936 Free Idea & Andy Rooney

936 Free Idea & Remembering Rooney

I.

Here’s a free idea that’s worth gazillions of dollars.  It’s for the companies that make electrostatic cleaning cloths, like Swiffer and its competitors.  

Make socks out of the fabric.  Put them on and waltz around the floor and that’s the end of dusty floors.  Make them either disposable or washable and you’ll start a revolution.

These cloths work because the polyester fibers they’re made of take on an electrostatic charge when rubbed.  The charge picks up the dust which becomes entrapped in the cloth’s little ridges.  Eventually, the whole thing blackens, and you put a new one in your little broom or mop or whatever those things attached to the handles are called.

But why bother with a mop or handle when all you have to do is walk around the house.  It’s even easier if you have one bad leg.  Lead with the good foot, drag the second behind you.  Effort: zero.  Cost: minimal.

Actually, they could make gloves out of the stuff, too.  That means all you would have to do is caress your furniture now and then.

In our disposables-dominated society it would be just one more thing to buy and use and throw away.  But these cloths are so thin they take up almost no room in the land fill.  Or, if it’s still too much waste, you could go to your secret hideout and just burn them.  Polyester melts into tiny globs and no one would be the wiser.

In the mean time, the dusty among us wouldn’t have to be and the clean freaks among us could waste their time more profitably.

II. Andy Rooney 1919 - 2011

All of us in the cranky and occasionally humorous commentary business owe a debt to Andy Rooney who died only a about a month after retiring from CBS News’ “60 Minutes” at the age of 92.  His popularity and acclaim opened doors for us lesser lights with smaller platforms and made it legitimate once again to elevate ordinary subjects to national prominence in new ways, following in the traditions of Mark Twain and Robert Benchley.


Shrapnel:

--Corzine followup:  He quit as head of MF Global, which continues to hunt for a missing half billion in customers’ money.  That wasn’t his fault, since it vanished over much more time than he spent there.  But he did the right thing.

--Others who need to do the right thing:  Ray Kelly, George Papandreou, Conan O’Brien and the owners of every NBA team.  The reasons vary and none amount to thievery.  The world would just be a better place without these guys.

--Joblessness, what joblessness?  The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the federal payroll has expanded 12% since the start of the recession, while the private workforce has shrunk by about five percent in the same period.  Ask your congressional representative about that, if you can find him or her.


I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

935 A Long Way From Brooklyn

935  A Long Way From Brooklyn

So, the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team is for sale.  That’ll teach ‘em.  They never should have left Brooklyn.  It was bad luck.  Sometimes “what goes around comes around” takes a long time.  Maybe the Dodger bankruptcy was the work of the ghosts of that other turncoat team, now known as the San Francisco Giants.

The oldest rivalry in major league baseball, they say.  The Dodgers pre-date the National League of which it is a member.  And the name “Dodgers” comes from the days when people ducked out of the way of trolleys on the streets of Brooklyn.

Anyone got a spare billion to buy these losers?  Actually, yes.  They’re lining up.  How did things get this way?  How did this storied and overrated team get so deep into the hole?

Lousy management = lousy baseball.  Lavish owner lifestyles and overspending.  Stupidity?  

We have long said that when the real contest is in the front office, the team can’t win the game on the field.

So, you want some prime real estate in southern California?  It’s there.  You want a legendary team, the team of Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, Sandy Koufax and Duke Snyder, Don Drysdale and Pee Wee Reese?  Take a number.

Of course, the Dodgers are not the only team in trouble.  There’s the hapless expansion team from Flushing, the New York Mets, created in part to fill the void when the Dodgers and Giants left home for the west coast.

The Mets are in financial hot water, too.  They ran smack into super scammer Bernie Madoff, who made-off with a lot of money the team needed and still needs.  Even though the Mets always have been a clown club there’s some heritage there, too.

Joan Whitney Payson was no one to sneeze at.  Neither was Nelson Doubleday.  Fred Wilpon?  He’s another story.

Maybe Fred and the Dodgers’ Frank McCort can go into partnership.  Try for the hot dog and beer concession at Dodger Stadium and Citi Field.
Meantime, minor league baseball is worth the ticket price.  Especially for teams that aren’t affiliated with Major League Baseball, that aren’t farm clubs for the majors.  Go LI Ducks!

Shrapnel:

--MS Word still refuses to accept punctuation in its title lines.  Hence, no apostrophes or dashes.  It’s nice to see that they’ve kept something in reserve for the Next Big Revision.

--What’s the most common phrase on shopping television?  “You get...” or “You’ll get.”  You had a nickel for every time anyone says that, you could pay all the bloated shipping and handling charges without noticing.

--A third alleged victim has accused Herman Cain of sexual misconduct.  That’s important but not nearly so much as his misconduct in finance and his idiotic notion that he or anyone else is a “self made man.”  The only self made men are the homeless, and not all of them, either.


I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

934 Corzine's Second Crash

934 Corzine’s Second Crash

It was April, 2007 when then-governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey broke his leg in a car accident on the turnpike.  He was not wearing a seat belt.  The car in which he was a passenger, piloted by a state trooper, was moving at about 90 and swerved to avoid another car.  Corzine also broke 12 ribs and spent some time in critical condition and on a ventilator, underwent surgery and eventually recovered.

Where was he going in such an all fired hurry at 11:30 at night?  To a meeting in which he was to try to make peace between radio personality Don Imus and members of the Rutgers University Women’s Basketball team.

The Corzine Crash of 2011 is a little different.  After losing a re-election bid, he went back to Wall Street and became head of one of those companies that no one quite knows what it does.  It is called MF Global.  It owns a lot of lousy debt from Spain and other European countries and it can’t figure out where some of its customers’ money is.

Corzine tried to sell some or all of MF (which used to stand for Man Financial and not that other phrase for which the letters are well known.)  That didn’t work out so now, it’s in bankruptcy.  The papers are reporting that this is the eighth largest corporate collapse in US history.  It doesn’t reach the size of Lehman Bros., WaMu or even Enron.  But it’s bigger than Chrysler’s.

Corzine isn’t accused of any wrongdoing, but his reputation’s back on a ventilator and may need additional surgery.  This crash wasn’t because of a high speed drive to a dopey destination at a bad hour on a bad highway.  But there’s probably no insurance coverage this time, either.


Shrapnel:

--Brian Williams’ new show “Rock Center” premiered Monday night, and he was right when he said it’s not going to knock CBS’ “60 Minutes” out of the box, despite his star power and that of Harry Smith (late of CBS,) Ted Koppel (late of all kinds of places,) plus in house stars Matt Lauer and Ann Curry.   “Rock” is better than the self-parody NBC has made of “Dateline.”  But it feels too Norman Rockwell-Norman Vincent Peale-ish.

--The website westradamus.com is winding down as of its renewal date in late December.  But those of you who refer to the Non-Prophet’s stuff in the off-season, that is any time between, say after the first week or so in January will have a new site to visit.  Location to be announced.

--Does Herman Cain ever give a straight answer and stick with it?  The latest is denial that there was a settlement/payout in a sexual harassment case against him.  After that, he said well, yeah, there was a settlement but it wasn’t big.  Guy sounds more like ex-congressman Weiner every day.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

933 Home (Page) Improvement

933 Home (Page) Improvement

Sometimes, people who’ve had high energy and good ideas run out of good ideas before they run out of energy and that almost always spells trouble.

Example:  In his first term, Giuliani cleared the streets of squeegee men, went after low level criminals and in both cases rode the wave of generally decreasing crime.  In his second term, he was out of ideas but not out of steam and opened a Pandora’s box of nonsense that pretty much negated everything good he’d accomplished or taken credit for accomplishing earlier.

Facebook was a great idea.   But you see what’s happened there.  Every time you blink, they have a new revision that makes the site less navigable and more complicated than it should be.

Yahoo has been doing the same by “improving” its mail service, with about the same result.

And now comes Google.  The whole idea behind this outfit was speed and simplicity.  Along the way, they’ve acquired a bunch of companies and integrated them nicely with their main business, the fastest, largest simplest search engine.

And they’ve gotten more complicated than the need to.  They are forever giving their products new “improved” looks, feels and operating instructions.

“Google (insert product name) has a new look.”  How many times a month do you see that?  They were fine to start.  Sometimes, they make actual improvement (color choices for calendar events, for example.) Most of the time, not.

Google Docs has a new look.  Nothing wrong with the old one.  Google+ has been added.  Hey, guys, we already have Facebook and My Space and Linkedin and who knows what-all that’s similar.

Google Buzz has been subtracted (but [gee whiz] you can keep all your old buzzes if you want them.)

Google Maps for Android is “upgraded” every 20 minutes.  What was wrong with the old version?  Maybe it missed locating two gas stations or saloons that it has now added, and which you don’t much need because there already were enough old ones.

Google, maybe, has too many people with too little to do.  Better to keep making unnecessary changes than to fire people.  But can’t you find something that NEEDS to be done?  You know, like copying more books into Google Books or fighting lawsuits for copyright violations from copying the wrong books into Google Books.

We know you’ve become a corporate giant.  But like your soulmates, Apple and S.C.Johnson-a-family-company, we love you anyway.  

So please stop annoying us with nonsense.  Especially that new “tabs” page that defaults to your app store.

Shrapnel:

--Today, 10/31/11 is Halloween and the birthday of my friend Emma McClain.  Would that she were still among us, she would be 98.  She’s been gone since ‘03 but sometimes she still keeps in touch.


I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com  (you can use the new look, the old Beta version or the simple HTML version and still get through.)
© WJR 2011

932 The Name Game

932 The Name Game

What’s in a name?  Depends on who you ask.  If you ask the New York Police Department’s “Catch a Muslim By the Toe” Department-of-spying it’s a “tripwire” for detecting potential domestic terrorists.

Yes, the NYPD’s  investigators, reports the Associated Press, are tracking everyone who changes his name.  Everyone.  

So when someone lands here to make a better life (does that still happen?) and changes his name from, say, Rachman Ali to -- oh, maybe Roger Ailes, or Sa’ida Pirvani to Sarah Palin, it’s “tag, you’re it?”

But this is nothing new.  A close relative, Max Rotholz, fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s.  He came here only to find Germans, including German Jews, were looked upon with suspicion.  He got around to changing his name --and those of his American-born wife and children -- in 1952.  "Mark Richards" was not exactly a credible choice, given his accent, his manner and his appearance.  But we lived with it.

By '52, the anti-German thing had faded away, at least in law enforcement circles. But almost 50 years later the immigrant-as-suspect is back with us.

Real Americans don’t change their names.  (Except those in show business.  Oh.  Wait. Show biz types are not real Americans, are they?)

So here’s the NYPD, possibly getting daily printouts of the proceedings of Name Change Court and then staking out the perpetrators.  Maybe they should also stake out the judges.  They, after all, are facilitating terrorism.

Another close relative changed her name to something American on becoming a US citizen.  The judge responsible for that fiasco, was the late Eugene Nickerson who was nominated to the bench by Jimmy Carter, related to John Quincy Adams, and therefore himself automatically suspect.

So bring on the cops.  Andrew (nee Ahmed,) watch your step because we will be watching, too.  You think those traffic cameras only watch traffic?


Shrapnel:

--You can’t make this stuff up:  The Brooklyn Bridge is not for sale but there is one on the market in Frankfurt, Kentucky.  The price is zero.  But here’s the catch:  the “buyer” has to dismantle it and remove it from where it crosses the Kentucky River, move the pieces, set them up as they were originally and then maintain it in usable condition.

--Who says we’re a nation of lawbreakers?  When the Pennsylvania legislature recently outlawed the use of car and truck directional signals, everyone -- everyone -- obeyed immediately.  Now, we have to work on Amish buggy drivers, motorcyclists and bike peddlers, because some of them did not get the message and still use hand signals.

--Failing to signal is a symptom of two things.  Thing one:  “I know what I’m thinking, and you too should know what I’m thinking.”  Thing two: “You don’t exist, so why would I signal in the first place?”

I’m the former Wes Rotholz.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to that phony wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR (the initials didn’t change) 2011

931 Let's Go Camping

931 Let’s Go Camping

Perhaps you noticed this:  the world didn’t end on October 21, 2011.  Just as it didn’t end on May 21, 2011 or September 6, 1994.  So engineer-preacher-radio station owner Harold Camping has been wrong three times out of three.  

The latest prediction didn’t get the kind of publicity afforded the one in May, nor did it bring in the bucks.  This time, no one spent his life savings on billboards.  No one looted his kids’ college funds to donate to Camping’s 66 radio stations or his TV stations or even to buy a Rolls as a final resting place.

End time predictions have always been a gold mine of contributions.  Unfortunately, Camping’s engineer-like precision has tarnished the value of that gold if not the price.

If old Har is an end-time extremist, are there end-time moderates?  Not really.  Just people sensible enough to not name a date.

They’re all predicting the end of life as we know it.  Even the atheists among us see reason enough to forecast that -- albeit without the folderol of a Second Coming.  (Or even a first coming for REAL non-believers.)   

Take a look at what’s going on in the world today, whether here or in Europe or the Middle East or anywhere else and look in the mirror and with a straight face say to yourself “this’ll all work itself out.”  

As an aside, there were two relatively small earthquakes in Northern California on October 21st.  They did little damage and killed no one.  Was that a preview of things to come?

In the meantime, the usual collection-plate-passing, fear-mongering end timers will continue their rant, even as prediction after prediction (and the accompanying messiah) fails to materialize.

But you still can don your tin foil hat and join them.  Just bring your checkbook and check your skepticism at the door.


Let’s end with a song.



Shrapnel:

--The jewelry folks must be figuring the price of gold is on the downswing.  For awhile, they stopped offering it for sale and instead hawked sterling silver, rhodium and other lesser metals.  But in the last few weeks, the shopping channels seem to have gotten back into the gold business, offering 14K solid stuff at inflated but not hyperinflated prices.

--Spam of the week:  it’s from someone at yahoo claiming to be the New York State Police and citing a vague traffic law violation in a place never visited.  And they don’t give an address.  Let’s not go camping, let’s go fishing.

--Joe The Plumber whose name isn’t Joe and who isn’t a plumber, is running for congress in Ohio.  Good practice to start a campaign with a couple of lies, because that’s what congressmen do.  But can they fit the name “Wurzelbacher” on the ballot space... something California found tough when Schwarzenegger ran for governor.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them.  ®
Please address predictions, death threats and comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

930 The First Hundred Years

930 The First Hundred Years

Quick, name all the logos you can identify instantly at a glance even if there’s no written name along with it.  Unless your head has been in the sand for awhile, there’s the Nike swoosh, the Apple apple, the NBC peacock, the CBS eye and the Target target.

But the one that’s been around longest and probably strongest is the Chevrolet whatever-you-call-that-thing.  For want of an actual name, people have been calling it a “bow tie” since 1913.  The car itself has been around since 1911 and has been part of General Motors since 1918.
That thing

Stories abound about its origin.  Maybe it was a variation of the cross on the Swiss flag (Louis Chevrolet was born in Switzerland.)  Maybe it was a wall paper design co-founder William Durant spotted in a French hotel room.  Or a doodle on a napkin.  No one knows for sure.

What they do know for sure is what the oddly shaped little thing stands for, and that it alone is more valuable a trade symbol than the entire rest of the company that makes it.

But Chevy is more than a car.  As a car, it ain’t all that much.  Never has been. As a symbol of America, the good the bad and the ugly, it’s an institution.

Chevy at 100 has come a long way from the first third of its life, spent as a dowdy cheapie for people who couldn’t afford an Oldsmobile, Mercury or DeSoto.  And although the 1957 Bel Air and Impala have come to represent the 1950s as “The” car, it was the ‘55 that changed everything for the brand.

That’s when they first shucked off frumpy for stylish.  That’s when they first built a small block V-8 with some oomph.  That’s when they first could take a corner at the speed limit without that then-famous stomach turning pogo stick ride.  Everything after that was an add-on.

So while Chevy marks its 100th birthday early next month, in a way it’s also its 56th birthday.  

The company website polled drivers and owners, asking which was the greatest Chevy of all time.  The result:  the 1969 Camaro.  Kind of a knockoff of the 1964 Mustang from rival Ford.  Better late than never.

Every car maker runs into quality problems.  Even currently mighty Toyota and Honda have had their share of recalls, some of them truly serious and potentially deadly.   But Chevy owners know -- and have always known -- from quality problems, both serious and frivolous.

GM is not the worst offender in the defect department.  But there have been years when they came close to leadership.  The Chevette, the Corvair, the SSR.  Oy!  These were chart toppers.  And the Aveo is in a class by itself.  Well, not exactly by itself.  There’s always the Renault Dauphine, the Fiat Multipla and the Yugo.

But no one expects anything of Renault or Fiat and the Yugo was only a Balkanized Fiat to begin with.

Chevy at 100 is, indeed, a symbol of what has always been right and what always has been wrong about cars, and about America.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011