Joel Gunz, Writer de Pays

How nice of you to drop by.

2009-01-11T10:06:00.000-08:00

With my complete knowledge of the English alphabet, 17,232-word vocabulary and a blackbelt in punctuation, I can add words to just about any sheet of paper you give me. Click through these titles at your leisure.

As seen at McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Odd humor

Lists from The Anvil

Creative non-fiction

This damn Hitchcock obsession

Book Reviews in The Oregonian

"Spellbound by Beauty"

Editorial Features from Vox

Commerce Magazine -- "Minority Report," a three-part series

McSweeney's List: Secure Website Authentification Questions

2009-01-10T15:05:00.000-08:00

What is your mother's maiden name?

What is your older sister's favorite Monopoly game piece?

Who did your paternal grandfather vote for in the 1956 presidential election?

Why did you choose a liberal-arts degree when your entire family urged you to go into finance?

In what year did you begin working on your novel?

How many weeks away was graduation when you dropped out of college?

What was your score on the civil-service employment exam?

Where were you sitting when your girlfriend told you she was pregnant?

Where did you never end up going for your honeymoon?

In what year did you begin working for the post office?

What is the name of the hedge-fund manager your ex-wife married?

How many hours did it take you to drink that bottle of Jack Daniel's yesterday?

What time was it when, in a drunken rage, you threw your novel into the fire?

If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?

Book Review: Digging the Dirt on Hitchcock Leaves the Author Vulnerable

2008-11-30T11:06:00.000-08:00

Ingrid Bergman. Kim Novak. Grace Kelly. These legendary screen stars and others owe their immortality in no small part to a rather unlikely impresario: the obese, deeply phobic son of a Cockney greengrocer, Alfred Hitchcock. While other directors accentuated the curves and smoldering sensuality of their leading ladies, Hitchcock iced things down, straightjacketing his beauties into demure pencil skirts and creating that countervailing Hollywood icon: the cool Hitchcock blonde.

Those relationships are examined in Hitchcock expert Donald Spoto’s third book about the director, “Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies.”

Part biography, part analysis, this book covers almost the entire sweep of Hitchcock’s career, beginning with his early days in Britain’s silent film industry and ending – except for a brief coda covering his final decade – in 1964. Spoto focuses on the director’s professional collaboration and personal relationships with these women, adding behind-the-scenes insight into how Hitchcock elicited some of the screen’s most memorable performances. In his foreword, Spoto promises to tell a tale of “Hitchcock’s sadistic behavior and his occasional public humiliation of actresses” and later cites as an example an occasion when the director slapped Joan Fontaine in order to induce tears for an emotional scene in Rebecca.

But it’s in the book’s final three chapters where he delivers on that promise in full detail.

It has long been known that Hitchcock made a series of improper sexual advances toward Tippi Hedren, star of The Birds and Marnie – leading to a bitter falling-out – but Hedren has never gone on record to describe those events in any detail. This book fills in those gaps and a picture emerges of an excruciatingly painful and embarrassing time for her.

That episode aside, separating fact from the author’s scornful language, inflated with innuendo, is, at times, difficult. Take, for example, the above-mentioned slap: it had been delivered at Fontaine’s own request, yet Spoto uses it to demonstrate that Hitchcock had created an unpleasant atmosphere on the set.

Clearly, Hitchcock had his obsessions and weaknesses; over his half-century-long career he developed crushes on one or another of his leading ladies. Still, most of the actresses with whom he worked spoke fondly of their experiences with him. Spoto minimizes and dismisses that part of the story – even as he complains that Hitchcock partisans would “ignore or minimize” the “pain for which he was responsible.”

As a researcher and film scholar, Donald Spoto has few peers. His strength lies in his expert insights into Hitchcock’s films. With “Spellbound by Beauty”, however, his attempt to peer into the personality of Alfred Hitchcock the man reveals more about the biographer’s biases and character tics than it does those of the Master of the Suspense.

New Food Review: Stagg Chili's Classic Chili With Beans

2007-07-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

Originally appeared in "New Food Reviews" on McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

Safeway has it on sale this month: 10 cans for $10. I consider simply getting five for $5 or even one for $1. They'll let you do that at Safeway. Instead, I put the Tofutti Cuties back in the freezer and load up on the full 10. In the pot, Stagg Chili's Classic Chili With Beans retains the shape of the can—a monolith of beans and rust-colored gravy that looks suspiciously like dog food—until I demolish it with my spoon. I am reminded of The Electric Company's cartoon parody of the giant black slab from 2001: A Space Odyssey. An hour later I come down with a fierce gas attack. One down, nine to go.

Stagg Chili's Classic Chili With Beans

2007-07-15T23:38:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in "New Food Reviews" on McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Safeway has it on sale this month: 10 cans for $10. I consider simply getting five for $5 or even one for $1. They'll let you do that at Safeway. Instead, I put the Tofutti Cuties back in the freezer and load up on the full 10. In the pot, Stagg Chili's Classic Chili With Beans retains the shape of the can—a monolith of beans and rust-colored gravy that looks suspiciously like dog food—until I demolish it with my spoon. I am reminded of The Electric Company's cartoon parody of the giant black slab from 2001: A Space Odyssey. An hour later I come down with a fierce gas attack. One down, nine to go.

Point, Click, Counterpoint: How New Media is Changing the Way Politics are Made

2007-07-15T01:08:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Gunz Communications
Originally appeared in Vox

Other than acknowledging YouTube's preeminence in the digital landscape, the recent presidential debates on YouTube didn't exactly put the New in New Media.

In response, The New York Times ran a series of op-ed pieces penned by media gurus describing a genuine New Media debate. Their suggestions ranged from the practical to the silly to the Orwellian. Here are a few:

"The audience should be given a share of the stage with the debate moderator. The millions of voters watching the debate could interrupt, in real time, from the comfort of their homes to help hold the candidates accountable for their answers. If people thought Hillary Clinton did not answer a question thoroughly, they could text on their cell phones, call the toll-free number on the screen, or vote online to register their dissatisfaction." - "The People's Court" by David All, Republican campaign consultant.

"Each debate would have a live audience and Webcast. [All] debates would be stored, open to the public, and licensed with simple software tools so that citizens could easily rewatch, remix and share. An ambitious blogger could create "Democrats on immigration," splicing into one online video the smartest, funniest, most provocative statements from the debates." - "Time of Their Lives" by Zephyr Teachout, director of online organizing for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign.

"Imagine if presidential debates were not one-night-on-a-stage affairs, but always on. By wearing [personal webcams that always transmit data], candidates would embed themselves in the Internet 24/7. The hard questions that inevitably arise from daily interactions with staff members, reporters and the public would provoke "answers" that could be stored, parsed and double-checked by citizen debaters. It would provide us with what television debates promised but never delivered: a way to discern the knowledge, intentions and character of a potential president." "Keep 'Em Coming" by Kevin Kelly, Editor-at-Large, Wired magazine.

Web 2.0 isn't only about "virtual worlds" and consumer-created content. What's truly new about the new Web is its capacity for a depth of engagement that has never been seen on a global scale. As emerging technology writer Steven Johnson has written, "After a half-century of technological isolation, we're finally learning new ways to connect." From syndicated blogs to online forums to the sheer volume of online video footage and other content, we can see how presidential hopefuls answer not only the canned questions, but we can also see how they act during unscripted moments.

And this matters. Because leadership isn't just about rhetorical or oratorical skills. A president's job, day in and day out, is unscripted and unrehearsed. And his or her leadership abilities need to be firmly in place whether the mic's on or off.

As Kelly, above, concluded, "Lincoln and Douglas crisscrossed Illinois 150 years ago, challenging and prodding each other in hours-long debates. Now that the networks are open, we can again demand strenuous, unscripted politics."

TV has long been accused of creating public discourse that favors style over substance. That's not entirely true or fair to the medium. Politicians' uneasy relationship with the media centers around the near omnipresence of reporters' microphones and TV cameras. Correspondingly, public cynicism toward elected officials has increased precisely because television exposes the substance of the political process.

And Web 2.0 is pushing media ubiquity to the nth degree.

Microphones, cell-phone videos and webcams are now putting public figures under a near 24/7 spotlight. Under this kind of scrutiny, there isn't a presidential hopeful alive who will not emerge from this election unscathed. Cobble together enough video footage and even the articulate and hyper-controlled Hillary Clinton can be made to look like a dimwit. You can bet that Barak's supporters are working on that right now, not to mention video junkies within the Republican camp.

Maybe that's not so bad. Amid this chaos also lies the increased likelihood that citizens will be treated to a well-rounded, coherent picture of the candidates - warts and all. And that's progress.

The always-on capabilities of cheap recording devices and Web video are facilitating the logical next step for democracy. Over the next year and a half, each candidate will be found to be smart in some ways and really dumb in other ways. We'll see the candidates - and those who end up occupying the White House - for what they truly are: humans just like you and me.

New Food Review: Coke and Milk

2007-06-17T15:22:00.000-07:00

Originally appeared in "New Food Reviews" on McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Shirley drank this when she was depressed. Or was it Laverne? Pour one part Coke into half a glass of milk. Stir lightly and watch the puffy white cumulus clouds of milk deliquesce into a beige ready-to-drink nimbus. Enjoy. I haven't thought of Coke and milk for years, and then my friend Aimee got to talking about that movie Best in Show, which has the guy who played Lenny from Laverne & Shirley in it, which made me think, "I should pour myself an ice-cold glass of Coke and milk." I remember liking the concoction, and being at an age when I took pleasure in eating (or drinking) foods that other people thought were weird. I think the age was 13. It tasted like cream soda, except that the "cream" was 2 percent milk, and the "soda" was Coke. Sort of a motherly hug of milk followed by a fatherly smack of Classic (before they called it that) Coke.

Minority Report -- Riding the Pipeline: What Two Groups are doing to Create the Next Generation of Women and Minority Leaders

2007-06-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in Commerce Magazine, December 2006

Part three in a three-part series.

When Harvard President Lawrence Summers questioned the innate potential of women to succeed in math and science, a debate erupted regarding women and minorities that hadn't been heard in decades. Think of the fallout from comedian Bill Cosby's speech calling African-Americans to task for not taking more responsibility for their economic plight, throw in last spring's protests from the Hispanic community over President Bush's proposed immigration reforms, and this much attention hasn’t been paid to minorities since, perhaps, the Sixties.

As far as the Northwest is concerned, such activity underscores the feeling of many that Oregon's professional workplace is still largely a white man's world. True, the door to the Executive Suite is open to all, but once women and minorities enter those quarters, they may not always feel that they are being treated as equals. Such prejudice will likely not be articulated; well-meaning white individuals might even insist that it isn't there. But women, blacks, Hispanics and others often find that they have to work harder to earn equal respect. Comments may be made behind their back. To these individuals, entering such a climate on a daily basis can be daunting.

Add in layers of negative cultural and social perceptions that linger among some women and minority groups, and that's a recipe for under-representation.

Diversity is an issue that everyone must confront. Oregon's economy depends on it. Each time an Oregon company fails to win a federal General Services Administration contract because it didn't meet diversity benchmarks, more job opportunities go to another state. All Oregonians, regardless of their gender or ethnic background feel that pinch.

Terri Fiez, Oregon State University Professor and Director of its School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, suggests that the solution begins with the individual.

When it comes to being a woman or a minority engineer, Fiez says, "It isn't easy. You have a choice: you can be a leader, or not. You have to have the same qualities as any leader, even if you're just starting out." According to Fiez, such minority leaders are defined by a certain set of characteristicsthe drive to put out consistently solid work. She adds, "You must have the ability to reach out to others to create community, because they won't always reach out to you. Just like any leader, you must be especially kind to others, even if they aren't kind to you."

Of course, such leadership qualities don't come about by accident. They must be cultivated from youth.

OSU senior Meghaan Smith is pursuing her PhD in chemical engineering. She reached out for this career because others encouraged her to see herself as an engineer. Says Smith, "My mom directed me that way after she became interested in engineering. She saw those same qualities in me and encouraged me to go for it."

Smith is President of the local chapter of Society of Women Engineers and recently finished a summer internship cosponsored by MIT and Harvard University. Nevertheless, in spite of her accomplishments, she still faces challenges that males don't. "It's a little intimidating to get into class and see that I am the only woman. I feel that I stand out because I'm a woman. I've had guys say things like, "I would have gotten that award or scholarship, but they had to give it to a female."

For Smith, much of her support comes from her family. Others, however, don't have that resource.

Urban black youths may be caught in a cycle of poverty that militates against getting a college education. Cultural antipathies toward a career in the sciences cause some blacks to feel that such a choice is a racial sellout.

Other systemic conditions make it difficult for minorities. North Portland's Jefferson High School, which serves a large portion of that city's black students, has long struggled to provide a consistent academic program, and each year turns out graduates ill-prepared for the rigors of, say, a university engineering program.

Hispanic students likewise have their own challenges. Language barriers often inhibit their parents from engaging in the school system, and a college campus is virtually terra incognita for them; and their children are often left to fend for themselves. If they have recently immigrated to the United States; their relatives may not understand how difficult it can be to succeed in college while continuing to work the family business.

Such youths need outside help if they are to take up the challenge of pursuing a professional career. As it turns out, various agencies have been cruising along under the radar, guiding kids toward just such a goal.

Each year, Portland-based non-profit Self Enhancement, Inc., which is "dedicated to guiding underserved youth to realize their full potential," coaches some 2000 youths, aged 8-25—most of whom are minorities living at or below the poverty line—to choose a better path.

Following a year-round program, SEI provides mentoring, tutoring, peer group support and elective classes to help kids with their homework and to develop life and leadership skills. Many of these kids come from highly unstable homes, and SEI offers them consistency, even taking on the role of additional parent, if need be, putting these youths on a healthy academic track as early as second grade—and keeping them there well into their college years.

And the results are truly astounding. 98 percent of these students will graduate from high school (compared with 48 percent among their peers who do not join SEI) and fully 85 percent of those high school graduates will go on to college. Many of these kids are the first ones in their family to earn a college degree.

Alumni are encouraged to pick up the SEI torch themselves, paying their lessons forward to a new generation of minority and poor youths. Take Siyonna White Webb, for example. Webb joined SEI at age 12 and, with its help, became the first person in her extended family to finish high school. Then she went on to Portland State University with the aid of a full scholarship. She recently graduated with a degree in criminal justice, and now she plans to work with Portland-area youths in crime prevention.

SEI's work is not new. In fact, the organization celebrated its 25th anniversary last August.
SEI has provided minority youths with the extra push they often need to get out and succeed. Other organizations at the other end of the educational pipeline are pulling such students through the system to get on a professional career track.

That's what Oregon State University's Ellen Momsen has been doing for the past three years. As Director of its Women and Minorities in Engineering program, Momsen's job is to seek out such candidates from among elementary and high schools, get them to consider a career in engineering, and help them fit in once they have made the commitment.

The fact that the WME program is funded entirely by grants and gifts from industry sponsors indicates that such a program is a priority for corporations. With that financial support, the WME program has created nearly three dozen paid research positions for its core students; it has also hosted engineering classes for middle school students and held high school career counselor workshops. The heart of WME, however, is its Ambassador program.

Following what Momsen calls a "near-peer" approach, student ambassadors—usually undergraduates who are themselves female and/or have a minority background—visit high schools throughout Oregon, working to overcome the negative perception that engineers sit in Dilbert-style cubicles all day devising new technologies to enrich the white male establishment—a scenario that turns women and minorities off.

Along the way, these Ambassadors help science teachers answer the perennial students' question: "when will I ever use this?" while modeling the fact that engineering is a legitimate option for minorities.

Plus, these Ambassadors make a career in engineering look cool.

They share their experiences with high school students about their trips to foreign countries. Dispelling the notion that they hang out in their dorm rooms practicing calculus, they talk about their experiences as athletes and cheerleaders and as members of garage bands. These young engineers literally rock.

Momsen's WME Ambassador Program is very much in line with sociologist Richard Florida's description of the "computer geek" as a recently evolved pop-culture hero. Florida's's 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class lumps engineers and software programmers in with designers and artists as part of the creative community, with values more aligned with rock stars than pocket-protected Poindexters. He writes that this new breed of engineers is "youthfully inventive and at times youthfully rebellious, walking into a situation and wondering why it has to be that way."

Still, "the percentage of women who pursue careers in engineering is plummeting," Momsen complains. "It's dropped 10-12 percent in the last decade—particularly in computer science. A recent study showed that girls don't know much about engineering and don't want to know much."

Women and minorities are often all-too-aware of the social ills besetting today's world. Momsen's task is to help younger students see how a career in engineering can make a difference by pointing out the social relevance of engineering and the benefit it brings to mankind. It would seem that Momsen's job—connecting young women and minorities with opportunities to use science to solve real-world problems—is simple.

"It's very difficult to change perceptions and attitudes," says Momsen. "There are very entrenched stereotypes about what engineers do and what engineering is." Continues Momsen, "When I started this job three years ago, I thought that there would be a magic set of steps [to increase women and minority enrollment]. I thought, 'We're going to do this and then this and then this,' and then the problem will be solved. Well, not exactly. It's been much more difficult than I imagined it would be."

Reprinted from the December 2006 Commerce Magazine. ©Daily Journal of Commerce. All rights reserved.

Civil Rights and Uncivil Lefts – Opportunities and Challenges for Oregon's Professional Minorities

2007-06-16T09:52:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in Commerce Magazine, October 2006

Part two in three-part series.

Kevin Johnson begins our interview by asking me to let people know that isn’t his real name. He’s not trying to make my life difficult. It’s just that he isn’t interested in being pegged as anybody’s “poster child.”

Over the last 15 years, Johnson has owned several businesses, ranging from a construction services firm to a mortgage brokerage. He is now preparing to complete his MBA at Portland State University while maintaining his position as one of the top-producing commercial lenders for a regional bank. Kevin is also African-American, a detail that makes him a bit anomalous in the purportedly liberal city of Portland.

In Oregon, observers note that leaders who come from racial minority groups are few and far between. Yet, while racial tension and discrimination admittedly persist, enormous progress has been made; generally speaking, business and civic leadership roles are there for the taking by whites, Hispanics, blacks and Asians alike. So, why the disconnect between availability and actuality?

In his book Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America -- and What We Can Do About It, author Juan Williams speaks to the issue on a national scale. He cites a dearth of leadership voices from the black community urging their members to take responsibility for their own advancement. He writes, "Why is rhetoric from our current core of civil rights leaders fixated on white racism instead of on the growing power of black Americans, now at an astounding level by any historical measure, to determine their own destiny? Fifty years after Brown [v. Board of Education], much of the power to address the problems facing black people is in black hands."

Mr. Johnson (not his real name) is doing just that. Interestingly, as a precondition to being interviewed for this article, he asked to change his name on the grounds that he "does not want to be a poster child for black advancement." He is simply an ambitious adult who wants the rewards due for his hard work and intelligence, regardless of skin color.

During his time in the construction industry, contractors frequently asked Johnson to register his firm as a minority business, which would increase his chances of winning certain bids. He never did, though. He says, "I didn't need that to be successful. I didn't want anyone to perceive my success as coming from a handout."

That guiding principle – refusal to take handouts based on race – has been a constant. And Johnson is the first to admit that that has, at times, been a tough row to hoe. After he sold his construction firm in the mid-1990s, Johnson joined Smith Barney as the company's first black stockbroker in its history in Oregon. Occasionally, after speaking for weeks with a prospective client on the telephone, he would finally arrive in that person's office only to see the deal screech to a halt. Since he doesn't have a so-called "black" accent, these prospects were often surprised to find that he was black when they finally met him in person. For some, that was a deal-killer.
Still, Johnson insists that racism isn't an insurmountable obstacle to success. "Can a black man succeed in business in Portland? Yes. It does present a hurdle. You have to expect that some people will be surprised by your skin color when they meet you. And some just will not work with you. But that's a small group. Most people I've met have worked with me."

Four decades after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, minorities have more opportunities than ever. Nevertheless, Johnson says, "I'm still surprised to see how few blacks are represented in professional-level banking positions in Portland."

Why is that? The reasons are complex, and most agree that the finger cannot be pointed at any single racial or interest group. In 2004, comedian Bill Cosby gave a searing commencement speech at Brown University, calling the black community to task for not doing more to improve the situation. His comments provoked a national debate.

Johnson agrees with much of what Cosby has said. He observes a tendency among some in the black community to devalue those who want to succeed in the academic or business world. "If a black kid does well in school, other black kids will put him down. And that doesn't change once you're an adult. If you don't use the slang, you're a sellout."

Even in families where success is encouraged, racial lines can be drawn that discourage black kids from reaching out in certain ways.

"My parents raised me to be articulate and successful," says Johnson. "So it was surprising and confusing when my father criticized me for not using slang. He felt that I was being condescending to other blacks when I didn't use the accent or the lingo. There's a perception that only if you act like you're from the hood – only then are you truly black. That's stupid."
The rub is that if a black person insists on using slang or wearing hip-hop clothes, his or her chances of advancement in the job world are sharply reduced. Further, as Johnson notes, some in the black community attach a negative stigma to certain professions, such as banking or high-tech engineering, which discourages many blacks from pursuing these lucrative careers.

Today, blacks are leaders in media (Richard Parsons, head of Time Warner, Mark Whitaker, editor of Newsweek), global corporations (Kenneth Chenault of American Express, Ann Fudge of the public relations firm Young and Rubicam), and national politics (Senator Barack Obama, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice). Civil rights leadership, however, remains in the hands of older individuals, such as Jesse Jackson and Julian Bond, who made a name for themselves in the 1960s and are perceived by many as anachronisms.

In Enough, Juan Williams writes that these civic leaders don't "recognize that national politics has changed and [that] black people [and] white people, as well as Hispanics, Asians, and other immigrants, have changed. … [T]he black leadership is fighting the old battles and sending the same signals even as poor black people are stuck in a rut and falling further behind in a global economy."

Johnson takes that concept a step further, looking askance at the very notion of a civic leader who stands up to represent the black community. He says, "I think the idea of having a person speak for the whole black community is ridiculous. It presupposes that you vote a certain way, that you have a certain set of values, et cetera. I don't agree with that concept. Nobody can speak for what my opinions are."

He feels that the sort of leadership that, say, Martin Luther King, Jr. once provided is no longer needed. King and others "served a purpose. But now that kind of leadership has to come from the individual or from the parents."

Perhaps the kind of leadership that is now needed is just what Kevin Johnson is providing.
"I can sit wherever I want on the bus," He says. "I can go to any college I want, I can be a banker or anything else. I don't see myself as any different from other hardworking blacks."

Minorities in Oregon's Professional Workplace: The Employment Issue that Dares Not Speak its Name

2007-06-16T09:46:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in Commerce Magazine, September 2006

Part one in a three-part series.

It's the invisible elephant that no one wants to talk about. Four decades after the civil rights movement gained traction nationally, racial minorities and women remain underrepresented in Oregon's professional workplace. That fact is no secret. Yet, meaningful dialogue on the subject has been conspicuously absent. And nowhere does that elephant smell more than in the high tech sector.

From their education choices to their job search, Oregon's women and minority males—specifically African-Americans and Hispanics—are not exactly lining up around the block to seek careers as programmers, network engineers and the like. The result is that Oregon's high tech sector remains what it has been for many years: a predominantly white male environment.

Local companies don't necessarily like this situation any more than minorities themselves. There is a very real financial incentive for companies to hire women and minorities. Federal government General Services Administration (GSA) contracts often require companies to maintain certain minimum levels of minority employees in order to be eligible for these contracts. Lacking qualified applicants from the local population, companies have little choice but to recruit such workers from out-of-state or miss out on bidding opportunities. Either way, local minorities and women can get left behind.

Enter Terri Voshell who believes training is one key to the solution.

As President of software training firm Touchstone Technology, she has experienced first-hand what it's like to be a woman engineer in the high tech industry's predominantly male environment. And while she has observed some gender prejudice, she believes a bigger and more crucial deterrent for women and minorities is their assumption that a high tech career is simply not an option that is open to them.

During the last ten years, Voshell has helped hundreds of students gain entry-level training in Linux, Red Hat, Novell and other software applications—most of them white males. Of the exceptions, she says, "there have been about two black men, one Native American man, two Asian women, and about a dozen other women."

Voshell would like to see those numbers rise. She's even willing to commit resources to help the shift, but she realizes she can't do it on her own.

The kind of outreach that she envisions almost certainly needs corporate support that was once commonplace, but that has all but disappeared, says Steve Bissell.

Now the president of a local tech training firm, Axian, Bissell recalls an earlier era when corporations, in partnership with universities, did just that. Bissell, President of tech training and development firm Axian, describes the path that many took to enter the computer industry in the early '70s. As a student at DeVry University, he saw representatives from DeVry approaching high school students one-on-one to get them excited about a career in engineering. Students who may have been drifting in school and at risk of settling for low-skill, low-paying jobs were given opportunities and resources that they may not have otherwise had. And they succeeded. Says Bissell, "One reason [DeVry] had a high percentage of graduates who landed good jobs is because they were working closely with Hewlett-Packard, GE Medical, and others to make sure they were teaching their students the subjects and skills that the hiring companies really cared about." Such strategies are now all too rare. Yet, it is here that Bissell sees a solution to the problem of minorities in the workplace.

"Companies," he says, "ought to be reaching deep into the school system to identify minority students who would make good candidates for jobs at their company—and then begin drawing them through the system to come work for them." He admits that such an approach has its obstacles. "In order to do this, companies need to be thinking six or seven years down the line. Intel recently announced huge layoffs in the IT department. It's hard to imagine that they're giving much thought to whom they will hire in several years." Perhaps. Smart IT managers and CIOs, however, are even now drawing up succession plans to aid the transition of knowledge and skills to the next generation of employees. Those plans have a special urgency right now.
According to the Oregon Department of Employment, for at least the next four years, the 45-to-64 age group will grow faster than the 25-to-44 age group; over the next ten years, that aging group will be reducing its workload and retiring. This presents an opportunity now for minorities and women to fill jobs that will soon be vacated by those oldsters.

In order for that to happen, however, a dialogue needs to be opened up to candidly discuss these issues. And that is easier said than done.

After all, whites don't necessarily have a personal stake in the subject; conversely, fearing that they will be marginalized as activists or radicals, minority workers hesitate to speak up. Then again, the discussion itself is a minefield that could easily threaten politically correct sensibilities. After all, proposed solutions often center on such reverse discrimination tactics as hiring quotas and Affirmative Action—solutions that whites and minorities alike find distasteful.
Meanwhile, women and minorities continue to be left behind for the best high tech jobs in Oregon. And the state's economy is the worse off for it.

Reprinted from the September 2006 Commerce Magazine. ©Daily Journal of Commerce. All rights reserved.

Beer Story

2007-06-16T09:43:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in the The Anvil

When I was about five, my stepfather began the decade-and-a-half long process of teaching me how to drink beer. At first, he taught by example. On Sunday nights, as the family settled into the 7:00 ritual of the wildlife TV series Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, Dad would cradle a can of Olympia in his left hand and pry back its tab, bending the aluminum slip into the shape of a cat's tongue.

His drinking technique was methodical and efficient—the work of a US Postal Service veteran. Hoisting the can with the precision and economy, he would balance its rim on his lower lip and let the hay-colored liquid pour neatly into the cavity of his throat. To Dad, backwash was about as alien to his mouth as Swahili.

If he drank the beer from a glass, he would let me take a sip of the foam. Then I would plop down on the floor next to my sisters, resting on the tripod formed by my elbows and chest, to watch Marlin Perkins send his assistant Jim into one absurdly dangerous situation after another. I always wondered how the cameraman got there first and why he never got any credit for it. Perkins’ soothing voice allowed me ample opportunity to let my mind wander and to observe the thin aureole of foam that would cling to my Dad’s upper lip until he licked it away with a move as furtive and quick as a reptile’s.

Some years after that, Dad allowed me to have my own glass. By this time, he had upgraded to Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve, which was superior to the brands he previously drank because it came in a bottle. He only allowed me about an ounce of the stuff, but he poured it in such a way that the foam head was taller than the actual beer by a factor of about five to one. Still, at age 12, I felt that I was sharing a beer with him, which was cool. Taking the tiniest of siplets, I would nurse that spoonful of beer through the course of an entire dinner, or The Donny and Marie Show.

I had a rather conservative upbringing, my stepfather’s careful regulation of my beer consumption notwithstanding. Our friends, the Harrisons, on the other hand, were much more libertine—a point which I brought up at key moments, such as when I was trying to get permission to do something they would not normally allow me to do. They had two boys about my age, Tim and Rich, who owned motocross bikes, had TVs in their rooms, and were allowed to fart audibly in the house. I wasn’t even allowed to say the word “fart”.

Carl, their father, was a “pull my finger” kind of guy, a self-taught master mechanic who could jerry-rig just about anything that involved steel, grease and internal combustion. He drank Rainier, Hamm’s, Pabst, and Olympia. Actually, he drank whatever was on sale. By the case. And he allowed his boys easily twice as much beer as I got at any age. Our families often went camping together. We’d stay up all hours of the night while the parents crammed around the kitchenette table of the Harrisons’ trailer playing pinochle. Or we’d watch Carl pull out his guitar and try to fake his way through the Buck Owens songbook. I'll never forget the sea of beer cans and bottles lolling around the floor of the camper like dazed armadillos while Carl picked out the chords to “Crazy Arms.” Finally, Tim and Rich and I would sneak out to the woods, or to our tent to debate the virtues of bike parts that they were considering buying (and that I definitely was not); or about the mechanics of sex. Sometimes they would complain that their Dad drank too much. Some years later, Carl came to that conclusion himself, and he hasn’t lifted a bottle since then.

My stepfather continues to have a bottle or two every day. Although he now drinks microbrews—or at least, macrobrews that have a more opaque color and bear labels apparently designed by ex-hippies—his drinking habits remain the same. Each day’s intake—each swallow, in fact—is as precisely measured as the 35 years that he gave the Postal Service. Myself, I like beer, but I can take it or leave it. Maybe that’s because I feel that it is best consumed in accompaniment to the throaty intonations of the host of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

Kodachrome Dreams

2007-06-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in The Anvil

I
When I feel the need to get out of the city or out of my house or just plain out of my head, I drive about 15 minutes east of Portland into the Columbia River Gorge. Avoiding the asphalt chute of Interstate-84, an Eisenhower-era highway project that blasts along the shore of the river, I follow instead the World War I era Old Columbia River Highway—a route that necessitates slower driving and affords more opportunities for contemplation.

Oregon’s license plates once advertised the state as a Pacific Wonderland. This is due in part to the Gorge and its mist-tufted cliffs, hidden ravines and moss and lichen-bearded basalt gullies. An elf could step out from behind a fern and you wouldn't be surprised.

I have recently gone up the river about half a dozen times, and this has nothing to do with my recent divorce. Nothing at all. Still, a recent Sunday seemed like a good day for a return trip. I had no idea where I was headed, exactly. So I decided to wander. We had just had a winter snowstorm—a weather event that left patches of hardened snow in the shadows of the pine trees and great icy mounds built up by snowplows that looked like they could hold out until April. Meanwhile, fresh moss and new grass were already emerging. I’ve always had a preference for that tail-end time when the winter snows begin to depart reluctantly, like children leaving a party.

II
When I was about 17, I wrote a poem that illustrated the point in a youth’s life when he is suspended, as it were, between childhood and adolescence:

TWELVE
Big boys with
imaginary playmates
of the month
tacked to their bedroom walls
and fold-outs of Spiderman.

Under the bed
toy guns
and other hidden clutter.

I guessed I’ve always been fascinated by that period of oscillation when one thing becomes another. The cinematic dissolve when one scene fades into the next. Winter yielding the right-of-way to spring. A boy collecting toy guns and lethal ideas.

III
It’s not that I’m suicidal or anything, but when your marriage is breaking up, you think a lot of crazy thoughts. Some of them might involve death. I’d been thinking along these lines myself when I stopped at Shepperd’s Dell, a wide spot in the Old Highway that features a short, 100 yards, if that, trail. This path winds along the edge of a recess in the walls of the gorge, ending at a three-tiered waterfall. The cliff that the trail follows would have made a great jumping-off spot, and I contemplated the possibility. But I don’t really want to die. Yet, here I was, in the woods, in the snow, thinking morbid thoughts. Could hardly help but recall Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.” In my case, however, it was early afternoon. And I have promises to keep to my kids.

IV
About two years ago I discovered—or, perhaps, rediscovered, I’m not sure—the Hotel St. Francis, a small spa and hotel that you can reach by leaving the Old Highway, crossing over the river at Bridge of the Gods, and continuing eastward until you stop your car at Carson Hot Springs. It seemed that I had been there before, a long time ago, as a small child, but I'm not quite sure. Built in the 1930s, the simple wood frame building hasn’t been updated in decades, and, if you've never been there, it still gives you the impression that you have.

Somehow I ended up at Carson Hot Springs again. As I came around the final bend of the narrow road that leads to the hotel, something wasn’t right. Where there should have been dense forest and undergrowth, there was a new building under construction, its unfinished exterior walls wrapped in gaudy Tyvek insulating paper. The original bungalow cabins, one of which Jane Seymour once stayed in while filming a movie here, were gone. Described in tourist literature as “Washington’s last old-fashioned health spa,” the St. Francis was being scraped into the dustbin of history. All that remained were some bits of foundation masonry.

V
Samuel Lancaster, the Old Highway’s chief architect, supplied the lofty aesthetic rationale behind that road-building project. "There is,” he wrote, “but one Columbia River Gorge [that] God put into this comparatively short space, [with] so many beautiful waterfalls, canyons, cliffs and mountain domes." Believing that "men from all climes will wonder at its wild grandeur when once it is made accessible by this great highway," he made sure that the highway was, above all, sympathetic to its environment.

Unfortunately, those ideals proved to be untenable in the long run. The cliffside that the road traces is unstable, and in the fall and winter it is frequently buried under landslides. Some parts have had to be demolished out of concern for public safety. Its narrow lanes and switchback curves make it impractical for large trucks. Except for the handful of residents who rely on it as their only connection to the outside world, the Old Highway is given over almost exclusively to tourist traffic. It is a relic.

VI
The previously mentioned Jane Seymour movie came out in 1993. Made for cable, Praying Mantis is about a woman scarred by childhood trauma who grows up to marry a series of men, each of whom she then murders on their wedding night. One brief scene was filmed at the Hotel St. Francis. Although that cabin has been destroyed, the video in which it appears is available for purchase through Amazon.com.

VII
In one of my parents’ photo albums there is a snapshot of Grandma, my parents, my sisters and me that was taken when I was about six. It is a sunny summer day, and we are at Crown Point, a spot on the Old Highway that affords a breathtaking cliff-top view of the river, upstream and down. In this picture, the sun is beginning to hang low, edging toward the period late in the day that photographers call the Golden Hour, when colors intensify and shadows deepen and it is almost impossible to take a bad photo. The family is all there, three generations of us. I remember the blissful sense of at-one-ness I felt that day smiling for the camera, smiling on the inside and out, utterly and uncomplicatedly happy.

After my day-trip I told a friend who also frequented Carson Hot Springs that the old hotel was being torn down and replaced. There was a pause. Then he said, “It couldn’t last forever.”

Coping with Sports Illiteracy: It’s Not a Day at the Beach

2007-06-16T09:24:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in The Anvil

True story. I didn’t learn until last year that, unlike the Rose Bowl, the Super Bowl takes place in different stadiums around the country. I also don’t know how to keep a bowling score, and whenever I see the Trail Blazers on TV I still look for Bill Walton’s copper afro.

I’m sports illiterate, and it’s an inherited disorder.

When I was about 10 years old, my stepfather, Carroll, took me to my first—and last—baseball game. It was the Portland Beavers, a minor league team whose members I had never heard of, and whose win-loss record hovered around .500. We climbed the stadium stairs, while Carroll carefully compared the seat assignments on our tickets to the numbers stenciled on the backs of the bleachers. Finding our place near the top row, we sat down. As it happened, we got the entire section to ourselves, because the rest of the crowd had moved lower to take seats whose owners hadn’t shown up for the game. From our seats the players looked like bugs.

I pestered him to move lower like everyone else, but that just wasn’t his way. Maybe it was due to all those years of doing exactly what he was told day after day at the post office, but he was apparently incapable of sitting in any seat other than the one to which the lottery of scrip had assigned him.

We remained, detached as Olympic gods, watching the game from halfway between land and sky.

Maybe that’s why, like all parents who resolve to give their children a better life than they themselves had, I have never taken my seventh-grade son to a baseball game. Our family has other traditions. Instead of season tickets to the Beavers, we go to the beach. The two pastimes are not as different as you might think.

Baseball fans like to envision games like those portrayed in Kevin Costner movies and Pepsi commercials: it’s late afternoon or early evening and the sun is bending toward the horizon. The bright green and mocha colors of freshly mowed lawn and carefully raked soil are especially rich. Photographers call this the Divine Hour. In this setting, fans might ruminate on the subtle mathematics of wind speed, velocity, trajectory and chaos theory.

These aficionados may insist that there is no better way to spend a spring, summer or fall afternoon than at the baseball field, awash in the constant white noise of the spectators. The poets among them say that if you close your eyes and listen, you just might hear the voices of all the people you’ve ever known.

Sure.

Well, I’m a kind of poet, too. Not unlike baseball fans, I can spend an afternoon contemplating mathematics, mine just concentrate on the formulas that guide oceans of saltwater to a preordained tide line, obedient as an Australian Shepherd. Sitting on a rock watching the tide roll in and the sun sink into the ocean, I can imagine that I’m Descartes, conceiving of the universe as an exquisitely chaotic clockwork. I can listen to its white noise, a sonic wash so complete that if you close your eyes you can pick out every sound you’ve heard in your life.

A few years before he retired, Carroll—who once received a Medal of Service award because he hadn’t missed a day of work in something like 25 years—called in sick, though he was healthy as a race horse. I wouldn’t have been more shocked if he had decided to sport a green Mohawk. I awoke to the aroma of Mom sautéing bacon, onions, corn, clams and halibut. That morning, he’d decided that we should spend a day at the beach.

After dressing, I helped load the car with blankets and extra coats. As Mom simmered the mixture in fresh milk and clam juice, Carroll loaded the cooler with ice, beer, pop and snacks. An hour’s drive later, the midday sun was dazzling as we sat in the sand and ate our seafood chowder, occasionally picking grains of sand off our tongues.

Afterward, we gathered driftwood for a fire. The smell of smoke and burning kelp mixed with the salt air and further helpings of Mom’s thin-but-flavorful stew. My stepfather got this spectator sport just right. Front row seats, even.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing my son a disservice by not taking him to baseball games and car shows, by not owning a TV or Playstation. Like my stepfather, who isolated us in the nosebleed section of PGE Park, I’ve cloistered Max away from experiences common to most other children in America, all because my philosophy to avoid mainstream entertainment is as strict, perhaps, as Carroll’s own conservative work ethic.

Because of that, the social Esperanto required to easily get a date for the prom—or, when gets older, I fear, to make chit-chat with customers on a salesroom floor—is about as foreign to Max as Sanskrit. Instead, I buy him books. We watch movies with subtitles. He’s more familiar with the Saturday morning lineup on NPR than he is with the Cartoon Channel.

Still, when Max visits his friends he watches “Spongebob Squarepants.” The difference is, he’s watching it by choice—not reflex. So I console myself with the notion that, in spite of my best efforts, he’s going to be just fine.

And we take trips to the coast, where we observe the beauty of a wave folding over itself with the grace of a baseball pitcher’s wrist, pounding the sand with a noise as true and as satisfying as the crack of seasoned hickory against a hardened leather ball.

Coke and Milk

2007-06-16T09:18:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in "New Food Reviews" on McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Shirley drank this when she was depressed. Or was it Laverne? Pour one part Coke into half a glass of milk. Stir lightly and watch the puffy white cumulus clouds of milk deliquesce into a beige ready-to-drink nimbus. Enjoy. I haven't thought of Coke and milk for years, and then my friend Aimee got to talking about that movie Best in Show, which has the guy who played Lenny from Laverne & Shirley in it, which made me think, "I should pour myself an ice-cold glass of Coke and milk." I remember liking the concoction, and being at an age when I took pleasure in eating (or drinking) foods that other people thought were weird. I think the age was 13. It tasted like cream soda, except that the "cream" was 2 percent milk, and the "soda" was Coke. Sort of a motherly hug of milk followed by a fatherly smack of Classic (before they called it that) Coke.

Vision Statement for Me: A Model of Getting

2007-06-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in The Anvil

I, Joel Gunz, envision myself as a debt-free adult who values honesty, integrity and no-expiry 2-for-1 coupons. As a Portuguese-American professional with an acquired taste for dark-roasted Ethiopian Yrgacheffe coffee, I shall serve my community by dispensing advice that is liberally salted with anecdotes from my life experience and by making ironic references to my failed relationships. I will quote passages from Charles Bukowski, some of whose work I will soon read.

My identity will be framed by a commitment to avoiding eye contact while describing my latest interactive marketing venture, which will give my listeners the general sense that I am both successful and modest. Likewise, my ownership of a clean, yet not-quite-perfect, 1972 BMW 2002 will lead acquaintances to conclude that I am financially secure, yet unpretentious.

With a full tank of gas in my car, two weeks' worth of boxer briefs and a prudent reserve of cash in an interest-bearing bank account, I see myself hitting the road to gather new, exciting and fulfilling experiences the way some people collect cereal boxes. For example, I may visit a Tibetan monastery. The monks may so impress me with all their meditation and peace and whatnot that I will arrange to meet the head monk in order to set up all-inclusive package trips to their monastery, enabling real estate brokers, Web developers and others to seek enlightenment. Scholarships will be available for documentary film producers and tenured professors from small East Coast liberal arts colleges. I envision receiving a percentage of the profits from the sale of these vacation packages, as well as a portion of the gift shop's revenue stream, which, I envision, will offer Buddha-embroidered golf shirts and so forth at a 400-500 percent markup.

My Five-Year Vision
Since one of my core values is to "think global/act local," before five years have elapsed I will have begun to value and cultivate the productive capabilities of those in my community, like Ignacio and Pedro, who live in the Winnebago behind Wal-Mart. I may hire them to help me during the harvest season when the Pinot Noir grapes in my vineyard will have reached maturity.

Which reminds me. By 2010 I envision owning a 12,000-square-foot craftsman-style house overlooking a vineyard in Yamhill Valley. A model of sustainability, this house will be built entirely out of wood reclaimed from Harry and David gift boxes and nails fashioned from discarded Hot Wheels. Its construction will be financed from the royalties earned by my novel about a detective named Newt Bronson, a salamander who is amphibiously at home in the "dry" world of law enforcement as well as the "moist" subterranean underworld. It will be a best seller.

In five years my pantry will be filled with a collection of the world's greatest sea salts.
I will invest my talents and resources for the betterment of others. A community of like-minded folk may drop by my house every other Thursday. We will sit in my Mission-style furniture and enjoy a bottle or two of Chateau Gunz. This enlightened assemblage of Seekers will talk about God, the perception of reality and the absurdity of their ex-spouses' demands for alimony. And then, after first bussing the dishes into the kitchen, they will leave.

Within half -a decade, my wife, whom I will meet at a writers' retreat on one of the Puget Sound islands, will have her e-commerce website up and running. The Plastiform bathroom appliqués that she designs, and which are manufactured by Ignacio's nieces and nephews, will be distributed across the Americas and Europe.
In five years, I envision myself in the kitchen. I will put my chocolate croissant down on the antique butcher block and look into the solarium at my wife, secretly watching as she bends over her design table, the morning sunlight filtering through her chestnut hair. She will catch my gaze and then begin to explain patiently, for the umpteenth time, that she needs to find a mail-order fulfillment company that will send its delivery truck to pick up her appliqués at Ignacio's trailer, instead of trundling all the way up to our house to get them because the diesel fumes give her migraines. I will love her use of the word "trundling," and the way she says it, as if she were hiding a marble under her tongue. I will smile, because I know that she always makes the wisest decisions in these matters. I will then return to work on my current novel, which, as I envision it, will become the voice of the 21 st century.

Footnote Manifesto

2007-06-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in The Anvil

When I write a research-intensive article, many wonderful – but off-topic – factoids accumulate. I collect them in the way an elderly woman might gather stray cats to her bosom.*

*My goal is to write an essay that has a footnote-to-body ratio of 20:1. I shall create a network of footnotes, endnotes, after words, epilogues, postscripts and appendices so labyrinthine that it would take a rabbinical student or Halliburton accountant years simply to unravel them. Cliff's Notes will attempt – and fail – to simplify them. Woody Allen will parody them. These footnotes shall be so impressive that the Pulitzer Prize committee will create a new category for them, which, of course, I will win. Although only Harold Bloom will actually read my footnotes, he will demand that they be added to the curriculum of all college English syllabi.

After a Papal Bull denounces my footnotes and a sect of Shi’ites proclaims a fatwa against them, I will be forced into exile. I will be able to seek asylum only in Belize, some of the Canary Islands and Gresham. My story will become a cause célèbre while I become a sex symbol among female students who favor vintage sweaters and designer eyewear. Screen printers will emboss my visage on cheap cotton t-shirts, which they will sell from makeshift booths on college campuses. This will make it very hard for me to go out in public. They – the aforementioned female students – will create blogs demanding my amnesty and will write anonymous letters to their congressmen, signing their name “PS”.

Merriam-Webster will officially recognize the asterisk as the 27th letter. That standup comic who makes all those punctuation sounds with his mouth will finally have some new material. He will make a comeback and we will meet on the Conan O’Brien Show. After ceding to me their right to digress, Umberto Eco, Al Gore and the heirs of Winston Churchill will change careers en masse and take up tap dancing. Typographers will love to hate me. Nicholson Baker will be my official biographer. We will meet on a bench in Central Park and I will dictate my life story to him while eating a bialy. You might find Waldo in my footnotes. In my honor, Quizno’s will create a “Footnote Long Hot Dog” in which the meat will extend three feet beyond the bun.

When I create this magnum opus, my work here at a tiny little division of Hallmark Cards will be done.

Gunz Metrics Releases State of the Craigslist Singles 2006

2007-06-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in The Anvil

72 percent of women seeking men on Craigslist express a desire to "conversate," and 34 percent argue with their cats twice per week. These and other statistics are revealed in Gunz Metrics' new report, State of the Craigslist Singles 2006.

The objective of the survey was to find a height-weight proportionate (HWP) female for friendship and possibly more. Eligible respondents were restricted to college-educated females with a thorough knowledge of French New Wave cinema, 36C bust line (or larger)1 and at least one toe ring. Further, candidates were eliminated from participation based on membership in the National Republican Party, ability to line dance/do the Electric Slide, and/or preference for White Zinfandel.

Although some subjects changed their identities -- sometimes as many as three times -- in order to make it through the screening process,2 it was concluded that approximately 212 separate women participated in the study. 3

Activity was measured in three areas: Click-through (CT) rates, engagement in the Craigslist Relationship Management (CRM) cycle and, of course, closed transactions. Interviews were conducted by email, on the telephone and at the lounge at the Red Lion Airport hotel.

Subject Line
It was determined that phrasing the subject line of the ad as a question rather than as a declaration produced the best results. Hence, "Do you read Fortean Times? Are you a good kisser?" (12 percent click-through) yielded better results than "You be the showgirl. I'll be Sinatra." (6.3 percent CT). "Want to come upstairs and see my tattoo?" (15.8 percent CT) pulled better than "Blah blah blah smart blah sexy" (.3 percent CT). "Why lie? I just wanna get laid!" netted a high number of results (62 percent) from women who "live in Gresham," are "420 friendly" and "looking for a generous man." By far, however, the subject line "Why are all the smart girls chubby?" pulled the strongest CT rate (93 percent). The "chubby" ad also produced the most emotional responses, forcing one researcher to move to Longview, Washington and change his name.

Age
Curiously, the younger the advertiser, the older the respondents tended to be. Hence, on average, a 23-year-old male could expect to see his inbox filled with responses from 37-year-old women. Conversely, if the ad stated that the poster was 42, the average age of female respondents was 22. Gunz Metrics dubbed this the "looking for daddy/let me be your mommy" effect.

Content
Researchers also experimented with various content styles and formats, such as a resume style ad with a Romantic Objective, a chronological, bullet-pointed sexual history, and names and telephone numbers of previous romantic partners. Gunz advises against that. Tax statements, health records and proof of divorce were likewise not very helpful. Surprisingly, photos were also a liability. It made no difference whether the researcher posted a picture of his face or his Speedo trunks. CTs held steady at zero percent.

Close Rate
Researchers have not yet closed any transactions, and the honeymoon suite at the Red Lion went largely unused,4 although "closure" was swift and consistent -- and often accompanied by a restraining order (11 percent, obtained by the researchers; 43% obtained by the respondents). After meeting the researchers at the lounge, most respondents (89 percent) excused themselves from the conversation, on average, within seven minutes. Thus, this study indicates that women who meet men via Craigslist almost never finish their margaritas.

Conclusion
What's the takeaway from State of the Craiglist Singles? Researchers are still determining that. You can find them locked in their bedroom at their mother's house preparing a similar study with regard to MSN Chat.5

1 While photographic proof of these eligibility requirements was not required, 17 percent of applicants volunteered such evidence; 62 percent of that group cropped their face out of the picture and 22 percent digitally obscured their face.

2 Chloe/Adrienne/KittyLuvr, you know who you are.

3 It was impossible to determine the exact number of participants. This was due to infiltration from ex-girlfriends, National Security Agency operatives and at least one transvestite.

4 In-room video rental statistics were not considered within the scope of the study.

5 Yolanda -- if you're reading this, I still have that mix tape I promised you! I've tried calling you 327 times, but your phone seems to be disconnected.

The State of Craigslist Singles

2007-06-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in The Anvil

Getting the Last Word in: How Hitchcock’s Endings Tell Us More about Ourselves Than We Want to Admit

2007-06-15T00:45:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in The Anvil

When I was about 13, a friend and I snuck into The Exorcist. Of course, it was a given that my parents wouldn’t allow me to see it. Feeling guilty and a bit ill, I walked out. Three times.[1]

The reasons for ditching the movie are obvious: I could only take so much airborne pea soup. The reason I went back in is that I like to finish what I start, which also helps explain why I like Alfred Hitchcock movies. He was a master at finishing his movies just so.[2]

That said, Hitch’s films tend to end rather abruptly. Take North by Northwest, for example. Within 30 seconds the bad guy is caught and the hero and heroine are locomoting into an oh-so-Freudian tunnel as the movie fades to black.

But – what a perfect ending! In that half a minute, several plot points are resolved: The authorities arrive to save the day; the microfilm is retrieved; the evil arch villain is captured and his murderous henchman killed; the leading man gets his woman gets saved, and gets married; and much, much more.
Similarly, Frenzy ends the instant the necktie strangler is caught, closing with the line: "Mr. Rusk – you're not wearing your tie."

Perversely, Vertigo has no ending. Hitch shot a concluding scene for the film, but it never made the final cut. As it is, the final shot portrays Scottie standing on a precipice, looking down at the fallen corpse of his beloved "Madeleine." He can’t step forward, yet he can’t go back, either. We are left hanging, with Scottie, in perpetuity.

And, speaking of perpetuity, Rope – which was shot using techniques to create the illusion that it was filmed in one perpetual take, and whose theme song is Poulenc’s “Perpetual Movement” – has my favorite Hitchcock ending. James Stewart has exposed the murderers and fires a handgun out of the window of their Manhattan apartment to signal the police. The final moments – about two minutes – are wordless and music-less. The only sound is the street noise that wafts in through the open window, each character pondering his fate.[3]

My feeling is that Rope is, in fact, one long dénouement whose climax occurs in the film's opening moments with the murder of David Kentley (Dick Hogan); and the next 80 minutes are the resolution to that act. In the spirit of the film’s many allusions to perpetual motion, Rope is like one long exhalation. Then it comes to a still, motionless end.[4]

Hitch had a somewhat uneasy relationship with his audience. As a first-rate showman he delivered glamour, thrills and humor with unequalled panache. Yet, as an artist he understood – and was perhaps chagrined by – the complacency and selfishness of his audience (and, therefore, of mankind in general). With a mixture of love, condescension and grandiosity he referred to his audience as “the public.” In less generous moments he called them “the moron masses”.

Hence, I believe that these quick exits are Hitch’s way of telling the audience: “Okay, you came, you saw, you got your thrill, now run along home.” They also help to implant the tangy aftertaste of unresolved disquiet that is characteristic of his films.[5]

Sometimes it even feels as if Hitch were giving us a swift kick on the way out the door. In Spellbound, the movie ends following the famous first person point of view shot of the villain shooting himself – which is to say, the audience – in the face. Immediately afterwards we cut to the leading couple laughing up a storm at the train station and embracing in a passionate kiss. The End. The juxtaposition of violence and glee gives this ending a dada tone as surreal as the film's earlier Salvador Dali-created dream sequence.

Characters rarely “live happily ever after” – in a complete sense – in a Hitchcock film. In the end, his movies rarely “square up” the way we expect from a Hollywood production to do. In a Hitchcock newsgroup, Ken Mogg, author of The Alfred Hitchcock Story,[6] observes:

I often think of the last line of Howard Hawks' comedy ‘Man’s Favorite Sport’ – it’s said of Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss drifting downstream in a boat – ‘They’re beyond help now’. That also applies to many Hitchcock endings involving couples – unless by ‘help’ you mean the sort offered by marriage-guidance counselors!

As a case in point, Shadow of a Doubt is about a girl nicknamed Charlie (Teresa Wright) after her uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton), a man with whom she shares a unique and profound affinity. At the beginning of the movie, both Charlies are in a state of boredom, or ennui, that, in Hitchcock’s films, is usually a prelude to mystery, conflict and, finally, enlightenment.[7]

As the movie progresses, young Charlie realizes that her uncle is the so-called Merry Widow Murderer. Because of her relationship to him, she, in a sense, shares his propensity for violence. Confirming this, in the final confrontation and ensuing struggle she apparently pushes him from a speeding train to his death.

Following a harrowing – and self-enlightening – experience such as this, you’d think that her life would change in dramatic ways. The film ends, however, with the young woman taking up a romance with one of the investigators who had been tracking her uncle. The implication is that she will settle down to an ordinary, probably banal life. We’re left wondering how much young Charlie has really changed.

For that reason, perhaps, Hitch’s introductions and conclusions are often symmetrical – like the two halves of a clamshell. Rear Window, for example, opens with a bored James Stewart laid up with a broken leg and asleep in his wheelchair – which is exactly how the movie ends, except that by then he has a second broken leg.

The implicit message is that life has now returned to normal for Stewart and his fiancée, played by Grace Kelly. Yet that normal, ordinary existence is a thin veneer over the internal conflict that the couple has yet to face now that they have confronted their (external) enemies. By film’s end they have inched closer to resolving their domestic differences.

It’s just like Hitch said: “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”

Or as Psycho's Norman Bates in observed, “We’re all in our private trap. We scratch and claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it we never budge an inch.” When you boil the drama and suspense away from Hitchcock’s films, many of them simply chronicle the trajectory of that one-inch increment.

Psycho is a rarity in the Hitch collection in that it ends with a proper dénouement.[8] All loose ends get tied up neatly (for Hitch) in two longish scenes: first, there’s a clinical analysis of Norman's mental state, followed by a last good look at the monster we've been sympathizing with for the previous hour. If Spellbound ends with a kick in the tush, Psycho ends with Hitch rubbing our nose in our hypocrisy. And he lingers in the moment.

Alfred Hitchcock believed that most people are part of what Nietzsche called “the sleeping masses.” That’s why he created nightmares. Because, following a bad dream, we wake up.

And so his movies are full of shocks. They strike areas beyond the reach of Freddy Kruger or The Blob. They jab the enemy within us. And just when they’ve pierced it, the house lights come up.

[1] I regret that I saw The Exorcist.

[2] Hitchcock obsessed over the endings to his films. Deleted footage – a rarity from a man who usually directed with a supremely sure hand – is available for some of his movies. Suspicion, Vertigo and Topaz were each prepared with alternate endings as the director juggled the demands of his stars, the front office, censors and his own artistic sensibilities. Alternate footage for Vertigo and Topaz is available on special-edition DVD versions of these films.

[3] Like hothouse flowers, the two men are isolated from normal society in many ways: their homosexual orientation, their rarified philosophies , and their ultimate act of antisocial behavior – murder. When, in the final scene, Stewart throws open the window, fresh air – and the real world– enters the pair’s claustrophobic apartment for the first time. In a soundscape worthy of John Cage we hear the sounds of traffic, rushing wind, distant voices and then the wail of approaching sirens.

[4] In their hubris, the murderers embraced a fractured interpretation of Nietzsche’s concept of the superman: by virtue of their self-styled “superior intellect,” they felt that they were among the “elite few” who had a right to commit murder. In effect, they attempted to make themselves God. It was a bid for immortality, i.e. perpetual life. In the final moments of the film, as they heard the police coming, they came to realize that they awaited not endless life, but the electric chair. And time seemed to stand still in one perpetual moment. In this way, perhaps, they did achieve endless life – but not on the terms they had been expecting.

[5] Hitchcock, a Bordeaux-phile, no doubt appreciated the stony, mildly bitter aftertaste of wines from that region, a flavor that has been dubbed “the kiss of Claret.” It’s a quality not unlike the aftertaste that follows the endings of his movies.

[6] Published by Titan Books, London, 1999

[7] In a book review published on his Hitchcock scholars’ website http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/, Mogg further comments: “Young Charlie’s state of mind in the early part of the film resembles what the philosopher Kierkegaard called ‘dread’, a state of innocence or dreaming that awakens a thirst for the prodigious and the mysterious. Later, when Charlie learns the truth about her uncle in the public library scene, the camera’s upward retreat evokes The Fall.”

[8] Of course, all of Hitch’s films end with a dénouement. But if you blink, you’ll miss it. What’s missing is the feeling of decompression or the restoration of equilibrium that accompanies a lengthier conclusion. Hitchcock consistently cheats us out of that feeling.

My Teen Obsession: How a Hitchcock Blonde Changed the Way I Look at Movies

2007-06-15T00:40:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
This article originally appeared in The Anvil as part of the promotional build-up to my multimedia presentation "How to Watch Hitchcock: An Evening Film and Philosophy."

By the time I was 17, I had seen almost every film in the Alfred Hitchcock canon. Hence, when it was announced that Vertigo (one of the last few that I had not seen) would be released in a new print in 1983, I was ecstatic. For me, this was the cinema event of the year. I had no way of knowing that it would also turn out to literally change the way I look at movies.

I was about as unprepared for Kim Novak's portrayal of "Madeleine" as Pearl Harbor was for a Kamikaze attack in 1941. "Madeleine" was everything I thought I desired in a woman at that time, in all of her glorious contradictions: timid, audacious, intelligent, sophisticated, mysterious, simple, complicated — often all in the same breath. I will never forget the devastation I shared with Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) when I suffered her loss twice in a period of about 60 minutes. Even after the movie ended and the house lights came up, I sat in stunned, slackjawed silence, my eyes fixed on the curtains covering the movie screen like a red velvet burial shroud. People stared at me as they filed out of the theater. Later, I went to a vintage shop and bought a dark three-button suit just like Ferguson's. Hey, I was 17. I'll obsess my way — you obsess yours.

Novak's performance changed how I viewed not only Hitchcock's movies, but also film in general. In the years B.V. (Before Vertigo) I was drawn to Hitchcock's films because I enjoyed his technical prowess. The very word montage — as uttered by Hitch — held an almost mystical fascination for me; its concepts were a Rosetta Stone-like key to interpreting the hieroglyphics of film imagery. Vertigo changed all that. Thanks to Ms. Novak, I was shoved headlong into an emotional abyss — one with stucco walls and a tile roof not unlike those of the film's Mission San Juan Bautista. In my psyche, Madeleine's bones remain there, twisted and sunbleached, to this day. After Vertigo I understood film's unique power as an art form to reach into one's soul and play it like an organ.

Happily, Vertigo remains a perennial screen favorite. I can count on seeing the film return to one of Portland's independent theaters about once a year. For that reason, I'm proud to say that I've never seen the movie on a television set. Nor would I want to. Kim Novak gave us a big-screen performance, and watching it on an ordinary TV screen would be like listening to Maria Callas' performance of Carmen on a clock radio. Novak's Madeleine is, ipso facto, unattainable. I'm grateful to Hitch for giving us the few images of her that exist, so that I, like other Scottie Fergusons, may sit in a darkened theater and will her, once more, back to life.

Perhaps this movie had a similar effect on you. If so -- or if you think you'd like to find out if it would -- drop by our screening. It will change the way you look at movies.

Strangers on a Train: Literary Symbols, Demigods and Much Ado about a Cigarette Lighter

2007-06-15T00:27:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Originally appeared in The Anvil

Movie critic Anthony Lane thinks that “great companions to new movies are old books.”[1] Which is why, if you spot me at, say, a Vin Diesel film, you might also see a copy of Proust tucked under my arm. I use it to divert attention away from the 40 ouncer of Colt 45 I’m trying to sneak in. James Michener works well for that, too.

By Lane’s algebra, the older the movie is, the older the book should be to go with it. Thus, Alfred Hitchcock’s vintage Strangers on a Train (1951) goes quite well with Bibliotheke, Apollodorus’ 2nd century B.C.E. guide to Greek mythology.

Strangers on a Train is about a materially privileged yet morally ordinary joe named Guy (Farley Granger) who encounters his brutish doppelganger, Bruno (Robert Walker). Make no mistake: the aptness of their names is no coincidence. Strangers' allegorical connotations would make even Aesop blush.

Guy was the sort of Ivy-League-tennis-star-dating-the-senator’s-hoochie-daughter that everyone loves to hate. And the fascinatingly squeamy Bruno wanted with all his heart to have what Guy had: physical grace, charm, and the ability to tie his own bow tie for a formal dress party.[2]

The two make a criss-cross pact to trade murders: I’ll do one for you and you do one for me. Since they are otherwise strangers, each supplies the other with a perfect alibi. Bruno keeps his promise by following Miriam (Kasey Rogers), Guy’s Inconvenient Ex-Girlfriend, into an amusement park and strangling her to death near that most funereal of carnival rides, the Tunnel of Love.[3] But when Guy backs out of the deal, which required him to murder Bruno’s father, Bruno seizes upon a plan to blackmail Guy, using the latter's personalized cigarette lighter as evidence.

And sometimes a Zippo is not just a Zippo.

That lighter—a gift from Anne (Ruth Roman), Guy’s new fiancée, engraved with his initials and a pair of crossed tennis rackets—speaks of that world of privilege while hinting at the crossed paths of the two men.[4] Cigarette aficionados point out that Guy’s lighter was made by Ronson, manufacturers of what have been dubbed “the Cadillac of lighters”. This particular Ronson lighter was an “Adonis” model. That’s a very juicy detail—and it keeps with the film’s theme of unattainable yearning after an ideal.

As the ambivalent hero of Strangers on a Train, Guy was handsome, athletic, and sophisticated. A true Adonis. But let’s not forget that, though he welched on the deal, he wanted his Inconvenient Ex-Girlfriend dead—not unlike the Greek Adonis, who maintained his own connection to the underworld. And the attempt on his life by the animalistic Bruno is reminiscent of the fate of Adonis who was likewise killed by a wild beast.[5] Just a thought.[6]

That’s why Bruno clutched that lighter like a girl with a kewpie doll at the state fair. It was his only tangible connection to Guy. And when Guy spurned him, Bruno used the lighter to frame him for murder. In Bruno’s rush to plant the lighter at the scene of the crime, he lost the thing down a storm drain. But in reality, Bruno had long since dragged Guy down into the sewer with him. When Bruno stretched with all of his being to retrieve the Adonis lighter from the gutter, it was as if, in his weird way, he was trying to seize all that Guy stood for.

To Bruno, Guy was a model of perfection, an unattainable Adonis. The best he could do was to hold a demigod’s tchotchke for a few fateful moments. Come to think of it, Bruno kind of reminds me of Tolkien’s Smeagle, who likewise fixated on a trinket. Not that I’ve actually read Lord of the Rings. Once, though, I used the novel to conceal a pastrami sandwich I'd snuck into a screening of Delicatessen.
-------------------

[1] From “A writer's life: Anthony Lane” at arts.telegraph.co.uk, filed: 14/12/2003.

[2] It helps to remember that Strangers on a Train was a novel written by Patricia Highsmith as a sort of warm-up to her classic The Talented Mr. Ripley. If you’ve seen the Matt Damon/Jude Law movie, you’ve seen a bit of Strangers.

[3] If you're wondering whether Hitchcock was indeed a Schopenhauerist who believes that one's will-to-life is simultaneously a will-to-death, this fact alone should settle it.

[4] The movie abounds with doubling and crossing images: close-ups of merging train rails crossing and uncrossing; an impressionistic portrayal of the murder scene reflected in the dual lenses of a pair of eyeglasses; chubby Hitchcock making his cameo appearance while carrying a double bass fiddle.

[5] The Greek hero Adonis was so beautiful that a dispute arose between Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, and Persephone, goddess of the underworld. Each goddess wanted to possess Adonis for themselves. Zeus settled the matter by requiring the hero to spend one third of the year with Aphrodite and one third of the year with Persephone. Adonis got to choose the goddess with whom he would spend the final four months, and he always chose Aphrodite. This arrangement continued until Adonis’ death when he was attacked by a wild boar.

[6] Don’t hold me too close to the fire on the mythological parallels here. I quit writing recondite essays long ago (around about the time I quit sucking in my gut) and only trot out the classics if I've lost a bet or it if it will help me win a drinking game.

It's the Death of Network News as We Know it: Welcome to the Heyday of News Reporting

2007-05-15T01:05:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Gunz Communications
Originally appeared in Vox

The bubble-headed bleach blonde comes on at fiveShe can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye.--Don Henley, "Dirty Laundry," 25 years ago.

Ever since that first bead of sweat spurted onto Nixon's lip in the 1962 presidential debates, media critics have been lamenting the sodapop-ization of TV and print news. According to these critics, what's at stake is U.S. citizens' rights to be reliably informed about current events. You'd think it was the end of news as we know it. In a way, it is. And, frankly, it's not a moment too soon.

At its best, TV news allows viewers to get breaking news stories instantaneously -- complete with words, sound and moving pictures. The downside, though, is that those reports are written to conform to one editorial "voice" and are delivered over a one-way medium that leaves viewers with little opportunity for response -- or challenge. When Walter Cronkite declared, "That's the way it was," he didn't leave much room for a second opinion. As a result, TV's greatest strength -- its ability to deliver a rich narrative -- is also its greatest weakness.
Likewise, what newspapers lack in terms of sound and video, they make up for by giving readers the chance to stop reading, to reflect, and to compare one news story against another. But, like TV news, it's a one-way medium. And while both of these media purport to be objective, they are actually unrelentingly subjective, reflecting the bias of the reporter or the news organization that's delivering it.

It's just as Marshall McLuhan declared. The medium is the message. That is, each communications medium possesses intrinsic attributes that shape the stories it delivers.
Pure objectivity is a grail that journalists, philosophers and Zen students have all pursued. Yet, species-wide, it seems to elude us. That's why, in the long run, Big News can only fail to satisfy. It can't fully deliver on its promise of objectivity. Nightly news might give us the facts, but its record for delivering truth is spotty.

What's more, by its very nature as a mass medium, TV isn't equipped to encourage independent thought. The Internet, on the other hand, is, perhaps, the best medium ever invented to stimulate free thinking.

With its multitude of voices, it's possible to go online and get a much richer and nuanced account of current events than a single news anchor could ever deliver. The Net may not be objective; but, with its plethora of voices, it offers an antidote to the dualistic red-versus-blue ideological trap that traditional media too often falls into.

By this measure, the Internet is the best thing that could happen to media news. It still isn't purely objective. But to describe it as simply subjective is to misunderstand how users experience the Web. To coin a phrase, it could more accurately be called a multi-jective news and commentary platform.

The current multi-jective media environment forces audiences to be skeptical and discerning about the information they choose to accept. News and commentary providers must exert themselves to earn their respect -- and monetize that content -- by delivering reportage and analysis that is intelligent and credible.

Of course, accuracy is one thing, but ideological bias is another. And traditional media is hardly immune. Because it reaches an aggregate audience, TV, print and radio must deliver content that is simmered down to an "average." As a result, consumers have a vanilla or chocolate choice of either "liberal" or "conservative" news. Again, the Net can help.

Thanks, in part, to an amazingly robust online presence established by traditional news agencies, there is now solid ground on the Web in which smaller, independent voices can operate and gain traction to offer alternative perspectives.

True, you can find plenty of lone bloggers cranking on about the "9/11 conspiracy," but you're only a mouse click away from more credible insights found at such sites as Slate or Salon. And no elected official worth its fundraising team goes without writing a blog. The days when the Internet was an out-of-control misinformation orgy have gone the way of the Wild West. The Web is maturing and we are now in a new heyday of news and public affairs.

Case in point. The current issue of Harper's magazine featured a controversial expose of Washington D.C.'s powerful lobbyists. In this article, journalist Ken Silverman went undercover to report on lobbying firm APCO's willingness to represent unsavory political interest groups to members of Congress. Powerful stuff. It was also highly charged with ethical issues. I wanted to see the backlash.

I went online and easily found Silverman's follow-up to the article at Harpers.org. That story linked to the audio transcript of the NPR phone-in show Talk of the Nation, in which Silverman and an APCO representative battled it out on the air. Pretty cool. But I hadn't had enough. From Harpers.org I clicked through to APCO's website and read the lobbyists' official response to Silverman's piece. And then I clicked over to a public relations blog that described one PR professional's reaction to Silverman's having "punk'd" (his word, not mine) the lobbying firm. I clicked to a streaming video of Silverman's PBS interview with Bill Moyers. With a few flicks of the wrist, I had an incredibly deep, 360-degree, multi-jective view of this contentious issue. And I hadn't even Googled it yet.

Walter Cronkite, eat your heart out.

Grand Theft Youth?

2006-09-15T00:45:00.000-07:00

By Joel Gunz
Gunz Communications
Originally appeared in Vox

Reports from such observers as Ralph Nader and the Christian Coalition suggest that our nation's youths have booked passage en masse on a hell-bound hand basket -- college enrollment is down, depression is up and Levis' waistbands are all over the place. Like 1930s-era mobsters, advertisers are routinely rounded up as suspects in this blame game. A quick look at the history of this issue suggests that the truth is a bit more complicated. Depending who you ask, advertisers can even be perceived as an empowering force among youths.

Flower Power
It is commonly perceived that the 1960s were the beginning of the end of childhood, a time when youths in the counter-culture tuned out to sex, drugs and "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." Ad agencies, so goes the official story, co-opted that trend in order to make a buck and push more Hush Puppies. As Thomas Frank asserted in The Conquest of Cool, however, youth-oriented advertising in the 1960s was less a co-optation of a newly perceived market segment (though there was plenty of that) as it was a celebration among ad agencies of the fresh perspective that youths were bringing to corporate culture. He notes that "even Leo Burnett, the Chicago-based celebrator of middle-American values, applauded in 1967 what he called the 'Critical Generation's' skepticism toward established values as potentially 'one of the healthiest things that ever happened to the human race."'

Such expressions were commonplace, and they indicated that youths were seen as both target market and source, if not of wisdom, at least, of inspiration. In other words, we can thank both the free market economy and the eternally young Pepsi Generation for the decline of the cultural rigidity represented by the Organization Man, ranch-style suburbs and the office cubicle.

Hop on Pop
More recently, it has been observed that young people -- even preteens -- are increasingly skeptical of advertising. A 2006 Harris Interactive study of youths aged eight through 18 reveals that less than one teen in 10 believes that advertisements tell the truth, while more than half say they often notice tricks companies use to get them to buy things. While it is true that advertisers are working harder than ever to appeal to the lucrative youth market, ther're doing so because youths are exceedingly shrewd consumers.

Thrift store chic has long been a part of youth culture, but in the past it was often associated with alternative or punk culture. Now, Value Village and Goodwill have entered the mainstream and kids are treating their wares as equal alternatives to pricey retailers like The Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch. Teens understand the value of a dollar, and thriftiness is "in." Says retail analyst Jennifer Black, kids shop at thrift stores "not because they don't have the money but because they want to save the money."

Further, today's youths are working smarter than many adults may even dream possible. In his recent bestselling book Everything Bad is Good for You, author Steven Johnson argues that reality TV and video games contribute to rather than detract from youths' mental development. For instance, one rainy day he introduced SimCity to his seven-year-old nephew. "I was concentrating on trying to revive one particularly run-down manufacturing district," Johnson writes, when his nephew piped up, "I think we need to lower our industrial tax rates." He concludes, "My nephew would be asleep in five seconds if you plopped him down in an urban studies classroom, but somehow an hour of playing SimCity taught him that high industrial tax rates can stifle development."

Johnson cites similar examples demonstrating that TV shows like The Simpsons and Survivor aren't necessarily the mental junk food some parents think they are. Such evidence is good news for advertisers, who use TV and games as marketing tools.

On the other hand, this news is also fodder for media critics, who decry the use of such tools as product placements and "branded content" as unfair or deceptive: it is sometimes difficult to tell if an advergame or other new media ad is really an ad.

What's more, not all is well among kids. Childhood obesity is on the rise, and the tactics of fast food purveyors are now being lambasted with a passion once aimed at Big Tobacco. As a result, regulatory bodies like the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) -- part of the industry-funded National Advertising Review Committee -- have set their crosshairs on Ronald McDonald. For instance, last year CARU created a new rule requiring all mealtime foods to be shown in advertising as part of a balanced meal, displaying four out of the five food groups. Pennsylvania-based interactive firm Refinery has observed that "licensed cartoon characters, advergaming and product placement in children's programming are being scrutinized, and will likely be more restricted in the near future."

What does all of this mean? Depending on how you interpret the data, it could be either the best of times or the worst of times. One thing, however, seems certain: if a teen's job is to scare the bejeezus out of his or her parents, today's youth are performing remarkably well.

Anvil List: Best Excuses to Avoid Gardening

2006-07-16T23:06:00.000-07:00

Contributors include Kent and Erica Lewis, Greg Coyle and others. Joel Gunz's contributions are highlighted in bold.

Concrete lawn doesn’t require much water or weeding.
Only got 37 Burpee catalogues this year.
Hay fever in family bloodline.
Save the environment while extending the life of your lawnmower: don’t water.
Can't see the lawn for all the beer cans.
Garden Weasel isn't the same after I got it "fixed."
I refuse to kill anything, especially aphids.
Damn terra cotta gnomes eat the strawberries when I'm not looking.
Waiting for Monsanto to create a genetically altered Hefeweizen tomato.
Used the last of the chicken wire to build a playpen.

Anvil List: Least Believable Hollywood Rumors

2006-06-16T23:24:00.000-07:00

Contributors include Kent and Erica Lewis, Greg Coyle and others. Joel Gunz's contributions are highlighted in bold.

Brad and Angelina separate to be with unattractive, boring nobodies.
Mary Steenbergen turns down role as wife/mother on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
George Lucas to direct "American Scratchiti."
Arnold Schwarzenegger trades in his HUMMER for a Honda hybrid.
Tom Cruise learns Arabic; converts to Islam.
Ben Affleck reads script before filming begins.
Vin Diesel solves Rubik's cube.
Mary Kate Olsen a regular at North's Chuck Wagon.
M. Night Shyamalan wraps production of "Barbie's Return to Fairytopia."
Death prevents Aaron Spelling from winning sweeps.

Anvil List: Most Effective Ways to Liven up a Funeral

2006-05-16T23:26:00.000-07:00

Contributors include Kent and Erica Lewis, Greg Coyle and others. Joel Gunz's contributions are highlighted in bold.

Require all attendees to wear spandex and legwarmers.
Synchronize disco lights to the sound of guests sobbing, sniffling and moaning.
Hire a professional ventriloquist to allow the deceased to give the eulogy from "beyond the grave."
Host an open casket service with someone else's body inside.
Invite Marcel Marceau to give the eulogy.
Place deceased in 40-foot casket--then EVERYONE can be a pallbearer!
Hand out air horns and giant #1 fingers at the door.
Coordinate a 21 gun salute, indoors.

Youth Marketing Flame War!

2006-02-15T01:01:00.000-08:00

by Jerry Ketel, Creative Director, Leopold Ketel & Partners
Joel Gunz, Copywriter/Creative Consultant, Gunz Communications
Originally appeared in Vox

A recent issue of Vox featured an Editor's Letter objecting to the FTC's plan to audit major food companies' youth marketing strategies with the intention of further regulating them. It stated that "public opinion is already doing what the government hopes to do," and that such actions may even be a waste of taxpayers' money. Jerry Ketel, Principal and Creative Director of Leopold Ketel and Partners, disagrees. What follows is an edited version of the email exchange. As a bonus, it contains a novel strategy to obtaining a job interview.

Joel,
The FTC should absolutely require food companies to disclose the marketing activities directed to youths. In fact, I have a hard time understanding why you are defending this industry practice without any public oversight. Obesity is the number one health problem in children today. Everywhere I go, I see chubby children snacking on fast fried food or sipping corn syrup fizz. It's no secret that marketers spend billions of dollars hustling packaged food directly to children -- precisely the audience who has the least willpower to resist such ubiquitous arm twisting.

According to the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, businesses spent $15 billion marketing products to children in 2004 and were rewarded with $200 billion in sales. The overwhelming majority is for sugary breakfast cereals, fast food, soft drinks, snacks, and candy and gum.

This alone should be enough to have the voting public protesting in the streets. And yet, you seem to be more worried about the cost of a bag of chips. Who is more important here, the profits of multinational corporations or our children?

The US food industry wields enormous influence in this country. In the book, "The Politics of Food", author Marion Nestle chronicles the behind the scenes pressure this special interest group brandishes in Washington….

This is not an industry that needs to be shielded from the scrutiny of the public interest. If anything, its power and influence need to be subjected to the spotlight, especially if it means protecting the safety and well being of our children. If this means shelling out an extra 1/10 of a cent for a bottle of Coke, I'll gladly pay it.

--Jerry

Dear Jerry,
In 2004, the federally funded Children's Advertising Review Unit -- an arm of the Better Business Bureau -- published a set of principles by which marketers should regulate themselves in relation to their youth-targeted strategies. Its seventh point states: "Although many influences affect a child's personal and social development, it remains the prime responsibility of the parents to provide guidance for children. Advertisers should contribute to this parent-child relationship in a constructive manner." (Italics mine.)

Jerry, kids are more aware of their power of choice than ever. According to a recent Harris Interactive survey, kids are increasingly skeptical about what companies tell them. In fact, less than one kid in 10 between the ages of eight and 18 believes that marketers tell them the truth, and more than half (57%) say they "often notice tricks companies use to get them to buy something." These facts are overturning the assumption that youths are innocent dupes who need federal protection from "arm-twisting" marketers.

The same principles of free market economics that enable Burger King to tout Whoppers to tweens also do a very good job of keeping those large corporations from perpetually overreaching. For instance, in their quest for elusive funding, during the 1990s, schools began responding to the marketing overtures of Coca Cola and Pepsi. Then came the public outcry against this scheme. In response, the Federal government took action with a wellness program curtailing the sales of junk food during school hours. The Beaverton School District is taking the lead in implementing these new laws. I cite this as an example of how democracy should work: The public spoke out. The government responded -- and took action to manage its own public school system.

Junk food has been around for a long time. And thanks to a deluge of news articles, books and documentaries, awareness of its ill effects has never been higher. And the market has responded. Just a few weeks ago, McDonald's joined nine major food and drink companies in vowing to promote more healthy foods and exercise in their child-oriented advertising. Last year, Kraft Foods said it would curb ads to young children for snack foods including Oreos and Kool-Aid. The food industry is correcting itself – and the government hasn't had to lift a finger or a tax dollar.

In this context, Jerry, the FTC's inquisition-like tactics appear superfluous and even draconian!
I don't believe in shielding industry from public scrutiny. From Enron to Kraft Foods, there are too many cases of abuse. And the enormous influence large corporations exert on government goes without saying. However, Tony the Tiger's influence on your family or mine cannot be regulated by even the most stringent laws. That part is up to us as parents. When I see an obese kid sitting on his butt with one hand in a bag of potato chips and the other twiddling an xBox controller, I don't ask, "Where is Uncle Sam?" I ask, "Where are Mom and Dad?"

Cheers,
Joel

Joel,
This is starting to sound like a classic debate between a New Age Libertarian and a New York Liberal. But before we digress into such a spectacle, I have chosen to dig a little deeper into the nature of the FTC request. Here's what I found. According to the independent NewsTarget, the FTC plans to ask only 50 major companies to report on their advertising and marketing practices directed to children. But what is interesting is this quote, "The information will be exempt from the Freedom of Information act, the FTC said, and all collected information will be kept confidential and will not identify specific company data on the report."

Joel, this FTC "regulation" is merely a one time effort to garner information from the food industry to access just how far 50 companies are marketing to children. It seems far less draconian than you presented in your editorial.

And now for the spectacle. Joel, you are a knee jerk, numb nuts, advertising whore who is defending our industry's worst practice, marketing to minors. Sure, everybody's doing it but I have to draw the line when it comes to pushing cigarettes, booze or unhealthy food on our children. It is wrong. Period. To ask how some of these companies are marketing to children should be part of an ongoing effort to educate parents and children on the dangers of unhealthy food. This is why the government exists, to provide social services that would not occur in the anarchy of the marketplace. To ask companies to police themselves, as you have suggested is like asking the wolves not to eat the sheep. It ain't gonna happen. And sure, kids are wary of being advertised to but they are also just as easy to be persuaded. You have kids! You know this! Tell me that your kids have never persuaded you to do something outside of your normal parental boundaries, like stopping at the McDonalds or buying Fruity Pebbles! It has happened, it does happen and guess what, we are just now realizing that we are creating a nation of unhealthy kids who will turn into a nation of unhealthy adults. The public is waking up to this realization and is creating a sea change, Joel. Wake up and smell the double tall, no whip, decaf with a splash of vanilla latte.

Regards,
Jerry

Hey Jerry -
I get the whole monster in the boardroom dilemma. Got it. Nevertheless, I invite you to join me in seeing the BIG PICTURE. Here's where I stand. Others (i.e. not us) have polluted this debate with ideological dogmatism on BOTH sides of the aisle. This climate of discourse has infected not only youth marketing, but also US Politics, the Israeli-Arab conflict and beyond. Such intellectual colonialism hinders efforts to make progress in any of these issues.

On another note, I'm not sure how you feel about bringing pro-business libertarians working into your agency, but what do you think of meeting one of these days? I've got a new portfolio. Want to see it?

Jg

Joel,
At the end of the day it all comes down to this. Being an advertising man, I feel I must hold our industry to the highest standards. There are far too many barbarians that would storm the gates of ethical standards in the name of shareholder profits. Therefore, I believe we must, as citizens, ask for accountability and oversight of public and private institutions who hold sway in our society. We, the advertising industry must ask ourselves to be watchdogs for the greater good. I believe in the notion of caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. But there is an even greater notion our society has been built on, e pluribus unum, from many, one.

Let me know when you want to come over. I'm pretty open next week.

JK