Author Archives: webnerbob

About webnerbob

A Cleveland and Ohio State sports fan who lives in Columbus, Ohio

Drinking On A Plane

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I typically don’t drink any adult beverages in airports or on planes. I figure traveling is one of those times when I want to be mentally sharp and at peak decision-making ability, in view of the various snags and issues that can arise during air travel these days.

I recognize, however, that other people have adopted a different approach to alcohol and air travel. Take, for example, the British passengers on a recent SunExpress flight to Turkey. Those thirsty passengers exhausted the plane’s supply of wine and beer only 25 minutes into their four-hour flight. The CEO of SunExpress said he thought British passengers were “more hedonistic” and more “high-spend” than travelers from other markets. No kidding!

Details on the specific SunExpress flight where this happened are sketchy, and there is no information on how extensive the supplies were before the flight took off, or what happened once the passengers on the flight learned that all of the booze on board had been consumed. I’m guessing they weren’t particularly happy about it.

I’ve done a decent amount of traveling, but I’ve never been on a plane where anyone in my row was drinking heavily–much less every passenger on the flight. I did sit next to an off-duty flight attendant on a flight once, however, and when we started talking about her job she said that the worst passengers to deal with are people who are drunk, so the flight attendants on this particular flight must have had their hands full. As a passenger, it would be unnerving to know that virtually everyone else on the plane had knocked back a few and were operating under the influence. I think I would have been very relieved when the flight ended and I was able to retrieve my bags and exit the plane without incident.

Forced Obsolescence

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In the ’50s and ’60s, American automakers became famous for implementing an approach known as “planned obsolescence.” The idea was to roll out new features and appearance changes every year–adding a bigger tailfin here, a new hood ornament there, an FM radio option, an increase in horsepower, and perhaps a new form of power steering–so that a hapless person who bought a new car three years ago would look at their perfectly adequate vehicle with a sense of embarrassment and decide that they needed to buy a new one just to keep up with the times.

The new tech companies have gone one step beyond planned obsolescence, into the realm of forced obsolescence. That’s what happens when the tech companies just stop supporting the old tech that seems to work just fine, requiring you to purchase and switch to new tech. You don’t just want to change to keep up with the Joneses, you have to change if you want your device to work at all.

This is what happened with our Roku device, which is probably more than five years old. It has worked like a charm. Several months ago, however, we started to get messages when we tried one of the streaming service channels advising us that the channel was no longer available on our antique Roku device, At first I resisted doing anything about it, figuring that one less streaming service is not that big a deal. But now other services have started to drop off, too–so I’ve knuckled under and bought a new Roku device that hopefully will get us back to full streaming capabilities.

It’s irritating, but what are you going to do about it? The tech companies will tell you that they had to stop supporting the old device because of security risks, so the switch to the newer, faster, safer device is really for your own good. But his forced obsolescence approach also happens to provide a lot more certainty for tech company bottom lines, because the switch to the new product is no longer dependent on unpredictable consumer tastes and decisions. The tech companies figure that if they’ve got the ability to eliminate the X factor, why not do it?

80 Can Be Weighty

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On the health front, it can be hard to know what to do sometimes. Confusing and often contradictory studies that can influence lifestyle choices seem to abound.

For example, I’ve always understood that, as you get older, a big part of maintaining good health is working to keep your weight down, because excessive weight is associated with many problematic health conditions that can affect mortality–not to mention causing trouble for aging joints. Now I’ve seen a study that suggests that for people over 80–a group the study, incidentally, refers to as the “oldest-old,” which seems a bit harsh–maintaining more weight and a higher body mass index number is associated with decreased mortality risk.

So, what’s a person who’d like to make it to that “oldest-old” category to do?

Apparently successful, long-term aging is an exercise in threading the needle. In your 60s and 70s, stay focused on the scale and the beltline, and keep that weight off. But, at the same time, don’t get too weak and scrawny, either, because if you make it to 80 you might need to bulk up a bit more. But if you do make it to 80, let the party begin!

It also means you should keep both the “fat clothes” and the “skinny clothes” in your closet, because you’re probably going to need them all at some time or another.

Fake Crying, Fake Laughing

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We watched the last episode of Shogun last night. The show ended, incidentally, in an enjoyable, Shogun-like way–which means there was more than a dash of mystery and confusion and misdirection to season a good storyline.

The episode required Cosmo Jarvis, who was quite good as Blackthorne in the series, to cry on cue at the loss of Mariko. It’s a tough assignment, perhaps the toughest assignment in acting. Jarvis gave it the old college try and did a credible job, but the cry didn’t quite reach the believability threshold. It made me think about how rarely you see a really authentic-looking cry on screen. When you see the genuine article, the entire face and upper body contribute to the cry, from the hunched, heaving shoulders to the quivering chin and mouth up to the sad, crying eyes. A true crying person is unmistakably crying. A single tear rolling down the cheek of an otherwise stolid face isn’t really a believable substitute.

Laughing also involves the complex interaction of lots of parts of the face, but usually laughter on cue is a lot more credible than crying. It is probably easier for actors than crying because they can summon up the memory of a good joke or a funny experience and use it get into the laughing mood. It’s harder to do that with crying, although some actors try. My mother told me once that when Shirley Temple was a child star and needed to cry on cue, one of the people on set would tell her her dog had died–which doesn’t seem like a solution you reasonably use more than once.

Anger, sadness, romantic interest, and surprise are emotions that any decent actor can reasonably convey, but fake crying is the gold standard. Find an actor who can do a believable cry on cue and you’ve identified a true “master thespian.”

The Random Restaurant Tour—LXIII

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There’s been a lot of buzz about Hank’s, the new restaurant opening at the corner of Gay and High Streets in downtown Columbus. Last night we checked out Hank’s on its official opening night, and I can comfortably say that the buzz is warranted.

Hank’s is a seafood and low country cuisine venue that comes to Columbus from Charleston, South Carolina, where it is one of the finest culinary establishments in that food-loving town. Its arrival is welcome, because our downtown area is noticeably lacking in seafood options. Steakhouses we’ve got, but seafood? Not so much. Hank’s aims to change that.

The restaurant has a casual elegant vibe, with a wraparound bar and oyster bar, leather seats, and white-jacketed waiters. And the food fits in well with the casual elegant atmosphere. At the recommendation of the friendly bartender, we got the scallops crudo appetizer, pictured above. It featured thinly sliced, succulent scallops that you spooned onto crisps. It was, in a word, delicious. Kish got the she crab soup, which also was terrific. It came in a huge bowl, too—big enough for two, which made me happy since I wrestled it away from her so I could enjoy a few spoonfuls of rich she crab goodness.

The bartender also recommended the ahi tuna entree, shown below—and she therefore went 2 for 2. it featured slices of rare, blackened sushi grade tuna served over cheesy grits, with two fried oysters as a complement. After I scraped off the diced vegetables on top (sorry, Hank’s!) I enjoyed the combination of low country flavors and textures in every bite. I second the barkeep in highly recommending this dish.

My doctor is always encouraging me to eat more fish. Thanks to Hank’s, that challenge just got a lot easier. I’m looking forward to the day, coming soon, when Hank’s opens for lunch.

The Second Cocktail Golden Age

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When we have gone out to eat recently, I’ve been struck by the changes in the menus–and specifically, the increased attention to the cocktail section. At many of the nicer restaurants in town, the menus are giving more and more space to the description of new drink concoctions to tantalize patrons, as well as offering the tried-and-true options. One of our favorite restaurants, Speck, accentuates the enhanced cocktail focus by handing our postcards with stylized depictions of cocktails like the one above.

(A Garibaldi, in case you’re interested, is made with Campari and orange juice, and looks like it would be a very refreshing warm weather drink.)

Why has this apparent increased focus on offering, and consuming, cocktails happened? I wouldn’t draw too many sweeping conclusions from it. I think drinking habits tend to be cyclical. Cocktails had their heyday in the Roaring Twenties, when many of the classic combinations were created, and have periodically waxed and waned in popularity in alternation with wine, beer, and “neat” drinks in the decades since. Now that we’re back in the ’20s again, cocktails are taking their turn.

This cocktail era–which you might call the second golden age of cocktails–is different from past cocktail-consuming eras due to the willingness of inventive bartenders to experiment with different ingredients, obscure liquors, and elaborate combinations. We recently went to a place where the menu featured one drink made with brown mustard. That’s not something you’d have seen the Rat Pack guzzling. The menus carefully describe all of the ingredients, too–which increases the urge to try something new, just to see how it tastes.

I think the increased focus on developing new cocktails is pretty cool, and the sight of diners sipping from the distinctive glasses they are inevitably served in gives a very cosmopolitan flair to dining out. This must be a fun time to be a bartender, because it certainly is a fun time to be an adventurous drinker.

Cicadas On The Cusp

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This year will be a big cicada year in the Midwest.

We live with cicadas every summer, thanks to the “annual cicada” nymphs that emerge from their underground homes, climb the nearest tree, and molt into their adult form. They then make an unholy racket as part of their mating process. Every so often, one or more of the cicada species in the broods that remain underground for much longer periods–13 or 17 years–also emerge, and the cicada love call noise level increases accordingly. This year, multiple species in both of the longer span cicada broods will emerge, for the first time since 1803, so we’ll probably need earplugs.

It will be prime time not only for enduring the calls of the cicadas, but also for studying these interesting–albeit loud–creatures. One of the things scientists are interested in examining is a fungus called Massospora that infects only cicadas. The fungus replaces their abdomens and genitals with fungal tissue and fills their systems with chemicals, causing them to engage in unusual sexual behavior to spread the fungus even more. Among other things, scientists are interested in seeing whether the fungus can be used for medicinal purposes in humans. (Speaking only for myself, I’d be leery of ingesting any medicine created with a cicada fungus that has the effects described above, but then I’m not very adventurous.)

I’ve lived through a number of these periodic cicada brood emergences, and it’s really no big deal. It’s loud at night when the cicadas are getting busy, but they soon die, making for crunchy walks in the cicada zones and helping to enrich the soil. I’d never travel to see even more cicadas, but if you want to get maximum cicada exposure, scientists say that Illinois will be ground zero.

Kid Sports

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Yesterday we went to watch a girls’ basketball game in which one of the teams was coached by our niece. It was the first kid’s sports game we’ve watched in more than 15 years–since our kids graduated from high school–and it was . . . refreshing.

There’s a pleasant innocence about kid sports that you forget about if you aren’t exposed to it for a while. Yesterday’s game involved two teams of sophomore and junior age girls, and it was fun to watch. They hustled, they ran actual plays, they blocked out and rebounded, and they made some clutch shots. For both squads, it was very much a team game, and so far as I could tell no one complained or sulked when they were taken out for a substitute or groused when a teammate made a turnover. There were no apparent prima donnas; the players on both teams seemed to like their teammates and enjoy playing a game with them. The parents for both teams behaved, too. It was a close, well-played game, and when the horn sounded both teammates went through the handshake line without any rancor.

As I said . . . refreshing.

At some level team sports loses its innocence, and some ugliness creeps in. The results of the games take on paramount importance, and basic things like whether a player improves and develops their skills over a season are minimized. That’s the point at which many kids drop out of team sports, and that’s too bad, because being on a true team teaches kids some very important lessons and causes them to develop some very useful qualities that will serve them well during their professional careers. Be competitive, sure, but be a supportive teammate, too. Be willing to do the small things that advance the team goal. Recognize that everyone has a part to play.

Every employer wants employees with such qualities.

When you read about misbehaving professional and high-level collegiate athletes, you tend to forget about the kids like the girls we watched yesterday, who are enjoying playing a game and working hard to improve and sharpen their skills. But fortunately for all of us those kids are out there–and the society is better because of it.

Faces On A Screen

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We were out to dinner at a casual spot last night–one of those places that seems to have TV screens covering every inch of wall space. As we sat down and I looked around, I was struck by how many of those screens featured close-ups of talking heads at that moment.

If your TV is tuned to a news show, or any kind of sports talk show, you’re bound to see a lot of faces on a screen. And now, with so much of daily communication happening through video calls on your computer, you get the same point-blank exposure to human faces on screens at work, too.

This didn’t used to be the case. Once, news shows or sports shows would feature footage of actual news events or highlights of key plays from a big game, with an occasional shot of an anchorman or a reporter on the scene. As some point in the past, however, somebody decided that actual film of events wasn’t really needed–probably for cost reasons–and head shots of people arguing with each other about the event would suffice instead. Add the onset of video calls into the mix, and the result is that we now get a steady diet of head shots, like the big screen footage of Big Brother in the Apple 1984 ad.

Babies are known to be naturally attracted to human faces, and studies have found that adult brains tend to look for human facial characteristics in various objects, like the fronts of cars. If in fact we’re hard-wired to appreciate human faces, this must be a golden age for homo sapiens, because I think it’s safe to say that this generation is seeing more close-ups of other human faces than any other generation in history.

When Patience Blooms

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Gardening is an exercise in patience, physical labor, resilience, and attention to detail–but mostly patience. You place your plants, tend to them, water them, remove weeds, try to protect them from disease and deer and ravaging insects and other pests, accept failure and try again, and hope that your labors are fruitful.

With some plants, you need more patience than others.

Consider the “sapphire tower” plant (Puya Alpestris) being tended in the Birmingham Botanical Gardens in Birmingham, Alabama, which is blooming for the first time in a decade. The plant is native to Andean region of Chile, where it grows in higher elevations and is pollinated by hummingbirds, who can hover by the plant between the spiky talks and dip their beaks into the fluted flowers. Removed from its native habitat (and hummingbirds), the plant grows slowly, and must be pollinated by hand, using paintbrushes. Its blooms also last for only a short while.

But when it does bloom, as it is doing now and for the next few weeks, the “sapphire tower” is a magnificent sight. I’m sure the horticulturalists in the Birmingham Botanical Gardens are feeling a tremendous satisfaction right now, and fellow gardeners can vicariously share in that feeling. It’s great to see patience and painstaking effort rewarded.

An Overrated Flavor

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The other day we celebrated a birthday at the office. The birthday boy had indicated to his friends that he really was a huge fan of cherry pie–so that ended up being the birthday treat, rather than cake. I happily joined in the singing of “Happy Birthday,” but I passed on the pie. I typically like fruit pies, especially apple and blueberry, I’ve never cared for cherry pie, or for that matter cherry anything. I think cherry is the most overrated, and therefore overused, flavor agent in Flavortown.

Pretty much everything comes in cherry flavor. In addition to cherry pie, you’ve got cherry-themed ice cream, chocolate-covered cherries, cherry suckers, cherry popsicles, cherries jubilee, cherry soft drinks, cherry licorice, cherry jawbreakers–the list goes on and on. In fact, cherry flavor is so ubiquitous that they even use it to make cough syrup and other patent medications more palatable. Instead of a spoonful of sugar, it’s cherry flavor that helps the medicine go down.

That overabundance of cherry items hasn’t done the cherry flavor any favors. And have you noticed that the cherry flavor in products is never subtle? Instead, it’s as if they different products are trying to out-cherry each other. The cherry flavoring in often so overpowering it has become cloying and mouth-puckering–almost as bad as grape flavor. Product manufacturers, dessert creators, and confectioners would do us all a favor by dialing back on cherry concoctions, but also on the amount of cherry flavor being infused in the product.

I think the cherry should aspire to be more like the humble apple. The apple has avoided the overexposure that has made cherry flavor so commonplace and over the top. You’ll find apple in a pie or applesauce, and maybe some sour apple gum, and of course a nice, crisp apple a day helps to keep the doctor away, but you’re not going to order an apple Coke or find apple-flavored cough drops at the drug store. Apple has stayed in its lane, and has profited from that exercise of good judgment.

Road Protests

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Recently, protests have increasingly gone on the road . . . literally. On Monday pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the highway leading to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, causing travelers leaving on flights from one of the country’s busiest airports to leave their cars and lug their suitcases to their terminals, as shown in the photo above. Similar demonstrations also blocked busy bridges and highways in other parts of the country.

It’s an old tactic to try to focus attention on a cause. It’s also a dangerous and self-defeating one. It’s dangerous because one of those blocked roads could have prevented the passage of an ambulance carrying a patient to a hospital in an emergency situation, where even a delay of a few minutes could mean the difference between life or death. It’s also dangerous because one of the travelers walking to O’Hare on a road not designed for pedestrians could have been inadvertently struck by a frustrated driver trying to get to a parking area. And it’s self-defeating because you wouldn’t think that the inconvenienced passengers heading to O’Hare, or the commuters delayed for hours by protests that closed other roads and bridges, will be in a mood to look kindly on the Palestinian cause.

The reality is that unpermitted road protests aren’t designed to persuade. Every major city has plenty of public spaces where demonstrators could appear, advocate for their cause, and make it onto the evening news–without ruining someone’s commute or causing a traveler to miss a flight. By choosing to block roads and bridges, demonstrators show that they want to be disruptive, and really don’t care who they inconvenience or what kind of chaos they create. They view their chosen cause as far more important than letting the rest of us go about our days in peace, and figure that wreaking havoc is a small price to pay for drawing even more attention.

It’s a selfish and desperate tactic, frankly, and one that I suspect will boomerang–but I doubt that the protesters who took the action think that far ahead.

Waiting For The Bats

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On our last night in Austin, we decided to check out a unique local form of entertainment: watching bats fly out from underneath the Congress Street bridge. The configuration of that bridge just happens to provide an ideal nesting spot for Mexican bats. Every night, at dusk or later–bats being nocturnal creatures–the bats emerge from their perches in those slots you see underneath the bridge and fly down the river to hunt insects.

And, because a swarm of bats flying out from under a bridge isn’t something you see every day, people started to come to view the spectacle. On Sunday night, bat enthusiasts lined the bridge, while we sat among a group of bat aficionados on a small hill facing the bridge. Boats on the river also gathered for a little bat viewing. It was a kind of carnival atmosphere, and as the designated time for sunset neared a great sense of anticipation took hold.

The sun fell and the skies darkened, and people around us kept predicting that the bats would emerge any moment–but instead it just got darker and darker, to the point where you couldn’t see much of anything, bats or otherwise. The Mexican bats aren’t huge creatures in any event, and they aren’t exactly designed by evolution to be highly noticeable at night. We saw a few bats flitting by on the other side of the bridge, framed against a lighted wall, but no large swarm.

It turns out that bats aren’t slaves to the clock, and will leave their roosts under the bridge at unpredictable times after sunset. In short, they come out when they’re good and ready. If they’re especially hungry, the swarm might fly out right after sunset, but if they’re not, they might cool their heels for an hour or two. And the bats don’t particularly care if the humans gathered to watch them are there are not. You’ve got to respect them for that.

Coffee Juggling

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We’re in Austin for a short visit, staying in one of the hotels in the downtown area. In these circumstances, one of my spousal duties is to get up first and go down to the service area and get two cups of hot coffee for us. This crucial responsibility inevitably requires me to employ the fine art of coffee juggling.

Coffee juggling involves a few important considerations, and a few even more important skills. The considerations involve exercising judgment on how full to fill the cup from the self-service coffee station, and what additional items, if any, you can reasonably bring along with you and the two cups of coffee. A banana, for example, can safely be carried in a pocket, but a muffin would be crushed in a pocket and therefore must be carefully balanced on a coffee cup lid. This dramatically enhances the coffee juggling challenge, so the question becomes: is a tasty muffin worth it? (The answer, incidentally, is always “yes.”)

The skills kick in after you fill your cups and make your additional food selection. The first skill is properly affixing one of those plastic lids to the brimming cup of java, and making sure it is fully engaged, so it won’t fly off on the return journey and lead to hot coffee armageddon. The next skill is figuring out how to shift the full cups of hot coffee in your hands so that you can safely stab the elevator button, and then do so again when you reach your room and have to fish the room key out of your pocket, unlock the door, and then use one hand to open the door knob while precariously balancing two cups of coffee with the other. The fact that the piping hot coffee has fully heated the paper cups and is probably burning your hand by this point just adds to the challenge.

But if your coffee juggling skills remain sharp, and you make it into the room without a drop or a spill, you can start your morning with a welcome feeling of first thing in the morning accomplishment. With the knowledge that you’ve capably performed your first important task and a hot cup of coffee for fuel, you are ready to face the day.

Full Service

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Yesterday we went to a retail establishment looking to purchase some important items that were outside the norm of our standard purchases. We picked a specialty shop that featured the items and were soon helped by a knowledgeable and attentive salesperson. She went through the different options, carefully explained how the items worked, gave us helpful demonstrations of different features, and patiently answered a bunch of our questions.

We weren’t rushed, and we weren’t pressured to make a purchase. To the contrary, our salesperson conveyed that she understood that we were making a significant decision, respected that fact, and just wanted to be as helpful as she could be. Her explanations helped to clarify the options and ultimately made our decision an easy one.

There aren’t many stores that have salespeople on the floor anymore. Most retail operations that used to employ salespeople–like the shoe stores of days gone by–have long since gone to self-serve models. Self-serve makes sense when you are talking about pumping gas, or buying items at the grocery store, buying new sneakers, or in many other everyday settings. In those places, you probably don’t need–or want–a salesperson dogging you as you make your choices. But when you are making a decision on whether to buy something significant that you are unfamiliar with, it sure helps to have a friendly salesperson to help you in the process.

I’m sure we could have gone to many “superstores’ to shop for the items we were looking for yesterday, sifted through the offerings, and made a decision on our own. But having more information and getting our questions answered by someone who knew what they were talking about certainly made us more comfortable and confident in our ultimate decision, and I think resulted in a better decision than we would have made otherwise. I’m glad there are still full-service stores out there, with capable salespeople ready to help their shoppers.