Last spring I canceled my satellite and I watch more TV today than ever. Do I have rabbit ears? No. I have the Internet. I figured out that I had literally spent thousands on cable then satellite paying for shows that I never really got to see. Two years ago I bought my first CSI subscription from iTunes. Then one day about 18 months ago I discovered that CBS rebroadcasts many of its TV shows online. I picked up a Mac Mini and plugged it into my new LCD TV. I began streaming programs directly to my new TV. Since the Internet rebroadcasts air after the official network broadcasts, all I really needed was the discipline to watch my “shows” at odd times. The money I’ve saved by not paying for cable or satellite actually paid for my Mac Mini. Somehow I found Glee while surfing the FOX website. I had put off watching it despite the rave reviews from my friends because I thought, hey I’m middle-aged. This show is for kids. But I was once a kid.
When I was a kid I was in choir. My teacher was Mrs. Bridges we won our “Regionals” but I never competed at “Nationals”, we moved. I was a geek as a kid and had few friends. In junior high had a tendency to want to hang out with the popular kids and that really got me nowhere. I used to lock myself in basement and sing for hours. I got a bit smarter in high school about picking my friends. Friends I could watch Rod Stewart sing “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” with and scream like a crazy woman or hold hands with in the dark while Mike Meyers went on a killing spree or friends who would cover for me when I sneaked out to meet the forbidden boyfriend. I was still a geek, though, lugging every school book I owned in a big red bag knocking people aside as I went to class. The red bag of courage what what my classmates used to call that bag.
I ignored Glee until the “Single Ladies” episode. Then I was hooked. Something about being a misfit but wanting to be accepted resonated with me. Every week I find myself swaying on the couch singing. I’d hold up a lighter while swaying on the couch if I wasn’t so worried about the fire hazard. I sing in my home more now than I have in the last decade. My voice is no longer the solid reasonably trained alto that it was; it has more cracks in it than a windshield in New Mexico, but I sing none-the-less.
The Glee Finale featured three songs that I love and own. Journey’s “Lovin, Touchin, Squeezin” and Lulu’s “To Sir With Love” both on 45 and Queen’s “A Night at the Opera” featuring “Bohemian Rapsody” on LP. LP and 45s were, uh, lumps of vinyl that music used to be recorded on.
The Glee Journey is a journey of the Soul, from adolescence, to young adulthood, through middle age, old age to the end. Will Schuester, the club’s coach, said there really is only one beginning and one end to life and the rest is one big middle. What we stuff in that middle is really what matters.
Last night was a wonderful season wrap and there was enough substance to keep me singing until the Fall season premier. People are surprised that the show is a hit, but I’m not. FOX picked it up within 15 hours of receiving the script. I suspect that during those 15 hours the executives at FOX were transported back to their own adolescence.
Share your thoughts about Glee. Please comment.
Every business coach and mentor I have ever had from Robert Kiyosaki to author Phil Laut, stress that a sale occurs when value meets price. In other words, a person determines how much something is worth to them before they pay for it. They can evaluate the experience of owing a product or the presumed experience of owning that product before they buy. Apple gets high margins for its products because the user values the experience he has owning an Apple product enough to pay a premium for that experience. I drive a Prius because I place a premium on the feeling I get while driving it. I buy whole rather than processed food, because I value the overall effect whole foods have on my health. Ellen Ruppel Schell argues in Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture
that we have become so focused on price that we have lost sight of the value proposition. What is the value proposition? When looking at an item or service, that we intend to buy, we determine its value in our lives. When the value of the item or service exceeds the price we are willing to pay, we have a value proposition. The value of the item or service we are buying is actually worth more to us than the money we are going to part with. About 20 years ago I went shopping for shoes with my friend, Robin. Her grand parents had just sent her $200 dollars. Before I knew it we were on 5th Avenue in Manhattan and Robin was handing over the entire sum for a single pair of shoes. I was flabbergasted. Robin told me that her family taught her that you never skimp on shoes. Robin bought shoes that could be resoled and repaired, shoes that were intended to last years. Having a pair of shoes that would last for years was more important to Robin than the $200 dollars in her wallet. I used to be a pretty enthusiastic skier. Because I have very narrow feet, most ski boots are ill-fitting. I went to a local shop in Durango about 15 years ago and the boot fitter fitted me with a pair of Rossignols. The fit was great, but the price tag was $600 dollars. About a month later, I went to a ski shop in Albuquerque and plopped down $450 dollars on a boot that fit just okay, but had the advantage of being cheaper. Thus began my boot fitting nightmare. Six years later I had shin and ankle injuries and had gone to every boot fitter I could find between Taos, Breckenridge, Purgatory, Wolf Creek…you get the picture…trying to make the cheaper boot fit properly so that I could actually enjoy skiing in it. I finally went to a boot fitter in Aspen and walked out with the Rossignols. I asked for and got a discount, but that wouldn’t have mattered. I had learned my lesson: when it comes to ski boots, the fit is key and trumps everything else including price. I spent hundreds of dollars more than I needed to because I let price trump value when it came to that pair of ski boots.
Several years ago I read The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works–and How It’s Transforming the American Economy
. That Wal-Mart is a powerful company is really an understatement. They can save forests by demanding that their suppliers reduce their packaging, they can support wild-caught fisheries rather than farmed fishing and save coastlines, they can undercut the competition and drive local small business out of business. Wal-mart is the nation’s largest low-wage employer. Their current motto: “Save money, Live better”. At the time The Wal-Mart Effect was written their motto was “Always Low Prices, Always.” The Wal-Mart Effect was about the high cost of those low prices. Catchy isn’t it?
One of the featured stories in the book was of Snapper, maker of lawn mowers. They stopped being a Wal-Mart supplier because they could not make a quality lawn mower to meet the Wal-Mart price point of less than $100 dollars. Snapper concluded that there are worse things than not being a Wal-Mart supplier. Charles Fishman, author of, The Wal-Mart Effect, mused that at the prices Wal-Mart charged for its lawn mowers, you could afford to get one every year. Which is good, because at those prices, you don’t expect one to last longer than a year and it probably isn’t worth repairing anyway. We just replaced our lawn mower, purchased in 2006 for $100 dollars with a $200 dollar model purchased last week. Both from Wal-Mart. Frustrated with a mower we could barely get to work each year, we were hoping for quality by going with the higher price point. What is our real cost? So far $100 dollars per year for lawn mowers with the added cost in frustration and stress of having a product that is difficult to start.
I am not too old to remember the time when a family purchased a lawn mower and that mower lasted season after season with perhaps a tune up every other year. Not so any more. In our culture today we value price over performance. It wasn’t always that way, but it is now. I have a Poulon Weedeater purchased at, you guessed it, Wal-Mart. It’s cost was $87 dollars. Its heart and soul are plastic and therein lies the rub. Parts that should not fatigue and break from simple use, do. Why, because they are plastic. I replaced the plastic choke housing a few years ago, for $18 dollars. Now there are so many other broken parts, all plastic, that the cost of the parts exceeds the original cost of the machine. I replaced the Weedeater with simple garden shears, and a lawn service, but I wonder about our land fills being filled with useless and poorly-made equipment.
Is this what happens when price trumps common sense? That we are doomed to pay more for an item over the long haul because we are constantly having to pay for replacements? By my count, our $100 dollar lawn mower actually costs $300 dollars and counting.
How do you work out your value proposition? Please comment.
Six weeks ago an explosion at the Deep Horizon well off the US gulf coast caused that well to begin spewing 800,000 gallons a day of crude oil into the water. Satellite images today showed the spill creeping toward the Florida Coast.
I was 27 and in medical school on the East coast when the Exxon Valdez hit a reef at Prince William Sound and spewed 11 million gallons of crude into the Ocean, destroying fisheries, birds and other wild life. More than 20 years later Prince William Sound is not fully recovered. The Exxon Valdez spill provided ample opportunity to study what happens when a catastrophic oil spill occurs and cannot be cleaned up. It is estimated that the residual oil along the coast line will degrade at a rate of 4% per year. Humm at that rate I’ll be dead and in the ground before the oil from that spill is gone.
I am sure that when this explosion is investigated careless and silly actions and omissions will have been determined to cause the explosion and hamper attempts to staunch the issue of oil into coastal waters. After all Exxon found it too expensive to repair the radar on the Valdez so the ship was literally blind as it moved through the water and the crew was exhausted because Exxon ignored its own policies regarding crew rest and relief.
Sarah Palin chanting “drill baby, drill” suddenly seems puerile, the rant of a decidedly uninformed politician who simply wanted to garner votes and win an election.
We are being asked to believe that while drilling in deep waters may not be as safe as we thought, it is okay to drill in shallower water, because we can do that safely. How can we even believe that we can drill safely underwater when we cannot transport oil safely over the water?
Unlike most people, I don’t need Obama to get mad. I just need him to develop a credible energy policy, something this country has never had. Dare I write it ? An energy policy that does not involve oil. I would like to think you can erect systems that can overcome any level of incompetence. Engineer around an idiot as it were. But it takes human effort and will to engineer such systems and, in the rush for oil, those systems will likely never be implemented in the first place or will be disabled when they are needed the most.
CNN lists new terms that are part of the American lexicon because of the explosion at the Deep Horizon well. The list would be funny if the situation were not so tragic for the list delineates the methods that have been attempted to contain the spill but have failed. Now the effort may depend on relief wells that will have to be drilled to control the oil leak. Relief wells that are months away.
When I was in medical school on the East coast, the Exxon Valdez disaster was a disaster that occurred on TV. It seemed impossible that I would ever see any direct evidence of the spill ensconced as I was in the North East. Now scientists predict that unless the situation is controlled, citizens living on the East cost will get a very up close and personal view of the spill for it will truly be coming to a neighborhood near them.
Please comment.
One word of caution, this blog deals with issues affecting people in middle age, which is why I am devoting some time to health and nutrition. I don’t have growing children so I won’t ever post frugal ways to feed a family of four. Trent Hamm of the Simple Dollar, does that much better than I ever could.
Last week I wrote the vegetarian dilemma defining what I believe the dilemma is: that vegetarian cooking so often lacks flavor and texture that it often leaves you wanting a slab of meat just to feel satisfied.
I excitedly tried a new recipe, spiced potatoes with lentils and barley. On the nutrition scale it scores big time. On the flavor scale, the recipe sucked big time. I am still eating it, because while my palate is quite unhappy, my colon is. I keep thinking about all that wonderful nutrition with each spoonful of that crunchy-yet-flavorless slop that I consume.
What went wrong?
The dish is boiled. So some whole potatoes are pan fried in olive oil and coated with prefab cajun seasoning. (Paul Prudhomme has a great recipe for home made cajun spices that actually involves using fresh herbs. His recipe for cajun spices can be made in advance and stored in an airtight container.) The potatoes are then boiled along with the peas, barley and parsley the recipe calls for in a stock pot filled with vegetable broth. The recommended lentils are canned and lemon juice is added to the broth. The liquid is allowed to evaporate and the barley, lentils, peas and potatoes are tossed together along with lemon zest to create a brown white mixture that is not even remotely interesting to look at, much less eat.
What would I do differently, for I will try again? Toss the recipe…it truly sucks and start over. Start over with red potatoes rather than the new potatoes the recipe calls for. Boil until fork tender, then toss with olive oil and K-Pauls’ homemade cajun seasoning and roast them until golden.
Next, boil the lentils, peas and barley in chicken stock rather than vegetable stock, drain. Then toss in fresh parsley, lemon juice, the potatoes, garlic, and a roasted pepper. Add the potatoes and salt and pepper to taste. The prep time will be twice as long as the original recipe, but the flavor should be quite good.
I have used a recipe from the NYTimes a wheat berry in tomato sauce for topping vegetables. The Times recipe uses this sauce with Asparagus but the sauce can be used with roasted butter nut or acorn squash. It is quite good. The recipe calls for coriander which makes the aroma just as pleasing as the taste.
From the Moosewood Restaurant is the farm-fresh meals deck. This is a card deck with well-seasoned recipes. Including a roasted squash, beans, corn, sage and red onion concoction that is quite good.
Why am I spending so much time on this topic? We are becoming a nation of heavy people. Travel internationally and you’ll see that we are truly becoming the heaviest people on the planet. We love our protein and all of the animal fat that goes with it, but red meat isn’t the only source of protein. If we don’t learn to get more of our proteins from whole grains and less from animal fats, especially red meat, there won’t be a health care system in the world or a dollar amount big enough to provide for the health needs of our citizens.
Please comment
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