There’s A Sucker Shoed Every Minute

Payless Shoe Stores, a low-cost shoe outlet found in many American cities, recently conducted an interesting social experiment testing the utter gullibility of American consumers.  In an effort to see just how much people would pay for its shoes, Payless created a new website and Instagram account and opened a pop-up store called Palessi — get it? — in a Los Angeles mall.  It then invited “influencers” to attend a grand opening of the store in exchange for receipt of a small stipend.

Of course, there really was no new store called “Palessi,” and the shoes being sold at the pop-up were just standard Payless shoes.  But guess what?  The “influencers” were suckers who apparently fell for the ruse and were willing to spend many multiples above the standard prices charged by Payless for its footwear.  One woman said she would pay $400 or $500 for tennis shoes that retail for $19.99.  Another sap paid $640 — 1800% above the normal cost — for a pair of boots.  Apparently, if you want to up the price of shoes you just create an Italianized name, throw in some glitz, and make the sales clerks wear black, and some hapless “influencer” will fall for it and presumably get others to do so, too.  Payless will use the experiment to advertise the fact that its shoes are fashionable and are valued by some people at far above their actual price.

I’m not surprised that Americans are willing to overpay for shoes, but what the article linked above doesn’t say is who the “influencers” were, or how they were selected.  If you’ve ever read Malcolm Gladwell’s interesting book The Tipping Point you know that there are people who are at ground zero of the creation of trends — by, for example, starting to wear Hush Puppies shoes — and there are others who introduce the new trends to a wider audience, and then finally the mass of followers who start buying Hush Puppies after the creators have already moved on to the next trend.  I’m sure there are many people who consciously strive to be “influencers,” and it would be nice to know how Payless identified the credulous group who were willing to grossly overpay just to be the first in the area to wear “Palessi” shoes.

For the rest of us, the Palessi experiment should teach a valuable lesson.  Who, exactly, are the “influencers” who are starting and promoting the stupid trends that often sweep America, and how easily duped are they?  Why should anyone pay attention to them or their “influence”?  I’m no trendsetter, but I’m reasonably confident I’ll never pay hundreds of dollars for a pair of sneakers, either.

Avoiding Fudge Failure

Yesterday a friend sent me a message saying that she wanted to make some peanut butter fudge for the holidays and asking if I had a recipe she could use.  She explained that she’s tried two recipes and encountered embarrassing “fudge failure” each time, with one effort coming out hard as a brick and the other a soupy mess.

I don’t have a recipe for peanut butter fudge — if one of the readers of this blog has one they’d like to share, I’d be happy to hear about it, by the way — but I do have a recipe for “fantasy fudge” that I first published on the blog in 2009.  I’ve made the fudge as part of my Christmas cookie baking in a number of years since then, and I can say with complete confidence that it’s pretty much failure-proof, as long as you keep stirring, both as the sugar, margarine, and milk is boiling and later when the chocolate is added.  Your arm will get a workout, I can assure you!

Fantasy Fudge

Ingredients:  3 cups sugar; 3/4 cup margarine; 2/3 cup evaporated milk; 1 12 oz. package of semi-sweet chocolate chips; 1 7 oz. jar of Kraft Marshmallow creme; 1 cup chopped nuts; 1 tablespoon vanilla.

Combine sugar, margarine, and milk in heavy 2 1/2 quart saucepan.  Bring to full rolling boil, stirring constantly.  Continue boiling for 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and stir in chocolate until melted.  Add marshmallow creme, nuts and vanilla and beat until blended.  Pour into greased 13″ x 9″ baking pan.  Let cool and cut into 1-inch squares.

Fudge failure is no fun!  Fantasy fudge will make your holidays more flavorful and festive.  And speaking of flavorful, we’ll start our annual Christmas cookie discussion next week.

Soup Canned

Household food staples of the 1960s have had a tough time of it lately.  Production of the glorious Twinkie was halted for a while a few years ago when its maker went through bankruptcy, and now comes news that the Campbell Soup Company — a brand so iconic and associated with American meals that its soup cans were painted by Andy Warhol — is struggling, too.

According to a report in the New York Times, Campbell’s earnings fell 50 percent last quarter, sales of its soups have been declining, and expensive acquisitions have left the company dealing with significant debt without providing any help in the sales department.  The company’s stock price trails the rest of the stock market and has lost a third of its value, and the company’s chief executive, Denise Morrison, stepped down under pressure earlier this year.  And now the company’s Board of Directors is facing a challenge that pits a hedge fund and dissidents who want the business to be sold or restructured against the heirs of John Dorrance, the chemist who invented condensed soups more than a century ago.  The Dorrance descendants own 40 percent of Campbell’s stock, have lived lifestyles of great wealth as a result of their descendants’ creation, and want to make sure that any changes that occur happen on their terms.

Why is Campbell’s struggling?   The Times notes that the company is “fighting headwinds like declining consumer interest in packaged food and a preference for fresh ingredients over highly processed soup from a can.”  Some people believe that the company has lost its focus with its acquisitions and needs to return to a soup-centric model, and analyst contend that the company hasn’t adequately responded to marketplace changes.  The article points out that “Campbell Soup cans, for example, have barely changed since 1900, and the top sellers remain tomato, chicken noodle and cream of mushroom.”

Of course, for many of us, those three soup options were familiar ingredients of meals when we were growing up.  In the Webner household, Campbell’s tomato soup (made with milk, not water) and grilled cheese was a highly popular dinner, countless casseroles were made with Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, and Campbell’s chicken noodle soup was the inevitable lunch if you were home sick from school with a cold.

I hope Campbell’s can figure out its problems.  Although I haven’t had a lot of Campbell’s soup lately, there’s something comforting about seeing those familiar red and white cans on the grocery store shelves, and I still think tomato soup and grilled cheese is something to be relished on a cold winter’s day.

Aftermath Of The GM Bailout

General Motors — the company that American taxpayers bailed out less than a decade ago, rescuing the company from near-certain bankruptcy after years of mismanagement — continues to struggle, and the dominoes that were toppled by the bailout decision continue to fall.

Yesterday the company announced that it is engaging in a massive restructuring that will close assembly plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada, eliminate thousands of jobs, and end some car lines.  One of the vehicles  being discontinued is the Chevy Volt, the electric hybrid GM rolled out to great fanfare.  The company said that “GM is continuing to take proactive steps to improve overall business performance, including the reorganization of its global product development staffs, the realignment of its manufacturing capacity and a reduction of salaried workforce.”  GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, said “GM wants to stay in front of changing market conditions and customer preferences for its long-term success.”  One of the “changing market conditions” is the declining public demand for passenger cars like the Volt and the Chevy Impala, which also is being discontinued.

President Trump and the United Auto Workers are both unhappy at the GM move.  Trump said he didn’t like GM’s decision and reports that he told Barra “You know, this country has done a lot for General Motors. You better get back in there soon. That’s Ohio, and you better get back in there soon.”  The UAW, which will see the loss of lots of blue collar jobs held by its members, said:  “This callous decision by GM to reduce or cease operations in American plants, while opening or increasing production in Mexico and China plants for sales to American consumers, is, in its implementation, profoundly damaging to our American workforce.”  The UAW news release added that “GM’s production decisions, in light of employee concessions during the economic downturn and a taxpayer bailout from bankruptcy, puts profits before the working families of this country whose personal sacrifices stood with GM during those dark days.”

GM’s decision will no doubt be devastating to those employees who lose their jobs and the communities where the plants will close.  But it also makes me wonder how even the advocates for the taxpayer bailout of GM less than 10 years ago feel about their decision to prop up GM now.  The underlying question raised by the UAW and President Trump is legitimate:  Was the bailout worth it, in view of these kinds of decisions?  GM remains a public company, and it gets to make decisions that it considers to be in its own competitive interest.  And if changing market conditions really do require GM to cut thousands of jobs that the bailout advocates expected would continue indefinitely, that may just tells you something about the wisdom of taxpayer bailouts generally.

The Sleepless Years

Here’s a conclusion from a scientific study that will shock anyone who has ever been a parent:  most babies don’t sleep through the night.  And the study also reaches another, equally startling determination:  most parents pay a lot of attention to trying to get their infants to sleep through the night.

Thank goodness we’ve got scientists around to confirm the obvious!

The study found that 38 percent of babies that were six months old were not getting even six uninterrupted hours of sleep at night, and more than half weren’t sleeping for eight hours straight.  One-year-olds were only marginally better, on average, with 28 percent not yet sleeping for six hours and 43 percent not sleeping for a solid 8 hours at night.  The study also found that many parents worry about their baby’s sleeping habits, with mothers reporting feeling tense and depressed about trying to get their child to sleep through the night.   The researchers offered this reassurance for anxious parents, however:  after following babies from birth until the age of three, they found no material developmental difference between kids who slept through the night at a young age and those who took longer.

The study’s authors seem to attribute parental focus on their new baby’s sleep habits solely to developmental concerns.  I’m sure that some of the attention to infant sleep is attributable to reading the “baby books” about what is normal and what isn’t, but my personal experience teaches that at least some of it is naked parental self-interest.  When our boys got to the point of getting a good night’s sleep — which incidentally meant that Kish and I got a good night’s sleep, too — we felt like we had crossed the Rubicon and should be popping the cork on a bottle of champagne.  When a baby finally starts eating simple solid food (if you can call baby food “solid”) and falls into a sound sleep with a full belly, the mood around the house takes a decided turn for the better.

What’s up next for the scientific researchers trying to confirm what every parent knows?  A careful examination of the joys of changing baby diapers?

 

British Swear Words

Do our polite and refined friends from across the pond curse?  I know they use words like “bloody” when they want to up the emphasis a notch and demonstrate that they are really miffed, but do they ever actually swear?

Apparently they do!  Ofcom, the United Kingdom’s communications regulator — who even knew they had one! — interviewed more than 200 people to determine how they reacted to an array of rude and offensive terms and swear words, and then ranked them in order of offensiveness.  In order to be sure that they covered every form of communication, they threw in a few well-known hand gestures, too.  Words in the mild category include “bloody,” “bugger,” “damn” and “arse,” as well as “crap.”  (It’s hard to imagine someone with a British accent ever saying “crap,” isn’t it?)  “Ginger” and “minger” — which means an unpleasant or unattractive person — were also placed in the mild category.

The medium category then includes words like “bitch,” “bollocks” (which Americans of my age know because of the Sex Pistols) and “pissed,” as well as words I’ve never heard used, like “munter” (an ugly or excessively drunk person) and “feck” (a milder substitute for you-know-what).  From there we move up to the strong category, which curiously has “bastard” in it — suggesting that the Brits find “bastard” a lot more offensive than we do, perhaps of the connotations of the word in a land that still has royalty and nobility — and “fanny,” which seems pretty mild to me.  The strong category also includes a bunch of British slang I’ve not heard of before.  From there, the list moves up to the strongest category, where the queen mother of curses sits, as expected, atop the swear list pyramid.

The list apparently is to be used by the Brits in their communications, with words rated as mild considered to be okay to use around children, whereas most people thought the “medium” and “strong” words shouldn’t be used until after 9 p.m.  The study also found, encouragingly, that the Brits are increasingly offended by words involving race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

I’m still finding it hard to believe that the Brits ever say “crap.”

Where Can I Get A Recording Of The Game?

I’m not saying my decision not to record The Game was outcome-determinative, but . . . well, c’mon, you know it was!

What a performance by the Buckeyes, their coaches, their much maligned defense, and their equally maligned offensive line!  Beating That Team Up North never gets old.  And this win is made all the sweeter by the fact that Michigan came in expecting to win.

Seriously — where can I get a recording of The Game, 2018?

Not Jinxing It

We’ve got a pretty big game to be played in Columbus, Ohio today.  On this rainy Saturday, the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Michigan Wolverines line up again for the best rivalry game in all of sports.

Normally I would set up the DVR function on our TV and record this year’s version of The Game.  I’m not going to do so this year, however, because every time I have recorded the Buckeyes they’ve played horribly.  On the other hand, when I haven’t tried to record them, they’ve played well.  Given that track record, the proper course of conduct is clear.

It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I’m a firm believer in jinxes.  Of course, it’s ludicrously far-fetched to think that the activities of an old guy far away from Ohio Stadium could possibly have an impact on a football game — but then we’ve all heard of the butterfly effect.  Maybe the mere act of setting up a recording disturbs the ether and karma just enough to affect how Ohio State plays.  Who knows how these things work?  I just know I’m not going to take a chance on upsetting the mystic balance and feeling like I’m responsible for another less-than-stellar performance.  If not recording The Game somehow gives Ohio State a minute advantage, that’s good enough for me.

I’m guessing I’m not alone in this sentiment.  All across Buckeye Nation, fans of the Scarlet and Gray are donning lucky apparel and avoiding activities that seem to be somehow associated with failure.  Of course, fans of TTUN are no doubt doing the same thing, and fervently hoping that their individual activities will produce a win.  With two devoted fan bases each working to promote maximum luck and good fortune and avoid the dreaded jinx, who knows how the balance will tip?

Either way, there’s no recording of the game today.  Go Bucks!

Think Before You Write

The on-line world once seemed like a fun, open place where you could easily and happily keep track of your friends’ trips, kids, and birthdays.  But as it has developed it seems to get angrier, and weirder, and creepier every day — to the point where many of the thoughtful people I know have decided to retreat completely from “social media” and avoid the on-line world like it’s a dangerous dark alley in the low-rent part of town.

Why have they decided to abandon Facebook and remove themselves from the internet to the maximum practicable extent in today’s on-line world?  Consider this story, about a woman who posted a negative on-line review of a local tavern where she’d gone for a bachelorette party.  She says she and her friends were well behaved and were inexplicably treated rudely by the bartender, so she gave the bar a bad rating, and some highly critical comments, on Yelp.  Other patrons of the bar, and the bartender, say the bachelorette party group was drunk and disruptive.

If we simply had a disagreement about what actually happened at the bar when the bachelorette party arrived, there would be no story here — we all know that there are two sides to every story and people’s perceptions of events can differ.  But this story took a sick and twisted turn when some people started reacting to the bad review by posting ugly, sexually explicit comments about the reviewer, found her Facebook page and where she worked, and even went on her wedding website and RSVP’d that they would be attending.  It’s a classic example of over-the-top, alarming cyberbullying that, unfortunately, has become increasingly common on-line.  And you never know what might trigger such behavior; a comment that you consider to be fair under the circumstances might push a cyberstalker over the edge and make you their target.

My grandmother used to say, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”  It’s not bad advice to keep in mind the next time you’re tempted to write something negative on-line.  These days, who knows where a few harsh words might lead?

Crucial Warnings

For those of you unfortunates who are out shopping on this Black Friday, a reminder to pay careful attention to the warnings on the shopping cart seat. Kids can fall out of shopping carts, you know. If you’re shopping with a young child, be sure to buckle her in securely. Oh, and don’t leave the child alone in the cart while you trot off to pick up the latest blue light special.

I don’t remember there being such warnings on the shopping cart seat when Richard and Russell were little, but apparently retailers now think parents need to be reminded not to abandon toddlers who are sitting in shopping carts. I’m a bit surprised, therefore, that other similarly obvious warnings aren’t also imprinted on the seat. Like, “don’t engage in shopping cart demolition derby with other shoppers.” Or, “don’t let your child stand up and dance on the plastic seat while the cart is in motion.” Or, “don’t place that set of razor-sharp ginzu knives in the seat area within easy reach of your child.”

You’d think these warnings would be unnecessary, but perhaps for people who are willing to risk shopping on Black Friday with a youngster a little reminder about the basics can’t hurt.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

This Thanksgiving, I’m especially thankful for:

• My wonderful wife;

• The good health and good spirits of my family and friends;

• A fine Thanksgiving meal with family that will be (hopefully) without any trace of rancorous political arguments;

• Being free from the want, worry, and oppression that troubles so much of the world;

• The many excellent books, films, and TV shows I’ve enjoyed this year, and the creative spirits who produced them;

• The opportunity to watch the Ohio State Buckeyes break more than a few Michigan Wolverine hearts this Saturday;

• The kind words I’ve received from faithful readers of this blog;

• That pre-Thanksgiving piece of pumpkin pie I snuck last night; and

• This chance to count my blessings on a chilly but peaceful Thanksgiving morning while drinking a hot cup of coffee and listening to some baroque music.

May everyone celebrate a similarly long list of things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving!

Candy Confirmation

Yesterday some well-intentioned soul — or, alternatively, some desperate person who still had a huge amount of leftover trick or treating fare and wanted to finally and conclusively get it out of their house before Thanksgiving — left a bulging, quart-sized bag of various candies by our fifth-floor coffee station.

As expected, the bag quickly looked like it had been attacked by a passing plague of locusts, and it went from packed to picked over in the blink of an eye. But as I passed by on multiple occasions to and from my secretary’s office during the day, I realized the bag also was providing a practical experiment in fifth floor candy preferences.

The mini Snickers and Milky Ways and other interesting chocolate candies were the first to go, followed by mundane Three Musketeers bars. By the end of the day, all of the chocolate candies were gone, but the Skittles and other fruit-flavored options remained. Colorfully packaged, perhaps, but clearly not the preferred route until no other option was left for colleagues desperate for their sugar fix.

Chocolate candies 1, fruit-flavored candies 0, and Three Musketeers somewhere in between. Useful information to keep in mind the next time you’re buying Halloween candy.

Turkey On The Road

With Thanksgiving only two days away, many Americans are bracing themselves.  They know that, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, or maybe — God forbid! — on Thanksgiving itself, they will hop into a car and try to drive to Grandma’s house through the gnarliest, most soul-crushing gridlock imaginable.

The venerable American Automobile Association is predicting that this will be the worst Thanksgiving travel week ever — which is really saying something.  The AAA forecasts that 54.3 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more from their homes this Thanksgiving, which is almost five percent higher than last year.  And if you’re one of those lucky  travelers who lives in a select American city, the AAA is even offering guidance on which route at which time will encounter the heaviest traffic and the longest delays.  According to the AAA, for example, if you leave San Francisco between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Wednesday and take I-680 north, you can expect 4 times the normal travel time between exits 8 and 21.  In most cities, the worst delays are expected to occur today, between 5:30 and 7 p.m.

Over the years Kish and I have occasionally traveled around the Thanksgiving holidays, and we’ve always deeply regretted it.  The worst incident occurred when we tried to drive from Columbus to Vermilion one Thanksgiving Day and got stuck in a massive traffic jam on I-71, which was like a parking lot.  It took hours to inch along, and when we finally arrived nobody had the placid, Pilgrim-like calm you hope to achieve on Thanksgiving.  If I recall correctly, the pre-meal backyard football game that year was a tad more aggressive than usual.

This year, I’m extremely thankful that I’m not driving anywhere outside of Columbus.  For those of you who will be on the road — well, good luck.

Blue Chip Gone Bad

In the not too distant past, General Electric was one of the most valuable companies in the world.  GE was the bluest of the blue chips, the maker of light bulbs and everyday appliances, a company so solid and trusted and reliable that it was a standard holding for retirees who bought it because it paid an old-fashioned quarterly dividend.

Now, GE’s stock price has plummeted to less than $10 per share, its its renowned quarterly dividend has been reduced to a penny per share, and there’s actually talk on Wall Street that GE debt — which is now rated at BBB — could be reduced to junk bond status.

What happened? Many things have contributed to GE’s abrupt fall.  The company has a lot of debt, some of it generated back when GE had a AAA rating.  The debt has put GE into an increasingly leveraged position as the company’s stock price has fallen, which in turn has put pressure on the trading price of GE bonds.  The company’s lines of business have experienced some down years, and prior management was viewed as too slow to respond to the challenges facing the company.  To address the problem, GE has shifted to new management, which is trying to sell off assets to improve the company’s capital structure, boost the stock price, and keep the company off the junk heap.  And, as GE sheds assets, new management will have to figure out what the company is and where it is going, long term.  GE can no longer get by on its reputation.

GE’s current plight is another example of how the American economy moves quickly, and if companies don’t move with it they can be left behind.  As recently as 2005, GE’s stock market price made it the most valuable company in America.  Now, it’s fighting for survival.  And in boardrooms throughout the corporate world, CEOs should considering this cautionary tale and asking themselves:  “What should I do to keep my company from becoming the next GE?”

Now Comes Michigan Week

Most Americans think of this as Thanksgiving week, when it’s time to give thanks, embrace our common humanity, and be generous to our fellow man.

Not so in Buckeye Nation. As soon as Ohio State eked out an overtime win over a feisty Maryland team yesterday, Ohio State fans breathed a sigh of relief, wondered what in the hell happened to the Ohio State defense this year, and then immediately thought: “It’s Michigan Week.”

Michigan Week used to be the week before Thanksgiving week, but a few years ago the Big Ten changed the schedule and moved The Game to the Saturday after Turkey Day. I wish they hadn’t, because bloodthirsty thoughts don’t fit comfortably into the expected Thanksgiving mindset. Before, Buckeye fans could hope to kick the ass of That Team Up North, watch The Game, and then after the violent clash ended shift gradually into pleasant, huggy Thanksgiving mode. Now we think about breaking Michigan hearts right up to the point the turkey gets carved, piously give thanks while we’re really pondering crushing tackles and Statue of Liberty plays, and then after the plates have been cleared abruptly return to full Michihate mode for the remaining hours leading up to the tilt with the Maize and Blue.

It’s jarring, to say the least. But hey — it’s Michigan Week!