"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee."

Laocoon and his Sons, by Francesco Righetti (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

     "Their reward for enduring the awful experience was the right to tell about it," J.K. Rowling writes in her novel, "The Casual Vacancy."
     And in that sense, I'm blessed to have a newspaper column, since my dire downs — and happy ups — can be whipped into a wordy froth and spooned to the public. Those without such an outlet sometimes write to me, and Monday's adventure ordering coasters and shoelaces inspired a number of readers to share their consumer travails — including several whose woes involved subscribing to the Sun-Times. Those I tried to help. And since I've got this maw every goddamn day to fill, I thought I would share John F.'s ordeal:

     As a regular reader I can sympathize with you on your recent foray into the world of AI and the shoelace incident. It really hit home as I reflect on my recent encounter with Comcast. Not long ago, Comcast lost the NBC Sports Channel. I know you are not a big sports guy so in case you did not know (I'm sure you do) was the home to the Bulls, Blackhawks and White Sox.  
     Originally, there was no price adjustment to customers for losing local professional sports in a major market while they negotiate with a new channel similar to the Cub's Marquee network. To date, these negotiations are still ongoing in spite of the fact that promises were made that a solution would be announced by the end of November.

     Meanwhile, Comcast decided that they would offer customers a rebate backdated to the date when NBC Sports went off the air. It was to be just over $8/month. I received the first rebate of just over $6/month on my bill but nothing for the first 2 months so it was not backdated as promised. Add to that the fact that next next bill did not include the rebate so I was right back to the higher rate.

     This is where the AI part comes in. It is virtually impossible to get a live person on a phone with Comcast. Instead you are directed on line to a 'live chat'. I am assigned an agent with what sounds like a human name attached to it. After typing in, at length my issue I am greeted with "rest assured that I am the person who will take care of your issue". Fasting forward, It took four hours and a total of five 'agents' each of whom promised that they were the 'person' to take care of my issue. Each time I was promised that the new agent has reviewed my chat so that they would be able to pick up right where I left off. Needless to say, with each new agent I had to start from Square One. During that time they offered me a new deal that would cost an additional $5/month while still not providing local sports. I chose to reduce my service to the lowest level where I would lose some channels but save me $30/month. This was negotiated on 11/18.

     Then came my next bill which not only did not include the discount for the Sports Channel issue but it reverted to the original price for the higher tier programming. So it was back to the 'live chat'... It turns out that because I have auto pay to save $5/month, that bill which was generated on 11/16 to to paid on 12/12. They claim that that is why the bill was for the higher rate. The bill did show that my next bill would have the corrections for the original issues which included the missed credits and lower programming tier ($151 down from the new rate of $188). So my current issue was that the bill I received for $208 should have been $188). This time, it only took three hours and two agents so I suppose that is an improvement. I was promised that my next bill will have the additional credit and will be $115 as this was negotiated prior to the autopay billing date.

   Had I not called to fix my issues, I wonder how many other people out there who do not have hours to wait on-line end up overpaying. By the way, if there is a local Comcast brick and mortar store it is a waste of time going there for billing issues as that is above their pay scale and they'll just direct you to the 'live chat'.

     Life was so much easier when you could get an actual person the phone. Good luck with your shoelaces.

     

Ordering stuff online is a depersonalized process, until it isn't.

These new Pisgah Range shoelaces had to brave the aftermath of Hurricane Helene to get to me.

     Do you care that a person wrote this?
     If the same column were spat out by a machine, would you read it differently? Would you read it at all?
     I'm not sure.
     We are nearing a time when algorithms can tell a story. Maybe even a good story; why not, since it's scraped from every other story ever written?
     So expect even more thrilling thrillers. Steamier romances. Funnier comedies. Who'll care they were composed in .002 seconds by a computer? The important thing is there is no author to pay.
     Still. AI doesn't replace a person, yet. Not to me anyway. I've had several unexpected human encounters in the anonymous electronic churn of online commerce and am grateful for them.
     First, I had some post-wedding business to take care of. My mother wanted to give a gift to my younger son and his new bride, and since she no longer navigates the online world, I volunteered to do it.
     On their wedding website, I selected a set of lovely coasters and was directed to someplace called Scully & Scully. I took my father's credit card and made the purchase. Lovely embroidered pink elephant coasters. No new household is complete without them.
     A day went by.
     The phone rang. "Scully & Scully" calling. The person on the line pointed out the address where the gift was to be shipped — our home, since the happy couple was honeymooning in Mexico — and the address on the credit card didn't match.
      A security issue. I tried to explain — it wasn't my card but my father's. I was authorized to use it. That didn't fly; the order was canceled.
     The next day, I phoned Scully & Scully, thinking to remedy the situation, and ended up with Carol Tytla, in the registry department. And here is where things got strange — several phone calls were needed to finally get those coasters on their way.
     And at one point, Carol and I were just talking, chatting like friends — about weddings, our lives, what sort of store Scully & Scully is. Like Neiman Marcus? I wondered. No, she said, more like Gump's. Oh, I've been to Gump's! I exclaimed. In Dallas. My sister lives there ...
     Suddenly, I worried Carol might get in trouble. I'd hate to get the woman fired. She said, no, things were quiet at the bridal registry department. Scully & Scully, at 59th and Madison in New York City, is an old school kind of store.
     "Mr. Scully is here every day," she said.
     That seemed worth investigating.

To continue reading, click here.

Cheesecake: part of your healthy diet regimen

    God save me from well-intentioned people.
    I was sitting in a coffee shop, having an interesting conversation about investments, when an acquaintance snuck up behind me.
    "How are you feeling?" he cried, giving that last word a clammy twist. "How's your insulin?"
    The sensible thing for me to do would have been to stand up, draw back a fist, and wordlessly lay him out on the floor, right there in the restaurant. That is what the situation called for. But having trained myself in the whole "...and what would happen next?" mindset of the zen masters, I know that actually doing so, as justifiable and satisfying as that would be, would also be a mistake. What I actually did say was this:
    "What's wrong with 'Good morning?'"
     My point was lost anyway, He fled, all confused and hurt. I might as well have belted him. 
    The hardest part about being a diabetic, after the endless hassle of trying to fill prescriptions, is the clumsy goodwill of the well-intentioned. True, I draw it on myself, by writing about this stuff. I see now why people keep their medical status private. But I'm a guy who writes about his own life. Too late to change that now. I've gotten used to friends announcing, "We'll get together for a drink," and then fix me with a pitying look, and add,  "...and whatever non-alcoholic pisswater this guy is permitted." Or words to that effect. But now, it seems I can't order wheat toast without the waitress raising an eyebrow and saying, "Have you checked the carbs on these babies? Because this isn't the near-bread you have at home..." 
    The Eli's Cheesecake holiday ads went up earlier this month, and in the first flush of joy that washed over me — this must be what commercially viable online influencers feel like all the time — I posted my cheesecake encomium from four years ago, "We will eat the good cold cheesecake, browned by the sun and be men."
     A reader replied: 
     The gift of cheesecake is mainly to myself, but I'll share with the family, 'cuz... tis' the season & all that. I drove over to the "factory" a few weeks ago, because I forgot about the website, plus — free samples! 😋I chose a lemon berry. Sweet Imperfection, which was the most inaccurate misnomer, since it was THE most perfect cheesecake I'd ever had. I brought it to my sister's house for a dinner she hosted, & now I must (must, I tell ya'!) return to get it again for Christmas dessert. I feel a little guilty droning on about all this to a diabetic, but you opened the door, lol.
     Ouch Anna. Yes, I opened the door. But no reason for you to stride through it and slap the plate of cheesecake out of my hand. As it happened, a slice of Eli's original is sitting in my refrigerator, having been defrosted the other day for purposes of writing my panegyric. I just popped down to the kitchen, checked my blood sugar — a healthy post breakfast 113 — and took a heaping forkful: 14 grams of delicious Eli's cheesecake, a half ounce, to be precise.
     A half hour later my blood was at ... 116. The same. Close enough for baseball. I ate the entire cheesecake — 98 grams, about 330 calories — slowly, throughout the morning. That is one key. Portion control. Discipline. Cheesecake is not close to the worst food for my condition — that would be Wheat Chex, which is like snorting lines of Domino sugar. I'm not sure why; cheesecake blends its undeniable share of sugar and carbohydrates in a soothing blanket of cream cheese. It's an indulgence I can afford.

     I can also eat two slices of Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza. You might have forgotten, in all this anti-vax, anti-science, anti-medicine madness gathering force in the land, but Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated insulin in 1921. It's readily available. I take 9 ml of long-acting Lantus insulin in the morning, to cover the day, and if I want to, oh, have a stack of pancakes for breakfast, I can zip in an extra 6 ml of fast-acting NovoLog. Sure, the blood sugar goes up, postprandially, but then it goes down, just the way it does with normal, non-afflicted people. 

    But we digress from cheesecake, and I certainly do not want to chide Anna, one of my favorite readers. Beloved, really. And what has Anna done to earn her special status? Do I have to spell it out? She went and bought cheesecake. Actually visiting the Eli's factory — no quotation marks needed — which I have done on numerous occasions and recommend wholeheartedly to anyone trying to inject a bit of joy into the miserable frozen slog of the holidays. To actually visit a tangible, physical location instead of spending our lives blinking at these non-existent virtual worlds.

    Although. If you are reading this in New York or New Orleans or ... God forbid ... Indiana, the good news is you can still have Eli's cheesecake, sent directly to your door or, better, to the door of a friend or loved one. All you have to do is click here. I've sent the gift of cheesecake and, let me tell you, people are putty in your hand after that. I've had friends look me in the face and say, "Honestly Neil? I don't even like you anymore — you're sort of a putz — and would have broken off all connection with you long ago. But you sent me that cherry-topped Eli's cheesecake, years ago, and, oh my fucking God, I'm in your debt forever...."

    Okay, that's a lie and, frankly, you should have immediately seen it as such. Mere puffery, as the ad men say.  Remember, we're a month and change away from sliding into a four-year slough of untruth, a 1460-day blizzard of prevarication that will test us to the very core. You will need to have a heavy duty BS detector working at all times. And you will need cheesecake in your freezer, and lots of it, as comfort in dark times. As will your friends.

     Look, bottom line. It's $72 to subscribe to the Chicago Sun-Times online, and they still constantly put the bite on you for more contributions. And while I of course encourage you to do so, they don't give you any cheesecake at all. Here, you can read my annual output for free, I never beg you to give me money (although ... would that work? Maybe I should start.) I do, once a year, in a creative, somewhat unhinged fashion, urge you to patronize Eli's. You know what is expected of you. Do it now.

     

     

     

Bats left, signs right.

   

"Stanley Musial," by John Falter (1954)

     The day before Thanksgiving we toured the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. I found it such a moving experience I wrote about it, at sufficient length that paper is holding the story to plug one of the holes that opens up during the holidays.
     The museum was so extensive, I couldn't do it justice. For instance, there is a lovely little gallery devoted to baseball art that isn't mentioned in the pending story at all, extensive though it is. I was attracted to this painting of Stan Musial, particularly because of the placard:
     "Many baseball fans cried foul when this Saturday Evening Post cover showed southpaw Stan Musial signing autographs with his right hand," it begins. "How could artist John Falter made such a rookie mistake? When posing Musial, Falter learned that Stan the Man wrote right-handed, which Falter then correctly portrayed."
     There must be something so satisfying in the act of correction that people leap to do it without first ascertaining whether they are in fact right, as demonstrated in this exchange Friday. Larry B. wrote:

     As a retired lawyer I must point out that the cab driver you talk about in your column today did not attempt to commit "robbery". That word is clearly defined as " taking of something of value from another person through force or threat of violence." I assume this was not the case. Indeed, I do not believe the driver was guilty of a "crime." He certainly was in violation of the Cab Company rules but he was just trying to negotiate extra compensation in advance.

     I answered him thusly:  

       As someone surrounded by lawyers, I expected your note. And like most readers offering corrections, it is you yourself who are mistaken. You are tripping over what I call "The Two Definitions Problem." Yes, the first definition of "robbery" is as you cite. The next definition, in my dictionary, is "unashamed swindling or overcharging." I am permitted to use the secondary definition, just as you are permitted to both set a table and own a chemistry set. That said, I appreciate both you taking the time to write, and you doggedly subscribing to the paper.

     Larry B. wasn't ready to give in.

     Thank you for your prompt reply. I appreciate your pointing out the informal  (and historically incorrect) meaning of robbery. Isn't it a shame what is happening to the English language?It is almost like "highway robbery"!

    I should have stopped here. But I too can be dogged in insisting on my rightness. 

     Again, we have to disagree. The language has always been mutable and plastic. When Herb Morrison saw the Hindenburg explode in front of him in 1937, he said to his WLS listeners, "It's a terrific thing, ladies and gentlemen." Terrific as in "full of terror." Such an event would no longer be considered terrific because the meaning of the word has changed. You may mourn that however you please.

     There's actually more, but that will do for today. 

How much do you tip the guy who tries to rob you?

     A cabbie tried to rob me Wednesday afternoon. At the cab stand outside Navy Pier. An inversion of the usual dynamic. Typically, it is the cabbie being robbed, by the customer.
     The trip started out so normally. Having spent a productive half day at the Sun-Times newsroom — there was a Christmas lunch — I strode through the tourist commotion of the Pier, burst out the doors, tossed a glance to my right at the CTA bus corral, didn't see a waiting  124 bus, so veered left. The first cabbie's door was locked — he gave a brisk shake of the head, and I figured he was waiting for an arranged ride or perhaps just didn't like the look of me. The second cabbie's door opened.
     "Where to?" he asked.
     "Union Station," I said, starting to climb in the back. "Madison Street entrance."
     "It's a $15 flat fee," the cabbie ventured.
     I froze, halfway in the cab.
     "No it's not," I replied, automatically, beginning to withdraw. "I'll take the bus." I began to close the door.
     "Okay, get in," he said.
     And here is the surprising part. I got in.
     "Run the meter," I said. 
     As we pulled away from the curb, I asked myself: why patronize the guy who just tried to rip you off? The short answer: expediency. There was no other cab. If I went back to the bus, I would miss the train. This driver wasn't a hardened felon, just another hard-working jamoke, trolling the bait to see if I was ignorant enough to snap at it. I was at Navy Pier at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday, after all. How on the ball could I be? Fleecing the rubes is as hallowed a Chicago tradition as there is. I'm lucky he didn't also try to steal my land.
     As we drove past Lake Point Tower, he started murmuring on the phone, in Yoruba — or Hausa, or Igbo or Fulfulde or one of the other 520 languages of Nigeria, one of the most linguistically diverse nations on earth. Thanks to WhatApp, cabbies hold continual conversations while they drive, I assume with relatives back home, or wives or girlfriends here. It's annoying, but what can you do? Me, a chatterbox, began talking to him anyway, breaking in on his conversation.
     "Here I try to do the right thing, and patronize cabs, insead of Uber, because there aren't any Ubers just sitting there. I'd have had to wait five or 10 minutes for an Uber to arrive, and I'd miss my train. And my reward is, you try to rip me off."
     Okay, not a Mamet monologue, but I was improvising.
     He replied that Uber is the true ripoff.
     "With their surge pricing," he said. "How am I supposed to make it?"

To continue reading, click here.

Scattered ash

 

    We closed on our house in June, 2000, and a few days later a microburst blew apart the large tree off our bedroom. I did not, despite my propensity to draw significance from, oh, black crows blocking my path, gazing at me intently, see this unwelcome development as augury. Stuff happens.
     Replacing the tree seemed essential, though, to restore the karmic balance to our new home. I chose a cimmaron ash because ash trees grow quickly, and indeed this one did. 

     A smart choice, at the time. "The Urban Tree Book," by Arthur Plotnik, published the same year, starts off with the ash. "One of Western civilization's most sacred trees. Among the oldest and largest trees of American towns."   

     Not anymore. Not so smart a choice, in retrospect.
     The emerald ash borer showed up in Michigan in 2002, and soon thereafter a protracted battle began, with regular treatments of the tree fending off continual assaults by the pest. We spent many times more on whatever voodoo potion they shoot into ashes to kill the little green monsters than we had on the tree itself. 
     That seemed to work. For a few years, I held out hope that my tree, separated as it is from its fellow trees, might be one of the rare survivors. I told myself that the weird signs of distress — sending off all these ugly suckers that I dutifully trimmed back — were caused by the borer treatment itself, which was not always applied expertly, in my amateur opinion.
     This past summer a large part of the crown never sprouted leaves. It looked dead. The arborist we consulted said, sure, he could pare back the dead crown, but the tree would look horrible and it would soon die anyway. Having previously condemned the majestic sugar maple in our front yard, I knew I could do this. But I did not plant the sugar maple. The ash I did. You're not supposed to outlive your trees — that's one purpose of planting them. To give shade to generations yet unborn. Not this tree. Since I am taking woodworking, I thought of saving the wood, kiln drying it, making a table, or a baseball bat. But a) that would take a lot of effort b) I'm not good enough to make a table or a baseball bat, yet and c) Owl Lumber sells ash wood.
    The tree came down Monday. Part of me wish I'd fled to the gym, to not be party to the removal process. But it seemed smart to stick around while the work was being done. I put in my Airpods and listened to Mozart to drown out the screams of the chainsaws. Advanced Tree Care did the job quickly and efficiently — so efficiently they almost left without trimming another tree back off our roof, but I pointed out the lapse, and that it was in the contract, and a worker went up and took care of it.  So I was glad I had stayed.
    The space where the tree had been looks surprisingly big. The stump is there — I have to get some stump remover for it. Life is sometimes about planting and looking forward, sometimes about cutting down and letting go.

Play captures Royko the writer, misses Royko the man

Newberry Library

   
     The Royko play is back. At the Chopin Theatre until Dec. 22. Having maintained a manful silence during its first run, the smart thing for me to do would be to continue keeping my big yap shut.
     But being a newspaperman was never a particularly intelligent way to make a living, never mind being a columnist who — I think people forget — is supposed to stir the pot.
     First the short take. I saw "Royko: The Toughest Man in Chicago" during its initial run in September — how could I not? — and enjoyed the one-man show, in the main. I love the part when Royko compares writing for a newspaper to being a kid playing outside at dusk, begging for just a few more minutes, another turn at bat, before he has to go into the house for a bath and homework and all the dull non-fun stuff kids are forced to do. This was in the context of the death of the great Chicago Daily News in 1978. Now we face the looming demise of the entire industry. I'm going to miss this.
     And I'm no Royko. Royko was great, the greased hub on which Chicago spun, and the play captures that nicely. Reading a Royko column, I used to say, was like having a computer chip implanted in your brain, a new circuit about whatever subject he was addressing. His thoughts become your thoughts. He was that good. Not all the time of course — people forget that. Royko wrote his share of duds — five days a week, you had to. But enough home runs to keep fans cheering.
     Where writer/actor Mitchell Bisschop falls short is that Royko was not the sum of his writing, but a human being, and a deeply flawed one at that. He could be menacing and mean, there at the end of the bar at the Billy Goat, sucking back his cocktails, snarling at the world. The daring suburbanite or forward young journalist who approached him did so at his own peril.

     Fame can be as addictive as any drug. It does bad things to people, and it inflated Royko's self-estimation and made him a jerk to his younger admirers. He was the king of the hill, but was also terrified of being knocked off his lofty perch. Everything was a battle for supremacy. You shook his hand, he tried to crush it. 

     I never had a good encounter with him. Not one. He once threatened to break my legs, and not in some teasing, avuncular way, but in a dead serious "I'll-break-your-fucking-legs" way.

     A little of THAT Royko might have given the play more bite. But then, I suppose Bisschop wouldn't have gotten the cooperation of the family needed to pad his play with big blocks of Royko's classic columns.

     Maybe this play will inspire someone to write an actual play about Royko, the man, and his era that doesn't quote any columns. The material is certainly available.
     Right here, I have a letter from Royko framed in my office, displayed as a kind of trophy and a reminder of the frequent price of success. Not addressed to me, but to a woman he accosted in a bar, and when she didn't recognize him, threatened with a broken ketchup bottle.
     "Please accept my apologies for my disgusting, boorish, and inexcusable behavior," Royko begins. "If I caused you any discomfort or inconvenience, I am truly sorry. Any anger you felt, and I probably gave you cause to be outraged, can't equal the self-disgust and anger I experienced when I eventually realized what a sorry fool I had made of myself."

To continue reading, click here.