You Get What You Pay For

Once in another lifetime I sold office furniture. All kinds of furniture, file cabinets, chairs, desks, new pieces, used pieces, whatever you needed in order to sit on, work at, or catalog your office.

I had a rule of thumb, a deal I would make with nearly all the people I sold to. I told them there were three things that were available in any deal. Being the nice guy, generous soul I was, I told them they could have any two of the three.

But the third was for me.

The three things available to them were the following:

1) The item can be exactly what you are looking for. The right color, the right style, the perfect fit for your decor.

2) The item can be exactly the quality you are looking for. High end leather, heavy duty steel or in the case of used furniture a perfect condition.

3) The item can be exactly the price you want to pay for it.

Like I said, I told my customer they could have any two of the three. Thus if they wanted it to be exactly what they were looking for and in exactly the quality they wanted, they would have to pay my price for it. And if they wanted exactly the product they were looking for and in a low price, then they had to take it in a lower quality. You get the picture.

This kept everybody happy. My customer got a fair deal, I got to make money, and we both walked away from the experience with a certain amount of satisfaction.

I mention this because more and more consumers aren't satisfied with their purchasing experiences. The United Airline fiasco of last Sunday was merely the latest example, but it's been in the cultural trade winds for several years now. Baseball teams use "flex pricing" to sell at scalper prices tickets to the most popular games. Electronics stores advertise ridiculously low prices on a particular item and only in the small print mention that only one or two are available per location. Cell phone companies have so many pricing plans and change them so often that's it's quite possible two users with the exactly the same plan can be paying wildly different rates. And of course airlines have so many up charge extras that once were givens such as more leg room, the bulk head seats, checked luggage, food and drink, and coming soon overhead storage space.

When people aren't satisfied with something as simple as buying a product or service there is a grumble in their stomachs, an ache that isn't soothed until they lash out in some way. United executives can't figure out why so many people are so upset about that video? How about it's because every one of us knows that guy could have been us. Heck, it WAS me on one occasion, albeit I wasn't dragged off the plane, but I was escorted off by security after being told my seat was needed for someone who paid more for that flight (he had paid the outrageous walk up/day of the flight price).

The ache isn't helped by the multitude of ways now available to search for pricing and the subtle admonishments given to continue to search for better pricing even after making a purchase. Ever wonder why for days after you bought that pair of tennis shoes from Sears an ad for those shoes keeps appearing on your Facebook wall? It's their way of saying somebody else might have gotten a better deal. You shouldn't rest until you know you have gotten the best deal possible. There's a rumor somebody somewhere in that other place over there got it for FREE!

What happened to just buying something and moving on? This constant litany of being told to never be satisfied is driving all of us just a little bit off our collective gourd. The reality is it's not in some people's interest for us to be satisfied. There are those out in the big bad world who want to keep us dissatisfied with everything, to make us think that the deck is constantly being stacked against us because, well, they are the ones who are stacking the deck. It's a beautiful bit of fraud. Make people dissatisfied by taking from them that which once satisfied them (a pleasant economic exchange) and then tell them that they are right to be dissatisfied so they need to keep searching for that mythical something better. Whatever you do keep picking at the scab of any transaction be it economic or personal or political, there must be something better. No, nothing is good enough...

And that's how you wind up with Donald Trump as president.

I suggest we as consumers turn my old three point deal program around and start telling people we are spending our money with that THEY can have any two of the three. That if they want to get their price and sell what they want to sell then it has to be at the quality you want. And if they want to sell the item or service at the quality they have then we get to pay the price we want.  And if they want to sell the quality at the price then we get to get exactly what we want. And both of us will walk away from the transaction happy and we'll all be satisfied.

And we might just save democracy.

United Flight 3411...or Tiananmen square?

America, Sit Down We Need To Have A Talk

Dear America:

Sit down we need to have a talk.

Look, we have been through a lot together. For so many years we've been partners in this marriage and let's face it a lot of it has been fun. Remember when we found gold and you sent all those miners here? Or that time those Jewish immigrants from the East Coast got tired of being harassed by that Edison fellow and came here to make Hollywood a worldwide symbol of creative fervor? And who could ever forget all those ships we built in Richmond or planes in Los Angeles. We changed the world, then we saved the world, then we changed the world again. You and us, together.

And we had our share of tough times too, I'll admit it. Some of them were our fault, others yours, but we were always able to work things out. But for the last several years you've been changing. Once you proudly took in the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Now you talk about building walls and making lists. Once you proudly boasted of your prowess in both science AND the arts. Now you denigrate anyone who shows any intellectual capability greater than a Jeopardy contestant.  Once you dared to say we can put a man on the moon then went out and did it. Now you say leave me alone I wanna watch the game. Watch it, not even play it.

Once you elected men of ideas and ideals to the presidency, men like Lincoln and Roosevelt (both of them). Now you've gone one step too far and we can't let this go on anymore. Making a man president who is manifestly unfit, an admitted sex offender, who pals around with neo-Nazis (no, make that real Nazis), who is a crooked real estate con-man, who finds it convenient to not believe experts in any field, who probably is mentally unbalanced and definitely passes the established tests police and psychologists use to establish someone as a psychopath and oh by the way he polled two and a half million fewer votes than this opponent is just beyond the pale.

Look we tried to make you a better country. We tried to make you realize that when you accept everyone as an equal, everyone benefits. You don't lose any of yourself by saying someone else's life has validity. We tried to make you realize that being polite and being concerned about the other guy makes it easier for everyone to get along, but you mocked it as merely "political correctness". It's not political at all, but it is being correct because that person over there isn't a race or a gender or a skin tone or a nationality. That person is a human being and they deserve to be treated with respect.

America, California wants a divorce.

We just can't do this anymore. We just can't keep pretending that it doesn't bother us that you end up listening to those drinking buddies of yours in that great swath of red states instead of those of  us who really have your best interests at heart.  Here's the reality, while they may be fun to pal around with and drink beer with and watch the game with, they don't contribute anything. They don't innovate, they don't create, they just sit around all day and grouse about how someone else is the cause of all their problems, usually someone who has more melanin in their skin. You find them so easy to be with because they give you simple, easy answers to life's tough questions.  They're what the twelve steppers call enablers. And while they grouse and complain you need to ask yourself, is their economy the sixth largest in the world? Do they have virtually no unemployment? Is their air and water cleaner then it was twenty years ago? Hell, even the things that are bad here, like the drought we are in, that we know the cause of (climate change) they want to pretend doesn't exist. I got news for you, they are not your friends. They, and the man they voted for,  are not going to make you great again.

Yet time and again you disregard us and all the examples we have set and listen to them call us "fruits and fairies that don't know nothing about real life" and then AGREE WITH THEM. You want to be with us, but you want to agree with them. You can't have it both ways. We're not going to take it anymore.

So we're walking. We want nothing more to do with you. Nothing. Well, maybe something with New Orleans or New York. No..no..have to be strong. Even the stuff we love about you we are willing to give up to get our sanity back.

And speaking of getting things back, we want our stuff back. I know you put your name on a lot of it, but we both know it belongs to us. So give us back our computers and our iPhones and our movies and our TV shows. And don't forget all that food the Central Valley has been sending your way all these years, not to mention all the wine and beer.

You can keep Disney world, we've got Disneyland.

Of course don't forget also about the money. All those trillions of dollars we send you every year that never gets spent on things we care about like single payer healthcare or cleaning up the environment. What was it you spent it all on? You NEEDED that new battleship? Just like you NEEDED that new bomber plane and the tax breaks for the rich and the bailouts for Wall Street. We have had it with handing our social security money over to you and you wasting it on a subsidies for oil companies. Those guys make billions each year, they don't need more money from us. In short, we're tired of making the money and you throwing it away on useless toys and trying to buy your way into having friends. We don't want to be a part of that anymore.

We will keep the children. And by that we mean the immigrants. We know you really don't care about them so there is no reason to even discuss joint custody. You don't respect them and the hard work they do. They are a huge reason our economy booms. They do all those back breaking jobs that no one else wants to do. Why? Because they believe in the future. Like we do. Like you once did. But sadly not anymore.

Good luck with that making you great again thing.

That's all we have to say. From now on you can speak to us through our attorney Mr. Eric Holder

It's Taco Labor Day!

By now most of you have heard about the Donald Trump surrogate who in an attempt to excuse his master's vile rhetoric about Mexicans made a comment about how America was in danger of becoming a land of "taco trucks on every corner".Everyone's had a great time with this, from Easterners wistfully asking for this to become the truth to Westerners smirking "yeah, like that's not the case now". Mid-Westerners wonder if this means the hot dog stands would have to move and Southerners are asking the question, "what's a taco?".

Much has been made that the commentator was Latino, the head of (possibly the only member of ) Latinos For Trump. Whatever his ethnic background, whatever his reasons for making the comment, the thing I want to point out is that he is a REPUBLICAN. And his statement basically pissed on one hundred and fifty years of Republican party theology.

If you remember your high school American history class, you will recall that the major reason for the founding of the Republican party was as an anti-slavery party. But it's secondary philosophical underpinning was as a party of business, in particular the party of the railroads who sought to transport American products from sea to shining sea. With a bloody civil war, a new amendment to the constitution, and the martyrdom of the greatest American to ever live behind them, the primacy of slavery was overtaken by that secondary business notion. Since then the Republican party has taken the stand that "the business of America is business" and have strongly advocated that government should not get in the way of business. Even when proven again and again that government needs to step in and tame some of the baser instincts of business (several depressions including a great one, air quality, water quality, child labor, the list goes on and on) Republican candidates have stood by the notion that the self made man, the boot-strapper, the guy who's willing to work hard and long is the exemplar of being an American and his name is Businessman.

So what is a taco truck? It's a small business built by hard working people who labor from sunup to sundown to legally and ethically make a living by the sweat of their brow and the flavor of their carnitas. They don't want a government hand out, they don't ask for anything other than the opportunity to satisfy the hunger of their customers. And if you ever happen to be in the same neighborhood as El Molino's truck, well then you will thank your lucky stars and gratefully accept the plate handed down as if from the heavens. A taco truck could one day become a taco shop, then a restaurant, then a chain of restaurants. It's the American Dream writ large with a side of guacamole and an Agua Fresca.

Aren't these the people the Republican Party has always claimed to be the champions of? Aren't they the ones the Congressional Republican Caucus trots out to prove how onerous government regulation of business is? Aren't they the exact people the Republican party wants all Americans to be?

They would be if it weren't for that inconvenient truth about their accents and their skin tones.

The very notion that any Republican candidate would disparage any business would have been thought preposterous even just four years ago. The idea that their current candidate puts himself forth as the right man for the presidency because of his achievements in business and then has one of his flunkies malign a business takes the issue into the realm of the absurd. I have never agreed with Republicans on any economic issue, even when I was the white male business owner they were trying to get support from, but I understood their economic philosophy and could at least see how some people could agree with it. Trump doesn't even make a pretext of being concerned with small business. For that matter he doesn't seem to have a handle on what big business wants. What the Trump version of the Republican party stands for is the fear mongering of second rate demigods. "They" are the reason for your economic travails. If it weren't for "them" being industrious and wanting a better life then you would have the life you dream of. "They" are the reason you are a lazy slob who has no interest in making a better life for himself as long as the beer is cheap and the game is on the tube. Vote for Trump and your life will be everything you dream of!

Republican championing of the small business man is, was, and will always be just a sham, a pretext to get what they are really after, unfettered deregulation of big business. Republicans claim to love business, but unless it's big and capable of funding nine or ten tables at the latest Elephant dinner dance they really could care less. The version of the Republican party that Donald Trump fronts now adds to this a sickening veneer of bigotry and hate. The small guy, the start-up, the taco truck who takes a couple of bucks away from McDon King Jr Corp? Crush them. Destroy them. They are the evil preventing harmony in the world. A world of sunshine and butterflies, where white, straight, Christian, men rule over all they can see.

And where there is a Chipotle on every corner.

Bag, Douche

Steinfeldt to Evers To Chance

Religious celebrations of spring to the rear thank you. The true renewal of life, of faith, hope, and belief comes tonight.

The long winter of our admittedly smug contentedness is over. Tonight Jon Lester will throw the first pitch in anger since Madison Baumgarner coaxed a foul pop up into the glove of Pablo Sandoval on a near Halloween night in Kansas City.

Baseball has returned. Some things are right with the world.

Today every team is undefeated. Every player bats 1.000. Every pitcher has a 0.00 ERA. It is the only moment of perfection for a game predicated on the need for failure. It's a moment to stop and cherish before it whiffs into the ether.

That's one of the many reasons I love baseball. It's not just about the great ones. It's about the not so greats, the barely remembered,  the never remembered. The mediocres and the failures are as much a part of the mosaic of the game as the superstars. For every Buster Posey there is a Steve Decker. Actually there are more Steve Deckers than Buster Poseys. For every player celebrated in story and song there are hundreds who toiled in anonymity, remembered only by those who memorize the Baseball Encyclopedia.

It's doubtful you recognize any of the players in the photo below, but three of them are the most famous double play combination in the history of the game. Tinkers to Evers to Chance. The names dance across the tongue as nimbly as the men danced across the infield and through the poetry of Franklin Pierce Adams. So who's the guy on the far left? That's Harry Steinfeldt. The third baseman. I'd have to check, but he probably was involved in as many double plays as the other three. Ah, but his name didn't scan well and his stats were not as note worthy as the others. Still he hit .268 lifetime and played in four World Series (yes, I got out my Baseball Encyclopedia to check). Nowadays you'd get seven years and $140 million for that. Yeah I'm looking at you Pablo. Oh, and Steinfeldt holds a record that might be the very definition of journeyman ballplayer. He had three sacrifice flies in one game. That's a record that has stood since 1909. It ain't flashy, but it was what was needed at the time.

So as the season winds it's way through spring, summer, and into the fall, take a moment to appreciate the "other" guys. They are as part of any fan's memories as their more famous teammates.

Play Ball!

The Land of God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy

So the other night I was watching Bill Maher's show and he had on as one of his guest former Govenor Mike Huckabee. Huckabee was there to flack his new book called "God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy". The book is so named because the purported author claims that is what he replies when he is asked where he is from, the "land of god, guns, grits, and gravy".

Forgetting for a moment that true to his political nature Huckabee can't give a straight answer to a direct question, he went on to define his little corner of the earth as being where civility rules the day, where people ask after your kin folk, have manners, and care about the next fella. Maher chided him that people in California or New York also care about the next guy, but Huckabee countered that he was trying to bring his form of civility to the rest of the country because his was a truer form.

Someone needs to explain to this jackass that there aren't different forms of civility. You either are civil or you are not. Civility does not mean merely asking after someone's family or that person's health. It means actually being concerned with the answer to the question. It means opening up your heart and having compassion for what the other person is going through. It means that not only do you truly care about that other person, but that you want to make sure that no one is ever subjected to the slights, put downs, or out right discrimination that person is or was subjected to. It's about making sure that everyone, everywhere, is treated with respect.

You see Mr. Huckabee we in those states you mock as having no civility in fact have greater compassion for our fellow human beings than it appears the state you hail from has. We aspire to a higher state of civility, one where the color of ones skin, or where they are originally from, or who they choose to spend their life with is of no matter. We in the "destination states" (as opposed to the "fly over states") wish to live in a world that doesn't see diversity as an anathema, but rather as a strength. That's why we take the time to enact laws that make civility a component of justice, a rock in the foundation of society.

So when you and your compatriots on the conservative side of the aisle look to sow distrust and hatred among the population by creating laws that say go ahead and refuse service if you have a personal problem with someone different from you, I have to tell you that you are not being civil at all. You are not standing up for any principle of civility that is recognizable. And hiding behind religion as the bulwark of your excuse simply demeans religion and shows a narrow mindedness that no religious person or institution should abide.

In short Mr. Huckabee and Governor Pence and all the others who defend these laws, your so called civility is nothing more than lip service. Please don't presume to lecture the rest of us on how uncivil we are - it just rings false.

Little Robin

Let us pray.

I've been sitting here reading friends' reminiscences since about four o'clock this afternoon. It's taken me all that time to get over the shock.

The world lost a comic genius. The Bay Area lost our favorite son. To those of us who were part of the San Francisco comedy scene of the late 1970's we have lost The One.

I'd like to say there was never a doubt in my mind that he would be The One, but that would be false. From the first time I saw him at the Holy City Zoo, a small comedy club where they literally would turn the lights out on a performer who went beyond his allotted ten minutes, I knew he was genius. But I also thought how in the world could anyone translate this manic energy, this mile a minute mind meld, into a anything more than an exhausting club comic. TV would kill the creativity, film -- yeah right can you see him playing anything other than himself? Even comedy recordings couldn't capture the half of his act that was spot on mime or that look in his eye as he calculated instantly just the perfect retort, barb, or non-sequitor.

Yet still you had to believe he was The One. Comedy clubs could fill on just the rumor he was going to come in and do ten minutes. The Other Cafe had a stage that backed up onto a window along the street. If so inclined passing pedestrians could stop and watch a few minutes of a comic's set, though hearing what was being said was dicey. The street would be jammed when word spread he was there. And this was a world without Twitter or Facebook. He came in second in the first San Francisco Comedy Competition and turned coming in second into a badge of honor for a legion of soon to be great stand-ups. Only The One could do that.

The energy he brought into a club was insane. He fed the audience, the audience fed him, the dynamo filled with electricity till a mere raised eyebrow or sudden change of body language was enough to bring tears of joy and aching of ribs to everyone. Other comics were in awe of that ability. He'd drop in at the Old Spaghetti House in North Beach to work with the improv  group Spaghetti Jam and it was a point of honor to just keep up with him.  Oh some griped, natural jealousy and professional envy are a bad mix. I don't think you could have a conversation about him without hearing "you know he stole that line from (insert name of comic)", but it was also acknowledged that he didn't do it conscientiously. It was just his mind working at warp speed, sucking in something he heard and using it to propel his jet engine.

Everyone has their story of their encounters with him. A party, a club, in the grocery store, he seemed to be everywhere at once. And at the same time he seemed to be nowhere. The yin of the energy on stage was balanced by the yang of the quiet thoughtful off stage persona. You had to think the off stage person was decompressing from the onstage persona, gathering strength quietly like a tropical storm at sea moving towards hurricane status so that it could wreck havoc once unleashed. What we didn't know, what I came to deal with myself years later, was that the "decompression" was really the dark cloud lowering.

Those of us who live with the cloud know the power of those uplifting powders. Let me tell you, cocaine might be a high for you, but for us it allows a brief moment of what we perceive to be regular life. "This is it!", you think, "this is what it feels like to be normal! This is why all those people are happy. I want to feel like this all the time. I want to feel normal."

And that's how you slide into addiction. You think the Blue Fairy has made Pinocchio into a real boy, but in reality the Blue Fairy is the Wicked Witch and she's just fattening you up for the oven.

You don't notice that as the star begins to ascend. Or maybe it was just the times, the age of "everyone's doing it". Still I couldn't see how he was going to go beyond stand up comic. I think everyone thought that. The feeling was so prevalent that the biggest laugh he got one night at the Great American Music Hall was his last comment about how he had to finish so he could catch a plane for Los Angeles to shoot an episode of HAPPY DAYS. Really? HAPPY DAYS? Oh yeah, sure, what a gag.

I guess I was wrong.

Still the cloud followed. It followed Mork and Popeye and Garp and Vladimir and Adrian. It followed him up the stairs to hold the gold statue, an event that truly had me shaking my head in amazement. It followed him to the worldwide fame and the millions of dollars and the adulation. It followed him to Tiburon, that most exclusive of exclusive towns in the Bay Area. It was there that the cloud swallowed him.

I've been reliving my young adulthood over the past few hours, mourning not only him but the harsh reality of getting older. The cloud sits up on the ceiling, a comfortable distance away. I have learned the skills necessary to keep it at bay. My heart breaks that he could not.

I suppose that's the cosmic deal if you are anointed to be The One.

And the congregation says "Amen".

Spaghetti Jam Improv June 1978. Photo by yours truly. 

Hey There, It's Yoga Bear!

Did you miss me?

I've taken a couple of months off from the blog in order to get back into the swing of real life. I've gone back to work, which at first was a bit daunting since nearly everything I was selling before the surgery had been discontinued in favor of new models. The nomenclature of home technology normally requires a glossary of terms to understand, but when you've been away from it for several months a Rosetta Stone would be more appropriate. I felt like I was floating in a sea of  indecipherable vocabulary, occasionally having a shark come up and nudge my leg, reaching out for a lifeboat that keeps moving just out of my reach.

And then it all made sense again.

On the foot front things are progressing as they should be. The wounds have now pretty much closed up. The last to go was the largest one on the left side of the foot, the source of all gauze related discomfort at one time. Now it has neatly scabbed over and per the instructions of, well, everyone I am not picking at the scab. However any time someone mentions not to pick at the scab the only thing I want to do is pick at the scab. Otherwise I never think about it. And if I blink or yawn, you will blink or yawn as well.

Yesterday as I was driving up to The City for another physical therapy appointment I grumbled to myself that this was going to be the last one. For two months I've been going there, riding the bike, making circles with my foot, tracing the alphabet with my foot, bending my foot back and forth, and occasionally having someone twist and turn my foot in one direction or another. Save for the last bit, everything else I could do at home. I didn't need to drive through traffic twice a week, struggle to find parking, and put up with a smelly old gym (yes, the gym's charms wore off a few weeks ago). I was going to go to this last appointment, tell them I'd call about the next one, and quietly slip off into that wormhole of customers who never return.

My resolve to do that only strengthened when my PT assistant of the day turned out to be a kid I have nicknamed Caspar Milquetoast. I'm sure he's a nice kid but as a physical therapist he leaves a lot to be desired, mostly because he refuses to put any strength into the only thing I really need a therapist for -- the resistance work. Whereas all the other guys really force me to push against them, Caspar retreats like a friendly ghost, offering little if any resistance. Having him was just another nail in the coffin of physical therapy as far as I could see.

I'm riding the bike and Caspar asks when was the last time I saw Mr. Miyagi, the actual physical therapist. Not in a couple of months I reply, so off he goes to fetch the elusive Miyagi. I must have turned my head or closed my eyes for the briefest of moments, but suddenly he appeared next to me asking how everything was and had all the wounds healed. When I said they had, he clapped his hands together like a miniature Oliver Hardy and exclaimed that it was now time to really start working on my foot. He turned to Caspar, told him to do ultra sound therapy all the way up to my knee and then a deep massage on my calf and ankle. Mr. Miyagi would then come back and do some resistance work.  Okay, I thought, let's see where this goes.

The ultra sound went fine and then I prepared myself for what I assumed would be the worst leg massage I've ever had.

A BRIEF INTERLUDE: Years ago Betsey and I went up to Calistoga  for mud baths and massage at Doc Wilkinson's Spa. When asked what type of massage I wanted I opted for the Shiatsu massage because I had never had one. After half an hour of having elbows pile driven into my muscles and fingers literally wrap themselves around various tendons and ligaments, I swore I would never have one again. That was until yesterday.

Caspar Milquetoast turned into the Incredible Hulk ("Hulk like to smash things"). I have never felt pain like I was feeling then. My calf muscles were on fire. I suddenly understood that I could never stand up to torture. If I have the secret codes you will get them with little effort on your part. I swear I thought at one point he was going to ask me if it was safe. I have never in my life asked a masseuse to stop because it hurt too much but I found myself just on the edge of crying out for Caspar to cease when, in fact, he stopped. I'm laying on the table completely drenched in sweat, completely spent, and all I've been doing is nothing.

But damn my leg and foot felt GREAT!

Once again Mr. Miyagi appeared at my side asking me this time if I had ever done yoga. Other than in college when I did it in order to ogle the girls and one time at a Club Med when I was dared to do it, I had not. Then we will start slow he said and guided me down to the floor and onto a yoga mat. This will be for the stretch of your foot he told me and had me kneel down and place my feet under my butt. Then he had me lean back and apply pressure to my calves and feet. You will do this for ten seconds he commanded and we will build up to one minute. In my mind Mr. Snark came out to play. Ten seconds? Really? We gotta build up to.....

OH MY DEAR GOD THE PAIN!!!!

I was cursing every sugary snack I ever ate in life, every time I went back for seconds at the buffet, every time I laughed at my dancer friends who warmed up while I sat there making fun of them. A minute, are you insane?! My knees will pop out and my thigh muscles will explode if I do a minute.

And it was when I was doing that last one, the one lasting a minute, that Mr. Miyagi bent down and asked, "When will we see you again?"

"Next Wednesday", I croaked.