Today was haircut day, and I always get such a pleasure going to my barber. That's not only because I like the guy tremendously -- but how we crossed paths. For years, I went to a barber in West L.A. named Meredith. Like me, she was from Chicago, so we always had good conversations. Then, one day I couldn't reach her store, drove by and saw it had been shut down. It was a shame. I needed to find somewhere else to go, had no idea and just flipped through the Yellow Pages. For reasons I can't remember why, I landed on a place in Santa Monica on Wilshire. I think it was because the place was reasonably close, and their ad looked low-key, which is what I want from a barber shop. When I arrived, they could have stuck me in any chair. There were about a dozen, and they pointed me to one that was open. "Go over there to Don." When I reached his chair, I saw a handwritten sign he'd put on the mirror -- "Will be gone March 11-15 for Chicago Cubs Spring Training." I knew I have found my new barber. I knew I had come home. Don O'Hern was and is great. A real Chicagoan, he comes from a family of firemen, to boot. Just a wonderful guy (and terrific barber, which helps when you're a barber). Eventually, he left to start his own place, Don's Cutting Edge. It's only a few doors down, also on Wilshire in Santa Monica. I've been going to him for 20-25 years, and have yet to run out of wonderful conversation. Most especially during the baseball season, when Cubs talk rules the day. But he loves movie, literature, travel, photography and more. Not long ago, on a whim I checked Yelp to see if Don was listed there. He is -- and he has a five star rating on 40 reviews. So, it's nice to know that I'm not blinded by Cubs Love. (Here's the start of the first comment there. "WOW. OK. I finally have a place to get my hair cut in Santa Monica that does not reach for the clippers right away and make me look like a marine!" What's funny about that is that Don himself looks like a Marine. Actually, he looks like a doppelganger for former Dodger Kirk Gibson...) It's a small, traditional barber shop, with the walls always changing with artwork (which he'll post from aspiring local artists and photographers), or movie posters from his personal collection, or even his own terrific, framed photos from his travels.
Over the years, we've become friends, even catching dinner on occasion after he shuts to shop down for the night. But mainly, I just like that he's such a good barber (especially for my admittedly simple needs). But mainly above even that, I just love how I happened on his Chicago Cubs-loving chair by total accident.
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When companies use their CEO as corporate spokesman, it's usually to put a warm, human face on the Big Corporate Entity. And that's because their CEO is someone who actually comes across as a warm, human face. It's what happened with Wendy's and Dave Thomas. John McCann of 1-800-Flowers presents a reasonably personable public image for the company. (It's flowers, after all, the guy's got to be okay, you figure.) And it even made Lee Iacocca of Chrysler a major national figure -- and Mr. Iacocca was not likely a warm and fuzzy guy. Which is all the more reason I can't figure Papa John's putting its John Schnatter in the forefront on all its TV ads. Even long before he came out whining about maybe having to raise the price of his large pizzas by 14-cents because of the Affordable Health Care Act, I got the creeps whenever a Papa John's ad would pop. For years, I've been scratching my head trying to think, "Who thought this was a good idea?" Far from seeing warm and fuzzy, he strikes me as the most tightly-wound CEO in America (which is an impressive competition to win), someone so anal that he has his secretary plan his coughs. A guy who if the slightest thing doesn't go the way he wants it will explode in anger. He's one of the few people I've ever seen whose body looks tense in a still photograph. And this is who they think America will warm to as the friendly face of Papa John's? The only thing I can figure is that this has nothing to do with a PR company saying, "Hey, let's put the CEO on your ads because he comes across like such an amazingly nice guy." It seems more a case of John Schnatter saying, "I want to star in the TV ads for my company. Anyone disagree? Hunh?"
It came as no surprise to me when he went on his rant against health care and 14-cents. Yes, he walked it back when the story became a disaster, but to me, those ads are the face of a guy who meant to. To be clear, none of this is meant as a complaint against Papa John's pizza or Mr. Schatter's politics, or a call to boycott. I've had their pizza in the past, and thought it was pretty good for home delivery. I'd personally be reticent to buy from them for the time being, but I'm not adamant about it. I can absolutely understand people going there for a pie. This only came about for one reason: because a Papa John's ad just ran on TV, and it gave me the creeps. Again. He had his arm around some kid, trying to look like just a regular guy, and all I could think of was yelling at the screen, "Run, kid! Run!! Run for your life before he snaps and strangles you!!!" In most of the articles I read about Dick Van Dyke receiving his lifetime achievement award from SAG, they mentioned that one of the things he was doing these days was performing in an a capella group, the Vantastixs. They're terrific, and I thought you might enjoy seeing a really nice, extended view of them in concert. "Hillary Clinton got away with murder, in my view. She said they had a clear-eyed view of the threats. How could you have a clear-eyed view of the threats in Benghazi when you didn't know about the ambassador's cable coming back from Libya?"
-- Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) I look forward to Mr. Graham's outrage at George W. Bush actually receiving a Presidential Daily Briefing titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S." which even explained the use of airplanes, and then ignoring the memo, after which 3,000 human beings died. Although 11 years have passed, perhaps the senator is just taking his time, trying to craft a really good expression of moral indignation. “Look, if we had a Clinton presidency, if we had Erskine Bowles as chief of staff of the White House or president of the United States, I think we would have fixed this fiscal mess by now," - Paul Ryan (R-WI) about Hillary Clinton on Meet the Press Sometimes I think the Republicans in Congress can't shock me by their gutterly laughable, teeth-gnashing, shameless hypocrisy. But then they outdo themselves. I get the sense that some of these people sit in a room and play a game to see which one will be able to say the most unbelievable thing that no one else in the circle can even get out of their mouth, and the winner gets to say it in public. (Or maybe it's that the loser has to.) Republicans hate Hillary Clinton. They hate her so irrationally that they tried to paint her as a murdering lesbian harridan. The mere mention of Hillary Clinton's name at 500 paces can get the head of many Republicans to explode. There is only one person Republicans have hated this long more than Hillary Clinton. And that's Bill Clinton. For goodness sake, they hate him so irrationally they impeached the guy. They hate Bill Clinton so much that they actually did create a "vast right wing conspiracy" to destroy him in every way possible. And yet he left office with an approval rating of 68%. And that made them hate him even more. And then, during the recent presidential election, Republicans lionized Bill Clinton. They put him on a pedestal up with Abraham Lincoln. "Clinton was trying to move the party to the center," former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-AA) said in praise. John McCain (R-AZ) fawned over the guy. "President Clinton -- who took military action to stop ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and who did so in Kosovo without a U.N. Security Council mandate -- ultimately understood..." "Obviously President Bill Clinton gets it," lauded Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) When the Republican standard bearer, Mitt Romney (R-MA) lost the election, the person he quoted to defend himself, to relate how good he was, to explain that his loss was only an accident -- was Bill Clinton. ”I spoke with President Clinton the day before yesterday, he called and spent 30 minutes chatting with me. He said a week out I thought you were going to win. And he said, but the hurricane happened, and it gave the president a chance to be presidential, and to look bipartisan, and you know he got a little more momentum, and of course he also said that when he was watching Ann speak at the Republican convention, he decided he was tempted to join the Republican Party. Yes, Republican now supposedly love Bill Clinton so much that they want him to be a Republican!
And Republicans are saying, now, that the hated, evil queen Hillary Clinton -- the person they believe is likely going to be the Democratic candidate for president in 2016 -- is so absolutely incredibly wonderful, that she could solve the economic crisis caused by George W. Bush. And...AND...she could do it with Erskine Bowles -- who had been the Chief of Staff for...Bill freaking Clinton! And that's because there is one person they irrationally hate more than they irrationally hate Bill Clinton and irrationally hate Hillary Clinton. And it's Barack Obama. Republicans will say almost literally anything to try to irrationally demean President Barack Obama. Nazi Socialist anti-American radical Kenyan who wants to kill old people. It's as if the thought process has turned off. It doesn't matter if it makes no sense. It doesn't matter if it contradicts everything they've stood for in their entire life. It doesn't matter if it's such a ghastly hypocritical lie that when you tried to get into heaven God Himself would meet you at the gate and push St. Peter aside to say, "Hold on, you have got to be kidding me. No way. Down there." And so now, Paul Ryan, the losing Republican candidate for Vice President, thinks so little of Americans that he's will to sell his soul and say that a Clinton presidency with Erskine Bowles would have fixed the Bush-created financial crisis. The same night, that very same Hillary Clinton and very same President Barack Obama appeared on 60 Minutes and explained that they had such a difficult time debating each other in the 2008 primaries specifically because they agreed so closely on almost everything! And Paul Ryan -- now -- wants Americans to believe that he believes that President Hillary Clinton would fix the fiscal crisis. Doing, likely, exactly the same thing Barack Obama is doing. No wonder he lost. And by the way, none of this addresses that any Democratic president would have to get her or his economic policies past the same Republican Congress which votes unanimously "no" on virtually everything. Unless, that is, Mr. Ryan is acknowledging that Republicans are consistently voting "no" against Barack Obama purely because he is Barack Obama. Not because of his policies, which would be almost exactly the same as those of Hillary Clinton, by their own acknowledgement. I would say that Republicans have reached a low in pathetic, self-serving, lying hypocrisy. But I have confidence in them. I know they can go lower. Just for the fun of it. With the Super Bowl coming up, this came to mind and seemed particularly appropriate. Back in 1986, the Chicago Bears were about the play in the Super Bowl, which they subsequently won. If the world knows anything about that Bears team and music, it's the goofy video of "The Super Bowl Shuffle." But this is the music I most think about. You must understand, much as I adore the Cubs, Chicago is a Bears Town. People just absolutely love the Bears. So, when they were about to play in the Super Bowl, it was a Really Big Deal. Huge. Days before, On the evening of July 23, the Chicago Symphony had a concert. Sir Georg Solti was the conductor, and the evening included the renowned CSO Chorus conducted by Margaret Hillis. The concert of Tchaikovsky and Liszt concluded. But then the orchestra did something uncommon. The stately CSO Chorus rushed back onstage -- not in their long robes, but in Chicago Bears sweatshirts. They took their place, waited along with the tuxedoed and gowned orchestra members as the bewildered patrons watched and waited in uncertainty...and then on the downbeat from Sir Georg Solti, they all brought the elegant patrons to wild cheers of utterly unexpected excitement with the team's fight song, "Bear Down, Chicago Bears!" The song never sounded so good. In fact, the event was so popular that the orchestra recorded the number as a single (!) which was a premium giveaway when they did a fund drive. It's a remarkably wonderful recording. But this, the live event, was recorded, as well, and the joy of the audience make it my favorite of the two. One last word about the song. It's credited as written by "Jerry Downs." But that's a pseudonym. His real name was Al Hoffman, who -- among his great many credits -- co-wrote "Mairzy Doats," "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" (and other songs from Cinderella, including "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Make"), Perry Como's big hit, "Hot Diggity," "Allegheny Moon" and "Fit as a Fiddle," which was used in Singin' in the Rain.
But this is his "Bear Down, Chicago Bears!" We take you now to Orchestra Hall. The evening of January 23, 1986. Days before the Super Bowl. The CSO Chorus has just returned to the stage in Chicago Bears sweatshirts, the orchestra waits, the classical music audience goes crazy, Sir Georg Solti raises his baton and... |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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