Transformers 4: Worst Movie of the Summer?

The biggest-grossing film of the summer blockbuster season opened last weekend.  It was "Transformers: Age of Extinction," and it took in $100 million in the U.S., $301.3 million worldwide.

Audience reactions are mixed, but the critics are not:  They hate the movie.  

Perhaps the best description came from Peter Keogh Thursday in his Boston Globe review.

Keogh called it "165 minutes of explosions, car chases, cars turning into robots, images of cars, robots and tiny human figures spinning in slow motion after an explosion or car chase, ludicrous bathos, tight shots looking up Nicola Peltz's tiny shorts, stentorian sound effects, cheap Wagnerian music, all shot and edited as if by a Cuisinart.

"In short, the cinematic equivalent of being tied in a bag and being beaten by pipes."

(Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?)

The critic from the Christian Science Monitor said this:  "Reviewing a Transformers movie is a bit like reviewing a toy.  In fact, it's exactly like reviewing a toy."

The Transformers movies actually grew out of a toy line that originated in Japan and was introduced in the United States by Hasbro in 1984.  Hasbro has since acquired the entire franchise and releases new toys to go with the movies.  This year's new movie-themed toys (or toy-themed movie) are dinobots, one of which is featured in the poster above.

Transformer toys can be manipulated from action figures into other things, like cars.  They have been a huge hit with boys.  And the boys who have enjoyed the Transformer toys over the years seem to form the market for the movies, which are not only violent but feature sexy two-dimensional (okay, three-dimensional) female characters. 

Forty-two percent of the weekend audience was over the age of 25.  Boys who were 10 years old when the first Transformer toys were released would be 40-year-olds today. Not surprisingly, almost two-thirds of people who saw the movie were men.

Nikki Finke, whose NikkiFinke.com is followed widely in the entertainment industry, started her post this way:

"I don't blame Michael Bay (the director/producer) for making unnecessary fourquels.  I do blame you for paying to see this hot mess.  Bay's all too familiar formula of crashes and explosions with barely there dialogues between robots and humans (and now dinobots) ...."

Well, you get the picture.

Update:  Maleficent, the Disney recast of the bad witch in Sleeping Beauty, creeped over the $200 million revenue mark in the U.S. over the weekend with world revenues of $585 million.  While its popularity does not compare with that of Frozen, the 2013 smash hit, it is Disney's second sorta-fairy-tale release with some complexity to it.  Audiences seem to be taking to these movies. 

Golden Gate Bridge -- Eventual Suicide Relief

Above is one view of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.  What you see are some of the many, many tourists who cross the bridge on a pedestrian walkway each day, looking as they go at the beautiful city and the San Francisco Bay. 

If you take this walk and you are unlucky, you may see more than you want -- someone climbing over the 4-foot-high rail abutting the walkway and pitching himself or herself into the waters below.

This has happened at least 1,600 times since the bridge opened in 1937.

Finally, last Saturday, the board of the bridge authority decided to do something about the suicides.  In a unanimous vote, members approved local spending that, coupled with federal and other funds, will allow the placement of strong metal nets outside and underneath the railings to catch people and stop them from the long drop into the bay, which causes broken bones, massive internal injuries and, almost always, a painful death.  

I discussed the situation at greater length in an earlier post -- "Fixing America's Favorite Suicide Destination?," March 16, 2014 -- and so will not repeat myself here except to say that it amazes me that coming to the decision took so long.  

The design for the nets was approved in 2008 (over other submitted proposals that would have raised the railings, which people feared might block the views.)  

Arranging the funding has taken more than five years, during which period 250 or more people have jumped to their deaths.  Construction of the nets is expected to be finished in 2017 or 2018.

The Golden Gate was built in four years in the 1930s, a period when engineers worked with slide rules and did calculations with pencils and paper.  The construction project required emplacement of huge footings in bedrock under the bay, construction of enormous towers to hold the massive suspension cables, ordering and assembling the steel roadway underlayment and railings, welding all the parts together, stringing the cables a distance of 1.7 miles and paving the bridge, as well as building roads to meet it at both ends. 

Now, in a theoretically more advanced period of design and manufacturing, it is going to take almost as long to get metal nets attached to the side of the bridge as it took to build the entire structure itself.

I am pleased it is happening, finally, but distressed at the seeming lack of urgency.

The Great War in History

One hundred years ago today, in Sarajevo, a Serbian nationalist fired two pistol shots at Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife, Sophie. 

The bullets, shot at close range, killed both targets.  

The incident set off flurries of belligerent national posturings and ineffective negotiations across Europe.  

Five weeks later, on August 1, the Great War began.  It ultimately grew to engulf Europe, as well as much of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

Four years later, the war ended.  At least sixteen million people had died in battle, in genocidal slaughter, of disease and as collateral victims.  Whole countries were ravaged. Maps of Eastern Europe and Middle East were redrawn. 

The Great War was not like the American Civil War and World War II, the great bloodbaths that bracketed it.  In those two wars, the issues -- slavery, Nazism, Japanese aggression in Asia -- were clear.  The high cost was lamented deeply but understood.

The Great War was different.  As they battled in trench warfare and with machine guns and nerve gas, soldiers on both sides questioned why they were fighting.  Even today, we cannot describe its central issue.  At the time, it was called "the war to end all wars," but it did not settle anything.  Just over 20 years later, the Second World War began.

The scars remain.  You cannot drive through many small towns in France or the British Isles without encountering monuments listing the names of local sons killed.  

Starting today, Europe will begin four years of commemorations and remembrances of the First World War.  

I plan to spend some time over the same period rereading old books, and some new ones, about the Great War.  Below are some volumes of history on my list.  (I welcome other suggestions.)

The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman's 1960 history of the war.  Tuchman was a fine historian and a great writer.  This is well worth a second read.

The Proud Tower, also by Barbara Tuchman, a 1966 collection of essays describing Europe between 1890 and 1914 and setting the scene for the national clashes that led the war to occur.

1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War, last year's well-received book by Charles Emmerson that concerns itself not with the origins of war but with situation of the broader world in 1913.  An interesting book with a new focus; possibly longer than it needed to be.

The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell, a1975 cultural history that documented how the war influenced the generation of British writers who had fought in it.  Very influential, still somewhat controversial.

Later:  World War I in Literature and Poetry

The Public Pension Problem

It is difficult to overstate the problems now facing public employee pension plans in American cities and states.

More than 80 percent of government workers are covered by defined-benefit programs that guarantee retirement income based on years of service and salaries at the ends of careers.  I have read estimates that public pensions average 87 percent of final years' salaries, which sounds high to me but may be true.  In any event, when government workers retire, usually at younger ages than workers in the private sector, they receive guaranteed pensions and health care benefits for life.

The situation is very different for private-sector workers.  The number of companies offering defined-benefit retirement plans has plummeted since the 1980s.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by early 2013, only 18 percent of US workers had such plans.

There are several reasons for the disparity.  One was the federal enactment of programs like IRAs, Keoughs and 401k plans that encouraged workers to set aside money for their own retirements and allowed companies to substitute 401k matches for full-out pension programs.

Another was the decline of manufacturing in the country and, with it, union employment contracts with negotiated retirement benefits.

Third was the change in employment patterns.  People now change jobs and careers frequently.  Even if companies offered retirement benefits, few workers would put in the 30 years it took to get the gold watch and pension.  And many companies would be sold, relocated or go out of business during the same time period.

None of these changes occurred in public employment.

Nationwide, it has been estimated that cities and states have underfunded their defined-benefit employee retirement plans by as much as $4 trillion.

A public union protest in Trenton this spring

A quick canvass of the situation in one state, New Jersey, gives a general idea how the problem arose.


Every New Jersey governor and legislature for the last 20 years has acted to undermine the stability of the state's pension commitments. Some of the early missteps:

         -- In 1992, as stock markets rose, the valuation of pension funds was switched from book value to market values, making the funds appear to be 125 percent funded instead of the previous 100 percent.  The state also adopted a more optimistic assumption -- that invested assets would return 8.75 percent annually instead of the previously assumed 7 percent.  Accordingly, contributions were cut by $1.5 billion over two years.

         -- In 1994, the state stopped pre-funding retiree medical care and drew down previously accumulated assets to pay current claims.  It also gave itself 34 years to bring contributions back to necessary levels, cutting funding another $1.5 billion over two more years.

        --  In 1997, the state issued bonds to fund its pension contributions, effectively funding one year's obligations with future annual commitments starting at $90 million and rising to $550 million.

        -- In 2001, the governor and legislature unilaterally increased benefits for past and future retirees by 9.12 percent.  This was done without collective bargaining and with no real planning.  Its apparent purpose was to curry votes and campaign contributions from public employee unions.

Since 1997, no year's pension allocation has approached the level needed to cover promised payouts. From 2001 to 2005, virtually no money was paid into the retirement system at all.

As the funding failures stacked up, actuaries raised their recommended annual allocations:  In 1998, the amount was about $480 million; this year it's almost $4 billion.

The usual political procedure has been to underfund the obligations in a given year while promising bigger contributions in subsequent years as the New Jersey economy grows and tax receipts go up.

Unfortunately, the economy never grows enough.

Then, when the economy fails to grow, another new future commitment is made and then abandoned with new promises for greater funding in coming years.  This is what is known as "kicking the can down the road."

The current governor, Chris Christie, committed himself and followed through on making the highest (but not nearly high enough) public pension allocations since the 2008 recession.  Now, though, he has backtracked because -- surprise! -- this year's tax collections were lower than expected.

For the coming year, Christie proposes to allocate $681 million, enough to cover the year's payouts, but not the rest of the pledged $2.25 billion to rebuild the funds.

(Remember, the actuaries are now recommending annual payments approaching $4 billion.  Next year's state budget is about $34 billion.)

Democrats have countered with proposals to raise $1 billion with increased taxes on high earners and businesses and to cut the state budget by $200 million.  Christie has vowed to veto any tax bills.

Meanwhile, retired public employees seem to be winning their court case demanding reinstatement of cost-of-living adjustments to their benefits.  (In 2011, the state ceased COLA adjustments, promising to resume them when the state's pension investments covered 80 percent of anticipated costs.)  Even with low inflation and interest rates, it is estimated that COLAs would cost $250 million a year.

None of these groups has the faintest idea what to do in the next fiscal year, when New Jersey is supposed to budget even more for public employee pensions.

The result of all this is that New Jersey's state pension programs are now 57 percent funded with $50 billion in outstanding unfunded liabilities.

New Jersey is a high-tax state, like California and New York but without the nice weather or a world-class city.  In recent years, two people have moved out of the state for every one who has moved in.

The state economy is growing more slowly than other states', and nobody seems to have a good idea for improving the situation.  Increasing taxes won't help, but neither will cutting funding for education, road maintenance or the highway patrol.

It's a big, big mess.

Later:  Can anything be done?

The Onion: A Beard Update

Snooki Forever

At right is 2009 MTV poster for "Jersey Shore," a popular reality show.  I never watched it, but, as a New Jersey resident, I heard more than I wanted to know about its gang of foul-mouthed and hard-drinking 20-somethings.

The show ended after six seasons and three years, and most people in New Jersey were pretty pleased to see it go away.

But it didn't go away.  The Seaside Heights house where Jersey Short was set can be rented for the bargain price of $1,200 a night.  It also is available for sweet 16 parties and other cool events.

And then there is another lingering remnant:  Snooki.

Snooki (Nicole Polizzi) was the most popular character on the "Jersey Shore."  At its height, she was paid $150,000 an episode.

Now we seem to be stuck with her.  Every few months another Snooki story find its way into our newspapers.

Yesterday we read that Snooki's lawyers won a court case against a company that marketed a knockoff of her perfume.

Yes, Snooki has her own perfume.  It is not expensive and can be found at Walmart, Kmart, Sears and Amazon.  People seem to like it.  One reviewer said, "From the cute packaging and the fact that I love Snooki, this is great perfume."

Snooki also has her own line of Snooki self-tanning products.

Before and After

Other Snooki news:

Snooki lost 50 pounds after having her first baby, and no, I'm not going to post a picture.

 Oh, what the hell.  It's on the right here.

Snooki earned $200,000 for appearing "Dancing with the Stars."

Snooki made the rounds of TV's major talk shows.

Snooki has an opinion about New Jersey governor Chris Christie.  If Donald Trump had run for president in 2012, she would have voted for him.

Snooki, pregnant with her second child, is planning a wedding.

Snooki was paid $32,000 by Rutgers University to sit on a stage and answer questions from a student  audience.  (The school claimed the money didn't come from student tuition but rather from a vending contract with Pepsi.  A funny thing about money, though:  It's fungible.)

Snooki and someone named Jwoww (also pregnant and with her own line of perfume and tanning products) are in the fourth season of another classy MTV program named, appropriately enough, "Snooki and Jwoww." Or JWOWW.  It gets reported either way.

I think New Jersey has had enough of Snooki.  Why couldn't MTV have set this new show in some other lucky state?

Who Said That, Part 3

I had planned to cap this piece with a quote from H.L. Mencken, but when I went online to make sure I got it right, I found there were several different versions.

According to brainyquote.com, Mencken wrote this:

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

thinkexist.com has it this way:

"No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of 

the great masses of the plain people."

Here's how thisdayinquotes.com put it:

"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

Finally, I found two citations that agreed with each other -- from goodreads.com and britannica.com:

"No one in this world, so far as I know -- and I have searched the record for years, 

and employed agents to help me -- has ever lost money by underestimating 

the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

Unfortunately, H. L. Mencken died 58 years ago, and so we can't consult him personally about the quote.  My guess is the last version above is the correct one.

He was an irascible and skeptical newsman, most associated with the Baltimore Sun, and right on serious issues including the Scopes trial and the treatment of Jews in Germany in the 1930s.  People still read him and hold Mencken conferences, and there are annual meetings at his gravesite.

Something tells me that nobody will be talking about Snooki 58 years from now.

Great White Sharks

Here is a great white shark.  It and its fellows swim the seven seas, moving from one feeding opportunity to the next.  Individual sharks have been know to travel from the shores of one continent to another.

The great white shark is a dedicated and exclusive carnivore, feasting on seals, dolphins, smaller sharks, fish and rays.  It has rows of teeth, sometimes as many as 300 teeth, to assist in its pursuit of prey.

(Great whites that ate humans were features in a book, Moby Dick, and a movie, Jaws, but experts claim that sharks are mostly curious about, but not hungry for, people.  Sharks are more likely just to move in and take a taste, say an arm or foot, according to scientists and Australian surfers.  This all may be true, but if I saw a shark fin in the water, I'm pretty sure I'd swim to shore in a hurry.)

An organization called OCEARCH has been studying the movements of great white white sharks for several years now.  It does this by capturing sharks and affixing transmitters to their dorsal fins.  When the sharks surface, the transmitters emit signals.

This may sound uncomfortable for the shark, or like an invasion of privacy.  But it is a much lesser indignity than being fished.  While shark fin soup remains a delicacy in some parts of the world, the harvest of sharks is increasingly being regulated or banned.




Pick a shark, any shark

So far, OCEARCH is tracking 47 great whites, all of which can be followed by name searches on the organization's website. (Albert, Beamer, Marcella, Princess, etc.)

The movements of two East Coast-based sharks have been much in the public eye these days.

One is Mary Lee, a 3,500-pounder, who was briefly detained and tagged off Cape Cod last September.  Later in the year, she swam close to several Florida beaches before moving north and attracting great interest in Northeast states.

Since then, Mary Lee has swung back south.  Here is her recent course, as tracked by OCEARCH pings.

Meanwhile, Floridians were following the movements of Katharine, a more svelte, single-ton creature, also tagged off Cape Cod last year.  In May, Katharine took the route below around the Florida Coast.  She now is in the Caribbean and thought to be headed toward Texas shores.

.
Katharine and Mary Lee have become so popular that they can be traced by Google searches, i.e, Where is Katharine the shark?  Mary Lee even has her own facebook page.

Not much is known about the habits of great whites.  They are believed to mate out at sea, and the gestation period of baby sharks is estimated at 18 to 24 months.

Until a University of Tasmania study a year or two back, their diets were underestimated by two thirds.  It takes a lot of seals to fuel a great white.

The leader of the study, Jayson Semmens, told Discovery News, "We don't have a good handle on the population sizes of white sharks.  We know that sharks in general are under pressure around the world from overfishing."

"They're quite vulnerable," he added, "because of their life history. They're long-lived, they reproduce late in their life and they produce a small number of offspring."

In fact, the number of great white sharks in the Atlantic Ocean, which had declined in the 1960s to the 1980s, seems to be increasing rapidly.  Scientists take this as a good sign because great whites are natural regulators of other ocean species.

USA v. Portugal: Soccer and Facial Hair

What a great match we saw last night.  In the photo above, the US keeper Tim Howard watches in frustration as a ball headed by Portugal's Silvestre Varela (on a cross from Cristiano Ronaldo) rockets into the net in the final postgame minute to tie the game.  The Americans had played well, coming from behind and then scoring a second goal.  They seemed sure to win until the very last moment.

A real heartstopper.

Americans have taken to professional soccer.  I was on an airplane during the US team's first match of the World Cup.  When the American team team scored its second and winning goal, the plane erupted in cheers.

Next up: The US team plays Germany on Thursday at noon EDT.  I'll be watching.

Now let's talk about hair.

Here again is Tim Howard.  He has a shaved head and an unshaved chin.   Earlier this year I described the remarkable growth of facial hair in another sport ("Beards of Baseball, April 24, 2014), but I have realized since that I was missing the much larger picture.

(For those of a curious bent, ESPN in 2010 took a famous photo of Howard wearing no beard, nor anything else, lunging as if to block a corner shot.  He is a prodigious physical specimen, as might be expected of someone who can play 90 minutes of world-level soccer twice each week.)

One of Portugal's star players, Raul Meireles, left, was pulled off the field toward the end of yesterday's match.


Notice that Meireles wears a beard like Howard's and, on the top of his head, not just a Faux Hawk hairdo (see my post, "Men's Hair Fashion: the Faux Hawk," April 19) but the whole enchilada, a Mohawk cut with shaved sides.

It seems to be a family matter in Meireles' case. At right is a picture I found of him and his also-tattooed and Mohawked wife taking a swim.


Beards, big bushy ones, are everywhere these days.  Four or five years ago, young hipster men were sporting carefully trimmed Van Dykes and ultra thin sideburns.  Now full beards are the group's fashion accessory of choice.

I was curious about this, and so when I had a chance to talk with a bewhiskered 28-year-old fellow the other day, I asked him about it.

"So what's the deal with your beard?" I said.

"It's all about the contrast," he answered.  "I have a very tailored look in the clothes and shoes I wear.  Having a big beard just lets me cut loose a little bit."

It appears that the beard is the new black.

Lilyhammer

Poster for Season Two

I don't watch much television, but I have become a fan of the Norwegian-made, Netflix-screened series Lilyhammer.  A third season of eight shows is scheduled for release later this year.

Commonly described as a "fish out of water" vehicle, it is actually more a clash of cultures with a lot of humor and a certain amount of violence.

The setup is this:  A New York mobster, placed in the federal witness protection program, is relocated to Lillehammer, Norway, which he remembers fondly from TV broadcasts of the Winter Olympics there in 1994.

In the first scene of the series, the newly renamed Giovanni "Johnny" Henriksen travels by train to his new hometown and witnesses some bullying among the passengers.  He administers justice as you might expect a "made man" to do, but in a manner quite shocking to fellow passengers.

Matters proceed from there.  The Norwegian creators set the stage in Norway's ultra-polite and nonviolent environment, and the mobster and the Norwegians play off each other.

Not all the Norwegians are admirable, and the mobster, while violent, is not all bad.  The setting is beautiful, and the characters are interesting and fun.

The mobster is played by Steven Van Zandt, who again takes up the wig he wore for his role as nightclub owner Silvio Dante in the one of the biggest hits in television history, The Sopranos, which ran for six seasons on HBO.

In Norway, the Lilyhammer series also has been a smash hit, watched by 50 percent of all television viewers when new episodes are released. It has been distributed broadly, and the last I read, has aired in 130 other countries.

One thing I like about Lilyhammer is that it gives Americans a look at a different country.  Previously here, imported television series have ranged from the BBC's Edwardian drama Upstairs, Downstairs, to the BBC's Edwardian drama Downton Abbey, interspersed with a number of pretty good police procedurals.

In return we have given the world two hugely popular television series -- Miami Vice and Baywatch.  We can only imagine what people in other countries think of us.

Netflix is trying new things in its effort to keep relevant after subscribers grew tired of ordering DVDs in red envelopes through the mail.  Its most highly regarded effort, the excellent House of Cards series, is a much darker American remake of a British series by the same name.

But back to Lilyhammer.  American critics are generally positive if not thrilled with the show, and American audiences are somewhat more enthused.  Viewers on the Imdb website give it a rating of 8.3 out of 10.

The only regular criticism I could find from American viewers was that they didn't like having to read subtitles to understand the Norwegian characters' dialogue.

Not everyone here is a cineaste.

Note: For those who do not subscribe to Netflix, Lilyhammer can be viewed online.

Randy Scheckman and Public Universities

Randy Schekman at UCLA

Here is Randy Scheckman, an alumnus of the University of California, Los Angeles, and now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.  This year he was the commencement speaker at his undergraduate alma mater.

He took the occasion to issue a cri de coeur for public universities.  Here is part of what he said.

"I came from a middle class family where college was an expectation, but money was a concern.  No private school for me.  But UCLA was great.  I paid $270 in fees for my freshman year in 1966, and my room and board at the student co-op amounted to no more than $800/year.

"As a freshman, I learned chemistry from Willard Libby, a Cal PhD Nobelist who invented C-14 dating of ancient biological materials.  Working in a research lab as an undergraduate at UCLA stoked my passion for science as a path to discovery of basic cellular processes.  I worked a summer job and earned enough money to cover my fees, room and board and books for the full year.  My father paid next to nothing to send five children through college.  At least 80 percent of the University of California budget at that time was covered by the state, compared with a meager 10 percent today."

Why should we care about Randy Scheckman's views of public education?

Maybe because of where it led him.

He was the first graduate from UCLA to earn a molecular science degree.  Many, many others have followed the path he blazed in essential research.  Since his graduation, UCLA's bioscience research laboratories have grown to rank among the finest in the world.

Randy Scheckman in Stockholm

In 2013, Schekman, with two others, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine.  He devoted his considerable share of the prize money to an endowed professorship he already had established at Berkeley and named after his mother and sister, who died of cancer.

Also last year, he announced that his lab would no longer submit articles to Nature, Science or Cell.  He said those journals restricted publication to drive up demand and that they were self-serving, causing scientists to cut corners or pursue trends, rather than focus on important scientific questions. Not surprisingly, he now edits eLife, an open-access, reviewed journal.

Later in his speech, Scheckman said, "I have remained a faculty member at Berkeley for over 37 years in part because public universities are the most effective engine of social mobility in our society."

He's right.  Seventy percent of American college students earn degrees at state colleges and universities, including several like UCLA and Berkeley that are ranked among the best in the world.

This last year, in-state tuition with dorm and board fees at the University of California was over $30,000.  The average family income in California, higher than in most states, was around $58,000.

Meanwhile, private colleges cost about twice as much.  Even those with the most lavish endowments enroll far fewer students from working- and middle-class families than the University of California.

The California situation is not a one-off.  All states, their budgets strained by bureaucracies and pension commitments, have cut back funding for public higher education.  All colleges, public and private, seem to rely more and more on adjunct, non-tenured faculty to teach students while expanding their administrative staffs with extra layers of bureaucrats.

If these trends do not change, how many future Randy Scheckmans will never achieve their potential?

To quote an old expression, this is what as known as eating one's seed corn.

Yearbook Pranks

A school district near my town had to collect and "fix" every single yearbook before its release this year because of a problem with one picture.  If you look carefully at the photo above, you can guess what the problem was.

The young man in white bragged about his prank, and news got around.  If he had kept his mouth shut (unlike his fly), no school advisor would have been the wiser until it was too late.

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Here's another yearbook prank, caught last month in Georgia.

This was done by a girl who obviously knows her way around the Periodic Table. Translated, the message is as follows:

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Also this year, a girl on the yearbook staff in Marysville, Calif., made 175 changes to that district's book just before it went to press.  She swapped pictures and substituted crude terms -- "Virgina" instead of "Virginia" and so on -- for the correct ones.

She thought she had pulled off a great prank.  People in Marysville sound pretty angry with her.

---

Yearbook pranking seems to have become a high school sport.  Most pranks are verbal, and most seem to be found in the quotes seniors submit with their photos.  A few I found on the internet:

"Waking up is the second hardest thing in the morning."

"No, I don't want a quote under my picture."

"I will miss the friends that I have made and the memories we shared along with the teachers I have boned with over the years."

---

There are approximately a jillion more of these.  You can look them up if you like, but I imagine most of my readers would prefer not to do so.

Everything is Animal House these days.

An Idea

American newspapers and magazines have shed -- what? -- 50 or 60 percent of their journalists over the last 20 years.  Maybe more.

A certain number of those people were copy editors.

Copy editors are precious improvers of written product.  They brook no misplaced commas or misspelled words, no sly puns or run-on sentences.

Think of the hawk who, perched on a football goalpost, can spot a mouse in the grass at the far end of the field.  That's a copy editor.

I see a market opportunity for a band of proven copy editors to hire themselves out for final proofreadings of high school yearbooks.  Self-styled pranksters would find themselves handily overmatched.

Sleep -- Are We Doing It Wrong?

We all understand the importance of a good night's sleep, but many people do not sleep well.  The University of Maryland Medical Center estimates that almost two-thirds of us have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, waking up or feeling rested in the morning.

Accordingly, the United States now has hundreds of sleep treatment centers, and many people take over-the-counter or prescription sleep aids.

Psychologists and historians now suggest that these problems reflect a break with our evolutionary habits.

They have gathered a lot of evidence that suggests that eight hours of continuous sleep may not be as helpful as two periods of four hours of sleep with an interval of one to three hours of quiet wakefulness in between.

Thomas A. Gehr of the National Institute of Mental Health conducted a 1992 study that kicked off the discussion.  He put a group of healthy men in an environment with 10 hours of light and 14 hours of darkness each day for a month.  At the end of the month, the men had without effort adjusted their habits to sleep in two shifts, each several hours long, punctuated by one to three hours of wakefulness in between.  Gehr called this "polyphasic" sleep.

Then historian A. Roger Ekirch published an interesting and readable book (which I recommend) in 2005 called At Day's Close: Night in Times Past.

In it, Ekirch cited references, starting as as far back as Homer's Odyssey, to "first sleeps" and "second sleeps." During the middle period, some people used the toilet or visited neighbors.  Mostly, he said people stayed in bed to read, pray and have sex.

The volume of references he cites is compelling.  In one instance, he reports the discovery of many 15th century prayer manuals designed specifically for use in the period between first and second sleeps.

In another, he says that Benjamin Franklin took "cold air baths," reading, naked in a chair, during his middle-of-the-night wakeful periods.

Ekirch and psychologists have speculated that this quiet middle period of relaxed reading and reflection may have had the evolutionary benefit of regulating tension and stress that built up during the daytime.

The introduction of artificial light seems to be what killed off the old sleep patterns.

In earlier times, people took shelter from the dark for fear of highwaymen or predatory animals. But gas lamps and, later, electricity allowed some safety.  People could venture out at night or keep the lights on indoors.  It became easier to stay up later and collapse the longer sleep-wake-sleep routine down to a steady eight hours in bed.

By the 1920s, references to polyphasic sleep had all but disappeared in the West.  Even today, though, some African tribal peoples and a number of animal groups continue to live on polyphasic schedules.

I have met several people who have adopted this sleep pattern.  Each of them lives alone and has the freedom to set his or her work schedule.  They seem to drift into this habit naturally and to find it comfortable, but they are a little defensive about it.

Maybe they could teach us something.

Who Said That, No. 2: The Panther

Early in my life as a newspaper reporter, I had a desk next to a columnist who has continued on to a fine career writing for magazines and film.   Very talented, and a nice guy to boot.

One afternoon, as he was ending his day gig and I was starting on the 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. night shift (chasing earlier stories our paper had missed and many, many reports of violence) we fell into conversation about Ogden Nash, the early 20th century humorous poet we both admired.

My colleague gave me this Nash quote:

   "If you hear the knock of a panther, don't anther."

I loved it.  It sustained me through one evening's share of panic and gore.  I've repeated it over the years, often to great effect, at social events.

Unfortunately, we both got it wrong.

Recently, I looked up the quote.  It comes from an Ogden Nash poem that goes like this:

Ogden Nash

The Panther

The panther is like a leopard,  

Except it hasn't been peppered.

Should you behold a panther crouch,

Prepare to say Ouch,

Better yet, if called by a panther,

Don't anther.

I still prefer my colleague's version.  Who needs the "peppered" stuff?  Or the "Ouch" business?  And the last two lines don't flow comfortably.

The whole thing works best as a couplet: "If you hear the knock of a panther, don't anther."  Several generations of amateur oral historians have improved on the original.

Nash was a smart guy, and no doubt he dashed this off quickly.  I picture him scribbling it down, perhaps on the back of an envelope, as he waited for his friends to join him for a drink in the bar at the Algonquin.

Back in the good old days, when many writers were paid by the word, it made sense for poets like Nash to stretch out their observations, sometimes, as here, in the six-line form, now known as a sestet or sestina.

Now, by contrast, everyone from reality show stars to rock stars comment on the full range of events from the silly to the complex in the extreme short form, with Twitter posts.  How things have changed.


Note: My first "Who Said That?" post on April 20 concerned a famous comment attributed to two different legendary university leaders.

The Civil Rights of Students

Last week a Los Angeles judge lit a firecracker under the foundations of school policies in his ruling on the Vergara V. California case.

He found that several state laws  -- regarding teacher tenure, dismissal and seniority in force reduction decisions -- had the perverse effect of putting Los Angeles' most ineffective teachers in front of classrooms with the city's poorest Hispanic and African American students.

The laws, said the judge, "impose a real and appreciable impact on the students' fundamental right to equality of education."

I posted several discussions of the Vergara case earlier this year --"School Lawsuit: Vergara v. California," March 28; "Vergara v. California," Dismissing Bad Teachers," March 30, and "Vergara v. California: California's Tenure Decisions," April 3.

California's two teachers' unions of course have vowed to appeal the Vergara decision.  The battle will continue for years.

Still, people around the country are taking notice.

In an editorial last week, the largest and largely leftish Star-Ledger newspaper in New Jersey called for that state's Education Law Center to file a similar civil rights lawsuit on behalf of poor students in Jersey's inner-city districts.

In fact, New Jersey has walked the walk when it comes to funding inner-city schools.  Since 1985, those districts have been allotted substantially more money than other districts.  So far, the extra money, often 30 percent or more, has not yielded even marginal improvements.

"Good teachers are an incredibly important variable in student success," said the editorial.  "Last year, a Harvard researcher found that students taught by an incompetent teacher lose more than nine months of learning in a single year." (Emphasis from the editorial.)

As in California, New Jersey teachers' unions are the biggest opponents of laws and policies that promote children's access to the best possible teachers.

I find the unions' positions ironic and sad.

Lawsuits like Vergara assert the centrality of good teaching and document the ways in which it has been undermined by state laws promoted by teachers' own professional associations.

So now we have a battle between entrenched unions and a rising chorus of children's activists.

Anyone who has been inspired by a teacher understands that teachers take up their work because they are committed to the best interests of children.  But, equally, any parent who has seen a child suffer the consequences of a year in the wrong classroom is painfully aware of the damage bad teachers inflict on students and student motivation.

It is unfortunate that there is no way, outside of industrial-style union negotiations and contentious courtrooms, for communities and teachers to strike a fair balance.  To acknowledge the contributions of dedicated, effective teachers.  To let go of teachers who, for whatever reason, cannot meet the requirements of a challenging and essential profession.

The teachers' unions are prepared to wage war.  So, now, are the student activists.  Parents and their children, particularly impoverished parents and children, are stuck in the middle.

Our commitment to maintaining a free society with equal opportunity hangs in the balance.

Curious Fashions: Wedge Sneakers

For just about forever, there have been wedge-heeled sandals.  Below is a 1940 Valentino pair that is part of the collection at the Metropolitan Museum.

And here is the Kork-ease Ava, which was popular in the 1970s and has come back into vogue in the last several years. 

Five or 10 years back, there started to be a lot of wedge pumps like the one below.

These are still perfectly nice, and women buy them regularly.  Like wedge-heeled sandals, they will probably be with us always.

But things kept going.

Once wedge pumps found a market, designers started offering wedge-heeled boots.

I actually bought a pair of these and I thought they were neat and cool until, a couple years later, suddenly I realized they weren't any more.  So I got rid of them.

What came next was probably inevitable, but still, it surprised me.

I refer of course to the  "wedge sneaker."

French designer Isabel Marant took the credit for introducing the wedge sneaker in 2011.  There were many fabrics and colors.  Prices ran from $600 to $1,400 or more.   One example is below.

Naturally, as these became fashionable, other designers followed suit and rolled out their own versions.

In spring 2012, Nike offered this style.  It was expensive, as Nike shoes are, but not nearly as expensive as the early Marant models.

And so it went.  For a couple years, wedge sneakers were quite the fashion statement.  I used to read articles about women wearing them to gym classes, but I never saw any wedge sneakers at my large gym, whose membership includes many stylish young women.  Real athletes don't work out in shoes with heels, even wedge heels.

Mostly, the wedge sneaker was a street shoe trend, often worn with tight pants or short shorts, as seen below.

Through 2013, shoe companies kept offering them for sale, and sales seemed to be good.  It went on and on. 

Here is a 2013 model that I would not buy under any circumstances.

By early 2013, Ms. Marant was pretty steamed about the ripoffs of her idea.  

"Everybody who has the wrong one," she complained to a British newspaper, "looks quite bitchy, very vulgar when mine are not at all."

And she had a point.  Many of the newer wedge sneakers were pretty darn ugly.

Today you can buy much cheaper versions, including this unfortunate one from Puma, marked down at Zappos.

Now fashionistas are discussing whether the wedge sneaker craze is over or has a couple years left to run.  

My guess is that serious trendsetters are done with this style.

Personally, I would not recommend buying wedge sneakers at this point.  If you have a pair that you like, you probably can keep wearing them.  Not for long, though.

In fact, Isabel Marant herself seems to have moved on. Here is a sneaker from her pre-fall collection.

This seems to be more the coming trend -- regular sneakers in various designs and colors.

Above are some by designer Raf Simons for Adidas.  Prices start around $400 and ascend to the heights from there.

At the gym, where the most common clothing color is black, these should be fine.  On the other hand, most people don't set out to make fashion statements with their workout attire.  (Those who do tend to prefer outfits that reveal prominent muscles or very tight abs.)

Good workout shoes now come in a range of colors, but I am not sure that color or texture is the point in these buying decisions.  I think I am like most people when buying gym shoes: I seek shoes that 1) fit well, 2) are not of obnoxious colors and 3) are priced right.  Given the third criterion, I don't see Raf Simons shoes in my future.

So the real point of these new colorful sneakers, like the wedge models, is their appeal as street shoes.

Here is a street-oriented attempt to pair colorful sneakers with a dress.   As you can see, it is all matchy-matchy pink.  This is not my kind of look, but it may appeal to some of the more girly girls.

Maybe I'm too cautious and traditional, or maybe I spend too much time in New York and so am inclined to basic black.  Whatever.  But I do like this look with black sneakers that was shown by Simon Gao at London Fashion Week this spring.

Color is great, and some women carry it off very well.  But those who travel every now and then find it difficult to coordinate odd-colored basics with the rest of their clothes.  It is much easier to tuck in a bright scarf or shirt than to plan everything else around a pair of shoes that demands attention all on its own. 

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Another report from our popular California-based guest columnist

Grandma

With Oprah, it’s one tsorah after another. First, her network dumped her as president, then she canceled Lindsay Lohan’s reality show without telling her, and now it’s her stepmother, Barbara Winfrey. 

For 14 years, this yachna was married to Oprah’s father, Vernon, and lived in the mansion Oprah bought for them. Then Barbara divorced Vernon and told him to move out. Some chutzpa she had, but he did. 

Oprah called her, wished her Happy Birthday, and told her to get out of the house by Monday. Now Barbara’s kvetching to “The View” yentas and anyone who’ll listen that she’s homeless. 

In her book, she calls Oprah a shtunk and accuses her of picking food off guests’ plates during meals. This is the kind of shmegegge she thinks is going to sell books? Hoo-ha!

Meanwhile, Oprah considered buying Donald Sterling’s basketball team. He’s the prost graubyon with the big mouth and the nafka girlfriend. About basketball Oprah admits she knows bubkes. But between you and me, I think because her father’s a barber, she has a thing for the name Clippers. 

“Where’s she going to get $700 million?” asked Adele Luskin. “Hah! That kind of chump change Oprah can find between her sofa cushions,” I told her.

A new book on Rose Kennedy puts the kibosh on her as Mother of the Year. Another “Mommie Dearest” is more like it. In her personal letters and diaries, Rose admitted she used to beat her children with coat hangers and lock them in closets. This, mind you, was long before Joan Crawford we knew from nothing. 

And every time Rose caught her husband Joe Kennedy cavorting with chorus girls and the likes of Gloria Swanson and Marlene Dietrich, she would shlep to Europe. There she’d buy a couple hundred dresses and suits at a time. Where she found the space to store all those clothes, what with her closets crammed full of Kennedy kinderlach, I don’t know. 

Go figure.