The guys in this picture are:
     A. Working for a living.
     B. Looking for handouts.

The guys in this picture are:
     A. Entrepreneurs starting their own business
     B. Beggars

The guys in this picture are:
     A. Prime examples of a real work ethic
     B. Disturbing the peace.

I’d say, ‘take your pick,’ but you already did that, didn’t you? We have a complicated and frequently contradictory view of people who literally take their retail business to the street. Some of us pay them to entertain us, some give them a charitable contribution, and most of us pass by with anger or embarrassment or some other emotional response. Pretty much nobody will congratulate them for pursuing the American Dream, but maybe we’re missing something here.

While I was enjoying a summer day on a bike ride, these guys were taking turns entertaining the motorists at Six Corners in Chicago. Okay, they were mostly using plastic pails as drums and not everyone was entertained, but that’s no different from any bit of street art. Some of us like it and pay for the show and some of us hate it and offer no reward, but the performers give it their all either way.

That makes their job the same as a restaurant server or a porter or a valet, doing the work with no idea whether a tip is in the offing. Capitalism is a tough town.

There’s a performing group at Walt Disney World that does essentially the same thing as my new friends on Cicero Avenue. The Disney World team has a longer performance with more people, more props and—sorry, guys—much more talent, but both groups seek to entertain us by attacking garbage cans with sticks.

Maybe one of the guys in this photo will be in Orlando one day and get discovered, earning his way to a bright musical career and some great reminiscences about his humble beginnings. Probably not, but we never know. Every super hero has an origin story and my weekend entertainment was undoubtedly part of theirs.

Sometimes, the people asking for money on the street aren’t offering anything tangible in return, although I do get the positive feeling that I’ve done something charitable, possibly heroic, when I give them a dollar. Here’s a mom with a baby, sitting on the sidewalk, looking for money to put food on the table, and I know all the reasons I shouldn’t part with my money. She might be a scammer, it might not be her kid, and giving her money only encourages her to keep begging and never get a job… Still, she’s having a worse day than I am by any measurement available and I’ll take the risk that she’s secretly a billionaire asking me to make her even richer.

The choice is easier with a street performer or a migrant mom selling water or candy outside the grocery store. Now it’s a more physical transaction, an offer of a product or a service in return for payment. As a true capitalist, I can’t help but applaud the entrepreneurial spirit, even if I don’t happen to need any more Skittles. Every sale they make, or don’t, is part of their origin story and I’m helping them to craft it either way.

Someday, maybe a couple of decades from now, my street-side drummers will be talking about our interaction on their podcast, recalling the guy who gave them ten bucks and the encouragement to continue striving for their art. Today, though, I spent $10 to get a blog idea, and that’s an investment I’ll make any day of the week.

Next week, we're taking a look at what's really newsworthy and a way to avoid a whole ton of conversation, and people who subscribe here will love it the most.

I'm having second thoughts about what qualifies as news and I know Italy will be very disappointing, but let's share some punchlines first. If you don't know all the jokes, just buy me lunch or dinner, or maybe a Porsche, and I'll catch you up on them.

• You can call me Ray. I wrote a few weeks ago about going to a friend’s funeral and learning that everyone called him David, while I called him Dave. Later on, I realized that at least half of my long-time friends call me Mike, not Michael. I should probably object, but I’m grateful anyone talks to me at all.
• Suffering for their art. The people who own the movie theaters started putting in reclining seats with giant cushions to compete with the comfort levels we all experience while streaming at home, but the live theater owners haven’t caught on yet. Tiny seats, tiny cushions, zero leg room and,  even worse, no popcorn.
• A timely question. We always think we sound smart when we say a stopped clock is right twice a day. Problem is, we can never know when those two moments are going to come along. It’s like saying we should only buy lottery tickets on the day our number is coming up. Almost a tautology, but stupid, nonetheless.
• Batteries not included. Actually, that thing about stopped clocks makes even less sense than I thought  before, since most clocks are digital and they're never right when they're stopped. Glad I could clear that up for you. Next week, we debunk the idea that a penny saved is a penny earned.
• Smells like teen dispirit. I took a picture of my granddaughter making funny faces and posted it online and she thought it was absolutely great. A few years from now, she’ll be a teen and think it’s 200% mortifying. Humor is a constant, but audience tastes evolve.
• Duke! Get away from that man. Every so often, I think I should share some humor on this blog, but most of my favorite jokes involve long stories that lead to TL:DR replies. I’m solving the problem today, though, by just sharing the punchlines. IYKYK.
  • Now that’s how you wave a towel.
  • I’ll take the soup.
  • Ours is prettier.
  • So, tell me, Johnny, did you do it?
  • He had a hat!
  • Some people just don’t know how to tell a joke.
  • Yes, sir, but your wife has been here for two weeks.
  • You idiot! I sent you a truck and a canoe and a helicopter…
  • You’re really not in this for the hunting, are you?
  • (Seven punch lines too scatological to include in a family blog), and, of course…
  • The Aristocrats!!
• Old Standard. I stopped in at an ethnic restaurant the other day and concluded that the food was not really authentic because it didn’t taste like the first place I’d gone for that cuisine. After Olive Garden, I know Italy could only be a disappointment.
• Let it go. Not every comment or joke requires a defense. It’s okay to laugh when someone points out how your side goofed up without an “oh yeah?” or a whatabout.
  

Next up, we'll be comparing beggars and entrepreneurs, because the lines can blur quite a bit on the mean streets of Chicago. Subscribe now so you won't miss it.

Web-surfing and puzzles are taking up way too many hours, which isn't leaving enough time to write my memoirs. Too bad, because I saved all the really good stuff for the book...

• We’re the Cheapest! There was a guy who ran a bike store in the old neighborhood who always had the lowest prices on any item you asked for, but only when it was out of stock. Once the item was on his shelves, it was a different story. I’m reminded of him every time I hear some candidate making promises about what they’ll do once they’re in office.
• Sorry about the explosion. Why is it that people in power save the really useful information for a book they won’t publish for five years and never tell us what’s what when it could make a difference? “Here’s the code that would have prevented that nuclear blast. Yeah, I could have told you before the bomb went off, but I thought it would be a great detail to save for my memoirs.”
• Why aren’t you dead yet? Some guys on Twitter keep posting about “the obituary I didn’t want to read today” and I wonder if they have a most-wanted list. Do they have people who are on the list every day or do they have specific holidays or seasons for their favorite unfavorites?
• Worse and Worser. What’s it like to be on the International Space Station and have only two options for getting home: Boeing and SpaceX? NASA was probably smart to choose SpaceX, because Boeing’s doors can fall off at any time, but a SpaceX rocket that doesn’t explode on the way up will probably be okay on the return.
• One across. I’d like to think I’m well informed, but it turns out I spend most of my time doing puzzles. I’m zipping past the headlines in the NYT to get to Connections and the first thing I read in the WaPo is Keyword. On Sundays, I settle in for the crosswords and I never quite get to page 5 of the news section. Don’t ask me what’s going on in the world, but if you need a six-letter word for excessive pride, I’m your guy.
• TMMI. Along the same lines, reading the Sunday papers takes a lot less time now that I’m no longer opening the opinion section. To be frank, I’m totally overdosed on opinions long before the weekend arrives. Whether it’s Twitter or Facebook or, increasingly, Linkedin, online visits reveal the greatest leverage of all time; 0.0001% facts transformed into 99.9999% rants.
• Talk amongst yourselves. Why is it that conspiracy theorists are so busy fighting the mainstream that they never get into battles with each other? Why don’t the people who blame Jews for 9/11 argue with the people who say it was the Bush Administration? Why don’t the people who say 100 million illegal aliens voted in 2020 argue with the people who say it was the voting machines or the people who say it was China or a wireless link from Italy or…you get the idea. The world would be a calmer place if they just fought with each other over whose conspiracy is real and left the rest of us alone.
• Class Warfare. Am I the only one whose Facebook feed is non-stop stories about some poor person or poorly dressed person who is abused while sitting in first-class on the plane, only to reveal that they are just so super-duper deserving of their seats that everyone wants to kiss their filthy—but very worthy—feet?  I think they’ve finally run out of ideas at the click-bait factory.

It’s a question I get all the time from my millions of admirers: What’s the one incredible achievement of my life that brings me the greatest satisfaction? I understand why people would ask this, of course. After all of my trillion-dollar philanthropy and all the times I have saved humanity from imminent destruction, you’d think it would be difficult to pick only one.

And yet, the choice is very simple. There has been no heroic feat, no philanthropic contribution, no single gift to our world that makes me as proud as my work at the Chicago Banana Hospice. As bananas contemplate the last stages in their terrorized existence, I strive to make their final days on earth as calm and painless as possible. It’s God’s work, and I am humbled by the opportunity to serve.

Thankfully, none of us will ever experience the untold evil inflicted on bananas. Living in peace and resting in the sun, they look forward to a long and happy life with the same bunch of friends they’ve been connected to since birth. Then, one day, without warning, they are attacked by machete-wielding terrorists, separated from their homes, confined to cardboard cages where no sunlight can enter, and tossed into cold bins where they can be poked and squeezed by predators. Soon, all they can anticipate is the ultimate pain of being skinned alive and cut or mashed or simply devoured by their new captors.

Their only hope is Chicago Banana Hospice. We work with the brave rescuers at Instacart, who miraculously find a way to save our poor friends and bring them to us for their final days. Here at our banana hospice, we provide a calm and quiet countertop where they can escape the terror and spend their final days in peace, still connected, literally, to the friends of their youth.

We are non-denominational at the Chicago Banana Hospice, accepting Doles and Chiquitas and Del Montes, and even store brands, because they are all equal in the eyes of God. We don’t accept plantains, though, because we have to draw the line somewhere. We know you understand.

Our work at the banana hospice is challenging in many ways. Watching our friends as they deteriorate can be heartbreaking. Sometimes we wonder if we shouldn’t simply end their suffering in a banana bread or a disposal, but we refuse to give in to those cruel interventions. Instead, we provide physical and spiritual support as they transition from yellow to brown to black and, ultimately, a state of ooze that will be mark their end of days on the kitchen counter.

Only when their suffering has ended do we bring them to their final resting place. Then, we waste no time in reaching out to Instacart to rescue a new bunch of frightened victims that we can support on their journey to eternal rest. We hope you'll join us in this noble quest and create your own banana hospice. All you need is a kitchen counter, a grocery app, and the ability to walk past your bananas without intervening for at least a week.

Is it any wonder that this is the pinnacle of my gifts to the world? Yes, I’ve saved children from burning buildings and created cures for more than 3,000 illnesses and defeated intergalactic evildoers, but all of that is nothing compared to my work at the Chicago Banana Hospice. As long as the terror continues, I will provide a safe haven for bananas from every brand and every corner of the world.

Am I a hero or what???

I’ll be tied up with some new heroics next week, but subscribe now and you’ll be sure to see our next post, whenever I get around to it.
 
 
 

I've discovered some great jobs that demand much less time than I was led to believe, and a whole lotta monkeys are not missing the stigma at all. It all makes sense when you consider:

• Do I get my birthday off? Clearly, the easiest part-time job in the world is Chief Executive Officer. Elon Musk is supposedly in charge of at least four companies, which makes each one 25% of a job, and then he spends most of his day tweeting. Maybe if he spent more time running SpaceX, fewer of their rockets would explode. Just sayin’.
• Lotsa personal days? Apparently, the same part-time attendance is no problem for other jobs, including Senator, Governor and even Vice President. They’re really critical, 24/7 roles with crises and deadlines and no time to sleep, unless you’re running for president or vice president or something. Then you can be out of the office indefinitely and still get paid as if you were at your desk, tending to the people’s business.
• A gift from the distant CEO. Meanwhile, the new CEO of Starbucks negotiated a deal that lets him run the company without having to live near headquarters, commuting as needed on the company jet. I know it sounds like just another CEO perk, but it’s really a gift to all the headquarters staff and their families. Historically, companies have had a strange bias toward moving their headquarters to wherever the CEO lived, upending the lives of workers who must either move or find work elsewhere. I’m sure all Starbucks HQ staff are grateful for the CEO’s sacrifice on their behalf. 
• It wasn’t the masks? Recent studies indicate that kids entering kindergarten today are less prepared for school than people in that age group before the pandemic, even though they didn’t lose any class time when schools were closed. Maybe it was all the developments of the time, including family stress, quarantines, deaths, et al that combined to affect even the littles and not any specific thing we dislike politically.
• Name blame. In contagion news, Mpox is spreading rapidly, killing hundreds and threatening to march across the globe. On the positive side, no monkeys will be ostracized for the epidemic. 
• Trauma queens. As I get to know more about the people in my universe, it’s hard to find any who didn’t go through some type of trauma on their journey to today. Yes, there are a rare few whose lives have been idyllic, but most have just learned to deal with the scars and carry on. It makes me wonder why we’re so unforgiving when we see other people in crisis.
• Follow the money, and the submarines. Whenever I see some controversy online, one simple way to find the truth is by checking in with the people who have skin in the game. The Navy is looking at the impact of global warming on submarine maneuverability through the Arctic, so it’s real. Big-time investors stayed in the market through the Kamala crash, so it isn’t.
• Absolutely not. There are a few questions that can always be answered with one word: No. “For instance: Am I the only one who…” “Is it just me, or…”
  

Next week, we'll figure out whether the guys I met on the street are entrepreneurs or panhandlers, because it's really a toss-up until a couple of decades from now. You'll want to become a subscriber to learn the truth.  

Today’s pop quiz: How is a woman who’s crossing the street while staring at her cell phone the same as a guy in a bunker who’s railing online against people he’s never met?

They’re both part of the largest social experiment in the history of the world, an experiment so vast that it includes all of us and offers no option to sit it out. It’s not a scientific experiment, though, so there is no control group and no way to stop the chain reaction.

Our pal with the cellphone and our bunkerbuddy on his keyboard are both getting carried along the stream of technology that leads inexorably to isolation and narcissism. The same tools that were supposed to create a worldwide web of connections have created 8 billion armies of one, each a hero in their own minds and each besieged in a lonely tower.

It seems we’ve all started to believe the world revolves around us. It could be that we’ve spent so much energy cultivating our ‘best lives’ that we lost the ability to connect with everyone else. Possibly, we’ve been told so often about the incredible hellscapes outside our doors that we’re afraid to venture beyond our portals.

Whatever the explanation, the result is the same: the ultimate test of nature versus nurture. Do we instinctively need to connect with other humans in real life or do we only need to experience the rest of humanity on a screen? For millions of us, during the Covid lockdowns, our most frequent interaction with outsiders came when the (essential worker!!) delivery guy brought us our pizza and ammunition. We’re getting out more since then, but we’re interacting with the world much differently than in the time before.

On the street outside my apartment, people stare at their phones when they walk, silently demanding that everyone else look out for them to keep them safe. Cars, trucks, bicycles, scooters, skateboarders and pedestrians dare me to violate their space. In the bunkers where preppers wait for the civil war, every infraction anywhere in the world is a very, very personal assault, directed specifically at them by people who know who they are and where they are and are coming for them very, very soon.

None of this is exactly new, of course. Drivers forgot how to use turn signals a decade ago and everyone shares photos of their food instead of the other people at the table. Bunker Bob posts images of his gun collection and the gun range, but he never offers up a group photo from the family picnic. The prevailing photo format of the 21st Century is the selfie, a photo we have to take of ourselves because we’re all alone. Or so it seems.

There’s still some hope, though. Brave patriots are venturing out to the beaches in Chicago, gathering at neighborhood festivals, and dining at restaurants in the vicinity of total strangers. These are acts of rebellion today and these are the true heroes, battling to regain what has been lost and reject the tyranny of technology. You won’t read about them in the mainstream media, but they are our last hope and they cannot afford to falter.

Perhaps I am naïve to dream of a day when people can speak without a keypad, when we can take group photos of our dinner parties instead of our dinners, when we replace the selfie with the ussie, or maybe the weie or the groupie. Yes, I might be naïve, but I have a dream of a better day. It’s only my dream right now, but I am the center of the universe and everyone will follow my lead now that I’ve shared my views online.

Right?

Right?

Hello?

Look at me, sitting alone in my bunker and railing at the world. End my isolation by subscribing  now. You might not be glad you did, but I will certainly be much happier.