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“Parade’s” Paycheck Parade

This is hardly earth-shattering news, and not very timely besides, but last week Parade Magazine published its annual celebration of pecuniary envy, “What People Earn”. This gives us, amid all the ads for weight loss systems and USMC-themed Hummel-like figurines, the chance to line up what Tiger Woods makes with the take-home of a janitor in Billings, Mt., and a circuit court judge in Kalamazoo.

Now, I was always taught that it was rude to ask people what they earn. In some circles (like among Europeans), it’s actually bad form to try to maintain a conversation by talking about something as boring as a job–a person should have (or try to cultivate) better conversational skills using more intriguing methods of interpersonal exchange. So I guess instead of dissing Parade for being nosy, boring, and banal, I should thank it for asking the questions people want to know.

Then again, screw it. I’ll thank them when Walter Scott answers the reader question: “What does Courtney Cox think of man’s basic nature? Is there really an objective division between good and evil, or are our souls the active battleground of good and evil, as the Manichaeists believe?”

The results of Parade‘s crack reporters’ research shows that, by gosh, just as you might think, there’s a huge range of dollar amounts for everyone listed. Tiger Woods, $100 million. A pastor in Wichita, $5,800. US Army dog handler, $30K. The 25-year-old CEO of Facebook, $3 billion.

Sure, I believe that guy’s worth $3 billion. Until the next big computer fad comes out, and he’s left to scrounge nickels like the guys from Napster, MySpace, and Netscape.

Seeing Parade in the Sunday paper always makes my skin crawl (True headline from this week’s online edition: “Lisa Kudrow Says It’s Important to Keep History Alive!”). But this paycheck issue is always extra-creepy, for a number of reasons:

* It’s plain nauseating to think that Glenn Beck made $23 million last year (which is a low guess anyway, since Forbes estimates it was closer to $32 mil.), because that’s just not a world I want to live in. Ditto Jay Leno bringing in $32 mil.

* There is a forced camaraderie and false connection implied by lining up everyone’s picture on an equal grid, so that Johnny Depp and a nursing home worker look like fellow students in a high school yearbook. Sorry, Johnny Depp seems like a likeable down-to-earth megastar, but he lives on a different planet. And on that planet, he owns four houses and lives with a French model. Nothing against Seymour, Tenn., but Johnny Depp is not popping in for a BBQ anytime soon, no matter how friendly the people seem.

* The strained equivalences are reinforced by use of the first person plural throughout the article. “How We’re Making It Work.” As best as we can, thanks, though the cost of living is a lot different in South Dakota than in suburban Maryland, and people like Kanye West are making it work because they can afford lots of handlers and lawyers to keep them out of trouble when they get drunk and abuse people.

* It forces me to consider scenarios in which I’m working in a menial job in a flyspeck town. Fate may be capricious, of course, and it’s a longshot that it would happen, but what if an old “Twilight Zone” storyline came true, and you woke up one morning with your body switched with a complete stranger’s? And why should you have people across America learn that you make crap wages?

* It hurts my head to imagine the reality behind some of the people’s occupations and stated income. A modern dancer in Murray, Utah, earning $32,000? There’s a modern dancer in Murray, Utah? And she makes a living wage? Weird, baby.

* And I hate it because it’s so transparently shoddy, for all the above reasons, and so illuminates the problem of ranking articles like this, whether published by Forbes or Inc. or Jack & Jill. While trying to pass as important sociologically and even anthropologically, they are always merely one editor’s idea of an interesting topic, fleshed out under deadline with questionable methods. How did Parade find the retail salesperson in Kreamer, Pa., and why did she tell them she only made $8200 last year? And what conclusions can be made from a call that certainly was made randomly? And I hate myself for getting sucked into articles like this, too.

And then there’s a long, long argument to be made about whether a person’s income is in any way reflective of the worth they add to society, and the growing chasm between the wealth of the richest and the poorest in America, but those are for another time. Most of the people in the article aren’t too concerned that the average CEO makes 300 times what his average worker makes. They’re probably just happy to have their pictures in the paper.

And heavens, that’s enough time spent on THAT magazine. Sorry for wasting your time on it.

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Big Food = Big Laffs

I’ve been trying to convince the drama teacher at my daughter’s school of this irrefutable equation for two years now, with no success. One need only point to Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” for evidence of its veracity, with the giant banana peel and the aggressive instant pudding. Maybe she’s been swayed by the wave of recent articles about American obesity, and pictures of gargantuan hamburgers that people actually try and eat.

A few years ago at another school, I worked on props for a version of “Jack and the Beanstalk”, which included a lot of material about eating. (The kids thought that material was hilarious, BTW. You can always trust kids to laugh at food, poop and any combination thereof.) For that play, I made chicken legs out of 2-liter bottles and papier mache, hams out of detergent bottles, and bowls of spaghetti out of clothesline, paint and brown styrofoam balls. The giant cheeseburger has had a place of importance in our TV room ever since.

For Liesel’s play this year (which will be held this weekend at the fabulous Portage Theater in Portage Park), I only had one food prop to make, but thankfully it was to be a little larger than life. A character had to get in trouble with the police for smuggling cheese into Russia, so I needed to create a wheel of cheese that was big enough to see but not so big that a grade schooler couldn’t wave it around.

I started with a plastic tray for under flower pots. I cut a pie-shaped slice out of it, filled it with newspaper, and sealed it all up with a couple pieces of cardboard. Then, we covered it with a few layers of papier mache. When you apply papier mache as thickly as we do around here, it’s going to dry very tightly and cause the object to buckle and crease a little bit. Thankfully, cheese is not always a symmetrical delicacy.

Then a base of white paint, which makes it look like brie, a food funny in some situations but much too runny to be believable in our scenario:

Then some yellow paint, and a few holes drawn on:

And Wooola! It’s not very large. In fact, it’s actually life-sized. But I take any assignments I can get these days.

Bonus Prop: Here’s my version of an iPad that I created for the play. These are available now, so you don’t have to wait for Apple to enjoy their little masochistic waiting period. Pencil not included.

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Happy Birthday Michigan!

The Water Wonderland. The Great Lake State. The Mitten and the Rabbit. My home state was admitted into the Union 173 years ago today.

A get-rich place of boom and bust. First furs, then lumber, then copper, then autos. And through it all, a crazy race of people. Where the nickname “Wolverine” came from, no one is certain. It’s been speculated that the Native Americans called the white settlers that because of their rapacious attitudes. It may have been coined during the border war with Ohio in 1836 (often called the Toledo War), because of the ferocity of the citizens insisting that we deserved that little strip of land (we were appeased by Congress when they offered us the Upper Peninsula in exchange–a good trade). But the mysterious origin of the word only makes it more endearing to its folks.

I moved out of there just after college, and I still feel a little guilty about it, but in 1982 things were pretty tough, and I didn’t see any jobs there for a writer. Besides, I wanted to try Chicago for its city living and its public transportation. (Well, I didn’t move here for the El, of course, interesting though it was, but because I could survive here without a car.) I also had family roots in the Windy City, so it wasn’t a big dislocation. But often I feel the pull of moving back to Michigan. Why not trade one bankrupt state for another? I know I could never move very far from it, in any case, because I’d miss those cool summer nights, shocking fall colors, and cold winter mornings over the rolling hillsides. There’s something different about the landscape there. The hills move just a little bit looser and dreamier there than they do in Wisconsin, Ontario, Ohio, or Minnesota. Those big expanses of Great Lakes water allow for so much thinking and feeling awestruck. And the people! They have so much pride in their state that it makes the rest of you all look like sneaky carpetbaggers.

So here’s to the Great Lake State! The Yoopers and the Trolls, the stiff-necked Dutch and the factory rats, the displaced Southerners and Middle Easterners, the hunters and the professors, the casino operators and the industrial designers. Your fortunes will rise again, and fall again, but through it all, you’ll always have hunting holidays and Tiger baseball.

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Fall is Time for Hard Cider

Came across a nice article today at The Paupered Chef, about making hard (alcoholic) cider at home. If you’re looking for a fun, harvest-time, inexpensive food project, this is the ticket. It’s easy and inexpensive, and you can use any type of cider you find, either from the store, the orchard, or the farmer’s market.

I’ve made hard ciders a few times in the past, but they came out very very dry. Champagne seemed like water by comparison, and I’m not a huge fan of bubbly. Nick, the Paupered Chef, ran into this problem too, because whaddya know? He was using champagne yeast! On a lark, he experimented with lager yeast instead. Huzzah! Why didn’t I think of that? I was too skeered to deviate from the recipes, I guess, but I’m wiser now. Brewing is just cooking that takes a little longer to taste the results, so why not experiment? Anthony Bourdain ain’t coming to your brunch, no matter how many times he says he is.

In the comments section, a reader lays out a big cider recipe including brown sugar, cinnamon, and corn sugar. Don’t know how it will come out, but I admire his DIY ambition. Another reader also sticks up for us home-brewers when someone makes a snide remark about brew-nerds. Hey, few things in life are better than homemade beer and cider. It’s cheaper, it’s homemade, it’s fun, and you don’t pay taxes on it. What’s not to love?

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On Demand Book Machine

A slick little gizmo, that’s certainly “bound” to become more common in the future!

Ha Ha! I should send my gags to “The Family Circus” , or maybe even the Jumble!

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Son Joins the Hordes of High School

It didn’t hit me yesterday, because I wasn’t the one who drove, but today I got hit with it smack in the face: Number One Son is in high school. As he left the car this morning, it looked as if he were entering a literal stream of young people, heading upriver (or down? Lousy metaphor), flapping around in the water, headed toward that ravenous monster, the future. Kids from all backgrounds (except I guess neglectful ones), dressed in all sorts of clothes (didn’t see many headscarves at the Catholic grade school), armed with enthusiasm and intelligence and a little blind naivete that likely is necessary to get a jump-start on adult life.

His anxiety was strong in the car, as he tried to bury himself in a thick biography of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. On Tuesday, enough things went wrong to alert him that he’s no longer at the parish school around the corner. His newfangledy tablet computer (which he got through an experimental school program) went out on him twice. He forgot his locker combination. And he came to realize that he might actually have to pay attention through his whole 90-minute classes and do most of his homework at night. At least there were no snafus on the CTA bus coming home.

He’ll be fine in a few weeks, I’m sure. But we’ll need to keep an eye on his stress levels, because they have a tendency to get bottled up until they explode. I’d blocked out of my mind, at least a little, how difficult the first weeks of high school were. One thing I do remember is, back in the day, I got myself so worked up with nerves and the fear of failure that I made myself sick for a few days. The only people I knew were my brother’s friends and the dorkiest kid in my grade school who was following me there. It was a school full of traditions and demanding standards and a lot of all-boy school machismo, and I really thought that I’d never make a friend there on my own terms. Of course, I eventually made some of my best friends there, some I still stay in touch with. But the immersion was more than my 14-year-old spirit could handle.

I had a dream a few days ago that I still had my handsome fat baby boy in my arms, and I was blowing neck farts on him. He smiled and laughed, we probably even talked about things in a dreamlike way. Damn, he was a handsome baby! I woke up satisfied, not sad or wistful. But oh if it were possible to hold your kids one more time in your arms, if only for a day! How much would any of us pay — how many years off our own life would we sacrifice — if such a thing could be done? It aches just to think about it. Sometimes it’s hard being a sentimental old fluff like me.

(Below is a family portrait that he drew when he was four years old, and his little sister was a caterwauling babe-in-arms. Note the monsters and space ships on the frame, and the pile of hair on his head. I think this was drawn when “Monsters, Inc.” had just come out.)

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Fishing Boats for Sale

Driving through the backroads of Michigan this summer, I’ve seen “For Sale” signs everywhere. Not just on houses and property, but also on cars, trailers, lawn mowers, snow blowers, fishing boats and pontoons. It’s very sad. It’s gotten to the point where I expect everything sitting in someone’s front yard MUST be out there to be sold. I had to apologize repeatedly to that old woman sitting in the Amiga in Fruitport, and she STILL gave me the finger when I drove off.

Just kidding. I was never in Fruitport. And I have no use for an Amiga.

Such a fire sale can be hard on the nerves of the casually interested. If I had a few million sitting in the bank ready for action, I’d probably start succumbing to temptation and assemble a flotilla of pontoon boats, bass boats and jet skis. What I’d do with a flotilla, I don’t know. Float it as best I could, probably. The temptation is also there to scoop up some of the homes and property that are sitting on lake front property, but they cost considerably more than a 20-year-old pontoon. And I have no interest in becoming a real estate baron. Plaid pants make me look fat.

These are tough times for my favorite state. It always seems to be tough times here. I moved to Chicago in 1982 because of tough times, and every time I come back, it’s déjà vu all over again. Now the workers who are losing their jobs or feeling the pinch of the general downturn are trying to sell their fishing boats, which are basically standard equipment here. The “Cash for Clunkers” program might help the factories get rolling again, but the GM bailout will be forcing wages down. So even those folks who still have jobs might not be able to afford a house and a boat.

Oh boo hoo, you might be thinking. I don’t have a boat, or a trailer or even the time to use one if I did.

But it was part of the social contract here in Michigan for generations. You put your time in at the factory, and you’d be able to send your kids to school, have some health coverage, and be able to relax a little on the water on the weekends. Now that’s falling apart quickly. The state is out of money, the city of Detroit is bound to collapse soon, the small factories that fed Detroit are cutting back and/or shutting up shop, and the people who are just trying to wait for the rebound to start are going to food banks and selling the fishing boat. Maybe when things turn around, they’ll be able to buy a new one, maybe not. Sad to watch. Feels like the whole state is hunkered down, waiting to get punched one more time.

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Happily Ever After…Not So Much

Since many people assume that I am completely obsessed and an utter expert on fairy tales and the postmodern exploration of their themes, metathemes and metametas, I thought I would pass along this gallery of photographs by Dina Goldstein. As her daughters have begun to be interested in Disney princesses, she began to explore the idea of what “happily ever after” was like. Her portrayals of Snow White and the rest of them are beautifully done, and sometimes disturbing. My favorite is Cinderella drinking in a honky-tonk. Enjoy.