All Lit Up

We’ve got our Christmas lights up, and they look very nice — so nice, in fact, that one of our neighbors came up to me and thanked us for making the street more festive.

The neighbor asked me if I had put up the lights.  I found this flattering, and funny.  My Christmas light-stringing days are well behind me, and there is no way I would flirt with  disaster and climb up a long ladder to get the lights up to the top of our tall tree.  I told the neighbor, without a hint of personal masculine embarrassment, that we had hired a service to put up the lights and were pleased with the job they had done.

In my book, if you want Christmas lights done right, hire a professional — one covered by the workers compensation laws.

Tannenbaum Time

Thanksgiving is over, so it is officially okay to start thinking about Christmas. If you’re in Columbus and looking for a Christmas tree, stop by St. Mary’s Church in a German Village. This morning volunteers laid in a huge selection of trees to help make your holidays more festive — and pine-scented.

Freedom To Brawl

It’s Black Friday.  Those who are in the grip of Black Friday mania have already been out at the stores for hours, tussling over the electronic gadgets and big screen TVs and kids’ toys that are the staples of Black Friday sales.  If you don’t already have somebody’s grandmother in a headlock in your efforts to get one of the last sale items at Walmart, you’re probably not going to be venturing to the stores today.  And, you’re probably feeling embarrassed about how the whole Black Friday spectacle reflects poorly on those of us who live in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

But, should you be embarrassed, really?  Or, should you, upon careful reflection, realize that Black Friday riots are instead a quintessential expression of American freedoms that, while not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights, are nevertheless core parts of the American experience?

I’m talking about things like freedom to shop for hours.  Freedom to demonstrate unseemly personal greed.  Freedom to make a complete horse’s ass of yourself in a public setting.  Freedom to go deeply into debt on credit cards.  And freedom to spoil your kids rotten with the stuff that you ultimately purchase on Black Friday and then give to them on Christmas.

The Spectator has published a defense of Black Friday brawling.  It provides some interesting information about Black Friday — like how it was invented in Philadelphia and initially called Big Friday before it was rebranded with the same name as a great Steely Dan song, and how there are places where you can actually make wagers on how many people will be killed in Black Friday fracases versus how many people will die in shark attacks.  Hey, why not?  It turns out that, by some counts, you’re more likely to die in a Black Friday fistfight with some turkey and stuffing-stoked Mom in the aisle of an electronics store than in the jaws of a Great White.

This year, instead of shaking my head in disbelief at the antics of crazed shoppers on Black Friday, I’m going to celebrate the mania>  But my personal celebration won’t involve heading out to the stores.  Instead, I’ll revel in the footage of shoppers throwing haymakers as just another thing that makes America great.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Every Thanksgiving, I tend to think of childhood celebrations and family members who are no longer with us.  Uncle Tony, for example, liked the heart and liver that used to come with the turkey (which struck us kids as pretty disgusting, incidentally), so they would be cooked and set out separately for him.  Dad had a cool bone-handled carving set which featured an enormous knife and knife sharpener, which he would scrape together to make sure that the knife was as sharp as possible for the crucial turkey carving step.  And Mom liked to put little wax candles at every place settings — pilgrim boys and girls in their pilgrim garb, and these little wax turkeys, which were my favorite.

I suppose Thanksgiving is all about enjoying family memories.  May you and yours create some fine new memories today!

When Do You Eat?

Most families have their own unique Thanksgiving Day traditions.  Sometimes the traditions come in the form of a special food — like Aunt Sue’s candied yams, or Uncle Frank’s oyster stuffing — but other traditions may involve who gives thanks, who sits in which seat at the table, and who carves the turkey.  One tradition that often differs from family to family is:  when do you eat the primary meal?

I say “primary meal” because, in our household, Thanksgiving Day typically involved pretty much uninterrupted eating, from stem to stern.  There was the initial breakfast period, followed by the light grazing period, the heavy grazing period, the meal itself, and finally the irresistible post-meal, belt-loosened extra piece of pumpkin pie or leftover turkey sandwich while watching the last football game of the day.  So, just to clarify, here I’m talking about the table-groaning meal where you actually sit down together, eat the freshly carved turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and a few rolls, and take a slice of the cranberry relish that still is in the form of a can because somebody has to do it.

In our family the primary Thanksgiving meal came at roughly 4 p.m., depending on whether the turkey was done.  The meal was strategically positioned between the end of the first football game broadcast and when the next game started to get interesting.  At our house, that timing of the meal was so deeply engrained that it never occurred to me that you could eat your Thanksgiving meal in any other time slot.  When I later realized that some people ate at noon, or 2, or (horrors!) 6:30, it was an astonishing revelation.  And I often wondered how you could move the meal and still fit in the other parts of the Thanksgiving Day festivities, like watching the parades, the various grazing periods, the backyard touch football game, and the evening card games.

So, when do you eat?  And if you doubt that the timing of that primary Thanksgiving meal is a tradition, ask yourself why you eat when you do.  If your honest answer is a shrug and the response that you’ve always eaten at that time, that sounds like a family tradition to me.

A Sign Enough

The Third Street Secret Signer has struck again, but this time the resulting message is a bit more cryptic — thanks to some bad luck.

For the first time, the TSSS has used both sides of the bridge, east and west. (The east side, which has no sidewalk, was previously functionally inaccessible because of the constant flow of traffic speeding onto the 70/71 on ramp, but that ramp is now closed.) The east side sign reads “You Are Enough,” which is apparently the title of a recent book for women. On the west side, which is the TSSS’ previously preferred sign-posting location, the TSSS had put a sign reading “You Are Valuable,” but by the time I walked home last night that sign had fallen down and lay crumpled on the sidewalk. I’m hoping the sign was just blown down, rather than being pulled down by some Grinchy jerk who is messing with the public positivity campaign of a Good Samaritan.

Even with the west side sign fall, I’m sure I’m not alone in appreciating another nice gesture by the TSSS. Hopefully s/he will take the remaining sign to heart and realize that their single sign effort is “enough” to give us a holiday boost heading into Thanksgiving.

When Ad Campaigns Go Wrong

There’s a significant and growing methamphetamine problem in South Dakota, and the state is trying to deal with the many issues — crime, death, health care, and others — that are all part of the problem.  As is typical these days, one element of the state’s response is an ad campaign, to raise awareness and let the citizens of South Dakota know that their state government is addressing the crisis.

So, what ad campaign did South Dakota come up with?  One that features the tag line:  “Meth.  We’re on it.”

I’m serious — that’s really the key line in the ad campaign.

Of course, once the campaign appeared, the inevitable jokes started flowing, and South Dakota has become a bit of a laughingstock.  Newspapers in South Dakota have been weighing in on the campaign and resulting public relations debacle, and you can read some of their editorial reactions here and here.  The prevailing view seems to be that while the campaign may have achieved the goal of raising awareness of South Dakota’s meth problem — after all, it’s undoubtedly received far more national publicity than your average, run-of-the-mill “click it or ticket”-type public safety ad campaign — the embarrassment the state is experiencing due to the campaign probably  isn’t worth it.  And there’s the obvious lingering question:  couldn’t somebody in state government have recognized that this kind of reaction to the campaign was bound to happen?

There’s another, deeper question, too — why South Dakota felt that an ad campaign was needed in the first place.  The production of the ads cost $449,000, and when all of the ad spots are purchased, the total cost of the campaign will be about $1.4 million.  That’s a lot of money, and it’s entirely fair to ask whether it should have been spent on an any ad campaign — even a competently created one that didn’t make South Dakota the butt of jokes.  Wouldn’t the money have been far better spent on state programs that are specifically dealing with the meth problem, rather than ads featuring flinty-eyed ranchers and other South Dakotans?

South Dakota’s disastrous ad campaign may have raised awareness of the meth problem in an unexpected way, but maybe it also will raise awareness of the stupidity and waste caused by governmental TV ad campaigns generally.  Maybe the next time an ad campaign is suggested by a state agency in South Dakota or elsewhere, some thoughtful person will remember the “Meth.  We’re on it” flop, nix the ad campaign, and see that the money is spent instead on actually directly addressing the problem in question.

Amazon Is Everywhere

The depth of Amazon’s penetration of American popular culture is pretty amazing.  Last week, for example, we needed some white cranberry juice to prepare a seasonal cocktail we were making for a gathering with friends.  Kish went to several grocery stores in Columbus and couldn’t find any.  We decided to give Amazon a try, and sure enough, it offered Ocean Spray white cranberry juice — which was delivered to our doorstep the next day, with no muss and no fuss.  Pretty convenient!

But I had no idea of the stunning breadth of Amazon’s business activities until I got a surprise while walking the dog.

In our neighborhood, there are a few strategically placed containers where dog owners can get free poop bags.  It’s a good idea for the neighborhood, because it gives dog owners no excuse but to clean up after their pooches, and it’s a blessing for the dog owners who otherwise might be caught short in the crucial bag department.  The bags had been made by anonymous companies and featured cartoon drawings of happy (and apparently relieved) dogs — until now.  I stopped by one of the containers last week, pulled out two of the plastic baggies so I would have a ready supply, and saw to my surprise as I was putting them into my back pocket that they were from AmazonBasics and featured the familiar swish/smile logo.  So, Amazon has now made crucial inroads into the German Village canine poop bag market.

It’s hard to imagine that poop bags are a very lucrative, high-margin item for a supplier, but I guess if you’re aiming to dominate the supply of every product Americans might need, poop bags are just another item on the list.  And the poop bag itself makes it clear that Amazon isn’t just looking at America, either — the bags I took feature the suffocation hazard warning in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese.

Achtung!  Amazon is everywhere!

 

Let The True Season Now Begin

Kudos to the Penn State Nittany Lions for playing a very tough, gutty game today in cold, rainy Columbus.  Fortunately, for Buckeye Nation, Ohio State was able to overcome lots of turnovers and sloppy play and continue their quest for a slot in this year’s College Football Playoff.

But that’s for another day.  As the seconds ticked down this afternoon, all true Ohio State fans felt a little shiver in their spines and a quickening of their pulses.  With the Penn State game behind us and a W secured, we knew deep in our guts that the greatest rivalry week in college football — really, in all of sports — is now upon us.  And we also know that this year The Game is set up to be an absolute classic.  Ohio State hopes to continue its march to the National Championship, and Michigan — which has an excellent team — knows that it can derail those hopes, and break the hearts of Buckeye fans everywhere, if they can just win this year’s edition of The Game.

Next week Ohio State will head to That State Up North to take on the Maize and Blue.  The teams and their fans despise, but somehow respect, one another.  Players who have taken the field in The Game say that it is one of the hardest-hitting, but cleanest, games they’ve ever experienced.  Both teams want to win, but they want to win the right way.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Michigan Week.  Brace yourselves!

Am I The Midwest?

Hello Emerson is a rising band from right here in Columbus, Ohio.  Kish and I have had the chance to see them perform several times, and they’re great.

They have a new song out called “Am I The Midwest?”  I’ve linked the YouTube video for the song above.  If you’re a born and bred Midwesterner — even if you’ve since moved away — I bet the song will strum some mystic chords of memory for you.  It’s a great song that really captures a living, breathing piece of this part of America that so many of us call home.

Hat tip to the GV Jogger and Dr. Science, whose son Jack plays keyboards for Hello Emerson.

A Reason For The Ratings

Apparently some people on the conservative side of the spectrum are noting that the ratings for the impeachment hearings aren’t very strong. They cite the ratings to argue that the American public at large just isn’t interested in the proceedings.

They’ve clearly overlooked one obvious reason for the viewership statistics: why watch during the day when you can come home at night and get utterly unbiased and objective reactions to the proceedings from your Facebook friends, left and right?

We may be living through social media’s finest hour!

Festive Front Steps

We’re well past the growing season in central Ohio, and it’s been too cold to enjoy sitting outside. But that doesn’t mean that flowerpots and outside benches can’t be put to good use. In our case, a few pine swags, some white birch logs, and some strategically placed pine cones and red berries give the area by our front steps a decidedly festive winter look, just in time for the holidays.

Out Of The Pens Of Babes . . . .

If, like me, you tend to get a little overwrought about things like college football games or how your favorite team is faring, I’ve got a suggestion for you:  read this story and, especially, read the handwritten letter that nine-year-old Fraser Hartnell wrote to the coach, the quarterback, the team, and the fans of the Michigan State Spartans.

Michigan State has had a tough season this year — the kind of season that no doubt has a lot of Spartan fans grumbling and saying unkind things about the coach and the players.  In this social media era, it’s easy for fans to post the most appallingly negative, hurtful things about young athletes playing college sports.  I’m amazed at what some people say publicly about college and professional athletes, and I’d like to think that, if those fans just thought about how deeply wounding some of their comments are, they might not make them in the first place.

Fraser Hartnell helps to put it all in perspective.  He plays quarterback on his football team, and he knows that things like interceptions happen.  The important thing is to learn from them, and keep trying.  He went to a Michigan State game this year that the Spartans lost in heartbreaking fashion, but he still had fun — and, as Fraser recognizes, sports is really supposed to be about having fun, anyway.

Here’s what he had to say to MSU fans who were upset about the loss in that game:

“We did not win but you can still have fun when you lose because you love your team no matter what.  Not everyone gets to go see a game so if you get mad I feel sad for you.  Some people get spoiled like a kid who gets all the Christmas gifts.  They are only happy with wins.  Losing gets rid of the bad fans.  That way when we win we can enjoy it.  I like wins but it is not all in life.  There are a lot of things sadder than losing a game.”

My guess is that most of the adult sports fans who read Fraser Hartnell’s heartfelt letter — myself included — will see a little of the “bad fan” in themselves, and realize that they need to take Fraser’s viewpoint to heart.  I’m going to try to adopt Fraser’s positive attitude when I watch the Buckeyes and the Browns this weekend.  As Fraser wisely says:  “Games are supposed to be FUN but they are just games.”

Into The Barking Zone

Recently, our previously quiet little part of German Village has become a kind of barking zone.  Some new people have moved into the surrounding apartments with their dogs, and those dogs apparently like to bark.

Not all the time, though — just when I’m leaving the house in the morning and coming home from work at night.

A dog across the street seems to be the barking leader in the barking zone.  He stands with front paws on the ledge of the window of his home, barely visible in the shadows next to a curtain, looking outward.  From his dim outline and the nature of his bark, he looks to be some kind of hound.  When he sees me coming or going he barks and barks until he’s got to be hoarse.

After the pooch across the street starts up, dogs in some of the other places hear him and they typically join in from their homes, blending their more high-pitched yips and yowls and yelps with the leader’s deep-throated woofing.  Within seconds, we’ve got a fully developed canine cantata going on.

I’m not sure why I am the target of such furious barking, which doesn’t seem to happen with other random passersby.  There’s obviously something about my presence that the dog across the street finds disturbing, or threatening to his alpha dog status.  And although I’m curious about how the dog across the street picked me out, the muffled barking doesn’t really bother me.  It’s just become part of the greeting when I get home.  In fact, it’s kind of like my own little fanfare.

 

Big Head Syndrome

I’m worried about the Ohio State football game against Penn State on Saturday.

The Buckeyes obviously have a lot of talent this year, and they’ve played exceptionally well so far.  They’re undefeated, have won every game by huge margins, and have risen to the number 1 or number 2 spot in every football ranking service, including the rankings established by the College Football Playoff committee.

That’s great — but it’s also the problem.  Ohio State has been so good during its first 10 games this year that people have started talking about them as if they are one of the historically great teams — not just at Ohio State, but in all of college football.  You’ll see analysis of how the Buckeyes match up with other all-time great teams in terms of statistical dominance, margin of victory, and other metrics.  And one telling measure of the praise that has been gushing around this year’s team is that Ohio State is a 19-point favorite to beat Penn State come Saturday.  That’s right:  Ohio State is expected to beat a one-loss, traditional powerhouse that has played the Buckeyes very close in recent years and that is itself ranked in the top ten — by nearly three touchdowns.  It’s an absurd example of the sky-high expectations surrounding this Buckeye squad.

I think it’s silly to talk compare a team to all-time great prior teams while there are still lots of important games to be played against excellent teams like Penn State and, next week, Michigan.  I also think it’s dangerous.  If you hear about how great and unbeatable you are long enough, you might actually start to believe it — and if you get the big head and start to believe those press clippings, you’re headed for a fall.  Ohio State fans have seen this story before, with the 1969 team, the 1973 team, the 1998 team, and the 2015 team.  Each team had lots of smoke blown up its behind about being the best ever — and then had a horrible stumble.  I’m worried we may be seeing a replay of the same disappointing story this year.

There are young Ohio State fans who have absolute confidence in this team.  Those of us in Buckeye Nation who are old enough to remember the crushing losses of the past, including in games where the Buckeyes were heavily favored, are very wary.

The hype can be a trap.  It will be up to Ryan Day and the other Ohio State coaches to make sure that the players disregard the praise, focus on their prior mistakes and getting better, and come out humble, motivated, and ready to play on Saturday.