Checking in to Disneyworld

checkbook“You are going to pay us back with a … check???” My daughter Laury (famed creator of the Forever Plan) was absolutely incredulous.

Laury was calling to say thank you. We had returned from our surprisingly sunny seven days in Orlando where we had rented a 6 bedroom house for Laury and Alex, Mike and Becca and all the grandkids. We spent our week splashing in the pool, swishing down ginormous water slides, barbecuing, board gaming, Heads Upping, and having a blast.

Oh yes, we hit every one of the four Disneyworld theme-parks meeting Mickey and Minnie and Elsa and Anna, smearing ice cream on our faces and waiting in those scientifically engineered queues. A two and a half hour wait to spend 4 minutes on the “Avatar-Flight of Passage”3-D simulator ride? That’s nothing. Fastpass? We don’t need no stinkin’ Fastpass.

Some other things we discovered on the trip:

  • If your neighbors are getting way too loud in their backyard, send your three-year-old granddaughter out in your own backyard with a handheld microphone that blasts “Let It Go” and let her belt out the few lyrics she knows. Your neighbors won’t last outside for more than 2 minutes.
  • “Baby Shark” is viral for a reason. Just singing it quietly during a runway holdup is enough to calm our 6-month-old grandson. It must be something subliminal.
  • A friendly Alamo Rent-A-Car agent at a conveniently placed office can save the day when a nine-inch nail punctures one of your front tires.

Anyhow, during the course of the week, Laury and Alex ran up some ancillary expenses that I wanted to reimburse them for. I got the dollar amount from Laury and told her she should expect a check from the bank in a few days. And that is when a note of panic rose in her voice. “A check? Really? I don’t think we have seen a check in years. I don’t even know where to deposit one. Don’t you have Paypal, or Venmo, or Google Pay?”

My generation gap is showing. I still use checks. Lots of them. Some I handwrite, some are printed on my home printer (recently declared by Laury to be the loudest and slowest printer in the world,) and some are sent directly from my bank. It makes money seem tangible and lets me track where it is all going.

And I am not the only one. I receive checks from other “old” people too, though I am technologically advanced enough to deposit the checks electronically.  I even balance each one of my checking accounts (yes, I have a few) every month, something I have been told is absolutely unnecessary when your phone tells you your bank balance with a click and a glance. I just love to hear that ding when my desktop computer software (no laptops for me) tells me my checking account, and perhaps all the world, is in balance.

So Laury–expect a check.  It is a piece of paper in a digital world.
____
Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise!
___

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required
Email Address *

First Name
Last Name

//s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.mailchimp.com/js/mc-validate.js(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);

Why “Build Me a Wall” Hasn’t Worked for 50 Years!

defenseFriday afternoon, 1967. A schoolyard in Rogers Park. The sun is shining brightly, but the nip of late fall is in the air. No grass grows in this schoolyard. This isn’t the mean streets or the jungle, but this is still a Chicago Public School, and amenities like grass are thought unnecessary. There isn’t much graffiti, just a couple of rectangular boxes spray painted against one of the walls, strike zones for games of fastpitch. But no one-on-one pitcher vs. hitter game is going on over there this afternoon. It’s autumn, it’s football season.

I am one of ten or 12 eighth-grade boys, Converse All-Stars on our feet, who have taken possession of the boy’s playground, a flat, unmarked, blacktopped area. The game is almost over, the other team, ahead by a touchdown, kicks off to us. The ball hangs in the air for a moment, before descending into the arms of Bob, our team captain. He is a schoolmate, not exactly a friend, someone whom I recently saw for the first time in 45 years.

Bob desperately wants to win this game and knows a dramatic kick-off return can spark us to victory. He cradles the football against his chest and begins his run forward. Hoping to get blockers in front of him he bellows out “Build me a wall!”

Build him a wall? How can we do that? Do we want that? The options race through my young mind. We can say the other team should build the wall for him. We can point to a small pile of stones by the fire door and say that we have already started to build the wall. We can advise him that statistically speaking, the wall won’t get him any closer to the endzone.

But Bob is foaming now, quite furious. He wonders if some girls watching from the sidelines are laughing at him. He screams that he will stop the game until someone builds him a wall. Or he’ll call Dr. Gray, our school’s phantom principal, out of his office to declare a schoolyard emergency and get the wall built that way.

It’s been over 50 years, and it is my duty to let you know Bob never did get his wall. And no one with any sense has called for one since.

Yes, we are back blogging at ChicagoNow. The month-long experimental voyage to WordPress was OK, but problems at that site with proofreading/editing, poor search engine visibility, and lack of good realtime readership statistics there have led me back to my friends at ChicagoNow. I hope none of our readers were whiplashed!

____
Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise!
___

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required
Email Address *

First Name
Last Name

//s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.mailchimp.com/js/mc-validate.js(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);

Do Cyndi Lauper, Ray Liotta or Jennifer Garner Get the Job Done?

celebrity-endorsement
Cyndi, Ray, and Jennifer sell it.

“Hi, I’m just a guy  named Ray Liotta and I don’t smoke anymore, thanks to Chantix.”

There is nothing new about celebrity product endorsements. Back in the 50’s Ronald Reagan shilled for Chesterfield cigarettes while Rock Hudson was a Camels type of guy. Star athletes can make millions from the what they wear, from the Rolexes on Roger Federer’s wrist to the Nike swoosh on Tiger Woods’ hat.

Jennifer Aniston spent decades as America’s sweetheart, not just because of Friends and her Rom-Coms, but because she pushed every beauty product known to man. Jennifer Garner now offers competition and not only with celebrity divorces. In commercials, she loves both her father and his CapitalOne Card, and of course the makeup that makes her skin wrinkle-free.

George Clooney? Do you think the man really crave his Nespresso that much? Well, at least enough to make him the highest paid celeb in 2018.

We love our celebrities, never more than now when they tweet and instagram every thought in their heads. So we love the products they push. Isn’t that the whole philosophy behind celebrity endorsements? That is why I am a bit puzzled by a pair of ads that have run in the past few months, one featuring Cyndi Lauper, and the other Ray Liotta.

The ads, for the drugs Cosentyx and Chantix, feature our stars as everyday people. Cyndi is only one of a crowd with psoriasis. As for Ray, he’s just a man who loves his family and hates smoking.

So what’s the thought process the ad execs have here? We know that you know these people are celebrities, but maybe you will respond to seeing them as just regular folk and get prescriptions for these expensive pharmaceuticals.

It just doesn’t work for me. It makes me uncomfortable. I feel like a spy. Celebs are celebs and that’s why I will let their endorsements sway me.

If someone wants to see what’s in MY wallet it, better be Jennifer Garner in all her glamorous Hollywood glory!

Last blog’s best comment: Surely these “tips” were either written while expressing one of those mischievous sardonic smiles or this was a project for the Times Writers to put down their thoughts while completely inebriated!  Marty Kander.

____
Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise!
___

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required
Email Address *

First Name
Last Name

//s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.mailchimp.com/js/mc-validate.js(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);

New York Times Best Suggestions Sort of Suck!

cocktail
Tip Number 6–Don’t bug the bartender.

I like the New York Times. I’m an online subscriber and try to read it every day. But sometimes The Times runs the most annoying articles and features. I’m not talking about the political pieces. If I didn’t agree with The Times Editorial Board in the matter of Donald Trump I probably wouldn’t be a subscriber. No, I’m talking about the times they try to humanize their paper. To help us out with the little things in life. To make us be more productive. To make us shine!

One of those types of articles popped up last week. 8 Delightful Tips for Living a Smarter Life in 2019. Enough to make you cringe, isn’t it? And to make it even more creepy, this is a “Greatest Hits” compilation of tips that have appeared in The Times throughout the past year. Since most Best Lists have at least 10 entries, I will assume that even the column editor Tim Herrera had a hard time finding many good tips in The Times from 2018.

So let’s take a look at what my favorite paper (sorry Trib) thinks are the best ways to make us live a smarter life–and how I feel about those tips and strategies.

  1. Only answer email once or twice a day. Oh, come on. In the business world, electronic communication is the lubrication that keeps things sliding along. Today a problem was brought to my attention. It took a round robin of emails to clarify the situation, identify the team that would need to work on it, and set up a meeting time that would work for everyone. If only one of those emails went out each day, we would have a better chance of putting Elon Musk himself on Mars before our issue was even addressed.
  2. Quit being the flaky friend. Not bad advice, but if you are the flaky friend, the one who will “say yes to everything, never mean it and when they show up, they’re late” you probably aren’t reading The New York Times anyway.
  3. Try a tipsy grocery store shopping trip. A recommendation to plan your social events around the wine bar at your local Whole Foods. Now, I can admire a well-stocked grocery store as much as anyone, and I have been known to make a lunch out of samples, but come on–do I want to tell my wife our Saturday night date is at Trader Joe’s?
  4. Can’make the party? Don’t apologize.  Or according to Scaachi Koul, author of this tip, don’t even bother to say you won’t show up. Now it is possible this particular advice was given tongue-in-cheek, but she is Canadian, so I don’t think so! I’ll just be sure to keep Ms. Koul and any other non-responders off our future guest lists.
  5. Don’t worry about leaving the house at the same time as your partner. This is a recommendation that if half a couple likes to head for an event or outing early, while the other half prefers leaving at the last minute, rather than argue each part of the couple should just head out at their own preferred time.  Barb and I do struggle with this at times, but leave separately?  It’s advice that might work in Manhattan or Lincoln Park where anywhere is no more than a brisk walk or crowded subway ride away. But for suburban living…no way!
  6. Order a cocktail without annoying the bartender. I guess that one is for people who go to bars like The Aviary where you have to make a reservation two months in advance. Most people I drink with at the Mexican place down the street just ask for a Margarita. The only decision is salt or no salt.
  7. Listen to video game music while you work. Does this make sense to anyone over 20 years old?
  8. Just be a better listener. Ok, I can deal with this one. And may I ask you to be a good reader as well!

That’s it. Maybe by next year The Times will be able to come up with a full top ten list. In the meantime, what are YOUR tips for smarter living?

Wednesday’s Blog Comment of the Day: Saw Green Book yesterday. Sad funny and meaningful all at the same time. Excellent film.  Marty Zak

 ____

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise!
___

 

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required
Email Address *

First Name
Last Name

 

//s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.mailchimp.com/js/mc-validate.js(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);

photo credit: Ian E. Abbott <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/103579181@N02/45686160562″>Mai Tai</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

The Green Book and Mudbound: Two Movies of Black and White

mudbound-green-book-collage
The Green Book and Mudbound explore race relations in the South.

Holiday Season is Viewing Season too, and Barb and I have used the extra free time to watch a pair of movies. We saw The Green Book at the theater as part of dinner and a movie night with friends, and Mudbound at home on the evening of Christmas Day after sending the family packing and cleaning the house. The first has been getting great word of mouth and we actively sought it out, the second is a less recognized though highly acclaimed Netflix-produced film from last year that we stumbled across. They are both moving stories of race and hate and love.

The Green Book is the lighter of the two films. It’s a buddy film, it’s a road film, it’s a film of racial divide, as a white bouncer from New York drives and in other ways assists a black pianist on a barnstorming tour through white establishments from Ohio to the Deep South in 1962. A little Driving Miss Daisy, a little It’s a Wonderful Life, a little Goodfellas, and a whole lot more.

Don Shirley, the musician played by Mahershala Ali, has the education, the talent, and the diction of the upper classes, but is just an excluded Negro in the South. His private torments extend beyond race. Viggo Mortenson is Tony Lip, the temporary driver, street smart and tough, but with an expansive heart and a commitment to get Shirley to every show, no matter the circumstances.

Mortenson has done road pictures before, and no matter how desperate the situation here, nothing compares to the absolute bleakness of 2009’s The Road. But in both pictures, we learn of the power of love.

Love is also the last redemption in the much starker, more despairing movie, Mudbound. The setting is once again the racial divide of the South, this time in the World War II 40’s. A black family and a white family tied together by the land they farm, struggle against each other, the culture that makes them enemies, and nature that plagues them with unyielding fields and never-ending rains. Any act of friendship or kindness between black and white is viewed with suspicion, every action has the potential of being the lit fuse that sets off the powder keg. After the horrible, the unspeakable does occur, one character acts to destroy hate, another finds he must re-create himself “not for war. But for love.”

These are not Christmas movies. But isn’t that final message what we need the season to be about?

Best Comment from Friday’s Post:  THANKS–A BREATHE OF FRESH AIR–John Markay

____
Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise!
___

 

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required
Email Address *

First Name
Last Name

 

//s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.mailchimp.com/js/mc-validate.js(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);