Taking the temperature

I happen to like colder temperatures. Not just at home, but at the office as well.

As long as I remember, people in offices have tried to break into that locked plastic, wall-mounted thermostat to control the temperature. And if you’ve ever tried to do it – not that I ever have because that would be wrong – it’s never been an easy thing to do. So I hear.

Occasionally, some maintenance guy will leave the cover unlocked, and you’ll have access to it for awhile. But despite the painstaking effort to put the cover back in a position that makes it look like it’s locked, eventually some thin-skinned whiner who wears a mohair sweater and scarf when it’s 90 degrees will rat you out because “it’s just soooo cold in here!” Then they lock it up again.

These thermostats don’t just control where you’re sitting. They control different zones in the office. The problem is it’s the same kind of common-sense zoning you find on Bourbon Street, or the Vegas strip. Maybe it controls the temperature where you’re sitting, as well as a corner on the complete other side of the office.

Fortunately, technology has made changing the temperature and messing with people much easier. Sort of.

Everything’s digital now, so you can set the temperature much more accurately. Instead of turning a dial, and waiting for that “pfsssst” sound, now you just hit an up or down arrow.

The problem is the locking system has also gotten better. Screens and their housings can be locked so only a designated person can change the temperature.

But the good news is, since so many agencies have drunk the Kool-Aid on the value of open office plans, which either limits the “zones” or makes them much larger depending on how you look at it, the opportunity to irritate a greater number of people in a shorter amount of time is very real.

Carpé freeze ‘em.

Working on my tan. Camry.

What do the Holy Grail, the lost city of Atlantis, mermaids and a particular tan Camry have in common? I have exactly the same chance of finding any of them.

I wrote here, and here about the auto accident I had almost a year ago that totaled my 2008 Lexus ES350. The only glimpse of the person who hit me, then ran, came from the other car she hit. The person who crashed into us was driving a tan Camry.

I work a lot in Orange County, so I have the (clears throat loudly) pleasure of slogging it out on the 405 South quite frequently – the same freeway I was on when I was hit. And even though I know I’ll never find it again, every single time I'm driving down there, I keep looking and hoping I'll stumble across the tan Camry.

Of course by now, the driver has either repaired the front end damage to her car, painted the car, sold it or all of the above. And because there are so many Camrys on the road, many of them tan, my adrenaline and hopes are on a constant roller coaster ride during the daily commute.

In this case, like the lottery, I know the odds and I keep playing anyway. I’m not even sure what I’d do if I saw the car. I know what I’d like to do.

But of course it'd depend whether I was driving my car or the wifes Land Cruiser.

Father's Day 2014

I don't usually re-post on here, but today's my day and one of the perks is I don't have to write a new post if I don't want to. Especially when this one - which did fine last year and the year before that - will do just fine again.

I think you dads know what I'm talkin' about..

Since today is Father's Day, I thought I'd take a minute to pay tribute to the great dads of our time. No, not the real ones, the tv ones.

It occurred to me as I was looking for these pictures that the fictional dads are as varied as the real-life ones are.

The difference is that they make great decisions almost all the time. And even when they don't, they get to resolve the situation properly in a half hour or an hour.

Sometimes they're just as much a mystery as the real ones are. For example when they appear to us after they've died and we've crashed on an island. As they so often will.

And sometimes, the people you think are least equipped to be a dad turn out to be great ones.

I used to joke that ninety percent of the job was just showing up. But two teenagers later - while it's still a big part of it - I've learned the percentage is way off.

To all the real world dads, who need more than thirty or sixty minutes to make things right, who are there for their kids at breakfast, after school, after dinner and in the middle of the night, doing their best day in and day out to provide everything and more for their kids, Happy Father's Day.

The back room

A few years ago, for about nine months, I had the good fortune to work at FCB in San Francisco. It was a fun, jet-setting kind of gig because I had to commute back and forth from Santa Monica, where I was living at the time. I’d leave Monday morning, and fly back Friday night. Racked up lots of frequent flyer miles, and also got to know a lot of the airport personnel by name. Thank you for the free upgrades.

That was the good news.

The bad news is it was on Taco Bell.

If you’ve followed this blog for any amount of time – and if you have, thank you, but you really need to spend more time outside – you may remember I wrote here about my time up north. One thing I happened to leave out was the night I went looking for trouble.

Normally, trouble usually has no trouble finding me. But on this night, I decided to act on something I’d heard. I don’t remember if it was in a noir motion picture from the fifties that took place in San Francisco, or whether the concierge at the hotel had mentioned it to me in passing. I'd heard there were all sorts of backroom crap games in Chinatown, and I was setting out to find myself one.

I also don't remember where I heard this little tidbit: the best way to find one was ask one of the many Asian cab drivers.

So, very late in the evening, I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take me to Chinatown. When we got near it, he asked for the exact address, and I told him I didn't have one. I wanted to be taken to a crap game.

He laughed, shook his head and told me there weren’t any. By the way he said it, I could tell I’d struck gold with this driver.

I told him not only did I know there were, but I knew that he knew where they were. I was insistent he take me to one of them. After a lot of back and forth, denial and more denial, he finally said he did know of one. But he wasn’t going to take me there.

When I asked why, he said because the games were closed to outsiders, especially Caucasians, and if I went into one I might not come out.

Even if I didn't hear about them in a movie, it was beginning to sound like one.

You know how seeing a police car in the rear-view mirror after you’ve had a couple beers sobers you right up? That’s how fast I lost my desire to play in a back-room crap game.

He took me back to the hotel, where I tipped him generously and thanked him for being so honest with me.

He said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Summertime, Spartans and bagpipes oh my

I have to admit as open and freewheeling as I like to think I am, the truth is I'm probably much more a creature of habit.

For example, there are two staples of my summer every year. The first is a four-and-a-half day trip to San Diego for Comic Con with my son. The second is our family tradition, now in its twelfth year, of a few days in late summer at the Hotel Del Coronado. I look forward to each of them equally, but for obviously different reasons.

I mean, you almost never see women scantily dressed as Spartans from the movie 300 at the Hotel Del. And try as you might, it's just impossible to find a four-piece shrimp cocktail for forty-five dollars at Comic Con (I've taken the liberty of not including a picture - you're welcome).

Each place is unique in its own way.

This year however, in a fit of wanderlust and gypsy channeling, the wife brought up the idea of going someplace different. When I heard her say that, two thoughts went careening through my head: first, by different I hope she means in addition to, because there's no way I'm giving up my two summer traditions (cue Tradition from Fiddler on the Roof).

And second, how much is this going to cost me? Especially at this late date.

Still, I like the idea of adding a third leg to the summer routine.

In summers past, before Comic Con and the Del, we’ve gone up north and spent a few days in San Francisco. One particular time, we enjoyed a week in the Hapsburg Suite at the Fairmont that we'd won in a charity auction. I like to file it under worse things could happen.

But I'm afraid the wife is thinking of a somewhat larger, more distant trip - more along the lines of Scotland.

Now don't get me wrong. I've been told more than once that I have legs that were meant for a kilt. And once I get past the idea that bagpipes sound like a bag of cats screaming to get out, I actually enjoy them.

The problem with a trip like that, as with so many things in life, is timing. We’re already late in the game as far as booking air fare and hotels at any kind of reasonable price. Plus – and this is a good problem to have – I seem to be getting fairly booked up work wise, so I don’t know how I’d clear the days. With freelance, no worky no money.

Still, because I've been known to occasionally act on a whim, pour gas on the credit cards and ask forgiveness later, I’m going to brush up on my brogue and see if I can acquire a taste for porridge and kippers just in case.

If it does turn out to be Scotland, the only thing I know for sure is I’m not playing golf when we get there.

Quick warning: clip has language not be suitable for the youngsters.

The rude of the problem

Being interrupted is right up there on my list of pet peeves, along with paper straws, napkins made from recycled material and one-ply toilet tissue.

I think it stems from the ugly-American-in-a-foreign-land practice of thinking if you just talk louder and repeat the same thing over and over, they'll understand what you're talking about. Even though they speak a different language.

Not always, but much more often than I'd like, I work in an industry that runs on equal measure of rudeness, ego, asinine comments, loud and I know better than you do.

It usually goes like this. You'll be in a conference room, either on your first or thirty-seventh meeting of the day. You have the floor and you're speaking. Without warning or reason, someone starts talking over you. Then another person joins the chorus. Pretty soon, they're not all just trying to talk over you, they're also jockeying to talk over each other.

They don't hear or care what you're saying, because, you know, what they're saying is So. Much. More. Important. It's like those drivers on the freeway who're behind you, pass you, then pull in front of you because that one car length makes All. The. Difference.

I hate those people. And I hate when it happens - in meetings, on the road and in real life.

Apparently I'm not the only one in advertising who hates this. Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, principals at the Kaplan Thaler agency in New York, wrote a book called The Power of Nice. In it, they point out the many times being nice in business has turned potential clients into actual ones. By the way, that's not the reason they suggest being nice - it's just a side benefit.

Don't get me wrong. There are many pleasant, decent, courteous people in the business who are just as frustrated by the rudeness and bad upbringing all too frequently on display.

They're just not in my meetings.

Right turn

Despite what several people think, if I had to position myself on the political spectrum I'd say I'm a centerist Democrat. There are things that make sense to me, and instead of aligning these positions with a party affiliation, they should be labeled as "common sense."

I know, it's a quaint notion.

I come from a time of wildly liberal thought. And, in spite of the fact I closed down my junior high school for two days by organizing an anti-war protest with my friends Sandy and Mark, who belonged to the Young Socialist Alliance, and whose parents belonged to the Socialist Worker's Party, it's safe to say currently my views don't fall that far left on the spectrum.

Because they don't, they often run counter to my more liberal friends. But I think a lot of opinions - on both sides - are knee-jerk (or in the case of the right, just jerk - BAM! I'll be here all week) reactions fueled by emotion instead of reason.

The point I'm taking the long road making is while I've moved more to the center, I've noticed some of my friends have swung to the way far right. These are people I grew up with. We came from the same circumstances, environment and educational background. We all held the same positions on issues during the years we were in school together.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, they started posting things on Facebook revealing just how far right they've become in their thinking.

It's not just their opinions, which they're certainly entitled to, that disturbs me. It's their seemingly complete lack of compassion and empathy disguised as political opinion. It reflects a hardening towards less fortunate people that's as callus as it is unreasonable. Maybe they always felt this way. Maybe it's the way their parents felt. Maybe they just don't like to think. Or compromise. But the mindless vitriol that spews from them makes me mourn for their humanity. And it also makes me think maybe I never really knew them as well as I thought I did.

Despite how it sounds, I don't judge my friends on their political views. But I do judge those views. It's a fine distinction, but one nonetheless.

What I'm getting at is it just makes me sad. Sad some of my friends, some who I've known since elementary school, have become so hardened in their souls. It seems their true selves are being held captive somewhere in a deep, dark basement at Fox News, being forced to watch the insane, angry, petulant, hostile, aggressive, misinformed, manipulative ramblings of Hannity, Beck and O'Reilly 24 hours a day.

Mental waterboarding.

I'm for the death penalty. I support gay marriage. I don't believe guns should be outlawed. I believe a woman is the only one who should be making choices about her body. And I also believe in compassion for the less fortunate. This casual disregard, Fox News mentality, taking refuge behind comments like "Let 'em pull themselves up by their bootstraps." is all bullshit. You can't do it when you don't even have bootstraps.

There for the grace of God goes anyone who thinks otherwise (during the recession, I knew a lot of people who were one paycheck away from reconsidering their opinion on government assistance).

It's hard to believe Arizona once had a senator who wasn't an angry, old grandpa who traded his dignity and reputation by choosing a uniquely unqualified airhead to be his running mate. But it did. During his tenure, Barry Goldwater was referred to as Mr. Conservative. Today, because of some of the common sense views he arrived at later in life - like a woman's right to choose, accepting gays in the military (His quote was "they don't have to be straight, they just have to shoot straight") and not letting religion into politics - he's been denounced time and again by the right, with their philosophy that you have to think or behave a certain way to be a good and moral American.

If someone like Goldwater, who many consider father of the conservative movement, could eventually arrive at reasonable, common sense views on the issues, maybe my more conservative friends will too.