The Lockness Monster

You press the button on the fob. The nearly inaudible click. Press again the button with the closed padlock symbol. The horn bleep. Do it again, neurotically, the way you do, the way so many of us do. Undo it. Second thought. The driver's door gets unlocked. Click again to unlock all four doors. Third thought. Lock? The rapid-fire calculation of risk, safety, security, fear, privilege, race, poverty, wealth, bias, tree limbs, mice, rats, cardinals, sparrows, finches, crows, history, memory, future. Keep unlocked. After all, the car will be in view from where you sit. Plus, what is there to take? You have your laptop with you, which you prize more than the car, a 2016 sedan. They (who are "they"? why assume plurality? who are these contrived and conjured bogeymen from your primordial Freudian-Hegelian-Jungian dream swamp?) are welcome to the 15 or 20 returnable cans and bottles for 5 cents each. He or she or it or they can have the straw fedora sitting in the back seat, if that's what they really want. They can wear it proudly and defiantly. You will nod at them knowingly as you stroll by each other on the Parisian boulevard at midnight. Go ahead, from the so-called glovebox without gloves take the napkins, straws, CDs, condoms (unused naturally), chewing gum, chewing gum wrappers, wrench, Narcan, antacid tablets, cough drops, tampons (unused naturally), tire-pressure gauge, sanitary napkins, compass, torchlike flashlight, toothbrush, Geiger counter, gas mask, mouthwash, and her spare keys from 2016. Have at it. Have at them. Have them. You prefer that they leave the registration and insurance documents for two reasons: you'll need them; and doing so preserves the illusion that your identity has not been compromised by this intrusion. And is it an intrusion after all if the doors were unlocked? Will their defense attorney turn it around and claim your unlockedness was an invitation to browse, forage, and take? What defense attorney? No one would bother to investigate such an unheralded and low-grade transfer of goods. 

You drive home. You park in the camera-monitored private parking lot.

You press the fob twice to lock all four doors. You do it again to hear the confirmatory beep. 

If I were a rich man...

Good song, entertaining play. "Fiddler on the Roof." Saw it on Broadway with my older brother and my parents. A Christmas present. Something tells me my younger brother was at home watching a famous football game in which the Kansas City Chiefs lost.

If I were a rich man:

• I wouldn't necessarily be happier.
• it might be harder to live sober.
• perhaps I'd be less, not more, generous.
• my life would be more complicated.
• other people would view me differently.
• I might employ the personal pronoun "I" more often.
• I might forget what it was like to be a poor man
• I would dress differently.
• I might speak differently.
• my circle of friends and acquaintances might change.
• I might eat differently.
• I would travel.

Coachez-vous avec moi?

Have you heard about this one? You can hire someone to make sure you stay clean and sober. But it might cost you $1,000 or more per day to enlist the services of such a provider, called a sober companion.

Let me pause here to note how I discovered this fact: The hugely entertaining Sunday Styles section of The New York Times, which spotlights the glitterati, ran a piece on this phenomenon. You've got to admire their pluckiness. Last Sunday's edition featured a section opener on a designer, Anand Jon, who always found himself aswarm with barely (pun intended) nubile wannabe models and who now, um, faces multiple charges of rape, sexual battery, and lewd acts (big shocker); an article on fancy inventions, such as slippers that double as mops; and the piece on sober companions, featuring a profile on an ex-con, ex-user named Ronnie Kaplan. Oh, and the bottom of the page is anchored by a large banner ad (say, 14 inches across by 6 inches deep) by Gucci, for an "indy" silver leather bag: $2,590 for the large and $1,990 for the medium; roughly the cost of a few days for a top-drawer sober companion.

Apparently some of these sober companions come out of the entourages of celebs. Hey, they get sober and why not be a smart entrepreneur and combine the skillset of bodyguard, therapist, coach, pastor, and cashier! A sobrepreneur! (I take credit for coining the term.)

It should be noted that part of the sober companion's services typically involves attending with the client meetings of free 12 Step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA. And it should be further noted that AA encourages and suggests that the new person find a sponsor (also for free). The sponsor is someone who shares his or her "experience, strength, and hope" about sobriety (but not about film deals, fitness tips, financial planning, or tattooing techniques).

One of the firms that offers these services is named the brilliantly marketable Hired Power. (Why didn't I think of that? Conscience? Envy? Not quite enough shamelessness?)

Incidentally, this all reminds me of some of the scenes in "The Player," the acerbic and first-rate movie by the late Robert Altman, where the guy pitching movie screenplays is told AA meetings are a hot place to shop scripts.

May I discreetly and delicately mention that (as readers who have read this journal can discern) I have some "credentials" in this arena? Ergo, I hereby offer some suggestions for other sorts of companions along the same lines. Alas, someone undoubtedly will take these suggestions and run straight to the ATM with them.

Labor Coach -- (No, not the one for labor and delivery of babies.) A professional to keep one on task during the workday, making one productive, happy, and whole. (I'd make a great one -- for someone else.)

Lustwaffe -- A personnel weapon, or battery of tools, to assist one in navigating through issues of concupiscence (I just love that word from my seminary days; come to think of it, seminary itself is such a richly layered word, too, in't?).

StepMaster or StepMistress -- Just another name for a sober companion, perhaps skewed toward sub-dom addicts.

Better Up -- Aimed at helping compulsive gamblers or impotent sex addicts or persons with low self-esteem.

Lip Service (or Imus-n't) -- Someone to protect you from saying the wrong thing at the wrong time (not that I'd ever need that, oh no, not me).

By the way, The New York Times article ends with this observation by Mr. Kaplan, "The lifestyle, most of it is a facade....Most of them are miserable. I try to bring meaning to their life." [Some day, I should do a post on the word "lifestyle."]

Excuse me, the phone is ringing. If it's Lindsay L., I've got to turn her down. Men with men and women with women. I know, sounds kinky. Hey, I was just in Berlin!

The $250,000 Question

What kind of second home can you get these days for 250,000?

That's the question bothering The New York Times and its impoverished and restless readers. Appropriately enough, the articles was in yesterday's Escapes section.

Yeah. That's the question keeping me up nights.

Truth be told, we would be lucky to get $90,000 for our recently painted house. Clarification: our first house, not our weekend home or summer demesne. Location, location, location. City, city, city.

Of course, those poor unfortunates struggling to buy a second home for 250,000 beans are not considering locations like the urban location of our manor. (Mind your manors! HAHA!) Oh no. It's got to have a view or be near water -- ideally with a view of water on a hillside. And they certainly do not want messy things like people nearby, especially nonwhite, nonupperclass, nonprofessional people. (Animals are okay, though. "We just love the varied wildlife here.")

I'm willing to wager these are the same folks who have fear and loathing of the "wild life" of our cities, who devise terrific policy solutions for our cities, and who proudly sport their so-called tolerant and liberal-minded moral credentials.

How much do you want to bet?

Bets starting at $250,000 being accepted now.

Right here, right now.

As Tony Soprano might say, while grabbing an important portion of his anatomy,

"Right here."

Freegonomics: Food for Thought -- and Word Blenders

As you know, I like wordplay. The title of my blog declares it. (Of course, laughorist is a blend of laugh + aphorist.) So, when I read an online piece today about some folks in the San Francisco area who succeeded in complying with their vow not to shop for a year (with some exceptions), I was all set to declare myself as the inventor of the blended neologism "freegonomics."

Read on.

The news story made reference to so-called freegans, people who advocate minimal consumption -- with some going so far as to eat out of Dumpsters. (Please note: the former newspaper copy editor in me warns you that Dumpster is a brand name and should be capitalized when you read it in print or online.) The word freegan itself, of course, is a linguistic blend of free + vegan. (Turns out that some freegans are meagans, because they allow themselves to eat meat.)

Well, I cannot claim to have coined the term freegonomics (the link here to the word is actually a thought-provoking essay by columnist Lucy Siegle in The Observer back in February 2006). A simple search of "freegonomics" indicates that several others already beat me to it, by months if not years.

Even if I did not coin the term, I feel the concept raises issues worth considering. When I was in college, during the Vietnam War, I remember a philosophy professor, John McNeill, challenging our class at LeMoyne College with respect to those who protested the war. He said something like this:

"A Franciscan movement could end this war in 90 days. But you can't do it. If everyone from, say, the ages of 15 to 30 disciplined themselves to the point of buying only necessary goods, you would be able to get anything you want from the government in no time. The economic effect would be huge, and you would be able to stop the war. But you don't have that ability to sacrifice."

Something like that. And I suspected then, and now, he was right.

There's little doubt that consumption (is "overconsumption" a redundancy about redundancies?) in capitalist (well, in all societies) involves abuse, destruction, waste, and greed.

But couldn't the same be said ever since Adam and Eve (easy on those apples, kids)?

I don't disagree that we (we in the U.S. and the so-called developed nations, as well as we who pollute the air and foul the rivers of a booming China) are ravaging the planet. But on a macroeconomic level, if "we" all were to cut back even to a sensible minimum of consumption (a sensible minimum, however you define it), does that impoverish thousands, if not millions, of suddenly jobless people?

I am neither a microeconomist nor a macroeconomist. I tend to be quite frugal (some would say cheapskate). I am not an extravagant buyer. When clothes are given to me as gifts, I feel sheepish (well, that's true for anything made of wool - HAHAHAHA).

I don't know what to conclude about any of this.

Just some food for thought.

And, speaking of word blenders, as opposed to food blenders, even Wikipedia (the source of many definitions above) is a blend of wiki (Hawaiian for fast) + encyclopedia.

You can look it up.

Laugh. Or....

Else.

Spinmeister, Well-Heel Thyself

Well, there's spindoctors and then there's spinmeisters. And the latter are very well heeled. As in platinum or gold. Turns out, there's this d.j. in New York City who caters to the posh uppercrust, at fund-raising galas and such, pinkies-out affaires, attended by those with interchangeable first, last, or middle names (you know, like Whitney Brewster Harrington, or vice or thrice versa, or Alexandra Bennington Vermont).

As noted in today's New York Times, one Tom Finn is said to command $5,000 to $12,000 per night to play tunes for the rich and famous and powerful (and mostly white and mostly uncoordinated).

He does about 70 nights a year, it says. (What's he do on his off days? Spin pizza dough down at the corner pizza shop?)

You do the math. A minimum of approximately 5,000 times 70. Dollars. Not pesos.

Oh, he used to be with singing group The Left Bank. Remember their song? "Walk Away Renee"? Shite, he almost had his band aptly named. Should've been The Right Bank.

Up to $12,000 a night.

Give him his due. He's not just spinning records or playing CDs. He creates a mood (a mood to help people reach into their alligator-skin wallets or their Coach purses).

The story noted that he's the man for fund-raising galas, such as for New York City Ballet or high-society shindigs.

So let me get this straight. My daughter, and legions of other ballet dancers, train daily, often through grueling injuries, and do the actual performing of the art, and they all probably are lucky to get paid $12,000 a night combined, in total, for all I know!

And my wife, who is a neonatal intensive care nurse, actually makes less than $1,000 a night, even on the night shift. Can you believe it?

What's your salary per night? Or day?

You're right.

Life ain't fair.

We all know that.

But maybe this is what our opponents and "enemies" mean when they refer to our having a morally bankrupt society.

A d.j. at a fund-raiser (maybe even a fund-raiser for the poor -- a word no one would dare use there) reeling it in.

Laughing all the way to the Left Bank, or any bank.

What would Jesus say? (or pay?)

What would Kierkegaard say?

Laugh. Or....

Else.