tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91928594846596827712023-11-15T09:03:44.792-08:00Key West WindNo Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-89291278060786946522015-12-23T12:21:00.000-08:002015-12-23T12:21:35.306-08:00THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT RUMP<br />
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THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT RUMP</div>
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A 2019 News Summary</div>
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Washington D.C. May 15 – The attempted assassination of President Donald Rump
by an Irish ‘sleeper cell’ is having further ramifications in the Congress with
the introduction of several bills to prohibit Catholic immigration to the
United States and to detain all undocumented Catholic immigrants in ‘rehab resorts’
until extradited to their home countries. The legislation, sponsored by members
of the Congressional caucus calling itself ‘Real Patriots First’ also calls for a ban on Americans
traveling to Ireland as well as a boycott of Irish imports ranging from whiskey
to folk singers.</div>
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Responsibility for the attack on the president was claimed
by the Holy Warriors of Bethlehem, a militant offshoot of the Knights of
Columbus. The claim was posted on their website until the administration --
skirting free speech guarantees --
demanded that world-wide servers voluntarily shut down the site. However,
the Chinese giant, Ali Baba, kept it running long enough for various western
sources to publish the group’s intent ‘to wage holy war against the infidel
protestants who have defiled God and controlled America’s evil empire for too
long.’ </div>
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At her morning news conference today, Vice-President Sarah
Failin issued a statement that security cameras might be installed in Catholic
Sunday School classrooms and suggested that church confessionals no longer be
considered ‘above the law’. The Vatican responded almost immediately with a
Facebook video by Cardinal Terrance Twist, head of the Papal Curia.</div>
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‘The Holy Father wishes the world to know that Catholicism
is a peaceful faith and that the Mother Church – despite a few brief aberrations
during the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition – condemns all acts of
senseless violence in general and those of small revisionist groups in
particular. To blemish the entire Catholic world based on the acts of a few
misled radicals could be considered a mortal sin.”</div>
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In a related development, the head of Homeland Security, Ben
Carfather, announced that the month-long encirclement of Boston by federal
troops has been lifted along with the ban on Boston Celtics basketball games.
The prohibition on St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, however, will continue as
will the closing of St. Patrick’s cathedral in New York City until a more
suitable name can be agreed upon. Mr. Carfather stated: ‘We now believe the
principal threat to our security and to the nation’s tranquility can be found in terrorist cells hiding
in abandoned grain elevators in the Midwest. As a consequence, we now have a
huge interagency dragnet covering wherever beautiful spacious skies and amber
waves of grain can be found.” </div>
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Reliable sources have also reported that Secretary of State
Ted Missile was preparing a NATO Resolution that prohibits the display of
Shamrock flags, leprechaun images and playing of the song ‘How Are Things In Gloccamora’ in
member countries. These are believed to be recruiting tools for The Holy
Warriors of Bethlehem. </div>
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On
the local level reports from around the nation indicate that mob attacks on
Irish pubs in New York, Houston, Chicago and San Francisco are lessening,
although credible bomb threats were reported last night in Kansas City, Atlanta
and Charlotte; and “No Irish Need
Apply’ signs have proliferated in Alabama and South Carolina. In addition, anti-catholic
graffiti is reportedly appearing on church properties and bingo parlors in the
Rocky Mountain states.</div>
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Although the new legislation, which President Rump is
expected to sign from his secret hair salon in the Caribbean, makes no mention
of where the ‘rehab resorts’ are to be located, reliable sources say work has
already begun to restore structures in the Mojave Desert that were used in
World War Two to house people of Japanese descent.</div>
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(more, unfortunately, to come)</div>
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*************</div>
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Please share this blog with
friends. They can access it at <a href="http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/">http://keywestwind.blogspot.com</a>
or by Googling keywestwind.</div>
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And may everyone enjoy a full and satisfying holiday, and a
2016 more sane than the year now approaching its welcome grave.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-68808158278903185372015-11-07T14:28:00.000-08:002015-11-07T14:28:24.253-08:00THE UNFORGETTABLE FALL OF JACK MCGRATH<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">THE
UNFORGETTABLE FALL OF JACK MCGRATH </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Small
Rumination On Friendship</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I’ve been thinking a lot about
friendship lately – its contradictions and conundrums<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-- because two very old and close friends have died in
recent months. The first, Merrill Grant – born and bred in New York City -- was
one of the most honest, self-effacing men I’ve ever known; and also the funniest.
We first met over lunch many years ago when I was trying to recruit him into my
company.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Halfway through the
second martini (It was the ‘Mad Men’ era.), we were cautiously feeling each
other out; gossiping a little about the television business and talking eventually
about our families.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told Merrill that in a few weeks I
was taking my kids on safari to Kenya and Tanzania and was really looking
forward to the trip. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Merrill, who
had a distinctly New York accent, broke into a cherubic smile and said:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Yeah? That’s wild!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My old man did the same thing when I
was a kid.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Really?” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Yeah, really … except
it was called the Bronx Zoo.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I loved Merrill from
that moment on and for the next thirty-five years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My second friend – Bob
Schneider – was of a different sort entirely: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>cautious, loath to make decisions and always a bit defensive.
He and Merrill never met; and it’s safe to say each would have disliked the
other. Coming from a very modest background, Bob became a vice-president of
Xerox Corporation and had a career that anyone would consider successful. Yet
his attitudes and his opinions were usually tentative and unsure, and he was
most at home in while sitting on the fence. He once told me a story that – in
all probability -- played an important role in shaping his dedication to studied
neutrality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When he was a senior in a small-town high school, he became enthralled
with a girl whom he considered “way above his station”; the daughter of the
local bank president. In order to impress her, he began saving money from his part-time
job as a grocery clerk until – after a few months – he’d saved enough to invite
her to dinner at the only “high class” restaurant in the area. Much to his
surprise (and relief), she accepted. </span></div>
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</span>When the night arrived, they were seated by a tuxedoed maitre d’ (intimidating
enough, to say the least) and given menus the likes of which Bob had never
seen. But he studied his carefully as if he knew what he was doing and finally
asked the girl of his dreams what she was going to have.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I think I’ll have the lobster
bisque.” she said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Good choice.” Bob told her.
“But wouldn’t you like some soup first?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bob’s life-long philosophy of ‘better safe than sorry’ may
have been born that night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any
case, he became in time a decent man who avoided risk, never again put his foot
in his mouth and lived a satisfying and largely predictable life. I think of
him as one of an endless and anonymous herd of executives who spend a lifetime
in our giant corporations and retire without a trace. And yet he remained a good
friend long after he faded to self-absorption and ennui in an assisted-living
community.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then – inevitably --
Jack McGrath came to mind. I met Jack when I was eighteen and innocent. A year
later, I was ten years older. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d gotten a job as an
attendant in a private mental hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, and had moved
into a five-bedroom apartment with four other ‘psychiatric aides’ (as we were
charitably called), including Jack who was in his early thirties. The apartment
was a sprawling, five-bedroom wreck (cracked linoleum floors, one bathroom,
green and purple wallpaper) within walking distance of the hospital and – more
importantly – upstairs from a hangout called The Cardinal Bar and Grill,
generally referred to as ‘The Bird’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My other three roommates –
Carl Ringhouser, Howie Boudreau and Milton Kanzaki – were in their mid to late
twenties and working on ‘advanced degrees’ in psychology and sociology. Since I
was barely out of high school, and had never heard of an ‘advanced degree’, I was
benignly tolerated but generally ignored; except by Jack who with enthusiasm
offered to introduce me to ‘the real world’. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had no idea at the
time that he was a satyr. I’d never even heard the word. (For anyone unfamiliar
with satyriasis, it’s the male equivalent of nymphomania.) All I knew was that
he was a tall, skinny Irishman who played hard and drank heavily and loved
great jokes and said a lot of outrageous things. He was a great mentor, or so I
thought, for a young kid who’d never been in ‘the real world’ and was aching to
explore it. So Jack’s obsession with sex came as a shock, but not necessarily a
negative one. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although his audacity
with girls – his outright lasciviousness <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-- was way beyond the bounds of my imaginings, I did get some
vicarious pleasure from watching him ‘work the room’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hanging around The Bird night after
night, month after month, he talked and laughed with ‘the guys’ while his eyes
scanned the bar for any female, and I mean ANY female, he might take to
bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once he found a target, he
managed to proposition her within five minutes of saying hello. If he were rebuffed,
which was less often than one might think, he took it in stride and just
targeted another female sitting a few barstools down. And needless to say, there
were nights when we had to pull him away from near-fights with boyfriends or
with husbands who were playing pinball at the other end of the bar. Even as we
hustled him back to safety, he’d be laughing and joking and re-scanning the
room. (At one point, Jack thought he’d died and gone to heaven when he met a nurse
who turned out to be a nymphomaniac. The relationship was headed for disaster
when a hastily-organized and very hush-hush intervention forced them to stop
fucking in empty rooms, alleyways, broom closets, shower stalls, and stairwells.
But that’s another story for another time.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet despite his sex addiction, Jack
generated loyalty from an astonishing number of people because he had little
malice in his soul and was, in fact, supremely generous; lending money to
anyone who needed it and never asking for repayment. In fact, he seemed
surprised when people did repay him. Even women who were at first appalled by
him came to accept him and often to like him. He also earned people’s respect
because he was brave beyond bravado and dedicated to his job assignment. As
senior ‘aide’ on the most violent ward in the hospital, he was always the first
to dive into a fight or to try to restrain a patient who’d gone ‘high’. Not
easy, and often dangerous. But he was always there. Always reliable. Always in
good spirits.</span></div>
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</span>And then, suddenly, he wasn’t. Our crazy, tough, free-spirited,
sex-addicted Irishman was gone. I don’t remember how exactly: a heart attack, a
brain embolism. Whatever it was, it struck without warning and killed him
instantly. Nor do I remember how Milton Kanzaki ended up with the urn. But it
was Milton, a shy and awkward intellectual, who remembered Jack insisting one
night that when he died, he wanted to be buried at sea. And Milton – thinking
Jack’s request serious but absurd --had soberly promised he would make it so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s why, after a few days of alcoholic debate, and using money
chipped in by the Bird’s regulars, we chartered a plane in Bridgeport,
Connecticut, to spread Jack’s ashes in the ocean. We could have rented a boat,
of course, but the prospect of a plane ride (suggested, by the way, by an
ex-girlfriend) captured our imaginations. And Jack, we told ourselves, would
have loved it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We took off on a sweltering summer Saturday in a little plane that
seated three plus the pilot. Milton sat in the copilot’s seat holding the urn,
and Carl and I sat in back. The wings were above the fuselage – which gave us
an unencumbered view below -- and the two side windows were open which gave us
a welcome breeze.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we climbed
past the shoreline, we could see sailboats and motor craft all over Long Island
Sound. Carl claimed he could even see an outline of the Empire State Building
to the west. And when Milton and I turned to look, the inexplicable happened.</span></div>
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</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jack’s urn fell out the
window.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Milton had balanced it on
the window ledge for only a second and it had somehow slipped his grip. It
happened so quickly that we could only react with shocked silence. Yet,
paradoxically, time seemed to slow as we watched it plummet toward a raucous
flock of seagulls circling a garbage barge almost directly below us; and saw it
land – unbroken -- on a huge mound of human detritus being towed toward a
dumping ground in the open ocean.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And so our flawed true friend, Jack McGrath, -- whom we valued deeply
and will always remember -- was consigned to the sea as promised; but not
exactly as planned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">****</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s been said that the true test of friendship is time. But that
strikes me as<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>tautological and
self-evident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>True friendship
barely recognizes time. If Merrill or Bob or Jack were alive today, we’d pick
up right where we left off; as if no time at all had passed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So it occurs to me that true friendship usually lasts longer than love,
and is more trustworthy. Almost from the day we’re born, we’re fed the messy and
misleading mythology of love: love conquers all .. all your need is love ..
you’ll find the love of your life .. you’ll live and love happily ever after ..
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>etc. But whether framed in the
language of sappy romantic novels or great literary masterpieces, we soon find
out that we’re neither Cinderella nor Prince Charming; and that love is at best
a moving target; fickle and ephemeral. And while that may sound cynical or even
bitter to a romantic, the divorce rate alone testifies to its truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact is that love, in
the end, rarely endures the test of time unless it’s based on and buttressed by
friendship. If we’re not lucky enough (and luck plays a big role) to enjoy both
with a partner, our friendships still endure and support us. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We may separate friends for our own reasons, as I’ve often done, and we
may not even acknowledge them for long periods. But they nonetheless last a
lifetime, and the mutual loyalty that seals them yields its own reward.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thus the burning question is: why can’t more of us get past the
deceptive mythology of love and realize that fulfillment can be found in true friendship
as well? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It beats me. But I for one am thankful beyond words for friends living
and dead. They’ve made life well worth living.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>****</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>AFTER DINNER MINTS</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I worked at the Hartford hospital for nearly five years and
eventually started college. But after the eccentricities of an institution
whose staff was nearly as dysfunctional as its patients, college life seemed
only intermittently interesting. Ultimately, I dropped out. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After three years, we were summarily evicted from our apartment
when Milton Kanzaki – finally learning how to drive --<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>lost control of Carl’s aged Lincoln
Continental and ripped off an entire corner of the building. The bar owner also
eighty-sixed us, but soon changed his mind when business at The Bird started to
slump.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At about the same time, a new drug called Thorazine (a
great-granddaddy of Valium) was introduced into mental health care. We welcomed
it because violence in the wards dropped dramatically. That the patients seemed
unnaturally mellow and at times trancelike was just fine with the staff and was
taken as a sign of progress<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>..
which, of course, it wasn’t. A pacified schizophrenic is nonetheless a
schizophrenic. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The nymphomaniac nurse was ultimately fired after a doctor
caught her in bed with one of his patients. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reliable rumor had it she was given a decent severance
package. The patient’s family, as one might expect, was never told.</span></div>
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</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please share it with
friends. It can be accessed at <a href="http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/">http://keywestwind.blogspot.com</a>
or simply by Googling keywestwind. Many thanks.</span></div>
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</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-20850658153032099952014-12-30T06:44:00.001-08:002014-12-30T06:44:28.929-08:00THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA DOG<div class="MsoNormal">
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<br /></div>
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(THE FOLLOWING KEY WEST STORY IS TRUE. BUT BECAUSE THE
STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS STILL APPLIES, ALL NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT
THE GUILTY.)</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> Call him Howard. Or better, call him Big Howie because he’s built like a
grizzly bear: tall, heavy-set and formidable. He doesn’t walk, exactly. He
lumbers. His voice is gravelly and lubricated by Captain Morgan. Imagine a
middle-aged linebacker with a nasty laugh and a slight paunch. He looks pretty
much past his prime. But who’d want to risk finding out?</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Big Howie is a senior agent of the Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS) and has never been inclined toward kindness or compassion. (Something
to do with having three ex-wives.) So his temperament is well suited to the job
of patrolling the waters off the Florida Keys in search of anyone trying to
sneak into the good ole’ US of A. Big Howie and his partner, Dan the Fan, have
saved the country from more desperate Cubans, Dominicans, Haitians, Mexicans,
Nicaraguans and Hondurans than they can count. Along with the Coast Guard, they
are dedicated enforcers of our strange “Wet foot/Dry foot” policy which – should
you not be aware of it <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-- says
that if you make it to dry land, the US government won’t send your sorry ass back
to where you came from. But if you’re caught floating –- or even standing -- in
coastal waters, we’ll ship you back to the misery and degradation you’ve risked
your life to escape.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> So one afternoon a few years ago, Big Howie is out testing a new
high-speed boat that’s been confiscated from some hapless drug runner and given
to the INS when he spots what looks like a piece of flotsam bobbing in the
distance about three miles off Geiger Key. It’s a hot, clear day and the ocean is
flatter than a drunken tourist singing karaoke. Since he’s not technically on
patrol and also alone (Dan the Fan has taken a sick day to attend a Marlins
game), he decides to ignore whatever it is and powers up the Hawk Channel toward
Palm Island where he spends an hour or more running the boat through its paces
and playing tag with sea buoys.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When he heads back to Key West, he
notices the same piece of flotsam floating in the same place. Unable to
identify it through his binoculars, and mildly curious, he heads toward it
until it materializes into another of what he and his co-workers call ‘Cuban
cruise ships’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s smaller than a
rowboat but bigger than a coffin; and made of pieces of old canvas tied to
metal milk cans which somehow support a makeshift engine mount. But there’s no
sign of an engine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Big Howie’ s
seen a lot of homemade ‘vessels’ in his day -- everything from rafted bathtubs
to motorized surf boards --<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but
this one takes the cake. </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s an old man sitting statue-still in the middle, holding a piece
of frayed rope looped around the neck of a grungy dog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Big Howie circles them at a safe distance,
calling out a ‘Hello!’, but the old man remains silent and rigid. Even the dog
doesn’t make eye contact, emitting only a low growl. Maneuvering carefully
alongside, Big Howie tosses a bottle of water toward the old man who reacts for
the first time, picks up the bottle and empties it in one long, thirsty shot.
Suddenly he manages a broken smile and -- with a voice that’s both hoarse and
weak –- breaks into a torrent of Spanish.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Unfortunately,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Big Howie’s foreign lingo skills range from
‘adios’ to ‘café con leche’ and end there. So he has no idea what’s being said.
But that doesn’t matter because his duty’s clear. All that’s required of him is
to radio his position to the Coast Guard and wait for them to pick up the old
man. In a few days, he’ll be back from whence he came and the American taxpayer
will be saved from another welfare recipient. </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But then, as Big Howie picks up the microphone of the marine
radio, something strange happens. Not being the introspective type, he doesn’t
know how it happens or why it happens. But it does happen. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He feels a sharp stab of sympathy for
the old man which confuses him long enough to have an alien –- and unsettling –-
thought which leads to an impulsive –- and illegal -- decision. Looking around
to make sure no other boats are in sight, he throws the old man a line and
gestures for him to tie it to something. But there’s nothing safe to tie it to.
So the old man clutches it like a lifeline – which it is -- while Big Howie
slowly tows him further out to sea, steering with one hand and making calming
gestures with the other.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> He heads toward an uncharted shoal a mile away, near the edge of the
Eastern Sambo reef. Although it seems to take hours to get there, there are still
no other boats around; which is just fine because what he’s doing is way out of
bounds. The shoal<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-- all sand and only
about fifteen feet long <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-- was
created a year earlier by Hurricane Wilma and barely manages to stay a foot above
the waterline. That means it’s a temporary but indisputable sliver of the good
ole’ US of A. So after he reaches it and makes the radio call, and after a
Coast Guard cutter appears on the hazy horizon, Big Howie – feeling mysteriously
good about himself -- <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>takes off
for home; leaving behind a bent and barefoot old Cuban standing on a spit of
sand with a grungy mutt at his side.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Normally, that should be the end of the
story: a random and impetuous act of kindness from an improbable source. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But once the kindness bug bites, all
kinds of itches want to be scratched, and all manner of confusion arises.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>*****************</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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The next day is Big Howie’s day off <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and -- never one to consider sympathy or
understanding as motives -- <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he finds
himself in unfamiliar territory. He’s attacked by guilt and wondering why he
did what he did, and why he ignored his sworn duty. At first he tries to tell
himself that it’s probably because he likes dogs. Which is true; finding them more
compatible than women. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that’s
hardly a satisfying explanation because he’s nonetheless curious about out how the
old man is doing. And the grungy dog too, for that matter.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So he calls the INS detention
center and learns that the old man has been shipped to Miami where, according
to the records’ clerk, he has a grandson and various other relatives who are
happy to welcome him and who are very grateful he’s alive.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“So how about the dog?
“asks Big Howie.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We sent
it over to the pound.” says the clerk. “They’re gonna’ put it down.”</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Big Howie<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is shocked. “Whaddaya’ mean they’re gonna’ put it down?” </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You know, bubba …<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>put it to sleep. Euthanize it.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“They can’t do that!” says
Big Howie loudly. “I mean … it’s the old guy’s dog!” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Yeah? Well, ain’t
none of my business, man. You got a problem .. take it up with them.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And with
that the clerk ends the call.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Asshole.” Big
Howie says; and with his usual assessment of people he’s never met adds:
“Shitheads … every fuckin’ one of ‘em.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Indignant,
and anxious to take corrective action, he then jumps into his Ford 150 and
drives out to the animal shelter on Stock Island. It’s still early and the only
person there is an elderly female volunteer. He overwhelms her with official bluster,
his badge and his size; and then wings it. He tells her the dog entered the
country illegally and has to be sent back to Cuba. The poor woman is reduced to
speechless confusion as he ‘confiscates’ a portable kennel and manages to get
the dog – trembling and snapping – into the back of his truck.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> Only then does he recognize
he’s given himself a problem. He knows what he wants to do, only he’s not sure
how to do it. But since he’s an action kind of guy, he takes the dog by the
horns, so to speak, and brings it to a vet he’s met a few times at Bare Assets.
The guy’s not happy to see Big Howie at his place of business, which has
several people and pets in the waiting room, and even less happy to see a
defensive, flea-infested mutt with no license or papers. But he eventually
agrees to examine the dog and to give it its proper shots on condition that Big
Howie makes no mention of their favorite strip joint. He even arranges for the
dog to be bathed and groomed the following day by his new fiancé, also with the
understanding that Bare Assets is off limits conversationally.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> So now Big Howie has a clean,
healthy and somewhat calmer mutt who speaks no English; but is ready to be reunited
with its rightful owner and its native language. (For the sake of convenience
Big Howie calls the dog Pedro, the name he applies to all male Hispanics.
Females, of course, are Chiquitas, as in bananas.) </div>
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After getting the number and address of the old man’s grandson, he calls on the phone and introduces
himself. The conversation goes like this:</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“ We got your grandfather’s dog down
here. You can come and get it anytime.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“What chu’ talkin’ about? What dog?’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“The dog he came over wit’, bubba .. in the boat.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Hang on.” says the grandson. A
muted conversation is held in Spanish, with only the word ‘gringo’
recognizable. Then the grandson comes back on:</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“He says it’s not his dog.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Whaddaya’ mean it’s not his dog? It
was in the boat wit’ him! Whose dog is it?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“He don’t know. He says he picked it
up on the beach near Matanzas.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“He WHAT? Big Howie is dumbfounded.
“Jesus Christ, man! What’s up with that? He need company or somethin’?”</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Naw, nothin’ like that. He
says he figured if he ran out of food, he could eat it.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The fuck you say! You be serious?
He was gonna’ eat the dog?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Thas’ what he say, man.
What can I tell ya’?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Big Howie is rendered silent
until the grandson says: “You still there?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Yeah .. yeah.” he answers.
“So he don’t want it?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Hell, no. We awready got two
kids, two cats and a dog. Don’ need another one.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You sure? REAL sure?” Big
Howie asks in desperation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Yes boss, fer damn
sure. But thanks for pickin’ up the abuelo. He’s a little nuts sometimes, but
we love ‘im.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Ye’re welcome.” answers Big
Howie, as he hangs up. And then, addressing the general situation as he sees
it, he <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>shouts “Aw shit!” because
he accepts that the dog, like it or not, is now his and his alone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that, my friends, is the
best story I’ve ever heard about how to adopt a dog in this lovely, eccentric
and unpredictable place called Key West. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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************* <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> AFTER DINNER MINTS</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I ran into Big Howie recently in Fort Lauderdale airport. He
eventually resigned from the INS and now runs a charter fishing boat out of Key
Largo. He says he’s found a woman who, while much younger, understands him and
is happy to live with him. Her name is Maria and she’s Cuban American. He
showed me a photograph and – I must say – she’s quite beautiful; and Howie’s
opinions of people and the world seem to have mellowed.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Pedro, he told me, is still alive, still nervous and
skittery around people, but is now bi-lingual. He’s sired six puppies ‘out of
wedlock’ with a neighbor’s Labrador, and Howie and Maria have kept one. Howie
named it Tonto after the Lone Ranger’s ever-loyal sidekick.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think it’s a great name, but I can’t help but wonder whether
Maria has ever told Howie that ‘tonto’ in Spanish means ‘stupid’. If she hasn’t,
she’s wise beyond her years. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally, the ‘wet foot/dry foot’ policy remains in effect,
despite the renewal of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States.
It was and is an ill-conceived attempt to offer freedom and to deny it at the
same time. Let’s hope our policy makers come to their senses sometime soon, and
figure out that liberty cannot be both a carrot and a stick.</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you enjoyed reading this blog, please share it with your
friends. It can be accessed at <a href="http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/">http://keywestwind.blogspot.com</a>
or by googling keywestwind. Many thanks and best wishes for a happy and
satisfying 2015.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
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</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-64011848965328405172014-12-04T09:45:00.002-08:002014-12-07T08:50:14.147-08:00A FAREWELL TO EAVESDROPPING<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-outline-level: 1; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-outline-level: 1; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-outline-level: 1; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-outline-level: 1; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-outline-level: 1; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-outline-level: 1; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-outline-level: 1; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve always loved eavesdropping. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I know it’s rude, nasty and sneaky. But that’s never bothered me. The
snoop in me has always ignored any guilty hiccups I might have. Of course, unlike
Facebook and Google, I don’t do it to exploit people. Nor do I eavesdrop on
everyone everywhere like our government. I don’t need righteous justifications
like ‘national security’ or ‘profitable growth’ to invade someone’s personal
life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I eavesdrop because it’s fun and
makes me feel, well, kind of powerful. And it occasionally teaches me
something. That’s a kick too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over the years, I’ve eavesdropped in
bars, in men’s rooms, at baseball games and auctions, on a hayride, in a
hospital emergency room and in a motel while a married salesman and his girlfriend
were having rough sex next door. (The noise couldn’t be ignored so that might
not count as true eavesdropping.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve also developed ways to
avoid being caught. The best is to seem totally immersed in a book or a
magazine. (I prefer <i>The New Yorker</i> because it implies a touch of
integrity.) People might glance at you once or twice, but that’s about it.
Still, to be safe I always turn the page every few minutes. This technique can
also be useful for discouraging chatty seatmates on airplanes or guys on the
next barstool who think their life stories are interesting. (Or you can just
say ‘Bugger off.’ and take your chances.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I don’t have
anything to read, however, I simply look as if I’m deep in thought; reflecting
on theoretical aspects of the Higgs boson or pondering the advantages of a Walmart
Lay-Away Plan. Once in blue moon, of course, my target’s eyes and mine meet accidentally;
and then I’m in danger of being discovered. So I switch roles instantly. I look
back at him/her with a weak smile, empty eyes and slightly slack jaw. I call it
my Forrest Gump look. It works every time. The other person invariably looks
away, satisfied that I’m an idiot and couldn’t possibly understand what’s being
said anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But here’s the tragedy:
nearly all my clandestine eavesdropping pleasures – my secret senses of power
and superior knowledge – have vanished. For all practical purposes,
eavesdropping is dead; cruelly murdered and mutilated by cellular technology. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so, with right and with reason
on my side, I have come –with one exception – to hate cell phones. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider the two girls having
dinner at the table next to mine last night: each was either talking on her
cell or texting, pausing only to pick up a fork or to take a sip of wine. The
most significant exchange between them came when one looked at the other and
said: “Kim says hi.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or consider the six local bus
passengers I saw sitting side by side, totally lost; three texting, two talking
into smart phones, and one head-down listening to music. I could have stripped
nude or hanged myself from the handrail and no-one would have noticed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, of course, there’s the other
side of the coin: morons who shout into their phones as if the person on the
other end is stone deaf. Or who turn the speaker function on and broadcast hip-hop
or rap or whatever at arm’s length. People like that are so removed from a
sense of common courtesy – of simple decency -- that they’re not worth
discussing. If I had my way, I’d simply cut out their tongues and puncture
their eardrums. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I hope you can
understand how I feel. Cellphones have ruined eye-to-eye communication. They’ve
made privacy (and often, intimacy) into a loud broadcast medium. They’ve inured
people to the daily realities and moment-to-moment events surrounding them. And
they’ve made eavesdropping extinct. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet, all is not lost. There is
one ray of light in the dismal Twittery night; one life raft floating on the
ocean of Facebook garbage; one gemstone hidden in the endless strip mine of
cellular blah blah.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I call it the ‘driplet’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The driplet is a shard of cell conversation
– a mere fragment – overheard in passing. It can be a phrase, a sentence or
perhaps even a paragraph. But it must be incomplete, and as opposed to a
dribble which is inconsequential, it must suggest something that fires your
imagination. In other words, it must prick your natural curiosity. It must scream
out for a plot; a scenario, a mystery. A driplet – to be succinct -- must be drama
in a drip.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, as examples, are three driplets
overheard on a recent trip to Manhattan:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From an overweight and somewhat
disheveled Englishman walking through the diamond district on West 48<sup>th</sup>
Street:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Good
God, all they sell here are diamonds. Can’t she be satisfied<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with something
less?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And from a girl in battered Converse
sneakers and pink knee socks standing alone in the rain in Washington Square:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“FuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyouNO
I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>WILL NOT LISTEN!fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou ..” etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And finally, my favorite from a well-dressed
guy with a fancy briefcase walking fast in the garment district:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I’m telling ya’ .. this guy’s legit. He’s the financial advisor to the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Dalai Lama.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now ask yourself. Don’t those three
tiny driplets suggest the human condition at its most vulnerable and its most
gullible? Can’t you launch whole flights of imagination around them? If at
least one of them doesn’t get your creative juices flowing, then your mind –
I’m sorry to say -- has calcified; and you must seek help right away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Check yourself into The Monty
Python Clinic of the Subconscious or the George Carlin <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Happiness Center before it’s too late.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And good luck to you. I mean it …
well, mostly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span>AFTER DINNER MINTS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">If you’ve heard a driplet or two that’s stuck to your ribs,
contribute it/them to the Comment section of this blog. Maybe we can develop an
almanac of memorable driplets or even start a contest for the best driplet of
2015. If successful enough, the word itself might even be recognized in the
next edition of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">This driplet just in, overheard from a Wall Street type
vacationing in Key West. “This chick thinks she’s an IPO.” That’s short, in
case you didn’t know, for Initial Public Offering. The mind boggles wondering
whether she has a share price. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I hope you’ll ask friends to read this blog. It can be
accessed by googling keywestwind or by going to http://keywestwind.blogspot.com<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span>Many thanks and Happy Holidays.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-58658816536624367452013-07-16T11:42:00.000-07:002013-07-16T11:42:42.202-07:00HOW TO FULFILL YOUR DREAMS ...KEY WEST STYLE<span lang="EN">
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Hearken to the life of Michael Avery: surfer, sailor, street vendor, handyman, author, drug dealer, raconteur, convicted felon and dedicated gentleman.<br />
I’ve long struggled to capture Michael in a single phrase; but all I can say is he occupies a unique space between Peter Pan and Jack Kerouac. For example, he and a friend once tried to sail from Hawaii to Australia by following the contrails of passenger jets. They weren’t sure whether their first landfall would be Australia or Japan. It turned out to be New Zealand. On another occasion -- sailing alone in the South Pacific-- he was thrown from his boat and clung to a chartreuse toilet seat for two days until someone --no doubt drawn to the seat -- rescued him.<br />
But those were only waypoints on a journey that led to Key West in the late 1980s.. He was by then in his mid to late thirties, and was searching for a home; a place that not only tolerated eccentricity and individuality, but encouraged them; a community where you were rarely asked why you were there or what you did; and where most people lived hard in the present. Key West seemed to him a perfect fit.<br />
He also fell in love with a local girl who was blond, bright, attractive and gregarious. I’ll call her Charly to protect her privacy. She was at the time a bartender -- popular and well respected -- in a town whose bars were the principal venue for almost all serious intercourse; conversational, political, and otherwise. Michael fell so hard for her (and she for him) that on their first date, he trusted her with his longest-held and most-cherished dream which she promptly forgot until one afternoon twenty years later.<br />
In those days, it wasn’t easy to make a buck in Key West. The cruise ship boom was in its infancy, the real estate developers were exploiting the geriatrics up on the mainland, and the local bankers were sleepy. In fact, it was sometimes hard to tell the difference between the oddballs and iconoclasts who were ’down and out’ and the oddballs and iconoclasts who were ’up and coming’ (Come to think of it, it still is.).<br />
So for a number of years Michael --with Charly as a stabilizer -- lived a life of conventional unconventionality. He worked at a lot of things, including selling jewelry as a street vendor, writing short stories for a local newspaper, house-sitting for snowbirds and, when things were slow, dealing cocaine to a select group of friends. At the time, half the town seemed to be selling drugs to the other half. Even a Key West fire chief with the exquisite name of Bum Farto had been convicted of dealing. (Three days later he jumped bail, never to be heard from again.) Michael was also convicted, served time in prison, and came back to Charly in a less adventuresome frame of mind.<br />
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Then, sometime in mid-1998, his life went permanently awry. He was diagnosed with liver disease and told by doctors that he wouldn’t survive without a transplant. Two years later (’two bumpy years later’ according to Charly) it became clear that no transplant would be forthcoming. And as predicted, Michael became more and more ill; his behavior sometimes normal, sometimes nearly irrational. He was drinking heavily, still hanging out with buddies at his favorite bar, and as always reading books about life and death. But he was slipping physically as well as mentally and, in Charly’s eyes, struggling to come to grips with the inevitable. <br />
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On a November day in 2000 -- when the nation was riveted to Florida’s Bush/Gore election battle -- Charly asked Michael to go to the bank and make a payment on their car loan. He agreed to go that afternoon; so she gave him a check and the payment book and left for work. <br />
At some point in the day, he did start out for the bank but stopped first at his favorite bar for a few drinks with cronies. When he left the bar, he said he’d be back shortly to pay his tab. <br />
He then drove to the bank -- the Key West Federal Credit Union -- and fulfilled the dream that he’d confided to Charly twenty years earlier. Instead of paying the car loan, he robbed the bank.<br />
After passing the teller a note demanding money, he politely told her he wouldn’t harm her and asked her not to include any coins because he wasn’t planning to travel through any toll booths. Frightened anyway, and following strict bank policy never to interfere, she complied. So carrying a sizeable bag stuffed with cash, he left the bank as quietly as he’d entered it. When he reached his car, he turned to see if anyone was following him. Surprised that no-one was, he started the car, took time to fasten his seat belt and drove away. <br />
<br />
And that’s the dream he’d had since early childhood; the fantasy he’d confided to Charly: he’d always wanted to rob a bank. And over the years that dream had been nurtured and sustained by the mythological lives of Jesse and Frank James, Butch Cassidy, the Dalton boys, and later by ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger and Willie ‘The Actor’ Sutton. And now Michael Avery had done it!<br />
<br />
Immediately after that, however, his train went off the tracks. Here’s what we know and have pieced together, partially from what Michael remembered and from what followed:<br />
He went home and burned all the dollar bills he’d been given because, as he later explained. ‘they were too bulky.’ When Charly got home that night, not having any idea what was going on, she found a small mound of ashes on the patio stones with a few charred scraps and a piece of George Washington’s face.<br />
Then, for reasons Michael could never explain, he hid a bundle of money in a Kleenex box at a neighbor’s empty house; and another stash of money in a friend’s outdoor garbage can which was due for pickup the next day!. And finally, he returned to the bar, got drunk, paid his tab and distributed fistfuls of money to everyone in the bar; cronies, strangers, a few tourists and the staff. He left behind a happy gaggle of people and disappeared into the night.<br />
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At five o’clock the next morning, a convenience store clerk called 911 to report that a injured man had entered his store. When the police arrived, they found the man slumped in a corner with a serious gash across his forehead. He was conscious but seemed groggy and confused.<br />
“I think I got robbed.” he told them, then added. “No, that’s not right. I robbed a bank .. and I feel awful about it.’<br />
Thus was Michael Avery, bank robber, apprehended by the constabulary. The cops quickly recovered the stashed money, but seemed disinterested in how their captive was hurt. And to this day, no-one knows what happened.<br />
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For Charly, the following month passed in a fog of confusion.. Michael was held at first by the Key West police, then transferred to the Monroe County jail and put into its infirmary. Since bank robbery is a federal crime, the FBI asserted control of the case and transferred him to the Florida Keys Hospital. Charly was permitted visitation when he was under local control; but finally -- as his condition became more and more serious -- she was denied the right to visit him in the hospital for reasons only a federal bureaucrat could think of. In fact, A 24/7 guard was posted outside his door. She kept trying, however, and on one occasion -- and one only -- a compassionate guard swore her to secrecy and let her in.<br />
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Then, on the evening of December 15, 2000 she got a terse phone call from a Justice Department prosecutor. Without explanation, he told her that Michael would be released without conditions the next day. If she wanted to, she could come and get him. Which of course she did.<br />
Two days later, on December 18, comfortably ensconced at home and after having said goodbye to his closest friends, Michael died. He was fifty-nine years old<br />
Only a month had passed since he’d fulfilled his dream.<br />
<br />
I have no idea what he was thinking when he faced death. But I like to think the Peter Pan side of him thought he was off on another wonderful adventure. And if not, then I hope the Jack Kerouac side approached it as just another waypoint on the road. Whatever it was, God bless.<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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<br />
A few days after the robbery, the Key West Police Department issued a public plea for the return of the money Michael gave out at the bar. As far as I know, they never recovered a penny. What a surprise!<br />
<br />
The arresting officer in Key West doesn’t remember the case. Neither do the detective in charge or the then-chief of detectives who is now the city’s chief of police. The reporter for <i>The Key West Citizen</i> who wrote two stories about the robbery doesn’t remember it either. He’s now a Monroe County deputy sheriff. The FBI said I could file a request under the Freedom of Information Act if I wanted to see their records, but didn’t tell me how long it would take or even whether it would be approved. And finally, a nice lady at the Key West police department’s records office found Michael’s case file and promised to call me back once she’d gotten permission to show it to me. I never heard from her again. Hmmm.<br />
<br />
After distributing Michael’s ashes to several of his friends, Charly spread some on the lawn of the Key West Federal Credit Union. Whether the grass became greener is unknown.<br />
<br />
Many days later, she found several hand-written notes hidden in a way that she’d eventually find them. They said, in effect, not to worry .. he’d be okay .. and she should get on with her life.<br />
<br />
She did move away from Key West and returned to the island only recently. Although now married, she always smiles nostalgically when talking about Michael and readily describes him as the love of her life. And why not!<br />
Even bank robbers can be lovable.<br />
<br />
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<br />
Please feel free to share this blog with friends. Just have them Google keywestwind and click on the header or go to </span><a href="http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span lang="EN">http://keywestwind.blogspot.com</span></span></u></a><span lang="EN">. Many thanks. And all comments are welcome.</span> <br />
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No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-89937320159627131322013-03-14T15:04:00.001-07:002013-03-14T15:04:27.721-07:00"THE BEST FIREWORKS SHOW IN THE WORLD, BAR NONE!"<br />
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It was startling.<br />
This man could have walked out of a John Ford western or a 19th century tintype. He was short, barrel-built and swarthy; with fast-moving eyes and thick black hair parted in the middle. Wearing canvas trousers stuffed into battered riding boots and a white shirt buttoned to the neck, the only thing missing was a bandolier hanging across his chest. And to top it off, one of his incisors was gold and glistened when he smiled.<br />
My first thought was of Viva Zapata! (Anybody remember it? Marlon Brando as Zapata, Anthony Quinn, Joseph Wiseman?)<br />
And the first thing he said to me was something like:<br />
..el mas grande.. el mejor en el mundo. Me garantia!”<br />
Seeing my blank expression, he gave up the bandit bit and repeated himself in perfect English:<br />
We’ll give you the best fireworks show in the world, bar none. Guaranteed!.<br />
That’s exactly what he said; and in retrospect I believe that’s exactly what he meant.<br />
His name was Eduardo Lopez and he was --by experience and reputation -- the leading fireworks expert in Mexico, with a degree (I found out later) in electrical engineering from UCLA. My advance man -- Tom McNally -- and I were standing with him in the penthouse of a high-rise hotel looking out over Acapulco Bay toward the Pacific Ocean. Senor Lopez was pointing out a little island -- more like jumble of uninviting rocks -- in the middle of the bay.<br />
We’ll be out there all day setting things up .. and when you’re ready, you just give us the signal. he said.<br />
We’re using Walkie-Talkies, Tom interjected.<br />
Yes, and then … away we go! Vamos a fuego!<br />
And we’re gonna’ give you a wonderful surprise at the end. added Tom..<br />
I turned to face him and said: We’ve got a lot riding on this, McNally… and I’m not big on surprises. In fact, surprises make me very nervous!.<br />
I know that, he said reassuringly, but this will be sensational. I mean, really sensational. Trust me. Even you’ll be impressed.<br />
<br />
So trust him I did. Because he was the best advance man for big management meetings I’d ever seen. And the one we were talking about -- for Xerox Corporation -- was by the standards of our little company, huge.<br />
Xerox was bringing 250 of its senior managers from around the world for a five-day conference in Acapulco to discuss how to improve the company’s performance and how to establish its future goals. It was the fastest growing company in the world and determined to stay that way for as long as product superiority and smart management permitted.<br />
The meeting’s format was to be something they’d never tried before: a ‘bottom to top’ approach that I’d sold to the CEO, and then been asked to implement because no-one inside the company trusted it or wanted to be a part of it. Recent research had shown that major communications gaps existed in large corporations, particularly at the top levels of management. In other words, policies set at the top were quickly diluted and sometimes ignored as they were passed down the line. The result was that the most senior people were often ‘out of the reality loop’.<br />
So the basic idea was to put together a meeting in which lower level managers could -- with no holds barred -- tell top management what they thought of the company’s policies, performance and goals, and how to improve on them. It was, in many ways, a democratic approach in an autocratic environment, and not a comfortable concept. As one young American marketing manager said to me:<br />
In other words, I’m supposed tell my big bosses that they’re assholes about some things .. and get away with it? I don’t <i>think</i> so.<br />
But the meeting’s format did allow exactly that, although in more diplomatic and, I should add, anonymous terms. Finally, after four days of intense discussion and debate, consensus recommendations would be presented to top management which --on the final day -- was expected to respond to them in as much detail as possible,<br />
So it was a high-risk, high-pressure meeting for everyone involved; and we knew that when it was over, we’d need something to ease the tension: some kind of event that everyone from the CEO on down could appreciate and enjoy.<br />
We’d already chartered a tourist ship for a final-night sunset cruise on Acapulco Bay; and arranged for an open bar and an elegant on-board dinner. Tables for eight were set on a huge upper deck, and a strolling mariachi band was hired to play what Tom McNally described as ‘Guantanamera music’. In keeping with our corporate democracy efforts -- and in the hope of encouraging interaction among different groups from different countries -- the seating was open. Anyone could sit anywhere.<br />
And the topper, the frosting on the cake, the <i>piece de resistance</i>, would be THE BEST FIREWORKS SHOW IN THE WORLD BAR NONE.<br />
So … sound the trumpets and take it away, Senor Lopez!!<br />
<br />
As darkness set in, all was going according to plan. The crowd seemed relaxed, the bar was busy, the dinner had been a success, and people were mingling with each other. No-one noticed that the ship was positioning itself with the lights of Acapulco at our back with only the vast blackness of the Pacific facing us.<br />
At the proper moment, Tom McNally -- standing at the rail and peering slit-eyed into the dark -- gave the signal.<br />
The ship stopped, the band fell silent.<br />
And nothing happened. Nothing.<br />
McNally pounded the walkie-talkie against his palm as if to wake up the batteries. Then, speaking into it, he held his hand up toward me, signaling that all would be well and not to worry. The ship’s engines came to life again and we described a long, slow circle back to our predetermined location.<br />
Again, as we approached, McNally gave the signal. And again, nothing happened. Not a glimmer. Not a sign of life. We were facing a disaster and the Xerox crowd -- sensing that something they didn’t know about had gone wrong -- were beginning to snicker. By that time, I’d joined McNally at the rail.<br />
What the fuck is going on, Tom? I snarled.<br />
He threw his eyes toward the sky and said: It’s okay .. it’s okay .. I’ve got it under control now. It’ll be perfect this time.<br />
So for a third time, the ship’s engines came to life and we turned in a leisurely circle back toward the rocky island where Eduardo Lopez and his minions were hidden. And this time, as McNally gave the okay on the walkie-talkie, I detected in the darkness a single tiny light that reflected back toward us on the bay’s flat surface.<br />
That’s all I saw until, seconds later, the island exploded.<br />
<br />
Rockets and missiles and explosions of every color and description erupted from one end of the island to the other. Some went skyward, some shot nearly parallel to the water, some plunged into it, others simply burned on the rocks. And outlined in the light of that moving, twirling, shooting inferno, we could see Mexicans running for their lives, diving into crevasses, zigzagging from rock to rock and leaping into the bay. It was a deafening, whistling chaos of sound and light that held us immobile and nearly hypnotized even as rockets hit the ship’s side or roared a few feet over our heads toward the Acapulco shore.<br />
Who knows how long it lasted? Five minutes? Ten? All I knew was that something had gone terribly wrong.<br />
But when the last flicker of fire disappeared and the smoke around the island began to dissipate, everyone agreed -- with equal parts awe and confusion -- that they’d never seen anything like it. Even the ship’s captain must have been transfixed because we hadn’t moved an inch.<br />
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Then, just I was breathing more easily and wondering how I could explain things, Tom McNally’s surprise announced itself.<br />
Trust me, he’d said. It’ll be sensational, he’d said.<br />
With loud hissing and crackling, a great glistening X appeared on the water. It must have been fifteen feet high, floating on a flat platform. Then -- seconds later -- a giant E lit up on another platform tethered to the first, followed by the R. Reflected on the quiet bay with the black infinity of the Pacific in the background, the letters X-E-R seemed to be standing magically by themselves on the water. By the time the O appeared, everyone was applauding and chanting X - E - R - O … over and over again. The fireworks fiasco seemed instantly forgotten.<br />
But the final X never ignited. We waited fifteen seconds .. then thirty .. a full minute ..and nothing. The chanting stopped and we were left looking at nothing .. zip .. a flaming ZERO .. a glistening nada. All the work, the planning, the endless hours of discussion, the hopes .. everything ended with a massive XERO glowing in judgment on Acapulco Bay.<br />
McNally looked as if he wanted to jump overboard; and to tell the truth, I was tempted to push him.<br />
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I have no idea who began to chuckle; but as the ship turned toward home, someone did and it became viral; breaking into a rash of laughter that spread from table to table to bar until it seemed that everyone on board was laughing or chortling at the irony of our failure. It was, in fact. funny in its own manner and taught me a lot about keeping things in perspective. After all, I told myself, it was only a fireworks display.<br />
Yet, paradoxically, that was when it also dawned on me that Eduardo Lopez and my man Tom McNally had indeed delivered -- albeit accidentally -- THE BEST FIREWORKS SHOW IN THE WORLD, BAR NONE.<br />
Guaranteed!<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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Luckily, aside from a few bruises and a badly-sprained ankle, no-one was hurt on the little island. When Senor Lopez sent us a long letter of apology and explanation, I accepted the former but didn’t understand the latter. An invoice accompanied the letter which -- after some discussion -- we paid in full.<br />
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A few years later we managed another large corporate meeting in Acapulco for the LTV Corporation. Although it was a success, there were no fireworks and less laughter.<br />
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I slept fitfully on that final night, and woke bleary-eyed and hung over at four in the morning. I’d forgotten to turn on my A/C and the room was stiflingly hot. So I stumbled out to my balcony for some fresh air and came instantly awake. In the distance, a giant X was glistening in the silence and darkness of Acapulco Bay.<br />
Friends say I must have dreamed it … and perhaps I did.<br />
But I think not.<br />
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In any case, our experiment in corporate democracy was in the end a failure. A few internal bureaucracies bent a bit, but didn’t break .. and things at Xerox quickly returned to the <i>status quo</i>. Corporations are and always will be the same.<br />
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<i>When I first began blogging, an old friend and avid gardener, Tricia Lynn, urged me to write this story. Sadly, she died as this year began. But her smile, her rapier wit and her compassion will be long remembered by everyone who knew her. This one is for you, Tricia. Sorry it’s late.</i><br />
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Please feel free to forward this blog to friends. The link is http://keywestwind.blogspot.com. Or they can Google keywestwind and click on the header. Many thanks.<br />
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No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-65585763847757301492012-11-15T08:09:00.000-08:002012-11-15T08:09:39.864-08:00HOW TO LIVE IN PARADISE ... AND FAIL.<br />
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PART TWO<br />
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The Hubble Space Telescope has identified<br />
a galaxy 13.2 billion light years from Earth.<br />
NASA<br />
July 2012<br />
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They cannot scare me with their empty spaces<br />
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.<br />
I have it in me so much nearer home<br />
To scare myself with my own desert places.<br />
Robert Frost<br />
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Twice upon a time that seems like yesterday, I lived on a pair of mythic islands.<br />
The first, Mallorca, taught me a lot about people. The second, Virgin Gorda -- decades later -- taught me about myself.<br />
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Virgin Gorda -- in the British Virgin Islands -- stands like a sun-tanned sentinel at the mouth of a channel that leads from the open Atlantic to the capricious waters of the Caribbean. It is a narrow island dominated at one end by a modest mountain and at the other by an extraordinary geologic formation -- house-sized boulders dropped on top of each other as if by a giant hand, forming grottoes at the water’s edge -- called The Baths. The island also boasts brilliant white beaches, coral reefs teeming with marine life, and seas the color of cerulean crystal. The sun shines 350 days a year. <br />
It is -- by almost any definition -- a paradise.<br />
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When I first lived there, the island was populated by a few thousand natives descended from African slaves, called ‘belongers‘; and perhaps sixty or seventy ex-patriots. The ex-pats owned nice homes with glass windows, telephones that often didn‘t work, and TV sets that delivered snow from Puerto Rico.<br />
The belongers owned next to nothing.<br />
There were a handful of cars and trucks (and one taxi), but the primitive roads were used mostly as walking paths and for herding goats from one arid pasture to another. No-one was ever in a rush to get anywhere .. and where was there to go anyway?<br />
The most efficient means of communication was ‘the message tree’ that shaded the island’s only freshwater well. Bits and pieces of paper -- fluttering like Lilliputian laundry -- were tacked, glued, stapled, taped or nailed to the tree trunk; eventually reaching whoever they were addressed to, whether directly or by word-of-mouth, whether trivial or essential. And if one became unstuck, well … it became unstuck. But rarely did the message -- ‘Janet got boy’ or ‘Alfred go fish’ -- get lost. All in all, life on the island was languid and leisurely; and remained far distant from the daily thunderstorm of strife eagerly reported by the world’s press.<br />
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But it did have its memorable moments.<br />
On one occasion, I had dinner with a newly-arrived, New York couple in the open courtyard of the island’s only pub, called The Bath and Turtle. A group of five or six black men -- each carrying a machete -- was lounging against a nearby wall and talking quietly in the local patois, a truncated and nearly unrecognizable form of English. But what began as a quiet exchange soon evolved into a loud discussion which quickly became a high-pitched, arm-waving argument.<br />
My companions, unable to keep their eyes off the machetes or their imaginations away from racial incidents in the United States, were looking panicky; and the wife finally asked in a frightened whisper whether we should leave.<br />
You can if you’d like, I said, but they’re only debating who’s going to pitch in the cricket match on Sunday.<br />
Early the next afternoon, I ran into the same couple at Teacher O’Neal’s Restaurant and Good Gifts. The husband, like many New Yorkers, was a news addict and was suffering early withdrawal symptoms.<br />
Do you carry The New York Times? he asked.<br />
Teacher O’Neal herself was behind the counter: a large, formidable woman who struck me as an amalgam of Aretha Franklin and The Statue of Liberty, with a twist of lemon.<br />
Yassuh, we do. she answered. <br />
Well I’d like a copy, please.<br />
Teacher sized him up and, with a straight face, said:<br />
Do you want today’s Times .. or yesterday’s?<br />
Confused and wondering whether she might be a bit backward, he said:<br />
I want today’s Times, of course.<br />
Teacher’s face was expressionless, but the Cheshire Cat was lurking in her eyes.<br />
Well in dot case, mon, she told him, you got to come back tomorrow.<br />
And only then, after having set and sprung the trap, did she smile.<br />
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Now and then there were also more dramatic moments.<br />
A middle-aged British couple (I’ll call them David and Dolores Dragon) was famous on the island for having tectonic arguments which -- fueled by alcohol and mutual loathing -- could last for days. Since their house was on a ridge in a well-populated area, their screaming insults provided better entertainment for the natives (and many ex-pats) than anything offered elsewhere. But one night, after a particularly vicious exchange, Dolores drove David from the house with a butcher knife and threatened to kill him if he came back.<br />
For the next week, an ominous silence descended on the Dragons’ lair. Although Dolores was seen moving about the garden, she made no visits to the local market; and there was neither sight nor sound of David, not even the sound of his elephantine snoring. Their neighbors eventually became concerned; and one ’friend of the family’ even had the temerity to knock on their door and ask about him. Dolores dismissed the inquiry with two words: He’s gone.<br />
That’s when rumors began to spread like fleas in a dog park: Rather odd, isn’t it? Do you think he’s all right? You don’t suppose she .. no, silly of me. I’m sure everything‘s just fine. Don’t you agree? Hmmm.<br />
The implication was as clear as the cobalt sea.<br />
A few mornings later, early, The Voice of God began shouting at me from above, and saying things -- foul, repellent things -- that I couldn’t understand. So I forced myself awake and peeked at the morning light, but The Voice refused to stop. It thundered through the shutters and careened back and forth off the walls, driving me out of bed and into the yard, stumbling and squinting at the sky. Vaguely, I noticed the sun had just risen and was waking the hibiscus blossoms in my garden.<br />
Then my eyes focused on a tiny Piper Cub flying in a tight circle over the near ridge -- no more than a hundred feet over the rooftops -- and moving so slowly I thought it might stall. Leaning perilously out the passenger door was a figure holding a huge loud-hailer --a bullhorn -- and blasting it toward the earth.<br />
<br />
GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU GODDAM WITCH!<br />
YOU HEAR ME?<br />
GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU FILTHY PIECE OF DUNG … YOU <br />
FUCKING PILE OF GOAT SHIT .. GET OUT!<br />
YOU HEAR ME, YOU DRIED UP COW?<br />
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David Dragon’s voice shattered the morning, and rained invective down like Agent Orange on an innocent village. People awoke everywhere and rushed from their houses, their huts, their shacks, their hovels. Tourists came out of their rooms frightened and dressed in next to nothing. And the voice thundered on and on for what seemed like forever.<br />
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YOU DESPICABLE PIG FUCKER .. THAT HOUSE IS MINE.<br />
DO YOU HEAR ME?<br />
GET OUT, YOU STUPID, MOTHERFUCKING WHORE.<br />
YOU’RE UGLIER THAN DOG VOMIT.<br />
GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, UGLY BITCH. LEAVE .. GO .. JUST FUCKING<br />
GO!!!<br />
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Dolores Dragon, it was true, was not an attractive woman. But in her own way, she had presence. According to several neighbors, she stood rigidly in the middle of her garden throughout the assault, absorbing her husband‘s sonic bombs, bare-footed and wearing only a nightie; with her right arm raised high in a fist and her middle finger extended toward the sky … until the little plane peeled off and headed toward the rising sun. <br />
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And finally, for contrast, there was the day I met the most beautiful woman in the world: a day I will never forget.<br />
My house -- one of the nicest tropical homes I’d ever seen -- overlooked a pristine beach near The Baths that could only be reached by anchoring a boat offshore or by finding a hidden, boulder-strewn path from an adjacent area. People rarely did either. So the beach -- about three hundred yards long and lined with coconut palms -- was for all practical purposes, mine.<br />
It was usually my habit after lunch to take a swim with my chocolate Labrador, Quincy; and then to read under the palms for two or three hours. Quincy would lie next to me guarding two tennis balls (he always carried a spare) and watching sea birds, probably wishing he could fly.<br />
On that fateful afternoon, I’d been reading for an hour when I sensed him going on alert; ears at attention, tail beginning to wag. When I looked up, a woman -- a breathtakingly beautiful woman -- was jogging along the waterline, perhaps twenty yards away. Since we were in deep shade, and she in brilliant sun, she appeared not to notice us. It was as if she’d come out of nowhere. Magically.<br />
Yes, magically. And for me. From the gods.<br />
Go get her, I said to Quincy who instantly was up and running.<br />
They played happily in the wavelets at the shoreline; she throwing his ball, he retrieving it and chasing her, until finally they turned and romped back toward me. She was wearing a string bikini that said this is what bikinis are made for: a slim, perfectly proportioned body, an exquisite tan, and a luminous day when anything and everything is possible.<br />
I stayed in my low beach chair, pretending to read and trying to rein in my pulse, until she was standing directly in front of me. As I lifted my eyes to her, she flashed the most stunning smile in the most beautiful face I’d ever seen, and said:<br />
Izz dis yu-wah dawg?<br />
Never has a fantasy so quickly -- so irreversibly -- plunged to its death on the rocks of reality. This was hideous. Hideous! How could this creature of dreams ask if Quincy were my dog with the worst, the coarsest, Brooklyn accent I’d ever heard? IS DIS YU-WAH DAWG.? It was as if Gwyneth Paltrow or Nicole Kidman had the voice of Bugs Bunny!<br />
What’s up, dawg?<br />
I was, of course, crushed. But you never really see people objectively after the first instant. From that moment on, whatever they say, however they dress, whatever mannerisms they have, changes their appearance and, in turn, what you think of them. The fates proved it to me that day; sending me a verbal joke disguised as an angel.<br />
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In all, I liked Virgin Gorda; although it often seemed too slow and too small, and certainly didn’t offer much culture. But the laid-back pace was helped by an ever-changing cast of tourists, gullible and otherwise; and spiced up by the foibles and eccentricities of its ex-pats. So, on balance, its beauty and its quirky appeal kept me diverted for a time from a sense of emptiness -- a feeling of unknowing -- that still asserted itself in the midnight of my thoughts.<br />
I’d had a great career in the business world; I’d successfully raised two sets of kids; and I’d earned enough to live a life of leisure. Yet that lovely island yielded no real knowledge for me except to underline that many of us spend our lives searching for something we can’t define and settling -- often with relief -- for something we can. Call it contentment, happiness, security, whatever. But for me there was then -- and still is -- something missing: a reconciliation of some kind, possibly to ’aloneness’ or to some other feeling as difficult to articulate as it is to admit to.<br />
I’ve known many people who consider themselves to be the center of the universe despite whatever exists billions of light years away. Sometimes I envy their egocentrism, more often I pity it. But I’ve learned finally not to worry much about such issues. Not even a paradise (or an ego) can trump the universe.<br />
So instead I try to sit in the world -- in its immediacy -- just where it touches me and hope that my desert places become less alien, less scary, in the mysterious and expanding universe that I call Self.<br />
And so far, thank you, with a sense of cosmic humor, that seems to be working.<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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Virgin Gorda is today dotted with multi-million dollar homes with infinity pools overlooking the sea and tennis courts hidden in palm groves. There are several five-star hotels, good restaurants, internet access and cable television. Almost everyone --belongers included -- has a cellphone. The message tree is empty..<br />
<br />
The war of the Dragons lingered on for several years, in the tradition of a medieval siege. It ended finally with Dolores’s death from cancer. David, for reasons that seem almost funny, committed suicide a few months later.<br />
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My home -- which I’d named Sol y Sombra -- was eventually sold to an American lawyer who tore it down and built a glitzy house worthy of the Intracoastal Waterway in Fort Lauderdale. I’m told he left the beach untouched and the boulders unmoved.<br />
We must be thankful for small favors.<br />
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If you enjoyed these ramblings. send the link to others. It’s http://keywestwind.blogspot.com or they can Google keywestwind and click on the header. And PLEASE, PLEASE feel free to comment.<br />
<br />
Happy Holidays to all.<br />
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No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-61537962071031296702012-10-29T16:45:00.000-07:002012-10-29T16:45:11.569-07:00HOW TO LIVE IN PARADISE ... AND FAIL<br />
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<br />
PART ONE<br />
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Twice upon a time that seems like yesterday, I lived on a pair of mythic islands.<br />
The first was Mallorca, mountainous and magnificent, in the Mediterranean south of Barcelona. Conquered over the millennia by countless violators, it remained always angry, beautiful and unbowed.<br />
The second was Virgin Gorda, narrow and parched, with brilliant white beaches fondling the azure Caribbean. When it was first seen on the horizon by Christopher Columbus, he said it looked like a fat virgin at rest. Thus, the name. <br />
He’d been at sea for a very long time.<br />
<br />
When I think of Mallorca I think first of people: of Tod and Lee Minisch and one of the strangest sights I‘ve ever seen; and of Colonel Gerald Patterson, epitome of imperial arrogance. And I simultaneously visit in my mind terraced villages clinging like lichen over the sea and ancient olive groves saturated in sun and salt and history. But somehow I also find myself remembering the loneliness and sense of separation I felt while living there, and never understood.<br />
And when my mind turns to Virgin Gorda, I remember Teacher O‘Neal‘s Good Gifts and Restaurant; the huge ‘message tree’ that shaded the island‘s only freshwater well; the incomparable smell of night-blooming cactus; and the day I met the most beautiful woman in the world. But again, I’m visited by a residual memory of personal emptiness, of estrangement, that defied definition.<br />
But that’s for later. Or maybe not at all.<br />
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Let’s begin with Mallorca; with laughter, and with the obscure fishing village of Puerto Andraitx where my wife and I rented a tiny house near the village square.<br />
As we all know, news in a small town travels at the speed of light. So it wasn’t a surprise when -- on only our second morning there -- a guy about my age (late twenties) hailed me by name and introduced himself: Tod Minisch. He was sitting at a sunlit table in front of the local tavern and drinking black coffee mixed with a foul-tasting local hooch called algarroba, made from the seeds of St .John’s Bread trees. With dark and disheveled hair topping a lanky frame, heavy horn-rimmed glasses, careless clothing to match a broad, generous smile, and a faint Southern accent, I liked him immediately A beaten-up copy of Camus’ <i>The Stranger</i> was at his elbow. <br />
We’d begun the usual ritual of where-you-from-and-why when he told me without embarrassment that he was paid a monthly stipend by his family to stay away from his ancestral home in Kentucky. So he and his wife -- after wandering around Europe for a while -- had chosen Mallorca as a semi-permanent ‘pit stop‘..<br />
I’d never met a ‘remittance man’ before and was about to ask what he’d done to be sent into exile, when two huge Afghan hounds -- beautifully groomed with coats nearly to the ground -- came out of nowhere; joyously leaping all over him, spilling his drink and knocking him half off his chair. Right in back of them came a stunning girl; tall, tanned, leggy and dressed only, it seemed, in long, semi-diaphanous scarves that yielded glimpses of a beautiful figure. She was walking fast and talking fast, but not to us or to the dogs. She was just talking. Something about learning the sexual nicknames for turnips and scallions in Mallorquin, the local dialect. And soon the local ladies were going to teach her onions, tomatoes and (best of all) carrots and cucumbers!<br />
Tod, arms flailing to fend off the Afghans, blurted: Lee, this is the new guy who just moved into the ….<br />
Never breaking stride, she said: Oh hi. Welcome.<br />
And walked right past us, still talking, but now -- I thought -- about fishing or about flowers. Maybe a mix of both. In any case, the Afghans ran after her, unfettered and raucous, while Tod and I watched her recede toward the harbor, scarves flapping like loose spinnakers and her voice fading to a slow dissolve.<br />
That’s my wife. he said finally. She talks a lot.<br />
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A week or so later, a dinner invitation (more like a summons, actually) arrived from the self-appointed leader of the town’s English-speaking ex-patriots: Colonel Gerald Patterson whose grand villa sat on a hill overlooking the harbor. Long and white with chocolate shutters and two central domes, it reminded me of a banana split .. and I hadn’t even been at sea for a long time.<br />
According to Tod, with whom I’d been having coffee every morning, the Colonel had been chief of police of Alexandria, Egypt (at the time a British protectorate), before retiring. But he still had a penchant for investigation and liked to ’vet’ new arrivals in town. Lee, Tod’s wife, hated him. But Tod himself -- a gentler and more accepting soul -- simply described him as a ’another Brit asshole’. I decided to reserve judgment.<br />
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So then came the dinner: four couples at a large round table being served a wonderful paella by two Spanish maids. There were the Pattersons, another British couple, a Canadian couple, and my wife and I. The British couple seemed limited to a two-word vocabulary: ‘uumm’ for approval, and ‘quite‘ for agreement. The Canadians were more interesting. He wrote episodic thrillers for BBC television and hovered over his wife like a hawk. After she and I exchanged glances, I didn’t blame him. She was very attractive and clearly bored.<br />
And then there was the Colonel, a near-stereotype: blustery and overweight with a florid complexion and a handlebar mustache, wearing a pressed khaki shirt, and pontificating endlessly on the sorry state of the world, of England, of Spanish wine and of local plumbing.<br />
His wife’s name, apparently, was ‘Yes, Gerald‘.<br />
Sometime around dessert, he looked over at me like a great white hunter about to interrogate a native bearer.<br />
So... Tell me, young man. he said. How are you finding our little community?<br />
Knowing that my debut was at hand, and after saying we loved it, I launched into an anecdote about the retired local schoolteacher I’d found to teach me Spanish. He’d lived in the United States for eight years as a boy and returned to Mallorca after World War Two. As a result, his English was sprinkled with long-forgotten slang like ‘You’re a card.’ and ‘Tell it to the Marines, kiddo!’ and ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships’.<br />
He’s just great, I said, grinning. … it’s like listening to a time capsule.<br />
Uumm, rather amusing I‘m sure.. the Colonel replied. But why in heaven’s name do you want to learn the language? I mean .. it’s silly, really. Quite useless.<br />
The Brit couple doubled up with an ‘uumm .. quite’.<br />
I suspect my face went blank with incomprehension because he shifted his chair to face me more directly. Then he picked up a knife from the dinner table and held it at arm’s length for all to see.<br />
Look here. he said. You see this knife?<br />
Everyone nodded almost involuntarily.<br />
Well, in Spanish it’s called … a cuchillo.<br />
He paused, looking slowly around the table. Everyone was focused and waiting.<br />
Simply ridiculous. he said disdainfully .. A cuchillo! Can you imagine? Why any damn fool can see it’s a <i>knife</i>!<br />
I didn’t see much of the Colonel after that lesson in colonial linguistics. He probably thought of me as ‘just another American asshole’ .. or whatever the polite British equivalent is. Nor did I even consider returning his hospitality<br />
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During the following months, I settled into a comfortable daily routine: coffee in the morning at the tavern, reading the Paris edition of The Herald Tribune (always three days late), snorkeling and spear fishing, lunch and a siesta, writing until dinner (almost everybody -- including me --was writing a novel), and then back to the tavern after dinner for whatever it might offer.(It had the only TV in town; a smallish box that got snowy reception but which was kept at maximum volume on Sunday afternoons for the bullfights from Barcelona.)<br />
As I got to know Tod better, and to a lesser extent, Lee, I marveled at their tolerance for each other. He seemed to endure her non-stop chatter with grace and a degree of amusement; and she seemed to accept his off-beat intellect and the light alcoholic fog that usually encircled it. As an ex-model, she loved clothes and dressed flamboyantly. He cared nothing for clothes and could have passed for a bum. She was an excellent cook; he barely noticed. In sum: he drank quietly, she sipped noisily.<br />
Their loyalty to each other was never better illustrated than on the evening of Bobby Somerset’s party. Bobby was a Brit and a sailor, and unlike the Colonel, could never be blamed for England’s loss of empire. He was gregarious, intelligent and engaging. His yacht -- a sizable schooner -- had a permanent mooring at the end of the town wharf: a long, stone pier that sheltered the town’s little fishing fleet.<br />
Every year he threw a cocktail party on board, attended by an eclectic mix of ex-pats as well as a few local characters like the tavern owner -- a fan of the dictator Franco -- and a sour-faced but shapely widow whose husband died in one of Franco’s prisons. Bobby’s yacht, however, was considered to be like Switzerland: neutral with requisite civility.<br />
In any case, on the night in question, the party ended after dark just as a misty rain began to fall. Lee was dressed to the nines in a flowing, flowery skirt and Gypsy blouse, in full make-up with her long brunette hair carefully coiffed. Not wanting to dampen her artful image, she dispatched Tod to get their Land Rover -- parked in the town square -- so he could back it down the wharf to the yacht’s gangplank.<br />
A few minutes later, while several of us waited under a tarp suspended over the deck, Tod’s taillights appeared as he backed slowly toward us. His brake lights went on near the gangplank and he stopped.<br />
Open the door. Lee shouted.<br />
And that’s when it happened.<br />
He reached around to open a rear door and suddenly the Land Rover shot backward right off the end of the wharf. After floating for a few seconds, it sank toward the harbor bottom with its headlights beaming upward like subterranean eyes. We blasted up the gangplank, but when we reached the end of the wharf, there was no sign of Tod. Only those eerie eyes staring at us from the depths. <br />
Lee screamed and tore away from the arms of Bobby Somerset who was trying to hold her back. She ran without a sound to the edge and leaped off.<br />
A split second before she hit the water, Tod’s head broke the surface. I imagined her desperately trying to reverse gravity, but to no avail. She landed fully clothed and instantly uncoiffed.<br />
Tod swam easily to the wharf’s stone steps and climbed to the top with a silly, embarrassed grin. Somehow, he was still wearing his glasses. Seconds later, Lee appeared. She had seaweed hanging from her hair and looked like a Dali portrait: limp and dripping, but hissing with anger.<br />
She ripped a lit flashlight from my hand and hurled it at Tod…who ducked.<br />
You stupid son of a bitch! she screeched.<br />
We watched the flashlight fly past his head and describe a graceful arc into the harbor. Suddenly a third eye was beaming at us from the depths.<br />
Tod said: Are you okay, honey?<br />
And then he giggled. And then Bobby Somerset giggled. And then viral laughter attacked everyone, even Lee who looked at first volcanic, but who finally started talking and laughing and hugging her sappy and saturated husband.<br />
It was, everyone agreed in retrospect, a wonderful party.<br />
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In a village hidden from the pulsing arteries of progress, time is different. Rather than passing in measured cadences --in hours or days or weeks --it drifts in a current you never really feel until you bump into an unavoidable reality.<br />
We’d been in Puerto Andraitx nearly a year -- using it as a base and as a home -- and abroad for nearly two years. We’d traveled together through most of Europe and parts of the Middle East, and done what we’d set out to do. But our savings, which we’d been living on and which had lasted longer than I‘d hoped, were nearly depleted. The drain was showing at the bottom of our financial tub.<br />
It was time to go home.<br />
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A few nights before we left for good, a going-away party was thrown for us at the tavern, attended by ex-pats and locals alike. It was a noisy, drunken affair that lasted deep into the night and at which lots of promises were made, knowing they’d never be kept. But such is the nature of things in a impermanent and capricious world.<br />
And then finally --on our last night -- we were having dinner at home when Tod, as was his habit, walked in without knocking. He looked a bit downcast and I sensed he’d come to say a final and more private goodbye.<br />
Hi, Tod .. I said. Where’s Lee?<br />
He seemed puzzled for a few moments until, with the shyest smile and with his spirits lifting, he said:<br />
I think she’s home discussing something with me.<br />
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It was a great line and we laughed hard and with tears, as only good friends can.<br />
But I couldn’t help but sense in that sentence a hint of loneliness.. It wasn’t an acute feeling, exactly. And not necessarily conscious either. It seemed to me as if he were grasping quietly for something he couldn’t identify and wasn’t even sure existed. But somehow I empathized and understood .. because I myself felt in my most unwilling moments a similar emptiness: a barren place inside.<br />
But how could I?<br />
Tod and I were different personalities, totally. Different backgrounds, different values, different futures. And given the moment, it seemed silly of me to be morose or self-analytical. After all, hadn’t I been living in Paradise? Hadn’t the last two years been nearly idyllic?<br />
And there was still last-minute packing to do, a plane to catch, a job to find and yet another life to explore. So I packed all unspoken questions away with my socks and my half-written novel and forced them into their own exile, thinking foolishly they’d stay there.<br />
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Until Part Two and Virgin Gorda … I wish all my readers well.<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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In the next few years, I wrote to Tod a number of times but never heard back and thus have no idea how he fared. But since his was a soul without malice or spite, I hope he fared well; with or without the chatter.<br />
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No-one who lived in the village ever published a word, including myself. In fact, not long ago I found a few yellowed pages of my novel; and remembered one particular sentence that I must have written a hundred times. The prose was labored, artificial and pretentious. In other words, terrible.<br />
So much for the Great American Novel.<br />
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Finally, Puerto Andraitx is now dominated by condominiums that block all access to the water. The village square boasts a modern pharmacy, an expensive boutique, two gift shops, and a disco. The tavern has been renovated and offers cappuccino and hi-def TV. On weekends, its outdoor tables are crowded with tourists gawking at the power yachts moored against the wharf and speculating about how much they cost.<br />
Very few seem to enjoy -- or even to notice -- the splendid anamoly of sea mists in the mornings mingling with the scent of orange blossoms.<br />
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No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-69916104278190957152012-09-25T05:34:00.000-07:002012-09-25T05:34:29.769-07:00ONLY IN KEY WEST ...A TWISTED TRIBUTE<br />
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Panamah Peat died recently. (Yes, that’s how he spelled it.) His liver gave out on him long after his family gave up on him, and that’s why he disappeared for six months after his death. His real name was Peter Hill, and no-one seems to know how old he was; although -- with his bird’s nest beard and hurricane hair -- he looked like a desiccated old pirate for as long as anyone could remember.<br />
Panamah was widely-known in Key West as a talented jewelry designer, a skilled photographer and a hopeless drunk. What makes him cogent to this narrative is that he was also a founding member of The Chartroom Gentlemen’s Club and Occasional Choir, known locally by the acronym CGCOC (which is commonly understood to mean ’Fuck You’ in Klingon).<br />
But before acquainting you with the club and its members, I should introduce you to The Chartroom Bar and to James ‘Whistle’ Cox. Also a drunk. Also deceased.<br />
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Imagine for a moment that deep in the intestines of a big resort hotel -- a hotel replete with beach bars, pools, and lush tropical gardens -- there is a dingy low-ceilinged room that could pass for a large storage closet. You enter and find -- parallel to one windowless wall -- a heavy mahogany bar with seven battered bar stools ending at a popcorn machine last cleaned during the Carter administration. On the wall opposite are two windows blocked by louvers and a small door leading to an empty hallway. Crowded into one corner: a round table with sagging chairs; an old TV mounted from the ceiling like a monument to obsolescence. The floor is carpeted with shells from a huge barrel of peanuts; the walls are covered with cracked and fading photos of patrons past, and the air is permanently saturated with the acrid essence of booze, beer and cigarettes. No sunlight has ever intruded here.. ever.<br />
Welcome to The Chartroom.<br />
In the late 1970’s, this darkened retreat was the socio/political center of the city and was frequented by an egalitarian mixture of bankers, artists, shopkeepers, fishermen, politicians, treasure hunters, real estate developers, cops, street musicians, smugglers and occasional tourists. But by the early 90’s -- as the city began to emerge from a long catatonic stupor -- the bankers, politicians and big dealers deserted it for the privacy and prestige of the Key West Yacht Club; leaving behind a poorer but more interesting bunch of inebriated eccentrics of whom ’Whistle’ Cox was one.<br />
’Whistle’ -- nicknamed after the tiny whistle he attached to each pair of ’cabana pants’ he made for local clothing shops -- loved to sing, and lubricated his vocal chords each day by consuming a quart of Smirnoff vodka. His was the original idea to start an invitation-only, once-a-month dinner for Chartroom regulars and irregulars. The Dutch-treat dinners would be held at whichever restaurants he could persuade to feed twenty-five or thirty unruly misfits. It would culminate with the entire group standing (if they could) and singing songs <i>a capella</i> from lyrics Whistle distributed. He himself would conduct the choir with dramatic sweeps of his arms that occasionally caused him to lose his balance and sink from view.<br />
The Chartroom Gentlemen’s Club and Occasional Choir proved to be a great success; although -- as time passed -- more and more persuasion was needed to get restaurant owners to host it. But the dinners nonetheless grew to be quite famous; and invitations became highly-prestigious and sought after, even by the traitorous yacht club defectors.<br />
And then, suddenly, shockingly, Whistle Cox, only in his mid-forties, died. And although everyone swore the Club would continue, everyone knew it would not and could not without his leadership.<br />
His family -- which had repudiated him long ago -- came to Key West to attend a memorial service and a reception at the Chartroom before taking his ashes back to a Midwestern town he was known to hate. To them, despite decades of being detached, it seemed ’the right thing to do.’ But to the Gentlemen‘s Club, it seemed a sad, undeserved and unjust end to their friend’s life.<br />
Until …<br />
Someone somehow got into one of the hotel’s guest rooms while the memorial service was being held. And that someone somehow knew that Whistle’s ashes were in an urn in that room. Yet the intruder, whoever he was, took nothing that anyone would notice and left without a trace. In fact, the room’s occupants never knew he’d been there.<br />
A week later a second service -- very private and attended by only a few people -- was held in The Chartroom. The louvered blinds were shut, the door closed and locked, and the lights made as dim as possible. A plug was drilled and withdrawn from the mahogany bar rail and a whisky glass full of ashes poured into the empty hole. The plug was then refitted, sanded and re-varnished. A moment of silence was observed.<br />
Finally, a brief but satisfying toast was proposed because Whistle Cox was home … and properly buried.<br />
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As expected, the monthly dinners became bi-monthly, then quarterly or worse, and finally petered out entirely. Although a few old regulars like Panamah still drank at the Chartroom, Whistle’s saga and his myth slipped quietly from the local consciousness.<br />
Not much of a surprise, really. Alcohol fogs memory; and Key West in any event is a town of transient passions and temporary people.<br />
But one night years later, I stopped for a drink at the Chartroom. It was as dim and dingy as ever; and presided over by Rosie The Buxom Bartender, a self-proclaimed witch of a certain age who owned a hundred T-shirts and managed to display her cleavage in each of them. The bar was quiet; only a little knot of locals, a few tourists and Panamah. He was regaling one of the tourists with a story about the good old days of catching ‘square groupers’ (floating bales of marijuana) in the Gulf Stream and was scratching absently into the bar rail with a jewelry tool dangling on a chain from his neck.<br />
He finished the story with a twisted smile, took a sip from his empty glass and looked expectantly at the tourist. I suspect he was waiting for the man to offer him a drink. But instead, the man said:<br />
What are you doing?<br />
Panamah looked puzzled, then followed the man’s gaze to the bar rail and realized he was still scratching into it. He dropped the little tool and studied his hand for a few moments as if it belonged to someone else. Then he nodded to himself and ran his fingers through his tangled hoary hair.<br />
Finally, he met the tourist’s eyes.<br />
I think I might be digging my grave. he said.<br />
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When Panamah died in a Veterans’ Administration hospital early this year, no-one claimed his remains until a loyal female friend contacted the ex-wife from whom he’d been divorced for thirty years. The VA was planning to dispose of him in whatever way it disposes of the unclaimed dead. So, in the nick of time, the friend and ex-wife intervened; and after months of bureaucratic haggling, the hospital agreed to release Panamah to them. They took him back to Key West and divided his ashes among old friends and relatives. But his obituary, published shortly afterward in <i>The Key West Citizen</i>, said: ‘one of the urns … will be buried at an undisclosed location …’ <br />
You know, of course, where that location is and where Panamah’s remains now rest.<br />
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And here this narrative ends: two men .. two Key West characters .. two lives revealed and resolved. If there’s a positive lesson to be taken from their odd and often alienated lives, it’s one we all accept and understand, but sometimes forget:<br />
Be thankful for true friends, whoever and whatever they are and for whatever form their friendship takes. They, more than anything or anyone you’ll encounter, last … if you’ll excuse the word … forever.<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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In all, five gentlemen are now interred in the Chartroom bar rail, the most prominent of whom is Mel Fisher who discovered the Spanish treasure ship, Atocha. In addition to Mel, Whistle and Panamah, there’s also General Geof -- commander of the Conch Republic army -- and someone named Bob Smith. Rosie the Buxom Bartender probably knows who he is, but she is long gone; retired to the safe boredom of rural Oregon.<br />
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The present bartender/sexton of the Chartroom bar/cemetery is a charming local pixie named Emily who suffers fools gladly, as all bartenders must, but whose dainty velvet glove nonetheless hides an iron fist.<br />
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Finally, as of this writing, two other men have had the foresight to reserve burial space in the bar rail; and holes have already been drilled to accommodate them. The first -‘Che’ Kohen - is a fast-talking, gravelly-voiced New Yorker who is also a founding member of the CGCOC. The second is James Cox, Jr.; a banker in Houston, Texas, who apparently and improbably is Whistle Cox’ only son. So just think of that!<br />
One day in the indeterminate future, the Chartroom can celebrate what will be one of the most unusual reconciliations of father and son since Jesus Christ pushed aside the rock and ascended.<br />
Can you imagine?<br />
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Thanks for your time. Please share my link with friends. It’s http://keywestwind.blogspot.com. Or ask them to Google keywestwind and click on the header.<br />
Until next time, salud, cheers, and down the hatch.<br />
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No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-22819657892875806932012-09-06T09:35:00.000-07:002012-09-06T09:35:17.855-07:00PBS IS DEAD ... AN OBIT FOR THE FREEZER<br />
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As you probably know, big newspapers and wire services usually write the obituaries of famous people in advance of their deaths. So when someone prominent bites the dust, the pre-written story of his or her life is pulled from the ‘freezer file‘; and defrosted by adding who announced the death, where and when it happened and, usually but not always, the cause.<br />
As you probably don’t know, there is also an organization called The Society of Professional Obituary Writers that bestows annual achievement awards on its members Among recent winners was “’Tatooed King Of The Runway’ Was A Tough Act To Follow.” by Tom Hawthorne of the Toronto Globe & Mail; and “Claude Miller,104, Sawmill Master And Proud Moonshiner “ by Holly Crenshaw of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. There have even been a few books written on the skills and creativity of what is called The Dead Beat. But unlike the movie Oscars, the television Emmys, and the music Grammies, the obit awards have no nickname; and one’s imagination bursts into flame at the opportunity to create one:<br />
The Reapers?<br />
The Peters (as in Saint)?<br />
The Pearlies (as in Gates)?<br />
The Hannibals? Well, no.<br />
Perhaps there should be a naming contest and an annual gala. (It would of course be black tie.) First prize could be, say, the honor of writing an obit for The New York Times which not infrequently carries one on its front page. Come to think of it, The National Association of Funeral Directors could sponsor the whole celebratory shebang. Maybe even a cable channel like Discovery or The History Channel could …<br />
But I drift and digress .. and I haven’t even begun. Please forgive me.<br />
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Since I was present at the birth of the Public Broadcasting System, and will probably be present at its death in the near future, I’ve decided to write an obit for the freezer file. You, my readers, should feel free to defrost it at the appropriate time:<br />
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Washington, D.C. (date) The Public Broadcasting Service, commonly known as PBS, died yesterday after a long struggle with cancer of the unimaginative and the irrelevant. The death was announced by a spokesman for the United States Congress which voted to take PBS off its life support systems, otherwise known as tax dollars.<br />
“We finally gave up hope.“ said the spokesman who asked not to be identified because of his close affiliation with several well-known lobbyists. “So the decision to terminate, while heartbreaking, was inevitable and nearly unanimous.” (Only Representative Michelle Backmann of Wisconsin abstained for reasons unclear to her staff but consistent with her voting history.) <br />
PBS was born on October 5, 1970 to The Carnegie Foundation of Pittsburgh (father) and the Ford Foundation of New York (mother). It was baptized the following year in Washington D.C ; with The Corporation for Public Broadcasting acting as both godfather and wet nurse, a new gender concept in federal bureaucracy.<br />
Taking up the cause of ex-FCC Chairman Newton Minow who accused commercial television of being a ‘vast wasteland’, PBS was to provide alternative programming to the American public. The nation’s options at that time were limited to three program sources: CBS, NBC and ABC. And although a sprinkling of educational stations -- many operated by universities -- was scattered here and there, they had little or no impact on the American consciousness. Thus, at birth, PBS was hailed as the messiah to bind those stations together in pursuit of enlightenment and the higher good.<br />
Observers agree that in its infancy, PBS showed great promise; buoyed by two of its initial offerings, Sesame Street and Masterpiece Theatre. As it grew, it also offered highly-praised programs like Nova, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, Electric Company, Great Performances and the McNeil Lehrer News Hour. But as it passed through adolescence into adulthood, some critics began to suggest that certain genetic defects -- overlooked at birth -- were beginning to show.<br />
They pointed out that PBS was not, after all, a true network. It did not own stations, did not produce its own programming, and did not control the broadcast times of its member stations. Thus, with few exceptions, it was unable to build audiences on a national level; making it more akin to a conventional program distributor, but with government paying for its extensive technical and administrative bureaucracies..<br />
In addition, during the period of its maximum success and visibility, it failed to diversify its programming into two major areas: comedy and sports. It did, however, import a number of moronic British comedies ranging from the rarely funny ‘Have You Been Served?’ to the music hall trash of ’The Benny Hill Show’; presumably on the theory that excreta with an English accent smells and sells better.<br />
Sports was also denigrated by the system. Its attitude was embodied by John Jay Iselin -- the preppy, bow-tied president of WNET (New York) -- who claimed that his station’s coverage of lawn tennis and of Ivy League football was quite enough sports, thank you. When asked who cared about Ivy League football, he said: ‘Our audience cares.’ Hence, in three words he defined the birth defects that plagued the system throughout its life: elitism and a smug sense of superiority.<br />
In the final stage of its illness, those characteristics perhaps more than any, led PBS to overlook (or underestimate) the changes accelerating all around it. Hybrid competitors had entered the arena; obviously aligned against the commercial networks, but also -- by default -- against public television. HBO, Showtime, TNT, Nickelodeon, Discovery, The History Channel, A&E and others began offering high-quality programming that ignored political and semantic propriety (Difficult language and explicit sex were never allowed on PBS, no matter how artistically presented.) and began to draw major audience segments away the traditional channels, including public television channels. The result was an amoeba-like splitting of the broadcast media into hundreds of new parts.<br />
During its last few years, PBS did try to rally by announcing several initiatives in search of a new ‘business model’; including a satellite channel in Great Britain and a policy of broadcasting ‘institutional’ commercials at fifteen minute intervals in the United States. Unfortunately, a new ‘programming model’ was never considered as a treatment for its increasingly dire condition.<br />
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has asked that in lieu of flowers. contributions be sent to local public stations in the hope of shortening their interminable pledge weeks. No date has been set for a memorial service.<br />
It is believed that PBS died comfortably surrounded by its family of apologists.<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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Given the ratings of leading cable channels, many of PBS’ most popular programs could easily be transferred to commercial television. TNT or A&E would welcome the audience that the best of Masterpiece commands; The Discovery Channel would be happy with Nova; CNN -- which is slowly leaking audience -- would benefit from The News Hour; Nickelodeon would probably welcome the world of Sesame Street; etc. And each of those would be strengthened by the ability of its carrier to advertise and promote nationally across all media. Just an idea, but ….<br />
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My opinion is that PBS was doomed from the moment its first president., Hartford Gunn, decided to headquarter it in Washington, D.C. where it would be subject to the political pressures that its parent -- The Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- was supposed to protect it from. The long term result of trying not to offend anyone in power, particularly those of a conservative bent, was to lose the battle for survival.<br />
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After further research, I’ve learned that The Society of Professional Obituary Writers does indeed have a name for its awards. They are called ‘The Grimmies’. Yuck!<br />
Ugh!<br />
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Thanks for reading these opinions. Next month’s post will be titled HOW TO CREATE A CEMETERY .. KEY WEST STYLE. Please share any and all my blog posts with friends and acquaintances. The link is http://keywestwind.blogspot.com. Or you can Google keywestwind and click on the header. Again, my thanks. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
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</div>No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-53374578652155225512012-08-11T13:37:00.000-07:002012-08-11T13:37:06.426-07:00HOW TO BE EJECTED FROM A WORLD-FAMOUS RESTAURANT ... A SMUTTY TALE FROM THE 'MAD MEN' ERA If dirty stories make you uncomfortable, or if you’re offended by vulgar jokes, this blog entry is not for you. But if you believe as I do that anything goes (short of downright malice), then ….<br />
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Read on, my friends, and you shall hear<br />
Of the silly saga of Prudence Devere<br />
It began on an evening in Sixty-seven<br />
In a quiet restaurant whose food was heaven..<br />
When an issue arose from out of the blue…<br />
And manners were abandoned, and good taste too.<br />
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When I first met Pru Devere, she was in her early thirties, attractive in a conventional way, articulate, intelligent and well-educated. She was already a successful copywriter at a big New York ad agency, had won industry-wide recognition for her work, and was about to become the agency’s first female vice-president. Not satisfied, however, with what she’d already achieved, she was determined to start her own agency; a nearly unheard-of goal in a business so thoroughly dominated by men.<br />
But all in all, she was much like her male peers: bold, talented, ambitious and driven.<br />
Yet despite having so much going for her, Pru had one major flaw: she believed she could manipulate people without them ever noticing. And although she was charming and persuasive, she was nonetheless a serial manipulator; addicted to using anyone and everyone to her advantage. Which is why she ran through boyfriends faster than a bicycle messenger through red lights and why I found her to be fun … in small doses.<br />
For example, whenever she had a serious business problem, she would call one of a coterie of ‘qualified friends’ and offer lunch at a decent mid-town restaurant.<br />
’We haven’t seen each other for so long.’ she’d coo. ‘Let’s just get together and chat. And this one’s on me, okay?’<br />
I myself had gotten several of those calls, and in some ways looked forward to them. The lunches gave me a chance to hear gossip about which agencies were pitching which clients, and who was pulling the sneaky on whom. (Also, a free meal on her expense account was welcome at that stage of my self-employment.) Eventually, of course, we’d get to her problem which was usually one of agency people or politics, and then I’d offer my opinion for her to disparage and ignore, but somehow absorb. In truth, I came to suspect she considered me a better ‘sounding board’ than anything else.<br />
So I was stunned one day when she called and invited me to dinner at Lutece.<br />
Lutece for dinner? I said to myself. I can’t believe she’s serious. Lutece is the most famous French restaurant in New York! What am I saying? …it’s one of the most famous restaurants IN THE WORLD! Holy Christ, it’ll cost her a fortune!<br />
And, of course, that’s when my suspicion gene snapped awake.<br />
What does she want? I asked myself … and then figured that whatever it was, it would cost me something. Nobody like Pru Devere does Lutece without a big payout in mind. So what would I be paying out? Did she want me to join in some conspiracy that she‘d profit from? Did she want to pitch someone I knew and needed inside info? Or maybe she was secretly starting her own agency. But would she do that without an anchor client?<br />
If so, we’d be eating at Katz‘s Deli, not at Lutece.<br />
So it was with anxiety and salivary anticipation --along with those natural twins, curiosity and wariness -- that I met her on the appointed evening.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
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Lutece was located in a converted brownstone on East Fiftieth Street and was easy to overlook if you didn’t know it was there. But once inside, there was no doubt that you’d entered a special place. The ambiance and the décor were, of course, French and perfect in detail. But what was different was how subdued the dining room was. In a city whose restaurants were often deafening, even bordering on raucous, everyone at Lutece spoke in near-whispers. The atmosphere was as reverential as might be found in, say, the Sistine Chapel; and for a moment I wondered whether only white smoke came from its kitchen chimneys.<br />
In any case, my strategy with Pru was to insist on small talk for as long as possible so I could enjoy a few of the dishes made famous by Andre Soltner, the chef/owner. And I succeeded through the Alsatian onion tart (wonderful) and got halfway through the braised baby lamb (even more wonderful) before Peggy knocked lightly on my hand and said:<br />
I have a fantastic opportunity at the agency.<br />
Congratulations. Tell me about it later. I replied.<br />
No. That’s no good. You need to think about it now.<br />
I’ll think about it over dessert. I can’t think and eat at the same time.<br />
Then just listen, she demanded. It’s a big deal for me.<br />
I must have nodded my okay because she plunged into it. <br />
Warner Lambert is giving us a new product .. something so amazing that .. I dunno’ .. just amazing. And I’ve been given the whole thing. I mean EVERYTHING .. packaging, design, marketing, promotion, publicity, the ad campaign .. the works. Isn’t that great? I even get to name it! And if it’s successful … WOW. The sky’s the limit. Don’t say anything, but I think I could become creative director of the whole agency .. Or maybe even a bigger agency like Y&R or BBD&O. Great, huh?<br />
Yeah, sounds wonderful. I said. Could I have a bite of your trout almondine?<br />
Don’t be so wise-ass, she chided. I’m serious, dammit! And I need a name for it.<br />
Aha! There it was. She knew I was good at labeling things .. and people (‘Masterpiece Theatre’ would be a case in point) .. and wanted to bounce some names off me and maybe get some suggestions. But I was still more interested in the food; so when I asked casually what the product was, I wasn’t listening too carefully<br />
First, you have to promise not to laugh, she said. It’s .. uh .. different. So promise. No laughs, no jokes!<br />
Her look was so intense, her eyes so serious, that my taste buds skidded into stop.<br />
Okay, so what’s the product? I asked.<br />
Promise me! she insisted. Cross your heart and hope to die .. and you will die because I personally will kill you.<br />
Oh for Christ’s sake, Pru I promise. What’s the product?<br />
It’s a vaginal deodorant.<br />
A WHAT?<br />
Sensing that I was about to burst, her jaw tightened and she hissed at me through gritted teeth.:<br />
You heard me, goddamit .. it’s a vaginal deodorant.<br />
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My laugh must have sounded like a gunshot because every conversation in the restaurant stopped. Even at the furthest end of the dining room, people turned to see if anyone had been hurt.<br />
You sonofabitch, Pru said. You promised!<br />
She was trying to make the best of it, looking embarrassed and smiling apologetically at people sitting nearby. Meanwhile, I’d brought myself back to semi-control with a series of gasping giggles.<br />
That’s crazy, I said finally. Who the hell wants a vaginal deodorant?<br />
Teenage girls, she told me. They’re very self-conscious about their bodies; and the company’s research says it’s a massive potential market. In fact, even post-teen women worry about .. uh, odor. It could be a very hot product.<br />
Wonderful, I said, you can call it ‘Cherries in Bloom’ and give it a scent. You know, like a room freshener or those pine tree things that hang on rear-view mirrors?<br />
She gave me that hard look again.<br />
Or how about ‘Serene”? … but spelled s-i-r-e-n-e so the teenies will think it’ll make boys happy.<br />
You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you? she said.<br />
Yup, I sure am.<br />
I must have been making too much noise again because the hostess/major domo --who I later found out was Andre Soltner’s wife -- captured my attention from her command post with pursed lips and a slightly upturned eyebrow. Very French and very pointed. I got the message<br />
Okay, let’s get serious, I said.; meaning it but knowing I was barely holding on.<br />
So is this a spray of some kind? I asked.<br />
Yes, that’s right.<br />
All wrong, I said.<br />
All wrong? What’s all wrong?<br />
It should be a roll-on.<br />
What the hell are you talking about? Pru demanded.<br />
A roll-on, dummy … up and down, up and down.<br />
She still didn’t get it so I hummed the melody to the Doublemint Gum jingle. Then she understood and, much to my surprise, laughed with me. Together, we sang ‘Double your pleasure and double your fun …’ as Mrs. Soltner headed our way.<br />
I lifted my arms in surrender and put a forefinger to my lips in the universal sign of silence. She nodded curtly and turned away.<br />
Pru said: We really have to behave or they’ll throw us out.<br />
I agreed and we settled back to our meal, smiling and occasionally giggling quietly at the absurdity -- and the paradoxes -- of the world in which we lived and worked. So the next minutes passed without incident, the dining room went back to its air of respect and gentility, until, as we were looking at the wondrous desert menu, I had an inspired and thoroughly unexpected vision.<br />
I’ve got it! I said. I’ve got the perfect name.<br />
What?<br />
It’s even got its own tag line .. the name itself says it works instantly.<br />
Oh for God’s sake, Pru said. What IS it???<br />
I looked both to my right and to my left to see if anyone was listening, and I beckoned her closer to me.<br />
Are you ready?<br />
She looked ready to kill.<br />
In a half-whisper, I said: we should call it …Lickety-Split.<br />
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And that, my friends, is how all restraint was lost, all etiquette shattered. In short, that is how to be ejected from a world-class restaurant.<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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Warner Lambert finally named its product ‘Pristeen’, a name that was possibly too cute. It was advertised nationally, and promoted heavily, but lasted only a few years before being withdrawn.<br />
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Pru Devere continued to have a successful advertising career, but never started her own agency. The only woman of the ‘Mad Men’ era to do so was Mary Wells of Wells, Rich, Green who married her biggest client. She lives today in Manhattan and on her yacht in the Meditteranean.<br />
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Andre Soltner sold Lutece in the early 1990s to an upscale restaurant chain. It closed in 2004 when its old customers refused to adjust to a new menu and its new customers considered it past its prime. But it is still referred to, not infrequently, on ‘Mad Men’. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.<br />
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Vaginal deodorants in the form of sprays, wipes and suppositories are still available in most drug stores. Some are scented with aromas described as ‘Sheer Tropics’ and ‘Fresh Island Breeze’. They seem to sell for reasons beyond reason.<br />
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And finally .. although Pru Devere and I remained friends, I never received another invitation from her .. not even for breakfast.<br />
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Thanks for reading my ramblings. I hope you’ll share them with friends by sending them the link: http://keywestwind.blogspot.com.No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-21626000400508798622012-07-08T12:35:00.000-07:002012-07-08T12:35:52.142-07:00HOW TO SELL A SOW'S EAR .. AND THROW A GREAT PARTY <br />
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Okay, after months of sloth, I’m back to speculate about bad ideas.<br />
It’s often said that good ideas are a dime a dozen. But if that’s so, wouldn’t bad ideas be even cheaper?<br />
Nope.<br />
In 1958 the Ford Motor Company decided to name a new automobile after Henry Ford’s oldest son. It flopped big-time; and the name ‘Edsel’ became a synonym for failure. Bad idea.<br />
Decades later, the Coca-Cola Company inexplicably decided to re-name the world‘s most famous product. They called their regular Coca-Cola ‘Coke Classic‘, and replaced it with a different product called (can you believe it?) Coca-Cola. It went flat instantly and the company quickly retreated back to Square One. Another bad and very costly idea.<br />
And remember recently when Hewlett-Packard brought out a Touch Pad to compete with the iPad? If you don’t, it’s okay. The poor little thing was euthanized after only forty-eight days on the market: very much like the Blackberry Playbook, another ballyhooed baby barely born when it was flushed with the bathwater.<br />
And how about the Netflix debacle in 2010? After announcing that it was unbundling its service, its customers rose up en masse and smote the company a mighty blow. Red-faced to match its packaging, Netflix re-thought, rescinded and retreated. And finally, just the other day mighty Microsoft wrote off $6.2 billion for an online ad company it bought in 2007. That’s over a billion bucks a year down the toilet!<br />
So no matter how technologically advanced you are, or how deep your corporate pockets, bad ideas too frequently take on a life of their own. I’ll explain why later on.<br />
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But first let’s cut to a phone call I received many years ago from a small Michigan company with very big ambitions. The company was called University Microfilms and the caller was its founder and president, Eugene Power.<br />
Mr. Power believed that microfilm was the wave of the future for information storage and retrieval. Nothing could touch it for convenience, flexibility, easy storage and quick accessibility. If anyone thought otherwise, Mr. Power told me, his head was in the cloud (my present pun, not his). And to prove his point -- and to draw national attention to his company -- he had microfilmed and then reproduced in facsimile form every issue of a magazine I’d never heard of, bound them in ten fancy hardcover volumes and was selling them in a limited edition of 1000 sets for the astronomical price of $1000.<br />
Now that was my idea of a bad idea; breathtakingly bad.<br />
The magazine was called Vanity Fair and, as I subsequently learned, it had once been a cultural icon with regular contributors like Dorothy Parker, Aldous Huxley, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Wolfe, and P.G. Wodehouse. It was also the first magazine to reproduce the fine art of icons like Monet and Picasso. All in all, it molded the tastes of an era and became a cultural star of the first magnitude.<br />
In its day, that is.<br />
And its day -- begun as a fashion magazine in 1914 -- ended in 1935!<br />
No wonder I’d never heard of it. It had been dead for three and a half decades.<br />
And dead too was Mr. Power’s idea. He and his staff had canvassed bookstores everywhere -- even in his hometown of Ann Arbor -- and nobody but NOBODY wanted to carry a $1000 facsimile set of old magazines.<br />
So he was calling in the hope that I could breath life into what he should already have known -- and into what I was sure --was a corpse.<br />
Sorry, I said, what you’ve got is a sow’s ear. And although I’m good at some things, I don’t have the faintest idea how to make a silk purse.<br />
But he wouldn‘t take no for an answer and begged me to take a look.<br />
Since he sounded like a pleasantly sincere, if slightly desperate man, I agreed. In part to placate him and also, I suppose, to confirm my own judgment.<br />
The set of books arrived a week later and I found myself skimming with delight every eight-pound, silver-bound volume. It was a captivating history lesson, a nostalgic odyssey, a graphic bible, an arrogant, funny and thoroughly wonderful chronicle of values found and values lost. As presented, however, it was nonetheless a dinosaur; a fossil in silver bindings. Nothing, in my opinion, could resurrect it.<br />
But on a whim, I showed it to my partner, Phil Bloom, an ex-Broadway press agent who was at least twenty-five years my senior. We’d recently formed an odd-couple partnership because I knew the business of corporate writing but knew nothing about publicity while he knew nothing about corporations but a lot about press coverage. The theoretical buzzword in those days was synergy. <br />
In any case, I figured he might remember Vanity Fair and be amused by Eugene Power’s naïve effort to attract attention to his company.<br />
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Several weeks later, after I’d almost forgotten about it, Phil burst into my office beaming like a troll that had just eaten Hans Christian Andersen.<br />
I sold it! he shouted.<br />
Sold what? I asked.<br />
The Vanity Fair books! Can you believe it? I sold ‘em!!!<br />
Whaddaya’ mean you sold them? I asked.<br />
Bergdorf Goodman! BERGDORF … GOODMAN! They took it.<br />
He was literally sputtering with excitement. So I waited him out.<br />
They’re gonna’ sell the books! Get it? Berdorfs is gonna’ sell the books!<br />
Phil, calm down. I said. Bergdorfs doesn’t sell books.<br />
No, no, listen to me. They looked at them and loved them. And they’ve decided to do a huge Twenties thing for Christmas this year. They’re not only gonna’ offer the books for sale, they’re gonna’ feature them in their windows. It’s huge .. I mean, HUGE. They’re giving us all eleven windows for the whole Christmas season!!!<br />
It was a major coup; and to this day I’m not exactly sure how Phil did it. But I’m nearly certain it was through what I came to call the Society of Tasteful Men (STM): an unofficial and almost subterranean community of well-educated and talented men drawn to New York for obvious and not so obvious reasons. It had established itself in the arts, music, fashion, theatre and related fields and its members tried to help each other whenever they could. My partner was a member and -- as it turned out -- so was Bergdorf’s chief window designer. <br />
In those days --unlike today -- successful gay men stayed in the closet. Being homosexual was not only criminal in many states, but was considered -- even in liberal circles -- to be an illness or an unfortunate aberration. Moreover, it was rarely if ever discussed publicly. So the Society of Tasteful Men was discreet, careful and almost invisible except to its members.<br />
But, of course, that’s how almost all systems work. Gay or straight, it’s who you know.<br />
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Unfortunately, just as I’d never heard of Vanity Fair, Eugene Power out in Ann Arbor had never heard of Bergdorf Goodman. So it took a while to light the fire of enthusiasm under him. Once lit, however, he was, as they say, all in; and enthusiastically backed our idea to hold a launch party at the store to unveil the windows and the books.<br />
Fine. he told us. You know what they say: In for a penny … right? <br />
I was tempted to tell him New York doesn’t do pennies. And although Phil was thrilled, I was still skeptical about the whole thing. How could an upscale department store that had never sold a book possibly sell a set of books that were really a bunch of magazines that hadn’t been published since the Jurassic age … and hawk them at Christmas time for a price that nobody ever heard of?<br />
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Then, much to my surprise, Andrew Goodman -- the owner and king of the Bergdorf empire -- got into the act. How and why I’ll never know. But instead of launching the windows in the usual manner, he decided to hold a big black tie dinner in his private penthouse on the top floor of the store. Phil was ecstatic and I was beginning to think we might at least achieve half of Eugene Power’s objective: namely, some national press coverage.<br />
And that’s where we hit a snag.<br />
Who could be invited to the party who was rich enough to actually buy a set of the books? That’s what Eugene Power -- suddenly cautious -- was asking. He sensed that Bergdorf’s traditional client list, while certainly affluent, were not quite what we were looking for. And although he was happily in for a penny, the pounds were starting to mount up. And press exposure, of course, has no calories.<br />
Being totally unqualified to address the question, I pondered it for several weeks until the Society of Tasteful Men again rode to the rescue. George Trescher -- another of Phil’s acquaintances -- was Director of Development at the Metropolitan Museum, a right-hand man to Thomas Hoving -- the museum’s adventurous director -- and a frequent escort of Brooke Astor, one of the Met’s great benefactors. In other words, he was as ‘connected’ as anyone could be and was willing to develop an ‘A List’ for us of New York’s high and mighty<br />
There was only one problem, he said. We needed a lure to attract them. He loved the idea of the Jazz Age and Roaring Twenties windows, but where was the exclusivity? Everybody walking by could see the windows .. and the people we wanted weren’t just anybody. We needed a ‘hook’ on which to hang the invitation.<br />
So a meeting was set up with all involved, except of course Andrew Goodman who was above such concerns. A number of ideas were thrown around, none of them inspiring, until facetiously and impulsively I said:<br />
Why don’t we hire Benny Goodman for the night? Then we could call the party ‘Goodman at Bergdorf’s’.<br />
The room went dead silent.<br />
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‘Goodman at Bergdorf’s’ was one of the most memorable nights of my life even though, paradoxically, I don’t remember that much of it. What I do remember vividly -- as I mingled (not very comfortably) with all the wealth and power in that spectacular penthouse apartment -- is sitting on the carpeted living room floor after dinner. I’d taken off my rented patent leather shoes, my black tie was hanging loosely around my neck, and I was literally resting at the feet of the most famous musician in the world; the man called the King of Swing. He and his quartet floated from room to room and the lilt of his clarinet meandered like a musical stream, creating ponds and eddies of warmth and excitement everywhere. To this day, I’ve never seen an audience so rapt; so thoroughly hypnotized. It was magic.<br />
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Two days later, Bergdorf Goodman called to say they’d sold the last set of Eugene Power’s limited facsimile edition of Vanity Fair. All forty tons of it were gone.<br />
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The lesson of this story is not that a silk purse can be made out of a sow’s ear.<br />
After all, Mr. Power‘s company, when all was said and done, undoubtedly lost a good penny or two on the deal. It did receive some good press coverage, however, which I suppose is still pasted in somebody’s scrapbook in a dusty Michigan attic or, more probably, preserved somewhere on microfilm.<br />
No, the real lesson here is that a bad idea takes on a life of its own when the big boss likes it. It’s that simple and that sad.<br />
So … how soon do you think Microsoft will write off its $5.3 billion investment in Skype?<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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Vanity Fair was folded into Vogue in 1936, but was born again in 1983 as a celebrity/public affairs magazine. Its editors have included Leo Lerman, who was an editor at Vogue; Tiny Brown, ex-editor of everything except her own life; and now Graydon Carter who owns The Waverly Inn and The Monkey Bar in Manhattan while journalistically exploring the private lives of celebrities.<br />
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My partnership with Phil Bloom lasted only three years. It was oil and water all the way, with the generational difference too great to overcome. And although he taught me a great deal, he was in the end disinterested in my knowledge and skills. So much for synergy.<br />
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I eventually repaid George Trescher’s help by introducing him to the CEO of Xerox. The introduction led in turn to the company’s sponsorship of ‘New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970’; the first contemporary art exhibit ever mounted by the Met.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
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With the analog and digital ages infringing on its hopes, University Microfilms must have taken cover in some small recess of the information warehouse. I can find no record , no evidence, that it ever existed. But at least on one night, in one bright place, its star shone more brightly than a meteor in the firmament.<br />
I’m glad one person still remembers.<br />
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Thanks for reading my blog. I hope you’ll call it to the attention of friends and send them the link which is http://keywestwind.blogspot.com.No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-58650290655306183622011-12-23T13:21:00.000-08:002011-12-23T13:21:55.390-08:00LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS ... A FOOTNOTE<span lang="EN"> <br />
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How about a bon-bon for the Holiday Season?<br />
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When I was growing up in an isolated New England mill town, I had no concept of ’rich’ other than the abstract rich in fairy tales, But as I grew a little older I became conscious of another ‘rich’ who lived on the high ground in big houses under big trees on the other side of town. They were mythical and mysterious and separate, but I was able to glimpse them occasionally driving by in their shiny Buicks and Pontiacs. They seemed to drive fast through our neighborhood and their eyes always looked straight ahead.<br />
Then, in my first month of high school, I got an inkling that we might just share the same planet. Kids I didn’t know -- but who seemed nice enough from a distance --were described to me as ‘His old man’s a big shot at the mill.’ or ‘Her old man’s really rich’. Rich is what defined them at first .. that and they wore nicer shoes.<br />
And finally, at seventeen, I fell in love with a banker’s daughter from the high ground, and she with me. I found out her family had fights just like everybody else, but they were nonetheless worlds apart from anything I‘d known. Instead of ‘supper’ they called it ‘dinner’, and instead of ‘dinner’ they ate ‘lunch‘. They also ate in a dining room, not in the kitchen, and used cloth napkins. And their garage could fit two cars! But most baffling of all, there was no clothesline in their back yard.<br />
I was in awe of them.<br />
Less than a decade later, and long after my heart was broken by that first love, I migrated to New York City with a guitar, a sleeping bag and thirty-five dollars. By that time, my attitude toward the rich had become ambivalent. I sang anti-capitalist folk songs in Washington Square, but secretly lusted after the good life which I defined as an apartment with an elevator. After a further ten years of many ‘ups’ and a some deep ‘downs’, my career as a writer and consultant began to blossom. I embraced capitalism and became -- for want of a better description -- reasonably affluent. But if I were no longer in awe of the rich, I still carried a lingering and deep-seated envy of them.<br />
That is, until one memorable night in London.<br />
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In the early Seventies, London was the hottest (or ‘coolest‘, depending on how old you are) city in the world. It basked in the excitement of the Beatles and the Stones, John Osborne’s plays, John Schlesinger’s wonderful movies, and the madness of ’Monty Python’s Flying Circus’; not to speak of Twiggy’s antics and Mary Quant’s miniskirts and hot pants. It was also enjoying an explosion of new clubs, and restaurants like Mr. Chow‘s, San Lorenzo, and a very fashionable spot called ‘Menage a Trois’ which served dinner in portions of three: three carrots, three fingers of veal, three cookies for dessert. (Peas, thank heavens, were not on the menu.)<br />
Among the private clubs, the ultimate in chic, snobbery and exclusivity was Annabel’s in Berkeley Square. With a superb kitchen and after-dinner dancing, it had a dress code as precise as a military manual and prices (cash only) that would make your eyes water. It was so upper-echelon that whatever happened there not only stayed there, it was entombed there. I became a member after being nominated by the chairman of the Rank Organization, for whom I’d done a serious favor, and seconded by the titled granddaughter of a British prime minister. Yeah, me .. the hick kid from a mill town! <br />
But having a big expense account is not, of course, being rich.<br />
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In any case, I decided one night to invite my favorite client, Herb Schmertz of Mobil, to dinner at Annabel’s. I also invited a German model, Heidi Keine, whom I’d known in New York and who’d recently moved to London. Heidi was bright, beautiful and had an acerbic wit that I thought would add spice to the evening. Neither she nor Schmertz had ever been to Annabel’s and each was excited by the opportunity to see what it was all about.<br />
We were seated near the dance floor in the elegant, dimly-lit dining room; low-ceilinged with mirrored columns and bouquets of orchids at each table. The room was nearly full with ’the beautiful people’; although there was an subtle space at one end separating a table of five: an old man, a middle-aged woman, two very attractive thirty-something girls and a guy who I assumed was a husband or boyfriend.<br />
Over dinner, Herb and Heidi got along famously, leaving me to drink more wine than was wise and to ponder what to do with the remainder of the night. Finally, when the dancing began, I said:<br />
Do you think anybody’s ever picked up a bird in Annabel’s? (That’s what girls were called in those days.)<br />
I was looking at what I now considered ‘The Gang of Five’.<br />
My friends knew exactly what I had in mind. <br />
Don’t do it, they said simultaneously. And Herb added: They’ll throw us out. <br />
So I brooded until he and Heidi got up to dance, and then made my way across the room. One of the girls saw me approaching and gave me a tentative ‘Do I know you?’ look. It was less than a smile, but more than simple curiosity. <br />
The best I could do was: Is a fifth permitted to dance with a third?<br />
Then she did smile, glancing at her table mates, and said: Why not?<br />
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What followed was the most uncomfortable ten minutes I’d ever spent. Everyone in the room -- including the maitre d’ and the sommelier -- was staring at us as we danced to the Bee Gees. And when I say they stared, I mean they stared unashamedly and openly. It was apparent that I’d trampled on British protocol and would probably be hanged at dawn. When I looked at Herb and Heidi, they were shaking their heads in dismay. Yet, oddly, my dancing partner seemed oblivious to it all. <br />
Finally, readying myself to face whatever punishment was coming, I escorted the girl back to her table. We’d only spoken a few words, so I was surprised when she said:<br />
Why don’t you join us? I’m sure your friends won’t mind.<br />
I’d like that, I replied. But I should tell you my name. Which I did.<br />
Hello. she said, offering me her hand. I’m Ann Getty. And turning to introduce me, she added: This is my father-in-law, Jean Paul .. this is …<br />
The other names sailed past me. I couldn’t absorb that I was being introduced to the richest man in the world -- the famous and infamous miser/founder of Getty Oil -- and that I’d crashed his table. Like an ill-mannered lout, I’d walked right through the invisible barrier that separated the mythical Gettys from the madding crowd. And people were still looking at me as if I were about to be struck by lightning.<br />
The next few minutes are lost in the haze of memory. But I did manage to register that the older woman was a nurse/companion and that the other girl was another Getty daughter-in-law. The guy with them was obviously well-connected, but just the girls’ escort. He was clearly furious that I‘d joined the party and couldn’t resist throwing me dirty, surreptitious looks. As to the patriarch, I don’t remember him saying a word to anyone.<br />
Eventually, after the usual chatter about who you are and where you’re going (The girls were on their way to Gstaad for a month’s skiing.), Ann said to me:<br />
Why don’t you ask your friends to pay their check and join us?<br />
Puzzled by the conjunction, I said: What does paying their check have to do with them joining us?<br />
I’m sorry, she told me, but you don’t know how people try to take advantage of us.<br />
That was the second memorable moment of the night; and I wondered whether the mega-rich might be mildly afflicted with paranoia.<br />
I said: Doesn’t that happen mostly with people you know .. rather than people you don’t?<br />
She looked uncomfortable with the question; and since it was more a statement than a question anyway, I changed the subject .. kind of.<br />
Is it true that your father-in-law took all the phones out of his castle and put in a coin-operated pay phone?<br />
Well, first of all, it’s not a castle, she answered. It’s a Tudor manor .. and yes he did. Everybody was using the phones to call long distance and the bills were getting huge.<br />
So how many bedrooms does it have? I asked.<br />
I don’t really know. she answered. I’ve never tried to count them.<br />
I wanted to inquire whether the ’Tudor manor’ had a moat, but thought better of it.<br />
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Moments later, after quietly briefing Herb and Heidi and paying our check, I led them over for the appropriate introductions Everyone was in a festive mood (except the escort who was still sulking and surly) and conversation flowed easily. Heidi told a few anecdotes about her modeling career, Herb chatted about our relationship with the BBC. Only the old man, who seemed barely awake, remained silent.<br />
Then at one point, Ann Getty leaned toward Schmertz and said: I understand you’re with Mobil.<br />
Yes, I am. Schmertz said.<br />
Ummm … that‘s nice. she cooed. We have an oil company too.<br />
To this day, I’ve never heard a more patronizing or more condescending remark. But Schmertz, who’d helped elect JFK to the presidency and who, if called upon, could name-drop with the best of them, took it in stride. I, however, did not .. and eventually coined a new word to describe what I’d encountered that night. The word was ‘arronoia’: a combination of arrogance and paranoia. It managed to destroy whatever residual envy I had for the rich, whether they were billionaires counting pennies or small town bankers with well-brought-up daughters.<br />
It was a final lesson well worth learning.<br />
Although, as an old friend of mine has always said: Rich or poor .. it’s still nice to have money.<br />
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HOLIDAY CHOCOLATES: SOME BITTERSWEET<br />
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Ann Getty and her husband became prominent public figures and philanthropists in San Francisco. I believe she still lives in the Bay area.<br />
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The surly escort eventually revealed himself to be a rising executive in the British subsidiary of Armco Steel, a large American company. When I delightedly informed him that Armco’s CEO was not only a close friend but in many respects my mentor, his attitude changed as if by magic. I promised, of course, to mention our meeting.<br />
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Heidi Keine and I stayed in touch until 1982 when she disappeared off the stern of a sailing yacht in the Caribbean. Her remains were never found.<br />
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When he died, Jean Paul Getty left over $625 million to establish an art museum in Los Angeles. Yet in 1973 when his youngest grandson was kidnapped, he refused to pay a $3 million ransom, relenting only when the boy’s severed ear arrived in the mail. Then, agreeing to pay $2.2 million because that was the tax-deductible maximum, he lent his son -- the boy’s father -- the remaining $800,000 … at four percent interest. Go figure.<br />
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Much to my surprise, the staff at Annabel’s treated me with deference and great respect after the Getty ’incident’; obviously confusing my ignorance with bravery. The club, by the way, is still going strong; and -- man or woman -- one must still be properly dressed: tie and jacket, tailored trousers, no casual footwear, no suede or leather clothing, and for women, no ‘undergarments’ showing. Some things never change.<br />
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Please feel free to send this posting to anyone who might be interested. The link is </span><a href="http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span lang="EN">http://keywestwind.blogspot.com</span></span></u></a><span lang="EN">. </span>No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-46248969464270695522011-11-06T10:28:00.000-08:002011-11-06T10:28:28.660-08:00HOW TO BALANCE THE BUDGET .. AND UNBALANCE THE CONGRESS<span lang="EN"> </span><a href="http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span lang="EN">http://keywestwind.blogspot.com</span></span></u></a><span lang="EN">. If you think it’s worthwhile, show it to a politician or a political journalist and ask what they think. Thanks for reading me.</span><br />
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Enough with odd and funny stories. I feel the need to get serious. To say something important!<br />
But what?<br />
Well, how about HOORAY FOR WARREN BUFFETT!!!!<br />
Maybe not. In fact, for sure not.<br />
He recently wrote in the New York Times that he pays a smaller percentage in income taxes than his secretary and nineteen others in his Omaha office. He then recommended that the rich pay more .. as a simple matter of fairness and to help balance the federal budget. His article produced a flash flood of discussion that lasted nearly five minutes before receding back into the river of half-truths and outright lies that has become American politics.<br />
Pffft .. and it was gone.<br />
Then, a few weeks later, he announced an investment of five billion dollars in the Bank of America (a disgraceful, despicable and dysfunctional organization if ever there was one.) The B of A -- which claimed it didn’t need the money -- will pay Mr. Buffett three hundred million dollars a year in interest for money it supposedly didn’t need, plus giving him a fistful of warrants that delete the value of every other shareholder’s investment. <br />
And now President Obama is asking the rich (including corporations) to pay $1.2 trillion more in taxes for the same reason: fairness. Surprise! Surprise! ‘The Buffett Rule’ -- as Obama has labeled it -- has risen to flood stage again.<br />
But I’d rather call it ‘The Bluffett Rule‘.<br />
So what’s really going on here? <br />
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Well for one thing, asking the rich to pay more taxes is disingenuous nonsense. Making it happen is about a hopeless as measuring Michele Bachman’s IQ. Mr.Buffet, who is no dummy, and the President, who is no longer an innocent, know it as surely as they know simpler ways to balance the budget and reduce the national debt. <br />
But before we get to that, I’d like to ask what took The Oracle of Omaha so long to speak up? Where’s he been for the last ten years? As he and his peers were enjoying the Bush tax cuts, and going from filthy rich to mega-rich, didn’t he notice that the country -- especially working stiffs like his secretary and ’The Nebraska Nineteen’ -- was being driven into crippling debt, disillusion and despair? What kind of oracle is he anyway? He seems a lot like The Wizard of Oz: amplified but ineffectual. <br />
What he and the President aren’t admitting is that the problem with getting the rich to pay more taxes lies not with the rich themselves, but with politicians, impure and simple. If the truth be told, the core problem is campaign financing. It’s all about getting re-elected.<br />
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Here’s a little riddle: what cost five billion three hundred million dollars and resulted only in confusion, gridlock and a national migraine?<br />
Answer: the 2008 election. The presidential candidates alone spent two billion four hundred million dollars!!<br />
Furthermore, it now costs an average of a million dollars to get into the House of Representatives (two million or more in bigger cities) and seven and a half million to get into the Senate! <br />
Look at it this way: if you’re a freshman Congressperson elected for twenty-four short months, you not only have to find the caucus rooms, the lunchroom, the lavatory and the gym in the basement of the Sam Rayburn building, you also have to find a at least ten thousand dollars a week to have any hope of re-election.<br />
No wonder you’re all sound bites and glib slogans. You don’t have a lot of time to do much except raise money.<br />
Of course, money isn’t everything, is it?. How about principle, and policies, and how you stand on the issues? Aren’t those things crucial too?<br />
Maybe. But politics is like playing Texas Hold’em. If the issues are the cards that go face-up on the table for everyone to see, the bigger bucks are like aces in the hole: IN ALL RACES FOR CONGRESS IN 2008, THE CANDIDATE WHO SPENT THE MOST MONEY WON <i>NINETY-THREE PERCENT</i> OF THE TIME!!!<br />
Money doesn’t just talk, it shouts. <br />
And it corrupts.<br />
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And where does all the money come from? Despite all you might read about Obama’s grass-root support or the Tea Party’s populist appeal, eight of the ten largest contributors to the 2008 presidential campaign came from Wall Street, including two foreign-owned banks!! What a surprise!! And what a surprise that politicians are terrified of offending their principal sources of cash. <br />
So is there a cure for this monstrous and metastasizing cancer?<br />
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Unfortunately, no.<br />
The ‘financial class’ will continue to control elections and exert undue influence unless we limit campaign expenditures and limit the time available to spend them.<br />
Ideally, all primaries, caucuses, straw polls, etc. should be banned in national election years until two weeks before the nominating conventions; and no campaigning for those primaries should be allowed until two weeks prior to the actual nominations..<br />
Once the national conventions are held and the nominees named, no political advertising in print or on television or through direct mail should be allowed, and no other forms of campaigning permitted, until six weeks before the November election.<br />
If you can’t get across to the people of America in six weeks, you shouldn’t be running. <br />
Second, specific limits should be put on the total <i>amount</i> of campaign spending by each candidate for the House, the Senate and the Presidency, and the same time limits imposed on all campaigning. No more tricky end runs by so-called ‘Super PACs’ that ladle unlimited funds into the money pot.<br />
If the British can conduct a general election with only three weeks’ notice, we should be able to conduct one in ten weeks. And as a consequence, substantially reduce, if not erase, the influence of big money.<br />
If that could be achieved, tax reform would come much more easily. <br />
Everyone, including Mr. Buffett and the President, knows that a flat tax on income is the best answer to our budget and deficit problems. The concept is far from new: Jack Kemp offered the idea in the 1980’s, Steve Forbes in the 1990’s and now the cowboy governor from Texas has adopted the idea. I personally believe that a graduated flat tax ranging from five percent on lower incomes to twenty-five percent on all gross personal and gross corporate income would put the federal budget back into the black. Of course, it would mean no more tax breaks for anyone: no personal deductions for mortgage interest, property taxes, education; no corporate deductions, weird tax credits, percentage depletion allowances, tricky foreign earnings deferrals. No loopholes, period.<br />
Right now, our tax code is longer than the Holy Bible: 3.4 million words long. And it grows more grotesque and frightening every year, like a monster in a child’s dream.<br />
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But, alas, all this is but a dream also. Campaign financing will remain the same, tax reform will not happen in any meaningful way, and big money will continue to control and corrupt the political process.<br />
So let’s get back where we started. I think Warren Buffett should write another article and pledge to pay the same percentage in income taxes as his secretary. That would be putting his mouth where his money is, and vice versa. That would be something for all to see and maybe even to follow.<br />
Deeds, not words, are what is needed, Mr. Buffett. Otherwise, all is a ‘bluffett‘. And this country and its hard-working people -- without courageous leadership -- will have to ‘roughett’ for many years, perhaps even for generations, to come. <br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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If you have any doubt that our tax code has been twisted and tweaked beyond reason, consider this: In 2010, three of the largest corporations in the world -- General Electric, Exxon Mobil and Bank of America -- reported profits totaling 55.4 billion dollars and paid exactly ZERO is federal income taxes. I wonder how much they spent on lobbyists and tax accountants,<br />
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Here’s another idea: if a flat tax were adopted, people who are convicted of tax evasion, avoidance or tax fraud should automatically be relegated to the top tax bracket for the rest of their natural lives.<br />
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American companies right now are holding $1.4 TRILLION overseas in unreported profits. Those companies include Microsoft, Proctor and Gamble, and Pfizer. They’re waiting for even lower taxes to bring the money home. Come back, Shane!<br />
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And finally, I can easily understand the anger of the Occupy Wall Street movement. But they’re shooting blanks at the sky. A better approach would be to target one nationwide institution like, say, Bank of America. Picket its branches, camp outside its offices, encourage its depositors to go elsewhere, start a website called BUBBA. Break Up The Big Bank of America. That, I believe, would yield more than just noise and press coverage.<br />
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In sum, I believe ..<br />
THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE AMERICAN ECONOMY THAT AN HONEST CONGRESS AND A DEDICATED ADMINISTRATION CAN’T SOLVE. SADLY, WE HAVE NEITHER.<br />
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The link to this blog isNo Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-32056961021211213472011-08-19T09:56:00.000-07:002011-08-19T09:56:14.542-07:00THE POWER OF ONE: HOW A VICIOUS BIGOT UNINTENTIONALLY CONTRIBUTED TO EQUAL RIGHTS<span lang="EN"> <br />
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1968. What a year!<br />
The Detroit Tigers won the World Series (Honest!), Rod Laver won Wimbledon, the United States won the most gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Mexico. And the Beatles started Apple Records. Such are the memories of many. Memories of wins, memories of songs still sung and loved. Memories of glory.<br />
But I also remember 1968 as The Year of Hatred. And of terrible loss.<br />
In January the Vietcong began the Tet offensive. Countless thousands died on both sides, proving we were in a full-blown war. The following month -- in our domestic war -- three college kids were killed during a civil rights protest in South Carolina; and student riots broke out all across the country. On March 31, Lyndon Johnson said he was finished with the presidency, paving the way for a man who personified hate: Richard Nixon.<br />
Then, less than a week later, national shame. <br />
Martin Luther King is assassinated. Two days after that, a shootout occurs in Oakland between the police and the Black Panthers. Three die, including a sixteen year-old boy It’s a precursor to another gun battle between black militants and police in Cleveland. There, ten are dead, including three cops; fifteen are wounded.<br />
April’s shame is followed by June’s calamity. . <br />
Bobby Kennedy -- campaigning in Los Angeles -- is also assassinated. The nation is thunderstruck; ripped apart by the Vietnam war on one hand and by violent civil rights battles on the other. Two of our most respected and dedicated leaders have been killed, and entire segments of society are grieving. <br />
For the moment, hate seems to be gaining the upper hand in America.<br />
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Early in the year, CBS called me about a documentary series it was going to broadcast prior to the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions. The seven-part series was titled ‘Of Black America’ and would begin with a one-hour program called ‘Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed”. The narrator would be the only black ever to star in a dramatic TV series (I Spy), the actor/comedian Bill Cosby. Subsequent programs would cover blacks in the military, in education, in entertainment, etc. Basically the project would be presented as a comprehensive survey of African-American life and culture.<br />
No-one had ever undertaken or even proposed such a bold and innovative idea. And given its scale and the volatility of the times, it was bound to create a ton of controversy and be seen as overtly supporting the civil rights movement.<br />
It was no surprise to CBS that its regular advertisers wanted no part of it. Toothpaste and toilet paper makers, beer companies and cupcake bakers, were not going to be ‘part of the solution’ as Eldridge Cleaver would write later that year. So half-apologetically, and with feeble hope of a favorable response, CBS asked me whether Xerox -- a young, fast-growing company known for not being afraid of controversial programming -- might be interested. <br />
Although -- like a majority of Americans -- I was never actively involved in protesting the war or in supporting the civil rights movement; ‘Of Black America’ seemed to awaken something in me. Suddenly I wanted to be involved and to involve Xerox as well. But I couldn’t see how.<br />
Most of the company’s annual TV budget had already been committed. And aside from the political implications and the budgetary problem, the marketing people would automatically reject anything broadcast during summer re-runs; not a prime period for leasing copiers. Then the Xerox PR people -- always skittish and overly cautious -- would surely find other reasons to reject it. So despite CBS dangling a significant discount if I could entice Xerox into sole sponsorship, I simply couldn’t persuade myself that the company could afford an investment at that level of risk and resistance.<br />
Then a new and very different possibility occurred to me. What if I could arrange dual sponsorship with an old-line conservative company like the Great Northern Railroad, United States Steel, or Standard Oil of New Jersey? What if we could align ourselves with the ghosts of the robber barons? That would be like saying all of American industry -- from one end to the other, new and old, basic and advanced -- endorsed the movement for equal rights. Xerox would sponsor half and the old-line company the other half. Together they would make a statement no-one could ignore and no-one would dare dispute. Or so I thought.<br />
I cautiously floated the idea with the new CEO of Xerox, Peter McColough, who -- aware that I was ignoring normal channels -- gave me a qualified go-ahead.<br />
I went to United States Steel first. I couldn’t get my foot in the door. Next I tried Ford Motor Company. Same story, but more polite. To say Pan Am and The Pennsylvania Railroad were uninterested would be an understatement.. But finally, through a friend, I got an appointment with Christian Herter Jr., Vice-President of Public Affairs for Mobil Oil Corporation which, originally, was Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony). Herter was a ‘Boston Brahmin’ of impeccable background: son of a Secretary of State, social lion, ex-legislator and long-time public servant; the kind of patrician whose trousers didn’t dare wrinkle when he sat down. I sensed I was dead the moment I began pitching him.<br />
But I hung in there, explaining the benefits that could accrue to Mobil, until he interrupted me:<br />
‘I’m sorry.’ he said. ‘But we could never do anything like that.’<br />
‘And why is that?’ I asked.<br />
He looked at me as if I were possibly of limited intelligence.<br />
‘What if .. after the first Black America show .. somebody threw a brick through one of our service station windows?’<br />
I looked absently for a few seconds at photographs hung on the wall behind him. There were presidents and cabinet members, heads of state, Middle Eastern kings and princes, captains of industry. None of his family.<br />
Then I said: ‘What a great idea! Do you know anybody we can hire to do it?’<br />
With the most humorless thin-lipped smile I’d ever seen, he dismissed me.<br />
‘Thank you for thinking of us.’ he said.<br />
In the end, the message was clear. No industrial giant and no consumer goods producer would go anywhere near ’Of Black America’. So I went back to McColough with my tail between my legs and told him I’d failed. He leaned back in his chair and put his forefingers to his lips, thinking it over.<br />
’Well,’ he said. ’I guess we’ll have to go it alone.’ <br />
Those few words guaranteed him my absolute loyalty until the day he retired fourteen years later.<br />
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‘Of Black America’ debuted -- with Xerox as sole sponsor -- on July 2, l968. If I remember correctly, several CBS affiliates in the South refused to broadcast it. Nonetheless, it was by documentary standards a great success. The critics were nearly unanimous in their praise; the overnight Neilsen ratings were good and its share of audience held steady throughout the hour.<br />
But I was deeply worried that the audience would slip away in the coming weeks. For one thing, the second program -- about black soldiers -- would be up against the Major League All-Star game on NBC. For another, the competition would surely start ‘stunting’ with special programs to shore up their own ratings. We needed something, anything, to draw more attention to the series after the first flurry of publicity.<br />
And it came, fortuitously, like a <i>deus ex machina </i>descending from the heavens <br />
The Xerox branch in Atlanta got a letter that said::<br />
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Dear Sirs:<br />
Due to your sponsorship of the Black America series,<br />
we are cancelling our Xerox 813 machine effective immediately.<br />
Sincerely.<br />
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<br />
Robert Shelton<br />
Grand Vizier<br />
Ku Klux Klan<br />
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It was perfect: the Power of One. Better even than Christian Herter’s brick. I nearly fell out of my chair with gratitude. Copies were sent immediately to the Associated Press and to Reuters, and within hours the story was being distributed around the world. Every newspaper in the United States -- whether daily, weekly, tabloid or broadsheet -- published it; and every television news program -- whether VHF or UHF -- gave it prominent play. Columnists and commentators wrote about it and people from all walks of life -- in barber shops and diners, in four-star restaurants and expensive boutiques -- talked about it. In the following weeks, no matter what the competition threw at us, the ratings stayed high and the series remained powerful and persuasive.<br />
In sum, the KKK letter generated crateloads of newspaper clippings and TV transcripts. So when the series ended, I filled two large packing cases with press coverage of all kinds and prepared them for shipment. But rather than send them to the Grand Vizier, to whom we owed a perverse thanks, I sent them to Christian Herter, to whom we owed nothing. <br />
He never acknowledged their receipt.<br />
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It’s odd how unpredictable life can be. Less than a year later, I was a television consultant to Mobil. A new management had taken over and Herter had left. His successor as V-P was Herb Schmertz who had helped manage the presidential campaigns of both Kennedys. Schmertz was young, bright, bold, and charismatic. (He was also Jewish; probably a first in the oil industry and certainly a first for an oil company with heavy Arab interests.) We took to each other instantly and within months Masterpiece Theatre, underwritten by Mobil, was in the final planning stage. (see my earlier blogs).<br />
In discussing its promotion possibilities. I happened to tell Schmertz about Christian Herter’s brick and the subsequent letter from the Ku Klux Klan.<br />
‘Never underestimate the Power of One.’ I told him.<br />
‘We should get so lucky with Masterpiece.’ he said, chuckling.<br />
And we did .. in a way.<br />
On the morning after Masterpiece Theatre‘s debut, I was in Schmertz’s office for an informal ‘post mortem’. We were reviewing overnight ratings, critics’ reactions, response from friends and colleagues, etc.<br />
Things looked very good, but the icing on the cake came from Mobil’s CEO, Raleigh Warner. That morning -- on his commuter train from Princeton, New Jersey -- a stranger had introduced himself and had enthusiastically complimented him for ’sponsoring’ Masterpiece Theatre. Then someone nearby -- who had overheard the conversation -- added his own compliments. Warner, both pleased and flattered, called Schmertz the moment he got to the office.<br />
‘That’s the Power of One again.’ I said.<br />
‘In this case .. two.’ Schmertz observed.<br />
‘Yup .. and I’ll bet they were both well-dressed young executives.’<br />
‘What else would they be on that train?’ he said.<br />
But when I was leaving, and halfway out of his office, he stopped me.<br />
‘Wait a minute. Those guys weren’t actors, were they? I mean, you didn’t hire them to be on that train and …’<br />
I turned on him, looking hurt and putting my hand over my heart. I may even have fluttered my eyelashes. And with a word that would soon be made famous by a porcine princess on Sesame Street, I said:<br />
‘Moi?’ <br />
And left.<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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‘Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed’ won an Emmy for its writer, a relatively obscure staffer at CBS News named Andy Rooney. Yup, the same!<br />
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The Xerox ad agency created a wonderful photo image to advertise the series. It was a color close-up of clasped hands holding up a tiny American flag between the thumbs. The two hands were perfectly matched, but one was black and the other white.<br />
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In 1975, Xerox was forced by the Federal Trade Commission --in an anti-trust action -- to license its entire portfolio of patents to outsiders, principally the Japanese. Eventually, under the pressure of new competition, the company became just another industrial giant guided by unimaginative and uninspiring leadership. <i>Sic transit gloria mundi.</i><br />
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‘Of Black America’ generated hundreds, perhaps thousands, of complementary letters addressed to the company. My favorite was also one sentence and came from somewhere in Alabama. Unlike the KKK letter, it was unsigned:<br />
Dear Xerox,<br />
From one who is black and beautiful to<br />
you who are white and beautiful .. Thank you.<br />
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Thank <i>you</i> also for reading this blog.<br />
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Until next month, I am No Nonsense at http://keywestwind.blogspot.com. <br />
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</span>No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-91589910546195716572011-06-18T12:59:00.000-07:002011-06-18T12:59:13.610-07:00PART TWO: HOW TO CONQUER A CONTINENT ... AND BEFUDDLE A BEAN COUNTER<span lang="EN"> <br />
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Okay, here’s the problem in a nutshell: <br />
In the early 1970s, Xerox Corporation -- a newly-global company and one of the fastest growing in the world -- was suffering from a migraine. The Spanish-speaking people of the world -- principally those in Latin America -- couldn’t pronounce its name without sounding like they’d been shot up with novocaine at a dentist’s office. They pronounced it something like ‘Share-oosh’, a slurpy distortion of the letter X, which is rarely used. (Unless you want to include the x in Mexico where its Spanish pronunciation is like a quiet asthmatic exhale.)<br />
Anyway, just imagine saying: “Please make me four share-oosh copies of this and two share-ooshes of that.’<br />
So the Xerox CEO, Peter McColough, asked me to come up with a solution. Find a way to get them to say Xerox like we do, he said. He then agreed to pay me an outrageous fee which befuddled the company’s auditor, and gave me a guilty conscience because I thought the problem was insoluble right from the start. But McColough -- who considered it a major roadblock -- insisted I take a crack at it anyway.<br />
Why me? Well, I’d worked with the company as a free-lance speechwriter, written its annual report for six or seven years, created a widely-quoted ‘mission statement’ of its long-term goals and ultimately became responsible for choosing and negotiating the television programs it sponsored. So, as an outsider, I knew Xerox from top to bottom and had earned the trust of its senior management by making a few decisions no inside subordinates wanted to make. (See my blogs about Alastair Cooke and an Arab League boycott.)<br />
Moreover, I was thought to be a ‘creative type’… a useful reputation if justified, but frightening if you’re bereft of ideas. And that’s exactly what I was. Five months after taking the assignment -- and after having done a ton of homework -- I was stumped, frustrated and brain-blank. I felt as if I’d hung myself from a rafter and was waiting for someone to kick the chair out from under me.<br />
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One day, out of the blue, Mike Dann invited me to lunch. Dann -- the mythic guru of television programming -- had guided CBS to the top of the Neilsen ratings and kept it there for years. He’d resigned from CBS unexpectedly, but had re-surfaced as a vice-president of the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) which produced the new kids’ program, Sesame Street. His responsibilities with CTW were vague; and cynics figured he’d just taken on something ’soft’ to occupy him between breakfast and dinner. Besides, they joked, Mike had never <i>known</i> a child and a ‘workshop’ to him had something to do with basements and Budweiser, not with elves and the North Pole. (It was a bad rap. Mike had three young kids at home and a number of detractors elsewhere.)<br />
I’d met him casually once or twice; but certainly not enough for him to pick me out of a lineup. So I assumed the invitation was just an ambassadorial ’thank you’ because -- months earlier -- I’d arranged for Xerox to sponsor a Sesame Street promotional program on NBC. It aired a few days before the show’s formal debut on PBS, and marked the first (and probably last) time commercial television promoted public television. But PBS was still in its infancy, and NBC probably figured it was good PR and would do no harm to its ratings.<br />
In any case, I was glad to meet with Dann. Despite Sesame Street’s instant success, I felt it wasn’t reaching a significant portion of its intended audience: namely, inner-city children (a white euphemism for Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans). In those Cro-Magnon days, not only did cable television not exist, but many educational stations were limited to ultra high frequency (UHF) channels which delivered terrible reception and required a different antenna from the usual VHF ‘rabbit ears‘. Consequently, the underprivileged kids in big cities like Detroit, Cleveland, San Diego, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. weren’t receiving Sesame Street at all. <br />
So it was my intention to use Dann as a messenger to Joan Cooney, the head of CTW. I wanted her to consider going commercial (VHF) in urban areas where the public TV system was ineffectual .. which, incidentally, also included most of semi-rural America, Georgia, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama.<br />
That it was none of my business never occurred to me. Nor did I ask whether the people at CTW were addressing the problem, although they were surely aware of it. But since I’d played a very minor role in helping them, I considered myself part of the family and therefore deserving of an opinion on how things should be run. (That’s seems to be how an inflated ego works if -- on the one hand -- you’re young, bold and insensitive .. and on the other .. secretly unsure, apprehensive and bereft of ideas you’re being paid to find.)<br />
<br />
<br />
Over lunch at an Italian restaurant, Dann listened to my opinions while stabbing at a Caesar salad as if the croutons were alive and escaping. He was clearly disinterested in what I had to say and impatient to move on. Which he did the moment I paused for breath.<br />
It’s impossible to recreate, or even to imitate, his speech because he talked in long, complex sentences that seemed to circle back on themselves or to disappear down a dark, twisting arroyo never to re-emerge. Yet in some odd manner, a careful listener -- a patient ear -- could distill what he was saying and find cogency and a keen intellect. I couldn’t help but wonder whether his style was conscious; perhaps designed to keep his audience puzzled and off-balance as he was going for their jugular. <br />
But that wasn’t where he was going with me. After a while I realized he was pitching me for seed money, elliptically at first but then with baited outriggers deployed and trolling. And the project he was pitching -- the ’little experiment’ CTW was toying with and wanted a modest contribution for -- was a pilot of Sesame Street in Spanish.<br />
Clang! Clang! Clang! Judy Garland bells exploded in my head again. I was suddenly riding on the top deck of her trolley and drunk with excitement!!<br />
It wasn’t easy to interrupt when Dann was on a roll, but I managed it.<br />
Mike .. MIKE ..to hell with a pilot, I said. Why not Sesame Street for all of South America?<br />
Without blinking an eye, he said: That’s exactly what we’re planning to do. A hundred and thirty Spanish programs a year .. just like here.<br />
At the time, I thought he was lying, a practice not uncommon in television circles.. But in retrospect, I was probably wrong because his real job at CTW -- as I later found out -- was to ’internationalize’ Sesame Street. <br />
If you can put a package like that together, I said, .. a year’s worth in Spanish .. not Puerto Rican Spanish but South American Spanish .. I might be able to get Xerox to spring for the whole thing.<br />
I know .. I know .. I added, .. we’re talking millions of dollars, but I think they’ll go for it .. <i>if</i> …<br />
Dann cocked his head slightly.<br />
If <i>what</i>?<br />
If .. there’s a ten-second underwriting credit at the beginning and end of each show.<br />
Maybe something like .. uh .. say .. an animated blackboard with a child writing a wiggly X-E-R-O-X in chalk and saying in a child’s voice .. in Spanish, of course .. that the program is presented as a public service by Xerox.<br />
(I didn’t mention that it would be pronounced with Z as in ‘Zee-rox’. In fact, I never mentioned it to anyone except McColough.)<br />
I’ll see what we can do, Dann said.<br />
Obviously he could be succinct when he wanted to. <br />
<br />
I have no idea how CTW did what they did as quickly as they did it, or how they did it so well. But less than eighteen months later, Plaza Sesamo -- the kissing cousin of Sesame Street -- went on the air. It was produced in Mexico City by Latinos, written, directed and acted by Latinos and ‘supervised’ by educational experts from different Latin American countries. The only thing ‘Gringo’ about it was the sponsor -- Xerox Corporation -- with opening and closing credits in each segment.<br />
But nobody objected because Plaza Sesamo hit the continent like a tsunami; sweeping away local prejudices, drowning out regional rivalries, washing away government suspicion and undermining entrenched bureaucracies. It was watched loyally by countess millions of children and adults alike who found it infinitely more entertaining than endless re-runs of Gunsmoke. It was enjoyed in mountain villages, in the central squares of fishing towns, in bodegas and orphanages, in the favelas and barrios of big cities, by the rich, the poor, and by everybody in between. It penetrated to the soul of Latin America because it taught and nurtured its children.<br />
<br />
<br />
And, not accidentally, the continent began pronouncing a certain X word almost exactly as we do .. all the way from El Paso, Texas, to the Straits of Magellan.<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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<br />
Soon after its introduction, Plaza Sesamo was dubbed into Portuguese for Brazil. Within a few weeks of broadcast, the Big Bird character -- transformed into a sympathetic half-dragon/half-bird named Abelardo -- finished third as a write-in candidate for mayor of Sao Paulo, the country’s largest city. His original name -- Filiponio -- was hurriedly changed on the eve of production in Mexico City when the producers found out it was used in several countries as a homosexual slur.<br />
<br />
The Law of Unintended Consequences was affirmed when -- a few months after the program’s debut -- several Xerox subsidiaries reported that the ‘special fees’ usually demanded by corrupt customs inspectors for importing Xerox equipment had been dropped. No ‘official’ reasons were given, but it was not uncommon for Xerox employees to be asked if they could get Abelardo’s autograph or that of Paco, the grumpy equal of Oscar the Grouch.<br />
<br />
Oddly, the definitive and ’complete’ history of Sesame Street, titled Street Gang by Michael Davis (Penguin, 2008), contains no reference whatsoever to Plaza Sesamo, or to Latin America itself, although it does refer to Mike Dann making deals for Sesame Street with Bermuda, Trinidad/Tobago, Barbados and other English-speaking dots in the Caribbean. Seems a shame.<br />
<br />
Peter McColough was so impressed with CTW that he asked, through me, whether Joan Cooney would be interested in joining the board of Xerox. She was, and did; serving for a number of years until McColough retired.<br />
<br />
Finally, I don’t know what happened to the bean counter/auditor or whether he ever worked up the courage to question McColough. But I trust his career ended without further confusion and that he never again had to grapple with epistemological issues like how much an idea costs or how long it takes to have one.<br />
<br />
Only The Shadow knows.<br />
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Thanks again for being with me. Please send my link to people you like (or don’t like). The more the merrier.<br />
I hope next to write about the future of public television; that is, if I can get anyone in public television to talk to me.</span>No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-51450031783418548982011-06-10T13:20:00.000-07:002011-06-10T13:20:42.655-07:00HOW TO CONQUER A CONTINENT .. AND BEFUDDLE A BEANCOUNTER Here's an extraordinary phone conversation for the ages, from ages ago; specifically from early 1971. It came into my office in New York City; and the caller was calling on behalf of my favorite client. I remember it almost word-for-word because .. well, how could I forget it?<br />
<br />
Good morning, sir. My name is Richard Kingsworth. I'm Director of Internal Auditing for Xerox Corporation. I understand you are our consultant for TV programs and report to our Vice-President of Corporate Communications. Am I correct?<br />
That's right. What can I do for you?<br />
Well, first, sir, thank you for taking my call. We certainly think you've done some wonderful things for Xerox. And they're much appreciated. In fact, my family watches everything we sponsor, including some of the controversial stuff .. if you know what I mean. But of course that's not why I'm calling. I actually wanted to ask you a few questions about ...<br />
Wait a sec, I say. If you're an auditor, shouldn't you be talking to my accounting department? That way you can talk bean to bean, so to speak. Why don't I just transfer you over there?<br />
<em>(But I'm thinking: Why's the head of auditing calling me directly? It's like getting a call from the head of the IRS or the Internal Affairs Division of the NYPD. And what's with the compliments?</em><br />
<em> I don't like this at all.)</em><br />
No, please! Don't transfer me! I'm calling about the recent invoices you've been sending to Peter McColough<em>.</em><br />
<em> (Ah ha! Now I get it. He's snooping into the expenses of his own CEO .. the big boss .. the capo di capos. That takes chutzpah. But he has to tread VERY carefully. That's why the butter-up.)</em><br />
What about them? As far as I know, they've all been paid on time.<br />
Slightly insulted, he says: Of course they have! But they don't seem to relate to anything .. and they're in addition to your television fees. I mean .. we can't find any documentation on what they're for. All they say is 'monthly retainer' .. and I'm afraid we need more information than that .. for our outside auditors also.<br />
Okay, I can understand that, I tell him. But there's nothing to find. I have a handshake deal with Peter .. all verbal. Nothing's on paper.<br />
Forgive me, but to do what exactly? And for how long? I mean, for what period of time?<br />
I pause, perhaps a beat too long, and tell him: I'm thinking.<br />
He pauses too: I beg your pardon. Did you say you're <em>thinking?</em><br />
That's right. That's what the invoices are for. Thinking. It's a little unorthodox, but there it is. You know how the company has a long-term planning department? ... like an in-house think tank? Well I'm kinda the outhouse .. different but the same if you know what I mean.<br />
(<em>Mr. Kingsworth, despite being a beancounter, is not an unintelligent man. So by now he senses I'm playing games with his function. And I know he'll be persistent because that's his job. But I have the ear of his ultimate boss; and I'm young and cockier than I have a right to be.)</em><br />
And call you tell me what you're thinking <em>about</em>? he asks. After all we're talking substantial sums here, aren't we?<br />
<br />
He's right and his question forces me back to a night six months earlier when Peter McColough and I had dinner at the Harvard Club; not exactly my idea of a gourmet restaurant but at least quiet ... and given the food, nearly empty. He'd just gotten off the plane from his first tour of new Xerox subsidiaries in South America. And while enthused about their potential, he was worried about one issue. In fact, more than worried .. because there seemed no way around it.<br />
There's no X in the Spanish language, he told me. People can't seem to pronounce our name right. All they do is make a hissing sound.<br />
He was mostly accurate, and only a little wrong. I'd lived in Spain for a while and knew that Spanish does have an X. But it's seldom used and when pronounced -- depending on the country -- sounds most like 'Shhh'. So Xerox would be pronounced something like 'Share-osh'. It sounded in my mind like a salt marsh at slack tide.<br />
I want you to come up with something, McColough said. I have no idea what, but we can't do business if nobody can say our name. And we can't change that. So I want you to figure something out.<br />
See if you can find some way to get them to say Xerox like we do. Not like they're using mouthwash.<br />
Among other things, I liked McColough because he never demanded instant reactions from people. So I was able to push around the worst baked Alaska I'd ever tasted while I thought about the problem.<br />
Finally, I said: God, Peter, I wouldn't even know where to start. I mean .. I can't imagine what we could do. Every country down there has one or maybe two TV stations, but they're either government-owned or government-controlled. Half of them are banana republics or military dictatorships ... I guess there's a few democracies if you want to call them that .. but most of them hate each other. Mexico thinks Argentina is retarded .. and Argentina thinks Mexico is neanderthal. It doesn't seem to matter who .. Chileans .. Venezuelans .. whatever. They all think they're different or better than anybody else.<br />
I know all that, McColough said grumpily. But there's got to be a way around it. That's what I want you to tackle. You can deal with me directly and bill me for your time. Give me a rough number .. a ballpark figure .. so I can think about it.<br />
My reaction was that I wanted no part of it. For openers, even we pronounced Xerox -- a word derived from the Greek words for 'dry' and 'writing' -- in a weird way. We made the first X sound like a Z and the second like an X: Zee-rox. Pretty silly, huh? And we're going to teach trhe Spanish-speaking world how to say an invented word that we ourselves pronounce illogically? Fat chance!<br />
What McColough wanted from me looked like a lose-lose situation. What's the use of taking a job that can't be done? I asked myself. And then having to admit failure? And losing the credibility I'd earned with him? No thanks. I wanted to stick with what I knew: television programming on the American networks.<br />
That's when I decided on a sneaky way out. I'd quote him an outrageous number. Something sky-high and beyond reason.<br />
Peter, you'd have to pay me too much, I said. I was smiling, as if were a joke.<br />
How much? he asked again.<br />
How about $25,000 a month?<br />
Fine. Send me the bills marked 'monthly retainer'.<br />
<br />
I was re-living my shock when the auditor's voice recaptured my attention.<br />
As if clairvoyant, he said: I would presume $25,000 a month buys something more ... uh ...<u> </u><em>concrete</em> than just thought. As I said, we'll need some specifics to fill in the blanks.<br />
Sorry, I can't give you any information without Peter's permission.<br />
Well, can you tell me generally what we're dealing with? Are you talking proprietary technology .. patent issues .. mergers and acquisitions .. new imaging processes? If I can call it<em> something</em> I may not have to question Mr. McColough about it.<br />
<em>Now I'm beginning to feel sorry for this guy. It's no easy thing to question the man who ultimately controls your career. But I was already in for a penny, and thus for a pound.</em><br />
<em> </em>Nothing to do with any of that stuff, I tell him. All I can say is Peter asked me to come up with an idea for him.<br />
An idea? <em>One</em> idea?<br />
<em>I don't answer because I've already done so .. and because I sense he's befuddled and grappling with an alien concept; something beyond his professional training and certainly beyond his personal experience. And I'm right because his next question stuns me. It's a voyage into the unknown; an epistemological miracle.</em><br />
<em> </em>How long does an idea take? he asks.<br />
<em>And suddenly we're confronting something worthy of Aristotle .. or Albert Einstein .. or maybe even God!</em><br />
<em> HOW LONG DOES AN IDEA TAKE? I'm tempted to ask 'just a run-of-the-mill idea or a really good one?' And I want to tell him 'somewhere between a split second and forever'. But I'm also wondering whether an idea is like a pyrophoric substance that explodes the instant it's exposed to air or whether it's like a compost heap whose long, slow fermentation eventually self-ignites.</em><br />
<em> HOW LONG DOES AN IDEA TAKE?</em><br />
<em> How the hell should I know?</em><br />
<em> But the auditor himself recognizes the absurdity of his question and in his confusion tries to retreat to something more familiar; something perhaps quantifiable.</em><br />
Or should I ask how much an idea <em>costs</em>? he asks.<br />
Again, there is no answer and, suddenly, I want out of the conversation. So I apologize for taking his time and cut him short. My final words are, Talk to McColough.<br />
<br />
But to be honest, that specific question -- how much does an idea cost? -- has in its own way been bugging me for months. Because I still don't have the faintest idea how to make a salt marsh at slack tide sound like a modern corporation. I've done extensive research, read deeply, talked with experts, solicited diplomats, traveled, dreamed, hoped, cursed and gotten drunk more than once in the search for a solution. But nothing has surfaced. I've been paid a small fortune and still haven't a clue.<br />
What's worse, I'm being dogged day and night by an insidious and unavoidable sense of futility.<br />
I simply hate my looming failure.<br />
<br />
Then, a week later, Mike Dann calls. Mike Dann .. of all people! The little Napoleon of CBS whose quick patter and elliptical monologues are famous for confusing everyone but himself. I never could have dreamed he'd suggest an idea that could solve 'The X Problem'. Never in a million years.<br />
But he did.<br />
And together -- with more optimism than good sense, and with differing interests but one complementary purpose -- we set about to conquer the land mass of our hemisphere all the way from El Paso, Texas, to the turbulent waters of Cape Horn.<br />
My next posting will tell how.<br />
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Thanks for reading.No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-10137635425672991302011-04-10T19:24:00.000-07:002011-04-10T19:24:31.272-07:00HOW TO STOP AN ARAB PLOT AND GET FIRED .. ANOTHER 'MAD MEN' STORY <br />
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I've been fired twice in my life. The first time is worth mentioning only because it taught me how useless logic can be. I was in college at the time and working on a dairy farm. The farmer and I milked a hundred and ten cows at five o'clock in the morning and five o'clock at night, seven days a week. But I could never get up on time for the morning milking, although I was <em>always</em> right on the button at night. So the farmer -- a happy-go-lucky guy whom I liked -- fired me. Which I understood.<br />
But cows don't care what time they're milked as long as their teats are manipulated regularly. So -- in an attempt to save my job -- I said to him:<br />
Ya' know, if we could do the milking at nine o'clock in the morning and at nine at night, I'd <em>never</em> be late. <br />
Are you crazy? he answered. I'm in <em>bed</em> at nine o'clock at night!<br />
I dropped out of college not long after, figuring I might learn more from farmers than from professors.<br />
Metaphorically, that is.<br />
<br />
My second experience --years later -- was more dramatic. It stalled a career or two, humiliated an ad agency, infuriated a client, and nearly created an international incident. And, of course, it got me canned.<br />
Even without sex, that's pretty juicy stuff!<br />
The client was Xerox Corporation in the era when it was the <em>only</em> company whose machines made copies on plain white paper. (Yes, the late Jurassic period.) It was also one of the fastest growing companies in the world with affiliates and subsidiaries everywhere ... except in the Islamic world. You could travel from Casablanca to Algiers, through Tunis, Tripoli, Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and Damascus and nary a plain paper copy would you find. Only those crinkly, fast-fading, dun-colored, icky-slippery things produced by its competitors.<br />
Xerox had been boycotted by The Arab League.<br />
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The back story of why is a little fuzzy. But when the company was a pup, it underwrote a series of semi-documentary films about the United Nations, including one about the founding of Israel, If I remember correctly, the films weren't very successful. But the underwriting credit alone was enough for The Arab League -- sort of a Middle Eastern 'mini-UN' -- to impose the boycott. And not unnoticed, probably, was that the chairman of Xerox, Sol Linowitz, was Jewish and prominent.<br />
In any case, the CEO of Xerox, Peter McColough, desperately wanted the boycott lifted. And he sure as hell wasn't going to unseat Sol Linowitz as a peace offering. It seemed as if McColough -- a Canadian, a Catholic and a liberal Democrat -- was deeply offended by the boycott. as if the Arabs were punishing him personally for having done what his company considered morally right and responsible.<br />
So out went the word. Lobbyists were dispatched to Washington, Congressmen and Senators were contacted, consultations were held with the State Department. Months passed.<br />
Nothing happened.<br />
Other political and diplomatic doors were opened through Xerox affiliates and subsidiaries in other countries. More months passed.<br />
Still, nothing happened.<br />
Eventually it became like a proverbial pea under McColough's mattress. He saw the Middle East as a huge potential market: twenty countries with a population nearly equal to that of the United States. It was almost worth wearing a burnoose and a dishdashah for! But he just couldn't crack the boycott.<br />
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Enter the savior.<br />
He came, as most saviors do, in disguise: a documentary film producer from England who was introduced to the company by a Xerox advertising agency. The man had<em> bona fide</em> credentials; and after being gingerly handed up the chain of command, he reached trhe Xerox vice-president of communications who -- after listening to his pitch -- heard the bells of St. Peters ringing in his ears. This was it! If he could pull it off, he'd be a prince among pretenders! He'd be Peter McColough 'man' forever.<br />
The Brit proposed to produce a multi-part, non-partisan history of Islam for broadcast on PBS, the Public Broadcasting System. It was (and still is) a great idea and was certainly needed. If any nation were ignorant of Islam, it was ours. The proposed series -- objective and balanced -- would educate and enlighten the American public and be a contribution to international understanding. Who could possibly be against it?<br />
And there was a kicker. The producer -- although an independent -- was well connected to The Arab League and felt confident that the series would get Xerox off the boycott list. No guarantees, of course. But the promise, if not explicit, was nonetheless implicit and very exciting.<br />
It was hope amplified by imagination ... like a first date,<br />
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I was brought into the picture a few months later. McColough had already been given an extensive briefing and had enthusiastically endorsed the project, asking for regular updates. The producer was ready to start pre-production, location scouts were standing by, and final contracts were about to be signed.<br />
But corporate enthusiasm had overcome common sense. Nobody had asked public television whether it would broadcast the series! That's a huge 'Whoops'! And that's why the Xerox vice-president finally let his hot-shot television consultant in on the deal. I had extensive contacts at PBS and knew its strongest stations well. <br />
But before trying to pull his chestnuts out, I wanted to review the bidding. I asked for everything Xerox had: the full proposal, script outlines, correspondence, memos, legal opinions, etc. Then, as an afterthought, I asked to see the contracts that were about to be signed. I was surprised at how many people had already managed to put their fingers into what promised to be a glory pie.<br />
Finally, I called a few friends at the BBC to double-check the producer's credentials. They told me he was an 'Arabist' -- an apologist for Arab causes -- but a legitimate and recognized expert on the Middle East. The apologist part was a little worrisome, but not much. After all, how else could he have gotten close to The Arab League?<br />
So after my first pass, the project looked good. In fact, I was getting enthused about it myself when I was stopped dead in my tracks. Buried deep in the fine print of the contract submitted by the producer, and apparently approved by the Xerox lawyers, was a sentence that gave final script and narration approval to 'appropriate authorities including The Arab League'. The sentence went way beyond the normal 'boiler plate' approval that legally belongs to the broadcaster. It was, in effect, a poisonous plant; inserted with forethought. There could be no other explanation. And whether the producer was a pawn or a conspirator didn't matter. If we went ahead, it meant Xerox would be ceding editorial control of the American public's airwaves to The Arab League. The company could be accused of underwriting propaganda in the guise of education. And all for its own narrow self-interest,<br />
If word ever got out, Xerox would be pilloried (I avoided the word 'crucified') and humiliated by the American government and its political establishment, by the Israelis, the world-wide Jewish community, and the international press ranging from <em>The New York Times</em> to <em>Pravda</em>.<br />
The deal had to be killed, and fast.<br />
<br />
Now came the melodrama,<br />
I called an emergency meeting of those involved and explained why the project was camel dung. There was much wailing, hand-wringing and flagellation. Everybody who'd plunged a finger into the glory pie was now pointing it at somebody else. But I sensed that much of the tribulation was because nobody wanted to give Peter McColough the bad news. In fact, the vice-president of communications, my boss, was flat-out terrified.<br />
You can guess what happened next.<br />
I tracked McColough down at a meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. It was seven a.m. his time when I called. He sounded barely awake and grumpy: not a morning person. I told him that the History of Islam project had to be killed, and that going forward would be like sitting on a bomb and lighting the fuse yourself.<br />
He was so angry he fired me on the spot.<em> Definitely</em> not a morning person.<br />
I then called the vice-president and told him what had happened. All he could say was: Oh God, I'm sorry. Honest to God. I <em>am</em>. I'm really, really sorry. His tone was dripping with relief that it wasn't him. Nor did he offer to intercede on my behalf. If the messenger were dead, he wasn't about to attempt a resurrection.<br />
<br />
The next day, shortly before noon, McColough walked unannounced into my office in New York.<br />
He'd always had a wonderfully warm smile .. which spread across his face as I left my desk to meet him. He looked a bit bemused perhaps, but was in no way embarassed or apologetic.<br />
Quickly glancing at my watch, I took a chance. I asked whether I could charge him for the twenty-seven hours I'd been fired.<br />
He pursed his lips, as if thinking it over, and told me if I did, he might have to fire me again.<br />
I charged him anyway.<br />
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<br />
AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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The Arab League, for reasons unknown to me, eventually dropped the boycott. Perhaps they got tired of handling those crinkly, dun-colored, icky-sticky things.<br />
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To my knowledge, no history of Islam has ever been broadcast nationally in the United States. It's a shame because our ignorance of Moslem culture and beliefs, reinforced by mounting reactionary bigotry, is more dangerous than ever.<br />
<br />
As the people, the vice-president of communications avoided as many decisions as possible for the remainder of his career. He never told me how he backed out of the deal or who he managed to blame for its failure. Nor did he ever try to bypass me again.<br />
<br />
Sol Linowitz resigned as chairman of Xerox shortly thereafter to become Ambassador to the Organization of American States. In 1979, under the Carter administration, he negotiated the turnover of the Panama Canal to Panama.<br />
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Peter McColough -- who became a valued friend -- was CEO of Xerox for fourteen years. He died in 2004.<br />
I will never forget that smile.<br />
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Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment, positive or negative, and to share this blog with others.<br />
The link is <a href="http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/">http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/</a>.No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-11291432731853592852011-03-28T07:26:00.000-07:002011-03-28T07:26:48.268-07:00HOW TO FIRE A MOVIE STAR AND GET A JOB ... A 'MAD MEN' STORY.<span lang="EN"> <br />
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Two silly questions. <br />
First, do you remember Gregory Peck? Of course you do. Who could forget <i>To Kill A Mockingbird, Roman Holiday, The Big Country, Twelve O’Clock High, The Guns of Navarone </i>and <i>The Yearling?</i> The man was a first magnitude star!<br />
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Second question: Guess who was afraid of him; deeply and illogically intimidated by him? <br />
A giant multi-billion dollar corporation, that’s who! <br />
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I’ve written about ’corporate cowardice’ before, but haven’t defined it for fear of sounding trite or banal. Usually it’s nothing more than being afraid to bring bad news to the boss. So it tends to be shrugged it off with a ’So what?’ or a ‘What else is new?’ Which is okay as far as it goes. But what has always fascinated <i>me</i> is the defensive/aggressive kind of cowardice that creates deniability; that’s always ready with a credible disclaimer.<br />
Let’s call it cowardice in camouflage.<br />
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Around the time of the current ‘Mad Men‘ series on TV, a woman at a New York ad agency called me. She claimed she had a major client who ’needed’ my services as a television consultant. Judy Garland warning bells went off in my head (Clang! Clang! Clang!). Big agencies usually hated my guts because I abrogated their most profitable function: buying TV time for clients. And anytime they could take a shot at me, they did so happily.<br />
So what’s up with this one? I asked myself. A ’cold call’ from someone I don’t know, a mystery client and an agency that wants to slit its own throat? I figured it was some kind of set-up and reacted with suspicion leaking from my vocal cords..<br />
But over the next few weeks, the woman persisted with more calls. And I got perversely curious. I wanted to find out what her game was and why she was playing it. So after looking up her agency’s clients and its personnel -- and finding no old grudges or people whose relatives I’d murdered -- I agreed to have lunch with her.<br />
She chose a restaurant so far from Madison Avenue that not even a phone call could reach it.<br />
Odd. <br />
In fact, more than odd.<br />
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She turned out to be a petite blond, kind of cute, in her mid to late thirties. (I’ll call her Joann) And with her -- unexpectedly -- was a big, bearish man in his late fifties: a senior vice-president of The Travelers Companies; the insurance giant based in Hartford, Connecticut. (Let’s say his name was Henry)<br />
He and I circled each other over pre-lunch martinis while petite Joann smiled and said nothing. I told him what I’d done for other companies; and he told me his CEO had asked him to do ’something prestigious’ on public television (which, of course, was right up my alley). I knew The Travelers had a recognized commercial presence on CBS through sponsorship of The Masters golf tournament: so I angled toward his stated interest and began to describe how I could work with his agency.<br />
I didn’t get far before he interrupted me. <br />
I’m not too happy with the agency right now. he said.<br />
Light bulb! Light bulb! <br />
I suddenly understood why we were having lunch closer to the South Bronx than I’d ever been or wanted to be This was no attempt to sandbag me … and it had only peripheral bearing on public television. This was a conspiracy to sandbag his own agency!<br />
How wild , I thought, No, how delicious!<br />
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But wait.<br />
What was Joann doing there? Didn’t she <i>work </i>for the agency? Wasn’t her presence a direct conflict of interest?<br />
Yes, of course it was, That’s why <i>two</i> light bulbs went on! <br />
It was instantly clear that she was part of the deal. Henry wanted to move the account and to steal her at the same time.. Or .. she’d persuaded <i>him </i>to move the account and to take <i>her</i> with him. Whichever it was, it looked ethically questionable .. but not illegal.<br />
Treason in advertising wasn’t considered a sin in those days. <br />
Still isn‘t, probably.<br />
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So what they wanted was Henry <i>and </i>Joann together. I wondered, of course, whether she was screwing him; but my instincts said no. And after checking her out with sources of my own, it seemed I was right. She was considered an uptight, straight-laced account executive. It was thought she and Henry had a slightly twisted father/daughter thing, but nothing sexual.<br />
I believed it; partly because he was about as attractive as Rush Limbaugh.<br />
So after a week or so of self-debate, I decided to play. It was, after all, a major account and a five-star name. I’d hire Joann whose principal task would be to keep Henry informed and happy. Following some minor negotiation, I had contracts prepared and ready for signature. That’s when Henry threw in a curve ball as a condition of the deal.<br />
He wanted me to fire Gregory Peck.<br />
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Peck had been the company’s television spokesman for five years. During a lull in his acting career, his agent had negotiated a ‘sweetheart deal’ with The Travelers. It paid him a ton of money for not doing much: one or two institutional commercials every year and occasional appearances at company-sponsored events. He was, of course, given luxury accommodations for he and his wife, first-class airfare, limousines everywhere and an expense account that was generous, to say the least.<br />
And now, despite knowing him personally, despite his having socialized over the years with everyone in top management, and despite having hired him themselves, The Travelers wanted <i>me</i> to fire him.<br />
It was his stature that frightened and intimidated them, of course, because he was influential far beyond the world of film: president of The American Cancer Society, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a fixture of the Democratic Party, a prominent member of Richard Nixon’s ‘enemies list’, etc.<br />
If the company itself botched the task and Peck took it badly or -- even worse -- said something negative about The Travelers in public, it could be a public relations mess (not to speak of a road block on the career path of whoever botched it.).<br />
So there it was: corporate cowardice in need of camouflage; specifically in need of a hedge-bet in the form of a young, unknown messenger not <i>quite</i> affiliated with the company who might have misconstrued its intentions or even gone beyond the scope of his instructions: me.<br />
In a pinch, I could be disavowed, denied and (without a contract) disowned.<br />
I began to wonder who was sandbagging whom.<br />
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But I agreed to do it, and called Peck’s Hollywood agent, a well-respected man who’d been in the business for centuries. He told me that --by coincidence -- he and Peck would be in New York the following week and would be happy to meet for lunch.<br />
Before I set it up, I insisted that Henry come to New York and wait in my office for the outcome. Joann would, of course, baby-sit him. I also arranged for the unsigned contracts to be in front of him.<br />
I must say, I had<i> cojones </i>back then..<br />
On the appointed day, I met Peck and his agent in the dining room of The Four Seasons, one of my favorite restaurants because of its elegance and tranquility. I was anything but tranquil, however, having lost a couple nights’ sleep trying to figure out conversational ‘openers’. (How’s this: Greg, any enemy of Dick Nixon’s is a friend of mine. Oh God, no!)<br />
The agent looked as I’d expected: a calm and collected old pro. And Peck? A dignified, intelligent and very handsome man. In fact, one of the most distinguished men I’d ever seen. The maitre’d seated us at a corner table and gave us menus. I don’t think I appeared nervous, but I was very close to conversational constipation. So with only an instant of forethought and no plan, I said:<br />
I’m hoping we can have a congenial lunch today even though Travelers isn’t going to continue its relationship with you. <br />
The old agent sat back in his chair, nodded once and smiled. Sadly or sagely. I couldn’t tell.<br />
Well, he said, I’m glad you don’t beat around the bush.<br />
And Gregory Peck said: So am I. But all good things come to an end. I see they have soft-shelled crabs today.<br />
And that was it. For the next hour and a half, we chatted about people, politics and French cooking.<br />
When I got back to the office, Henry looked as if he were about to collapse from apprehension. He was actually pallid. But before he could say anything, I delivered the little speech I’d prepared on the way back.<br />
‘Gregory Peck sends his regards and says he will forever hold The Travelers and its management in high esteem.<br />
Now sign the fucking contract, Henry.’<br />
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And that, Mad Men, is how you fire a movie star and get a job.<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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Taking The Travelers account was, as you might imagine, a mistake. Joann turned out to be an incessant whiner and Henry an inveterate worrier. They were perfectly suited to each other. I resigned after eighteen irritating months.<br />
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I did earn the company significant recognition for underwriting a documentary series on PBS called ‘Six American Families”. The audience was upscale and sizeable, the reviews were great, and the company was happy about doing something that its Hartford competitor, Aetna, hadn’t.<br />
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I never found out exactly why they wanted to fire Gregory Peck. Maybe the CEO’s wife found out he was making more money than her husband.<br />
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The Travelers continued sponsorship of the Masters tournament on CBS for years until a clever ad agency -- after creating a red umbrella as the company logo -- rained on it.<br />
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Until next time, thanks for reading and please share the blog with friends. The more the merrier. The link is </span><a href="http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span lang="EN">http://keywestwind.blogspot.com</span></span></u></a><span lang="EN">. </span>No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-69097041366071821992011-03-17T08:35:00.000-07:002011-03-17T08:35:39.441-07:00ALASTAIR COOKE: MIXED MEMORIES AND CORPORATE COWARDICE<span lang="EN"> <br />
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Someone told me recently that PBS was broadcasting a tribute to Alastair Cooke who -- among his many achievements -- was the host of Masterpiece Theatre for twenty-two years. I knew Alastair -- not as well as I might have -- but always felt privileged to be on a first-name basis with him. That is, until we had a bitter and destructive dispute that ended with him barely recognizing my existence.<br />
Oddly, we didn’t meet when Masterpiece Theatre was first put together; even though I was heavily involved in its creation. But I enthusiastically endorsed him as its host. He was experienced, urbane, sophisticated and articulate: an elegant patrician who wrote his own material. And he had a sense of humor! <br />
Them kind don’t come along too regular. <br />
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We did meet, finally, two years later when I arranged for Xerox to sponsor ’Alastair Cooke’s America’ on NBC, a thirteen-part documentary series produced and directed by Michael Gill. At the time, Xerox was considered the premier sponsor of ’socially conscious’ programming on the commercial networks. For me it was wonderful and rewarding period. I was representing two major corporations (Mobil being the other) that believed television could enhance, enlighten and broaden peoples’ lives. <br />
Alastair was thrilled to have Xerox as sole sponsor. It meant the series wouldn’t be cluttered with toothpaste and toilet paper commercials. Xerox commercials would be spaced judiciously so as not to diminish the overall dignity of the presentation. (Remember that word, dignity.) Everything was going smoothly until Alastair told me how thrilled he was that his publisher was printing 15,000 copies (or maybe 25,000. I can’t remember.) of a slick and expensive ‘cocktail table’ book to complement the NBC broadcast.<br />
Thinking I was doing him a favor, I said that 15.000 copies might be big by book standards, but not by mine. They should be printing five times as many .. ten times! And since he’d be getting fifteen percent of the gross, he should tell his publisher to wake up. <br />
That was the first time I gave him bad news.<br />
The publisher, of course, told me to fuck off, thank you <i>very</i> much.<br />
After the first broadcast, the book rocketed to number one on The New York Times best-seller list. After the third broadcast, it disappeared entirely. Sold out! No books available! It took weeks, perhaps months, for the publisher to catch up to demand. It was a hard lesson, And who knows how many sales were lost. <br />
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After that, I had only peripheral contact with Alastair until a day in 1982 when he phoned to say he was thinking (quite seriously, he said) about suing Sesame Street unless it agreed to drop a character named ‘Alastair Cookie’ on a new segment of the show called ‘Monsterpiece Theatre‘. Knowing I had ties to Joan Ganz Cooney, the head of Sesame Street; he was calling, I suspect, to see if I’d act as a a back-door messenger; an indirect and unofficial channel to deliver his displeasure. Mind you, he didn’t say so. But why else would he call?<br />
I was horrified. Suing Sesame Street would be worse than suing Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa. It would be as if The Masterpiece Theatre Man was attacking all the little kiddies in America! And their mommies!!<br />
And clearly, patricians didn’t <i>do </i>parody.<br />
It took a while, but I managed to pacify his ruffled dignity (that word again) by arguing it was an <i>honor</i> not an insult to be so portrayed .. that satire and parody are almost always reserved for people of fame and achievement. Alastair Cookie and Monsterpiece Theatre were, in other words, a tribute not to be trifled with and certainly not to be threatened. Just the opposite. He should be <i>proud </i>of it!<br />
Privately I was thinking he was way too full of himself.<br />
But that was that. Other parodies subsequently appeared on television including Mousterpiece Theatre, Disasterpiece Theatre and even Rastapiece Theatre. And not a peep out of Alastair Cooke … or Cookie. Whatever.<br />
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Then, unfortunately, came golf. <br />
Without my knowledge, he approached Xerox with an unwritten proposal (a definite no-no in my book) to produce a television special on the history of golf. He was obsessed with the game (really obsessed!!)and was once quoted as saying he thought golf more ’awesome’ than politics. He himself would write, direct, produce and narrate; and he confidently predicted it would be unlike anything ever seen on television. <br />
The vice-president of advertising for Xerox -- a well-meaning guy rather easily swayed by fame -- bought it; and the Xerox ad agency got an agreement from ABC to broadcast it.<br />
I was totally bypassed --and kept in the dark -- until a year later when Alastair delivered the final cut. Then Xerox asked me to screen it. With the request came some mumbo-jumbo explanation for bypassing me. So why tell me about it now, I wondered? Had the ad agency -- which probably organized the end run around me in the first place -- somehow screwed up with ABC? Why would they ask me to look at something that was signed ,sealed and delivered: a done deal?<br />
I called Xerox minutes after seeing it. They’d clearly been waiting by the phone.<br />
We can’t show that, I told the vice-president.. It’s awful. The critics will kill Cooke and roast us for sponsoring it.<br />
You really think it’s that bad? He asked.<br />
It’s worse than bad. It’s way below broadcast standards. Have you seen it?<br />
Yes, I didn’t think it was very good.<br />
How about the agency?<br />
They didn’t think it was very good either.<br />
(Translation in corporate-speak: Man the lifeboats! )<br />
And ABC? <br />
We haven’t shown it to them yet.<br />
Well, I guarantee they’ll reject it. It’s disjointed, confusing, poorly shot and badly edited .. the works. Alastair’s so obsessed he can‘t see the forest for the trees. I mean .. him standing in a wooden barrel half-naked trying to hit a golf ball? Holy Shit! You’re gonna’ have to eat it because nobody’ll put it on the air.<br />
Jesus Christ!! he said bleakly. I’ve got six hundred thousand bucks in it!! (which I imagine would be about $1.5 million in today‘s dollars).<br />
I could almost see him wringing his hands,. As I said, he was a well-meaning guy, but he tried to ignore trouble when he could and usually panicked when he couldn’t. <br />
And then, finally, the worst and most frightening prospect of all occurred to him. <br />
Oh my God! he said. Who’s going to tell Alastair?<br />
I wanted to say: You made the deal, you unmake it. But I’d seen ‘corporate cowardice’ before ( the subject of a future blog) and knew that ugly things sometimes go with the territory. I’d have to be the ’heavy’.<br />
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Alastair was not only stunned when I gave him the news, he was deeply hurt. This was as important to him as anything he’d ever done .. perhaps more so. We argued about it for hours in his apartment on upper Fifth Avenue. He wanted to appeal to higher authority; but I’d already cut him off at the pass. I told him I’d screened the program for top management at Xerox (a lie) and at ABC (not a lie). Fred Pierce, president of the network, had seen it and agreed with our decision.<br />
So the entire project was scrapped. Alastair felt I was not only the messenger but the message itself. He never spoke to me again. And I couldn’t really blame him.<br />
I’d killed his favorite child.<br />
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Nearly ten years later, I attended a black-tie gala at the State Department to celebrate the 20<sup>th</sup> anniversary of Masterpiece Theatre. With one notable absence, everyone was there: actors, producers and directors, representatives of British broadcasting, ambassadors and cultural attaches, Mobil big-wigs, public broadcasting’s elite, everybody. And as you might expect, Alastair was the principal speaker.<br />
He gave a lengthy, witty and -- of course -- literate speech in which he indirectly and quite subtly took credit for just about everything except the birth of Christ. Or so it seemed to me. Everyone loved it .. but I thought that poor old Alastair -- like so many other prominent personalities -- had become the victim of his own mythology.<br />
But now -- grown older and a bit wiser -- I take a different view<br />
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He was without doubt a journalist/broadcaster of monumental stature. He hosted Masterpiece Theatre for twenty-two years, bringing his insights and observations to countless millions of Americans. He was also heard <i>for fifty-eight years</i> by Great Britain and the English-speaking world on his ‘Letter from America’ radio series. He wrote for diverse newspapers, journals and magazines, and produced books and television programs of enlightening quality.<br />
And he was human. That’s what most tributes fail to penetrate: he was human. And a few mistakes, a few egoistic misjudgments, and an occasional touch of arrogance, in a long lifetime of achievement are not only understandable but inevitable. They make the mythical man palpable and more real; in fact, fallible .. and thus in the end even <i>more</i> admirable <br />
So now, much too late, I do wish I were still on a first-name basis with him. I would have learned far more than I taught.<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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Alastair’s cocktail table book eventually sold more than two million copies and made him a rather wealthy man. But with true Methodist prudence, he never gave up his rent-controlled apartment on Fifth Avenue.<br />
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The ‘notable absence’ at the Washington gala was Herb Schmertz, ex-vice president of Mobil, who contributed enormously to the birth, growth and health of Masterpiece Theatre. He had apparently become <i>persona non grata</i> at Mobil and the company must have insisted he not be invited.<br />
It was yet another example of corporate cowardice, with a twist.<br />
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Thanks for reading. Spread the link , please.. I’m No Nonsense at <br />
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</span><a href="http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span lang="EN">http://keywestwind.blogspot.com</span></span></u></a><span lang="EN">. <span lang="EN"></span><span lang="EN"> </span></span>No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-70108815550050936222011-03-11T11:52:00.000-08:002011-03-11T11:52:06.994-08:00COUPLING LINDSAY LOHAN AND ADOLPH HITLER ... WITH HELP FROM TIGER WOODS<span lang="EN"> <br />
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Here’s a puzzler for you: what do Hosni Mubarak, Charley Sheen, Eliot Spitzer, the United States government, Ted Haggard, Mel Gibson, Adolph Hitler, Leona Helmsley, Tiger Woods and cute little Lindsay Lohan have in common?<br />
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Answer: they’re all victims of their own mythology.<br />
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When individuals are powerful, rich or famous (PRoFs), they tend to believe what they’re told about themselves. The people who do the telling are usually friends, admirers, sycophants and subordinates: an ‘inner circle’ that acts as a protectorate, so to speak, deflecting criticism and rationalizing bad behavior. So what the PRoFs receive -- day after day, year after year -- is sympathy, tolerance and praise. And praise, to paraphrase a famous dictum, corrodes; absolute praise corrodes absolutely.<br />
Especially with egos the size of, say, Charley Sheen , Mel Gibson, Tiger Woods and little Lindsay Lohan. <br />
Sometimes the corrosion is subtle .. as when a corporate officer quietly sucks up to the CEO’s wife. Other times it’s absolute .. as when a Charley Sheen abuses everybody in sight; and then tries to justify it. That’s the ‘shoot yourself in the foot’ brand of corrosion; identical in conceit to the wildly oblivious remark made by hotel magnate Leona Helmsley: ‘Only the little people pay taxes’.<br />
That is the stuff of which legends are made .. and jail terms.<br />
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But there are also other kinds of corrosion: most commonly the “It can’t happen to me’ variety. That’s when someone is UP for so long that DOWN no longer seems a possibility. Tiger Woods and his infidelities, John Edwards and his Argentine girlfriend, Eliot Spitzer and his hookers, and Ted Haggard with who knows what … fall (appropriate word) into that category. Mind you, they <i>know</i> when they’re wrong. How could they not? But the influence of their enablers -- all those sycophants and supporters, agents and managers -- has made them feel as if they can <i>do </i>no wrong. Not that they’re above the law. No, no … of course not! But they <i>are</i> different, aren’t they? Almost everyone says so. And almost everyone has <i>always</i> said so.<br />
So they eventually forget where and what they came from and begin to think they’re living in a separate universe; an alternative reality <i>in</i> but not quite <i>of </i>the real world. And in some sad and sorry ways, they’re right.<br />
Do you suppose Hosni Mubarak’s cabinet warned him that the Egyptian people were profoundly unhappy with him? I doubt it.<br />
Did the German general staff remind Adolph Hitler -- even gently -- that Napoleon’s armies died at the gates of Moscow and that his were facing Stalingrad in winter? I doubt that too.<br />
And how come Mel Gibson’s inner circle didn’t insist to him that (duh!) anti-Semitism isn’t exactly <i>de rigueur </i>in Hollywood and that the Holocaust really did happen? Were they too busy drinking his booze? <br />
As for Lindsay Lohan, a talented and unresolved child, I suspect her handlers and hangers-on didn’t start ringing their hands in despair until it was too late or until the <i>ganja </i>ran out. Her career has certainly been ruined and most probably her life.<br />
Because like all the others --whether giants of history or here-today-gone-tomorrow personalities, -- she came to believe her own mythology.<br />
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Now let’s get serious.<br />
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What about an <i>entire</i> government? Does the same pattern hold true? After all, don’t we regularly elect a <i>new</i> government? We choose new leadership; with entirely different people gaining power, position and influence. So can they seriously believe in their predecessors’ myths? <br />
Can there be such a thing as serial self-deception? <br />
Well, as the simplistic Mrs. Palin would say, you betcha’<br />
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Take Iraq as an example. (Pakistan and Afghanistan qualify too.)<br />
And let’s forget all that crap about nuclear threats and weapons of mass destruction and terrorist training camps: the hard sell that sold the American body politic on military intervention. We know now it was all smoke: no nuclear threat, no WMD, no terrorist camps.<br />
But what about bringing democracy and stability to a long-oppressed people?<br />
That’s a goal Bush embraced and Obama has affirmed. He‘s promised to get us out of Iraq and to leave behind a safe, stronger and more democratic country.. So will that promise be real or will it prove to be a serial myth: something we’ve been telling ourselves for so long and so often that we now believe it?<br />
Well, I have a little story that bears on the issue.<br />
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In the year 1097, the first Crusader armies reached the Bosporus on their way to recapture Jerusalem from the ‘infidels’. The Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople, Alexius, (himself a man of demonic dimensions as inhuman as Hitler‘s), told the Crusade’s leaders that two factions had been struggling for control of Jerusalem in a seemingly endless battle for supremacy in the Levant.<br />
They were the Shiites and the Sunnis. <br />
That was nearly a thousand years ago.<br />
And we think we’re going to leave behind a stable and peaceful society? We, the United States of America, are going to miraculously erase a millennium’s worth of hatred … heal a millennium’s worth of wounds!<br />
If that’s not being victimized by your own mythology, I don’t know what is.<br />
What we <i>will</i> leave behind is yet another genocidal war between Shiites and Sunnis who’ll be joined in a merciless <i>menage a trois </i>by the Kurds (who only want to secede and to pump oil).<br />
What we leave behind, in fact, will be chaos … because of our own self-deception.<br />
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But please don’t misunderstand me. We need myths. We really <i>do. </i>We need a Paul Bunyan and a John Henry, an Abe Lincoln and a Mohammed Ali, a John Kennedy, an Amelia Earhart and a Patrick Henry<i>. </i>We need them all … because they carry truths about honesty and courage and human value. But above all, we need to realize that myths about ourselves are always distortions .. and must be tested in the bright light of common sense. Just plain common sense.<br />
Look. Pakistan has always claimed it needs massive American aid -- meaning weaponry mostly -- to maintain the balance of power on the Asian sub-continent and to counter the threat of an invasion by India. And we seem to have bought that rationale for decades. We’ve poured in countless billions of dollars. But now?<br />
<i> An Indian invasion? You must be kidding!!</i> Why would one of the world’s healthiest economies want to take over a violent, sectarian, corrupt, poverty-ridden, lawless, illiterate, inhumane, dissected and diseased society? It defies common sense.<br />
India needs Pakistan like the Russian Mafia needs an attorney general.<br />
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So yes, institutions and governments, like individuals, can and do become victims of their own mythology … more often than we realize or want to admit.<br />
And it’s so sad.<br />
I mean …who could have dreamed that Martha Stewart, Barry Bonds and the Roman Catholic church had so much in common?<br />
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Please ask your friends to connect. The link is <br />
Until next time … when I’ll be remembering Alastair Cooke in a somewhat revisionist way,<br />
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</span><a href="http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span lang="EN">http://keywestwind.blogspot.com</span></span></u></a><span lang="EN">. Comments and criticism are welcomed.</span>No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-6081455788063402032011-03-04T07:32:00.000-08:002011-03-04T07:32:57.365-08:00BLACKMAILING MASTERPIECE THEATRE (PART TWO) ... AND THE WHTT NETWORK. GUESS WHAT THAT STANDS FOR.<span lang="EN"> <br />
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To write succinctly about real-life relationships -- whether between people or between institutions -- is difficult, to say the least. There are too many subtleties and gradations, too many nuances to be considered; not to mention feelings that can be bruised and countless memories subject to dispute<br />
So what am I doing here .. placing myself nakedly in harm’s way?<br />
Well, I’m reconstructing how the strange relationship between Mobil and public broadcasting managed to survive; and how Masterpiece Theatre thrived despite public television’s paranoia and resentment toward its most prominent underwriter. It wasn’t easy and it involved some really low blows (a few of which were thrown by me). <br />
In early 1970 it was my hope that the launch of Masterpiece Theatre would go smoothly because PBS, the network, and WGBH, the originating station, were both new to <i>national</i> networking; and Mobil, the underwriter, was totally new to public television. It seemed an agreeable and comfortable match.<br />
I was kidding myself! <br />
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I’d recommended that Mobil commit a large advertising and promotion budget to the series, knowing it would be essential for success. Mobil, meaning my boss Herb Schmertz, agreed. ( A portion of that budget, I should add, would go to my company.) Then Schmertz got a call either from an executive at WGBH or from Hartford Gunn, the new president of PBS. He, the caller, stated that since PBS was the national broadcaster, PBS should control advertising and promotion. Translation: give <i>us </i>the money. We’ll spend it more wisely. <br />
I balked big time at that, but agreed to fly to Boyne Mountain, Michigan, for a national meeting of public television ad/promotion managers; and for an introduction to the new PBS director of those activities, a woman named Larsen (I think) who was hired from somewhere in the federal bureaucracy. I tried to keep an open mind, but to say the people there were cool toward me would be an understatement. Studiously polite, yes. After all, I represented big (albeit oily) bucks. But friendly and eager to cooperate? Not a chance.<br />
And Ms. Larsen? Wow!<br />
She was pleasant enough .. but over dinner on my second night, she told me she considered herself uniquely qualified for her job. She said --and I swear this is true -- that she could bring total objectivity to the task because she had never owned a television set!!!<br />
Holy shit, I said to myself, I gotta’ get out of here.<br />
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. When the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was established in 1967 as an ‘overseer’ of the public system’s growth and health, its first appointed president was John Macy, whose prior job was head of the Civil Service Commission. Shortly thereafter, my good friend Lewis Freedman, the brilliant producer of Hollywood Television Theatre, told me he’d had a dream about Macy. In the dream, Macy was asked what the difference was between running the civil service and running CPB.<br />
He thought for a moment and said: ‘Well, really ..not much.’.<br />
At that instant, Lewis said, the dream became a nightmare.<br />
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It’s not exactly hot news, of course, that the non-profit world and the corporate world have never sung in perfect harmony. Many non-profits tend to consider themselves on a higher (but lower paying) plane of integrity; working as they do for the public good. Mere commerce is, well, mere commerce. Back then, in fact, I often came away from meetings with public television representatives with the impression they considered themselves always and inevitably on the side of the angels. That’s why I began to think of PBS (privately,) as the ‘WHTT Network’; the initials stand for We’re Holier Than Thou.<br />
Hartford Gunn didn’t contradict my impression, Plucked out of WGBH Boston to become the first president of PBS, he decided to headquarter the new network in Washington, D.C., right down the street from CPB. He consulted with me before making the decision and I begged him to put its headquarters in New York or Los Angeles where he could draw on an established talent pool. Barring that, I told him, Des Moines, Iowa, or French Lick, Indiana, would be wonderful. No-one would ever want to visit, and he could do whatever he chose. He chose Washington where the available talent pool was Ms .Larsen and others like her and where the network would be subject to the same political pressures as its supposed protector, CPB. <br />
So much for my opinion. <br />
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Nonetheless, after a few more ‘skirmishes’ about broadcast times, credits for Mobil and promotional tactics, Masterpiece Theatre debuted in January of 1971 under the very competent WGBH producer, Christopher Sarson. Our first offering was a pot boiler called ‘The First Churchills’ starring John Neville and Susan Hampshire (who also starred in ‘The Forsyte Saga’ and always looked as if she had a head cold.) Mobil controlled the advertising and promotion which --fortified by superb graphics from the designer Ivan Chermayeff -- was strong and tasteful; and the host, Alastair Cooke, was able to camouflage the program’s flaws with astute and urbane commentary. <br />
To be honest, our strategy was to start with our weakest drama so as to learn some lessons about our promotional approach and then to follow it with the big guns: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Hardy and James. <br />
But surprise! Surprise! The critics liked ’The First Churchills’ and so did the audience which was tiny by commercial standards but sizeable by public broadcasting standards. So we were off .. and if not running, then at least shuffling along hand in hand. Sort of.<br />
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For the next two years, Schmertz, Sarson and I (and from time to time others representing public broadcasting) traveled to London to screen and to search for future Masterpiece Theatre properties. The BBC was delighted to see us because we were establishing a new American market for their productions.. <br />
But I suspect Sarson was always uncomfortable with Mobil having a ‘say’ in the program choices. And if so, he was partially correct . The air belonged to public television and Mobil had no right to meddle with its legitimate prerogatives.<br />
On the other hand, Sarson understood that no-one wants to hear in the morning that he or she missed a good program the night before. Mobil controlled the advertising and promotion, and thus public awareness of what was coming up. So it was perfectly reasonable for Schmertz and I to screen future programs (Even the ones that were rejected, like ‘War and Peace‘ with Anthony Hopkins? Nobody ever asked that question.) We could also constructively advise and consult, if not consent, on content and scheduling. That, I believe, was the unspoken understanding to which all parties agreed. And miraculously, all parties usually agreed on which material would fit best into Masterpiece Theatre!! <br />
That is, until ‘Upstairs/Downstairs’ (U/D) came along..<br />
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Here’s what happened: <br />
The CEO of Mobil, Raleigh Warner, had a friend who saw it while vacationing in England. He later called Mr.Warner who called Herb Schmertz who called me.<br />
So the next time we were in London with Chris Sarson, we tracked it down at London Weekend Television (a commercial broadcaster!) and screened the first few episodes of a potential 65 or 70.<br />
Schmertz liked it; <br />
Sarson didn’t. <br />
I <i>loved</i> it. I thought it was brilliantly produced and performed, and perfectly attuned to the values and ambiance of its era. I wanted it on Masterpiece Theatre, period. Double period..!<br />
A week later Michael Rice, the new general manager of WGBH (Calderwood was long gone) told Mobil it wasn’t suitable for Masterpiece Theatre and to forget it.<br />
So suddenly both Sarson, the producer, <i>and </i>his station management were against broadcasting it. And then, somehow, PBS got into the act and concurred. And finally, CPB, which should have been minding its own business, joined the active opposition. At the same time, I was passionately arguing in its favor; but to no appreciable effect.. ‘Upstairs/Downstairs‘, I was told time and again, was<br />
… too British<br />
… too narrow.<br />
… too superficial<br />
… too much like a soap opera<br />
… too obscure<br />
… too maudlin.<br />
.. . too slow … and so on.<br />
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Suddenly I had an insight (about time, no?): this argument might not be about Upstairs/Downstairs’ at all! With the forces of public broadcasting acting as if Mobil were plotting to overthrow the United States government, maybe that’s exactly what they’d come to believe. After all, if Mobil got “Upstairs/Downstairs’ on the air, it would look as if it were calling the shots. It would be as if an oil company, God forbid, had taken over <i>de facto </i>control of the public air. PBS’ independence would be destroyed and its virginal integrity violated..<br />
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Shit! I thought. I just want it on Masterpiece Theatre.<br />
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But if suspicion and paranoia were really what it was all about, I reflected, so be it! There’s only one way to deal with it.. Let’s test out how deep it goes. Let’s see whether money talks and integrity walks.<br />
The next time we were in London, I arranged a luncheon with all the naysayers. I didn’t invite Schmertz because I wanted him to be able to veto my strategy if it back-fired. The lunch was properly polite until I started lobbying for U/D for the umpteenth time.<br />
One of my guests quickly stopped me: Why aren’t you hearing us? ‘Upstairs/Downstairs’ is a dead issue. I mean, <i>really</i> dead.<br />
Okay, <i></i>I said, how about this? How about we broadcast a few episodes to see if people like it? If they don’t, end of story. But let’s just <i>test</i> it, for Chrissake!<br />
I think it was the CPB guy who then said: Whaddaya’ mean ‘we‘? What's 'we'? And where’d you get the brass to think your programming judgment is better than ours?<br />
And there it was. The voice of the WHTT Network, with all its smug superiority. We’re Holier Than Thou! We, not you, are on the side of the angels. <br />
And there was I .. totally fed up and ready to unleash the attack dogs.<br />
I replied as quietly as I could: Well if we’re really at the end of our rope on this subject, then let me tell you one thing. If you refuse to broadcast ‘Upstairs/Downstairs’, I will kill Masterpiece Theatre.<br />
The statement was so bold it silenced the table.<br />
Finally, someone said: Don’t be silly. You don’t have the right to do that!<br />
Don’t I? Well I <i>named</i> Masterpiece Theatre, I told them. And after it was on the air for a year, I copyrighted it because you guys didn’t have the foresight to do it. I <i>own</i> it .. understand? And since the music, the graphics, the set and even Alastair have become totally identified with it …guess what?<br />
Again the table went mute until someone said:: That’s blackmail.<br />
Maybe so, I thought, but it’s not really blackmail until you pay it.<br />
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A month or so later, after WGBH had reconsidered its position,, PBS made one final attempt to kill the series. It said we were paying too much for it. So I ‘persuaded’ London Weekend to cut the price, promising that Mobil would make up the difference in a future deal. Which it did. No-one in public broadcasting ever knew.<br />
When, at last, it went on the air in 1973, ‘Upstairs/Downstairs’ became a Sunday night phenomenon all across the United States. It brought a new and broader audience to public broadcasting and won an EMMY as Best Dramatic Series four years in a row; something no drama had ever achieved.. (Under pressure from the three commercial networks, the nominating rules were then changed so it could never win another.)<br />
And so now, I must offer a dual confession.<br />
I was bluffing all along. I couldn’t possibly have killed Masterpiece Theatre. I’d invested far too much of myself into bringing it to life.<br />
And I lied! I never copyrighted the name; and apparently no-one ever checked. To my knowledge, it has never been copyrighted. And Mobil, thank God, didn’t overthrow the government. But it did put a splendid and deserving series on the air.<br />
So I offer no apologies and live with only a few (mild) regrets.<br />
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AFTER DINNER MINTS<br />
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Stan Calderwood, who had been head of marketing for Polaroid, lasted only six months at WGBH. His successor, Michael Rice (the only person who ever called to congratulate me on the success of U/D) didn’t last much longer.<br />
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Herb Schmertz was offered early retirement shortly after a new CEO took over at Mobil. Wisely, he took it. I think he was far too smart and certainly too flamboyant for his new superiors.<br />
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Chris Sarson resigned shortly after the U/D battle. Rumor had it he left because of it; but I doubt that. He had other irons in the fire and went on to create and produce a fine children’s program at WGBH called ‘Zoom!’ It ran for six good years.<br />
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Oddly, John Macy and Hartford Gunn, champions of bureaucracy, both died in the same year: 1986. <br />
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I remained a consultant to Mobil after Schmertz retired, but the company’s culture was changing and its commitment to worthwhile projects was sliding toward the conventional rather than the innovative. So I quit. Years later, after it merged with Exxon, it stopped underwriting public television entirely.<br />
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WGBH replaced Chris Sarson with Joan Wilson, a wonderful woman who always considered Schmertz and I collaborators rather than adversaries. She was supported by the steady and wise WGBH president, Henry Becton. When Joan died prematurely in 1985, her responsibilities were given to Rebecca Eaton in whose capable hands they still reside. Before Rebecca agreed to take the job, I advised her to keep it for five years and then move on. That was twenty-six years ago.<br />
So much for my opinion.<br />
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A final irony? The BBC is producing a re-make of ‘Upstairs/Downstairs’ and PBS is scheduling it on ‘Masterpiece’ without debate. What a surprise!<br />
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Please spread this blog around to anyone who might like or dislike it. The link is </span><a href="http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span lang="EN">http://keywestwind.blogspot.com</span></span></u></a><span lang="EN">. Thanks to all. </span>No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-49217379942998702802011-02-27T14:52:00.000-08:002011-02-27T14:52:50.217-08:00BLACKMAILING MASTERPIECE THEATRE ... AND WHO THE HELL IS FRANK GILLARD???<span lang="EN"> <br />
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Masterpiece Theatre had its 40<sup>th</sup> birthday in January and almost nobody noticed. But I got nostalgic about it. So just for fun, I went to Wikipedia and was told that the original idea for Masterpiece Theatre -- now the longest running drama series in TV history -- came from a man named Frank Gillard. Then I went to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) website and learned that Christopher Sarson was ‘the founder’ of the series.(Note the singular)<br />
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Well, I said to myself, I’ll be goddamned!! Or maybe I’ll just be gob smacked!!<br />
Success, as everyone knows, has many parents; failure none. And I understand there are often different truths within the framework of success. In fact, I’ve always been willing to make allowances for exaggeration, shading, semi-truth and charitable interpretation. But I’m not willing to warp the truth beyond recognition.<br />
So it’s time to set the record straight and to unbend a few historical abuses.<br />
Christopher Sarson was <i>not</i> ‘the founder’ of Masterpiece Theatre. Not even close. But he did contribute a great deal to its start-up and to its early success. More of that later.And who the hell is Frank Gillard?<br />
I never heard of him and I was there. In fact, I <i>named</i> Masterpiece Theatre and was one of its three principal founders. (Please note the plural.) The other two were Stan Calderwood, then a senior executive at station WGBH in Boston; and Herb Schmertz, the newly-appointed Vice President of Public Affairs for Mobil Corporation. <br />
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And here’s my true version of how Masterpiece Theatre was born …. and nearly died in its adolescence when the forces of public broadcasting adamantly and dogmatically rejected a series Mobil (meaning Schmertz and I) had found and wanted to broadcast. In the end, and after a long and bitter battle, I virtually ‘blackmailed” the series onto the air, It was called ’Upstairs Downstairs’. <br />
But more of that later too. <br />
It all began in early 1970 when Stan Calderwood, in a meeting arranged by Mobil‘s ad agency, asked Herb Schmertz whether Mobil would be interested in underwriting a 13-part BBC adaptation of Henry James’ ‘Portrait of a Lady’ starring Richard Chamberlain. Chsmberlain, before moving to England, had been wildly popular in America as the star of the ‘Dr. Kildare’ series on NBC. Calderwood believed that the James adaptation, combined with Chamberlain’s marquis value, might be celebrated as enthusiastically as the ‘Forsyte Saga’ which was shown on various educational TV stations (principally in New York and Boston) a few years before.<br />
I was a consultant to Mobil at the time and, as it happens, was looking for an opportunity for the company to gain a presence on public television’s first <i>national </i>network, PBS, which was to be created in October of that same year. But I doubted this was the opportunity.<br />
For one thing, despite all the hoopla, far more people talked about ‘The Forsyte Saga’ than ever watched it: and for another, almost nobody watched Kenneth Clark’s famed ‘Civilization’ series despite its splendid reviews and intellectual cachet. And both came from the BBC.<br />
Still, Schmertz and I agreed that we should at least look at ’Portrait of a Lady’. Which we did along with Calderwood and Peter Roebeck, the Beeb’s distributor in the United States.<br />
We were shocked. The show was worse than bad. It was terrible. <br />
Yet during four or five hours of (painful) screening, it came to light that a number of other ‘serial dramas’, as they were then called, were already in the BBC’s vaults. Maybe, just maybe, we thought, there might be more here than meets the eye (excuse the pun).<br />
So off we flew -- under Roebeck’s wary eye -- to London where lo and behold … we found the mother lode: wonderful BBC television adaptations of novels by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Thackeray, Balzac, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Hughes, two more by Henry James and more. <br />
What to do with it all was obvious and almost spontaneous. Instead of Calderwood’s modest proposal, we said, let’s create something entirely new: a full season of dramatized novels by great writers!! In truth, the idea just seemed to emerge by itself. It came from each of us and from none of us. <br />
Within weeks, we’d closed the deal between Mobil and WGBH which, in turn, closed the deal with Roebeck. We’d already agreed that we needed to package the programs in a unique way and would also need to produce ’wrap arounds’ to introduce and conclude each program. I suggested ’Masterpiece Theatre’ as a working title until someone could think of something better. No-one did; so to my surprise, the title stuck.<br />
It was then that WGBH assigned a member of its staff, Christopher Sarson, to be line producer on the project. Chris, a likeable and very affable Englishman, was responsible for designing the final package, picking the theme music, the set, etc. In fact, it was probably Chris who suggested employing Alastair Cooke as host, although I can’t remember exactly. I do recall Mobil asking my opinion and my being enthusiastic about the possibility because I’d seen Cooke many times on ‘Omnibus’, a CBS Sunday afternoon program on the humanities. He struck me as perfect: urbane, sophisticated and articulate.<br />
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Thus on January 10, 1971, Masterpiece Theatre was born -- almost at the same time as PBS -- as a collaborative effort of Mobil and of WGBH. None of us had even a hint that it would become an iconic institution. But it certainly did .. and the people who made it happen -- and who brought ‘mini-series’ into the American vocabulary -- have never received due credit.<br />
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So thank you, Stan Calderwood, although I doubt you‘re still with us; and thank you, Herb Schmertz, who’s retired and living in the New York area. You created Masterpiece Theatre .. not Chris Sarson who contributed a great deal at the beginning and not Frank Gillard who -- although once a senior radio executive at the BBC -- nobody (and I mean NOBODY) connected to the project ever heard of.<br />
And what I want to know is … how can I ever trust Wikipedia again? And how can you? <br />
I guess the old axiom is true: ‘Don’t believe everything you read.’ Especially on the internet.<br />
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Okay, I’ve run out of steam. So in my next blog, I’ll describe the war over ‘Upstairs Downstairs’, and public television’s deep-seated and self-destructive distrust of the corporate world. At the time, I should have sensed it coming. <br />
Finally, the winner of ‘The Tackiest Street In America’ contest wasn’t even a street. It was a question.<br />
A friend from upstate New York wrote:<br />
<i> “Does an aisle in Walmart count?”</i> She will receive the full sized statue of Andrew Dice Clay dressed as a Degas ballerina as soon as I receive her money order for shipping and for transportation and hotel costs for the dresser.<br />
Until next time. Spread this blog around to friends.. Or enemies. The link is <br />
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</span><a href="http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN">http://keywestwind.blogspot.com/</span></span></span></u></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> <span lang="EN"></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN"> </span></span></span></span></span></span>No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-56443327722421692682011-01-29T14:40:00.000-08:002011-01-29T14:40:50.818-08:00'The Tackiest Street In America Contest': Nominations Are Open I live in Key West, Florida, whose main street, I'm sorry to say, is probably the tackiest street in America. I could be wrong, of course, because ours is a country with lots of tacky and I can't pretend to have seen it all .. or even a large part of it. Which is why I've decided to solicit nominations for the honor, to be measured again my own Duval Street. Whoever submits the winner -- which will be judged by an impartial panel I'll control with an iron fist -- will win either a life-sized statue of Andrew Dice Clay dressed as a Degas ballerina or a free hunting trip with Dick Cheney. The choice will be his/hers. <br />
Now for the sake of clarity, I should define 'tacky'. Tacky doesn't necessarily mean dirty or broken down, although each might easily accompany it. Tacky<em> does</em> mean tawdry, tasteless, cheap and exploitive. Golly gee ... think of Sarah Palin. And if you don't care to do that (and who could blame you?), think of John Edwards.<br />
Please note that I have no political biases.<br />
And that is Duval Street: two lanes that run for less than a mile from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean; two lanes than are tawdry, tasteless, cheap and exploitive; two lanes that are a testimony to municipal dysfunction and indigenous greed.<br />
I recently counted forty-seven T-shirt shops on Duval. Forty-seven! Some of the more tasteless shirts displayed in their windows said:<br />
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<em>I Pee In Pools</em><br />
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<em> I'm no gynecologist,</em><br />
<em> But I'll Take A Look.</em><br />
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<em> My parents said I could become anything,</em><br />
<em> So I became an ASSHOLE.</em><br />
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<em> I shaved my balls for this?</em><br />
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<em> </em>Of course, every shirt boasts Key West as its source, as if asserting that it reflects the values of the city and its residents. And once inside the shops, one finds even subtler slogans of Key West like ..<br />
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<em>Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck</em><br />
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<em> </em>But that's not all. In addition to the T-shirt sellers along this miserable mile are forty-one .. count 'em .. forty-one bars! You think I'm kidding? No, in fact, I'm not. (Live music begins blaring at ten in the morning.) There are also two strip joints, a 'gentlemen's club', an on-street escort service, a nudie bar, and an assortment of chain operators: a Hard Rock Cafe, a Fat Tuesday, a Banana Republic, Coach, Express and two drugstores whose sales of headache remedies must surely account for the majority of their business.<br />
And finally, to bottom out this stretch of 'Keys Sleaze', we're confronted with aggressive street peddlers, merchandise hustlers, pushy panhandlers, and abusive drunks who caroom along the sidewalks like horizontal avalanches.<br />
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I accept that <em>some</em> tacky ambiance can be expected in a tourist town. And Key West is certainly a tourist town: a tiny, two by four-mile island that hosts nearly two and a half million people a year, with over one million of those (all on Duval) staying just for the day, buying a margarita or two and an overpriced T-shirt, maybe having a burger and then urinating enough to nearly overload our municipal waste system. And of those, almost nine hundred thousand come off cruise ships that arrive in the morning and leave by sunset.<br />
But now hear this! At this very moment, our greed-besotted leaders are considering an expansion of the Key West ship channel to handle the newest cruise ships: the behemoths that carry 5000 passengers and 2500 crew .. which I'm told are to be followed by a second generation of giants that carry 10,000!<br />
Can you imagine what Duval Street and its surroundings will look like when and if that happens? Can the diversity of this beautiful little island survive under the weight of, say, another million and a half people a year?<br />
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The answers could be suggested by history because Key West has consistently shown itself to be the most short-sighted city in the United States; a city that was once the richest per capita in the country and thirty-five years later was the poorest.<br />
In the 19th century, it was the center of the American cigar industry, producing some 100 million cigars a year. Shortsighted labor policies caused the industry to abandon the island and move to Tampa. Then it became the largest producer of green turtle in the nation .. that is, until the turtles were hunted to near extinction. The same thing happened to its flourishing sponge industry which imploded, and most recently to the thriving shrimp fleet which shrank to nearly nothing as a result of over-fishing.<br />
In other words, just about every asset Key West has enjoyed has turned first to gold and then -- driven by blind greed -- to dreck.<br />
Today it still has magic, with pictureque old neighborhoods and buildings shaded by flowering trees and blossoming bougainvillea as beautiful as anything to be seen anywhere. It still draws and welcomes writers and painters and sculptors and musicians and playwrights (and everyone else) to its gentle climate and to its even gentler tradition of tolerance for all.<br />
But Duval Street has become a metastasizing cancer spread by the greed of the landlords, bar owners, shop keepers, tour operators, politicians and bankers who believe that any new business is good business and who continue to argue that more is always better.<br />
They do nothing to control the cancer or to treat it in any way. And they ignore the symptomatic and ominous complaints of tourists -- on whom the city dependa almost entirely -- who swear they'll never return.<br />
So the reason I nominate Duval Street as the tackiest street in American is not because it's tacky<em> per se</em>, but because of the tawdry leadership, the compulsive greed and the tunnel vision of those who, every day, permit it to corrode and to poison an otherwise wonderful place.<br />
Okay, nominations are now open to all.<br />
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p.s.- To be fair, a handful of very good restaurants still survive on Duval Street; and on the upper end of the street there are still a few tasteful shops and art galleries. How long before they become T-shirt shops? Who knows? And more to the point, who cares?<br />
As always, comments positive or negative are welcome.No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192859484659682771.post-55531655651054843842011-01-19T07:50:00.000-08:002011-01-19T07:50:06.176-08:00The Warts of Panama and Other Odd Subjects<span lang="EN"> <br />
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Wow!! What unexpected reactions!!<br />
After my first blog saying Baby Boomers were screwed, I had hoped to follow with postings about subjects like <br />
… the slow, sad death of public television;<br />
… the futility of thinking (or even dreaming) there will ever be peace in Iraq;<br />
… the disappearance of simple courtesy in our society;<br />
… the joke of campaign finance reform;<br />
… and a posting about the most short-sighted city in the history of the United States: <br />
Key West, my home and most favorite place.<br />
But the Baby Boomer blog struck a nerve with people who raised questions -- mostly thoughtful and a few suspicious -- that demand answers.. <br />
So here goes.<br />
First, to ye of little faith: I am NOT ‘getting an honorarium from the Panama Tourist Board’. There are at least ten other countries that come immediately to mind where <br />
Baby Boomers can live bigger, better, cheaper and safer than in the US. <br />
I used Panama as a prime example because the country WANTS retirees (from anywhere) to live there. Why else do you suppose it enacted laws to encourage them to do so? Why else are there 50,000 condos being built in the country right now? <br />
But I did NOT say it was for everyone or that it’s a perfect place. In fact, you must read the following email from a friend who lives in the same building where, five years ago, I bought a condo (now rented) in the big bad metropolis of Panama City: <br />
“<i>Panama City is part New York City and part Dodge City. Laws are merely suggestions. Money is everywhere (in the upper class). There is no viable middle class. The upper class is usually anyone making $300 or more a week.</i><i> People are used to deprivation. Bridges are almost falling down, so motorists make the sign of the cross when crossing. Mass transit is chaotic, so commuting workers get up several hours earlier than necessary. Housing is based on very extended family units.</i><i> The Panamanian character is hopeful and cynical. Strongly democratic, though wishful for a strongman who can get the buses running on time and the Metro built.</i><i>We have a Looney Tunes mayor whose claim to fame is that he won the local ’Dance With the Stars’ contest. His most genial idea: build an outdoor ice skating rink. Trash pickup has been terrible .. but improving.</i><i> A word about the ambiance. </i> BTW, <i>a private hospital</i> <i>SUITE costs $160 a night!</i> So yes, Panama does have warts .. as does anyplace. And keep in mind, my friend’s view is just of Panama City, a metropolis of 1.5 million people. The rest of the country is quite different .. with different warts.<br />
One thoughtful reader wondered how long my ‘rosy picture in Panama’ can last.<br />
Good question. My hunch is it will last for the foreseeable future which, in this case, is about twenty years .. by which time the last of the Baby Boomers will already have slipped into retirement. I also believe that Cuba will open up in the not-too-distant future .. and possibly even Venezuela when Chavez finally exhausts his suffering country. But Ecuador, Nicaragua. Guatemala, Costa Rica and Belize, among others, are there right now. And if you don’t care about distance, there’s Argentina, Indonesia (Bali), Spain, Melanesia and Thailand.<br />
Take your pick .. but pick carefully.<br />
A few readers also asked what impact a mass migration of gringos might have on the environment of a country like Panama. Well, for starters, twenty-five percent of the total land mass of Panama is covered by national parks!! And that’s not counting sixteen wildlife refuges. How many countries even come close? Damn few. And there’s still plenty of empty space. <br />
But what’s curious is that no-one asked what impact it might have on the environment and on energy conservation in the States. Well, let’s say 350,000 Baby Boomers migrated to Panama. That’s 350,000 fewer homes that need heating in winter, and almost as many that won’t need air-conditioning in summer. That’s at least 350,000 fewer cars, and as many as 700,000 fewer people consuming food that has to be diesel-trucked or flown thousands of miles. (In Central America, at least, you drive much less, use far less A/C, and eat meat, fish, poultry, fruit and vegetables raised, caught and grown locally. It‘s so good you get spoiled. Tomatoes that taste like tomatoes? Impossible.!)<br />
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In writing about the Baby Boomer generation, I’ve tried to make the point that there are real and viable options to watching millions of people slowly descend toward poverty as their incomes erode and their quality of life deteriorates. (AARP seems in large part to agree. Try the link at <br />
But my overriding purpose has been to get Baby Boomers to FOCUS on the problem. As people grow older, they often rationalize that time will solve everything and that looming issues will eventually go away. One reader (a possible candidate for what I call the ‘NaivTea Party’) actually thinks the sheer number of Baby Boomers will be enough to form a powerful voting bloc. But that’s like thinking you can stop a supertanker but putting it in reverse. By the time it stops, it’s too late.<br />
So please --whether you agree with every point I’ve made or not -- spread the word both to Baby Boomers and to their children that they must get out of their comfort zones and away from unreal hopes and false rationalizations. They are facing sunset years that are stark, uncomfortable and profoundly disappointing.<br />
That is a no nonsense, indisputable fact. Yet -- with a bit of courage and imagination -- they can still do something about it by leaving the country that has let them down.<br />
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Please check out my next blog: The Slow, Sad Death of Public Television<br />
Till then, feel free to comment -- good or bad -- on this one. <br />
Nice to be with you again.<br />
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I love picking up my meds over the counter and paying one quarter of what they cost in the US. My doctors charge $40 for an office visit, minus 15% discount, and a little more for a house visit. I have one internist, a neuro-surgeon and a cardiologist within walking distance; the same distance from huge shopping malls and three medical centers.<br />
I was just in the hospital for ten days with a spine that was bleeding out from Coumadin. They got to it before I lost leg function. CAT scan, MRI, all meds ( 100 bags of painkillers mixed with antibiotics), around-the-clock medical attention and the surgeon, three doctors, pain management specialist, anesthesia and four hours on the operating table and I am now as good as new. Total cost: $20,000.<br />
I love it here.<br />
I’m a salt water fisherman and go out all day for $500, shared with four other friends. Marlin are as plentiful as rats, but I prefer the 20-40 pound dolphins. And for $150 for the whole family, nothing beats the short drive from Panama City to go peacock bass fishing. Try catching twenty to thirty per person (one to three pounders) in a morning.<br />
Keep up the blog, my friend.</span><a href="http://aarp.org/home-garden/bestplacestoretireabroad/"><u><span style="color: blue;"><span lang="EN">http://aarp.org/home-garden/bestplacestoretireabroad/</span></span></u></a><span lang="EN"> for a second opinion.)</span>No Nonsensehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01225723324277111414noreply@blogger.com1