Quote of the Day (Steve Forbes, on Differences Among the Very Rich)

"A mere $500 million separated the two. In a billionaire's world, that is close."—Forbes Magazine editor-in-chief Steve Forbes, describing the financial photo-finish between traditionally filthy rich guy Bill Gates and the now even wealthier Carlos Slim, quoted in Barry Paddock, “America Loses Bragging Rights As Carlos Slim Tops Forbes’ Annual Ranking of World’s Billionaires,” The Daily News (New York), Thursday, March 11, 2010

One night, as an impressionable collegian, I visited a buddy of mine who was working for a wealthy man. While my friend and I were talking in the kitchen of his employer’s home, the man’s twentysomething daughter came in, laden with bags from her stop at a nearby upscale grocery.

After emptying various foodstuffs of staggering variety and plenitude, she turned one bag upside down. Out flew change from her trip. Only it wasn’t silver that spilled across the counter. It was more twenty- and fifty-dollar bills than I had ever seen anywhere (except for inside a bank) in my life.

I’m not sure what made my eyes bulge more: the sight of so many large bills (remember, this was more than 30 years ago) or the woman’s nonchalance at how she collected and disposed of the remainder of her grocery bill. You had the sense that if she misplaced one, two, or even three $50 bills, she’d never notice it.

This was my first concrete lesson in what F. Scott Fitzgerald meant by “The rich are different from you and me.”

I thought nothing could top that little episode in how the rich approach money until I read Steve Forbes’ quote above.

Mr. Forbes, maybe in your universe, $500 million comes to a “mere” amount. But it’s so far distant from my upbringing and current livelihood that I’d need a Mount Palomar telescope to glimpse it—and even then, I don’t know if I’d believe what I was seeing.

Oh, and another thing: For years, one of my friends has called Bill Gates “the anti-Christ.” Does this news item now mean that there are two anti-Christs? Is there enough room for all that money—not to mention the egos belonging to it all?

Song Lyric of the Day (“A Mighty Wind,” Unexpectedly Apropos to the Current Nor’easter)

“Oh a mighty wind’s a blowin’, it’s kickin’ up the sand,
It’s blowin’ out a message to every woman, child and man…”—“A Mighty Wind,” written by Eugene Levy, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, for the movie A Mighty Wind (2003)

Actually, this weekend, like much of my area in northeast New Jersey, the “message” must of us wanted to send was to PSE&G: GET THE POWER BACK ON. We became hypnotized by many, many minutes of staring at weather maps like the one accompanying this post, showing winds anywhere from 65 to 75 MPH--as many as 20 MPH more than the winter storm that blew through here two weeks ago.

I was at Mass, around 20 minutes before 6 pm on Saturday night, when the lights blinked, struggled to stay on, then went out again, this time for good. The rest of the Mass was conducted by flash- and candlelight.

A block away, at home, the same thing had happened. No power for the next 30 hours. What was especially aggravating was that, as we made do with quilts, candles, flashlights, etc.—and, toward the end, a boiled-water alert—we could see, at the end of our street, other houses that hadn’t lost power.

Well, it could be worse. We appear to have escaped otherwise largely unscathed. Others weren’t so lucky, with trees down and wires down all over the place—and even some lives lost.

It’s good to be back online—not to mention warm again! Here's hoping that you, faithful reader, emerged okay from all this...

Quote of the Day (George Santayana, on Friendship)

“One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.”—Attributed to philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952)

Quote of the Day (Ben Franklin, on What Makes Men Weary)

“After three days men grow weary, of a wench, a guest, and weather rainy.”—Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack

This weekend, if we receive all the Biblical-style precipitation and wind the weathermen are forecasting, we’ll have a pretty good way to test Ben’s hypothesis, kind of like what he did with his lightning experiments. Let’s see where we are with this on Monday.

Oh, and by the way: the way I heard it, Benjamin Franklin might have quickly wearied of guests and rain, but it really took a lot to get him tired of a wench!

Part of what made him a world-class celebrity, as the first American diplomat in France, was that he was a world-class flirt, too. As you can probably tell from the image accompanying this post, nothing made his day like being fussed over by a young woman.

Make that "women"--plural.

Quote of the Day (Tom Wolfe, on the American Novel Today)

“The American novel is dying, not of obsolescence, but of anorexia. It needs . . . food. It needs novelists with huge appetites and mighty, unslaked thirsts for . . . America . . . as she is right now. It needs novelists with the energy and the verve to approach America the way her moviemakers do, which is to say, with a ravenous curiosity and an urge to go out among her 270 million souls and talk to them and look them in the eye. If the ranks of such novelists swell, the world—even that effete corner which calls itself the literary world—will be amazed by how quickly the American novel comes to life. Food! Food! Feed me! Is the cry of the twenty-first century in literature and all the so-called serious arts in America. The second half of the twentieth century was the period when, in a pathetic revolution, European formalism took over America’s arts, or at least the non-electronic arts. The revolution of the twenty-first century, if the arts are to survive, will have a name to which no ism can be easily attached. It will be called ‘content.’ It will be called life, reality, the pulse of the human beast.”—Tom Wolfe, “My Three Stooges,” in Hooking Up (2000)

This Day in TV History (Great Scott! It’s Willard!)

March 10, 1980—With more than two decades behind him of offering cockeyed optimism on radio and TV, Willard Scott took his act to the national level as weather forecaster of NBC’s morning Today Show.

In the years since, he has become a kind of Zelig with a happy face, popping up in nearly every corner of the globe with inexhaustible doses of cheer: at state fairs, fundraising events, parties, civic occasions, Thanksgiving Day parades, as well as on the Orient Express, in Rome, South America, Australia and China.

Even now, as a substitute weather reporter on Today, Scott is likely to show up in faraway places. His impact has been felt everywhere, but nowhere, I will argue, as much as at the U.S. Census Bureau.

It’s easy to see why. Whenever longer U.S. longevity rates are discussed, one explanation you invariably hear is about the better medical care that people receive now than in the past.

Don’t you believe it.

All those medications that doctors prescribe for seniors—you really think they’re working in perfect sync with each other? You think that doctors have perfect control of these interactions? Please.

No, what’s happening is this: those longevity rates are better tugged upwards over the long-term by lower infant mortality rates and by centenarians, the fastest-growing age cohort. Last July, reports from the Census Bureau and the National Institute on Aging indicated that the number of people worldwide living to be over 100 grew from a few thousand in 1950 to more than 340,000 today, with most of those in Japan and the U.S. As for the future: in the U.S., centenarians are projected to grow from 75,000 today to nearly 600,000 by mid-century.

Why all those senior senior citizens? Good God, people, isn’t it obvious? It’s the chance to appear on The Today Show, with Willard Scott rewarding you for a life well-lived by flashing your picture around the world and telling everyone some nice wholesome little details about you.

It all began innocently enough in 1983, when a viewer persuaded Scott to deliver an on-air birthday greeting to his mother, who had just passed her 100th birthday.

That one little episode has led, 27 years later, to the following state of affairs described on the Today Show’s Web site: “Please note that Willard gets many more requests than he can fulfill on the air.”

Well, I shouldn’t wonder!

Today Show producers probably weren’t expecting something exactly like this when they hired Scott, but they had good reason to believe that his jolly, toupee-wearing, large-and-in-charge persona would get people watching. After all, this was the same guy who, with Ed Walter, formed the DC radio duo the Pep Boys; who played Bozo the Clown for a while on the local station; and appeared in the first Ronald McDonald TV commercials (locally, not nationally) in 1963.

Willard has been so upbeat over the years that if he were around early in the 20th century, he’d probably tell a little Kansas girl named Dorothy not to worry her pretty little head about that nasty ol’ twister, and keep singing that song of hers he liked, “Over the Rainbow.”

Not everyone has cottoned to all of this. One dissenter was onetime Today co-host Bryant Gumbel, who groused in an infamous 1989 memo to management: “This guy is killing us, and no one's even trying to rein him in."

Now, I can’t say that the cranky co-host was way off the mark about Scott. After all, I wasn’t exactly a big fan of a guy who appeared on camera dressed as Carmen Miranda. But Gumbel’s horizon-wide critique encompassed virtually everyone on the show except the fellow in his own mirror.

Maybe Gumbel was jealous of the fact that, despite making more money than the show’s weatherman, Scott still received more fan mail than himself and co-host Jane Pauley combined. But whatever Gumbel's motivation, viewers soon let him know, in no uncertain terms, that though they could abide hosts who were smart and serious, they drew the line at self-important.

When I get up in the morning, I’m grouchy, and I’m not any better, no matter how strenuous the labors of TV newscasters, when I walk out the door for work. But give Willard credit: he’s never taken himself too seriously.

I’ll take that any day of the week over the assorted prima donnas who’ve appeared on the Today Show over the years.

TV Quote of the Day (“Glee’s” Sue Sylvester, on Men With Curly Hair)

“I don’t trust a man with curly hair. I can’t help picturing small birds leaving sulphurous eggs in there, and I find it disgusting.” —Sue Sylvester (played by Jane Lynch) of Glee, quoted in Tim Stack, “The Glee Whiz: Jane Lynch,” Entertainment Weekly, 2009 Year-End Special