Veterans' Day 2020

Last Saturday, I was just heading out for a walk with my friend Kyung. We were nearing the Arthur Fiedler Bridge, on our way to the Esplanade, a lovely park that runs along the Charles River. We heard car horns starting to honk, full-throated cheering. We looked at each other. This could only mean one thing. Yes!

Having worn my Biden Aviators/Harris Chucks shirt three out of the prior four days, I had retired it in favor of my Women's March Boston January 2017 tee. In any case, I felt appropriately dressed for a bit of a celebration.

We continued on our walk - a beautiful day that felt more like September than November - along a crowded Esplanade. Lots of folks out walking or biking. Lots of dogs. Lots of kids. 

Was it just me, or did everyone seem relieved and joyful? After all, Boston gave Biden-Harris 83% of our votes. So, yes, I'll say that it just wasn't my imagination. People WERE relieved and joyful. 

We stopped a couple of times to answer relieved, joyful texts from friends; ordered a pizza; and swung back to The Hill to pick it up. 

We took it back to my place - we're in each other's very small bubbles - and plunked ourselves down in front of the TV to watch the news. We even turned on Fox for a bit. They were rather subdued but mostly realistic. We switched back to our joint political TV home, MSNBC, once we heard someone (was it Ari Fleischer?) tell us that we needed to give Trump time to get a grip on his emotions before we can expect him to concede. Come on. He's the President of the United States. Grow the f up!

After scarfing down our pizza - and never has pizza tasted better - we walked back out. There was some sort of gathering up by the State House, and another on Boylston Street at the corner of the Common and the Public Garden, but we didn't go. We just walked around and soaked up the crowd excitement - with lots of honking in the background.

I am so relieved. I am so joyful.

Yes, I'm aware that the next couple of months could be quite fraught. Trump can do a shit-ton of harm on his way out the door. So far (I'm writing this on Saturday evening), Trump is still insisting that he has won. 

Yes, I'm aware that McConnell will likely be in charge of the Senate, and is perfectly capable of being his rancid, obstructionist self and block even the most centrist and modest thing that Biden wants to get done. 

Yes, I'm aware that nearly half of the electorate went out and voted for someone I believe to be singularly unfit for the office he holds. (Forget the lies, the ignorance, the bullying, the racism, the misogyny, the proud no-nothingness, the meanness, the QANON nonsense, the encouragement to white nationalists/fascists, the scorn for the military. Do you have to personally die from COVID before you accept the fact that we're in the midst of a pandemic? And that we have a far worse death rate than virtually all other "advanced" economies?)

I'm just exhausted. You'd think I'd have done something more than write 300 get-out-the-vote and make anytime-I'm-asked donations through Act Blue.

And today we celebrate Veterans Day, a non-holiday holiday if ever. 

Here's what I had to say last year. It still holds. 

So Happy Veterans Day to our veterans. And Happy It's Almost Over Day to all Americans. 

Maine looking for that elusive Fountain of Youth

I've only been there once in the last few years now - and that was mostly a pass through on my way to Canada, with a brief look-in at Bar Harbor - but it's a state I've visited many times over the years. And it's a state that I'm tremendously fond of. (I'm writing this on Tuesday, November 2nd, so I don't yet know whether my ardor will be heightened or a bit quenched by the election results. I'm hoping that the weak and weasel-y Senator Susan "I'm Disappointed" Collins is shown the door, and that the state goes Full Blue.)

Maine is beautiful. It has some lovely beaches (so what if sticking your toe in the water, other than on the one day in early September when it warms up, can send you into quick freeze cardiac arrest). Some iconic lighthouses. Pretty and/or funky little towns like Damariscotta, Camden, and Bar Harbor. Excellent lobster rolls. Wild blueberries. Enough artsy-ness to satisfy the most-art loving among us. Lakes, oceans, mountains. Minor League Baseball. (Go, Sea Dogs!) A store that sells the wooden wares produced by prisoners. And a wonderfully cool small city in Portland, which has great shops and dining. 

Sure, the weather's not all that great. But, hell, I'm a New Englander. And I do have to admit that once you drift away from the tourist, summer vacation and skiing spots, plenty of Maine is poor and bleak. (It's been 35 years since "The Beans of Egypt Maine" was published, but I doubt that life's improved much for the sort of folks whose lives the novel depicted.)

Still, I could see living there, and I don't say that about very many places. 

It's also the oldest state. Not as in the state that's been a state the longest, which I'm pretty sure is Delaware. At least they were the first to ratify the Constitution. No, Maine is the oldest because its population is the oldest. Half of its people are 45 and up (vs. the U.S. median age of 37.9).

It's not because it's the Northern version of Florida or Arizona, with a bunch of old geezers transplanting themselves there when they retire. Sadly, it's because the young folks are fleeing the state because there's not all the much opportunity there if you don't want to trawl for lobsters, pick potatoes, fell trees, manufacture Bean Boots (L.L., not of Egypt) or work in tourism. 

To keep the young folks from fleeing, Maine has to find mo' better ways to get them employed. So an organization called FocusMaine is trying to scare up some job opportunities. They're doing so by focusing on agriculture, aquaculture, and life sciences.

Agriculture and aquaculture? Gulp. Aren't those the depressing industries that young people aren't interested in? Who wants to spend their fall harvesting potatoes in Aroostook County? Who wants to be out on George's Bank trying to haul in a big catch of cod when a nor'easter's blowing in?

The goal, of course, is not to create more jobs for blueberry pickers. (Even though I wouldn't mind if it were easier to find those tiny wild Maine blueberries in the market.)

...the goal is to capture more of the value [of all that agriculture and aquaculture] through local processing and production of upscale products. (Source: Bloomberg)

Which falls under their broader FocusMaine mantra of "catalyzing jobs where Maine's assets meet global trends." (I'm feeling a bit generous, so I'll forgive them that "catalyzing jobs" thang.)

Anyway, anyone who's been in business knows that focus is good. And focusing on your strengths is even better. And for Maine, that's good food/good seafood. Not to mention (although I was not aware of it):

...a strong tech sector, anchored by the likes of Jackson Laboratory for Mammalian Genetics in Bar Harbor, the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, and Idexx Laboratories Inc. in Westbrook.

To date, the results have been modest:

In its first three years, FocusMaine says, it has worked with more than 100 companies, helped place more than 1,500 interns, and helped create 260 jobs. Which is not a huge number, even for a small state like Maine, but a start. 

Yes, it is a start.

And FocusMaine admirably wants to make sure that they can create jobs not just in the places where I like to visit, and could even envision living, but in places like the fictional town of Egypt, which are pretty poor and depressing. (A lot of towns in Maine are named for places people would rather be: Paris, Mexico, Bangor, Denmark, Naples, Peru. Calais. Even Egypt would be preferable to some of the god-forsaken spots in Maine.)

I wish FocusMaine the best of luck. For the sake of the state, and for my sake, too. Because if I ever do end up living in Maine, I'd sure rather there be people there who aren't my cranky, crabby, creaky old peers. Let's get that median age down!

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And Happy Birthday, Molly, to my wonderful niece. 

A not so lovely bunch of coconuts

Although I eat meat (some) and wear leather (when I wear real shoes, which isn't all that often), I believe in protecting the animals we consume from abuse. When I buy meat and animal-related products, I look for brands that are ethically produced: free-range chicken, grass-fed beef, contented cows.

So I agree that people should treat animals - whether we're consuming them or experimenting on them or watching them jump through hoops for our entertainment - as ethically as possible. Still, I often find the positions taken by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) to be extreme. Yes, the conditions under which factory chickens live and die are cruel, but are those farms really concentration camps? Is the slaughter of chickens really a Holocaust?

But when it comes to the exploitation of the monkeys of Thailand, the use of monkeys as forced labor, I'm PETA all the way.

PETA investigators from its Asia division found cruelty to monkeys at farms and facilities used by Theppadungporn Coconut Co., according to the animal rights group.

"When not being forced to pick coconuts or perform in circus-style shows for tourists, the animals were kept tethered, chained to old tires, or confined to cages barely larger than their bodies," a PETA news release stated. "One coconut farmer confirmed that when monkeys are terrified and try to defend themselves, handlers may have their teeth pulled out." (Source: CNN)

Jeez, it's bad enough worrying about whether human laborers - including children - in many of the Asian countries that produce so much of what we eat, wear, and use are treated terribly: paid a pittance, working under unsafe conditions, living in squalor. Now we have to worry about whether monkeys are being used as slaves?

Most animals (pretty much any and all other than sponges and coral) are to some extent sentient. They feel pain, they experience emotion. But there's sentience and then there's sentience. So, no, I don't think a chicken's life is as valuable as that of a human. But as you climb up the evolutionary chain and get closer to homo sapiens, the sentience gets more sentient.

Monkeys? Okay, they're not as close as our great ape brothers and sisters - common chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans - but they're right up there. In terms of sentience, in terms of intelligence, they're head and shoulders above chickens. Which is why they're being dragooned into picking coconuts when they should be gamboling around in treetops.

Thanks to the PETA investigation, Costco is no longer carrying Chaokoh (a Theppadungporn brand) coconut milk.

"No kind shopper wants monkeys to be chained up and treated like coconut-picking machines," said PETA President Ingrid Newkirk in a statement. "Costco made the right call to reject animal exploitation."

Not that I'm a coconut milk drinker, but no kind coconut milk drinker wants those monkeys treated so poorly, either.

Other retailers, including Walmart, are looking into the allegations and may call it quits with Chaokoh as well. (You can buy their products on Amazon, if you're so inclined.)

For its part, Theppadungporn has conducted its own investigation and has found no monkey business, and they've "noted that its suppliers have signed memorandums of understanding that there's no monkey labor at their farms."

Maybe I'm just the suspicious type, but I don't know if I'd be so trusting of those MOUs claiming that no monkey labor is being used.

Anyway, Costco will resume carrying the coconut milk once they're satisfied that the coconuts used in Chaokoh milk are harvested by humans, not monkeys.

There's no doubt in my mind that human coconut harvesters will be paid a pittance, and that they're likely living under some pretty miserable conditions. Still, these humans at least theoretically have a choice. They're paid, however piss-poorly. And they're not living in cages. Or forced to perform.

I know, I know. We exploit animals all the time. But pretty much since the advent of the internal combustion engine, we haven't used them to plow our fields or lug us around. And there's something particularly appalling about kidnapping monkeys and making them harvest of not so lovely bunch of coconuts.

Tomorrow's the Big Toy Hall of Fame Announcement. Let's see how I do.

I don't know what I was doing last November that was so all-fired important that I missed the announcement of the 2019 inductees into the Toy Hall of Fame. So I never did hear the excellent news that the Coloring Book - long one of my favorites - has at last made it in. The Coloring Book was selected alongside Magic: The Gathering (whatever that is), and Matchbox Cars. (I've been more diligent in the past in keeping up with what's up on the toy front. Here's my 2018 post.)

Anyway, I'm on it this year, and later this morning, I'll be on the lookout for the press release announcing the winners. 

The nominees are:

Baby Nancy, one of the first (if not the first) Black baby doll that got the ethnic details right. Baby Nancy wasn't just a white baby doll made with a different shade of plastic. She was unapologetically Black, and had textured hair to boot. This was back in the late 1960's, when it was already high time for little Black kids to have a doll that kinda-sorta looked like them. (I say kinda-sorta, because it's not like I actually looked like Tiny Tears.) Shindana, the toy company that introduced Baby Nancy, closed in the 1980's after bringing out a number of dolls designed with Black kids in mind. But Baby Nancy served her purpose, and today there are plenty of Black dolls on the market. 

Bingo was also nominated. Growing up, I played plenty of Bingo. Somewhere along the line, my family was given a cast off real Bingo set, replete with the hand-cranked number dispenser. But Bingo is more closely associated with old folks in the church hall, hand stamping the multiple cards they have in front of them. So, toy? You decide. (I decided it's really not.)

As pre-teen, I read a few books about girls and their horses, but it was never a big thing in my neighborhood. I didn't know anyone who "rode." The closest association I had with horses was my father's cousin Arthur who was a motorcycle cop in Worcester who doubled as a cop-on-a-horse when needed for ceremonial purposes. The girls in horse books were all rich, suburban, and, I was pretty sure, Protestant. And I wasn't all that interested in their impossibly remote lives. I did watch a lot of cowboy shows, but horses themselves? Meh. So I apparently missed the Breyer Horses "which realistically captured the spirt and magic of the living creatures" and which apparently "seized the imaginations of children." Just not any children I knew. 

Jenga is somewhat fun to play, but it was never going to be the game of choice for someone with such limited mechanical ability and devoid of spatial reasoning. Which, alas, would be me. 

Lite-Brite (1966) came out too late for me, and I don't recall that my sister Trish (10 years my junior) ever had one. Too bad. It's no coloring book, but I would have much enjoyed poking little colored pegs into a black board and watching them light up.

Master of the Universe was a "line of action figures". He-Man, et al. All boys had for action figures when I was a kid was khaki-colored plastic GIs, so this was an improvement of sorts. At least they're colored. And they don't all look alike. My experience with them is limited, but I seem to remember buying Moss-Man for a young friend back in the day. That young friend is turning forty next year, so this was a while ago.

My Little Pony are so amazingly creepy that just the thought of one of them makes me crave the sturdy, WASP reality of the Breyer Horses. But I must confess that, if these had been around when I was a kid, I would have been begging for a little pastel blue or purple, big eyed Little Pony with flowing cream locks and fluttering eye lashes.

With family, with friends, I constantly played board games growing up. Monopoly. Clue. Chinese Checkers. Easy Money. Horse Race. Shoots and Ladders. Parcheesi. Go to the Head of the Class. Candyland. Concentration. Sorry. (See below.) But I don't remember ever playing Risk. There was one strategy game that I played occasionally. I think it was Stratego. Or maybe Battleship. I seem to remember little metal ships.  I'm quite sure that we would have considered Risk too brainy, too elite. Played, no doubt, by the sorts of families who collected Breyer Horses.

Now Sidewalk Chalk. There is a fabulous, and fabulously versatile, plaything. Oh, it's all fancied up now: bright colors, easily wash-off-able. But we were happy with a packet of white chalk. Or, if we were lucky, colored chalk. Sure, it was associated with school. As in, writing on the blackboard, and, later, greenboard. And with getting stuck clapping erasers after school. But in civilian life, it was used - of course - for Hopscotch. And for drawing things, like hearts with our initials and the initials on whatever boy we were crushing on (or our friends thought we were crushing on) at the moment. Whenever I come across evidence that kids have been chalking the sidewalks, which happens quite frequently in the Public Garden, which is just across the street from where I live, it always puts a smile on my face. Even if they're the type of kids who, in my childhood, would have collected Breyer Horses and played Risk.

I spent many hours of my childhood over a board of  Sorry, which was right up there with Monopoly and Clue in terms of frequency of play. What could be better than being crazily aggressive and screaming Sorry! at the top of your lungs, when you really weren't sorry in the least. (A similar thrill was achieved when playing the card game "I Doubt It," when you could challenge someone by pretty much calling them a liar.)

In my humble, gray-haired opinion, it's way too soon for Tamagotchi, the digital pet, to make it into the Hall of Fame. Plenty of time to get to virtual anything, once the old-timer toys and games (think Chalk!) are enshrined. 

I love the game of Yahtzee, and still play it occasionally with my sister Trish. Like the best games, success relies on a combination of skill and luck. 

But only three toys or games are going to make into the Hall of Fame for 2020, so I have to go with:

• Baby Nancy (it's time)
• Chalk (simple, classic, inexpensive)
• Sorry! (all those childhood hours devoted to this game)

Sorry, Yahtzee. Maybe next year.

Anyway, the winners will be announced later today. We'll see if this is my week for picking winners. 

Mental Health Day

The other day, I got a company-wide email from the head of HR at one of my clients. I've worked with this outfit for years, and have always had an internal email address. So I get to see this stuff, even if it doesn't apply.

The purpose of the email was to announce that Tuesday, November 3rd, was being declared a Wellness Day that everyone should take off. 

In her note, the HR head mentioned that this was what we used to refer to as a mental health day. And that, between the pandemic and (for U.S. employees) the election, everyone deserved one. So, a day off.

I was never a big one for taking a mental health day. The only time I can remember taking one was when I worked for Wang and just had a day when I could not bear going in. Amazing, given what a terrible place Wang was, that I only acted on this impulse one.

Other than the folks I worked with, who were wonderful - and working with great people does count for plenty - Wang was just god-awful. 

It was an extreme bureaucracy that made it nearly impossible to get anything done in an expeditious way. I was in an outlier group, dedicated to the financial services industry, and our products were software, not hardware. (They did run on Wang gear, of course.) But the entire product development and release process was built for hardware manufacture, which just didn't work for software releases - especially for those of us in a niche market. So we were always scurrying around trying to see what we could get away with without going through the Wang process.

We'd cut our own disks to ship to clients, we'd copy our documentation rather than have it printed, we'd go guerrilla to get marketing collateral created. 

I once enlisted two fellows in my group to pose as clients for a datasheet, as it was going to take months to get the professionals in on the act. This backfired a bit, as both of my models had five-o'clock shadow, a problem that the professionals might have used makeup to get around. Nonetheless, I got my datasheets printed within a couple of weeks, not the months it would have taken if I'd played by the rules. After all these years, I can still picture exactly what Jack and Charlie looked like on those datasheets. Thanks, guys!

A colleague once brought her hairdryer into work so she could fake "shrink wrap" the documentation for her product so it would look more like an official Wang release.

The bureaucracy was just one terrible aspect of Wang. 

The physical plant was terrible, and by end of my time there, Wang had pared down on niceties like emptying the trash and replacing burnt out lightbulbs. One day, while taking the staircase down a few flights, I nearly walked into a ginormous loogie that someone had hawked up. 

One of my male colleagues reported that he'd gone into a stall in the men's room and found a row of dried boogers lined up over the toilet paper roll.

It was that kind of place. 

Plus a terrible commute. Plus perpetual lay-offs. 

So it was amazing that I took only one mental health during the 2 years, 7 months, and 17 days I worked there. (Not that I was counting.)

Inevitably, me being me, I didn't enjoy that mental health day in the least. In fact, it made me sick. 

Still, it was better than being at Wang.

Anyway, Pink Slip will be taking a mental health day today, even though I may be in far greater need of one come tomorrow.

I will spend the day trying to avoid the news, and I'll be reciting the Biden mantras: Truth over lies. Science over fiction. Unity over division. Hope over fear. 

Everything else is a bunch of malarkey.

Foreboding

Last Thursday, I went grocery shopping. No big deal. I go to Roche Bros. at least once a week. This time, I only had a few things to pick up, but I added a couple of eye-to-the-future items - e.g., a 5 lb. bag of flour - to my cart.

What if? What if? What if? I kept asking myself. What if the stores close? What if there's nothing on the shelves? Last spring there was a flour shortage...

I probably have enough in my larder to last 2-3 months without stepping toe in a grocery store. Sure, it would get pretty boring - yet another lunch of canned soup and peanut butter crackers; yet another dinner of pasta with whatever. And how many batches of brownies - and, yes, I do have a package of egg replacer, if it comes to that, so I'll be able to bake - do I want to bake and consume all by my lonesome? Talk about the COVID-19! 

I know I won't starve. On the contrary, I could probably live of the fat of my muffin top for a good week if it came to that.

I'm good for TP and paper towels, too, but if I happen to be walking by a CVS in the next day or so, and they have Bounty, I won't pass up the opportunity to do a bit more stocking up. Same for TP, even though I believe I have a year's worth in my inventory.

I nabbed another quart of isopropyl alcohol the other day, and I may grab some bleach next time I look in at the hardware store. (I have no expectation that I'll find Clorox wipes or Lysol spray before I'm vaccinated.) But disinfectant-wise, I'm good. 

So, yeah, if some super lockdown is put in place, I can survive quite nicely. 

I even have my new rowing machine, in case the hypothetical looming lockdown forbids solo, masked walks with no one in sight. 

My backlog of books is large. And there's always Kindle. 

Still, I have an intense sense of foreboding about what's coming.

Despite all the isolation, the social distancing, the mask-wearing, the hand-washing, the hand-wringing, it sure does sound like it's going to get a lot worse before it gets a little better. 

Last spring, in the early days of the lockdown, things were pretty grim around here. No, Boston was never as bad as NYC, but we were hit early and hard. Many days when I took my walk, I seemed to be the only person out and about. It was creepy. 

But then spring - though plenty dreary and rainy this year - sprung, and brought with it more life to the city. Nothing equal to the before times, but not terrible-terrible. Everyone (or pretty much 99% of everyone) had a mask on, but there were people on the streets, in the parks, and it felt good. And there was that blessed light at the end of the day (if not the tunnel) that made it all more livable. 

There is no light yet at the end of the COVID tunnel, and that blessed light at the end of the day was truncated over the weekend when Daylight Savings Time ended. My least favorite day of the year is the one that involves "falling back" one hour. That mythic one-day extra hour of sleep doesn't make up at all for the fact that it will be dark by 4:30 p.m.-ish

It might not seem so awful for those who live further into the time zone. Sure, it's darker in the morning for them, but they get that evening light. Sunset in Boston yesterday was 4:37 p.m. Not that I'd want to live in Cleveland, but the sun set at 5:21 p.m. there. 

When it's still light in the evening, I'm apt to take a little spin around before it gets dark. In the before times, I'd go out occasionally after dark. Sometimes to actually do something social-lifey. (Remember that?) And sometimes just to take a little stroll on Charles Street, where there would be people heading in and out of shops and restaurants. Or to walk over to the Frog Pond skating rink on the Common to watch folks skate. Don't think that'll be happening this year. (To me, one of the great urban sights is seeing people skating after dark.)

Now I'll be pretty much in for the day, in for the night by late afternoon. Grim.

What usually makes the dark more tolerable is having the holidays to look forward to. 

I'm by no means a live-and-die-for-Christmas type of gal, but I like the lights on the Boston Common. I like the lights on my tree. I enjoy the bustle, even if I'm not a crazy participant in it. (I'm a shop early person.) 

I'm hoping that the city still turns the Common lights on. But they probably won't have the caroling ceremony the night they're turned on. 

I'll get a wreathe and a couple of poinsettias. Will I get a big tree this year? Maybe, maybe not. Will I host Christmas Eve for my family this year? Maybe, maybe not.

First Night is off, so there won't be a million people pouring into Boston for the parade, the entertainment, and the fireworks. (I never took much part in it, but I enjoyed the early kiddy fireworks that I could watch from my front steps.)

That night, we'll be ringing out a rotten year. I'm hoping that the rottenness is somewhat alleviated by the election outcome, which, as it's still unknown as of this writing, only adds more foreboding into my personal foreboding mix.

But by the end of January, we'll be seeing a bit more late at the end of the day. Sunset at 5! Wow!

And if there is a God, Joe Biden will be president, and Donald Trump will have left the stage peacefully. (I'm not optimistic.)

But if the forecasts for COVID are correct, we'll be looking at thousands upon thousands of additional deaths. Hundreds of thousands sick, many with lasting health problems. Millions upon millions experiencing economic difficulty, if not outright ruin. 

Yes, if Biden wins, and the Democrats take the Senate, there'll be some forward movement on a co-ordinated, science-based response to the pandemic. And some economic relief in sight. (God forbid - if there is a God to forbid - that Mitch McConnell continues to rule the Senate roost.) Even if Trump somehow manages to hang on, there'll be better treatment for COVID and some forward movement on a vaccine. 

Overall, though, I feel a profound sense of foreboding about the coming winter. 

I am fortunately not someone given to depression. But I am so not looking forward to what I fear is coming our way. 

There's a word for it: foreboding. 

Trick or Treat? Grateful for the neighbors who are getting into the spirit.

I always enjoy Halloween, but this year it's looking like another 2020 Bah Humbug. Can kids even got out trick or treating?

Usually, especially when it's on a Saturday, it's a mob scene in both of the places I traditionally spend Halloween: Beacon Hill and Salem, Massachusetts.

This year, I'll be in Boston, and once it gets dark, I'll probably take a little stroll around to see the houses with their candles lit, their lights on, their jack o'lanterns grinning. 'Cause this is a neighborhood where a lot of people get into the spooky spirt and decorate. 

Last Saturday, I strolled around the 'hood to see what was up and took pics of some of the better in-the-spirit houses I passed.

Thank you, neighbors for making spirits bright.

Now, I just need to figure out what size bag of Butterfingers I need to pick up at CVS, because it's just not Halloween without some Butterfingers.

Happy Halloween, you guys. Let's hope that next year won't be such a boo-fest. Can't wait to see my first kid going at as Donald J. Trump in an orange jumpsuit. 

"Quibi. I think that will be a fun name for us."

When I first heard of Quibi last spring, my initial thought was "not interested." Which translates into "not buying." And it turns out I wasn't the only one.

Quibi - from "quick bite" - was a content service focused on delivering short burst videos to smartphones. (They recently made a last ditch effort to provide their videos on other devices as well.)

There is, of course, no lack of content you can get on your smartphone, since pretty much everything you can watch on your television set or your computer is also available on the really small screen. And that means everything from a full-length movie to a short burst Tik Tok video. 

So who needs another service, even if it comes with original content like Murder House Flip (which I wrote about last spring)? Make that especially if it comes with original content like Murder House Flip. 

Quibi launched last spring, and six months later, it's out of business. It was able to attract plenty of glam funding - $1.75 billion worth - but failed to woo enough subscribers to keep it going. 

You'd think that, what with the pandemic gluing people to their devices for longer periods of time, they might have had a shot, but there are just too many sources of content out there that subscribers are already paying for or that's just plain free.

$1.75 billion sure sounds like a lot of dough for an outfit that only managed to last six months, but what do I know. I mean, I went to business school and all, but it's not like I'm some kind of Meg Whitman or something.

If her name rings a bell, it's because for over 20 years, she's been one of the most prominent women CEOs. She headed up eBay. She headed up Hewlitt-Packard. And she headed up Quibi. Prior to becoming CEOs, she worked, among other places, at Hasbro, where she headed up the division that owns Mr. Potato Head, and where she was responsible for bringing the Teletubbies to the U.S. (Teletubbies say 'eh oh'.) 

She also spent $150 million of the billions she's made over the years trying to get herself elected governor of California, losing to Jerry Brown, who is pretty much the antithesis of Meg Whitman. So it's not like she has an impeccable record when it comes to bad ideas. 

Quibi's cofounder is Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose name might not be as household-wordish as Whitman's, but who has quite a background himself: Disney, Dreamworks (which he co-founded with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen)...

The duo managed to attract some heavy-hitting investors: Disney, NBCUniversal, and WarnerMedia. They had advertising commitments from blue chippers like Google, P&G, and Pepsi. And some big name content providers as well. It wasn't all Murder House Flip:

Quibi had about 50 original titles at launch, including shows featuring originals with Jennifer Lopez, Chrissy Teigen, Chance the Rapper, Liam Hemsworth, Sophie Turner, Lena Waithe, Nicole Richie and Reese Witherspoon. It also greenlit pricey projects with Steven Spielberg, Sam Raimi, Antoine Fuqua, Anna Kendrick, Rachel Brosnahan, Issa Rae, Kevin Hart, Steven Soderbergh and the Kardashians, among others. (Source: Yahoo Finance)

One of the sweeteners for the content providers - who were paid up to $100K per minute for their offerings - was that the content producers got to keep ownership of their content. And, while they had seven-year licenses "after two years, content owners have the right to assemble the shows and distribute them elsewhere." So what was appearing on your smartphone wasn't all that exclusive, unless you're the type of content consumer who needs to see what's new with Nicole Richie and Chance the Rapper right away, and just can't wait for it to become non-exclusive. 

This part of their structure turned out to be a problem when  Quibi went shopping around for someone to save them. Turns out, since the content wasn't Quibi's own, possible buyers of the company weren't that interested. And with just 500,000 subscribers... (Some/most of who probably came from Quibi's deal with T-Mobile to offer a free Quibi subscription to their customers.) Well, yawn.  (In comparison, Hulu has 28 million paying customers.)

And now Quibi is winding down. They're laying off their 200 employees and looking to sell off whatever they actually do own. And they're probably looking for someone to take their 10 year lease for 49,000 square feet worth of office space off their hands, too. 

Investors are hoping they'll be able to claw back 50% of what they put in, but that's probably optimistic. But it's likely not that big a deal for most of them. (To quote Ralph Kramden of The Honeymooners: "It came easy, and it went easy.")

When Whitman and Katzenberg announced Quibi in October 2018, they were having fun with it, as one does, Whitman noting that:

“Jeffrey can't stop saying the name Quibi. I think that will be a fun name for us.”

As it turns out, maybe not all that much fun, unless you count the fun the people making fun of their downfall are having. And probably not as much fun as managing Mr. Potato head, let alone getting Tinky-Winky, La-La, Dipsy and Po to cross the pond.

Absence of color, Peruvian Connection style

 'Tis the season when the catalogues start rolling in. And I get a ton of catalogues rolling in, both from companies that I regularly purchase from (L.L. Bean) to those I've never bought a thing from (Hammacher-Schlemmer). 

Years ago, I wrote to dozens of catalogues asking to be taken off their mailing list. I still get an awful lot, but the catalogue tsunami did abate somewhat. (For all I know - and I would have absolutely no reason to know for most of them - most of the ones who stopped sending catalogues are out of business.)

My latest haul (received over the last week) includes Garnet Hill, Hammacher-Schlemmer, Jockey, Maryland Square, L.L. Bean, Land's End, Artful Home, Soft Surroundings, and the Vermont Country Store. Oh, yes, and the Peruvian Connection.

I really like beautiful and interesting sweaters, and Peruvian Connection carries a lot of beautiful and interesting sweaters. And once in a while, I put away whatever misgivings I may have about some poor woman in Peru making seventeen cents and hour to knit one up, and buy one. 

They're expensive. 

But when I have a beautiful and interesting sweater, I hang on to it. Forever.

I still have the first Peruvian Connection sweater I bought in 1989. I can't remember what I paid. A lot. But, hey, I'm still wearing it, patched elbows and frayed button holes and all. And when I put it on, it brings back wonderful memories of the trip my husband and I took to Berlin over New Year's 1989-1990 to celebrate the Fall of the Wall. That sweater, black with a multi-colored vertical striped pattern, was my wardrobe mainstay for the entire trip. I wore it pretty much every day with a different colored turtle neck.

So what if I paid a lot? Amortized over 41 years, it was nothing.

It's been a couple of years since I bought a Peruvian Collection sweater, so I'm due. And if there was anything in the right color - blues, purples, pinks - I might be interested. So I thumbed through the latest catalogue. 

What struck me was not the absence of sweaters in any colors I wanted. But the absence of color among the models. 

The cover featured a stunning red head, freckles and all. And she appeared up until page 10, when things switched over to a stunning blonde. (Blondes, amazingly, seem to continue to represent the beau idéal of beauty, definitely punching above their skimpy weight in terms of working as catalogue models.) 

I'm not sure whether it was the same blonde, but blondes held the fort until page 24, when red returned. Back to blondes on page 30. Back to red, page 50.

On page 54, I spotted my first brunette. But on closer examination, she actually had auburn hair, and she had to share her two-page spread with blondie, who maintained control until red grabbed the back cover.

Seriously, I don't believe you have to make sure that catalogue models appear in exact proportion to the numbers they hold in society. If there are a hundred photos, thirteen of them don't need to be Black.

But we are an increasingly diverse country, so the absence of people of color, of people who appeared Asian, or Mid-Eastern, or even of Italian or Greek origin, seems weird. And what are we to make of a catalogue called Peruvian Connection that doesn't feature any Hispanic or indigenous peoples models? Is it deliberate? Have they done the market research that shows that their audience is entirely made up of blondes and red-heads, who need to see beautiful versions of themselves in order to buy something? Or was it an aesthetic choice? Maybe next time the catalogue could use only Black models as a purely aesthetic choice.

All I can say is that L.L. Bean has non-white models. Say, is that Mt. Katahdin that gorgeous young African-American couple is climbing? The cartoon characters on Land's End's cover are mixed race, and the first human you see is an adorable young Black woman modeling a turtleneck. Land's End even shows folks with grey hair. (Include me in!)

Artful Home - source of the one funky, artsy item of clothing I buy each year, and an occasional gift - is a glorious mix of races and ages. Garnet Hill is, too. And I've got my eye on that gorgeous cardigan modeled by a gorgeous brown-eyed, dark haired woman who might be Hispanic. Or Mid-Eastern. Or Italian. Or Greek. All I know is, she's not a blonde.

Hammacher-Schlemmer. Jockey. Soft Surroundings. Their models represent! Especially Soft Surroundings. I didn't do a nose count, but their models appear to be majority-minority. I've never ordered from them, but their clothing sure looks ultra-comfy.  "Effortless style." Who cares about style, as long as it's effortless!

Maryland Square is a shoe catalogue, so it's hard to tell, as their catalogue just shows shod feet.

But even the Vermont Country Store catalogue has plenty of models with dark hair, and a handful of dark faces. And if there's any catalogue that gives off more of a "white people like" vibe than the Vermont Country Store, I don't know what it would be. (Seriously, muu-muus?)

The United States is on it's way to becoming a "majority minority" country, in which those of us of white European origin no longer make up more than half our population. You'd think that retailers would want to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, other than the ones who specialize in Ku Klux Klan apparel, Nazi paraphernalia or other niche markets (one-armed paper hangers). It helps everyone to see themselves represented, i.e., wanted as a customer. 

And it helps us all to see that there's plenty of everyone else out there. 

After all, everyone else: They're just like us!

Blacks, Asians, South Asians, Native Americans, Hispanics - they wear flannel PJs! They buy toys for their kids! They buy goofy electronics!

Maybe they even like muu-muus!

But maybe what they don't like is expensive, interesting sweaters from the Peruvian Connection. 

To tell you the truth, I really hadn't noticed that Catalogue America, for the most part, represents our diversity fairly well if the absence of color, Peruvian Connection style, sent me looking.

Let's just say that absence of color struck me as odd. 

Fun with pork-scented technology!

Somewhere along the line, I read that the thing that vegetarians missed the most about meat was bacon.

I don't eat a ton of meat, but I'm not a vegetarian. So I don't have to actually think about it. But I get it.

As much as anything, if I stopped eating meat entirely, I'd miss bacon. I'd miss BLTs, scallops wrapped in bacon, and "American Chop Suey" (hamburg and macaroni, greatly improved by the presence of bacon). I don't eat a ton of bacon-and-egg breakfasts, but there really is nothing like a little bakey sandwich on buttered toast. 

And, ah, the smell of bacon.

Doggos are right here: it's wonderfully alluring. 

But would I want to be breathing it in while out there walking around with my mask on?

Well, no.

And I suspect most people feel the same way. 

That, of course, hasn't stopped the folks in Hormel's Black Label Bacon group from "inventing" a face masks redolent of bacon. They've just launched:

"Breathable Bacon," what it calls "a revolutionary face mask featuring the latest in pork-scented technology." (Source: USA Today)

Pork-scented technology? Who knew there even was such a thing? And why would someone have invented it in the first place?

Come to think of it, I probably know the answer.

When I was in business school, some folks from the research firm Arthur D. Little spoke to a marketing class. Which is where I learned that dogfood makers add special chemicals to make the dogfood smell like something humans might want to eat. Dogs don't need the additive. They already have a good sense of scent. But us humans like to think that Fido is fine dining on beef stew.

So I guess there is sort of a need for pork-scented technology. And I also guess it will help improve the palatability of vegetarian and vegan food alternatives - like fake bacon.

Anyway, from a marketing point of view, this is a fun idea. Especially given that a) Hormel is giving the masks away for free (while supplies last), and b) they'll also be donating as many as 10,000 meals to Feeding America. Which tells me they've made 10,000 of the masks, which I'm absolutely sure will sell out. Or whatever the free giveaway version of sell out is.

Also getting in on the food-smelling mask concept is Jack-in-the-Box, which is coming out with a mask that smells like chicken. It will be used to promote the fake chicken product (UnChicken) that they've recently debuted. (But does it taste like chicken?)

Meanwhile, the bacon-ish face mask is nothing compared with some of the other ideas that Hormel has come up with:

Hormel said its recent innovations include The Black Market, a multisensory virtual reality experience, the development of a musical experience using the sounds of bacon and the world's first bacon-fueled motorcycle.

Want to bet that this will also be the world's only bacon-fueled motorcycle? I mean, I've heard of alternative energy sources, but to quote Joe Biden, 'Come on, man.'

Back to the face masks.

They're going to be our companions for many months to come, and I'm all in favor of having a bit of fun with them. 

This week, I'll be wearing my Halloween-themed face masks. One is orange with black dots, the other is a candy corn print. (I'm hoping breathing through that one will be a reasonable substitute for eating candy corn, which I adore, but which is absolutely worthless as a food stuff. Plus it's addictive.)

Come December, I have a line up of holiday masks. And I've got one ready for St. Patrick's Day.

But a scented mask? I don't know about that.

Why breathe in chemicals when you don't have to? I'll stick with my own fumes. 

Still, Hormel seems to be having fun. Marketing-fun wise, I'd say they're on the pig's back. In this grim world, I almost envy them. 

Here comes Santa Claus, and, say, is he moving to the head of the vaccination line?

I'm all for public service announcements (PSAs).

When I was a kid, people littered. You would routinely see folks tossing bottles, cans, kleenex, whatever out their car windows. Not in my family, thank you. We were in the vanguard. The only thing we were allowed to pitch out the window was an apple core, and that was because the birds would eat it.

Despite our efforts, there was always a ton of the trash on the side of roads and highways. And on sidewalks in my neighborhood, you could always find empty cigarette packs and candy wrappers. (If you saw a discarded Lucky Strikes pack, you could step on it and whack the kid you were with on the arm and shout "Lucky strike!")

There's a classic scene on Mad Men that shows the Draper family getting up from their picnic blanket, shaking it - and all the trash on it - out on the grass, and taking off.

Then came the Don't Be a Litter Bug campaign. And, while there's still plenty of trash to be found - and a lot more trash possibilities, given fast food which wasn't a factor in my childhood -  you really don't see people littering like they used to.

Smoky the Bear, unfortunately, has not been able to keep up with the fires out West (thanks, climate change!), but we all do know that if we carelessly discard a cigarette butt, things might well go up in frames.

And speaking of cigarette butts, PSAs about quitting or just not starting smoking helped decrease the number of smokers.

So PSAs. Yeah, I'm all for them.

In fact, I'd love see more PSAs about mask wearing, social distancing, handwashing, and crowd avoidance. 

But given that the Federal government (at least as far as the White House is concerned) has pretty much surrendered on the idea of containing COVID-19 - as Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows stated on the Sunday morning talking heads shows yesterday - I wouldn't expect them to get behind a decent, thoughtful, publicly spirited, public health campaign.

After all, they're counting on therapeutics to keep the sick from dying, and the on-the-horizon (somewhere, somehow) vaccine to keep us from getting sick to begin with.

Still, it's a bit of a surprise that a good part of the $250M advertising campaign that the Department of Health and Human Services was cooking up was focused on getting Santa Claus performers to promote vaccination in return for early access to said vaccine. 

Well, bah humbug to that, even though Mrs. Claus and the elves - also deemed essential workers by HHS - were going to get to jump to the head of the line, too.

This was all premised on the Trumpian emptier-than-empty promise that we were going to have a vaccine by election day. 

Alas, the Santa-vaccine plan has been trashed - probably via littering, knowing these guys - and Michael Caputo, the HHS assistant secretary who came up with the idea is on medical leave. (He went on leave after becoming embroiled in some brouhaha that's long since forgotten.)

The Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas aren't thrilled to hear that the vaccine won't be available in time for them to get those kiddos on their laps, and that they won't be able to jump the line to get it. (Not that seasonal workers shouldn't have priority over some categories. I just can't figure out just what categories a seasonal Santa should have priority over.)

Rick Erwin, who heads up the Real Beardeds, recorded the calls he had with Caputo to discuss this initiative.

Caputo seemed really excited about the prospect of making the president happy with his plan. “I cannot wait to tell the president,” Caputo said. “He’s going to love this.” (Source: Slate)

Well, that's true. It does seem like the sort of thing Trump would love. Showy and attention grabbing. (Santa!) Lacking in true substance. (Santa!) Skirting the real issue. (No national co-ordinated plan on anything -> people dying.) Based on wishful thinking. (Vaccine by November!) Science-denying. (Vaccine by November!)

Like I said, I'm all for a good PSA. I'm guessing that there are plenty of agencies that would be delighted to do one for free, and plenty of outlets willing to run them gratis. But why would the Trump administration start doing something rational and sensible now?

Welcome to the holiday season! Looks like it's gonna be a fun one. 

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

Meanwhile, Pink Slip has a small history with professional Santas. Many years ago, I wrote about some feuding in their ranks. The post got a number of comments, and I had to remove a few because they were libelous. A few years later, the Santas were at it again. And I hate to say it, but I'm guessing most Santas are Trump supporters...

Good. Just not good enough.

It looks like Purdue Pharma, the OxyContin pushers who pretty much single-handedly created the opioid crisis, has gotten its comeuppance. At least somewhat.

Earlier this week, they agreed to a settlement (worth $8.3 billion) with the Justice Department.

As part of the deal — the largest such settlement ever reached with a pharmaceutical company, officials said — Purdue Pharma agreed to plead guilty to three felonies. (Source: WaPo)

That's the good news. Sort of. Purdue, which has filed for bankruptcy, may not have the scratch to pay their fine. 

...[and] state authorities and families who have lost loved ones to their products said the Justice Department’s terms go easy on the Sacklers, the billionaire family that once ran the firm.

Massachusetts is one of the states that's none too happy with the settlement. Maura Healey, our AG, ain't having any. She had this to say:

"I am not done with Purdue and the Sacklers, and I will never sell out the families who have been calling for justice for so long.”

Massachusetts is not alone.

About 2,800 cities, counties, Native American tribes and other groups have sued drug retailers, distributors and manufacturers, including Purdue, in a mammoth case that has been consolidated before a federal court judge in Cleveland. Separately, most states have sued the company in their own courts, believing those venues give them a legal advantage. Those matters are distinct from the federal settlement announced Wednesday and remain ongoing.

Hopefully, the bankruptcy doesn't fully shield Purdue. Or the Sacklers, for that matter.

Just what did Purdue Pharma do? Why, they were front and center when it came to creating:

...the widespread problem of overprescribing, diverting, and abusing pain pills [which] raged across America while drug manufacturers, distributors, pharmacists, and doctors profited from the problem and largely deflected responsibility.

The Sacklers benefited quite nicely from Oxy-Contin. The family is worth $13B. And while they weren't going door-to-door to push pills to physicians, or hiding information about just how addictive OxyContin is, they were plenty involved. Now, from their lofty perch as rich folks/philanthropists, they're pointing their fingers down the food chain at Purdue Pharma lower echelon employees, back in the day they were exerting plenty of pressure from their board-level positions as directors to rev up financial results. Among other things, a bunch of the Sacklers:

...approved a new marketing plan called “Evolve to Excellence” in which “Purdue sales representatives intensified their marketing of OxyContin to extreme, high-volume prescribers who were already writing ’25 times as many OxyContin scripts’ as their peers,” the Justice Department said.

Those efforts directly led to uses of the addictive tablets that were “unsafe, ineffective, and medically unnecessary, and that often led to abuse and diversion,’’ the government said.

Throughout, Purdue Pharma marketing downplayed the addictive properties of Oxy. Which worked out fine for them, but not so fine for those taking their pills.

And, of course, those with sports injuries, accidents, chronic pain, were a more lucrative (i.e., far larger) market than those taking strong drugs to cope with cancer-related pain. 

So far, the family has contributed $3B towards a settlement, and they're hoping that will do it. 

Not good enough.

I can't imagine what families go through when someone they love - their child, their brother, their aunt, their parent - is hooked on opioids. For a lot of them, the addiction started out innocently enough. A sports industry. An accident. A little something for the pain. OxyContin is addictive, a gateway drug to heroin, fentanyl. 

I think it's good that Purdue has at least agreed that, at least on a few counts, they're guilty as charged. Just not good enough.

As for the Sacklers, they're probably shaking in their designer boots. For years, they no doubt congratulated themselves that because the company that made them rich didn't have the Sackler name in it, no one would associate their family with the death and destruction of so many other families. They don't need to be stripped of every last penny. Still, they need to 'fess up and pony up.

$8.3 billion is something. But over the last 20 years, over 700,000 Americans died of a drug overdose. No, not all of them died because of Purdue Pharma's OxyContin. Even if it's "only" 222,000 folks - the number who've died due to COVD - that $8.3 billion is less than $40K per capita. 

Just not good enough.

Twin Peaks

There's no doubt in my mind of minds that Twin Peaks, a "breastaurant" - twin peaks? get it? get it? - is a terrible place to work. Like Hooters, like the Tilted Kilts, members of the wait staff - comely young women, all - are hired for their looks and for how good they look wearing revealing outfits. 

In presumable return, they can make good tip money from the leering men who like to be waited on by cute young things in tight tops and short skirts. 

In my younger days, I was a waitress - both during summers while I was in a school, and full-time when I was out of college and casting around for something to do. It pretty much goes without saying that I didn't work in any place that required racy garb.

For one thing, they didn't exist back in the day. Sure, there were strip joints, but there weren't "family restaurants" (burgers and wings) where the "girls" dolled up. For another thing, if there had been such restaurants, they wouldn't have hired me even if I wanted a job there. Which I most decidedly would not have.

My first waitress job, age 18, at a Big Boy's, had a really alluring uniform, which looked like it had been designed by a nun, in consultation with my mother. We wore knee length brown skirts, white cotton blouses with round collars and pin-tuck pleats, and brown clip-on bow ties. White waitress oxfords, of course. For accent color: orange aprons that matched the leatherette banquettes. We were also required to wear "lunch lady" hairnets. 

We were issued nametags, and were warned to wear them up high enough so that no one would get fresh and ask what the other one was named. Ho, ho!

When I worked at the Union Oyster House and Durgin Park, our uniform was a white nylon dress purchased at a cut-rate nurses' uniform store. Knee length. White waitress oxfords, natch. Waitresses at both of these places ranged in age from twenty-something (that would include me) on up to women in their seventies. We were working girls. Just not that kind of working girl. 

(I really can't count the one shift I worked at Valle's Stakehouse in October 1972. The uniform was standard white nurse's dress.)

My final waitressing gig was at a basement pub beneath the long-defunct Admiralty Room, which was considered a relatively swank dining establishment at the time. Unionized men worked in the fine dining room. Un-unionized women worked below ground in a casual pub atmosphere. In keeping with the nautical theme, the uniform was a bright blue polyester sailor dress (with kippy white with red trim sailor collar) - so rigidly non-natural in fabric that, when you took it off, you could almost stand it up. The dress was pretty short, but this was in keeping with the times, and I had great legs. 

I didn't work there long. Terrible food. Not great money. And mostly boring (although I did see a woman give a guy a hand job at the bar one time). I can still remember what the guy looked like. He was a regular, and we referred to him as HJ.

But I never worked a house where the point was to look and act sexy. (Good thing.)

Anyway, on the current restaurant front:

A group of 34 former employees of Twin Peaks, a restaurant chain featuring scantily clad waitstaff, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday alleging their uniforms and a system for grading their bodies amounted to sex discrimination and harassment.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for Northern District of Illinois, alleges Twin Peaks “preys on vulnerable young women” and is “run very much like a commercial sex ring.”

Central to the allegations are claims that managers at the start of every shift assess the tautness of female servers’ arms, stomachs, legs and backs and assign them “tone grades” that are used to determine who gets to serve the best sections of the restaurant. Those with low scores are told they are fat, and some have been threatened with termination unless they lose weight, the suit alleges.

The suit alleges staff must work in lingerie or bikinis during special costume weeks, and if they refuse, they don’t work.

The environment resulted in “rampant sexual harassment,” with other employees catcalling and customers able to touch and say things to the female staff without consequence, the suit alleges. (Source: Yahoo)

I believe each and every word of this. No doubt in my mind that management was disgusting, the customers crude. As for other employees "catcalling", well, has anyone ever been in a restaurant kitchen? 

At Union Oyster House, the fellow who put together the salads and shrimp cocktails was a heavyset fellow with a cigar stub perpetually in his mouth. Each time I came over to his station to get a salad and/or a shrimp cocktail, which was multiple times per shift, he'd mutter, "I had a dream about you last night, Marlene [as he called me]. We was making love."

Did it occur to me to complain to management. Or even tell him to shut up. Hell no. This was 1970. This was a restaurant. Trash talk was as much a part of the scene as the numbers runner. (Do numbers runners still exist?) All it merited was an occasional eye roll. And, yes, I'm delighted that women no longer put up with shit like this.

And I really do have sympathy for the women who've experienced the lousy Twin Peaks work environment. The managers should be better behaved instead of disgusting sexist louts. But I do have to ask what employees expected when they went to work at a restaurant called Twin Peaks, which had its waitstaff wearing "sexy" uniforms. It's kind of like working at the Bada Bing on The Sopranos and becoming incensed if Silvio Dante asked you to pole dance. 

It's a terrible time to be a restaurant worker, and I wish all the litigants here well. But, seriously, when the restaurant biz comes back from the dead, I hope they find new places to work. No one wears a white dress to wait any more. But there are plenty of places where the wait staff wears black pants and a white shirt. Or a polo shirt. And you can probably make decent money without subjecting yourself to the grossity of a restaurant like Twin Peaks.

Bet there's a couple of Staties with a some new assignments

Massachusetts doesn't have a governor's mansion. The state's not the big. With the exception of Jane Swift, acting governor for a couple of years, who was from western Mass, none of our governors during my lifetime have lived so far away that they couldn't easily commute into the State House in Boston.

So we don't have a fenced fortress set up for our governors and their families to live in.

What they do get is protection in the form of a detail of state troopers parked in front of their residence, protecting the occupants. 

With the foiled plot to attack Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer and Virginia's Ralph Northam, these are scary times. Our governor, Charlie Baker, is a Republican, so is less likely to have the right-wing militias after him, but he's a pretty liberal R - a RINO to many - and he's kept a pretty tight lid on the state during the COVID crisis, so he could well become a target of domestic terrorists. Any political figure, of any prominence, is at risk. 

Anyway, before he became one of America's Most Popular Governors, Charlie was a successful businessman. And he lives in a lovely, successful businessman house in the lovely, successful businessman North Shore suburb of Swampscott. 

An parked in front of his lovely, successful businessman house is a SUV with a couple of Staties in it.

Our State Police force is nothing to write home about. Instead, it's something to write exposé articles about, as this charming organization seems to be perpetually scandal-plagued: overtime scams, procurements scams, scam scams. 

But you'd think they could manage to keep an eye on the governor's home.

Not so. 

While a couple of these guys were sitting there protecting and defending, some lunatic with a violent criminal past managed to walk in through the unlocked kitchen door and leave a pile of papers for Charlie. While Charlie's wife and daughter were in there.

Now, it's a large house and all, but you'd think these dudes would have noticed a strange ve-HICK-el (that's cop speak for vehicle, yes?) pull into the driveway. And a strange perp (ditto) step out and head for the house.

But no.

Probably too busy sitting there looking at their phones. Or listening to Rush Limbaugh. Or calling into sports radio. Or counting the minutes until their next run to Dunks. 

I would guess that protecting the governor is a pretty plum assignment. Sure, there are plenty of evil doers or just plain nuts who might want to take a swipe at him, but this isn't gunville. It's not RWNJ (right wing nut job, to you) territory. And the governor of Massachusetts isn't the president of the United States. I'm sure there are occasional threats, but I would guess that guarding Charlie Baker's house isn't all that dangerous a job.

Plus Charlie seems like an affable enough guy. I'm sure he's demanding - he didn't get to be a successful businessman or the governor by being a totally chill slacker - but I'm pretty sure he's not an irrational tyrant, a Captain Queeg. And protecting The Guv, one would think, would be a more interesting assignment than parking on the median strip on the Mass Pike with a speed gun.

Anyway, they caught the guy who broke into Baker's house, and no one was harmed. But while Baker has said little about the incident, you have to believe that - especially given that his family was there - he's mightily pissed. And that mightily pissing off the governmor may well have translated into a couple of reassignments, a couple of downgrades, to the feckless Staties that let this happen on their watch.

Maybe they're out in Lee, patrolling the state forests. Or in Belchertown. Nah. How could they be trusted to guard the Quabbin Reservoir? 

It'll be interesting the hear what the excuse is on this one. Folks can get arrested for texting while driving. Wonder if these jamokes were texting while supposedly guarding the governor's house?

All I can say is, bad career move

Sorry, Jeffrey Toobin. But now everyone knows you're a dog...

I'm sure you've all seen it going around. That thing about so many people not wearing pants while they're participating in a Zoom or Webex meeting. I wouldn't have thought that it was actually a thing, except that Fishbowl did a survey last spring asking professionals about their video conferencing attire. They found that:

• 1 out of 10 people (9.6%) wear only underwear below the belt during video conference calls. The gender breakdown probably won't surprise you — men answered that they video conference in their underwear at more than three times a higher rate than women at 14.27% vs 4.72%. (Source: Bizjournals)

The M-F differential doesn't surprise me. Still, I found it a bit disturbing that anyone - let alone 14.27% of men - sits around during a business meeting in their undies. The rest of the findings made more sense.

• Only 3% of professionals wear professional attire in video meetings

I assume by "professional attire" they mean what someone would wear to the office, or in a client meeting. So I guess there are still circumstances in which full business drag remains appropriate. In a serious meeting, a lawyer might want to lawyer up. A telehealth doctor might want to don their white coat.

I met with my financial advisor via Zoom last week. I don't recall what he was wearing. A dress shirt maybe? I don't think he had on a tie, which is fine by me. I know he wasn't wearing a ratty t-shirt. And I'm guessing he had pants on.

And some people are just very formal, stiff, even.

I have absolutely no cause to get dressed up for any of the meetings I have. No way I'd be zooming in something I would have worn to an in person client meeting back in the day before COVID. That would have been a nice pair of pants or a skirt, a jacket or nice sweater. Earlier on, I would wear a suit, but that's been a while. The tech industry tends toward casual, and I'm right there with them.

But 3% sounds about right.

• 12.50% answered with jeans

That would be me. Although I do wear linen pants or khakis during the summer, my uniform is mostly jeans. Others, however, are attired in something they wouldn't wear into the office even on the most casual of Casual Fridays:

• 75.20% answered with pajamas, sweats, shorts, or leggings

I just bought a pair of sweatpants, so I might be switching to sweats from the waist down.

I just really can't imagine sitting around in my underwear. And I really don't want to imagine anyone I'm Zooming with sitting around in their underwear, either. And it matters not whether it's boxers or briefs. (Although, admittedly, boxers seem more like real clothing to me.) There's really something not right about going to work in your underwear.

But high praise to those Jockey short wearers compared to the non-zero number of Zoom call participants who don't even bother with underpants. A roster that includes Jeffrey Toobin.

I like(d) Jeffrey Toobin. He's a legal commentator who writes wonderful articles for The New Yorker, and appears as a talking head on CNN. He's smart, clear, interesting. And liberal-leaning. So I enjoy his writing and his appearances.

During a recent meeting with New Yorker colleagues in which they were doing an "election simulation", gaming out different scenarios, Toobin apparently forgot that the least he could do was wear underpants:

The New Yorker magazine has suspended longtime staff writer Jeffrey Toobin after he inadvertently exposed himself during a virtual staff call last week over the messaging platform Zoom.

“Jeffrey Toobin has been suspended while we investigate the matter,” a spokesperson told The Washington Post. Vice.com first reported the suspension Monday afternoon. (Source: Wapo)

"Inadvertently exposed himself"? Huh? How does that happen? 

One of the reason you can get away with undies is that, on Zoom, you're pretty much seen from the waist up. I suppose you could accidentally stand up and show the world that you wear "fun" boxers or dowdy white cotton grandma undies.

But to be naked? Huh? A thousand times huh.

He's also been suspended by CNN.

“Jeff Toobin has asked for some time off while he deals with a personal issue, which we have granted,” a CNN spokesperson said."

Personal issue"? I'll say. Is Jeffrey Toobin another Anthony Weiner? 

Toobin, who could not immediately be reached for comment, told Vice.com in a statement that he “made an embarrassingly stupid mistake” during the Zoom call. “I believed I was not visible on Zoom,” he said. “I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video.”

How completely embarrassing, how colossally humiliating, to give away your dirty little secret: that you get your jollies sitting there with your privates in the altogether while you and your colleagues are taking care of business.

So what if he believed he was not visible on Zoom. This is still incredibly skeevy behavior.

What an idiot.

And to compound his idiocy, he thinks that you mute video. Hah!

In the early days of the Internet, there was an iconic New Yorker cartoon:

If you can't read the caption, it's "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

But that was in a long ago time, when we didn't have cameras and video conferences. Now, I'm afraid, our canine friends would be outed. As was Jeffrey Toobin, behaving like the ultimate louche, unsavory, pervy dog.

I take that back. Dog's too good a word for Toobin. No one would expect dogs to be clothed from the waist down. Let's just leave it at perv.

It'll be a long time before anyone can look at Toobin's talking head talking without thinking about what he's wearing. Or not. It'll be easier to read his articles, once he gets back. Although even there I'll be thinking "was he naked while writing this?"

This is assuming that all Toobin was doing was letting it all hang out. Not that he was, ah, enjoying himself. Ugh! Ick! ("Look, Ma, no hands!")

What an a-hole Jeffrey Toobin is!