I did a book swap with my boss a couple months back: Friedman for Friedman. I lent her Hot, Flat and Crowded in exchange for his previous tome, The World Is Flat. If HFC is Friedman’s sober step back from the hype surrounding globalization, TWIF is him taking a Koolaid bath. Not that he doesn’t recognize the inherent challenges presented by the time honored practice of outsourcing all the dirty work to the lowest bidder. If anything, Friedman has to be one of the most honest and balanced writers out there in terms of looking at the issues from a well-rounded perspective. Strangely, reading this book actually made me more anxious about the future than HFC, which describes the doomsday scenario around the corner. What hit home for me was the realities of a highly competitive world in which, barring some dramatic turnaround, the position of the U.S. will continue to slide. Being mainly concerned with the rise of China and India, Friedman doesn’t talk much about Germany, but I always think Germany makes a telling contrast with the U.S. Unlike our service and financial based economy, Germany still relies on manufacturing as the engine of its economy. We, on the other hand, produce things like “social networking tools” to allow out of work PR professionals to have a second career as social media “gurus”. But this is the kind of economy we have created. As Friedman describes, Americans are being forced to scramble in order to keep pace with change and demonstrate their added value above and beyond the folks in other countries we have outsourced most of the real work to. We’ve still got a cushy lead, but how much longer can we stay ahead of the pack? (And, as individuals, stay employed?)

Governor Lingle is finally buckling under the pressure from various quarters to do something about the Furlough Fridays. Although it would be nice to think the parents’ voices made a difference, the timing of her sudden announcement would seem to indicate one voice counted a bit more than others (although she denied that this was the case).

Anyway, all this Friday Furlough excitement got me thinking about education in Hawaii and how it stacks up against the other 49. So I started rooting around in the data to see what I could find. I was hoping to find some good stuff on high school and college graduation rates, but there don’t seem to be any good conclusive studies out there. Here’s what I was able to uncover. Apologies for any factual misrepresentation. Click on the image to view in full size.

3 for 3. 3 RBI. The kid’s a natural. I guess I should come clean with the knowledge that there are no outs in the Shetland League. The last batter of each inning hits a grand slam every time. I think Taiyo’s enjoying the game, though. Even if he keeps complaining about how hot the uniforms are in Hawaii weather.

Apparently not everyone is convinced print media is dead in the water. A new magazine is rolling into town: Flux Hawaii. Best I can gather, it is a lifestyle, arts and culture rag. Which I think is a fine and noble cause. I just wonder about the choice of medium. They are allowing prospective readers to choose the first edition cover from five submissions by artists asked to portray “the future of Honolulu”, and have the originals on display over at Borders in Ward Center. I voted for the rather bleak one above, both for the artistry that went into it, and the fact that it most accurately displays the current cultural temperature. I’m a fan of optimism, but let’s be real – this state needs a lot of work.

And your mother, too! This movie simply blew me away. It takes the horny teenage boy plus road trip trope out of Hollywood’s immature hands and turns it into a powerful mediation on life and death, class and politics, interior (personal) and exterior (world at large) realities. Americans can’t handle honest portrayals of sex (let alone much else) in their movies, which comes from an innate sense of prudish restraint and a penchant for substituting sensational gestures for raw emotion. This movie is pure raw emotion (which is not to say it is not intelligent). Some of the best scenes in the film, in my opinion, are the miniature departures from the main narrative – a funeral procession, a wedding, one of the characters’ hometowns – that provide context and new insights. Not the kind of connect-the-dots backstory you would get in an American movie (like, oh, he was abandoned as a child, that explains why he has difficulties forming emotional attachments), but rather the kinds of small details that are all too human. It’s the kind of movie that leaves you lying beaten up on the side of a dusty road breathing air into your lungs with a renewed gratitude at this miracle called life.

I’m not really an ad man, but I do follow the industry trends a bit. I guess that makes me a wannabe ad man. In fact, I think the honest truth is that most people in branding are wannabe ad men (and women, to be politically correct).

These days, for all our advancement toward the bright future where advertising has died and been replaced by digital brand experiences, there’s a whole lotta retro going on. One trend I’ve noticed recently is a return to the good old days of solo program sponsorship, where a single brand carries the show. Like the Ed Sullivan Show brought to you by Brylcream – a little dab’ll do ya.

Some examples from the past few months:

Morning Joe – Starbucks’ uneasy marriage with MSNBC. Jon Stewart, in typical  fashion, cast the sponsorship deal under a rather harsh and sniggery light.

Bud Light Golden Wheat (which probably needs all the marketing push it can get) bought up a single edition of SNL for its brand launch.

And then there was the ill-fated Microsoft-sponsored Seth McFarlane variety special. Microsoft pulled out when they learned the content was less than savory. Which makes it seem like the marketing folks who approved the deal had never watched a single episode of Family Guy.

Ah, it was so much easier in the old days…

I’m finally allowing myself to admit there may be diminishing returns with every subsequent Coen brothers movie I view. It’s the formula that gets to me. For all their mastery of every aspect of the art of film – from script to soundtrack to direction to cinematography to editing – the plot of nearly every Coen brothers movie can be reduced to the single phrase: “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

That said, I still laughed my ass off at Burn After Reading.

On a continuum of their films, with No Country representing the darkest extreme and Big Lebowski representing the lightest, and Fargo at dead center, I’d place it about midway between Fargo and Lebowski.

Brad Pitt, as always, is an unfortunate distraction in the proceedings. You know what it’s like: you’re trying to get into a movie but can’t get past the fact that Brad Pitt is there being Brad Pitt, all ham and fist, blocking you from actually connecting with the story.

And George Clooney. How many times is he going to play a fast-talking shifty womanizer for the Coen bros? I actually enjoyed it in Oh Brother, but it’s become a pretty thin schtick.

The others are top-notch, however. The Coens always seem to elicit the best from their crew. I thought Richard Jenkins in particular as the tragicomic gym manager with a somewhat unusual past played his role with superb understatement.

It’s been over a month now since the state government, the education bureaucrats and the teachers union reached an agreement that will no doubt go down in the record books as one of the most wrong-headed decisions the state has ever made, an agreement of Swiftian proportions: Furlough Fridays.

A lawsuit, a scathing open letter from the Secretary of Education, a NY Times op-ed, a parent protest on the capitol steps – not one of these has made much of an impact on a governing body indifferent to the plight of 130,000 public school children in a state that ranks near the bottom of the nation in education.

We were there at the protest, which turned out to be an impromptu Jack Johnson concert masquerading as a protest. Jack deigns the South Shore with a few hits from the catalog, steps off stage, and what do you think happens? That’s right. The hundreds of “outraged citizens” dwindle to a handful. 130,000 affected students, and yet the organizers are only able to collect a couple thousand signatories for the petition. In spite of this, the mothers who organized the event deserve some kind of Nobel Prize for their efforts.

And now, in a new and strange twist, the Advertiser is reporting that Lingle has actually had the money to put a stop to the furloughs all along. Much like Dorothy and her ruby slippers. Will wonders never cease!

On a more positive note, our son Taiyo received a “Mindful Student” Award for the first quarter of classes, the highest award given at Waikiki Elementary. Although it is comforting that he seems to be doing well, it’s all relative to the more alarming fact that he seems to be off from school more often than in the classroom.

Over a month ago sheer curiosity led me to Honuguide’s Ecolounge event at Indigo. Man am I glad I went. Not so much for the “event”, but for the presentation I witnessed.

Joel Paschal used to work in Hawaii for a government funded organization. They received grants to sail into the Hawaiian Leeward Islands – a small, scattered chain stretching out northwest of the main Hawaiian archipelago – and clean the reefs and atolls. He showed us pictures of beaches humans have rarely if ever set foot on that are completely covered in garbage – the handiwork of sea dumping and the currents. Baby albatross, such as the one pictured above, are fed bits of refuse floating in the ocean by their parents, who skim it from the surface along with organic matter. Their stomachs can handle the organic matter, but not plastic. (The photo above was taken by a phenomenal photographer and activist named Chris Jordan.)

Joel shared with us some of the measurements they had taken of the units of plastic per square meter of ocean. I now forget the precise number, but they already greatly outnumber units of organic matter. When the government shut down his program, he was forced to return to California, where he conceived of the idea of building a raft made from junk and sailing it to Hawaii to raise awareness of what we are doing to our oceans. His journey is chronicled here.

There’s a real world out there we’re destroying. We need to start living smarter.

Several weekends ago I found myself in need of a beer to accompany a Kua Aina burger. Being in Kaka’ako, I knew the Liquor Collection, with its formidable selection of world beers, would provide. What could be a more appropriate fit to a Hawaiian burger than a brewed-in-Hawaii ale? I decided to acquaint myself with Hawaii Nui’s Golden Ale and was far from disappointed. Nice and crisp with a fine, upstanding character. Lacking the refinement of the Kona beers with which I am much better acquainted, but definitely worth repeat explorations.