Greetings from Nerd-ville: We’re Number Two!

Sometimes you just luck out and end up living in the place that suits you.

Seriously, I pity the anonymous commenters who frequent boston.com and bostonherald.com (and who may even be in the paid employ of  the latter, given the insanely frothing nature of the comments there) to – no matter what the topic of “conversation” is – piss and moan about how terrible it is to live in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Honestly, you’d think that the Bay State is anything other than an excellent place in which to live.

Most educated – 1st

Lowest divorce rate – 1st

Healthiest – 4th

Wealthiest – 5th

Pursuit of Happiest  - 10th

Gun-happiest (i.e., firearms death rate) – 50th

And all round best places to live – 7th

Seriously, other than being in the Top 10 for taxes paid – which may have something to do with being the 5th wealthiest state – there are few factors that we don’t rate pretty darned high (or low, where low = good) on. Even – and this is incredibly surprising – our rank as the state with the worst drivers, which is 48th.

Maybe our weather isn’t the best but, still, this is a great place to live, especially if you’re the type of person who likes living around healthy, educated people who aren’t generally shooting at each other. 

In any case, I am always delighted to see the news when we rate high on yet another list, the most recent being the pocket protector rankings. This list ranks states by the concentration of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) professionals.

Massachusetts came in Number 2, second only to Virginia (which outstrips us because of all those government agencies, contractors, and sub-contractors there).  In the Number 3 position was, thanks to Microsoft, Washington. (Source: Bloomberg.

There are other states with more techies in absolute terms – think California – but in terms of geeks per capita, Massachusetts is right up there.

Just as the top of the heap is not surprising, neither is the bottom:  Mississippi, West Virginia, and Nevada.

Being high on STEM-mers is good for a lot of reasons. It’s where the growth is. Where the high-paying jobs are. It’s the future.

And, as someone who has enjoyed a good long career in nerd-dom, I have always enjoyed working with techies. For the most part, they were smart, funny, off-beat, and decent. Not that I never encountered any techie a-holes: I met plenty of them, often – why am I not surprised? – in the executive ranks, where an apparent willingness to be nasty and aggressive conveyed them out of the cubicle and into a windowed office and a seat at the table. Sometimes even at the head of the table.

But for the most part, working with techies was wonderful – certainly one of the best aspects of working in high tech.

When I worked full time, whatever the company, I was always part of a bull session group that, maybe one evening every couple of weeks, gravitated to someone’s office, where we spent a couple of hours shooting the breeze and, of course, solving the company’s problems. (If only they had listened to us…)

These groups always had at least one techie (in my world, that would have been a software engineer). Ed, Charlie, Frank, Paul, Ted. Some of the most wonderful and interesting guys I ever worked with were techies.

So, too, were some of the oddest.

There was Mike, who more or less lived at work, and in whose office we one day found a bag of suppurating sweet potatoes that were stinking to the high heavens.

Not to mention Jim who, when we doled out desserts at Friday lunch – at this small company, we took turns bringing dessert, and had our weekly full-staff meeting over brown-bag lunch and mostly home-made goodies – would tremble with anxiety if he felt he was going to be deprived of a second helping.

And then there was the marvelously (mostly) outspoken Bill.

For one client project – a custom information system -  I was managing, Bill was the only full-time tech resource I had. When the client came to town, I introduced Bill as the lead engineer on the project.

“Lead engineer?” Bill snorted, “I’m the only engineer.”

All was forgiven a while later when, as part of what was more or less a hostile takeover (at least as far as the rank and file were concerned), our new president flew in from wherever out of town to address the troops. He had started into his remarks – the usual bull and bromide – when Bill’s hand shot up.

Mr. President acknowledged him.

“Would you mind introducing yourself, sir?” Bill asked him.

Our new president told us his name.

Bill nodded deeply. “I thought so,” he told the slack-jawed new head guy, who was just starting to get a clue about what he was in for.

Ah, techies.

When younger marketing professionals ask my advice on whether to pursue a career in product marketing or marcomm, I always ask them one question: If you were stranded on a desert island, would you rather be stranded with the engineers or the sales guys.

I always knew who I’d rather be with, which is how I ended up going the product marketing route.

One of the things I miss these days is that I don’t get to meet with the techies as often as I’d like. I’m with the product marketing folks, the product managers, the marcomm-ers. Once in a while, I get to work with the engineers, but I only have one client with whom I work directly and regularly with the geeks. No surprise that they’re just about my favorite client.

Sure, maybe they’re not the smoothest of the smooth, the coolest of the cool, but what’s not to love about nerds?

So happy to live in a place where we have so many of them.

Landlines

I’m one of those old-fashioned types who still has a landline.

I can’t remember when the last time I made an outgoing call on it. (Actually, that’s not quite true. On the day of the Marathon bombings, when there was no mobile service for a while, I used it to call the landlines of my local sister and local brother to make sure that they were okay, so I could email by traveling sister and non-local brother and let them know we were all safe.)

Once in a blue moon, I’ll use it my landline to dial into a conference call. Sometimes it’s just easier to be on speaker, and the landline is better than a smartphone for that. But an outgoing personal call?

Pretty much the only time I use it for one of those is when I’ve misplaced my Blackberry and want to track it down.

Mostly the landline is used incoming by a) good causes looking for money, even though I tell them time and again that I DO NOT give to anyone (other than one of my schools) that solicits me over the phone; b) political surveys and/or get out and vote calls; c) bad people trying to get me to give them my credit card information; and d) my dentist calling to tell me that I have an appointment the next day.

I hang on to it mostly for the fear factor of not having a landline to call 911 or whatever.  There’s also a sentimental attachment to the number, I suppose, which I believe I’ve had for nearly forty years now.  But I’ve had my cell phone number for nearly twenty years, so sentimental/schmentimental.

My “real” phone is my cell. On my landline, I have the most minimal plan allowable, and augment the local coverage with a two-buck a month long distance service from some little phone company in Maine. On my cell phone, I have the mega-minutes plan, plus texting, and, of course, Internet access.

My husband, the last person in America to not have a cell phone, has a VoIP-based Magic Jack number, which mostly works, if you don’t mind terrible reception. But if the phone call matters, he uses the landline.

While those of us of a certain age keep the home-phones going, many of us are at least quasi-ambivalent – how’s that for an expression of ambivalence -  about keeping a landline home phone. But for the “young folks”, it’s a no-brainer. They just use their cell phones.

This, of course, means that, just as young folks won’t know what it’s like to dial, use a pay phone, call collect, or memorize their friends’ numbers, they won’t know what it’s like to pick up the family’s general phone and holler, “Hey, it’s for you.” Nor will they ever have to remember to tell a parent or sibling that they got a call, let alone actually take down a message.

All this reminds me of an experience my sister Trish had answering the family phone – PL-35811 – a few years after my father had died.

The caller was none other than a childhood friend of my father’s, one “Moko” Doyle, a fellow who had figured largely in tales of my father’s youth. Moko had been something of goof-ball, a not especially bright guy who was a trouble magnet. When my father was evaluating the friends of my brothers, it was not an entirely good thing if my father characterized any of them as a “Moko Doyle.” (There were worse designations, I must say. A “Moko Doyle” was at least likable. A bum, a louse, a crook, a complete POS, was a Vincent P. Egan, but that’s a story for another day.)

Anyway, Trish was home alone when she answered a call from Florida, Moko checking in with his old pals after many decades away.

My sister, still just a kid of 14 or 15 at the time, had to tell Moko that my father was dead.

He then asked about my Uncle Charlie.

No, Trish was sorry to report, Charlie had recently passed away.

Spike? Moko asked hopefully.

Alas, Spike was gone as well.

Poor Moko, reciting the litany of his boyhood friends, only to find them all gone. (Poo Trish, having to give Moko the news.)

Finally, Moko asked about Nemo, who, Trish was happily able to report, was still among the living.

With no landlines in the house, calls from the likes of Moko Doyle will be a thing of the past. Exchanges like this will all happen on Facebook or LinkedIn.

It’s not just homes, of course, that are getting rid of landlines. Businesses are hanging up on them, as well. (Hanging up: another thing that doesn’t happen much anymore, either.)

Of the nearly 300 employees at Evernote, only a handful – those in customer support, for the most part – have a landlines.

At Facebook, it’s the same deal for their 5,000 employees. Ditto for the 53,000 workers at Google.

Silicon Valley companies big and small are pulling the plug on desk phones in favor of mobile devices. While consumers have been cutting the cord for years, businesses are joining the trend at an accelerating rate thanks to the increasing capabilities of mobile devices, which make it easier for workers to be productive and stay connected from any location at all hours. (Source: Bloomberg.)

Which, of course, means that there’s no cutting the cord between work life and personal life, a condition that has been in the making for a number of years – and is not an unalloyed good.

That aside, the trend really spells trouble for the landline equipment and networking providers like Alcatel and Avaya. Business spending on landlines fell by one-third between 2008 and 2012, and is expected to plummet by the same amount between now and 2016.

And for the telecom providers like AT&T and Verizon, it means figuring out to squeeze more revenues out of wireless as the cash cow of landlines dries up. I’m sure that they’ll figure it out. After all, they have plenty of experience with the decline of Yellow Pages and the end of personal “rental” of phones, which was what the model was in the good old days. (A few years ago, we were visiting my husband’s elderly aunt and realized that, although she had, maybe a decade or so earlier, replaced her old black rotary dial phone with a jazzier number, she had been paying $9 a month fee for that old Bakelite number month in, month out.  We called “wrong number” and returned it for her, although, as I recall, there was some super hassle about sending it back.)

As one guy interviewed for the Bloomberg article – the head of a start up where everyone uses their personal mobile phones for work (and gets reimbursed for overages) – said:

"You just don’t need desk phones. We talk over e-mail, text message, chat clients, social networks. "

This is, of course, true.

I do a lot of my client communicating via e-mail. When I was still working full time, I hung out with remote colleagues on IM. But there are plenty of times where you really do need to get on the horn and actually talk-talk with someone: not over e-mail, not over text, not via FB.

Sometimes you really do need to pick up the phone and call.

At which point, it really doesn’t matter if you’re using a landline, a cell phone, or Skype.

As the AT&T ad used to say, back in the day when Bell ruled:

Reach out and just say ‘hi’…

Hey, they’re waiting to hear from you.

Come on, admit it. Don’t you like to get a call once and a while from someone – business or personal -  who just wants to yack for a while?

A dream is a wish your pocketbook makes

A dream may have been a wish that Cinderella’s heart made, but, Jiminy Cricket, if you’re a well-heeled NYC parent and not a hearth-sweeping skivvy, a dream is a wish that your pocketbook makes come true.

Or so it seem, based on an article in the NY Post – and when are they ever wrong?  -  on hush-hush, word of mouth service that, for about $1K a day, is (make that was) helping folks who had better things to do than wait on line tapping their Tod’s in the broiling Florida sun. Hel-lo-o!

The workaround is hiring a disabled person to become an ad hoc member of your family, letting you cut ahead of the common folks and whisk yourself right into a ride.

The “black-market Disney guides” run $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day.

“My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida. (Source: NY Post, by way of boston.com)

This came to light, by the way, because of social anthropologist Wednesday Martin’s research for a book entitled Primates of Park Avenue. That sounds like a good one. Can’t wait.

As for giving those with disabilities a break, believe me, I am in complete sympathy with those who need to use handicap parking, etc.

I have an old and dear friend with crippling rheumatoid arthritis. Forty years (and twenty operations) into dealing with it, she can’t walk all that fast or all that far, and has no use of her fingers. She has handicapped parking tag and, believe me, she needs (and deserves) to use it.

I have another old and dear friend who after surviving ghastly treatment for malignant mesothelioma – no, it doesn’t just happen to asbestos miners; it happens to librarians who work in asbestos-ridden old libraries – has to use one of those motorized scooters to get around in.

However, I do believe that plenty of those folks buzzing around in motorized scooters have a problem getting around because they’re obese, not because they have a disability. So, right off the bat, it doesn’t seem fair that just because you’ve signed up with The Scooter Store, you get to cut line with your posse.

But, sure, for folks in wheelchairs and those who really do need help walking, life is crappy enough as it is, why not give them a break. (Disney, by the way, doesn’t guarantee preferred ride boarding. They just promise a “more convenient entrance.” But those discerning NYC mothers swear by it.)

Hiring someone in a wheelchair or scooter to play ‘poor Aunt Hephzibah’ so you and your precious little ones can scoot to the head of the line: just despicable. (Gives new meaning to ‘hire the handicapped’, that’s for sure.)

Dream Tours, the group that was the supposed go-to for the NYC elite, is a Florida non-profit that is:

Dedicated to providing quality based, memorable, and affordable vacations, to people with special needs.

Well, I suppose you could argue that Rollo the Rich Dude and his brood have special needs, if you consider not feeling like standing in line to get into “It’s a Small World” a special need. (Personally, I’d pay a thousand dollars a day not to get into “Small World” but that’s, after all, just me.)

Dream Tours is focused primarily on adults with special needs. In the words of their home page: We specialize in accessible travel. The company takes individuals and groups on tours of Disneyland, and runs other tours – a cruise, trip to the Smokey Mountains – as well. Their web site is full of heart-warming pictures of families having fun.  Their web site also makes frequent use of Disney characters. Wonder if that’s Disney-approved, given that at one point a few years ago, Disney went after a family that carved Winnie the Pooh on their child’s gravestone. And their logo incorporates the cap of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. If they don’t have Disney permission, I suspect that they’ll be hearing from old Walt’s legal team any day now.

Dream Tours’ program goals include:

• To emphasize community inclusion for individuals with disabilities, fostering partnerships to provide access to the same social, cultural and recreational facilities and activities enjoyed by all citizens
• To provide enriching activities that are meant to challenge everyone’s own personal physical abilities and at the same time allow them to socialize with their peers in a safe environment
• To create a mechanism for sustainability, businesses, partnerships and grants, successfully continuing the program

Theirs is, at least nominally, a very laudable mission. But it may have been that “create a mechanism” goal that tripped them up.  After all, if you can rake in a thousand bucks taking a group of non-disabled POS’s around, and it helps support their efforts to work with those who are both in need and deserving of help, then their thinking may be ‘why not?’.  Maybe the secret handshake is that the New Yorkers know that they have to say that Little Lord Fauntleroy has ADHD, and Dream Tours doesn’t dig too deep. Is this maybe a case of doing the wrong thing for the right reason?

Ryan Clement, who founded and runs Dream Tours, is denying any malfeasance.  It was supposedly his assistant, Jacie Christiano, who was the tour guide on what it appears to have been one of their VIP Tours. 

Due to inaccurate press and slander, Dream Tours is not offering VIP tours at this time. Our focus has primarily always been providing magical vacations for adults with special needs and helping their dreams to come true.

As I learned time and again in small companies that were, as often as not, unintentional non-profits, when you move away from what your “focus has primarily always been” you tend to get in trouble.

Guess that’s what happened here.

And when that happens, donations – in the case of the small companies of my experience, these were donations masked as investments (or vise versa) – tend to dry up.

If they really were legitimate do-gooders, here’s hoping that Ryan and Jacie can get back on track. As it says under Jacie’s bio:

“Around here, however, we do not look back for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things…” Walt Disney

As for those queue-jumping NYC a-holes: shame on you for your cavalier behavior, and for what you’re teaching your children. (Just one of many dreadful things they’re teaching their kids, I’m certain.)

As for Disney, you may want to keep a closer eye on how many families “poor Aunt Hephzibah” rolls in with. You really don’t want to be encouraging liars and cheats. How un-Disney like. Sure, Disney is pretty expensive, and beyond the reach of many families. Nonetheless, doesn’t Disney still believe that “when you wish upon a star, makes no difference who your are”?

Is it just me????? Or are the Quabbin Seven the complete idiots they appear to be?

The other day, a group of UMass and Smith College students were found meandering around Quabbin Reservoir a bit after midnight.

The UMass students were chemical engineers, just graduating with masters degrees. No word on what the Smith-ies were studying.

Apparently none of the brigade were long on common sense.

Quabbin Reservoir, for those not from around here, is a quite beautiful place in the western part of Massachusetts. In my guidebook,it’s one of the prettiest places in the state. Quabbin was created in the late 1930’s to provide drinking water for Greater Boston and, interestingly, required several small towns to be disappeared. I’m not 100% certain, but I believe that from the air, you can see the ghost outlines of the foundations from those towns of yore.

Anyway, given that it provides water to an awful lot of folks in Massachusetts, it’s a very important part of our infrastructure. One that we want to keep safe, secure, and sippy-cup delicious. (We do, by the way, enjoy really wonderful water in our fair state. When we were kids and visited our relatives in Chicago, we were all gacked-out by the taste of that city’s water, which was sweet water compared to the well water we drank once when we visited some friends of the family who lived on a farm in Wisconsin. I remember the Rogers kids struggling mightily not to do a spit-take on the lemonade that we were served.)

Anyhow, the students who were apprehended poking around Quabbin in the dark happened to be from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Singapore.

Now, if you were a student from a country that was either the home country of the 9/11 bombers or had housed Osama Bin Laden.

And if you knew that people in the US in general, and – these days – in Massachusetts in particular, were (fairly or unfairly) fairly suspicious of people from those countries.

And if you were studying in a state that had just been whip-sawed by a couple of miserable jihadists who’d hijacked our very own, very best holiday, Patriots Day, and killed four innocent people, including a sweet and adorable 8-year old boy, and maimed hundreds of others.

Would you go in the dead of night to a somewhat secured reservoir to poke around because, as chemical engineers, you had a ‘career interest’ in it?

Anyhow, the Quabbin Seven are facing trespassing charges. And while they may very well be completely innocent of any malfeasance past, present, or future; any terrorist intent; or even any evil thoughts, they will now surely be facing some scrutiny by the FBI, will they not? And surely the INS will be taking a look and seeing whether any of these students may be outstaying their welcome.

I know that young folks can be foolish and impulsive. That sometimes it just seems like a good thing to hop in the car and head to the Res to look around on a nice spring night when school’s out.

But unless you wanted to be deliberately provocative, or are up to no good, would you do this?

What a bunch of nimrods.

And people call us Massholes?

Seriously, folks.

Torts ‘R Us. (And the workplace lawsuit of the week award goes to…)

When I looked through my (virtual) clippings file to see what I might be interested in blogging about this week, I had three – count ‘em, three – possibilities that involved work-related law suits.

What’s a blogger to do?

I suppose if I were the mono-focus, monetizing, let’s really get a book out of this type, I could spend all of my blogging time on work-related law suits.

But that wouldn’t be all that interesting.

And it would probably be pretty darned repetitive, too.

Easy to imagine having to alternate between “this is the worst place in the world to work” screeds and “can you believe that someone’s suing over this?” posts.

So I thought I’d eliminate two of the possibilities, and focus on just one of the sue-the-bastards du jour.

The first one I got rid of involved the family of a 42-year old deckhand on The Bounty who was swept overboard and died when the ship was caught up in Hurricane Sandy. (The Bounty was used for the early 1960’s movie of Mutiny on the Bounty, and has since been a tourist attraction.)  Yes, it was the captain’s decision to head out in the middle of a hurricane. But all the crew members were given the option of abandoning ship before it left port. Idiotic as that captain was – and he, too, died – surely, a 42 year-old is capable of heeding the warnings about the danger of one of the fiercest hurricanes on record, which were well known before The Bounty lifted anchor…

The second potential topic that got the heave-ho was one about a fellow in Upstate NY who’s suing McDonald’s for screwing with his hours to deprive him of overtime pay. Certainly, this practice is behavior most foul. But then I got all weirded out by the guy’s claim that he was making $13/hour at McDonald’s, which got me off the tort track and on to just what is an unskilled, minimum wage job worth.

So, with two tort candidates eliminated, I settled on the New Mexico worker who’s suing Intel because some fellow employees planted (and acted on) a “Kick Me” sign on his back.

The Intel employee, Harvey Palacio, said in the complaint recently filed in Albuquerque that once he suspected something was taped on his back during the August prank, he went to senior staffer Randy Lehman to ask if something was there.

"Lehman said turn around and as Palacio did he saw and heard (another employee) yell out `Don't read it, just do it'," the lawsuit said.

Lehman then kicked Palacio three times in his buttocks, according court documents. (Source: Huffington Post.)

Another colleague gave him another two kicks for good measure.

"Palacio decided that this could not continue and walked back in front of the group to ask someone else to remove it," the lawsuit said. "Palacio felt demoralized and assaulted and he began to cry during the drive home. He could not tell his wife because he was so embarrassed and ashamed."

Lehman and the other kicker were convicted of petty misdemeanor assault, sentenced to some community service, and  fired by Intel (Lehman after 19 years).

But apparently the criminal charges, and getting the work-jerks fired, wasn’t enough for Palacio. So now he’s suing Intel.

There are a couple of ways that this saga can be interpreted.

1. Worker preyed upon by vicious a-hole workplace bullies. Certainly a possibility. There are some real thugs out there, and maybe the Intel Two are a couple of them. Palacio also claims that there were a couple of other incidents: his uniform hidden, his work bag filled with trash. Palacio, a Filipino, also believes that racism was involved. So maybe these brutes maliciously hid Palacio’s uniform so he actually couldn’t get his work done. Maybe they put really awful offal in his work bag. Maybe these guys were complete bigots trying to drive the “foreigner” out.

On the other hand, this could be a case of:

2. Thin-skinned guy with no sense of humor meets clumsy goof-ball pranksters with no common sense. No one’s going to argue that it’s a good idea to put a kick-me sign on someone’s back. (Ho, ho!) Let alone to actually kick him. But what if this was just how the gang of ‘merry pranksters’ at Intel rolled? Stupid “hijinks”: kicks the equivalent of love pats, trash in the bag that’s nothing more than an empty coffee cup and a Twinkie wrapper. Maybe that’s how all the newbies at Intel in Albuquerque were treated. Maybe they just wanted to get a reaction. Maybe they all had mild Asperger’s and couldn’t interpret Palacio’s discomfort as such.

Maybe because Intel’s a tech company, it’s a lot easier for me to imagine the second scenario than the first.

Palacio is seeking “unspecified damages” plus legal fees (naturally).

But before taking criminal and civil action, wouldn’t you think that Palacio would have complained to HR?

Maybe he did, but they didn’t do anything. Which doesn’t sound like something that would happen at any large company, given that, in today’s see-you-in-court climate, they need to tread very carefully.

And I do feel bad that this guy was so humiliated that he cried on his way home. (As someone who cried on the way home from work on occasion – though never due to a kick-me sign on my back – I know that feeling.)

Still, if – as I suspect – scenario two is closer to the truth, all this lawyering-up seems like overkill.

I could, of course, be dead wrong, and it was all scenario one, only worse.

And I do hope I remember to follow up on this one and see what happens.

For now, all I have to say is that, if Harvey Palacio wasn’t quick enough on the uptake to get the crude, indeed unpleasant frat-boy humor that still exists in the American workplace, he sure was quick enough to pick up on American suit happiness.

Medical tourism, hair restoration edition

While I would not want to be a bald woman, I’m pretty darned fond of bald men.

Not only am I married to one, I am also the daughter of a bald man. And the sister of two more.

I like bald guys.

I think they’re pretty darned cute.

But I understand that there are men for whom bald is not beautiful. And plenty of women who feel the same way.

And given how gruesome comb-overs are, especially if they get caught in a windstorm and go spiraling out of control, and how dead-muskrat so many male hairpieces are, I can understand why some men might get drawn into the pursuit of the hirsute.

Certainly, all the ads for baldness treatment on TV (which are second only in persistence to those for male, ah, enhancements, including the newer one I’ve been seeing for the underarm roll-on testosterone booster) indicate that there’s plenty of interest in mo’ better hair out there. (For all the hair restoration ads that there are out there, I will say that I miss the Hair Club for Men ads of yore, especially given that, years ago, I actually sat in the table next to the one where Sy Sperling – “I’m not just the president, I’m also a client” of Hair Club for men was dining. Sy, by the way, was a  model of restraint, He resisted the urge to lean over and hand my husband one of his cards.)

Still, I hadn’t thought of hair restoration as part of the medical tourism industry.

Apparently in Turkey it is.

In 2012, roughly 270,000 of the 31.7 million tourists who visited Turkey came for medical treatment, pumping $1 billion into the economy. Many come for cosmetic therapies, including rhinoplasty, liposuction, and thermal spas, but according to those in the medical tourism industry, the real money is in hair…

The Istanbul Hair Center reports they treat 70 to 80 medical tourists every month—nearly twice as many patients as they saw last summer. (Source: Business Week.)

Admittedly, 270,000 medical out of 31.7 million overall tourists does not set off big flashing GET YOUR TREATMENT HERE signs in my mind’s eye. And I wouldn’t lump thermal spas in to the medical tourism mix, either. (Mud baths? Seriously, folks.) Still, I wouldn’t have imagined that Turkey would be a medical tourism destination at all. (Personally, I can’t imagine any country, other than the good old U.S. of A. as a mecca for medical tourists, but that’s just my inner jingoist USA! USA! chanter coming out.)  Customers are drawn to Turkey  from Europe and the Middle East, and tourism is largely boosted by word of mouth – one satisfied customers/patient at a time.

Hair restoration, by the way, is quite a big deal: a lot more complex, painful, and dangerous than any comb-over, hair weave, or scalp-painting job.

Typically, men come for four days to one week. The first day their scalp is analyzed and a graft spot is chosen, usually from the back of the head, where many balding men retain hair. Other options include chest and shoulder hair. The next day they head to the operating room—the procedure can last eight to 10 hours, with about 7,500 root implants. After that comes postoperative care. The following day, patients can fly home. Full results are expected six months after the operation.

And it’s not just the hair on your head that they’ll do for you. They’ll also give a man hair on his chinny-chin-chin.

The Istanbul Hair Center was one of the outfits mentioned in the BW article.

Fortunately, their website (partially)  translates into English (and Arabic, if you’re a bit more adventurous). Thus we learn that they are an “expert institution,” providing “treatment in fully equipped hospitals with expert staff under sterilized and safe conditions” using “scientific methods.”

Somehow, this doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me, but maybe something is lost in translation.

They use something called the “FUE method” which, again, would not raise my comfort level to that which be achieved by a method that didn’t start with the letters “FU”.

FUE method which can not be fully applied in many countries around the world, is applied by us perfectly through our own experience.

FUE stands for “Follicular Unit Extraction,” and, despite that “can not be fully applied” warning, has been around for a while and is the “industry standard.”

So, unless you’ve always wanted to see the Blue Mosque, there’s no reason to trek to Turkey for it.

Anyway, hair restoration tourism in Turkey: it’s amazing what you find in the news when you’re just grazing around.

Philistine? Pea brain? Just plain jealous? (Art sure makes me ask the big questions about just who I am…)

I never actually wish I were a genius, but some days I do wish I had more of an appreciation for them.

Not that I don’t appreciate genius.

Take James Joyce.

I could re-read his early works over and over again. Will anyone ever write a short story that’s as brilliant as The Dead?

I could even, I suppose, re-read Ulysses if I had to.  (Maybe someday I’ll even want to.)

As for Finnegan’s Wake. On my bucket list, for sure. Once I get past the fact that it makes no sense and ends with the word “the”.

Then there’s music.

Of course I can distinguish between music and musack.  But do I embarrass myself that I’d rather listen to show tunes – even Ethel Merman belting ‘em out in Annie Get Your Gun – than put on Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring?

And then there’s art.

I’m not someone who thinks that great art ends with Rembrandt. Honestly, I like a lot of the modern stuff. I was a sophisticated and savvy enough kid to fall in love with Miró at the age of 10, and I still have the postcards from the Chicago Art Institute to prove it. Okay, so maybe I thought Joan Miró was a girl painter. So shoot me.

But there are some things I just plain do not get.

Some of which were on sale at the Frieze Art Fair last week in NYC.

Now, Balloon Dog.

I’ll give you that it’s witty enough.

But $25K? For one of 40? Admittedly in unique colors. Still... (At least it won’t deflate like a real balloon dog would.)

And I’d much rather a Paul McCarthy “Balloon Dog” than the Paul McCarthy “Gold Butter Dog 1, Guggenheim Crown” staring at me, whatever the price. Even if it’s silicone and not really butter, which would turn rancid, and I do find that Guggenheim Crown pretty darned drôle.

As for that “You Look Good” (by Barbara Kruger) lurking in the background: at $250K, you can probably forget about it.

That is, after all, quite a bit to pay for an affirmation, when you can create one on your own using a Sharpie and a Post-it note. Which I’m going to do the minute I get off this blog.

After all, if you DIY-it, you can change them up every day, pretty much for free:

You’re a really swell person.

You ARE funny.

Not bad, for someone your age.

So easy to make fun, isn’t it.

But the truth is that I didn’t think of “You Look Nice,” which is worth $250K. All I came up with is the derivative “Not bad for someone your age,” which is worth bupkis.

Bad enough I’m a philistine, but a jealous one…. I should be hanging my head, not blogging.

I will, however, forge on, mostly because us non-genius types have to make up for our non-genius by being balloon-dogged and determined.

Which takes me to the works of Tom Friednman.

The booth of Luhring Augustine gallery was devoted to Tom Friedman, whose five food sculptures -- made with Styrofoam and paint -- looked quite appetizing. All sold within the first 90 minutes.

A large pizza pie and a slice of white bread hung on the walls; a group of sweet treats, including a Twinkie and a Snowball, sat on the floor. The tiny green pea could have been easily missed on the white wall where it resided -- were it not for the hefty price of $35,000.

“That’s classic for Tom,” said co-owner Lawrence Luhring. “There’s always something in his work that’s minuscule.” (Source: Bloomberg.)

A $35K Styrofoam pea? Why didn’t I think of that.

I guess it’s because, not only am I a jealous Philistine, I’m a pea brain as well.

Needless to say, I wanted to learn more about Tom Friedman, and came across some info on an earlier exhibit. Friedman’s genius, I assure you, does not end with the Styrofoam pea.

He made a “perfect sphere” out of 1,500 pieces of chewed bubble gum.  (“it is the knowledge of his quasi medieval investment of time that gives the piece its power”).

Let me tell you, I can identify with that “quasi medieval investment of time,” but has mine given Pink Slip any power?

He also created “a sculpture made from a box of cooked spaghetti that have been attached end to end to form a single, loopy spiral, the process that friedman undertakes is both intricate and fraught with the possibility of a messy and frustrating failure.”

Messy and frustrating failure! I may not be a genius, but Tom Friedman and I have something in common. (Although my failures have probably only appeared messy and frustrating to me.)

Then there’s this:

hair
everyone knows, rather intimately, what a bar of soap is,
or at least we think we do, until friedman shows up with his
sculpture that changes the whole concept of soap into an object with a--sticky-when-wet--surface that holds spiralling pubic hairs perfectly in place. ultra-thin, circular lines expanding concentrically outwards from the center.

he must have labored over this little enigmatic thing for hours. 'initially I was drawn towards materials that had to do with personal hygiene. cleaning materials...I drew a connection between mundane rituals for keeping ourselves clean, and rituals for spiritual purification.' friedman said. (Source for this, plus chewing gum and spaghetti: Designboom.)

I’ve finally found it, that chasm that separates genius from pedestrian intellect, that je ne sais quoi which je ne have pas.

Sure, I’ve labored over this little enigmatic thing of a blog for hours, but when I find a spiraling pubic hair on a piece of soap, I pick it off with a square of toilet paper and throw it out.

No wonder I’m where I am today.

The.