Not sure if the presence of the proper noun “Spam” will cause this entire blog post to be filtered into oblivion…but here goes…
Yes, this is a blog, of sorts, about that much-derided pork/pork-byproduct product. Those of us who work the nightshift around here get especially punchy and lonely by about 9pm on a Friday. So instead of Friday Night Lights, we decided to see what we could do to amuse ourselves, knowing that most sane members of the industrialized world are having a civilized dinner of some sort at home or at a restaurant. We’re working with what we can scavenge in the break room fridge/remembered to bring from home/could purchase in the vending machines here in our suburban office park.
Bill brought the hot plate, I brought the doughy white bread, we found the ketchup and Amy provided the unexpected household cleaning tip.
The accompanying “video” was shot entirely on my Apple iPhone 3g. Amazing picture and audio quality, considering it’s a phone (!)
None of us had even tasted Spam for decades. It’s sweeter than I remember it. Bill said it wasn’t as salty as he remembers from childhood. Amy had only hazy memories of it.
We were all surprised that it did not come packed in that gelatinous glop we so fondly recall from years past. A gourmet treat Spam ain’t, but I would definitely keep it on hand for an emergency. Or a spontaneous no-budget cooking demonstration.
Please let us know if you have any other questionable, high-sodium, preservative-packed easily-prepared-in-the-office snack ideas for this coming Friday. If this feature video becomes a cult-hit on YouTube, we may publish a cookbook and we will include YOUR recipie suggestions whilst giving you no credit whatsoever and certainly no money.
This coffee machine appeared the other day in a break room in an office park on Long Island.
As a reference point, it’s pictured here with a 6′3″ man (We’ll call him Jim. In fact, his name is Jim.)
Jim getting a cup of "joe"
The unsuspecting office workers (including this reporter) reacted with fear and awe, like the apes in “2001 : A Space Oddyssey,” except we didn’t have a bone to beat it with.
One woman was seen attempting to withdraw cash from it. Could it beat Garry Kasparov at chess? Does it have a “flux capacitor?” Might it spit out a JetBlue boarding pass?
It calls itself “Latte Lounge.” Even if you take your coffee black, THIS will make it green. It’s environmentally-correct.
It was brought in on a trial basis by very conscientious office managers. It operates without those disposable plastic specialty-coffee pod thingies and therefore creates less waste.
To get a simple cuppa joe, though, one must answer more questions than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Would you like to make your selection in English? French? Italian? Strong? Regular? Mild? French Roast? Moccachino? Skim Milk? Steamed Milk? Small? Medium? Large? Irish Cream? Vanilla Hazelnut? Cafe Mocha? Hot Cocoa? Yada, Yada, Java, Java.
The “Lounge” is billed as eco-friendly, but it’s so weirdly large that it might have its own eco-system. Will it inspire one of those Bud Light radio commercials? (Sing along. You know the melody.) “Mr. Overly-Elaborate Workplace Coffee-Maker Inventor.”
HAL 9000, as some have taken to calling it, does offer over 60 beverage options, brewed from fresh, whole beans ground on demand. And the final product does taste great, so maybe it will keep us from driving to Starbucks for coffee. You’re welcome, Mother Earth.
On the other hand, the new coffee is SO delicious, many employees say they’re making more trips to the break room to drink ever more coffee. Using more disposable cups, despite the company-provided ceramic mugs. Increased liquid consumption means extra bathroom breaks. And toilet paper recycling is an issue that makes even Laurie David queasy.
Is “Latte Lounge” a step forward in the greening of the American workplace? Or just a head fake?
(Poken Image Here?)
As managers strive to be environmentally responsible, some are finding that, just like in THIS IS SPINAL TAP, there’s a thin line between clever and stupid.
Consider, if you will, “Poken.” Billed as the virtual business card, Poken will help you keep track of information when you meet business contacts.
It’s kind of a cross between a Pokemon figure and a highly-contageous virus. You purchase your Poken doo-hickey (shaped like an alien, say, or a zebra) and it’s loaded up with all your email addresses and phone numbers. If you want to trade info with someone, you touch your Poken’s sensitive bits to THEIR Poken’s corresponding parts and some kind of magical/deeply disturbing transfer takes place. Never again will an old-growth forest give its life for business cards.
And there’ll be no more scribbling on cocktail napkins, either. Actually THAT sounds so “Mad Men” that it seems cool….
Most grown-up companies have already done the big, obvious things: recycling paper, turning off the lights at night. And many are switching to all-electronic payrolls, springing for live plants to freshen the air, and replacing old desktops with laptops that use up to 80% less energy.
Despite the earlier, sophomoric toilet tissue joke, your office manager CAN buy TP at places like TheGreenOffice.com, which boast free “Carbon Neutral Delivery.”
But most workplaces stop well short of creating compost heaps or organic herb gardens in the parking lot. Is there a sensible middle ground? Maybe we just can’t see the deforestation for the trees.
Jeffrey Swartz, the CEO of Timberland, recently announced a ban on bottled water at his company headquarters worldwide. Sounds simple enough. Then he faced the dilemma of plastic soda bottles in vending machines. The manager of corporate dining services complained that there weren’t enough cups and glasses on hand to accomodate the folks who would otherwise be drinking bottled beverages.
So … Timberland had to look at buying more dishwashers! As Swartz lamented on his blog at Earthkeeper.com, running a sustainable business is “really freaking hard.”
Timberland makes rugged shoes and hiking boots, so kudos to them for fretting over their environmental footprint
But fans of the Web site SecondhandNation.com might beg to differ. Their motto is “Re-Use. Enthuse. Repeat.” Can’t we just all wear our old boots and parkas for another winter?
For that matter, couldn’t we all just live naked in a cave and drink rainwater?
In Japan, the government’s “Cool Biz” campaign seems to have backfired. Office workers were told to abandon traditional business attire in Tokyo’s sweltering summer.
And the name “Cool Biz” seems downright Orwellian anyway, because it calls for setting air conditioners at 28 degrees Celsius (82.4 Farenheit!)
Economists fear the sheer discomfort may have killed national productivity rates.
Dwight Schrute, “The Office” relentless anti-environment watchdog, urges everyone to stop recycling. Of course, the fictional Dunder-Mifflin IS a paper company. And the paper industry argues that since trees are a renewable resource, paper IS green. The manufacture of computers and electronic devices typically requires the mining of minerals and metals as well as the use of plastics and hydrocarbon solvents. These materials are not considered renewable resources since they can’t simply be replanted.
I was a latecomer to texting. Relatively speaking. I didn’t text at all before about a year and a half ago. And it really didn’t start ruling my life until about this time last year.
I started slowly. A quick, practical message to a friend here or there. “Meet me at the diner.” “Be there in 5 minutes.” That sort of thing. Now, if I don’t hear from some people several times a day, I fear they’re shunning me. How did I get from there to here?
Texting is brilliant because it fills a real social gap. I never liked talking on the phone. And I really never liked cell phones. I can’t see the body language, I can’t get the nuances of what people are saying. I can’t send nuances. I can’t call a timeout to think of a response to a thorny question.
Email is okay, but kinda clunky. If your handheld device gets email, it’s useful, especially if you’re sending a picture….but nothing rivals the immediacy of the text. Or the informality. The sense of being really, really close to someone who’s a block away or a world away. Texting has the feel of pillow talk.
And with texting, you go at your own pace. If you don’t have a pithy comeback, you wait 15 minutes, or an hour or whatever. The other person assumes you’re SO POPULAR, or SO BUSY that all sorts of pressing matters intervened. Not that I would be rude and just drop out in the midst of an important text conversation with a friend, but I find that most texting is just goofy, stream of consciousness small-talk anyway. The best texting–especially with a new romantic interest for example–looks for all the world like dialogue from a Nora Ephron screenplay. Okay, maybe a very rough draft on an off-day for Nora.
I have kept all the texts I’ve ever exchanged with one particular friend. We went back the other day and read them all from the beginning, each of us speaking our lines aloud. I have an iPhone, and the iPhone’s visual display really lends itself to this. Everything you and your friends say is in color-coded, cartoonish “bubbles” and is accompanied by a friendly sound effect, if you want. This makes quips and banter seem even more clever than they really are.
I even had a teensy disagreement with someone via text, which is kind of surreal because the curt jabs still look almost comical when displayed on the iPhone. It probably didn’t look as cute on his Motorola phone which displays traditional text unadorned. So each of us had a different sensory experience of the exchange. I wonder how much it shaped our perceptions of how serious the disagreement was, how sarcastic the other person was being, how soon we would patch things up, etc.
If you care, it was patched up in a matter of minutes. Via text of course. It’s easier to send a little “U still mad?” or a “U still like me?” Or “watcha up 2?” to break the ice than it is to pick up the phone and actually talk. And the use of abbreviations and emoticons helps keep it casual and lets you calibrate the vibe you want to send.
Texting is just less threatening than speaking to another human being. A psychotherapist told me that many of her patients find it much easier to put deep emotion into texts than to put them in any other form. Some people can only express intimacy via text.
I don’t think it will ever come to that for me. But I do feel compelled to check my phone every few minutes. Not when I’m driving of course. Not when I’m on the air or working intensely on a project. But it’s almost reflexive, like glancing at a clock. It’s practically an involuntary motion, like breathing. That’s how woven it is into the fabric of my day.
And it’s not just that I’m checking to see who’s thinking of me. I also want to make sure that I respond to THEM quickly so they don’t mistakenly think that I’m ignoring them. It’s an expectations game.
I have checked my phone only about 4 times while composing the foregoing blog. And another 5 times while proofreading it.
As a woman in TV news, my job is 90% hair. Or at least it seems that way sometimes. This past week, I spent several hours and several hundred dollars (my own) gettin’ my hair “did.” And I’m still not happy. And I don’t even have problem hair. It’s healthy and thick and slightly wavy, with (almost) no grays. But it’s still a major project every day, every month, every year.
Stereotypical anchorwoman-hair is helmet-like, motionless, bullet-proof, etc. There is some truth to that stereotype, because in TV (especially when you’re at a desk doing a traditional newscast), flyaways are distracting and, frankly, there’s no time to check and make sure every hair is in place. Even on network newscasts, there usually isn’t a stylist on set at all times to tweak things. In addition, newscasters are often actually focusing on content, delivery, etc., and not cosmetics! And most local TV stations, even in major markets, have ditched professional hair stylists in all the recent budget cuts.
So it’s tempting to beat your hair into submission so that it doesn’t talk back to you. Dead hair behaves, more or less. But that doesn’t mean it actually looks good. It looks untouchable. Thus, the Sherman-tank-like effect that we’ve all come to know and loathe.
But if you’re a woman on TV, the viewers ARE constantly evaluating your hair. I know this because I do it when I’m watching. On a tight shot, it takes up lots of screen space and it frames your face. And, whether we like to admit it or not, studying the talking heads on TV is one of the ways viewers — myself included — learn about styles, decide what we like and dislike, get inspiration for styles to try, regard as cautionary tales about styles to avoid at all cost, etc.
But in “real life,” hair is expected to move and shine and bounce. Even if a few pieces fall in a way that they’re not supposed to, it looks fine and natural. But on camera — especially in a newscast, when you’re probably not really moving your head that much and there is no gust of wind to explain hair movement — a chunk that looks out of place takes on unwanted significance. And don’t even get me started on Hi-Def.
So … over the years, I’ve honed in on a style that is “natural plus.” Kind of like the hair I would have in civillian life, but a little fuller and more disciplined. Viewers are just trained to expect more volume in TV hair. Hair that is really flat, though it may look fine in “real life,” looks unstyled and “blah” on camera. That is, unless you’re doing some kind of avante-garde production in which viewers expect something unconventional.
As for color, mine is naturally dark brown and I would be happy with that if I had an off-camera job. But ON camera, especially in contrast with my pale skin, dark hair looks too severe. The effect is almost vampire-like. I need a few lighter-toned strands in there to reflect the studio lights and to indicate depth and texture.
So I’ve been getting highlights for many, many years. Invariably, they are too blonde one time and too subtle the next. The pendulum swings. Even when I go to the same colorist and they use the same products, a 60-second variation in how long they leave it in the hair can create a noticable difference in the outcome. And after a few weeks, it oxodizes and the color turns into something unpleasant. Anyway, by then, the dark roots are showing already and it’s time to make another appointment. That’s why I’ve never even tried to go blonde, as some managers have suggested over the years. Taking very dark hair all the way to Blondeland requires a serious commitment to get your butt in that hair chair every three weeks like clockwork for a half a day of chemical overload. And it comes at a massive expense that usually isn’t paid for by the employer.
With hair color, you get what you pay for. You can try taking the cheap way out, but it will look fake and harsh and it will damage your hair. A really high-end dye job looks subtle, and shows multiple layers of color, like would occur naturally. That takes time and money.
But even my minimal honey-colored highlights are hard to get just right. And the more you DO to your hair (believe me, mine gets abused from daily styling with a metal roll brush, hair dryer, curling iron, hair spray, styling mousse, back combing, etc.) the more deep conditioning it will need to keep it shiny. But the deep conditioning treatment can also make the hair really soft for the first week or so afterward. It FEELS great, but it looks flat and floppy on camera, thus starting the whole vicious cycle over again as I battle to achieve some shape and volume. And even if you’re trying to gain a little length, as I am, those ends need to be trimmed every few weeks. If they get damaged, you’ve wasted your time. Damaged hair looks cheap and dry and makes a woman seem older than she needs to.
When I first got into the TV news business — the mid 1990s — shorter hairstyles were preferred, mostly because they were more common in society in general. And the overall look expected of newswomen was pretty conservative. That made styling a bit easier. Times have changed now. Fashions are more casual, but also less forgiving.
Hair is generally longer nowadays and it’s expected to look full and lusterous – unless you’re a woman “of a certain age” and/or already a huge star. With every extra inch of hair there are countless extra variables and things that can go wrong. (Or right.)
If there are any men out there who’ve actually read this far, I have one more thing to say to you: Be glad you were born a boy!
This is a summer of weddings. Well I guess they all are. But I’m about to go to my second one of the season. That’s a lot for me. I think I had literally gone 10 years without attending any nuptials.
I have a few friends who never married (at least not while I knew them) and some who moved away and had low-key ceremonies to which I wasn’t invited. Plus I guess I moved “away” a few times.
Anyway, I’m soon road-tripping with a gal-pal to our friend’s wedding in Bar Harbor, Maine.
I’m really looking forward to it. And I’m not even angsting about what to wear (see previous blogs.) It’s an afternoon wedding, outdoors (actually on a sand-bar at low tide.) So as long as it’s fun and cute, it’s fine.
But what to get for the happy couple? I asked friends who recently got married. I wanted to see it from the recipients’ point of view.
They have very strong opinions. They do like cash. And some guests like to give it–especially guys. But I’m a girl so I have to give a gift. The newly-married couple emphasized the importance of just GIVING SOMETHING ON THE GIFT REGISTRY. They say a guest deviates from those suggestions at great peril. “If you’re gonna go off the list and get us something else….it better be really, really, really nice. And even if it IS really nice and really expensive, it’s still probably not what we would choose. We chose the things we chose on the registry FOR A REASON. WELIKE THEM! DON’T GET CREATIVE.”
