culture – Page 15 – Life In A Word

Gadgets… Be Gone!

The defining elements of the 1970s included disco music, bell-bottom pants, and really big sunglasses. You had block-long lines at gas stations thanks to the “Energy Crisis”, President Nixon’s resignation because of Watergate, and the long-overdue wrap of the Vietnam War. People preferred their clothes and cars in bright colors, their hair shaggy. I don’t remember much of this stuff, since I was only a budding teenager. But I’ll never forget my very first audio cassette tape deck.

You’re seeing obituaries in the news these days for noteworthy people of the 1970s. Fifty years ago these people were generally in their thirties or forties; a reasonable age to invent something. So it didn’t surprise me to read about Lou Ottens, who died in March at the age of 94. Ottens was an engineer for the Philips Corporation. Never knew him, never heard of him, but I’m forever grateful he invented the compact cassette audiotape.

[Millennials, roll back the clock on music media. From your digital subscriptions, pass through Blu-Ray and DVD, then compact disc (CDs), until you finally land in the 1970s and the compact cassette audiotape. If you made it to long-play (LP) vinyl records you went a little too far.]

Cassette tapes were a sensation in the 1970s because not only were they pants-pocket-portable, they were recordable. Me and my cassette deck spent many an afternoon capturing Top-40 hits off the local FM radio station (Barry Manilow! Helen Reddy!) Then I’d store my precious cassettes in their little suitcase, which could hold twenty or thirty inside plastic cases. Add in the invention of the Sony Walkman at the end of the decade (the first handheld cassette player) and you’ve got a broad overview of 1970s music media.

I did have a Walkman somewhere along the way, but the better memories come with my tabletop cassette deck (like the one shown here). It lived on the desk in my bedroom, with its square speaker and giant pushbuttons, a precursor to today’s boom box. It ate the occasional cassette tape with relish, and background noise always accompanied recordings off the radio, but my tape deck was still fairly state-of-the-art for the 1970s. It only weighed a couple of pounds including the four C batteries. The pop-out handle made for easy carry.

Lou Otten’s passing speaks to how many inventions, no matter how novel or cutting-edge, are sooner or later kaput. Like the wax occupants of Madame Tussauds, you know your useful life has passed when you’d be better off in a museum. So how about a few more inventions from my childhood years – once useful but now “almost gone”?

1960s

magnetic stripe card (smartphones are saying, “move over”)
plasma display panel (PDP)
handheld calculator (just ask Siri now)
8-track cartridge (whoa, that’s ancient history)
Liquid Paper

1970s

Pong (one of the earliest arcade video games)
floppy disk (removable computer file storage)
portable GPS device
cell phone (audio calls, nothing else)
videocassette recorder/player (VCRs)

I was just as curious to check out the decades of my parents’ childhood. What inventions from their formative years are no longer?

1930s

Polaroid photography (in its original form)
IBM electric typewriter
coin-operated parking meter (now accepts credit cards)
drive-in movie theater (making a COVID-era comeback, perhaps?)
twist-tie (now built into your kitchen trash bag)

1940s

aerosol spray can (can we at least agree, these need to go?)
Slinky and Silly Putty (not today’s child’s toy of choice)
atomic bomb (let’s just pretend these are obsolete, shall we?)
lp phonograph record
jukebox

Last summer I went through a few neglected boxes in the garage and found a few of my old audiocassette tapes. I keep a still-kicking boombox in the garage (for AM radio baseball games), with a dusty cassette tape player in the middle. One afternoon I popped in one of those old tapes, pressed PLAY, and behold: John Denver was alive and singing again. The music was as crisp and clear as 1970.

So give it up for Lou Ottens. Not only did he design audiocassette tapes, he designed those little guys to last!

Some content sourced from the Hackaday.com article, “RIP Lou Ottens, Developer of the Compact Cassette and More”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Tale of the Little-Dog

When my son and his wife visited with their daughters last week, the consensus for dinner was hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. These choices were noteworthy in that I honestly can’t remember the last time I ate a hot dog. Sweet Italian sausage? A couple of times a month cut up into a stir-fry of vegetables. Beer brats? Also delicious, hot off the grill with a little mustard. But a hot dog is child’s play by comparison. Or should I say, a “dachshund sausage”?

It’s true. The Germans, who by all accounts can take credit for the invention of the hot dog (five hundred years ago!) nicknamed their frankfurters “dachshunds” – or “little-dog” sausages because, well, they looked exactly like the dog breed. The only history Americans claim is the re-nickname “hot dog”. Even the hot dog bun – which really took hold at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 – points back to the Germans, who always ate their sausages with bread.

Are hot dogs a staple in your diet, or like me are they simply a distant memory? If they weren’t hot off the grill in the backyard or at a summer picnic, perhaps you had one at a baseball game (but not so much football or basketball, go figure). You’ve probably also seen hot dogs on the midway at carnivals and county fairs. Wherever you get your franks today, they’re just not as likely to come from established restaurants.

In the 1970s, America seemed to have hot dog stands on every corner. The most popular of these was the distinctive drive-thru Der Wienerschnitzel’s, but you also had – at least from my California-based memory – Pup ‘N’ Taco, Ben Franks, Tail o’ the Pup, and the walk-up Hot Dog on-a-Stick booths you’d find at amusement parks. Today’s retail hot dog is at a Sonic Drive-In or the food court at Costco. If you live anywhere near New York’s Coney Island, you can also include “Nathan’s Famous”, or at least the annual hot dog eating contest of the same name.

A hot dog may be “a cooked sausage eaten in a long, soft piece of bread”, but its secondary meanings are less definitive. “Hot Dog!” is something you used to say when you were VERY happy about something else (“used to”, meaning sixty or seventy years ago). A “hot dog” is also a person “who makes fast, skillful movements in skiing, snowboarding, or surfing to make people notice them”. That last definition still stands.

Speaking of “used to say”, we also used to sing about hot dogs, didn’t we? Oscar Mayer’s jingle convinced us we should BE hot dogs (so everyone would be in love with us). But the better song came from Armour, which asked us what kind of kids eat Armour hot dogs? Per the lyrics, “…fat kids, skinny kids, kids that climb on rocks… tough kids, sissy kids, even kids with chicken pox…” Today’s version of the Armour jingle would probably be censored just for using the word “kids”.

“I wish I had a million dollars. HOT DOG!” (Courtesy of Paramount Pictures and “It’s A Wonderful Life”)

Hot dogs will always be a childhood memory more than a dietary preference in my book. My mother, raising five hungry boys, developed several dinner recipes when time and ingredients were in short supply. These included canned baked beans and weenies (two ingredients = dinner!), and a truly odd creation from the Betty Crocker cookbook made up of hot dogs, mashed potatoes, and cheese (three ingredients!). Whether it tasted good or not – I honestly can’t remember – dogs, mash, and cheese conveniently covered the protein, carb, and fat categories, all in one broiler-blasted casserole.

My most vivid childhood hot dog memories are not the dinners mentioned above. Instead, I can’t forget snacking on raw hot dogs from the refrigerator (which sounds awful now, but hey, I was a kid). My mother was faithful to the Oscar Mayer brand so I ate a lot of their hot dogs raw. Speaking of Oscar Mayer, here’s the better memory. They built a motorized advertisement which to this day may be the coolest vehicle on wheels. The “Wienermobile” cruised the streets of Los Angeles, stopping every now and then in a parking lot so you could view it up close. The driver handed out tiny plastic replicas of the vehicle, appropriately labeled “Weenie Whistles”.

(Courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures and “The Santa Clause”)

Let me conclude with a solved hot dog mystery. Your grocery store sells most brands in packages of ten. They also sell hot dog buns but in packages of eight. Why? Because hot dogs weigh about 1.6 ounces, which makes a package of ten a convenient sale of exactly one pound of meat. On the other hand, hot dog buns are baked in trays of four, which work best with conveyor belts and processing. An odd number of buns – trays of five – is a model of inefficiency. So until one or the other manufacturer changes their standard, you’ll always have leftovers for snacks. Or better yet, for your dog.

The hot dogs I served my granddaughters last week were comically advertised as healthy: no fillers, no preservatives, and so on. They weren’t very good. Maybe the worst part of a hot dog is what makes it taste so good? Or maybe hot dogs have simply lost their appeal to me? No, wait, that can’t be true. Anything my granddaughters ask me to eat has instant appeal.

Guess I haven’t eaten my last little-dog sausage just yet.

Some content sourced from the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (NHDSC) website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Springtime Rings

My daughter drops little hints on our phone calls recently, teasers to suggest her boyfriend will soon pop the proverbial question. If he does propose, her left hand will be adorned with an engagement ring and she’ll become – literally – a marked woman. She might as well sport a little neon sign on her ring finger blinking, T-A-K-E-N.

While my daughter gets excited about her potential Ring by Spring (Hallmark Channel movie, March 2014), I glance down now at the gold band I’ve been wearing for the last thirty-four years. My wife and I decided a plain ring wasn’t enough of a statement for wedded bliss so we chose one with seven inset diamonds across the top. Now that I think about it, those seven gems might as well broadcast M-A-R-R-I-E-D.

Over the years, I’ve grown fond of the string of bling inside my ring. It’s a unique setting and the diamonds draw compliments. But credit to my wife, there’s purpose behind the glitter. She gives me her coy smile and declares, “When you’re walking down the street by yourself, the woman with her eye on you a block away will easily know you’re married”. A block away? That’s pushing it, but my diamond shine certainly does seem to advertise M-I-N-E.

Speaking of the opposite sex, Irwin Shaw, a playwright and author from the early 1900’s, wrote a short story that seems appropriate here. It’s called The Girls in Their Summer Dresses. Shaw puts us on the streets of New York City on a beautiful day, where a married couple is going for a walk. The husband keeps getting distracted by every pretty girl passing by and his wife calls him out on it. Their conversation over drinks after – and his closing thought – make for an interesting perspective on marriage. You can read The Girls in Their Summer Dresses here.

I can’t talk about my daughter’s forthcoming engagement ring and my own circle of gold without including a ring of my wife’s. No, not her wedding band (though it’s a beaut’) but rather a Claddagh ring she’ll receive from Ireland in the next few days. As we learned when we visited the Emerald Isle (and also from the Hallmark Channel – As Luck Would Have It, April 2021), the Claddagh ring includes symbols of love (heart), friendship (clasped hands), and loyalty (crown). Wear the ring facing one way to show you’re single and looking for love. Wear the ring the way my wife will, to show you’re already “captured”.

So there’s one more ring for love out there in jewelry shops (and it’s not a “promise ring”, which doesn’t count for much of anything). Ever heard of an eternity ring? It’s a band of precious metal with little gems all the way around the circle, to symbolize “never-ending love”. Talk about a bauble. Women describe it as “cumbersome”, and rumor has De Beers came up with the concept to justify a large purchase agreement with Russia for small diamonds. My wife will never get an eternity ring from me. Our vows included a nod to her wedding ring as “a forever sign of my love and fidelity”. See? I’ve got “never-ending” covered already.

My newsfeed included a recent wedding proposal in Atlanta, where the groom-to-be took his bride-to-be on a helicopter tour of the city, then promptly dropped to one knee on top of the skyscraper they landed on. When he popped the question he opened a box of five engagement rings. Seriously? I hope the guy my daughter will marry is way more decisive than that. Commit to just O-N-E, son, kind of like you did when you chose my daughter.

Some content sourced from the CNN.com article, “Man tops off helicopter proposal with five engagement rings”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Feeding Frenzy

Thanks to a whole lot of snow in Colorado I was pretty much housebound this week. I was also reminded of the number of mouths I’m expected to feed. That total is nine… if I count the four horses, two cats, and one dog besides my wife & me. Now that I think about it, a horse eats enough for two so let’s bump the number to eleven mouths. And nine of those belong to animals.

A year or so ago I wrote a post called Sign Me Up!, where I marveled at the rapidly growing world of subscription-based services. Among my own subscriptions I listed a magazine, a newspaper, and digital music, I also included Chewy, the online pet food supplier whose mission is “to be the most trusted and convenient online destination for pet parents (and partners), everywhere.” At the time I was just trying Chewy out, not willing to go all-in with a subscription. Today? I’m fully on board and wondering why I didn’t sign up sooner.

Even the U.S. Post Office celebrates “fur babies”

Every time a Chewy pet food box shows up at my front door my first thought is, “Why didn’t I come up with this idea?” Chewy’s concept is wonderfully simple… and wildly successful. First, create a list of the world’s major suppliers of dog and cat food. Second, negotiate bulk purchases of their products at a discount. Third, set up a small network of fulfillment centers. Finally, sell to customers with some of the discount, keeping the rest for your own operation and profit. It’s a middleman’s recipe for millions. Er, make that billions.

If you think this post is a plug for Chewy you’re darned tootin’ it is. Chewy offers over 2,000 brands of pet food to 15 million subscribed customers. 97% say they’re satisfied. Chewy’s net sales in 2019 were $4.8 billion dollars. Nosh on that impressive number for a second. $4.8 billion sounds like the GDP of a small country. A small country with a lot of pets.

Foresight is everything here. Ten years ago I wouldn’t have believed there were 200 brands of pet food, let alone 2,000. If I go back to my childhood (way more than ten years ago) I can name exactly four pet food brands or products of the day: Purina, Friskies, Alpo, and a curious General Mills creation called Gaines Burgers (“The canned dog food… without the can!”) Well, I also remember a variety box of dog biscuits called “Fives”, but that’s because I snacked on them every now and then when there wasn’t anything else in the pantry. Fives were fit for human consumption. At least, I think they were.

The pet food demand of the 1970s wouldn’t have sustained a subscription service like Chewy. On the other hand, today’s market is a feeding frenzy, especially with more people opting for “fur babies” over children. And don’t think Chewy hasn’t noticed all the doggy daycare and emotional support. Now they also deliver food for your fish, your bird, your snake, and all those farm animals grazing on your backyard lawn (alpacas, anyone?) Chewy even offers a pharmacy of over-the-counter meds when your pet is in some way under the weather.

I was going to wrap up this plug by smugly suggesting Chewy cater to our horses, but of course they already do. I can’t subscribe to hay bales yet (I’m sure they’re working on that) but I can buy grain, treats, blankets, tack, and fly spray. So instead, let me speculate it probably won’t be long before Chewy gets into the “human” food delivery business as well, to compete with Amazon, Wal*Mart, and Target. With Chewy’s millions of subscribed customers, the new offering would take off like a bull in a china shop. Or better, like a big, furry bad boy in a Star Wars movie.

Her Majesty’s Persistent Presence

America is a vast melting pot, her contents stirred for generations in a dogged effort to blend peoples and cultures into a cohesive whole. It’s the classic chemistry experiment, where the glass beaker is filled with all manner of substances and then shaken, only to watch the inevitable separation back to individual weights and colors. The shake-up brings moments of drama though; the storm before the calm if you will. It’s also an apt description of the British Monarchy.

Despite my best efforts to filter my newsfeed, I still got the announcement about Oprah Winfrey’s televised interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle last week. I don’t know much about either former royal (or Oprah, for that matter) so I dismissed the headline and moved on. But I was alerted to the interview again the following day. And again the next day. Finally, in a move that can only be described as can’t-help-myself, I got out of my chair, grabbed the remote, and programmed the DVR to record. Something deep-rooted was telling me Sunday night’s interview was must-watch TV.

No it wasn’t. The questions and answers were predictable. The topics just begged for a response from Buckingham Palace (mission accomplished). After two hours of back-and-forth (and too much time in a chicken coop) my take on this couple hadn’t changed. Meghan shouldn’t have dabbled in the royals in the first place. Meghan eventually orchestrated her way out of the palace (and the country). Harry followed. Now they’re barely surviving… in an 18,000 square foot house in Montecito, California worth $14 million. Oprah is their neighbor.

Waste of two hours? There’s no denying it. Still, I chose to watch.

Americans don’t have royals, but we have a lot of movies about royals.

Why do I care about Harry and Meghan? I don’t, yet somehow I do. Maybe I should blame The Crown, the excellent Netflix series about the British monarchy. By total coincidence, my wife and I started watching Season Four this week, which is all about Harry’s mother Diana. Then my newsfeed tells me the Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Philip) suffered a heart condition last week, rough enough to land him in the hospital. Add to that regular photos of Queen Elizabeth looking ever-regal at the ripe old age of 94 and the royals are all over the place. They make themselves kind of hard to ignore.

The episodes of The Crown are a revelation, especially for those of us in “New England”. Each show kind of ungilds the lily of America’s perception of British royalty. There’s more drama, politics, and in-fighting than we Yanks would’ve ever believed of fair princes and princesses. Yet through it all stands the queen – at the epicenter of the shaken beaker – somehow maintaining poise and presence. All of the events in The Crown take place within Elizabeth’s lifetime, yet it feels like we’re going several generations back.

Despite The Crown and my newfound respect for Elizabeth, there’s no question it was the late Diana, Princess of Wales who first piqued my interest in the British royals. Who could blame me, right? Lady Di was beautiful and supremely innocent, a veritable Disney princess in the flesh. She was born just a few months before I was. Her wedding to Prince Charles in 1981 – the grandest of ceremonies watched by hundreds of millions of people across the world – was the stuff of fairy tales (Charles himself, not so much). Diana embodied all that was good and somehow magical about life as a royal.

But then we have Diana’s shocking death not sixteen years after her marriage. Talk about shaking the beaker. My wife and I were at a party in California at the time and returned to our hotel late, staying up hours past midnight to watch the funeral on television. Like the Oprah interview this week, I can’t explain why I gave up half a night’s sleep to watch. I just felt compelled to.

Thanks to The Crown, the royals aren’t looking quite as regal as they used to. Diana effectively sacrificed her life to be a royal. The agendas of Elizabeth and her several prime ministers were in constant conflict. Season Four has a poignant episode where Elizabeth arranges an individual lunch with each of her four children. She needs a valet to prepare a brief of information on each child so she can have meaningful discussions with them. Elizabeth may be “Queen Mother” but the title rates a distant second to “Queen”.

Harry and Meghan seem determined to move on from the monarchy. They’ll never achieve “normal”, and whether their marriage is the real deal is TBD, but good on them for making a show of it. Me, I’m moving on too. The next season of The Crown isn’t until next year so it looks like I finally get a break from the royals. Er, unless William and Kate are up to anything interesting. Are they up to anything interesting? Hm. I’d better go check.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Pulling the Plug

Thirty years ago, the S. C. Johnson Company introduced a new member of their Glade line of fragrance products called the “PlugIn”. Maybe you have one in your bathroom. The PlugIn uses a small amount of electricity to warm up scented oil, which slowly diffuses into the nearby air. You can even get one that lights up. Ironically, the Glade PlugIn was my first thought when I read about this week’s National Day of Unplugging.

So this is what we’ve come to in the year 2021. As a counter to our undying affection for our electronic devices, a portion of the next couple of days has been designated “National Day of Unplugging” (NDoU) by a non-profit organization called Unplug Collaborative. The Collaborative started its membership early last year and is determined to “spread awareness about how to maintain a healthy life/tech balance”. Theirs is a noble, if not impossible effort.

Should you choose to participate in the NDoU “24-hour respite from technology from sundown to sundown, March 5-6”, I ask, will your life necessarily change for the better?

It’s just an awareness campaign, I get it. Unplugging phones, tablets, laptops, and whatever else you consider “tech” for one whole day is essentially raising the white flag on what each of us already admit: we spend too much time with our screens. But let’s be honest – what exactly defines “healthy life/tech balance”? I think the answer is highly personal, depending on your job, disposable income, place of residence, and the ways you choose to spend your downtime.

My wife is a wonderful example of “wired” (er, “wireless”); someone who twenty years ago tentatively navigated texting, apps, and what little else her basic cell phone had to offer. Today, she sports the latest model Apple Watch, two iPads, and a MacBook, all of which seamlessly share information with each other and then with her. She even sports a protective wristband to reduce her exposure to electromagnetic radiation.

I can’t imagine my wife “unplugging” for four hours, let alone twenty-four. My conversation with her would go something like this:

NDoU wants you to put your cell phone to bed – literally.

“Hey honey, so there’s this thing called ‘National Day of Unplugging’ where we get to shut down all of our electronic devices and work on making our life/tech balance better. Just give me your watch and your tablets and your laptop and I’ll lock them in the closet until tomorrow night. Sound good?”

The response I’d get (if I did get a response from her) would be something like,

“Wait, WHAT??? National Day of WHAT? Are you freaking kidding me? Hahahahahahaha, good one, honey. Yeah, let me think on that for just a second… um, NO WAY. And keep your hands off my screens!”

I get it. Not only does my wife fiercely track her 10,000 steps and her circles on her watch, she monitors a dozen or more daily feeds on her tablets, and countless emails and websites on her laptop. It would be just as soul-sucking as taking my Amazon Kindle e-reader away from me (and let’s not even discuss that possibility).

This NDoU supporter doesn’t need screens… ever.

Unplug our gadgets and then what do we do… watch TV? Sorry, if I’m really gonna play this game the TV also has to go. The point of NDoU no doubt, is to reestablish face-to-face communication, prepare meals together, get outdoors, read books (what’s a “book”?), and so on. Unplug Collaborative’s website lists fully one hundred ways to spend your time devoid of tech. You can’t unlock the full list without signing up for their membership so I’m just speculating on examples. [Hey, if you join, let me know if one of the hundred is “fool around in the bedroom”. That one doesn’t take anything plugged in. At least, nothing I have any experience with.]

If the NDoU campaign really gets momentum, I could see the unplugging moving beyond tech. Perhaps next year we’ll give the washer and dryer a day’s rest too, as well as the home exercise equipment, the stereo speakers, and the kitchen appliances. Now there’s a frightening image. Imagine twenty-four hours in dirty clothes, with no workout, singing just to make a little music, and sandwiches and pretzels for dinner. Okay, skipping the workout wouldn’t be so bad.

For the record, I’m a proponent of a healthy life/tech balance. Taking away my screens for a day isn’t such a bad thing. After all, we could be talking about my coffeemaker here. Now don’t be talking about unplugging my coffeemaker. You’re gonna have a fight on your hands and you don’t want to see me without my morning coffee. Do that and I might have to think about unplugging you.

O-Love

I like a lot of foods people seem to hate. My favorite Thanksgiving pie is mincemeat, not pumpkin. My favorite licorice color is black (red is just a licorice imposter). You can heap any kind of shellfish you want on my plate except oysters. You’ll find blue cheese in my salad and Brussel sprouts cozying up to my steak. But what about “America’s Most Hated Food”? Was I born in the wrong country? Sorry fellow citizens, I must respectfully disagree with the winner of a recent survey on hated foods. Black or green, stuffed or plain, sliced or diced, there’s nothing quite like the taste of an olive.

Zippia is a job-search engine I’d never heard of, until I came across their just-released survey called The Food Each State Hates the Most. Zippia’s road to its results is rather unscientific. First, come up with a list of forty-odd foods where people tend to say, “gross”. Then, use Google Search Trends to determine which of these foods people look up the least. Finally, group the search results by state. After that meandering highway, here’s what you get:

I think Zippia produces these surveys as a clever way to attract customers. Didn’t work for me – they just insulted my taste buds! Thirteen of fifty states claim the olive as their most hated food? Two of those states are California and Georgia, where the lion’s share of America’s olives is grown. I’m already suspicious.

I’ll grant Zippia’s survey this. Most people I know don’t care for olives. They don’t like the look or the smell, and even though they’ll admit to olive oil in their salads and heart-healthy recipes, they’ll still deny any affection for the fruit. Yes, I said fruit, not vegetable. Doesn’t that make those little sodium balls a bit more palatable?

The rest of the survey, I can buy. Anchovies shouldn’t swim anywhere near a pizza (good call, America’s Heartland). Washington and Oregon residents probably sat next to me in elementary school, overdosing on bologna sandwiches. Eggplant, ick. And beets… beets… I’m almost sixty years into this world and have yet to acquire the taste. Check back with me in the next life.

If the Zippia survey is to be believed, I live in a state where turkey bacon is our most hated food. Really? We just bought several pounds of the stuff last weekend at Costco. It’s not so bad. On the other hand, olive oil and vinegar stores are trendy around here. Most markets have an olive bar adjacent to the cheeses. Meats and breads have been enhanced with bits of olives for years. And for the really fancy, serve a tapenade with your crackers; a French spread made of finely chopped olives, capers, and anchovies. Okay, so tapenade’s probably not for everyone. But I like it.

I developed a taste for olives as a kid because my mother kept tossing them into her casseroles. Before I knew it I was eating olives as a snack (and what kid hasn’t done the “wave” with one on each finger?) One regrettable afternoon I downed a whole can of the large black ones before discovering my mother intended them for one of her recipes. Believe I went to bed with no dinner that night. At least my belly was full of olives.

[Side note: The only member of my family who likes olives is my daughter. Maybe I should’ve named her Olivia? I did have a childhood crush on Olivia Newton-John.]

As if you need more proof of my love of olives, you’ll always find several cans in my pantry. The sliced ones go into my pizzas, salads, and tacos. The diced ones go into my omelets. The whole ones sneak onto vegetable trays next to the carrots and celery (when my wife isn’t looking) or I just down ’em by the can. And their green siblings with the red pimentos jammed down the middle? They go perfectly with chips ‘n’ dip in front of the TV.

Step aside, America. Spain produces more olives than any other country. Italy and Greece aren’t far behind. It would be appealing enough to live on the sands of the Mediterranean, growing old on their uber-healthy diet. But also having trees of “America’s Most Hated Food” everywhere you look? That clinches the deal. I just might take my O-Love overseas one of these days.

Some content sourced from the Zippia.com article, “The Food Each State Hates The Most”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Forty Days and Forty Nights

Tuesday seems like weeks ago. Some call it “Fat Tuesday” (esp. those pancake-bingers partying hard at Mardi Gras) but to me, it’s just the last day of my food free-for-all. My wife and I decided to give up “flour” for Lent (more on that in a minute) so Tuesday night we overate at our favorite Mexican restaurant. Chips and salsa (the chips a hybrid of corn and flour). Enchiladas and tacos wrapped in big, fluffy flour tortillas. Sopapillas fried from puffy flour tortillas, drenched in honey. Big, frosty margaritas to wash it all down. It was kind of a fiesta final before Lent.

Now it’s Ash Wednesday as I type and I’m already obsessing about my forbidden flour. This morning’s breakfast was hardly a fiesta – coffee and a protein shake. Not a tablespoon of flour to be found anywhere. My upcoming fever dreams will be liberally dusted with flour. I’ll have fantasies of consuming an entire bakery case (shelves and all), eating my way out of a gigantic loaf of bread, or parking my mouth below the pasta-maker while endlessly turning the crank. I’m looking at all the snow outside my office window right now. It looks exactly like white flour. It probably IS white flour. Hang on, I’ll be right back…

As of today, we’ve officially started the season of Lent again. The next forty-odd days and nights are gonna be the usual challenge. Did you know the Old English translation of “Lent” is “spring season”? How that computes with all the flour I’m seeing outside my windows right now is beyond me. More to today’s point, Ash Wednesday is the deadline to answer the question, “What am I giving up for the next seven weeks?”

Lent, as even non-Christians know, is the religious season of preparation leading up to Easter. It’s the time to reflect inward, with more attention to prayer and the Good Book, less attention to “shortcomings” (sins, people), more charitable service to others, and finally, a cruel little something called “self-denial”. Self-denial is anything you want it to be, but the idea is to subtract from your daily equation: something you don’t need but you’ll struggle to be without. Consider seven popular choices for 2021:

Chocolate. Maybe this one’s popular because it’s the easy way out. Chocolate’s often in my desserts, occasionally in my protein shakes, and every-now-and-then in my mid-afternoon pick-me-ups. But I can certainly do without the sweet stuff for forty days. C’mon, people used to give up food for Lent! A little chocolate’s not really what the Big Guy had in mind.
Meat. Christians forego meat on Lenten Fridays anyway but some choose to give it up the whole way. Not me. If I’m giving up flour, I’ve got to have meat-and-potatoes to soften the blow of all my bread, pasta, and baked goods currently on hiatus. For Pete’s sake, I can’t even have chicken noodle soup! What was I thinking?
Smoking or Drinking. Maybe these are your vices but they’re not mine, so either would be a Lenten cop-out. I enjoy the occasional glass of wine or a beer, sure, but putting them on the shelf for the next month or so? Hardly a stretch.
Coffee. Okay, we just shifted from first to fourth gear. There is nothing – NOTHING – to fill the vast and infinite void left behind by my morning cup of joe. I understand self-denial but don’t turn me into a raging lunatic. Force me to give up coffee for Lent and I’ll have a newfound respect for the next option, which is…
Sleeping In. Normally this would be another cop-out for me because I’m one of those annoying morning people. But deny me my coffee and I’ll gladly hibernate until early afternoon – every day until Easter.
Social Media. I dropped Facebook late last year. I’m only on Instagram a couple of times a week. I have no Twitter feed. I get it – it’s 2021 – but this one’s a no-brainer for me. I mean seriously, just give me a call.
Speaking Poorly about Others. I asked my sister-in-law what she was giving up for Lent and she said, “I’m going to be nice to others”. That gave me a good laugh until I found this item on the list. My sister-in-law has plenty of company. So, consider: could YOU give up airing dirty laundry for forty days?

One more thing about Lent. Each of the liturgical seasons has a color, and Lent’s is purple. You’ll see a lot of it in churches, cathedrals, and flower arrangements this month and next. I like purple enough, but ask me to name purple items and all I come up with is eggplant (the nightmare vegetable of my youth), figs (the nightmare fruit of my youth), grapes (I prefer the green ones), cauliflower (yep, it comes in colors), and lavender and amethysts, both of which I have little use for. Purple is about as smart a choice for Lent as giving up flour.

In conclusion, I could use your prayers as I endure my forty-day flour fast. By late March my car tires will look like doughnuts and my paperback novel a nice, thick Pop-Tart. Toss me a Frisbee and I’ll slather it in syrup and devour it like a pancake. Put your pasta under lock and key. Guard your pizza with your life. I’m coming for your cupcakes.

Some content sourced from the Delish.com article, “7 Things To Give Up For Lent That Go Beyond Food”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Chocolate Cremè de la Cremè

Godiva, the incomparable Belgian chocolate maker, is closing every one of its retail shops in North America. Maybe you’re blaming the pandemic but Godiva claims foot traffic at shopping malls – where most of its boutiques are located – “plummeted” over the last few years. I’m sorry to see Godiva go. Mind you, it’s not that I make a habit of buying $3 truffles. It’s more the idea that I could if I wanted to.

Godiva is the cremè de la cremè of chocolate. Their products are born of a family business dating back to 1926. Their Truffe Originale, “an intense dark chocolate mousse in fine dark chocolate, rolled in pure cocoa powder”, is the standard by which most Belgian truffles are measured. Godiva’s three chefs are profiled on its website (I discuss one of them in my post Confection Perfection), and endeavor to maintain the very high standards of Godiva while churning out new and different creations. It’s no wonder Godiva isn’t considered a “candy store” or a “chocolate shop” but rather a chocolatier. Only the very best get a label like that.

Godiva’s handcrafted “gold box” assortment

To me, Godiva chocolate is a taste of heaven on earth. But it’s also a taste of a lifestyle – one most of us will never afford. Godiva has me picturing mansions (not houses), yachts (not boats), private planes (not the middle seat in coach). Godiva is a brief, delicious dip into the behind-the-gates world of the uber-wealthy.

I’ve stepped into a Godiva chocolatier exactly twice in my life. The first was in college, after a visit to the Rizzoli bookstore at exclusive Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago. After spending too much money at Rizzoli I was in the perfect mindset for Godiva (which was right next door). I still remember selecting a single truffle from the glass display case. The petit woman behind the counter wrapped up my tiny purchase in box, bow, and bag, as if I’d just purchased a fine piece of jewelry. She bid me a fond farewell. I walked out of there feeling, well, special.

My only other visit to Godiva was more recently with my wife and daughter, on a Saturday at one of Denver’s nicer shopping malls. We’d just come out of Starbucks, coffees in hand, and there beckoned Godiva. After much deliberation, we spent the better part of $10 and walked away with three truffles. I’m sure they were elegantly wrapped. I’m also sure they were delicious. But with Godiva, it’s more about the taste of something beyond your means. That taste may be more satisfying than Godiva chocolate itself.

Tiffany is a comparable experience (as I wrote about in my post All That Glitters). Walk past the front-door security guard into their multi-level department store in downtown Manhattan. Your first thought will be either, “I don’t belong here”, or, “I’m underdressed”. Ooh and ahh at their lavish necklaces, bracelets and rings, but don’t expect to see price tags. Like Godiva, Tiffany’s best is behind glass and you have to ask a staff member about the cost. My wife and I made it to Tiffany’s fifth floor before we found something we could afford – a pair of ceramic coffee mugs. At least we also walked away with their signature blue gift boxes.

Then there’s Prada, the Italian fashion house famous for its luxurious leather handbags and shoes. My twelve-year-old daughter dragged me into their Madison Avenue boutique once (past the requisite security guard) but I realized our mistake as soon as we entered. Prada displays maybe a dozen items in a single museum-like showroom, each carefully positioned on an individually lit shelf. You are invited to sit on the central couch and offered a choice of beverage. Then a person brings you items of your choosing (but don’t touch!). Once I realized Prada purses start at $1,000, I asked my very disappointed daughter if maybe she’d like to go for ice cream instead.

Godiva’s North America retail shops will be gone by March, but you’ll still have other options to purchase. You can find small displays of their products at the cash registers of upscale department stores. You can order most of their delicacies online (including “Gold Box” assortments, which cost more than you can afford). You’ll even find Godiva’s “Signature Mini Bars” at lowly retailers like Target and Walgreen’s. But let’s face it, Godiva is as much about the experience as it is the chocolate, and I’m just not gonna feel uber-rich when I’m at Target.

Some content sourced from the 1/24/2021 CNN.com article, “Godiva is closing or selling all of its stores in the United States”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Soft Spots

ESPN broadcast college football’s national championship Monday night. As the game moved to lopsided late in the second quarter my mind drifted to details besides the football itself. Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, FL is a striking facility, especially at night from the vantage point of the Goodyear Blimp. 15,000 football fans spaced randomly into 65,000 seats (thanks, COVID) looks awfully sparse. And speaking of awful(ly), the television commercials… well, let’s just agree college football ain’t the same thing as the Super Bowl, folks.

Super Bowl commercials are more entertaining than the game itself, unlike the advertisement drivel I saw Monday night. Super Bowl plugs cost $5 million for thirty seconds while Monday night’s spots were six figures at best. Finally, Super Bowl ads are desperate to be memorable (even if you can’t remember the product itself), which is why you have office pools for “best commercial”. You’re not gonna have an office pool for what I watched on Monday night. This was the reverse of the Super Bowl: great football, lousy commercials.

To say Monday night’s commercials paled in comparison to Super Bowl ads is like saying Sprite’s a little clearer than Coke. These product pushes were awful. For starters, you had what seemed like five advertisers over a four-hour broadcast. Dos Equis showed up every fifteen minutes. Their beer (excuse me, their lager) ads included a closeup of a glassful, with a commentator calling the movement of the bubbles as if they were players on a football field. Really? I hope his was a big paycheck.

Then you had AT&T, who seems to be promoting the lovely Milana Vayntrub (as salesperson “Lily”) as much as their products. Perhaps they’ve watched too many Progressive Insurance ads with Stephanie Courtney (as salesperson “Flo”)?

Finally, ESPN promoted itself. Normally I’d harp on the host network for advertising some of its own programs even though they paid millions to broadcast the game. But part of me thinks ESPN really does need the promos. COVID took a big bite out of sports over the last year, as well as a big bite out of ESPN’s workforce. When the network brought us Korean baseball and American cornhole competitions I thought, “Okay, the end is near”.

But forget ESPN because I need to be a Davey-downer (i.e., slam) on one more commercial. I’ve been building to this moment since the first paragraph. Gatorade just launched it’s first new beverage in twenty years: “Bolt24”. It’s low-cal and loaded with electrolytes, so naturally the target audience is athletes. And Gatorade also selected athletes to push its product. Enter Serena Williams. She’s one of those athletes I’m on the fence about. Her athletic skills and accomplishments on the tennis court are unquestionable. She’s garnered enough championships to earn her place in the tennis player “GOAT” discussion (greatest of all time).

But Serena also has her not-so-role-model moments. She does not take losing well. She does not welcome constructive criticism. Countless broken rackets, lectures (threats?) to chair umpires, and disqualifications would have you wondering if there isn’t a permanent child lurking within the adult. Wah wah wah. But the Bolt24 ad was the last straw in my Serena drink. Why? Because the tagline goes, “you know you’ve made it when the whole world knows you by one name”. Oh, so when I say just “Serena advertises Bolt 24”, you knowingly say in response, “oh, her?”

Yeah, I get the pitch. Bolt24 is a one-word drink. Serena Williams is almost the only Serena I can think of (besides Serena van der Woodsen, the entitled main character of the TV series Gossip Girl). But I just can’t buy into the loftiness of the catchphrase. Get the world to recognize you by first name only and “you’ve made it”? Sting. Madonna. Cher. Bono. Enya. See the pattern? It’s an actor/singer thing. Also, an athlete thing. Lebron. Tiger. O.J. (Maybe that last one should just be “Juice”?)

Okay then, shutting down my rant now. Holier-than-thou personas don’t deserve any more press. I like to keep “Life in a Word” positive; simple; modest. Like me. You know… Dave.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.