The Long, Hot Summer

Picketers at City Hall, Newark, New Jersey, July 16, 1967

A riot is the language of the unheard.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

Summer '67 still lodges in my memory. It won't move out.

I was 15 and lived two miles from Springfield Avenue, ground zero of the week-long riots that, until quelled, rocked the once-placid and pretty city of Newark. 

I remember the troops and the half-tracks, the smoke and the barricades, the sniper-fire and skyward nightly blazes. I also remember all the tough talk of pals and neighbors and the gang at the barber shop (always my conduit to the adult world). Nixon and George Wallace were sounding pretty good of a sudden and the government had better crack down hard on the blootches or we're all fucked.

But at home—our still-tolerant, FDR-democrat stronghold—not a syllable of criticism for the rioters was uttered that week; and I'm glad for that.

Newark was the worst of the 159 "race riots" that combusted across the US during The Long, Hot Summer, a phrase coined in 1940 by William Faulkner in The Hamlet and made popular by the steamy 1958 movie based on his novel.

Faulkner's 1949 Nobel Prize had made him an important spokesman for civil-rights moderates who endorsed "gradualism." the notion that, for society to improve, blacks need only wait—to sit tight until whites come to around to their point-of-view. Just you wait and see, things will get better.

Faulkner revealed his middle-of-the-road stripes (I'm mixing metaphors) in a March 1956 letter to Life Magazine, published as a commentary on the recent arrest in Montgomery of the ringleader of the Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr. 

In the letter, Faulkner made clear that, though he loathed Jim Crow, he equally hated the prospect of compulsory integration: "So I would say to all the organizations and groups which would force integration on the South by legal process: ‘Stop now for a moment. You have shown the Southerner what you can do and what you will do if necessary; give him a space in which to get his breath and assimilate that knowledge."

To which King the next week replied, “We can’t slow up. We can’t slow up and have our dignity and self respect. We can’t slow up because of our love for democracy and our love for America. Someone should tell Faulkner that the vast majority of the people on this globe are colored."

And although Montgomery made integration the law of the land, Newark boiled over eleven years later. The July '67 riots began after two white cops beat and arrested a black cabbie for passing their double-parked cruiser. Within a day, the molotov cocktails were flying. The six days of riots left 26 dead and hundreds injured. Property damage exceeded $77 million. White flight escalated and once-placid and pretty Newark entered an ugly  downward spiral it has yet to reverse.

The morning after the riots ended, the Springfield Avenue precinct police chief assembled his officers on the steps of the precinct house to give them a pep talk. 

“Just return it to normal," he said. "Don’t treat it as a situation. Because once you begin to look at problems as problems, they become problems.”

PS: Go here to see a gallery of photos from The Long, Hot Summer.

It's Never Too Late

When I make a cup of coffee I change the world.

― Jean-Paul Sartre

The smart money's on Starbucks: its stock, which bolsters the leading hedge-fund portfolios, returned nearly 19% this month, despite a global drop in same-store sales.

But, I'm sorry, I've had it with Starbucks. Not the stock. The store.

I just paid $3 for a single cup of drip coffee―only a buck less than the price I pay for a whole pound of ground at Safeway (the equivalent of 27 cups of brew).  

Coffee is my water, as singer Becky G says; and though many Americans will gladly fork over three bills for a bottle of water, I won't pay that for a cup of coffee―not even a cup of kopi luwak, the coffee made from civet doodie.

I guess I'll be making my own coffee now. It's still the cheapest way―and has been for a century. A home-brewed cup in 1920 cost only 24 cents (adjusted for inflation). Today it costs a drop less―just 18 cents.

The sad thing is, I used to love Starbucks. 

I'd spend hours of my time there, even though the chairs were tippy and the stores looped the same Bob Marley record over and over again. I sat drinking coffee and reading philosophy books, yakking with fellow caffeine addicts about movies and politics, and writing marketing copy (my sole source of income for years).

But at some point the romance forsook our marriage.

The reasons escape me. 

Were I to consult Dr. Phil, I'm sure he'd say it was my fault our marriage turned ugly (or as he'd put it, "It's because of you your marriage looks like the dogs keep it under the porch").

And he'd be right. I demeaned Starbucks, complaining when the bathrooms hadn't been cleaned. I hid expenditures for restaurants, clothes, and movie tickets. I was neglectful. And I had a wandering eye: more than once I fantasized about visiting Peet's.

But Dr. Phil would be quick also to point out that marriage is a proverbial "two-way street" and at least some of the blame for the chill in our relationship falls on Starbucks.

Starbucks was simply too needy. It begrudged me for sitting hours on end with my nose in a book. It turned angry over the the fact that I ignored important chores, like taking out the garbage. And it resented that we never went anywhere.

But it's never too late to remove the strains on our marriage, Dr. Phil would add. 

Starbucks and I could still sit down and reach an understanding about what we each need, what we each deserve, and what we can realistically give one another. 

Starbucks only needs to affirm that our commitment and loyalty to each other are deep.

And drop the price of a Grande Drip.

In the Year 2525

Customer service is the new marketing.

— Derek Sivers

Mind if I make a prediction? 

I last predicted Hillary would win in a landslide; but here's my prediction anyway: 

Before the year 2525, for once a CSR won't blame me for her company's mistake.

Blaming customers for her company's mistakes has become every customer service representative's default response to problems.

I'm unsure when the practice began, and unsure why.

It truly vexes me. 

Maybe I'm in an unwitting member of a customer-rewards program designed by Lex Luthor. Maybe I'm on a shared list of losers. Maybe in a prior life I was Stalin's sous chef and this is payback.

I don't know the reason, I only know it happens to me repeatedly. Just this month:

• A CSR for Cloudburst (a lawn-sprinkler company), when I called to ask why I hadn't heard from the firm, insisted I never mailed back the reply form from its direct mail solicitation. But I did; I remember, because I resented needing a stamp.

• A CSR for Michaels (an art supplies retailer) told me I was a dodo to arrive at its door for a curbside pickup before the company's app advised me to do so. Telling her I don't have the app on my phone earned me an exaggerated eye-roll.

• A CSR for Young Explorers (an e-retailer of toys) said I was to blame for the fact the company shipped a talking laptop to me and billed my grandson's credit card. When I informed the rep that I'm 66 and don't need a talking My First Tablet, I was still blamed for the mistake; and when I said my grandson was 2 and didn't have a credit card, I was blamed once more.

• A CSR for M & T (a bank) told me it was clearly my fault the bank didn't receive my online application for a new checking account; the fact that Russian hackers had hijacked the bank's website a few days before was immaterial. (I immediately hung up and called the three credit bureaus to set up a fraud alert, FYI.)

If indeed customer service is the new marketing, your marketing sucks.

Sorta like my ability to predict.

A Me Too Far

One of the chief characteristics of a mob is its quickness.
It is sudden. It pounces.

— Teju Cole

Woody Allen's new autobiography, Apropos of Nothing, nearly never was. 

That's because Allen's son, famed investigative reporter and father of the #MeToo Movement Ronan Farrow, strong-armed Hachette, the book's would-be publisher, into dropping it. 

Fortunately, Allen's book was rushed out by a competing house.

Ronan Farrow objected to Hachette publishing Apropos of Nothing due to its savage portrayal of his mother, actress Mia Farrow, who three decades ago alleged that Woody Allen had sexually abused their adopted daughter (the case was twice dismissed by the courts). 

Farrow threatened to sever his own ties with Hachette and egged the publisher's mostly-female staff to walk off their jobs in protest.

I just read Apropos of Nothing—I love memoirs by aging rock stars and Hollywood people—and am glad to have Allen's account of his three marriages, first to Harlene Rosen; then to Louise Lasser; and then to Mia Farrow's and his adopted daughter, Sun-Yi Previn. Allen clearly loves all three of his wives and has done his best by them.

His girlfriend Mia Farrow—herself the victim of an abusive, alcoholic father—is quite another matter. Allen admits he was foolish ever to become involved with such a crackpot, but Mia Farrow was a pretty, cultured, award-winning actress on the hunt for a new husband when they met (Farrow's ex-husband, Andre Previn, had dumped her the year before).

If Woody Allen was guilty of anything, he was guilty of being a schlimazel—a dupe and a patsy, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Which brings me to #MeToo. (Me to #MeToo. Confusing, huh?)

#MeToo is grounded on the idea that no tomcat should be immune from justice. 

I don't agree.

Some men are tomcats who deserve caging. Think of predators like Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, R. Kelly and Larry Nasser.

But some men are tomcats who don't. Think of Romeos like Chico Marx, Louis C. K., Al Franken, Melvil Dewey—the librarian and inventor of the Dewey Decimal System—and, yes, Woody Allen, the sultan of schlimazelhood.

Don't get me wrong. 

#MeToo is among the most urgent political movements of our time. And it isn't just hashtag feminism, as leftist critics say; nor McCarthyism, as right-wing critics say. It's really all about truth, justice and the American way.

But in the hands of angry mobs, #MeToo promotes a radioactive Cancel Culture that suppresses the sort of honest talk you'll find in Apropos of Nothing.

In the hands of angry mobs, #MeToo pounces, weaponizing virtue against schlimazels.

And that's not fair.

Note to readers: As a rule, links embedded in my posts provide my sources and frequently "fun facts" omitted for brevity's sake.

Paranoid

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.

― William S. Burroughs

Political rancor is fine, when informed; it's uniformed partisanship that makes me cringe.

As we speak, Republicans ad nauseam are socializing this palaver:

No one should be allowed to drive again until there are no fatal accidents for 14 consecutive days. Then we can slowly begin to phase in certain classes of people who can begin driving again, but at half the posted speed limit and while wearing helmets.

This chestnut is rooted in ignorance and denial of the lethal nature of Covid-19. Two statistics and one calculation reveal how vacuous it is:

• 38,800 Americans died in car crashes last year, according to the National Safety Council; but 130,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 since its appearance four months ago.
  
  
• Annualized that's 390,000 dead from Covid-19―10 times the number killed in car crashes.

From the standpoint of body counts, equating infectious people to bad drivers is specious. Covid-19 is 10 times more deadly.

But know-nothing Republicans stand by this myth nonetheless.

Another myth they're peddling: 

Joe Biden molested a junior aide in the 1990s.

Again, a few facts should give any thoughtful person pause:

• Over 200 of his former staffers have told PBS then-Senator Biden never spoke to low-level employees, nor did he harass women. One called the accusations "surreal."
  
  
• The accuser didn't quit her job on the Hill, as she claims, "to pursue an acting career;" she was fired because she couldn't sort the mail. And Antioch University says the accuser never taught there, nor receive the law degree she claims to hold.
  
  
• As recently as January, she still practiced an obsessive hobby: posting pro-Russian propaganda on the Internet.

• The accuser also runs up expensive bills and skips on them; never pays her rent; lets her dogs poop throughout her landlords' houses; once she stole money from an animal-rescue nonprofit; and, worst of all, borrows books and doesn't return them.

The accuser is a whack-job. But Republicans know nothing of her background and insist her accusations are true (while those made by Christine Blasey Ford were, of course, false).

William S. Burroughs was right: paranoids know a little of what's going on. 

But never, it seems, enough.

NOTE: I'm grateful to followers for their many kind notes of encouragement. Goodly has now been read by over 385,000 people.

Plan to be Spontaneous

I opened a fortune cookie Saturday night and was told I should engineer some serendipity.

Easier said than done when the garage needs cleaning and your wife's complaining the women in her compassion class are fusspots.

But nobody said Buddhafication would be easy.

“Guess what?" says mindfulness guru Jon Kabat-Zinn. "When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are."

Whatever has happened to you has already happened.

Wait. What? There's more?

Yes. That's only the penultimate McMindfulness nugget. 

Make room for eternity.

Because matter is finite but time is not, according to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, we should embrace wholeheartedly the ineluctable "Eternal Recurrence of the Same."

Eternity is nothing less that the endless and identical repetition of all the physical events in the universe, in all their odious detail.

So not only has whatever has happened to you already happened, it will happen to you again—and again and again and again ad infinitum.

So you'd better not only live your life, but love it, Nietzsche says; avow what he calls amor fati—love of fate.

And, what the hell, plan to be spontaneous, too.

Want to Be Hot?

Experience is merely the name men give to their mistakes.

— Oscar Wilde

Blame Trophy Communism: in our everybody-gets-a-trophy culture, self-criticism is hard to come by. Which means a lot of weak work gets off the drawing board.

If you're a Trophy Capitalist, on the other hand, you don't worry: you know the market weeds out weaklings.

But self-criticism should be encouraged, if only to grease the market's skids.

Feeling shame about your work is just part of the game and—as an old boss of mine always said—"If you want the name, you gotta play the game."

This week, I had the pleasure of attending a Zoom meeting led by Andrew Wyeth's granddaughter and chronicler, Victoria. 

I asked her whether the artist ever destroyed work he wasn't happy with. Her answer was immediate: yes, like clockwork, every spring and fall Wyeth built a bonfire in his yard and burned work he wasn't happy with.

He didn't want it in the world.

Unless it stifles good work, self-criticism strengthens it. Don't sweat your missteps, but, please, don't be so naive as to think they deserve a trophy.

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain and  difficulty," Teddy Roosevelt said.

You want to be hot? 

Build a bonfire.

Tears over Tarawa

NOTE: Of the 1,500 posts I've published, the following remains far and away the most popular, read by more than 35,000 people. It originally appeared on Memorial Day in 2016.

In the middle of World War II, 2,700 Women Marines (average age 22) served in Headquarters Battalion at Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia. 

My mother was one of them.

She told many "war stories" later, mostly comical; and one, in particular, not comical.

The latter was set in late November 1943, when she helped operate a ticker tape machine inside the war room where the top brass worked.

The machine was dedicated to one purpose: transmitting live reports of casualties from the Pacific.

On November 20 of that year, 18,000 Marines began an amphibious attack on a Japanese-held "islet" called Betio.

A mere two miles long by a half-mile wide, Betio is a coral rock 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii and part of a larger atoll named Tarawa—in 1943, the most fortified spot in the Pacific.

As the history books tell, everything went wrong.

As the first assault wave prepared to hit the beach—code-named "Red 1"—high seas slowed the Marines' transfer from the battleships onto the landing boats, so the attack fell behind schedule.

Then, planned air raids were delayed, so the boats had to linger offshore, sustaining terrible artillery fire from the island. 

Slowly, the tide went down—much lower than expected—and grounded the boats on coral reefs. So the Marines abandoned the armored landing crafts and waded toward Red 1 hundreds of yards through chest-deep water and under brutal machine-gun fire from 100 Japanese pillboxes.

Those who made it onto the sand had to crawl inland, to avoid the rain of bullets. 

But hundreds of Marines never made it. They drowned in the surf. Their bodies so clogged the assault path the second wave of reinforcements couldn't be sent until the next day.

In Arlington, the generals in the war room stood watching a sign of the disaster-in-the-making on Red 1: the ticker tape machine.

My mother said it was spitting out the names of casualties faster than anyone had ever witnessed, or thought possible.

She said the normally gruff men were transfixed by the clattering machine. They stood looking helpless, and openly sobbing.

Your Mother Should Know

The comedian George Carlin liked to quip, “Business ethics is an oxymoron.” 

While most people on the receiving end of commerce would likely agree, having spent over forty years inside various businesses, I would rephrase Carlin's gag: Business ethics may not be an oxymoron, but it sure is an oddity.

It's as odd in the workplace as frontal nudity, purple hair and Hitler mustaches. 

Most business executives are decent folks who—to my view, anyway—conveniently "park their ethics at the door" along with their BMWs. Their workweek amorality doesn't make of them monsters or mobsters, but it does lend credence to Balzac's claim, "Behind every great fortune is a crime;" or a misdemeanor, at the least.

You'd think they would have learned right from wrong from their mothers.

Thank heaven there's now a guidebook for the ethically-challenged executive—one perfectly timed for the current global crisis.

Crisis Ahead, by crisis-management expert Edward Segal, provides a 250-page map through the corporate crisis minefield. But Crisis Ahead seeks to do more than that: it seeks to convert business ethics from an oddity to a commodity.

Segal is the author of a previous how-to, Getting Your 15 Minutes of Fame and More!, a cookbook for ambitious executives hungry for glory. Crisis Ahead is, in a way, that earlier book's "evil twin," a checklist for amoral executives eager to avoid the press's attention, a possible pillorying, or—worse—a pink slip.

Whereas the majority of books on business ethics—written by philosophers for b-school professors—are as impractical as they are impenetrable, Crisis Ahead is daringly straightforward, simple and "strictly business."

Segal states in his introduction—which includes a late-breaking essay on the Covid-19 crisis—that Crisis Ahead comprises only "quick, practical advice." The author's tips are aimed not at the academic, but at the business executive who needs to "prepare for, prevent, manage, and recover from a crisis, scandal, disaster, or other emergency." 

In other words, you'll find no theories, models or conundrums here. Crisis Ahead instead offers a bagful of "lessons learned" from illicit schemes, inside deals, sex scandals, errant emails and shoddy products, as well as no fewer than "101 best practices" intended for the beleaguered executive who needs to know "what to do in the moment: what levers to pull and what moves to make in real time when faced with a crisis." 

You also won't find terms like "environmental justice" or "social entrepreneurship" anywhere in the text; nor the names of philosophers, psychologists or theologians in the index.

So why consider Crisis Now a book on ethics? (Amazon—no paragon of the topic—has done just that, listing the book under both public relations and business ethics; but we'll set that aside for now.) 

The reason becomes clear when you read "Edward's Takes," brief sidebars by the author that accompany each case study. While these reflections consider "how well or poorly the company, organization, or individual did in responding to—or in some cases creating—a crisis," the vast majority also shine a light on the myriad misdeeds that led to the crises in the first place.

Time and again, we learn that executives themselves—not some error, accident, or act of God—bring about the catastrophes; that unscrupulous executives are indeed their own worse enemies.

You'd have thought they'd have learned better.

Swans

He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him.

— Hans Christian Andersen

Hospitals are swamped. Morgues are filled. Unemployment offices can't keep up with first-time applications.

What possible good can come from Covid-19?

I continue to hear people say we were blindsided, that the pandemic is a black swan.

The man who coined the term, financier Nassim Nicholas Taleb, disputes that claim. He thinks the pandemic was foreseeable and—like Bill Gates—predicted it.

That would make it (although no less catastrophic) a gray swan.

The deaths (93 thousand) and job losses (36 million) are indeed catastrophic.

But many of us are witnessing aspects of the lockdown that are less so:

• The air and rivers are refreshing themselves
• Animals are reasserting themselves
• Parents are discovering they have children
• Children are discovering they have parents 
• Neighbors are discovering they are neighbors
• People are learning there's value in art, architecture and books
• Adults are rediscovering bikes
• Family members are sleeping regularly and eating locally grown food
• Citizens are realizing government isn't their enemy; and
• Republicans are beginning to realize the president is

I think—for some of us—the pandemic's an ugly duckling.

The "new normal" could look prettier than we ever imagined.

The Pity Pot

Self-pity is essentially humorless, devoid of that
lightness of touch which gives understanding of life.

— Anthony Powell

The owner of a large Texas-based company saw fit today to blog about her "heartbreak" over furloughing her employees.

"Nobody wants to go in front of their employees and deliver bad news," she says. "But when the news to thousands of employees is that we were enacting a plan to save their jobs in the long term by furloughing them in the short term… well, nothing can quite prepare you for that."

She describes her discomfort at handing out several thousand pink slips; how she had to forgo her prepared speech and speak instead "from the heart;" and how she's truly madly deeply empathetic with her now-former employees. 

"Empathy cannot be something you only do halfway," she says solemnly. "Empathy is the thing that helps you truly connect with the people around you, guiding you through the tough moments by reminding you that, in the end, we are all human."

I have no doubt, on the heels of her self-disclosure, the owner feels better. 

After all, confession's good for the soul. 

But how do her out-of-work employees feel? Are they consoled by her reminder that, "in the end, we are all human?" We are. But not a few of us are also facing the breadline.

Self-pity isn't only humorless—tiresome and banal—as the novelist Anthony Powell says; it's unbecoming, in the way Marie Antoinette's toilet (above) is unbecoming: you can dress it up, but you can't take it anywhere. "Sitting on the pity pot," as they say in AA, is equally unbecoming; blogging from there is worse.

Psychotherapist Joseph Burgo thinks sitting too long on the pity pot reveals an individual's sense of entitlement: the "inner brat," frustrated by adversity, believes she's helpless, a "victim of circumstance."

In a leader, self-pity is particularly unseemly. As Edward Segal, a crisis-management expert and the author of Crisis Ahead, told me, "Self-pity is not a good look for a leader. Singing 'Woe is me' only shows you cannot put yourself in the shoes of your furloughed employees."

You'll recall how frequently BP's CEO Tony Hayward sat on the pity pot when he was interviewed by reporters during the Gulf oil spill. It won him no friends.

And you're aware, thanks to the daily Coronavirus briefings, how the president seems permanently affixed to the pity pot when he's interviewed. It isn't pretty.

I've managed people in my time; I've had to lay some off; and it was indeed painful—but not nearly as painful for me as it was for them. Denied their livelihoods, my self-pity was a luxury they simply couldn't afford.

Self-pity is pointless when those around you are looking for a leader.

Like hope, self-pity is not a strategy.

The Art of the Deal

The president notwithstanding, gangster Dutch Schultz truly understood the art of the deal.

When he sat for a conversation, Schultz never failed first to unholster his gun, drop it on the table before him, and ask, "Now, what was it you wished to discuss?"

I admire the Dutchman's style. Except I'm afraid of guns, don't own one, and don't pack in public. I prefer to pack my blankie.

From 1920 to 1933, Schultz distributed bootleg beer to speakeasies in the Bronx, building a loyal clientele through threats and intimidation. By 1928, his sales—adjusted for inflation—reached $30 million a year. Rivals called him the "Beer Baron of the Bronx."

Schultz was, without doubt, a psychopath; no act of violence was beneath him. By combining kidnapping, beatings, torture and murder, he and his gang of Jews rapidly showed the local Italians two could play at the game. Schultz became nationally famous for the phrase—coined by his accountant—“Nothing personal, just business.”

Dutch Schultz's 1931 Armored Lincoln

The Dutchman expanded his enterprise from the Bronx into Manhattan in 1928, crossing paths with the Irish gangster Legs Diamond. Diamond retaliated  by having Schultz's business partner killed. Schultz, in turn, had Diamond's partner killed; then Diamond, as well.

Schultz rounded out his portfolio at this time by adding illegal slots and lotteries to bootleg beer.

Like Al Capone, Schultz eventually was indicted for tax evasion. Although exonerated by two juries, Schultz fled New York in 1935, after the state's prosecutor threatened to indict him for running his illegal lotteries. He relocated his headquarters to the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark, New Jersey.

But Schultz just couldn't let go of his anger at New York's prosecutor. He told rival mob bosses he was going to kill him. Rubbing out a public figure was off limits, so the bosses contracted the hit squad Murder, Inc. to kill Schultz, which it did on October 23, 1935, while the Dutchman was dining in the nearby Palace Chop House.

My mother, 15 at the time, vividly recalled visiting the Palace Chop House and seeing the scores of bullet holes left by Murder, Inc. in the walls and windows and mirrors.

She also recalled attending a family wake where Squawk Reilly, Legs Diamond's business partner, arrived to pay his respects. Chastened by the Dutchman's recent demise, Squawk was attended by no less than four bodyguards. 

Wake Up, America!

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

— George Bernard Shaw

I've been sacrificing lately.

Cheaper cuts of meat. Cable instead of streaming. Pepsodent toothpaste.

It's getting old.

A neighbor said last evening, "It's time to get this economy rolling."

I couldn't agree more.

My retirement accounts continue to see a paper loss. It's time to stanch it—even if that requires a little human loss.

Have we forgotten, America, the battles our fathers fought?

Rationing. Curfews. Blackouts. Lonely deaths at the hands of the foe. 

It was good for our mothers; it's good enough for me.

Wake up, America! It's time for you to roll!

Our workforce is already neatly partitioned. You're either Essential or you're Nonessential.

Why can't our population be? You're either Expendable or you're Nonexpendable.

The designation is elegant, don't you agree? 

Let the economists and lawyers quibble over the "Value of Life" 'til the cows come home. I've got no time for that!

When the president toured the Honeywell factory last week, the PA system blasted "Live and Let Die" and I thought they're playing my song!

Wake up, Expendables! Get out there and die for the Dow.

Me, I'm strictly Nonexpendable.