bloomberg/Businessweek art critic smacks of Philistinism…

Still, as the holder of an MBA, not an MFA, I guess I have to come down on the side of the Bloomberg critic, not the art-lover who paid $3.9M for a photograph. Unless that art-lover was no art-lover, but just a canny investor.

Hmmmmm. So hard to interpret how to place value on a photograph. It must be an art form in itself.

Where there’s a will…

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to get our wills redone. This has been on the resolutions list for years, but with a recent cancer diagnosis for my husband, it took on a bit more urgency. (Jim is being treated and doing well, but this health issue did remind us that neither one of us is going to live forever.)

Given that our wills had last been done on crinkly white paper on a typewriter – and that our mothers, now both long dead, were among the beneficiaries - it was definitely time.

So, early in January, we got new wills done. I even did some research on whether you can inherit frequent flyer miles. (A point which will amuse anyone who knows my husband, who is an avid frequent flyer miles accumulator, and possibly even an FF savant. By the way, while it’s apparently something of a time-consuming nuisance to wrest the decedent’s miles out of the airlines, you can, indeed, inherit them.)

Unless those FF miles count, one thing that neither my husband nor I put any particular thought into was what to do about digital assets.

For one thing, other than his e-mail account and favorites list, Jim doesn’t actually have any. And other than about a half-dozen e-mail accounts, half-arsed Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, a defunct marketing blog, and Pink Slip, I’m not exactly awash in digital assets either.  We must be capital-A atypical, because:

According to a survey conducted last year by McAfee, the average US consumer placed a value of $55,000 on their digital assets, which included sentimental items like photos.) (Source: Business Week.)

Since $55K is probably not all that far off from what the average US consumer has in their retirement account, I’d say that placing a value of this magnitude on digital assets is pretty wishful thinking. Tasty as we may imagine it to be, ya just can’t eat sentimental value.

Still, digital assets are going into estate planning, and LegalZoom – which, although we did zoom on our wills once we got around to it, we did not use – is putting it there.

Because, you never know. Suppose you spend a lot of time tilling the soil in FarmVille. And then  you’re killed in an accident – say that, inspired by your Mr. Green Jeans time on the virtual farm, you decided to spend a weekend on a real one.  And you’re run over by a tractor or eaten alive by a combine or gored by a bull:

… and your three children – all of them equally ambitious virtual farmers – end up in a nasty feud about who deserves ownership rights to your amazing cows and spectacular barns.

Chas Rampenthal is the “in-house counsel and legal life coach at LegalZoom” – now if that’s not a 21st century job title, I don’t know what is – and he thinks about this stuff:

“When you think about these digital assets, they are the types of things that are difficult to pick up and hand to someone,” Rampenthal says. “It’s property that you can’t get your hands on.”

So LegalZoom is making digital asset disposition a part of its basic last will and testament service.

There is, of course, something to be said for including a list of your userids and passwords among your important documents, if only so your executor can get in there and clean things up for you. (Any day now, mine will be in the safe deposit box, along with other important “stuff.”)

But I suspect that most of us don’t have to worry about who gets our World of Warcraft account – at least nobody that I know:

… a World of Warcraft aficionado, for example, might not want his account to go a spouse or child. “Some people take this stuff very seriously,” Rampenthal says. “That person has probably amassed a certain level of strength, and it could make more sense to hand the account to his favorite gamer.”

I decided to go over to LegalZoom and see what else they had to say about digital assets. Well, nothing quite as interesting as raising the question about whether your WoW strength should go to your indifferent spouse or to a gaming pal. But they did say this:

It’s easy to forget that digital assets are just as important as tangible assets. And like real estate or money, it’s important to protect the legacy of digital assets and consider who should maintain control and how. (Source: LegalZoom.)

Well, maybe to some folks, those “digital assets are just as important as tangible assets.” Maybe to the average American who believes theirs are worth $55,000. But personally, I will hold to the belief that my condo is worth more than my blog, that my 401K is worth more than my LinkedIn profile, and – just to prove that I’m not above valuing the sentimental – my grandmother’s cookie jar is worth more than the old AOL e-mail account I use to accumulate junk mail and spam.

But, hey, I’m a tangible native, not a digital native. We do stuff. Maybe someday we won’t say “it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.” Instead it’ll be “it’s not worth the byte of storage it takes up in the cloud.”

Hamburger Helper

Candy mint or breath mint?

Coke or Pepsi?

Under or over for toilet paper?

We’ve always asked ourselves the big questions, that’s for sure.

But an upcoming ginormous question seems to be at the intersection of these three biggies: Live or Memorex, Pets or Meat, and animal, vegetable, mineral.

It’s whether our meat will come from actual animals which - however nasty, brutish, and short their lives may be – at one point or other in those nasty, brutish, and short lives drew breath. Or from labs, where it will have been grown from scratch in a Petri dish.

According to a recent story in The Economist, we’ll be closer to having to ask ourselves this question come fall, when Dr. Mark Post, a scientist in the Netherlands, expects to have enough lab-grown ground beef to make himself a hamburger. Yum!

What Post and his colleagues are looking to do is replace the current inefficient (and methane gas belching and farting) way of producing our beef:

Raising animals is a resource-intensive process. About 30% of the world’s ice-free land is used for it. Yet of the nutrients in the plants these animals eat, only around 15% is turned into meat. As the human population grows, and grows richer, demand for meat is increasing. Dr Post hopes to satisfy at least part of that demand by making the stuff in factories, in a way that converts about 50% of the nutrients into something people can eat.

Factory produced meat may sound gruesome, but the factory is pretty much where most of our hormonally augmented, breast-size-of-a-turkey-of-yore chickens are plucked from.

Beef factories are still a long way off. The first hamburger will have cost about a quarter of million Euros to produce – this sounds low, but what do I know -  which would make them a tad prohibitive to grill up for us Happy Meal drive-through folks. But the technology will scale, thanks to stem cell science.

Other than the obvious general Foodenstein nature of this whole deal, there’s one part of this development that I find particularly creepy. That’s where once the stem cells have been turned into muscle cells:

…they are encouraged to exercise and build up their strength by being given their own gym equipment (pieces of Velcro to which they can anchor themselves in order to stretch and relax spontaneously). The fatty cells of adipose tissue, needed for juiciness, are grown separately and then combined with the muscle cells before the whole thing is cooked. In theory, one cow could thus supply as many hamburgers as a million slaughtered animals can today.

Well, even though it does raise some questions about where we’re going to get the leather for our footwear, I’m all in favor of that sort of yield from one cow. (Talk about the ultimate miracle of the loaves and fish.) But the notion of these cells actually building muscle (if not burning fat) by exercising? Maybe they should come up with another word for it before we start seeing ads for Wonder Beef. The flash images of cells working out on ellipticals or in spinning class is too weird for me, although it may not be for most consumers. I can certainly see an ad campaign of these little guys – see how easy it is to animate them? – doing cardio and weight exercises to help keep us healthy.

The article suggests that, because no animal will die so that we can eat Big Macs, vegetarians might even start eating meat. I doubt it. Once they start reading about all those muscle cells climbing the Velcro, I’m sure that the vegetarians will start thinking about them as almost human.

Me? I think I’ll wait this one out a while. Maybe 50-75 years to see whether real-fake meat is safe at any speed. By which point the whole thing will be moot.

Hmmmm.  On second thought, maybe I will try one. If I’m already 90, what harm can it do me? Maybe I’ll even volunteer to be a guinea pig. Two all-lab-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun coming right up.

Want fries with that?

By all means, let’s leave nothing to chance: KLM’s new Meet and Seat program

When it comes to whoever’s sitting next to me on a flight where I’m flying solo, I guess I would have to say my luck is average.

I was going to say that it was terrible, but that’s only because I remember all those boors, the nose pickers, the ones with BO. The jerks who don’t understand that, if you’re the one stuck in the middle of a three-across, you are, in fact, entitled to 2/3’s of the space on each arm-rest – or at least half; but definitely not none. The leg spreaders who manage to encroach on your space.  (Not to mention all those times seated in front of the non-stop kicking brats, and behind the yahoos who immediately and aggressively throw their seat into the full recline position to a degree I would not have thought possible if I hadn’t spent those flights with their heads in my lap.)

One time, on a flight to Ireland, I sat next to a little old lady who had to get up every twenty minutes to go to the bathroom – and who needed assistance (that would be from me) to get up and out of her seat. I offered to change seats with the woman in back of me – who happened to be the little old lady’s daughter – so that she could help her dear ma-ma, but she declined, as she preferred to gab with her sister rather than deal with her mother. I suppose she was going to be “stuck” with her for the rest of the vacation, and wanted to enjoy her last few precious hours of freedom. Still…

It hasn’t all been terrible. I have occasionally had interesting conversations with my seat mates. Once, noticing the name on her customs form (which was an unusual one), I struck up a conversation with my next door neighbor and found that she was the cousin by marriage of a former colleague. One seat mate – who turned out to be the friend of a friend – gave me a lift home from Logan one night. A few times I sat next to unaccompanied kids – I always suspected that airlines put them next to mom-ish, grandma-ish, and aunt-ish women so that they’d be entertained (and safe). The most interesting of the unaccompanied kids was a 9 year old named Sabrina, who was heading to Alaska to join her mama and go pannin’ for gold.

Sabrina’s odyssey had started in North Carolina, from whence she’d flown – with a stop or two – to Phoenix for a visit with her grandparents.

When I caught up with her, on a leg from San Diego to San Francisco, she had nothing to keep herself entertained, other than a brown bag full of candy. And me, I suppose. Although Sabrina, who was quite the talker, did most of the entertaining. When we parted company in San Francisco, she was going on to her next flight to Seattle and, from there, to the gold fields.

Wonder how they made out.

My husband and I generally sit aisle-aisle on long trips, and on one return from Ireland, many years ago, he sat next to a young Irish woman who became a good friend of ours. She was heading to the States for the first time to visit her boyfriend, whom she later married (and later divorced). We went to Ireland for the wedding – a memorable event. L is now an American citizen. We see her regularly, and visit with her parents when we’re in Ireland.

Anyway, the person you end up sitting next to is a crap shoot. But, on the whole, it’s a reasonably tolerable and harmless one. And, you never know, you could end up making a friend for life.

Boors, nose-pickers and all – and even though about 99% of what I do on any flight is read or sleep - I actually like the serendipitous nature of getting stuck next to a random travel companion. One little bit of life’s overall voyage of discovery.

So, even if I do end up flying KLM some day, I won’t be signing up for their new match making scheme:

This month, the Dutch carrier KLM began testing a program it calls Meet and Seat, allowing ticket-holders to upload details from their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles and use the data to choose seatmates. 

…After selecting the amount of personal information they wish to share, passengers are presented with seat maps that show where others who have also shared their profiles are seated. You can then reserve the seat next to anyone who seems interesting — provided it is available — and that person will receive a message with your profile details.

…While it is not possible to “reject” a person who has chosen to sit with you, you can select another seat as long as two days before the flight. Those feeling awkward about moving can delete their data and select new seats using the standard — anonymous — online platform. (Source: New York Times.)

Which doesn’t exactly like it would stop the person you chose not to sit next to (even though they wanted to buddy up to you) from already having seen your profile and be a little ticked off. And figuring out where you are on the plane. And doing a little in-flight walking around (to, ahem, stretch their legs and avoid an embolism). Mile high stalking, anyone?

So I won’t be availing myself of this service, thank you.

There was a service mentioned that allowed FB “friends” to check out whether they’re on the same flights as each other, which is a little better.

Still, I like leaving that those accidental meet up to chance, as well.

A few years ago, I was on a flight from Paris and ran into two former colleagues, guys I had worked with years ago. We were all long gone from the company where we’d met, and all got a kick out of three Softbridge alumni ending up on the same flight. I felt very jet-set-ty and international, that’s for sure.

There was one service mentioned in the article that I do see as a travel possibility for me:

For fees of $6 to $60, Air New Zealand, AirAsia Xin Malaysia and Vuelingin Spain, for example, let passengers request empty seats next to theirs. If a flight turns out to be full, the extra charge is refunded.

Now you’re talking!

Post-MBA Investment Banker Syndrome

Ah, pity the poor investment banker.

Sure, they manage to eke out a better living than average schnook – even a first year analyst with a BS degree can make a couple of hundred grand. And they do get to do God’s work (at least if you believe Lloyd Blankfein, and who doesn’t?).

But it turns out that tt’s not just coal miners and lumberjacks who have it rough. All that investment banking may be hazardous to your health, too.

A University of Southern California researcher found insomnia, alcoholism, heart palpitations, eating disorders and an explosive temper in some of the roughly two dozen entry-level investment bankers she shadowed fresh out of business school. (Source: Wall Street Journal.)

And this doesn’t even factor in breathing town-car exhaust, shoulder separation from dwarf hurling, back problems from slurping down jello shots off the bellies of lap dancers, and carpal tunnel from tying bow ties. Not to mention eye strain from staring at their Bloombergs all day, and brain-strain from having to come up with jokes within 15 minutes of something horrible and/or interesting in the news. (E.g., the recent Costa Concordia cruise ship run-aground set off a cascade of bad jokes, most of which come from The Street. What's the difference between the Italian economy and the stricken cruise liner Costa Concordia?  Nothing - The bottoms dropped out of both. As I understand, the day that Pope John Paul II was elected, no one on Wall Street got any work done as the Stock Exchange became the Polish Joke Exchange.)

Anyway, these poor guys are just walking wrecks. No wonder they get paid so much.

Alexandra Michel, who teaches at USC’s b-school, began her study a decade ago, having gotten permission to hang around two banks, as long as she kept the banks’ ID’s quiet. Michel:

…shadowed the bankers at the office—sitting next to them, following them to meetings, mirroring their hours and even pulling all-nighters—for more than 100 hours a week during the first year, about 80 hours a week during the second year, and then followed up with in-person interviews.

“By the fourth year of the study, many bankers were a mess. Some were sleep-deprived; others developed addictions.”

Gosh! And that was years ago, before we learned that everything that goes on in an investment bank is not necessarily laudable, or aimed at the common good. How much worse it must be under today’s harsh spotlight?

These days, there’s the frothing mob howling  when they read that bailout money went to paying mega bonuses to contend with. Bad enough that we have to fork over because the banks were too big to fail and their tumble could take down the entire economic shebang. Who among us wants to write the check so that  investment bankers can get something more than a lump of coal in their stocking – something more like a lump of coal crushed into the Hope Diamond – because if they didn’t the talent would walk.

It’s kind of hard to dredge up complete sympathy for investment bankers. Presumably most of them were smart enough to know what they were getting into. It’s not like someone with my interests, skill set, personality, and competitive instincts was transported one morning to the Goldman trading desk and not allowed to leave. (As the WSJ article has it, “no one is being drafted into high finance.”)

Still, I wouldn’t wish “long-term health conditions such as Crohn's disease, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and thyroid disorders” – all reported by those averaging 80-120 hour work weeks in i-banks – on anybody.

Interesting, the study found that, after five years, while one-fifth had left investment banking for fewer greenbacks but greener pastures, only 40% of those remaining chose to “prioritize their health, meaning they paid more attention to sleep, exercise and diet and set limits on how much they allowed work to consume them.” The other 60% soldiered on. This latter cohort I would definitely place in the little sympathy for category.

If you can’t stand the Crohn’s disease, get out of the investment banking kitchen.

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You can see the full study, Transcending Socialization: A Nine-Year Ethnography of the Body’s Role in Organizational Control and Knowledge Workers’ Transformation here.

Other than the quick summary in The Journal, I haven’t seen any translations anywhere. For those who speak ASL (academic as a second language), here’s the paper’s abstract (from the Administrative Science Quarterly):

A nine-year ethnography is used to show how two investment banks’ controls, including socialization, targeted bankers’ bodies, how the bankers’ relations to their bodies evolved, and what the organizational consequences were. The banks’ espoused and therefore visible values emphasized autonomy and worklife balance; their less visible embodied controls caused habitual overwork that bankers experienced as self-chosen. This paradoxical control caused conflict between bankers and their bodies, which bankers treated as unproblematic objects. The conflict generated dialectic change that cognitive control theories overlook because they neglect the body. Cognitive control theories predict outcomes only in bankers’ first three years, when the banks benefited from bankers’ hard work. Starting in year four, body breakdowns thwarted organizational control. Despite bankers’ increased attempts to control their bodies, performance declined. Starting in year six, intensified breakdowns forced some bankers to treat their bodies as knowledgeable subjects. Because the body cannot be socialized completely, it helped numerous bankers transcend the banks’ socialization and modify their behaviors. Surprisingly, the banks benefited from this loss of control because the bankers’ ethics, judgment, and creativity increased.

And I wonder why I decided after one year in a PhD program that I just wasn’t cut out for the egghead life?

 

And a tip to Rick T for sending along a raft of Costa Concordia jokes.

Giving the bride away. (I’m my own grandpa)

Personally, I don’t believe that rich folks are any sleazier, say, than poor folks.

It’s just that, when the sleaze involves the kind of money that only PowerBall winning poor folks get to see, the sleaze is more fascinating. A sleazy poor person may snatch a couple of bucks from the church poor box. Yawn! A sleazy rich guy: now you’re talking!

Thus, I view the heart-felt adoption of a 42 year old “girl” by her48 year old boyfriend (father figure?) through the twin prisms of sleaze and fascination.

John Goodman – the new dad – is the founder of the International Polo Club of Palm Beach. So, of course, I am benevolently disposed towards him already. He made his polo-ing money the old-fashioned way, inheriting it from his hard working old man, who made it big in the air conditioning biz. Johnny, apparently, didn’t give a chukka about AC, but he did like the ponies, and he’s devoted most of his adult life to the polo cause. To his philanthropic portfolio he’s now added adopting someone who was probably a little hard to place.

Goodman now faces up to 30 years in the slammer because of a drunk driving accident in which he and his Bentley allegedly ran a stop sign and ended up slamming someone’s 23 year old son and his non-Bentley into a ditch, where he drowned.

With the prospect of both criminal jail time and the prospect of a wrongful death suit facing him, Goodman decided that the time was right to add to his family – he has two children by his former wife – by adopting his girlfriend Heather Laruso Hutchins. This entitles Hutchins to one third of the $300M trust fund that Goodman had established for his heirs.

The trust was off limits in the wrongful death suit, so it’s not a direct dodge. As his lawyer is eager to assure:

Dan Bachi, Goodman's civil attorney, said Hutchins' adoption was done to ensure the future stability of his children and family investments.

"It has nothing to do with the lawsuit currently pending against him," Bachi said. (Source:Palm Beach Post .)

But in case a good chunk of Goodman’s remaining assets are wiped out by said suit, he’s likely hedging that his loving and devoted 42 year old daughter will take dear old dad in, and support him in the polo style to which he became, thanks to his daddy dearest, accustomed.

This sets off all sorts of questions:

If, at some point – when wrongful death suits are in the next Bentley’s rear view mirror – Goodman decides to propose to Hutchins, does he have to ask himself for his daughter’s hand in marriage?

Does he get to walk her down the aisle?

If they have a child, is he the father, the grandfather, or both?

Is Hutchins the half-sister to Goodman’s other two kids, and does she become their step-mother if she and Goodman marry.

Who do you turn to for the answer to such questions? Other than Woody Allen and Soong Yi, that is.

Meanwhile, Goodman’s teenage – as opposed to 42 year old – children are challenging the adoption.  They’re doing so through their guardian, Jeff Goddess. (How fun would it be to be in court for Goddess vs. Goodman?)

[Goddess] claims that Goodman, 48, defrauded the court by a move that a local judge called a "surreal" step into a "legal twilight zone." (Source: Houston Chronicle.)

“Surreal” is right.

I’d love to be a horsefly on the wall of the International Polo Club of Palm Beach if Dad decides to take the best little girl in the world to lunch some Sunday…

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Other Info Source: HuffPo. 

And a tip of the polo helmet to my cousin Mary Beth, currently visiting Florida, perhaps in search of a non-sleazy rich man to adopt her. Having known her for most of her life, I can attest to the fact that she would make someone an excellent child.

Fraudster, beware. (And just plain old innocent e-mailers, you beware, too.)

Back in the day, I did manage a modest but non-trivial budget, so I suppose if I’d been cagey enough I could have set up some bogus outside contractor and funneled some money to myself way. But my budget, while a lot for a small company, didn’t include a lot of money to burn. And, hey, I managed that budget down to the dollar, so I would absolutely noticed if anyone – including myself - were embezzling from it. (Hey, I don’t remember hiring Maureen Rogers to do any work for us…)

At one far larger company I worked for, a marketing manager had done something along those lines. I think it she “hired” her husband (who had a different last name) to do something or other – make that nothing or other - that didn’t get done. I don’t remember the exact details, but she was rousted out of the office one morning and everything was ultra hush-hush.  At that time, I was running a pretty good-sized product marketing group and, beyond salary and travel, we had no budget. Marcom had the $$$ so we had to play nice. And the $$$ that Marcom had was large enough that a bit of embezzling might have gone unnoticed for a while. (How LARGE was the budget at this company? Well, let’s just say they spent $40 million on a product launch for a product that nobody actually ended up buying. Ah, what was $40 million in the dot.com era?)

But, hey, who wants to embezzle, anyway?

Well, apparently plenty of people – at least plenty enough that there are now a number of applications on the market that help ferret out wrong-doers by spying on analyzing their e-mail exchanges.

According to a recent article in The Economist, linguistic software is the way to go. (I would have thought forensic accounting was the way to go, but, according to The Economist, “this is like looking for a contact lens in a snowdrift.” Really? Really???? Wouldn’t looking closely at the transactions of those who could have their hand in the till work – maybe even just checking out payments made to an account that wasn’t, say, IBM or National Grid? But I guess that wouldn’t help nab inside traders and the like.)

Rip-offs tend to occur in what gumshoes call the “fraud triangle”: where incentive, rationalization and opportunity meet. To spot staff with the incentive to steal (over and above the obvious fact that money is quite useful), anti-fraud software scans e-mails for evidence of money troubles. Phrases like “under the gun” and “make sales quota” can indicate that an employee is desperate for a bit extra. (Note: I Americaniszed the spelling in the extracts from The Economist.)

Hmmmm. I would think that phrases like “under the gun” and “make sales quota” would be found in, say 75-80% of all end of quarter e-mails from sales folks.  Plus sales people don’t tend to have ready access to the till, do they? Sure, they can pad the old expense account. And cadge a few bucks from the coffee fund.  But if they were faking sales orders, wouldn’t that show up when shipping went to ship and accounting went to collect. Maybe this sales one is a bad example. A more likely scenario might be someone in accounting who sends a note to his buddy that includes the words “trifecta”, “desperate”, and “baby needs a new pair of shoes.” Or “Porsche” and “Rolex” – words that, frankly, you’d hope would show up in the missives of a coin-op sales force. But what do I know about anti-fraud software.

Spotting rationalization is harder. One technique is to identify those who seem unhappy about their jobs, since some may rationalize wrongdoing by telling themselves that their employer is an evil corporation that deserves to be ripped off.

Spotting people who seem unhappy about their jobs? Time to purge “suck” and “clueless” from the old e-mail vocabulary.

Ernst & Young (E&Y), a consultancy, offers software that purports to show an employee’s emotional state over time: spikes in trend-lines reading “confused”, “secretive” or “angry” help investigators know whose e-mail to check, and when.

Checking on the emotional state of employees via software. That’s just ducky.

But most companies aren’t just looking for pissed off employees. (And, frankly, who needs software for that?)

Financial firms are apparently big users of anti-fraud linguistic software to search for insider trading and Nick Leeson-style shenanigans.

Anyway, checking up on what your employees are saying isn’t all that new.

The last company I worked full time for monitored IM for something or another. Which is how they caught one employee calling the COO a useless jerk. Which he wasn’t really. He was an exceedingly decent man, caught up – as we all were – in a company that was pretty much useless and relentlessly jerky.

But it was kind of creepy when learned through the non-IM, non-e-mail grapevine – a guy in IT told us – that the company was spying on our IMs. This company was an agglomeration of a lot of small companies, all in different locations. My closest work buds were in NY and Texas, and we lived (and swapped rumors and bitched mightily and sometimes actually did work) on IM.

Of course, someone who’s engaged in fraud or otherwise doing bad stuff deserves to have their e-mail analyzed. But what about the 99.9999% who aren’t doing anything untoward?

Methinks that if you haven’t already it’s time to stop using your work e-mail account for anything that’s even vaguely personal. Gmail, only please. Unless they start intercepting and analyzing all transmissions over their network you should be okay. But if your particular evil empire does go that far, you can always grab your personal smartphone and head out of the building with the smokers and vent out there.

Wait until mind-reading software hits the market.

Forget fraud. No one will be employable.

Paper Mill

Many long years ago, I spent the weekend in Berlin, New Hampshire, where my college roommate’s sister and brother-in-law were living while he worked as a Legal Aid lawyer.

I remember a few things very clearly about this trip.

One, Berlin is a long way up there. Almost as far as the North Pole (or at least the Hudson Bay Colony).

Two, we saw a black bear out the back window of the house where we stayed.

Three, the Androscoggin River, which ran through Berlin  was covered with an unnatural, yellow-ish white froth.

Four, the town smelled horrible, the noxious odor emanating from the same source that produced the Androscoggin froth: Berlin’s pulp and paper mill.

As the locals will tell you, that smell was the sweet smell of jobs, which pretty much left Berlin (and a lot of other old New England mill towns) when the factories shut down.

Berlin, once a Coos County paper hub whose motto is "The City That Trees Built," had been a bustling mill town of more than 15,000 in 1970 but by 2010 had lost nearly 40% of its population, he said.

As has often been the case when one industry falls off, another one steps in. For Berlin, the job slack has taken up by the prison-industrial complex. (Thank goodness for those criminals!)  New Hampshire has a state correctional facility there, and the Feds are now taking job applications for a medium security facility they’re opening there.

A bit further down the Androscoggin, however, in Gorham, papermaking remains a going concern, mainly because going remains a going concern.

When the region's last mill closed in 2010, 197 workers were out of good-paying jobs, and the pain of lost paychecks rippled through this tiny mountain town of 2,848….

But the century-old Gorham paper mill is running again, under new owners, with 176 employees and plans to hire 48 more. The rebirth, and optimism at other paper mills nationwide, is due to one of the few bright spots in the industry: steadily rising demand for toilet and tissue paper that goes with population growth.

"I know of nothing that can replace it. You can do digital on books and financials and all this, but it's hard to do digital on tissue paper, hand towels and so forth," said Willis Blevins, the 70-year-old manager of Gorham Paper & Tissue. "Your bath tissue is always going to be there, in my opinion. What are you going to replace it with?" (Source: Wall Street Journal.)

Well, I guess if you’re rich enough one of those Japanese toilets that hoses you down you wouldn’t need toilet paper.

And I guess if you’re poor enough and live on a farm you could use corn cobs. (No more Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck catalogs, I’m afraid.)

But I’m with Willis Blevins here. What are you going to replace it with?

Which is good news for those in the paper biz, now that folks don’t write letters, read newspapers, or take notes on yellow pads. (Other than me, I guess: I still use yellow pads for my weekly and daily to-do lists, as well as for general purpose notes. I do economize and environmentalize by using both sides, however.)

For those who work in paper mills, of course, the decline of this industry, which employed so many in northern New England for so many years, is devastating.

As much as those of us with other options might be just as happy to be rid of the smell and the riverine froth, it’s a different story if  you swing a lunch bucket and want to stay put in your home town. When one of Gorham’s old mills was dismantled, three smokestacks were blown up:

"I could hear it and I was crying," said 56-year-old Mike Johnson, a fourth-generation mill worker. "It was like someone taking out a part of you."

And the mills provided pretty good jobs – “as much as $23.17 an hour with benefits.”

Fortunately for those who toil in toilet (and other tissue) paper mills, tissue manufacture is not so easily offshored. The combination of low cost and bulk makes it less than economical to ship from “over there.”

There’s a danger that, with so many tissue plants being opened or re-opened – Gorham is not alone – supply will outstrip demand, and prices (and no doubt wages and benefits) will be tamped down.

Still, for now, for some paper mill workers, the news is good.

One of them is Mike Johnson, who’s back in the mill.

Good for him.

One hopes that the next generation is better prepared for the brave new world of employment. (And I don’t just mean as prison guards.)

On my part, I’ll do my bit, buying toilet paper and tissue to stuff in gift bags. I’ll have to find out where Scott,  my t.p. of choice is made. I’d like to act locally.

And is it too much to hope that the plants no longer produce all those noxious effluents?

What better way to celebrate Presidents’ Day?(Hail, hail Freedonia!)

Today is as good a day as any to reflect on our form of governance. Say what you will about the tawdry spectacle provided by the current political season, it sure as hell beats living under a monarchy. (Which we don’t have, despite Jeb Bush’ lurking in the wings awaiting a presidential nod from a brokered convention, and, more locally, Joseph P.Kennedy the Whatever (Jr? III? IV?) deciding that the U.S. Congress isn’t a bad choice for a first run at elective office.)

After all, a system that gave us Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelts TR and FDR strikes me as infinitely superior to one that offers up claimants to the throne of countries like Romania.

Not that I have anything against Romania, which is something of an ancestral homeland.

Although she was German, my mother was, in fact, born in Romania, in a German town that, after WW I, had been realigned out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and into the Land of the Vampire.

But I have never harbored any romantic ideas about what Romania might be like. My mother’s family emigrated when she was a toddler, and any residual family was more or less drop-kicked back into Germany after WW II. So pretty much everything I know about Romania comes from reading about the brutal and, if they weren’t so brutal, brutally nonsensical lives of the Ceauşescus –  Nicolae and Elena – who, thanks to an assist from The People, slipped the surly bonds of earth more than 20 years ago.

My only current mental images of Romania are crappily constructed Soviet era cement apartment buildings, and Count Dracula, fangs and all, swooping around a forest.

If I were in the neighborhood in and around Arad, Romania, I would drop in on my mother’s hometown of Neue Banat – these days known by it’s Romanian name of Panatul-Nou – to say howdy. But it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll ever be in and around Arad, Romania.

Still, when I see Romania in the news I generally have a “hail, hail, Freedonia” moment. Especially if the news is about Romanian royalty.

This week’s news from home is that Prince Paul Hohenzollern has been declared by no less an illustrious outfit than the country’s highest court as the legitimate grandson of King Carol II – not to be confused with Carole King: no relation – and thus entitled to something that’s not quite clear. (Source: AP article on boston.com)

It doesn’t sound like this will put much of any royal conniption hoo-hah to rest, as his uncle, the former King Michael has indicated that the ruling means bupkis.

The 90-year-old Michael, who was forced to abdicate by the communists in 1947, says Tuesday's ruling does not give Paul any claims to the throne.

This battle over the non-throne throne has been brewing for a good long time.

Prince Paul was considered not-so-legit because his grandfather – that would be King Carol II – had done a no-no and married one Romanian Zizi Lambrino, when “by law Romania's heir to the throne was obliged to marry a foreign princess.”

So that marriage was, alas, annulled. But not before Prince Paul’s father was born.

After the annulment from Zizi, King Carol did what he was legally required to do and went ahead and married a Greek princess, who gave the world King Michael.

Well, what with the marriages and remarriages, the abdications and the renouncements, the Nazis and the Communists, this is a pretty complex tale – a lot more involved than King Edward and Wallis Simpson, especially if you leave out the Nazi sympathies, the kinky sex, and the cabochon rubies.

Anyway, Michael was last King Michael in 1947, when:

He abdicated after Romanian Communists threatened to kill 1,000 young Romanians if he did not renounce the throne.

Which, all and all, seems like a better reason than “for the woman I loved.”

Anyway, whether Paul ends up with anything other than the honor of having been declared legit, it’s been a big, big, BIG couple of years for him. In 2010, at age 62, he had his first child – a son named Carol. (Am I alone in thinking that one of the worst things you can do to a boy is give him a girl’s name? But, what do I know, I’m not royalty.)

And,

In December 2011, Hohenzollern was named "Ambassador of Romanian-Chinese Friendship" in Beijing. (Source: Wikipedia.)

To top it all off, he’s now the Prince of Romania.

Well played, Prince Paul.

Meanwhile, King Carol II, whose misplaced marriage to Zizi Lambrino set this whole thing off, died in Portugal in 1953. Fifty years later, his body was exhumed and reinterred in good old Romania.

No record of whether Prince Paul attended, but his father was still alive. He couldn’t go because in 1940 he had been forbidden to enter Romanian territory, a prohibition that I believe most of us could live with.

King Michael did not attend, either, but he did send as his emissary his daughter, Princess Margarita, and her husband Radu Duda, who was named Prince of Hohenzollern-Veringen after his marriage to Princess Margarita. (Source, again, Wikipedia.)

You can’t make this stuff up. But you don’t have to, as long as there’s Romanian royalty – and names like Radu Duda – out there.

Anyway, happy Presidents’ Day to all, especially to our incumbent and the ex-presidents (Jimmy Carter, George Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush) still around to enjoy “their day.”

It all makes me want to go out and chop down a cherry tree…

Never eat at a restaurant named Mom’s? How about one named Heart Attack Grill?

Mid-20th century novelist Nelson Algren had a couple of rules for life, one of which was “never eat at a restaurant named Mom’s.”

Personally, I would have no problem eating at Mom’s.

I wouldn’t say my mother was a great cook – my father was way too meat and potatoes for that to happen – but she had some dishes that were pretty darned good. Her soups were fantastic. For a German girl, she made a very tasty spaghetti sauce. And I wouldn’t mind opening the fridge door and finding a vat of her beef stew sitting there. She was also an excellent baker. If I found one of her apple pies next to that vat of beef stew, I would be completely delighted.

So I would happily eat at a restaurant named Mom’s.

But a restaurant named Heart Attack Grill?

Come now. Isn’t that just asking for trouble.

As it was for one hapless nosher who, having been foolish enough to sup at a joint that displays a warning sign reading "Caution! This establishment is bad for your health," almost died.

“It was no joke," said Jon Basso, who promotes himself "Doctor Jon," his scantily-clad waitresses as nurses and customers as patients.

Basso said he could tell right away the man in his 40s eating a Triple Bypass burger was having trouble. He was sweating, shaking and could barely talk. (Source: AP article, here from The Washington Post, but initially spotted by my brother-in-law Rick on Bloomberg. That terminal is worth every penny you pay for it!)

Apparently, he was having a heart attack that his fellow patrons thought was part of the act. Some of them were shooting videos as he was being hauled out be EMT’s.

An intrepid reporter for Bloomberg Business Week had dined there a few months back, and his description was enough to make me seriously consider signing up for a water and tofu diet. It’s not just that the waitresses – ho-ho (ho-HO?) -  wear naughty nurse uniforms, and are referred to as nurses. It’s not just Dr. Jon, wears a doctor’s gown and sports a stethoscope. It’s not just that diners wear hospital gowns, too. It’s that:

Wheelchairs are on hand to assist those who have become immobilized by a triple- or 8,000-calorie, two-pounds-of-beef, $12.94 quadruple-bypass burger (three or four patties, plus American cheese and optional bacon—15 or 20 slices of the latter).

8,000 Calories!  That’s 4 to 5 times what the average sedentary middle aged American requires. (And why am I guessing that the average diner there is not a four-sport male high school athlete who would have a hard time mowing down 8,000 calories. Let alone your average sedentary middle aged American.)

There are many other nice touches at Heart Attack. Like letting those who weigh in at 350 pounds (plus or minus) gorge themselves for free. Like pictures of Colt 45 that pose the question “Feeling Ghetto?” (Why am I guessing that they don’t put out the welcome mat for certain segments of our populace, even those of the obese persuasion?)

The Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas is a re-lo of some now-closed outlets in Arizona. This after their local AZ spokesmodel died last year at the age of 29. And the weight of 570 pounds.

I suppose that everyone in Arizona who was going to give the Heart Attack a one-shot try, just for the novelty, has done so. And the repeat customers may have all died off. So Las Vegas must seem like the perfect venue: Lots of tourists who will try anything once.  No such thing as moral suasion not to behave like a self-indulgent jerk. A big fat fatwa on prudery and moderation of all kinds.

Apparently the man with the Heart Attack heart attack is doing okay.

If he’s got any sense, he’ll keep his name withheld and regret that he gave in to such a gluttonous impulse. If he’s one of those 15-minutes-of-fame guys, he’ll no doubt be back for another pass the Triple Bypass burger, hoping for a cut of the “I survived a triple bypass” tee-shirts that are no doubt in the making. And posing with a “nurse” waitress feeding him some lard-ass inducing fries.

Hey, people are welcome to pick their poison. But is it any wonder that we have an obesity epidemic in this country?

Me? I’ll take a moderate serving of stew and apple pie at Mom’s, thank you.