Seasonality in Syria

Look for mass demonstrations in Syria to skyrocket with the beginning of Ramadan on sundown, July 31. In the Arab world, there’s no more sustained networking opportunity —Facebook and Twitter included—than Islam’s holiest month with its daily gatherings in houses of worship. In spite of the Assad regime’s brutality, 100,000+ Syrians have demonstrated every Friday—Islam’s Sabbath—over the past four months. Ramadan is an entire month of Fridays.

The current maelstrom in Syria, notes The Economist, is no peasant revolt, but a resilient, growing coalition of university graduates, day laborers, students, and seasoned dissidents. Unlike the Assad regime, which has behaved erratically—alternating brutal crackdowns with vacuous concessions—the protestors, says the magazine, have shown remarkable unity of purpose in their insistence on democratic elections, freedom of speech and assembly, and protection for minorities.

The movement has the support of large parts of the Sunni clergy and increasingly the business community (business is down 50% this year). Syria is 75% Sunni. Assad and his fellow Shia Alawite brethren are what investors might call highly leveraged—they’re 10% of Syria’s population. So is Syria nearing a tipping point?

Perhaps a second question—this one for bloodsugarologists—will shed some light. Will 28 days of sunup-to-sundown fasting during the year’s hottest month make the demonstrators and their minions meaningfully crankier toward Mr. Assad and his cronies?

This salaam's for you!

In the Gods We Trust: Bootsy Collins in Worcester

Photo by Ariel Wigdor

On June 29, funk deity Bootsy Collins, who will be 60 in October, brought his flamboyant musical retinue to the Palladium in Worcester, Massachusetts. In a previous life, the Palladium, a block down Main Street from elegant Mechanics Hall, was the Plymouth Theatre, a deteriorating movie palace frequented by this blogger in the 1960s. Today, the once seedy Mechanics Hall is an acoustic marvel, venerated in the world of chamber music. And the once squalid Plymouth? Well, it’s morphed into the consummately ratty Palladium. For Bootsy and his spirited audience, though, that may have been just what the witch doctor ordered.

In spite of volume that could have opened an East Coast branch of the San Andreas Fault, Boostsy and his funkful amigos, which included the great Bernie Worrell and ten or so other singers and instrumentalists, played with nonstop mastery and fervor. Of course, with such inspired song stand-bys as Cosmic Slop, Flashlight, Roto-Rooter, and,  Dr. Funkenstein, inspiration was never far from center stage. Nor was Bootsy, whose propulsive yet sinuous bass relentlessly devoured all resistance like an anaconda on steroids.

“He’s Hendrix on the bass,” commented my son, looking the part in his Axis Bold as Love t-shirt. The vestment, which depicts Hendrix and his two Brit sidemen from the Experience at the head of a chevron of Hindu deities, had sparked kudos an hour before the concert at an Indian restaurant on Shrewsbury Street. Our teenage Indian waitress, no doubt new to these shores, took one look at the shirt and praised my son’s sartorial taste, unaware that Hendrix had no part in the original Hindu line-up. When I tried to set matters straight, she nodded politely, approvingly. Perhaps the customer is always right. Without question, a god is a god is a god.

Giving Credits where Credits Are Due? Massachusetts’ Film Tax Incentive Program Respun

Best Place. Best Crews. Best Films., exults the Massachusetts Film Office , the state-run marketing outfit charged with enticing film makers to make movies and TV shows in the Bay State. In recent years, Massachusetts has hosted The Social Network, The Fighter, Shutter Island, soon to-be-released Moneyball, and other big-time productions.  Since 2007, the agency has set down cat nip for filmmakers via a tax credit equal to 25% of a film’s production and employment costs. In this, Massachusetts has company. Since Louisiana rolled out the practice in 2002, 15 states have jumped into incentiveville.

In talking up the tax credit program, it’s only natural for the Film Office to follow film songster Harold Arlen’s lead:  Accentuate the Positive. That it does by emphasizing the broadest-brush yardsticks like benefit to the economy (e.g, gross revenues) and jobs created in Massachusetts (also with grossed-up spin).

Drilling Down.  For relief, Wig & Pen turned to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue’s annual state-required reckoning, A Report on the Massachusetts Film Industry Tax Incentives. Released in January 2011, it covers calendar year 2009.  Here’s how the study parsed calendar year 2009’s $329.7 million in gross revenues from the Bay State’s film industry.

First, the report deducts $10.7 million in revenues that it estimates would have occurred without the tax credit program. Then, from the new total of $319 million it pares a whopping $215.2 million, reducing revenues to $103.8 million. The $215.2 million covers payments to film industry employees and businesses outside the state--$82 million of which went to $1 million and greater salaries for Hollywood actors.   

Finally, in step with the state’s requirement to balance its budget, the Department of Revenue subtracted state budget cuts needed to offset its film tax incentive expenditures.  That brought the direct economic impact of the program to $32.6 million.

In fairness to accentuators of positivity, the Department as part of the same exercise also modeled multiplier effects on the broader economy. That kicked in an additional $165.5 million in gross domestic product and personal income of $25.2 million.

Better, Not Best. So judging from Department of Revenue results, the tax incentive program was a force for economic good, but way less compelling than some might have us believe. Our lesson: even agreed-upon on gross economic indicators can mask as well as illuminate. It’s always a good idea to drill down, especially when special interests—inside and outside of government—have motive and opportunity.

Read The Economist's take (i.e., rant) on the use and abuse of film tax credits.
 

The Young Adult Brain in Action! Tales from the Amherst, Massachusetts Police Blotter:*

A Bonnie & Clyde Bank Heist, Amherst Style. In April, a young middle class couple, William Oldershaw, 24, of Sunderland and Shayna Henckel-Miller, 19, of Amherst allegedly conspired to rob Amherst’s highest-profile bank, The Bank of America. Oldershaw walked into the bank weaponless with a note that Henkel-Miller allegedly had helped him write, and handed it to a teller, who presented him with $249. He then exited the bank, where his accomplice waited in the escape vehicle—a TAXI CAB, which the police intercepted several miles down the road. An official at the BOA told Wig & Pen that both suspects had accounts at the bank.

Oldershaw’s Hedge. According to Amherst Police detective David Foster, Oldershaw believed that his request for $249 would yield less legal trouble [should something possibly go wrong]. If you steal $250 or more in Massachusetts, you can go to state prison for five years; If you keep the tab below $250, your maximum sentence is a year in a county jail. Unfortunately for Oldershaw, the state distinguishes between stealing and robbery, the latter (the above caper included) defined as taking something held or controlled by another person (maximum sentence: life in prison).

The Case of the Missing Key. In late April, Amherst police arrested Jeremy Michael Gilbreath, 22, of Wayland shortly after giving him—an alleged assault victim—a courtesy ride. The arrest came after police determined he had allegedly stolen a pair of police handcuffs from the cruiser. To his misfortune, he had neglected to swipe the key that went with the cuffs [if ever there were complementary goods. . .]. After he cuffed a women later that night, she phoned the police, who liberated her and took Gilbreath into custody.

Craftsmanship by Smith & Wesson

Wig & Pen Pontificates: It’s no accident that auto insurers wait until a driver is 25 to begin lowering rates. Their m.o. is not just about driving experience but the way that the Young Adult Brain (YAB) handles risk. Indeed, the YAB is not the cat’s pajamas when it comes to risk assessment/due diligence. Compounding the fracture is that YABs are especially vulnerable in a culture that emphasizes dreams-come-true while coddling aspirations with selective rosy evidence over critical thinking and falsification.

Say what? You’re also wondering why this blog has failed to note that robbing a bank and handcuffing an unenthusiastic victim are WRONG? If this has not yet occurred to you, think twice when your own young adult offspring tells you that he or she plans to make a bank withdrawal.

*Consider all assertions about the alleged perps to be alleged by the Amherst Police Department except where otherwise noted.

Meditations on Annoying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Annoying is a well-crafted, valuable read. The authors give generous treatment both to the social psychology and physical science mechanisms of much that annoys. That includes public cell phone conversations, the blaring of sirens, the buzzing of flies, the cracking of knuckles, the machinations of Newman on Seinfeld. As a closet Lothario, I was intrigued that attractive traits in courtship like independence and caring can prove annoying in marriage when they morph into aloofness and cloyingness. As a Red Sox fan, I was grateful to the authors for their resurrection of Yankee reliever Joba Chamberlain’s ordeal in the 2009 playoffs against both the Cleveland Indians and swarms of annoying midges from Lake Erie.

Forgive the authors’ occasional digressions that treat descriptions of scientific processes as ends unto themselves. They are, after all, science hounds. (Joe Palca is an NPR science reporter; Flora Lichtman is an NPR multimedia science editor.) Most of the time though, their physical science is apropos, like their description of the genetic and cellular mechanisms that screw up oxytocin flow, which correlates with an individual’s capacity to empathize and absorb stress (i.e. to be less annoyed and abrasive.)

Rare in popular social science books is the authors’ admirable scientific restraint in refraining from generalizing beyond their data—Don’t expect a unified field theory of annoying. But they do offer the insight that much that annoys us may be attention-commandeering stimuli that once presaged dire outcomes (evolutionarily speaking). In evolutionary terms, schlumps who got annoyed were more likely to survive. That makes annoying in the  21st century truly affordable. Why not, in gratitude, elevate your next dinner party with tales that enchant and annoy. Here's an example from Wig and Pen:

A Horological Annoyance. In the mid 1970s my late father’s wife redecorated the family homestead with a pseudo-antique table clock that announced its presence on the half hour with a metallic stridency that might have been a soundtrack for a cartoon featuring animated cookie cutters. One afternoon, while the lady of the house was out and about, a friend who repaired clocks as a hobby and who could stand the sound no longer, marched over to the clock and gently adjusted its chime hammer. Presto! Hyde became Jekyll. Metallic annoyance became dulcet. But my friend had only massaged a symptom of the underlying problem. When the clock’s owner returned, she immediately detected its kinder, gentler timbre, and demanded immediate restoration of its previous persona. I heard the clock’s annoying ring for the final time in 1983 on the night of my father’s funeral.

Glass-Is-Half-Empty Weather Forecast Images

Consumer advisory: In its popular 7-day forecast web page, the National Weather Service assigns a weather image to each day and night ahead that often views the weather-glass as half empty. As a former U.S. president might have complained, Those stormy pictures are often big hat, no cattle. That is why this blog as a public service has grafted two Seasonal Affective Disorder lights like bookends around the sorry sequence of weather images above. Note that 40% and 50% chances of rain receive decidedly rainy images. We might, of course, just as well be looking at 60% and 50% chances of dry weather.

Even more inspirational for the umbrella trade is the torrential rainy image at left, where the chances of no rain are 70%. Perhaps the Weather Service in its image choice is emphasizing the intensity rather than the chance of ill weather. On the other hand, if there is a 100% chance of only a 15 minute downpour, will the NWS serve up a tsunami image?

To date, this blogger has failed to resolve these troubling questions. Perhaps his friend, Dr. Roberto—an often reluctant economic forecaster—is right when he says: “Although weather forecasting is more reliable than many of our other predictive arts, the Weather Service like the rest of us may have much to hedge about, especially in covering for themselves should bad news prove worse.”

Graduation Wishes from on High

For the second year running, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony featured a nationally prominent keynote speaker that mirrored the university’s increasing national stature. Last year, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair got the call. On Friday, May 13, national political pundit and former advisor to four presidents David Gergen was at the podium welcoming his own generation’s future passing of the leadership baton to the generation that includes the 2011 graduating class.

Exit, Stage North. While few among the Class of 2011 were unenthusiastic about that prospect, they and Mr. Gergen were absolutely wowed by the message from outer space from astronaut Catherine (Cady) Coleman that followed on several supersized screens. Seated in the International Space Station with her hair coursing upwards in zero gravity, Coleman, who holds a Ph.D. in polymer science from UMass Amherst, emphasized the importance of teamwork. After releasing a miniature bobblehead likeness of the university’s mascot—the Minuteman—into weightlessness—she bid adieu to the Class of 2011 with the Serling-inflected message—I look forward to your future! Then she released her own seat restraint and levitating northward, vanished from the frame. View Cady’s extraterrestrial remarks and choreography here:

CadyProRes

Turning away from the American Public, Obama Embraces Us

At the end of his 9-minute announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s demise, President Obama threw his audience an unexpected behind-the-Barak-pass. Speech over, he turned 180 degrees and ambled off down a hallway with his backside to his audience. A remarkable forensic sayonara from an American president.

To decode that nonverbal passage, this blog spoke with several marketing professors and practitioners. “It’s about closure,” one of them remarked. “By showing us his back, he’s closing the book on Bin Laden and much of the 9/11 trauma. Obama’s body says better than W’s words ever did:  Mission Accomplished!" “After walking away from us, Obama takes a sharp left and disappears into another room,” noted a second observer. “His gait is calm and business-like as if he’s about to take care of more business of state, even though the nation is about to party.”

Another marketing pundit was more prescient: “By walking ahead and away from us, especially when he’s just registered a political slam dunk, Obama is inviting us to follow him--for six more years.”

The final 30 seconds of the Obama speech:

This Is Not a Peccary?

This is not a pig!!--Such a comfort for the zoo-going  public at the peccary corral at the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem. To cover most bases, the signage is in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, and Arabic. And it terminates with two exclamation marks to underscore its urgency and transcendent import. (See the photo below; the sign, of course, reads right to left.)

Source: FRGDR blog

 After all, “the other white meat” and the animal that gives it up are anathema to Orthodox Jews and Muslims. According to Leviticus, the pig has the desirable “cloven” hoof but doesn’t ruminate (i.e., chew its cud). To be zoo- and dinner-worthy, you need both assets.

Leviticus explains:

the pig, for though it divides the hoof, it does not chew cud, it is unclean to you. You shall not eat of their flesh nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you.

And the Qur’an's unambiguous position on pig consumption boils down to this: Just Say No! (or else!)

Enter the Peccary. But the peccary is a pigoid above the fray. So what if it they are known commonly as skunk pigs? So what if they are as hairy as Sean Connery’s back before Hollywood insisted that the original 007’s dorsal required a blade more persuasive than Odd Job’s? So what if they are members of the family Tayassuidae, a.k.a, New World Pigs, which belong to the artiodactyl suborder Suina, which also includes the bona fide pig family, Suidae.

Not to worry! In addition to cloven hooves, peccaries are blessed with the missing link to orthodox cred: a nonruminating stomach. (even though the organ has three chambers and an internal cuissinart that allows them to process roughage like prickly pear cacti.)

Peccaries for Peace. With that said, isn’t it time to elevate the peccary as a symbol of rapprochement in the Middle East? You’ve got a better idea? Let’s begin with our mutual tolerance for the little critters and erect a peace that lasts. Let's bring Arab and Jew to the peace table--a capacious table where all eat peccary together.




This Is Not a Peace Pipe?



Letting Their Freak Flags Fly

James Taylor;Paul Simon

There comes a time in many a follicle-challenged pop-star’s career when the decision to conceal hair loss looms large. After all, for many of those ageing baldies, the seductions of marketing still pander to their roots in a culture where youth’s magic horn plays on. Check out, then, the Maginot Line in the career of James Taylor—a boundary where the hatless vagaries of youth give way to concealment by haberdashery and other wiles. Note the career tipping point below between his Dad Love’s His Work (1981) and That’s Why I’m Here (1985) albums. For Paul Simon, concealment came much earlier in the 1970s. Paul opted for hairpieces, which he finally traded in for hats in the mid-1990s.

Across the Great Divide:
Dad Loves His Work (1981); That's Why I'm Here (1985)

On album covers, both artists have sported a frolic of hats. And both have embraced additional concealments like cropping their heads/faces right where hairlines might have launched in younger days.

Finally, they’ve also dispensed entirely with their own images on album covers (including Simon’s latest). Is Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints a subliminal longing for plumage lost? Is JT’s Never Die Young a lusting for hair beyond the pale of his and our species?

It troubles Wig & Pen that both ageing boomers--true American artists--continue to duck and cover.  Can they reconcile their roles as tragic artists with membership by default in what Larry David celebrates as "the bald community."  Here's hoping they reconcile and let their 21st Century freak flags fly.

Hitlers in America

In the clip below, Chris Hitler, an investment and real estate specialist in Mequon, Wisconsin, wants you to know that he is passionate about personal storage. Listen to the clip, and you’ll hear Chris, without pretentiousness or guile, deliver his pitch. For Wig & Pen, the experience was revelatory—everything about Mr. Hitler exudes middle American normalcy except, of course, the drop-dead weight of his surname. Comics pursuing straight-man roles should study this offering. It could raise the late Phil Hartmann from the other side.

This blog discovered Chris Hitler in the indispensible web article, A Brief History of Hitlers in America, by Howard Altman. Altman describes the town of Circleville, Ohio as Hitler Central. You can find five generations of Hitlers buried in its Hitler-Ludwig Cemetery. For marmoreal photos, click here.

At the Gates in Circleville

The End of the Line? Altman’s article is a great read but like many writers who embrace a subject, he is excessively bullish about it:

You might think there wouldn’t be any Hitlers in America. But they’re everywhere, Altman remarks. ". . . In fact, there are 50 or so Hitlers living in these 50 states and their history with our country goes back over 200 years.

Fifty Hitlers is what I call a one-way trip to extinctionville. Let’s be generous and say that 40 have child-bearing potential. Twenty of the 40 would likely be women, who I think would be itching to trade in their surname for a spouse’s. That would likely apply to the trend in hyphenated married names, including those of the implicated offspring. What self-respecting American bride would prefer the married name of Hitler-Messerschmidt to the less controversial, more efficient Messerschmitt?

That leaves us with 20 male Hitlers. Even given a reproductively fit cadre from this subset, how many women do you think would line up to be the first on their block to conspire in Hitler, The Next Generation?

Inspiration for this post came from the pathbreaking TV series Hill Street Blues. In several episodes of season three, a traffic scofflaw—profession: unemployed stand-up comedian—sported the name Vic Hitler. Valuing true talent, Hill Street Detective J.D. LaRue signed on as his short-lived agent. But the jokester was doubly cursed: his name proved a liability with club owners and his on-stage narcolepsy proved a show stopper. Sample this Hitler’s day in court in the clips below.

The Brand that Was You--2011

The brand that was Lou

For a second year running, this blog celebrates the enchanted craft of branding. What a growth industry it has become! Just like power tools, ping pong balls, universities, and New Age retreats, individuals have their own brands too. Such hopes had I for the improvement of my own personal brand 14 years ago after discovering Tom Peters’ heady article, The Brand Called You !

But even though I’ve repeatedly failed to realize my brand potential, it’s a comfort to know that future opportunities for revisionism await, if not in life, then afterwards via my local newspaper’s obituary column.

For several years, the Northampton, Massachusetts-based Daily Hampshire Gazette has turned to reader-penned necros.  Beside the honoree’s name and age, the author gets to distill a lifetime’s "footprint" in a word or two. Without purgatorial delay, here’s my Top Ten Roster from the past year. I’ve changed the names and ages of the innocent (and the experienced), but left their personal "brands" intact.:

10. Inez Gomulka, 87,~
       Lived All Her Life on the Family Farm
 
 9. Tobias Z’Beard, 58,~The Perfect Gentleman

 8. Chadwick Cook, 74,~ Protector of Special Places

 7. Abigail Sweeney, 88, ~World-Class Grandmother

 6. Dianne Boger, 82, ~Data Entry Pioneer

 5. Arthur Colovito, 71, ~A Quiet Man

         ~Tied for 4th place~

 4. Thaddeus Prosky, 62, ~3 Holes in One

 4. Ned Romanowski, 91, ~Golf Fueled His Life

 3. Ozgood Curtis,75, ~Career in Funeral Services

 2. Sidney Charles, 38, ~Saw Humor in Everything

 1. Grady Gerber, 58, ~Born to Ride

Ave, Pope Jeremy!

Still Wafer-thin after all theses years

The Borgias, which debuted last night on Showtime with the no-holds-barred episode, “The Poisoned Chalice/The Assassin,” stars Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia, a.k.a. Pope Alexander VI. Without question Alexander could really fill a vestment (See above.) Jeremy Irons, on the other hand (like the late George Harrison), has—to euphemize—gaunt good looks. Who would spite him for not bulking up like Robert De Niro in the final segments of Raging Bull?

Irons, of course, is so convincing a thespian that he should easily overcome the slings and arrows of horizontal challenge. Especially since Showtime has gone out of its way to omit likenesses of the real Rodrigo from its marketing (i.e., we are not anchored to his true image). To underscore Irons’ dramaturgical gifts, this blog dares to present the original Rodrigo and his Showtime scion side by side. The Borgias’ dramatic grist, of course, should also help Pope Jeremy to rise to the occasion. After all, combining Church corruption and “Family” business (a la the Sopranos) should prove an unbeatable, transcendent opportunity.

Entranced at Amherst College

“I know trance music when I hear it,” might have been the response of late U.S. Supreme Justice Potter Stewart had he attended last Friday night’s (March 25) concert as the final installment in this year’s Parallels Series, an inspired new music series at Amherst College. For a nonstop hour and 45 minutes, Ethiopia’s greatest singer, Mahmoud Ahmed, backed by Boston’s Either/Orchestra—a progressive ten-piece jazz ensemble—had the audience of 400+ under its power.

What was it about that dark, eclectic music that provoked college-age women to rise up from their seats, shaking and swaying in serpentine thralldom? Or the rest of us to embrace a more seat-bound version of such submission?

Seduced by the darkness. The relentless pulse gained power via the dark confines of the music’s architecture. A pentatonic scale that almost never resolved on “comfort” notes like major fifths, and a tonal range that rarely exceeded two octaves kept the listener in a state of willing confinement. So did horn tones that avoided primary colors and excessive brightness.

The effect was to propel the audience forward in a truncated musical space--as if through a dim-lit subterranean passageway just high enough to stand in. Along the way, periodic syncopations from Mahmoud’s baritone and the horns added spice to the relentless forward progress. The musicians offered additional digressions--call and response vocal and instrumental volleys and extended instrumental improvisations (some of them excellent).

The redoubtable Grace Zabriskie

During one of the concert’s many sultry moments, it occurred to me how splendidly the music might work as a soundtrack in some of David Lynch’s tawdrier movies—perhaps even in Twin Peaks. Swaying in my seat, I closed my eyes and all at once saw a giant likeness of Grace Zabriskie’s face homing in on my own. A true demonstration of the power of music to enchant!

Mahmoud Ahmed’s basaltic voice originates in the back of his throat and takes you for a ride. At age 69 he remains a vocal marvel; his commanding presence got stronger as the evening progressed. Listen to a clip of him below with the Either/Orchestra,which--just like in in Amherst--offers a stunning exploration of crepuscular soundscapes through nuanced arrangements and dark dissonances.

A Chip off the Old Corporate Block

The next time you reach for a Dorito, consider its rounded corners. Those beveled vertices are soft, but it wasn’t always that way. Before the great Dorito makeover of 1994, they came to sharp points, just like at your friendly Mexican restaurant. In the company of a good sangria, who hasn’t felt the prick?

I first became aware of Doritos’ rounded corners ten years ago on a tour at a Frito-Lay factory. When we got to the Dorito production line, our host showed us the metal molds, each with a myriad of soft-cornered triangular negative spaces awaiting infusions of cornmeal. No sharp points; fewer law suits to worry about, he confessed.

That explanation, of course, was never part of the official Pepsi/Frito-Lay party line back in 1994. (Nor will you find it in Dorito’s present-day Wikipedia entry.) It’s easier to eat them without the sharp corners, noted Jerry Vogel, Frito-Lay’s then Director of Corn Products in a 1994 New York Times article. . . a lot of the scrap in the bag, he added, was from the corners breaking off.

Will the real Dorito take a bow!

No doubt about that, but back then high-profile lawsuits against food manufacturers/purveyors and, of course, the tobacco industry, were all the rage and the source of deep-dish corporate neuroses. Remember the great McDonald’s scalding coffee incident of 1992? Seinfeld did, in an episode when Kramer bungled a sure-thing settlement in the wake of a scalding latte tucked inside his pants. Who told you to put the balm on? demanded his motor-mouth attorney, Jackie Chiles. In a later episode, Jackie experienced similar frustration when Kramer kissed off a windfall from the tobacco companies. But by redesigning the Dorito for architectural superiority, Frito-Lay made its chip litigiously bullet proof. And brace yourself--they did consumers a favor.

View the legal tete a tete here.

New Glocks on the Block in Amherst, Massachusetts

Last week, when my son’s alarm failed to detonate for school, trouble ensued. So I promised that we’d buy a new clock at our local oasis for controlled substances, CVS. Perhaps because of the aura of drugs, we began riffing compulsively—a la Who’s on First—about buying not a clock but a Glock—e.g., a high-performance Glock with a quiet mechanism, etc. Of course, it was easy pickings to home in on several stylish Glock-branded Clocks via Google.

A Glock in a Clock; that sounds like Dr. Seuss material, observed a friend who has never fired a gun. That immediately evoked fond memories of The Cat in the Hat, featuring its superhero’s precarious balancing acts with concatenations of household objects (see below) This high-profile blog would never alter such copyrighted material, but invites you—consider it a rainy-day family project—to photoshop the requisite alarm clock and Glock to the top of the heap.

What, no Glock on a Clock?

Finally, while flat out on my New Age chiropractor’s training table last week, I mentioned my recent blog post on forthcoming legislation in Texas that will allow concealed guns onto the Lone Star State’s public university campuses. My chiropractor’s response: You should have seen the Valentine’s Day ad that I saw for a pink derringer-size Glock surrounded by chocolates—all in a heart-shaped box. So far, this blogger’s searches for that keepsake have come up empty. But Wig & Pen is pleased to submit the forensic evidence below, no less felonious to the diabetically challenged.

Fishy Business Revealed



Source: The Wall Street Journal

When I was five, my family lived next door to an affable guy who owned a fish market on Water Street, the old Jewish commercial center in Worcester, Massachusetts. His wife was a bleached blonde and a chronic malcontent--often with him in the crosshairs. “Nathan—don’t come near me until you’ve showered,” was her ritual greeting to him after a fishy day’s work. He was a good provider; but she had higher aspirations, my father told me years later. And, added my father, she subscribed to one olfactory truth--that you could take Nathan out of the fish market but you’ll never take the fish market out of Nathan. How did he de-scent? A shower must have just been the beginning, my father speculated.

Those buried memories rose to the surface last week when I saw the artful cuts of salmonized graphics (see above) accompanying the Wall Street Journal’s March 2 feature, The Slippery Business of Picking Fish. What a paean to the salmon!—graphics that suggested salmon wall-plaques, salmon contra-dance skirts and the kindest cut of all—a salmonic likeness of the Green Mountain State. (So what if it’s Wild Pacific Salmon?)

The Mostest in Symbiosis. Salmon and Vermont, in fact, have coevolved in landlocked harmony even before Wig & Pen. Vermont salmon (Salmo salar) are genetically and physically identical to their Atlantic brethren—both are balletic leapers, spawn in streams, and migrate to open waters—the latter to the ocean and the former to Vermont’s lakes (Champlain, Dunmore, the Northern Lakes of the “Northeast Kingdom).  Click here for more than you want to know about Vermont’s landlocked salmon.

And how might a veteran fish monger best exorcise the smell of Vermont salmon or, for that matter, an entire fish market? There’s no silver bullet, remarked the proprietor of North Shore Seafood on King Street in Northampton, Massachusetts. “Throughout the day I use hand soap and lemon juice,” he confessed. “Of course I shower when I get home and use a bit of bleach on my clothes. One thing’s for sure: if I go out at night, it's not in clothes that I’ve worn at work--I do value what's left of my social life.”

Guns in Texas College Classrooms: A Shot in the Arm for Online Education?

Will Kevlar Save in Texas?

Blogger’s preface: Two years ago, my friend Osgood,* a dynamic professor of accounting, left my campus in Amherst to head up an accounting department at a large private university in Texas. Lately, I’ve been thinking about him in light of forthcoming legislation in the Lone Star State that will give college students and their professors the right to pack heat—including concealed handguns—on the state’s 38 public university and college campuses. Although the law targets public higher education, my friend’s campus and other private universities will no doubt be in the crosshairs of change in the “Don’t Mess With” state—change that aspires to make gun possession a protective right for (almost) all.

That’s especially poignant for my friend because introductory accounting regularly ranks high among courses that fail the most students. Credit two factors: the course’s level of difficulty and its status as a gateway for majors outside accounting. If you plan, for example, to get a business degree in marketing or human resources, soldiering on through intro accounting is a rite of passage. (After all, it is the language of business; isn't it? ! Ask your CPA. See the top ten list below for Temple University.) Passing intro accounting, then, is analogous to, but less formidable than, passing organic chemistry if, say, you plan to become an orthodontist or a proctologist.


Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.com

 Gird Thy Loins. The bottom line, then, for my friend and his intro accounting staff is—Protect yourself at all times from students who may harbor resentment and,of course, guns. If you’re on the dais in a lecture hall, you’re the alpha target in the house. If 20% of the 200 students in your class are failing, and just 25% of them (i.e., ten) are armed and dispersed among the audience, their own accounting problem becomes your logistical problem. First, Wig & Pen recommends that you seek intimacy with Kevlar. Like the professor depicted above, wear a suit that declares—“I'm a bipedal fortress.” Avoid nambi pambi Kevlar executive vests: Don’t conceal your protective cred like a hidden asset in an accounting footnote. (Explore the latest in protective wear here.)

Second, value good marksmanship when hiring teaching assistants. Remember, they are your first, best line of defense. Position them tactically and if possible, assign failing students to a pie-wedge-shaped sector that widens toward the front of the hall. Just imagine, the hapless, ill-intentioned student in the second row doing a depreciation problem. Before he can say “straight line,” he’s fit for amortization himself, felled by friendly fire.

And finally, if like Wig & Pen you’ve never fired a gun beyond Boy Scout camp, consider this strategic prospect: Online education is becoming as expansive as all of Texas!

*I’ve changed his name to protect what’s left of our friendship.

Old Man Walking—Just like a Train

Get Out of My Way, You Jerk, a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, examined the causes and consequences of pedestrian sidewalk rage. The feature cited average rates of locomotion in Manhattan for men (4.42 feet per second), women (4.10 fps), cellphone users (4.20 fps), tourists (3.79 fps), and others.

And it sparked my memories of an elderly Brit with two oversized canes and the air of a professor emeritus whose forward progress gave new meaning to the word glacial. Until last June’s heat wave, he would walk each day onto my campus (the University of Massachusetts at Amherst), eventually stopping for lunch at a campus cafeteria.

Although he moved at a tempo apart, no one who ever saw him failed to admire his grit and his walk ethic. Still, when he extended a cane onto the crosswalk at Massachusetts Avenue—a large thoroughfare that bisects the campus—he became the scourge of most drivers at directional cross-purposes. At those crossings, prominent Ped-X-ing signs and tight campus police enforcement ensure that foot traffic rules.

So how long might a driver on the wrong side of the cane wait for our friend? One day I timed his passage across the two east-bound lanes (15 feet across total). Getting across both took him 42 seconds—an eternity if you’re behind the wheel, perhaps an eternity and a day if you’re a student behind the wheel.

A 42 second stroll--15 feet across

Just like a train. “For me it’s not unlike coming up short at a train crossing,” observes a friend who studies the behavior and psychology of decision making by accountants. “At first there’s shock and disappointment that you just might have an indeterminate wait on your hands. How you adjust—how you shift gears mentally and emotionally—is critical, of course, to your short-term disposition. Why not count train cars from Peoria or root for the aging professor as he goes for the gold?”

Sometimes, though, a more pragmatic response can present itself. If you’re in the far lane, and the cane has just touched down on the crosswalk, you have 21 seconds before it reaches your lane. Many drivers, in fact, grab daylight while they can. But a strict interpretation of Massachusetts law, i.e., “law driving,”--the stuff you learn to get your license—requires that you stop your vehicle whenever anyone sets foot (or cane) on a crosswalk. Fortunately, there are broader interpretations of the law: “In a situation like that,” observed a campus police officer, "my recommendation is—use good driving judgment!"