Olympic fun & games

Hey—I told you that the Olympic Games in London would be entertaining even before they open, didn’t I? And so they are.

First, the actual opening ceremony is creating more drama than three rival high school cliques on a class trip. They’re being put on by filmmaker Danny Boyle, who’s been having run-ins with the official Olympics broadcasters, as well as falling victim to the realities of London public transport.

Boyle is probably looking back fondly on the storyline of his Trainspotting as being a cakewalk in comparison to his current gig. It’s so bad that LOCOG has actually admitted that there are “creative tensions”. When an official body concedes that there’s a slight problem, you know there are rivers of blood flowing.

For one thing, Boyle is fighting with organizers over camera positions for the company he’s hired to film the ceremony (in addition to the official games crews) as a narrative. I’m reminded here of the battles between Leni Riefenstahl and Josef Goebbels over the exact same thing back in 1936. She won and we got Olympia. Wonder what we’ll get out of this squabble?

Whatever it is, it’s going to be shorter than Boyle had planned: he’s had to cut 30 minutes from his extravaganza on account of otherwise no one’s sure people who’ve shelled out a week’s salary or more to attend will be able to get home afterward. That’s because London transport shuts down at 0230—a huge concession from the workforce, a screaming one hour after normal quitting time.

This doesn’t actually surprise me a lot, because British infrastructure workers and institutions aren’t really known for their flexibility. Example: I was on my way to a job interview in London on the Tube, when the train just halted at Edgware Road and stayed there. After some minutes (minutes, I tell you), someone came over the PA system to kindly inform us that the driver of this train had ended his shift and done what he always does, walked away; and the new driver hadn’t shown up yet, so we’d sit there (and every train behind us would sit wherever it was) until the next shift wandered in.

(And don't get me started on the tsuris it takes to open a bank account.)

Several million people coming to your country, paying many times over the odds for food, accommodation and other goods and services? Hey—they can just get stuffed. Sixty thousand revelers trying to get back to their hotels from the opening ceremony? If the job’s not done by quitting time, not your problem. Let 'em walk.

(They cut a whole three to four minutes from the schedule by axing a routine by stunt bikers. They’ll still get paid and get credit, but of course it’s not the same thing.)

But wait—there’s more. Again, as could have been predicted by anyone who’s ever spent more than 23 minutes in the country, those merry folks at HM immigration announced yesterday that they’re going on a 24-hour strike next Thursday, the day before the opening ceremony.

(Now, an interesting facet of this strike is that the PCS union is acting on a vote by their members: 57% of the only 20% of union members who actually returned their ballots voted for the walk-out. That would be basically 11% of their total membership. So 80% couldn't even be bothered. Not exactly what I'd call vox populi, but I guess the leaders feel they have to be seen to be taking action.)

Of course, if HM Government would like to avert the prospect of immigration queues at LHR stretching back to Philadelphia, they can accede to the union’s demands regarding pay, conditions and proposed job cuts.

Well, I’m sure we ain’t seen nothing yet. So stay tuned to the all-games-all-fun channel.

Recruiters 28

I was contacted last by a recruiter for a product manager position, but I’m not holding out much hope. Partly because I’m not a particular match for the position, but mostly because this recruiter is, well, I think her intellectual elevator doesn’t go all the way to the roof.

First of all, there’s her LinkedIn profile, where she describes herself as “Ambassodor” for a local chamber of commerce. And also as a member of a local “Conceiger Association.”

But in our conversation she was very surprised to hear that there’s an academic institution called the College of William & Mary, because she’d never heard of it. Perhaps she thought I was making it up to pad my résumé, like the last CEO of Yahoo.

And then, in response to me mentioning that my research concentration at that brand new (or possibly mythical) college was the history of technology, she paused and then said, “Oh. Well. I guess technology wasn’t as…advanced as now.”

I don’t know whether she was implying that my degrees date from before the Industrial Revolution, or that “technology” sprang fully formed from the brow of Zeus in the past three years. Perhaps both.

At any rate, I was not impressed and I don’t see how a client could be, either.

Let the games begin

This whole Olympics thing—really very exciting. But I don’t know how anyone will have any energy left to pour into the athletic events, after all the massive flapdoodles taking place in advance of the opening ceremonies.

I’ve picked up on three such in just the past few days.

First there was this massive outcry in Britain when it was learned that the deal the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG, although I don’t know how they came up with that particular acronym; maybe they just ditched the P?) made with corporate sponsor McDonald's included a proviso forbidding any other food vendor in the main Olympic site from selling chips (AKA fries).

The one exception is if the chips are accompanied by fish and doused in vinegar. (Okay, I made up the last bit, but the fish part is for real.)

The Brits who’ve commented on various sites have heaped opprobrium on McDonald's without considering what the alternative might have been. I mean—once you’ve thrown away the idea of having any kind of nutritious offering at the venues, and you’ve made clear that what you want is megabucks from a corporate sponsor, that pretty much left the field open only to the Golden Arches.

And LOCOG made that quite clear by also having Coca Cola, Cadbury’s and Heineken as sponsors.

Flap number two came from our side of the pond, when various Congressmorons discovered only 17 minutes ago that the seriously ugly Team USA uniforms were manufactured in China. There was huffing and there was puffing in chambers; the likes of Pelosi and Boehner were shocked—shocked, I say—to learn that the Ralph Lauren designs were (like all of his line) not made in the USA.

Well, I find that just the teensiest bit disingenuous, since (particularly on the ‘Pub side) they have not the teensiest qualm about all those textile and garment jobs that went to China after even Mexico’s wage scale got to be too high for their corporate donors. (Really, the more serious crime is the fashion felony that these faux-preppie rags commit. Ralphie, Ralphie—that's the best you got?)

You also have to wonder how much Lauren felt he had to make off this gig that he didn’t consider biting the bullet and having the pieces for 600 athletes assembled in Alabama or Texas or another right-to-work stage. North Carolina probably still has all those factories pretty much available.

In the wake of the bad publicity Lauren has vowed that “next time” he’ll make them in the USA; because I guess he’s got a long-term contract. Longer than any of his employees, anyway.

The latest spectacle comes in the form of security for the games—which had been contracted out to a private firm, G4S—is, uh, well…in question. Seems G4S, which was to have provided 10,400 trained security staff, basically screwed the pooch and will now only be able to supply 7000. Maybe. But they’re not sure.

The Ministry of Defence [sic] has announced that they’ll throw in 3500 soldiers (or maybe more, depending on whether G4S can even cough up the 7000; to date they’ve only vetted 5500. They claim to have been operating on a “just-in-time” model…to save themselves some money) to take their place. Considering that the troops—while no doubt combat ready (since many of them are actually being pulled off the line, as well as off vacations)—won’t have been given a clue about logistics, policing, etc., this could be really, really interesting.

I mean—we have the opportunity to see the most uniformed military policing an Olympic Games since 1936. Although I bet the uniforms won’t be nearly as spiffy as back then.

What’s also interesting is the performance of Nick Buckles, G4S’s CEO, before Parliament. While admitting that his company’s performance has been “a humiliating shambles”, he insisted that they still deserve their £57M ($90M) “management fee”. That’s because, “We’ve managed the contract and we’ve had management on the ground for two years.”

So—although I think he was playing fast and loose with the concept of “management”, he basically thinks they should get paid for time on the clock, regardless of the results.

For sheer arrogance, though—wins the gold medal.

Do you Yahoo?

Very interesting news out of the Silicon Valley: Marissa Mayer starts her job as CEO of Yahoo! this morning. Mayer, 37, was previously a VP at Google, and has been a vocal proponent of girl geeks.

Mayer has her work cut out for her—Yahoo! has been lost for some time, & has been going through CEOs at a good clip; five in the past five years. First order of business will be to figure out what the company wants to be—portal, search engine, breath mint, floor wax—and then make it happen.

I’ve seen Mayer in action—she’s smart, articulate, energetic. It’ll be really interesting to see how these qualities translate to turning around a behemoth in serious trouble.

Linking to Mitt

As I've commented before, LinkedIn is a strange, strange place. But it does have its charms.

So far, I've found no fewer than three "profiles" for the presumptive GOP presidential candidate.

This one may be legit.

This one seems like some campaign worker created it.

This one is probably the most accurate. (But as of the weekend it had been removed. You're lucky I took a screen shot.)

Happy birthday, Woody

Today marks the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, that most American of song writers and quintessential champion of the working man.

Everyone will be hearing “This Land is Your Land” this weekend; it’s undoubtedly Woody’s most famous work. Plus—it’s easy to play on the guitar and makes a rousing sing-along.

But I have a couple of others for your exploration. Both are on my pod for the gym, and I expect I’ve startled more than one person on a nearby treadmill by singing some of the lyrics.

Here’s U2 and “Jesus Christ”.

And here’s John Mellencamp singing “Do Re Mi”. No, no—not that Do Re Mi. The one about how California isn’t all that much of a Goldeneh Medina unless you show up with your own gold.

Both of these songs are painfully accurate today—they could be anthems for any “occupy” protest. I wonder what Woody would have made of the auto/bank/mortgage/offshoring economy we live in today?

Well, no, I don’t wonder at all. I know.

So I’ll leave you with “I Ain’t Got No Home”, sung by Springsteen. Crank up the volume and let it flow right on through you.

Facebook yoga

Here’s a quintessentially California story: a contract yoga teacher was sacked from her job at Facebook because she “glared” at an employee who was texting during a yoga class.

Completely California because it’s got yoga and texting in the same sentence. Very Silicon Valley in that the texter—whose feelings were apparently hurt by the “confrontation”—prevailed.

Of course, instructor Alice Van Ness had been warned by her employer (the vendor of yoga services to Facebook) that she couldn’t ban mobile phones in the class. But you can understand her being skeptical of that because, well…yoga is the antithesis of multi-tasking, and you can’t really be fully in the moment if your little thumbs are click-click-clicking on your little device about your little thoughts to your little friends.

And, seriously—if the outside world can’t get along without you for a 50-minute period, then either you’ve organized things pretty badly, or you’re the Pope.

(Even Mark Zuckerberg’s then-fiancée negotiated with him for uninterrupted blocks of quality time before they got married. And he’s the bleeding CEO of the company.)

Well, it’s an ill wind...Following all the publicity, Van Ness has found another job where she can enforce the cellphone ban. And we’ll hope the little FB princess doesn’t take it into her head to sue Van Ness for damaging her fragile, vapid psyche by expecting her to behave with a modicum of courtesy.

Music between the ears

You know that annoying, really grating feeling when you can’t get a song out of your head? Well, let me share what’s been bouncing around my cranium for the past couple of weeks:

New Tricks is a BBC show about three retired Metropolitan Police geezers working for a female superintendent to solve cold cases. It’s actually much better than the theme song.

No need to thank me; it's good to share.

(Hey—it could be worse. I could have reminded you of “It’s a Small World”.)

Bus stop memorial, Pt. 2

I drove past the bus stop at California and Escuela in Mountain View yesterday. That’s where residents had erected a memorial to a man who was killed by a speeding car on 21 June.

That was more than three weeks ago, so I was surprised to find that not only was the bench still a memorial, but the floral and stuffed animal tributes had multiplied.

Says something about Bill Ware that people think it’s more important to remember his life than to sit down to wait for the bus.

It's a small, small world

If you’re looking for an example of the concept of chalk and cheese, I give you a recent extravaganza performed for newly-fledged North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The chalk/cheese juxtaposition comes from a bunch of (unlicensed & unauthorized) Disney characters, including Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and Snow White’s dwarfs.

Dunno how to interpret the Disney display. I do know that about ten years ago Kim’s eldest brother, Kim Jong Nam, was eliminated from the succession of the Dear Leader after being caught by Japanese authorities using a Dominican Republic passport in an attempt to visit Tokyo Disneyland. (And I swear I’m not making that up.)

Frankly, the video doesn’t look to me as though anyone’s having much fun, but perhaps the Kim dynasty is looking to turn the last bastion of Stalinism into yet another Happiest Place on Earth?

(And Disney legal folks, if that phrase about happiness is your trademark, please just consider its appearance here fair use. Okay, thanks, bye.)