Observations

- I’ve not yet seen an organization with unhappy employees and happy customers.

- There is zero correlation between servers in a restaurant introducing themselves and the quality of the forthcoming service.

- If the speed limits are generally 70 and below, why do we make cars that can go 200 miles per hour?

- I was happy Ghosn escaped from Japan given that country’s hugely unfair prosecutorial stacking-of-the-deck (they have a 99% conviction rate).

- I have a problem being told how much money a political candidate has raised in a given quarter, which I believe has less than nothing to do with the quality of his or her platform.

- There’s a LinkedIn ad daily from Fisher Investments which is so bogus that the guy running it has turned off comments to his posts to avoid all the critique he received.

- I don’t think much of the guys (they are always guys) who yawn in public with the accompaniment of what must have been the mating call of the Woolly Mammoth.

- We’ve gone to a movie theater twice in the past year when, once upon a time, we went every weekend. There’s not just better stuff on streaming services, most movies today are hugely boring.

- I want a button on airplane seats that says, “Turn off the seat belt sign in calm air or be sued for kidney damage.” I’m convinced some pilots are simply perverse.

- If athletes can make $100 million a year guaranteed for multiple years, why can’t a CEO? I’m just sayin’….

In late December, I sat with 60,000 other people in the growing Massachusetts gloom in Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, to watch the New England Patriots defeat the Buffalo Bills in a nail-biter that came down to the last play. I wouldn’t normally be there, greatly preferring to watch comfortably on a large screen TV in my home where drinks don’t cost $400 and I can smoke a cigar.

However, I won the tickets at a charity auction, found out they were in the Putnam Club, and my wife joined me on the train ride from Providence on ancient tracks until the train arrived at the stadium, nose-to-nose with another engine which had come south from Boston.

I observed that people under 40 were basically drinking as much liquor as they could, and people over 40 were eating as much food as they could. (The Putnam Club features hot pastrami, short ribs, prime rib, shrimp, and so on in addition to traditional burgers and hot dogs.)

The stadium personnel are exceptionally polite and helpful, everything is Las Vegas-expensive, and we had to wipe the accumulated ice on the seats off ourselves. My wife innovatively retrieved napkins and a cardboard drink tray which served nicely as an ice scraper. I might keep one in the Rolls.

This stadium of fans, holding more people than the armies of 90% of the countries in the world, stayed to the bitter end, rooting heartily, booing every adverse officials’ call, and loudly supporting the home team, already in possession of six Super Bowl titles, every fan feeling he or she earned it. (Watching people slam “high fives” in the audience when the team scores is rather hysterical, as if they did anything but swill beer and stuff fries in their mouths.)

It occurs to me that people want a good time. They need a good job, the ability to earn a living and put some money away, to enjoy themselves with family and friends, and to otherwise be left alone. They don’t really care about what happens in North Korea or Iran unless it’s a direct threat to their safety. They don’t want the government regulating their lives except to provide for defending the coasts, delivering the mail, and providing for domestic tranquility (a phrase from the Constitution itself).

That night, in a brightly lit, comfortable stadium, filled with great athleticism, plentiful food, and refreshing drink, the Patriots won.

In more ways than one.