Ah, it’s Friday again. It’s been extremely hectic around the Schmidt office and casa of late, as you may have inferred from lack of blog posts. But, whatever happens – good or bad – Friday always arrives, doesn’t it?

So, in the spirit of TGIF – and for ‘tooni drinkers everywhere – a few classics re “our” favorite drink.

The Thin Man movie (first one, the sequels got progressively worse). I get woozy just watching them pound down the ‘toonis (“Will your bring me five more martinis, Leo?”), but Myrna Loy is sheer delight. Alcoholism never looked so glam.

Martini time with W.H. Auden (Lovely article about a relationship with the poet.)

M.F.K. Fisher: Martini-Zheen, Anyone? (Gourmet archives, 1957; I’m happy to say I own an original issue with article.)

Mental Floss: 10 Famous Martini Preferences

#5:Alfred Hitchcock and Winston Churchill had the same idea – Hitch said the closest he wanted to get to a bottle of vermouth was looking at it from across the room. That quote is often attributed to Churchill, actually, but the Washington Post says otherwise… Churchill is misquoted all of the time, so I’m inclined to believe them. (I gaze fondly at the vermouth and then gently shut the fridge door…(yes, I do occasionally use it, but hardly ever in my Friday evening martinis.)

Happy Friday to all.

I like to think of myself as an optimistic realist…or a realistic optimist, depending on the day and issue. (And yes, there are times I’m a cranky cynic; I’m also human.)

Regardless of my mood, I’m weary (and wary) of the constant bombardment of doom we face 24/7.  I try to keep it in perspective – we’ve always been one epidemic, meteor or mad man away from Armageddon.  And, I’m sure that when our first ancestor dropped out of the tree to forage, there was a lot of hysterical screaming, “No, NO! OG! You’ll die! Something will eat you! Come back! Come back!. GET BACK!” (Of course, all that probably sounded more like, “SCREECH! Oogga, ooga, UH! HU! SCREECH” …but I digress…)

That’s why I was heartened to read of several books in NYT – all of which point out that somehow we keep chugging along.  Civilization keeps getting more – um – civilized.  Think about it – even in our current toxic political climate – Obama didn’t have Sarah Palin beheaded (of course, she probably would have kept right on moving around,  flappin’ – like the headless chickens my grandmom dispatched on a regular basis)…George Bush didn’t look Al Gore in the tower.  None of our leaders have fought in a duel lately.  London isn’t literally sitting atop rivers of sh**.  Billions have access to clean water (although at least a billion people don’t. We need to work on that. Some predict the next world war will be fought over water, not oil.)

We’ve made some progress over the years. As noted in NYT about “The Rational Optimist,” by Matt Ridley.

It does much more than debunk the doomsaying. Dr. Ridley provides a grand unified theory of history from the Stone Age to the better age awaiting us in 2100.

What made Homo sapiens so special? Dr. Ridley argues that it wasn’t our big brain, because Neanderthals had a big brain, too. Nor was it our willingness to help one another, because apes and other social animals also had an instinct for reciprocity.

“At some point,” Dr. Ridley writes, “after millions of years of indulging in reciprocal back-scratching of gradually increasing intensity, one species, and one alone, stumbled upon an entirely different trick. Adam gave Oz an object in exchange for a different object.”

The evidence for this trick is in perforated seashells from more than 80,000 years ago that ended up far from the nearest coast, an indication that inlanders were bartering to get ornamental seashells from coastal dwellers. Unlike the contemporary Neanderthals, who apparently relied just on local resources, those modern humans could shop for imports.

Ah – shopping!  We can save the world with shopping!  But seriously – Ridley goes on to talk about innovation coming from the bottom up – from entrepreneurs.

Rulers like to take credit for the advances during their reigns, and scientists like to see their theories as the source of technological progress. But Dr. Ridley argues that they’ve both got it backward: traders’ wealth builds empires, and entrepreneurial tinkerers are more likely to inspire scientists than vice versa. From Stone Age seashells to the steam engine to the personal computer, innovation has mostly been a bottom-up process.

“Forget wars, religions, famines and poems for the moment,” Dr. Ridley writes. “This is history’s greatest theme: the metastasis of exchange, specialization and the invention it has called forth, the ‘creation’ of time.”

Now, I’m going to go use some of my time for gardening (and perhaps some shopping for the garden…;-) Y’all have a great weekend.

That bit of dialogue is from Supernatural, a television show that consistently ends up on critics’ top ten lists.  (It also has a killer soundtrack of classic road trippin’ R&R from the 70s and 80s. I got into a lot of fondly – albeit somewhat hazily remembered – trouble with many of these songs playin’.)

Of course, you’d expect management with fear in Hell. It should be noted, however, that sniveling minions can turn (and demons ain’t exactly trustworthy to begin with…duh-oh).

But – to be fair to Lucifer (it’s my blog and it’s Friday) – doing our best isn’t always good enough. Yet, some folks seem to think trying is sufficient and they should be compensated accordingly. This is especially a problem in non-profits. I’ve worked with more than one senior staffer or ED who were utterly aghast that they might be held accountable for actual results. (“But, I can’t control the donations!”)

Certainly, we should all try to be our best (bonus points to anyone who knows that TV show reference)…yet, we also need to recognize when that may not be enough…when to admit it and move on…or when to call in someone better (and pay them for results.) Me? I’m good, even excellent, at a lot of things. I – um – suck at others. Lessons learned and wisdom hard-earned.

Happy Friday! (I’m hoping the complete Season 4 of Supernatural shows up in the mailbox today. Total geek-out, enabled by that instrument of the Devil, Amazon one-click.)

P.S. I also highly recommend Vampire Diaries, which precedes Supernatural every Thursday.  So much for the CW targeting the young and pretty demographic.

Other TV recommendations (that you can queue up at Hulu and watch on the weekends) : Justified (based on Elmore Leonard’s characters – US Marshal in Kentucky): Fringe (Sci-Fi/Fantasy with terrific acting.  Watch  episode “White Tulip” to see why it’s must-see for me – wayyy out there sci-fi and a very human story about love, loss and letting go); Modern Family (sit-com).

After listening and then writing…I now feel the loss in way I never would have before.  I missed out on a lot of warmth, fun, and laughter.

Billie never did anything “big” – at least  not as our celebrity-obsessed society defines noteworthy accomplishment (Oh, ah! 5 million followers on Twitter!).

She was an Oklahoma farm girl, worked at the same hospital for 35 years, and didn’t like to be the center of attention. Yet, she lived a big life, in the best sense of the word.  Billie will be remembered as a wonderful mother, wife and sister – kind, generous, and witty (I laughed as much as I cried when writing the eulogy…the stories!).  She’s also sorely missed by someone who never really knew her.

And, that’s a very big legacy.

Thank You Billie.

The top one: 1.  Never, ever make any assumptions about what your customers know or do.  They’ll – OMG! – surprise you.

2. Don’t assume no news is good news.  Check and find out what’s going on.  Sure, it may be bad, sad and depressing, but at least you can start dealing with it.  (This goes for everything from surgery to a potential biz investor.)

In a more whimsical vein (it’s Friday, after all):

Don’t plan to dig into a heapin’ plate of steaming spaghetti while watching a zombie flick. (What WAS I thinking?  Oh, it’s a prime-time telecast, so it won’t be that bad…um, it was that bad.)

Check the olives for mold BEFORE you put them in the martini.

and

Break the rules every once in a while (well, maybe not the ones above…)

From the “Things that make me happy” list: My old, old apple tree in the backyard.

However, it’s not in the best of health – prone to mildew, moths, and whatever else is passing through.   But, it gives its all every year, producing bushels of apples…most of which have worms….which I cut out and use the apples anyway (when you’re a gardener committed to not using toxic stuff, you get a lot less squeamish about creepy-crawlies.)

Yesterday, Corva from Divine Earth (”Our pruning is seasonally appropriate, contemplatively rendered, and cost-effective.” Had me with “contemplatively rendered”) came to do a pruning estimate for the tree.  She also gave me some great free advice and her love of trees and nature simply radiated from her.

As we discussed those dang worms, she reminded me I should cull apples from the clusters, so the remaining one will grow larger. While it won’t get rid of the worm…”you’ll have more apple and less worm.”

And, that’s my takeaway for Friday ‘tooni musing – I may not be able to totally eradicate a problem, but, with the right work and attitude,  I can certainly have “more apple.”

So, here are some of the bright spots on the Web – some serious, some not-so.

Seth Godin on chocolate should be fun. (packaging and branding)

Michele Miller on Burger King’s Marketing To Women (Well, at least this campaign is better than the S&M dominatrix one I saw in Germany a couple of years ago for the “angry whopper”…;-)

Bruce Fryer’s perspective on Health Care Reform: Rationing or Gluttony? (Brings to mind my Mom’s elderly friend who gets an MRI whenever she “feels like it.” ?! Need I mention she’s on Medicare?)

IP Law For Start-Ups (just what it says…found through Ask A VC.)

Grant McCracken on The John-Boy Problem (Marketers take note – you’re not necessarily the target market.)

Gail Collins, NYT Columnist, Florida We Have A Problem (We also have a whale museum funding problem, who knew?)

Ike Piggott’s taking the long view, doing a riff on P.J. O’Rourke’s classic piece, Whiffle Ball World. (I don’t always agree with Ike, but he thinks about things.)

When you live in a Whiffle World, you don’t worry about being eaten by hyenas, you worry about whether pets are spayed and neutered.

When you live in a Whiffle World, you don’t worry about your teeth rotting out, you worry about whether they are white enough.

When you live in a Whiffle World, you don’t worry about having access to safe drinking water, you fret over whether it’s the right flavor or brand.

The Unhappy Hipster. If you’ve ever wondered why those cool people in Dwell look so depressed…but warning: don’t be drinking coffee when reading or you may do a spit take.

Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project (For those of us who live in a Whiffle world, happiness shouldn’t be all that hard). Here are nine (very simple) things you can do every day.

Stuff White People Like, Conan O’Brien.

Sunset Magazine: How To Make Fresh Cheese. (Oh, put down the tweeter twitter and do something fun…that you can eat.)

You can also read my take on Avatar over at Lip-Sticking.

And, if you don’t feel like staring into your screen a minute longer…take a walk, maybe to the library, like I’m doing this afternoon, to browse through good old-fashioned dead-tree media…and enjoy the bright blue sky and snow-covered mountain views along the way.

Here’s a quote that sums it up nicely:

“Courage disappeared from American public life in xxxx, and has been absent now for x years. There have always been cowards in our politics, there has always been an uncertainity of leadership, but never before has the whole nation become cowardly and remained cowardly over so long a space of time, never has it dodged every vital question that came up, and never has there been such a dismal lack of leaders – or at least one leader at a time – to whom it would listen.”

Think this was written by someone gazing back fondly at – say – the Reagan presidency? Maybe an unrepentant Kennedy fan? Well, there’s a reason I put those “x’s” in there (Jill – if you’re reading, I’m sure you’re way ahead of me…;-)

The above is from an article, Wanted: Political Courage, by Charles Willis Thompson…in the November 1932 issue of Harpers Magazine. He believed courage disappeared in 1919, “13 years ago.”

From the NYT obits:

“Mr. Parker wrote the Spenser novels in the first person, employing the blunt, masculine prose style that is often described as Hemingwayesque. But his writing also seems self-aware, even tongue-in-cheek, as though he recognized how well worn such a path was. And his dialogue was especially arch…”

“Of all our novelists, Auchincloss is the only one who tells us how our rulers behave in their banks and their boardrooms, their law offices and their clubs,” Gore Vidal once wrote. “Not since Dreiser has an American writer had so much to tell us about the role of money in our lives.”

No matter how different Parker and Auchincloss were – they knew how to get people and feelings on the page, and make it interesting – whether writing about a smart-mouthed Boston PI (Spenser) or a lawyer in a white shoe firm. And, that’s why I love their work.

So, in memory of them – I’ve started re-reading their books in chronological order (you can find many at your local library.) Some haven’t aged well (the discussion of feminism and middle-aged angst in Parker’s Promised Land [published 1976] for example, gets tedious. Skip a few pages and focus on the characters.) But, even when showing their age, the books are quality endeavors worthy of a few hours of Friday martini time.

(And, yes, J.D. Salinger also died this week, but I could never get into Catcher In the Rye…with apologies to all my teachers who made me read it.)

But, never – in any of the horrifying survival scenarios – does someone say, “We’ve got to have a banker if we’re going to make it!” Engineers. Farmers. Doctors. Carpenters. Soldiers. Yep, all those. But nary a banker (and – nope – no marketing consultants needed either. Not much call for product launch planning when people are hunting cats for food.)

So, just why do bankers get paid so much? Because that’s the way the system works (or doesn’t, as we’ve seen over the past couple of years.) If we stripped away the artificial constructs of our society, there’d be no need for anyone whose sole skill was making money out of – well – money. (Cut to scene from I Am Legend where Will Smith chases his dog into a dark building filled with zombie vampires – where piles of stained and useless paper are laying around…the paper being money.)

Steven Brill wrote an excellent article, What’s a Bailed-Out Banker Really Worth? It’s an intelligent analysis, not a hatchet job. But the bankers themselves don’t seem to know when to shut up; they’ve lived so long in the stratosphere, they’ve lost touch with reality, as evidenced in this statement to Brill, “A lot of our folks have second and third homes and alimony payments and other obligations that require substantial current cash.”

Now, I’m all for capitalism. I have nothing against people making as much money as they can (without totally screwing someone else.) I hope to have a (small) second home one of these days (had one in the past). However, when I read this statement, I have a Bolshevik twinge or two.

And, of course, it’s not just bankers. As Warren Buffett is also quoted in the Brill article,

“Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. . . . . A mediocre-or-worse C.E.O. — aided by his handpicked V.P. of human relations and a consultant from the ever-accommodating firm of Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo — all too often receives gobs of money from an ill-designed compensation arrangement.”

I call this the “C-syndrome.”  I’ve known any number of CEOs who consistently fail (company folds, people lose the jobs, class-action suits are filed…) and  yet keep going – to better gigs and more money.  Once you’re in the club, you’ve got to really, really screw up to get kicked out.

I’ve got no answers. I don’t know how we “fix” the system or even if it can be fixed. However, I’m an optimistic realist (I have absolutely no patience with people that somehow thought Obama was going to magically and quickly change everything for the better once he got into office.) I think our society is changing for the better, ever so slowly and in small ways. And, that change begins and ends with you and me.

Now, I’ve got to go polish off a list of marketing consultant type of things…with Terminator Salvation awaiting me for my Friday Martini Time.

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