Missing Bernie Mac
Category: Uncategorized
Drop-off Dystopia
Typically I perform the pick-up portion of our children’s daily school shuttle service. My better half does the drop-off.
Pick-up is GREAT. Parents are finished with work, some are already halfway through their second cocktail, maybe they have already stopped at their favorite dispensary, I don’t know. But everyone seems relaxed, and all of the children are excited about being picked-up.
Recently I’ve been switched to drop-off duty. Unfortunately, drop-off duty is the exact opposite of pick-up duty. Essentially, it’s a dystopian Mad Max hellscape in the mornings. Everyone is cranky, surly, and apparently always behind schedule.
This morning, I watched two adult women/moms scrap it out over a parking space. (when many others were available) It was a pretty ugly scene for a Newport Beach fight, there was Lululemon and Uggs fur flying everywhere. Scary stuff.
I watched from the comfort of my car. 1-so I could talk to the boys about how this is bad behavior, and 2- So I could jam out to LL’s Going Back to Cali which was on the 80’s on 8.
Don’t judge. A person has to find their own bliss in Drop-off Dystopia.
The Puddin’ Pop Man is baaaaack.
I’ve been away for a while, but rather than give a lengthy reason why, I’d rather just make a smooth and quick transition into a topic, and just move forward from there.
You know who else has been gone for a while? Bill Cosby. Smooth enough?
Jury selection started yesterday, Monday May 22, in the trial that will soon place the final dagger into the hearts of an entire generation who grew up admiring and respecting the comedian.
With Donald Trump in the White House and Bill Cosby on trial for serial sexual assault, it feels like the 80’s turned into an internet troll hell-bent on destroying all of our pleasant memories from that time long ago.
Remember, there were only a few media options in the 80’s, and Cosby DOMINATED the most popular medium, television. He owned Thursday night. Kids that grew-up in the 80’s pictured Cosby as the ultimate father figure and all-around “good” man. Not just the character Bill played on the show, but actual Cosby himself took on these admirable qualities.
It was easy to confuse real-life Cosby from fictional Cosby. Many of the shows’ plots were taken directly from his stand-up routines, or from his book. Blurring the lines further, the fictional Cosby even wore a pin on the fictional show, honoring real-life Cosby’s friend, Sammy Davis Jr., who died in real life.
Fast forward two decades, directly after the birth of my first son, the nights were often filled with more feeding than sleeping. When breast feeding, there aren’t many other activities one can engage in, except consume electronic media. During this time period, my lovely wife worked her way through several Netflix shows in the wee hours of the night. But one of her favorite watching destinations was Cosby Show reruns.
I often watched them with her and we would talk about how great it will be when our son can watch the show with us. I even imagined when my children get older and become too cocky about their ability to live on their own, replaying the famous scene where the family makes Theo live off of a strict budget of Monopoly money.
Unfortunately, between breastfeeding age and the time my son would be old enough to watch TV, the Cosby scandal broke. I imagine millions of other 80’s children had the same cosby-feuled aspirations that I once had. Unfortunately, those images have now been torn to shreds, lit on fire, buried 15 feet underground, and then had an atomic bomb dropped on them.
Cosby himself is back to remove even the slightest hint of innocence or self-respect he may have left. In a recent Sirius Radio interview with Michael Smerconish, the comedian was asked why he didn’t want to testify. Cosby replied, “I just don’t want to sit there and have to figure out what I believe is a truthful answer, as to whether or not I’m opening up a can of something that makes my lawyers scramble.” In other words, I can’t keep all of my lies straight, so I’m not going to say anything.
As if his statements even carry any weight at all anymore. This is one of the biggest He said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said , she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said competition ever.
At trial, the vileness of this monster will come out, and hopefully his victims will finally know justice and a bit of peace.
Death by 1,000 Meetings
Limiting screen time is a current concern for a large percentage of parents. When I was a kid, my screen time was also regulated. Not by my parental units, but by the fact that we only had access to three channels, and except for Saturday morning, the programming was completely geared toward adults. It’s tough to get a seven year old to appreciate the humor of “All in the Family” long enough to sit through 30 minutes with commercials.
In contrast, my four year old has an unlimited supply of fun or educational cartoons available, sans commercials, 24/7.
But my screen time was also limited by the communication I received from society at large, which essentially boiled down to “Don’t watch TV, it will rot your brain.” The message was clear, time spent watching Voltron, Saved by the Bell, and wrastlin’ were all monumental wastes of time, even for children.
While I accepted the rhetoric, I still logged PLENTY of hours on the couch during my teen and early Twenties—mostly nursing hangovers. While I enjoyed the leisure of wasting entire afternoons watching Real World marathons, society’s message often nagged at me, even to the point of diminishing my enjoyment. “You’re wasting your time” was always present in the back of my conscious.
Then I became an adult.
And as an adult, I have watched millions of wasted man hours in the trivial pursuit of Corporate America’s favorite pastime… meetings.
Any human who has spent any amount of time behind cubicle walls knows the story of wasted hours. Although every meeting has different variables, so many of them have the same unpleasant and unproductive qualities: topic is too vague, no agenda, boring, tedious, doesn’t accomplish anything, and most effective meetings achieve the same results as a well-crafted two paragraph email.
Worker bees have also perfected a plethora of strategies to occupy themselves during meetings from hell. There’s the doodler, the note taker, the phone checker, the talker, and then there’s the silent type that are daydreaming of the beach, the mountains, or maybe even thinking about a past episode of Saved by the Bell. Myself, I’m a pincher. I pinch myself to stay awake, and to avoid screaming “You’re wasting my time!” as I turn over a table, and storm out of a bad meeting.
There are a plethora of blog posts and books with fantastic strategies for harnessing the power of meetings. But I have found the most effective way is to simply avoid them—at all costs.
While this may prove trickier to accomplish given your specific employment status, reduction and even elimination of meetings should be the goal. The marketing master, Seth Godin, provides some excellent strategies on meeting improvement and elimination here and here.
As an entrepreneur, I’m involved in different segments of the economy, and it’s interesting to see what role meetings play in various industries. For example, the manufacturing companies I monitor all have essential operational meetings to start and conclude every week. These gatherings are necessarily repetitive, but efficient. In essence, manufacturing processes constantly need tweaked and the line needs monitored, these factors reduce needless meetings.
Typically service industries have less meetings due to the fact that their employees are usually actively serving their customers. Finally, there are the governmental meetings I’m sometimes forced to attend. While I believe the role of a modern day government should be active and effective, in reality, government is only an accumulation of other human beings trapped inside of one non-stop meeting. If you have to attend governmental meetings, my only advice is to bring plenty of reading material. Sorry.
Some meetings are essential in moving the ball forward, but most are not. The ones that are time wasters need to be treated as such, and removed. Not tweaked, streamlined, or revamped, but eliminated.
At the end of the day, you can take control of your own time. For example, I’m skipping a meeting right now, and watching old episodes of Voltron on YouTube.
The Olympics and Steroid Mania
Once again the Summer Olympics are almost upon us, which means two weeks of nonstop action along with two weeks of nonstop reporting about steroid related rules infractions. This follows the slew of disqualifications at UFC 200—if a few more fighters would have been ruled out, Dana White would have needed to enter the Octagon himself.
I have a completely illogical and indefensible view of how steroids should be used in sports.
I think they should be outlawed in baseball, basketball, hockey, boxing, mma, and let the NFL keep sneaking whatever they currently do.
But for the Olympics, bring them on. Stop the record books where they are, and let’s truly test the limits of human ability.
I want to see some Russian dude push two tons over his head. I want to see some woman run the 100 meters in 7 seconds. I want to see someone put the shot out of the infield.
From everything we’ve learned from Lance Armstrong and the Russian weight program, an extremely high % of athletes are using them anyway (gasp!) (The key is not getting caught), then why not make their use ubiquitous?
Besides, steroids don’t make you bigger, faster, and stronger, they mainly help you recover. You can take all the ‘roids you can find, not work out, and still be an out-of-shape piece-of-shit.
I’m old, and like many old men these days, my doctor will start prescribing hgh to me in a few years. And yet, no one will care. So why not load up Usain Bolt, and let the man do something the entire world will gasp at?
I’m 100% certain most people disagree (what about the children?). But, I’d still like to see it. Why not?
The Importance of Family Traditions
Preparing for the family’s annual summer vacation focuses my mind on the importance of having family traditions.
Traditions can be daily, weekly, yearly, or longer. We all have daily traditions that we take for granted. Do you wake your kids up the same way every day? Do you put them to sleep in the same manner? Is there a special game you play on the car ride to school? These routines help define our relationship to our children and to the world itself.
One of our family’s weekly traditions is letting both kids eat Friday night dinner in front of the television. Yes, for all of you Screen Time Police Officers out there, you read that correctly, in front of the television. Even further, there’s very little communication that happens besides delivering and replenishing food and drinks. The adults sit off to the side and have “adult” conversation while the toddlers take in the newest Paw Patrol while shoveling a week’s worth of leftovers into their mouths. Judge away.
Traditions can help teach children and others about religious practices as well as pass down behaviors specific to one’s culture. They can also help mark seasonality, which becomes super helpful when living in a place where the weather stays the same throughout the year. Or, traditions can just be a time when mom and dad recover from a long week, and the kids get to ease into their weekend doing something they desperately want to do.
“Hank, why do you drink? Hank, why do you roll smoke? Why must you live out the songs that you wrote? Over and over, everybody met my prediction. So if I get stoned, I’m just carryin’ on an old family tradition.”– Hank Williams Jr.
What traditions do you and your family practice? Are they positive or negative? Are you mindful of them and their impact?
Traditions can also be the suck-o-licious kind, like, packing for a family of four to be away from home for a week, which is what I need to get back to doing.
The Other “G” Word
William Klug Ph.D., an Engineering Professor at UCLA, was murdered on Wednesday June 1, 2016. There are several apparent motives, including a poor grade received by the shooter. Professor Klug’s death was one of only 27 gun fatalities on that day; however, his death hit home in a particularly personal way. We had several mutual friends who were impacted. Also, my wife is a professor, and meeting with disgruntled students is a common occurrence in her job. This is also true for most of our closest friends and neighbors.
Given how often my loved ones find themselves in similar situations as Professor Klug, one might expect another post about the state of guns in America. But, this will be about the other “g” word that Americans have become obsessed with— grades.
In this era of Common Core, it’s worth noting that standardized schooling is a relatively new concept in human history. Horace Mann has long been lauded as the person who implemented a consistent learning experience throughout the United States in the early 1800’s. But, it was Henry Ford’s miraculous assembly line and the industrial revolution that followed that necessitated training millions of workers who could stand in line, follow directions, and perform mind-numbing work for eight to twelve hours a day.
The groundwork was laid. Standardized factories meant standardized schools. The playbook for success was passed down from generation to generation, “Get good grades in school and you’ll get into a good college. Get good grades in college and you’ll get a good job. Get a good job and you’ll be happy.” The lesson was simple, good grades unlocked the Industrial Era’s playbook.
While this scenario worked well during the 1800’s and 1900’s, it fails to produce the desired results in today’s economic climate. In case you haven’t noticed, the internet has ushered in the Information Era where manufacturing jobs are done by the lowest bidder (usually an impoverished person from another country), and a person’s economic worth is largely based on their intellectual output.
The traits, or “soft skills” (creativity, autonomy, teamwork, and project management) needed to navigate this new landscape often can’t be found in our archaic standardized school system. We see the evidence of this all around us, yet many parents only shrug because they feel helpless against the behemoth that is the American educational system.
While the problems and potential solutions to a nationwide educational system are above my paygrade, I know that parents can have an immediate impact on this situation by stressing learning over grades. Instilling a pliable mindset where lifelong learning is the goal, and not good grades at all costs, will help your child to be a high-functioning member of today’s economy, but also in an ever changing one.
Even though he doesn’t start formal school for two more years, the pressure for good grades has already started for my oldest child, and I take daily action to stop this negative mental encroachment. The last interaction I have with him before tucking him in at night, is asking him two questions. What did you do today that was the most fun? And, what was one thing you learned or one skill you improved?
The answers to the questions aren’t important, my repetition is. The nightly subliminal message that he receives before going to sleep is to focus on something fun, and that learning and improving are the true goals.
We live in a hyper competitive school district where the good grade rivalries started in my child’s preschool room for one year olds. Throughout preschool events, when parents talked to me about their child’s milestones, I would see the stress in their facial muscles. They were already convinced that their two year old (Da Da want wa-wa.) was doomed to a life of failure, while some other toddler (Daddy can I have some water?) is obviously destined to be the next CEO of JP Morgan Chase.
The first few times parents cornered me and asked about our parenting techniques caught me by complete surprise. My common retort of “You know he still poops in his pants? Right?” always seemed to leave their thirst for knowledge unquenched.
Whoever’s child eventually gets that dream job of the future, they’ll get there without any talk of their grades. Oh, there will be talks, many that they won’t enjoy. There will be lessons about responsibility, hard work, commitment, planning, executing, failing, marketing, finance, logistics, and how to be a good teammate, coworker, and manager, and thousands of other topics. But, no one will quiz them about their grades.
I find a deep sadness in the loss of a life over something as insignificant as grades. Put simply, at a certain point in one’s life, grades don’t matter—at all.
How can I be so certain of this with only anecdotal evidence?
I’m in my early 40’s, and for the past two decades I’ve had millions of conversations with friends, family, employers, and colleagues on topics ranging from happiness to death. Further, with the advent of the internet, I’ve witnessed millions of social interactions by friends and complete strangers. In that time, I’ve seen countless arguments, memes, political debates, pictures of Halloween costumes, and cat videos. But, I haven’t seen one post about someone’s grades (who wasn’t actively in school). Not one.
So, as parents, if we want to instill a new playbook that will help our children thrive and maximize their happiness, focus your message on learning, not grades.
The nation’s thoughts, prayers, and well wishes are with the family of Professor Klug, as are mine.
Nick Tahou was a Culinary Genius
“There is no sincerer love than the love of food.”— George Bernard Shaw
It’s impossible to say which trip was the best, but a person never forgets his first time.
It was well past 2 a.m. during my first month of college. I was pledging my fraternity at the time, and too many of us piled into the house secretary’s car for my inaugural trip to the food mecca of Rochester. We didn’t take his vehicle because he was sober. In fact, I’m certain someone else drove. We took his car because he had a station wagon that could hold the most people. Since I was a low-life pledge, I had the pleasure of riding in the far back, stuffed in like a sardine.
After a fifteen minute commute from the suburb of Henrietta, home of R.I.T., we arrived in downtown Rochester. The sardine station wagon was immediately greeted by a slew of pimps and prostitutes. They were more than entertaining, with most of them having tongues as sharp as their pimp’s knives. Our group of drunk and loud Alpha males traded verbal compliments and insults with them as we waited to jam ourselves into an already crowded restaurant.
I was shocked at the number of people waiting to get food at three in the morning. But I soon learned that this level of crowd was normal for this time of the morning. Finally, after only a ten or fifteen minute wait our “plates” were served. Ever since that first bite, it has been a love affair that has lasted over two decades. If I was ever on Death Row, the answer to the final meal question is a simple one.
The Garbage Plate™ combines simple ingredients with a few exceptional ones to make an unforgettable culinary treat. While there were several individual noteworthy items (Tahou hots are fantastic) on Tahou’s menu, the real star was the world renowned Garbage Plate™.
The standard building blocks of the Garbage Plate™ are macaroni salad and home fries (the potatoes are cut slightly larger than a nickel). Customers can choose two sides from: home fries, French fries, macaroni salad, and baked beans. The building blocks are topped with several options, but the two most popular are two cheese burgers (topped with white cheddar) or hots, and then covered with the most glorious meat sauce ever created, with just a dash of mustard and white onion sprinkled on top. While there were hundreds of combinations, there is something magical about the mixture of starchy potatoes and the creamy mac salad that offsets the grease infusion of two cheeseburgers that truly brings the Garbage Plate™ to life.
The Tahou legacy in Rochester lives on. But, unfortunately, new ordinances limit establishments from being open 24/7, and the death of Nick in 1997 still reverberates throughout the organization.
Since I now live over 2,000 miles from my treasured culinary treat, I’m forced to prepare it myself. These days, I’m also on a very limited carbohydrate diet, so the Garbage Plate™ is strictly a cheat day meal for me.
Lightly coat a pot or pan with Olive or Avocado Oil. I use a full size Le Creuset pot because I find the depth of the dish reduces splatter when I blend the ingredients. Add the onions and sauté for a few minutes. Add the hamburger and all of the spices. Once you have browned the meat, add the water, brown sugar, and tomato paste. Simmer for 15 minutes.
Use an immersion blender to finely chop the sauce. You’ll probably need to add a bit more water during the blending process.
Simmer for another 45 minutes to an hour, periodically adding a touch of water if necessary. You want it to be soggy, not soupy. I simmer it for several hours because the aroma fills me with an immense amount of joy.
Tahou Sauce Recipe
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 cup water
- 1/4 cup tomato paste
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 3/4 teaspoon allspice
- 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 clove garlic, diced or pressed through a garlic press
Don’t forget about the bread. I prefer a fresh baked loaf of Italian, cut thin. But, if you want to be authentic, you can leave the loaf out until it hardens to Tahou-level stiffness.
Lastly, you could use another hot sauce besides Red Hot™ to top off your plate. I never will, and you really shouldn’t, but one could.
Thank you Nick, your masterpiece still lives on in the hearts and stomachs of thousands of your followers.
Enjoy.