Day Game

The Old Bat

Oprah is closing her show before inviting me as a guest. Elaine's is closing before I attained good-table status. And there is no bat where fans can meet at the New Stadium.

It seems like a good time for moving on to something big, something new. But, what exactly? Good question: when in doubt, take in a game. When is serious doubt, take in a day game.

I sat out by the left field foul pole in the shade of an overhang to watch a game in the New Stadium. A few other singletons sat nearby. Admittedly, they were some years ahead of me with little else to do and, judging by the quality of their clothing and their plastic lunch bags, perhaps not much in the bank to help them do it. I was hoping that I didn't fit in.

We saw a good home-team win and were forced to listen to some of the worst white rock & roll music ever recorded, at superhuman volume, just so we'd have something to do between batters, pitches, and just about anything else that might happen naturally during a beautiful May afternoon game.

Fortunately, even noxious music and a corporate lack of faith in the game itself cannot diminish some things:

• the newest old Yank, who no longer has the speed or the eye of his youth, on a given day, can hit two 400 ft. homers to center. Andruw Jones. 
• Jeter getting his 2,976th hit. A double.
• Mo, making his 1,000th appearance. Mo-ver! 
• Sinatra doing it His Way one more time after a win over the listless Jays.

There were people there, mostly young and mostly male who actually paid $9.50 for a single bottle of beer. These are the ones who moaned deeply about the $4.59 per gallon they had to pay somewhere in New Jersey in order to get across the GW. Yet, they will pay over $100 per gallon for a beer at the New Stadium. Go figure.

Mo & Tex

Some, no, many of these people were very poorly dressed:

• in "gym" shorts, although they had definitely not seen a gym since high school.
• in undershirts that should have been under something.
• in too many calories stuffed into too short-shorts and too skimpy-shirts.
• in remarkably bad suits and haircuts, nervously looking at their BlackBerrys for a command from their boss or client.

And the most attractive person there by far? Naturally, she was wearing a SF Giants cap, orange brim.
Cool, even in the hot sun.

As much as I loved baseball, and as much as I loved a day game above all others, I honestly wanted to be somewhere else, and it wasn't just because of the haberdashery. I couldn't envision exactly where I'd rather be, but could not help thinking: how could most of these people, who look so unhealthy, who dress so poorly, who will pay anything to drink watery beer have full-time paying jobs. 

Today's Lonely Bat

How these people found and retained good jobs and kept them with absolutely no sense of style is a mystery as great as the true location of the strike zone is to pitchers and batters. We may still be over-employed, and that's a scary thought.

I had no doubt that thousands of these people loved being mercifully away from their too-busy jobs. But, I had little compassion for them, wanting instead to steal their jobs, while they were not looking,  as Granderson surely should have stolen third in the second inning, while the Jays third-baseman was napping. 

When you're at a day game in May, in the shade, with the sun shining after days of rain, as the home team is walloping homers, and you wish you were somewhere else, it's time to make something happen. It didn't need to be a Saint Oprah grand slam, a sold single would do.

Most people believe that reaching the age of sixty to be a form of early death. They won't even walk past Frank Campbell's fine Funeral Emporium on Madison Avenue for fear that they will be magnetically attracted upstairs among the bouquets. Well, maybe they haven't heard the news: Sixty is The New Thirty! I know this is true, because I made it up.

I walk past Frank's any time I please on a lunch break from the Writers & Artist's Club Members' Reading Room after a brief waltz around Crawford Doyle, one of the last great independent book emporiums on the Isle of Manhatta. I may even do a little jig just to prove a point.

Forever Is A Long Long Time

They're all over Jeter and Posada for being near dead too. Who's next, Mo? In baseball, when you're forty, "they" think your sixty.Yet, Posada played a huge part in a walk-off win recently and Jete will soon get his 3,000th. And there is still much Mo to go.

And what about Andruw Jones! Two huge shots to center, one in the visiting bullpen, the other into the Memorial Park, over the 408 sign. Many say he's washed up. Once upon a time, I watched him play in center for Turner's Braves in '96, and face Mo in late innings, the first of the Torre-Yanks' string of Series wins. Now, he's an add-on cagey vet, who just might get that game winner in another October.

The Yanks always know where they want to be.

Dear Andruw, Jorge, Mo, and Jete, You're not washed up until you say you're washed up. And then some.

Walking to the train after the last out, seeing the ghost of Joe D in front of me, I almost believed it myself. 

When It Rain...It...Rains...And...

Bumper Sticker

1) Driving behind a woman in a Toyota sedan, Riverside, CT. Bumper sticker:

Wise Men Still Seek Him

Note To Him:

With all due respect, this does not seem to be working well enough. Perhaps it's too exclusive a group. May I humbly suggest more Women Seekers be pursued or that You ramp up efforts to recruit more Un-wise men?

Respectfully,

3G

2) In-Turn Defined: "You will provide work to us and our clients and can tell your parents, friends and prospective selective schools that you work/ed here; you will have  other people with whom you can work, and services and products with which you can work - In-Turn - we will not pay you much or at all, or cover your personal expenses, and we will own all of your work and it's value forever. Further, this in-turnship does not imply any offer of future employment or future in-turnships."

3) License plate on Mini Cooper parked in Greenwich, CT:

MOMLET

Merc nearby:

BREATH 

Please. Why do we do these things to ourselves?

Full

4) Somebrellas are Better Than Others: One of our favorite city things to do is walk down Madison or Park in the rain after visiting our club on East 79th Street. We buy a new umbrella near any subway station or major intersection, if we've left ours at home or on the train into town. We always get the big one for about $10. We say "about," because, depending on where you are, the vendor, just in from Africa (they own this business), might ask $12 or even $15. Just tell him you're a New Yorker and he'll take less, maybe even $8 on a slow day. After all, he wants to be a New Yorker too.

5) Speaking of our club: the Travellers &Writers Club is the result of the merger some years ago between two clubs, The Travellers and Writers & Artists. The Travellers had a great building, the site of the merged club, and W&A had a better library.

Choice

The club offers a very efficient solution to the fact that it has no steam room. On hot, rainy, muggy days , such as we've recently been having, the staff closes the windows and doors in the The beautiful tall-ceilinged Reading Room on the 2nd floor and turns off the air conditioning for an hour or so. This results in members being able to read and get a steam in the same room.

No need to bother with a shower afterwards on those rainy days!

Also, the club has brilliantly outsourced its all of its dining, except for Elevenses and Tea, to the very affordable Viand Cafe, which is practically next door. It is, of course, run by a man named Ari (Greeks still own this business).


6) License plate on a gray Maserati ahead of us in Rye, NY:

F08-08S

We though it odd that this Mighty Mas owner would not bother to get a vanity plate; however, while stuck at a red light, we figured it out. F**k 08, 08 Su**ed. Indeed. Guess it was an '09 Mas, succor (sorry) for the TooBigToFail class.

Confusion

The Mas was immediately replaced in front of us by a gray Astin Martin Rapide. License plate:

RAPIDE

How slow can you get. Arrete!


Ed Note: Apologies, but currently my old iphone is not on speaking terms with my old  mac with new software. So, we need to use stock photos.  Maybe my editors will provide a new phone!!??

Get Thee to The ...Nuttery

Discourtesy's Up

1) You get home in the evening after a tough day. Before deciding not to go to the gym, whose homework to tackle, and what to make for dinner, you want a little room to decompress.

The phone rings; it's the land-line. You hesitate. It might be your brother, your mother, or your brother about your mother or visa versa. Could it be that client you pitched a couple of months ago, finally, or that job you applied for last year, but never heard back? You grab the receiver.

"Please hold for a courtesy call," says the lovely voice. Courtesy? As if. Instead, it's a perfect example of an Orwellian corporate world, intruding on you in a most discourteous way, but giving it a warm and fuzzy name.

What kind of fellow-humans thought that this would be a good idea? Get thee...!

2) You're on hold again - duh! - after punching in your account or phone number.

"We appreciate your call..." Really? Then, why don't you ever answer the phone without putting us on hold? If you truly appreciated our business, we would not be automatically on hold, or, at least, we would be able to proceed quickly without having to listen to nine different options, none of which cover the real reason for the call.

My Account Number

Eventually, you get through, and the first thing you are asked is: "May I please have your account number?"

What do they do with these numbers , while you've been on hold for five, ten, eighteen minutes?

Get thee to...!

3) Triple Play is a baseball term for something that is very hard to perform and only happens 4-5 times a season, since 1876, less than 1,000 times in baseball history!

And yet, you might think that it's a commonplace event the way certain companies throw this supposed money-saving term around:

Cable-Internet-Phone. Phone-Cable-Internet. All for about ninety bucks a month. Such a deal.

Well, not always. It turns out that Cable companies may not be any good at phone calls, in the same way that they are not always good at Cable! And, phone companies don't always offer cable in your area, or aren't really so good at that. You get what you pay for.

Triple play? Near-miracles don't come cheaply. A double and a single is just as good as a home run.

Get thee to The...!

4) You're on the check-out line and hand in your Shopper's Card. Before the cashier begins giving you some special benefit, she asks, "Would you like to donate a dollar to help children?" Huh, didn't this just happen at the gas pump?

Charity is epidemic: it's at Stop & Shop and Costco. Chase "card services" wants you to donate to Robin Hood Foundation online. Suddenly, the most generous citizens in the world by any measure of giving are being inundated with more requests for giving. Everywhere we go: everywhere we look.

Want Heaven With Those Fries?

And, where there is charity, there is...guilt, whenever you choose not to give. Was that an "attitude" you saw in the cashier's eyes, when you said no? How did we get here?

Obviously, we are not against giving. To the contrary, we do what we can and encourage others to do so (see Disclosures, below), but this feels different. The companies facilitating the giving see it as part of their brand. Banks especially, after nearly taking the country down a couple of years ago, seem to be on a new mission or several of them with our money.

Here's an idea: why don't these companies start asking people and The Party in China to start an epidemic of giving? Why aren't American companies building their brands and doing good by expecting their Chinese "partners" and consumers to donate to these worthy causes?

Could it be that they would not want to offend their Chinese customers?

Get thee to The...Nuttery!

Disclosures: A)We think that there is a place for giving in a consumer environment, just not everywhere. We once created a national limited-time program for vending machine giving called Small Change, Big Dreams, in which one of the snack/drink choices was a specific program to reduce child obesity. Everyone loved it until the vending company's corporate parent sent in the lawyers...and it died. B) We created a tennis tournament, which currently raises money for a local children's tennis program. C) One of our business services clients is an educational non-profit organization for whom we develop ways to reach donors among other things. We see pervasive requests for charity giving as a privacy issue more than a giving issue.

When It Rains...

"...the wind is part of the process
     the rain is part of the process..."
- Ezra Pound, Canto 74, The Pisan Cantos


"...But visionaries are limited by their vision..."
- Malcolm Gladwell, Creation Myth, TNYer, 5/16/11

                                                                            *

Sunday morning tennis was rained out, and so we had to conjure up other things to do. Shall we think about how complicated our world has become? Yes, let's; and let's also talk about how we deal with that.

                                                                             *

Simple, but not digital

We have plenty of digitized gadgets that are meant to simplify our lives; some call these hardware. These gadgets provide and contain information in a number of new ways; some call these software. Are you with me so far? Good. Now, here comes the hard part: these digitally-engineered gadgets and their info packets have raised our expectations regarding human capabilities. Just for fun, let's call this Simplicity's Complication.

                                                                            *

During the past week, I have spoken to a bank supervisor in Bangalore on my cell-gadget regarding the fact that a significant sum of money seemed to be missing from my balance, as indicated on my mac-gadget in my virutual account. He was very professional, but could not find the money either and apologized, saying "I"m sure it's there somewhere." He also explained how some "cash" was not always "cash" to a bank, until that bank, especially if it is comprised of not one but two formerly Too Big To Fail Banks says it is cash.

I have also spoken to a representative of an office supply company in Oklahoma about a dysfunctional wireless printer, who said the "connection is there somewhere, but we just can't see it yet."
According to my calculations, we  couldn't see it yet, as we could not see the "cash" yet because it was not there. The systems were flawed. But, according to the humans on the other end of the lines in these capers, these things were not there because a certain human was too flawed to see them: namely, me. Apparently,  I hadn't been updating my software: read, digital capabilities.

This was getting too complicated. I just wanted to have the cash to cover my chili-steak wedge and to print out my email exchange regarding the missing cash. Couldn't do either.

                                                                               *

Complex

This might be a good time to tell you that my friend Mulligan has a theory about people that might help us here. He believes that there are only two kinds of people - no, not richer or poorer or sick or healthy or alive or dead - as in marriage vows.

A Type #1 person begins each day expecting good things are going to happen in the course of that day; this places the person in an excellent position to deal with anything that might be somewhat troubling in the course of the day. Type #2 begins each day expecting trouble during the day; this does not help the person deal with trouble, and, what's worse, it places the person in a poor position to take advantage of good opportunities that might arise.  In fact, most of the time, #2 will not even recognize a good thing when it hits them in the face.

According to Mulligan, all religions revolve around the difference between the two types and why being one Type is infinitely better than being another (Hint: if you do not know which is which, you are Type #2), unless you really love suffering, which, apparently, billions of people do.

Mulligan is certainly no Norman Vincent Peale*, and I have tried to poke holes in his theory many times, without any real success. The guy seems to have a very good point.

                                                                                *

Where were we? Oh yes, complications.

When things get too complicated, I resort to a few tricks, all of which have the following goals: A) to slow me down, B) to keep it simple, C) to poke fun at myself, and D) to make me into Type #1, at least for a little while, even if I am a natural born Type #2.

humble

One of my tricks is to read poetry, which is, perhaps, the perfect literary form for our age. It is relatively short compared to most stories and novels; it is musical; and it contains mystery. This last trait is very important, and has turned poetry into a kind of torture for generations of students unfortunate enough to be taught by people who mistake mystery for something called Hidden Meaning. 

For those poor students, we offer the following thought: great and even good poets never hide anything. Ever. They offer only clarity; however, they do it in a unique way right in front of our noses, and therein lies the mystery.

I might read a deceptively simple poem by Kay Ryan, our former Laureate, or a longer, more complex poem or series like Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos, which happens to have been Sunday morning's choice (see quote above).

Digitally-engineered gadgets love precision, not mystery. When they do not function according to the engineered plan, according to the engineers and their representatives, it is also due to hidden meaning. This is why engineers mistrust poetry, mystery, and people like me and probably you, if you're on this mailing list and have time to read this stuff.

                                                                            *

TooSmallToFail©twmcd

Another of my tactics is to look at a very fine book called humble masterpieces: Everyday Marvels Of Design by Paola Antonelli, Curator of Architecture & Design at the MOMA.

It is impossible to recommend this little book highly enough to anyone interested in simplifying life in the face of constant complication in the form of poor design, shoddy workmanship, lack of customer service, general rudeness or a prevailing memyselfandI-ness.

Here are some of the most profound design ideas and improvements by human beings, who, one has to think, are united in their Type Oneness; they expected to be able to make something really cool, and so they did.

Here are Karl Elsener's Swiss Army Knife, Reach & Shibe's baseball, Kasper Faber's lead pencil, Italo Marchioni's ice cream cone, Sire Henry Tate's sugar cube, Walter Hunt's safety pin, and a French Design Team's Bic Crystal pen, with which I composed the first draft of this piece.

apple

And there are many more examples of how human beings make life truly simpler for themselves and others using nature as the best design teacher. They were artists as well as designers; they slowed down, kept it simple, had a sense of humor.

Somehow, after looking at this book, I cannot help being a Mulligan #1 person for an entire rainy day and longer. Innovators are not limited by their own design; they borrow, tinker. They dream, but carry a tape-measure. And they love a good mystery.

We need more of them right now, before we drown in our own complexity.



Ed Note: We highly recommend the current May 16 Innovator issue of The New Yorker. We particularly recommend Gladwell's story about the creation of The Mouse and Anthony Lane's profile of Pixar. It is no coincidence that a man named Steve Jobs plays a pivotal role in each of these stories. 

* wrote a book called The Power Of Positive Thinking among others. I seem to recall that he was one of Richard Nixon's favorite authors. We recommend skipping it and going with Mulligan's ideas, which are shorter and do not involve any connection to Nixon.

For Insanity, Press Seven

"Thank you, Mr. Dermo"

We moved recently. We moved only a few miles away, but, as far as certain "service" companies were concerned, we may as well have moved to Mars. Perhaps you too have encountered one of the absolute non-miracles of our digital age (some might say, The Middle Digit Age), the Main Menu, on which everything is a la carte. Here is our compendium of recently recorded Main Menu telephone "conversations:"


1. " To continue in English, please press 1 and do not whine about English being relegated to a 'second language' or mention how stupid it is that you have to press a digit, instead of someone who doesn't understand English. These might lead to a disconnection and/or losing your place in the queue, which, for your information, is not spelled c-u-e. If you do not press 1 and are a resident of Arizona, you will be asked a few brief questions by a representative of the Arizona Department of Immigration and Naturalization."

2A. "For Billing and Accounting questions , please press 2 and be prepared with your 27 digit account number. If you cannot remember your account number, which data shows 99.9% of callers cannot or, if you are not calling from the phone number listed on your forgotten account, you will be asked several 'security questions' you answered when establishing the forgotten account. If you cannot remember the correct answers to these questions, for example, What is the mother's maiden name of person who stole your first boy/girlfriend, you probably don't have an account with us, and you may hang up."

2B. "For Billing and Accounting questions (Cable). Please note: we are a cable company, and, as such, nobody outside of a few geeks inside the Accounting Department actually understands cable billing, and these geeks are not available for consultation. We recommend canceling service, at which point you can speak immediately with a sales representative. They do not understand your bill either, but they may offer you a slightly better deal in order to keep you as a customer, and, although you will still not understand your bill, you might pay a little less each month for a couple of months anyway."

3/4. "For repairs, technical assistance or to make or cancel an appointment or installation, please press 3. If you are calling about removal of 30 feet or more of unnecessary cabling and stapling in a room, which may or may not have actually needed cabling, you will need to remove it yourself; however, please go back to the Main Menu and press 4, so that you can temporarily turn off service. Please note, we are not responsible for injuries due to self-repair. Also, Please Note: all appointments and installations require the presence of an over 18 year-old adult on the premise, and do not even think about trying to make appointments outside our regular 8am-2pm and 2pm-8pm slots."

In your dreams....

0. "Sir/Madame, Please do not press 0 again. Pressing 0 will not bring you to an Operator, because we do not have any, and it will not bring you to a representative. At the end of this menu, you will be instructed as to how to properly receive representative service, since the menu has been created in order to reduce the cost of having representatives, which only creates a bigger monthly bill for you.

5. "For Customer Service, please go to www.wedontdothatanymore.com or press 5, but we highly recommend our web service, which has been specifically designed to avoid having to offshore customer service representative jobs, which, if we were going to hire customer service representatives anymore, which we most assuredly are not,  almost certainly would be American jobs for Americans, who usually press #1 and speak reasonably good American English with local colloquialisms, lilts, and other kinds of things your grandmother would remember if she can remember much of anything."

6-8. "Pressing these numbers will not actually bring you anywhere except back to the beginning of the Main Menu, which, as you already know if you've ever eaten there, is longer than the wine list at La Tour d'Argent in Paris. You should have pressed something in the 1-5 range already. If you have not pressed any number, due to having a sorry, old  a rotary dial, Hah!

La Tour d'Menu

9. "If you now want to speak with a representative or require phone trauma therapy, press 9. If you would like to speak with a trainee, we offer service at no charge. If you would like to speak with an experienced representative, who might be helpful, we charge $10 per each five minutes. If you would like to speak with a supervisor-level representative, who will use their real local name and not a made-up American type name and actually answer your inquiry somewhat to your satisfaction, we charge $25 per each 10 minutes. Please have your credit card number, expiration date, security code, and the name of your first pet available. If you never had a pet, that's terrible, go back to the Main Menu."