Out of Bounds

The Springfield Republican has a story today about the dire financial situation of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Tucked in at the end of the story is the fact that the Hall has never attracted the kinds of crowds that were projected when it opened in its fancy new quarters. I'm not surprised: Despite some great exhibits, and a high-profile location - right on Interstate 91 in Springfield, Mass., in a building that announces itself with a giant sphere blinking with colored lights - it's probably the worst-publicized attraction around. It's rarely featured in national travel pieces, does next to nothing to promote itself in the local media, and is - in my experience, at least - lackadaisical about responding to requests from the press. No wonder attendance is anemic.

Crackerjack math

Graham crackers are good for two things - S'mores, and graham cracker crusts. But try to figure out how many crackers it takes to make, say, a cup of crumbs - the amount many recipes call for - and the package offers no clues. Wouldn't you think Kraft would add a handy note on the box? I called the consumer hotline a while back to ask, and after some hemming and hawing, the representative came back with this answer: 4 sheets (that's two squares per sheet) makes 1 cup of crumbs. I said it would be good to include that information on the package. She agreed.

But it hasn't shown up yet.

The newest package of Honey Maids that I opened, by the way, didn't have "sheets" made up of "squares" - it had rectangles. I asked the customer service rep why the crackers had a funny shape, and she said she didn't know. But she apologized, took down the UPC code info, and promised to send me a coupon for a new box (I didn't ask - she offered). I actually got coupons for two boxes soon thereafter.

As for why the crackers were oddly shaped, who knows? Something the rep said made me think that they might have been made for a private label brand - and ended up in the Honey Maid box by mistake. I used them anyway. They tasted fine.

Goodwill hunting

“Dad carries, Mom finds the right size and my brother does what he’s told.”

Sarah Burdulis of Somerville, Mass., in The New York Times on March 22, 2009. She was shopping for a designer wedding gown at a Boston Goodwill Industries charity store, and brought her family as reinforcements in case it turned out to be a "zoo" inside.

Nuns and Grammar

This Shouts and Murmurs from The New Yorker (long ago) reminds me of high school, and nuns who knew their stuff ...

Morning Grumps

Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice redesigned its carton earlier this year, introducing a sleek orange swish down the side of the carton that made it look like the Nike of OJ. But consumers apparently hated it, emailing, calling and writing PepsiCo to say the new design made Tropicana look like a generic brand, and they wanted the old carton - the one featuring an orange with a straw sticking out of it - back. Who knew OJ was the stuff of protest movements?

Tropicana caved in almost immediately. (Wimps! Where's your backbone?) Unfortunately, the company also went back to the old cap, ditching a very cute little round half-orange shape that was fun to wake up to.

If consumer pressure was enough to make Tropicana abandon its redesign, maybe consumer pressure can bring back the little round orange cap. Send your protest letters here. Hurry!

Ich-y Business

I love McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. I also kind of love Billy Bass, the singing, flapping "fish"; I actually bought a Billy long ago. But the new McDonald's ad - its annual Lenten effort pushing the fish sandwich - is just too creepy. No more Filet-o-"Fish" for me anytime soon.

Subway Hero

“I yelled, ‘Contact the station agent and call the police!’ which I think is hilarious because I don’t think I ever said ‘station agent’ before in my life. What am I, on ‘24’?”

Chad Lindsey, who leaped onto subway tracks to rescue a man who had fallen, quoted in The New York Times on March 18, 2009

Reader's Digest

Time Inc. is offering a freebie to the first 25,000 people who sign up for its new experiment: Mine, a magazine with articles that will be culled from a handful of publications - TIME magazine, InStyle, Real Simple, Travel and Leisure, Food and Wine, Money, Golf and Sports Illustrated. They're calling it "my magazine, my way": You get to choose the five magazines you're most interested in and they'll come up with a package customized just for you (and anyone else who signs up for the same five magazines, I'd guess).

Go to this site to sign up. But be prepared for some random questions; I was asked, for instance, if I prefer sushi or pizza, or if I'd rather spend time with Leonardo da Vinci or Socrates. Anyway, sign up fast if you want to receive the print edition (five issues over 10 weeks) - they're taking the first 31,000 responses, according to USA Today. You can also get an online version, which will be available to the first 200,000 who sign up.

Hopping Down the Bunny Trail

McCormick, the company that makes spices and food dyes, has a new gadget on its Web site that helps you make custom colors for your Easter eggs (or cupcakes, or frosting): the Color Creator Tool (although that term seems to be confined to the press release - if you search the site it won't show up.) You click on a color wheel to select the color you want, and the wheel tells you how many drops of this color and how many drops of that color are needed ("dusty rose" eggs call for 14 drops of red and 6 drops of blue, for instance).

As for hard boiling eggs, Mother has a fail-safe method: Place the eggs in a saucepan and cover them with cool water. Then put the pan on the stove and turn the heat to medium-low. Let the water come to a gentle boil, then turn off the heat and put a cover on the saucepan. In 15 minutes, the eggs will be perfectly hard-boiled. Remove them from the pan and refrigerate until you are ready to dye them.

Homeless, Homeless Hippo

This story, about Farasi, a baby hippo in a zoo in Switzerland, is really cute. (But it's also sad, so don't get too attached to Farasi. He's kind of like Wilbur in "Charlotte's Web" - except he doesn't have a supersmart spider available to rescue him.)

Cheers!

Sam Adams has introduced a new glass that it's pitching as the ultimate vessel for beer drinkers -
- "an outward turned lip" to deliver beer to the front of the tongue, a bead inside the rim that "creates turbulence and releases flavors and aromas," etc. etc. I was unaware I needed these features, and I'd never heard of the glass.

But when I ordered a beer at Amy's Place in Easthampton, Mass. (which has the best pulled pork sandwich around, and the super-best french fries) I really liked the curvy glass it arrived in. The glass was thin, it fit in my hand nicely (most pint glasses appear to be designed for paws, not hands), and it was … well, pretty.

I asked if I could buy one, and the hostess reluctantly said no. She did, however, say I could have one - for free! So, that's one more reason I like Amy's Place.


For good food, customer service, and niceness

Sam Adams, of course, is selling the glasses, too, at its estore: four glasses are $30.

Bonds, Just Bonds

The first step was getting up the courage to look at my 401k statement. The next step was deciding what to do. I'd clung to my long-time allocation plan - a global stock fund; large-cap, mid-cap and small-cap value and growth funds; a bond fund - thinking that at least I'd be "buying low." That approach has lost its appeal as the market continues to sink. But I certainly wasn't thinking about pulling my money out of the funds.

Last week I finally took step three and made a change: I directed all my future contributions to the bond fund. And I stopped the automatic rebalancing that I'd had in place, because I don't want those future contributions to get redistributed among funds that don't look like they'll be going up any time soon. I figured I'd take a look every quarter and decide if and when I want to start automatic rebalancing again.

I'm no expert, but this seemed like a plan. And the March 4, 2009 Wall Street Journal appears to back me up. Jason Zweig's Intelligent Investor column
included this passage: "Change your new money, not your old money. In your 401(k), you could leave your existing positions in stock funds as they are. Bailing out completely is not the only option for reducing your exposure to stocks. You can take your new contributions from future paychecks and direct them into an investment-grade bond fund. You can always reverse this decision later; to make sure you remember, mark your calendar to review the choice one year from now."

That's the Ticket

SRO … When we went to New York City recently the show I really wanted to see - "Jersey Boys" - was sold out, so I figured I'd go to the TKTS booth and see what was available, cheap (… or I'd use the discount codes at Broadway Box and Theatermania, where the prices appear to be the same as those at the TKTS booth, without the wait).

But I had some extra time on Friday, so I stopped by the "Jersey Boys" theater to ask about tickets. Specifically, single tickets. The fellow at the box office seemed happy to help (unlike the grump at "The Lion King" box office a while back, who sold me obstructed seats and seemed to take pleasure in doing so; not a Disney "Have a magical day" cast member, I guess). Anything that weekend would work, I said - matinee, evening, whatever.

After poking around on his computer, he came up with a couple of singles for the Saturday matinee. Then he poked around a little more - and said he actually had two great seats together (not singles), for prime time: the Saturday evening performance. It turned out that they weren't just great seats, they were the perfect seats: the front row of the center mezzanine.

So ... I now had a pair of tickets for "Jersey Boys" for my husband and me. I headed for the "Wicked" box office. There was a line - groups of two, four, five - and it looked like they were all leaving empty-handed. But the box office person - again, a nice guy, very patient - found me two singles in the center orchestra for the Saturday matinee. My son and daughter went to that.

Both "Jersey Boys" and "Wicked" have long been in the "difficult" category in terms of getting tickets. The magic word appears to be "single."

Favorite popcorn

Microwave popcorn makes me suspicious - too many chemicals floating around in the oven. I like popcorn popped the old-fashioned way, on the stovetop. I'd been buying Orville Redenbacher's in a jar and been happy with it (even though it's sometimes hard to find, nudged out by those microwave packages). But Orville's been topped by my new discovery: Kernel Seasons. It pops up big and fluffy (really fluffy), and it's delicious! Highly recommended. I found it at Big Y World Class Market in Massachusetts. But you can order online at the Kernel Seasons site. (The site is nomorenakedpopcorn.com, but it reroutes you to the less intriguing kernelseasons.com.)

Dead mouse

Get rid of the smell of a dead mouse that's trapped in my house? The Car Talk guys have talked about how to get rid of the smell of a dead mouse that's tucked away in the recesses of an engine. But what about the mouse that's tucked away, dead, in the recesses of your house? Bob Vila ("This Old House") has apparently gotten this question a lot. His site links to a company that makes products to take care of this very thing.


Or, you can just wait it out. A mouse takes about three weeks to … go to a better place.

Favorite can opener

OXO CAN OPENER: Its gears must be really well-calibrated, because the crank turns with hardly any effort. Also, OXO is a great company for customer service. A few years ago the pin that holds the little lid on the spout of my OXO kettle broke, and I called to see if I could order a replacement pin. Instead they sent me a brand new kettle. Free.

Favorite ice cream scoop

COPCO ICE CREAM SCOOP: The best scoop ever. It's really strong, and it's really sharp, so you can carve a scoop out easily even when the ice cream is hard as a brick. I bought mine at Linens n Things years ago, but LnT is gone now. I've seen them in other stores too.

Favorite silver polish

MAAS SILVER POLISH: Makes things extra shiny, and the shine lasts a long time. Also, unlike most polishes, it smells okay. There are always deals on the Web site: Plus, good customer service.

Where in the world did my ________ come from? *

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*Export info from www.nationsencyclopedia.com and www.cia.gov unless otherwise noted

Critical thinker ...

I was a big fan of John Leonard's television reviews, in New York magazine and elsewhere; whenever I saw his byline I made a point of reading. Leonard died recently, and the Columbia Journalism Review ran this story about his memorial service.

His opinion and mine almost always matched. I am a James Garner/ "Rockford Files" fan, and so was he. I loved the 1980s TV show "Sledgehammer," and so did he! He could just express it much, much better. Here's proof, from a 1986 issue of New York.

Not your usual used-car operation

Last fall I needed a new car - and decided, for the first time ever, to get a used car. I knew exactly what I wanted: a 2002-2006 Volvo S60 sedan (preferably black), with cloth seats (preferably heated). A manual transmission. Fewer than 50,000 miles. And I didn't want to pay more than $16,000.

I called the local Volvo dealer that we'd bought our previous five cars (new) from; the salesman said he'd see what he could do, but sounded curiously disinterested, given the way car sales have been of late. I called other local dealers. I looked in the papers, on Craigslist and online.

I found a couple of prospects: one in Rhode Island (it turned out the seller wasn't actually sure he wanted to sell), and one in California (the dealer was eager to make a sale - but I'd have to fly out to see the car).

But I'd also emailed Carmax, a national "auto superstore" with a Web site, and a showroom about an hour from me. A salesman called the next day and promised to find my car. A few days later, he called back to say he had it - in California. I'd have to pay $900 for shipping, but I didn't have to take the car once I saw it.

From his description, it had everything I wanted except for heated seats (probably because it came from Southern California), and the price was well under my limit. So I ordered it.

The car came in ahead of schedule. I test drove it, and everything was good. When it was time for me to take delivery, the salesman drove it to the Registry of Motor Vehicles in my town, so I didn't have to make the hour drive to pick it up.

It had a 60-day warranty, and I needed to have a couple of minor things adjusted. Both times the service department was terrific. When the service manager said he'd call me at work at 2:30 to tell me if the car was ready, he called at exactly 2:30. The car was ready when he said it would be.

It was the best service I've gotten from any car dealer. The motto on the Carmax Web site reads "The way car buying should be." And it was.

(And in case you're wondering, I'm not related to the owner.)

- good job!

What happens to my subscription when a magazine goes belly-up?

I'd gotten exactly one issue of my gift subscription to Domino - "The Guide to Living With Style" - when I read that Conde Nast was dumping the magazine after the March issue. Its circulation was good, and ad sales were decent enough, given the way the housing market's been going. But not decent enough, in the eyes of Conde Nast:

It was highly disappointing news, since I liked the mix of merchandise Domino had - things I didn't come across elsewhere. Plus, it had articles like "How To Cozy Up Your Living Room in an Instant" and "Help! I want to break free of beige!" Someone should pick up the shelter magazine slack. O at Home has closed, too, and the things in Elle Decor aren't so much what I like.

Anyway … I went to the Domino Web site to see what it said about unexpired subscriptions, and it said nothing. No number to call, no address to email, etc. Finally, in the magazine itself I found the number for subscription customer service: (877) 356-9904. I called, and it turns out that Conde Nast will fulfill the defunct Domino subscription with a subscription to another of its magazines via a firm called Great American Opportunity. You can choose a subscription up to $15 in value (although it sounded like there might be wiggle room there). Now I've got a year's worth of … GQ.

for making it hard to find the info I needed
for helpfulness once I found a person to talk to. (Four stars, that is, assuming my GQ starts arriving in 10 to 12 weeks, as promised)