A Fan Loyalty’s Statute of Limitations

Sports_Fans_by_psbox362There will be no conversation in my house tonight. There will be no conviviality. There will be only conflict…and deathly stares, possibly combined with smug looks of superiority. The husband and wife will set in separate chairs, watching the same hockey game, but seeing it quite differently. The husband calls it “the Rangers game.” The wife calls it “the Red Wings game.” The husband, I, am from New York. The New York Rangers of the 1960s and 70s spent the season in furnished apartments in the sprawling apartment complex in Queens where I lived. It exists today. It’s called Glen Oaks Village. The Rangers were part of my childhood. Boom Boom Geoffrion lived next door to my aunt and uncle and slammed the walls, screaming bad words in French when he returned to the apartment after a loss. Andy Bathgate swung his kids on the swings in the playground of our grade school, P.S. 186. We ran into the Rangers in the Silver Moon diner, and if we paid a buck, we could watch them practice at Skateland, a mile away. Rod Gilbert and Jean Ratelle and Reggie Fleming and Vic Hatfield waited for us afterwards and signed autographs. Ed Giacomin would put a cigar in the mouth hole of his goalie mask and dare his teammates to shoot it out. For $1.50 and our high school ID card we could get tickets to see the Rangers in the old Madison Square Garden. We lived for Marv Alpert to yell “Shot! Score!” The Rangers were life.

But life took me away from the Rangers when my wife and I moved across the country to Tucson, Arizona in 1978. The Coyotes were years from howling in Phoenix or Glendale, or wherever they are now. The only hockey was a pathetic minor league team called the Tucson Rustlers. We lost track of the NHL.

When I was hired by CNN in late 1981 I was excited to move to Atlanta, only to find out the Flames flamed out and moved to Calgary.

In 1989 I was transferred to Detroit to take over the bureau and we were reunited with the NHL.  I could lustily root for the Rangers again when they invaded Joe Louis Arena. But over the past 26 years I’ve also become a loyal Red Wings fan and even attended a Red Wings fantasy camp playing alongside Chris Osgood and Hall of Famer Ted Lindsay.

How can you root for both the Red Wings and the Rangers? When does the team loyalty statute of limitations run out. How long do you have to be away from your hometown before you can’t root for your hometown team anymore?

I contend you never have to stop. Yes, I’m also a Yankees fan, but when the Tigers faced the Yanks in the playoffs a couple of years ago, I decided it was the Tigers turn to win my loyalty in hopes our town would see its first World Series victory since 1984. Another Yankee fan called me a traitor and said I could never go back. But it got me thinking about letting go. I’ve now lived in Detroit longer than I’ve lived anywhere. Must I give up my childhood loyalties in favor of teams representing the town where I’ve spent the most time? I don’t think so. I have specific reasons for rooting for my teams. I wish Detroit’s teams the best of luck. The teams that represent my adopted city. But I remain loyal to the teams that represent the first time I attended Yankee Stadium with my dad and brother, saw Roger Maris hit two of his 61 homers in ’61, attended my first NFL game with my brother and saw Joe Namath as the last man between the opponent and end zone take him down, even on gimpy knees. I remain loyal to the team that exposed me to Walt Frazier and Willis Reed even though they are, today, a pathetic shadow of past glory.

It’s OK. We will be sportsman and sports lady like watching the hockey game tonight. I will cheer if the Rangers score…but quietly smile when the Red Wings do too. My wife won’t say a word…unless of course, the Rangers get smoked. Then we’ll have a problem.

Money…It’s What I Spend

moneyI like money. Doesn’t have to be a fortune. It just has to be money. Bills or coins, I’m good with it as long as I can fold it, flip it, spend it, insert it in a vending machine or toss it on the table at a poker game.

But the world is turning against money. For instance, there’s a new self-serve store in our workplace that sells coffee, soft drinks and snacks. It’s handy. It’s a few steps from my office. But it doesn’t want my money. In the middle of the store is a counter and a cash register (I think that’s what they still call them) with instructions on how to pay. The first day I looked to see where to insert my bills and coins. There isn’t any place. You have to swipe a credit, debit or gift card. Anything with a magnetic stripe..not a picture of a president or imprint of a national memorial or even a buffalo.

I have no intention of charging a Diet Coke and a bag of Corn Nuts. First of all, when the bill came at the end of the month I could just hear my wife say, “Diet Coke and Corn Nuts? Are you 7?” Paying by cash not only is efficient, it saves me from a great deal of embarrassment.

Let’s say this practice of not using a tangible method of trade was a practice when Peter Minuit bought Manhattan from a tribe of Native Americans for 24 bucks worth of trinkets.

Minuit: “OK Chief, I’ve brought a big box of trinkets and Slim Jims worth 24 bucks. Now. I’lll take Manhattan.”

Chief: “Hold on Dutch boy. Keep your crap and give it to the Salvation Army. We run a trinketless society here. We only accept a wampum rub. You keep rubbing the wampus belt until you spend down all the beads. When you’re left with bare string, you’re tapped out.”

Minuit: “But I’m trying to hide this idiotic purchase from my wife. The last time I bought an island it turned out to be manatee that was just sleeping. When I tried to build a settlement, the big galoot swam away.”

Chief: “I understand. Mrs. Chief gets riled when I use my wampum rub to buy Clint Eastwood movies. Yeah. He’s that old. OK…I dig. I’ll take your beads and junk this one time…but don’t try the same thing to buy Staten Island.”

Sour Grapefruit League

springtrainingFor many years I’ve been terribly jealous of Major League Baseball players. Not because they get paid a jillion dollars to play a game, or that many of them have great hair or gorgeous girlfriends or wives. No, what I covet is a job that includes “spring training.”

It’s a great concept. Players spend six weeks or so in warm weather, practice a couple of hours a day, sit by the pool, play golf, and a bunch of games that don’t even count, before they even begin to get down to work for real.

Say, for instance, teams of white collar corporate drones need to get in ship shape for the brutal fall budget planning season for the year ahead. To do so, they spend six weeks in DC during cherry blossom season which lulls them into believing the world is fair. Then training cranks up with a full schedule of mock meetings with another companys’ controllers who are there to beef up their resolve to break the hearts of aspiring Directors by insisting on across the board 20 percent cuts…just for the sport of it. By the second week, cocky Millennials who showed up expecting to make the team even though they have no discernable skills or practical experience, will wash out once they find out that once you get hired, you have to actually do work.

C-Suite executives generally show up during the third week sporting artificial tans and obnoxious anecdotes about the Disney cruises they took in the off-season. But they’ll need to catch up quickly with two-a-day harassment workouts. You can’t just walk in the office after a two-month off-season and expect to effectively harass your staff.

Last to show up are members of the Board of Directors. Their regimen includes “backroom deal boot camp” and “boardroom coup playacting.” Despite it being the pre-season, there’s immense pressure to get in shape before the annual shareholders meeting where they must show how well they practiced their “I give a shit” looks when a shareholder offers a proposal.

Personally, I feel I could benefit from a reasonable off-season of, say 3 months while I lick my wounds from the last corporate bloodletting season, and a productive pre-season where I can effectively sharpen my political knives.

I’d be ready to roll with any idiot who blathers on about their latest pet project, and would even suggest negating a moronic policy decision…by way of the “midlevel-manager’s challenge.”

Spring Flung

yardworkYou ever get that feeling you’re doing something terribly wrong, but it feels so right? That’s what happened today at a big home improvement store. We went there for the mundane task of purchasing a garbage disposal, but the bastards went ahead and fully stocked the garden section just so you could smell the smells of warm weather: fertilizer, soil, lawn mower oil as soon as you enter. You involuntarily walk over near the instruments of sunshine: hoses, garden tools, barbecues and bulbs. You tentatively approach them, touch them, smell them. Oh, you could get ahead of the game and buy them now, but what’s the use? They would stare at you, taunt you, mock you for being so anxious even as the cold and snow and ice still blanket your lawns making those purchases useless for another 6 weeks. I prefer to be half-full, however. I will buy the fertilizer. I will buy new garden hoses. I will buy a hoe and a rake. I will stock up on seeds. I will force spring into my psyche and winter fatigue out of it. I will enjoy every minute of it. Until spring actually arrives and I have to use all that stuff and waste a Saturday mowing my lawn…and bitching until the day I can use my skis again and light the fireplace and drink Jack Daniels on the rocks in my Lazy Boy without the interruption of mindless yard work..and dream about yet another spring..and how to avoid the tasks it brings.

…and the winner…Isn’t!

academy-awards-bestpictureI’m afraid I didn’t get to see any of the films nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, but was able to view incredibly cheap, but wildly entertaining alternate versions of those big budget movies that deserve some recognition.

My roster:

1-A young student who is incredibly clumsy is given a chance to play the drums in the school jazz band. Indeed, the band is so bad the students call it the Spazz Band. Our young drummer fits right in and repeatedly misses the cymbals with his drumsticks and ends up with deep cuts on his hands. The film’s title: “Whipgash.”

2-A actual seal, adopted by the crew of an aircraft carrier, ends up to be an incredibly effective assailant, showing uncommon speed and accuracy in biting the butts of Naval officers targeted by put upon Navy seamen. When the carrier reaches its home port, the seal finds it cannot put the fight against uptight officers behind it and attempts to enlist on a destroyer bound for Sausalito to fight Marin County vegans. The film’s title: “American Flipper.”

3-A washed up actor attempts to revive his career with a risky plan to stage non-stop reenactments of the duel that killed Alexander Hamilton. The film’s title: “Burr Man.”

4-The concierge of the most expensive hotel in Akron not only provides sexual services for the clientele, he kills them, then, in an act of extreme chivalry, embalms and buries his victims. The film’s title: “The Grand Put To Rest Hotel.”

5-The British intelligence agency hires a code breaker who speaks only in Morse Code. The man’s constant “dihs” and “dahs” get on everyone’s nerves even though he’s a genius at deciphering messages from the enemy. Sadly, he’s bounced from the service when it’s revealed he also knows all the words to “It’s a Small World After All” in Navajo. The film’s title: “The Irritation Game.”

You may not have heard of them…until this very moment. But I assure they’ll be on the film festival circuit in enlightened cities and towns around the world…that still have Blockbuster stores.

Office Spaced

IMG_2215I have no affection at all for offices. A person trying to woo me to his firm promised me a corner office. It was a generous gesture but I told him that under no circumstances would I accept a corner, or any other office. I ended up not taking the job anyway because I was an out-of-work journalist and I wasn’t quite ready to switch to something new. I also despised offices of any sort but loved newsrooms, which are, in effect, offices with just the right proportion of chaos, collaboration and profanity.

A couple of years ago as a sign of a promotion, I was ordered to move from my open cube to a closed office. “If I’m being promoted,” I asked, “why am I being placed in solitary confinement?” Alas, I now view the general prison population through a glass window. Sometimes it’s fun to have one of my co-workers on the “outside” play the game of “prison visitor” and place their hand on my window and I place mine opposite from the inside..just like in “Birdman of Alcatraz.”

IMG_2216

Thanks to the Chicago Auto Show last week, I hadn’t’ seen my office or desk in 6 days…until today. I jangled my keys like the “office warden,” opened my door and breathed in the squalid stale air that could only be neutralized by brewing coffee and inhaling a box of Altoids.

For a brief moment I thought about tidying up the mess on my desk I left behind, but why bother? That would only make room for a new mess and I was already quite familiar with the desk-tritus on display, including the Post-it note with my computer password from 2009. I keep forgetting it. Damn passwords!

The sad part is I’ve now grown used to spending my workday holed up in my human Habitrail. There are all sorts of places to hide stuff I should have tossed years ago, I can make phone calls in private and I can engage in the guilty pleasure of watching the YouTube video of Katy Perry in her skimpy jungle outfit singing “Roar,” uh… during my lunch break…of course.

In fact, I think that tomorrow I’ll start the process of reforming. I won’t toss used Keurig pods under my desk and tell curious visitors they’re my dead pet mice, or rationalize a pile of randomly ordered file folders by calling my system “Anarchic Alphabetizing.”

I might even take down the sign on my door that warns potential visitors, “Where productivity comes to die.”

The Truth About Fiction

williamsMy scalp is getting a little red from all the head scratching I’ve been doing this week. NBC suspends its main anchor for basically making up the details of a story and the anchor is lambasted as a journalistic pariah.
The host of a program that is a completely fictional “newscast” announces his impending retirement and that news is greeted in many quarters as the end of our current civilization. stewart
So let’s think about that. Real newsguy lies: bad. Fake newsguy announces retirement: worse
Now Brian Williams has been a very successful guest on a number of comedy programs exhibiting a sharp sense of humor. But is has to stick in his craw that among a certain segment of the population, Jon Stewart’s fake newscast is their main source of news.
Maybe, just maybe, the funny, suspended NBC anchorman was simply attempting to swim in Jon Stewart’s pool figuring fake news is the way to go to build an audience.
Apparently, his employer didn’t see the humor, or the irony.
Of course neither Jon Stewart nor Brian Williams cannot even begin to compare their volume of fake news with the utter fiction spewed regularly, for the past 20 years, by Fox. It always remains in my memory that moron ex-weatherman Steve Douch-ey once declared ex Michigan Congressman David Bonior was bounced from office because of his liberal policies, when in fact, Bonior chose not to run for re-election.
It doesn’t matter, really. America has decided that fake news is much more palatable and believable than actual news.
So why jump on Brian Williams when he was simply tailoring his product to the prevailing winds of public preference?
Can it be too long before CBS decides to upgrade its long-running program to “60 Made-up Minutes”?
Perhaps ABC will change its Sunday morning talker to “This Imagined Week.”
I can even see my alma mater, CNN, put the execrable Don Lemon at the helm of “Altered States of the Union.”
Personally, I’m going to relax about the whole thing. I haven’t actually watched a television newscast in ages, mainly because I can glean fake news much more quickly on Twitter and Facebook or the Onion. Afterall, when you want fake news, you want it right away..and that’s the truth.

“None of the Above”-Adventures in Hiring

The person I ever interviewed for a job sashayed into my office, put on a really bad Marilyn Monroe voice and purred, “you KNOW I’m the one for you.” I explained as gently as I could that while we paid by the hour we required our employees to work an entire day, not one hour at a time.

shitsThis was at a small radio station in upstate New York where the AM side was live with a DJ, and the FM side was dentist office music. The position we were hiring for was for the FM side. The duties included spinning very boring music and answering the phone. There wasn’t even a microphone in the studio. No, this person could not speak on the air. All the announcements were pre-recorded.

Choosing the right candidate was very important because we needed someone who not only could tell the difference between Montovani and Percy Faith, but could answer the phone without swearing at the listeners. This didn’t always work out. One job candidate who slipped through the cracks charmed us during the interview, then horrified us when a listener asked if school had been cancelled due to a snow storm. “Aren’t you listening to the effin’ station you idiot! No, your damn kid has to go to school!”

Of course, she was quite beautiful, and this being 1977, our standards were as low as our morals.

Many years later, as the CNN Detroit Bureau Chief, I received many more resumes and job inquiries from less than ideal candidates.

There was the brazen babe who barked on the phone to our assignment manager, “Git me personnel honey and make it snappy!” Our assignment manager was a rather tough young lady who barked back, “The only place I’m GITTIN’ you is off this phone!”

I always appreciate creativity, but not when it’s idiotic. For instance the gentleman who sent a cover letter that resembled the “Sock it to me” wall from the 60’s show “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in.” It actually had little doors you had to open to read about this guy’s attributes. He forgot to include, “time waster.” I quickly closed the door on his chance of being hired.

Then there was the guy who thought life wasn’t tough enough for me, so his resume was a multiple guess quiz about his experience and qualifications. I decided he was “none of the above” for me.

Which brings me to the current crop of hopefuls—the blessed Millenials, or, as I like to call them, the Mal-lennials because they’re just bad news.

Work your way up by doing your time in the sticks making bupkus while gaining valuable experience and making beginner’s mistakes? NFW! One might tweet.

No, they come into a job interview to basically find out if you’re worthy of their talents.

Don’t get me wrong, every generation had its share of cocky, egotistical jerks who think the world owes them a living. But the current version of genetic Texas Hold ‘em is no river and all flop. Just once, I’d like a kid to come into my office, say he/she would like to start at the bottom, learn the ropes and develop to become a valuable employee. I get dealt one of those…I’m all in.

On Birthdays

littleguyI have traveled around the sun one more time. The custom is to celebrate this feat of survival and centrifugal force with parties, presents, cakes, candles and a card.

When I was a kid growing up in Queens, NY, the place to be was a family restaurant on Union Turnpike called Sandy’s. My best recollection was the specialty of the house at Sandy’s was some sort of hamburger and fries, but since no one really ate at Sandy’s intentionally, its menu has long ago faded from my memory.

A Sandy’s birthday party was pretty much the same. You invited 10, 12 kids, one of whom was designated to exhibit the violent effects of nausea precisely when you were opening the biggest, and presumably, best present in the pile.

There were party favors that included one of those noisemakers that unrolls when you blow on it. It was always fun to blow the thing in a kid’s face at the precise time he or she was about to place a forkful of fries in their mouth. It resulted in proving over and over again, to the birthday boy’s delight, that french fries are definitely not aerodynamic. Either is ketchup.

Opening presents was always fun. Back in the 60’s you mainly received from your friends board games, a football or a high-caliber faux firearm you could use to pretend you were either a war hero or cowboy ridding the American West of indigenous people who still regret selling Manhattan to those nasty Dutch boys for 24 bucks in bangles and beads.

The tension would build as you unwrapped each gift. If you received a sweet air rifle the kids yelled “yay!!!!.” If you received the board game “Park and Shop” you might hear one of the kids quietly mutter, “I have that game. It sucks. Actually, that IS my game. Couldn’t wait to dump it on someone.” Receiving a football or anything else that could be construed as a projectile brought horror to the host parents as a spontaneous game of catch would break out in the restaurant. If you were accurate you nailed a busboy with a full load of dirty dishes. The noise they made when they crashed to the tile floor was the best birthday present of all.

Sandy’s closed in the mid-60’s and was followed in its space by restaurants called Sands and Pancake Island, which finally gave way at the end of the decade to the slot car craze evolving into Sebring Raceway, where we blew hours and our allowances on racing our slot cars. I lost track of it after that when I went away to college.

We’ll go out to eat again for my birthday, but it won’t be like Sandy’s. For one, it’ll just be our family and no one will be bringing presents, since to make their lives easier, I find a few things online, buy them and let the gang wrap them. When they hand them to me I act totally surprised when I rip off the paper and they give me a look that says, “whatever keeps him awake.”

Make no mistake, I appreciate the chance to take another trip around the sun, even though by now I know all the rest stops and bars and space junk. You never know how many of those trips you’re granted, but I know one thing. I won’t waste a minute playing Park and Shop. That game sucks!

Requiem For Radio Shack

radioshackLong before I ever set foot in a Radio Shack there was a small chain of stores in the New York metro area called Electronic City. They were dark, musty places with an entry way and a counter and guys in plaid shirts who wanted to know, very quickly, what the hell you wanted. A resistor, a capacitor, a switch, a battery, whatever, you had to pretty well damned know what you wanted because they’d have to retreat to the back room to find it for you.

Then I discovered my first Radio Shack some time in the early 1970’s. They were bright. You could browse. Oh, the nerdy salespeople might hover a bit and were almost too anxious to help you but they were fine. The only counter was the long glass one where you paid and might see little electronic games displayed that made it possible to play poker or Blackjack against yourself. Calculators were still new and quite expensive and soon they became available at Radio Shack.

When I had a science project that was my go-to place. I simply brought my list of parts and the salesperson cheerfully scrounged up every last switch and circuit board. Sometimes they were just a little too cheerful and if you needed a D battery, they might show you 5 different brands and want to explain the advantages and disadvantages of all of them. Honestly, I just needed a battery that would put the light in my flashlight.

They also seemed somewhat conservative in temperament. I had a rather coarse electronics instructor in college named Harry Hawkins who attempted to make learning the order of the colored bands on a resistor easier to learn with a totally inappropriate mnemonic device (I apologize in advane) “Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.” Which, as I remember it, stood for: blue, black, red, orange, yellow, green, brown, violet, grey, white. There I stood in the middle of a Radio Shack checking out the resistors attempting to remember those values and unconsciously muttered my teacher’s “helpful” device. The horrified clerk quickly came over and offered his assistance while shushing me with the hand that wasn’t carrying the latest “electronic slide rule.”

Radio Shack always stayed about the same, even when it started selling mobile phones and computers but eventually seemed provincial in the face of big box stores and online commerce.

I haven’t been in one in years, and I know that’s part of what killed the chain. But it’s a bit sad to know when you need a crazy part, a connector, a cable, there won’t be a nerdy guy and convenient place to go. Yes, I can order the stuff online, but sometimes you just don’t want to. Sometimes you just want the security of in-person handholding, and a place to buy a battery-powered toy you can try to beat at Texas Hold ‘em.

RIP Radio Shack. In your memory I promise never to invoke the words of Harry Hawkins.