More Spin Than a Legion of Vinyl-era DJs

I enjoy jabbing my finger into the carefully-coiffed and studied figure of big business. In a perfect world, I'd be the tiny stone in their shoe they could never find.

It was with this in mind that I wrote Dannon Yogurt after discovering they had shrunk their cartons of Light & Fit yogurt by seven tenths of an ounce while maintaining the price of the previous configuration.

You should know that Dannon isn't the only manufacturer attempting this sleight of hand. Not by a long shot. 

Snack foods, toothpaste, toilet paper, soup—you name it. If the lead bean-counter thinks shaving an ounce or two from the serving or a couple of dozen sheets from the roll is likely to go unnoticed by most consumers, it is as good as done.

It's a beneath the radar price-hike, which is why I delight in telling these folks "I see you!"

I half expected a response informing me of a yogurt shortage, or that the Chinese had developed a sudden craving for the stuff. 

I should be grateful Dannon didn't shrink the serving and raise the price, which incidentally, is the reason for 'New and Improved'. (Displaying their shrewd marketing prowess, you'll notice manufacturers make no attempt to say for whom products are new and improved.)

Without further delay, here is my missive:

Dear Dannon,

I was very excited to see that your new tubs of Light & Fit yogurt have been reduced by .7 of an ounce.

You see, I am recovering from hernia surgery, and the new, lighter packs are so much easier to remove from the refrigerator. It's an older model—you know, the kind with the freezer on top? And when I'd stoop to drag the old tubs out, it put a big strain on my abdomen. So I am very grateful!

Plus, my doctor is also after me to drop a few pounds, so these smaller servings will definitely help me accomplish that. Of course, lifting the older, heavier tubs burned more calories. So I guess we should call it a draw.

I also noticed there was no change in the price. Considering that I'm getting less yogurt, doesn't this amount to a price hike? Trust me, doc is doing a great job of lightening my wallet. He doesn't need the help of a multi-national conglomerate!

I think that in between all this marketing and strategizing you guys are working too hard. Take it from me, that is how I got my hernia in the first place! Instead of lightening my servings and my wallet, you should do one or the other. It's just too damn hot.You know?

Sincerely,

La Piazza Gancio

Their response:

August 16, 2016

Dear La Piazza Gancio,

Thank you for taking the time to contact The Dannon Company. Comments from consumers are very important to us and we certainly appreciate yours.

At Dannon, we take great care to ensure that the highest standards are met in everything we do. In our products, packaging, marketing and advertising, we strive for excellence. When a valued consumer like you takes the time to contact us, we take it seriously. Please be assured your comments will be shared with the appropriate individuals. I know they will find your remarks interesting, and will consider them carefully as we work toward continuous improvement in all areas.

As always, we appreciate your interest in our products and are always available to answer any questions or concerns that you have. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to call our toll-free number 1-877-DANNON-US (1-877-326-6668), Monday through Friday, 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. Eastern Time.

 
Sincerely,

(name removed)
Consumer Response Representative

Again, like so many of their peers, Dannon completely ignored my question. You have to love how corporations like these reduce consumer inquiries to an occasion for PR. 

Way to stay classy, guys!

I'm trying to imagine the fun I could have at such a place. For instance, when a superior asked me a question I could respond with a verbal resume, informing them only of my latest and greatest accomplishments.

One needs to applaud the (ahem) vigorous work ethic. The unswerving commitment to R&D.

I can hear the executive board now:

“Gentlemen. What's the best way to fatten the profit margin? Do we develop an irresistible new product?”

“No!”

“Work up a compelling new marketing campaign?”

“No!”

“Explore new markets?”

“No!”

"Shrink the serving?"

"Yes!"

I am left to wonder if they expect as little from their employees.

The Wildlife-Imposed Time Out

There aren't many times I enjoy coming to a stop while driving. Possessing a full-blown case of driving fatigue (the result of the miles I pile up as a professional driver), each stop is yet-another speed bump which endangers a schedule perpetually short in time and rich in distance.

Traffic lights, farm equipment, construction, accidents (which no longer seem very accidental for a population bent on texting and phoning)–all conspire to prevent me from the timely completion of my appointed rounds.

Which is why I drive like you—aside from the texting and the lane departure stuff.

But every condition, every circumstance, every rule has its exception. And this is no, well, exception. Yes, you heard that right. There are times I actually like to stop. Or at least, don't fucking hate it.

You are pregnant with anticipation. Swollen by a single-minded curiosity to discover under what conditions I could possibly be willing to apply my size thirteen foot to a brake pedal.

Let your water break. Let the contractions begin. Wonder no more.

You see, I frequent a roadway which winds around a retention pond favored by Canadian geese. An expansive green lawn sits on the opposite side. This, too, is enjoyed by the small flock.

But a problem exists. At some point each day, the flock wish to go for a swim. And for reasons known only to them, they desire to cross the two-lane road on foot. And so they begin their march.

Inevitably, traffic appears. And to my eternal wonderment, it stops. Even dudes with shaved heads and goatees driving obnoxious pick-ups trucks that scream “I am badass! Fear me!” do.

It is remarkable.

And this isn't an isolated incident. 

Twenty-years ago and much nearer the sturm und drang of Chicago, four lanes of rush hour traffic came to a halt because a mother duck needed to lead her eight charges across the street to another portion of the wetlands bisected by our noisy concrete.

Even as we routinely treat our fellow motorists like obstacles and endeavor to sweep each other aside like so much roadside trash, we willingly indulge these creatures as they haltingly make their way across the street.

Instead of provoking stress, this inversion of mankind's hierarchy has the opposite effect. There is no anxiety. No impatient sighs. Fingers don't tap steering wheels. This wildlife-imposed time out quite literally forces us to remove our feet from the gas pedal. I smile.

Thoreau, wherever he is, couldn't be happier.

Eventually, their crossing is complete and the rat race is resumed. We fight each other and our self-imposed barriers; the signs and stoplights which impede us.

One explanation for the rise of religion is that mankind needed to believe in something greater than himself, presumably to lift the curatorial burden of the world from his narrow shoulders.

And while I see a distinct lack of Christianity from behind the wheel of my bus, these geese, in some small way, give us pause and put us in touch with something apart from our schedules and our texts and our angst.

Bless them.

Tomato Love, Interrupted

This is a post about consuming food. Not eating it mind you, but consuming it. There's a difference. Stay with me.

In the early-eighties, I read an article in Harper's (or was it Atlantic?) about the evolution of American agriculture as it specifically related to the tomato.

The article detailed how tomatoes had become big business, and as such were too important to be left to the vagaries of nature. Management was required. And as a result, modern tomatoes bore only a faint resemblance to their previously unmanaged selves.

They shipped better. Lasted longer on store shelves. Were uniform in their appearance. More disease-resistant. And most importantly, matured faster.

Now, that is wonderful stuff. Seriously. I mean, who wants a tomato that can't hack a week in a produce bin? Or whose delicate sensibilities are offended by seventy-two hours in the back of a truck?

Not me.

But unless you're a businessman, you may notice one glaring flaw. One big, giant omission: taste. As in, how did they?

Oh. Yeah. That. Well...we're working on it.

So. We were left with tomatoes that resisted disease and lasted longer on store shelves and were uniform in appearance but really didn't taste better. The juicy tomatoes which practically demanded to be eaten in a bath tub appeared to be a relic of my long-ago youth.

Which is why an article in the Chicago Tribune on a Rockford-based tomato-grower named Mighty Vine aroused such interest. They were dedicated to growing tomatoes that possessed, in addition to the many fine qualities imbued by corporate farms, taste.

Could the notion of a functioning congress be more radical?

All was well for several weeks. They were available at the local chain grocery store and I willingly coughed-up a little more than normal for these blood-red beauties. I had forgotten what it was like to slice a tomato and leave a small puddle of juice behind.

They immediately made salads more vibrant. On hamburgers, their undiluted tomatoness paired perfectly with a slice of raw onion, thankfully rendering ketchup irrelevant. Hell, they made everything better.

And then they were gone.

I'm guessing you know this game. It's hide and seek turned inside-out. You search for a product, enjoy it and then the manufacturer/distributor/wholesaler or retailer hides it.

Be it Iguana Foods chile rellenos, the Moroccan marinade I used on pork chops, Pepper Jack Doritos, Whole Foods garlic and Parmesan bread, Mars Bars or Palermo's far too briefly available frozen flatbread pizza topped with pesto and mozzarella, if there's something manufacturers suspect I (and perhaps you) enjoy it will be made unavailable before you've stuffed the grocery receipt in your pocket.

(While not entirely edible, I'm wondering how the Suzuki Kizashi departed these shores without me ever buying one.)

MBAs with too little to do have identified a certain personality type prone to this experience. What they haven't figured out is how not to sell to us. Which in turn raises another question: how will they know when to discontinue it?

So while I am driven to the edges of starvation, the shelves at my favorite grocer remain stuffed with far too many varieties of chicken sausage, gluten-free tea, turkey bacon, wasabi-flavored corn nuts, coconut water and the always-execrable mayonnaise.

Worse is the understanding that by not buying them, I am perpetuating their availability. Must this be so difficult? So horribly and sickeningly twisted?

I remind myself this is about unavailable tomatoes—not a lifetime of grocery store angst. I need to focus. I fight-off memories of Home Run Inn's Plum Tomato pizza and contact Mighty Vine, determined that these won't slip through my fingers also.

The good news is that they haven't ceased production. They are merely rebooting and should be back in my favorite chain grocery store shortly.

My jaundiced skepticism of business-speak and public relations propaganda magically falls away as I begin to understand that these juicy red orbs will again re-enter my life.

Such is the power of the liberated tomato.

A Reasonable Crime

I don't often relate to criminal activity, which is probably one of the reasons I have been able to remain blissfully ignorant of all things prison. But the actions of Dany Y. Ortiz are different.

Like you and me, Mr. Ortiz loves pizza. And again like you and me, he wasn't able to have it as often as he would like. Being the motivated individual that he is, Dany discovered the path to more pizza lay in removing spare change from parked cars.

Before you rise up in righteous indignation, know that Dany didn't take your lap-top. Or your tablet. Or your cell phone. No. Dany just wanted your tollway change—for pizza.

Who among us can't find it in our hearts to understand these powerful gastronomical longings? The incessant urges that would drive a man to pilfer loose coinage from a stilled automobile?

I do. I have felt the power of this lust myself ladies and gentlemen. Stood naked and helpless in its lure. 

And I am not ashamed.

I know only too well the feel of a warm slice of pizza on my fingertips. The gorgeous, diabolical promise being offered as I bring it to my mouth. The comforting crunch that accompanies the first bite. 

The riotous symphony of warm, gooey cheese, fresh-baked crust, herb-laden tomato sauce and smokey pepperoni my overwhelmed taste buds struggle to take in.

I chew again, pressing the luminous and erotic mix of flavors into my sensory organs. Take! Eat! For thine art pizza! Behold thy glory! Remember the pizza and keep it holy!

"Take a chill pill" my dining companions sometimes suggest. 

But there is no chill pill for pizza. Ask Mr. Ortiz.

Those schooled in the fine art of geometry have attempted to instill in me the belief that a circle has no beginning and no end. That it is, in a sense, infinite.

And yet, as someone schooled in the fine art of pizza, I can assert with some authority that a pizza is not infinite. It has a beginning, a middle and sadly, an end. The emotional devastation that accompanies a pizza pan suddenly bereft of its reason for being is the proof.

As any mathematician worth his or her mozzarella should be able to tell you, the end is, well, the end. Despite its shape, pizza is finite.

This is the lurid and unspeakable truth behind Dany Y. Ortiz's depravity.

Let me be the first to petition the court for leniency. It was not the dark force of evil that propelled Dany to perform these acts, but a mere longing for the multi-faceted deliciousness that is pizza. Is this not entirely and easily understood?

We need to advocate for this young man, not punish him. If punitive action is called for, if only to satisfy the victims of these insignificant thefts, let us create a charge as benign as their motivation.

Does the justifiable pilfering of unsecured coins work?

And if the court finds that incarceration is indeed required, I beg of you: let it be a facility within the delivery zone of a four-star pizzeria.

Huh?

When it's not baseball season, the Chicago Bulls are my favorite team. I have lived and died with them repeatedly. The way all fans do.

Dating back to the days of Walker, Boerwinkle, Love, Van Lier and Sloan, I have relished their traditional emphasis on defense and was thrilled to see it resurrected twenty years later, headed by some kid from North Carolina whose name escapes me at present.

Another twenty years later, hope again spiraled out of control when a young nucleus of Luol Deng, Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah produced the NBA's best record over the course of the 2010/11 season. 

It was hard to believe the glory days weren't back.

Of course, the season's first three and four-game losing streaks in the midst of the Eastern Conference Finals put an end to that. Add a career-altering knee injury to Rose one year later, and the glory days were something for other people to enjoy.

In other words, the ephemeral and capricious nature of championships had become startlingly and painfully clear.

With that team now scattered to the four winds, the rebuilding has begun anew—kind of.

With a stated goal of becoming younger and more athletic, the Bulls used this year's first-round draft pick on Denzel Valentine, a talented and promising guard from Michigan State.

Check.

Then free-agency opened. You should know the Bulls have done notoriously poorly for a team of their renown, with just Carlos Boozer and Pau Gasol to show for their extracurricular wooing.

Until this year.

The Bulls have evidently changed course and decided they're a team on the cusp of a championship. In one week, they have successfully pursued (and signed) thirty-year-old Rajon Rondo and thirty-four year-old Dwyane Wade.

Now, Mr. Wade is a player as talented as his name is misspelled. A sure-fire Hall of Famer. The winner of three NBA championships. The lineage is faultless.

Mr. Rondo is also highly regarded, named to numerous all-star teams and the winner of an NBA championship with the vaunted Boston Celtics. He is a triple-double waiting to happen.

Either could be the tipping point that pushes a team on the verge into serious contention.

But the Bulls aren't. In the words of GM Gar Forman, they're retooling. Getting younger. More athletic. Aren't they? 

It's hard to see how the additions of two guards in their thirties constitutes a youth movement, unless we're competing in an over-fifty league at the YMCA.

The glut at guard is unfathomable. Do the Bulls have a secret? Are they going to trade Jimmy Butler? Move him to small forward?

Who knows.

It's hard to admit The Man matters. But he does. Look at the Cubs under the custody of Tom Ricketts and Theo Epstein. I can only hope the Bulls' brain trust of John Paxson and Gar Forman knows what the hell they're doing.

Jerry Reinsdorf obviously does.

But as the folk who let Deng, Gasol and Noah walk away virtually scot-free, and who replaced one of the league's premier coaches with an untested—but servile—lapcat, you have ample reason to wonder.

And I do.

This Is What a Cunt Looks Like

(Incidentally, it rhymes with 'stunt'. Which is certainly appropriate.)

Give It Up for Cleveland

As a Bulls fan, the 2016 NBA Finals presented me with several potentially troubling scenarios. 

A Golden State win would anoint the Warriors as the greatest team of all-time, displacing the 1995/96 Bulls in the process.

Ouch.

And a Cleveland win would add weight to the argument that LeBron James is the most singular player of all-time, kicking Michael Jordan to the curb in the process. 

Yikes.

So you see? Not easy.

My lifelong predilection of rooting for the underdog eventually won out, aided by a nifty bounce pass from geography.

Tasked with the titanic challenge of defeating a team with a 73-9 regular-season record, even a 57-win team like the Cavaliers were decided underdogs. Plus, Cleveland is a tad closer to the Midwest than San Francisco, so the geography component is, if you'll excuse me, a slam dunk. 

Check.

So what happened? The Cavs promptly fell behind three games to one. When you consistently root for the underdog, you expect this. It is part and parcel of the whole rooting-for-the-underdog dynamic.

But then things took a hard left turn.

Draymond Green, Golden State's remarkable power forward, had his Achilles heel exposed: he has a penchant for letting opponents get under his skin. And as it is in the NBA, the player who retaliates is not only the one who gets caught, but who pays the price.

And after grabbing LeBron James' crotch near the end of game 4, Green sat out game 5.That is the price for amassing four flagrant fouls in the post-season. It was a break, pure and simple. And the Cavs were smart-enough and good-enough to take advantage of it. That is what champions do.

They won game 5. They won game 6. And with momentum on their side and Golden State clearly rattled, they won a tightly-contested game 7.

And as luck would have it, James not only made a critical block late in the game, swooping in from nowhere to deny a sure-fire lay-up, he effectively put the game out of reach via a free-throw with just seconds left.

The Browns, Indians and previous editions of the Cavaliers all gave the city ample reason to reach for Prilosec. And this year's Cavs had two great excuses for providing Cleveland another. 

The visitors had compiled a sparkling 3-15 record in NBA Finals game sevens, in addition to the fact no one had ever come back from a three-games-to-one deficit to win the Finals.

But the Cavaliers did.

With the elusive championship finally arrived, Cleveland can celebrate a hands-in-the-air doozy. It will be an unusually happy Monday morning in Ohio, methinks.