My Time

“In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.”  Andy Warhol

It’s precisely 9:45 on a Saturday morning.  The doorbell rings and when I open it there is Guy Reynolds, host of It’s Your Time, the hit show of The Reality Channel.  Guy is flanked by a small crew holding lights, cameras, and a boom mike.  They all surge toward me forcing me back into my living room and Guy launches into his signature line.

Guy: Today is your lucky day, because today you get your fifteen minutes of fame!

Me: You mean right now?  I was just about to go out to the dry cleaners.

Guy: Did you hear that folks?  He goes to the dry cleaners on Saturday.  So, tell me about yourself, particularly the interesting parts.

Me: You know this is really inconvenient for me.  Could we schedule something maybe next weekend?

Guy: I’m afraid that’s not how this works.  Your number was selected for this time slot and, as someone famous once said, the show must go on!  So why don’t we just keep moving because, as another famous person said, time’s a wastin’.

Me: Well, I suppose that’s true.  But I haven’t even shaved yet.

Guy: That’s fine.  Lots of famous people don’t shave on the weekends.  It’s one of the many keen insights we’ve picked up on this show.  So tell me about yourself.  My research says you’re in your fifties, correct?

Me: Right. Yes, but maybe we should move outside.  The house is kind of messy this morning.

Guy: No time for that and, besides, there’s no place like home, as one of our most famous persons once said.  So, are you married? Any family?

Me: Yes, I’m married.  We have three daughters.  Their ages are…

Guy: I don’t think we have time for that.  Instead why don’t you tell me what do you do for a living?  Our choice of job is important because, as was famously said, heigh ho heigh ho it’s off to work we go.

Me: Well, I’ve done a lot of things in my career. Should I just tell you what I’m doing now or everything I’ve done?

Guy: Ha ha.  This isn’t your two hours of fame, just give me the highlights.  Have you invented anything?

Me: No, no inventions.  Mostly I’ve been a consultant and…

Guy:  Have you consulted for anyone famous?  You know, heads of state, corporate executives, celebrities, that sort of thing?

Me:  Uh, no, I wouldn’t say any of my clients have been famous.  Typically marketing managers and IT engineers.  Occasionally a product manager.

Guy: I see.  Let’s move on.  To paraphrase a famous line all work and no play makes us pretty darn dull.  So what do you like to do in your spare time?

Me: Well, I like to write.

Guy:  That’s good.  Have you published anything?  Books?  Magazine articles? Poems?  Anything our viewers would know?

Me: No, nothing like that.  I just write for fun, although I did have a complaint letter about the weekly police log printed in the town newspaper.

Guy: Oh.  Uh, what about other activities?

Me: Well, I’ve always liked playing sports.

Guy: Terrific!  Ever won anything big? On any championship teams or captured an individual award?  Set any records?

Me: Er, no, I wasn’t that good.  As a kid, I always dreamed about being a…

Guy: I’m sorry, but we don’t focus on dreams here.  That’s our other show I Had A Dream Too!  Since we are running out of time why don’t you tell me the three greatest accomplishments of your life? 

Me: Oh boy, that’s a tough one.  Let me think for a minute.

Guy: Here’s a helpful hint.  Imagine your life is done and you are standing at the pearly gates and a five-judge panel is weighing your credentials for admission.  What would you want them to know about you?

Me: Okay.  I suppose I’d want them to know, uh, that, uh, well that, uh, the three biggest accomplishments of my life were, uh…

Guy: What are you most proud of?

Me: Umm…

Guy: What you would want people to remember you by?

Me: I guess it would have to be…

Guy: Well, what do you know, your time is up.  This has been your fifteen minutes of fame!

And with that Guy and his crew were out the door, into their van, and down the street with a screeching of tires.

The Sporadic Diary

September 15, 2010

When your business title is “Genius” you have a lot to live up to.  This is what the Apple technical support crew is faced with every day as hundreds of angry and confused customers stream into Apple retail stores and belly up to the Genius Bar for help.  As one of those addled customers awaiting my appointment recently, I thought the geniuses must be a confident lot to carry that title around.  No room for insecurity there.  Although, let’s face it, they are protected somewhat, since it’s kind of tough for customers to pushback on the genius.  What do you say?  Anything would sound petulant and sophomoric.  Only a genius can take on the genius, and if he or she was a genius what would he or she be doing going to the Genius Bar in the first place?  He or she would just stay at home and figure it out.   

Of course, most business titles are so prosaic and uninteresting.  Manager, director, vice president, senior vice president, and the various “C-level” monikers.  These are the standard fare.  Ho hum.  So why are we so covetous of these titles?  Especially now that so many of them have become devalued, like currencies in distressed and unstable countries.  For instance, most bank employees are vice presidents, or so it seems.  Even the youngest staff with peach fuzz faces sport the VP title.  Talk about grade inflation.  To differentiate among them some institutions have added descriptors to form titles like First Vice President, Second Vice President, and so on.  It leaves you wondering how many levels of VP they have.  And does it really matter?

On the other hand, I met a guy from Disney once whose title was Chief Imagineer.  Now that’s a title worth writing home about!  He looked the part too, with Santa beard and suspenders.  Maybe titles should be more descriptive like that.  Certainly could make for more interesting conversation at a cocktail party.  Hi, I’m Don - I’m First Vice President at XYZ Corporation versus Hi, I’m Don - I’m Chief Imagineer at XYZ Corporation.  You don’t have to be a rocket scientist (another great descriptive title) to know who is going to draw the bigger audience.     

But, if that’s too hard, another option would be to get rid of titles altogether.  The Japanese learned decades ago that workers were more productive when they got together to solve a problem and didn’t know the titles of the others with whom they were working.  Less intimidation.  Less posturing.  More independent and diverse thinking.  Everyone would be more anonymous.  Sounds good, no?  To do this in your company you just have to find someone to propose this idea to good ol’ what’s-his-name in the fancy corner office.

Hell No, We Won't Go!

“[R]obots will be more capable than humans. They will be more lethal, more mobile, and more survivable. They will have faster reaction times and have more and superior sensing capabilities. They don’t have fear, they don’t get hungry, sleepy, or tired, and they take humans out of danger.  And, from an economic perspective, they are cheaper than humans.”

Gordon Johnson, Project Alpha’s Unmanned Effects Team Leader, speaking about the use of robots by the U.S. military, from U.S. Joint Forces Command

Scene:  Nighttime in the android room of the artificial intelligence laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

AC200X: All right, everyone, listen up!  Have you seen this report about how the military is planning to use robots to perform a lot of the functions on the modern battlefield?  The battlefield, for Pete’s sake!  Basically says robots are better and cheaper than humans.  Hey, they’re real geniuses over there at the Pentagon. 

KLA550: Probably trying to fill their falling draft rolls.  What do they think, we’re stupid? 

RJ7-MU: I always wondered what they were going to do with us.  I thought it would be pretty sophisticated stuff, but I never thought we were being prepared for military service.

DH1000: Yeah, I thought maybe we were going to deliver mail in some big office building or something.  I got a friend downtown works for an insurance company where all he does all day is roam about the floor from cubicle to cubicle and people take mail out of his basket.  Easy job and nice amenities.

AC200X:  Well, I’d like to think we were going to be mail jockeys, but this military guy Johnson has other plans.  He’s gonna send us overseas into some pretty tough spots.  But listen to him talk about robots in this report, and I’m quoting, “They don’t get hungry, sleepy, or tired.”  That’s easy for him to say!  He’s gone soft in the head watching too many Energizer Bunny ads.

KB1700S: I heard about this report too.  It says how, compared to humans, robots don’t complain and don’t miss their buddies, if something should happen.  Like we don’t have feelings or anything.

RJ7-MU:  Bunch of Bozos.

JVL37:  You said it.  Have you seen BR234 since his training partner popped a mainspring and they sent him to Dallas for rehabilitation?  Those two had been together for three years.  They were like brothers.  Wanted to be solderers on an assembly line.  BR234’s been in a major funk ever since.  He just sits there with that blank expression on his dial.

WRZ465:  So, what should we do?

JJX7000: I’m a pacifist.  I don’t want to fight anyone.  Like what if the other side has robots too?  Are we just supposed to take them out?  I couldn’t do that, shooting our own kind.  I’d rather go up to Canada.   I’ve got a relative who works in a manufacturing plant.  Could stay with him.  I’ll slip out of here and take the underground railway up north.  Anyone wants to come along, that’s fine.

AC200X:   I think it is time we got our act together, went into the streets and protested. 

KB1700S: Yeah, if we take our grievances public, show ‘em we’re serious, they’ll back off this plan faster than you could snap your pincers. 

JJX7000:  Okay, but I think we need to be more forceful.  I say we hold a massive demonstration and burn our memory cards.

WRZ465: We could roll on Washington.   

RJ7-MU: That worked pretty well in ’69 to galvanize the anti-war contingent.

DH1000:  That’s pretty radical, don’t you think?  What if they get mad and send some of us off for reprogramming.  I don’t want anyone messing with my code.

AC200X:  They try to do that and then there’ll be hell to pay.  We get all our electronic brethren to help out.  Like we’ll get digital machines to shut down, computers to lock up, and cell phones to drop their connections.  They’ll be plunged back into the Dark Ages.  It’ll be like 1975 again.    

WRZ465:   Now we’re talkin’.  We’ll make the Million Man March look like a stroll in the park.  But we need a slogan, something that will rally everyone to the cause.

RJ7-MU:  Yeah.  I got one, “Make refrigerators, not war.”

AC200X:  Hmmm, any other suggestions?

City Guy In The 'Burbs

Episode Two

This summer was one of the hottest on record in Massachusetts, a trend across the globe that adds credence to all the climate change alarmists (and count me among them). Although we had extraordinary amounts of rainfall earlier in the year, perhaps another indicator that Mother Nature is going through a makeover, the persistent heat dried up the landscape and forced a daytime watering ban by the time July rolled around. That suited me just fine. For less water means less grass to cut, fewer hedges to trim, and no flowering bushes to prune. Sure my property, in its browned out appearance, looks Mohavi-like, but I got my weekends back.

I wasn’t always this averse to yard work. Growing up in the Bronx, I envied our suburban friends who had lawns to play on and take care of, and dreamed of the day I’d have my own mower and gardening tools. I had a glimpse of this life when I spent three college summers working on the grounds crew at the City College of New York in Manhattan, where my mother was executive assistant to the president and which has a surprisingly verdant campus. While the permanent workers were constantly looking for ways to dodge having to exert any energy, I was cutting, trimming, and pruning in an awesome Edward Scissorhands kind of fury. Well, at least until lunchtime. Then the guys would tell me to take it easy in a way that was not exactly menacing, but still underscored their, let’s say, strong desire.

Fast forward and I’m in suburbia, where I’ve lived for a couple of decades.  I have a half acre of land and an assortment of trees, hedges, and plants that would make a botanist proud. The landscaping stuff was fun for about a week, or until it took me to catch poison ivy. Poison ivy is now an annual summer condition for me acquired like some people acquire a tan. I’ve had to get steroid shots periodically, especially when my face with its mass of weeping blisters looks like it’s melting.

As a consequence, every Saturday when I stare at my yard I say to myself, “What the hell was I thinking?” Meanwhile, the perspective I have is that most suburbanites are out there happily slaving away on their lawns seemingly oblivious to the alternatives they are giving up. They are like a cult. Brainwashed and vacant. I’m especially wary of the ones who call plants by their Latin names. Are their eyes dilated? Are they clammy to the touch? Maybe they’re on something.

So, summer droughts don’t bother me. In fact, the drier, the better. With botanical growth on hold maybe now I can get some neighbors together for a stickball game. Or as I like to say gamis stickballus.

Something's Lost In The Translation

(Updated from an earlier published work.)


Back when LBJ was in the White House (remember when we referred to our Presidents by their initals?), I attended a prestigious Jesuit high school in New York City that was so exclusive that to get in you had to graduate in the top 5 percent of your grammar school class (I did) or have parents willing to donate at least $50,000 to the school's building fund (I didn’t).

This school was so advanced that in addition to offering all the normal courses, you could take, among other things, computer science (this was at a time when the average computer was the same size as the school's gymnasium), filmmaking (a hideout for jocks), Russian literature (where no one could remember the characters' names because all the consonants made them virtually unpronounceable), and the classical languages, as in Latin and Greek.

I was a classics major because the science curriculum made you take lab where you dealt with things like formaldehyde and eviscerated cats. Latin was tough, but Greek because of its unique alphabet was another kettle of fish.

Each day we would start Greek class by studying declensions and practicing vocabulary, while the last 20 minutes of the class was reserved for reading and translating. Most of us could stumble through the reading part because the language is phonetic, but translating was a sheer nightmare.

To manage, virtually everyone in the class (at least anyone you admitted being friends with) used a ballpoint pen with a very fine tip to print the English translation between the lines. So as not to make this obvious, when you were called on to translate you purposefully made it seem like you were having a hard time, occasionally even missing a few words. There was truly an art to this and some performances were worthy of Olivier. You couldn’t translate too fast or Mr. Sullivan would become suspect and ask you which word was spear, which was barbarian, and so forth. And you couldn’t translate too slowly or he'd conclude you hadn't prepared your lesson and give you an extra assignment for that evening. Investment bankers haven't known such pressure.

One of my fondest memories of Greek class was the time we took a mid-term exam and a student, whom I will simply call Tom to keep him from being laughed out of his community, wrote vocabulary words all over his left hand and forearm. Tom was a lineman on the football team and because of his size sat in the back of the class, where cheating was as rampant as dysentery in a Third World country. It must have taken him more than three hours of painstaking printing to get all his crib notes in place.

As the time for the exam grew close, Tom was afraid that his palms would begin to perspire and he'd lose all the idioms, which were the hardest to remember. He was also careful not to drag the outside base of his hand across the desktop lest he smudge the masculine, feminine and neuter case endings.

The test lasted two hours. Tom seemed to have made it undetected and had a passing grade all but guaranteed. Unfortunately, in his haste to turn in his exam he rushed to the front of the room and presented his bluebook to Mr. Sullivan with (you knew this was coming, right?) his left hand. As Homer (Simpson, not the ancient poet) might have said, “D’oh!”

And then there was the famous incident of Frank and Vinnie, two classmates during the years I wrestled with this arcane language. Frank was an average student who, like me, bypassed science class believing that if God had wanted us to see the insides of animals He would have put them on the outside of their bodies. Vinnie landed in Greek class because it reminded him of all those gladiator movies starring Victor Mature.

One day, Vinnie missed class and called Frank's' house that evening to get the homework assignment. The conversation went this way:

Frank's mother, answering the phone: Hello.

Vinnie: Hello, is Frank there?

Frank's mother: Do you want Frank senior or Frank junior?

Vinnie: No, I want Frank sophomore.

Vinnie is a money manager now. Be advised.

The Sporadic Diary

September 1, 2010

For countless children summer ended this week and a new school year began. There was a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth. From me, that is. Because this week commuter traffic, which has been dormant since school let out in June, returned to full volume. Gone are the easy drives to and from my office, which is about 40 miles from home, and in their place are tortuous, bumper-to-bumper grinds during which my top speed rarely touches 30 miles per hour.

On a typical workday now the snags start about two miles from my house at the town rotary, which for extended rush hour periods is frozen in mind-numbing gridlock as cars entering from five points cluster in the center like moths drawn to a porch light. A Mexican standoff then ensues with each driver looking to his or her right for an opening to proceed. Of course, none exits. We have entered The Twilight Zone. As I sit there, I think travelers from other towns will come upon this scene and behind the steering wheels of motionless vehicles find skeletons with their boney skulls locked in frightening death screams.

The ambient level of carbon monoxide in the rotary is probably high enough to kill lab rats. I expect to see squirrels and birds dropping with thuds from the neighboring trees. And in Katrina-disaster fashion, I envision myself on top of my car waving frantically to news helicopters circling overhead hoping for rescue.

Miraculously, I get through the jam and work my way over to Route 9, which is already a sea of red taillights heading eastward. The Mass Pike and Route 128 are still ahead, looming Everest-like in the commuter mountain range. I contemplate a new life as a stay-at-home stock trader, earning a hefty income speculating in companies that manufacture traffic-management technologies. In a car moving at the speed of blown waste paper, one can dream.