STRETCHING THE TRUTH

A Canadian clothing company that manufactures yoga garb has a quality control problem that is alienating their fan base. Especially the part of the base that has a big fanny.  Lululemon’s hottest item is a pair of stretch yoga pants that sell for $100.00. This is the perfect garment for men and women engaged in a transcendental endeavor to free themselves from material attachments. And the pants look really cool with a pair of $400.00 Louis Vuitton running shoes.

Here’s the problem.  On Lulu’s company website there is a disclaimer that reads:  “In some cases, you may experience extreme sheerness.”  In other words, you can see through the pants. When your garment selection lists possible side effects, you may need to reconsider your wardrobe.

One consumer expert suggested that before you purchase the pants, you should try them on and bend over to see if there is a “see-through” issue. Of course, you are hardly in the best position to gather accurate information that way. Here’s where you might say to your BFF, “I have a really, really big favor to ask of you.”

A company spokesperson suggests you do a yoga maneuver called a “downward dog” to test the transparency of the fabric.  I had no idea what this was, so I searched for it on YouTube.  My wife came down to the basement when I was watching a video demonstration and now I’m forbidden to go online unless I have spousal supervision.  One yoga enthusiast, presently employed as an engineer, said she doesn’t mind that her butt shows, but she dislikes the fabric because of the excessive static cling. This is what happens when you ask an electrical engineer a question about tight translucent pants instead of asking a structural engineer.

The controversy highlighted for me how many unintentionally funny things corporate people say under pressure.  I offer these actual statements from recent news reporting as evidence:

“I want this situation to give the company an opportunity to rebrand itself,” said one Lululemon VP. A solid sales strategy, but perhaps branding should not be the first thing that comes to an observer’s mind when eyeing Lululemon’s customers herding around in bodysuits. Another company executive saw the situation as “a window of opportunity” for improvement. Okay, there’s another unfortunate image.

A sales representative addressed the problem of defective inventory already in the stores. “The company will be pulling our pants down from the shelves.”  When you utter a sentence that includes the phrase, “pulling our pants down,” you’re just asking for some tabloid journalist to take your quote out of context.

One clothing manufacturing analyst said that the company needs to deal with the problem and get some closure.  Apparently, he forgot that with elastic-waist pants, closure is seldom an issue.  Then he went on to say, “It is clear that they really have a good product.”  He could have added, “They also have a product that is really clear.”

Another company official noted:  “Investors have been plowing money into the stock, so we still have room to grow,” which is not only commentary on future potential but a nod to the biggest advantage of pants made of spandex.  And finally, Lululemon’s chief financial officer added that analysts are taking a “wait and see attitude.” Men parked in front of the fitness center are adopting a similar approach.

GOODBY BIG JOHN GILLIS

BIG GOOD JOHN

Big John Gillis was as tall as a grizzly bear, but gentle as a teddy bear. The forty-year veteran of Indiana radio, who recently passed away, was an iconic figure.  His loyal listeners looked up to him. “I guess being 6’ 4” was a big help,” he once told me.

So ingrained in Indianapolis was the persona of Big John that until his passing, people still thought he spent his mornings in a helicopter reporting for harried commuters making their way to work. Truth is, John hadn’t been in a WIBC chopper for almost 20 years. In a bow to the economy, he had transitioned to a fixed-wing plane and then a mobile unit for his reports. He ended his traffic career broadcasting from a studio where even the sound of barking dogs on the street outside did not convince his fans he was really earthbound.

John loved the sound of his own voice. I offer this as high praise, because you always felt that each word that tumbled effortlessly off his tongue was not only meticulously chosen, but was savored for still another nanosecond before he went on to the next.  “His 60-second traffic reports,” said long-time associate Jeff Pigeon at John’s funeral, “lasted about eight minutes.”

Years ago in an interview at his home, after he left WIBC, John told me: “I have 20 seconds to do what I have to do, read a sponsor’s name, and then if I can figure out a way to twist a word or inject my personality into it, that’s it…I’m a disembodied voice, and every 10 minutes I stop what I am doing and talk to my imaginary friends.”

A disembodied voice? Perhaps. But it still embodied everything that was good about radio in those years.  He wasn’t just a person you recognized on the street, he was a person you felt you knew personally. Everyone liked him, of course, but far more importantly, you knew instantly that he liked you, as well.

John loved radio. It was his best friend. He wanted to introduce you to his best friend. But “why radio?” I asked him during our visit in 2007. “Because everywhere you travel, it’s there; it takes you places immediately…it exercises your imagination.” If there was any sadness, any remorse in John, it was that media had changed. “We went to high tech and lost the high touch,” he told me. “Radio should be about content, character and personality.”

John should have thrown in loyalty, an ingredient he added to a recipe that brought him a taste of success, and also fulfilled him. There was no doubt, Big John had many opportunities to leave the market and pursue a more lucrative career elsewhere. That was not in John’s flight plan. His job was on the air and in the air, but his feet were on the ground. He loved Indianapolis; he was wedded to WIBC. Why break up a happy marriage?

“If I have 20 minutes to live and I spend the next 19 with you, having this conversation, I would die happy,” John said to me. “If in that 20 minutes, we come up with an idea and we have 20 years to make it happen, then God has blessed me far beyond my wildest dreams.”

John did not have those 20 years.  But if you still hear his halting, yet mesmerizing, voice in your head, look to the heavens. No, he’s not in the helicopter, but he’s up there. Trust me.

DICK WOLFSIE: DOCTORING MY QUESTIONNAIRE!

DICK WOLFSIE: DOCTORING MY QUESTIONNAIRE!: Whenever I visit my doctor’s office, I have to fill out one form or another. Most of the time, the staff simply wants to confirm that my ...

DOCTORING MY QUESTIONNAIRE!

Whenever I visit my doctor’s office, I have to fill out one form or another. Most of the time, the staff simply wants to confirm that my insurance hasn’t changed, which I think is just medical jargon for: “Has your coverage been dropped?” Before my last appointment, they asked me about my medications and about any side effects I am experiencing. I never have any side effects, but I usually write down headaches, nausea, vomiting, hallucinations, decreased libido and heightened impulsivity. That way they’ll think I’m really taking all my pills.

Here is another question I had to answer:  What is your nickname? I’d never been asked about this before and I really don’t have a nickname, but they hate it when you leave a blank space so I wrote down “Sparky.”  I knew if somehow that ended up on my vial of blood, it would cause a lot of chatter at the lipid lab.

Next, the form wanted me to list any new drugs I’m taking. And then it asked:  What is the frequency? I had my gout medicine with me, so I held it up to my ear, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

My alcohol consumption was also something they wanted to keep track of.  How many cans of beer, how many glasses of wine and how many shots of liquor do I consume in a week? I called my wife to see if she had any idea. “I buy you a case of beer a week,” she said.

“Wait a second. I don’t drink that much beer.”

“Oh, you mean actually ‘drink’ it? You didn’t say that.  I’d say you ingest five beers a week. The rest of the cans I find all over the house, either knocked over by the cat, or warm and three-quarters full in the corners of your office.

There were some questions about my family medical history, requesting info on relatives who had died and their cause of death, including all four of my grandparents. My maternal grandmother died suddenly at 94, her demise the result of large whiskey sours before breakfast and two packs of Camels a day. This should be a lesson to you. I’m just not sure what the lesson is.

The next line inquired about the deaths of my aunts and uncles. We were never a close-knit family, but I thought my brother who still lives in New York might remember some of the details. “Hello, Peter, it’s Dick.”

“Dick who?”

“Very funny. I have a question about Uncle Sid’s death.”

“Oh, how sad. I’m sorry to hear that. When did he die?”

“1985.”

This wasn’t getting me anywhere, so I simply scribbled in something to fill up the space—a cause of death that wouldn’t raise any red flags. It was likely that no one ever looked at those answers, anyway.  But apparently, I’m now quite the topic of conversation in the medical records department. I was told that of all the 2,000 patients in this internal medicine practice, I’m the only one whose aunts and uncles were all run over by a bus.

GROWING PROBLEMS

I’m usually good at planning around big events. For example, I know not to schedule my once-every-five-year colonoscopy the week of the big neighborhood barbeque. I am careful not to sign up for blood tests if the fasting conflicts with the Thursday night meatloaf special at Cracker Barrel. And I’m smart enough to avoid being numbed-up for a filling on the same day I’m delivering a speech at Kiwanis.

But recently, as I made final preparations to attend my high school reunion in New York, I realized I had failed to properly coordinate my barbershop appointment with my trip back east to see my old friends. I looked at the calendar and my dilemma was obvious. I knew I needed to get a haircut about two weeks before the event. Any sooner, and I’d look disheveled in all the photos. Any later, and it would be clear to my buddies that I got the trim just for the party. More importantly, I never look good right after a haircut. The magic number of days after a visit to the barbershop for me is 10. At that point, my hair is not too short, not too long.  Just right. Your number may vary.

I called Buddy, my barber. I figured he’d handled problems like this before. “As I look at my calendar, Dick, I think we can work this out so you’ll look good, but you’ll need to get in three haircuts before you leave town for your vacation.  And you’ll need to have two appointments in the same week.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Hey, I’m a hairstylist, not a vacation planner. How about a little color for that gray?”

“If you touch up my hair right before I leave, everyone will notice. And if you don’t touch up my hair, it will look like I aged 50 years—which I did, of course.  I just don’t want to make it that obvious.”

I hated to admit to my wife that I was so vain, but I wondered if she had ever thought about stuff like this, herself. She’s having a big get-together with her college friends sometime next year.  “Mary Ellen, are you planning your hair salon visits so they time out right for your 40^th reunion?”

“Of course.  I started scheduling appointments way in advance to make sure I could see Jenna about  six days before the dinner. Now she plans to get married the very week of my make-over. She returns from her honeymoon the day before I leave.  Who goes to a reunion with a 24-hour-old haircut?”

Did any of my male friends think about stuff like this? I called Bob to see if he could relate to this situation.

“Why are you asking me about this, Dick?”

“Because, Bob, you have held many high-power executive positions, oftentimes addressing huge audiences—so you had to look your best on those days. Why wouldn’t I ask you?”

“Because I am completely bald, that’s why.”

I’ve decided not to worry about this anymore. Only a narcissistic person would think he had to get a haircut exactly 10 days before leaving for a trip. Not only that, but I’ll be busy that week getting botox injections.

RUG RAT

We’ve always been envious of friends who have done it in every room of their house. So, we finally decided it was now or never: we were going to re-carpet our entire home. We had successfully avoided this huge hassle in the past by moving just as the carpet had worn out our welcome. Early in our relationship, we once moved when the fridge needed to be defrosted. We just couldn’t be bothered.

We knew our carpet was dirty and disgusting when we started wiping our feet before going outside. Also, when friends came over for a cocktail, we told everyone it was a shag carpet. It really wasn’t. It just looked that way because we’ve had dogs and cats for 32 years. Sometimes I walked out of my bathroom while brushing my teeth in order to watch TV in my home office. There were a few toothpaste globs on the floor. I scraped them up now and then. They looked a lot like dinner mints.

In preparation for this big move (of course, we were not moving but we might as well have been), I bought a book called: The Complete Carpet Buying Guide, by Alan Fletcher. The book is wall-to-wall with great ideas. Mary Ellen kept telling me to put the book down and go to bed. “Just a few more pages,” I pleaded.  I still hadn’t gotten to chapter six: Making it all work in the bedroom.

Once we made the decision to go ahead with the project, I stood at the bottom of the stairs and scanned the house. The immensity of the task overwhelmed me. I wondered if we really had to do the first and second floor at the same time.

“Two stories in one day is a lot to cover, Mary Ellen.”

“Isn’t that the attitude that got you demoted at Channel 8?”

When it was time to pick the color, Mary Ellen pretended she wanted my input so she flung some carpet samples on the floor. “Help me decide between the bistro, buff, desert sun, kangaroo, ecru, fallow, fawn, russet, sepia, moose antler, tawny, sienna and Sahara. I want something that won’t stain when you walk into the living room eating your breakfast cereal.”

“Do they have something in a nice Wheaties shade?”

“Dick, this is hard work. Which color do you like?”

“Okay, beige,”

“They’re all beige.”

“See, that’s what made it so tough. Time for a beer.”

Before they could install the carpet, this guy named Luke came to measure each room. He strolled through the house, scanning the walls and floors to get the dimensions with this really cool laser device. I asked him how many people called him Luke Floorwalker, and he said I was the first. That day. 

Because I am cheap, I was looking for ways to cut corners. (Actually, the carpet installers do that for you at no extra charge.) The idea I came up with was to take the dozens of carpet samples we had and use them to create a patchwork of colors that would cover one entire room. Mary Ellen said that was the stupidest idea I ever had in our entire relationship. She’s so young to be losing her memory.

MY ONE NIGHT STAND

BEDSIDE MANNERS

This is an article about my one night stand. No, I didn’t have a one night stand. I bought one. (I’m making this worse, aren’t I?)  Let me try this: I purchased one night stand at a local mega-hardware store.  It was packaged in several parts, but the box said, “Assembly Very Easy.” I was suspicious. That was exactly what my third grade teacher said before she made me sing in front of the entire student body at Roosevelt Elementary School.  I remember swearing that was the last assembly I’d ever do.

Of course, I have broken that pledge a couple of times already.  About two years ago, I tried to put a wall unit together, but I stressed out when the shelves didn’t fit properly.  I walked away frustrated, but the cat liked what she saw. We now have the world’s most expensive kitty litter box.

Overall, this should have been an easy task. Every piece in the kit was assigned a letter. All the grooves were numbered and there was an actual picture of all six kinds of screws and four types of nails. I once saw a guy on YouTube complete the Rubik’s Cube blindfolded using only his feet. Some guys get all the easy gigs.

The first problem was that the directions were in three languages: English, Spanish and French. This was an immediate distraction to me because the phrase “Avec precaution, retourner l’element sur ses chants avant,” sounds a lot saucier than “Carefully turn your unit over and onto its front edges.” The second problem was that I’m not good with tools. Like, the directions said I needed a Phillips screwdriver. That would be equal parts vodka, orange juice and Milk of Magnesia, right?

I was relieved to find there was a hotline number—answered, I am sure, by the very same kind of people who respond to those life and death turkey questions on Thanksgiving morning. One year, I abused that phone number after downing a couple of wine coolers.  I called to ask if I could take a frozen turkey in the sauna with me to defrost it. It’s hard to make those folks laugh. By the way, this furniture manufacturer only answers the phone between 8 a.m. and midnight, so by 7:59 in the morning the lines start lighting up with frustrated customers like me who were up all night wondering who Allen is and where he put his stupid wrench.  

One of the things they instruct the buyer to do is register the product. I’ll register to vote; I’m happy to show a police officer my registration; and I’m never shy about registering my opinion.  But I will not register my night stand.  I have my rights. If they want their night table back they’ll have to pry it away from my cold dead hands.

Once the bedside table was completely assembled, I was pretty happy with myself, although it did take me four hours and three phone calls to complete my task. I must admit, however, that I am not totally confident I got it to look 100 percent like the photo on the box.  But Mary Ellen must have been impressed when she got home.  She thought it was the biggest birdhouse she had ever seen.