Curb the Enthusiasm

Cool, Calm, Collected: Our local newspaper published an article today from the Associated Press about two new books chronicling Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s near two-decades-long career as a book editor, for Viking Press and Doubleday (http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011101020323). Several times during those years I saw Jackie, getting into an out of cabs on Park Avenue. My most memorable sighting was in a restaurant with two of my colleagues from Nation’s Restaurant News, a trade publication I joined in 1977.

One of the perks of the job was being able to dine at some of the classier eating spots in town. One day, I found myself with Liz and Peggy having lunch in an expensive, over the top restaurant off Park Avenue in the mid-East 60s. The décor was gaudy—lots of mirrors and gold accents. As it had recently made its debut, the restaurant had yet to be discovered by the lunchtime crowd of power elites. It was, to be honest, rather thinly patronized that day. Aside from we three, only one other table was occupied. As I looked around I saw two people sitting at the table, a professorial-type man with unruly grey hair and a strikingly composed, thin, raven-haired woman with big glasses, eating a salad.

As Peggy’s back was to the other table, I whispered to her to glance in the mirror to see the reflection of what I thought was Jackie O. Instead, she twisted her body for a full frontal look and then, in no resemblance to a stage whisper, blurted out, “It’s Jackie Kennedy!” I shrank in my seat, but Jackie didn’t bat an eyelash. A perfect example of being cool, calm and collected to what must have been a common occurrence in her lifetime.


Curb the Enthusiasm: Analysts were mostly euphoric about the level of 2010 retail holiday sales. “Americans are splurging as though it’s 2007 again”, the NY Times reported. Sales exceeded $584.3 billion, a 5.5% improvement over the prior year and well above the previous high water mark of $566.3 billion of 2007.

Happy days are here again, for retailers, especially when you consider they tightened their inventory levels. When earnings results start coming in a few weeks from now, there truly will be bells ringing happily along the corridors of commerce.

Except when one thinks longer term. The price of gasoline keeps rising. It has long been thought that for each penny gas rises in price, $1 billion is sucked out of consumer spending on non-fuel purchases. Particularly vulnerable is discretionary spending. Consumers spent lots of money self-gifting in 2010. How long they will continue to do so is linked to the price of gas and, in the Northeast, to the cost of home heating oil.


Futility Bowl: NY Football Giants fans are hoping by the end of today’s games their team will wind up in the playoffs that are the run-up to the Super Bowl. All it will take is a win over the more hapless Washington Redskins and a loss by the Green Bay Packers to the Chicago Bears.

In truth, the Giants have been engaged in playoff-type games for the last two weeks and have been found lacking. So today’s battle with the Skins has all the trimmings of a Futility Bowl. It’s a toss-up as to which team is more undeserving.

Giants fans, among whom I count myself, don’t know which team will show up today. Will it be the team that two weeks ago whipped the Philadelphia Eagles for 52 minutes, or the team that imploded during the game’s last eight minutes, allowing the Eagles to overcome a 21-point deficit and win by seven?

There’s a time-honored saying that on any given Sunday any team, even one with inferior players and coaches, can win a football game. But most respectful fans will privately admit that a Super Bowl winner should be a team that consistently achieves greatness each week. Though the occasional lapse might show up over the course of a 16-game season, consistency speaks volumes. The New Orleans Saints demonstrated that last season. Sadly, the Giants have not shown that this year, one week crushing their opponents, the next week showing devastating vulnerability. Against the Eagles the Giants showed they could play Jekyll and Hyde within the same game. The result has been a 9-6 record going into today’s regular season finale.

They don’t deserve to make the playoffs, but, like I said, I’m a Giants fan, so I’m hoping for the best. My brother Bernie, on the other hand, started out as an avid Giants fan, but in the 41 years he has lived in the Washington, DC, area, he has changed his allegiance. He’ll be at today’s game rooting for the home town Redskins. His team is mired in a decades-long slump and franchise turmoil. Here’s how the NY Times described it a few days ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/sports/football/30redskins.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=donovan%20mcnabb&st=cse

So let the better team win today. Here’s hoping that means the Giants.