Frustration In A Can

If you own or rent a home, you pay every month for the utilities; gas, water, trash, cable or satellite, electricity, etc. These regular expenses are a necessity and – baring an exceptionally cold winter or hot summer, normal monthly costs are a small but necessary part of overall living expenses.

Like most people, I tend to take utilities for granted – you pay your monthly bill, flip a switch, the light comes on. Turn a knob, the oven heats up. Pick up the phone, you get a dial tone. (Unless you’re under 30 and you don’t have a clue what a land line or a dial tone is, in which case, never mind.)

My point is, you expect a “utility” provider to be overwhelmingly reliable, and on those rare occasions when something doesn’t work (power outage, low water pressure, a tree limb across a phone line – that sort of thing), you want them to be easy to work with and to quickly remedy the problem.

When was the last time you heard somebody complain about Southern California Edison, for example? For the most part, you don’t. CV Water District? Nope. Charter Cable? Okay, now here’s a company that pretty much illustrates perfectly the difference between being a reliable and customer-focused utility/service provider and, well, one that isn’t. 

But this isn’t about cable TV. My growing frustration is with our local trash, er, excuse me … ‘waste’ collection, er, ‘management’ company. I won’t mention the company by name, but its initials are “A” and “W” and used to be “BFI.” As customers of this company, unfortunately, we’re “SOL.” But I digress. 

Our household refuse, yard clippings and recyclables (it all just used to be generic ‘trash’ in the pre-PC days) are supposed to be picked up once a week. At least that’s what we pay for. Inevitably, however, one of our three different colored hoppers, or bins, or whatever they call the massive, wheeled containers that we drag out to the street – is left behind by its respective collection truck.

That’s because we live on a private drive with several other homes on it. So our three humongous cans have to go out on the street with everyone else’s monster cans. All of us combined used to be able to fit as many “traditional” trashcans as we needed in a rather small area near our collective mailboxes. Of course, that was also when trash truck drivers would get out of their cabs and actually empty the cans by hand. Ah, the good old days.

Now, one smoke belching, oil leaking, diesel drinking truck comes for the brown cans. Another comes for the black cans. And a third comes for the blue cans. Sounds environmentally responsible and efficient, doesn’t it? Not hardly. My neighbors’ and my cans now take up twenty or thirty linear feet of street. No matter how hard I try to arrange all of the cans to leave plenty of room so that the ginormous mechanical arm can pick them up – inevitably one or more of the drivers knocks over a container, or places it back on the street directly in front of another container that has yet to be emptied. So guess what? The full one’s left unemptied by the next driver because – well, heaven forbid  he should get out of his cozy cab to move a container that his own conscientious colleague left in the way.

Of course, I’ve called repeatedly to let the oh-so-nice customer service reps know that this is an ongoing problem and am always promised that a driver will be out the next day to pick up our missed cans. I’ll just say that – what customer service promises and what the drivers actually do are usually polar opposites on the professional spectrum. I’ve been told repeatedly that “a driver will be dispatched by radio to pick up your can – if not today, then tomorrow for sure. And we are so sorry for this inconvenience.”

Sounds good, right? Sounds responsible. Sounds customer-centric, like these good people really and truly care about us . Right.

Sounds like a big ol’ oversized bin full of I-really-couldn’t-care-less-about-your-problems-and-just-want-to-get-you-off-the-phone-so-I-can-get-back-to-checking-my-Facebook-wall. Oh yes … and thank you for calling, we appreciate your business.

I’ve been told that my problem will be resolved within 24 hours so many times I’ve lost count. And still the can sits out on the street by itself, stinkin’ up the neighborhood until the following week’s normal pickup day.

It makes me want to ‘forget’ to pay their bill some month and see what happens. But something tells me the company’s accounts receivable personnel will do their job a lot more reliably than the drivers. Ya think? 

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a longer version of my column first published yesterday, 6.23.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Laughing My Arse Off

Last weekend, my wife and I saw “The Trip” at a small theater in Old Town (no ‘e’) Pasadena known for showing artsy-fartsy, lo-budget, independent films.

I laughed myself sore at the achingly funny, often poignant, mostly-improvised “dialogue” between actor-comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (playing dangerously loose versions of themselves), as the middle-aged duo spend a week on the road traveling through Northern England’s Lake District – ostensibly to review its more esoteric inns and restaurants for a British magazine.

The movie has been edited together from an earlier six-episode BBC2 sitcom of the same name and features several spontaneous, seemingly ad-libbed, devastatingly sharp verbal duels between Coogan and Brydon, each a brilliant impressionist in his own right. These two do Michael Caine, Al Pacino, Sean Connery and even Woody Allen better than the originals themselves.

I purposely don’t do movie reviews, so I won’t go into any more details of the plot, or lack of one, than I already have. My point, however, it that as I laughed my way through the eye-wateringly entertaining film, I was once again reminded that the British accent is a God’s gift to the English people.

Maybe it’s His way of making up for giving them a taste for bland food, Benny Hill and medieval dentistry skills. Now imagine how much funnier that line would sound spoken with a British accent. See what I mean?

Chrome Is Where The Heart Is

One of the things that my Dad and an older brother often did in their spare time was to take an ordinary car or truck, strip it down to its nuts and bolts, pistons and bearings, gaskets and gears – and then rebuild the entire vehicle from the tires to the headliner, turning it into a faster, more powerful, shinier, louder, way more impressive piece of rolling stock than it had been in its former life.

Whether it was Dad’s ‘48 Jeep 4x4 Willys wagon with a small block Chevy powerplant and completely custom interior (including a hand-fabricated cockpit-like dashboard and overhead console) or my brother’s mid-60s era Chevy Chevelle SS with extra wide street racing tires, a Hurst shifter and Holly 4-barrel carb, our house near Two-Strike Park was the birthplace of these and many other impressive rides as I was growing up.

I couldn’t help but reminisce about the vehicles of my youth this past Saturday when – in honor of my Father-in-law, Bud Falkenstien’s birthday (who fittingly is a retired mechanic) – we attended the weekly gathering of the Early Rodders car club at the United Artist theaters on Verdugo under the 2 Freeway interchange with the 210.

The Early Rodders have been meeting on Saturday mornings at 7 o’clock since 2001. Although many of the cars on display any given weekend are painstakingly restored muscle cars from Detroit’s golden years (think ’56 Chevy Nomads or Corvette Sting Rays) or much older classics (a 1951 “Henry J” looking like a Studebaker on steroids had me daydreaming of ¼-mile qualifying runs) – anyone with a passion for cars is invited to bring their ride and show it off. This past Saturday I was surprised (pleasantly) to see a couple of 70s-era Nissan (known as Datsun back then) Z-cars like one I used to collect speeding tickets with way back during my misspent youth.

There were also several of the more exotic sports cars present last weekend – including a suh-weet Ferrari GTB, a rare mid-engine Ford GT40, a vintage Rolls Royce, a totally bad and rad Shelby Cobra and even a gorgeous, British-built, open-cockpit Morgan.

Stroll around the UA parking lot on a Saturday morning and you’ll see small groups of men (this is a decidedly “guy” thing – including my wife, I counted a total of three ladies in attendance last Saturday) with their heads under the upraised car hoods, inhaling the heady fragrance of hot motor bath and 10-40 weight oil and talking exhaustively (sorry) about cubic inches, torque-foot pounds and gear ratios. Walking and gawking, hearing brief snatches of conversation about 4:11 gears in a Dana 60 rear end, or singing the praises of a 289 Ford V8 vs. an Olds 455 or Chevy 396, it occurred to me that – whether it’s sports cars or sports heroes – we guys always seem to share our passions by the numbers. If you’re into more typical sports (which, for whatever reason, I have never been), you can recite runs scored or single season passing yards, field goals attempted or rebounds per game as easily as your own home address. On the asphalt at an Early Rodders event, however, the talk is mostly about horsepower and model years. But nonetheless, it’s all about the numbers.

It seems to me that the popularity of this sort of gathering is growing, even if only on a subconscious level. For example, the Men's Ministries team at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena has had such success with our annual summer "Classic Car Nights" sponsoring six such events over the next three months alone.

To which I say, enjoy the phenomenon while it lasts. I mean, seriously. Can you even imagine attending a weekend gathering of gearheads a decade or two from now and drooling over a souped up, ‘classic’ Prius? (“Dude, don’t you just love the smell of rechargeable batteries in the morning?!?”)

Yeah, neither can I. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This was first published yesterday, 6.16.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Feelin’ the Facebook Love

So, today is my birthday. Seems to happen every year right about now. Even if I wanted to avoid it – or ignore it (which seems to be more the case with every added year) – Facebook makes it impossible.

For the five of you out there without a Facebook presence, the social networking juggernaut automatically notifies you when each and every “friend” of yours has a birthday. Not only on the day itself, but on the Sunday before you get a notice of all your friends who will celebrate a birthday in the coming weeks.

This is frustrating, because I’ve always taken some bit of pride in writing down my family and friends’ birthdays on a big paper calendar (talk about ‘old school’) that I have under the keyboard on my desk. Then (depending on the importance or significance of said friend or family member, to be brutally honest) I either send a quick email, make a phone call or – hopefully – have looked ahead early enough to have the time to go buy a card and drop it in the mail.

I can’t tell you how many people have been pleasantly surprised over the years that I bothered to remember their birthdays -- with even a quick email. It seems like such a simple thing to do, yet so many people just don’t seem to take the time to do it. Honestly, it’s been kinda fun to do something nice like that all these years.

Then came Facebook. Now remembering someone’s birthday is almost entirely done for you. All you have to do is click on a person’s name, type in your greeting and post it. Woo hoo. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there will soon be an ‘app for that’, too. It sure has taken the fun and “specialness” out of my efforts to brighten someone’s day, though. Dang.

Now all I have to worry about is how many messages I’ll get on my Facebook wall today. 25? 50? Do I dare hope for 100? Nah … because, I know no matter how many I get, it won’t be long until the insecure side of me starts asking why I didn’t get more. I mean, who doesn’t like me or want me to have a happy birthday? What did I do to them? Did I somehow miss their birthday?

Crud. Life used to be so much simpler. I must be getting older.  

Happy birthday to me.

Flagging A Big Problem

Did you know today is Flag Day? It comes around every June 14^th. Even though my birthday is the next day, I almost always forget until I see someone else’s flag on their front porch. Then I rush home and dig mine out from wherever I stashed it on July 5^th the year before.

I can’t blame myself entirely, though. If it has to do with patriotism, citizenship, shared responsibility to our country or anything to do with American exceptionalism, it isn’t taught in our schools (other than at private, Christian-schools and in home-school curriculums). More often than not, anything like this is actually demonized as being jingoistic and unenlightened.

Shame on us.

We proudly teach gay pride, Mexican pride, self pride and pride in being from any other country on the planet or in being anything different or unusual or unique. But our educators (for the most part) have purposely abandoned any teaching about what made this country such a magnet for all of those other individuals and groups who take so much pride in being from somewhere else.

I wonder. Do you take your hat off and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance at ballgames? If you didn’t fly your flag today, why not? Do you even have a flag? (And no, an L.A. Lakers or USC Trojans car window flag doesn’t count.)

It’s a grand old flag, folks. I sure hope we come back around to appreciating all that’s good about it. Happy Flag Day. Long may it wave.

N-B-C-you later!

I can never thank the decision-makers at NBC News enough for promoting Ann Curry -- the former overly empathetic and hyper-politically correct news-reader on their flagship TODAY Show -- to her new position of co-couch-sitter with Matt Lauer. Now I have considerably less distraction on weekday mornings and am able to get to work on pressing projects much sooner than I used to.


Not that the über-liberal Ms. Curry is ideologically any different than her predecessors, Meredith Viera or that irrepressible cheerleader for all left-leaning causes, Katie Couric. Heavens, no.


It’s just that Ms. Curry’s interviews and “reportage” drip so heavily with breathless sincerity, hand-wringing angst and feigned concern, she routinely gets in the way of her stories and subject matter. Watching her in action feels like pushing a Prius with discharged batteries through a swamp of whipped Crisco and honey mixed with buckets of crocodile tears. Yuck.


The power-off button on the remote is suddenly much easier to push on weekday mornings. To quote Jimmy Fallon, another personality on the same network but at opposite ends of the broadcast day; “Thank you, NBC!”

The Wonders Of It All

Our world is a place of many wonders – a baby’s birth, a bird in flight, the grandeur of snow-covered mountains, Donald Trump’s hair. Here are some of my personal wonders of late:

I wonder …  why pants with two legs are called a “pair” and eyeglasses with two lenses are a “pair,” but a shirt with two arms is only a shirt. Shouldn’t it too be a pair of shirts, like a pair of pants or a pair of glasses? Who decides these things? And while we’re talking shirts (well, me at least), why is a woman’s called a blouse, but a mans’ is a shirt? And why do women’s blouses have buttons on the opposite side as men’s shirts?

I wonder …  whatever happened to the imminent catastrophic disaster that was predicted ad nauseam as a result of the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant explosions following the massive tsunami? According to the agenda-driven media, we were all doomed to become glowing examples of a nuclear nightmare come true. Yes, there are still many serious problems to overcome as a result of old nuclear technology built in a worst-possible location being hit by a natural (but not unprecedented) disaster of Biblical proportions. In spite of this, no lives were lost due to the reactor “disaster.” In fact, the biggest, most impressive meltdown has been of the anti-nuke hysteria surrounding the entire incident.   

I wonder …  speaking of dangerous and deadly energy production – why there isn’t an uproar over the many thousands of birds (many of which are rare and endangered) and entire colonies of ecologically vital bats being Osterized every year in the U.S. by windmill farms built smack dab in their migratory paths because that’s where the wind is? I mean, can you imagine the media stink if these same creatures were being decimated by oil production?    

I wonder …  why every major newspaper and TV network trumpeted the killing of Osama bin Laden as a proud moment in our history, a triumph of justice and a source of great comfort to the victims of 9/11. And yet, a vast majority of these very same news outlets regularly preach the progressive foolishness that capital punishment is not justice served, does nothing to benefit the victims’ families and is an evil act unto itself. Except in this case, right?

I wonder …  why Nancy Pelosi blustered to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in a July 17, 2008 interview about $4-a-gallon gas prices that, “The price of oil is attributed to two oil men in the White House and their protectors in the United States Senate.” In a later interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, she called the rise in gas prices “… a scam of the greatest magnitude.” So, is she blasting and blaming the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for our latest skyrocketing prices at the pump? To put it in social media vernacular: LOL. Of course not. I’ll say one thing, Ms. Pelosi, when it comes to great scams, you’re the queen.

I wonder … what the crew of the USS Carl Vinson must have thought when it was ordered that Muslim seamen would respectfully wash and anoint the body of a heinous terrorist with perfume and then recite prayers for his soul – all in the name of giving him a “proper” Islamic burial at sea (even though Islamic law requires burial in the ground). Wait. Haven’t we been told repeatedly that Osama Bin Laden wasn’t a true Muslim? And talk about sending mixed messages to our sworn enemies. We can send a high-velocity round through that monster’s forehead, but at least we showed respect to his body before turning it into shark chum in the Indian Ocean. Certainly don’t want the bad guys mad at us, right? And speaking of ticking people off …

I wonder … how anyone can take seriously the latest imagined indignation being protested by the American Indian Movement all because our Navy SEALS strike team used the code name “Geronimo” to identify Osama bin Laden during the raid on his compound? Are you kidding me? Maybe the commando team assigned to Ayman al Zawahiri will use the name “Custer” and make it all better. Get a life, people.

I wonder …  how many readers will be p’oed with me this week? Guess we’ll soon find out soon enough. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is an edited repost of my column first published yesterday, 6.9.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

A Pitchy Performance

I confess to having purposely avoided watching NBC's "new hit smash, critically acclaimed show" The Voice. For one thing, I'm not a fan whatsoever of the so-called coaches that mentor the contestants each week -- especially Cee Lo Green and Christina Aguilera – who I think both can each be blamed for single-handedly degrading the standards and quality of popular culture.

I also don’t have any desire to get sucked into yet another talent/reality show having been a devoted follower of all things American Idol for the past too many years and a sometime watcher of America’s Got Talent – now that Howie Mandel has replaced the laughably lame David Hasselhoff, the show is actually mildly entertaining at times.

Having said that – the first ever live!! (except on the west coast, of course) episode of The Voice happened to come on at my house last night and nobody in the room was interested or energetic enough to reach for the remote to change the channel to something less mind-numbing. Pathetic, right?

So through the process of digital osmosis, I wound up half-watching most of an episode. Unfortunately.

Last night’s show opened with the four celebrity coaches “singing” a mashup of Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions.” I put that verb in quotes because – in all honesty, and with the possible exception of the non-rocker of the group, country star, Blake Shelton – having sung as poorly as they did on last night’s show, I can’t imagine any of the four celebri-singers making it past initial auditions for The Voice, Idol, America’s Got Talent or even the old Star Search show with Ed McMahon.

I mean, seriously? They forgot lyrics, mumbled, sang off-mike and were at least a half-step below most of the late great Freddie Mercury’s high notes. Talk about pitchy. It was painful. As in, dawg, I’m just not feelin’ it. Watching these supposed pros stumble and struggle through the opening number, I could only hope that the live show wouldn’t be the death of their careers. Then again …  

What night is Glee on?

A Waterfall of Hype

I must begin this post with a disclaimer -- or mea culpa -- I’m not sure which is more appropriate. I’ve spent the last twenty-five-plus years writing ad copy for clients as large and well-known as Nissan, the LA Dodgers, Blue Cross, Carnation Foods, Lockheed Martin, Baskin-Robbins and well, I’ll just say that I can be blamed for thousands of TV and radio commercials, print ads, web sites and direct mail campaigns. Sorry.

I know far too intimately how the creative side of effective marketing works – specifically, how to use words, images and cultural attitudes to create something called perceived value for any given product or service. This is especially important when marketing what we in the business call a parity product, or something that is almost identical to its competition. Advertisers of parity products try to convince consumers that there are valuable differences between their – whatever – and all others. Buy ours, not theirs. Why? Because we’re brighter, whiter, newer, fresher, cooler, more hip, more fun, a better value, more impressive, less polluting, faster … you get the idea. Parity products include beer, banks, dairy, grocery stores, soft drinks and that mother of all perceived value marketing magic – bottled water.

Case in point; there is a TV spot running now for a popular brand of bottled water whose slogan is, Bottled At The Source. The TV commercial for this particular water shows a kid at home asking his Mom for the water by name (as all kids do, right?). Mom turns to  a store keeper (through the magic of green screen) and repeats the request. The store keeper turns and asks a warehouseman with a hand cart, who then turns toward a beautiful, panoramic vista with a snow-covered mountain peak in the background and lush, verdant rolling hills in the foreground punctuated by a forest of majestic pines in between. As bluebirds flutter overhead and God-like rays of sun warm his face, the warehouseman calls out to what can only be the great Spirit of Mountain Water in the Sky and calls out, “Crystal Geyser, please!”

Makes you crave a cold, tall glass of this nectar of Nature, doesn’t it? (Or a barf bag, in my case. Then again, I’ve been in this business a long time.)

Now, I’ve crossed swords with enough Standards and Practices guardians at the various networks to know that you can’t say things in a TV commercial that aren’t technically true (political and environmental advocacy ads not withstanding). And I happen to know that this particular water is, indeed, “bottled at the source.” Technically.

Here’s the thing: the source for this particular brand of bottled water isn’t in some far-flung, Eden-like glacial valley where furry animals talk to each other and never poop near the water supply. No, the source is actually about 185 miles north of where I live in a place just beyond Olancha, California, a teeny tiny town on the edge of the dry and dusty Owens Dry Lake bed. Makes you thirsty just thinking about it, right?

So, why don’t they show the real source in the TV spots for the brand? Because the Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water bottling plant is in reality a few massive, nondescript corrugated metal buildings that squat alongside the ribbon of asphalt that is Highway 395. There are huge windows on the side of the buildings facing the thousands of cars, RVs and trucks that scream by every day on their way to Mammoth, Reno and beyond. As you roar past you can see a plumber’s nightmare of wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling pipes and valves and stainless steel and wires and cables and various other industrial equipment.

Outside, between the massive metallic structures is a vast parking lot that is typically occupied by dozens of tractor trailer rigs and forests of wooden pallet stacks. Not a bluebird, verdant valley or cascading waterfall in sight.  

I’m really not surprised. Because I know that, as it is with most parity product marketing, it’s more often than not the implication of purity, or superiority or better performance/enjoyment/whatever that makes consumers part with their hard-earned dollars – not actual product benefits themselves. A rose is a rose and water is water, after all.

The blatant marketing sleight of hand used in the Crystal Geyser commercials, however, just makes me want to take a drink – but not of water. Which reminds me of a much better campaign for yet another parity product, the brilliantly executed “Most Interesting Man in the World” commercials for Dos Equis beer. Of this type of smart advertising I can only say, cheers!

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a slightly longer version of my column first published yesterday, 6.2.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.