CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

Dragon Bowl Asian Bistro

1221 W 11th St

Houston, TX 77008

(713) 426-2750

http://www.dragonbowlbistro.com/

Dragon Bowl Asian Bistro is a new restaurant at the edge of the Heights, at the intersection of N. Shepherd and 11th. We’ve been watching them build out the space for it in the strip center and have been anxiously awaiting the opening of another nearby food choice. It finally opened recently and today we finally made it in to try it out.

All three of us got bowls, and they were pretty good. Mine was shrimp, vermicelli, assorted veggies in a citrus sauce and it was quite tasty. I had steamed dumplings as an appetizer and they were okay. The rest of the group liked their food as well, but there were no raves.

There were two issues that detracted from the dining experience. The first is that we waited over 30 minutes from the time of our order until the food was ready. I can understand that a new kitchen won’t operate at peak efficiency for a while, but that seemed a bit overlong for the simplicity of what we ordered.

The second issue was that the menu had been pared down quite a bit to match what the new kitchen was capable of producing, but even the reduced menu was overstating what they could deliver. I first ordered the tempura shrimp appetizer, and was told they weren’t currently making that. I then ordered the fried dumplings and was told they could do steamed but not fried, which didn’t make any sense to me as the obviously had the dumplings to steam and their open kitchen showed plenty of woks with oil for frying.

There were also a lot of grumbling, unhappy patrons waiting around for their food. The place is pretty small so some of them tried to engage us in the camaraderie of their shared conversation about how slow the place was, but we were giving the kitchen the benefit of the doubt seeing that it was so new, and demurred from joining into the dis-fest.

However, I will say that I agreed with their opinions, even if I felt it impolite to blather them about a small restaurant within earshot of the busy crew working in the open kitchen. Having been peripherally involved in the restaurant business I can say that their kitchen is both overstaffed and overslow, and a single well-trained chef with maybe one assistant could have produced all the food much faster than the 4-5 people they had bouncing around back there like pinballs.

The bottom line was that the food and prices were at just about the right place for us to keep Dragon Bowl on our radar, so we plan to check back after they’ve had time to work out the kinks. But for now we’re not paitent enough to beta-test this new restaurant.

Update 8/22/2006

We went back to DBAB today for lunch, and there was much improved efficiency in the preparation and delivery of the food. The menu is still quite sparse, and while the ingredients are very fresh and plentiful, they still don’t quite have the….pizzaz…to put this place higher up in our rotation. We’re rooting for them, because they’re convenient and use good ingredients, and we’re crossing our fingers that they get it all together and become successful before the money runs out.

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Today the world derives the vast majority of its energy from non-renewable resources like oil, coal, and natural gas. There is a finite amount of these fuels, and at the current growth rate of usage they will all be used up within 100 years. That means that some of the young babies of today will live to see the end of the age of hydrocarbon fuels. What will they use to fulfill their energy needs?

There is a strong push to replace hydrocarbons with “green” energy sources, using so-called renewable resources such as sunlight, wind, or thermal energy. While I can see that these resources could be considered renewable given their current levels of usage, I fear the impact on our environment if we scale usage up to the point where they could provide most of the world’s energy needs.

Consider wind power, which today consists of a few wind farms in a few places, and which have no discernable impact on weather patterns (or the energy supply, for that matter). However, if you scale up wind power so that it is ubiquitous, and you remove all of that wind energy from the meteorological realm, what would be the resulting long-term impact? I have been unable to find any estimates of this, nor do I see a logical way to predict such an impact, even if one were to attempt to figure it out. Today we see huge, wild shifts in the world’s weather with each degree of temperature change — what would be the impact of reducing wind energy by one mile per hour around the globe?

The same with sunlight. Today people have solar cells or solar water heaters on the rooftops of their homes, and there are a few large-scale commercial solar energy farms, but again nothing noteworthy in relation to the overall world energy supply. And these few solar installations really have no impact on global weather, as they are so small as to be inconsequential. But, again, imaging scaling up the production of energy from sunlight, with vast farms of solar cells or solar water heaters absorbing energy from sunlight, energy that would previously have hit the ground and contributed to the natural forces of our biosphere. What if large-scale solar energy farms reduced the global temperature by one or two degrees?

The same can be said for geothermal energy, as well as other “renewables” such as biomass or flowing water. These may seem to be potentially endless reserves of energy, but when one uses one’s imagination to extrapolate usage up to providing any significant portion of the worlds energy needs it becomes much less clear as to the long-term effects and actual “renewability” of these resources. Keep in mind that if you take a long enough view of the world, oil is a renewable resource, we just have to wait a few geologic millenia for natural forces to replenish the oil supply naturally (just like it was created in the first place). An energy source is “renewable” only if it can be replenished faster than it is used, and no one can yet say that this is true for sunlight, wind, biomass, or thermal energy sources.

In my opinion there are two realistic, long-term energy resources available to mankind today. The first is nuclear energy, and the second is hydrogen energy, and they actually represent pretty much one energy source. You see, hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe and is also an efficient energy source. The trick is that it takes a great deal of energy to extract hydrogen from its primary sources, such as water. So we need nuclear plants in remote places producing hydrogen to be used everywhere else. And while both hydrogen and nuclear fuel are both finite resources, the known quantities would provide for mankind’s energy needs for an uncountable number of millenia.

We are at the end of the Hydrocarbon Age and at beginning of the Hydrogen Age. Let’s climb on board.

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I have worked in technology for almost all of my professional career. Much of it has been in a consulting or contracting mode, where I would work at a customer company’s site instead of at my employer’s. So I’ve been able to observe dozens of different companies and approach process and change within their oranizations, specifically their IT organizations.

Contrast the following:

• I had a sales call at one international energy firm where they were interesting in really bleeding-edge integration of vendors that weren’t quite ready, and I was told the company’s approach was “if we’re not making mistakes, we’re not moving fast enough”. Wow, that’s like a blank check for a consultant!!
• I worked for three years at another international energy firm where the smallest change had to be submitted a week in advance and a change affecting multiple servers had to be in the system for a MONTH prior to actual implementation.

Which was the more successful firm? Depends on what you’re measuring — is it revenue, is it profit, or is it the company’s long-range investments in future technologies and revenue sources? Besides, the test of a successful energy firm is when prices are below $50 a barrel, so the answer may not appear for a while.

Another dichotomy:

• My first job after college was as a marketing analyst with leviathan insurance company. When I realized I had a knack for programming and systems development, I applied internally for a job posting for a server administrator. I mean, I’d taught myself to program pretty sophisticated stuff in less than a year, I’d be a great internal recruit, right? Cheap and willing to learn. However, HR couldn’t even let me post for the job because it was more than two analyst grades above my own in their job classification system. This is the same company that installed a cube wall in front of a floor-to-ceiling window because the employee sitting there wasn’t a Manager and only Managers got window cubes. Seriously.
• My third job after college was to move to national technology consulting firm, coming from a very small-potatoes tech consulting firm. I told the hiring manager what my salary expectations were… and when it came time for the offer, he actually offered me more (to ensure I was still happy after I started and realized that my ask price was below market). Pretty amazing.

Now, that hiring was during the heydays of the tech boom, I realize that, but (from my persective), “Leviathan Mutual” passed up on a great internal promotion opportunity because of hidebound process and procedure rules, while “Nimble Consulting” broke protocol to accomplish what they needed to accomplish.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I by no means advocate “shooting from the hip” for technical work. (Here is where people who know me in person will start to snicker). On the contrary, I am the Queen of Procedure Docs. (It has been a mostly peaceful reign). I write procedure docs to ensure two things:

(1) The Safety Blanket: The Customer feels reassured that we know what we’re doing.

(2) The Caffeine Factor: The technical team (myself absolutely included) can perform our middle-of-the-night tasks like upgrading servers without having to remember all the steps in our head.

In my mind, the above two reasons are very practical reasons for documentation. Even if you don’t agree with it, your customers will be happier if you show them what you’re doing. And it is simply a good idea to write down anything you plan to do at 3 in the morning. But you’ll notice I didn’t list

(3) Because I Said So: Make sure everyone else adheres to some process simply because the process exists.

But I find as my technical career progresses that process-slavishness doesn’t have to be company-wide. It can exist among people and departments, and I realize as I get older (and crankier, no doubt) that I am having less and less patience with it. I have no patience for those who live in the “World of Should” (e.g., “People should follow the process, because that’s the process”, regardless of the real-world situation). This is a jewel with many facets:

• There’s no need to put “helper” text on an application form, because everyone should have received training on the app.
• I shouldn’t have to code a “back” button on a web site page, because the browser has a back button, and the user should know to use that instead.
• We shouldn’t have to help a customer who caused their own problem, the customer should just fix it themselves.

My issue with all of the above reminds me of something a friend’s husband once said: “Well, you might be right, but you won’t have any friends”.

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“But The User Should Memorize their Training Booklet…”

I find in my life and professional career that there are two types of people:

• Those that live in the land of “should”
• Those that live in the land of “is”

I had a chat with a friend in college, and I asked the question whether or not health insurance companies should pay for preventive maintenance. “Of course they should!” she exclaimed. I countered by saying that insurance companies are essentially financial organizations, if preventive maintenance didn’t lower their costs, why should they do it? Her response was, “Well, well… just because it’s right!”

And that may be… it may be “right” (in the moral sense) to provide preventive care to people, but no company is going to do it just because it’s “right” — they’ll only do it if they’re losing customers because they don’t offer it, or if companies start to pay extra for health insurance in order to attract and retain their own employees. That’s how the free-market economy works. That’s reality.

So if you want to get your health insurance company to offer preventive maintenance, I would argue that the least effective thing you could do would be to tell your health insurance company that you need it. They don’t have really any big financial incentive to do it for one person whose health insurance is determined by their employer. A better idea would be to tell your employer you need it, and/or get other employees to join their voice to the chorus. Then maybe your employer (who actually has the power to change health insurance companies) will ask your health insurance provider for it. An even better idea is that if you’re the one who really needs it, pay for it yourself or go find an employer whose health insurance offers it.

Similar things are rampant at work. Lots of people get caught up in “should” and “it isn’t fair”. Things such as:

• There’s no need to put an intuitive “helper” text on an application form, because everyone should have received training on the app.
• I shouldn’t have to code a “back” button on a web site page, because the browser has a back button, and the user should know to use that instead.
• It isn’t fair that we have to help a customer who caused their own problem; the customer should just fix it themselves.

I find these types of arguments / whining very frustrating, because wanting people (especially customers) to act the way you think they “should” is really an exercise in futility. It’s like hitting your head against a brick wall — it might seem like a good idea, until you do it. And no sane person would think that they could actually break the wall with their skull.

The husband of a friend of mine once said (in response to something I was whining about), “Well, you might be right, but you won’t have any friends”. It was such a great truth I was immediately dumbstruck. He was right: what good was expecting people do X if it didn’t make for a harmonious relationship? What good is expecting users to use the back button if they aren’t web-savvy enough to know about the back button? What good is demanding a customer fix her own problem if it makes her so mad she takes her business elsewhere?

The Reaction Equation

This brings me to another corollary of this same philosophy:

E + R = O

or,

Events + your Reaction = Outcome

I can’t take credit for this one either; it’s from a seminar I attended for work many years ago. The concept is this: in this equation, the only thing you can tailor to affect the “O” is your “R”. The events are just gonna happen, so figure out what outcome you’d like to see and pick your reaction according. Again, this is so simple and logical and practical, yet it was a revelation to me.

Yes, a rainy / stormy day on your tropical vacation sucks. But if your desired Outcome is a fun and relaxing vacation, you can decide that your Reaction on that day is to get that all-day spa treatment you were thinking about: then you’ve tailored your reaction to still ensure that you get a good vacation. Or you can do whatever else you never get enough time to do during the week that would still equal “relaxing vacation” for you: playing chess, napping in the hammock, reading a trashy novel, cross-stitching.

Same thing goes for work: if a coworker slacks off and doesn’t do their job on your project, you can either:

1. Get irritated that the coworker “should” have done their job and refuse to do it yourself, or
2. Send the coworker a reminder email to do their tasks, or
3. Do it yourself to make sure it gets done and be really mad about it, or
4. Do it yourself to make sure it gets done, then address the issue appropriately later

Which one you pick depends on your desired outcome. If your primary desired outcome is to point out that your coworker isn’t doing their job, options #1 or #2 are for you, but they preclude or risk the outcome of successful project completion. If your desired outcome is that the project finish on time / successfully, then you have to pick #3 or #4, since you can’t really affect whether or not the coworker does their job. If you don’t want it to happen all the time, then maybe #4 is the right path.

So the equation doesn’t really mean there’s one right answer, but it does mean that you focus on what you want out of the situation and tailor your reaction. This can be especially helpful in interpersonal relationships that drive you crazy. If you have a friend who constantly whines about her various physical ailments and you wish she would stop, your main choices are that you can ignore it, listen and sympathize, or tell her flat-out that you’re not interested. Assuming you still want to maintain this friendship, #1 is probably your best option. #2 is going to get you more whining, and #3, telling her to stop, risks the friendship. It may seem “cold” to look at friendships this way, but it can actually be quite freeing — or at least, self-educational.

I was friends with a girl once who had gone through a terrible divorce. Initially I didn’t mind listening to her and being her friend, but eventually it became this horrible nightly parade of negativity, much of it heaped on me (long story, but she saw parallels between my life and that of her ex-husband). After a while when nothing I tried could dispel her endless venomous rantings, I quit being her friend. That was the only reaction I could come up with that got me to a good outcome — not having vitriol hurled at me.

Everyone Does What’s Easiest for Them

Now, none of this means you can’t vent if something irritates you. I mean, one of your outcomes is probably to make yourself feel better about a given situation, and if venting to a neutral third party helps, then it’s definitely a good reaction to have. But in general I find when people look at their “R”s, they all do what’s easiest for them. (This bit of wisdom is from my wonderful husband Engineerboy).

You probably know at least a couple friends who go visit relatives regularly, and a subset of those friends would probably prefer not to go visit at least some of the time, but they go anyway. This is because it’s easier for them to be considered a “good son/daughter/grandchild/cousin” than it is for them to disappoint their relatives. Their desired “O” is to be a good family member and not shirk obligations. For someone else, the equation may work out so that it’s easier for them to deal with disappointing their family members then have to leave home for a visit. Their “O” may be to not respond to guilt, or to simply be home more. So everyone does what’s easiest for them and their personal makeup / situation.

One last example: picture an office worker who routinely brings in fancy coffee to the office. She freely shares the coffee with the other team members, because it’s easier for her to pay for expensive coffee for everyone than it is for her to endure the crappy coffee that’s provided. Her desired Outcome is quality coffee every morning. If the company then decides to improve their coffee situation, it would be silly to demand that the company reimburse her for all the fancy coffee she bought in the past — after all, she was just doing what was easiest for her.

So?

Anyway, I just had to get this out of my system and now I feel better. I’ve tailored my reaction to certain people I interact with whose behaviors I don’t understand by driving toward my desired outcome: being able to feel better about it without actively being hostile to people I know. Plus, maybe there are a few of you out there that will find these truisms as much of a revelation as they were to me. And that’s the best Outcome of all.

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So I had an experience yesterday that caused me to need to come here and vent. Mynagirl and I work for the same company in a downtown Houston office building, and our building has a cafeteria. It is a garden variety corporate cafeteria, with food that is neither really good nor really bad, and fairly reasonable prices. They typically have four or five general areas for food…a mexican line (tacos, burritos, taco salads, quesadillas, etc), traditional food line (chicken breast, meat loaf, fish, turkey, vegetables, etc), sandwich line (sandwiches), grill line (hamburgers, grilled chicken sandwiches, chicken fingers, fries, etc), and twice a week a pasta line where they make pasta to order.

There is also a salad bar, dessert area, frozen yogurt machine, Starbucks cofffee, fountain drinks, bottled drinks, and fresh fruit.

So, not bad for a corporate cafeteria.

But yesterday when Mynagirl and I sat down, there was a man and woman at a table not really that close, but close enough for us to have to endure the guy pontificating for 20 minutes. The subject of his sermon? He ranted and raved and railed about the fact that the cafeteria was “ripping me off” because they charged him for the extra cup of gravy that he asked for and for the cup of ice and water that he got.

Now, some of you are saying, “Yeah, brother, right on…fight the power!”, while the majority of you are saying, “Man, what a cheap bastard.” I fall squarely into the latter category, and find that as I get older I am beginning to have less and less patience for people who have an entitlement mentality. These are people who somehow expect the world to be “fair” and somehow perceive that large organizations like businesses and governments should somehow have bottomless pits of money that they should be used to make life easier for cheap bastards with a sense of entitlement.

In the specific example of the guy yesterday, here’s what happened from my perspective:

• Cheap Bastard (CB) orders chicken fingers which come with a little plastic cup of gravy. CB asks for a second little plastic cup of gravy, thereby taking more gravy than is built into the food costs. CB then is surprised and offended that the cafeteria wants to charge him $0.25 for this cup of gravy.
• CB comes into the cafeteria empty-handed, and has not bothered to purchase and schlep his own bottled water with him (which the cafeteria allows), nor has he filled his own cup with water from one of the many water fountains available all over the building. Instead he grabs a cup that the cafeteria provides, goes to the ice machine that the cafeteria bought and maintains and fills the cup with crushed ice from the crushed ice machine provided by the cafeteria, then moves to the push-button water-dispenser that was purchased and is maintained by the cafeteria and fills the cup (with water that the cafeteria pays for), then grabs a lid provided by the cafeteria, then grabs a straw provided by the cafeteria, then goes and sits at a table in an area provided by the cafeteria, finishes his water, throws the remaining water and ice, along with the cup, lid, and straw into a waste receptacle that the cafeteria maintains and pays to have emptied. And then CB complains that all of this convenience costs him another $0.25. He truly is a CB.

And I think that’s where the major disconnect is between the CB’s with a sense of entitlement and the rest of us. I truly don’t think that CB understands that his cup of gravy or that cup of ice with water are a very real, hard cost for that cafeteria business. And although he may not think it’s worth $0.25 to have the luxury of extra gravy or he doesn’t think that it’s worth another $0.25 for the convenience of having cups, lids, straws, crushed ice, and water available, he should realize that it is not the job of the cafeteria to give things away. The cafeteria is a business, not a charity, and so has every right to charge for these things, and it appears to me that they are charging very fairly. CB is free not to eat there and/or not to get extra gravy or a cup of ice water if he doesn’t want to pay for them. However, paying for them and then complaining that they are not worth it are just plain stupid. The fact that CB paid for them proves that they were worth it to him, unless he was forced through the line with a gun to his head, or something.

In yet another example which also happened in the last few days, I was traveling home from a business trip and was in the Seattle airport, and was going through a fast food line to get some nachos to nosh while waiting for departure. The couple in front of me got a taco plate, a salad plate, and two medium drinks (trust me, I remember exactly). After they ordered the wife went off in search of a table, while the husband kept tabs on the progress of their lunch order. The girl who was checking them out was obviously new, and rang up his total. She told him “$12.97, please!”, to which he responded, “No, that can’t be right” and directed his gaze to the menu. The girl double-checked her figures and claimed it was correct, but the guy insisted it was too high. He then ran through the pricing from his perspective. “First we have the taco plate meal, then we have the salad plate meal, and those include drinks so the total should be eleven fifty-something” he says.

At this point the new checkout girl was completely paralyzed by what to do, as you could tell she didn’t agree with him or his math, but wasn’t sure enough to say so. So she summoned a more senior lady from the back, who reviewed the tab and pronounced it correct. Mr. Man continued to dispute the charges, and pointed out to both of the ladies that there was a handwritten sign that said that the two dishes they had ordered were available as a meal for price X as opposed to the a la carte pricing where the drinks were added separately. The senior lady finally acknowledged that he was correct and rung him up for the displayed price.

Now, there are those of you out there who are again saying, “Yeah, brother…right on….fight the power!” while the rest of you are again saying, “What a cheap bastard!”. Again I am in the latter camp. I can hear all you CBs out there reading this and finding it incomprehensible that I can fault Mr. Man for fighting to get the correct price, but I do, with extreme prejudice. Because while Mr. Man argued with these oblivious cashiers, he made the rest of us poor, tired, huddled business travelers wait for 5 extra minutes (while our already-prepared food was cooling on their counter), all to save about $1.50. I was literally at the point of handing this schmuck $5 and asking him to get the hell out of everybody’s way, because enough was enough. The restaurant was obviously not purposely ripping him off, and the amount in question was trivial, but Mr. Man stood there making everybody wait to make his point. Now, I know that he had every *right* to do that, but it was still rude to everyone else in line, and Mr. Man should have said to himself “Close enough” and moved on.

Now, if Mr. Man had been buying a car and the price was off by $5,000? Go ahead and make a stink. If he paid for his groceries at the store with $100 bill, but only got change for a $50, stand your ground, and more power to you. But making a stink in a busy airport line making everybody else wait in order to make your point about $1.50? That’s just beyond the pale and begins to border on a disorder. Let it go, pal, you’ll get it back many times over in good karma (or the avoidance of bad karma), trust me.

I’ve known many CB’s personally, and one thing I’ve found is that most of them have never actually run a business themselves, or worked in a job where they were responsible for profit and loss. Either that, or they see money simply as a game that they must always win, not matter what the stakes. These are the same dorks that will drive across town to save $0.05/gallon on gas, burning up any cost savings with their meanderings but not caring, because they get to “win” with the lowest price.

When your imperitive is to maximize the bottom line, such as with your own business or running a product line within a larger business, you realize that you can’t afford to give things away, or to waste time making sure the accounts balance to the penny. The for-profit enterprises that do seem to give things away actually don’t, because they either charge you for them elsewhere and hide that cost, or know that they’ll get future sales/profits from you by investing in providing you with an incentive.

For example, that home security system that they install for free? It’s the minimum system and they know you’ll almost certainly add on additional sensors and things, plus they charge you a monthly recurring fee for monitoring the system, and that’s where they make the money. The restaurants that *do* give away extra gravy and cups of water? They’ve built those expenses into their food costs already, so you and me and everybody else there is paying for that “free” stuff.

Remeber, as it says in the abstract up there, TANSTAAFL, which means, There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, and that is a truism that is very true indeed…steeped in truthiness, in fact.

Based on the little I know about CB from his rantings, I’ll bet he’s also a bad tipper (BT). And I find that BTs and CBs both have an entitlement mentality. The world owes them something. It owes them what they think they deserve, regardless of they they’ve actually earned it or lucked into it. Dammit, I just *know* I’m supposed to have a big, flat-screen TV to watch the Super Bowl on, and the fact that I don’t means either that my company isn’t paying me enough or that the companies making the TVs are charging too much for them. It couldn’t possibly be that I can’t afford one, because that’s just not right.

Don’t you know people like that?

Are *you* a person like that?

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We should be right in the target demographic for Whole Foods Market. Mynagirl is vegetarian, I try to eat relatively healthily, we like natural and organic foods, and we don’t penny-pinch when it comes to grocery shopping.

However, we go there as little as possible, even though there are some things that we can only get there. For example, I stopped eating ground beef from grocery stores and restaurants (click here to find out why) but I eat organic and/or grass-fed ground beef, both of which Whole Foods carries. Yes, Kroger and Randall’s carry some form of organic ground beef, but it’s frozen and the volumes they sell means that it’s usually not the freshest. But the meat counter at Whole Foods has trays filled with fresh organic and grass-fed ground beef.

Whole Foods also has a produce section filled with organic fruits and vegetables, rather than the few organic things carried by mainstream grocery stores. We also prefer natural sugar as opposed to refined white sugar, whole grains as opposed to bleached white flour, preservative-free as opposed to shelf-stable-for-our-convenience, and additive-free as opposed to chemically-treated-and-or-irradiated-to-kill-any-possible-bad-things-while-introducing-who-knows-what-long-term-health-effects.

So, Whole Foods Market should be the place for us, right, right?

Wrong! Wrong!

The reason that Whole Foods is wrong for us is because every trip there is an exercise in frustration and annoyance, and a test of my patience with people. You see, I have almost zero tolerance for the following:

• Narcissists
• Rudely oblivious people who think the entire world not only revolves around them but also needs to cater to their every need and whim, including freeing said oblivious person from having to demonstrate the common courtesy that all humans must demonstrate to get along in this world, such as sharing space in the aisles of grocery stores with other carts, moving out of peoples way if one is blocking the entire pathway (particularly if there is plenty of room to get out of the way and said oblivious person is blocking the entire pathway simply because they are oblivious and self-centered)
• BMW drivers (or is that the same group as above?)
• Health freaks (those who take “healthiness” to OCD levels)
• Poseurs
• People with obvious affectations
• People who park in the fire lane of grocery stores to load/unload, making all other traffic go around them and reducing traffic flow to one lane, simply for their own convenience, and oblivious to the fact that if all shoppers did the same there would be anarchy and chaos, but they count on the fact that nobody else is rude enough to do what they do so they know they can get away with it
• In other words, every single other person in WFM other than Mynagirl and me

Not only that, but the layout of WFM (at least the one on Kirby in Houston) is a tightly-packed rat maze with all of these oblivious, rude, narcissists packed in together like sardines jostling for position with as little human compassion or interaction as possible, and with zero friendliness or politeness that I have experienced. And that last part is the literal truth. I have never interacted with a WFM patron who was even slightly polite, and most are outright rude, brusque, and dismissive. I don’t know if it’s the lack of protein in their diets or the fact that many of them eat healthily only as an affectation while not really beleiving it, and so are cranky at constantly doing something they don’t want to do, but feel they must do in order to keep up the imaginary image they have of themselves.

You may be thinking that perhaps there’s something that I’m doing to trigger these reactions, but trust me, I’m not. I was raised in a small Texas town by a mother who taught me to be polite and friendly and to treat others as I would like to be treated. I’ve tried that at ‘Hole Foods Market – for example, at a particularly tight intersection I’ve stopped to allow cross-aisle traffic to go, waiting for someone in the other lane to stop and let me through, as I was stopping to let them through, and instead have experienced person after person breezing past as if I were the Royal Guard keeping the hoi polloi at bay while their procession passed. And it was very clear that I wanted to cross the intersection, and if I hadn’t finally decided to just rudely cut somebody off and force my way into the flow, I’d still be there.

Now, you may say that that’s life in the big city, and I should just get used to it. Well, I lived in the Northeast (NY/NJ) for several years, so I understand how to live in a brusque and rude society. And up there, it’s actually not rudeness, because it is the expected behavior. That’s the way everybody is, and one is expected to simply assert one’s self similarly – no harm, no foul.

But this is Texas, where people are friendlier. And in virtually every other retail situation that I experience, I get normal Texas hospitality. But not at ‘Hole Foods Market, for some reason. And I go to all kinds of other snooty places here in Houston, and still don’t find myself feeling like I’m in some rat-infested little market on some street corner in New York, dealing with brusque, uncaring idiots. Only at ‘Hole Foods Market.

And I think that may be part of it – WFM has laid their stores out to be like a cramped NYC deli/grocery, and the people who shop there I’m sure include a high percentage of people who subscribe to the Sunday edition of the New York Times, and think the only real place to see a play is Broadway, and make sure to make one or two shopping trips to NYC each year, because that’s the only place to really get good fashions, don’t you know? And so they watch Annie Hall and Sex and the City and The Sopranos and decide to put on those New York airs and blend.

Yeah, I’ve got your blend right here, pal. How about this? How about you remember that you’re in Texas and that here people’s default behavior is to be friendly to each other? How about you put aside your affectations and airs and treat other people like human beings when you’re at ‘Hole Foods Market? And how about you park in a parking space, just like the other 95% of the people there, who somehow manage to struggle and strive to roll their carts an additional 50 feet to their cars, which you seem to be unable to do so must pull up and inconvenience everybody else?

And how about the next time we cross paths in the aisles and I have the right of way and you try to cut me off, I just push my way in front of you, slap your cart and say, “Hey, I’m shopping here!!”

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While I’ve never liked the idea of eminent domain, I’ve been able to make an uncomfortable peace with it. Until recently, eminent domain defined a right held by governments and municipalities to forcibly take ownership of property for a fair price regardless of the owner’s wishes to sell, as long as there was compelling case that “public use” would serve the greater good.

For example, suppose a city decided to build a park in a certain area, and all but on of the landowners agreed to sell to the city for a negotiated price. The last landowner, however, holds onto his empty parcel of land that he bought as an investment and demands a price that greatly exceeds recent market prices. It’s clear, in this case, that the landowner is trying to stick it to the government, knowing that he has them by the short ones as the last holdout for a major project. So, the government claims the land under eminent domain and pays the landowner the going rate.

In a less clear-cut example, suppose the evil landowner above was replaced with an 80 year old widow living on the land in a house she’d lived in for the last 50 years. Now it’s not so clear-cut, and it was this type of situation that caused me to have intellectual problems with eminent domain. Who is qualified to weigh the need for a community park against a lifetime of ownership and memories? It always felt un-American to me that cases like this often ended up in the forcible condemnation and claiming of the land, followed by the widely televised bulldozing of the poor old widow’s lifelong home.

However, while there were cases in the past that I would consider abuse of eminent domain, they were nothing compared to the new definition of eminent domain provided by the Supreme Court.

Now, based on the recent Supreme Court ruling (Kelo v. the city of New London, Conn.), the definition of eminent domain has been expanded so that “public use” now includes the ability to forcibly take land and give it to private developers who assert that they can create a material improvement for the community, such as more jobs, bigger tax base, etc. So in the past, eminent domain could claim land for public use such as parks, roadways, etc. Now public use includes taking privately owned land and giving it to private companies to develop more profitable enterprises with the land.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote the principal dissenting opinion, where she stated, “Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.” She also stated that this decision eliminates “any distinction between private and public use of property — and thereby effectively [deletes] the words ‘for public use’ from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment”.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate dissenting opinion where he says that the court is changing the interpretation from being for “public use” to being for “public purpose”, and sums up that change by saying “This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a ‘public use’.” He then further stated that “Losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities. Those communities are not only systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social use, but are also the least politically powerful.”

I couldn’t have said it better than Justices O’Connor and Thomas. This decision will *clearly* benefit large, wealthy companies…who are the only companies with both the capital to stage an “urban renewal” project and also the political clout to cloud the judgment of local officials into stealing land from rightful owners in the name of “improvement”.

Isn’t this America? I got to the land first, I own it, I’m putting it to good use, you don’t need it for “public use”, so keep your goddam hands off of it! I don’t care that Pfizer wants to expand their plant, I was here first. Don’t you remember kindergarten? No cutting in line! Also, I’m not trying to hold out for more money like some carpetbagger…I don’t want anything from you, other than for you to leave me alone. I believe myself to be a reasonable man, but this issue gets me so riled up that I’m not sure what I’d do if somebody tried to take my home and give it to Wal-Mart. I might end up on CNN in some kind of stand-off. And I consider myself not only reasonable, but VERY reasonable. I fear for the repurcussions when a case like this involves less reasonable people.

The one and only positive aspect of this case is that the majority opinion contains language stating that this ruling does not preclude governmental entities from enacting laws to restrict this type of eminent domain. Many state legislatures are already considering legislation to restrict eminent domain, however my hopes are very low. We are asking governments to restrain themselves from increasing their tax bases. Not only that, but whispering in their other ear are huge developers filling their heads with tails of marina$, resort$, spa$, shopping center$, and office building$.

I wonder who will win that argument?

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Some songs are so sweet, so romantic, so personal, you just have to imagine how great they would be as a wedding song. Here’s my personal list as I run across them:

• In My Life, by The Beatles — I’m partial to this one since it was at our wedding
• Into the Mystic, by Van Morrison — you have to hear this song if you’ve never heard it before. It is so beautiful and wonderful I tear up every time I hear it.
• When I’m 64, the Beatles — Just wonderful.

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So one of my favorite web sites, The Smoking Gun, has dug into the story behind the supposed memoir by James Frey called “A Million Little Pieces”. According to their findings, many (if not most) of the key events depicted in his book either never happened or are wildly modified and exaggerated. Now, most memoirs contain certain dramatic license, usually of this type:

• Retorting to cads in a pithier manner than real life
• Embellishing the details of what went on behind closed doors
• Endlessly deep wells of altruism
• Rose-colored memories of one’s bucolic childhood and/or gut-wrenching remembrances of childhood abuse
• Crazy exes
• Rehab as a virtue and not the pathetic bottom rung of an egocentric, self-inflicted downward spiral
• Invention of the ThighMaster
• Etc

We, the reading public, expect a little fudging of the facts for better reading, because the truth is that we are all mostly mundane and the absolute, literal truth of the events of just about anyone’s life would make for dull reading.

However, Mr. Frey has gone beyond the expected bounds of dramatic license for non-fiction works. It appears that the truth of the matter is that he spent his life as a spoiled, coked-out frat boy, nothing more, nothing less, and then finally stopped snorting blow long enough to write a fiction book that contains some small aspects of his actual life surrounded by very huge imaginings and tall tales.

For example, he derides rehab as useless and encourages people to kick drugs by using the slogan “just hang on”. Perfect. That’s like telling a depressed person to “just cheer up”. If he was in fact addicted to drugs, and he managed to quit them on his own without treatment, that might be noteworthy. However, the fact that it worked for him does NOT make going cold-turkey with no support the most effective way for true addicts. I would not be surprised to find out that although Mr. Frey may have been an abuser of drugs, that he was not a true addict and so his blatherings about coping with drugs should be discarded, if for no other reason than they are based on a sample size of one (very impeachable source) and have not been proven to be repeatable.

In another case of melodramatic license, Mr. Frey twists the details of a tragedy from his high school days into a “Rebel Without a Cause” moment in his life. The facts are that two 17 year old girls were riding with some other guy in a car, and the guy raced a train to the crossing and lost. He was broadsided on the passenger side and both girls died. The driver survived, was prosecuted for his crimes and served time for the accident, due to his blood alcohol level. The main players in the story, interviewed by The Smoking Gun, have a vague recollection of who James Frey is, but also have a clear recollection that he was in no way involved in the incident. These witnesses include the dead girls parents and friends. However, Mr. Frey moves the whole incident back 5 years so that it happened when he was 12, and weaves himself into the plot by claiming he helped a girl sneak out of her house to the movies so she could go on a secret date with a boy her parents disapproved of, and on the way back from her date she was killed. Mr. Frey was, of course, wracked with guilt, and also became the focal point for the wrath of the entire town, who blamed him and felt sorry for the poor football star driver of the car. Mr. Frey makes no mention of the other dead girl, or of the fact that it happened 5 years later, or of the fact that the three people involved had left a party with many witnesses and headed to another party, nor of the fact that neither girl left home using him as a cover story. Basically, he makes no mention of anything that matches the reality of the situation.

In another example, Mr. Frey tells about being in a drug-fueled rage, striking a police officer with his car, assaulting said police officer and his backup, inciting nearby watchers to riot against the cops, being beaten down by the police, and finally serving 3 months in jail as a result. The actual story, as uncovered by The Smoking Gun, is that he was drunk, made an illegal u-turn, didn’t hit a cop, didn’t start a fight, didn’t incite a riot, was released after 5 hours, and the cops noted on the arrest report that “He was polite and cooperative at all times”. Yeah, what a rebel, huh?

And the list goes on and on and on and on, click the link in the first sentence up there to read the full expose on The Smoking Gun. All of this would simply be humorous and a bit sad to me, except for one thing. Oprah Winfrey was enthralled with this guy’s fable, and has treated him as if he were a near-messianic example of what she and all her quivering desperate housewife audience want…the “Bad Boy” who cleaned himself up, not with outside help, but with the sheer force of his own superhuman will, beating up cops, inciting riots, vomiting and bleeding on airlines, and reading great works of literature to illiterate cell-mates in prison along the way. A suburban housewives’ wet dream come true.

And the fact that he is being held up as an example by someone with the undeniable cultural power of Oprah Winfrey means that people are taking his story to heart. This means that there are addicts who are tattooing “Just Hold On” over their trackmarks instead of going into rehab. There are people who are looking at the devil-may-care actions of the fictionalized James Frey as something to emulate. This would not be a good idea even if his stories were true. But the fact that his stories appear to be based on his imagination makes it even more wrong.

And the most wrong, most vile aspect of this whole thing to me is the fact that Oprah is standing behind this chump with her full support, in the face overwhelming facts and the admission of the author that he took great license with the facts. I can almost forgive Mr. Frey for his book, because at the time he wrote it he had no idea it would ever even be published, much less become the second best selling book of 2005 behind Harry Potter. So, he told a wild tale, characterized it as a “memoir”, managed to sell it, and then had to stand behind it as it caught fire. I find that aspect to be sad but understandable…the spoiled frat boy caught in a white lie to aggrandize himself and make a few bucks.

But Ms. Winfrey is already rich beyond belief and has nothing at stake here other than the fact that she adopted this guy as her pet bad-boy, and now seems not to be able to let go and face the facts. For example, Mr. Frey appeared on Larry King Live, admitted to his fabrications while defending them as within the bounds of dramatic license, and Oprah called in and said that regardless of the truth, it’s his “story” that is important. Here are Ms. Winfrey’s incisive arguments in support of Mr. Frey and his book:

“If you’re an addict whose life has been moved by this story and you feel that what James went through was able … to help you hold on a little bit longer, and you connected to that, that is real. That is real,” she said. “And it’s … irrelevant discussing, you know, what happened or did not happen to the police.”

Wow. Oprah thinks that it is irrelevant to discuss the actual facts of this asshole’s life and instead encourages real addicts with real problems to embrace the fictionalized actions of a mythical being that James Frey created in his head and put into his book? That is the height of irresponsibility, and although I have never been a fan of Oprah’s I used to have respect for her and the good that she seemed to try to do in the world. But in this case she has abandoned any claim to righteousness or the moral high ground, because she is using her awesome stature as a media powerhouse to try and do what all women who fall for bad boys end up doing…trying to justify it in the face of utter tragedy. She might as well have said:

“You just don’t understand him, he’s not really like that. If you knew how he was in private, how much he cares, and how much he’s had to go through you’d know why I love him, even when he hits me and sleeps around and steals the rent money and hits the kids and gets fired and drives drunk and…and…and…and…”

The litany of a woman and her bad-boy-gone-wrong. Oprah needs to “Just Hang On”, forget about her ego, and come clean that she backed a loser here, if for no other reason than to stop the harm that his book coupled with her publicity is doing to people who are being sent the wrong message…real people with real problems. One of my great fears in this story is that we will find out that Oprah has some sort of financial stake in the success of this book, or his next book, or his movie, or his TV show, or something else, and so is taking these irresponsible actions not out of a misplaced mothering instinct but as a coldly calculated business decision to stem her losses. I actually don’t think even Oprah is capable of stooping that low, but given the spectacle she has made of herself thus far, I would not be surprised to learn that was the reason behind her actions.

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Nobody Goes to the Movies Anymore

There’s much ballyhoo and boo-hoo in the press these days about how movie theatre revenues are declining. Nobody “goes to the movies” anymore. DVDs are too prevalent and come out so quickly. Moviegoers just aren’t as excited about going to the movies.

One possibility is that the movie quality is declining. I know Engineerboy feels this way, at least in part. Make good, interesting movies that people want to see, and they’ll go to the theatres.

But that’s not entirely true. Sure, a theatre packed with Syrianas and When Harry Met Sallys and Full Metal Jackets would be great, and you might see more people — although some potential moviegoers may want more Dukes of Hazzards instead (which actually wasn’t a bad movie…). But the truth is, at least for people like Engineerboy and me, going to the movies is largely about the experience as much as it is the film content itself. Granted, if the only offerings at the Googleplex were Deuce Bigalow Three through Thirty-Three, we might take a pass. However, we’ll go to the movies even for a mediocre offering just to have a nice social afternoon escaping from reality, snuggling next to each other in the seats, and munching on treats.

But our urge to go for even a mediocre offering dims in the face of the waning experience that is “Going to the Movies”. Movie theatres could do SO much to improve the experience and pull people in, almost regardless of the quality of the film itself.

What the Hell are Squinkles?!

First off, improve the concessions. For some of us, this is almost the whole point of the “Going to the Movies” event… the fresh popcorn, the Milk Duds, the fountain Cokes. But movies no longer have “traditional” candy, I was informed… No Milk Duds, no Whoppers, no Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. About the only recognizable offering among the weird disgusting-looking candies were M&M’s. I’m sure somewhere at the corporate level a bean-head decided that evil alliances with sub-par candy providers were a good financial decision, and it may have looked really attractive on paper. But what 35-to-40-year-old has great memories of Squinkles at the theatre when they were a kid? I bet you if they just bought from the various vendors without regard for alliances and simply bought with the immense buying power they wield, they’d have a fully stocked display case of REAL candy that might make people actually want to come to the movies. But it’s a long-return payoff to improve the bottom line, unlike simply slashing your “treat” providers to UnknownCandyCo.

And improve the popcorn… I mean, the stuff they put on it isn’t even labeled as “Butter Flavoring”. It’s “Golden Flavoring”. If that doesn’t scare you, it should. It’s just flavored oil. Eww. There’s a classic theatre here in River Oaks from a boutique chain (Landmark Theatres) that actually has butter on their popcorn. I’m sure it’s messy and a total pain in the ass for them to maintain, but it’s SO exquisitely good. Makes going to a show there worth the narrow seats and only two or three screens.

So if the treats are any indication, the movie theatres just don’t care about you anymore. Just a year or two ago if you ordered a pretzel extra salty, you got one right from the spinning spindle — warm and decently fresh, with the salt baked ALL over that twisted little piece of bread. Last week when we went to the movies I ordered an extra salty pretzel and got a PLAIN pretzel in a disgusting perforated steam pouch and had to find the location of little salt packets on my own. I mean, could this place give less of a shit about the experience? They can’t even be bothered to bake the salt into the pretzels. And trust me, trying to get large hunks of salt to hold onto an already-baked surface is completely futile. AND distracting if you’re trying to watch a show. Similarly, I got tricked the other day into lusting after a “Cinnabon Pretzel” at our local Marq-E multiplex. It looked incredibly appetizing in the picture, hot and delicious with a cinnamon bun center with swirled icing. Knowing how yummy Cinnabons are, I asked for one. Same disgust-o perforated pouch, with a little TUB of COLD icing. Why does this make me want to come to the movies? It doesn’t.

In general the whole self-service aspect of the movies gets so infuriating that you do begin to ask yourself, Why am I here?. I have to butter…er….oil… my own popcorn. I have to salt my own puny pretzel. I have to get my own napkins and straws at the end of the counter, at this narrow space among the zillion other patrons. It does make one ask “Is this experience worth $30?”. As the theatres try to cut costs by streamlining their process, they forget that at some point the loss of customer interest just isn’t worth it.

Go for the Long Haul

Like many companies, the theatre chains are trying to improve bottom line by slashing basic services. This may work in the short haul but will not gain you long-term loyalty. And loyalty is what these guys need as home-based options get more advanced. I know theatre chains are bitching about movie quality, but they should take a hard look at themselves and decide what will entice people to the theatre instead of staying home. I mean, people still go to eat out all the time even though nearly everyone has a stove and oven. Going out is fun, and enjoyable, at the right restaurant. The theatre chains have to think of themselves as more of an “experience provider” than a “movie house” that can just shove any old thing at their patrons and somehow miraculously expect the patron to want to come back again and again.

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