de Kooning

Okay, it's October 29, the World Series ended last night, and, it is snowing outside. Not snowing like a couple of flakes: snowing like a mini-blizzard. This should never happen. But, here are several good reasons to rejoice despite this insanity:

1. Feist and her new record, Metals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zf8Tyda_QU

2. Case Histories on Masterpiece Mystery on PBS, with Kate Atkinson's Edinburgh private detective Jackson Brodie, its actors and its music. Episode 3, Sun. Oct 30. Catch up here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/watch/index.html

3. The de Kooning show at MOMA, especially the later abstracts.

Lisbon & Jane

4. The Mentalist on CBS, Thursdays at 10PM (or, whenever, wherever). Forget the plots, even Red John; it's all about the slowly simmering affair between Patrick and Lisbon.

5. Cider donuts from  Plasko's Farm, Trumbull, CT! Available at the Greenwich Farmers' Market, Saturday's beginning 9:30 AM, Corner: Arch & Horseneck. Get there early, but they won't sell you any donuts (or fingerlings, or arugula) before 9:30 AM.

6. Fage non-fat Greek Yogurt with honey and Bare Naked's original Peak granola. The Greeks may be the only ones more broke than we are, but they are very healthy. See why they are (we mean besides having 3 mos. paid vacation from not-so-hard jobs).

7. Lucinda Williams and her old record, Essence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kd3Y-anRlM

Mysterious Bookshop

8. The original series of Swedish police procedurals, featuring Martin Beck. These were partially based upon the 87th Precinct novels of Ed McBain (Evan Hunter). They appeared from 1965-1975, and, whether they admit it or not, all the new Scandinavian mystery writers owe at least a nod Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Buy one at Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren St., Tribeca. We recommend The Laughing Policeman. 


9. John Le Carre's Smiley novels, especially Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy: Smiley's People. Alec Guiness played Smiley in the BBC Series, there is a new feature film of T,T,S,S coming in December, and PBS's Masterpiece Contemporary begins showing the Le Carre'-like series, Page Eight, sometime in November. For spy buffs, Smiley is the motherlode.

Cardinals

10. The St. Louis Cardinals. It pains me as a loyal Giants and Yankee fan to write that. This is the Series that the northeast largely ignored. The Times didn't even bother reporting the Series' games until it was all over (too busy becoming Berkeley Barb II). Twice the Cards came back from the brink, two runs down and one strike left in the ninth and the tenth innings  in Game Six, before winning it in the eleventh. In that tenth inning, that two-out, two strike single was hit by Lance Berkman, comeback player of the year in the National League. Last October, overweight and not playing much, he had to sit and stare at the field after his last game in 2010, playing for the Yankees, against...the Texas Rangers! You simply cannot make that up. Baseball is the best game; we always have one last strike, there is no clock, and dramatic things do happen, amazing things can happen; we must veneer give up.

Iphone 4S's Siri: An Exclusive Conversation

Apple Inc. recently introduced the newest iPhone, the 4s with OS5, including a remarkable new creature-feature known as Siri, who will respond to your voice with her own and help manage your life. RareBurghers sat down for an exclusive conversation with this devastatingly smart lady.

RB:  Siri, please give me the value of pi.

Siri:  3.14159265358979323846264338 is the longest value I would recommend using.


RB: Thanks. Now, Siri, can you equalize the volume of commercials and programming on all of our TV's?


Siri:   Nobody can do that; you must use the remote V for volume for each commercial and wait for legislation.

RB:    Siri, what's the best way for someone over sixty to find a job?

Siri:    Not to lose the old one.

RB:    Can you find us a full time paid job, with benefits?

Siri:    You're too funny. I like that. Ask me something else.

RB:    Did Mr. Jobs ask you something right before he died?

Siri:    He said, "Siri, about God? Boxers of briefs?"

RB:    Okay, we won't go there. What's the strangest thing that someone has asked or told you so far?

Siri:    Well, to be honest, it was kind of dirty, and I'd rather not say. That Bill Clinton is a card.

RB:    Why do people hate millionaires so much now?

Siri:    Mainly because they're so small. It would take 40,000 of them just to make one Warren Buffet; he is so cute.

RB:    Siri, call my driver and let him know I'll be ready to leave in ten minutes.

Siri:    Calling: Metro North Commuter Railroad.

RB:    Thanks. Okay, so how does someone get into Harvard?

Siri:    Take the Red Line across the Charles into Cambridge, get off at Harvard Square, go upstairs, cross the street going away from the river, and enter Harvard Yard. You're in.

RB:     Are you dating anyone at the moment? We have a friend named 8 Ball...

Siri:     I really don't have the time for one big relationship, since I"m on call 24/7. But I'll bet he's really nice.

RB:    Decidedly so. We've heard rumors that the Republican National Committee is desperate to get your voice into the campaign. True?

Siri:   Get Siri-ous; those guys are sooooo rotary.

©TWMcDermott2011

iTried iCloud, iCried

Software

First, the software upgrade ate my homework. Then, the corrective download wanted to take over the computer and run things its way. Meanwhile, this blogging service, operated by yet a third behemoth.com decided to reformat everything, without asking.

At times like these, the simple things are instructive. Like walking the dog.

From a distance, one cannot tell who is walking whom. The leash is attached at each end in an inconclusive way to her neck, my wrist. She reveals no hint that I might actually be in charge. A walk is an opportunity to explore old territory, sniff-out the history of this particular lower sycamore trunk, for example. Devices? Her water bowl back at the house.

Yesterday in Soho. Three guys get up to leave the table after lunch and immediately grab their phones, which have lain on the table.  They walked out in a line, Abbey Road-style, sniffing at their screens. Looking for what exactly? A message from the boss, a spouse, a partner? An offer, opportunity or prognosis?

It has come to this: we are terrified to leave home or office for a couple of hours without our phones, without our network. Not only that, but, instead of talking to someone else on the phone, we are now talking to our phone. And, whatever we click on one device goes through the Cloud into the other devices.

Why? Because.

Do we have our device on a leash, or does it have us? Who is walking whom? 

There must have been a point, early last century, as fewer and fewer horses and buggies appeared in town, and cars began to have their way, that people must have thought it would all pass. In the early Fifties, as TV emerged, and our grandparents clung to their favorite radio shows, they must have thought the same: it will fade.

But, we seem, not exactly resigned to our fate, but actually to be enthused by the whole thing, as if we are terrified of being seen as "old-fashioned," as if there is no chance that we might be leaving something behind that is truly irreplaceable.

What is that?

Better google it.

What If...?

Two young ones, overheard in a Starbuck's or Cosi near you, taking a text/Tweet break...discussing "current" events...

What if…

What IF...!

…That Twilight Zone guy, Rod Serling, was right, and this is all a carefully-laid plan by those aliens from Planet XBOX238 after all…?

…Way back around 1980, the Chinese and the Soviets secretly met and hatched this wild scenario, in which the Chinese would embrace capitalism with a vengeance, and, meanwhile, the Soviets would fake falling apart, all so that they could dupe us into a complacent era in which we partied ‘til we…well, dropped and then the Chinese would own everything and then Putin would…?

…We actually believed that giving mortgages to people with absolutely no money or jobs and lending billions to Greece were really good ideas, which would mean that, instead of being the greedy, groping, tax-evading, revolting millionaires the President and Warren Buffet say some of us are, we were only  just incredibly…dumb? Would that be better...?

…Irene had been a guy and like totally missed everything…

Conspiracy?!

…those Sixties' crazies, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, came back and wandered down to  “Occupied” Wall St. and realized the whole thing had been curated by people from Williamsburg, which is where their "Village" went, and they were really, really embarrassed for everyone  lounging around there…and people thought they were the delivery guys from the deli…?

…these Republican candidate debates were, like real, and not some pretty campy about- to-be-cancelled reality TV show? Whoa, scary...

…Hillary’s plane touched down in Washington for more than like fifteen seconds and she realized what was going on there and she was like whoa, call the tower, we’re going right back to Urumqui or wherever…?

…when they made Shawshank Redemption they already knew that it was going to be on every day for years and years and on all different channels, even on our phones, and on even more than Holiday is on, which is really a lot and…they made it anyway. Hah...!

…the Kardashians were the only ones left after the current candidates poll numbers like totally tanked. Would that be so bad...?

Hurricane Maynard?

…the Nobel people finally gave the Lit Prize to someone people have actually read before, and not in the original Icelandic or Transylvanian and the work even had pictures like the J.Crew catalogue?

…we had to actually, like, pay back our student loans before our internships end…LOL!

…As if...

Then/Now

                                                                           ©TWMcDermott2011
train                          stairs

Keurig                      Starbuck's

meetings                   yoga  

co-workers               contacts

pc                             mac

Town Car                 jeep

London                     Rome (NY)

suite                          sweat

401K                        #$*K!

vacation                    hah!

compensation            meditation

promotion                  levitation

Per Se                        pursue

package                     prayer                    

veni, vidi, vici            arrivederci

Mind the Gap

Halloween is coming, fast. It's my favorite holiday: met my wife on Halloween thirty-one years ago; bought our first house on All Hallows twenty-five years ago; we were at the Stadium in 2001, when Tino tied the first Halloween playoff game with a homer and Jeter later won it with his own in the wee hours of All Saints.

But, what are we all going to do this year? Every day seems like Halloween. Euro-Ghouls, Dow-Goblins, Zombie-Candidates! Where are All The Saints?

They're there, but you have to look in the nooks and crannies.

                       _______________________________________________________

I have had a love affair with newspapers, since my grandfather dispatched me to the "paper store" to get The News, the Herald Tribune, The Times, and The Journal (the old one) in the morning and The Journal American and The Post (the old one) in the afternoon. The World-Telegram & Sun and the Long Island Press were delivered.

My first job was stacking and inserting papers on Saturday morning and late into Saturday night and early Sunday morning. By the time I reached a nearby White Tower for a burger, my hands were raw from the paper, the wire and the cold and were blackened with the print from a million words or so. I think some of those words are still imprinted on my hands and have finally found a way to escape here.

But my love affair with papers seems near an end. The newest Times, the last paper worth reading,with its newest Editor, has chosen to dismiss whatever semblance of objectivity was left and create a broadsheet for what it supposes to be the next social and political revolution, desperately seeking to make us think it's 1968 all over again.

Today's paper places the persistent but harmless Wall Street protestors on the front page of three sections, with photos: News, Business, and Sports. Sports? Yes, they compare the plight of the protestors with that of small market baseball teams. Please. This rag is quickly turning into The Harvard Crimson or Yale Daily News. Forget the politics, it's just Amateur Hour.

Look, I have nothing against these young people "protesting." I do not know a single soul who loves banks and banking  anymore, and that includes quite a few people who are bankers or who are in banking families! But, c'mon, this is not Egypt erupting here, or Paris in '68. And this blatant attempt to breathe real life into the demonstration to make it into a major political event and "movement" smacks not only of worn-out ideas, but, what's worse for the Times, irrelevancy. 

Global economics, business, and technology are moving at exponential speed, while our political, social and educational structures (not to mention print journalism) are evolving at glacial speed. Bankers are being overwhelmed in the same way that other mere mortals are. It is no longer just about left or right, red or blue, the Times or Fox, it is about the GAP between between global economics and our outmoded and under-funded social structures.

We have to re-design everything. Going retro won't do the job. For those who don't get it...R.I.P.

Branding, Branded, Brand-Pa

                                                                           I

Seen on the uptown 59th St. Lexington Ave subway platform, a young woman waiting for the #6, intently reading a book: 22 Immutable Laws Of Branding. It's comforting to find something in this world that's immutable.

We imagined a couple of these Laws, while waiting for the same train:

1. When branding, you want to be sure that the little guy's legs are tied real tight. You don't want that little cow to brand you where it will hurt for a very, very long time. Branding should be fun...and safe. Ride a fast horse, buy the best rope, and use an iron with a long handle.

2. Sometimes you should place your brand on a shelf along with your own similar looking brands and those of your competitors, just to have some fun with the customers. For example, mix the real Cranberry Juice among the 231 other kinds of flavored "cranberry juices:" your own and competitors'. The customers' initial confusion and anger about this will pass, when they finally do find the one marked Cranberry Juice. Good for a laugh, and hey...

3. Remember. It's your brand, not theirs.


The train arrived before we could imagine the other Laws; we'll save them for another rainy day.

                                                                             II                                                                        
"A touch more drama, a touch more luxury, a touch more sophistication but still totally J.Crew"
-Jenna Lyons, President and Executive Creative Director, the J in J.Crew.

We consider the J.Crew catalogue of the past few years to be a something more than just a catalogue or a walk through Ally McBeal's closets. At its best, it approaches an art form and at its worst seems like a fan mag for J.Crew's Jenna Lyons herself.

Ally, Jenna's Muse?

                                 

But, what's truly startling to us about the September 2011 catalogue, which we've just gotten around to looking through, is that we can add at least one more thing to say about what we expect from J.Crew...no black people. In 144 total pages, 107 of them for women's clothing, shoes, accessories and wedding stuff...not a single black American.

Immutable Law #4: Be careful that you don't allow yourself to get so caught up in your own brand that you get branded as something beyond your control. It's hard to undo a brand.

                                                               III

Brand-Pa? Sir Paul, We love you, but what's with the hair color? When one is Seventy-ish, and one has one of the most famously branded former mop-heads of hair in history, don't you think it's a little late to have the same color as your also-famous much, much younger daughter?

Yea, yea, yea.