Inexcusable Trend - Treating Dogs Like People

In the spirit of Esquire's "The Indefensible Position" column, I offer up "The Inexcusable Trend" - an exploration of those fads, furors and tendencies in vogue which fly in the face of good taste, logic or simply defy justification.

How many times have you found yourself smack in the middle of crap day and thought to yourself that sometimes, you wish you could have a dog's life?

Dogs have it pretty good...sleep, eat, play, poop...repeat. No deadlines, no bosses, no bills and no commuting! I know, I know...they can't play X-box, drink beer, don't understand football (although every guy who has a dog will swear that his pal watches TV)...and then there's that whole neutering thing...but as smart as they are, dogs don't know that life can be any better.

Which brings me to the point of this essay - the inexcusable trend as it pertains to our canine friends - TREATING DOGS LIKE PEOPLE. And not just treating dogs like humans but treating them better than most humans are treated...like snobby, pretentious, pampered and entitled people.

What's was the catalyst for this most recent rant? As if the dozens of people I see each day toting Fifi around in Gucci bags aren't enough...it was an article in the "Executive Life: Business Travel" section of a recent Business Week. The article detailed Houston's "pet-friendly" lodging options and the myriad ways an exec can "pamper their pooch while on the road."

Options include a package at the apparently way trendy Hotel Derek that gives dogs their own plush beds, bottled water and gift bags of toys. At the Four Seasons, they have special "Posh Pet Privileges" that include "exercisers" (assuming this means dog walkers), in-room grooming and menus featuring organic ingredients. And if classic presentation is your pet's thing, at the Lovett Inn, meals served out of sterling bowls on sterling trays with water by Evian.

Let's ignore the obvious opportunity for digression served up by the Business Week article - you know, the one about executive privilege, corporate governance and accountability to shareholders (aaahemmm...Tyco).

This kind of thing is not just wasteful and embarrassing, it's completely unnecessary. Why? Because DOGS DON'T CARE. I guarantee that when dogs of rich owners are sniffing each others' butts at the dog park, they're not comparing notes about how the "took their meals" when they traveled last. Eat, sleep, crap and play...basic needs = happy puppy.

Love your dog, treat it well and you'll have a loyal companion for life. But if you want a fashion accessory that you can use to make statements about who you are beyond that you an animal-lover, you're not looking for the kind of companionship a dog provides.

Where the Heck is My Diebold AccuVote?!

I just voted. And in a nostalgic nod to the 1980s that I can appreciate on some levels, I used a pencil to color in ovals next to the candidates of my choice. But this means of doing my civic duty was completely unexpected and the whole process, decidedly underwhelming. My wife summed it up perfectly on our way out of the polling place when she exclaimed to me "that was it?"

In the months and weeks leading up to this day, the media and punditocracy was awash with grave concerns and vast theories about the extent to which electronic voting machines would wreak havoc on today's results. Rampant fraud, technical glitches and votes lost, unrecoverable because of a lack of paper back-up...or at least the specter of the potential resulting mayhem added an incremental (and badly needed) level of "interestingness" to this mid-term.

But not for me...at least not this election. I voted with the tried and true paper ballot and filled-in bubble for which the potential errors are limited to those human and analog. Wowee. Relieved to a small degree, I mostly feel like I got hosed - I know that some guy in Iowa just had more fun voting than I did!

Pimpin' The Same Thinkin'

You hear it uttered all of the time about just about everything... "There are no new ideas anymore!" My Gramps used to say it...and that was way back in the 80s!

In our more rational moments, we know that not to be true. We can cite as evidence, technological advances like the internet, societal trends like social networking, the emergence of Rap and new Aaron Sorkin dramas...ok, ignore that last one. But at times, it sure seems like remake, retread and redux are the norm rather than the exception. And it's most glaringly apparent in the mainstream mega-entertainment-complex. I'm talking about the troika of TV, Movies and Theater. And the thing that's so confounding about that is that this is an industry where it's people's job to be creative...as in create...as in come up with new stuff.

I just came back from the Broadway adaptation of High Fidelity...yes, the cult novel (and yes, it was once a "cult" novel...back before the movie "About a Boy" made Nick Hornby a best selling author) which begat the cultish (and excellent) movie starring John Cusack.

The show was entertaining...well produced and well acted. The music wasn't bad either...by Broadway standards...but for a story which is rooted in one man's devotion to classic Punk and Indie music...there was, for me, something lost when the movie soundtrack that included The Kinks, Sex Pistols, Costello and The Clash was replaced by Andrew Lloyd Webber-esq performance numbers. With that switcheroo, regardless of the names of the characters or the plot line, it ceased to be Fidelity.

Most people would agree that most of the time the remake is rarely as good as the original, the movie rarely does the book justice and that theater is its own unique art form...more different than cinema and TV than like it. There's been crossover success for sure - Chicago the movie was a huge hit as The Lion King the show has been...but in both instances, they were musicals to begin with...it was logical...the adaptation would mirror the performance style of the original at least.

So if Fidelity wasn't a musical, it begs the ultimate question of WHY? Why even try to make High Fidelity a Broadway show? It's not like it was a franchise in and of itself with über-wide demographic market appeal like The Lion King. I kid you not - before the show started, the guy in his 60s sitting next to me said to his wife while reading the Playbill, "I didn't know this was based on a movie!"

And if the producers liked the classic premise of the story (man-child loses girl, grows up, wins back girl), why pimp Hornby's take? Why not just create a new story on that framework?

I know the answer - $$. A franchise - even a small one by the entertainment industry's standards is a franchise none the less and name recognition always helps ticket sales. Also, it fits perfectly with Broadway's attempt to become more mainstream in its offerings...because the middle-America and under 40 demos were apparently desperate to go to the theater but alas, there was nothing for them to see.

But to people who know the book and the movie, how can it not feel SO trite...and feed that generalized feeling that in the entertainment biz, everyone is just pimpin' the same thinkin'.

Back...to the Future?

Logical and safe? Sure. Futuristic and inspiring? No. NASA chose Lockheed Martin to build Orion - a bell shaped "crew delivery vehicle" which will replace the Space Shuttle as the primary exploration vehicle for the next "decade" (read "quarter century" judging by the lifespan of the Shuttle). It may get the job done but who's not just a little bit disappointed that Orion looks just like Mercury, Gemini and Apollo? Weren't we promised more?

X33 wasn't all that exciting (it was a plane, it even looked like the Shuttle) but at least it didn't feel like backward motion. Huge booster rockets with astronauts crammed into a cone atop thousands of pound of liquid fuel seemed like a logical first step back in the 60s but everyone THOUGHT that our technological achievements would accelerate and that space exploration would evolve. That's what drove, in part, the Shuttle program – it was the next evolutionary step.

True, space exploration is a hugely complex undertaking and NASA has been plagued by problems – failures and loss...but isn’t space the final frontier? Aren’t the risks inherent? Shouldn’t how we get there evolve (or at least look cooler) over time? So with Orion, is NASA playing it safe or was the original thinking about how to ferry people and stuff beyond Earth’s atmosphere truly the best? Is this exploratory conservatism or back to the future for a reason?

Dick - Why You 'illin'?

Yes Dick. It's all a massive mega media conspiracy...this whole Iraq quagmire thing. Thank goodness we have calm, rational and forthright leadership in you to expose it. And Fox News.

We, the "lemmings" (no, you didn't call us that, but if we're buying what they are selling so easily, doesn't that make us lemming-like too?!), appreciate it. Sincerely. In fact, we really should do something nice for you as our way of saying thanks. How about a nice long extended vacation beginning ASAP?

Ok. Now let's be serious and frank for a moment... What's the deal with these fist-pounding crank-fests? Do you and Rumsfeld have a contest going? And is the bet a dollar?

You're an intelligent guy so we know that you know that Cheney in '08 isn't going to happen. You don't want it and neither does the Republican base. So you're destined either for the soft-landing of a board seat or the wide open spaces of good 'ol Wyoming. You did what you were brought in to do - got your boss through two elections successfully (in theory)...Iraq could so easily just be his mess.

You could just clam-up, ride it out through '08, carve out you niche as a private citizen and then patina as you slowly fade from our collective memory the way most VPs do. Look at your predecessors...whether you agree with "An Inconvenient Truth" or not, Al's getting props worldwide. He even won a screen-writing award. And then there's Dan... Dan (like Al) avoided controversy and now he's Chairman of a hedge fund. And dispite his own spelling and word-useage issues, after he left office, people still generally liked him enough to make his book a best seller.

So why limit your options and appeal? You can walk loudly AND carry a big stick on your ranch if you want, but this whole Mr. Wilson, curmudgeon-thing is becoming part of your public persona and won't play well in the boardroom.

Blowing Off Wind

When I was growing up, a neighbor installed solar panels on his roof. They were ugly, he was weird and the whole situation carried the aura of fanaticism. "Alternative energy" hadn't yet entered the American lexicon. Neighbors scoffed that the panels were just "a waste of money" and "pointless" (because they were notoriously inefficientin the early 80's) but the single biggest gripe was that they were lamentably "ugly." One woman went so far as to plant a new tree just to block the view from her living room window.

Community reaction in my neighborhood growing up illustrates one of the biggest impediments to broad-scale adoption of alternative energy generation these days - that while the majority of people believe the technology works, has value and support the concept of "clean power," most don't want to look at what's needed to produce it. Power production has always been something that happened in isolated areas, industrial zones or "the other side of town" and folks want and expect it to stay that way. And there’s nothing wrong with that except that the reality is that for alternative energy generation to work efficiently and to be cost effective in the way that it needs to be to be a viable alternative to traditional fossil fuels and nuclear, by and large, the means of generation needs to be in places much closer to where people live, work and play. It means people will encounter the means of production. Solar panels work best on the roofs of the buildings they're powering...but they're getting easier to disguise. Wind turbines in contrast, due to the size of the blades needed to generate meaningful power and that they need to be located where the wind blows best makes them hard to visually minimize. Because of their prominence in the landscape, they are likely to elicit strong emotions.

Wind is the battle du jour where I live and it's forcing people to consider competing emotions within themselves and the community. It's calling priorities into conflict for Joe and Jane Q Public and creating some very odd alliances and strange bedfellows. How odd? How strange? How about socially progressive intellectuals and fossil fuel companies? How about liberal cause-fronting celebrities and conservative lawmakers?

At issue is the proposed "Cape Wind Project" which seeks to erect 130 wind turbines that are 400 ft. tall (to the top of the blades) several miles off-shore in Nantucket Sound off the Cape Cod coast. Why this pristine location? It's because there's a shoal there that provides the needed anchoring and the wind conditions are ideal for power generation. The turbines would cleanly provide ¾ of the power consumed by Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Not surprisingly though, a project of this nature, in a preeminent tourist area and within view of some of the most expensive coastal real-estate in the country has drawn much fervent criticism. What is surprising...or at least unusual in the realm of environmental issues (and is quite a conundrum for many people) is that many Massachusetts residents (and a lot of seasonal ones) find themselves in uncomfortable position of having to agree with BOTH sides of the argument. It's not often that "environmentally friendly" people (I'm talking everyday people who aren't Al Gore but who recycle actively and support environmental initiatives) find themselves opposing something they know is better for the environment.

Many citizens not to mention the old guard of Massachusetts and many political and celebrity "friends of the environment" from Ted Kennedy to Walter Cronkite have come down on the side opposed to Cape Wind. NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) has gotten the better of their minds and hearts. NIMBY is powerful because it involves a choice - and forces people to make a decision about something close to home literally.

If you're for wind, you need to accept the means by which it's generated. You also need to accept that you can't just plunk a turbine any old place (read: places where people don't vacation, where poor folks live or spots that are already "ugly"). It may even mean that you might need to look at windmills on the horizon from the deck of your vacation home or where you tan.

To embrace the future, it usually means that you have to compromise. The key to compromising is being flexible. And the thing that makes being flexible possible is the willingness to consider things in other ways. In the case of Cape Wind, the choice need not be progress or beauty...if people are willing to reconsider what they regard as "beauty."

Europeans largely made peace with wind power years ago and embrace turbines as a unique and beautifully dramatic part of their landscape. You can see them on the Irish coast, in the French countryside and dotting hills in Bavaria and the Alps. They view modern turbines the way we view the old wood and fabric windmills of yore - as interesting and picturesque aspects of the landscape.

What's unfortunate is that opponents of Cape Wind are refusing to compromise with themselves to the extent that they can make peace with the technology and envision beauty in a new way...even if the turbines will be so far from shore that despite their height, they'll only apear to reach 1/2 inch above the horizon. For the vocal opposition, Nantucket Sound must always appear the way it has "naturally" - turbine free. Emotion (and nostalgia) win out over logic, practicality and adaptability...and we all miss an opportunity to take a step forward together.

I'm not criticizing the opponents of Cape Wind for taking their position - I'm just saying that if they could open their minds to see beauty in modern turbines and recognize the minimal visual intrusion this specific project would have on the vistas they know and love, they could reconcile those diametrically opposed views that place them on both sides of the argument.

Questions of Conduct - Part 1

RANT: People Singing Audibly on the Train/Bus/In Public

Why? For you? For us? To make a statement? Your music so loud from your earphones that I can identify the song and learn the lyrics - fine. They're your eardrums...and maybe you're partially deaf already which explains why you've got the volume jacked to 9. But your duet with 50 Cent or Rush? Please. I respect the artist. But you aren't him. I say "him" because invariably, it's guys who are the offenders and if they're singing on the subway, they aren't listening to Kelly Clarkson or Beyonce. And if you're not listening to music (other than what's in your head!), that's even worse. If you want an audience - plunk yourself down outdoors at the station and put out a hat. If you've got some talent, you may even make a few bucks. But public transportation (where the bleary-eyed or dead-ass tired stand packed together tighter than bristles on a brush) isn't the place to conceive new lyrics for your band's latest, to see if you can remember all the words to [insert your song here] or to make a statement about how cool your are by vocalizing all of the expletives and racial slurs in what you're listening to. Keep it to yourself, perhaps even turn the volume down and we'll think that you're all that just for being respectful of your fellow commuters!

Bush's First Pardon?

2008. What's in a year? That depends...for the soldiers in Faluja and Baghdad, it's at least how much longer the Bush Administration says that they'll be in Iraq. For the President though, it'll be "Miller Time" as the timing for their withdrawl "will be decided by future presidents." How convenient. This would just about do it. I don't think it's a stretch to call this the official start of the Bush lame-duck presidency. It sure feels like hands have been thrown up... that after three and a half years of self-inflicted pain and self-victimization, the Bushies are exhausted by the whole "Iraq thing" and this out of touch administration is closing the storm shutters, putting on the noise-canceling headphones or hanging out the "gone fishing" sign (although "gone hunting" may be more appropriate). Marginalized by poor choices and sloppy political footwork, with party members running for the hills, it seems like they're beginning to lay the groundwork for absolution via term limits.