There used to be a ballpark

Anyone who knows me knows I absolutely hate the New York Mets and rarely resist an opportunity to poke fun at them.

Photo by Mike Harrigan

I also hated Shea Stadium, and that had nothing to do with the Mets. I hate the Red Sox far more than the Mets, but I love Fenway Park. I just found Shea to be an ugly eyesore and, unless you were fortunate enough to acquire field-level tickets, a really poor place to watch a ballgame.

So why is it that instead of cackling about these pictures and injecting my usual anti-Mets venom — they should have filled the stadium with Mets fans first, then knocked it down — I actually find them to be kind of sad?

Photo by Mike Harrigan

I had no attachment whatsoever to Shea, but there’s something very stark and haunting about the shell of a former ballpark. Instead of laughing at the remains of Shea, like I thought I would, I found these pictures to be haunting and sad.

I don’t even want to venture a guess as to how bad it will affect me when they start tearing down the old Yankee Stadium, as my attachment to that building has been chronicled in these pages quite frequently.

I never thought I’d say this, but, as I tip my Yankees hat, R.I.P, Shea Stadium.

Unemployment Nine: My new career path

Never mind journalism and new media: I’m going to be the next Sergio Valente!

While searching the “Arts/Entertainment/Publishing” listings on Yahoo! HotJobs , I came across this ad, which could not possibly be a more perfect match for my career aspirations (I left the ad as-is, so blame them for the errors and not yours truly):

 

Uh-oh ... Sergio!

Are you an experienced Apparel Designer with bilingual Korean language skills? Do you have at least 10 years denim design for Women’s / Juniors? Are you looking for a new opportunity with a leading apparel company? Then keep reading…

 

 

We are a leading apparel company based in New Jersey seeking an experienced denim designers who has bilingual Korean and English language skills.

Key responsibilities include:

- Create new designs for Juniors denim lines

- Evaluate prototypes, pre-production and production samples ensuring conformity to specs and resolving quality issues

- Work with technical design team creating tech packs

- Communicate with overseas Asian teams as well as internal teams

The qualified candidate will have:

- 10+ years of apparel / fashion design experience

- Must have experience with Women’s and Juniors casual or sportswear lines with emphasis in denim

- Proficiency with Microsoft Excel, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop

- Adept at both Mac and PC platforms

- Flexible, creative, and detail-orientated

- Willing to work long hours to meet deadlines

- Bilingual in Korean and English

We offer:

- Competitive compensation

- Comprehensive benefits

- Opportunities for growth

- Much more!

So if you have at least 10 years Fashion / Apparel Design experience with expertise in Juniors denim and are bilingual in Korean, then apply today!

How do you say, “WTF?” in Korean?

Unemployment Nine: It just gets worse

Burning roller coaster

The roller coaster I’ve often spoken of in this blog is very close to burrowing underground.

The first e-mail I read this morning delivered the horrible news that an icon at my former publication was kicked to the curb, along with a companywide announcement of a large percentage of layoffs taking place today. Further e-mails informed me that some of the victims were people I have a great deal of respect for on both personal and professional levels, who had been with the company even longer than the first person I mentioned and who, much like myself, did not deserve their fates.

It’s truly frightening that mismanagement and pure numbers dominate decision-making, and that years of loyal and valuable service mean absolutely nothing when cutting time comes.

Yet the “lucky” ones who remain are expected to double and triple their efforts, despite being told in the same announcement that there will be no salary increases this year and that a hiring freeze was imposed. And when things do turn around, who do you think will reap the benefits: the people busting their asses and doing two or three jobs to keep things afloat, or upper management?

Am I surprise or shocked? Absolutely not: I realize businesses have to do what they have to do, and I also realize the people guilty of the mismanagement are usually the last to go, often with severance packages that are likely equivalent to the total salaries of the underlings who were already let go.

This doesn’t mean I have to like it. So many people who don’t deserve to be unemployed, myself very much included, are in very uncomfortable positions thanks to years of horrible decisions.

Putting aside my sorrow for today’s victims (which is not easy to do at all) and looking at things from a purely selfish viewpoint, the frightening trend continues of more and more people applying for fewer and fewer positions. This means the people making decisions on the few positions that are available will likely be even more picky than they already have, sitting comfortably and waiting for a person whom they consider to be the perfect candidate.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I hope the people in charge of hiring decisions realize that, if I may temporarily assume the voice of the unemployed, most of us want to work, even if the positions being offered are supposedly lesser than the ones we were ejected from.

As I said in November, while those in charge of hiring may view a potential backward move as going from 100 down to 70, from the perspective of most of the unemployed, we view it as going from 0 to 70. If there wasn’t an interest on our part, we wouldn’t waste our time if we weren’t interested in the position.

If the decision-makers are worried about candidates such as myself taking their jobs as stepping-stones to “better” jobs in the near future, my question to them is: What better jobs? And as far as near future, does anyone really think this mess is going to right itself in a matter of months? Try years.

And if anyone who lost their job is sitting around and waiting for the perfect position to open up, they are either very rich or very stupid.

Another trend I’ve noticed recently was going to be my topic for today before I checked my e-mail and got the lousy news above. I’m seeing ads for positions I’ve applied for running for the second and, in many cases, third times. And in many cases, the web sites hosting the jobs don’t allow people to reapply for them.

So many of these jobs are excellent matches for my experience and skill set, yet those in charge of hiring decided that it would be a better move to rerun the ad than to explore the credentials of people who have already applied and are clearly interested. Why? What was so wrong with my résumé or cover letter? Don’t I deserve a chance over someone who just joined the ranks of the unemployed?

As the four-month anniversary of my layoff approaches, I’m finding it more and more difficult to stay positive and to not let the stress affect other parts of my life. I’m finding myself more and more irritable for greater lengths of time, and I’ve had more and more trouble sleeping. And as I’ve stated repeatedly, I’m in a relatively good situation compared with many of my fellow unemployed people.

I just don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel right now, and it’s hard to stave off feelings of depression, bitterness, anger and boredom.

This truly sucks.

Unemployment Nine: The new age of job listings

The difference is gigantic between how job listings were constructed a few months ago, before this wave of layoffs started, and what they look like now. And if you’re browsing them as an unemployed person rather than someone looking to upgrade their job, the trend is downright scary.

Let’s face it: The people with jobs to offer know they have a much deeper pool to choose from, and they’re tweaking their ads mercilessly.

For example, I’m looking for a job that involves editing, managing content and/or writing for the web.

A typical job posting from a few months ago would have looked a little something like this:

Web content manager: Individual wanted to create and edit content for Web site. Must be proficient in Microsoft Office and comfortable with content-management tools. Familiarity with HTML, Photoshop or legal content a plus.

The same job posting today would read like this:

Web content manager: Individual wanted to create and edit content for Web site. Must be thoroughly proficient with Microsoft Office, WordPerfect, XyWrite, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Final Cut Pro, at least two-dozen content-management systems and any other software packages that come to mind between now and your interview, including several that have yet to be released. Will be required to create e-commerce system from scratch during interview while using only Notepad. Law degree from Ivy League or top 10 university required. Additional degree in computer science, journalism or new age healing a plus. Must be able to offer therapeutic massage service to employees in headquarters and branch offices. Certified lifeguards welcome. Ability to walk on water or heal animals with the touch of your fingertip a plus. Equal opportunity employer.

Is it any wonder I’ve gone nearly four months without a job? People are holding out for the absolute perfect employee, because they can, and ignoring the fact that a lot of skills or assets they’re requiring can be learned easily and quickly. And the ads are getting worse and worse by the week.

This is a truly alarming trend.

The 2008 Dallas Cowboys: A bigger mess than I thought

Thanks to a good friend of mine, I’ve become a regular reader of ProFootballTalk.com, which I’ve found to be an outstanding source of breaking football news and rumors.

Cowboys in trouble

While browsing the site this morning, I saw a headline that made me shake my head and yell out, “Duh!” — “Report: Cowboys Need Discipline .” Well, no shit! But after reading the story, my hopes for this team are dimmer than ever.

According to the post — which quotes a story by Calvin Watkins of the Dallas Morning News – team owner Jerry Jones may be far more at fault for the Cowboys’ lack of discipline than head coach Wade Phillips.

The team apparently suffered from chronic lateness, delaying not only the start of meetings, but the departures of charter flights to road games. Are you kidding me? And Watkins reported that while former head coach Bill Parcells would fine players $5,000 for being late to meetings, Jones capped Phillips’ fines at $100. Fining Terrell Owens $100 is like fining me a quarter. Come on, now.

I can’t sum this up any better than ProFootballTalk.com’s Aaron Wilson did: “All of this information leads to one admittedly simple conclusion: Why doesn’t Jerry Jones clean house, including the coaching staff, and bring in someone tough enough to command respect and end the era of permissiveness and pampering? Answer: Jones simply got tired of Bill Parcells and Jimmy Johnson telling him ‘No’ when they were in Dallas, and Jones enjoys running the Cowboys as his personal fantasy football team. Stronger leadership has to start at the top.”

Hey, Jerry, did you forget that Jimmy Johnson put together a team that won three Super Bowls in four years (sorry, but Barry Switzer gets no credit from me), and that Bill Parcells took a team that had finished 5-11 three straight years and made them respectable? Do you know why? Because they know football and you don’t.

For the good of the team, please hire some good football people and stay in the background, or a team with more than enough talent to win a Super Bowl will never do so.

Farewell, Bidie

A great and truly unique dog moved on to her next life this afternoon.

Bidie wasn’t my dog — she belonged to one of my best friends — but I was, indeed, one of Bidie’s humans and, I’d like to think, pretty high on her list of favorites.

Bidie

When I first met Bidie, she lived in a studio apartment in Brooklyn Heights and was almost two years old, yet still had the energy of a crazed puppy. In fact, all I knew about her was that she was black-and-white with a red tongue. The entire time I was in the apartment, she ran around full speed, launching herself off the top of furniture and occasionally licking my face while speeding by in a blur. She was like a miniature Tasmanian Devil.

Bidie “grew up” to become a Bull Mastiff in a Boston Terrier’s body — 12 pounds soaking wet, without fear of any other being, man or beast. And Bidie and I ended up being roommates for one memorable year in Hoboken. During that year, I rarely called her Bidie, opting instead for various nicknames including Scrappy-Doo, Half-a-Doggie and Bitch Ass (the last one was courtesy of her owner).

Bidie ready for her walk

When Bidie’s owner was away, the dog and I would “share” my bed. However, we used Bidie’s definition of “share.” No matter where I started out, somehow, by the middle of the night, a 12-pound terrier would be spread out across 90% of a queen-sized bed, while a 250-pound human was left with barely enough of the edge to not end up on the floor. I still don’t understand how she did that. It defied the laws of physics.

Bidie also defied the laws of acoustics with her snoring. The noises that came out of this tiny critter were louder than the snores of most human beings, cattle or other large mammals.

Any thoughts I had of Bidie possibly having some fear were washed away by my one — and only — trip with her to the dog run in Hoboken.

I took care of a Welsh Terrier in Manhattan and found that when he was one-on-one with another dog, he wanted to kill it, but when he was surrounded by a bunch of dogs, he was civil, so I thought Bidie would react the same, but, in the words of her owner, “Not so much a lot.”

The second I let Bidie off the leash, she was hell-bent on a mission to eat every other dog in the dog run — not scare them, not fight them, eat them. After scooping her up and apologizing profusely to several people, I decided that the great dog-run experiment had come to an unsuccessful end. I seriously doubt we would have been welcomed back. In fact, the next few times I walked through the park, I expected to see posters of Bidie in a circle with a line through it. I can’t say I would have blamed them.

Even though I only lived with her for one year, it took me a full six months to get used to not having her around once we gave up our apartment. I would turn the key in the door of my new apartment every day expecting to hear the pitter-patter of little Bidie paws.

Bidie in her later years

Fortunately, a couple of years down the road, we ended up living on the same block, so I still got to spend a lot of quality time with the little scrapper. Even after Bidie and her human moved about an hour away and I didn’t get to see her as much as I’d have liked, I always got an extra-special greeting, with eyes wide open, bat ears straight up in the air and tongue hanging out.

Unfortunately, part of being around pets is dealing with their shorter life spans. Bidie’s time had come. She was 16 years old. It wasn’t one of those unexpected things, like a perfectly healthy, younger pet getting hit by a car or suddenly being diagnosed with a disease. Bidie hung in there gamely for quite some time, but old age is a bastard and it had really begun to take its toll.

The 16-year-old Bidie isn’t the dog I’ll remember, though. I’ll remember the younger, scrappier little beast who terrorized every other dog she saw, monopolized beds and furniture and stole hearts.

If there’s a dog run in Heaven, I hope all of the other dogs up there are quick, or they might be in for a rude awakening.

I miss Snapple Tru Root Beer

Whatever happened to Snapple Tru Root Beer?

Snapple Tru Root Beer

I don’t know why this soda popped into my mind, but it used to be my absolute favorite soda before it disappeared from the shelves.

Could I have been the only person who was a fan of the stuff? I don’t know if it was really “true” root beer, but it had such a unique taste and, to steal from the irritating Bud Light commercials that have infested National Football League coverage, it had “drinkability.”

I loved that stuff. Maybe I can get a hold of Wendy from the old Snapple commercials and she can brew me up a batch?

Unemployment Nine: What I’ve learned

I’ve been unemployed for a little over three months now and, with more and more people unfortunately joining me, I thought I’d share some of what I’ve learned in the hopes of being helpful.

• No matter how productive I’ve tried to be, there’s only so much that can be done, and this results in lots of free time. This can be good, but it can also be bad, because I’ve started to second-guess myself and wonder if there are more productive things I could be doing. When it comes down to it, you can only check the job sites so many times without driving yourself crazy. One thing that I’ve found to be very helpful: If I have a few errands to run, I’ve tried to space them out over a few days instead of doing everything Monday, then sitting around the house the rest of the week. It definitely helps to get out of the house at least once a day and do something. Staring at the PC all day isn’t good, whether it’s monster.com, Facebook Scrabble or YouTube.

• I obviously desperately want a job, but I’m worried about two habits I’ve developed that will have to disappear quickly once I’m hired. The first is waking up to feed the cats anytime between 6:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m., then going back to sleep until around 10 a.m. or 10:30 a.m. There will obviously be no option to go back to sleep once I’m working. The second is spending the majority of the day in sweatpants or flannel lounge pants. Most offices aren’t quite so tolerant of that sort of attire.

• I never realized this when I was on the other side, but hearing people complain about their jobs while I don’t have one is maddening. I don’t take it personally and I know it’s not meant in a harmful way — jobs are part of everyday life, and it’s natural for the conversation to turn to them. But, as scary as it sounds, I actually miss some of the things that used to annoy the hell out of me. And when I finally do escape this exile, I will try my best to remember to not bitch and moan about my job in front of those who haven’t escaped yet.

• Living a block-and-a-half from a Dunkin’ Donuts is dangerous. It’s not quite as dangerous as living a block-and-a-half from Wendy’s, White Castle or White Mana would be — I’d surely be pushing 400 pounds by now — but it’s dangerous.

• Facebook in general and Facebook Scrabble in particular are highly addicting. I’ve learned so many Scrabble tricks and words I never knew existed that bail you out of a tough Scrabble situation and earn you big-time points. Until I started playing Facebook Scrabble, I never knew the words xi, za or zee existed, but they’re among my favorites now, even though I don’t know what they mean, because they’ve won games for me. I may even look up their definitions and try to work them into conversations one of these days.

• Random play on iTunes may be the greatest invention of all-time. It’s definitely in the top 10. Sliced bread is overrated.

• Cats really do sleep all day. Once the novelty of having their human home during the day wore off, which took about two days, I became more of annoyance to them than company. There’s nothing like getting a phone call or e-mail, only to receive a dirty look from the cat who was roused by the sound of the phone or the PC. The other day, one of my cats buried herself under a throw blanket at around 10:30 a.m. and didn’t come out until after 5 p.m. I actually poked her once every hour just to be sure she was breathing. I am the proud owner of two lazy sacks of fur.

I’m seriously ready for this to end, now.

Unemployment Nine: New year, fresh start?

I can’t say I was sorry to see 2008 come to an end. A man should not have to lose his job , his bar and his ballpark in the same year.

2009

Unfortunately, 2009 has gotten off to a very slow start in terms of the job hunt. I know today was, for all intents and purposes, only the second true business day of the new year, but my patience level is running very low right now.

When you’re unemployed, December is a total and complete waste of 31 days. I had one interview during the entire month, and the total number of résumés I sent out was definitely in the single-digits.

The listings are starting to pick up a little and, as I said, there have really only been two business days. But I want a job, and I want it now.

Good riddance to 2008 and, as for 2009, move your ass already.