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The Tryout – Softball Edition

March 13, 2016 by bobbycalise

In February 2005 I started at my first post-college job at Petry Media Corporation in Manhattan. The sole perk of this position, besides being gainfully employed, was the company softball team.

An athletic guy who played sports all his life, I thought I’d automatically be given a spot on the team. (What an entitled millennial I was!)

Instead, the manager and starting pitcher for the team, Marty, explained that the team was highly competitive, dating back to the 1970s, and that if I wanted a spot on the team I’d have to try out for it.

When the season started a few months later, I was given an opportunity to get into a game and show Marty that I could play. I barely passed my audition, managing four infield singles and solid defense in the field. But Marty was impressed with my speed and glove, so I had earned my spot.

After that tryout, I started on Petry’s team for 11 consecutive seasons until I recently moved from the New York area to just outside of Washington D.C.

Now, I find myself, at 34, trying out again, this time for the local softball league. There’s no such thing as a résumé or references when it comes to joining a softball league. I can regale the head of the league with stories about how I once hit four home runs in a game (leaving out the part where I committed seven errors at shortstop in the same game), or how I hold virtually every team record for the Petry Pilots (again, including most errors in a single game), or how my lifetime batting average is around .450.

But none of that matters. I’m starting from scratch. I’m just some not-that-young guy who is looking to keep the last of his competitive fire alive, meet some good people and make some friends in the process, and maybe have some fun and win some games, too.

After asking too many questions for the league commissioner, he eventually informed me that there would be an open tryout on March 12 at noon at the local field for “free agents” (i.e. prospective players without a team) like myself, and that I had the opportunity to showcase my talent (if I had any) to any of the team captains and coaches who chose to attend the tryout. If they liked what they saw they could select me from the free agent pool and add me to their rosters.

I hadn’t had to try out for a team since 2005* so I didn’t really know what to make of the situation. I had to put my feelings of entitlement and indignation aside and focus on showing these guys what I had to offer to their teams. (I also had to get used to the fact that despite my improved play at shortstop—that seven-error game was years ago, so lay off!—there was no guaranteed I’d get to play my favorite position.)

*I’ve interviewed for many jobs since 2005, which were all effectively tryouts to some degree. But sports feels a little different.

And so I went out and gave it my best without being too flashy. My defense was solid, though I didn’t get much of a chance to show off my arm. My hitting was passable for not having hit a softball since last August. All in all I gave them enough to judge me as a guy who could add value to most softball teams.

During the warm-ups, the scrimmage game that followed, and after we ended the official tryout, several coaches approached me to ask me what night I was interested in playing on (each league was assigned a night, much like the Petry Pilots had all their games on Tuesdays since, I think, the beginning of time), as well as what position I was interested in playing (and which other positions besides shortstop I would be open to). They also told me about their own teams, trying to put their own best feet forward. “We won our league last year,” or “We’re a fun group of guys,” or “Do you like burgers and beer? We’re partially sponsored by a local pub.”

I played tennis in college but had walked onto the team without being recruited by any schools, and so this feeling of someone actively pursuing me based on my athletic ability was new. None of them offered me a sports car or illicit cash in an envelope, but they were certainly jockeying with each other for the best possible players for their roster. And by the time I left I had given my contact info to four different team captains. (When I left I said, “Okay, well that’s enough speed dating for me!” No one laughed.)

Though a full-time position as shortstop is not guaranteed on any of their teams—just like I had on Marty’s team, I’d have to earn my position—I ultimately decided to play for Frank, a retired military guy I met during warmups who reminded me a lot of Marty, my former coach.

Frank has a first-place caliber team who lost a few guys during the off-season and is looking to reload his roster. He brought one of his teammates to the tryout, who hit a couple of home runs during batting practice, so it was clear they had at least one guy who could swing the bat.

The first game will be in a few weeks, and that’s really when my tryout begins. Will I be able to secure playing time on Frank’s team throughout the season, and prove him right in selecting me for his roster? (I use “select” loosely as he group emailed me and four other guys after the tryout about joining his team.)

Maybe Frank’s team will be a bust, or maybe I’ll play 11 seasons for him. Either way it’s a fresh start in a new place, and I’m thrilled for the opportunity to be playing competitive softball again.

I should only hope the tennis team tryout I have next week goes so well…

Posted in Personal Essays, Sports | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

‘Tis the Season to be #grateful

December 21, 2015 by bobbycalise

This blog post comes from my mom, Joanne Kelleher, as she recalls a #christmasmiracle from 30 years ago. It’s a great read, especially this time of year. Enjoy.

Gratitude is currently enjoying its day in the sun. Twitter feeds and Facebook timelines are sprinkled with #gratefuls and #gratitudes, and the happiness experts advise you to keep a gratitude journal if you want to live a happier life. This particular happiness hack is not new, it’s just become popular to publicly proclaim your gratitude. Most of us have always carried with us moments of grace that we call to mind for a burst of joy, or comfort, or encouragement, and they have been inspiring gratitude in us before there were hashtags to label them. As Christmas approaches, I remember back to such a moment that redeemed a difficult holiday season thirty years ago.

My little boy Bobby was three and he and I were living with my twin brothers in their 2-bedroom apartment in Bayside, Queens. My husband and I had separated, and my brothers had been kind enough to take us in until I could save up some money to rent an apartment. They were two single guys in their mid-20’s, not used to having an active little kid around, so I tried to keep Bobby quiet and out of their way when they were home so as not to wear out our welcome. Usually, we slept in the living room, but sometimes one of my brothers stayed at his girlfriend’s apartment, and on those nights we got to sleep in his bed.  That was always a treat, especially if it was a Thursday night and I could catch up with Knot’s Landing on the television in his room.

During that time, I worked in a warehouse answering phones for a company that rented out televisions and VCRs on a monthly basis. It was my job to let customers know the window for their delivery, pick-up, or service call. I also handled customer complaints, which could be pretty frequent because when stock was low, they rented out equipment that was not up to the usual standard. It wasn’t a great job, but it provided a small income while I tried to get my life back on track. I had become friendly with the other girl who worked there and we were planning to rent an apartment together.

Aside from the everyday stress of trying to get my life together, the added expectations and expense of the holidays were weighing on my mind. I had a few items on lay-away for Bobby, but there were always holiday-related purchases to make and errands to run. With the Christmas countdown accelerating, I decided to squeeze in a lunchtime dash to my go-to neighborhood for bargain shopping. I knew that parking wouldn’t be easy in that congested area, especially at this time of year, but I had to get my shopping done. As I reached the heart of the shopping center, I saw a prime parking spot right on the main street. What a lucky break! I pulled up in front of it preparing to back into it, but before I could back up, a car snuck up behind me and pulled into the spot front first. What?! Are you kidding, guy!? I flung the car door open and stormed back to address the other driver – That is MY spot!  He said, “I’m not moving.”

That was pretty much the end of the conversation and the end of my reserves. It wasn’t just the fact that he wasn’t moving, but the way that he dismissed me, like I wasn’t even worth the argument, that deflated me. I couldn’t muster up more yelling but I couldn’t move either. I stood there frozen in place, hand on hip, the recent months of failure and worry flooding through me and pooling at my eyes in tears that threatened to spill over. Suddenly, I heard a voice from somewhere above my right shoulder. I looked up from the spot-stealer to see a police officer sitting on a horse.

Officer: What’s the problem?

Me: He took my spot.

Officer (to spot-stealer): Get out of the spot.

As simple as that.

All of this had taken place under the el (the elevated train tracks), which obscured the midday sun, but a few blocks beyond us, the el ended and the sun shone brightly. When I looked up at the officer to thank him, he was backlit by sunlight; it looked as though he was glowing. And just then, it began to snow – flurries, the kind that swirl around you like the last flakes settling in a snow globe. The only thing missing was a choir of angels singing. I stood transfixed in the magic of it all, then headed back to my car to claim my parking spot.

I have never forgotten that moment.

On the day of the hero police officer, I couldn’t know that things would get worse before they got better, that my father would die alone in his apartment on Christmas Day, or that the friend who had agreed to rent an apartment with me would back out and leave me with a rent that I couldn’t cover. On that day I only knew that for the first time in a long time, I felt hopeful. It was my own tiny Christmas miracle.

Moments of grace don’t always appear as a literal knight in shining armor riding in on a horse illuminated by rays of sunlight in a swirl of gently falling snow, serving justice. Yes, sometimes these moments are huge, like getting the call that your son is in the clear after a months-long medical scare he’d been dealing with. But there’s also grace to be found in the things that we take for granted – having enough to eat, a roof over our heads, our friends and family, even just a quiet moment with your cats purring on your lap.

Catch these moments when you can, and savor them.

Merry Christmas!

#gratitude #grateful

Posted in Guest Blogger, New York City, Personal Essays | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

How was Austin City Limits this year?

October 19, 2015 by bobbycalise

Guest blogger and Austin, Texas, native Danny Calise reviews his experience at this year’s Austin City Limits music festival.

For the first time, my girlfriend, Maya and I attended Austin City Limits (ACL) music festival this year. It was a two weekend event, the second of which we attended. Practically a rite of passage for any Austinite, we were initially drawn to it by the lineup, and eventually realized that it was about much more than just the music.

Buying tickets for such a popular event turned out to be an event in unto itself. The festival organizers announced a window of time weeks before the festival when discounted tickets would be on sale for students and military personnel. The “line” started at 5AM and tickets were to go on sale at 10. We arrived promptly at 5, and there was already over a hundred people in a scrum to reach the ticket window. Heck, we could barely find parking to line up to buy tickets. Most of the people in this line were UT students, willing to suffer for cheaper tickets. But what we learned after abandoning our post around 9 AM, was that when it comes to ACL, sometimes it’s worth it just to pay more for convenience. Thus, we ditched the line and bought tickets on Craigslist later that day.

Officially, the festival got underway on Friday afternoon. After I was released from work at 4:30, I rushed home, picked up Maya and proceeded to the Capital Metro Rail station near our apartment. The plan was to catch the train to downtown, walk nine blocks to the festival shuttle (which, hopefully didn’t have a massive line), and arrive at Zilker Park before Future went on at 6. Well, the train got us to downtown at about 5:45. Making a gametime decision, we noticed a bicycle cab riding by and flagged the driver down. “How much to Zilker?,” I asked, knowing it may be a lot due to festival inflation. “Normally, I charge $30 per person, but for you guys I can do $20.” Too much. We can just take an Uber, I thought. “Thanks anyway.” “Okay, how much would you like to pay?” “I was thinking more like 20.” “How ‘bout 25?” “Sold!” And off we went on the back of a bicycle taxi at sunset. We rode over the Congress St. bridge, soaked in the view and the sun, and passed by all of the cars in traffic heading towards the event thinking, “Suckers!”

The bicycle cab took us as far as he could, right up to a police stopping point for cars. We had about a 5 minute walk to get to the festival. Hungry and ready to hear music, we were delighted to see a random dude with 10 Papa John’s heat-keeping pizza bags stacked up near the gate. “Two dollars a slice?,” he offered. “Sold! We’ll have two…each.” What a world!

Entering the festival gate, we could hear Future playing. To the left we saw huge monitors and an enormous crowd. We had made it.

* * *

Future’s set delivered. Accompanied by a DJ, he energetically played all of the best tracks from his latest album, Dirty Sprite 2, as well as his mixtape with Drake, What a Time to be Alive. Following Future on Friday night, we saw Flosstradamus, presumably a rap/DJ duo whose set consisted of remixes of other artists’ well known songs. This was a common thread among DJ performances at the festival. Floss climbed up their speakers to be seen by the concert goers in the back. Towards the end of Floss’ set, we decided to patronize the food stands, labelled “ACL Eats.” The available stands included local favorites such as P. Terry’s, Stubb’s BBQ, Amy’s Ice Cream, and a lot more. Being vegetarian, Maya and I opted for Frank’s BBQ, which offered a Veggie Chili Cheese Dog for $9. This was by far the best vegetarian option, and as two people who have been burned by a lack of options in the past, we were grateful. We dined under a very large canopy at picnic tables. It felt like camp.

To close the night, Foo Fighters headlined. Their set, like their most famous songs, was epic. Old songs like “Monkey Wrench,” as well as newer, older songs like “Best of Me” were injected with an instrumental break right before the very last chorus, showing that the band could rock like no other. Dave Grohl was seated for the set, still on crutches from his injury months ago. But it didn’t stop him from being funny on the mic, and at the very end of the set, admitting “Okay okay, we’ll play the damn last song now.” Clearly, he was referring to “Everlong.” It sent us away that night with an unforgettable tune in our heads and smiles on our faces. We swam through the enormous crowd and made our way to a bus stop that would take us to the train stop that would take us to our parked car that would take us home. The next night, we decided to drive in and pay for parking.

* * *

On Saturday, which also happened to be my birthday, we skipped the morning performances and drove into downtown at 5:30 PM. We got to Barton Springs Rd., parked in a $10 lot, and, although we were disappointed that the Papa John’s guy wasn’t there, we made it into the gate in time to catch some of Modest Mouse’s set. After seeing Foo Fighters the previous night, our expectations were high for the remaining festival bands to rock, and Modest Mouse didn’t disappoint. Isaac Brock’s voice sounded just as otherworldly live as it does on record, and hearing “Float On” live was exactly what the thousands in the crowd wanted. From there, we caught R&B youngster Alessia Cara. Her soulful voice rang out as she sang her current hit, “Here,” much to the pleasure of the small but receptive audience.

After Ms. Cara, Maya and I settled down on our sheet towards the back of the audience area where Drake would be playing later on. Bassnectar, apparently a dubstep DJ, performed on the stage next to us, his silhouetted figure and extra long hair swaying and bopping to some raucous, bass-heavy electronic tunes.

Drake’s set was the highlight of the weekend for us. He played just about everything you’d want him to. From his one-off features (“Come My Way,” “Tuesday”) to his current hit, “Hotline Bling,” to his deep album cuts (“Crew Love,” “Worst Behavior”) and just about everything in between, spanning all of his three official albums and various mixtapes. He was energetic, honest, and candid, admitting that he was “about to do something very Drake-ish,” and playing yet another song just for the ladies. Perhaps the most jaw-dropping moment of the show occurred when the lights went out and another figure appeared on stage, J. Cole. Cole played his current song with Jeremiah, “Planes,” as well as snippets from “Power Trip,” and “Work Out.” To see two huge rap superstars, neither of whom represents the “gangsta” image, touting one another and sharing an on-stage hug, was a treat. It made me wonder why these two don’t have a hit together.

Following J. Cole’s appearance, Drake closed the show with fireworks shooting out of the stage, capping off his headlining set with yet another unforgettable moment. After the last note was played, everyone in the crowd attempted to exit the park simultaneously, a process that took an hour and a half including the painstaking process of inching our way out of the parking lot. Well worth it.

* * *

We wanted to get an early start on Sunday, so we headed downtown around 2 PM, wanting to catch one of Maya’s picks, Kali Uchis at 2:45. It was a sweltering day with much of Zilker Park drenched in oppressive sunlight. However, we were pleased to discover that Kali was playing underneath a huge tent. Kali played her smooth, reggae/island infused pop jams to a loyal fanbase under a canopy. Her band consisted of young guns: teenaged musicians rocking out while she swayed front and center with long, pink hair. She posed questions to the daytime audience such as, “Who are y’all excited to see tonight?,” and she disclosed that she was pumped to watch The Weeknd later on. Her set was a personal one, clearly early on in her career, and those of us who were familiar with her music (as well as her endorsement from Tyler, the Creator), were excited to be there for that moment.

Knowing we didn’t have much we wanted to see at the festival before Chance the Rapper went on at 6, we decided to forgo the food stands and venture out into civilization to a nearby Mexican joint, Chuy’s. To sit down in a comfortable restaurant was a much needed break from the sun and from the dusty grass that was starting to fly around everywhere at the festival. And just before our waitress dropped our check, who walks into the back dining room at Chuy’s, but Kali Uchis! She didn’t stay, but we did let her know that we were fans. Truly, a classic ACL experience.

By 6, we were back at the fest and ready to watch Chance. He performed all the best songs from his very popular mixtape, Acid Rain, as well as select songs from his band project, Surf. The full band sound was something very interesting to watch and listen to for the audience, differing from other hip hop acts. Surf established Chance as not just “the Rapper,” but a veritable band leader, which translated well in a live setting. In between songs, he hyped up the crowd with a call-and-response “Woo-OOH” chant, and generally rambled about the positivity he found reflected at him by the audience. He acknowledged that he values his personal time very much and that he has mixed feelings about flying to a different location to perform. While it wasn’t exactly what we wanted to hear, this revelation was consistent with Chance’s honest persona and certainly makes for a more interesting artist than someone whose whole life consists of touring and recording. Nonetheless, hearing our favorite songs from Acid Rap in band format was very enjoyable.

To fill the two hour gap between Chance and festival closer, The Weeknd, we once again laid down our sheet and went horizontal on the grass. Nero, a DJ, played in the background, and we weakly fist-pumped each time the beat dropped.

By the time The Weeknd went on, we were both ready to wrap up the..well, weekend. However, he brought a lot of energy to the stage, as well as his numerous recognizable songs. His collaboration with Ariana Grande, “Love Me Harder,” had new life as a one man song. He played some of his salacious anthems from his early stuff, “Glass Table Girls” and “Wicked Games,” and wowed the crowd with his Michael Jackson-esque banger, “Can’t Feel My Face.” Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack hits, “Earned It,” and “Often,” reminded the crowd why this guy was headlining. We were exhausted by the end of the set, and decided to venture off to the parking lot before the whole crowd was released. On the way out, though, we heard the song I had been waiting for the whole festival, IMHO, undeniably the song of 2015, “The Hills.” Having already exited the festival gate, we sang along with Abel Tesfaye as he declared that when he’s f’ed up, it’s the real him.

* * *

All in all, the weekend was music and fun-filled. We didn’t have any complaints or regrets, and got to dance, eat, drink, and relax to our hearts’ desires. Would I recommend ACL to someone who’s never been? Heck yes. But be ready to fight crowds, inflated prices, and funked up transportation along the way.

Posted in Customer Experience & Reviews, Guest Blogger | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Bat Flip

October 16, 2015 by bobbycalise

A lot has been made lately about the “bat flipping” trend taking place in Major League Baseball. (God help us if people start calling it “Bat-gate.”)

Some baseball players, after hitting a ball that they know is going to result in a home run—Major Leaguers, especially home run hitters, can usually tell from the feel of bat hitting ball whether they got “all of it,” i.e. hit it hard and high enough that it’ll end up in the outfield seats.

When they get that special home run feeling in their arms and hands and legs and eyes and ears, sometimes, they toss or flip their bat up in the air, some with more flourish than others, as if to say, “Yup, I know that one’s gone.” The gesture is celebratory, self-promotional, and ultimately innocuous.

Unless you’re on the other team, apparently.

The “unwritten rules” of professional baseball—which are so numerous and rigid that I often wish someone would have actually, ya know, written them down—say that a bat flip “shows up” the other team, i.e. makes them look bad. And more so, it “disrespects for the game.” (Is it weird that I’m quoting text that I just told you was unwritten? Why yes, yes it is.)

Historically this sort of infraction has been self-policed by Major Leaguers. If you flip your bat after hitting a home run against one of baseball’s more irascible pitchers—presumably one who has read the unwritten rules many times on the toilet—you can expect that said pitcher will “plunk” you, “put one in your ear,” or to forgo anymore MLB argot, they’ll throw the ball at you as hard as they can in an attempt to hit you as a form of punishment.

Whether the act of bat flipping should be considered offensive to the other team—I don’t think it is—or whether bat flippers deserve some form of retaliation against them—a grown man intentionally throwing a baseball at another grown man, really?—is not what I care about, at least not for the purpose of this blog post. (And yet it took me seven paragraphs and over 300 words to get to the purpose of this blog post!)

The purpose is to understand whether bat flipping is something that we should worry about as it relates to youth sports. Should we be concerned if a 10-year-old little leaguer celebrates a great moment, such as a home run, by flipping his bat three feet in the air? Is this the sort of showy, unsportsmanlike behavior that indicates that kid’s future success or failure in the real world? Should we be telling our young athletes to “act like they’ve been there before,” and hold in that emotion until some other unnamed future time when it’s acceptable to let it out? Perhaps the safe zone lies in between not showing any emotion and giving every kid a participation, avoiding to have to label some kinds winners and others losers.

Bat-gate (crap, now I’m saying it!) came to a head when the Toronto Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista hit the biggest home run of his life this past week. Bautista, one of the game’s premiere sluggers, has hit hundreds of home runs in his career, but none more important than this one, which put his team ahead in a win-or-go-home playoff game. Upon getting that special home run feeling (that sounds creepier every time I type it out) he stared for an extra split second as the ball traveled towards its eventual home in the stands, then flipped his bat way up into the air, almost angrily, as if to dismiss anyone who had any doubt he could do what he just did.

And yet the opposing team, a lot of people around baseball, and many media personalities, believe it was the wrong thing to do. Showing emotion, apparently, has no place in baseball.

But what about the kids??? What should we tell them to do in moments like this, when their visceral instinct tells them to act on the outside as happy as they feel on the inside?

As the parent of zero children, I believe they should show as much emotion as they want, so long as they aren’t directing any animosity to the other team. A celebratory bat flip is fine—even if it’s simply meant to pat themselves on the back—but pointing at the pitcher and saying, “you suck,” is a no-no.

If the goal of youth sports is indeed to prepare kids—99.9% of whom won’t end up playing professionally—for the real world by teaching them life skills like leadership and sportsmanship and teamwork and the value of practice and hard work, then we also have to include self-promotion on that list.

Like it or not, the business world is becoming increasingly about (if it ever wasn’t) being able to furnish your own personal highlight reel at a moment’s notice. You may find yourself in an elevator with the CEO of the company for which you work, and you’ll need the perfect elevator pitch for when she asks you what you’re working on, or simply, how it’s going.

An understated response to this question, “Busy,” or “Fine,” or changing the subject to the weather, won’t do. Not if you want to get her attention. (Yeah that’s right, it’s a female CEO, you misogynist.) No, you’ll need to tell her, succinctly but with a healthy dose of enthusiasm, how you are directly contributing to the success of the company, and on which projects, specifically, you’re “crushing it” (like a boss, of course). This is the bat flip of the corporate world.

Like it or not, this is the wave of the future as Millennials much younger than myself continue to invade the workforce. Communication has forever been socially networked, and now there’s no feat too small to brag about, including what you do between 9 and 5 (or 6 or 10). So to ask a 10-year-old not to be showy when he does something well, like hit a home run, score a touchdown, or make a jumpshot (or for that matter, ace a test or just absolutely nail his hypothesis on a science project) you might actually be doing him a disservice.

Of course these are not hard and fast rules, set to appear on Harvard Business Review, Elementary School Edition. But I think it’s worth considering that if you are going to operate under the assumption that youth sports prepares kids for life, you should probably think holistically about what that life might look like 10 or 15 years after they leave little league.

Posted in Sports | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

A Boy Named Bobby

October 13, 2015 by bobbycalise

In the early 1980s my mother, then in her early twenties, was working as a secretary at Blue Cross & Blue Shield. While there she befriended a co-worker, an African-American woman named Bennye, whose husband and son shared the same name: Bobby. My mother got a kick out of it when Bennye would talk about her two Bobbys, big and little, in her thick southern accent. “BAH-bay,” she’d say, “an’ BAH-bay JUNE-ya.” So when my mom became pregnant with me in 1981, she decided I’d be a Bobby, too.

She had to sell my father on the name, which didn’t take much. “What about ‘Bobby Raymond’ for a boy?” my mother asked him, tacking on the middle name for her grandfather, who had recently passed away.

“Hmmm,” my dad pondered, “Bobby Ray…like Bobby Ray Murcer,” a popular outfielder on the Yankees at the time. “Yeah, that works.” I imagine him deciding this as casually as he might have decided between a hot dog or a hamburger at a barbecue.

When it came time to make it official on my zero-th birthday, my parents chose to put “Bobby,” not “Robert,” on my birth certificate. Like my namesake, an Okie whose legal name was actually Bobby Ray Murcer, I too, was just Bobby.

Years later I asked my mother whether she had ever considered that someday I’d be a full-grown man named Bobby—i.e. a full-grown man without the benefit of being able to switch back and forth between Bobby, among friends, and Robert, in professional situations or on legal documents.

“Back then my world was so small,” she told me. She hadn’t really thought about her life, or mine, that far in the future. I can’t fault her for that…right?

Yet when my brother was born four years later, my parents were four years older and ostensibly four years more mature. They put “Daniel Joseph” on his birth certificate. I guess there was no Yankee named “Danny Joe.”

—

“There’s nothing wrong with that name,” computer programmer Michael Bolton’s co-worker reassures him in the 1998 movie Office Space.

“There was nothing wrong with that name until I was about 12 years old and that no-talent [1990s adult contemporary singer Michael Bolton] got famous and started winning Grammys.”

Having a pop culture reference point for their name might be a good thing for some people, but it never did much for me growing up. I’d get “Bobby’s World” (the popular ‘90s cartoon show about a little boy named Bobby, voiced by Howie Mandel), or “Bobby Boucher” (Adam Sandler’s mush-mouthed lead in The Waterboy), but none was particularly original. Needless to say my peers never made the connection on their own that I was named for the Bobby Murcer.

More recently, though, the popularity of the TV adaptation of the Game of Thrones books ended up working to my advantage. As people became acquainted with the show’s most popular character, Daenerys Targaryen, a.k.a. Mother of Dragons, a.k.a. Khaleesi (wife of the king, or “Khal”)—which is coincidentally pronounced on the show exactly like my last name, ca-LEE-see—I no longer had to accept common mispronunciations like “ca-LEES,” or worse yet, “Carlisle.” I simply mentioned the show and they immediately got it.

In fact at an airport about a year ago, I walked up to a kiosk to pay for a shuttle bus back to my hotel. When the young woman working there asked for my last name, I gave it. She stopped writing and looked up, shyly. “Um…have you seen Game of Thrones?” I smiled knowingly and told her I had.

The GoT effect has extended to my wife, who changed her name after we got married and sent out a companywide email notifying her coworkers. “It’s pronounced like Game of Thrones,” she wrote in the note.

A few moments later she got an email back from someone at the company she had only spoken with a handful of times. “So, how many dragons do you have?”

—

When I was in grade school, being called Robert instead of Bobby made me furious—especially when it was over the loudspeaker to summon me to the main office. I’d angrily march down the linoleum halls and storm into the office.

Not bothering to ask why I’d been called to the office in the first place, I’d explain to anyone within earshot that MY NAME IS JUST BOBBY, NOT ROBERT. Usually the offending secretary would halfheartedly apologize, then go right ahead and call me Robert the next time.

Loudspeaker snafus aside, I liked school. I liked it so much, in fact, that I had perfect attendance from first grade through my senior year of high school. It’s not that I was never sick, just never sick enough to miss school. (As my mom, a single parent by then, would say: “School for you guys was half education, half free babysitting.”)

None of my high school friends were particularly impressed with this feat. “You never missed a day of school?” they’d ask. “Why not?” Still, at the time I felt my Cal Ripken-like attendance streak was something unique and special about me. And as Woody Allen purportedly said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”

I looked forward to receiving my perfect attendance award in a ceremony at end of senior year. This achievement was supposedly verified by amalgamating my last high school’s attendance records with my new one’s, but I suspect they simply took my word for it. I clearly cared far more about getting the award more than they cared about fact-checking it.

When I went up to the stage to accept my honor, twelve years in the making, I stared down at the fake wood plaque with its fake gold plating. It read:

Perfect Attendance Award
Robert Calise

—

My brother—nee Daniel Joseph, but who, incidentally, mostly goes by “Danny”—taught English at a university in China for two years. He told me that on the first day of class, he had to assign “English names” to his college-age students:

If a student didn’t have an English name, I asked them to pick a letter from the English alphabet that they wanted their name to start with. They would choose one based on the sound of their Chinese names. Whatever letter they chose, I would give them a bunch of choices, which they usually hated, and then forced them to pick the one they hated the least.

The most popular names according to Danny included: Cherry, Sherry, Jason, Vicky, and Allen. Beyond those, the names were a little more unique, at least from an American point of view.

Kids would select names like Purple, or Poet, or Wood. Others might choose Dragon, or Hometown or Man. He had students named Fish, Dollars, Garlic, Money, Color, Nature, Echo, Short, and my personal favorite, Kidult (a combination of Kid and Adult, obviously).

I can’t help wonder what names I might have come up with for myself, but part of me is glad I didn’t get to choose my own name–especially when I was a kid. There’s a good chance Michael Jordan Calise or Knight Rider Calise would be writing this today.

—

While studying abroad in England during my junior year of college, I met a fellow American student named Dan, who came from a neighborhood just outside Boston. I introduced myself as Bobby, as I always did.

“Good to meet ya, Bawb,” he replied in his local dialect. I didn’t correct him—Um, actually, it’s Bob-by—preferring instead to imagine myself as a Boston street tough Dan knew from his neighborhood. Oh him? That’s Bawb. You don’t wanna mess with Bawb.

A few days after meeting Dan, he and I got together at a pub near campus. I went up to the bar and ordered a Newcastle and when I came back, Dan was talking to a group of American students he knew from orientation. He introduced me to everyone: “Hey guys, this is Bawb, from New Yauk.”

“Hi Bob!” said one of the girls in the group, a perky Floridian. I was happy to have this new group of friends served up on a silver platter for me—Bobby wasn’t so great at meeting new people—so I didn’t want to make waves by clearing up that small detail of what my name actually was.

Initially it was strange hearing these new people call me Bob, as if they were speaking to someone else. But it also wasn’t altogether unpleasant, the idea that I could take on a new identity among these new people in a new place.

But after a few weeks playing the role of Bob, I eventually confessed to two of the girls in the group that back home I went by exclusively by Bobby. They didn’t miss a beat. I seemed much more like a Bobby, they said.

Making the Bob/Bobby distinction ultimately made me feel more comfortable while in England, though it did cause some confusion among the natives. While checking my email in the college’s computer lab one day, I ran into an English guy I’d seen in one of my classes. We started talking.

“What’s your name, mate?” he asked.

“Bobby,” I replied.

“Like the doll?”

“Huh?” I said, confused. Then I realized what he meant. “Oh…no, not Barbie. It’s Bobby, B-O-B-B-Y.”

“Oh, BOE-by,” he said, drawing out the first syllable–basically explaining to me how to pronounce my own name for the English ear.

“Right,” I said. “BOE-by.” My English name.

Posted in Personal Essays | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

The NYC Tenement Museum: My Own Personal Family History

August 4, 2015 by bobbycalise

When I was a senior in high school, I applied for a $500 scholarship from an organization called the Sons of Italy.

I didn’t know much about the Sons of Italy except for the few times my Italian grandfather had mentioned them in passing. In their own words, here’s what the Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA) are all about:

We are a national organization of men and women who represent the estimated 26 million Americans of Italian heritage, dedicated to promoting our culture, our traditions, our language, the legacy of our ancestors, and our contributions to the U.S. and the world. … We exemplify the very best of what it is to be Italian American.

To compete for the scholarship, I had to write a short essay on why I was proud to be an Italian. Easy money, I thought. I ate pasta and meatballs with my dad’s side of the family every Sunday for as long as I could remember. Surely, I could parlay this pseudo Italian-ness into a saccharine story about my Italian pride. Even if I didn’t really believe in the concept of ethnic pride.

When I told my family the next Sunday that I was writing the essay, my Italian grandmother beamed—that is, until I spoiled her good cheer by admitting that I was not, in fact, proud to be Italian.

“Not proud to be Italian?” she said, incredulously. “What would you rather be?”

It wasn’t that I would rather be something else. It was just that I never felt a sense of pride for being something that I had no control over. It’s not as though I’d been given a choice and selected to be half-Italian, 3/8 Irish, and 1/8 Portuguese. I’d simply been born with this heritage. The way I saw it, I was nothing more than a random soul floating around, eventually landing in a human body that happened to be a part of an Italian family from Queens, New York. How proud could I really be about that?

Over the years I’ve tended to identify more with my Italian side, perhaps for no other reason than my last name. (Had I been outfitted with my mother’s maiden name, Kelleher, I wonder if anyone would have sniffed out my Italian-ness.) But really my ethnicity was nothing more than a small talk topic of no more significance than the weather.

—

About eight years ago, my mother and grandmother (my Irish-Portuguese side) were invited to an unveiling ceremony for a new exhibit at New York City’s Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The museum opened in 1988 and serves as an educational memorial to the millions of American immigrants who settled in New York and lived in almost sub-human conditions as they tried to find work, raise a family, and build upon their social status ever so marginally with each passing generation.

My family was invited because one of the museum’s tours apparently mentioned one of my Irish-American relatives who struggled so mightily to find a social and financial foothold in 1860s New York City.

At the time I didn’t attend the ceremony, and didn’t give much thought to the Tenement Museum for years after the unveiling, even after my mother visited it a second time and assured me it would be worth my while for me to go see. I still didn’t budge, and so for our wedding anniversary she just went and bought two tickets for my wife and me.

In February 2015 we finally visited the museum. And I was blown away.

Our knowledgeable and engaging tour guide, Rebecca, unfurled the remarkable—yet almost banal for new Americans in the 1860s—story of Joseph and Bridget Moore.

Hmmm, I thought, Moore. When, earlier in the week, I had told my grandmother I was finally going to the Tenement Museum, the name she told me to listen for was Jane Moore.

As Rebecca continued to tell Bridget and Joseph’s story, I realized that the tour included more than a mere mention of a long-ago relative of mine; the exhibit was the story of my own family’s origins in America.

By the end of the tour, as I slowly connected the dots of the real-life characters in Rebecca’s story, my family members, I discovered that Jane Moore was the daughter of Joseph and Bridget, making her the grandmother of my grandmother—my great great grandmother.

The hour-long tour covered the many challenges Irish-American families like the Moores faced: substandard living conditions; not enough work opportunities; specious blame for bringing cholera to America; crooked politicians leveraging financial favors given to poor Irish for their votes; and little to no medical care or government-sponsored financial assistance. (In the Moore’s case, a lack of medical care or access to medicine led to the death of one of Jane’s infant siblings. The tour included a room recreated to look like the site of the child’s wake, complete with a tiny coffin.)

Towards the end of the tour, Rebecca showed us a picture of Jane and her husband; Jane was the only one of Joseph and Bridget’s eight children (four of whom died during childhood) to have her own children. One of those children was my grandmother’s mom. Rebecca told us that two of Jane’s grandsons grew up to be a New York City fireman and policeman.

Those grandsons are my uncles (my mother’s twin brothers), Chris and Kenny.

I’m usually not a crier, but something struck me in that moment. That I’m a sixth generation New Yorker. That my family’s humble beginnings had been preserved so beautifully. And that every day Tenement Museum tour guides like Rebecca are telling complete strangers from all parts of the world the story of how the Moore family survived an Irish potato famine in Ireland, a hellish five-week trip in the hulls of a slave ship, treacherous and sometimes deadly working and living conditions, and evolved into the family I belong to today.

I still can’t quite say pride is the right word for what I feel towards my ancestry, whether it’s the Italian, Irish, or Portuguese pieces of me. But I certainly have a new appreciation for all the work and sacrifice and hardship that led up to my own existence. And for that, I should strive to make my ancestors proud of me.

Posted in New York City, Personal Essays | Tagged , , | 1 Comment »

R.I.P. Petry Media Corp, a.k.a. My First Real Job

July 28, 2015 by bobbycalise

Petry Media Corporation, where I started my career back in 2005, officially shut its doors earlier this month. This is my version of a eulogy for the defunct company which, for better or worse, gave me my start in the media business.

“Do you play softball?”

I was asked this question while sitting in a decade-old, coffee-stained desk chair, waiting to be interviewed for a position at Petry Media Corporation. My potential new boss, Judy, was finishing up some paperwork and had me wait outside her cube for a few minutes. While I sat there, my would-be coworker, a guy named Ross, had ostensibly decided to conduct his own pre-interview.

Ross was my age and played for the company softball team. Petry didn’t have many employee perks, but softball, if you were good enough to make the team, was one of them.

Whether he was intending to or not, Ross put me at ease for my actual interview with Judy. By the time I finished a short while later, I was reasonably confident that I had the job. A couple of days later Judy called to formally make me an offer, which I accepted.* For a cool $26,700, I would be a research analyst at Petry Media. More importantly, I had my first real job in New York City.

*Earlier that week I had accepted the a research analyst position with one of Petry’s competitors. Before I could officially accept Judy’s offer, I had to renege on my acceptance at the other company. It was a pretty awkward call and my almost-new boss was pretty pissed—this was Friday and he had been expecting me to start the following Monday. You might be thinking that what I did was unethical, but the other company was offering an even lower starting salary, $22,000, so I didn’t really feel too bad about walking away.

What I didn’t fully understand when I accepted the offer, but would slowly piece together later, was how Petry actually made its money.

Petry was a “rep firm” for local TV stations across the country. If you own the local NBC station (a.k.a. “affiliate”) in a relatively small market like Green Bay or St. Louis, you might not be able to afford to hire your own sales people to sell TV commercials on your station. Instead, you contracted a company like Petry, whose sales team would sell your station’s air time—and collect a percentage of the ad revenue they bring in.

My job was A) to keep the inventory (the TV shows) current in the system so the sales people could sell the ad space in them; and B) to give my best estimate of how many people would watch them (i.e. Nielsen ratings), so the sales people knew how much to charge for the ad space. For the second part, the estimates were based on how many people watched that show in the previous season, or for a new show, how other shows like it had performed in the past. (If we didn’t have high hopes for a show, we would simply use “time period” estimates based on the ratings for the canceled show that ran during that day and time in the prior TV season.)

The job was far from rocket science—a lot of the work was glorified data entry—but I enjoyed learning about the television industry. I’d heard the terms “rating” and “share” before, but didn’t really know what went into calculating them.

I made fast friends with Ross (the softball guy). It turned out we were born a month apart, both former journalism majors, and both huge Yankee fans. Ross had grown up in Manhattan; even as a Queens-born kid, I found that fascinating. I was commuting into work every day from Long Island and didn’t know a whole lot about The City. Ross was my unofficial tour guide, directing me on things like best subways to take to get somewhere, or the fact that Fifth Avenue was Manhattan’s vertical dividing line between streets, e.g. East 54th Street and West 54th Street.

I had been at Petry for a couple of months when softball season started. I wasn’t guaranteed a spot on the team, but Marty, a veteran sales rep at Petry and the longtime manager of the softball team, let me try out. As the youngest guy on the team (besides Ross), I assumed I’d have no trouble playing my way into the lineup—but the fact that I even had to try out made me a little nervous.

I reached base on four infield singles and play solid defense in the outfield and made the team. (Eleven years later, I still play for the team. Over the years guys left Petry the company, but not Petry the softball team. Marty was the only remaining Petry employee to play on the team before the company closed up shop earlier this month.)

The other nice perk of working at Petry was lunchtime. On most days we used the unoccupied conference room to watch TV while we ate lunch—and we could usually push the lunch hour to 90 minutes. If it was “upfront season,” the time of year when the TV networks were previewing their new fall lineups to whet the appetites of advertising buyers and sellers, we got to watch the pilots for new shows that the networks would send to Petry (to help our reps sell them). I remember seeing the pilot episode of How I Met Your Mother and knowing it would be a hit.

The research analyst position at Petry, for most people who held it, typically had a shelf life of about a year, two at the most. Most of Petry’s research analysts followed one of two career paths. They either found research jobs at other media companies, or they entered Petry’s sales training program. (By all accounts the training program was fairly rigorous and low-paying. If you “passed,” Petry required you to sign a multi-year contract pledging your loyalty to them. This was, I gathered, a standard deal for rep firms.) The research-to-sales guys I knew seemed happy enough, but I wasn’t interested in selling for a living after a negative experience selling Cutco knives during college had left a bad taste in my mouth.

While I looked for work at other companies around my year mark at Petry, Ross and I had tons of down time once we got our work done. We spent a lot of that time talking about Moneyball and the new trend of advanced metrics in baseball. Sometimes, when things were really slow, and felt like we’d “run out of internet,” we’d tinker with some of our work processes.

Part of keeping the inventory current was loading “tapes,” or the most current data files from Nielsen that had the ratings from all the shows in the most recent “sweep” period. (In my nearly two years at Petry, I never actually saw a “tape.”) The process involved putting certain codes in an application that looked like it was stuck in 1980. The numbers and letters we entered into the program’s various blank spaces didn’t seem to correspond to any sort of user manual. So, we wrote our own. When we found a step that didn’t seem to make sense, we changed it and put it in our manual (i.e. a Word document). Before we knew it, we’d literally rewritten Petry’s antediluvian process for uploading ratings data to its network. (I’m sure it’ll eventually be placed into the Petry time capsule for our great-grandchildren to discover.)

Eventually, Ross left Petry for a job at CBS, where he was already freelancing on weekends, trying to break into sports production. I left a few months later for another media job. Having Petry on my résumé helped me land the gig—my new boss had also started her career there, too.

Petry gave me my start in the grown-up working world, and while I left the company for greener pastures ten years ago, I’m still thankful for the time I spent there. R.I.P. Petry.

Posted in New York City, Personal Essays, Working | 1 Comment »

The Increased Price of Nice Nails, Post-New York Times Expose

May 31, 2015 by bobbycalise

On May 7 the New York Times published an expose about the horrific working conditions for manicurists in many of Manhattan’s nail salons, “The Price of Nice Nails.”

Specifically, the article pointed to many cases where workers were being paid abysmally low wages—after initially being forced to pay salon owners for the job in the first place—with little opportunity to earn more or work their way up to a decent living wage. Even well-tipping customers are no boon for these workers, because the salon owners are skimming their workers’ gratuities, too. The article also pointed to the hazardous conditions brought on by manicurists working with and breathing in harmful chemicals all day, often with no masks.

Suffice it to say the Times did not paint a pretty picture of NYC nail salons and many customers, including my wife, were left wondering if there was a way to be a “responsible” mani-pedi customer.

On Thursday night she had her first post-NYT mani-pedi. She went back to a salon she’d been to many times before, Angel’s Nail on the Upper East Side. Despite the claims in the Times, she felt Angel’s maintained a clean shop, the workers usually seemed in good spirits, and the prices weren’t dirt cheap to the point where she felt they were cutting corners on employee wages.

As the Times article pointed out, mani and pedi prices in NYC are actually lower than in other parts of the country—which is unheard of for basically any product or service I can think of—because a) the area is so much more concentrated with salons and b) salon owners pay their employees so little. From the Times story:

The typical cost of a manicure in the city helps explain the abysmal pay. A survey of more than 105 Manhattan salons by The Times found an average price of about $10.50. The countrywide average is almost double that, according to a 2014 survey by Nails Magazine, an industry publication.

With fees so low, someone must inevitably pay the price.

“You can be assured, if you go to a place with rock-bottom prices, that chances are the workers’ wages are being stolen,” said Nicole Hallett, a lecturer at Yale Law School who has worked on wage theft cases in salons. “The costs are borne by the low-wage workers who are doing your nails.”

If there was any question as to whether Angel’s Nail was aware of the NYT article (and the potential backlash against Manhattan nail salons), it was answered right away on the price board. My wife reports that in previous visits she paid about $33 for a mani-pedi at Angel’s. But this past Thursday, the same service was priced at $43–a 30% increase.

The way I see it we can interpret the big price bump in one of two ways: either the $10 difference represents the salon’s mea culpa over previously paying its workers poorly, now showing its customers that Angel’s has seen the error of its ways; or it represents a smart salon capitalizing on an opportunity to monetize its customers’ guilt for previously paying so little for their mani-pedis (though, why should customers feel guilty if the salon wasn’t doing anything wrong?).

The salon was nearing closing time when my wife arrived so she got the benefit of having two workers tend to her, one on the mani the other on the pedi. When she went to pay her total came to $47 (not the $43 from the price board, so now it was a 42% increase from her last visit). With the article in mind, she didn’t feel like she was in a position to argue, so she went ahead and paid it. On top of that she tipped BOTH workers, more than she normally would have. All told she paid around $55 for a the same mani-pedi that used to cost her about $38.

I can only assume other nail customers are seeing changes in the pricing–and possibly the level of service, cleanliness and customer service–at their local salons. I’d like to think its made the bad salons clean up their act. If that means the good salons are using it to make a little more money for themselves, well, I’ll leave the laws of supply and demand sort out whether that’s a smart strategy moving forward.

Have you been to a Manhattan nail salon before and after the Times article? Have you seen a difference?

Posted in Customer Experience & Reviews, New York City, Small Business | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

The Profit Goes to SJC Drums and Saves Business, Brothers

May 17, 2015 by bobbycalise

I was all set to write a snarky review about the season 3 premiere of The Profit. I assumed it would start off with a bang–and by bang I mean another stubborn, inept small business owner who, by halfway through the episode, the audience ends up hating and rooting for Marcus to walk away from.

Instead, I saw actual human beings having actual human emotion, and the story about the failing business was secondary.

Marcus and the audience first meets Mike and Chris of SJC Drums at a trade show in California. Their booth is packed and everyone seems to be having a good time–a little girl shredding it on drums!–but we learn that Chris, a “partner” at SJC, quit his six-figure job to make half that doing the operations and books for SJC. Oh and “partner” is in quotes because he doesn’t have any equity in the company for some reason. Huh?

The product seems top-notch–Marcus says the drums are “badass.” (From what I know about drums–literally nothing–they look really nice.) SJC’s customers, apparently, include Green Day, Imagine Dragons, and Lady Gaga. But they’re only making “15 points,” or 15% margin, on their drums. (Marcus says their low margins are “not badass.” Good one.)

Later, Marcus visits SJC a  their headquarters in Massachusetts. The warehouse is pretty messy and we learn their process for making drum kits stinks–Chris and Mike aren’t on the same page on which orders are the highest priority, which means the employees don’t know which ones to make first–and they are just about broke. Nothing surprising here as far as The Profit goes–if the business was doing everything right, Marcus wouldn’t need to be there.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Marcus sits Mike and Chris down in the back office and Mike tells him that he and his brother Scott started the company (SJC are Scott’s initials) but Scott left in 2013. Mike bought out Scott’s half of the business for–get this–$533,000.

WHAT???

Mike explains that in order to pay Scott back, he has been paying $2,000 a month and will do so until year 15, when he will pay the remainder in a balloon payment of $285,000.

WHAT???

Mike says he didn’t want to short change his brother on the way out–whether he jumped or was pushed we’ll find out later–by offering less than the company was worth. He starts crying when Marcus observes that Mike put his brother ahead of himself. “I wish he understood that,” Mike says through tears.

But something’s not quite right here. Mike’s coming off as the caring brother (no idea if he’s older or younger than Scott) but clearly something big and ugly happened that we don’t know about yet.

After a scene where now Chris is also crying to Marcus in the snow about how much he loves the business–despite being a 0% equity partner–Marcus is ready to BALL OUT. Here comes symbolic handshake and check time.

BOOM. $400K for a third of the business. Mike hesitates and has dumb concerns. Marcus shoots him down. YOU WILL TAKE THIS MONEY. Mike takes the money. But there’s a catch. Marcus is also pushing a third of the company to Chris, so they are all equal partners at SJC. Mike is like, oh yeah I was totally gonna suggest that, and agrees to Marcus’s conditions.

Marcus rounds up all the employees the next day, explains the deal he made with Mike, and tells them from now on they are selling three levels of drums–good, better and best. Instead of only selling kits worth of Imagine Dragons, they will sell sets that a beginner can afford and hits the 40% margin goal Chris set so that they can, ya know, make money when they sell drum kits.

But the staff is having trouble cutting costs without cutting quality significantly.

Marcus goes to visit the mysterious other brother, Scott. Scott is a soft-spoken, seemingly sensitive guy who clearly loves music and making instruments. (He estimates having made 5,000 drums in his life.)

Scott’s side of the story is that Mike hired all his friends to work at SJC and those guys would all make fun of Scott. Listening to him talk and having seen some of SJC’s employees, I can totally see that. Mike’s the guy with tattoo sleeves, a black cap and a black hoodie, and so is all the staff at SJC. Meanwhile Scott is a little artsy, maybe a little music-nerdy, not necessarily the go along to get along type. It’s not hard to imagine a work environment in which he, despite maybe being the most talented guy in the shop–AND THE FREAKIN’ CO-FOUNDER–might feel intimidated into walking away from his own business, which has taken on a bully culture in which he’s the sole target.

Marcus convinces Scott to come back to SJC, at least temporarily, to put his expertise towards their 40% margin problem.

When Mike sees Scott walk in with Marcus it’s Awkward City, population: 3.

Mike tries to open the conversation but Scott is clearly hurt. “What did I ever do to you?” They go back and forth a while and finally agree to talk about drums rather than personal beefs. Marcus brings Scott out to the warehouse.

Now Mike is crying–literally crying, again–to Chris in the back office about how it’s too awkward, he won’t work at SJC if Scott is there, etc.

Marcus comes into the office and rather than trying to play therapist he gets REAL with Mike. He tells him his earlier apology to Scott during their bickering session was garbage. (Marcus was totally right, BTW. It was one of those apologies where you apologize for how the person is feeling, but not for your part in it. Classic apology loophole.) “I’m not Oprah. To think that your brother doesn’t add value is f—ing asinine.” Go fix it, he tells Mike.

Mike goes back to Scott and makes a better apology, but Scott is still not ready to talk about “brother things.” Mike replies, “Well just so you know, I am ready to talk about brother things. I want some sort of relationship that is healthy for us.” As much as Mike has ostensibly dicked over his brother, it sounds like he’s genuinely remorseful and feels really bad about what went down. This explains why he’d be agree to those ridiculous buyout terms. At this point I kinda just feel bad for both of them, not being able to settle their brother things.

They shake hands and leave the conversation there. It’s a rare case in reality TV where the emotion feels real, not manufactured by the producers.

The next day Scott is back and straight SCHOOLING SJC’s staff on how to cut costs for the drums to get to a “40 points” margin. Dude is just solving EVERY problem the rest of the guys couldn’t. Even Marcus is blown away. “It’s kinda cool to listen to your brother,” he tells Mike. “Cuz he’s got some crazy s–t in his head, but he’s very smart.” Watching Scott work is pretty fascinating, even if you–like me–don’t know jack about drum-making. He’s like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, banging out that math problem on the blackboard at MIT like it was nothing.

Thanks to Scott, SJC now has a prototype they can make for $537 and sell for $895–a 40% margin. They test it at a studio with fancy schmancy audio equipment–which, BTW, who the hell knew there was so much technology in music?–and it passes with flying colors. You could actually argue the SJC “good” prototype is actually too good compared to what you’d get from most beginner kits. But either way it’s within the quality standards of SJC’s brand.

Mike–who up to this point doesn’t seem to be all that valuable of an employee at SJC–has the tall order of going to Sam Ash in New York City with Marcus to convince them to carry SJC’s “better” kit alongside their better-known, multi-national brands.

They’re not having it.

Mike, a better salesman than I gave him credit for, pulls out the big guns ad plays up the handmade in America angle. On top of that he name drops Green Day–they don’t actually say say Billie Joe but it’s implied that “he” and Mike went to each other’s weddings–and says he could get the band to make an appearance at Sam Ash. Richard Ash, grandson of Sam Ash, eats it up. (This scene, BTW, feels TOTALLY fake, but whatever.)

Meanwhile back at SJC Mike and Scott are tight again. Mike says the best part of Marcus’s visit was that Scott is back in his life and they have a relationship again. Again, it seems genuine. They hug it out. And scene.

Marcus does it again–rescues a failing business, and this time mends a family riff. WHAT CAN’T THIS MAN DO?

Posted in Small Business, TV | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

New Paltz Notebook

April 17, 2015 by bobbycalise

A while back I got a letter—in the mail—from someone in SUNY New Paltz’s alumni relations department asking me to give back to my alma mater. (I’ve written before about my feelings donating to my school, so I’ll save you having to read that rant again.)

The letter, which was ostensibly personalized to my year of graduation (2004), included a reference to the “unforgettable” a capella group at New Paltz, Absolut A Capella.

Referencing something from my time at New Paltz was a smart move, and likely a tactic many alumni relations people at all different schools use as a way of getting grads to feel all mushy inside about their college experience—and to loosen their purse strings (or their Venmo accounts or whatever people use to pay for things these days).

But here’s the problem: I have no effing idea what Absolut A Capella is or was! I don’t doubt that there was an a capella music movement at my school during the years in which I matriculated (I’ve always wanted to use that word) at New Paltz—they made a whole movie about it, and I’ve confirmed with friends that this was a thing at other schools—but I have NO recollection of such a movement at New Paltz. In fact an a capella group, based on my experience at NP, was the exact opposite sort of thing that would have been indigenous to the culture of the school.

(A quick Google search confirmed that Absolut A Capella is and was indeed a thing at New Paltz, originating in 2001, my freshman year at the school. Further, if you click on the link in their Facebook profile it brings you to what appears to be an Asian website about catering. And, despite my holding a journalism degree from New Paltz, this is where the investigation ended.)

The stars of Absolut A Capella...?

The stars of Absolut A Capella…?

Anyway I thought of the legendary Absolut A Capella last night when I came across a Buzzfeed article called “15 Things Only A New Paltz Student Would Understand.” (How does a small, public liberal arts college get a feature on internet darling/juggernaut, you ask? Per the site: This post was created by a user and has not been vetted or endorsed by BuzzFeed’s editorial staff. BuzzFeed Community is a place where anyone can post awesome lists and creations.)

I don’t want to dissect this unvetted, unendorsed post written by a college student—who, BTW, probably just got more eyes on something she wrote than I ever have—because that’s a little lame and weird. That said I do have a couple of notes as someone who graduated from New Paltz 11 years ago.

None of the following items on her list are endemic to New Paltz, specifically: hilly parts of campus; student-athletes using Gatorade bottles; a preponderance of dyed hair; overly aggressive campus cops; printing quotas—you know what, nevermind. This article stinks to me, but maybe current New Paltz students love it. Maybe seeing people with dyed hair is completely mind-blowing to the modern college student. Whatever.

I’ll leave you with a glimpse of the SUNY New Paltz I remember, from an excerpt of a thing I wrote when I was in school as part of a Joan Didion “Los Angeles Notebook” knockoff:

It was a late October afternoon, walking on my way to my Literature of Journalism class. It’s about a five-minute walk through campus to the Humanities Building. As I walked to class on this brisk autumn day, dreading the thought that it will only get colder than this as we get into winter, I see a girl walking towards me.

Like many colleges, New Paltz tends to be extremely liberal. So whenever I walk through the campus and streets of New Paltz, not much surprises me.

Walking towards me and eventually past me on my left side is a girl wearing a sandwich board. However, instead of the board reading the sandwich special of the day for a local deli (which would have been odd enough), it was painted like a stick of Doublemint gum. As I am prone to do when I am in New Paltz, I shrugged it off and walked to class.

On that same route to class I noticed a girl wearing devil horns, and again, I thought, “OK, nothing I haven’t seen before in New Paltz.”

Suddenly, I realized it was Halloween, and though I felt like an idiot because I didn’t figure it out right away, I didn’t feel that stupid about it. I see things like this on the other 364 days a year that aren’t Halloween. But instead of a feeling of frustration, or confusion, I kind of just laughed it off and thought, “Just another day at New Paltz–my college.”

Was there something unique to your college experience that you think people who graduated when you did could appreciate? Share in the comments!

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