Author: Dan Oshinsky

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Airport Questions.

“Do you know which way your gate is?”

I look up at the airline employee who just checked me in. It’s 4:52 a.m. at San Antonio Interational Airport.

“Excuse me?”

She repeats the question.

I look right. There is a security checkpoint over there.

I look left. About 10 feet away, there is a blank, white wall. There are no doors or exits or windows, only a dead end. I don’t have any rappelling equipment with me, and I’ve left my chainsaw at home. TSA orders.

I look up at her. She’s waiting for an answer: left, to the dead end, or right, to the gates.

I point. She smiles. I’ve passed the test.

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My Grandson, The Chipotle Apprentice.


Of note: What follows is a work of original blog fiction. Only the business card printed above is real. (Also: Chipotle does make quesadillas; they’re just on the secret menu.)

My grandson is named Charlie.
I love him very much.
He is 22 years old.
He has a degree in fine arts from SUNY-Schenectety, the Harvard of east central New York.
Charlie works as an apprentice at Chipotle.

Charlie has a warm smile.
The edges of his lips twist when he laughs.
He likes to lock his fingers behind my back when he hugs me.
He hair droops over his eyes, like a wilting azalea leaf.
Charlie works as an apprentice at Chipotle.

When he was in first grade, he wanted to be a fire fighter.
In the third grade, he wanted to be a scientist.
In the fifth grade, he saw a film on Sptunik and wanted to be a cosmonaut.
In the sixth grade, he got sick on the ‘It’s a Small World’ ride and changed his mind.
Charlie works as an apprentice at Chipotle.

On Monday, he called to say hello.
He says he likes what he does.
There have been apprentices for bakers, for dressmakers, for craftsmen — all honorable professions.
Why not burrito makers?
He says that he is the protégé of the burrito press.
The successor of the salsa.
One day, all the tortilla touches will be his.
There is a full moon out tonight.
He says it looks like a giant, uncooked, floury shell.
He thinks it might go well with some carnitas and corn-based salsa.
Charlie works as an apprentice at Chipotle.

I know Charlie is just in that transitional phase that happens when ‘What do you want to be?’ turns into ‘What do you want to do?’
But I know that transitions never really end.
I know that empowerment isn’t easy.
I know that destiny can be hard to grab.
I know true success has a way of staying just out of reach.
Charlie works as an apprentice at Chipotle.

I wonder if I will have great grandchildren one day.
I wonder if I will see my grandson married.
I wonder what they will serve at the wedding.
At the bar mitzvah, Charlie had those little quesadilla squares for hors d’oeuvres.
Chipotle doesn’t make quesadillas.
I wonder if they’d make an exception for him.
Charlie works as an apprentice at Chipotle.

In twenty minutes, the girls will come over to play bridge.
Muriel will talk about her grandson, the lawyer in Springfield.
Mariel will talk about her granddaughter, the med student in Eugene.
Sarah will talk about her grandson, the policeman in St. Paul.
I will not talk about my grandson, because I do not know what I would say, and I do not know what they would say.
It is not that I am ashamed of him.
It is not that I don’t love him.
I know he’s just figuring things out, and that’s okay with him.
It’s just harder on me, that’s all.
Charlie works as an apprentice at Chipotle.

At 7, Charlie was precocious.
At 12, he was precious.
At 13, he became a man.
At 22, he’s still becoming one.
I hope he does before I die.

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The Day I Accidentally Rooted for Kansas.

I want to take it back.

I cannot un-know what I know. I cannot reverse time. I cannot deny what has happened.

But I cannot imagine going on knowing that one day, fourteen years ago, I may have accidentally rooted for Kansas.

¶¶

My dad used to do a bit of work with the D.C.-area Boys and Girls Club, which was affiliated with the D.C. police, which was the reason why dad always ended up as the policeman in my elementary school’s annual Sock Hop production of the “YMCA.” But it’s also the reason why we ended up at a fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Club, this one put on by the Washington Redskins.

The MC that night was Chris Berman. He did a couple “back back back” jokes, the DJ played “Hail to the Redskins,” and then Berman tossed it to the live auction.

One of the items was a trip to Kansas City to see the Redskins play. I do not know why — I was only 7 at the time, and I’d never been to Missouri before — but I asked my dad if I could bid on it. He said yes.

He thought I’d bid once or twice and get out of it.

I wanted to win.

The ballroom must’ve held a thousand people, maybe more, so it’s understandable why the auctioneer didn’t initially notice my arm shooting into the air. But around $300, my Uncle Sol caught his eye and gave him a wave in my direction.

“$300,” he said, and pointed at me.

This being my first live auction, I was unfamiliar with the bidding process. I didn’t notice other people taking their hands down after bidding. So even after the auctioneer pointed at me, I kept my arm up. He looked elsewhere. Someone bid $350. He looked back at me.

“$400,” he said.

My arm stayed in the air.

It went on like this for a few more rounds. Dad told me to stop bidding; my hand stayed in the air. But by then, it was too late. It was down to just me and one other contender.

I bid, and the auctioneer looked at the other bidder. He was consulting with his wife. How much was too much to spend on a mid-November trip to Kansas City? he was surely asking. She gave him a look. His arm stayed by his side.

“Going once,” the auctioneer said. His eyes swept the room. He caught my eye. My hand was still in the air.

“You can’t bid against yourself,” he said. The entire room laughed.

When the room quieted, he asked for a second time, and then a third, but the other bidder didn’t match.

¶¶

When you’re seven, it’s only the weird things that stick out. Going to Kansas City, I remember we flew Midwest Express out of the old terminal at National Airport, and I remember that the stewardesses gave us real silverware to eat our in-flight meal with. I remember that we stopped in Milwaukee, and that dad wanted to buy me a Green Bay Packers cheese head. (I wasn’t interested.) I remember going to a barbecue place in Kansas City, where they used paint brushes to slather sauce on their brisket sandwiches, and where the food was wrapped in the Sunday edition of the Kansas City Star. (The barbecue place turned out to be the legendary Arthur Bryant’s.) I remember the omelete bar at the hotel, and I remember regretting having gone through six or seven eggs at breakfast before the flight back to D.C.

The game itself was less memorable. We had seats in the upper deck behind one of the benches. It was cold. The Redskins lost, and I remember Brian Mitchell dropping a pass in the end zone on a 4th down. The box score doesn’t provide much help: the Redskins ran through Gus Frerotte and Heath Shuler at QB that day. It didn’t matter. They lost, 24-3.

But it’s this other memory that’s started to bother me.

¶¶

Not having anything to do on a Saturday in Kansas City, my dad and I decided to drive out to Lawrence, Kan., to see a football game.

I’d long since forgotten the opponent, but I was thinking about the game yesterday, and I checked in with Google to see if it could offer any answers. I tracked down the date of the Redskins-Chiefs game, and then cross-checked it with the KU football schedule.

The day was Nov. 4, 1995, and I watched as the Kansas Jayhawks beat the Missouri Tigers, 42-23. That’s what the box score says, but I don’t remember it. My memories from that day are hollow: a long, flat stretch of highway out to Lawrence; a half-empty stadium; and something about a giant drum. I can’t know for sure, but I’d guess that my dad and I cheered for Kansas that day.

What I didn’t know is that a decade later, I’d be enrolling at the University of Missouri.

¶¶

It’s weird, now, but I feel almost wronged by the memory. There is the Chase Daniel cover of Sports Illustrated hanging next to my bed. There is a Brad Smith jersey hanging in the closet. There is a copy of the Mizzou alumni magazine on the coffee table.

And then there is this memory, of a chilly fall day, of a horseshoe stadium, of a rivalry game that I didn’t fully understand.

A decade later, I’d fall in love with one of those teams. I’d plan my Saturdays around their Saturdays, and their glory would become my glory.

But on Nov. 4, 1995, I’m afraid that I rooted for the wrong one.

I wish I’d known then. I wish I didn’t know now.

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The Bird Who Sticks His Head Out.

My parents weren’t big on idioms when I was a kid, and I’m probably happier off as a result. Idioms have a way of summing things up a bit too perfectly, of providing a universal answer to a singular context. Not ever wound demands a band-aid, I guess is what I’m saying.

The other thing is, only some idioms actually make sense. Most don’t seem to make any.

Take this old expression: “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” I’d always thought that it was an odd way of saying, “Go out and take a risk.” But as of 2009, this Urban Dictionary definition seems more appropriate.

Yesterday, I just finished reading Jennifer 8. Lee’s excellent “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles,” and it’s there that I discovered the Chinese equivalent of this semi-sensical English expression.

In Chinese, they say, “Qiang da chutou niao.” But in English, it means, “The bird who sticks his head out gets shot.”

See, now that I get.

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Three Cool Thoughts.

What could be the first of a regular segment on danoshinsky.com: three thoughts I heard this week that made me stop and think:

1. Make small stuff do big things. (via Professor Wade Adams, Director of the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology at Rice University)

2. Some things aren’t rocket science; they’re much more complicated. (via “Traffic” by Tom Vanderbilt)

And the I-sleep-fine-thank-you-but-still-this-is-pretty-awesomely-worded thought:

3. If life is really as short as they say, why is the night so long? (via M. Ward’s “Chinese Translation“)

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Stupid Human Things That Happen on Thanksgiving.

Three Thanksgiving things that I’m submitting immediately to the “Stuff White People Like” database:

1. Thanksgiving Day runs: Like many semi-lazy humans, I participated in an extended, organized run yesterday. It’s common knowledge that such Thanksgiving Day runs are notorious for presenting the most variable weather conditions existing outside of Death Valley. I have now completed Thanksgiving runs in Washington, D.C., and San Antonio, Texas. In each run, the weather was sub-arctic at the starting gun. By the third mile, the weather had heated up to the point where anyone wearing sleeves looked as out of place as the polar bear in ‘Lost.’ I am told that all Thanksgiving runs — including those in Miami, Topeka and Duluth — feature such wild, inappropriate temperature swings. As usual, awards were presented to the fastest runners, which I found strange, because anyone who was able to even loosen up at 7 a.m. in below-freezing temperatures should be taken immediately to the nearest institute of kinesiology for testing.

The previous two years, I ran a 10K. This year, I ran a 5K. As always, by the end of the run, I looked like I wanted the state of Texas to award me the death penalty.

2. Watching the Rockettes: If you’re like my family, then you completely lost it when you saw Matt Lauer introduce the Rockettes yesterday. The Rockettes are one of those organizations that, I’m quite convinced, only exist because people are inherently stupid. The Rockettes exist almost entirely out of nature, a homogeneous group that wears the same outfits and does the same routine every year. And every year, Americans completely lose it at the sight of these women. Most things obey the law that Einstein once wrote of: insanity is doing the same thing year after year and expecting different results every time. But the weird thing is, watching the Rockettes and NOT expecting people to go nuts would be considered insane.

3. Low-quality sporting events: We are at the point in society where we, as Americans, should no longer allow the Detroit Lions or the Dallas Cowboys to play football on Thanksgiving. We should absolutely demand that the NFL, on the one day when no less than 93 percent of the population is watching football, actually present us with viewing options. And it is unconscionable that other networks have not stepped up their TV watching options. I’m on my ass. I’ve just eaten what amounts to the gross domestic product of Guatemala. I’ve poured enough alcohol into my system to lose the ability to operate machinery as complicated as a remote control. That there are not better channel choices — which is to say, more violent events featuring humans colliding at high speeds — is shameful. We deserve the lowest in high definition gladiatorial competitions, and the Detroit Lions do not come close to fulfilling our needs.

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More Proof That I Am, in Fact, an Idiot.

I am an idiot.

I’m 22 years old and blissfully unaware of the world around me. Blissfully unaware, I’d venture, is one step closer to bliss than most people ever get.

But it’s that bliss that, today, reminded me of how big an idiot I really am.

I had to go to Target this afternoon because there was a hot yoga class in town that I wanted to try, and to take the class, I needed to first purchase an official yoga mat. Such a mat is the consistency of an oversized Shamwow, except that it costs $20 and does nothing that a $3 towel wouldn’t do when it’s 95 degrees inside a yoga studio and your palms are too sweaty to grip much of anything. [1. I also must report that my yoga class consisted of what I must assume were the five most flexible people in all of South Texas. The yoga teacher herself may have been born without joints, bones or the ability to sense the unstoppable pain in my lower back. I don’t think she was a contortionist; I think she was a human balloon animal.]

There was traffic on the way to Target, so I called a friend while I waited in traffic. I kept talking as I got to the store, parked the car, grabbed a hand cart and found the oversized Shamwow that would be my platform for future yoga futility. I started walking back toward the checkout line.

Somewhere during the walk, the idiot in me took over.

For the most part, I try not to be an asshole in public, and generally, I look upon other assholes with scorn. At the top of the list of assholes in public are People Who Talk On Their Cell Phones While Urinating. Just below that, on the list of assholes worthy of title case, are People Who Talk on Their Cell Phones in the Checkout Aisle.

I decided, mid-walk, that I did not want to enter that second category.

But instead of doing the rational thing — explaining the situation to my friend, hanging up and calling back a few minutes later — I just kept walking and talking.

I walked and talked over to the toiletries aisle and picked up some paper towels. I found the grocery aisle and eyed a pint of ice cream, though I eventually passed on any. I looped through to home furnishings and grabbed two scented candles, then back to sporting goods, and over to menswear. At some point, I found myself back in the grocery aisle and decided upon a single can of minestrone soup. My handcart was getting progressively heavier. My left arm was starting to sag. I kept talking.

During my fifth or sixth loop of menswear, I looked down the aisle toward the store’s entrance and noticed that it was getting dark. I told my friend that I had to go and hung up. I saw the counter flashing on my phone. I’d been walking and talking for nearly 40 minutes, it said.

I walked over to the checkout aisles and found an empty lane. I put my things on the belt, and in a conscientious effort not to be one of those aforementioned assholes, I smiled at the cashier and said hello. She said nothing. She put my items in a bag and told me the price of my goods. A trip for a cheap yoga mat had turned into a full-on shopping spree, all in an effort to be polite to this cashier. I thanked her and wished her a nice day, and I actually kind of meant it. She didn’t respond.

I grabbed my bags, and my left arm sagged again. I didn’t feel like an asshole, which was a thought with about as much comfort as my $20 yoga mat. I only felt like an idiot.

Which is, to say, I only felt like myself.

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Read This, and Every Time You See the Word “DVR,” Insert “The Internet” Instead.

The New York Times has an interesting article today about the DVR and its impact on TV viewing. The article notes that TV execs once feared the DVR. Now, they love it.

What happened? It’s a cycle that happens with any revolutionary technology:

1. The technology is created and released to the public.

2. The technology gains widespread adoption.

3. Everything else works to catch up to the technology.

We created cars, and paved roads came later. We created sliced bread, and toasters came later. We created the slap shot, and — 50 years ago today — goalies started wearing masks. Ever heard the phrase “safety first”? In hockey, quite literally, safety came second.

But TV is just starting to adapt to the DVR, even though the TiVo was introduced more than a decade ago.

The original problem with the DVR was pretty simple: TV stations need money. They sell advertising to make money. But the DVR gave the consumers the power to skip past those ads.

The secondary problem was with TVs complicated ratings system. The ratings are measured in — and I’ll put this politely — an esoteric way. TV people don’t like the Nielsen ratings system. But it’s the only measure that counts when it comes to deciding whether or not a television program is successful.

When the DVR was introduced, it allowed viewers to record a show and watch it later. But Nielsen didn’t account for these viewers. If you weren’t watching the show live, it didn’t count in the ratings.

So it took a few years for the ratings system to catch up. Explains The Times:

Two years ago, in a seismic change from past practice, Nielsen started measuring television consumption by the so-called commercial-plus-three ratings, which measure viewing for the commercials in shows that are watched either live or played back on digital video recorders within three days. This replaced the use of program ratings.

With the new system, ratings are up — way up. Thanks to the plus-three system, Fox has added about 600,00 viewers per show. Even NBC, which has seen the smallest gains with plus-three, has added an average of 140,00 viewers per show.

Here’s the crucial thought: for eight years of the DVR’s existence, television stations were improperly valuing their own assets. Thousands of people were watching TV shows, but those viewers weren’t being counted.

The same is happening with internet advertising. Ads are sold using a CPM valuation that doesn’t work. Today, the clickthrough is the key to increasing your CPM and raising your advertising rates. But it’s not particularly effective.

Why? For one, humans aren’t nearly as impulsive on the Internet as you’d expect. The clickthrough method works well for products that can be delivered on demand, which is why iTunes’ store is so effective, why porn sells on the web and why watching movies with the touch of a mouse is the next big thing. But say you see an ad on Yahoo!’s homepage for Chick-Fil-A. Even if you click through to the company’s website to read or see more, is that really any indicator that you’re heading out for a chicken sandwich at lunch?

The real money will be made when internet advertising measures — much like the Nielsen plus-three method — user engagement. DVR viewers are actively choosing to record and watch their favorite shows. For internet ads to be successful, those ads will have to demand a similar level of interaction with users.

Whatever the new version of CPM is, it has to measure that consumer’s desire for a particular product. A clickthrough simply doesn’t measure up.

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What I’ve Been Up To Lately.

It’s been a busy week at the office, which means it’s been a slow week here on the site. So I wanted to pass along links to a few things I’ve been doing lately.

This week, we launched a weekly NBA column. This was the first edition.

Also this week: my ‘Top 10 Costumes We Do NOT Want to See on Halloween.”

I’ve been working on a first for KENS 5: a comprehensive guide to the upcoming election.

And two original slideshows. One was my backstage tour of a local haunted house. The other, a companion piece to a story about a woman trapped on the ‘Mexican side’ of the border fence.

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