New Medium, Same Great Taste

It's been suggested on more than one occasion that as a body of work the St. John's Hoops e-mails are not as bad as, say, the typical issue of Us Weekly or Teen. It's even been suggested once or twice that they should be collected together somehow, perhaps in a book, or serialized in The Atlantic Monthly.

Of course I'm flattered, but the reasons this has never happened are many. (The Atlantic Monthly, for example, now returns all my letters unopened.) Chief among them is that in writing the weekly dispatch I've never desired to appeal to people outside our band of playmates and the few dozen non-players who've asked to be added to the mailing list over the years.

Still, I've always been a completist. And, as it would to any writer, the thought of having all my scribbles collected together at least suggests the possibility of immortality.

But this is the twenty-first century! The age of OnStar and hybrid SUVs and cell phones that get satellite TV! Books are for old people, the printed word for Luddites. And so with the fanfare that in decades past accompanied the introduction of the tail fin and color TV and the Wonder Bra I introduce the St. John's Hoops weblog!

That's right. Today St. John's Hoops becomes part of the blog phenomenon. For those who don't know -- and you really should be a little embarrassed -- a blog is a web site on which an individual publishes content and to which others in the group are able to post replies. Think highly interactive web site catering to the special interests of a select group. Like Ralph Nader's web site, but without the panhandling.

The St. John's Hoops blog is located at http://stjohnshoops.blogspot.com. On the site you'll see St. John's Hoops e-mails going back to May of this year, and every week I'll be adding more from the archives.

Within the next 24 hours everyone on this mailing list will receive an e-mail from the blog's host (blogger.com) inviting you to create a user ID and password so you can post to the blog. I respectfully request that you use your first and last name as your user ID so everyone knows who's posting. Save your JiggyBoy216 handle for America Online.

What will happen to this weekly e-mail? Frankly, I don't know. One way or another I'll still notify you every week whether we're playing or not. If you don't hear from me just check the site.

Thanks, everyone, for your kind words and insightful and hilarious replies to my e-mails over the years. What started as a simple "Yo! Gym's open tonight. Play?" in 1994 has evolved into one of my favorite weekly to-dos. And for the record: We are playing this Wednesday at our usual time: 6:30 p.m. Please let me know if you will or will not be there.

"Eleven is eleven, and ten is ten."

Thus spake Matt Thurber, when asked whether we should postpone the St. John's Hoops 10-Year Anniversary celebration until next year, or try again to make it work this year.

And so: Announcing the return of our 10-year anniversary bash, complete with three-on-three tournament and post-tourney whoop-de-do!

It's a tad late in the year for an outdoor soirée, but let's not forget the thing that makes St. John's Hoops St. John's Hoops: Our access to the best gym in town. Thus, on Wednesday, October 20, we'll convene at 6:00 p.m. on our home court. We'll square off in a double-elimination 3-on-3 tourney and then retire to a nearby watering hole (likely Red's Savoy, pending confirmation they can take us) beers, pizza, and more.

To ensure a smooth-running affair we'll need an accurate headcount. Please let me know ASAP -- but no later than Monday, October 18 -- if you will or will not be there. Please also let me know if you want to participate but cannot make it by 6:00 p.m. I will be sure you get assigned a later start.

As in the past, a disinterested party (my wife) will pick the teams and fill in the bracket. I will provide her with minimal input -- just enough to keep her from putting, say, Dan, Tony, and Balza all on the same team.

If you've been absent from St. John's for a while, this is the night to return! If you're fretting that your game is a little rusty, give me a break. Most of us were past our primes when we started this 10 years ago. Let me repeat: UNLESS YOUR HOUSE IS BURNING DOWN YOU SHOULD BE THERE.

Watch for more details in the coming weeks.

Special thanks to the St. John's Hoops 10-Year Anniversary Celebration Working Group for participating in the first and only conference call in the history of SJH, and to Jeff Schoenherr for bending over backward to attend.

Casa del Dolor

Sure, I've been to California. It's everything they say it is, and worse. Populated by beautiful people in fast, rust-free cars, but hot, crowded, and expensive. (A gallon of milk costs TWENTY DOLLARS!)

Let's take a look at one of the major components of the California Misery Index, home prices.

• In California, the median home price is $464,000, vs. $382,000 just a year ago. One of the hottest markets is San Diego. Since 2000, home prices there have risen 76%. The median home price in San Diego county: $582,000. In Orange County, a house selling for $800,000 two years ago now fetches $1.2 million. Ow-ee.


• One of the key indicators of out-of-control housing costs is the ratio of house prices to rents. Since 1995 that ratio has jumped from 13 to 18 in San Francisco, and from 13 to 22 in San Diego.


• Another key yardstick: home prices vs. personal income. From 1975 to 2000, home prices hovered between 2.7 and 2.9 times income -- pretty stable. Today that ratio nationwide stands at 3.4. In California the ratio is 6.4.


• Thanks to the gulf between home prices and personal income, even folks making big coin are having trouble affording a decent house. To qualify for a mortgage to purchase that nearly half-million-dollar median-priced house, Mr. and Mrs. California would have to earn a combined $112,000 a year. Twelve months ago that number was $85,000. Today not even one in five California households can afford to buy a median-priced house in their own state.

What's the point, and why should readers of this weekly missive care? I just like collecting data that validates my own dim view of the Golden Brown State (much the same way I enjoy jokes about French military prowess for their own sake). I suppose this e-mail is for those Left Coast correspondents -- you know who you are -- who really should take a closer look at relocating to the Land of 10,000 Lakes. By the way, it's actually closer to 14,000. And did you know that Los Angeles county, home of the, uh, Lakers, hasn't a single lake?

And there: I've accomplished my meaningless-ramble-to-hoops segue. Cost to play hoops at St. John's each week: $0. Amount that price has risen since 1994: 0%. Please let me know if you will or will not be playing this Wednesday. We tip off at 6:30 p.m., as usual.

The Man in the Gray Flannel Box

Ever stop and think about how much of what you do is simply copying what you did before? I'm not talking about cutting the grass or making Tater Tot hotdish. I'm talking about your professional life, during which you get paid the big bucks for your ideas and insights. Bunk. If you're not replicating what you did last month you're probably digging through the Hollister files so you can copy what you did on that project back in '99.

I thought about this a few weeks ago when I got stuck writing a news release for a client. (PR's not really our bag but, hey, if someone asks we're experts at it.) I needed the standard CEO quote, the one every news release serves up after establishing the company's "leadership" has been "extended" thanks to its "breakthrough" new "solution," yadda yadda. For some reason I was having trouble pulling one out of my ear, so -- God and client forgive me -- I dredged up a release from the archives, copied the CEO quote, changed four words, and plopped it in.

Hey, I wasn't proud of it. Most of my work is fiercely original (as you will see when your company finally relents and agrees to meet with us). But the client was delighted. Why? Because they wanted us to follow the template, to copy what had been done before. Despite what they say about wanting to stand out, most companies in reality want to walk safely down the middle of the road, shadow-boxing with the competition and veering to avoid the truly original and innovative.

Is that bad? I don't know. In marketing, anyway, certain much-derided practices are returned to again and again because they're proven to work. (I can tell you exactly which five elements in a direct mail letter 95% of people read, and in what order.) In the case of the news release the client was happy, the CEO was happy, the editors were happy, and in a perverse way the competition was happy. While the client was indeed introducing a new product, the competition saw that in doing things the usual way our client wasn't going to garner too much attention, not differentiate too much, and thus not, in the end, alter the status quo much.

I once recommended to that client, by the way, that they paint every one of their products blaze orange, their signature color. They manufacture scientific test and processing equipment, hulking boxes that stand shoulder-to-shoulder with competing products in laboratories and manufacturing facilities. Everyone's boxes are painted light industrial gray and differentiated only by the logos that are visible when you get within arm's length of them. I had seen a company in a similar market get a huge boost in awareness simply by painting every one of its products its corporate color, a brilliant royal blue.

The client nodded, my idea noted. Their boxes are still gray.

With that, I release the following into the public domain:

"COMPANY is well-known in the industry for many front- and back-end applications like APPLICATION, APPLICATION, and APPLICATION," said NAME, COMPANY president and CEO. "Our product development efforts now are on innovating and furthering our reputation as the 'no-compromises' choice. The PRODUCT solution is further proof that no one can equal our expertise in PROCESS."

In this I hope you will be utterly conformist: Come out to St. John's tonight for hoops. We tip off at 6:30, as usual. Please let me know if you will or will not be playing.

Table for None

You like lamb chops? I love lamb chops. A rare treat. (And, by the way, Sam's Club has excellent meat. But that's another story.) I made some lamb chops the other night. Saturday, I think it was. Normally I make them with that wine-and-parsley sauce recipe from my 1958 first-edition Gourmet cookbook, and even though the herb garden is overflowing with parsley I decided to simply sear them with salt, pepper and garlic.

I also tried a new cream of smoked mushroom soup I'd prepared for earlier in the week by smoking a pound of mushrooms. Boy, was that divine. And you know how with cream soups they often have you strain out the flavor agents, the mushrooms, leeks, onions, et al.? Well, frugal gourmet that I am I saved all those, mixed in some eggs, breadcrumbs, and cream cheese and made a brilliant smoked mushroom terrine.

The Missus had picked up some fresh asparagus and a bottle of white earlier in the day so the stage was set for a perfect dinner. And it was. The first bite and a half were the equal of anything I've ever put on our table. Then came the grunting. From beside the table, down in the little bouncy chair. The little one, the girl, had a bright red face and a grimace that indicated severe discomfort. I don't have to tell you parents what that means. But, boy, when it takes five or six minutes for them to work it out it really takes the edge off your prime eats. Then the older one, the boy, started in. "She's got POOOOOPIEEEES! POOOOP-IEES!" And, "Don'tlikethis! Don'tlikethis!" And, "Wanttoast! Wanttoast!"

So up for the toaster, swap out the juice for chocolate. When I came back, the Missus was gone, and I heard "Whoooooooooooooo-boy!" from upstairs, followed by, "Can you bring me a plastic bag?" Followed by, "Don'tlikethis! Want JUICE!" When I'd delivered the bag and returned with the juice the boy had wriggled from his booster seat and slipped out the front door and was trotting -- pantsless, somehow -- down the sidewalk toward the street. He got a most peculiar stare from an elderly woman in a Winnebago headed north and a young man on a Harley headed south. (We're on a busy corner.)

When I got the boy's pants on and got us both back to the table the phone rang. It was my sister, who I'm convinced has wired all the dining room chairs with sensors that tell her when we've sat down to eat. We chatting briefly about her former boss's sister's friend's father's pituitary problem before I protested that my dinner was going cold, but when I hung up I noticed the boy was gone. I tracked him to the nursery by following the discarded items of clothing and found him secreted under the crib. The Missus was rocking the girl, who had conked out with an almost-empty bottle nestled in her mouth. "She was sleepy so I thought I might was well put her to bed," she said (the Missus, not the girl, who doesn't say much at all).

I reached under the crib to dislodge the boy but he screamed, "NO! NO! NO!" which I knew would wake up the baby so I backed off and returned downstairs alone. When I turned the corner the cat was standing over my plate with cream soup on her whiskers and lamb chop bone lodged in her mouth. At the site of me she bounded down and disappeared.

I love lamb chops. I really do. But Saturday I had cereal. Tooty Fruities. You know, those Froot Loops knock-offs in the bag. You like cereal?

Tonight we're having lasagna. Dinner at 5:30, at least that's what I've been told. After that, hoops at St. John's. Will you be playing tonight? Please let me know. We tip off at 6:30.

Nanker-Phelge Dept.

It's time to play "Guess the Cause of Death"! The category is The Rolling Stones. Ready?

In 1969, a British coroner ruled that guitarist Brian Jones' death was

a) death by drug overdose.
b) death by misadventure.
c) death by asphyxiation.
d) death at the hand of person or persons unknown.

Time's up! The coroner ruled "death by misadventure." What a delightfully British way to say "We can't ascertain with certainty, m'Lord, but the whole thing seems damned improper, what." (In fact, Jones drowned in his pool after consuming, or perhaps after not consuming, a variety of illegal, and perhaps some legal, substances. Unless he was murdered.)

But enough rock music trivia. It's already 4:30! It's time to answer that weekly question about hoops at St. John's. As side 2, track 3 of the Stones' first album said: "Tell Me (You'll Be Coming Back)." We tip off at 6:30 p.m., as usual.