Back Before The Sixties

Some interesting observations today from Judith Warner about the current fascination with late 1950s/early 1960s America, on television (Mad Men) and in the movies (Revolutionary Road):

"Unlike the baby boomers before us, we “baby busters” of the ’60s never rebelled against the trappings of domesticity represented by our images of the 1950s. Many of us, deep down, yearn for it, having experienced divorce or other sorts of family dislocation in the 1970s. We keep alive a secret dream of “a model of routine and order and organization and competence,” a life “where women kept house, raised kids and kept their eyebrows looking really good,” as the writer Lonnae O’Neal Parker once described it in The Washington Post Magazine."

"The fact is: as an unrebellious, cautious, anxious generation, many of us are living lives not all that different from those of the parents of the early 1960s, yet without the seeming ease, privileges and benefits. Husbands have been stripped of the power perks of their gender, wives of the anticipation that they’ll be taken care of for life."

As with all of Judith Warner's columns, the Comments about them are always worth reading too:

"My life as a 50s and 60s housewife was quite pleasant, although we managed on far, far less than the two-income homes of today. Married women today have a mountain of debt to worry about, now that their husbands are unemployed.It couldn't last--the grandiose culture that so many women expected to enjoy. Self-indulgence has led so many ordinary couples to financial ruin, despite the wife's second income. Expectations of self-fulfillment have been far too high."

Battlestar Galactica - On Now!

Have you been watching the new season of "Battlestar Galactica" this month?

"Scifi.com, the online site representing the Sci Fi Channel, serves up a holiday gift with its original online series “Battlestar Galactica: The Face of the Enemy.”

"In this 10-part serial, Lt. Felix Gaeta (Alessandro Juliani) finds himself trapped on a shuttle adrift in deep space with five others, including two No. 8 Cylons (played by Grace Park)." (Boston Herald)

I haven't been watching it either, since I don't usually watch TV on my computer.

But I think I'll have a look!

Fly The Friendly Skies

A former TWA Flight Attendant reflects on the decline of airline service over the past two decades:

"I know the days are gone when [flight] attendants could be written up if we did not put the linen napkins with the T.W.A. logo embossed on them in the lower righthand corner of the first-class diners’ trays. As are the days when there were three dinner options on flights from Boston to Los Angeles — in coach. When, once, stuck on a tarmac in Newark for four hours, a planeload of passengers got McDonald’s hamburgers and fries courtesy of the airline.

"I have experienced the decline of service along with the rest of the flying public. But I believe I have felt it more acutely because I remember the days when to fly was to soar. The airlines, and their employees, took pride in how their passengers were treated. A friend who flew for Pan Am and I have a friendly rivalry over which airline was better. Friendly, yes. But we each believe we worked for the best.

"We tell stories about cooking lamb chops and dressing them in foil pantaloons; we debate the beauty of my Ralph Lauren uniform versus her Oleg Cassini. I like to tell her how we would have the children on board serve the after-dinner mints — delicious pale-green circles with T.W.A. stamped on them, arranged on a silver tray. We remember the service we provided — dare I say cheerfully? Happily? Proudly? And when my friend and I part ways, although we hold on to our allegiances, we know that all of our passengers were served well."

I am an infrequent flyer today, but old enough to remember those glory days of air travel -- particularly international travel -- which I did a lot of for business.

We just returned from a great vacation, marred only by the serial hassles of airlines and airports. The personal memories evoked in this article are warm, but so very distant. And, I'm afraid, never to return.

Bon Voyage!

Hooters

File this under "Be Careful What You Wish For:"

I was once part of a team reviewing a software application that vets internet inquiries from potential customers. As part of the project, a list of "vulgar" words and phrases was developed to screen out pranks and inquiries not worthy of followup.

One of the words on the list was "hooters," which meant that any inquiry containing that word would not be passed through for marketing and sales followup.

Someone on the team pointed out that Hooters has 310 restaurants, generated over $120 million in revenue in the prior year, and according to this recent article is open to new technology:

"ATLANTA -- Hooters of America Inc. will install Radiant Systems' 6e line of back-office and point-of-sale technology at all 110 company-run branches of the 310-unit casual-dining chain, Radiant said.

"The technology vendor also said Atlanta-based Hooters had named Radiant as a preferred supplier to franchisees."

"By providing comprehensive table-service functionality from the POS to the back office, Radiant technology will help Hooters efficiently manage restaurants and improve profitability," Chris Duncan, Hooters vice president of administration, said in a written statement.

"He said the 6e system's centralized data-reporting capabilities and Internet functionality -- or "Web-architected platform," as Radiant described it -- would "allow our employees and managers to see enterprisewide metrics in near real-time, which will enable us to manage growth and change based on more accurate operational information."

"Hooters" was promptly removed from the "vulgar" list.

Karen Carpenter Australia 1971

We Are China Ten Years Ago

Tom Friedman has a way of getting at what's wrong with us:

"I had a bad day last Friday, but it was an all-too-typical day for America.

"It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone.

"A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.

"Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn’t we at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?)

"As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before.

"Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport.

"It closed in 1998."

It's time for the United States to re-boot.

The Leg Lamp

Screen Grab | The Leg Lamp
By Pilar Viladas (New York Times)

For sale: replicas of the kitsch leg lamp made famous by the film “A Christmas Story.”

I’ve long been a fan of the movie “A Christmas Story,” the tale of 1940s Midwestern childhood that opened in 1983 to lukewarm reviews, but which later became a cult classic.

Until recently, however, I was unaware that the film’s infamous leg lamp — a saucy light fixture shaped like a woman’s leg, complete with fishnet stocking and a fringed satin shade that suggests a World War II pinup girl’s undergarment — was anything more than an amusing/horrifying prop.

In fact, the Web site redriderleglamps.com sells replicas of the kitsch classic in several sizes, from a 50-inch floor model to a 20-inch desktop size. And for a (considerable) surcharge, die-hard fans can have the lamp shipped in a facsimile of the wooden crate marked “Fragile” that caused such a stir when it arrived at the home of the film’s 9-year-old protagonist, Ralphie, and which occasioned one of the film’s funniest lines.

Darren McGavin, who plays Ralphie’s perenially grouchy father, looks at the crate and says, “Fra-gee-lay … must be Italian!”

Brian Jones, the man who began making the leg lamps in 2003, also bought — for $150,00 on eBay in 2005 — the wood-frame house in Cleveland where “A Christmas Story” was made and opened it to the public; according to a recent story on cnn.com, 30,000 people a year now visit. There’s also a museum and gift shop across the street, where you can ogle the leg lamps in person.

Recession-Proof

Add Restylane and Botox to Wal-Mart and McDonalds on the short list of things that seem to be thriving in this awful economy.

“It’s like comfort food,” says Maralyn Burr of Omaha, Neb., who in June lost her job as a district sales manager for Borders bookstores. With $140,000 in debt from her 22-year-old daughter’s musical education, Burr told the WSJ she’s slashed spending and all but stopped eating out. But she hasn’t given up her Restylane and Botox injections."

As indicated in an earlier post on the Freeway, Botox appears to have become mainstream.

Governing The Other 56,255,297

My Manager approved my request for a vacation day on January 20. I’m not going to Washington that day, but I am looking forward to President Obama’s Inauguration speech.

I was impressed with his election-night speech in Chicago, after it was clear that he’d won the election.

I think Maureen Dowd really captured that moment in her column the next day in the New York Times:

“His somber speech in the dark Chicago night was stark and simple and showed that he sees what he’s up against. There was a heaviness in his demeanor, as if he already had taken on the isolation and “splendid misery,” as Jefferson called it, of the office he’d won only moments before. Americans all over the place were jumping for joy, including the block I had been on in front of the White House, where they were singing: “Na, na, na, na. Hey, hey, hey. Goodbye.”

“He rejected the Democratic kumbaya moment of having your broad coalition on stage with you, as he talked about how everyone would have to pull together and “resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.”

“Promising to also be president for those who opposed him, Obama quoted Lincoln, his political idol and the man who ended slavery: “We are not enemies, but friends — though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.”

As I wrote in my post just after the election, 56,255,297 Americans voted for McCain/Palin, and many more didn’t vote at all.

It appears at this point that President-elect Obama understands this reality; I hope so, because we really need a President who can govern in the best interest of all Americans.

Look Before You Leap!

There are real animals on the savanna outside our room at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, and there may even be antelopes, although it certainly is not a freeway.

And there is a framed drawing of three monkeys on our wall, illustrating Fante Proverb No. 7 from Ghana, which I've been thinking about all week:

"The monkey leaps only as far as it can reach"

And this article from the New York Times popped up when I searched for more information about the proverb.

Walt Disney World really is a magical place!

Vacation!

We're outta here for a week!!

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