A Really Bad Interview

Here’s an example of a really bad interview.

The sports editor of the Grand Valley State University student newspaper was doing an interview with the football team’s new offensive coordinator and asked the coach to name three non-football historical figures he’d like to have dinner with.  According to news reports, the coach responded as follows:

“This is probably not going to get a good review, but I’m going to say Adolf Hitler.  It was obviously very sad and he had bad motives, but the way he was able to lead was second-to-none. How he rallied a group and a following, I want to know how he did that. Bad intentions of course, but you can’t deny he wasn’t a great leader.”

(The coach also named John F. Kennedy and Christopher Columbus as his two other historical dining companions, in case you’re interested.)

Of course, Hitler directed the genocidal murder of millions of Jews and was the direct cause of a worldwide war that killed additional millions and left his country a crushed and ruined shell, and his brutal and repressive regime has left an indelible moral stain on the German people.  That’s not what most people would view as the record of a great leader, but the legacy of a seriously disturbed psychopath.  Not surprisingly, Grand Valley State University promptly suspended the coach, and he then resigned.  In a statement posted on social media, he said:  “In a poor effort to give an outside-the-box answer to a question, I mistakenly communicated something absurd,” and added: “There is no justifiable excuse — it was insensitive and not my intent.”

So what in the world was he thinking?

Best In The State

What makes a great sports bar?  You know, the kind of place where you want to go watch your favorite team play a game?

Clearly, there are some basic elements.  Great sports bars aren’t white tablecloth and fine china venues.  You’re looking for tasty food favorites at reasonable prices, an ample selection of beers to stoke your competitive spirit, and a friendly and attentive wait staff that won’t leave your glass bone dry during the key part of the game.  You want to have plenty of TV screens in the room, so any table or chair will have good sight lines to the screen carrying your game of choice.  And, equally important, you’re looking for an energetic atmosphere and a setting with lots of fans watching their games, where you won’t be shushed for letting out a cheer, giving a few high-fives, or blurting out a random curse at a bad play.

Whatever the qualities that make a great sports bar, JT’s Pizza & Pub here in Columbus clearly has them all.  The MSN website just named JT’s the best sports bar in Ohio.  Given the sports-obsessed culture in Ohio, that’s incredibly high praise, but it’s really not surprising.  JT’s has great pizza, appetizers, wings, and sandwiches — exactly the kind of fare you want from a sports bar — an extensive beer and drink menu, and a raucous atmosphere come Game Day.  Stop by for an Ohio State game, an NFL Sunday, or March Madness if you don’t believe me.

Congratulations to my nephew Joe, the proprietor of JT’s, and my nephew Danny, who works there, for making JT’s into a sports bar that has won Best in the State honors.

Those Little Routines

Over the years I’ve always used some kind of coin container.  When I was in college, I used a large glass jar as the repository for pocket change — until one day the glass broke from the accumulated weight of the coins, and I switched to a smaller jar.  I’ve also used metal cans.  Now I use a nice wooden box that Kish got me long ago.

But whether the container is glass, or metal, or wood, the concept is the same:  when you come home, you empty your pockets.  in my case, the house keys go on the top of the dresser, the cell phone gets set down on the cordless charger contraption, and any loose change goes into the coin box.  It’s one of the little organizing principles that many of us use to order our lives and establish our small, personal routines.  Those little routines can add comforting structure to your day, and also mean you don’t have to go tearing the house apart looking for your keys and phone and glasses every morning.

Years ago, the change containers used to fill up a lot more quickly, because I would always pay for my lunches and small purchases with cash, and bringing home change was a nightly occurrence.  Now that using a payment card has become my most common form of payment, I often end the work day with no change at all — but habit makes me check my pockets for change, just the same.  The reduction of change in our lives is another simple sign that the economy is changing, and our personal practices are changing along with it.

But I still pay for some things with cash, and even if it takes longer than before, the change box gets filled.  Last night I noticed that the box is filled, again, so it’s time to empty it out, fill up the old-fashioned paper coin sleeves, and take them to the bank to add another $34 to the account and feel the satisfaction of saving.  That’s what will be on the schedule for tonight, and I’m kind of looking forward to it.

 

Kobe Bryant

The reaction to the tragic death of basketball great Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and others in a helicopter crash on Friday has been amazing, and overwhelming.  The crash, and the reaction to the crash, has been the lead story on many news websites over the past few days, featured even over stories about the spread of coronavirus and coverage of the ongoing impeachment trial in the Senate.

I’m not an NBA fan, and I didn’t really follow Bryant’s career, so I would not have predicted the outpouring of often emotional responses to Bryant’s death.  The Los Angeles Times, for example, has a continuously updated page with links of dozens and dozens of articles giving multiple reactions to the tragedy and Bryant’s death from fans, celebrities, American athletes, international sports stars, cultural figures, politicians, and others, as well as coverage of the crash and stories about other aspects of Bryant’s life.   To give you an idea of the depth of the coverage, one of the Times articles posted on the page notes that the chaplain of the United States Senate spoke of the death of Bryant, his daughter, and others in his prayer before the start of yesterday’s impeachment trial proceedings.

Bryant’s legacy is complicated by his criminal case and the perception by some that he was a selfish player, but the reaction to his death shows that, for some people at least, he became a lot more than that.  His impact on basketball was undeniable — even now, playground players evidently call out “Kobe!” when a player makes a clutch or seemingly impossible shot — and he obviously was an inspirational figure to his fans.  His support for women’s basketball and the WNBA, his outreach and encouragement to fellow athletes in basketball and other sports, his sponsorship of a studio, and his other political and social activities broadened his impact still more.  He obviously touched many people in a special way, and the fact that he died young, and in a tragic accident, compounds the impact of his death.

As I read the articles about Kobe Bryant, I found myself wondering how many other sports figures, or cultural figures, or celebrities, would elicit that kind of response.  I’m guessing not many.

Vegan Coiff

Waiting to get my haircut today, I noticed this sign. I don’t color my hair, so I don’t know beans about hair coloring products. But vegan? Wait, people ingest this stuff?

With All Deliberate Speed

People who rely on governmental services get used to waiting.  You fill out a form and then wait for weeks, or months, or even years before the ponderous bureaucratic machinery moves forward and action is taken.

But even by slow governmental standards, the city of Winnipeg, Canada moves at a glacial pace.

On January 26, 1993, a city snow removal machine smashed up the curb outside the house of Calvin Hawley.  Hawley promptly made a complaint to the city, so that someone could come out to fix the curb.  The city promised repairs.  When nothing happened, he continued to call.  At one point, the city told him that its system for logging complaints had changed, and all of his prior communications about the broken curb had been lost.  But Hawley was undeterred in his campaign to cure the curb.

In 2017, when city work crews appeared on his street, Hawley thought his day had come.  Alas!  The city workers were there to fix other, more recently damaged broken curb sections.  It just added insult to injury.  So Hawley filed an electronic complaint, which allowed him to track when the repairs to the curb would move forward.

Last year, Hawley got his answer:  his curb will be repaired by June 26, 2037 — which would be more than 44 years after the city snow plow first crushed it.  44 years!  Think about that the next time you moan about having to wait in line at the BMV.

Welcome Back From NYC

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who is viewed as a likely candidate for mayor of New York City in 2021, apparently is upset about gentrification and displacement.  During a recent speech at a Martin Luther King Day celebration, Adams made some controversial remarks on the topic that made mention of Ohio.

According to a Washington Post report on his remarks, Adams complimented long-time residents, saying:  “You were here before Starbucks.  You were here before others came and decided they wanted to be part of this city. Folks are not only hijacking your apartments and displacing your living arrangements, they displace your conversations and say that things that are important to you are no longer important.”  The Post article reports that Adams then turned to the topic of recent arrivals to New York, and said:  “Go back to Iowa.  You go back to Ohio! New York City belongs to the people that [were] here and made New York City what it is.”  The article also states that Adams said: “You are not going to enjoy this city, and watch the displacement of the people who made this city.”

Gentrification and displacement are serious issues, and obviously Adams feels strongly about them.  Still, telling recent arrivals to get out of town doesn’t exactly seem like a thoughtful and measured response to the issues — even by blunt New York political standards — and a Martin Luther King Day celebration seems like an especially ill-suited forum for delivering that kind of negative message.

Since Adams is urging people to go back to Ohio, I just want to note that Columbus, and other parts of Ohio, would be happy to welcome transplanted New Yorkers — and anyone else who wants to come to a place where they won’t be judged by how long their family has lived in town.  We think that Columbus belongs to whoever lives here and wants to be part of our community.

 

Lunchbox Land

Kish and I met Russell for breakfast at Dell’s Fine Food in Fostoria, Ohio today. In addition to winning countless awards for its barbecue and making the best pancakes Kish says she’s ever had — which is the highest praise any pancake could possibly hope for — Dell’s also features an impressive display of old-fashioned lunchboxes, from back in the day when many kids took a lunchbox and matching thermos filled with hot soup to school every day.

I’m sure I had a Mercury astronaut lunch box, a Jetson’s lunchbox, and a Monkees lunchbox, and a few others, too. My thermoses always broke — the glass inside shattered if you dropped it — and I eventually became too self consciously cool for a lunchbox and carried a sack lunch instead, but I still have a soft spot for the lunchbox days of the ’60s.

Ringing The (Taco) Bell

This year, Taco Bell is going to be experimenting with a new approach to recruiting qualified restaurant managers:  in certain labor markets, it has announced it is willing to pay an annual salary of $100,000 to managers of company-owned Taco Bell stores.

The Taco Bell initiative is a response to a very difficult labor market for employers.  With the current unemployment rate at historic lows — the product of a strong job market and lots of aging Baby Boomers moving into retirement, among other circumstances — there just aren’t many good candidates out there.  So Taco Bell is going to test, in certain markets in the Midwest and Northeast, whether paying a $100,000 salary brings in a better crop of candidates.  That represents a significant increase over the current starting salary for Taco Bell store managers, which ranges from $50,000 to $80,000.

The Taco Bell manager initiative isn’t the only evidence of a tight job market and wage pressure.  The article linked above notes that other companies operating in the fast-food restaurant market — typically the classic source of low-paying, entry-level jobs — are reporting wage pressure affecting their margins.  Just this week the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in the fourth quarter of 2019, “median weekly earnings of the nation’s 118.3 million full-time wage and salary workers were $936, an increase of 4.0 percent from a year earlier ($900).”  The BLS statistics show wage growth in 2019 above the rate of inflation (which was about 2 percent) in all age categories except workers between 55 and 64, with workers in the 25 to 34 age range showing especially strong wage increases.  And the BLS wage statistics indicate the labor market is particularly good for women, with median weekly earnings for women in 2019 up by 6.2 percent.

Imagine — making a six-figure income as the manager of a Taco Bell!  Your parents never would have thought it was possible.

This Week’s Big Health Scare

News outlets are reporting that the “coronavirus” that was first detected in Wuhan, China is sweeping across that country, causing the Chinese government to try to quarantine entire cities of millions of people to try to stop the spread of the virus.  Nevertheless, cases have been reported in Thailand, Japan, and even in the United States, where a man in the state of Washington who recently returned from China was found to be infected.

It seems like there is always some huge health disaster for us to worry about.  This week, it’s the Wuhan coronavirus.  Should we be concerned about it?

The link above is to an L.A. Times article that provides some basic information about the Wuhan coronavirus.  Coronaviruses are common in humans and some other animals, but the Wuhan variation is a new strain that hasn’t been seen before.  After some people began showing pneumonia-like symptoms, health officials traced the origin of the conditions back to a large seafood and live animal market in Wuhan, China.  Initial research indicates that the Wuhan strain may have come from the handling of snakes at the market, with the virus jumping from snakes to humans.  (At this point, one can almost hear Indiana Jones saying:  “Snakes!  Why does it always have to be snakes?”)

The key issue for most of us is determining how the virus is transmitted, and what we can do to avoid getting it.  The virus appears to be moving from human to human via the airborne route, which is why you see pictures of people in China wearing masks that cover their noses and mouths.  Viruses that are conveyed by air can spread rapidly and are the most difficult to contain.  And, from the reports of cases outside China, that’s what has happened here.  Still, it appears that some people are more prone to becoming infected than others — exactly why that may be so is one of the things researchers are examining — and severe illness, and death, has for the most part occurred only in people who are older and otherwise dealing with significant health issues.  The man from Washington infected with the virus, for example, is being monitored and is reported to be in good condition.

I tend to be a fatalist about these kinds of things.  I’ll pay attention to the news about the coronavirus, but I’m also content to let the CDC and other public health officials and scientists do their work and figure out how to deal with the Wuhan coronavirus, just as they have dealt with SARS and Ebola and other global health issues.  I’m confident that, if I need to go out and buy a mask, they’ll let me know.

47 Years Of Working

Earlier this week I got a document called “Your Social Security Statement” from the federal government.  That’s the document that tells you how much you and your employers have paid in Social Security taxes, tells you what your monthly Social Security payment will be at various retirement ages, and also gives some pointers about how, and when, to start getting the benefits.

The statement also tells you, year by year, your taxable earnings for Social Security and Medicare purposes.  As I looked at it, I realized, with a certain chill, that I’ve been working for 47 years now.

The statement notes that my first job was in 1973, during the Nixon Administration, when the 16-year-old me got hired as a “bag boy” at the now-defunct Big Bear Supermarket at the Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington.  I had to wear a collared shirt and tie and a long white apron, and I bagged groceries at the checkout lines, helped old ladies put their groceries in their cars, and retrieved shopping carts from the parking lot after the store closed down.

According to the statement, I made slightly more than $500 that year, which sure felt like a lot of money to a kid living at home.  The next year, after I got trained on how to run the cash register myself so I could sub in for the ladies who were the permanent cashiers when they needed a break, I upped my earnings to just over $1,000, and I felt flush with cash.

It’s all there on one page — my earnings from working on the Ohio State Lantern, from my summer intern stint for the Wall Street Journal, from writing obituaries for the Toledo Blade, from serving as a press secretary for a Congressman on Capitol Hill, as a research assistant in law school, as a summer associate at law firms, as a judicial clerk in Washington, D.C., and finally from the law firm where I’ve worked for nearly 34 years.

It’s kind of weird to look at my employment history on that one page, and remember those old jobs that I haven’t thought about in a while.  47 years is a long time, I suppose, but it really doesn’t feel that long, and the memories of those jobs — and the feeling I had when I got that first two-week paycheck that probably netted me about $64 — are still fresh and lurking.  Thanks to the Social Security Administration for the reminder!

Mascot Madness

In Philadelphia, police are investigating a complaint that “Gritty” — the mascot of the Flyers hockey team — punched a 13-year-old kid after a photo shoot last year.

The kid’s father claims that after the kid patted “Gritty” on top of his furry orange head, the bug-eyed creature took a running start and punched the kid in the back, leaving a bruise.  The Flyers say that they conducted an investigation and concluded that “Gritty” did nothing wrong and there was no evidence to support the assault claim.

I suppose one could argue that the combination of circumstances — the fact that the incident allegedly happened in Philadelphia, where sports fans are notorious, involved a goggle-eyed mascot named “Gritty” for a team playing a sport where dropping the gloves and taking a few swings is an accepted part of the game, and a franchise that recently unveiled a “rage room” to allow frustrated fans, and “Gritty,” blow off steam by wrecking various household items — should be factored into the investigation, but clearly we need to let normal police investigative techniques take their course.

The more important lesson here is that all anthropomorphic mascots should be given as wide a berth as possible, whether they are found at a hockey game, a ballpark, or an amusement park.  Unless you’re a “furrie” — that is, somebody who gets his or her jollies wearing a fuzzy or hairy costume depicting some kind of character — being a mascot would be one of the worst jobs imaginable.  You’re stuck in a hot, probably smelly costume with inadequate breathing capabilities, you’ve got the heavy burden of engaging in “zany” behavior at all times, and the fans around you undoubtedly aren’t respecting your personal space in any way.  Pats on the head, and for that matter kicks in the behind, are probably a regular occurrence.

I’m guessing that, in the professional mascot world, “Gritty” isn’t alone in wanting to use a “rage room” now and then.

Deploying The Digital Undead

Hollywood has made tremendous strides in marrying technology and film.  First it was in deploying high-end “special effects,” using miniatures and models, such as were found in 2001 and Star Wars, then it was in having computers generate images and entire scenes.  More recently, technology has been focused on the human actors, who’ve either been digitally recreated or, as in the recent film The Irishman, de-aged.

Now we’ve apparently reached a new frontier, where filmmakers believe they can literally raise an actor from the dead and, thanks to the miracle of modern computer, give the actor an entirely new career with new roles.  And the first actor to be targeted is one of Hollywood’s icons:  James Dean.

The moviemakers, acting with the full permission of the Dean family and estate, plan to feed TV footage and still photos of Dean into a computer to create a digital James Dean.  (The real James Dean died in 1955 at age 24, after making only three movies, and immediately rose to legend status, including being the subject of an Eagles song.)  The digital creation will then be moved from the computer to the movie screen with the help of stand-in actors moving through scenes using the motion-capture technology commonly used in CGI filmmaking, and another actor will supply the voice of the digital “James Dean.”

Digital JD is supposed to make his debut in a Vietnam War drama called “Finding Jack” — which seems like a very weird choice, given how closely the real James Dean is associated with the pre-Vietnam War, leather-jacketed bad boy ’50s.  The filmmakers say that they’re not aiming at a one-movie curiosity, but instead hope to give their digital creation an entirely new career that will revive interest in an actor who has been dead for more than 60 years.

Some people are rightly reacting with horror to this effort, which seems desperate and ghoulish.  But it may be the wave of the future in increasingly cash-conscious Hollywood.  Some studios may think:  why worry about developing and casting new acting talent if you can revive Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Lucille Ball, and other stars of the past, draw upon their established personas, and avoid dealing with real-life actors’ huge salaries and huge egos?

I’m not a fan of this effort, but I’m also not sure it will work.  James Dean may have been an iconic figure for a particular generation, but how many people under, say, 60 even know about him or have any interest in the films he actually made?  Fame is pretty fleeting in today’s Netflix world, and I’m not sure that the ghosts of stars of the past are going to fit in.

Working Too Hard

Recently I was on the road and arrived at my hotel at about 8 p.m.  I hadn’t eaten, so after dropping off my bag in my room I visited the hotel restaurant, had a cheeseburger for dinner, and then was tempted by an apple crumble for dessert.  I asked if I could get it with ice cream, and the waiter said that would be fine.  The combination above is what arrived.

In case you’re wondering, on the plate that’s closest to the camera, that’s a kind of crumble pie, with no apple pieces, at the far left, two little green apple spheres with faux stems in the middle, and an apple slice dipped in dark chocolate in a mold made out of a cheesecake-like substance on the right, all set against the backdrop of Aztec-like lines inscribed in dark chocolate that was hardened on the plate.  The bowl at the far side of the plate contains my scoop of vanilla ice cream.

I’m sure I was supposed to admire the artistry of the presentation of the dessert, and the delicate nature of the plating. Mostly, though, I wondered how I was supposed to eat the various elements. I spooned the scoop of ice cream onto the crumble pie to let it melt, grabbed one of the little green apples by its faux stem and ate it, and then was stumped.  Was the molded cheesecake-chocolate option on one side of the plate supposed to be eaten in conjunction with the crumble pie at the other end?  If so, how?  And what was I expected to do with the chocolate markings –scrape them off and chow them down with the crumble pie, or the apples, or the cheesecake chocolate mold, or all three?  I ended up alternating between bites of the crumble pie and the molded object, ate the second little green apple at some point in between, and left the dark chocolate stripes alone.  It was fine,  I guess, but it would have been even better if I’d just gotten what I expected in the first place — a single dish that contained warm spiced apple slices, crumble, and ice cream on top that you could eat in the normal way.

I admire haute cuisine, and the efforts of chefs to bring creativity to the art of cooking and to reimagine some time-honored dishes.  But there’s a time and a place for it — and a late dinner at a hotel restaurant isn’t it.  It was clear that the kitchen had worked hard on the dish, but it really was making me work too hard in order to enjoy it.  Call me a philistine if you will, but I wasn’t ordering dessert to get a work of art.  I just wanted a traditional fruit dessert served in the traditional way.  Maybe the artistry can be reserved for the souffle.

Car Colors

The other day I walked past this brightly painted car in a nearby parking lot.  I was struck by its color, which I thought made this 2020 Hyundai Kona look like a colossal insect, ready to skitter across the asphalt and disappear into the foliage.

Car manufacturers have come a long way since the days of Henry Ford — who supposedly said that car buyers “can have any color they want, so long as it is black.”  Now, the different makes and models always offer an interesting palette of color options to new car buyers, and usually the colors have very evocative names.  From a review of the Hyundai website, it looks like this particular hue is “lime twist,” and it is available only on certain Kona models.  Other options in the Kona rainbow include “chalk white,” “sonic silver,” “thunder gray,” “surf blue,” “sunset orange,” “pulse red,” and “ultra black.”  I guess you’d pick “lime twist” if you want to be reminded of the sultry tropics every time you get into your car, or perhaps because you work as an entomologist.  In any case, one obvious advantage of the color is that there’s not much chance that you’re going to struggle finding your car in a crowded parking lot.

I’ve always been leery about buying a brightly colored car.  I’ve always subscribed to the notion that yellows and oranges and reds are going to be magnets for police officers eager to hand out speeding tickets and are tough to keep clean, especially during the dreary, road salt-encrusted winter months.  The only new car I’ve ever bought with any kind of color was a 1988 Honda Accord that was “harvest gold,” which I figured wouldn’t show dirt too much.  Since then, I’ve stuck with basic black on every car I’ve purchased.  My brother-in-law in the car business thinks black is the most beautiful color for a car, so long as it is kept clean, and I tend to agree with him.  At this point, I’m not realty interested in attracting attention with my ride, whether from the highway patrol or otherwise.

Maybe Henry Ford was on to something.