More bookstores on the horizon?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm by no means an Amazon basher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As If I Needed Another Reason to Despise the NFL

I will admit it: I’m a sports fan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just who is Troy Haupt?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I guess I'm talking myself into it.

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

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

Cheater pants! Make that cheater bicycle pants.

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

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

Cheating is, of course, on a long continuum.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, indeed, you can.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Nostalgia Craving” Tourists? Not me...

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

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

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

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

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

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

No wonder we took the train the next time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christa McAuliffe, local girl.

Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Hard to believe it's been that long...

I am by no means a space junkie.

As a kid, I was excited when Alan Shepard was shot into space, up and down. Part of the excitement was that, for the first and only time, we had a TV in the classroom - a 12", rabbit-eared black and white box that someone's dad had brought in for us. There we were, nearly 50 kids in the classroom, all craning our necks so we could eye-witness (at least via television) this marvelous occurence. Made even more exciting and marvelous because Alan Shepard (while not a Catholic, which would have made it more exciting) was from New Hampshire. Almost a local!

Over the years, I paid quasi attention to what was going on, space-wise. But on that July evening in 1969, when the first man walked on the moon, I went out on our front steps, looked up at the moon, and yawned. Having spent the entire day taken no great leaps, but many small steps to wait on customers at Big Boy's, I was tired.

I liked the Right Stuff, both the book and the movie.

But I was never an especially avid follower of what was going on in space.

The Challenger flight stirred up plenty of local interest. After all, Christa McAuliffe had grown up outside of Boston. She was a local girl. She was one of us. She was roughly my age, an Irish Catholic parochial school girl. If she'd grown up a few miles further west, and I'd grown up a few miles further east, we might have gone to the same high school. How many relatives and friends do I have who are teachers? She was one of us.

So, while I probably thought that launching a teacher into space was little more than a publicity stunt, I was rooting for Christa.

At the time of the Challenger disaster, I was working for a small firm in Cambridge, the consulting and software wing of a company that did most of its business on Wall Street. We all logged plenty of miles on a shuttle of our own: the Eastern Shuttle that ran hourly - and more than hourly, if there was a spillover crowd - between Logan and LaGuardia. No one called it the Eastern Shuttle. We just short-handed it as The Shuttle.

On any given day, at least one or two of our colleagues was on The Shuttle.

In late morning, our receptionist came over the PA and announced, "I just heard the news: The Shuttle's gone down."

We all ran out of our offices, doing a quick nose count, asking each other: Who's in New York today? Who's on The Shuttle.  We knew that our guys would have been on the 6:30 a.m. or the 7 a.m., the ones we took. But you never knew...

How parochial we felt - and yet how relieved - when we found out that Judy was talking abou the Space Shuttle Challenger, and not the Eastern Shuttle.

Over the follow on days, I followed the news closely.

Unlike the other astronauts, who were all "real" astronauts, Christa McAuliffe was a civilian. One of us.

There were the pictures of her parents, who looked like everyone's parents, stunned and sorrowing in the audience, watching as their daughter died before their eyes. There was her husband, there were her kids. And the kids she taught. Her sibs, her colleagues.

They were all local.

Just like us.

The closest I'll ever get into space was a simulated Journey into Space I took at the Reuben Fleet Science Center in San Diego, a billion years ago. (It gave me vertigo.) That and the space shot I sent a bit of my husband's ashes on - one of his last wishes.

I have no idea what NASA's up to.

I don't really devote a lot of my inner space to outer space.

But yesterday, I was thinking a bit about Christa McAuliffe, and feeling a bit sad for her family. She was a local girl. Just like us.

Threads

When I was a girl, back in the buggy-whip days, things other than financial instruments, software, and medical discoveries were made in Massachusetts. Tangible things were - get this - manufacturered here.

Worcester produced fine wire, abrasives, shoes and boots, aircraft components, boilers, bras, M16s, space suits, cheesy plastic toys, pocket books and boxed pizza mix. There was a factory just over the Worcester border, in Cherry Valley, that made something called elfskin. (I never inquired.)

But a lot of what was made when companies were "making it in Massachustts" (the refrain of a state-boostering ad run in the 1980's) were textiles and apparel.

Boston had facories where they made jeans, raincoats, suits.

Each summer, my family drove out to Ware, Massachusetts, to buy tee-shirts at the outlet store for a knitting mill. Sometimes, on the way back from a day trip to Horseneck Beach, we stopped at a mill outlet in Fall River, again to buy tee-shirts.

Over time, most of the factories in shuttered. They moved to the south, from where they eventually migrated overseas.

To some extent, the (mostly) unskilled or semi-skilled jobs that these factories offered aren't missed in our overall economy. They were replaced by the production of financial instruments, software, and bio-tech whatevers. So we go around celebrating our brainy, high tech, high paid workforce.

But, of course, it's not as if it the people who were working in the clothing factories turned overnight into computer scientists or money managers. A lot of folks were left behind. Their steady paycheck, decent wage jobs were replaced by the hardscrabble of ill-paid service work, and/or multiple pickup jobs.

So I was delighted when, last month, I saw a Boston Globe article on a mini-resurgence - or at least a leveling out - of the textile industry in Massachusetts. While there are only half the number of textile manufacturing jobs that there were in 2005, those jobs are good and welcome.

In New Bedford, Joseph Abboud (a local boy made good) has a factory where 800 workers - look for the union label - are running off over a thousand pricey suits every day. Southwick produces high-end men's suits in Haverhill. In Fall River, John Matouk & Company produce luxe linen sold in places like Neiman Marcus and Bloomies.

Today's textile and apparel firms have adapted to lower-cost, overseas competition by catering to niche and luxury markets, and automating processes to lower labor costs. They have found ways to customize products at the quirkiest details - say, purple sneakers with green laces and an image of your dog on the tongue - and turn around orders in a matter of weeks, if not days...

Instead of using pencils and graph paper, designers [at Abboud] create patterns with a keyboard and a mouse, employing software that will send precise cutting instructions to machines. Many steps that used to require hand tailoring, such as making pockets, have been automated, too. (Source: Boston Globe)

When it comes to textiles and apparel, Massachusetts, as it happens, is on the "cutting edge" (haha) of innovative manufacturing techniques. Both MIT and UMass Lowell (a city that certainly has its roots and bona fides in the textile world) are doing research in this area.

High tech and academia, meet the good old-fashioned textile and apparel industry.

Now, go forth and make more tangible stuff in Massachusetts.

Why drone racing will be more fun than NASCAR

Until I saw an article about it on Bloomberg, I’d never even heard of drone racing. And my first reaction when I saw the headline about it – “New Drone Racing League Wants to Be the Next NASCAR” -  was, do we really need yet another professional sports league. Let alone one dedicated to drone racing.

And then I thought about it. After all, there are professional ultimate frisbie players. Professional video gamers. And NASCAR itself.

So why NOT drone racing that goes pro.

That’s the bet Nick Horbaczewski is making by starting the Drone Racing League, with the backing of investors who include Stephen Ross, owner of the National Football League team Miami Dolphins, and Lerer Hippeau Ventures, a New York venture capital firm. Horbaczewski expects most fans to watch races online, much as they do competitive gaming in the U.S., using their phones, computers—eventually even virtual-reality headsets.  Ultimately, he has ambitions of becoming a digital Nascar for drones. (Source: Bloomberg)

Side note here: I’m sticking with NASCAR rather than Nascar. Not that it comes up that often in my writing, but, when it comes to acronyms, I’m a purist. But I’m seeing more and more acronyms turned into proper nouns with initial cap only. Just the other day I saw Wasp instead of WASP (which stands for white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, thus giving it at least a few things in common with NASCAR, although WASP is generally used for a tonier, more high-falutin gorup). But sorry. Neither Nascar nor Wasp does it for me.

Anyway, the key to drone racing becoming successful – which, if it happens, will no doubt occur without my becoming a fan; after all NASCAR and professional video gaming have gotten along without me  just fine – is creating an engaging experience for online watchers.  So,

For now, [Horbaczewski’s] focused on well-produced video content to be consumed on browsers and mobile devices, including ones that put the viewer in the pilot’s seat.

Thus, the key to going pro will be GoPro.

Cool.

As said, I probably won’t become a fan. For one thing, I’m not wild about the idea of walking out of my house, looking up, and seeing (and hearing) nothing but drones zooming around spying on people and delivering packages from Amazon because no one could possibly wait an extra moment to get their hands on that order of lightbulbs, or the leprechaun salt and pepper shakers. Yet drone racing certainly appeals to me more than watching a bunch of guys in jumpsuits and helmets – guys you can’t even see - gunning around in tricked up, logo-plastered cars in circles ovals, at blur-speed. While kinda sorta hoping that some car will go planing off into the stands in a ball of flame.

Here’s why I think drone racing will be better than NASCAR:

• The drivers will probably be nerds, not good ol’ boys in leather jumpsuits and helmets.
• No one is likely to get killed. Even if two drones crash, it won’t likely result in death. Most are battery-powered, so there’ll be no exploding gas tanks to worry about. And the pilots are on the ground working a joy stick, not sitting in the driver’s seat manning a steering wheel and stick shift. So they’re not likely to die. Sure, this will eliminate some of the frisson with which people watch NASCAR, but that’s all for the good. I suppose there’s a risk that a drone could drop out of the sky and conk someone on the ground in their noggin. But if the courses are well thought out, this won’t happen.
• Viewers will get to see cool stuff. Even if there’s a camera mounted on the hood of a NASCAR car – and I have no idea whether this occurs – what’s there to see in a dirt circle oval? I suppose there’s the chance that a wheel will go flying off. Or that someone will start swearing up a storm at a pit stop. But mostly, yawn! But just think of a race that’s go-proing over Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon? Of course, I don’t want to see the peace of tourists or wild animals disturbed. But the views could end up being pretty interesting.

So bring on the Drone Racing League.

But is it a sport or not? Is video gaming? Is poker playing? Is NASCAR? Or even Nascar?

Meh.

Take me out to the ball game any old time. (Pitchers and catchers report on February 18^th. As sucky as the Red Sox were last year, I do have to give this a woo-hoo!)

Innocents Abroad, Otto Warmbier Edition

Otto Warmbier should be back in class, starting the second semester of his junior year at the University of Virginia. Instead, he’s sitting in jail in Pyongyang, having been nabbed at the airport just was he was getting out of town. It’s not quite clear why Warmbier is being detained. Just that:

North Korea's official KCNA news agency said on Friday that Warmbier "was caught committing a hostile act against the state", which it said was "tolerated and manipulated by the U.S. government".  (Source: Reuters)

Another interpretation of the official government statement on the incident suggested even more sinister intent:

In language that mirrors past North Korean claims of outside conspiracies, Pyongyang’s state media said the University of Virginia student entered the country under the guise of a tourist and plotted to destroy North Korean unity with “the tacit connivance of the U.S. government and under its manipulation.” (Source: cincinnati.com)

“Tacit connivance”, huh?

That sure sounds like what the government would be doing with some too-cool-for-school undergrad idiot who decided it would be awesome to spend New Year’s Eve partying in North Korea. Forget the ghost of Guy Lombardo. Forget the ghost of Dick Clark. Forget just kicking back and watching the ball drop with Ryan Seacrest. Nothing says Rockin’ New Year’s Eve like sportin’ around with Kim Jong-un.

Look, I feel bad for this kid. He must be scared shitless, and his parents must be out of their minds with worry.

Otto Warmbier is in jail in a closed, authoritarian country with which we have no diplomatic relations – so no kindly ambassador showing up at the jailhouse door with a ‘hang in there’ and a plate of cupcakes. And it’s a country run by a vicious, insane, arbitrary, brutal megalomaniac. It’s a place where you can get arrested for looking cross-eyed at a picture of fearless leader Kim Jong-un, who’s not especially fearless when it comes to petty insults directed his way.

And it’s a country that the US State Department warns citizens against visiting:

The Department of State strongly recommends against all travel by U.S. citizens to North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK). This replaces the Travel Warning for North Korea of April 15, 2015, to reiterate and highlight the risk of arrest and long-term detention due to the DPRK’s inconsistent application of its criminal laws.

Travel by U.S. citizens to North Korea is not routine, and U.S. citizens have been subject to arrest and long-term detention for actions that would not be cause for arrest in the United States or other countries.  North Korean authorities have arrested U.S. citizens who entered the DPRK legally on valid DPRK visas as well as U.S. citizens who accidentally or intentionally crossed into DPRK territory without valid visas. The Department of State has received reports of DPRK authorities detaining U.S. citizens without charges and not allowing them to depart the country.  North Korea has even detained several U.S. citizens who were part of organized tours.  Do not assume that joining a group tour or using a tour guide will prevent North Korean authorities from detaining you or arresting you.  Efforts by private tour operators to prevent or resolve past detentions of U.S. citizens in the DPRK have not succeeded in gaining their release.

That would be enough for me, and you’d think it would be enough for someone bright enough to be an honors student at the University of Virginia.

But Warmbier is oh, so very young, and oh, so very foolish (which is easy enough to be when you’re young). And so a tour run by Young Pioneer Tours – and you’ve really got to love a tour organization named after the USSR’s brainwashing, mind-effing, red-scarved Communist Youth groups of yore – must have hit all the right notes.  What young and foolish 21 year old wouldn’t be lured by an outfit “specialising in travel to North Korea, we are an adventure tour operator that provides “’budget tours to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from’”.

I did plenty of foolish things when I was young, but at least I knew enough to fear being detained in places where the US didn’t hold sway.

Hitchhiking through Yugoslavia, my friend Joyce and I were picked up by a couple of French guys. We stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch, and one of the guys leaned over, and in what we used to call an Irish whisper, announced “Nous avons hashish.”

This was a few years after Billy Hayes of Midnight Express fame was arrested in Turkey for carrying hashish. And a few months after someone who went to my high school was busted there, as well. Although Therese G. was acquitted, the thought of being in a rancid jail in a scary-enough foreign country was on our minds. There is no way in hell we would have used or carried drugs. Or be found in the company of someone idiotic enough to Irish whisper “Nous avons hashish” while a couple of members of the Yugoslav state police – who looked plenty armed and plenty dangerous – were seated at the next table.

In our pidgin French, we managed to convey that we wanted to get our backpacks out of the trunk of their voiture. They went their ways, and we went ours.

So this was as close as I came to being an innocent abroad, caught up in someone else’s folly.

Who knows what Otto Warmbier did? There are rumors that he had gotten drunk. That he’d done “something” at the hotel, possibly making a lame joke, cocking a snook, however innocuous, at Kim Jong-un in some foolhardy way. North Korea is just not a place where you can’t make a joke about the leader’s hairdo, or fold the cover of a magazine in such a way that it would crease his face, without risk of landing you and your family in prison.

As I said, I feel bad for this kid and his family, and hope he gets sprung quickly. But this will mean the State Department having to do some fandango to satisfy Kim Jung-un’s insane ego, and who knows how that will play out. Otto Warmbier’s now a pawn, and he’s not just in play, he’s at risk of being stuck in North Korea for quite a while.

But what part of ‘stay out of North Korea’ did he not understand?

I really don’t like it when Americans - under the supremely naive and narcissistic belief that they should be allowed to travel untrammeled, and with full American rights in our backpacks, anywhere in the world -  find themselves trapped. And I don't like us having to foot the bill to rescue those who do ill-advised and foolhardy things.

One thing for journalists or aid workers. Quite another thing for garden variety tourists, or college kids looking for something quirky and off-beat to add to their c.v. What was it a few years back? A bunch of adventurers who wanted the thrill of backpacking in Iran and Iraq?

When Otto Warmbier is retrieved – and I sincerely hope that happens soon – I think there should be some payback for whatever efforts the government has to put forth to haul him out of there. How about he appears in a PSA talking about what a fool he was to think he could be a jokey, haha, USA-USA-USA tourist in a place like North Korea.

"Boston Accent": Thank you, Seth Meyers. This is hilarious.

A few weeks back, I saw the movie Spotlight (which tells the story of the Boston Globe's excellent work uncovering the Catholic Church pedophilia scandal). I went with my sister Kath and her husband, Rick. We all came away saying that we thought the movie was very good, the acting great, etc. And, since we're locals, we soon segued into the accents, which we deemed generally acceptable -possibly because none of the actors were caught out (as Jack Nicholoson was in The Departed) trying too hard to get it right (and failing miserably).

Because this is what Bostonians do when we see a movie set in our town: we critique the accents. 

Of course, we expect Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Mark Wahlberg to get it right: they're from here. And then there are the pleasant surprises: Leo DiCaprio in The Departed; Johnny Depp in Black Mass. 

But as often as not, the accents are dreadful, and we become connoisseurs.

Do people from other regions do the same thing? I think Da Bulls and Da Bears guys from SNL nailed the Chicago accent, as did the guys on the plane in the Discount Doublechek ad. But what do I know? I grew up listening to my Chicago-bred mother tell us that Chicago speech was accentless, considered the purest of pure American way of speaking. All news anchors, we were told, aspired to speak Chicago. 

My mother's defense of the Chicagoan way of talking was at such odds with how I experienced the Chicago way of talking. (Ahh-nest ta Pete, whenever one of my Chicago relatives opened their mouth, what I heard was a variation of Da Bulls and Da Bears.)

I actually hope that regional accents never die out. They're fun and they're entertaining - as long as you avoid the trap of letting yourself sound like a moron. Which is, admittedly, easy enough to do if you're brought up speaking a variation of Massachusetts English. (Having grown up in the Haht a the Cawminwealth - that is, Wuhsta/Worcester - I have to admit that, sometimes, I don't know accent-wise whethah I'm goin' or comin'. Mostly, having grown up in a bi-accent family (my mother's Chicago accent tempering my father's Worcester boy), I never had an especially strong Worcester accent - which is quite similar to the dumb-bunny accent most closely associated with Boston. Not to mention that, over time, both consciously and unconsciously, I chose to not speak Worcester. When I'm tired, or excited, or pissed off, I sometimes do find myself fallin back into it.And I can definitely turn it on on demand, which is kinda wickid awesome. 

Someone else who can really turn it on is comedian Seth Meyers. And why not? He may have been born in Evanston, Illinois, but he spent quite a bit of his childhood in New Hampshire.

Seth demonstrates his linguistic abilities in a quite funny parody trailer for a non-movie: Boston Accent.  Here's the trailer:

And here's the URL, if that doesn't work.

Even if you're not from Boston, it's worth sitting through the Febreeze or FIOS or whatever ad gets in your way.

Meyers doesn't just have fun with the Boston accent - and our local obsession with how it's portrayed - he also takes on the tropes of the Boston movies which have become such cinematic staples since Good Will Hunting hit the screen nearly twenty years back. Unlike most (but not all) of the movies set in Boston, Good Will Hunting has romance rather than violence. But it does feature Red Sox talk and South Boston idiots. So it's all good.

Anyway, I much enjoyed Boston Accent, as well as some of the comments on the YouTube page. Including those from folks who insist, for some reason that I can't fathom, that Bostononians pronounce the name of our fair city as "Bahstan", when anyone who's spent more than a nano-second here knows that it's "Bawstin." Sheesh...

Ding-Dong, Avon Calling.

My mother’s friend Helen was an Avon Lady.

Many the time I crossed Main Street and pumped up the rickety back stairs in Helen’s three decker, cash in hand, to pick up my mother’s Avon order.

Other than hand cream, I don’t remember what my mother bought from Avon. She did wear makeup – powder and lipstick – so maybe that was among the wares. Hair setting lotion might have been in there, too. I do know that she had some on hand at one point, because my brother Rick, then aged 2, swallowed a bottle full of it and had to be taken to the ER to have is stomach pumped out. I remember when he came back that the blood vessels around his mouth were broken, I guess from his screaming. (I was not yet familiar with broken blood vessels, as I had not yet broken all the blood vessels around my mouth, from chin to nostrils, by sucking all the oxygen out of a rubber tumbler, turning said tumbler into a blood vessel smashing vacuum.)

My mother was a customer of Helen’s for years. Well into my adulthood, a tube of Avon hand lotion was an inevitable stocking stuffer for me and my sisters.

But did I ever buy anything from an Avon Lady? Not that I recall.

Over the years, I did end up going to a couple of Tupperware parties. (Do they still play the game with the ball you shove shapes into?) But Avon? I don’t remember anyone I know, anyone my age, who sold Avon.

I believe that the house party cosmetic of choice for my generation was Mary Kay, reeling in its coterie of sellers with the promise of taking a ride on the freeway of love in a pink Cadillac, earned by pushing a Cadillac trunk-load full of MK.

I’m guessing there’s nothing the matter with either Avon or Mary Kay cosmetics. Probably not all that different than the Estee Lauder I get at Macy’s. (At least I think that Estee’s what I use. I’m too lazy to get up and look, but the colors are black and gold, and it’s whoever took over for Prescriptives, which became my makeup of choice once I decided – can’t remember why now – to abandon Clinique.)

But there’s no one I know knocking on my door asking me to an Avon Party, or a Mary Kay Party, for that matter. And both my mother and Helen are long dead.

As far as I knew, Avon no longer existed.

But they do and, according to Bloomberg, “investors are cheering Avon's latest road map to recovery.” A private equity firm is acquiring most of its North American business, and share prices rose on this news.

The direct-selling beauty brand promised to cut costs, boost revenue and modernize its technology, products, marketing, and shipping processes. That all sounds good to investors who have watched Avon fumble away an $11 billion takeover offer from Coty in 2012, followed by an 88 percent drop in shares over the next three years. (Source: Bloomberg)

The plans to get Avon on a more positive course will include some much needed IT investment:

For heaven's sake, many of the company's six million sales representatives are still expected to sell products using paper pamphlets rather than the snazzy iPad app and mobile ordering the company now envisions.

Six million sales reps? That must be worldwide, not North America. North America’s population is roughly 500 million. Surely, there isn’t one Avon Lady (or Gentleman) for each 83 citizens of US+Mexico+Canada+Islands. I know that for many, selling Avon isn’t a full time gig. It’s a second job, a stay-at-home-mom job. It’s pin money.

Still, that’s a lot of sales reps, and I’m guessing that Cerberus, the PE firm acquiring them, won’t be carrying quite so many of them when they get through their cost cutting/investing. Even if these six million aren’t paid employees, my guess is that the pin money folks making a few bucks a month will be history. No snazzy iPad app for them, thank you.

I’m actually rooting for Avon.

I like old-timey brands, even those that I don’t actually use.

Who wants to live in a world where there’s no Ding-Dong, Avon Calling? Hope they put that as a sound effect in the snazzy iPad app…

Best Jobs in America? I've actually had some of them.

Last night I was ruing my life as a blogger. Surely, I told myself as I struggled to find a topic that would let me keep my one-a-day blogging streak going, blogger must be the worst job in the world. But then I came to my senses and realized that while keeping up the unbroken Pink Slip streak may be a drag, one of the most fun aspects of my freelance work is the blogging. 

Of course, unlike with Pink Slip, which is a pro bono, Sunday painter labor of love – clearly owned and operated by a cheapskate who pays zip - my clients actually pay me to write their posts.

Even though blogging for fun and profit is enjoyable (as, mostly, is blogging for fun and no profit), it did not make Glassdoor’s list of the 25 Best Jobs in America. As with pretty much any list of anything, the criteria won’t work for everyone. But, hey, number of job openings, salary and career opportunities rating are as good as anything – and less arbitrary and more measurable than more squishy quality of work-life categories.

First up? Data Scientist. With all that big data being hoovered up by all the Internet of Things things there are out there collecting our every everything, with every click (intentional or errant) that we make while surfing being mined, with CCTV capturing our every move made in public…well, it’s no wonder that there’s big demand for those who can make some sense of it. And with a median base salary of $116K, it pays pretty well.

In fact, most of the jobs on the list pay pretty well, kind of a ‘duh’, given that salary was one of the three factors that went into jobs making the list.

Anyway, with all these swell jobs paying good money, I guess it’s no surprise that tax manager ($108K median salary) is Number 2.

Solutions Architect ($119.5K), a fancy name for figuring out what the client needs/wants out of some type of IT implementation and how to give it to them, ranks third. Engagement Manager ($125K), a fancy name for the person who makes sure that the client is happy-dappy with the deployment the Solutions Architect has designed, ranks fourth. While I’ve done needs analysis and extremely high level solution design (make that exceedingly extremely high level), I’d never claim to have been a Solutions Architect. But Engagement Manager? Back in the day, when I worked as a Project Manager on large scale “solutions” (note: post some day on why I hate this word) implementations, the Project Manager was also the Engagement Manager. 

So I’ve had a job that makes the Top Four.

Unlike Number 5: Mobile Developer. Does America really need more than 2,000 more folks developing mostly useless mobile apps?

Rounding out the Top Ten: HR Manager (who knew?); Physician’s Assistant; Product Manager; Software Engineer; and Audit Manager.

By anyone’s definition, I spent quite a few years during my full-time career as a Product Manager. Although it was a job that could be ultra-frustrating – I once defined it as ‘everything it takes to get a product out the door and into the market that no one else wants to do' – I much enjoyed being a Product Manager in the wonderful world of tech. I loved working with techies, I loved talking to clients and figuring out what they wanted in a product, I loved researching the competition, I loved making sure that everything came together, I loved figuring out how to talk about the product...

I don’t think I’d have the patience to do it now, but it was something that I very much enjoyed doing, across multiple companies and multiple products over multiple years.

Variation on a theme: Product Marketing Manager, which came in at Number 13. Product Marketing is a subset of Product Manager. Product Marketers are more outward facing, and don’t tend to get involved in overseeing tasks like QA, documentation, etc. In some companies, the jobs are combined; in others, Product Marketing Manager is carved out. Been there, done that. Liked them both. Marketing Manager is also on the Top 25 list – more promotional, less content oriented than Product Marketing. Been there, done that. Liked Product Marketing a lot more than I liked Marketing Marketing.

The jobs on the list are pretty much high end: STEM, healthcare, finance, tech. Good jobs that require a good education. Trouble is, other than Software Engineer (49,270 job openings) and Nurse Practitioner (5,624 openings), there aren’t all that many of these jobs out here. I know what we’re going to be doing. But are there going to be any good jobs for the not-so-lucky-ducks out who'd like to do something other than greet at Walmart or drive for Uber?

On behalf of the elderly female population

Who among us hasn’t, at least on one or two occasions, done something on the job that was incredibly ill-thought-out and/or dunderheaded? Something that seemed like a good idea at the time, but that turned out to stone stupid. And/or that backfired entirely on us. 

I suspect that, over the course of a fifty year work-life most of us have done/said/emailed something completely idiotic.

But generally – at least in my (admittedly limited) experience – those idiotic things (at least at the moment they were conceived) made some sort of sense. They seemed, in fact, like a good idea at the time.

So, while I do have some sympathy for Sue Stenhouse, who until recently was the director of senior services for the city of Cranston RI, I can’t imagine that there was ever a point in time where her exercise in stupidity made sense.

Here’s what went down in Cranston when Ms. Stenhouse was introducing a program in which high school kids would help seniors out with snow shoveling. An admirable program, surely. And what of it if, in what has up until now been a pretty snowless winter in these parts, Ms. Stenhouse ported in the Zamboni shavings from the local ice rink to stand in for snow? Maybe she should have waited to announce her program until there was actually some snow on the ground, but why the hell not bring in real fake snow? 

Bringing in snow to improve the optics of the shoveling program introduction is absolutely forgivable.No snow, no harm, no foul.

Less so bringing in a middle-aged man in bad makeup and worse wig, and wearing a highly personal nametag – “Cranston Senior Home Resident” to sit there to represent all those deserving seniors who would soon be having their sidewalks and the path to their trashcans shoveled out by the teens of Cranston. Which seems like an all-round bad idea that makes no sense whatsoever.

That’s “Cranston Senior Home Resident” in the curly blond wig. Seeing that wig does put to rest a question that has been asked since 1964, when Harpo Marx passed away. And that question is, obviously, was Harpo Marx buried with his wig? And the answer is, obviously, ‘obviously not.’

Ms. Stenhouse, while perhaps not yet a senior – from her Linkedin Profile, it looks like she’s in her late fifties – is close enough to shoveling program age eligibility to know what an elderly woman actually looks like. And on behalf of women in the demographic that would benefit from the shoveling program – even if most of us in our sixties are still, fortunately, capable of doing our own damned shoveling – I would like to point out that this isn’t what elderly women look like. The guy in the Harpo wig is at once both too young looking and completely absurd looking. Not that us elders can't be young looking. Or even completely absurd. Still...

And that nametag? Was Ms. Stenhouse counting on nobody at the presser asking “Cranston Senior Home Resident” for a comment? Perhaps she felt it would be a tad dishonest to give “Cranston Senior Home Resident” a fake real name. So no Ethel Fudd, no Bertha Mertz.

But you have to ask why Ms. Stenhouse, as director of elder services for Cranston, didn’t have any Cranston senior she could actually tap to sit there in back of the pile of fake snow, in front of actual – at least as far as we know – Cranston teenagers, to lend senior support to this program.

Eagle-eyed Providence TV reporters sussed the fakery out, and, in the wake of the revelation, Ms. Stenhouse resigned from her position.

I’m sure she was embarrassed – she should have been – but this seems like an over-reaction. As would have been any move to fire her.

She did something exceptionally clumsy and dunderheaded. But it wasn’t as if she were doing something evil, or attempting to defraud the public.

I hope that, someday, she can look back at this episode and laugh. If only because, at some point in the not-so-distant future, she has an epiphany and realizes that this crude caricature is not actually what elderly women tend to look like.

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

Info source: Boston Globe.

A holdup man named Yosemite Sam…What’s wrong with Jeremy Jacobs, anyway?

Somewhere along the line – when I was in high school and beyond my prime Looney Tunes watching years – someone gave the Rogers family a bunch of kids records. One that was played repeatedly Chez Rogers was about Yosemite Sam, the Looney Tunes character. Although the song was quite irritating, I actually considered it a blessed break from my sister Trish’s incessant playing of the Mary Poppins album. (I swear, all I need is for someone to queue up the first couple of notes of that one, and I can launch right in to a verbatim warble through the entire album.)

The loony Yosemite Sam tune began thus:

A holdup man named Yosemite Sam, robbed the Looney Tune’s train out of Boulder Dam

As it turned out, old Yosemite Sam wasn’t actually lookin’ to rob anyone. As he sang:

I don’t want your money. I don’t want your jewels. [Prounounced ‘jools’.]…I wanna ring-ring the bell on the choo-choo locomotive.

Well, there’s a latter-day Yosemite Sam, one Jeremy Jacobs, and, unlike Yosemite Sam, Jeremy Jacbos does want our money. That would be the tax payers’ money. Jeremy Jacobs thinks he’s entitled to it as the trademark holder of some of the buildings and sites at Yosemite National Park.

The name Jeremy Jacobs is probably better known in these here parts than in other places.

He is, after all, the owner of the Boston Bruins and TD Garden, which replaced the storied Boston GAH-din, and is where the Bruins and the Celtics play. (And where Bruce Springsteen will play on February 4^th, Trish and I in attendance, her musical tastes having evolved from Mary Poppins and Looney Tunes. Trish was, in fact, an “early adopter” of The Boss, and was the person who turned me into a fan.)

Mostly when you hear Jacobs’ name hereabouts it’s as part of criticism of Bruins’ ownership, which has produced one – count ‘em one – measly Stanley Cup in the past 44 years. As much as anything, this is a hockey town, and fans of the Bruins are as vocal, crazed, and passionate a bunch as any sports fans anywhere. So there’s been plenty of pissing and moaning about him and his ownership, starting when he let Number 4 (Bobby Orr) skate away shortly after he bought the team. Reason enough around here to despise the guy, let alone that he’s made a grab for some names that nobody but we the people ought to own. (Another reason for the antipathy towards Jacobs is, I suspect, the fact that he lives in Buffalo, and doesn’t have any presence or much philanthropy here. “Our” other sports team owners – Pats, Celts, Red Sox - are mostly from around here and are very active and visible in the community. John Henry of the Red Sox might not hail from these parts, but he married a local woman and lives in Brookline. Jacobs hangs his hat in Buffalo.)

Jacobs’ company, Delaware North, is in the hospitality business, and for years their sub, DNC Parks, has owned the concessions at Yosemite National Park (as well as at other parks). Then they lost their Yosemite deal. And that, apparently, pissed them off. So, Delaware North:

…went to court seeking compensation for what it says is $51 million of intellectual property, including trademarks on everything from ski and golf areas to the Yosemite National Park name itself.

Government attorneys have valued the intellectual property at about $3.5 million, and called DNC Parks’ estimate “grossly exaggerated and improper.” (Source: Boston Globe)

While all this plays out, the National Park Service is changing the names of some of the Yosemite’s facilities “to avoid liability or the potential for closures as a result of the ongoing court battle.”

Some of the trademarks were inherited by Delaware when they took over the Yosemite contract in the 1990’s. Others they scooped up on the QT, without the Park Service noticing.

If I read the article correctly – and I didn’t spend a lot of time on textual exegesis – the ownership of the trademarks isn’t in dispute. What’s irking Delaware is that, when they assumed the contracts back in the day, they had to pay the prior concessionaire for them as part of their deal.

According to its lawsuit, DNC Parks was required to purchase the assets of its predecessor, Curry Co., when it won the Yosemite contract, and it says the National Park Service is similarly obligated to require Aramark to buy DNC’s assets, including trademarks, at fair market value.

The lawsuit said the park service awarded Aramark the new contract without the same requirement.

So Jacobs/Delaware is looking for redress from the government: pay up or Aramark doesn’t get to use their trademarks.

Some of those trademark names aren’t exactly household words. I suspect that anyone who’s been through Yosemite remembers seeing the Ahwahnee Hotel. I remember it from 40+ years back, and remember thinking that it was a cool place that I’d like to stay some day when I could afford to spend the night in a national park in something other than an L.L. Bean tent. But did I remember the hotel’s name? No.

But in late September – no doubt when they knew they’d lost the Yosemite contract, or knew they were in danger of doing so – Delaware applied to trademark the word “Yosemite.”

Talk about naked greed! Talk about something that Delaware has no business owning. What doesn’t Jeremy Jacobs get about this land is your land? It’s not as if they came up with the name. It should be there for all the people – including Looney Tunes. I don’t think the Yosemite trademark has been granted, but certainly hope it never is.

If Delaware needs the money that badly, they can sell the Bruins to someone who’s more serious about winning the Stanley Cup.