Inside Out

I've been working a survival job in the Flatiron District for almost a dozen years now and the emerald island of Madison Square Park is a particular pleasure. Whenever I walk to or from work, I do my best to always take a stroll through its newly-restored paths part of the journey. The park hosts concerts every Wednesday evening during the summer and a couple of times a year they bring in a site-specific art work: one of my favorites was a series of bare trees of stainless steel that were installed during the winter, which contrasted very nicely with the black, leafless trees around them. In many ways, it's one of my favorite parks in New York.

So imagine my disappointment on Tuesday, when I saw this as I walked around the northern reflecting pool:

Now, I don't necessarily have a problem with corporations setting up booths in the park; it happens a few times a year in Madison Square. One of the better corporate events in the past has been during the U.S. Open when American Express has set up a large projection screen television (well-branded, of course) and bleachers so that people can hang out in the park during the day to watch the matches; I always think it would be, in some ways, better than going to the Open in Flushing Meadows since here you're actually sitting outside in a beautiful park instead of in a stadium (I know it's not at all better, of course!).

But what is this? The tent on the right has a play area with toys and games on the floor and it has a ol' big plasma television on the wall—a wall, mind you—that completely obscures any view of the park. What was Huggies thinking? Put this thing in a mall, outside a shopping center, inside Macys, even in a poorer neighborhood where this sort of play area would be a novelty (yeah, they're gonna do that!). But what moron marketing executive thought, "You know what affluent people really want when they go to the park with their kids? To find an enclosed play area just like the one they left at home!"

More disappointing to me, though, is the number of people who parked their kids inside this monstrosity on Tuesday and Wednesday (it was gone today). I understand that children are naturally attracted to television—hey: most of us are, whether we like or not*. How many times have I been in a bar and found myself checking the score on a game every few minutes... and I never watch sports at home. But the weather was beautiful both days and right across the reflecting pool from Huggies' tents is one of the coolest play areas in the city:

When I was a kid, I would have loved to have had access to a playground like this one! How hard can it be to say to little Jimmy or Sarah, "Why don't we go swing or climb or play on the merry-go-round instead? We can watch t.v. at home..."? Maybe, not being a parent, I'm missing something... because I really don't get it.

*My favorite quote on the subject is from the great Orson Welles: "I hate television; I hate it as much as I hate peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts."

Don't Bogart That Bandwidth

If you get your Internet service from Comcast, I'd suggest you start watching your bills—your fees may be going up after October 1. The company says their cap, 250 gigs a month, is approximately 100 times "the normal usage" and equivalent to 125 feature film downloads. People like my parents have little to worry about: if tomorrow my mother decided to e-mail our family every digital photo she's ever taken (and she's taken a lot), my folks couldn't use 250 gigabytes this month (assuming each JPG is less than a meg, which most are).

However, a family of four—like my sister Kelly's—that has two teenagers? There are videos and films, iTunes, Internet radio (to which I, personally, am addicted) or other streaming music, Facebook (which refreshes constantly when you're logged, whether you're looking at it or not), online gaming (whether on a Playstation or a computer, it's the same pipeline), newspapers, blogs (to which Kelly is addicted), IMs, e-mails with mega-attachments (those dancing cat videos add up if enough people send them to you)... and those are just the bandwidth uses I can think of; I've no doubt there are hundreds (if not thousands) of others. In my sister's family, each person gets 62 gigabytes, which is plenty for most people now; but as more and more video content becomes available, that will change. And remember: just like on your cell phone, you're using bandwidth whether you're sending or receiving.

How long until Comcast et al, like the cell phone providers, realize they can make more money by offering tiered pricing? Sure, you can get an Internet plan for $29.95... as long as all you do is e-mail without attachments. Want to read a newspaper? We suggest our $34.95 plan. Have a child? You'll find our $49.95 plan fits you perfectly. Two kids? Try the $79.95 family plan. Oh: they're both teenage boys? Our deluxe Gamers' package at $99.95 is just what you need.

Just don't go over your monthly allotment...

Makin' Me REAL Mad...

Sometimes, when I read the Times, I just get pissed off; yesterday was one of those days. I was reading the story about the U.S. Army overseer who was removed from his job because he demanded that KBR (a subsidiary of Haliburton... just typing that makes the bile rise in my throat all over again!) substantiate payment requests it submitted totalling over $1 billion. I won't go into the details here (because it makes me shake with fury the more I think about it again), but basically, KBR wanted the U.S. taxpayers to give them $1 billion and just blindly accept as fact that it spent the money wisely (or that it actually spent the money at all) on the soldiers fighting in Iraq.

Over the last five years, Catherine's day job has been raising almost $5 million for Dixon Place's new theater, a little over $1 million of which came from the city of New York. She's told me a number of times about issues that have come up with all of the paperwork she's got to file in order to get this money: minor changes to budgets require completely refiling dozens of documents. As her husband, I think the bureaucracy is run amok and they're wasting her precious time; however, as a taxpayer, I feel we should require the recipients to prove that they're using the funds responsibly and fulfilling the agreements they made with the government. Isn't that, really, the absolute least that we can ask of companies using public monies? And I guarantee you that even though Catherine is the only person dealing with this mountain of paperwork (unlike the many thousands in the financial departments at KBR), if there were an audit of their grant tomorrow, Dixon Place's account would balance to the penny.

The Republicans—and this Administration in particular—accuse Democrats of being "tax and spenders;" that we want to take money out of your pocket and give to the undeserving poor (because there's really no such thing as the deserving poor, is there?). Paying for programs that feed, house, educate, and heal the citizens of this country—that's wasteful. Giving it to an OBSCENELY wealthy multinational corporation with no questions asked, that's responsible fiscal stewardship.

Finally, I guarantee you that KBR demands complete, detailed documentation on every invoice they receive from their vendors and contractors before any payment is made!

Pity the next conservative bastard who makes a smarmy "tax and spend" comment within my earshot...

More Less Than Friendly Skies

As much as I am a firm believer in the golfer having to pay extra for taking along his clubs when he flies to Myrtle Beach, there are other aspects of the growing problems for air travelers that I find troubling. The Times today had story about smaller cities that are rapidly losing passenger service as fuel costs continue to rise. The airlines say that they can't afford to provide service, even with the Essential Air Service subsidies. As a rule, I'm skeptical of these sorts of claims by Corporate America—unless it's a guaranteed cash cow, C.A. will always say it's too expensive to get involved in a smaller market—but I know that on none of the flights I've taken to one of these airports has there been enough people to even warrant the small aircraft we used. Many of these airports are served by smaller airlines partnered with a larger carrier; these lean and mean companies with lower overhead and costs than the major carriers are still saying that the costs are just too prohibitive—and given how many small businesses are struggling in our current economy, I trust them when they say they can't make it work (as opposed to C.A., which would have us believe that anything less than unbelievably obscene profits are the same as losses—yes, I'm talking about you, Exxon).

So what's the solution? I really don't know. I can't see petroleum getting less expensive, so until we can run airplanes on some other kind of fuel, the costs of air travel are just going to keep going up. I don't see more subsidies as a very good solution, either; I don't mind paying a little more in taxes to help out someone else, but that's a short term approach, at best. As I've said recently, I'd love to see at least part of the answer be building a bigger, better and faster rail network: it won't erase the problem since trains need fuel, too, but they use a lot less of it to move a lot more people around. For the time being, though, I expect we'll just see more people driving a couple of hours or more to get to the nearest larger airport.