Que Sera, Sera

Apr 03, 1922 - May 13, 2019 (Time image)

Blonde and blue-eyed, Doris Day wasn't sexy in the same fashion as Marilyn Monroe, but she was perfect for pre-1964 America, girl-next-door beautiful.

Though her public persona never strayed from what we would call "traditional cultural values," her movie characters were articulate and spirited. With the benefit of hindsight we can see how she was the precursor of the ideal professional woman who is assertive, talented, and feminine.

Her personal life was no Doris Day tale:

Her 1976 tell-all book, “Doris Day: Her Own Story,” chronicled her money troubles and three failed marriages, contrasting with the happy publicity of her Hollywood career.

“I have the unfortunate reputation of being Miss Goody Two-Shoes, America’s Virgin, and all that, so I’m afraid it’s going to shock some people for me to say this, but I staunchly believe no two people should get married until they have lived together,” she wrote.

In my humble opinion, Doris Day is under-rated as a singer. Her music is part of the American songbook--Sentimental Journey, It's Magic, By the Light of the Silvery Moon--often producing an I-didn't-know-that-was-her-song reaction.

Born to a music teacher and a housewife in Cincinnati, she had dreamed of a dance career, but at age 12 suffered a crippling accident: A car she was in was hit by a train and her leg was badly broken. Listening to the radio while recuperating, she began singing along with Ella Fitzgerald, “trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, the casual yet clean way she sang the words.”

Her hit Que Sera, Sera, (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) from Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much" is a throwback to old-style performing--perfect intonation, clear projection, vocal control, feeling without emoting, and erect posture. She knew how to get on and off the stage. R.I.P.

Saturday in the Park

Good reasons to see the Giants vs. Reds on Saturday:

Beautiful afternoon weather, with great views of the bay.

High quality, albeit pricey, food.

The fancy, new scoreboard--now fully operational--chock-full of information for baseball junkies and casual fans alike.

Free bobblehead that depicts Pablo Sandoval's pitching:

[On May 6] Sandoval became the only other player besides Hall of Fame pitcher Christy Mathewson in 1905 with a homer, steal and scoreless pitching outing in the same game, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Reason not to go the park on Saturday: Giants baseball. The Giants lost to the Reds, 5-4, in a desultory performance by the home team.

MEGA

Nob Hill or Knob Hill?

Reported by the Chronicle:

“I like to have sex before I come to church. That way, if anything happens, I’m covered.”

Man to man, overheard at Grace Cathedral by Alexandra Morgan

Making Episcopal Great Again.

Happy Mother's Day!

Let’s Plan to Make a Plan Dept.

James Harden, after the Houston Rockets were eliminated from the playoffs by the Golden State Warriors:

“I know what we need to do," Harden said. "I know exactly what we need to do. We'll figure it out this summer."

Slip Me a Slug of the Wonderful Mug

Perhaps you missed the latest tempest-in-a-latte-cup when Sunday's episode of Game of Thrones showed what appeared to be a Starbucks drink next to one of the leading characters. (Starbucks, not to mention electricity and paper cups, does not exist in the Game of Thrones fantasy universe.)

The accidental product placement has garnered free social-media publicity for the Seattle-based coffee company:

Plenty of brands would like to find a way into an ad-free smash TV show like HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” On Sunday night, Starbucks Corp. seemed to have lucked its way there...the apparent anachronism handed Starbucks a big share of the voluminous “Game of Thrones” social-media conversation that follows every episode.

In the middle of its final season, over 17 million viewers (across all platforms) have been watching Game of Thrones. That's a lot of eyeballs.

Note: in an alternative universe it's possible that the Starbucks cup could have existed, for example:

After a day of slaughter, Daenerys really needed to stop at a bathroom. Her code of ethics forbade her from using the Starbucks facilities without buying anything--though she didn't have to (cut to image of the Philadelphia 911 incident)--so she ordered the venti, triple-shot non-fat latte, no sugar. When the barista asks if she needed a cardboard sleeve, the camera pans to her calloused hands, toughened by the fire of dragons that she rides all day. Daenerys smiles faintly and takes the cup without the sleeve and pops in the green swizzle stick that seals the top for transport. She enters the gender-neutral bathroom. Fade to black...

Note: at last night's Warriors-Rockets game actress Emilia Clarke, the subject of all the social-media fun, was spotted by the mascot. You cannot escape, Daenerys!

Killing the Goose

(Economist illustration)

Jean Baptiste Colbert:

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest amount of hissing.

The City of San Francisco imposes a multiplicity of business taxes. Some supervisors want to add an IPO tax to grab some boodle from individuals who benefit ("stock-based compensation") from an initial public offering.

The San Francisco Chronicle thinks this is A Tax Too Far:

IPOs by their nature are one-time shots, meaning the revenue isn’t dependable. Firms already hampered by the high cost of operations here will have another reason to expand or relocate elsewhere. Tacking on a tax needs more explanation than righteous anger over lopsided incomes. The need for a two-thirds ballot box approval is a major obstacle.

San Francisco should take a long look at itself. The city’s budget is due to pass the $11 billion mark, an ever-rising number fueled by tax collections from sales, real estate transfers and payrolls, much of it from the tech industry. The jobless rate is 2.1%, a figure never reached before. A big-business tax to improve homeless services and expected to yield $300 million annually won an overwhelmingly majority, though it’s under legal challenge. Throwing on a new tax makes no sense in a roaring economy and atmosphere of awareness and change.

San Francisco isn't just plucking the goose, it's killing it.

Nice Little Business You Have Here

(Image from 123RF.com)

Consumers value lower prices more than they do "corporate social responsibility (CSR)" policies--for example, green initiatives or workplace safety. So why do companies sometimes voluntarily restrict their actions more than the law requires? According to a Stanford study [bold added]

Firms may exceed regulation in order to reduce support for stricter regulations among key stakeholders, thereby forestalling future implementation of these regulations.

Another finding--breadth is more important than depth:

We found that self-regulation can be an effective corporate strategy, but the breath [sic] of self-regulation (the number of companies participating) mattered more than depth (the extent of self-regulation). In some simulations we conducted, we find that in the absence of self-regulation, pro-regulatory forces dominate in 68% of cases. If companies implement broad and deep regulations, this number drops to only 4%. However, companies can get it to as low as 16% by implementing broad but shallow regulations. In contrast, deep and shallow regulations only slightly reduce the chance of pro-regulatory domination.

Poll responders are displaying common sense; for example, it's better for everyone to cut their energy use by 10% than for a few large users to switch 100% to alternative energy.

It's also clear that companies are strongly incentivized to adopt CSR policies not because of innate altruism but because of the unspoken threat of regulation, i.e., "nice little business you have here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it."

Few approve of extra-legal coercion, especially if it's done to them, but it's better than imposing strict laws that nearly always have unintended consequences.

Crazy Rich Asians: New World, Familiar Plot

At the wedding of a secondary character the church is converted
to a jungle and the aisle becomes a pond (the bride wore boots)

I missed seeing Crazy Rich Asians in the theaters last year. When the disk finally made it to the top of the Netflix queue, I popped it in the player.

Nearly every Asian actor on American television had a part, and, as the title promised, there were over-the-top scenes of billionaires showing off their wealth.

But pictures of the lifestyles of rich and famous Asians---specifically, Singaporean Chinese---do not a story make, so the writers basically stole the plot of a dozen "royal-loves-commoner" Hallmark movies:

Handsome prince of a small European country comes to America--for college, for life experience, or to visit friends.

He falls for a girl, who along with every other American, has no idea who he is. He loves her because she appreciates him for himself, not for his title or money.

He has to reveal his identity because he needs the blessing of his mother, the Queen. (The King died long ago; in this movie he's merely absent.)

He can't put off the revelation because he has to go home to be coronated; in many Hallmark movies he also must have named his future queen.

The Queen and her aides disapprove of this American who has no training in royal duties and manners.

However, the common folk and low-level palace workers come to love her.

The middle part of the story is about how she tries to navigate the treacherous shoals of palace intrigue, not only the Queen's machinations but also a rival of noble blood, often someone who has known the Prince since childhood.

The Prince's love never wavers, but near the end of the movie she returns to America to save him from more damage to his status and authority.

The Queen, remembering how in her own life she chose duty over passion, sees the misery in her son. She realizes that the girl loves the Prince so deeply that she will give up her own future happiness for his sake.

The Queen welcomes her future daughter-in-law to the kingdom, and they all live happily ever after.

The would-be "princess", Rachel Chu (played by Constance Wu), is the everywoman / Luke Skywalker / Harry Potter character through whose eyes the audience discovers a vast new world. She's a NYU Finance prof whose skill at gaming and game theory later proves useful.

But Crazy Rich Asians is really about the business matriarch, Eleanor Young (played by Michelle Yeoh), who is transformed from disapproving Queen to another mother who wants her son to be happy. (Though Rachel and "prince" Nick Young get most of the screen time, one hint that the movie is about Eleanor is the opening scene, a flashback to 1995, in which Eleanor must assert herself against snooty London hotel staff.)

The movie is rife with references that ABC's (American-born Chinese) will appreciate, e.g., the frugality of the elderly regardless of their wealth, how everyone knows how to play mah-jongg, and how every woman knows how to cook.

I liked the movie because of its glimpses into how the non-American overseas Chinese .001% live, and I also like Hallmark movies. But if the latter are not your cup of tea, dear reader, then you may wish to give this one a pass.

Kaimuki nō ka ʻoi

"Lintherine" is a fictional security
company in Five-O.

I've never visited my second cousin's home, but I see it occasionally on TV. One of Hawaii Five-O's newer characters, Officer Tani Rey, "lives" in my relative's house in the old Kaimuki district of Honolulu.

Many of Kaimuki's original homes have been torn down:

Houses in the 1950s and 1960s began to change to the boxier styles, and ‘ohana zoning & rules requiring attached ‘ohana dwellings altered the character of the older bungalows if they were spared the wrecking ball.

The 1970s and 1980s saw an increase in bungalows replaced by residential “boxes.” By the end of the 1980s and 1990s, more of the classic Kaimuki homes were replaced by McMansions and “Garage Mahals” which continue to plague the area.

My cousin, with an assist from the TV show, keeps the '50's property in great shape. Let's hope that Tani--and Hawaii Five-O (in its ninth season)--stick around for a few more years.

Oh, the Humanities

(WSJ illustration by Loris Lara)

American poet and literary critic Adam Kirsch advises:

Stop Worrying About the ‘Death’ of the Humanities.

These worries apparently "stem" from the decline in the number of humanities majors and the concomitant rise in enrollment in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

Mr. Kirsch's argument is that the university is the wrong place to gauge the health of, and interest in, the humanities.

The real action takes place outside the classroom, in theaters, concert halls, art galleries and libraries, or simply in the living rooms where people read and think. Being a successful literature or history or art major requires different skills than the ones needed to make these things a part of one’s actual inner life. Students are judged by what they can readily articulate, but in life, it is what we don’t know how to express that draws us to read, think, listen to music or look at art.

When the university comes to be seen as the sole custodian of the humanities, both the humanities and the university suffer. Most scholarship in the humanities is directed solely to other scholars and has little or no effect on the culture at large...

Certainly there is a hunger in the U.S. for engagement with ideas and culture that isn’t mediated by universities. The Center for Fiction recently opened a beautiful new headquarters in Brooklyn, where it houses readings, workshops and a massive library; the Poetry Foundation does the same for verse in its home in Chicago. The NEA’s Big Read program, which encourages cities and communities to read and discuss a chosen book, has attracted almost five million people to its events since its launch in 2005. And the past decade has seen the emergence of several important intellectual journals, from Jacobin on the left to American Affairs on the right, which keep alive the tradition of the independent “little magazine.”

But the habit of seeing universities as the main or even sole custodians of humanistic culture isn’t just inaccurate; it is bad for universities themselves. When we consider the university the only place where society can explicitly formulate its visions of truth, beauty and justice, it’s no wonder that campuses become fierce ideological battlegrounds—for students, faculty and outside observers alike.

The History and Political Thought reading
list hasn't changed much (click to enlarge)

When humanities courses are not "ideological battlegrounds", they can make for a rewarding educational experience.

Your humble blogger, a social sciences major, regards his freshman acceptance into a coordinated humanities program to be the best decision he made in college. Philosophy, Art, History, and Literature had parallel curricula, all starting with the ancient Greeks and ending in the 19th century (e.g, Nietzsche, Impressionism, Metternich--Literature was the exception because the professor insisted on covering Waiting for Godot).

Being in a rush to graduate in less than four years, I exited the program in favor of courses that imparted more useful knowledge.

Only later did I come to understand that what is useful is not necessarily important.

Cinco de Mayo: It Never Gets Old

We checked, but the President hasn't (yet) tweeted about Cinco de Mayo. So we are reprising our 2016 post below.

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May 5, 2016

Donald Trump wishes everyone a happy Cinco De Mayo, digs into a taco bowl, causes millions to have indigestion.

Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! https://t.co/ufoTeQd8yA pic.twitter.com/k01Mc6CuDI

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2016

I don't like the guy's style or much of his politics, but I do love the way he knows how to provoke a reaction--he drives his opponents barking mad--in people who are already angry all the time. Deep breathing, folks. If you're Hispanic and reject his "love," think how unhappy he must be that you don't return his affection!

Already the deconstruction has begun on this supposedly innocuous Tweet.

The taco bowl is round and the dishes are square. Symbolism? Of what?

That's a horribly unhealthy-looking taco bowl, with cheese, beef, and sour cream all smushed together. The kitchen could easily have lightened it with more vegetables of color. Here again Mr. Trump is thumbing his nose at the sensibilities of the East and West Coast elites.

Speaking of thumbs, his left thumb is pointed up. Does it mean agreement, Tr(i)ump(h), or something else?

That "something else" could be related to the half-hidden picture of his bikinied ex-wife Marla Maples in the bottom right of the picture.

There's a lot of serious news out there, but the Donald knows how to suck all the oxygen out of the media room.

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Note--here's another remembrance: The Taco Bowl That Saved the World

Real Masculinity

The San Francisco 49ers drafted Arkansas linebacker Dre Greenlaw in the 5th round--his roster spot is far from assured--but he's already made the first team of life, according to the father of a college classmate. [bold added]

[Gerry] Daly, a 52-year-old husband and father of two, shared a story about the Razorbacks’ team captain on Twitter that resonated widely....

In 2015, Greenlaw and Meghan Daly were both freshmen at Arkansas who had become casual friends at Fayetteville High. At the party, Meghan, who hadn’t been drinking heavily with her group of friends, was acting erratically and told Greenlaw at one point she thought a pill, a date-rape drug, had been slipped into her drink.

Gerry Daly said Meghan’s friends later told her that Greenlaw stopped a man from leaving the party with her. On Thursday, Greenlaw recalled stepping in when a man began acting aggressively toward Meghan. Greenlaw helped Meghan find her friends, from whom she’d become separated, and they took her to the nearest emergency room.[snip]

“This is a guy who literally could have screwed up his future by doing this,” Daly said. “If the guy that’s trying to take Meghan away throws a punch and it ends up in a fight, who knows? He could end up getting arrested or thrown off the team. It was one of those things.

“The more I thought about it, the more I realized what he could have been putting at risk for my daughter. The more the shock of the event passed, the more the gratitude set in.”[snip]

Daly appreciated why Greenlaw might want to downplay his role, given he was a freshman on the football team who was at a party where there was underage drinking.

For that reason, Daly didn’t share the story publicly until Saturday, when Greenlaw officially landed in the NFL.

And what does Dre Greenlaw have to say? “At the time, I was just looking out for a friend.”

Unless It Happens to You

Teenaged carjackers crashed into a house in Castro Valley: [bold added]

The car hit the home of two elderly women at 12:30 am, destroying the garage and narrowly missing their bedrooms...A neighbor helped the two residents retrieve some items so they could go stay somewhere else. The crash severed the gas line and knocked out the power.

Pictures of the Castro Valley incident reminded me of the damage (photo, right) to a house a block away from our home in 2004. Teenagers (is there a pattern here?) crashed at high speed into the garage. Fortunately, no one was home.

Since then the house has been repaired, a brick-and-wrought-iron barrier (at waist-high it's barely a fence) now protects the property, and flashing crosswalk signals have been added nearby. Everyone would say such a freakish accident won't happen again---unless it happens to you.

Ducks: Enjoy Them at a Distance

The ducks that have long frequented our neighborhood have returned to Foster City.

Idly curious about how the two resting on the grass would react, I turned on the sprinklers manually. They rose to search and peck the ground, as if they knew that the water would cause earthworms and insects to surface.

They add to the color of the community, but resist the temptation to feed them, unless you want to clean your driveway, sidewalk, and patio more often. Enjoy watching them....at a distance.

May Day, 2019: Getting Better

Portland May Day ICE protest.

May Day is a day devoted to worker solidarity and protest. Often the demonstrations and marches spread to include other causes, such as immigration (see photo right) or the environment.

It seems to this humble observer that the original focus on the worker seems to have been lost, for on the jobs front there is less to complain about than ever.

Despite war and recession jobs are at an all-time high (BLS).

The U.S. private sector added 275,000 jobs in April, according to the ADP National Employment Report released Wednesday, a far greater number than analysts expected.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected the private sector to gain 177,000 jobs.

The mighty U.S. economy has created jobs under two Democratic and two Republican Administrations. Neither war, financial collapse, automation, or political rancor has knocked it off its stride.

May Day is marked by complaining about how bad things are. I prefer to celebrate how they're getting better.