Glancing Askance

Master of Obsolete Things

2012-02-11T04:30:00.002-05:00

I feel for Blackberry, I really do. Here was a company that was THE technology darling, whose devices all but defined contemporary business. For years, the mark of a connected, on-the-go successful individual was the little black box attached to their belt that was whipped out to check email, proving to all that said person was, well, a connected, on-the-go successful individual.

Then came the iPhone and Android and all phones smart and flat. And in the technological blink of an eye (or "i" if you prefer), Blackberry went from owning half the market to commanding less than 10%. All this makes them a candidate for what The New York Times calls "The Hall of Fallen Giants." There they are lining up to join such once king-of-the-hills as the Sony Walkman, the Polaroid Instant Camera and the Palm Pilot, every one of which I have in a drawer somewhere in my office.

However, my simpatico feelings for Blackberry don't come because I owned one and tossed it aside for shinier trinkets. In truth, those ubiquitous boxes were one technology I never flirted with, unlike, say, pagers. (Should I be asked, I can produce several models of that indispensable device in various sizes and flavors, all of which are useful today for absolutely nothing.) Rather, while I was never a giant like any of the aforementioned objects, there are any number of skills I used to pride myself on which are so obsolete now as to be considered useless at worst and quaint at best.

Any parent has had this revelation. Just when you figure out the best way to shampoo their hair without getting it in their eyes, or get the knack for paper mache, or get really, really good at Jenga, it's no longer necessary. There you sit on the floor with your blocks, looking for a 5-year-old to crush and there's none to be had. Oh well. Back you go to your books and your Time magazine and your PBS, nostalgic for a mastery which will never be tapped again, and wondering if it would be weird to have a dinner party and at some point in the evening challenge all comers to a game of Clue.

In the vein, there are (or more to the point, were) numerous adult competencies which I was good at, dammit, which are laughable now. I was very good at figuring out to squeeze the maximum amount of music onto a cassette tape. I was great at changing the ribbon on a typewriter. And when it came to being able to read a map and figure out how to get from point A to point B, no one was better. You remember maps, right? They're what existed before GPS turned us all into zombie drivers: "Turn left in 200 feet. Bing! Turn left now."

It's the same thing professionally. There's barely a piece of equipment that I learned on that's not more suitable today as a museum relic, or more likely, a boat anchor. Now a 13-year-old with an iPhone and a computer sitting in her bedroom has more capabilities than I did when I was one of four geeky guys sitting in a room with enough gear and blinking lights to make the casual observer think they were visiting NASA.

It was driven home the other day when we were setting up a job. Someone of a similarly advanced age was reminiscing on a break. He looked at me and said, "Boy, I remember the days when you were the go-to-guy for DOS!" That's DOS, as in Disk Operating System, one of the first personal computer languages. Did you hear that? I was the GO-TO-GUY! And today? Well, I'm still the go-to-guy for DOS. Unfortunately, that system hasn't been used since 1995. Or to paraphrase an old friend, I'm the expert of today fulfilling the needs of 10 years ago.

So, Blackberry, I know how you feel. Then again, maybe it's not too late. Many a company, person or product has been given up for dead, only to squeeze out new life which catapulted them back to success. The current deification of Steve Jobs and Apple is perhaps the most prominent example, but there are others. How about Detroit, Old Spice or Hawaii Five-O? A trio of things that under no other scenario could appear in the same sentence, all had good runs and saw their fortunes fade, only to reemerge. So it is possible. I just keep saying to myself two words, over and over: Betty White.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is getting to the point where he has forgotten more than he remembers. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Just Walkin'

2012-02-04T04:30:00.002-05:00

Walking is what my wife asks me to do on a Sunday afternoon. If it's a quiet day AND if all the things we have to do have been done AND if it's reasonably nice out, we'll go for a walk. An hour or two later we're back home and on to our next activity.

Matt Green is a bit more focused. At the moment he's about a month or so into his current walking project. I say "project" because Matt's walks are to our Sunday's jaunts as an aircraft carrier is to a dingy. There was his first big one, a 150-mile tour of New York City in five days in 2007. Then there was his coast-to-coast stroll from Rockaway Beach, New York to Rockaway Beach, Oregon in 2010. And then there's this one

Matt's currently embarked on a quest to walk every public street in New York City, excluding expressways and highways. With something north of 6000 miles of roadway, he figures that when you add in bridges, pathways and doublebacks, he'll log somewhere around 7500 miles. "Walking five or six days a week, while also allotting myself a nice stingy American number of vacation and sick days," he expects it will take him about two years to complete his journey.

He accepts donations to support his project, and is staying with friends "old and new." Should he run out of money, he's ready to shelve his journey, work to make some cash, and then pick up where he left off. His routing is somewhat random: "Each day I will simply walk somewhere I haven't yet been. As my map begins to fill in, my options will become narrower and narrower until, finally, there are no streets left unwalked. At that point I will probably drink some beer and sit down for a while."

While Matt has always liked to walk, he didn't always do it full time. He had a real job as an NYC civil engineer, restricting his walking to off hours. "Moving through the world at three miles an hour, you can fully take in your surroundings. There's nothing separating you from your environment." He assumed others might feel the same way, and so he began to organize walking tours, like "The Bridges of New York County" or "The Solstice Walk." And then something clicked, and he came up with his idea to amble across the country.

He views his New York City exploration as a nice counterpoint to his USA journey: "Instead of seeing a million places for just a minute each, I'm going to spend a million minutes exploring just one place." I asked him what he does in those minutes. "When I walk, I just walk. The idea of trying to come up with something else to do seems silly to me. If walking isn't engaging enough by itself, then why bother doing it for thousands of miles? I try to stay focused on the present moment, which means keeping not just my eyes open, but my ears (and nose, I suppose) as well."

And the why? "Articulating the goal of this walk is a work in progress. I'm careful not to try to sum it up in something neat and tidy, because I don't think human motivations are ever that simple." He says that, sure, he wants to get to know the city better, and learn it on a level that no tour can give you. Beyond that, "it gives you a sense of ownership, and makes you an active participant, when you start learning about things because you've discovered them, and not just because someone told you about them."

But the part of his explanation I like best involves an experience he had in Moorhead, Minnesota. There he came across a museum that had a handmade replica of a twelfth-century Norwegian church. The guy who built it happened to be there, and someone asked him why he did it. His response? "I don't know." Said Matt, "It was really inspiring to me to hear that. Instead of coming up with some story that fits the human desire for a moving narrative, he just told the truth: there's something deep and hidden in these pursuits that drives you in an intense way, but can't be easily converted into words."

And so Matt walks. Today it's Brooklyn, or maybe Queens. All he knows is that tomorrow he'll pick another street, and as he says, "eventually walk by the home of every person who lives in the city." No real reason needed, none given. Or as the title of his blog so succinctly sums it up, "I'm Just Walkin'."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford promised to join Matt on his journey for a day. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Makeover at 35,000 Feet

2012-01-28T04:30:00.002-05:00

Airlines ain't what they used to be. No longer the most elegant and fastest way to get from place to place, planes have become buses in the sky. Cabins have been redesigned to maximize every inch, everything besides the actual seat costs extra and routes have been reduced so it takes multiple stops to get from place to place. In fact, when you do the calculus of how much time and hassle it takes to get to and through the airport, take the actual flight, then get through traffic to your final destination, spending quality time on I95 is looking better and better.

Then again, airline passengers ain't what they used to be either. Blame it on the People Express's of yore or the Jet Blue's of now, but these days everybody flies. No longer a practice of just the 1%, the rest of us 99% are winging our way here and there in our cargo shorts and flip flops, ears stuffed with iPods, toting bags from McDonalds to go with our last "free" perk on board, a plastic glass of Coke. Or to paraphrase Walt Kelly, we have met the passenger and he is us.

Still, if you're sitting on a plane, there are a few assumptions one can make. One, you have enough money in your pocket to fly, not the cheapest way to get from place to place. Two, be it business or pleasure, you're going somewhere. And three, you have a minimum of an hour confined to a finite space with a limited amount of options to distract you. Enter the airline magazine.

These glossy publications target you, the traveling public. A cross between "People," "Vanity Fair" and "The Idiot's Guide to Flying," they are a refuge for many, if only because they don't sport an on-off switch. That's because even if you usually have your iWhatever at your fingertips, and can't remember the last time you paged through an actual paper publication, below 10,000 feet they are one of the few readily available sources of distraction permitted by FAA regulations.

So what's in them? Mostly what you'd expect. An article on things to do in San Antonio. An interview with actor Ewan McGregor. A roundup of the latest electronic gadgets to keep you amused. All this along with more granular stuff, such as route maps, listings of pay-as-you-go snacks and airport gate layouts. All this makes sense, considering the audience and the locale. And then there are the ads.

It's not that today's airline passengers don't have disposable income. It's just strange what advertisers think they'll dispose it on. To be sure, there are ads for high end jewelry and watches, vacation destinations and travel services, the kinds of things to which travelers might take a shine. But there're also a rather large number of come-ons that play to the notion that the people sitting in the seats are vain, insecure, have bad joints and are lonely. As a frequent flyer I resemble, uh, I mean resent, those assumptions.

There are numerous ads for cosmetic dentistry, hair replacement and plastic surgery. You also find specialized medical facilities focusing on joint replacement, spine surgery and treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome. And they are rounded out by ones for personalized dating services, with names like "It's Just Lunch" and "Selective Search." Now, I'm sure all are run by upstanding and skilled professionals. And if you have issues with any of those areas you shouldn't close your eyes to possible solutions. But speaking solely for myself, if I'm in need of any of these things, I'm far more likely to do a bit of research with friends, family and others who have been there and done that, as opposed to making an impulse buy based on a four color glossy: "Wow! I want some vertebrae work just like that! And they have concierge service, too!"

Still, I assume that those paying to run these blurbs have gotten at least some success from their investment, or you wouldn't see them month after month. I can only conclude that something happens to the consumer part of your brain when you get on an airplane. After all, that SkyMall catalog next to the magazine has been selling collectable reproductions of Yoda for 30 years, and he's still in there. So somebody must be buying. Or as Yoda himself might put it, "Money spent strangely, people do on planes."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford wonders why all the cosmetic dentists who advertise onboard seem to be from Texas. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Super PACman

2012-01-21T04:30:00.002-05:00

It sounds like a Zen koan: what is yours but not yours? What can promote you as long as you don't promote it? What is completely aligned with your interests but doesn't permit you to take an interest? Thanks to the Supreme Court and Citizens United, the answer is a lot easier than the sound of one hand clapping. It's this year's 800 pound gorilla of politics, the Super PAC. And I want one.

Mind you, we're not talking your ordinary, garden variety, run-of-the-mill Political Action Committee. After all, those are a dime a dozen, each promoting policies that are favorable to their contributors. They range from corporate versions like FPL PAC, which advances the interests of Florida Power & Light, to ethnic ones such as the CHC PAC, which advocates on behalf of the Committee for Hispanic Causes. And then there's the Egg PAC. Not an acronym at all, it looks out for the members of the United Egg Producers.

They are a varied lot, to be sure. Some were established to promote social causes, like the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, or to promote specific alternative medicine approaches, such as the American Naprapathic Association PAC, or even to look out for your favorite beverage, like the National Beer Wholesalers Association PAC. And of course, almost every politician with any national profile has one as well: Majority Leader Harry Reid has the Searchlight Leadership Fund, Senator Chuck Grassley has the Hawkeye PAC and Senator John Kerry has the Campaign for Our Country PAC. In the naming department, kudos go to Majority Leader Eric Cantor and his Every Republican Is Crucial PAC (ERIC PAC), Representative Darrell Issa for his Invest in a Safe & Secure America PAC (ISSA PAC) and Representative Pete Sessions for his People for Enterprise, Trade and Economic Growth PAC (PETE PAC). I guess the "G" is silent.

No, what I want is a Super PAC, a "Mission: Impossible" like entity that is a totally separate organization designed to promote my interests while also giving me the ability to disavow all knowledge thereof. Take Mitt Romney in a recent debate. Of commercials sponsored by a Super PAC that were ravaging Newt Gingrich, he said in one breath, "With regard to their ads, I haven't seen them" while in the next breath he said, "The ads I saw say say..." Now that's having your cake and eating it too.

First, my non-associated Super PAC would need a snappy name, one that is forward thinking, patriotic, promissorial and imperative. Romney has "Restore Our Future," Perry has "Make Us Great Again," Huntsman has "Our Destiny" and Gingrich has "Winning Our Future." Stephen Colbert already registered "Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow," though since handing it over to Jon Stewart to be legally free to run in South Carolina, it's been renamed "Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC." But assuming a sympathetic unaffiliated third party can come up with something catchy, all they have to do is file the proper paperwork and they'll be ready to go. Oh yes: that and find a millionaire benefactor that's willing to promote the same agenda that I have, though not in concert. Minor point.

And it will have to operate a bit differently than most. Since my constituency is less likely to be watching TV and more likely to be standing next to me, it will have to spend its money not on advertising, but on personal advocates. Think how effective this would be. After having a run in with cop who gives me a parking ticket, I can smile and walk away. My Super PACman can stride in, and call him all the names I was thinking of, but decided not to say for fear of landing in jail. And I can honestly say I had nothing to do with it.

That's the good thing about 501(c)(4) organizations: just like Mitt says about corporations, they are people too, and can say and do what they want. And so while I can't legally ask you to do so, should you have some extra cash (mind you, there are no limits to the size of your donation) and happen to have an outlook similar to mine, you might want to consider supporting what I consider to be a fine organization. Just make your check out to what I can confirm is an independent, self-standing, non-affiliated lobbying organization: "Majority Against Ridiculous Contributions," better known as MARC PAC.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford wouldn't mind if you contributed to his SuperPAC but you can't tell him about it. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Too Much Stuff

2012-01-14T04:30:00.002-05:00

We have too much stuff.

Let me be clear: by "we" I mean us personally. By "too much" I mean there’s more of it than almost anything else. And by "stuff" I mean miscellaneous items that don’t fit into any other obvious category. Mind you, I’m not referring to the various physical things you can find in our home. After all, we've lived in the same house for over 20 years, and raised two kids who are now 21 and 24. So there’s bound to be a lot of stuff from old clothes to board games to kitchen gadgets in every drawer and cabinet you open. True, we have too much of each of those as well, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Rather, the stuff I refer to is financial in nature: more to the point, while on the income side we have checks and deposits, on the liability side we have stuff. It’s all part of my feeble attempt to make sense of our monetary situation. As part of trying to keep track of what we spend, we generally try and use credit cards and checks as opposed to cash. That way we get a record of our transactions, and can sort it all out. So a trip to the grocery store is categorized as "food," a night at the moves is listed as "activities" and gas for the car is, unsurprisingly, "gas." Being self-employed, it also helps to calculate actual net income as opposed to gross: after all, post-it notes don’t grow on trees, and office expenses can be deducted as the cost of doing business. All this helps not only at tax time, but in a general way of letting us see where our money goes.

All of which brings us to now. Lest you think we are always good do-be’s, it’s not like we walk in the door and immediately run to the household ledger to enter every dime we spent in the appropriate column. Usually, when we balance our checkbook on a weekly basis, any checks get entered along with their appropriate categories. However, that’s actually a tiny portion of our outgoing cash flow. Far more is transacted on the aforementioned plastic. Those receipts go into a big tray, to be matched against the monthly bill when it comes... never a happy day.

Notice I said "matched." No assignment takes place. All we do is sync up the line-by-line listing reported by the bank against the myriad slips of paper which we have collected after every purchase. We make sure we were credited with any credits, that there are no apparent unauthorized charges, and voila! We have a rectified if not exactly balanced budget.

It’s left till sometime after December 31 to do the actual sorting. In the old days, I would take all the receipts, sit on the floor in front of the TV, and spend many nights making little piles of paper, category by category. That experience was one of the reasons I eagerly embraced an electronic checkbook early on; when you entered a check, you included a classification, which you subtotaled at the end of the year. And once the credit card companies enabled you to download that daily blow-by-blow into the same ledger, we had almost reached bookkeeping nirvana.

One element, however, remains if not labor intensive, then judgment intensive. I still have to go through each plastic entry and assign it to a category, making in any given year about a thousand "this goes here, that goes there" decisions. Most are easy, or even automatic... the aforementioned food and gas sorting, for example. But a disturbingly large number didn't seem to fit neatly into any category. Some are for multi-item purchases made on one receipt at a big box store, others from long forgotten online retailers with ambiguous sounding names. They aren't so easy to assign to "home repairs" or "restaurants." And so the catch all grouping of "stuff" was born. There’s just one problem: the stuff is starting to dwarf all other comers. More than telephone, more than automobile maintenance, more than clothes, it has grown and grown. And while we can eat out less, or stretch out an oil change for the car, I don’t know how to minimize what I can’t define. And so it grows, getting ever more blob-like all the time.

But I have a plan. No more stuff. From now on, I will insist that we note what’s on those receipts. And so starting today, I’m making a new category in our checkbook. I think I’ll call it "things."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is always amazed at how his income gets spent. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Bill's Excellent Adventure

2012-01-07T04:30:00.000-05:00

Let's say you're a chiropractor. Let's say you were born and raised in the east, and eventually moved to Arizona. Let's say you have a fairly typical life, including an ex-wife and a son. And let's say you coached youth football in your spare time. Then let's say that one day someone approached you with a proposition: how'd you like to go to India, and spend Thanksgiving teaching American style football to Punjabis and Kashmiris and Bengalis, who think the sport is played with a round ball and your feet?

You might say that idea is crazy. But if you're Bill, you jump at the chance.

Bill is all of the aforementioned, except for the crazy part. In the course of coaching 10 year-olds in the American Youth Football Association, as well as helping to run the local league, he made the acquaintance of some guys who told him about a business venture they were involved with in India. On the surface, it's not a big surprise: the press has been filled with stories about India's size, its enormous population and its emerging economic potential. Driving that emergence is the growth of the consumer class, which is voraciously coveting all things western, including television programming and spectator sports.

Since India grew up British, that would mean cricket, soccer and rugby. But many other sports have flourished and found huge followings as well, like field hockey and badminton. Couple this love of competitive spectacle with the need to fill cable and satellite TV hours, and you have the foundation for the Elite Football League of India, or EFLI.

While the league is fronted by Indian businessmen, its brain trust includes a number of well know American football names. Mike Ditka from the Chicago Bears, Michael Irvin from the Dallas Cowboys and Ron Jaworski from the Philadelphia Eagles are all part owners of the league. Doug Plank, who also played with the Bears and is currently head coach of the Philadelphia Soul Arena Football team, is one of the lead coaches. Together, their goal is to field a slate of eight teams in time for a kickoff later this year.

But to go from nothing to a legit contest between the Delhi Defenders and the Goa Swarm is a monumental undertaking. And that's where Bill came in. Along with Plank and the rest of the American coaching staff, they had to take highly motivated and talented athletes, and teach them not only skills but the game itself. And so Bill put his life on hold, and boarded a plane for the 20 hour flight to India to teach the basics of a slant pattern to guys who grew up thinking that touching the ball with your hands is a penalty.

Not surprisingly, for one who had never been out of the country, Bill's first impressions were cultural. Once there, he had a three hour drive to Pune, where the training camp was located. "It seems that there are no rules on the road, just a mass of rickshaws, mopeds, cab vans and a few cars," he wrote me. "I saw a family of five on a moped with a child and a baby. It's absolutely something I never imagined experiencing."

But once he got to camp and settled in, he found that serious athletes are the same the world over. "I have been pleasantly surprised how well the head coaches are picking up the football schemes and terminology," he noted after a week there. He said they love competition: "The Indian people like ‘Rambo,' they like ‘300,' they want to see gladiators. The desire is there, their hard work is off the charts." And the people? "Generous and genuine. They were very kind, compassionate and hard working."

He was there about a month, both coaching and using his administrative talents to run multiple sessions with hundreds of coaches and players. Now that he's back, I asked him what he learned. He laughed: "I learned how hard it is to get anything done in India, how hard it is to communicate in a country that has so many different dialects and languages. But I also learned that desire and will really count. Skills can be taught, but you can't get anywhere without pride and respect."

He's continuing with the league, moving more into an operations role, most recently helping to hire college level and above coaches to head over. He has plans to head back, this time to help create a database of players. But even if he's in Phoenix on November 12, 2012, I bet he'll have a hot dog and a beer, and be camped in front of a TV watching the opening game between the Mumbai Gladiators and the Pune Black Tigers. And I willing to bet he'll be rooting for both.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has always wanted to go to India. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

The Elements of 2011

2011-12-31T04:30:00.002-05:00

Big news! (Or at least what passes for big news in the world of chemistry.) This year saw the naming of three new elements on the periodic table. As is customary, the scientists involved in the discovery got first crack at coming up with a new moniker, much like naming a puppy. In the case of element 110, they called it Darmstadtium, after the town in which it was discovered. For 111, they went with Roentgenium, in tribute to the discoverer of X-rays. And 112 will be known forever as Copernicium, after the Polish astronomer Copernicus, who proclaimed that Earth was not the center of the universe.

In fact, a number of other unusual elements have also been created this year, just not in a lab. But they too have strange behaviors and structures, and can be hard to pin down. Herein then is a look at those that streaked across the sky in 2011, some to be around for a while, some to never been seen again.

Gaganium: A fast moving particle which almost continually changes its appearance, cloaking itself in bizarre coverings of other elements, including ME(at), SP(andex) and BU(bbles). Has never been seen at rest.

Romnimium: A particle originally discovered in limited amounts in Massachusetts in 2002, there had been talk of the discovery of a large supply in 2008, though that proved incorrect. Again this year there is talk of a large find, though scientists are having a hard time confirming it is the same element as sighted in the past, as many of its properties have almost completed reversed themselves.

Euronium: A particle discovered in 1999 that is actually a combination of a 23 other unique substances, this element was reasonably stable until this year. But as one substance has been decaying, then another, the entire particle has become unstable, with the result that it may disintegrate violently. Scientists in Germany are working to shore up the weakest links, the so called Greek force, to prevent an explosion.

Weddingarium: Discovered in Britain, this particle was created with great fanfare by the joining of two very minor particles, Williamonium and Katium. While the combined particle itself is expected to have little influence on anything at all, the actual melding of the two produced a cataclysmic light show that was blinding in intensity. This intensity also revealed a heretofore hidden substance, the so-called Pipa particle.

Newtonium: A particle once thought to be decaying to extinction, now threatening to render a number of other similar elements inert, notably Bachminium, Perronium and the aforementioned Romniunium. Highly charged, it has been known to attack so called "looker" cells. In its former state it was known as a particle that caused disruption deep inside the complex Beltway molecule, but now appears to act the same way from outside.

Osaminium: An elusive particle thought to be found only in caves in Afghanistan, it was finally discovered in Pakistan in front of a television. Due to its highly toxic nature, scientists destroyed it and disposed it at sea.

Packerarium: A particle characterized by its green and yellow wavelengths, this particle seems to smother most other particles with which it comes in contact. Consisting of 11 quarks at any given time, the one at the center of its structure, dubbed the Rogers boson, may be the most pure boson ever discovered.

Bieberarium: A very new particle discovered in Canada, it creates a strong force attraction for other similarly aged particles, who cluster around it whenever to appears. Interestingly, older particles have no attraction to it. Scientists have no idea of its half-life, and whether it will last another year or decay quickly.

Debatorium: A particle formed briefly when 6 or 7 highly similar quarks, each virtually indistinguishable from the next, come together. Once assembled, it exhibits a very agitated state, throwing off a high level of energy in waves. After a series of these waves, the particle disintegrates, typically reforming far away several weeks later, after which the process repeats. Seen most easily through a Foxscope.

Obaminium: A particle discovered with great fanfare just 4 years ago, it was originally characterized as one with limitless energy and ability to bind with all types of disparate particles. As it has decayed over time, scientists have been puzzled by its move to a lower energy state and its inability to meld with other substances.

There are reports that scientists are experiencing fatigue trying to chart these new discoveries, with their fleeting and complex tracks. Or as one chemist was heard to say, "In the new year, I'd give anything for a good old piece of lead."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is looking forward to new scientific discoveries in 2012. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

The Santa Ap

2011-12-24T04:30:00.002-05:00

"I am Siri's cousin Santi, your holiday personal assistant. How can I help?"

"Santi, I need to talk about Christmas."

"Checking. There is no one named Christmas listed in your contacts."

"No, Santi, I need help with the holiday Christmas."

"Christmas falls on December 25th every year. Would you like me to add it to your calendar?"

"Santi, no. I need help with Christmas presents."

"There are approximately 3.79 million Christmas presents nearby. Do you want a map to them from your location?"

"Uh, no Santi. I need presents for my family."

"Checking. There are texts in your inbox from Billy Johnson and Carolyn Johnson and Mrs. Marge Johnson containing the word 'present. '"

"Santi, tell me about Billy's list first."

"Billy's List is a web site listing the top horror movies by box office gross since 1950. It was started by Billy Colligan, a 23 year old college drop-out now ranked 746 on the Forbes list of Top Millionaires under 25."

"No Santi! Our son Billy Johnson!"

"I found a Billy Johnson, age 13, in your contact list. Do you want me to call or text him?"

"No, Santi. Just read me the text from Billy Johnson containing the word 'present.'"

"Reading. 'Dude, as a Christmas present I would like a new videogame. '"

"Santi, do you know which videogame Billy wants us to buy for him?"

"Checking. There are 197 videogames in stores nearby. Do you want a map to them from your location?"

"Santi, what kind of video game is best for a 13 year old boy?"

"Checking. Males in the age range of 12 to 15 prefer videogames which include shooting, cars and scantily clad girls. There are 5 scantily clad girls nearby. Do you want a map to them from your location?"

"Uh, no Santi. Read the text from Carolyn Johnson, age 17, containing the word 'present.'"

"Reading. 'Daddy, what I really want as a present is a Kardashian Kollection faux fur coat. You're the best!'"

"Santi, where can I find a Kardashian?"

"Checking. I have found 37 reality shows containing Kardashians. Do you want me to record them?"

"No, Santi! What I meant was at what designer store can I get a Kardashian Kollection faux fur coat?"

"Checking. Kardashian Kollection can be found at Sears, next to the chainsaws. Would you like a map?"

"Later! Santi, read the text from Mrs. Marge Johnson containing the word 'present.'"

"Reading. 'Honey, you know the kind of present I like. Whatever you get me will be fine. Love you.'"

"Santi, what kind of presents do wives like?"

"Checking. Wives like jewelry as presents. I found 4 jewelry stores close by. Do you want a map to them from your location?"

"Santi, is there anything I can get for my wife as a present that won't cost an arm and a leg."

"Checking. I'm sorry, I can find no presents that meet that criteria nearby."

"Santi, one more thing. What is the correct greeting for this time of year?"

"Checking. The correct greeting is Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year."

"Well then, Santi, Happy Holidays to you."

"Checking. There are 27 other holidays which are happy. Do you want me to add them to your calendar?"

"That's OK, Santi, I get it."

-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford hopes all can find a map to a happy holiday season. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Not Tom, Dick or Harry

2011-12-17T04:30:00.000-05:00

For a while it looked like Michelle had a real chance. Then it was Rick's turn until he imploded. John hasn't been able to break through, nor the other Rick. And Ron has his core of supporters, but can't seem to go beyond that. But until he bowed out it looked like Herman had a real chance. Despite his perceived shortcomings, Mitt is still a strong possibility. And after being left for dead earlier in the year, Newt has defied all pundits and currently holds a commanding lead at the front.

Notice anything about the leaders in this year's crop of contenders jockeying to challenge the president? Yes, they are all conservatives. Yes, they all are for a strong defense. Yes, they all believe taxes are too high, regulation too widespread and government too big. But look at their names: each has a moniker that doesn't come close to breaking into the top one hundred or even one thousand of the most popular names for kids today. They aren't your usual Tom, Dick or Harry... literally.

All this in an arena where name recognition is the very currency of the realm. On that basis, you would think a John (baby name rank: 26), a Michelle (125), two Richards known as Rick (127) or even a Ronald known as Ron (342) would resonate with the public. Those are names we trust, names we are comfortable with, so much so that we give them to our kids. But perhaps that is part of the problem: they are so common that they don't stand out. In fact, out of a pool of about 55 million registered Republicans, two of those running for the highest office in the land go by the same nickname, even if one is actually a Richard John and the other James Richard. Perhaps Rick Santorum would be better off if he went with his childhood nickname of Rooster.

In that light, you can also posit that's why Herman (1868) did so well at first, why Mitt (13,906) has never disappeared below the fenceline and why Newt (11,676) is making such a strong move. Forget policies and ideology: considering the sample of just 43 individuals in 235 years, our choices for leaders has been heavily weighted towards the unusual. While it's true we have had three Georges and six James's, we've also had a Millard, a Woodrow, a Chester, a Rutherford, a Grover, a Lyndon and a Ulysses. And this year's contest will pit whoever is chosen against a guy named Barack, a name so unusual in the American experience that despite that fact that his very existence is a role model for many, its ranking on the baby name charts only went as high as 8503.

Perhaps the ultimate name for a presidential candidate would be one that stood out all by itself with no qualifier necessary. Then there would be little confusion with your ex-boyfriend, or that annoying college roommate who drank all the beer in your mini-fridge. Recognition would be immediate, and there would be plenty of room left over on campaign buttons and bumper stickers for slogans. Using that line of reasoning, it's surprising that the party elders haven't started a movement to draft Cher, Madonna or Bono.

Of course, it's absurd to think that voters will select a candidate on the basis of a name. Or is it? This was the year that introduced the binary question on pop culture as some kind of litmus test for voters to use in determining fitness for the presidency. In one debate we found out that Rick Santorum preferred Jay Leno over Conan O'Brien, Tim Pawlenty preferred Coke to Pepsi and Ron Paul preferred BlackBerries to iPhones. What should one read into the fact that Newt picked "American Idol" over "Dancing with the Stars?" And Michelle Bachman couldn't choose between Elvis and Johnny Cash. Does that indicate her inability to pick should it ever come down to a choice between the right to privacy and the need for security? You be the judge.

But names, like relatives, are given and not chosen. Is it fair to hold anyone accountable for choices their parents made? Obviously not. And so whomever is the challenger, whether their name rolls trippingly off your tongue or makes you wonder what his or her parents were thinking, one can only hope that voters do more than take the WC Fields approach when they make their choice: "Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against."

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford finds the Republican debates the best reality show on TV. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Unempty Nest

2011-12-10T04:30:00.002-05:00

It's quiet again. In fact, you could say it's the lull before the next storm. Not that slack time between the freak Halloween snow and the first real accumulation of winter, but rather that interim between Thanksgiving and Christmas when the kids have come and gone and will come again. We went from quiet home to apartment complex and back, all at headsnapping speed. It's not that we don't love our boys and welcome having them back home so we can spend time with them. Rather, it's that we've gotten used to quiet and space, and well, their visits unempty the nest.

It's true that back at the beginning the prospect of the two of us home by ourselves seemed terrifying. After all, we had spent just 4 years alone in each other's company, followed by 21 as a threesome, then foursome. So on a purely mathematical level, we had 5 times more experience thinking of ourselves as a trio or quartet as opposed to a duo. Then 3 years ago our youngest went away to school, and we were forced to sit across the table and talk to each other with no buffer. Many a relationship has faltered on far less.

But wonder of wonders, we got used to it. It wasn't better, merely different, and in this case, different wasn't necessarily bad. Yes, there were still many times where we missed a fresh point of view, or someone with an actual preference on what to make for dinner, or a person with whom to watch a movie or football game. But as we settled into new patterns, we found that there were even positive elements about our newly achieved status quo.

It's not like its anything big. After all, the boys still have their own bedrooms, which lie fallow in their absence. So from a pure space standpoint their presence hardly impinges on ours in any meaningful way. They were always very independent, and so we can still out to dinner or see friends and not worry about them. And we have a third car that they can share if both are home, so transportation is hardly an issue, other than getting a momentary start when we see a vehicle in the driveway that we're not used to seeing there. But still, their departure enabled us to discover a few states of minor bliss that are disrupted by their presence.

High on the list is getting my socks back. When the kids were little and growing, separating a pile of clean clothes was a no brainer: the size of the stuff made it easy to sort out the three sets of male attire. But once they got to be my height, it got harder to parse the load coming out of the dryer. I would find my things in their rooms, and theirs in mine. Once they went away, however, it went back to a simple binary decision: girl stuff went to my wife, boy stuff to me. But when our now 21 and 24 year old were home over the holiday, my socks mysteriously evaporated. Now that the kids have returned to their usual places, so too have my footies.

Likewise, the food situation changes. To be fair, there is always plenty in the house at all times, so other than finding out that the leftover pizza has been scarfed down for breakfast the next day and is no longer available for lunch, it's not a deal breaker. But it's the little things that we've gotten used to. In their absence our supply has contracted to where the entire fridge is no longer taken up with gallons of milk. Leftovers stay leftovers, enough to provide an entire additional meal for one or both of us on a subsequent night. And on those nights when we don't feel like cooking, we're fine with a salad or soup or even a bowl of cereal, as opposed to someone wandering by going, “So what's for dinner?”

Boys, if you're reading this, don't take it the wrong way. We love having you home, and you are welcome any time. But understand that as we are getting older, our ability to adapt and change is more limited. As much as it feels strange to you when you come home, know it is similar for us. So just take it slow when you return. And give me back my socks.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford loves having his kids home. Really. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/..

On Beyond Beta

2011-12-03T04:30:00.003-05:00

Every morning when I first turn on my phone I see a bunch of icons in the upper corner. A big "M." A little phone receiver. A thought bubble. Finally, a little file with a check through it. Each of the first three means something came in since I last looked which requires my attention, in this case, email, a phone call and a text respectively. The last requires the least attention, but is by far the most interesting. It tells me about problems I didn't know I had, and improvements I didn't know I needed. It's the icon informing me that one of the myriad of programs I have was updated overnight.

Now, on the surface, that's a good thing. It's means that somebody is looking at a product or ap or service, and figuring out ways to make it better. True, just as likely they are ironing out bugs that were there when they first shipped it out the door. But considering that there's a more than excellent chance that I didn't pay for what I'm using, it's hard to complain that it wasn't exhaustively stress tested before it was released to me, the unsuspecting and decidedly cheap public.

It's an attitude that the technical world calls "always in beta." Beta used to indicate a product that wasn't ready for prime time, one that was available only to a select group of techies that signed up and were willing to endure a less-than-final iteration as the price of being on the cutting edge. They were expected to put the product through its paces, and provide feedback to the designers and developers so they could make a final version ready for the public. Indeed, it was a geek badge of honor to say, "Yeah, I'm a Beta tester for Google Voice / Microsoft Office / World of Warcraft." Only the coolest nerds need apply, a phrase which admittedly all but defines the term oxymoron.

But times have changed. In the hurry-up, get-it-out-there, build-critical-mass-quickly, all-but-the-first-is-last world that is technology, there is no time to shake anything out until it's all but perfect. And so anything that can be updated is. That means that once a product feels usable it goes out the door, hoping to gain a toehold while not pissing off too many people with its shortcomings. So what if a few of those angry birds explode collateral pigs without a direct hit. Get the public hooked, and we'll update to sturdier swine come version 1.1.

Thankfully this predominantly happens in the world of software and services, and not with physical things. Imagine a refrigerator whose ice maker randomly hurled cubes across the room, or a car whose brakes intermittently went into anti-lock mode, or a treadmill that sped up every time it clicked over a new mile. Needless to say, you would take it back screaming to the store where you got it. Sure, it's probably fixable, but for what you paid you shouldn't have to walk into your kitchen and duck.

And that may be the key: most of the aps and services that come still in beta cost us zero, or precious little. It's not that $.99 is nothing. But at that price point you have to keep your expectations in line with the deliverables. Sure, my Gmail occasionally hangs up, or Skype will drop a video call between me and the guy I'm chatting with in Paris or Pandora will freeze when playing a song. But considering the cost/benefit ratio involved, I guess I can be a little more forgiving. After all, just today I downloaded Google music, and through it uploaded 8000 songs to some far away computer which enables me to listen to any tune I have on demand on my phone at any time. Cost? Absolutely nothing. So I need to chill a bit if it burps every now and again between "She Came In Through" and "The Bathroom Window."

In that light, perhaps we've moved (with apologies to Dr. Seuss) on beyond beta. "New" doesn't capture it, "improved" is a given, while "final" is a state that will never exist. So if Alpha is the initial release phase of a product and Beta is the testing stage, maybe we're now live in Delta, the Greek letter that is representative of change. Whatever you call it, it is a modern truth: few new things these days ever stay the same.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford is continually amazed at what he can download at no cost. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Black Friday

2011-11-26T04:30:00.002-05:00

If you're a Steely Dan aficionado, "Black Friday" conjures up visions of a stock market crash: "When Black Friday comes/I'll stand down by the door/And catch the grey men when they dive from the fourteenth floor." If your sensibility runs more towards rapper Lil' Kim, her version of "Black Friday" is focused on dissing fellow hip hopper Nicki Minajs: "It'll be a murder scene/I'm turning Pink Friday to Friday the 13th." But if you're a retailer the term conjures up the sweet day when the red ink runs out and your year turns to profits.

But what to buy? Every year virtually every publication runs an article under general heading of "the best stuff to give." Usually it's themed to their audience, with Esquire offering up "The 25 Most Stylish Gifts under $100" while Bloomberg BusinessWeek has "The Executive Gift Guide 2011." In this space however, we have a more focused mandate: to find the things that make you roll your eyes as to how anyone could buy such a thing, while at the same time thinking "wait a minute! This would be perfect for..." In that spirit we offer the following list, with the explicit disclaimer that I covet none of the following.

New York Yankees ProToast Toaster: For the fan who just has to be reminded of his or her team before they even have their morning sip of coffee, there's the ProToast Toaster. Drop in two slices of bread, and out they come with the team's logo toasted in the center. Not to worry: as an officially licensed product of Major League Baseball, there is one available for every club, including one for Mets fans, which randomly burns the entire piece of bread.

Plush Sushi: Because nothing says fresh uncooked fish more than a stuffed representation of it. Turn your bed from a Teddy Bear hospital into your very own smiling, cuddly bento box. Available in tuna, shrimp, and wasabi and ginger versions. Sorry, but the salmon roe version is sold out.

Bacon Everything: It's true that 2008 was actually designated "The Year of Bacon" by several major food publications. But just as it takes time for the hits of Fashion Week to make their way to your local Target store, so too has it taken time for the all things smoked pork to trickle down to, well, all things. This year you can buy bacon candy canes, a sparkling bacon Christmas tree ornament, bacon frosting and bacon flavored popcorn. And my personal favorite, a tee shirt with the symbols for barium, cobalt and nitrogen printed along with their atomic properties. Of course, taken together, they spell "BaCoN."

Lil' Vampire Pacifier: Forget having a merely cute baby. How about having one with eternal life and taste for human blood? Nicely timed to coincide with the release of the newest "Twilight" offering comes this orthodontically correct sucker, one that sports luscious red lips and a full set of teeth including sharp canines. Now your offspring will have a reason to stay up all night and cry, though it's not for a bottle.

Butterfly in a Jar: An heir apparent to those whose only pet was a rock, this is exactly what it sounds like: a glass mason jar with a butterfly in it. But it requires no food or even air. The butterfly is electronic and is activated by sound. Tap on the glass and it flitters around just like the real thing. Fun to have on your desk, or use it to drive your cat wild. Just put it out of their reach, or it'll likely get knocked down, break and your kitty will wind up with a battery in her belly.

Chocomize Custom Chocolate Bars: Know someone who has a sweet tooth, but also some other serious food jones that a regular Snickers bar won't pacify? Then head over to Chcomize.com, and make a custom creation that will keep their blood sugar cooking. Start with your choice of chocolate, then add any of the more than 100 options, from beef jerky to gummy bears to curry powder. Or pick one of the favorite combinations, like The Zimmern, named for celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern: dark chocolate with mini pretzels, Pop Rocks, cayenne pepper and coffee beans.

Should none of those seem appropriate for your givees, there are plenty more: perhaps a radio controlled zombie, or a plush angry bird you can launch at people rather than pigs, or even a 1300 piece Lego model of a 1962 VW Bus. As for me, I said explicitly that I had no interest in any of the above. That being said, I confess I'm rethinking the chocolate.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford needs nothing, yet will eat almost anything. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

The Next Right Thing

2011-11-19T04:30:00.002-05:00

The opening act was done, and had left the stage. The waitress came around to refill coffee cups as the headliner and his accompanying guitar player made their way to the stage. Maybe 40, 50 people in the audience, twice as many empty seats as filled ones. The singer was a short, slightly-built kid with floppy hair and stubble, 22-years old as it turned out and looking barely that. He popped up on stage, bypassed the piano at the center and bent down to strap a rattle onto his left foot. The crowd, if you could call it that, giggled a little as he picked up a large gourd covered with shells and gave it a trial shake. He tentatively stomped on a wooden bar in front of the microphone, producing a deep thud like a bass drum. He glanced at the guitar player, who was holding a stick in his hand, ready to bang it straight down on the stage. They nodded at each other. And then came one of those moments that took my breath away.

It began with a steady beat and rattle, more a tribal thumping than a melody. In a piercing alto he began: "As the sun goes up over the sea/everyone was singing in a minor key/Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and priest/Gathered around for the jubilee./Two old ladies still waiting on a sign/growing bitter with age like a yellowtail wine./Shouting at the junkies in the court street light/Do The Next Right Thing or The Next Thing Right." Goosebumps went down my spine: Seth Glier was on stage.

Glier may just be the next right thing, but in spite of his tender age he's hardly a newcomer. His first 5 song EP "Why" was released in 2004, and since then he's had 4 more, the most recent being this year's "The Next Right Thing." A native of Shelburne, MA, Glier attended Boston's Berklee College of Music for a year before dropping out: "I wanted to play for people not grades, "he says. With his best friend and accompanist Ryan Hommel, they spent the last year in a blue Prius driving this way and that on their way to 250 performances. "This year," he told me, "I think we'll only do 150." He laughed: "I have a girlfriend in DC now, and want to have a life."

To be sure, his music echoes his influences, people like Joni Mitchell, Martin Sexton and Randy Newman. But he brings his own sensibilities to it, infusing it with an emotional content that's hard to imagine in one so young until you hear some of his back story. "This year is my dad's 20th year of sobriety" he tells the audience at one point. And at another he talks about how, when he's home, one of his responsibilities is to wake up his brother. The audience titters a bit, but stops dead once he continues: "My brother is 26, autistic and non-verbal. I get him up, get him showered and get him breakfast. I learned to communicate with words better once I realized how to communicate to someone without them."

That aside, it all comes down to the music, and Glier's singing and songwriting knocks you over. His songs are soulful, emotional, and on stage he takes each by the throat and shakes it alive, to the point that he's literally falling off the piano stool. In "Walk Katie Home" he talks about being so smitten with a young lady that he would drive 4 hours to New York City where she lived just to walk with her. (It didn't last," he said after. "She's now in Germany dating a glockenspiel player. That's life, I guess"). In "No Place to Land" he feels sorry for those who gain success at the expense of losing their personal moorings: "I lost you, dismissed you, tonight I miss you/I've been flying with my life in such command/that I've got no place to land." And my favorite, "New World I See," as yet unrecorded, is smooth and heartfelt about another girl you just have to meet: "Kentucky, keep your whiskey/ Georgia, keep your peach/My Carolina is sweeter than sweet."

I love live music, and have seen a lot of performers. And while many others have seen 30 Springsteen concerts, or followed U2 to 10 different cities, my particular passion is singer/songwriters or groups which are unheralded or little known. I love passing on discoveries to others, music you might not have heard of, and truth be told, may never really break out. But I don't think that's the case here. So consider yourself tipped off: Seth Glier is making the rounds. Get into him now before others tell you what you're missing. It's The Next Right Thing.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford loves live music of any type. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/

Guns, Not Butter

2011-11-12T04:30:00.004-05:00

Some of the most eye opening things you discover aren't the things you discover at all, but where those things lead. Take books: I'm an avid reader, and always on the lookout for something new and different. In that pursuit, I plumb the usual places: Amazon's new releases, the New York Times Book Review, recommendations from friends and co-workers. And more often than not I come across the usual suspects: new efforts from Erik Larsen (very good), Neal Stephenson (in the middle of, but good so far) and Jeffrey Eugenides (on my list). But then I came across one from Linday McCrum... and it took me further.

McCrum is a photographer who divides her time between New York and California. Her usual business is portrait and fine art photography. But for the last three years her personal project has been pictures of women and their weapons. From the 280 sessions she's had, she gathers her 80 of her favorites into a book that sold out at Amazon on its first day, "Chicks with Guns."

The captivating photos include subjects you'd expect, such as women in law enforcement and competitive shooters. But it also includes a picture of Alexandra of Houston Texas, with a gun in one hand and her naked three-year-old baby boy in the other. Then there's the caption for the photo of Jen from Minnesota and her handgun: "Any girl would understand when I explain it was something I saw and HAD TO HAVE. Some women experience that feeling with clothes, some with jewelry. For me it was with a large firearm."

There's lots more of interest about the book and its topic that gets you thinking. Writes McCrum, "Gun ownership is a really serious and complex issue, and it deserves serious consideration. It deserves far more than sound bites geared toward people's fear and hate. This project is not about politics or policy. I'm not interested in glorifying anyone, nor am I interested in vilifying anyone. I was just really curious."

Now, you could leave it there. There is plenty to discuss and debate about the underlying issue, as well as the photography itself. But that's when I took the next step. In perusing the reviews posted for the book, I came across one by Kathy Jackson. A positive outlook, it wasn't her comments but rather her credentials that caught my eye. She, too, is an author, but with a dog in this fight: her paperback is entitled, "The Cornered Cat: A Womans's Guide to Concealed Carry." Even more, Jackson is the managing editor of Concealed Carry Magazine.

So off I went to their web site. A magazine celebrating the carrying of firearms unobtrusively, it has articles that cover every aspect of the topic There's "Concealed Carry for the Petite Woman," with tips for dressing so your Ruger blends in with your wardrobe. There's "The Challenged Shooter," with a discussion on hiding your Glock in your wheelchair. And there's Jackson's own article on "Five Great Carry Finds." It reviews some of the latest trends in holsters and purses, including the Flashbang women's holster which suspends from the center of your bra for easy drawing, though "it proved difficult if not impossible to draw from the neckline, so don't look to this product to solve the dresses problem for you."

There're practical discussions as well, like Mark Walters' column called "Living an Armed Lifestyle." As he writes, once you get over the idea that there are indeed bad people in the world, and you have to be armed to protect yourself, you have to make a number of choices. This begins with such weighty matters as deciding whether to indeed break the law and carry a concealed weapon where it's not permitted. But it also includes such mundane choices as taking a stand and not buying Sticky Fingers brand BBQ sauce in the grocery store because "the Sticky Fingers restaurant chain won't allow law-abiding citizens in their eateries." And there are self-image questions as well: "are you willing to buy larger pant sizes to accommodate an inside the waistband holster?"

Here in the east coast megalopolis, where guns are generally equated with crime alone, this is eye-opening stuff. But dismissing it all as the dangerous pursuit of a small right wing contingent would be a mistake. For as McCrum says about "Chicks with Guns," she learned two lessons when working on her book: "The first is that on the subject of guns, nobody is neutral. And the other is that when you get outside of the blue-state cities, everybody has a gun."

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford shot .22 rifles in Boy Scout camp, but that's the extent of his firearm experience. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/

Trick or Treat Storm

2011-11-05T04:30:00.002-04:00

For those of you who live in our area, these sketches will seem familiar. For those of you who live to the south, these will sound like dispatches from Mars. Either way, following are random snapshots of some goings-on surrounding what most will come to call the Halloween storm of 2011.

Wintertime: In the space of 10 minutes, we went from fall to winter. I got up and went out running into a gray, damp Saturday morning, wearing shorts and a sweatshirt. The leaves were the usual autumn assortment of reds and golds, with more on the trees than on the ground. When I got back, I checked my email, and glanced at the paper before heading up to take a shower. By the time I had gotten the shampoo out of my eyes, the lawn was covered in white and you couldn’t see the next house on the street.

If a Tree Falls in a Forest: All night long, it sounded like we were in a war zone. There was an ongoing volley of “crack” and “pop” and “bang” and “thud.” But it wasn’t bodies, it was trees. With the leaves still up and the snow being of the heavy, wet variety, the weight and stress on the branches was extreme. They would bend as far as they could, then snap and plummet to the ground, often taking others with them. We heard some bounce off the roof, though thankfully none came through.

The Immediate Aftermath: By Sunday morning it was over, and a bright blue day belied that anything had happened. Still, no power (yes, we have a generator; again, you were right, honey), no cable, no phone, no internet. We spent an hour dragging huge branches off the driveway and walks, and trying to sweep snow off the buried shrubs which sprang back to life as though on springs. A walk down the street saw similar damage to others, with a few worse off: a smashed car, a huge tree resting on a roof. Worse physical damage than from Hurricane Irene, though not as much water.

The Lay of the Land: After 28 hours without power, we decided to go out to see about getting a hot meal (our generator provides lights, heat, water and several outlets, but doesn’t provide enough juice for the oven or cooktop. And there’s only so much you can do with a George Foreman grill). It was like driving on an obstacle course. Trees hung over roads. In many places, space was reduced to a single lane, as trees had fallen on one side and the plows just plowed around them. Most neighborhoods were without power. In the main street of each town, block after block was dark, followed suddenly by lights. In those areas, stores and restaurants were packed, as people looked to stock up on supplies, get food or just get distracted.

Free Ride: Had to go to work Monday, so left early. Word was that while trains had been suspended for a day, they were running normally for the commute, though sprinkled with delays. As I walked to the station, a train was pulling in. I ran and caught it to find it all but empty. As I found a seat, an announcement: "Good morning ladies and gentlemen. This is a special transit train being operated by a yard crew. We are not uniformed. We will be making limited stops. We will not be collecting tickets. If you need assistance, I may be identified by my big MTA winter coat, and my Boston Red Sox hat.”

And Lest You Forget: I had just come from a cold, wet, storm ravaged community that was reeling for the second time in as many months from weather related destruction. But that was there. In the city the roads were dry and the grass was green. I jumped on the subway to head downtown and glanced around to see the usual assortment of passengers. Well, not quite the usual. Sitting in the corner was a young woman chatting with a friend. The woman had a white porcelain face with red polka dots and big blue tears. Complimenting that were white gloves and leggings with the same polka dots, making her look like a doll. She wore a bright yellow wig and had matching yellow shoes. At the Spring Street station, she got up and walked off like nothing was unusual. And perhaps it wasn’t. It was New York City. It was Halloween. And life goes on.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford was without power for 123 hours after the storm hit. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

All in One

2011-10-29T04:30:00.002-04:00

Whether you use a slow cooker or a casserole dish, the idea is to put a bunch of different ingredients together into one pot, let them cook and serve it up to a hungry audience. Normally you take care to pick certain ingredients, carefully balancing the tastes and textures so just the right flavors come through, and even though it's all coming out of the same pot, there is definition to what you're eating. That is, unless you're Kentucky Fried Chicken.

More specifically, you used to be Kentucky Fried Chicken. Now you're KFC, a nod to both a snappier and shorter tag, along with the realization that these days "fried" is a four-letter word. Admittedly, back when Harland "Colonel" Sanders started the chain it seemed like a name for the ages. But just as Radio Shack no longer sells radios and tries hard not to look like a shack, its hard sometimes to escape your own history.

Regardless of what you call it, the mainstays are still there. Fried chicken, along with the traditional sides like mashed potatoes, corn and gravy. Each is still available to sooth those southern tastebuds that even Yankees have. And there is might have stayed. But then somebody in the R&D department had an idea: What if they put it all together? After all, people are ordering the items separately, so why not save them a step? Not as a Value Meal or Dinner Box or All-In-One, where you package each separate item together is a single carrier. No, I mean really together, as in a casserole. Only they don't have casserole, so they opted for a bowl. And voila', the KFC Famous Bowl was born.

As described on the company website, they start with a "generous serving of our creamy mashed potatoes, layered with sweet corn." Then because two starches are not enough, they added breaded, fried chicken and "drizzle it all with our signature home-style gravy, topped off with a shredded three-cheese blend." And that's the old version. As of this month, you can add bacon on top as well, because as they say in their ad campaign, "everything is better with bacon". Hard to argue with their tag line, "It's all your favorite flavors coming together."

And what a together it is. But it's not the calories (680) or the total fat (31 gms) or even the sodium (2130 mgs) that troubling here, though you can take issue with any of those numbers (and those are all before they add the bacon, which probably adds another 60 calories and a bunch more fat and salt). And it wouldn't be fair not to point out that the chain, like every other one out there, does offer healthier alternatives like salads and grilled chicken. But let's face it: you don't go to KFC to get a yogurt. You go to get fried chicken. Whether or not you go into cardiac arrest after chowing down is between you, your doctor and the Colonel, but it's not like you don't know what you're getting yourself into when you open the door.

Rather, it's the idea of dumping it all into one bowl that's troubling. Yes, some foostuffs are natural compliments: pancakes and syrup, peanut butter and jelly, bagels and cream cheese. But the idea of just layering up virtually every item in the palce and eating them with a spoon starts to sound suspiciously like reverting to baby food, where mom creamed it all together to hide the vegetables. Perhaps its best summed up by Eric Trinidad writing in The Huffington Post: "I felt like I should only be having this when recovering from dental surgery, or if I'm being spoon-fed in a hospital. Have Americans gotten so lazy that we'll just put everything in a bowl and eat it like horses going to a trough?" In fairness, though, he also notes, this: "At the same time, there's something awesome about living in a country that gives us that option."

When I was growing up there was an ice cream place near us that had a special we got only when there was a bunch of us. They took a scoop of every flavor they had, and added every topping available. It was a big gloopy mess, and the name said it all: "A Pig's Dinner." Now I'm sure that the marketing department at KFC thought that "Famous Cheesy Bacon Bowl" had a better chance of bringing them in that that moniker. But especially with the bacon on top, this silk purse is indeed a sow's ear.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford likes fried chicken, though we rarely eats it. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/

Bordeaux on the Hudson

2011-10-22T04:30:00.004-04:00

Back a dozen or so years ago, when work was slow and things were tough, Greg and his wife had a routine to escape the malaise. They would drop their then toddler off at her grandparents, and head to a local vineyard. There they would get a bottle and a couple of glasses, and sit outside looking over the hills. Amid sips and stares, things didn't look so bad, and they could imagine a better future. And wouldn't it be fun, they mused, if that future might someday include a vineyard of their own, where they could repeat the experience with a vino of their own vintage.

Several years later when they were checking out a new home, they discovered a bonus. Formerly owned by an old Italian gentlemen, the house had a patio with a pergola, an open topped frame that helped to define the space and kept things cooler in the summer. And what was growing up and around the structure? Not just any vines, but grapevines loaded with fruit suitable for corking.

Greg describes it as the quintessential case of be careful what you wish for. When I talked to him the other day, he was only too happy to chat: "I need a break from the harvest." For that erstwhile dream a dozen years ago has blossomed into an all-consuming hobby, one like any other that has its benefits and drawbacks.

"We grow about 200 pounds of grapes a year, in two varieties," he told me. The first is Catawba, a red grape that they use to produce a white wine. The other is Cesar, a notoriously fickle grape that produces a dark, tannic wine that is usually softened by blending with a Pinot Noir. "Other than the fact that we grow a difficult grape in the wrong soil and in the wrong climate, it's a piece of cake," he said.

Once picked, they have to squeeze out the juice. Like many non-wine making consumers, my only frame of reference is Lucy stomping around in a big vat. Greg just laughed: "Two things about that. One, grape stems are pretty sharp, and it actually hurts to step on them. And second, would you want to drink anything my feet stomped on? Yes, the alcohol produced would kill off anything harmful, but it's not a pretty picture."

Rather than go the Lucy route, he uses a stainless steel system that handles the processing, and has the added benefit of not turning his feet purple. And literally, there is a bright spot at the end. "I've always wanted a Ferrari," says Greg, "and my corker is made by a company called Ferrari. I still hope someday to have a sleek, red one, but for now this will do."

The math works out this way: 200 pounds of grapes yields about 19 gallons of liquid, which equates to about 95 bottles of wine. I asked him about any tax implications: do the "revenuers" of the government come looking for their cut? Turns out that federal law says that you can make up to 200 gallons a year for personal use. "But that's like a thousand bottles of wine, which equals about 3 bottles a day per person. Now, that's some serious drinking."

Of course, the test is in the tasting. "In our case, we let it mellow for about a year. It softens it, and creates a better flavor." They play with the process and the time a bit, seeing how they can tweak it to make it better. Greg says it will never ripen into a "colossal Bordeaux," but it's fun and it's drinkable. "What we get tends to be very dry, very alcoholic, and after a couple of glasses, starts to taste not too bad."

As to the name they bestow on their creation, they keep it simple: "We call it Plonk Blanc and Plonk Rouge." I looked up "plonk." It's an "unspecific and derogatory term in British and Australian English for wine that is notably inexpensive or judged to be of poor quality." Rather, in this case, it's Greg's homage to his favorite London Barrister, Horace Rumpole. After a long day at the old Bailey, Rumpole would stop into Pomeroy's Wine Bar for a glass of the "House Plonk - Chateau Thames Embankment."

But there's another way of looking at it as well. UK journalist Max Davidson equates plonk with "youth, excess, self-indulgence in times of penury. Forget grown-up wine. With plonk, the sweetest bouquet of all is the taste of a few pence saved." On that note, Greg, I raise my glass.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford can't say he knows much about wine beyond that he likes it. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

It's Not Butter

2011-10-15T04:30:00.002-04:00

We try to do the right thing, we really do. We eat lots of salad, and throw in beans and fruit as kickers. We have cut down on our consumption of beef to almost nothing, and fish shows up on the table at least once a week. Our pasta is whole grain, our milk is 1% and our bread has so much fiber in it you could use it in place of wallboard.

Not that I'm complaining. I know it's all good for me, and assuming I don't get hit by a bus tomorrow, it will hopefully let me live longer with fewer problems. That's not to say I'm a nutritional saint. I still have a weakness for peanut butter cups and strawberry Twizzlers. If I'm working late, I'm likely to grab a chain store hamburger for the ride home. And especially when I go on the road, I have a tendency to eat stupider, partly as a reward to myself for the disruption to my routine, partly because I am likely to be eating alone and the only person to disapprove of my dietary choices is me, and I forgive myself very quickly.

However, in our home, even I've willingly made the turn. While my wife makes it a point to shop for healthier alternatives for us both, be it low fat yogurt or brown rice or egg white substitute, I've made major sacrifices in my own convoluted personal dietary world. I've all but given up on cookies. I'm happy with a piece of fresh fruit, especially if it's been chilled a bit in the refrigerator. And I have cut down on my ice cream consumption to once in a blue moon. It may not sound like much, but we're talking sea change here.

But I think we've gone a butter too far.

It's not like we eat a lot of it, either. We usually have a stick in the fridge and a pound or so in the freezer, but it's almost exclusively used for cooking and baking. For everyday consumption, like shmearing on a piece of whole grain, low carb, high fiber toast (yum!), we have tubs of spreadable stuff. I say stuff, because I couldn't actually tell you the brand we used. It's some well-known combination of processed oils enriched with a panoply of Greek lettered vitamins, minerals and acids that they tell me are not just good for me but "essential" to my health. What I can tell you is that it is vaguely butter-esque. That, and yellow.

But the latest product of modern food chemistry to show up on our fridge goes by the name of Smart Balance Light. On the outside, it's a variation of the usual sunny looking container that is de rigueur in the "buttery flavored spread" category. And the product itself it's a little less canary than some of the others, with a tone a bit closer to taupe, though not alarmingly so. But appearances aside, it all comes down to taste. Now, perhaps there are those of you reading this that swear by this delicacy, that find it creamy and delicious, that can't wait to pop open a container and slather your whole wheat bagel. Let the record show that I am not in your camp.

It begins with a consistency more akin to spackle: spreadable is not an adjective I'd use to describe it. Perhaps our fridge is too cold, but even when applied to bread fresh from the toaster, I have to use a disconcerting amount of elbow grease to move it around the surface. As to taste, there basically is none. No butter, no cream, nothing. The best that can be said of it is that it greases the bread, making it easier to swallow. And while there's something to be said for a slogan like "lubricates your food," it's not drawing me in.

I'm all for healthy living. I'm willing to make diet and lifestyle changes that in the aggregate will help me live longer and better. And I'm happy to try new products with an open mind towards improvement, whether they be consumable by the eyes, ears or mouth. But just as I have no desire to watch Star Wars on my smartphone, I have no desire to eat something healthy that has no taste appeal. My mom and a thousand scientists have said everything is fine in moderation. So at least for me and my light wheat, multigrain English muffin, the only smart balance is just a little bit of butter.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to eat healthy, most of the time. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

No, You're Not Sorry

2011-10-08T04:30:00.002-04:00

My hotel room in Los Angeles had a nice view of the valley, and I had a fresh cup of coffee. I had just settled in to work when I heard a loud "CLICK," then silence. The lights went out, the air conditioner went off and the clock next to my bed went blank. It took me a moment to process what was happening. Yes, I had just come from the hurricane ravaged east, and was used to dealing with power outages and such. But this was Southern California. It was 10AM on a Wednesday, the sun was shining and I was in the middle of the city. No way the power could be out. Could it?

I opened the door and stuck my nose out into the hall. Sure enough, it was dim, lit only by emergency lighting. A maintenance guy was walking by, so I asked the obvious question: "Did we just lose power?" He shook his head. "Yes sir, it seems that way." Was it anything he did? I thought perhaps he was working on the floor, and cut it to fix something. He shook his head. "No sir, nothing we did. I'm so sorry for the inconvenience."

Now, I understand the service ethos that drove the comment. I'm sure he was sorry in the abstract for any hassle it caused me. And if it was the hotel that was the locus of the problem, he was stepping up as its representative and taking the blame. But at that moment the chain of cause and effect hadn't been established. Still, it was a nice thing to say.

I retreated back into my room and looked out the window. No lights in adjoining buildings, no traffic signals: it was a Beverly Hills blackout. The phone, which obviously was still working, rang. I picked it up to find a member of the front desk staff confirming it was indeed a utility issue, and not building specific. No, she had no idea what caused it. No, she didn't know how long it would last. Anything she could do for me, she asked. And then concluded like her associate in the hall: "Sir, we are so sorry for this."

But to be clear, neither could actually apologize because they didn't cause the affront. After all, the very definition of the word is "an expression of remorse or guilt over having said or done something that is acknowledged to be hurtful or damaging, and a request for forgiveness." Even if you go back to a more classical formulation, it doesn't line up. Apology derives from the Greek "apologia," which translates as a defense, or a speech made in defense. Mr. Maintenance and Ms. Front Desk didn't cause the blackout, so there should be no remorse to express, nor actions to defend.

It's just that those in the customer service field have learned that a sympathetic "I'm sorry" is the fastest and most surefire way to get a leg up, so much so that virtually every interaction with a disgruntled customer starts that way. Guilt or blame has nothing to do with it. Rather, it's a preemptive strike designed to defuse the situation, regardless of who is the aggrieved party and who is the agriever. I'm sorry for the difficulties you had when overdrawing your account. I'm sorry the item arrived after her birthday since you waited too long to order it. I'm sorry the size you ordered doesn't fit your big butt. I'm sorry you're a moron. Really. I'm very sorry.

Now admittedly, the apology trend is better than alternative. In the old days, the blame was squarely on you. It was a criminal justice system whereby you were guilty until there was incontrovertible proof you were innocent. That evolved into a stalemate best described as the "there's no problem here, don't even think of mentioning it or I will just glare at you" approach. And now here we are today, where rule number one is that the customer is always right, and rule number two is if the customer is wrong, see rule number one.

But perhaps the pendulum has swung a little too far. These days we apologize preemptively when we think there might be any disagreement: "I'm sorry, but I think ‘Modern Family' is a better show than ‘The Office.'" Other than in politics, where the word doesn't seem to exist, we seem to take pains to not offend even when we aren't. Put another way, perhaps Elton John was wrong; "sorry" does not seem to be the hardest word.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford always seems to be apologizing, though he's often not sure for what. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Touch of Zen

2011-10-01T04:30:00.000-04:00

If I said "Touch of Zen" to you, you might think of the 1971 movie with Billy Chan, Ying Bai and Ping-Yu Chang, the inspiration for such later gems as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Or you might think of the store in West Islip, NY that sells martial arts equipment. Then there's the health club and massage parlor in Walnut Hills, CA, the floral arrangement with bamboo by Buds, Blooms and Beyond in Tampa FL, or perhaps the salon in Albuquerque, NM. But odds are you wouldn't think of me and my cell phone.

Yet, increasingly, that's where I find myself. In a time when everything is faster, at our fingertips, always connected, I find myself having to practice the ancient of art of meditation when I want to make a call, look up an address or enter something in my calendar. Want me to Google the name of the movie where Harrison Ford gets amnesia after being involved in a robbery? Patience, Grasshopper.

It's not supposed to be like this. Whether your preferred eco-system is Android or Apple, whether you have a shiny device from LG or Motorola, whether you have a 3G phone or a 4G LTE smartphone or a 7Q giga-nano-hyper smarterphone, information in today's world is supposed to be like Chinese food: it's there before you order it. Like just-in-time manufacturing, when you turn and reach for it is supposed to be at your fingertips. If you do it right, you shouldn't even have to break stride as you walk down the street, punching up the closest organic taco place, knowing that your order with the burrito with local jack cheddar will hit the counter as you walk in the door.

And then there's me. Short of being an engineer, I consider myself a fairly well-informed geek. I have a holistic picture of how devices work, how to tweak them to make them work better and how to fix them when they have issues. And so to fix my particular device, which once was as speedy as a rocket ship and now has more in common with a tricycle, the person I would likely turn to for help is someone like me.

Yes, I understand that my phone is two years old, which in smartphone-dog years means it may as well be hand cranked. And I know I have downloaded and installed my fair share of dumb programs that take up space and bandwidth, be it the "Steamy Window" ap that coast my screen with "steam" like it's in the shower, or the "Obama Camera" that inserts the president into any picture you take. But I also know how to kill said stupids and run the thing lean and mean, so that those distractions and others are distant memories, and not memory hogs.

So I'm at a loss as to why my phone is crawling. From the time I wake it up to when I holster it in frustration, every action requires a deliberate press and wait. Let's say I want to check my phone log to see if I missed any important calls while in the subway. I do my secret pattern to unlock the phone: wait 10 seconds. I press the phone icon to get to the next menu: 10 seconds more. I press the log button: yes, 10 seconds. Digital is supposed to be on or off, much like being pregnant: you either are or you aren't, there's no middle ground. I would understand better if the phone didn't work at all. But it's hard to convince me that the bits and bytes are feeling their age, and are taking longer to go from here to there.

And so I wait. I press and I wait. I look around, check the weather, then look down to see if I can take the next step. I press again. I watch the people, check the traffic. I press again. I wonder what my wife is thinking of for dinner. Then I look down, and see the entry of the person I wanted to call. I press the screen, and think whether I need to stop by the bank as it connects. I mean, what other choice do I have? My upgrade doesn't kick in for a month or so. That means unless I want to pay $1825 for a new phone which will shortly cost me less than $200, I have no options. Excuse me, there is one more: throw it against the wall, then dance merrily on the splintered remains while screaming obscenities at the top of my lungs.

Patience, Grasshopper.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is counting the days till his "new-in-two" benefit kicks in. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Theory of Relativity

2011-09-24T04:30:00.003-04:00

As we have done in the past, my wife wanted to host a gathering for as much of her family as could make it. We sent out a bunch of invitations, but as usual for these things not everyone could attend. No matter: all were lovely people, and it was good to reconnect and catch up. There were cousins, in-laws, siblings and friends. And then there was baby Alice.

The kind of baby that makes you want to have another, she was as cute as button and quiet to boot. I welcomed the chance to take her for a while, and she seemed comfortable perched on my shoulder. If you have kids that are grown, this was the best kind of infant to offer to hold: well behaved, not too fussy and giveable-backable to the parents when the tide started to turn the other way.

Those in attendance made the expected comments about how contented she looked as I held her (she smiled a lot), how much she liked me (what's not to like?) and did I want to keep her (absolutely not). But as the two of us strolled around the house, I started to wonder: just who was she? Not animal, vegetable or mineral, but how did she fit into the gathering? She came with her parents, who were cousins of my wife. And since the crowd contained a gaggle of siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, in-laws and friends (and I thought I even saw a neighbor who wondered in looking for a couple of eggs and stuck around for a drink), we needed a Venn diagram to plot the connections.

Like an Abbot and Costello routine, the question is who is first, who is second, who is removed and who is nothing? The basics we all know, and are easy enough. Have the same parents, and you are siblings. The children of your siblings are your nieces and nephews, while you are their aunts and uncles. And those nieces and nephews are cousins to one another. Some slight wrinkles: if only one parent is in common, your siblings are "half," while if the relationship is through a second marriage, then it's a "step" away.

For many of us, that's as difficult as it gets. True, were we elsewhere in the world, there might be some subtle variations. For instance, in Sweden your mother's brother... your uncle here... is your "morbror," and while your father's brother... also your uncle here... is your "farbror." Some Polynesian languages use the same words for male and female cousins as for brothers and sisters. And in France, where they tend to treat affairs and liaisons much more casually than we do here, both your daughter-in-law and your stepdaughter are your "belle-fille." Remember, they also consider Jerry Lewis a god.

But even if you stick to these shores, it can get more complex. That's because families morph, expand and contract. Or you meet a bigger group, and want to chart your cousin's cousins, or start talking to those of different generations. So unless you are the Kardashians and call everybody "ex" or "defendant," it gets more complicated.

According to genealogists, you look backwards. More specifically, you look back along your ancestral line, and see where there are commonalities. Relationships are derived from the point of view of where you and another overlap. Go up one step, and you have parents. If they are in common, you have siblings. If you have the same grandparents, but not the same parents, you are cousins. But if you have the same great-grandparents, but nothing else, you are described as second cousins. And thirds have great-greats in common, fourth have great-great-greats... you get the idea.

But what if you hail from different generations? That's when "removed" comes in. You and your first cousins are in the same generation (two generations younger than your grandparents). But your mother's first cousin is your first cousin, once removed. That's, because your mother's first cousin is one generation younger than your grandparents and you are two generations younger than your grandparents. This one-generation difference equals "once removed." Likewise, twice removed means that there is a two-generation difference. You are two generations younger than a first cousin of your grandmother, so you and your grandmother's first cousin are first cousins, twice removed.

All of which brings me back to baby Alice. She is the next generation of the cousin of my wife. So to my wife, she is her first cousin once removed. But to me? Well, since I am related my marriage, you could say she is my cousin-in-law once removed. Or you could just say she's a cute baby. Me, I'm going with the later.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has 1 sibling, 6 cousins and who knows what else. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

No Ma'ams

2011-09-17T04:30:00.000-04:00

It was the usual back and forth email exchange we all do. I sent a note to a supplier I have worked with for years, requesting some equipment for a project. I tried to make the message as complete as I could, but obviously not complete enough. The project manager queried me back about one loose end: was billing to me or to the end client? I responded as succinctly as possible, adding what I thought was a note of respect: "To me, ma'am." The project manager quickly wrote back, "Ew. You ma'am'd me."

So much for trying to be nice.

If you look it up, both "sir" and "ma'am" are nominally titles of respect or courtesy, not insults. While both are used all over, it is far more prevalent in the south, and has even been enshrined into law in Louisiana. Dubbed the "Aretha Franklin Bill" as a nod to the song "R-E-S-P-E-C-T," they have a statute on the books that requires children in kindergarten through fifth grade to respond with a polite "yes, ma'am" or "no, ma'am," or "yes, sir" or "no, sir" when speaking to teachers, principals and other school employees. Or as a northern friend who visited Houston put it, "I've been repeatedly ma'am'd here... it's a veritable ma'am-appolussa!"

In these parts the terms are used more intermittently, usually to convey that the person offering up the appellation defers to the person being addressed. In fact, unlike in the military where it is almost used as punctuation ("Sir, yes sir!"), it's not uncommon to hear said title and a first name mixed into the conversation, which is surely the yin and yang of familiarity and deference: "Well, Ken, I think you have the right approach, if I say so myself, sir." That's what they call covering all your bases.

But while "sir" can be used with no trace of irony, "ma'am" carries more baggage. Originally a colloquial shortening of "madam," it began as a respectful form of address to a married woman ("miss" was for unmarried women), and was later restricted to the queen, royal princesses or by servants to their mistresses. And today? Perhaps the sentiment is best captured by actress Helen Mirren in her role as Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison on "Prime Suspect." As she explained to her male subordinate, "Listen, I like to be called governor or the boss. I don't like ma'am. I'm not the bloody queen, so take your pick."

Most women I talked to would seem to agree, and you can find countless other examples. In the premier episode of "Star Trek: Voyager," Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway told a young male ensign that "ma'am is acceptable in a crunch, but I prefer captain." In the seminal comedy "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," Mary and her neighbor Rhoda decide there's nothing worse than being 30-ish and single, except maybe being called ma'am in an episode entitled "Today I am a Ma'am." And Senator Barbara Boxer interrupted a brigadier general who addressed her as "ma'am" at a congressional hearing, and asked him to address her as "senator," saying "I worked so hard to get that title, so I'd appreciate it."

In my own very unscientific survey, ma'am seems to jab a female like a poke in the ribs. Los Angeles-based writer Jill Soloway once wrote "It makes me think I'm fat and old, like an elderly aunt." And New York Times reporter Natalie Angier wrote that it can be an unnecessary station-break comment on one's appearance in an otherwise routine and pleasant social exchange: "Hello, middle-aged- to elderly-looking woman, how may I help you this evening? Thanks, prematurely balding man with the weak chin, I'll take that table over there, in the corner."

Then there's Al Bundy. The patriarch in the comedy "Married... with Children" was also against ma'am, though from a slightly different angle. He and his friends, tired of being dominated by women, formed "NO MA'AM," which stood for the "National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood." Not to be outdone, the women formed F.A.N.G., short for "Feminists Against Neanderthal Guys."

Al Bundy. Barbara Boxer. Mary Tyler Moore. Names you'd be hard pressed to put into the same sentence in any other context. But none want ma'am to be the state of affairs. I, for one, will do my best going forward. When no official title is apparent, I guess I'll just have to find an alternative. "Buddy" and "pal" don't really cut it, "sister" and "dear" are too familiar and "hey you" too impersonal. So female person, if I don't talk to you, understand it's my way of showing respect.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is finding out more and more that when talking, less is more. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Taking the Pledge

2011-09-10T04:30:00.002-04:00

Raise your right hand and repeat after me: I pledge to buy handmade goods for myself and my loved ones, and request that others do the same for me. I pledge I will not text while I am driving. I pledge to reduce unnecessary idling by turning off my vehicle when stationary for more than 5 minutes unless in traffic. I pledge to catch and release, to save money and spend it wisely, and to play an active role in building a strong, vibrant and diverse Michigan economy. Actually, scratch that last one; I live in New York, so I don't really feel obligated to buy any Mackinaw Island Fudge.

Those are just a smattering of the innumerable pledges that are being solicited online. And while I may be unwilling to profess fealty to my Wolverine friends, you might be so inclined. In fact, if you're the type that feels compelled to make a formal commitment to a course of action or type of thought, there is no shortage of opportunities. Do a search for "take the pledge," and somewhere on the order of 6 million possibilities come up. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals(PETA) wants you to promise "never to go to a circus that uses animals," while the Clark Fork Coalition in Missoula, MT want you to pledge to "clean, inspect and dry your boat, boots and waders." And at Cornell students are encouraged to "Take Back The Tap" and choose tap water over bottled water, though in a bit of serendipity, local keg distributors have similar signs up and aren't against any synergies that might occur.

Pledges have gained new-found visibility this season as the Republican presidential hopefuls have been trying to out-promise each other to sign on to as many intractable positions as possible. Most well-known is the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" championed by Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, to never ever, ever raise taxes. There's the "Cut, Cap and Balance" vow to promote a balanced budget, the "Pro-Life Citizens Pledge" focusing on anti-abortion and the "Marriage Vow" pledge, which, among other things, states that signers of the document recognize "the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better sex." With regard to the last, it's worth mentioning Bill Maher's point that while that may be true, it's just not with each other.

But while it's easy to agree on the advisability of not texting while driving, most things aren't that clear cut, and certainly not in the arena of politics. Tea Partiers aside, who really believes that everything is so black and white? That's not to say that you can't have strongly held positions. It's just that taking a stand to the point of swearing you will never consider an alternate view regardless of the circumstances or evidence seems a fool's errand. Or at the very least, it's certainly not the marker of a person who says they will lead all the people by acknowledging the challenges, considering all the options and then choosing the one that is the best for the majority.

There are ample examples of this in history: slavery, strip mining, child labor to name just a few. In each case, the prevailing point of view at the time was considered gospel, with overwhelming opinion on one side of the ledger. Sentiment was such at one point that if it been suggested to potential leaders that they sign a pledge guaranteeing the women never be allowed to vote, there's no doubt many would have. Now it's harder to imagine that that point of view was ever considered legitimate.

Which brings us back to Bill Maher. He is promoting a pledge which is a seven point common sense approach to politics, one that admittedly is couched in his own particular style. The second plank is "No driving a truck or eating at a rural diner or any other homespun kiss-ass bull you wouldn't normally do." Three is "no more flag pins, because you're running for President of the United States, and I think we can safely assume you're on the team." And six, "you have to stop saying that ‘the American people are smarter than that,' and admit that a lot of the American people are morons." Say what you will about his politics, the man has a point.

But perhaps the most important position is the first. If we can get all in the mix to sign it, Democrat and Republican alike, perhaps we can get on to more important stuff. It's very simple, and it would solve a lot of problems. Number one is this: after this, you have to pledge to sign no more pledges. Pen, please.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford pledges to never sign a pledge. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

An Irene Diary

2011-09-03T04:30:00.008-04:00

On May 31, 1944, General George S. Patton, addressing his troops in England on the eve of their deployment to be part of D-Day, famously said this: "Thirty years from now when you're sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you ‘What did you do in the great World War Two?', you won't have to say, ‘Well...I shoveled shit in Louisiana.'" In a decidedly modern spirit, here's our Irene diary; decide for yourself whether we hit the beaches, or, well, you know.

Saturday/12PM. Cloudy: Turned on Weather Channel. Biggest storm ever...ever...to hit Northeast. Decided some precautions were in order. Took all furniture on deck, flipped it over and put close to house. Took potted plants off railings, put on the ground. Charged phones, made sure there were batteries for flashlights.

Saturday/2PM. First rains, breezy: According to Weather Channel, storm surge could wash away New Jersey. Maybe it WILL be bad. Downloaded movies to Tivo to have something to watch when we inevitably lose power and cable. Downloaded books to Kindle and iPad. Civilization must survive.

Saturday 5PM. Steady, light rain, winds: On Weather Channel: "Hurricane Irene poses an extraordinary threat and is one that no one has yet experienced from North Carolina to the mid-Atlantic to the Northeast to New England." Wrote down time for end of the world. In preparation, defrosted chicken. Mulled over what to cook. Eventually made Chinese stirfry with vegetables and chili sauce. Not my best batch...too much soy sauce. I blame Irene.

Saturday 7PM. Rain picking up, tress start swaying: On Weather Channel: Congress has been washed away. Or maybe just had some water in the Capital basement, hard to tell. First major local problem: storm drain in driveway backing up. Could be the beginning of the end. With rake, pulled leaves from drain. Crisis averted. Started watching "The Adjustment Bureau."

Saturday 930PM. Rain starting to pelt house, trees bending: Verdict: even as entertainment in a hurricane, movie just OK. Cleaned out storm drain again. Turned back to Weather Channel. I was wrong: end of world AND of New York City. Everything shutting down, even Starbucks in Manhattan. Proof of end times.

Saturday 1130PM. Pounding rain, sweeping winds: On Weather Channel, all is darkness. But that's because correspondent is on beach at night. Bedtime.

Sunday 330AM. Howling wind, stinging rain: Wake to sound of motor. Power went out, generator kicked in. Mental note: Yes, honey, you were right. Got up, checked refrigerator, hot water heater, well pump. All still working. Called in power outage, first on block. Turned on Weather Channel. New Jersey still mysteriously there, New York about to be submerged. Went back to bed.

Sunday 630AM. Sweeping winds, rains, dark skies: Cable, phone, internet all out. Must come to grips that we'll have to talk with each other. No end to suffering: unlikely to get Sunday New York Times, and hard to read Style section on smartphone. Still, gennie means coffee, hot shower, lights. Formally eat crow: yes, honey, you were right. On the bright side, no cable, so no Weather Channel: we might already be drowned, just don't know it.

Sunday 930AM. Sky brightening a bit, rains easing: Reconnoiter around yard. Huge tree from neighbor's house came down, split, half in our yard, half in theirs. KO'd some bushes, but no one hurt. On street, huge tree across road, blocking us in. Text contact at Fire Department for help. They say sure, maybe someday.

Sunday 1130AM. Rain easing, winds dying: Check out neighborhood. Climb through fallen tree on street. On next road, little babbling brook is now roaring rapids. Another big tree down there. Two neighbors with chain saws come out just looking to cut something. Help them, tell them about our street. Impromptu neighborhood gathering, many help. Work party forms, tree cleared. Only minor injuries.

Sunday 5PM. Rains ending, wind picking back up again: Still no power, cable, phones, no estimate of fix. Stove, oven not on gennie, so defrost more chicken, fire up grill. Another crisis: DVD with "West Wing" on it in player in room not on gennie. Have to carry to other room, plug in to eject, then use different DVD player and find episode where we left off. Family very brave throughout challenge: proud of ingenuity, stoicism.

Monday 7AM. Bright blue sky, light breezes: Still no power, phone, internet. Start cleanup on yard, cleanout gutters of leaves and debris. Weather Channel Online: who cares anymore? Gennie still cooking: yes honey, you're still right. Speaking of cooking, is it too early to defrost...chicken?

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford and his family all came through storm fine, just inconvenienced. His column, come rain or shine, appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com

Stuck

2011-08-27T04:30:00.006-04:00

"Don't you want me baby?

Don't you want me oh?"

-The Human League

I apologize.

If you came of age listening to the radio anytime around the Reagan presidency, at this exact moment, you're now going "dum, dum da dah dum... dabadabadada." That's because whether you liked this song or whether you hated this song, in 1981 you heard it played approximately 1,472,386 times, and it is embedded in your brain. You may not have thought about for 30 years, but now that I've brought it up, I guarantee it will haunt you as it came back to haunt me.

I blame it on David Mitchell. Not the lyricist, singer or producer of the tune in question, he's an English novelist. Having enjoyed his historical novel "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," I decided to check out some of his other works. That led me to "Black Swan Green," a coming-of-age story told from the perspective of a 13-year old boy growing up in the eighties in a village in Worcestershire, England. In one of the very first chapters, Jason talks about how his sister is holed up in her room listening to "The Human League." And so it began.

If there's any comfort, it's two things: the song wasn't by Barry Manilow, and you're not crazy, it's a documented condition. It even has a name: earworms. Not the parasite that Ricardo Montalbán dropped into the helmet of Chekov in "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan," but rather it's all about your brain's need to fill in gaps where it only has partial information. According to researchers studying this at Dartmouth (yes, Dartmouth!), when they played part of a familiar song to subjects, the participants' auditory cortex automatically filled in the rest. In other words, their brains kept "singing" along long after the song had ended.

There's ample historical precedent to this. It's widely written that Mozart's children would "infuriate" him by playing melodies and scales on the piano below his room, but stop before completing the tune. He would have to rush down and complete the sequence because he couldn't bear to listen to an unresolved scale. But even if your piano skills aren't up to Ludwig's, you can still fall prey. While it's true that musicians are more often bothered than non-musicians, women are afflicted significantly more than men, as are people who are neurotic, tired or stressed. In other words, you.

In fact, James Kellaris, a professor at the University of Cincinnati, has found that as many as 99% of us have fallen prey to this phenomenon. On average, the episodes last over a few hours and occur "frequently" or "very frequently" among 61.5% of the sample. As Kellaris writes, "Songs with lyrics are reported as most frequently stuck (74%), followed by commercial jingles (15%) and instrumental tunes without words (11%)." What seems to unite them is a simple, upbeat melody, as well as catchy, repetitive lyrics and a twist such as an extra beat or unusual rhythm. Not surprisingly, these factors are also what make songs or jingles popular in the first place (like the Chili's, "I want my baby back baby back baby back ribs" jingle, which made Kellaris' list of the most insidiously "stuck" songs).

But that's just fill-in-the-blank. Why do we keep repeating it over and over and over until we want to scream? While they don't know for sure, experts describe it for us mere mortals as a "brain itch." They surmise that your brain hates to have holes. And just like a mosquito bite, repeating it scratches that spot. Others postulate that earworms are simply a way to keep the brain busy when it's idling. Of course, we all know that the more you scratch a bite, the more it itches. And so it becomes self replicating.

So what is the calamine lotion for earworms? For sure, another song can dislodge the first, but it can also start a whole new pattern. You can also switch to an activity that keeps you busy, such as working out. Some report success by, in a homage to that Star Trek episode, picturing the earworm as a real creature crawling out of your head, and then stomping on it.

There is one more remedy: try listening to the song all the way through to get away from the hook. And so if you are where I was, here you go: "Don't, don't you want me? You know I don't believe you when you say that you don't need me. It's much too late to find, you think you've changed your mind, you'd better change it back or we will both be sorry."

All together now...

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford is easily distracted. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Doing Battle

2011-08-20T04:30:00.002-04:00

Accounts of confrontation between man and beast are legendary. There's Ahab in "Moby Dick" and Chief Martin Brody in "Jaws." Bill Murray has an epic battle with a gopher in in "Caddyshack." Even politicians have gotten in on the act: Jimmy Carter was attacked by a "killer rabbit," while Sarah Palin bested a caribou.

Me, I have a chipmunk.

Yes, a chipmunk. Those little stripped ground squirrels that move like rats on speed. Out here where the deer and the antelope play, we have oodles of the little fellas running around the yard. Usually we see them emerging or disappearing into one of the countless holes they've dug around the garden, gathering up nuts or seeds or chasing each other across the lawn. They're cute, they're cuddly... that is, until it becomes me vs. them.

In our case, we had finally decided to reset our front walk. Made of flagstones, countless cycles of freeze and thaw had turned it from a pathway into a minefield. One stone heaved this way, another that, others balanced like covers on a tiger pit, ready to flip over and swallow you up if you stepped on an edge. It got so we were reluctant to let anyone come to the front door, lest they twist an ankle and wind up in the hospital.

So we hired a couple of guys to fix it up. They spent two days picking up each piece, laying the jigsaw puzzle out on the lawn, then adding a smooth sand base and replacing the stones. Finally they filled all the seams with stone dust, making a flat, stable and attractive runway that took you from the driveway to the front door. All well and good.

But the next morning when I looked out, I noticed that some of the seams at the end were dustless and hollow. I assumed the guys working had just missed them. I grabbed a shovel and trundled out to the woods to find some leftover stone dust they had dumped there, then came back and filled them in. A few hours later I looked out and saw the same thing. Strange I thought; perhaps a small sinkhole existed. I repeated the process again, wondering what was going on. Then a chance glance an hour later showed the cause: a busy little chipmunk with feet firmly planted on either side of the inch and a half slot was digging madly. As I opened the door to go out, he disappeared down the rabbit hole he had created. The battle was on.

I first tried filling the slot with some rocks, then dust. Soon enough that was dug out. I swapped some stones around, moving the biggest slot to another spot. I looked out to see him at the bottom of the now narrower opening on his back, tail sticking up through the crack, paws clawing madly at the stone. I won, I thought. But not so fast. It took a little longer, but he soon found the bigger slot I had created a foot away, and commenced excavation there. Finally I removed a bunch of the flag stones and stuffed some plastic gutter mesh into his tunnels, then reset and refilled all. As of this writing, it's been a week, and no sign of my tormentor.

It calls to mind the writer Calvin Trillin, who tells the story about one of his favorite attractions in New York City for out-of-town guests, the Tic-Tac-Toe playing chicken in Chinatown. You put a quarter in the slot, a light goes on and the chicken plays the game to win a pellet of food: "Nearly all the people I take down there have precisely the same response," writes Trillin. "After looking the situation over, they say, 'But the chicken gets to go first.'" His response? ‘'But she's a chicken. You're a human being. Surely there should be some advantage in that." Unfortunately, it doesn't end there: "I'm embarrassed to say that some think for moment and then say, ‘But the chicken plays every day. I haven't played in years.'"

Likewise with my chipmunk. Yes, I bested him. Yes, our walk is now fixed. Yes, I made it animal proof. But it was hardly a fair fight. After all, he's a chipmunk, and I am a grown man: it feels a little like a beat up on a kid. I confess I come down every morning and look out to find no digging, and I feel both satisfaction and sadness. I actually feel bad I messed up his hard work. And so he and his ilk are back to being cute and cuddly. But if I see a pile of dust again... well, I'll go Navy SEAL on his ass in a New York minute.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford hates to do yard work. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Soul Redefined

2011-08-13T04:30:00.002-04:00

It was an uptown 4 train in New York City. Guy got on with a guitar, introduced himself and quickly broke into a tune. No denying the guy had talent: it was a soulful cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine." As we pulled into the next stop, he passed the hat. So far, all was going according to script. But then something new. He thanked the crowd, and said that if they wanted to hear some of his original music, they should go to iTunes or his web site. He stood up his guitar case, on which was a sticker with a picture of him and the address, www.VoEra.com.

And so I went. Kevin Hunt, aka Vo Era, is originally from Chicago. By his own admission, he was a rebellious kid, falling in with some gangbangers and drugs near his home in Englewood, a rough and tumble inner city area. Fortunately, when he was about 15 a friend and his grandmother got him to church. While he was there and "starting to get a better insight into life," a lady who was a known as a local prophet looked at him: one day you'll be a musician, she said. As he told me laughing, "Some people don't believe in prophecy, but I do!"

So he went and bought a keyboard, started learning it, then moved on to guitar and bass. He eventually quit high school: after all, no need for that when you're going to be a star. But he knew he still needed practice; he wasn't that good yet. So while he played and wrote, he supported himself with a bunch of odd jobs. Eventually he saw his mistake, and went back for his GED.

Walking into a bank one day, he had a revelation: "This is pretty chill: a desk, some business cards, a nice place to work." Armed with a smile, he talked himself into a job as a teller, then two years later moved to another institution as a personal banker. For six years he worked finance during the day, then burned the midnight oil practicing and gigging. Eventually his manager at the bank sat him down: he was slacking on the job, and had to make a choice. Of course, for him, there was only one. He quit, and went to work fulltime as a musician.

He started playing on the subway, trying to make a few bucks. That led to some invites to private parties and some club dates. Eventually a friend tipped him off to a sandwich place called Potbelly that was looking for lunchtime entertainment. He auditioned, and was offered the job, with the understanding he had to play a 3 hour set of cover tunes with no repeats. He only knew 8 songs, but quickly learned a bunch more to cover the time. He went from 2 days to 6, and had himself a steady, paying gig.

When his then girlfriend, now wife, got a medical residency in New York, it was the perfect excuse to do what he always wanted: get out of Chicago and come to the Big Apple. He started by working the same angles, getting a gig at two Potbelly restaurants in Manhattan, as well as trying to connect on the subway. He started setting up some social media sites, and is now actively working to push into the college market and internet radio.

He calls his music "Soul Redefined." I asked what that meant. "I like jazz, rock, R&B, but I'm not restricted. Everything I do has a soulfulness to it." And what does he want people to get from his music? "I write about relationships, attraction, hard times and real life. But no matter what the subject line is, it's all about the passion; whatever it is, I want people to feel the passion behind the music."

I had to ask about the name. "I had a friend who called me 'KeVo.' So I started just calling myself 'Vo.' But when I googled it, I got like 60 million hits. So I pulled out a thesaurus and started looking for a last name. Then I stumbled across 'era.' And it just sounded right: Vo Era." He laughed: "And then I thought it: era is about time, and this is mine."

It just might be. You can find Vo playing gigs in NY, online, at iTunes and yes, still on the subway. I asked him how hard that is: "It's tough. Lots of times people aren't paying attention. But the key is to always focus, and channel your energy on the small amount of those who are listening to you. It's all about keeping the positive energy." That, and making sure the prophecy comes true.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford loves live musicians wherever they play. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Timeless

2011-08-06T04:30:00.002-04:00

On the nightstand next to our bed is a nice wooden box containing a number of watches I've accumulated over the last several years. No antiques or high end Swiss chronographs, but rather a sport model with digital and analog readout, another with a nice moon phase dial I got for my birthday, even one I got from a client in Hong Kong with Mao on the face. I used to pick one out every morning when I got dressed based on my mood, and off I went.

Then, like many things in my life, I decided to try and simplify. As I was running a good bit, I bought a simple training watch with a nice big digital readout and a built in stopwatch. It was basic black with a rubberized band, and I made that my default choice. Whether I was wearing a suit or shorts, khaki pants or gray pin-stripped suit, or yes, running clothes, I strapped it on and was out the door. As such, for the last several years, all has been unimaginative but dependable in the time department.

Then just the other day as I was talking to someone, I unconsciously reached to my left wrist to adjust my watch. As I slid it up my arm a bit, I felt the cut in the band. I sneaked a look down and saw that near where the buckle sat was a tear in the rubber. Closer examination revealed that the cut was halfway across the strap, and was well on its way to completing its trip. In fact, when I went to tighten it, on the assumption less jiggling around would prolong its life, I learned that that assumption was dead wrong, and it snapped in two.

No matter, I thought: I have all those other nice timepieces in that box next to my bed. When I get home tonight, I'll pick one out and give it some air. But when I riffled through them, I realized that none worked. Nothing mechanical: it was all about power. Every one of them used a battery, and even though they have a serviceable life of several years, it had been that long since I had worn any of them, let alone replaced the battery.

So, options. I could pick out any one of the watches I had, and replace the battery. I could take the one with the broken band and replace it. I could pick up a new one, perhaps a different style that better matched my current needs. All easy, all relatively inexpensive approaches to solving a timeless problem. Or I could do nothing.

I could do nothing because we call carry a clock in the form of our phones. For many, this approach has been standard operating procedure for a number of years, even dating back to the days of pagers. Since it's always on and updated continuously, it's actually more accurate than most timepieces. If there's a disadvantage it's that it takes more effort, both physical and noticeable, to sneak a look. Hard to be chatting with someone and casually pull out your phone to check the time without looking like you can't wait for them to shut up.

Still, I decided my wrist would go commando for a bit. At first, it was strange. Like a missing limb, I keep looking for the phantom at the end of my arm only to see and nothing. I reached for it often, only to wind up scratching the missing spot a lot. And more than once I jumped in fright, glancing at my wrist to see it naked, only to remember it wasn't lost but au naturel by design.

Then a funny thing happened: I relaxed a bit. It's not like I didn't know what time it was: Lord knows there are clocks and readouts everywhere you turn. And there are certainly times you need to know the time. But other times, not so much. When I was chatting with someone, I focused more on them. When I was reading, I concentrated more on the book. Even when I was taking a walk, I spent more time looking around than figuring out how much time I had left.

The question sounds like a Zen koan: do you get more out of time when you can't tell what it is? I don't know, but as of this writing I'm still timeless. I don't think I've haven't missed anything. And if you ask me if I've got a minute, I can tell you yes, even if I can't tell you when it's over.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford still likes watches, even though he doesn't wear one. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Build and Destroy

2011-07-30T04:30:00.002-04:00

Actor and writer Robert Benchley famously observed, "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't." If you're in the first group, you probably also have your favorite way of dividing the populace: people who read instructions and people who don't, those who follow the rules and those who make the rules, or those who hang the roll of toilet paper over and those who hang it under. Or as defined in "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" with Clint Eastwood, "those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig."

Another way is look at it is those who like to build and those who like to destroy. When you're little, there is ample opportunity to do both. In the first category are Legos, sand castles and blocks. Come to think of it, in the second category are Legos, sand castles and blocks. And that's half the fun: you get to have one fantasy as you create something from nothing, still another as you reduce it back to its elemental nature.

Once you're grown up, however, the chance to do either one diminishes. You spend more time fixing stuff than conjuring it up, more time disposing of things than reducing them to rubble. And somehow replacing a washer in the bathroom faucet or taking down the kids' old swing set doesn't have the same psychic satisfaction as building a tinkertoy tower, then smashing it to smithereens.

Thankfully, others have seen this conundrum, and stepped into the void. This spring saw the opening in of "Dig This" in Las Vegas. "Dig This" is best described as an adult sized sand box with real trucks. The idea came to New Zealander Ed Mumm while he was operating heavy equipment to construct his home in Steamboat Springs, CO. He had so much fun clearing trees, constructing a road, building a pond and digging foundations that he wondered if others would as well, and if they would pay for the privilege.

That led him to create the first "Dig This" near his home. After a year of operation and tweaking his model, he closed the original and moved to a more accessible location, the mecca of adult entertainment. There, on the site of an of an old amusement park a few minutes off the Strip, his 5 acre fun zone is now open for business.

The most popular offering on the menu is "The Big Dig." This three hour experience starts with an equipment and safety orientation. An in-cab orientation follows, where you get buckled in and your instructor goes over the controls. You then warm up as your instructor gives you directions via a 2-way head set, after which you're unleashed on a major dirt excavation exercise. It all gives credence to the old saying that only difference between men and boys is the size of their toys: guests operate either a Caterpillar D5 track-type 10 ton bulldozer or a Caterpillar 315CL hydraulic 15 ton excavator. Of course, women are welcome as well.

But if you're more a tear-down kind of person than a build-up one, you might want to ask around and see if you can score an introduction to "The Destruction Club." To join this members-only New Jersey group you have to be invited in by a current member. An interview is required, along with an annual fee, the signing of a waiver and agreement to abide by the rules of the group: no use of firearms, no living things or paperwork can be destroyed and no alcohol or drugs can be used during the destruction session. If that all works for you, then the menu is open.

You first pick your object of scorn: maybe china plates or a vase, an LCD TV, even a car if you're so inclined (per session charges are a sliding scale based on the object to be pummeled). Then choose your weapon from their arsenal: baseball bats, golf clubs, axes, swords and even chainsaws are all available. You put on protective gear and are led to a rooftop location where the cameras are rolling. And off you go: chop, batter, smash, splinter and destroy to your heart's content. And again, lest you think it's a "guy" thing, club representatives say 40% of its members are women.

Build or destroy: take your pick. Whatever your state of mind, there's something out there to help you soothe it. Of course, unfortunately, as with most things in life, in this case you do have to choose. As an adult, you can't necessarily have your cake and eat it too; if you could, you would be Congress.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford like to build things, but usually they look like they should be destroyed. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Economics with a Beat

2011-07-23T04:30:00.002-04:00

If you've been following even a little bit of the fight going on in Washington over the debt ceiling (and who hasn't), you might be having a hard time understanding what is so hard (and who doesn't). Yes, there is bloat and waste in a thousand places in the government which could be trimmed. But also, yes, there are loopholes and inequities in the tax code which could be closed to raise additional revenue. Common sense says that grownups would look at the situation, understand the need for action and the necessity for compromise, and meet somewhere in the middle. But this is Washington: common sense doesn't necessarily prevail.

The key to understanding why the two sides can't seem to come together lies in their underlying philosophies: it's less about the actual numbers, more about the approach. A front page story in The New York Times called it "A War Over Government." White House correspondent Jackie Calmes wrote, "President Obama wants deficit reduction, including tax increase for wealthier Americans and corporations. Congressional Republicans... want a vastly smaller government constrained by lower taxes. The two are not the same thing."

So what exactly is the theoretical base that drives each side? Well, if you didn't sleep through Econ 101 (and I hate to say it again, but who didn't) you would have focused on two of the key theorists of the modern era. That would be John Maynard Keynes, a British economist who advocated for central control of economies through the use of fiscal and monetary policy, and his counter, Fredrick Hayek, an Austrian economist who was a proponent of free markets.

Of course, those are simplified summaries. To understand it, you need to dive into the details, dealing with phrases like "aggregate demand" and "price stickiness"(Keynes) or "inflationary credit expansion" and "catallaxy"(Hayek). Tough sledding for most. And even if you did manage to keep your eyes open through class lo those many years ago, it was, well, lo those many years ago. I can't remember where I put my keys, let alone economic theory touched upon briefly when I was twenty.

That's why I'm thankful for John Papola and Russell Roberts. Papola is an award winning producer/director in broadcast entertainment and marketing, while Roberts is a professor of economics at George Mason University. Seeking to learn and understand more about the economy, Papola stumbled upon Roberts, his blog "Cafe Hayek" and his podcast "EconTalk." Papola approached Roberts about collaborating on a video that would explain economics in an entertaining way. And that led to in 2010 to "Fear the Boom and Bust," and in April of this year "Fight of the Century."

Styled as rap battles between the Keynes and Hayek, the lyrics tackle the underlying theories of the two. In "Fear the Boom and Bust" Keynes kicks it off: "BOOM/1929 the big crash/We didn't bounce back—economy's in the trash/Persistent unemployment, the result of sticky wages/Waiting for recovery? Seriously? That's outrageous!" Hayek responds: "Whether it's the late twenties or two thousand and five/Booming bad investments, seems like they'd thrive/You must save to invest, don't use the printing press/Or a bust will surely follow, an economy depressed." Together, they sum it up: "We've been goin' back n forth for a century/ [Keynes] I want to steer markets/ [Hayek] I want them set free/There's a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it/[Hayek] Blame low interest rates./[Keynes] No it's the animal spirits."

In "Fight of the Century" the two are called to testify to Congress. The ranking member of the panel raps to them, "Which way should we choose?/more bottom up or more top down/the fight continues/Keynes and Hayek's second round." They continue to throw down, with Keynes rapping, "We could have done better, had we only spent more/Too bad that only happens when there's a World War/You can carp all you want about stats and regression/Do you deny World War II cut short the Depression?" Hayek's answer: "Wow. One data point and you're jumping for joy/the last time I checked, wars only destroy/There was no multiplier, consumption just shrank/As we used scarce resources for every new tank." The gallery nods and bobs to the beat, including a Ben Bernake look-alike in the front row, who turns out to be Papola's father.

Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo famously said that you campaign in poetry but govern in prose. I don't think I ever heard him say you create monetary policy in committee, but rap it in hearing room. But perhaps he should have. Papola and Roberts have done what very few can do: make economics entertaining and understandable. Now, if they could only come up with a similar effort to help me understand synchronized swimming, I'll be all set.

END

Marc Wollin of Bedford thinks he took Econ 101, but then again, maybe not. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Winning the Lottery

2011-07-16T04:30:00.002-04:00

For most of us the term "winning the lottery" means stopping by the corner newsstand, buying a ticket and scratching off some part of it to see if we've won a million dollars. But for some, it means something completely different, like the chance to start a new life in a new country. And so it was for Ertugert, or as he offers to be called by us linguistically challenged Americans, E.

E is Albanian, and lived there with his father and mother. A very poor country on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, Albania was communist until the early nineties. "Today you are either very rich or very poor," E said. And so with limited options on the home front, each family member applied to the US Diversity Visa program, better known as the "Greencard Lottery." Through this program, 50,000 people a year are offered a chance to come to the US and try and make their way. His father's number was drawn, and after an extensive interview process, and a cousin already here guaranteeing they wouldn't become wards of the state, they packed up and settled in the Bronx.

Of course, it's one thing to get an opportunity like that, still another to seize it. But E was a go getter, and set about looking for a job. One barrier? His command of English was, well, limited. He knew a few phrases, like "What time is it?" and "How do I get there?" but not a lot else. For instance, in combing the classifieds, he saw an ad looking for a bookkeeper. That might work, he thought. "In Albania, every office has stacks and stacks of handwritten ledgers," he told me, "and I figured I could keep those books with the best of them." The guy interviewing him began by asking about E's degree. E knew that degrees had something to do with temperature, and since it was hot out, he said there were lots of them. A few more confused exchanges led to the inevitable conclusion: the man set him straight on temperature, education and modern record keeping, and suggested he look for a different line of work.

Slowly his language skills started to improve, courtesy of the Hispanic guys he played soccer with in his new neighborhood. Eventually he heard about a job at an Italian deli in Brooklyn. Since he spoke some Italian learned back in his home country, he went for it. The proprietor, hearing his accent, asked where he was from. Upon learning it was Albania, he told him to keep it to himself, as the older Italian customers wouldn't take kindly to him. Still, he got the job.

But the language, both Italian and English, were still a challenge. Things took longer and needed explanations, such as when he was asked for a plain bagel. "OK," he told a customer, "Plain, but what do you want on it?" He didn't get that plain meant no seeds, so salt, not what was schmeared in the center. He lasted 4 days.

Next he got a job with an electrician, a skill he had picked up in Albania. And since the current there was 220 volts as opposed to our 115, he checked for live wires by grabbing them with his hands; after all, the shock was nothing compared to home. But then he saw shortcuts being taken, and one guy almost get electrocuted. He quit shortly thereafter.

Painting came next. They gave him a roller, a tool he had never used. He had fun making big patterns on the wall, but that didn't go over so well. He insisted on a brush, but that meant he wasn't terribly productive. They eventually made him the sander, since he was tall and could reach up high. He lasted until they taught him to put up wallpaper, only to return the next morning to find it falling off the wall. Eventually he met a guy at his church, a fellow immigrant from Germany, who started to teach him about computers. He picked it up quickly, and began working for companies doing graphics and networking.

Now, some ten years after he arrived, E is the very definition of a successful immigrant. He became a citizen in 2006, is married and has a child. But it was a challenging road. "You have to work hard for what you want here: nothing is given to you on a silver plate." And while he's not blind to the issues we have as a country, from race to economic challenges, he acknowledges the opportunity it has given him. "As to the future, I can see myself having my own company," he mused. Should that happen, you could say he will have won the lottery twice. Says E, "It would be kinda like having my own ‘American Dream' come true."

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford loves to meet new people with stories to tell. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Files Not Deleted

2011-07-09T04:30:00.005-04:00

As analysts work their way through the trove of hard drives that were seized when Navy SEALS dispatched Osama Bin Laden, the latest revelation is that he was contemplating changing the name of organization. In one letter he was composing to others in the organization, he wrote that he was upset that "Al-Qaeda Al-Jihad," which translates as "The Base of Holy War" had been shortened in practice to "Al Qaeda," or literally "The Base." True, in practice the terror organization wasn't usually confused with the German indie rock band of the same name, singers of the hit song "Blame it on the Moondog." But as a label to help promote worldwide religious fervor and uprising, dropping the end of the phrase made it easy to forget you were dealing with an organization dedicated to the overthrow of the west, and instead brought to mind an internet news site ("Breaking news from The Base: Kanye disses Snoop!")

It's a strategy that has worked for others, from Blackwater (now Xe Services) to ValuJet (now AirTran) and Philip Morris (now Altria). Not wanting to lose the most important part of the name, namely the reference to "Jihad," he had some trial ideas to float. He was doodling on "Taifat al-Tawhed Wal-Jihad," meaning "Monotheism and Jihad Group," or maybe "Jama'at I'Adat al-Khilafat al-Rashida," meaning "Restoration of the Caliphate Group." In the wake of this revelation, others have made suggestions online, many unprintable, some more In keeping with a bumper speaker mindset, such as "The Muslomaniacs." Even NPR got into the act: their news quiz show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" offered up "Taifat al-Tawhed Wal-Jihad," which roughly translates to "I Can't Believe It's Not Terrorism."

What else will they find? Surely he had other documents on which he was working which never got polished enough to send out to his followers, or files he kept just for himself. In that light, the discoveries are sure to keep on coming, despite the challenges of unearthing them. First they need to find Arabic translators who speak his particular Saudi dialect. Then assuming he was as sloppy as the rest of us and never deleted anything, they have to weed through all the old versions of AOL and Netscape that he never uninstalled. And they have to crack his passwords, though odds are "jihad123" will work for most. But once they jump those hurtles, they're liable to find files such as these.

Productivity Killers V4.doc. "Americans are prone to devote inordinate amount of time to non-essential, mind numbing, useless activities. We should try and exploit this vulnerability. Should we accomplish this, think of how much we could damage their economy as they sink every increasing amounts of their capitalist wealth into decadent activities which siphon off time, money and drive. Perhaps a TV show about mindless, vapid individuals at the beach, easily played portable games where you throw upset animals or fowl, or an online community where people spent time posting pointless updates about their lives. Odds are none of these would succeed, but we should not let that deter us from trying."

Passwords.xls. November 2002: caves2002. July 2003: caves2003. February 2004: caves2004.

Mortgage Offer.doc. "Mr.& Mrs. Bradley O'Hara, Dessert View Apartments #4C, 39744 Saguaro Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85017 Dear Mr. & Mrs. O'Hara; Congratulations! On behalf of Bank of America, I am pleased to inform you that you qualify for a no-verification mortgage of $1 million dollars for the property at 73653 Cactus Flower Drive. All you need to do to finalize the loan is to complete the simple one page attached form, return it the nearest local branch, and a check will be sent to you within 7 days. We look forward to calling you homeowners!"

Boom Rockets. High score: osama 1672. Second: Osama 1431. Third: obl 1123. Fourth: osama b 956. Fifth: Osama BL 893.

Open House V2. "We've moved! After several years on the run, come and join us as we celebrate our new home in Pakistan. We will be hosting a barbeque and flag burning at our new compound on 12 Safar 2009. Bring bathing suits (men only), and your favorite firearm to show off! Location of pickup to be delivered via courier. Blindfolds required to get on bus. Please RSVP by the next new moon on my Facebook page, Jerry Gibbens of Souix City, Iowa."

Wives/Sizes/Fav color.xls. Najwa/8/Black. Khadijah/12/Black. Khairiah/6/Black. Siham/4/Black. Amal/16/Black.

JS.doc. "Dear Snooki; I think you are the hottest! Don't let the Situation get in your face so much. And tell JWOWW to turn down the drama. From an overseas fan."

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford has lots on his hard drives he hopes never sees the light of day. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

A Crunch Too Far

2011-07-02T04:30:00.002-04:00

It's a balancing act, to be sure. Security vs. privacy. Excitement vs. safety. More taste vs. less filing. Whenever you want to do one thing, there's usually a counterweight on the other side. True, sometimes the decision is an easy one, like when you can actually get two mints in one ("It's a candy mint. No, it's a breath mint.") But more than likely you have to come down on one side or the other, and then somebody is going to be unhappy. Just ask Obama about Afghanistan, the New York Senate about same-sex marriage or Congress about anything.

Still, when Frito-Lay set out to do something good for the environment and spruce up the bag for their SunChips brand of crisps, they thought they could have it all. The chips, which are billed as being a healthier alternative to traditional potato chips with less salt, less fat and more whole grains, were a natural for some eco-friendly packaging. So back in April of 2010 the company introduced a "green" package that was billed as its first compostable snack bag. And while most of us usually prefer chips with nearby adjectives of "tasty" or "crunchy" as opposed to "compostable," anticipation at the company's home base of Plano, Texas was high.

Then the product hit the shelves. And rather than kudos from consumers, the biggest reaction was "Speak up... I can't hear you over the bag!" Turns out that while the new packaging may have been environmentally friendly in terms of landfills, that wasn't the case in terms of its contribution to noise pollution. While a normal chip bag clocks in at about 70 decibels, the new bag crinkled and crackled somewhere around 80 db, with some measurements putting it at a "deafening" 95 db. To put it into perspective, 70 db is the loudness of a conversation, while 90 db is about the level of a lawnmower. Stand on the platform of a subway, and you're enduring 95 db of noise. And since experts say that a listening to anything at a sustained level of 90 to 95 db may result in hearing loss, eating a big bag would mean you could get both fat and go deaf at the same time.

The outcry, when it could be heard, was substantial. Articles in publications such as the Wall Street Journal liked the change to such bad product moves as New Coke in 1985, and Proctor and Gamble's recoloring of Prell shampoo from green to blue in 1991. Even the "Today" show did a segment. And it wasn't just the mainstream media. On a grass roots level, a page on Facebook called "Sorry but I can't hear you over this SunChips bag" gathered over 55,000 "likes." (Some sample posts: "Every time I went to get a chip, my cats ran away terrified." "The perfect burglar alarm. Throw a couple on the floor by your front door!") In the currency of today's consumer society. that's a whole lot of static.

Frito-Lay tried to weather the storm, turning the liability into a marketing asset, by adding signs to supermarket shelves that read "Yes, the bag is loud, that's what change sounds like." But sales dropped and so they eventually gave up, retreating with their bag between their legs in October of 2010. Fast forward to earlier this year, when they rereleased the original flavor of the product with a retooled, quieter, compostable bag. Customers came back, seeming to prove that you can be environmentally friendly both below ground and in the air, and still enjoy that crunchy, multigrain goodness. If ever there were proof of better living through chemistry in today's world, this is it.

Or is it? In May, in an exclusive interview posted on BakeryandSnacks.com, whose masthead is "Breaking News on Industrial Baking & Snacks," Brad Rodgers, Frito-Lay's R&D director, said that the bag is home compostable within the 14 week claims made by the company, but... and here's the rub... "only under a hot active composter temperature that needs to reach above 45-55 degrees Celsius." He admitted the company had received some negative feedback from some home composters, but added that others have reported the successful turning of trash into dirt.

So it comes down to this: we're all for environmental sustainability and preventing global warming, as long as it doesn't interfere with being able to hear the dialogue at a Woody Allen film. Who said modern life is easy? Or put another way, with apologies to Al Gore, I think we've settled on the very definition of an inconvenient truth.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford actually likes Sun Chips over Lay's Potato Chips, as long as they come in the original flavor. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

The Other Man

2011-06-25T04:30:00.002-04:00

I don't know when it happened. When we first moved into our house over 20 years ago, I was gung ho to fix up, spruce up, paint up every little thing that needed work. Leaky sink? No worries, I'm on it! Grubby bathroom? I'll slap on a fresh coat this weekend! Sticky cabinet? Just let me get my tools! It was like a giant erector set that just needed tweaking. And speaking for myself, there are few things more satisfying than having a problem you can actually solve, and then seeing the results immediately. Not to mention any occasion to use a ratchet.

But somewhere along the way the magic faded. Partially it was a lack of time: the kids were growing up and there were lots more fun activities to do. Partially it was that the problems were no longer so simple to fix: it was beyond just putting in a new washer to stop the drip, it required a whole new faucet. And partially it was just lack of interest as the house became more like a pair of well-worn jeans: sure there were some small holes (literally), but it was comfortable, and I convinced myself they added character. It was a corollary to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." More like, "if it ain't broke too bad, do I have to fix it?"

My wife, on the other hand, had a different point of view. She saw the problems for what they were: problems. I could file away the leak in the kitchen as a minor inconvenience, not look up to see the stain on the ceiling or step lively over the broken front walk. But she knew better: they all needed to be fixed, both for us and for future generations. She pointed them out nicely, politely, insistently, but I waved it all off. Sure, I said, I'll get to it when I have a minute. Translation: leave me alone, there are important naps to take.

She also took into account the other unspoken part of the equation, namely that the issues had exceeded my limited abilities. I actually like fixing stuff, but the skills I bring to the table are rudimentary. We both recall (she with gusto, I less so) incidences in our first home. In one, I tried to replace a lighting fixture; in the other, clean out the trap in a slop sink in the basement. Both seemed to be simple jobs, ones I could handle and save the need and expense of an electrician or plumber. In both instances, things went horribly awry, with sparks in one case and floods in the other. Several thousand dollars later order was restored, but a lesson had been learned.

And so as the punch list increased, she took matters into her own hands. Taping her considerable network, she began to look for another man. She eventually connected with Vinny, and arranged a walkthrough. He cast a critical eye on the items that needed attention... the plumbing issues, the hole in the chimney, the noisy fan... and pointed out others that also needed help. He told her the things we needed to get, like some new tiles and a faucet. And when we got the wrong stuff, he shook his head at us sadly like we had screwed up our homework, then went out and got the right stuff himself. Other than having to work around schedules... his, not ours, I should point out...all got fixed toot sweet.

And the price? Not the money paid to Vinny, but the charge to me for stringing things along way past when they should have been dealt with? She trotted out her wish list of other non-critical improvements that I had waved off. The small fence, the discolored spot on the ceiling, the cracked grout in the shower? All done. Like the others, he did them effortlessly, so that they look as they should, as opposed to how they would look if, well, I did them.

Vinny has become the other man not just in my wife's life, but mine as well. He's taken the pressure off of me, and truth be told, done what I should have done. But I'm good with that. Now, if you live near us, I suspect your next call will be to us to get Vinny's number. But don't bother. We are not the jealous type, but he's ours.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford had the nickname in college of "Handy," because he liked to fix things. Sadly, he's outgrown that. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Survey Says

2011-06-18T04:30:00.002-04:00

Lots of people want to know what I think.

Well, maybe not lots. My kids don't really care. My wife asks, but it's just to be polite. And most others I know are only interested if the observation is embarrassing, funny or catty. But that's only because they know me. It's those that don't that are most interested in what I have to say... interested, that is, as long as I have bought their products, can give them money, or agree with their views.

Or that's the takeaway from the number of surveys I've gotten in the past week, at least a dozen by my count. As the cost to run them has gone down, the number has gone up. If you buy anything or sign up for something, your phone number and/or email is likely to make its way to some organization or business which feels no compunction about reaching out and touching you. And yes, that's what got Anthony Weiner into trouble, though it usually doesn't get that far.

The reason is simple. By taking the pulse of their clientele, the hope is to build a relationship and customer loyalty, or to solicit you for a similar product. It's not that this is a new phenomenon. It's just that this targeted communication is the most effective kind. After all, you've given them your contact info, which is the holy grail of marketing. No bought or trolled lists here: you've practically begged them to come in the front door, put their feet up on the coffee table and tell you about what you are missing.

Take last night. We went to a movie at a local playhouse, and used a discount card that we have that's a perk of our cable company, which also owns the theatre. So this morning, when I turned on my computer and opened up my email, front and center was a survey asking me to rate them on any number of criteria. They wanted to know my thoughts on the friendliness of the staff (they were fine), the cleanliness of the theatre (no real complaints) and the smell of the popcorn (as always it was tempting, but at $37.50 for a medium cup packing 3000 calories, I'll pass).

Similar inquiries came this week from a charity to whom I had given a donation, a vendor in China from which I had bought a two dollar cable for my computer, and even our garbage service after I checked their web site to see if this Friday was mixed recyclables or paper day. Each peppered me with questions as to how the experience was for me, if I would come back, and what they could do better. For the record, my responses were fine, yes and nothing, except to pick up newspapers and bottles on the same day.

The real question is this: do they really care, or are they just seeing if I will respond and am therefore fodder for more approaches? More likely the latter. Studies show that interested and engaged consumers are more likely to be repeat clients. And it saves the trouble of reaching the wrong audience, like the survey I got by phone from what was obviously a conservative group. Generally I don't pick up blind 800 calls, but when it rang all our lines in quick succession, I was curious. The recorded voice said it was a non-partisan public opinion survey, and proceeded to ask if I believed in the sanctity of marriage as defined between one man and one woman. When I said "No," I heard the voice recognition software click and whirr, followed by a quick "Goodbye" and the line went dead. Guess they'll save the dime next time.

It pays to remember that surveys don't always work. In perhaps the most famous example, The Chicago Tribune, relying on responses of voters, printed its famous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline on election night in 1948, only to wake up and find out how wrong it was. And lest you think that was a long time ago and the science has become foolproof, there were surely surveys supporting the introduction of Edsel, New Coke and the TV series "Cavemen." In the words of Sarah Palin, how's that workin' out for ya?

Still, I guess it's nice to be asked. At least I get the impression someone cares. So in that spirit, let me ask you: Did you find this of interest? Can we do anything to make your day better? And would you recommend us to a friend? But please only write back if you can give me a five out of five... you don't want to hurt my feelings.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford responds to 100% of the feedback he gets. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

Let Them Eat Cake

2011-06-10T04:30:00.002-04:00

It was a not-uncommon night on the road for me, this time outside of Washington DC. I had finished work, gone back to the hotel and dropped my stuff off in my room. Then I headed out for dinner, my companions being a book and a glass of wine. Wandering afterwards, I was looking for something sweet to top off my evening. And that's when I came across Danielle, a vision in white.

Now, before you think there was anything illicit going on, Danielle was actually behind the counter of her shop, "Danielle's Desserts," and the whites she was wearing were chef's. Like you, I've been in bakeries before, and seen some good looking stuff. But this was different. No white cakes with curlycue frosting here. Rather, each of the many phenomenal cakes and pies on display looked like it was homemade, a fact validated as I watched Danielle scrapping down a regular mixer on the back bench.

Perhaps best of all, rather than untouched complete units, each sample was partially gone. What this meant, and what the chalkboard hanging on the wall confirmed, was that a slice could be yours for the asking. There was Coconut Pineapple and Fresh Apple Crumb, Southern Caramel and Raspberry Delight. For the chocoholics there was Triple Chocolate Fudge, and for the lemonophiles Lemon Chess Pie. One looked better than the next, and I couldn't decide. "Damn you," I said to her. She laughed: "I get that a lot!"

Turns out the shop is the culmination of a 20 plus year journey for Danielle. A baker since she was a kid, she was taught the art by her mother, a necessary one to help keep her four brothers happy (and yes, they learned to bake as well). And so while she plied her day job as a senior human resources professional, she started a side business baking at night and on weekends. She teamed with a local caterer, supplying her with the stuff of which dreams are made. Then about two and half years ago a local restaurateur tapped her talents, stretching her even further.

"I always knew it was a matter of time," she recalled. "It wasn't a question of if, but of when." She finally decided to take the plunge, leaving her six-figure job to go full time into baking. She cast about for a location, never finding the right combination of the cost she could afford, the space she wanted and the traffic she needed. Then at an interview for yet another space, her contact suggested her current location, the Tyson's Galleria, a high end mall in suburban Washington. "It was a temporary space, and they were willing to give me a try. I thought I was crazy... other people thought I was crazy... but it worked out!"

And so now she has a place to call her own. I asked her what sets her shop apart. "The concept was baking from scratch, baking throughout the day, being very interactive." She does that by getting feedback from customers, and asking those who wander in to taste her newer ideas. Posts on her web site tell the story: "I normally have a fair amount of self control, but when I'm in there my knees get weak, my palms start sweating, and my heart races until I can get my hands on a red velvet cupcake." Another: "Let's just say, it is absolutely, hands-down, THE BEST Key Lime Pie EVER!" And one more: "I could come back just for the visual food porn in the displays."

As for me, it was a tough call. I love coconut, and the Triple Layer Creamy Coconut (Danielle's favorite!) looked tempting. The Carrot looked great, as did the Chocolate Pecan. But I couldn't resist one I don't often get, the Sweet Potato pie. It was spicy and sweet, creamy and full of body, and it was all I could do not to go back and break in late that night for another slice.

Danielle will confess that it's hard work, being a professional baker. "It takes a toll on your body," she says, "the constant standing, the non-stop shoulder and arm motions. If I sit down, sometimes I can't get up." But there is an upside. "The thing that gives me most satisfaction is seeing people's reaction. I'm glad I'm not a dentist or an IRS agent. People come in here and get real happy. A lot say, ‘I was having a really bad day, and I came in here and now I feel better.'"

I concur. I wasn't even having a bad day. But after a slice of that pie, I can tell you it got a whole lot better.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford can't wait to return to Danielle's Desserts in Tyson's Corner, VA. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/.

You Can't Touch This

2011-06-04T04:30:00.002-04:00

I put my hands out. Nothing. I pulled them back, then tried again. Still nothing. I moved them up, then down, right then left. Nada. Then just as I was giving up and pulling them back to move to another location, on it popped. I flailed forward like I was jerked by a string, trying to get in on the action. But no sooner did I get there, it stopped, and I was left high and dry.

Yet another automatic faucet had questioned my existence.

We've all become used to technology taking over our offices, our cars, our leisure time. When we check out, our purchases are scanned, tracked and analyzed, so that even before we walk out the door we are handed coupons selected just for us for our next visit. And our phones don't just allow us to make calls, but get us where we need to go, amuse us in our off hours and allow us to snap a picture of the bar code tag while in the store and determine that, yes, that garden hose is available for $1 less across town.

There are perhaps just two areas where technology plays a supporting rather than a leading roll. In the kitchen, it still takes a human standing over a pan or pot to stir, sauté or fry up your next meal. Sure, there are plenty of hi-tech helpers, from microwave ovens to computer controlled mixers to digital thermometers. But at the end of the day it still takes a skilled eye to determine that exact moment when the French toast should be flipped to get that golden hue.

Then there's the bathroom. At home, for most it's still a defiantly low tech environment. It might sport an electronic toothbrush or a waterproof radio. But unless you've installed a high tech toilet from Japan, the only power needed is for the lights and your hairdryer, and neither of those is absolutely necessary unless you're getting ready for the prom.

That's in stark contrast with the commercial restroom. At its most basic, all you need is a commode and a sink. A faucet, a soap dispenser and some paper towels, and you're good to... well... go. But over the last several decades every one of those elements has become automated. With the exception of the stall door... and there are numerous patents on file for automatic operation of those... it's now physically possible to walk into a restroom, do your business and walk out without touching anything but yourself.

That is, if it all works as designed. That's because these self flushing, auto water starting, auto soap squirting and auto towel dispensing devices usually rely on some kind of motion sensor. All well and good when that eye is clean and clear. But needless to say there is a fair amount of "stuff" (we'll just leave it at that) kicked up in said environment. And since some of that stuff settles on the sensor, it's the equivalent of wearing glasses that are coated with gunk... it's just plain hard to see. And so you wind of in the situation I was in: patrons waving madly at the faucet or soap dispenser or towel unroller, trying to get it to acknowledge them and spring into action.

Of course, this all presumes that all these devices are checking for is your presence. Is it possible they have been programmed with other criteria? Is it like the famous Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, judging you on criteria you can't possibly discern, and passing judgment on your worthiness for its favors? "You CAN'T be serious wearing that tie with that shirt. No soap for you!"

But if all they are looking to confirm is a human presence, then we might one day consider them our last line of defense. Against what, you might ask? Well, if popular entertainment is any guide, one day we are likely to be infiltrated by zombies, vampires or extraterrestrials. Were that to happen, and you couldn't tell those left behind from those who have been infected, here's what I would suggest. Mention to your hardy band of survivors that you all might want to stop whatever you're doing for a second to freshen up, and head to the rest room. Start to wash up, but watch closely those in your party. If someone sticks their hands out and gets nary a drop, they're likely not real humans: blow their head off before they can take you down.

Or you could also just tell them to try another faucet.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford loves those Airblade dryers made from small jet engines. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Doing Nothing

2011-05-28T04:30:00.002-04:00

Like many of you, I would say my normal state of motion seems perpetual. My office always seems to be piled with work. Something in the house always needs fixing. And between phone and computer, I'm usually reading or responding to something. That's not to say I always do what I need to do. As easy as it is to find a task, it's just as easy to find an excuse. However, even if I play hooky, I tend to think about what I should be doing even though I'm not doing it.

But sometimes doing nothing is a good idea. And not just doing nothing because you can't get a signal or aren't near your desk. Rather, I mean willfully doing nothing for nothing's sake. Yes, it's a rare occurrence for most, but that doesn't make it any less a good idea. And thankfully a recent change of coasts gave me just that opportunity.

We were working in San Diego, and hit a day where we started early and finished early. Still, there was other work to be done, so I headed back to my room, a task made easier by the appearance of a rainy day. But by 3:30 or so I had done all I could do that had any urgency. And since we were three hours behind the east coast, most of the people I needed to talk to were gone. A glance outside showed that the sky had cleared, and a slight wind was blowing. So rather than review another budget or write another memo, I decided to take a walk.

We were at the Hotel Del Coronado, one of the great resorts in the country. It's a landmark Victorian era structure on Coronado Island, where every room is just steps from the beach. I walked out and made a left, heading towards Mexico a few miles away. There were a few other people out there, some joggers chasing the breeze, some parents chasing their kids, but no crowds and no one paying anyone else any mind. The only sound was the waves hitting the shore rolling in and rolling out. I strolled along, eventually coming to some rocks where I sat and gazed out to sea.

As I generally do when I'm wandering someplace different, I had taken my camera along on the stroll. So I pulled it out to try and capture what was in front of me. But pictures of big spaces like that always look so inadequate when compared to the real thing. Or as Paul Theroux reflected in his essay "Sunrise with Seamonsters" about travel writing, "a picture is only worth 1000 or so words."

In that spirit, this is what I saw. The water was a green gray canvas spread out like a sheet. The sky met it at the horizon, the sweep of it a pale blue that seemed to go on forever, so far in fact that I had to swivel my head from side to side to take it all in. Far in the distance I could see islands in the mist, small bumps that disappeared and reappeared like they were ghosts. If I looked straight ahead it was easy to convince myself that there was no one else on the beach, or even the planet, but me.

Yes, they were things I should have been doing and people I should leave messages for. But for one glorious hour I did absolutely nothing. I sat and stared, listened to the birds, watched some crabs scuttle along the sand. Truth be told, I didn't feel bad, and I didn't feel like I needed to do something. Rather, if I was honest, I thought the best thing I could do was to sit for another hour.

Each week I fill this space hoping that you will read and enjoy it. In the best of all possible worlds, I hope it makes some small impression on you. And so if by chance this is a week where it has any effect on you at all, I urge you to do the same as I. Should you find yourself in a similar situation on this coast or another, in the mountains or just on a path in the woods on a weekend walk, find a place and an hour to just sit and look around. In short, follow the guidance of the great baseball player Satchel Paige: "Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits."

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford thanks Beth, Chris and Scott for giving him the opportunity to do nothing for a brief time. He hopes they got the same chance after all the others left, and took it. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Spring Season

2011-05-21T04:30:00.002-04:00

While the official date was weeks ago, it finally feels like we've turned the corner. Despite a few cool evenings and rainy days, you can actually feel the warmth in the air and see it on the trees. After a long cold winter, spring is finally starting to spread its wings. And nature's not the only one making the change. Stores are trotting out their warm weather collections, papers are publishing their vacation planning guides and school kids of all ages are starting to see the light at the end of this year's tunnel.

It's a seasonal adjustment that brings to mind short sleeve shirts, bike rides and barbeques. If you own a pool, you're starting to think about opening it up. If you have a convertible, you're starting to dream about putting the top down. And if you're the Taliban, you're getting your AK47 all oiled up. That's because just like Ralph Lauren announces his spring collection and Home Depot puts out the word that its garden center is open for business, the Taliban has issued a press release that heralds the start of its spring offensive.

Calling the spring of 2011 "a season of shining hope," this year's announcement had some new elements, including the assertion that the insurgents intend to protect civilians, while also focusing attacks on members of the government-appointed High Peace Council. In other words, this spring's suicide bombings and village raids will be a newer, shinier, more user friendly version of the usual carnage.

In fact, as long as there has been warfare there have been seasonal pushes. In the colder months, when snow and ice make it more difficult to move, fighters have a tendency to lie low. Other times, natural cycles such as the tides are important to maneuvers, and so drives are timed to coincide with favorable conditions, such as was the case with D-Day. And the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War was timed to begin on the first day of the year on the traditional lunar calendar, the most important Vietnamese holiday.

Still, on the surface it seems a little ridiculous to announce your plans for guerrilla warfare with a press release. But it's as much about psychological warfare as it is about the actual fighting. Not that the locals are reading the New York Times or listening the BBC. Rather, the populations of the western countries that are pouring men and money into the cesspool that is Afghanistan and Hamid Karzai's corrupt government have about reached their tipping point. Polls show that support is eroding fast, even while those same populations agree that the goal itself, to rid the country of thugs, is a laudable one. Still, we've all got problems in our own backyards, so when is enough enough? When the guys you're fighting say they're going to crank it up one more time with gusto, that's when.

Now that Osama bin Laden is history, however, there might be a crimp put into those plans. With the treasure trove of intelligence that that Seals seized during the raid, speculation is that the command and control structure for the organization has gone into hiding. Add to that this past week's revelation that a sizable cache of porn was found on site, showing the ascetic mastermind was perhaps not so ascetic after all, and the whole enterprise might need to rethink its five year master plan, let alone its spring fling.

Contrast these goons with the North Vietnamese. Say what you will about Uncle Ho and his followers, you had to admire their single minded determination to take their country back. From the tunnels they built underground to the trails they carved out of impenetrable forest to the famous sandals they made out of tires, they got grudging respect out of their opponents for their tenacity. They eventually won their battle, though you can argue that the tide of history turned against them and the communists lost in the end.

Then there's the Taliban, who seem to be more bully than benefactor. If bin Laden is any indication, much like the autocratic leaders of many a failed regime, they have two sets of standards: one for themselves and one for those they subjugate. Only time will tell if they will fall apart of their own weight or gain a lasting toehold in a God-forsaken stretch of the planet. Let's hope it's the former, and their next press release is for their going-of-business sale.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford thinks we are dammed if we do, dammed if we don't in Afghanistan. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

In Praise of Lyndon

2011-05-14T04:30:00.003-04:00

Lyndon makes a nice sandwich.

Actually, it's more than that. The guy makes a terrific sandwich. In fact, he doesn't just make it: he invents it, redefines it, creates it, polishes it, reimagines it... in short, if Picasso worked in a deli, he would spend most of time standing around watching Lyndon and thinking, "Well, he's got me beat... maybe I should go take up painting or something."

Yes, we're talking sandwich as in the kind of thing you slap together at home on a Saturday, a way station between the cereal in your past and the veal parmesan in your future. That's the way I viewed it, and indeed had created and consumed many along the way. But then I got lucky. I was at yet another corporate cafeteria, finishing up one project before heading on to the airport for the next. I debated skipping lunch all together and getting something later before I got on the plane. But I had some time to kill, so I decided I might as well get something to eat.

I wandered up in the elevator to the join the rest of the hungry stragglers. It was towards the tail end of the lunch hour, so the crowds were thinning out. A few at the hot station, a few at the salad bar, a few hovering near the remaining slices of pizza. I walked by the sandwich area, seeing signs for usual suspects: turkey, roast beef, tuna salad. Nothing leaped out at me. But then I noticed Lyndon at work.

Working methodically in his chef whites, he had a flour tortilla laid out in front of him. On it was a coarsely chopped grilled chicken breast and some roasted red pepper strips. As I watched, he took some lettuce and a sweet pickle and started dicing them finely, adding some sprinkles of oregano as he went. I looked around for a sign naming the special he was making. Nothing. But what I did see was a woman standing in front of the sandwich case watching him and smiling. I turned to her, as she seemed to be the eventual owner. "That looks great," I remarked. "What is it?" She shook her head: "Don't know. It's for Mark."

Turns out she worked for an executive at the company named Mark. One day he was doing the same walk I was, wandering around trying to decide what to have. Lyndon saw his aimlessness, and offered to make him something special. It was a hit, so Mark came back again. He never asked Lyndon for anything in particular, just to whip up whatever he thought would be good. That was two years ago. And so now, all he has to do is send his assistant up to the cafeteria, tell Lyndon it's "for Mark," and the master begins to create.

At this point Lyndon was adding a mixture of shredded provolone and cheddar cheeses to that day's masterpiece, along with some light BBQ sauce. He slid the whole thing into the pizza oven, then turned back to me. "Any chance I could get the same thing?" I asked. He smiled. "If it helps," I continued, "my name is Marc as well." He laughed and started in on another, interrupting the process to remove the original wrap with the now melted cheese, give it a quick sprinkle of fresh pepper, roll into a tight cylinder and set it between the plates of a hot pannini press.

I went and got a cold drink and came back as he was wrapping the original Mark's creation up and handing it across. I told the assistant to thank her boss for me, then turned back and chatted a few more minutes with Lyndon while he finished its twin. Here was a guy that took obvious pride in his work, and seemed genuinely pleased to be able to bring his own personal spark to what would certainly seem to be a routine task. He wrapped mine to go, said goodbye and turned to start his cleanup now that lunch was over.

But for me it was just beginning. I paid for my creation, and found a seat by the windows. I unrolled the wrapping and took a bite. It was all there: the different flavors, the various textures, a heady aroma of tang and sweet. In short, a masterpiece. I certainly hope that client hires me again. But more important than the work itself will be to make sure I adjust my schedule so my next appointment isn't until later in the day, and I have plenty of time to let Lyndon work his art. Mark, whomever you are, my stomach owes you one.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford loves a good sandwich. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Tack to Port(ly)

2011-05-07T04:30:00.002-04:00

"I'm pretty much at my target weight.

The thing is, I haven't quite reached my target height."

--Rico Rodriguez as Manny on ABC's "Modern Family"

Whether it's First Lady Michelle Obama and her campaign for healthier eating, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and his "Food Revolution," or your doctor, spouse or even in a fit of misplaced candor, yourself, someone has likely told you that you too are not at your target weight. And since the day is over when most who are reading this are likely to grow taller, we've all got work to do.

The reality, though, is that it seems we can't do much about it. That's not to say that we shouldn't eat less and exercise more: any health professional will tell you that these are good things if you want to live longer. It's just that, in spite of it all, the bottom line seems to be that our overall average poundage is up, and we need to come to terms with it. Whether it's genetics, evolution or environment, the result is the same: as a people, we are taller and heavier. It may be an ugly fact, but that doesn't make it any less true.

On a personal level, for all of our dieting and huffing and puffing, most of us find that our bodies have a particular point at which they like to be. You can manage to strip a few pounds off now and then, here and there. But left to their own devices, our bodies seem to eventually come back to their natural level like water. Even that most radical of all approaches, liposuction, has been shown to be a temporary fix. In a study just published in the journal "Obesity," researchers found that, "After 6 weeks, percent body fat decreased by 2.1% in the lipectomy group and by 0.28% in the control." The difference was "smaller at 6 months, and by 1 year was no longer significant." Turns out the body just adds fat cells back elsewhere: "BF was restored and redistributed from the thigh to the abdomen." Turns out you can't fool Mother Nature, even if you lop off her saddlebags.

And so we have to make adjustments. Manufacturers have been doing this for years. Dress sizes are bigger. Office chairs are stronger. Wheelchairs, ambulances and operating tables have all been beefed up (no pun intended) so that they can support the weight of users. Even the Coast Guard has gotten wise to the situation. Then did some back of the envelope calculations, and came to the realization that we better accept we're heavier if we don't want to drown.

Seems that back in the 1960's, the CG issued regs that stated the maximum number of passengers a ship could safely carry. That load was based on the "Assumed Average Weight per Person" or AAWP, which was 160 pounds. But to be real, "we" haven't seen that weight since "we" all wore bell bottoms. And so effective December 1 of this year, the AAWP will go to 185 pounds. That means that an eight-ton boat will now only be allowed to hold 86 people instead of 100. Before you run out and buy a new weekend skiff, note that the measure only applies to commercial craft and not recreational boaters. So you can still overload your 25-footer with your poker buddies, and hope they're not too drunk to swim to shore when the worse happens.

And what if you board that boat and notice that an awful lot of the passengers are pressing hard on even that threshold? Then you may want to swap your ferry ticket for a one on a plane. That's because the Federal Aviation Administration has an even dimmer, or perhaps more realistic view of the situation. They have issued guidelines that passenger loads on planes should be based on a weight per person of 195 pounds in winter clothing, and 190 pounds in summer clothing. We should all put our tray tables in an upright and locked position, and leave them that way.

It's a trend that sadly shows no signs of abating. Many new buildings have wider doorframes. Buses are now being constructed to not only hold more weight, but discussions are underway to redefine floor space, "to acknowledge the expanding girth of the average passenger." Watch: it's just a a matter of time before those "Maximum Occupancy" signs in auditoriums and ballrooms have to change. After all, even a floor can only take so much.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford needs to lose a few pounds, but so does everybody. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Mascot Envy

2011-04-30T04:30:00.002-04:00

Our family is rich in many ways: we have a nice house, several cars and all manner of material goods. In less tangible ways we are also well off: we have friends and family, and pursuits both work and leisure related that fulfill us and bring smiles to our faces. However, all is not milk and cookies. In one particular area, the members of our household are wanting, bereft in fact, compared to many of our more fortunate acquaintances. For while both parents and offspring attended good colleges, when it comes to mascots, we are paupers.

Unlike the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, the Wolverines of Michigan or the Gators of Florida, none of our alma maters' symbols are the kind that pump up those competitive juices and inspire a whole lot of school pride. Thankfully the institutions themselves were and are wonderful bastions of higher learning which served us each very well. But the mascots, those tangible embodiments which are supposed to represent said institutions on hats and tee shirts, are a different story. At best they are cute; at worse they are embarrassing.

Let's start with our youngest. He attends Colby in central Maine. With a campus that is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen, and a demanding academic program that covers a wide range of ground, it's been a perfect fit for him. However he hasn't been as keen to embrace the school's alter ego, the White Mule. The choice derives from a time when the school's football team upturned its "dark horse" status. And what is the opposite of a dark horse? You guessed it. There is even a statue of the beast outside the gym that makes it almost stallion-like... but sorry, it's still a mule.

Then there's our oldest, who went to Williams. Again, a small liberal arts college that many rank as one of the best in the nation. And again, a perfect fit for our son and his interests. The teams there go by the moniker of "Ephs," a nod to the founder of the school, Ephraim Williams. But what does an Eph look like? In the case of Williams, the students back in in 1907 adopted the name of a popular humor magazine as their representation in intercollegiate contests. And so should you dress for battle in your football pads or tennis whites and face off against the Ephs, you will be facing the fearsome Purple Cows. It is worth noting, however, that while the Cow may not strike fear into others, it has other strengths: it was just named by Reader's Digest as "The Most Lovable College Mascot" in the country, edging out the University of North Carolina School of the Arts' Fighting Pickle.

My wife's alma mater has the most legitimate sounding mascot in the family. A fearsome cat, the lion is all that you expect a college talisman. But it's not that simple. She went to Mount Holyoke, an all women's college, and the lion in question is actually spelled Lyon, in deference to the founder there, Mary Lyon. Additionally, any ferocity attributed to the cat is somewhat tempered by its nickname, Paws.

And there there's me. I attended Ithaca College in upstate New York. Our teams were known as the Bombers, though no one had any real idea why. Turns out the nickname came courtesy of a long-ago sportswriter, who talked about the basketball team's "bomb-like" shooting, and the name stuck. It's actually taken until just this month when a campus committee narrowed down suggestions from student, staff and alumni to three finalists that would embody the name in physical form. Of course, these days, any choice of a mascot has to abide by NCAA guidelines and overall political correctness, some any obvious "bomb" or military connection was impossible. And so, just this week I got an email asking to cast my vote for the Phoenix (a throw to the Greek ancestry of the Ithaca name), the Lake Creature (a reference to the Lock Ness-like monster fabled to inhabit the lake on which the college is built) to the Flying Squirrel (honestly... I don't have a clue about that one). One can only hope that the voters do the right thing... whatever that is.

Admittedly it could be worse. At least none of our family went to Scottsdale Community College in Arizona. Nothing to do with the school's academics, its fine faculty or lovely campus with an unobstructed view of the mountains. It's just that as bad as things are for us, at least we don't have to muster any false enthusiasm for the Fighting Artichokes... Go Artie!

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford is pleased that he didn't go to Whittier College: hard to cheer on the Fighting Poets. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Going to the Dogs

2011-04-23T04:30:00.002-04:00

If you take the train to work every day, few of the people stand out from the crowd. Sure, some are tall, others short, some dress in suits, others more casually. Beyond the normal assortment of superficial traits, however, few are terribly distinctive, save for a particular detail such as the bag they carry or the shoes they wear. But every now and again one catches your eye. Like the lady with the dogs.

On any given morning you can see Kathy walking down the platform, usually with 2 pooches trailing along. To look at her you wouldn't know she has two parallel passions. One track involves helping people get their financial house in order, a profession she practices very successfully at her own firm. In fact, you might even have seen her on television in that role as a regular contributor on various business channels. Her other track focuses on a different type of needy individual: homeless and abandoned animals on whom others have given up.

An animal lover forever... "I must have been a dog in a prior life," she laughs... she didn't set out to be fairy godmother to abused and abandoned creatures. True, her first two pups were rescue dogs acquired when she lived in Colorado more than twenty years ago, and who made the move with her to New York. Then one day she was out walking them when a homeless man came by, a dog trotting along by his side. The dog sidled over to Kathy, while the man kept walking. She called after him, but he threw up his hands and kept going: "Someone did it to me, now I'm doing it to you!" he yelled. However, he did stop and come back to hand her a box of dog biscuits... "his food..." before departing and leaving her with the animal.

She took him home and cleaned him up. "He was so dirty and matted I had to wear gloves," she recalls. But once he was scrubbed, he crawled up onto her bed and made big eyes at her, and, "well, I just had to keep him." She named him Seamus, and added him to her family as number three.

Then six months later a friend had a dog that had been taken by the authorities because it had bitten someone. At the time, the policy was for dogs with that history to be retrieved within 10 days or destroyed. The friend didn't want him anymore, so Kathy went to pick him up. As she was leaving the shelter with her new charge, she looked up to see another small pup trotting down the avenue. The pup crossed over to her, leaped into her arms and starting licking her nose. She looked around for an owner, but there wasn't one. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought. And so she added numbers four and five to her family, all in her studio apartment.

And so it went. She would give one away, then would find out about another who needed a new home, and add it the mix. People heard about her generosity, and she started to get emails, sometimes up to 20 a day. And she continued to find them accidentally on her own as well. Once on a vacation in Puerto Rico she came across a pup on a hike in the rain forest. She was busy looking for the owner when a local told her that people abandon their unwanted pets along the trail. Again, she couldn't bear to part with him, and brought him back to the mainland.

It's not like she had a formal plan, just a big heart and an even bigger soft spot. What kinds of dogs does she gravitate to? "I take the hard-to-place dogs, the 12-year old pit bill, the one with lymphoma." She tries to keep it in perspective: "They're not my children, and I know they will eventually die, but while they are here I try and give them the best home I can on this earth." Of course, none of this comes cheap in either time or money: she estimates she has spent hundreds of hours and many, many thousands of dollars to feed and care for them. But what she gets back can't be measured that way.

Now in Westchester for 8 years, she has accumulated animal charges big and small: dogs and cats, but also a horse and bunnies, some 15 all told. "Many of our clients are people with a passion. They understand this is mine, and it helps to tell them about who I am and what I believe," she says. Besides, when you get right down to it, perhaps both her 2-legged clients and her 4-legged charges aren't really that different: "Make them top dog, give them boundaries and give them love. It works for dogs, and it works for people."

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford hasn't had a pet since he was a kid. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Know Thine Enemy

2011-04-16T04:30:00.005-04:00

There is perhaps no better way to get a handle on a leader than their writings. Lenin was prolific, with works such "What is to be Done?" and "The State and the Revolution" laying the basis for the Bolshevik uprising. Kennedy's "Profiles In Courage" highlighted instances where lawmakers took courageous stands, and gave a window into the kind of legislator he might become. And Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and Mao's "Little Red Book" (which was actually a collection of his sayings) have been studied and analyzed endlessly.

More recently, in this country, it has become de rigueur for any politician with ambitions on the national stage to follow suit and pen a tome that sets out their views and operating principles. That's not to say that all are up to Bartlett's Quotations standards. Take Tim Pawlenty's "Courage to Stand," in which he talks his interactions with the prior governor of Minnesota: "The hockey player and wrestling fan in me would have some taken pride in surviving a Jesse Ventura smackdown." It's hardly Churchill, but it's what we've got.

In that vein, much has been made of the Green Book penned by our current thorn-in-the side, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi (or Ghaddafi or Khaddafi... it might be easier to agree on a joint UN Resolution with some teeth if we could first agree on a way to spell his name). A manifesto of revolutionary thought, it was an instant bestseller in Tripoli. Of course, this top-of-the-charts performance was helped along by the fact that if you didn't have a copy you were tortured and executed, but why quibble?

But perhaps we're looking at the wrong book. Turns out that the good Colonel, after finishing a round of Scrabble with his flunkies (you have a lot more options if every "q" doesn't require a "u") indulged his fancy as a writer of fiction as well. So maybe the CIA should stop poring over cell phone intercepts and coded military traffic, use their one-click ordering option on Amazon and get a copy of his thoughts and essays, "Escape to Hell and Other Stories."

It seems that several years ago the Libyan strongman found time between plotting terrorist activities and extorting millions from oil companies to be a bit more literary than practical. Not quite post apocalyptic, his collection offers ruminations on how we are flirting with disaster through our treatment of the planet. His views of modern society represent a throwback to a simpler time, when thieves got their hands cut off, when there was no running water, when electricity didn't all make us lazy pigs. Or from his point of view, the good old days.

He is unafraid to take on the ills of the world. For instance, he writes about a rival country that is sickened by "individualism and rampant capitalism." This morality tale centers on a fictional place called "Amelica." Author's note: any resemblance to countries living or dead is strictly coincidental.

As for modern society, he pens an allegorical fable about a man who rockets into space. It proves to be an epiphany, and, on his return, he comes to understand how technology has caused the downfall of society. It causes him to consider drastic action. Called "The Suicide of the Astronaut," and written with characteristic subtlety, the man in the story, proceeds to... No, I shouldn't: I don't want to spoil the ending.

Say what you will, Qaddafi also appears to have a real flair for sentence construction. A sample: "The earth is the lung through which you breathe, so if you destroy it, you would have no way to breathe." Another: "The city is a sea, full of flotsam and snails. The snails are people." Hemingway-esque,don't you think?

Critics haven't been so kind, at least those that won't be flogged for their opinion. (The Libyan Ledger called it "a masterpiece"). Alan Smithee, writing in Entertainment Weekly, said "May we suggest a stint at Tripoli's Writers' Workshop to brush up on, say, plot, character, dialogue, tone, and coherence?" Still, Smithee does say he comes out favorably when compared with other well know observers of the human condition: "He reminds one of Dennis Miller, albeit slightly funnier."

Still, as an aspiring writer myself, I appreciate my fellow scribe's efforts, if not the end result. With that in mind, if you drive by our place you might take note of the Bedouin tent in our front yard and the camel tethered beside it. These days, I'll take inspiration wherever I can find it.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford has never knowingly supported terrorism in the pursuit of a story. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Snail Mail

2011-04-09T04:30:00.003-04:00

Odds are that sometime today you emailed or texted or tweeted someone and got something back. Didn't make any difference where they were or what they were doing. They saw your note, typed a response and send it, a process that likely took less time that it did to read this sentence. That speed and ease makes its easy to forget that, short of a phone call, the only way you used to be able to reach someone was by the quaint process of scribbling something on a piece of paper, slipping it into an envelope and dropping it in the mailbox. For the kids in the audience, we called this "mailing a letter."

But that's just what Danni did back in 1993. Her father was having some health issues, and was anxious to try and reestablish some long dormant family connections. So at his urging she penned a letter to his nephew, the son of a brother who died while in the service. Trouble was they had no idea where he was. Danni took a flyer: since her uncle died while in the service, she figured there was a chance that the Veterans Administration knew her cousin's whereabouts. But VA privacy rules meant they wouldn't give her that information. And while they would accept the letter and attempt to pass it on, they wouldn't tell her if it was delivered successfully.

Still, it was the only shot they had, so off it went. And the response? A deafening nothing. Did it get through? Did he receive it and not wish to respond? Did he get it, but had issues about what to say? Good questions, all. But silence was all they heard. And so Danni and her life went on. She and her husband sold their house in Connecticut, retooled their lives and moved to the Cape. Danni's dad passed away. And every couple of years, once that internet thing caught on, she would google her cousin's name and see if anything popped up. But nothing surfaced, and it slipped to the back corner of her mind.

Then just a few weeks ago she was visiting her sister in upstate New York. They were sitting in the family room having a glass of wine and chatting when the phone rang. The answering machine was turned up, and an unknown voice began to talk. It turned out to be their cousin Mark, calling Danni's sister's after he had tried Danni's place and gotten her husband, who had given him her sister's number. As they heard who it was, and that he had the letter she had sent 18 years before, Danni responded appropriately: "I totally freaked! But we couldn't get to the phone fast enough!"

Turns out that the letter had made its way to Mark's mother who either forgot about it, misplaced it or something. She had recently died, and he was going through her stuff when he found it. "He was apprehensive but his friends convinced him to take a shot," relates Danni. "He's got no other family. So he tracked me down on the Cape, and my husband told him I'd been looking for him for forever. He called, and well... you could have knocked my sister and I over with a feather!"

They started to catch up, seeing who remembered what. Seems that part of the reason Danni couldn't locate him online was that he had changed his name legally when he was about 18. "He said he had no real connection to the family so the name meant nothing much to him. I guess that his mom kept the letter all those years was a big surprise." Still, it didn't take long to reconnect: "We talked on the phone for over 2 hours on Friday night, friended each other on Facebook, and my sister and I were able to show him pictures of the family." They made plans to get together in a central spot, he and his partner, and Danni, one of her sisters and their respective spouses.

How did it feel to reconnect with someone she had been wondering about for 18 years? "His calling us was as good as winning Mega Millions. It was exciting and a little strange as well as scary, but it was something I had waited for for so long. I can't help but thinking that my Dad is watching and smiling. I was never a patient person and he always gave me grief about that. I know it's trite, but if I learned anything it's that patience is a virtue, and good things come to those who wait."

That, and that snail mail can be really, really slow.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford doesn't remember the last time he wrote an actual letter. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Waystation

2011-04-02T04:30:00.002-04:00

When I sit down to pen my weekly rant, I observe certain protocols. I open a new document, formatted just so. I check my research file to see what has accumulated over the prior 7 days and demands to be discussed. And like a prisoner in a cell (an analogy more apt that you might think, and one which my wife will corroborate) I note the number in the upper corner, crossing off the old and staring at the new. And so it was that I recognized that you hold in your hands my 800th attempt at filling 2 minutes of your day.

The last time I made a similar observation in this space was on the occasion of my 500th column. When I wrote that particular piece I received several notes from followers who said that as they read it they were afraid that I might be using the occasion to end the run. Admittedly, since it was a half-dozen years ago, I remember it as "afraid," though it's also quite possible that they used the term "thankfully" and I'm romanticizing it.

Well, that wasn't the case then, nor is it now. But a lot has happened in the intervening time, and indeed, since this riffing began. So maybe it's best to call this particular point a rest stop. And that means it's a chance to stand up, shake out the kinks and see how far we have come.

When I started this effort, I didn't really have any expectations of this kind of longevity. As someone with an attention span that considers TV commercials long form entertainment, I thought my run would be much more modest. I thought I'd write 20 or 30 columns, collect them, sell them as a book to a publisher, and the next call would be from Oprah. Fame and fortune and much merriment would ensue, and I would invite all you faithful readers to a party in some exotic yet safe place such as Baghdad. Seems I was wrong on so many fronts.

Not that I'm complaining. The space has enabled me to have an extended conversation with a wide range of people around the world. Through its appearance in the paper and via email, a rather diverse group of friends, family, associates, acquaintances, clients and some poor buggers who have gotten sucked into my orbit have been subjected to these weekly musings. Some have even seen fit to fire back, warming my heart that they have not only taken the time to read what I have written, but found it worthy of hitting the "reply" button, an act for which I am endlessly grateful.

To paraphrase the Grateful Dead, it has been a long and strange trip indeed. Faithful readers have learned about female crash test dummies (#155 "Hit Her Again"), cruises for geeks (#254 "The Code Boat") and electronic passports (#583 "Marked Man"). There have been reflections on happy occasions, such as the graduation of our oldest from college (#705 "Dear Matthew") as well as sad ones, like the death of my father (#644 "Leave Footsteps, Take Memories"). Still other weeks have taken on sports (#590 "Mad In March"), food (#737 "Salad Days") and even Santa Claus (#316 "State of Alert").

To be sure, not every attempt at enlightenment may tickle your fancy, or, to be perfectly honest, even mine. Columns I write which I think are brilliant may garner no response, while others where I feel like I've phoned it in may generate a lot of mail. Yet, rarely a week goes by that someone doesn't remark to me that what I wrote struck a chord for them. Whenever I think that perhaps my editor and you dear readers have had enough, that small bit of reinforcement has been enough to keep me going. So blame those earnest souls if you must blame someone.

For those of you still here, who have either been with me from the beginning and gotten caught up in the undertow along the way, many thanks for taking the ride. But now it's time to get back into the car. I'll repeat what I wrote on the occasion of my 500th: if you'll keep reading, I'll keep writing. I can only promise you that I'll try and keep my eyes and ears open, use all 26 letters where possible, and bring a smile to your face at least once a week. Our destination may be unknown, we may even be lost, but I can tell you this: we're making very good time.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford invites all to a party on the occasion of his 1000th column. Make sure to put 2013 on your calendar. Until then, you can read more regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Small Bites

2011-03-26T04:30:00.002-04:00

In an article in New York Magazine in 1985, Gael Green wrote that, "Yuppies do not eat... they graze." A dozen years later in The New York Times, Kim Seversen went even further: "The entrée, long the undisputed centerpiece of an American restaurant, is dead." She goes on to talk about the "tapafication of American menus," wherein you see small plates taking top billing at more and more meals. As an early adopter whose wedding more than a quarter of a century ago featured nothing but hors d'oeuvres, (in the belief that what people really want to eat is appetizers, especially if there are pigs-in-blankets), it's a trend of which I wholeheartedly approve.

Even leaving aside the legitimacy of the descriptor (which admittedly was a finalist in 2007 for "Word of the Year" by the American Dialect Society), it's a movement that has moved beyond edibles. In almost every arena, we seem to prefer to consume in small bites. The drivers are varied: limited time, limited attention span to be sure, but also the insatiable need for nearly constant stimulation and gratification. Or in culinary terms, why have the spring rolls alone when you can have the entire pupu platter?

Certainly we see it in food. Personally speaking, when we go out to eat, we favor restaurants where we can share a bunch of dishes. Thai and Chinese are easiest, but Russian, Indian and even Italian fit the bill. We'll order a bunch of appetizers to get us going, then pool our taste buds and order a variety of dishes to share. Our biggest problem is finding enough space on the table to handle all the bowls, plates and platters that show up. We snack around, having a little of this, a little of that, with each of us favoring certain flavors or textures. And it seems to suit us: it's almost embarrassing how each dish at the end looks as if it's been licked clean by a puppy.

But look at any number of the books that have made a splash this year, and you see the same kind of segmentation. Jennifer Eagan's "A Visit from the Goon Squad" just won the National Book Critics Circle award. While described as a novel, it's more like a series of connected short stories or character studies. Likewise Tom Rachman's debut book "The Imperfectionists," and "The Illumination" by Kevin Brockmeister. In each case, the individual chapters virtually stand on their own. In fact, if you them put them down and pick them up later without refreshing yourself as to the most recent goings-on, you might be hard pressed to consider them as a whole.

The same thing happens with TV viewing these days. I don't remember the last time I looked at the clock and said, "Wow, it's 8PM... I better go turn on ‘CSI: Wichita Behavioral Anatomy Unit' or I'll miss it!" Everything I watch is Tivo'd or DVR'd or Hulu'd or whatever. Even then I only watch it in bitesized chunks. The opening 8 minutes of John Stewart, the first skit on Saturday Night Live, Sean Hannity's first yellfest with his "Great American Panel," to name a few. That's at least 3 hours of boob tube cherry picked to under 30 minutes of content... and even then I'm just as likely to hit the clicker or mouse and look for something else if it sags for a second.

Movies are about the only thing that I consume in their entirety anymore. Maybe because it's dark, and I can't find my way to the exit. Maybe it's because I hate to climb over people in the row next to me. Maybe it's because my wife likes films, and so I go whether I want to see it or not. In any case, it's a kind of self-kidnapping: I only watch movies at the theater for the very reason that it's hard to escape. I don't remember the last time I watched a flick at home, where my tolerance to sit for two hours in one place is practically non-existent.

And there's more. We don't talk, we email. We don't email, we text. We don't buy albums, we download singles. We don't read papers, we read articles online. In almost every area, we slice and dice, taking only the parts we want, not only discarding the rest, but never even looking at what we're passing over. Aristotle may have noted that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, but these days those parts are what make up the whole enchilada.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford loves to have the time to read the paper cover to cover, finding things he never would online. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Give Her Power

2011-03-19T04:30:00.002-04:00

For some women, it's jewelry. For others, it's shoes. Handbags do it for still others, and cars certainly figure in as well. It's not that any of those don't have a special place in my wife's heart, but she had her eye on something else entirely. So the question is posed: What do you give the woman who has (at least from my perspective) everything? Or more accurately, as the Spice Girls sang, "Tell me what you want, what you really, really want."

In her case it was a 10,000 watt generator.

Some background. We live in an area that suffers a fair amount of power interruptions. Back when moved in 20 years ago, it was a serious issue, with the outages occurring whenever the weather turned nasty. These breakdowns could last anywhere from several hours to several days. But we chose to move to a semi-rural, very wooded area, and so learned to accept a certain amount of inconvenience as the cost of doing business.

To their credit, the power company embarked on a concerted effort to improve the situation, and over the intervening years trimmed trees and strengthened poles. And indeed, the outages seemed to decrease in frequency and duration. Sure, a major weather event could still cause the lights to go dark, but if Mother Nature really wants to be a bitch, there's only so much you can do.

More recently, however, we've noticed an uptick in the blackouts. Maybe it's the result of the increasingly erratic weather we've been having. Maybe it's the economics of the power companying trying to stretch manpower and resources. No matter: the results are the same. On any given day we might hear the hard "bang" of every appliance and light shutting down at the same instant as all goes dark.

So we learned to cope. We kept flashlights at the ready, and our computers had battery backups. We trained ourselves not to open refrigerators, and to pull down shades to keep heat from escaping. We even had small pots ready to put on the grill to boil water (we have an electric cooktop). With cell phones and car chargers, we found we could even keep working from home for a short period. The one major headache was water. We get ours from a well, and so no electricity means no aqua. That means no washing, no showering and no flushing of toilets. We could deal with all the former headaches; the last, however, was the deal breaker.

And so we discussed the idea of the generator. Since I was out more, and might even be away on business, the outages usually affected me less. She, however, was more likely to be stuck in the middle of them. And so our sense of need for said device broke along predictable lines: I saw it as an expensive luxury, she as more and more a necessity. Back and forth we went, with the final verdict being "if you want it so bad, you figure it out." It recalled a former neighbor who gave in to his wife on a swimming pool, then calculated the cost per lap. On a purely economic basis, each dip was exceedingly expensive. However, on the marital bliss scale, one could argue it was a prudent investment.

So she called, shopped, met with electricians and generator companies, and explored options. Eventually she found the best price, the right guy and in it went. A big propane tank, a self starting motor, a new electrical panel and an automatic transfer switch to kick on if the juice went out. Hidden on the side of the house, it was all but invisible save for the hole in our bank account.

Then last weekend, on a clear day in the middle of the afternoon, suddenly came that "bang." The lights winked out, and if got very quiet. It took a minute to realize what had happened: then, "here we go again," I thought. But not ten seconds later, outside my office came a "whoosh" as the genie started, the lights came back on and order was restored. I heard a flurry of feet as my wife ran from her own office, down the stairs and burst in to mine with a grin on her face like she had won the lottery. As a friend said, I should kill the power more often. Or to paraphrase Mastercard, cost of 10 KW generator: too much. Look on my wife's face at that moment: priceless.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford didn't think they needed the generator, but is happy to be able to flush the toilet when the power is out. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Playtime

2011-03-12T17:07:00.002-05:00

By any measure, 2010 was a bad year for the videogame industry. Software sales, including games on all platforms, was down 6%, while hardware was off more than double that, down 13%. Still, to put it in perspective, even with those declines the industry took in more than $18 billion. That means that more money was spend on "Angry Birds" and "Call of Duty: Black Ops" than the total GDP of Paraguay.

With money like that being spent on diversions to be played on PC's, phones and game consoles, you might think that traditional toys were dead. But that's hardly the case: that industry saw its biggest sales increase in five years. In 2010, product sales rose by 2% to nearly $23 billion. No matter how you count it, that's an awful lot of blocks, balls and Barbies.

That's not to say that toy makers are content to sit still. Indeed, this past month the elves that work year round in Santa's workshop, or more likely farm their R&D out to the likes of Mattel, Hasbro and Playmobil, showed off their latest wares at the annual Toy Fair in New York City. Yes, there were traditional bikes and dolls in a wide assortment of shapes and sizes. But to capture the hearts, minds and wallets of today's kids, regardless of whether they are 6 or 36, they demonstrated they can go way beyond your Justin Bieber Action Figure (though it's true that this year there are both singing and non-singing models).

Take your basic Super-Soaker. Ever since this water-pistol-on-steroids made its appearance back in 1990, it's been the weapon of choice for serious water fights. But while the tank size has steadily increased, you still had to stop to pump it up once the pressure ran down. No more: the new "Thunderstorm" model is the first to have a battery-powered pump, so you can soak your "friends" without ever having to stop to reload.

And what fun is setting up a model race course if you can't ride along with it through those loop-the-loops and jumps? Problem solved with the new Hot Wheels Video Racer. Each of these 3 inch race cars has a camera embedded in the hood, a one-inch LCD on its lower chassis for instant playback and the ability to record 12 minutes of VGA-quality video. It also comes with a dongle to upload the footage to your computer, as well as a mount so you can lash it to your helmet when you go skateboarding, bike riding or skating. So now you can capture footage of those spectacular stunts and crashes, perfect for your insurance claim.

Just because you go to work doesn't mean you have to stop playing. The Desk Pets TankBot is a miniature robotic tank with an autonomous mode that relies on infrared sensors to see and avoid obstacles. That means it can search and destroy without making a mess of your workspace and knocking over your coffee. Even better, if you know your cubicle mate's weakest point of defense, you can steer the Bot there using the accompanying iPhone app, and attack him in mid-spreadsheet when he is least expecting it.

The TankBot cruises along at a few inches a second... good for surprise but not for adrenalin junkies. For that, you might want to turn to the SpinMaster Air Hogs Hyperactive. The fastest remote-controlled car of its size, this speed demon zips around at 20 miles per hour, which is the scale equivalent of a couple hundred MPH. And it has enough torque to spiral its way to the top of a 10-foot cylinder. Not too worry: if all that power is too much to handle, its built in rollbar makes sure it lands upright when it comes flying off the roof.

But if you need to prove brains over brawn, then you'll want to pick up the Radica MindFlex Duel. This brain-to-brain challenge offers up side-by-side tracks for you and your arch nemesis. You each strap on a headset with sensors, which reads your brain waves to levitate a ball and move it down an obstacle course. No, it's not science fiction: it converts Theta waves that come from concentrating into RF signals that control movement. It's a true battle of wits.

George Bernard Shaw famously pointed out that "Youth is wasted on the young." To be sure, these toys would be. So here's what you do: get it for your kid, then take it away and try it yourself. Then you can echo that anti-Shaw, Bart Simpson: "I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know why, but I'll do it again."

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford misses playing games with his kids. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Let's Get Ready to Colorrrrrr!

2011-03-05T04:30:00.002-05:00

The Super Bowl is a distant memory. The NBA Finals and the Stanley Cup playoffs don't kick off till April. We've barely started spring training, so the World Series is just a gleam in Derek Jeter's eye. True, we've got March Madness to work our way through, but even the finals of that don't happen till next month. So if you are a diehard, head-to-head competition fan, and you have to see a championship crowned, what are you to do till then?

You head down to Washington to see Michael "Spaghetti Kiss" Bracco defend his title. Currently ranked number 1, with a record of 7 wins and 2 losses, he'll have to bring it all to hold off the likes of Nick "Ghostfreehood" Borkowicz, Jami "Angry Zen Master" Noguchi and the unpredictable Bryan "Silent But Violent" Prindiville. There in our nation's capital, at a venue called "The Red Palace," those three will be joined by 6 other hot hands as they go canvas to canvas in a Super Art Fight.

Described by one of the creators as a punk-rock mixture of "Pictionary meets Pro-Wrestling," Super Art Fight started in Baltimore in 2008. It grew out of a contest called "Iron Artist" that was held at the Katsucon Anime Convention, a three-day fan fest now in its 17th year. SAF, as the hosts like to call it, was the brainchild of five local webcomic creators: the aforementioned Borkowicz and Noguchi, along with Chris Impink, Marty Day and Ross Nover. Impick also competes, while the other two have settled into hosting duties.

SAF, at its most basic level, is an art showdown with a live crowd cheering the artists on. Each starts with a fistful of markers and a sheet of paper about four or five feet square. Prior to the bout, each participant is given a starting topic, with which they must begin their piece. Once the whistle blows, they have 30 minutes to complete their drawing. But it's not quite that simple: over the course of the bout, each contestant is given a new topic every five minutes to incorporate into their work. Those topics are chosen randomly by a spin of the "Wheel of Death," which has new ideas posted on it as suggested by the audience. Past helpful suggestions include "monocle" and "owls attack," not to mention "Christopher Walken riding a unicorn."

Finally, to add a little more easel-to-easel excitement, participants are allowed... encouraged even... to "attack" each others art, either by completing a piece left unfinished by their opponent, or by subverting it with their own special additions. So a macabre Gothic leviathan can be "tweaked" by a competitor with the guerrilla addition of a Valentine Day-esque heart in the middle of its chest. Living proof that even in the arts world, war can be hell.

The crowd gets treated to play-by-play and color commentary, courtesy of Day and Nover. The whole thing is accompanied by an indie-rock soundtrack, the cheers and jeers of the audience and the occasional sideline interview with the artists. It's like Iron Chef, only without the pots and pans. And no panel of semi-well know judges here: the winner is chosen by the audience. Loudest cheers means the champion.

In truth, the contest has changed over the years since it began, though "matured" is a putting it a bit strongly. As co-founder Ross Nover explains on the group's website, "The quality of the artwork is now secondary to the quality of the performance. The artists have realized the audience doesn't care if a drawing is amazing or merely OK as long it's funny. They're asking themselves, ‘How quickly can I draw the funny thing?' as opposed to ‘How well can I draw the funny thing?' When we started, the artist really took their time and the competition was the joke. Now the competition has gotten serious to the point where I've had entire conversations about art fight strategy."

"Art fight strategy:" three words you probably never though you'd find in the same sentence. But while it may not have a ball, a helmet, a bat or a stick, its no less a contest than the sports that use those pieces of gear. And If they can call golf a sport, this has got to count too. So lace up your markers, strap on your highlighters, head on down to The Red Palace, and let's get ready to color.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford can only draw stick figures. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Cut, Cut Cut

2011-02-26T04:30:00.002-05:00

This past week, Speaker of the House John Boehner gave the House of Representatives all the rope in the world and said, effectively, "hang us." And so as one of its three exclusive powers (the other two being the ability to impeach elected officials, as well as to break an Electoral College deadlock), the 435 members of 112th Congress exercised the power of the purse, and began the process of determining how our tax dollars will be spent. Proposing 583 amendments to the basic revenue raising bill, 153 were brought to the floor, with 67 finally being adopted after 4 days of debate. Like the outcome or not, that's some serious legislatin' action.

The final result shaved some $60 billion off of the proposed federal budget. In theory, all well and good. The devil, though, is in the details. Some trims appear to make sense regardless of what ideology you espouse: Representative Tom Rooney, Republican of Florida, proposed Amendment #2, which eliminates $450 million in funding for F-35 Joint Strike Fighter alternative engine program, a program which Defense Secretary Robert Gates called "an unnecessary and extravagant expense." Others are more partisan in nature, such as #83, #268, #409 and #575, proposed respectively by Republicans Mary Jo Emerson of Missouri, Steve King of Iowa, Tom Price of Georgia and Denny Rehlberg of Montana. Each prohibits funding for various elements of the National Health Care Law. And a few proposals even came from Democrats: Jim Matheson of Utah offered up #38, which prohibits the use of funds for the Department of Agriculture's Community Connect broadband grant program.

Other cuts made one wonder... or maybe not... just what were they thinking. Dan Boren of Oklahoma was behind #566, which bars funds from being used to require manufacturers to report to the Justice Department the sale of multiple guns to one person. If you're of the Mike Bloomberg persuasion it doesn't make a lot of sense, until you find out that Boren is also a member of the Board of the NRA. Randy Forbes of Virginia got agreement on #145, which prohibits the use of any funds in the closure or realignment of the United States Joint Forces Command. Surprise, surprise, the USJFC is headquartered in Norfolk, VA. But there were also some profiles in courage: Anthony Weiner of New York was willing to incur the wrath of the Angora goat lobby with #101, which prohibits the use of funds to provide non-recourse marketing assistance loans for mohair.

In short, there is something for everyone to hate or like. However, while Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution starts with "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives," it ends with, "but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." In other words, it's hardly a done deal, and the fun is just beginning.

As for me, I'm just happy that Representative Steve Womack's amendment never made it through the process. Womack, a Republican from Arkansas, was going to introduce an amendment that would prohibit federal funds from being used to buy and maintain teleprompters for President Obama. He said it would save $5 million, but he withdrew the amendment because that estimate never got an official scoring from the Congressional Budget Office. Womack's explanation? "We're asking people to do more with less. And I think the president ought to lead by example. He is already a very gifted speaker. And I think that's one platform he could do without."

As a professional in this area, I might have found my own cause célèbre. I can't speak to withholding aid to Chad (#424), or the whether the Florida Water Quality Standards are onerous (#13). I'll defer to others as to EPA Guidelines on surface coal mining (#109), and whether or not we should continue to pay for the Klamath Dam Removal and Sedimentation Study (#296). In those areas and others, I'll let people with firsthand knowledge guide me.

However, I've seen speakers... gifted, smart, knowledgeable people, with great stage presence and good public speaking skills... try and give a concise message without a prompter, and let me tell you, it's not pretty. Obama is all those things. But if we're going to go to war with somebody or back a new democracy movement, I want him reading from a script. We've got enough problems without a slip of the tongue. Ronald Reagan may be a hero to the right, but remember his, "We begin bombing in five minutes" line? That's what ad libs get you. Five million? For my money, it would be cheap at twice the price.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is waiting to see who in Congress blinks first. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

"Groove, Groove and More Groove"

2011-02-19T04:30:00.002-05:00

Even if you have a tin ear, can't carry a note in a bucket and have all the rhythm that God gave squirrels, back in elementary school you probably had a chance to play the tambourine. It was that round thing nestled on the music teacher's cart between the wooden sticks, the maracas and the cowbell. A double threat, you could bang on it and get a drum sound, or shake it and have it jingle-jangle. In terms of making noise, it made a lot. That's not the same as making music, but it sure could be heard.

And that's probably where you left it. That is, unless you're Julia Joseph. Julia is a wonderful singer-songwriter, named Best Female Jazz Solo Artist in the 2004 New York International Independent Music festival, while her debut CD "Hush" won the 2008 Independent Music Award's popular vote for Best Folk/Singer-Songwriter. She describes her voice as "an alto that has a little crystal or a little grit on the top end." Others go further: Ty Greenstein of the group Girlyman says, "It contains traces of her heroes – Nina Simone, Phoebe Snow, Janis Joplin – but it's more than that," while M. Neala Byrne writes it's "a voice that could awaken the dead and lull the living to sleep."

While her singing and songwriting certainly deserve top billing, Julia also puts her talents to use for others. She works as a session vocalist and back-up singer, and you can hear her on several musical pieces from NBC's hit comedy, "30 Rock." More recently, she has become a permanent support player for fellow singer-songwriter Milton. In each of those roles she brings her voice and her musicality, but also something else: in her own words, she's a "kick-ass tambourine player."

If you see her play, you'd have to agree. Her leads and harmonies certainly add to any performance, but you can't help but notice her tambourine playing. Steady to be sure, it adds to the sound without overpowering it, while also accenting the whole. It's hard to imagine that that little noisemaker can make such a difference. But like many things, in the hands of a skilled practitioner, the ordinary can become extraordinary.

It wasn't always that way. "I took drum lessons a long time ago," she says, "and am happiest when grooving to some kind of rhythm. But for some reason I felt obligated to stick to the ‘singer-songwriter' thing." And so guitar became her instrument. But then Milton asked her to join his backup group, and she noticed how integral tambourine and shaker were to many of the tracks. "So I lied and told him I could handle all that stuff in the live shows and that I was a ‘real' player." But then she had to pony up: "At our first rehearsal, I was a little late because I had to run and buy a tambourine. I threw the packaging away outside the rehearsal room, walked in and winged it. No one was the wiser." She eventually came clean, but a "player" was born.

Now the owner of 6 different varieties, she approaches her playing as would any other musician. "You need to be very good at dividing beats evenly and with good dynamic emphasis. That's how you make it groove! When a rhythm section is locked in and tight, the music lives." Put another way, "It's an instrument. It makes sound. A LOT of sound. If you're going to play one, play it for real, or every drummer you work with is just really going to hate you."

I asked her if there are tambourine players she admires. "Jack Ashford... is the guy responsible for the back-beat in the ‘Motown Sound.' He played tambourine on everything, and if you really listen you can hear how much that tambourine is making the sound. Rosalie "Lady Tambourine" Washington is also truly something to behold. She is legendary for sitting in with the big acts who perform at the New Orleans Jazz Festival." Julia gets the possibilities: "Do not be fooled by how simple it looks or seems! There's all kinds of craziness a master can do. I mean, imagine a truly gripping tambourine solo? They do exist! I can't do one yet, no way... but it sure is a satisfying idea."

Just how important is her playing as opposed to her singing? "To me it's just a different part of the music. It's part of what's driving the rhythm. I guess if anything I was doing wasn't important, it would be nixed." Decide for yourself. Catch her live, and hear her singing and writing ability. Catch her with Milton, and watch her mastery of the tambourine. Or in her words, watch her add, "Dynamic, dimension, groove, groove and more groove."

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford caught Julia Joseph and Milton at the Common Grounds Community Coffee House. You can both performers locally or on iTunes. You can find this column regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Just Turn It Off

2011-02-12T04:30:00.003-05:00

Save a single semester of "Intro to Solid-State Electronics" in college, I have no formal training in engineering. Likewise, my knowledge of computer programming is based on one class in Ten Statement Fortran. From the first I vaguely recall how a transistor works, though I can't say I would any idea how to fix our TV should it stop working. And unless someone came to me and needed a set of punch cards in order to code blackjack on a mainframe, I probably wouldn't be of much use in designing a game for your smart phone.

That being said, in spite of this cursory training in the technical arts most would say that I come down on the geekier side of the ledger. When I was a kid my dad taught me to use tools and do basic household repairs, and I'm embarrassed to say that for years I dreamed of having my own socket set. Later, when I started to get interested in electronics, I took things apart, and got the basic idea of how a telephone or radio was constructed. I confess it was a big picture view at best, as I wasn't always successful in putting the same items back together again.

Even in the high tech arena, I was an early adopter if not always an early understander. When I started my own business in 1981, I ran out and ordered a Kaypro computer. This early Personal PC, considered portable because it had a handle, weighed in at about 30 pounds, and had 2 five-inch floppy drives, a 9" green screen and a whopping 64K of memory. When it arrived I ripped open the box and plugged it in, to be met by a blinking screen and nothing else. Long before iAnything, you had to be at least part geek to get things like that to work. And so from trial and error if nothing else, I learned the basics behind hardware and software.

Not so fast forward, and some 30 years later I still have at least a modicum of street smarts when it comes to troubleshooting a problem. Whether it's the car or the dishwasher, the TV or a computer, I may not have all the technical expertise to get it up and running, but I can usually identify and isolate the problem. Likewise, I can usually suss out if it's time to call in the experts, or alternatively stop someone from trying to fix it themselves before someone gets hurt, which usually results in the same thing plus a lot of swearing.

More and more, however, I'm finding this knowledge is a case of too much too late. I hate to admit it, but the ability to analyze a problem, sort through the myriad of potential issues and then formulate an action plan has been rendered somewhat obsolete by one particular piece of circuitry: the on-off switch.

Take the iPad, perhaps one of the most elegant and complex pieces of technology out there today. Mine was acting funky. I walked through all the settings, checked and renewed the IP addresses and cleared the cache. No matter if none of that makes sense to you; I did all the geeky things I could think of to no avail. Then my wife, whose technical prowess is... well, I want to stay married, so we'll just say "limited..." said, "Try turning it off and on." Ha, I scoffed, that's not going to fix it. She shrugged. But when she wasn't looking, I did just that. And before you could say Steve Jobs, all was working. Sorry, honey, you were right.

Likewise the next day at work when a particular piece of high end equipment was malfunctioning. I tried a few things: no dice. So I called over the chief engineer, a gentleman with 30 years of experience including stints with the BBC and a host of other major companies. He fiddled with it a bit, then suggested we try a "complete register cleardown." Sounded impressive, I noted aloud, but what did that entail? He smiled. "We'll turn it off, then turn it back on, and see what happens." Indeed, it powered up successfully, and we were good to go. Amazing what they teach in London.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. However, more and more these days, it's a lot of knowledge that can get you in trouble, or at least make it harder to fix the problem. Power cycle, reboot, implementing a temporary air gap... call it what you will. But if you can find the damn switch, nine times out of ten, you look like a genius. Now, if I could just figure out which symbol is for "on" and which is for "off," I might be home free.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford is noticing a lot of his "knowledge" is getting somewhat dated. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

News from All Over

2011-02-05T04:30:00.002-05:00

Thank goodness Egypt is blowing up. Not from the standpoint of stability in the region, the diplomatic and security minefield that a new regime represents, nor what it has done and will do to the price of oil and the stock market. Rather, it gives us a chance to feel superior to yet another autocratic state that is grappling with societal upheaval that can only be placated by mobs in the street. More to the point, we needed a little bucking up on the heels of the state visit by our personal banker, President Jintao of China (Best line of the week: Dennis Miller's observation that President Jintao and House Speaker John Boehner used to tour together under the title of "Hu and Cry.")

As color commentary to the play-by-play of the president's visit, the press has been filled with stories this past week enumerating how China is eating our lunch, and will continue to do so in the coming century. Much of the cold hard statistical data is indeed worrying: a Chinese work force of 813.5 million vs. 154 million here, Chinese exports to the US of $296.4 billion vs. our exports to them of $69.5 billion, and estimated Chinese GDP growth of 9.6% in 2011 vs. 2.3% on these shores. These, of course, are offset by a governmental system called "Chinese Capitalism" which is dictatorial in design and communist in form. The bottom line, however is that whatever you call it, it is economically formidable.

But it wasn't just at the geopolitical level that we were getting smacked around by the most populous nation on earth. It was also the week that Amy Chua became the publishing sensation of the season with the release of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom." In a neat bit of tightrope walking, she alternately validated the stereotype of the "success at all costs" Asian parent while simultaneously saying the book is about backing away from that model. No matter: she's become a lightning rod around parenting styles. In fact, while she was invited to Davos to the World Economic Forum to talk about her academic work on globalization, she wound up sparring on stage with Larry Summers about child rearing strategies. While not a billed as a proxy for the US vs. China debate, it was hard not to read some of that into the discussion. Or as noted by Gerry Baker in the Wall Street Journal, "The engaging Ms. Chua has captured in perfect synthesis the two things middle-age Americans now fear most - China, and their own children."

For boomers everywhere, it's a double whammy. At both the geopolitical and personal levels it's easy to see them as the villains and us as the good guys. Never mind the outcome: we can say that we are morally superior, even if we lose in energy produced or violin contests won. We are happier, more innovative, more flexible than they are or ever will be. Or as Summers pointed out in Davos, "Which two freshmen at Harvard have arguably been most transformative of the world in the last 25 years? You can make a reasonable case for Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, neither of whom graduated." If they had been the product of a Tiger Mom upbringing, he added, their mothers would not have been so happy. So there.

But then the Chinese go and do something that makes us aging baby boomers take pause. Not that we want to mandate personal behavior or anything, but in the immortal words of rock and roll, what about me? And that's why another piece of news from the across the Pacific muddies the waters. Under a proposal submitted by the Civil Affairs Ministry to China's State Council, adult children would be required by law to regularly visit elderly parents. If they do not, parents can sue them. Note that it doesn't require economic support, just visitation. And there is some clarification needed, such as what constitutes "regular" and how it would be monitored. While it does give new meaning to the term "nanny state," for those of us who defined our lives by our connection to our kids and now see a future without that, it doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

All that in one week from just one country. The Egyptians better get moving if they want to stay above the fold. Sure, we're all captivated by the pictures coming out of Cairo. But if all they got is a popular uprising, we're going to lose interest fast. Odds are we'll be on to the next Twitter revolution before you can say Tiger Mom.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford is getting whiplash by all that is happening around the world. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Superpowers

2011-01-29T04:30:00.004-05:00

Peter Parker has been much in the news of late. Well, to be fair, the stories are less about Peter, and more about his alter ego, Spiderman. Spidy is having issues vanquishing his demons, not just the Green Goblin, but those that seem to inhabit the Foxwoods theatre. It's hardly surprising: Superman, Mr. Fantastic, Storm... all have to come to terms with their powers. Used properly, they can be a force for good. But it can just as easily go the other way. After all, we all know what happened to Luke Skywalker's dad, Mr. Vader.

For me, this has taken on new relevance as I grapple a similar issue: I too have powers I can't control. No, I haven't been sent here from another planet (Superman), been on a spaceship that traveled through the Van Allen belt (The Human Torch), or drank a bottle of super-plastic fluid by mistake (Bouncing Boy). But through some weird quirk of physics, I seem to be able to control the weather.

Unlike Red Tornado's talent with the wind, or Sarah Rainmaker's skills with water vapor, I seem to have a more general ability to conjure up atmospheric disturbances. True, I have yet to figure any conscious way of summoning, controlling or harnessing this power. But there seems to be no doubt, given recent events, I must be the one responsible what's happening with the skies.

I first became aware of this "talent" nearly 20 years ago. We had moved to a new house and had 2 small children. It was springtime, and a job came up requiring my presence out of town. All well and good. I made sure my family was comfortably ensconced in our new abode, and caught a plane to Iowa. And that's when the first storm hit.

When I landed and called home, I learned that a major Nor'easter had roared up the coast and we... or more correctly, my wife and family... were without power. I could only sympathize via phone as the outage went from one day to two to three. Eventually the lights came back on, and all was restored, though not without some spoiled food and frayed nerves. I returned home to war stories, making sure to offer up suitable sympathy for a hardship I had missed.

Fast forward to later that same year, and another project took me to another locale. Wonder of wonders, another major storm rolled in, and power was once again interrupted. I returned home shortly thereafter, trying to be empathetic, but this time being met by dirty looks for not having been there to be of help.

A pattern started to emerge. If I got a call to go out of town, there was a better than even chance that something would happen with the weather. Might be rain, might be snow, might be wind, but it was as often as not bigger than usual. Schools were closed and roads were blocked. And it would miraculously be sorted out by the time I got home.

Those among you with a scientific bent would call up the old correlation vs. causality argument, and point out that just because two seemingly unrelated events happen in lockstep doesn't imply control. After all, "The Today Show" doesn't make the sun rise, though one always precedes the other. And that might indeed be the case here. But then again...

In fact, to try and prove my powers, I recently accepted a gig in Florida. No sooner did I make travel arrangements than the weather forecast was modified to include not one, but two major snow events in my absence. Now, if you are the doubting type, you can say it was mere coincidence. On the other hand, I should note that according to the Farmer's Almanac, "For early 2011, winter will be milder than normal across the north....with precipitation below normal." And then I was called to Miami, and... well, look out the window.

It's not just me who thinks so. Like the Vatican's Congregation for Cause of Saints, there is an independent body that has examined the evidence and concurs. Our neighbors have weighed in, and their opinion is unanimous. Perhaps best stated in an email my wife received when I was in Florida, "TELL MARC,COME HOME NOW!!!! Cannot take another foot of snow!!!!"

So apologies to all. I'm working on it. The good news is that I have nothing on my calendar that takes me out of town till May. But according to Colorado State University's Tropical Meteorology Project, 17 named storms are predicted for 2011. So be smart: you might want to check my schedule before you book your summer vacation.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford is working on his super costume. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Today I Feel...

2011-01-22T04:30:00.000-05:00

It's a Sunday morning in January. It's cold. I'm tired. With a long week of work behind me, and another one coming up, I feel...

OUT OF SHAPE: As I do most days, I get up and pull on my running stuff and head out. Yes, there are those who love running and look forward to it and feel better after it. I am not one of those. I do it because if I didn't do it I would get no exercise at all. And as many times as I do it, every day feels like the first time. There seems to be no building up endurance or strength. All that seems to happen is that when I get to the turn-around point, I can't believe how heavy my legs feel, how sore my knees are and how hard I'm breathing to make it up the last hill. I feel the burn, just not in a good way.

THERE AREN'T ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY: I would like nothing more than to sit and read the paper cover to cover. I would like nothing more than to strap on my snowshoes and take a walk in the woods. I would like nothing more than to finish the book I started. I would like nothing more than to pay all the bills on my desk, review our retirement portfolio and do some analysis of our other investments. I would like nothing more than to cruise the net looking at stupid stuff on Ebay. I would like nothing more than to lie on the couch and watch football. I would like nothing more than to take a nap. But something's gotta give. It's a coin flip what will actually get done.

LIKE AN IDIOT: Not a unique feeling, I'll grant you, but perhaps more so today than usual. The paper is filled with fascinating stories, about the possible emergence of a democratic government in the Arab country of Tunisia, the development of cyberwarfare against Iran and the independence struggles of southern Sudan. But to understand the importance of any of it in context, I first have to look up exactly where Tunisia is, how to make uranium by centrifuge and the tribal history of the Sudan. And to think I was focused on whether the Jets special teams were up the challenge. Was that really a good use of what limited brainpower I have?

OLD: My reading glasses broke, and I found myself practically incapacitated. As such I have to make a run to Target to buy a few more pairs, so I can place them anywhere in the house where I might have to decipher the print before me. On top of that, I'm finding that when I get in the car, the first thing I do is turn the heat up to high, and swivel the vent to hit my hands to warm them up so they work. Even with a nap in the afternoon, sitting still and focusing on a conversation after 10PM and not falling asleep is a major struggle. And as I go from my office in the basement up to the first floor, I'm suddenly understanding the simple genius of the guy who invented the banister.

BEHIND THE TIMES: In spite of the fact that I have a computer, a Kindle, an iPad and an Android Smartphone, I merely use all to work, check the weather and read the news. But today it's all about software, not hardware. According to what the experts are saying, the fastest growing cohort for social media is 65 and up. So the fact that I am not a dedicated user of Facebook, Twitter and the like means that I am being left out of the loop by my eighty year-old mother.

COLD: Maybe it's because I'm getting older. Maybe it's because I've had business trips to southern climes of late, and have seen the ocean. Maybe it's because the snow at the end of our driveway is over five feet high. And did I mention I'm getting older? In any case, I do believe in global warming... I just wish it would happen now. It's only January, and my feet are cold.

Individually, each is a challenge and I can wave it off. Taken together it's enough to make me feel like someone hit me with a stick. But there is good news on the horizon, and it's as simple as the clock. After all, tomorrow is just hours away.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford is trying to keep up, but it's getting harder. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, the Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Words to Live By

2011-01-15T04:30:00.000-05:00

When we were in Russia and offered tea, our hostess took her teapot and poured about two fingers worth of hot liquid into my cup, then turned away. I thanked her, blew on it to cool it down a bit, then brought it to my lips to take a sip. "Nyet, Nyet!" she said as she turned back with another pot. Turns out that the first pot contained the concentrated essence of the drink, and was not meant to be drunk alone. You took some of the base, then added plain hot water to fill up your cup. Attempting to do what I did was the equivalent of shooting uncut heroin, though the results would most likely be less catastrophic.

We're generally not used to working with things at the purest levels. It's probably safer that way, though the kick is not as intense. In fact most of what we deal with on a daily basis is cut or adulterated in some way, be it foodstuffs or politics. Indeed, one of the issues many have with the Tea Party is its view of "principle over party," where its core beliefs are more important than moderating them to work in the real world. If you're an ideologue, you applaud this. If you're a pragmatist, you disdain it. In either case, you think Michelle Bachman is crazy.

Still, it's an interesting exercise to reduce your core operating principle to single phrase. Politicians have been doing this for years in the form of campaign slogans. Obama's "Yes We Can" is perhaps the most recent example that gained a toehold. But it's not always the pithy utterance you see on the posters that takes on life. During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton advisor James Carville made "It's the Economy Stupid" the central talking point, while George H.W. Bush's "Read My Lips: No New Taxes" was his rallying cry, until those same lips had to talk out of the other side of his mouth.

You can never tell what will strike a chord and live in the public's mind, for beter or for worse. In Norway in 1983, Communist party candidate Liv Finstad tried to explain why her party wanted an increase in sheep farming. Her explanation, "Sauer er ålreite dyr" which translates as "Sheep are all right animals" became the phrase which helped to sink her candidacy. And in the 1990's in Romania, Minister of Transport Traian Basescu nailed it when he was asked why so many streets were blocked by snow: "Larna nu-i ca vara" he said, or "Winter's not like summer." Perhaps Mike Bloomberg should take note.

But it's not just politics. New York Sportscaster Warner Wolf will always be know as the "Let's Go To the Videotape!" guy, while radio broadcaster Paul Harvey had as his calling card, "The Rest of the Story." Celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse has two in "Let's Kick It Up a Notch" and the more succinct, "Bam!" And The New York Times had a front page story that individual athletes are getting into the act, with New York Jets cornerback Darryl Revis applying to trademark the phrase "Revis Island," a reference to his own little piece of turf downfield where receivers get stranded without the ball.

Which leaves the rest of us. Just because you're not a broadcaster or a politician or a celebrity doesn't mean you can't have a catchphrase. You didn't think you needed your own web domain a Twitter handle or blog... and you don't. But that's today. Things in this world move fast, and before you know it you'll wonder why you didn't stake out some turf sooner. After all, your email is likely to be something un-fun like "mark621" because all the good names had been taken by the time you thought you should get on the bandwagon.

So think of the phrase that reduces you to a pithy utterance, and register it now. And before you know it, your family, friends and associates will be clamoring for tee-shirts, coffee mugs and bumper stickers to show their agreement with your philosophy. As for me, I'm taking orders. Just let me know what size shirt to send you with the slogan on it, "Smile Like It Doesn't Hurt."

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford finds himself repeating the same things over and over. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

Countdown to Savings

2011-01-08T04:30:00.003-05:00

My father used to put it best: he would go broke if my mom saved him any more money. If there was a deal, she was on it. Be it cents or dollars, it was worth buying if you could take something off the purchase price. Never mind that you didn't need the coat/canned pumpkin/Tupperware; it could sit in the closet until it got cold/Thanksgiving/we ordered too much Chinese food. Sooner or later (so the logic went) you would need it, so why pay bust out retail when you could get it now for less?

Me, I have a much less forward looking outlook. When something breaks, I replace it. And at that exact moment in space/time, if I can find it for less, then so be it. If not, unless it's something I desperately need...a new computer, batteries for my son's hearing aids, strawberry Twizzlers... I'll make a mental note and keep my eyes open, seeking to find it at a reduced tariff within a reasonable time. At all costs (no pun intended), the goal is to avoid committing that most grievous of sins: paying full price.

Occasionally the stars do align, and I find that my need corresponds with a price reduction on that exact item. I'm on dinner duty, and ribs are featured as the Manager's Special. We're out of paper in the office, and that's the product-of-the-week at Staples. Or the grease stain from that errant piece of pepperoni pizza will not come out of my khaki pants, and Kohl's happens to have them on sale... though, to be fair, Kohl's always has pants on sale. (A Zen Koan: if all is always on sale, is the sale not a sale?)

So imagine my delight when our youngest son mentioned that he needed new winter boots, that the type he wanted was available at Dick's Sporting Goods, that we went by said store enroute for a visit to family AND that morning an email informed me that I could obtain a 50% off voucher at same. I don't know if I believe in Karma, but if ever there was a sign that the New Year would be a good one, this was it.

But it's never that easy. Seems I was ensnared in the latest craze, group savings, demonstrated perhaps best of all by the Groupon culture. For those of you as ignorant as I, the concept is that if you band together with other like minded bargain hunters, you can get a merchant to offer deep discounts. The catch is that enough people have to sign up to achieve critical mass. Once the target has been hit, all those who sign up are charged and get the deal. The idea is to use the power of numbers, coupled with a guarantee to buy, to get some serious savings.

The particular variant I was lassoed by, called "Overwhelming Offers," required me first to click a box. Easy enough. However, all that did was get me in the door, and give me a small discount at a different store. I was then presented with a counter. When enough other like-minded souls clicked, in this case 50,000, the deal would become active. But there was a catch: only the first 100 to click at that point would get the deal. I watched it climb in fits and starts, multitasking a bit onto other things as opposed to watching the pot boil.

An hour or later I clicked back as it neared the goal. Suddenly the screen flashed. I was presented with a new counter, this one a clock counting down to when the deal would be active. I hovered over my mouse ready to spring, when I noted a line labeled "advantage." Seems frequent users of the site are inched forward a few seconds, giving them a leg up on the masses. And sure enough, before my button ever turned green, 100 other hardcore savers clicked in, and I was left out in the cold.

Alas, it was not to be. But as it turns out, we swung by the store and the boots were on sale anyway, with no other discounts permitted. So phooey on the coupon crowd. You? You can Groupon and Woot and DealCatcher to your heart's content. As for me, I'll just wander in the retail wilderness as usual, noting that occasionally dollars do grow, or more precisely, fall off trees.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford likes to buy, as long as he doesn't have to shop. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

The Best 10 Best

2011-01-01T04:30:00.005-05:00

No, that's not a misprint. It's just that for a column that will be published on the last day of the year, I feel a certain responsibility. It's not to round up the top news stories, or showcase the best music, or even highlight the films that I think you shouldn't have missed over this past year. Rather, herewith for 2010 is my own best 10 best lists. Hardly the most mainstream, they give you a taste for all that other stuff you might have missed.

The Top Ten Dead Celebrity Homes For Sale. As of November, all were still available. And while there's no guarantee that should you buy it, Groucho Marx's ghost would be in residence telling jokes, or Frank Sinatra's spirit will be "Do-Be-Do-Be-Doing" in the attic, one of these may be the ultimate trophy home. Number one on the list is just down the road: George C. Scott's estate has 5 bedrooms, 7.5 baths, comes in at over 14,000 square feet and is priced to move at $36.5 million.

The Top Ten Party Schools. Work hard, party harder is the motto at these institutions of higher learning. While most also have top ranked academic programs in specific areas, a survey by the Princeton Review of 122,000 students also said that if you think your kid is spending his or her tuition holed up in the library working on the F. Scott Fitzgerald paper at one of these schools, you just might be fooling yourself. Penn State, Ole Miss and the Mountaineers of West Virginia all made the cut. Tops on the list? That would be the University of Georgia, which, according to Coed Magazine, has "the hottest sorority girls on the planet."

The Top 10 Places To Run A Marathon. New York? Boston? London? Anybody can do that. If you really want to wow the flat arches crowd, you need to pick a more exotic destination. There's the Easter Island Marathon in Chile, which is restricted to just 150 runners. At the Reggae Marathon in Jamaica, the locals line the route with their sound systems, pumping out Bob Marley to help you keep pace. And at the Big Five Marathon on South Africa, armed rangers patrol the route, ensuring you aren't forced to outrun a leopard. But if you really want a challenge, sign up for the Great Wall Marathon in Tanjin, China, where you also have to climb 5164 steps along the route.

The Top Ten Google Searches. Just what did we care about this past year? Probably no better canary in a coal mine than what we collectively tapped into Google. The searches that gained the most traction? Lady Gaga was up 60%, Netflix was up 80% and Justin Bieber was up a whopping 850%. But if there's a toy we all want, it has to be an iPad. Google lists it as "breakout," which it defines as a search term that "has experienced a change in growth greater than 5000%."

The Top Ten Apologies. So many stupid moves, so little time to say "I'm sorry." There's Helen Thomas to Jews. There's Mark McGwire to his fans. And there's Kanye West to Taylor Swift and President Bush, sort of. But the top apology has to be to Tiger Woods to everyone, for cheating on his wife, and for teaching her how to use a nine-iron on his back window.

The Top Ten Overreported Stories. Why didn't they just go away? Or more to the point, why won't the media just let them go away? To be sure, stories like the BP spill had legs, and deserved continual updates. But did we really need to have a TV special on LeBron James' career moves, breathless interviews with locals who might have seen Chelsea Clinton enroute to her wedding, or anything to do with bedbugs? But the winner... or loser, depending on whether it's them or us... has to be all things Palin, whether they be dancing or Tweeting.

The Top Ten Buzzwords. It's good that our language is a dynamic thing. This year we all learned about the intricacies of deep sea drilling (Top Kill, Junk Shot), more about Iceland's geography (the Eyjafjallajokull volcano) and far more about fiscal policy than we ever picked up in Econ 101 (Quantitative Easing). But if there was one word that was on everyone's lips, regardless of where they were from, it was this: Vuvuzela.

So as we cross into January, what will be top next year's lists? Not restaurant or club or fashion trend. Rather, check back here 12 months hence at this same time, and let's see if we can round up the 10 Best Political Feuds for 2011. I think we're in for a bumper crop.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford will have more to say in 2011. Adn you'll find it here every week, and in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

A Holiday Fable

2010-12-25T04:30:00.002-05:00

(Note: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidence, not to mention the writer's day to day existence)

Once upon a time there was a modern American family. HE was more or less a typically suburban male, working at a profession, interested in technology, reading and music. SHE was more or less a typically suburban female, devoted to her children, family and community, interested in movies, exercise and friends. While HE was Jewish and SHE was Presbyterian, neither was devoutly religious. And so their secular outlooks and lifestyles posed no problems, and indeed, offered up twice the usual number of chances to gather with friends and family to celebrate and eat the appropriate holiday fare, be it ham or latkes.

THEY also had two CHILDREN, boys about 3 years apart. When the CHILDREN were smaller, any holiday was an occasion to indulge in all the trappings of that particular celebration, be it chocolate bunnies at Easter or chocolate coins at Chanukah. For Christmas time, that most major of holidays, SHE liked to decorate the house for the season, with wreaths and candles and a tree with lights. The KIDS eagerly participated, and HE was happy to help as well. THEY even went so far for several years as to tromp through the snow and cut their own tree, an outing to which THEY all eagerly looked forward.

But as time went on and the KIDS grew older, the process lost its allure. And so the concession was made to buy a tree that had been cut by others, as opposed to doing the job themselves. In the beginning this was also a family outing, with different prospects being hauled out of the line and examined under the floodlights, until the winner was selected by acclamation and strapped to the top of the car. Once home, HE got it set up by the picture window in the living room and circled it with lights. The BOYS hung the ornaments, while SHE saw to the rest of the room and the other decorations, making it a festive place indeed.

Alas, like all things, this stage had its own lifetime as well. Eventually there came a time when one BOY was off on his own, while the other BOY lost interest in the process. As the holiday season approached, they stopped to pick up a tree almost as an afterthought. But rather than it being a collaborative effort, SHE was forced to basically do it herself, while HE and one BOY stood by waiting impatiently. After a few cross words, they left treeless, with hurt feelings and sadness all around. Seeking to make amends, HE offered to go out again with HER to get a tree. And while they liked the smell and feel of a real one, they decided to try an artificial version, opting for convenience. HE set it up, the BOYS helped trim it and SHE fined tuned it all, and once again there was festivity throughout the house.

Time went by, the BOYS got older and HE and SHE became empty nesters. The house seemed bigger than ever, with just the two of them wandering through it. Then once again, the holidays came, and it was time to open all the boxes and decorate. Since the KIDS were gone, the task fell to HER, with HE providing mere technical assistance to set up the tree and lights. SHE worked steadily, setting out the special cards she had kept, the special ornaments they had accumulated and the sentimental decorations made by the children when they were young. SHE grumbled as she did it, partly wondering if it were worth it and would be appreciated. But slowly, from an empty room that they almost never entered except to adjust the heat, emerged a festive tableaux that welcomed all who passed by or chose to sit and enjoy. And even HE agreed that it looked good and helped to make the season special.

And then in almost no time it was Xmas eve. The BOYS came home from places near and far. FRIENDS stopped by to share the season. HE uncorked the wine and poured the drinks. And SHE put dips and snacks for all to enjoy. And ALL admired the room and the spirit it conveyed. And wherever they came from and whatever they believed, they all wished each other a joyous holiday season, a happy New Year, and peace and joy, all in a place that helped to celebrate this special time of year.

(And remember: this is a work of fiction... sort of.)

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Marc Wollin of Bedford thanks all for reading this space for yet another year. It is appears weekly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquire and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com.

My Tron Legacy

2010-12-18T04:30:00.003-05:00

You'd have to have been hiding under a rock not to have heard about it. For the last three years, the Disney machine has been leaking, teasing, hyping the follow-up to a movie that was admittedly a flop when it premiered in 1982. No matter that minor detail. This time around the numbers will add up: 1 cartoon, 2 videogames, 3-D glasses, and $170 million dollars have been deployed to make Christmas 2010 the season of "Tron:Legacy." As Adam Rogers writes in Wired, "Come December 17, when the movie comes out, your butt will be in a seat and your head will be plugged into migraine-inducing Urkel goggles like everybody else. You will like ‘Tron: Legacy.' That's not a prediction - it's a command."

If, like me, you remember the original, you are at least curious as to what that order will turn out to be about. Being the geeky type (and back then, that was a pejorative characterization as opposed to now), I anxiously queued up to see the movie with friends and remember being blown away by what it was trying to do. The story was OK... in fact, I can hardly recall much of it. But as the first film where computer graphics ruled the screen, it was a tantalizing view of what could be. The "The Matrix" and other CG films were still a dozen years in the future; "Tron" was the toe in the water of where it might all lead.

In some respects, my own experience with computers is a parallel one. My dad worked in information management, though he was hardly a techie. But at about the same time the movie came out he got a Timex-Sinclair. When I visited him he showed it to me, a plastic box with a membrane keyboard about the size of an open paperback book. This early personnel computer was cheaper than Radio Shack's TRS-80, the Commodore 64 and the Apple 1, but did almost nothing. You could program it in BASIC to play blackjack (using numbers, not cards) and not much else in black and white on your TV screen. But like TRON it was a window on what could be, might be, must be coming down the road.

Not long after that I went out on my own and bought my own first computer, a Kaypro II. Considered portable because it had a handle on it, it was a 30 pound metal box that included a keyboard, a glowing green 8" screen and a pair of 5 ¼ floppy disc drives. I remember taking it out of its box and setting it up on the floor. I turned it on only to see a winking cursor: nothing else. It took a while to understand the concept of programs and machine code and a language called CP/M. Eventually I was able to write on it (PerfectWord), create simple spreadsheets (PerfectCalc) and even play an Asteroid-like game of glowing green Martians (the letter "M") attacking glowing green guns (the letter "G") to be shot down by bullets (You guessed it... the letter "B").

Now, 28 years and several dozen desk and laptops later I'd sooner be without my arm than without my computer. I don't try and buy the most cutting edge device, but look for that sweet spot between performance and price. I invariably buy machines that I think are way more than adequate for my needs, than invariably stress them to the max. And I'm not alone. After all, who would have thought that my now 80-year old mother would almost require a machine that would enable her to swap email with her friends, load and manage her iPod and video chat with her grandson in Russia? That's about as far as you can get from her early tech encounters watching her Aunt Elizabeth tune her Gloritone radio to her favorite soap opera "Our Gal Sunday."

It's a road that's hardly ending. "Tron" may represent the next evolution in visual imagery, or it may be just another sci-fi flick that gives you a 3-D headache. Likewise, I have been on a parallel path, with no assurances where I'm heading. To be fair, I certainly haven't ridden a light-cycle to this point... more like a tricycle with training wheels... but I've made progress. Like Jeff Bridges in the new movie, I'm older and slower, not sure what's happening around me and sometimes it's hard to tell the bad guys from the good ones... but at least I'm still in the game.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is already tired of 3D movies. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Shoot the Duck

2010-12-11T04:30:00.002-05:00

The challenges are real. The war in Afghanistan is now solidly in its tenth year with no clear ending in sight, notwithstanding agreement by all that we need to get out. Despite massive amounts of stimulus and signs of increased hiring by both small and large businesses, unemployment is ticking upward. Tax cuts which were deliberately passed with a very finite time horizon to allow time to rebalance the system are set to expire, forcing less is more and more is less arguments from each side that stand logic on its head. And John McCain is giving new meaning to redefining standards as he keeps moving the goalposts as to when he'll accept a recommendation on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

But don't despair: the good news is that Congress, despite its lame duck status, is still hard at work debating, drafting legislation and rounding up the votes needed to take action. To be clear, it's not on any of the aforementioned issues. Those, along with the START treaty, immigration policy and a host of other thorny issues will never even come close to coming up for a vote. Rather, Democrats and Republicans have reached across the aisle, shaken hands and then patted themselves on the back for taking bold and courageous legislation steps in other areas.

The Senate joined the House in passing the Food Safety Modernization Act, which allows for more frequent inspections of processing plants in an attempt to limit outbreaks of food-borne illness. There was the $4.55 billion payout for black farmers and would-be farmers, as well as to American Indians who claimed racial discrimination in federal funding. And in an overwhelming bipartisan display of agreement, they have rebuked Charlie Rangel for his admitted unethical behavior with the sternest measure short of expulsion they can muster, a 5-minute talking-to. (Jon Stewart: "Charlie. Charlie. You... that was bad, Charlie. Alright. Go sit down.")

But if there's a model for lawmaking in these troubled and rancorous days, it has to be the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation, or CALM Act. Acting on the scourge of our times, those overly loud commercials that force you reach for the mute button, this bill aims to restore sanity to television viewing. "Consumers have been asking for a solution to this problem for decades, and today they finally have it," said California Democratic Representative Anna Eshoo, who sponsored the bill. "The CALM Act gives consumers peace of mind, because it puts them in control of the sound in their homes."

The House overwhelming gave its nod to the bill, joining the Senate which had done so earlier in the year. It now goes to the President for signing. But considering what else is happening in the country, is this really a good use of the precious legislative calendar? Apparently so. "If I'd saved 50 million children from some malady, people would not have the interest that they have in this," said Eshoo. "Consumers will no longer have to experience being blasted at. It's a simple fix to a huge nuisance."

It's such a huge nuisance that both sides saw fit to shelve their ideological high ground. There were no complaints from Republicans about overreaching government regulation, nor from Democrats about subsidies to widget makers who might lose market share now that they can't scream about their wares. And our nation is the better for it: all those sitting on their couch watching endless hours of TV because their unemployment benefits have run out now have protection from intrusive infomercials. In an interesting footnote, the legislation passed on a voice vote, wherein House members all yell their acclamation at the same time. In this case, louder was obviously better and got its way, which runs counter to the spirit of the law itself. But we digress.

For a lame duck session, Harry Reid has an agenda that is stunningly ambitious, especially considering he couldn't get half of what he wanted passed in the regular session. Mitch McConnell has said he'll be happy to work together and compromise with the Democrats, as long as nothing actually gets done. Regardless of which side you favor, its obvious nothing of consequence is going to happen. So perhaps we'd be best off saving at least a few bucks on the lights and the heat, and call it a day at the Capital for this year. Or as Will Rogers said about a lame duck Congress, "It's like where some fellows worked for you and their work wasn't satisfactory and you let ‘em out, but after you fired ‘em you let them stay long enough so they could burn your house down." It would be funny if it weren't so true.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford, like a good many, has just about had it with everybody in Washington. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

The Gift of Saving

2010-12-04T04:30:00.001-05:00

Especially at this time of year, we're all reminded of the need to be generous. In that light, what better idea than to find something or someone which needs help, and offer then a little support? There are a myriad of organizations and causes out there, each of which requires just a small commitment from you to make a difference. You generally pledge a certain sum and moral support, and most importantly, your attention to the issue at hand. The object in question gets the help it needs, and you can feel like you've done good.

The laundry list of potential needs is almost endless: type "adopt a" into Google and you get over 27 million hits. If you're serious about it there are children and pets aplenty. But if you want to make a less demanding emotional commitment, you can also take under your wing a library or a stretch of highway, a wild horse or a river. And while the dollars you offer up can certainly make a difference, it's as much about awareness as anything else. For if you know about it and talk about, it's less likely to get lost in the shuffle and be forgotten. And that is certainly the case for Save the Words.

A project of the Oxford University Press, Save the Words is aimed at doing just that: savings words which heretofore have been a part of regular speech but have fallen on hard times (actually, like "heretofore"). And there are a lot of candidates. The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for over 600,000 words, while its online cousin grows by 1800 new and revised words a quarter. Recent additions have included "vuvuzela," those plastic horns that all but overshadowed the World Cup, "bromance," defined as a close but non-sexual relationship between two men, and those darlings of economic policy "quantitative easing," "overleveraged" and "toxic debt."

Of course, the bigger the list gets, the less we use. Or more to the point, we squeeze out the old ones and assimilate the new ones. Just how many of the inhabitants of those pages get aired out regularly? While it's hard to give any precise figures, researchers say that a five year old just beginning school will have a vocabulary of around 4000 to 5000 word families, while a university graduate will have a vocabulary of around 20,000 word families. And any person in a technical field is likely to have an even bigger mouthful: for instance, it's estimated that medical school graduates have 30,000 words on the tip of their tongues, even if they struggle to remember that "gastralgia" is just another way of saying stomach ache.

That means even with doctors and lawyers talking non-stop, there's only so much that gets said. And that leaves an awful lot of orphans deep in the pages that don't get to see the light of day. Hence the Save the Words campaign. A very clever website, it presents a collage of obsolete and archaic words which are gradually drifting into oblivion. When you peruse the site the potential adoptees call out to you (a cute feature at first which you can thankfully turn off), asking you to pick them. When you select a candidate, you are presented with a definition, a sample sentence and the chance to sign a pledge to use the word frequently in correspondence and conversation, thereby bringing it back from the lip of extinction. No subtraction from your wallet needed, just addition to your everyday vocabulary.

There are plenty from which to choose. Of course, like any grouping of orphans, some are cute and cuddly, while others are a little rougher around the edges. In both cases, however, there's a good chance that they have never graced your everyday speech. There's "senticous," a word from the 1600's meaning prickly or thorny. Or how about "obarnate," another term from the Middle Ages meaning to arm yourself against a foe. "Quaeritate" means to ask, while "ossifragant" means bone-breaking. And next time you bang your head on something, you can note that rather than being somewhat tender the resulting goose egg is "tenellous."

The trick, of course, is putting it into action. So tomorrow morning call your friend and profess your lubency to vicambulate. Then, before they call the cops, make sure they know aren't offering to do anything immoral, just professing your willingness to take a walk. And consider yourself a dutiful foster mamma or papa, and be satisfied that you have done your language proud.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford loves words, even those he doesn't use. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Better to Receive

2010-11-27T04:30:00.000-05:00

If you're an early bird you might reading this on Black Friday. Or maybe you got to it on Small Business Saturday. It might even have languished until Cyber Monday. (Note: Sunday as a retail destination is still up for grabs.) But regardless of when you get to it, this column will solve a major dilemma: what to get me for the holidays. I know you're been lying awake at night thinking about it, and for that I apologize. It's just that there's so much stuff out there that it's taken me some time to sort it all out. And so to enable you to finally get a good night's sleep, please feel free to pick and choose from the following list. Not to worry: there's something for every budget.

For scribbling notes day by day I like to use a pencil, enabling me to erase and rewrite. But after the initial spate of creativity, I'd just as soon lock it in. So this year I want a Sharpie Liquid Pencil. Brought to you by the folks that make the best marker in the business, this hybrid uses a liquid graphic solution that is like lead, and indeed, can be erased for 72 hours. After that the marks become permanent. So now I can throw away my mechanical pencils and tubes of teensy-weensy leads. And it's just $5.49 for a two pack at Staples. If ever the moniker applied, this is proof of better living through chemistry.

Those who know me know I like to travel, and like to keep track of where I've been. Maps are great for that, but a little dull. So this year, I'd love to have a Hi Tech Art Map. Sure, it looks like a regular world map. But it comes with 100 push in LED's that light up in eight different colors when activated. It even has two blinking ones, which can indicate home and where I am that week so my wife can keep track. Amazon has it for less than $125. Yes, it does give off an aura of world domination, but I promise I'm really harmless.

Since my backpack is my office, my endless quest is to find things that are compact yet functional. The wireless mouse I carry is bulky and undersized, but it's hard to imagine working for any period of time on my laptop's trackpad alone. Enter Microsoft's Arc Touch Mouse. Looking as much like zen sculpture as a piece of office tech, it flops to a flat, rounded, rectangular slab when packed. When it's time for use, you arch its back to a traditional mouse shape, a process which also turns it on and connects it to the computer. Just $69 and change from Buy.com, and that includes free shipping. And it proves that Steve Jobs isn't the only one with design chops.

I love to take pictures, but I don't like to lug a big camera with me. That means that often the only way I can snap a shot is with my phone. OK for quick pics, not so much for getting it all in. So I love the idea of Photojojo's magnetic lenses. Each the size of a fat thimble, one is a macro/wide angle combo, the other a fisheye. You adhere a small metal ring around the lens on your phone, then these babies snap on with a click. Twenty bucks for the wide angle, twenty-five for the fisheye, forty bucks for the pair. It's still not Ansel Adams, but it's certainly easier.

Beyond those are a few other odds and ends on which I have my eye. I like the new Global Droid Phone, which works on Verizon here and on overseas systems as well ($199). I no longer have anything in a locker, but the Master Lock 1500 which opens not with a dial but with a directional pad is pretty cool ($13). And if you want to splurge, the Aquavolo Music-Chromotherapy shower head combines a futuristic stainless steel design offering waterfall and rain settings, along with LED's and a built in MP3 player ($8500). Deliver it in person, and I'll let you have the bathroom for a test run.

Whatever you choose, just do me a favor and coordinate with all the others, OK? I'd hate to wind up with duplicates. And if you get a late start and everything has been spoken for, just give me a call: I left a few things off in your price range, and I hate to see you struggle.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford really wants what he always wants for the holidays: no bills. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Ride Sharing

2010-11-20T04:30:00.006-05:00

If you have something you like, you want to share it. Readers of this space know of my love of travel. If you had the floor, it might just as easily be about music or photography or painting. Or if you're Cliff Adams, and you love motorcycling and watching the scenery go by, you make a movie.

A devoted rider for many years, Adams would motor solo and with friends whenever he could. Then, at his grandfather's 100th birthday party, he was talking to his Pop about a trip he had taken in the distant past, a nine day excursion heading west on an old Scout . At the end of his ride Pop sold the bike for little more than trainfare home. He would have loved to ride again, but, he lamented, "nobody rides forever." That planted a seed in Adams' mind. True, no one does ride forever, and the older you get, the harder it gets. So you better do it now.

He looked at his calendar and nailed own a three week period he had free. He poured over maps, called friends from around the country, and had mounts made to rig his camera to his bike. He figured he would need to travel 500 miles a day to keep to his schedule. He had no sponsor, no backers, just a desire to ride and share the experience. But that's all he needed to let out the clutch on his film "Redline America."

Departure day started ominously when smoke started to seep out from under his gas tank: seemed one of the wires to his monitor melted. He fixed it, but road closures, traffic and rain compounded the headaches at the outset. Still, he was determined to ride hard to catch up and get back on track. So he roared through New Jersey and continued through Pennsylvania, riding hard for ten hours before catching a few hours of sleep, then heading further west into the Badlands.

There he hit yet another obstacle. The road ahead was closed, riddled with potholes due to shifting ground. A sympathetic Park Ranger heard his story, and gave him a tip. He zigged and zagged, and got on a little further down the way. But while checking his viewfinder as opposed to looking at the road, one of those potholes rose up and bit him. Luckily, neither he nor the bike we're badly hurt, though he lost one of his cameras. Just two days in, and it seemed to be over before it started. He decided to flip a coin. Heads he would continue, tails he would call it a day. When it hit the ground, Pop was looking up at him. On he went.

Finally, he got to the stuff of which a biker dreams. His route was to include Needles Highway, a 14 mile stretch of road in South Dakota that is lined with rock spires and pine trees. Alas, the signs said it was closed for paving. But in fact, the signs weren't accurate: it was open, just unmarked. Adams had hit that small window when it was virgin pavement, smooth as silk with no lines yet marring its surface. He jumped on it as if he were the first to ever take the route. If there was a sign the trip was meant to be, this was it.

The ride continued through such spectacular scenery as the "Going-To-The-Sun" Road in Glacier National Park and the Cherohala Skyway in Robbinsville, North Carolina. Adams documents all this using custom onboard bike and helmet mounts. He also enlisted other biker friends to ride alongside, providing perspective so it's not just scenery whizzing by. And he takes ample time to stop and shoot the local inhabitants: not people, mind you, but moose and birds, flowers and fauna. All of this is accompanied by his own musings and running commentary on his trip, mixed with a music soundtrack written and played by a variety of friends.

What emerges is a film less about motorcycling and more about wandering. It won't make you so much want to ride as it will make you want to see the country. For while it's easy to plan your next vacation to the warmth of the Caribbean, the excitement of Las Vegas or the bright lights of Paris, to do so is to forget what exists here under our very noses. Adams traveled 10,000 miles, and never once crossed an ocean. And in doing so, he contradicted his Pop. The old man said "no one rides forever." But with "Redline America" you can, and you can do it again and again.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford was captivated by "Redline America" despite the fact that all his bikes have pedals. His column appears regularly in The Record Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Double Dip

2010-11-13T04:30:00.000-05:00

When you travel on business, you have certain destinations you need to get to and specific rhythms you need to follow. The destinations usually revolve around offices you need to be at, while the rhythms are fairly rigid. Contrast that with traveling as a tourist, where the destinations tend to be museums and historical sites, while the rhythms have a more relaxed feel.

While they certainly are not mutually exclusive, usually it's tough to combine the two. It's not that you can't go sightseeing after a day of meetings in Cincinnati (no offense intended to my friends in Cincy). More to the point, as most road warriors will tell you, when you finally wrap up for the day you just want to have a bite of dinner, catch up on your email and get some rest before the forced march begins again the next day. It's not that there's nothing interesting to see; it's just that on balance the bed in the hotel outweighs the desire to visit the Queen's City's National Sign Museum.

However, you occasionally get lucky and wind up with some extra time in a place that all but dares you to turn your back on it. That was the situation myself and an associate found ourselves in this week. Our schedule was similar to one we might have in New York or Boston or Atlanta: finish up in one city, then race to the next, usually well past any civil dinner hour. Up early the next day, packing in far too much to do with the locals, then meeting up with others for a drink and a bite before heading back to the hotel to catch a few hours of sleep. But in this case, all bets were off: we were in Paris.

Like most business trips, our hours were chock full of work, starting at 6AM and going the full day. Between the schedule we were trying to keep and damage done to our body clocks from the time zone changes, we were pretty wiped out virtually all the time. Added to that was the fact that we were working and staying in La Defense, a manufactured business campus technically outside the city limits. Other than the signs in French and the Eiffel Tower in the distance, we could just as easily been in downtown Houston.

But we were in Paris! The last day of the project was no different than others: first call at 6A, non-stop go-go-go, finally a short break for a delivered sandwich at 130P (admittedly on a freshly made baguette). But when all was in the can, we saw it was about 4P on a Friday, and our flights back weren't until morning. The right thing to do would have been to go back to the hotel, and work the phones and email to the States, still in the middle of it's day some 5 hours behind us. Think how much we could accomplish! But did I mention? We were in Paris!

So we changed into walking shoes and jeans, and grabbed the Metro to the Place de Concord. We strolled towards the Tuileries on an uncommonly warm and clear November day, and stopped to get crepes; hers with sugar and butter, mine with Nutella and coconut. We meandered towards the Louvre, then crossed the Seine. Having been to Paris several times and knowing a little about where to go, and having a traveling associate who was game to walk and just look as long as I gave her time to snap pictures, we wandered the Left Bank heading towards the heart of the Latin Quarter.

The cafes were packed, and the shops will still open. Since it had been a few years since my last visit, I made a few wrong turns. No matter: like the old joke, we may have been lost but we were making very good time. Eventually we found our way to a tiny square I remembered, rimmed with open fronted cafes. As we sat in one and had a drink, a brass band made up of college students took up residence and performed an impromptu concert. We eventually wandered into a tiny restaurant nearby for a thoroughly French meal, finishing it off with a cup of gelato from a small shop on the square.

We finally grabbed a cab for a long ride back across the city to our hotel. I'd venture to say we were pleased with ourselves for performing that rarest of double-dips: a successful business trip AND a quintessential tourist excursion at the same time. I can only wish for you the same on your next outing.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford loves to share travel experiences with others. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Up All Night

2010-11-06T04:30:00.000-04:00

Perhaps the last time you did it was when you first had kids. Or maybe it was when a close friend got married, and there was that pre-wedding party. For sure you did it in college, most likely near the end of the semester when you realized that 20 page paper on Shakespeare wasn't going to write itself. But unless that's your usual shift, most of us just don't stay up all night anymore.

I'm not talking about "can't sleep" staying up. Rather, it's when you plan on remaining awake long after the rest of those around you have turned in. I've had a lot of those nights lately, a combination of just being busy, as well as traveling to different time zones and work which requires quick turnaround. And while it's been a "long strange trip," I did it with coffee and adrenalin and the occasional chocolate cookie, though I keep flashing on the the Grateful Dead's formula of "Livin' on reds, vitamin C and cocaine."

For me, it came in 2 waves. The first was in various hotel rooms in different time zones. Because of my travel schedule, business was happening here after business was happening there. As such, I put in a full day in the locale I was in, then conducted another via phone and email once I got back from dinner, eventually collapsing for a few hours of sleep in the wee hours before doing it again. The effect was not unlike an astronaut being isolated in a capsule in a far away environment. When I looked out the widow where I was it was dark and quiet, with only a few people or cars moving about in the middle of the night. But viewed down the phone and data lines it was high noon in New York, with a commensurate amount of activity.

Mind you, this isn't something that could be done effectively probably even 5 years ago, and certainly not as cheaply. But with email and Skype and my MagicJack phone thingy, I could see, read and hear in Brazil or Russia as if I was down the block in New York. Indeed, while I felt compelled to tell people where I was out of fear the lines would sound bad, the connections were so good they either didn't believe me, or gave no thought nor concession to my situation and time. And since I had absolutely no distractions sitting on the phone and my computer in a bathroom in Russia at 2AM (so as to keep the noise down while my family slept), I actually could respond quicker and more focused than had I been at my desk. It's a long way to go to get some quality office time, but it worked.

In the second instance we spend two back-to-back all nighters in New York City as we raced to get a time sensitive project out the door. They were planned for and I had a small team with me. But there were definitely times that each of us literally fell asleep in the middle of a discussion. When that happened we let the offending party catch a few moments of shut eye and just kept going around him or her. They awoke shortly with a start to see we were further down the road, and joined in after shaking themselves out like a dog after a bath.

Of course, this being the Big Apple we were never the only ones awake. When I walked out at 3AM to get some cold drinks and snacks for the gang, there were numerous delis open for business who thought it completely normal for a guy to roll in in the middle of the night for a bunch of sodas and chips. I passed one restaurant that advertised African and Caribbean home cooking where it was nearly impossible to get a seat, as it seemed every cab driver in the city was taking their lunch break there at the same time. And the next night when we realized at 4AM that we were running out of blank CDs, I had my choice of two places within a block that carried multiple possibilities. Nothing like a little comparative price shopping while the sun is still a fever dream in the future.

But then it was over. I was back on a regular clock with the normal human beings. Back to rush hour trains, lines at the coffee wagon and running out of chicken salad in the bodega for the day. I confess I like the light, but there's no denying there are definite advantages to keeping the schedule that Sookie Stakhouse keeps.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has gotten to where if he sees a bed he sleeps, with no questions asked. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

St. Petersburg 101 (Part 2)

2010-10-29T04:30:00.002-04:00

Last week in this space I related impressions we had on a recent visit to St. Petersburg, Russia. In that brief report, the focus was on the place and the sights we saw. In this outing I'll try and get less physical and more personal, in talking about the people in general and one set of encounters in particular.

Whenever you travel, you have to remember that, like Blanche DuBois, you depend on the kindness of strangers. And by and large all we met were friendly and helpful. True, the old babushkas working the registers in the little grocery stores or selling tokens in the Metro (for 22 rubles each, about 73 cents) had an attitude that anything other than exact change was an insult. But beyond that, mime and pointing and a few words of pidgin Russian managed to get us food, directions, admission and the occasional fresh "peeshka" or donut covered in sugar.

But without a doubt our most memorable encounters were two evenings spent with our son's host family. While he is studying in St. Petersburg for the fall semester, they provide him a room and 2 meals a day. They have accepted him warmly and eased his transition into the culture, for which we are very grateful. So when we were planning our trip, we suggested to him that we would love to thank them by buying them dinner at a local restaurant.

They accepted the invitation and made reservations at a homey Georgian place. Dinner was a fun and lively affair (and delicious as well), and we were taken when halfway through they invited us to join them several nights later in their flat for a home cooked meal. It's the kind of encounter that no organized tour can ever hope to duplicate.

Elena is a private teacher of English, while Andrei works in advertising. Her English is excellent, while he understands more than he speaks. Their daughter Nastia (short for Anastasia) and her boyfriend Igor are both students, she in psychology and he in computers and art, and both had a far better grasp of our tongue then we did of theirs.

Their flat was small, three rooms plus a kitchen and bathroom. Like many Russians they have a dacha about an hour out of the city, though it has no heat and is very rustic. It does have apple trees which provided fruit for the wonderful tart Elena made to accompany the borscht, vodka, wine and tea we shared around the table in their living room. To us they seemed typically middle class, and indeed by the end of the evening we lamented the fact we didn't live closer to one another.

Our conversations went in fits and starts, as we shifted topics and languages, with plenty of sidetracks to translate both literal words and cultural ideas. They talked with pride about the history of their country, and the hardships in particular the people of St. Petersburg endured during the war, a memory still surprisingly fresh. They lamented how the police are corrupt and not to be trusted, and marveled as to how our experience in the US is so radically different. We talked about how money and power drive governments and actions, though they have all but given up hope that they have any impact on theirs, while we take it as an article of faith that we have a say in ours.

They have a skewed view of the U.S., driven by the images they see in American films and videos, and have a hard time understanding our diversity and openness. That said, it is their dream to visit this country, particularly New York and the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, visa issues make it exceedingly difficult for individual Russians to come just to tour.

But our time together was also filled with shared experiences as much as pointing out contrasting cultures. Andrei, who has a background as a musician, was encouraged by Elena to sing a haunting Russian folk song. He then played the piano in their apartment, as did their daughter and our older son. We looked at family photos and swapped recipes: she told me how to make the apple tart we enjoyed, and my wife gave them recipes for chili. And we struggled to explain what a marshmallow was, and why in its Fluff form it tastes great on the peanut butter we all love.

It's hard and probably foolish to extrapolate from this individual encounter to anything beyond what it was: a gathering of two families from different cultures and countries and the search for common ground. But we found just that. And as big as the world is, it reminded us that it can be a small place, and we do best when we treat it as such.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford hopes someday to host Elena, Andrei and Nastia in his home. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

St. Petersburg 101 (Part 1)

2010-10-23T04:30:00.000-04:00

In our circle of acquaintances, it's not uncommon to know those who travel outside these shores. The locations vary: Western Europe is a usual destination, as are South and Latin America, and the major cities of the Far East. But tell someone you're going to Russia, and even among experienced road warriors you'll likely get a raised eyebrow or two. But with our youngest spending a semester there, it offered us an excuse to try something very different. And so we journeyed to St. Petersburg to spend a week and get a sense of the place.

Anyone guidebook will tell you the basics. A very manageable city on the Gulf of Finland, it sports such major attractions as the Hermitage, one of the great art museums of the world. Also not to be missed, (and we didn't) are St. Isaac's Cathedral, The Peter and Paul Fortress and The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. Add in the Kirov ballet, a few blini and some vodka, and a journey outside the city to Peterhof, the summer palace of Peter the Great whose grounds and gravity-fed fountains are one of the wonders of the world, and you have a trip for the memory books.

But what follows are a few more personal impressions of the place beyond a blow by blow of the premier attractions. By no means definitive, it's some of the things that struck us as we walked... and walked and walked and walked... around the core of the city and to a few outlying areas. Colored by our own biases and experiences, while also being almost comically selective as to what made an impression on us, it is none the less what we remember most once we strip away the simple recitation of where we went and what we saw. For this week, the focus will be on the physical sense of place; next, on the people.

The first thing that caught our eye was the colors. Many of the buildings are mint green or soft pink or pale yellow or baby blue. Whether it is indeed to make them stand out from the snow as we were told, or for some other reason, it gives the city a certain fairytale quality which contrasts mightily with what you expect from a place that is so associated with historical repression.

But if the buildings are colorful, the crowds certainly are not. The people are almost exclusively white and European looking. You see slight variations from Slav to Nordic ("Piter" itself being 40 minutes by plane from Helsinki) to some slight Mongolian influence. But you literally see no dark or truly Asian faces walking down the street. Meanwhile, the clothes and shoes are 180 degree opposites of that. Yes, it is a city, but dark tones don't just predominate, they overwhelm. We passed many a store sporting huge collections of boots and shoes that Henry Ford would have appreciated: you could have any color as long as it was black.

The streets and sidewalks were pleasantly wide and the buildings refreshingly low, making it feel similar to and yet somehow different from other European cities. Part of that can be attributed to the fact that it was all but demolished in the great Siege of 1941-1945 and then rebuilt, a memory still fresh both individually and institutionally. Indeed, we were shown explosive damage from the war marked with a plaque, and further a field passed a bomb shelter adjacent to a haunting cemetery filled with war dead, whose headstones were each miniature coffins filled with fresh flowers.

But if the canals and rivers felt like Amsterdam, and the many parks and squares like London, the numerous onion dome churches and signs in Cyrillic reminded you that you are in a place the hails from a different heritage than the west. The alphabet conspires to make it all but impossible to discern at first glance what's on a given street. That being said, we were able to finally decipher the hieroglyphics enough to know the places where we could get a bite (кафе) and the ubiquitous food shops which were open around the clock (24 часа). And we noted that "yucas" only seem to come in sets of 24.

Space won't allow a full reporting of impressions made over the entire week, but there are plenty more: the leftover Soviet era buildings, the brand new sleek Mercedes contrasting with the barely running ancient Ladas, the brides posing with their husbands in front of almost every major landmark. Suffice it to say it was indeed far different than what we were used to. And the people? That, comrades, will have to wait till next week. Until then, das vadanya.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford never knew he liked blini so much. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

The Bomb Swab

2010-10-16T04:30:00.003-04:00

As I shuffled down the security line at the airport, I did the usual dance. Out of my backpack came my laptop; in went my keys, money clip and phone. I kicked off my shoes and placed them on the belt to the scanner, along with my suitcase and backpack. A quick self pat down to check for any leftover guns I might have missed, and I moved to the line for the metal detector. After a nod from the guard, I stepped smartly through the machine, brandishing my boarding pass in front of me like a process server with a summons.

But my road warrior persona was shattered by a "beep-beep-beep" from the detector. My smile fell as the officer put up a traffic cop hand to stop me from going any further. I felt like a common tourist as I quickly rechecked myself. Did I forget some change in a pocket? Was I wearing a non travel-friendly belt buckle? Did I neglect to remove all my hunting knives? Nothing turned up. And indeed my warden was shaking his head. "It's not you," he said even as he continued to survey the hoards in front of him. "You've been selected randomly for additional screening." He unclipped a radio mic from his shoulder and spoke into it: "Swab on lane 14."

Seems I had fallen prey to the latest procedure designed to keep us safe in the skies. The original focus on security was on obvious weapons such as knives and guns. That was broadened to include other common items which could be used in an offensive capacity like scissors and nail clippers. Of course, anyone familiar with James Bond or Jack Bauer also knows that you can create a lot of mayhem with a spoon, a dog leash or a roll of quarters. And it was comedian George Carlin who noted that if you really wanted to, you could probably kill somebody using the Sunday New York Times.

Then the game changed. After 9/11, the airlines installed hardened cockpit doors. And while weapons were still a concern, the realization came that you could blow up the plane itself without ever bothering the pilot. Exacerbated when the infamous Shoe Bomber tried to set his Nikes aflame, the authorities started to concentrate more on the possibility of explosives. And so they began a program called Explosive Trace Detection or ETD.

In ETD, a small piece of material is rubbed around the edge of a suitcase or package. The cloth is inserted into a highly sensitive instrument that can detect trace amounts of chemicals, such as the nitrates used in bombs. The test takes just a few seconds, and assuming your aren't packing a gift of fertilizer for your aunt's begonias, usually turns up negative. Seeking to keep the bad guys guessing, they added a similar random trial for hands this past February. And it was this particular program that selected me as the lucky 28th caller to win the prize.

Another guard took me over to the side and asked me to hold my hands out, palms up. He then wiped both with a small band-aid looking piece of material, then slid it into a detector. A few moments and a green light popped on. He thanked me, and I was good to go collect my stuff and head to my plane. As tests go, this one was a breeze.

Perhaps too much a breeze. According to the TSA, they have had to make some adjustments to reality. Since the machines are incredibly sensitive, they've had to turn down the dial just a bit. Seems they were getting a bunch of positive indications from people who used nitroglycerin as a heart medication. And farmers, those who have shot a weapon recently and even certain hand lotions can set off the alarms. But the agency says that the one test doesn't exist in a vacuum. Should the alarm get tripped, it would just mean further screening for that individual. And if you're more worried about germs than bombs, they say that unlike the swab they use for suitcases, the hand swabs are used once and then disposed.

While it's another invasion of privacy, the ACLU has signed off on it. That's because there is no profiling involved, no invasive testing and no invasion of privacy. Your hands are already out in the open. So other than exposing them as filthy, there is little in the way of compromising your basic rights. So if you listened to your mother and never leave the house with dirty underwear, if you're flying you may now want to apply that to your hands.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford doesn't mind the airport screening, as long as he's not stuck behind a tourist. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

A View from Italia

2010-10-09T04:30:00.001-04:00

It was a Friday night when I first met Francesco and Catia. I was having a late dinner in a hotel bar in Orlando after flying in that day. We chatted quickly for a few minutes, just long enough for me to find out that they were Italian and on their honeymoon. Catia wanted to go to Alaska or Cuba, but they settled on a tour down the east coast. They started in Montreal, then continued on to Quebec, Toronto, New York and Orlando, before ending in Miami and heading home. For Francesco, it was his second time in these parts; for Catia, her first.

Then the following night, while I getting another late night bite at a sushi bar in the same hotel, they sat down next to me again. We laughed, and joked about them following me. Then we politely ignored each other as they ordered. But when I saw Catia struggling with chopsticks, I leaned over and offered to help. And we started to talk... in English I might add. Francesco's command of the language was more than competent, Catia's a bit less so, but both were far better than my pidgin Italian.

I asked them about their perceptions of America. The first thing they said was that it was "too big." They were both struck by the many different races they encountered. "We are used to different people but in the same form, as they are all Italian," Catia told me. They were also impressed with New York being such a melting pot, though they did note that "people there seem confused about the time... always running, no one is sleeping." But they also remarked on how friendly everyone seemed.

They were quick to say what they admired about America. "This is a country of opportunity," said Francesco. "Italian people came to US four generations ago. The first generation worked hard with, but had nothing. The second generation started to have something, and it continued. By the fourth generation they were able to go to college. The US is wonderful. If you work hard, study hard, you can have anything. That's not like in Italy. There you work hard, but you stay in same place for 30 or 40 years."

I asked them what they would tell people about what they saw and felt... not about the specific places they visited, but about the country as a whole. Catia said, "America is quite the same as the movies we see." When I asked which movies she meant, she said "Saturday Night Fever" and "Rocky," this despite the fact they hadn't been to Brooklyn nor Philadelphia. I asked her to explain what she meant. "In the US you love your country. It's not like that in Italy. We don't love our country as well as you... we have no flags hanging out the window."

They offered opinions on a number of other things. I threw out a topic, they discussed it in Italian, then Francesco answered for them both. Politics: "US politicians want to do something good for the country. That's compared to Italy, where politicians only want to have more money. In Italy we have a lot of Madoffs, but they don't go to jail, they stay in Parliament." Obama: "We admire Obama... he is like Jesus Christ. Not in a religious sense, but in that he gives everybody hope. But he says one thing and does another. He goes on expensive vacations and doesn't care enough about poor people."

I asked them what we needed to do more of or better. First on their list was environmental issues: "You Americans need to use cars with less power. You're good at recycling, but need to use less oil... you don't care about the environment enough." They also talked about the food: "You people eat unhealthy... everything is fried." And they critiqued what we consider Italian cuisine: "good, but too much garlic."

As their table was called, I asked them one last thing: would they come back? They both nodded in agreement: "We will come back, because it's the country of opportunity," said Francesco. But they also missed the slower pace and feel of their home country, and wondered if there might not be a better balance in work and play. "Italy is too slow, too safe. America is too fast, too unsafe. Maybe we'd all be better if we were a little more in the middle."

Slow down. Fewer fried foods. More recycling. Less garlic. It might not be the whole answer to our troubles as a country, but it's a start.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford loves to talk to people with different experiences. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Hot and/or Cold

2010-10-02T04:30:00.002-04:00

It's tough being in the middle. Doesn't mater what it is: middle seat, middle child, middle age. In each case, you have to watch as others ahead of you get the best pickings while those behind have the benefit of being the baby and being catered to. You spend your time there muddling through and watching and waiting, hoping that sooner rather than later circumstances will change, and you can move to one of the ends where the view is better and you have some room to stretch and finally let out the clutch.

That's kind of where we are on the calendar. It's hardly cold, but short sleeves and white pants seem past their "use by" date. On the other hand it seems a little early for coats and boots, and a sweater winds up being carried as much as worn. Dress for cool and you wind up sweating; dress for warm, and you're wrapping your arms around yourself trying to conserve heat. And there's the pure mental surrender that comes with switching to winter weight anything. I can't make that turn just yet; I just can't.

My confusion extends to my choice of beverage in the morning. Back somewhere around Memorial Day I made the switch in the morning to iced coffee. Not the sweet Frappa-Coffino-Latte-esque thingie with whipped cream and a drizzle of caramel on top that packs about 1000 calories a sip. Rather, we're talking the regular brewed American stuff cooled and poured over ice. In addition to having almost no calories save the type of milk or cream you put in, it has the added value of delivering my caffeine in a form that quenches my thirst and cools my core. Like the old Doublemint commercial, for my money that's two, two, two mints in one.

However, usually within a week or two of Labor Day, the night air turns a bit cooler. And so just as I put my shorts in the back of the closet and bring my sweatshirts to the front, I try and make a clean break. I put away the big sippy cup my wife bought me that can handle two cups of joe and a lot of ice, and reach for the deep blue mug I like that isn't so massive that by the time I get to the bottom the brew has cooled to lukewarm at best.

But this year, just as I got my arms around the change, it snapped back the other way. The other day I went for an early run, then made a pot of the hot stuff. I poured a steaming cup, and took a sip. One more taste, and I knew I had made the wrong choice: I was dripping sweat like I had malaria. So I rummaged through the cabinet and found my "cold" cup, filled it with ice and dumped my mug into it. After swirling it around to reduce the temperature, I eagerly gulped it down in a single swig, lowering my body temp even as I stretched my bladder.

Of course, the next day the pendulum swung the other way. Based on my experience the day before (and with the very definition of insanity being to do the same thing and expect different results), I started out with a glass of cubes and filled it to the brim. But a sip later and I was shivering. So I fished out the ice, filled a mug and slipped it into the microwave for a couple of minutes. It emerged watered down, but hot enough to take away the chill.

So for now at least I'm trapped in a nether world, not knowing which way to turn. It forced me to recall the wisdom of Cliff Clavin, the mailman on that seminal TV show "Cheers." When asked about this very problem, he pointed out that, "When the British ruled the Punjab, they drank steaming hot pots of tea on the hottest days of the year to balance out their inside and outside temperatures. So conversely, drinking an ice cold drink on a cold day actually results in a more comfortable body temperature." But then Diane the waitress asks, "Then why do you drink ice cold beer on a hot day?" Cliff's response: "What else are you going to do with it?"

Cliff, thanks for the guidance. I guess for now I'll just have to stay flexible.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford likes his coffee both hot and cold, but his tea only cold. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Ballot Boxed

2010-09-25T04:30:00.017-04:00

Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, a devotee of Fox or MSNBC, or a pissed off moderate in the Jon Stewart mould, you have to be thankful for one thing: we settle our differences by the use of the ballot with precious little violence. At it's heart it's very straightforward: on the appointed day you show up, indicate your choice and go home. After all is said and done, the votes are counted up and the winner announced. Barring the odd election in Illinois, there's not much more involved.

Still, any system can use a going over with an eye towards improvement, especially in light of the way we live our lives and the technology that's available. Absentee ballots are one concession to reality. Some states also allow voting in a window of time before the actual election day as a way of making it more convenient. And lately many jurisdictions have been instituting new voting systems and technologies as a way to improve speed and accuracy of results.

Conceptually all of approaches strive to do the same thing: give you a private place to make your choice, then enter same into a central repository where it will eventually be counted. At its most basic, that means marking your X on a piece of paper and stuffing it into a box. Where we live, as in many other locales, machines took over, with the old lever type monsters the standard for years and years. You went into a booth, used a big lever to close the curtain behind you, and pulled a little switch indicating your choice. Moving the big lever the other way registered your vote with a satisfying "clunk," reset the machine for the next person and opened the curtains to let you out.

But those behemoths were big mechanical albatrosses, and qualified technicians to fix and maintain them were getting in short supply. Other jurisdictions tried new systems to replace them, not always with great success, One only need remember the infamous butterfly ballots and hanging chads of Florida in the 2000 Presidential race to see where a supposed improvement was actually a giant leap backwards.

Well, I fear we may heading that way again. This year's primary in our home district featured new and improved voting machines, the Image Cast Optical Scan Voting System. Again, it's billed as a step forward, but in practicality, I have my doubts.

When you got to the polling station, they checked you in as usual by verifying your signature with those on the voter registration rolls. Assuming you matched up, they handed you a paper ballot. Yes, in this e-everything, save-the-planet, don't-print-it-unless-you-have-to world, you're handed a heavy piece of stock longer than a folded New York Times. They then directed you to a "privacy booth" to mark your ballot, which turned out to be a four-sided portable carrel with absolutely no privacy. And you used a "special marking pen," which was a regular Sharpie, to completely fill in the bubble next to your choice. I felt like a fifth grader trying to shield my answers on the test from prying classmates.

Once you had it all together, you took the ballot over to the scanner. There the poll worker armed the machine to record your vote. You then took your ballot which you so kept so carefully hidden out into the clear light of day for all to see, and fed it into the slot so the optical reader could read it and record your choices. As the paper ballot dropped into a repository for later verification if needed, the machine hummed a second, then a little screen lit up to tell you your vote had been recorded.

Progress? Let's add it up. Paper ballots. Filling in ink bubbles. No privacy. Considering we have smartphones and netbooks and Mp3 players the size of a matchbooks, that Google has become like Chinese food, delivering your search results before even you finish typing it, that we've figured out how to order a double cheeseburger with fries and a shake at a kiosk and have it ready to go by the time we drive 20 feet, you'd think we could have figured out a better way to record a vote. At least they didn't make me dip my finger in purple ink: I guess we still have Iraq beat.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford voted in the primary just to try out the new machines. His column appears regularly in The Record Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Skating for Freedom

2010-09-18T04:30:00.012-04:00

When you walk into a pizza place in New York City, you can reasonably expect to see a couple of things. The first is pizza. You'll also likely spot shakers of oregano, garlic and hot peppers. And without fail you'll see autographed pictures of a number of celebrities signed "Tony: Thanks for the pie!" hanging on the walls, leading you to wonder why Bono was in that neighborhood and why he would stop there to get a slice.

What you don't expect to see is 6 foot tall guy on rollerblades with a crash helmet holding an American flag. Now, this being New York and all, a guy dressed like that is not really that far outside the norm. So encountering him when we went to pick up some lunch merited a glance, not a stare. But he looked harmless, curiosity got the best of us and so we had to ask.

Turns out that Austin Szelkowski is on a quest to skate across America. A recent graduate in engineering from Kettering University in his home state of Michigan, he was waiting tables and trying to figure out how to build a business around his passion, "empowering young people to pursue their own passions and blaze a trail toward the lives they envision for themselves." Perhaps taking a clue from his university's mascot, a bulldog named General Determination, he hatched a plan to deliver his message on the most grassroots level imaginable: going from town to town on rollerblades over the course of a year. And so the "Freedom Skater" was born.

He drafted a buddy to do publicity and outreach, and they started to lay out their plan. They decided that come hell or high water they would kick off their quest on Labor Day at the Statue of Liberty, even if it meant they had to hitchhike to get there. They enlisted support from friends and family, and got lucky when they hooked up with Dan Hussain, an MIT grad with a venture capital firm and a history of helping startups. They then secured an RV as their mobile headquarters, and got a local sign company to spiff it up. And with that they headed east and put rollers on the ground.

Szelkowski certainly could have taken a more traditional approach to starting a business. After al, even in recession ravaged Michigan, most people looking for work don't take off on skates for a year. Why this direction? He says it had its roots when he spent a semester in Germany. While he and his fellow students felt out of place and out of control, he finally figured out the way to cope was to give that control up and ride the wave. "For just a period of time, instead of living life, I let life live me," he recalls. "It's not to say that I was passive. I just learned to laugh with the punches. I learned to let life be an interesting and unpredictable experience. I let life be an adventure. I've never lived more fully than I did during that three month span. Never."

He decided that the way to start his business was to get out and do it. And so for the next year his goal is to skate, meet young people and skate some more. His connections are helping him set up some speaking gigs at such top tier schools as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wellesley, and MIT. He is looking to connect with kids in person at schools, and of course, online though his Facebook page and website.

What kind of message can a guy in shorts and wrist guards impart? At its most basic level, Szelkowski says it's to "pursue your dreams and live without fear." He throws out a laundry list of drivers: "passion, courage, hustle, innovation, authenticity, entrepreneurship and shared vision." But most of all he says it's about freedom: "I believe true freedom will grow from grassroots, when the seeds of these ideas are planted in the hearts and minds of young people." He envisions a movement that will "revitalize and remake the American economy by inspiring passionate young trailblazers and entrepreneurs to imagine a stronger America and take the steps necessary to build it." To his way of thinking, if those first baby steps have to be on rollerblades, so be it.

Szelkowski will be around the city until the end of month, when he heads south and then west, all with a goal of getting to Santa Monica around September 2011. You might wonder about his method, but it's hard to argue with his message. And so if you see a rather large guy skating by the side of the road with an American Flag (or just trying to get a slice of pizza), give him a wave: that's the Freedom Skater you just passed.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford will keep his eyes open at the next pizzeria he enters. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

A Fan Tale

2010-09-11T04:30:00.002-04:00

I spend a lot of time in dark places where I can’t see the keyboard on my computer. So when I saw a small flexible light that plugged right into my laptop, I snapped it up. As a bonus, the package also included a similarly powered fan. Built on a long gooseneck, it had a small motor and two soft, flexible blades. At first glance, it seemed pretty silly. But on my next gig, that same dark, backstage space that had no light also had no air. So I plugged the fan in, directed it at my face, and was amazed how just a little air moving past my nose kept me alert and awake. Others looked at me and laughed, until they sat where I sat, and made a note to buy one for themselves.

It became a regular part of my kit until it burned out after a few years of use. I decided to troll Ebay and see if they had it there. Indeed, the very model I had popped up quickly. So I ordered one from "The Good Item Shop," one of the hundreds of Chinese distributors that seem to have an endless supply of small electronic trinkets. The price seemed to defy any rationale explanation: $.99. And they weren’t making it up in the shipping, which was $.95 for halfway around the world. True, it would take 2 weeks or so to get to me, but at that price, I could afford to wait. Sure enough, a tiny envelope showed up half a month later with the fan inside. Into my bag it went awaiting its first real outing.

A week or so later I found myself in yet another dark and stuffy location. Out came the light and the fan. I plugged them in, then wandered away to take care of a few issues. When I got back 20 minutes later and sat down, I felt no breeze. I looked up to see the two blades just sitting there limply. When I reached up to give them a flick, the housing was red hot. I swore once, quickly unplugged it, and assumed that was that.

While I really didn’t think I would get a refund, I did want to warn others. So I went to Ebay and gave the purchase the lowest ranking possible. I signed off, and made a mental note not to waste my money similarly again. But a day or so later, an email popped up from my friends at The Good Item Shop. In slightly fractured English, it said, "Thank you for buying from us. We are so sorry for the troubles caused to you. We have made a full refund to you. Would you please kindly help us to remove the feedback? You know feedback is our life, we don't want to be killed by a person so kind like you. Looking forward to your kindly reply." It was perhaps the most earnest customer service response I had ever had, made even more so by the agent’s name: "Better."

I quickly wrote back, pointing out that while I appreciated the refund, the product was faulty, even dangerous. Not a day went by before another response: "We have resent you a replacement, could you please help us to remove the feedback? Your feedback is very important to our account, we don't want to be killed by a person so kind like you. Thankyou in advance!" And indeed, my account had a $1.94 credit posted. Now the ball was solidly in my court.

Two weeks or so later, another tiny package showed up with a replacement. I let them know I had received it, and if it worked, would indeed revise my rating. Sure enough, a response: "Thank you for your message. Could you cancel the negative feedback to us? Your value is very omportant to us. What do you think about it?" Now I was starting to feel bad. So I plugged in the replacement and let it spin for a few days: no issues at all. It seemed that I did indeed just get a bad egg, and it wasn’t a scam. I went and revised my rating and wrote them back, thanking them for their followup and response. One more email appeared: "Thank you for your kindness."

All that for a $1.94 sale, from a merchant on the other side of the world, for a single questionable transaction. Peter Steiner had a famous cartoon in The New Yorker of two pooches, one at the keyboard of a computer and the other watching. The typist says to the other, "On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog." True, but I guess when everyone can read it, even a little howl can go a long way.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford will buy more from The Good Item Shop. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Pre Pre-Election Analysis

2010-09-04T04:30:00.013-04:00

Now that all the primaries are done and the story lines are set, we can be definitive in our analysis for the upcoming elections. All done that is, except for the one on September 4 in Guam. And let’s not forget about the one a week later in the Virgin Islands. Then there are the ones on September 14 in DC, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. And of course, Hawaii weighs in on September 18. But that’s it. Honest.

In the non-stop news cycle that we live in, it is indeed the season of the endless election. Everyone started running the day after the last one, and has been trying to validate or disprove any trends that emerged way back in the distant past that was just 20 months ago. And even though these are the just the midterms, they have been held up yet again as the "most important elections in history." And so, seeking to be the absolutely last word in analysis before Labor Day, or at least the absolutely last word before the next one, following are the dominant themes that seem to have emerged and their veracity in light of the results to date.

The Year of the Anti-Incumbent. With dissatisfaction with Washington at an all time high, the early word was that those in power would be toppled. Indeed, some high profile names, like Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania got knocked out of the process, and Lisa Murkowski is on the ropes in Alaska. But money and organization won out in most cases, from the high profile, where establishment figures like John McCain hung on in Arizona, to the low profile, where all 7 current US House members in Florida won against challengers. By some counts, 95% of incumbents cleared this hurtle towards reelection, which proves once again that all members of Congress are horrible, except yours.

The Year of the Woman. With Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina in California, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Nikki Haley in South Carolina and Linda McMahon in Connecticut, many think that women will finally be moving to center stage. Or as Samantha Bee put it on The Daily Show, "Last night, America, scared and with a poopy in its diaper, cried for its mommy." But as to whether or not it’s a trend per se, perhaps it bears remembering what Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski said the last time this proclamation was made: "Calling 1992 the Year of the Woman makes it sound like the Year of the Caribou or the Year of the Asparagus. We're not a fad, a fancy, or a year." More to the point, as in all of politics, the winners are likely to be strong, well financed and well organized. Or as Janet Reitman reported, also back in 1992, when she asked the Alabama delegates to the Democratic Convention about the topic, they replied, "Steel magnolias? Honey, forget that stuff. We're bitches from hell."

The Year Where Nothing Is Different. While there are precious few truths in politics, the following are as close to gospel as they come. 1) The president's party usually loses a slew of seats in the first midterm elections of a presidency. 2) Voters take out their frustrations on the party in power. 3) A president's party will suffer at the polls if his job performance rating is below 50 percent. 4) Above all, the economy is the dominant driver of voting patterns when the unemployment rate is high. If you’re going to put money on any facet of the election, those are the hole cards that tell you how it’s going to break come November.

The Year of the Vote. The 1948 movie "The Naked City" ended with the tag line, "There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them." And so it is with political narratives: there are a lot. But they are also much like Rorschach tests, in which you see in them what you want. For some it’s a matter of conservatives vs. liberals, while for others it’s a proxy fight between Obama and Sarah Palin, while still others view it as a contest between progressives and traditionalists. However, as Chuck Todd pointed out on MSNBC, the defining characteristic of all the elections to date has been that the candidate who got the most votes was the winner. It’s that simple truth that will likely once again be validated. And at least for me, in that light, November 2 can’t come soon enough.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is seriously thinking of not listening to television or radio news until November 3. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Off the Beaten Path

2010-08-28T04:30:00.008-04:00

Sometimes you've got time. It may be that you're early for a meeting, and so you hole up with a cup of coffee and flip through the paper. Other times you get to the airport for a pickup and the plane is delayed, so you pull into the cell phone lot and listen to the radio. Or maybe you're meeting someone to head home together on the train and they're running late, so you meander through the stores at the station.

In my case I was on the road. Once I checked into my room, I drove out and found a little barbeque place for dinner. After some great peach cobbler, I started to head back to the hotel for the night. But as it was still light outside and I was in no rush to go sit in an empty room, I decided to wander back via local roads. So while my GPS kept urging me to turn onto the highway, I kept going straight, looking to see what I might see that was new and different off the beaten path.

It's getting harder to do that. Since most of my travels are to places that support a fair amount of people and business, it's hard to wind up anywhere that doesn't sport a Target and a Home Depot and a TGIFridays. That's especially the case if you draw a circle around the centrally located airports, hotels and restaurants that cater to road warriors like me. Not that most complain: after dealing with travel, or a long day at a remote location, often the kindest words one can read are "Easy on easy off."

But if you do wander you start to see the kind of local places or regional franchises that haven't yet broken onto the national scene. And that was indeed the case in this particular neighborhood a handful of miles from the end of Interstate 73 in North Carolina. And while this trip was to Greensboro, I've had the same experience outside of Houston and Detroit and Denver. There's a lot out there that's not quite ready for prime time, but has found a toehold that, at least for right now, doesn't look to be threatened anytime soon by WalMart.

For instance, one strip mall featured a place called "Any Lab Test Now!" Recently named the second-fastest growing franchise by Franchise Times, this medical establishment enables you to get... well... any lab test now. There are the obvious biggies, like tests for HIV and pregnancy. Employers can get drug and alcohol screens done on perspective employees. Or you can spend $49 and settle that argument right now by ordering up one their newest products, the "Infidelity DNA Test."

A little further down the block was "Dan's Fan City." Started in Clearwater, Florida back in 1979, Dan's has about 50 stores in the southeast. They have outdoor and indoor models, ones with lights and without, and versions with blades or with actually fans. They even carry the Uno, a fan with one blade which looks kind of like a boomerang twirling around on your ceiling.

"Sports Clips" is just what it sounds like: a haircut place with a sports theme aimed squarely at men. There you can get their signature service, the MVP Haircut, "a precision haircut followed by an invigorating scalp massage with Tea Tree shampoo, a Classic Steamed Towel, finishing with a relaxing upper neck and shoulder massage." The stylists are touted as being as up to date on NFL draft prospects as opposed to the travails of Jennifer Aniston. And just like an oil change place that offers to top off your wiper fluid between visits, they say, "come in between haircuts for your complimentary neck trims!"

By then it was getting dark, and so I had to pass on a few others. "Monkey Joe's" seemed to be an indoor inflatable playground for kids. "FETCH" offered the same service, sans the inflatable part, for your pets. "Goin' Postal" touted shipping and office support services, hopefully without the violence the name implied. And "Massage Heights" offers, well, you can figure it out.

It's true that when you're on the road, sometimes all you crave is a McDonald's. And if you need some office supplies, it's nice to know that you can drive 20 minutes in almost any direction and eventually hit a Staples. But if you're feeling a little adventurous, it's worth going right instead of left. Who knows? You might just come across Bud Murphy's Pizza. And if you do, make sure to order their Pirogie Pizza, topped with mashed potatoes, sautéed onions, mixed cheese and scallions. That'll give you something to remember.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford loves to just wander when he travels. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Spies Like Us

2010-08-21T04:30:00.002-04:00

Back in July, ten Russian spies working under deep cover for many years were arrested and expelled from the country. They admitted to attempting to collect information on everything from nuclear weapons to the gold market and to personnel changes at the CIA. They used cold war techniques such as buried drops and "brush pasts" in local parks, as well as newer ones such as posting pictures on the internet that had text buried in them and laptop computers connected with each other to transmit encrypted information.

No matter: the authorities had detected them a decade ago and were watching the watchers. They decoded messages, did convert searches for forged documents and set up fake agents with whom the spooks interacted. However, turns out that the ten were as much Mr. Bean as Kim Philby. Officials recovered a bag that still contained the receipt for a mobile phone bought by an agent who went by the American name of Anna Chapman: it was made out to Irene Kutsov and the address was registered as 99 Fake Street.

Perhaps this all helps a little to explain the process we are personally enduring right now. With our youngest heading to St. Petersburg to study for the fall, it presented the perfect excuse to visit Mother Russia. We did this same kind of trip when our oldest was studying in Paris: it not only assuaged our apprehension about his situation, but we got to travel and see a bit of the world.

Having been overseas for both personal and professional reasons, I'm no stranger to the preparation a trip like this can take. True, some places are easier than others: if you want to go to Spain or Japan, all you need do is get on a plane. Conversely, if you want to go to Indonesia or Egypt, some forms are required. Still, in most cases, getting the required paperwork in order is routine: fill in your travel dates, passport number and local contact info, and they hand you a drink with an umbrella in it.

Not so with Russia. Just as the spies among us were still using techniques and trolling for information as if they were in a classic Eric Ambler thriller, so too does the Russian visa form reveal the apparatchik's skills at its best. Not content to merely ask name, rank and serial (or in this case, passport) number, the whole process plumbs the depths of your life and memory, the better to route out the sleeper agent that you didn't even know you were.

To be sure, it includes requests for the usual info: the dates you're traveling, the reason for your visit, other family members traveling with you. It also includes some questions designed to ferret out those that might become a burden on the sate: if you have insurance, who is paying for your trip, an official agency and hotel that is authorizing your visit. Perhaps a little overbearing, but in these economic times, maybe not too far out.

It hardly stops there: they ask your present employment or status, your educational level and institution, as well as the names of your spouse (even if divorced) and both of your parents, living or dead. Maybe it's a way of seeing if there's a chance you're Anastasia, or maybe it's just curiosity. They also request the last 2 jobs you've had before the current one, along with the contact info for your supervisor, or as they affectionately refer to him or her, your "chief." And they want to know every country you've ever visited over the last ten years, along with the date. Not that a trip to Chechnya will knock you out of contention, but maybe it means you bear a little more watching.

Finally, a round of yes/no responses is required. Have you ever served in the military? Have you ever been involved in an armed conflict? Have you ever been arrested? Have you ever been refused a Russian visa or deported? Do you have any specialized training in nuclear, biological or chemical devices? In light of recent events, one wonders if they're playing it safe, or perhaps recruiting.

And that's all on top of the official invite you have to secure, the checks you have to cut, and the onsite registration you have to go through once you get there. It's not quite the Berlin Wall, but it's doing as much to keep people out as to let them in.

Still, we've sent it all in, and hope there's no nyett in our future. In any case, it will be an adventure, and they'll be more in this space as it unfolds. In the meantime, we'll be studying our tsars, practicing reading Cyrillic and working on our taste for borscht. Pozdnyee!

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is both excited and a bit nervous about their trip to Russia. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Not An Option

2010-08-13T04:30:00.003-04:00

When you look at your car today, it's almost hard to believe its ancestor was the Model T that Henry Ford first mass produced in the 1908. Yes, it has four tires, a steering wheel and an engine. Beyond those basic elements, however, nearly everything else about it has changed, from the styling to the color palette to the components that make it run. In many cases the advances are major, like the new hybrid drives that blend battery and gas powered propulsion systems. In other ways they are minor, such as the size and shape of the gas pedal. But taken in total, what you're driving today has come a long way since you the time when you could get it in any color as long as it was black.

In fact, these days color is just one of the bewildering array of options that allow you to customize your vehicle to be your very own dream machine. Go the web site for any manufacturer and you will be able to point and click your way through menu after menu allowing you to specify just about every facet of the car. You can pick the material that the seats are made of, the entertainment system you prefer, even the type of shift knob installed.

All of these are most assuredly advances, though some are more successful than others. Take automatic seat belts. It's a given that belts save lives, as long as you wear them. Still, some riders didn't buy that logic, were lazy or didn't want the belt to crease their outfits. And so back in the seventies, Volkswagen led the charge by being the first manufacturer to put automatic belts in the Rabbit. All the others followed, helped along by government mandates requiring them. Most people hated the system, however, getting strangled at least once by the devices. It took until airbags were perfected, and manufacturers were given a choice between one or the other that they died a quick death, much to relief of most of us.

And so it was with other signs of progress. Hideaway headlights seemed like a good idea. So did CB Radios in every car. But once they passed their novelty phase, the public voted with its wallet, ordering less and less of both until it made no economic sense to offer them at the dealership.

This past month brought word that yet another idea that made sense to someone is going the way of the dodo. Volvo, long touting itself as one of the safest cars son the road, was a leader with such advances as side impact airbags, three point seat belts and a collapsible steering column. In 2007, it thought it was advancing the state-of-the-art by offering a $550 option package that included an electronic key fob that would tell you if you had indeed locked the car once you walked away. But when you came back, it went one better: it included a feature called "Intruder Detector" that told you if someone was lurking in the back seat waiting to ambush you.

Created by an engineer who had seen one too many slasher movies, the system featured a heartbeat detector that allowed the user to check their vehicle before they entered it. If the key fob sported a flashing light, it meant that there was man crouched in the backseat, wearing a ski mask and carrying a machete. Of course, it could also mean that there was a kitten locked in the car, but which was the more likely possibility?

Pussy cat or ax murderer, the need for this particular piece of technology just didn't resonate with the public. And so for the 2011 model year, the intruder detector is no longer an option. You can get pedestrian detection, blind-spot alerts and active cruise control, among others. But you'll have to look in your backseat for escaped mental patients yourself.

It just goes to show that just because "they" can invent it doesn't mean that "we" will come. And in the real world, they are actually very few reported cases of this particular hazard having any basis in reality. Still, I guess you can't blame them for trying. After all, fear is a powerful motivator, and there's no telling who might buy into it. In that vein, perhaps there's a market for the "Is the upstairs extension the one making the call?" detector, which would sooth babysitters' minds the world over.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford wants fewer options, not more. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

100 and Counting

2010-08-07T04:30:00.001-04:00

In some ways, nothing has changed about the Boy Scouts since I was a kid, and indeed since the movement was first founded by Lord Baden Powell back in 1910. They still wear uniforms of khaki green and tan, still cook out over fires, still swap patches with each other with the zeal of Wall Street traders. But neither Lord Powell nor myself had envisioned merit badges for robotics, high adventure camps featuring Class 5 white water rapids or live Twitter streams from the woods updating mom and dad on who's winning the tent Nintendo battles.

Indeed, the latest display of how the movement is trying to stay current was on display the last week of July at the National Jamboree held at Fort AP Hill, an Army base in Bowling Green, Virginia. Normally, jamborees like this are held every three years. This time out, however, it was delayed for an extra year so as to coincide with the centennial anniversary of Scouting. With that as a rationale, and just as if a person were turning a hundred, there was a desire to throw a really big bash and a whole lot of people to wanted be able to say they were there.

So as the culmination of a week of camping and workshops and cookouts, the Scouts cranked it up to eleven for a blowout. Billed as "A Shining Light Across America," they gathered together on a huge parade ground at the base on a balmy Saturday night. The weather cooperated as they staged a nationwide satellite broadcast that displayed things old and new, featured a score of celebrities, and shot off enough fireworks to give the Fourth of July a serious run for its money.

Preshow festivities officially started at 5PM for the 8P show. While kids in Indian costumes performed their version of Native American dances, and Scout bands from places like Trinidad and Tobago played sets on steel drums, the various troops began to assemble. In front of a giant stage featuring large screens, a high definition video wall and rappelling towers, an audience of over 40,000 kids and their leaders took their places. They were joined via satellite with Scouts gathering to watch and participate in Jacksonville, Ft. Wayne, Durham, North Dakota and New York City's Times Square. Countless other groups and individuals gathered to watch a live web feed, bringing the total audience to perhaps double those on site in Virginia.

With thunderous music and fireworks, the kids counted down to the start of the show. The evening featured many classic Scout staples, like kids singing and dancing, candle lighting and shoutouts to various states and troops. But much was updated to appeal to the next generation. Chief Scout Executive Bob Mazzuca made his entrance by rappelling down a scaffolding onto the stage. Paratroopers dropped into the event, sing-alongs were with done to live performances from indie bands such as Switchfoot and pop-rockers like Honor Society, and the featured competition was an onstage Rockband contest fought iPad to iPad and magnified on screen for all to see.

This being a hundredth birthday party, there were taped messages from celebrities from President Obama to rocker Ted Nugent. Videotapes traced the history of Scouting's past, and previewed the future and the new high adventure base in West Virginia that will serve as the jamboree's permanent home going forward. And the one of the highlights of the night was undoubtedly a talk by Mike Rowe, the host of TV's "Dirty Jobs" and an Eagle scout himself, who made his entrance in the bucket of a front end loader to wild applause, and wore a tee shirt that said, "A scout is clean, but not afraid to get dirty."

Some two and a half hours later, after recitations of the Oath and Taps piped in via satellite played by a pair of Scouts with the Black Hills of North Dakota in the background, the event wrapped up. In the various satellite locations the kids and their families shuffled out to head home, while on site in Virginia they made their way back to their tents. It's true that when compared to Woodstock, Altamont or Bonnaroo, there was far less mud, no violence and the music wasn't exactly making history. But a lot of kids went home happy and juiced about the movement, and that's a pretty good tradeoff.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford handled the Jacksonville portion of the Jamboree broadcast. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.

Don't Talk To Me

2010-07-31T04:30:00.002-04:00

It's not that I'm antisocial or anything, but I seem to be talking less. I don't mean in person. If you bump into me at the store or we go out to lunch, we'll chat and catch up on family and current events and the strange and silly things that are in the news. Sure, they'll be times when I'll be quieter than usual, others where you probably wish that I would just shut up. But be it big concepts or small talk, you'll have no doubt I'm not mute.

Remove me from your physical proximity, however, and it's a different story. More and more, my exchanges with others involve me tapping my fingers as opposed to flapping my lips. Be it email or texting, these days my connections with those across the office, across town or across the country are just as likely to be done by typing and responding as they are by speaking. I can joke, negotiate, argue, discuss, weigh in, plead, be sarcastic, fawn, kiss up or just shoot the breeze without the wind ever crossing my vocal chords, save a groan or a chuckle strictly for my own benefit.

I'm hardly alone in this change. Cellphone industry group CTIA reports that more than 822 billion text messages were sent and received on carriers' networks during the last half of 2009, amounting to almost 5 billion messages per day at the end of the year. On the email side of the house, estimates are that every day 247 billion messages are sent, though much of that is acknowledged to be spam. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, voice calls have declined 15 percent in the past two years, while the average length of call decreased steadily from 3.13 minutes in June 2007 to 2.03 minutes in June 2009. So not only are we talking less and typing more, we seem to have less to say when we do actually connect to a live person.

In fact, more and more it seems that texting is serving a dual roll. It both replaces talk, as well as serves as the precursor to it. How many times have you gotten a message that says, "Can u tk now?" or "R u busy?" Rather than just dial up someone and interrupt them, forcing them to have a conversation they aren't ready for, we use text to tee it up. In an always on, always connected environment, where anyone can be reached anytime, we use text to make sure that "on" is when we're ready for it, and not before.

Even when we feel we must call, the dynamics have changed. Used to be if you tried to connect and didn't get through, you left a message with a secretary or family member. Then voicemail became widespread, and we quickly adapted. Even if we got a live person, we would ask to be put into their VM box, so our message came through as we intended it. Yet now we've evolved past that, to where our kids tell us never to leave them a message. Rather, if they don't answer, we are instructed to hang up and text them. After all, why waste time calling in to hear a message when you can read it quicker? I confess that my favorite feature of my Google Voice account is that it transcribes every voicemail and emails them to me, enabling me to never have to listen to messages at all. Unlike Nipper, I don't pine for my master's voice.

But with this shift in mechanics comes the realization that the very nature of conversation... or rather these electronic exchanges that pass for conversation... has changed. While the substance may be the same, the very act of separating the riffs themselves from the instantaneous retorts they engender renders the whole give-and-take differently. Introducing the element of delay, even for just the few seconds it takes to read and thumb type a response, subtly changes the beast. Exchanges read more as scripted repartee than as emotional point counterpoint. Norwegian singer Sondre Lerche had a song that described it best: "Two Way Monologue."

So maybe it's time to radically rethink our phones. For when you consider how we use them these days, a new design is probably called for. Instead of speaker and microphone with keyboard appended, perhaps we need to reverse the equation. After all, speaking for myself and as Jimmy Buffet wrote, if the phone doesn't ring, that'll be me.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is amazed how much he now texts. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review and The Scarsdale Inquirer.