For Frying Out Loud (9 page)

March 2008

SHREDDING SOME LIGHT ON IT

I want to talk about something nobody ever talks about in public. And it's a dark, messy and dangerous place.

Get your mind out of the gutter.

I'm talking about your personal document shredder.

Right now, mine is upside down, unplugged and glaring at me with an unwanted credit card solicitation stuck in its teeth. I hate my shredder.

Remember the days when you'd get mail, read it and throw it away? So simple, so Twentieth Century.

Now that the credit pooh-bahs have convinced us that every unshredded missive is an open invitation to identity thief, I have become a slave to my shredder. I fight with it. I shriek at it. I have been known to wish it was dead. When my first shredder actually died, I had Jewish guilt.

It wasn't always this way. Back in the day, when I first took up shredding, I loved my shredder. What fun it was watching unwanted bank statements and old tax returns disappear into the maw to become confetti.

It was pretty easy, too. Three piles: file, shred, toss.

Now it's file, shred, toss, recycle. If the dollar sinks any lower it will be file, shred, toss, recycle or save for toilet paper.

How did this happen?

We heard about shredders for years, with our national security agencies using them to protect covert operations and corporate accounting firms using them to hide major fraud. Shredders let them get away with murder, both literally and figuratively.

But a shredder at home? What for?

Then came the credit police, along with cable newscasters eager to fill up that 24-hour news cycle, warning of terrifying identity theft tales. They convinced us that bypassing the shredder with a single envelope with our names, never mind an
actual invoice sporting an account number, means you might as well be selling your identity on eBay.

So I got into shredding. My latest shredder (that I've owned the same number of shredders in my lifetime as I have owned coffee pots is scary) is a Professional, Heavy Duty, Cross Cut Paper Shredder with auto reverse, steel gear construction and the ability to destroy CDs and Credit Cards. I so wish I had destroyed the credit cards before I abused them.

As for the destruction of CDs, I have to admit great pleasure in trying out the machine with old Barry Manilow albums. I shred the songs the whole world sings.

But the truth is, it's tricky business this shredding. Last week I accidentally sent a CD through the paper slot and the shredder ground to a halt like a politician caught with a call girl. I spent the better part of that afternoon extracting CD shards from the shredder with a tweezers.

I'd like to calculate how many hours a week I spend shredding bank statements, credit reports, charge receipts, insurance forms and old checks. And we can't forget about all the pre-approved credit card applications with their tempting pre-approved checks.

Those damn things just beg to be stolen so some low life can charge you for a trip to Vegas. I know that what happens in Vegas stays there, but I don't want it to be my credit rating. I'm telling you, worrying about this stuff can turn you into a paranoid nut job wanting to cancel all your credit cards, close your savings accounts and start hiding your money in tomato cans in the back yard.

Remember the promise of a paperless society? This isn't it, unless we've traded an eight-and-a-half by eleven society for confetti world. And speaking of tiny speckles of paper, yesterday, I failed to put the plastic storage bucket back into the shredder properly and came home to discover two sheepish Schnauzers and a den floor that looked like a parade route after the Red Sox won the pennant.

So now I'm looking at my upended, constipated shredder,
wondering if I have to purchase yet another anti-identity theft device. By the way, my 1997 coffee pot is still brewing just fine.

I go online and read the ads for shredders. I can choose from The Shredmaster, Powershred Plus, Destroyit Heavy-Duty, Intimus (what does it shred, Hustler and condoms?), and my personal favorite, Intellishred. If it were truly intelligent it would have figured out a different way to deter dumpster divers by now. They also offer machines with child locks, which, I assume, double as Schnauzer locks.

I have learned that the average heavy-duty shredder feeds 26 - 30 sheets at a time at 30 feet per minute. I imagine that will be useful to clean up after the Bush Administration. And I loved the ad for a continuous shredding heavy duty model for nonstop shredding 24-hours a day. What kind of business needs round the clock shredding now that Enron is gone?

But here's the really frightening truth about protecting your identity and the sanctity of garbage: there has now been a documented rash of scams taking money from frightened consumers for Identity Fraud Protection.

It's probable that some of the shady characters who dove in dumpsters to steal identities in the first place may now be going door-to-door selling phony protection against such despicable acts. Unscrupulous companies are all over cyberspace selling identity theft protection for a mere $14.99 per month.

These services, with names like Trusted I.D., Privacy Protector and LifeLock (heck, I'd subscribe to Jaw Lock if they would stop sales calls at dinner time) are lurking everywhere, ready to sell us our privacy back.

Well I don't want it. Take my identity, please. I'll forward the bills.

As for replacing my shredder, the jury is still out. After all, every day I send out dozens of pieces of correspondence with name and address all over them, even as I spend time feeding the shredder with similar information.

Face it. It doesn't make a shred of sense.

April 2008

GET YOUR HISTORY STRAIGHT AND YOUR NIGHTLIFE GAY

I've discovered Philadelphia.

Until recently, when I thought of Philadelphia it was all about cream cheese. No longer.

I've returned from an immersion tour that included the best food experience of my life (and that's going some), watching rainbow flags go up literally and figuratively, and being asked the quintessential “Provolone or Cheese Whiz?” It doesn't get much better than that.

On the pretense that lofty topics like history and culture were tour highlights, we'll start with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the artist Frida Kahlo's birth, there is a massive exhibit of her most important self-portraits and still lifes. Known for painting herself with that alarming unibrow and mustachioed upper lip, Kahlo was actually more attractive than her self-portraits – as noted in the fabulous photos from her personal albums along with the exhibit.

If you can't get there to see it in the next month or so, rent the film
Frida
, starring Salma Hayek – not only is there an unforgettable scene where Frida tangos with Ashley Judd, but you get a great look at Frida's canvasses, too.

Bonnie and I did not jog up the museum steps humming the theme from
Rocky
, but you knew that.

For history, I checked out Independence Hall. The room is tiny, with tinier windows. And July 4th, 1776 was reportedly a scorcher. Let's face it, our forefathers didn't wear cargo shorts and crocs. John Hancock and the others may have scribbled their john hancocks on the parchment just to flee the sauna.

Over at the new Constitution Center I walked among the lifesize bronzes of the document signers and a cerebral film exhibit charting our nation's quest for equality for all. I started
to nurture a bad attitude, figuring that the equality quest would exclude LGBT Americans. To the curator's credit, the march toward gay equality is noted and given weight, even if there is no resolution yet. I hope I get back in my lifetime for the last reel.

For more history, I visited the old Wanamaker's Department Store which is now Macy's (isn't everything?) with its two story pipe organ and 18th century architecture. Coincidentally there was a sale and I turned history into shopping before you could say Give Me Liberty or Give me 30% off. I was, at least, using currency with Ben Franklin on it.

Later, we sampled Philly's gay culture. We did the nightlife. We got to boogie.

For the Food Tour: We started in South Philly at Jim's Steaks, family owned and operated since 1939. Sure, I've had Cheese Steaks, but I'd never been asked if I wanted Cheese Whiz on mine. According to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, it's not the real thing without the Whiz. Sorry, Guv, I couldn't go there. But the gooey provolone over steak and onions folded into a perfect roll is deservedly legend.

Going from the ridiculous to the sublime, Bonnie and I celebrated our anniversary with brunch at the Rittenhouse Hotel. Truly, I have never had a more exquisite food experience in my entire calorie-clogged, thigh-bulging, restaurant-reviewing lifetime.

We took the Rittenhouse tour-de-kitchen marathon. The buffet had over 40 appetizers alone, including oysters, caviar, vichyssoise with lobster, foie gras ganache, escargot fricassee, shrimp spatzle and the unlikely winner, pineapple and Thai basil soda.

The main course took diners into the actual kitchen for a hot buffet of every kind of meat imaginable (and some slightly unimaginable) along with seafood, paella, venison sausages, Belgian waffles, Tuscan bread pudding, Brussels sprouts and, and, and….

For dessert there was a Liquid Nitrogen station, which, I
initially thought was on loan from a dermatologist. No, the smoking stuff was for submerging coconut curry foam and dark chocolate to form divine confections.

But on to Rainbow Flags. Following the hedonistic weekend, I spoke at the National Trust for Historic Preservation Conference on the topic of “Rainbow Flags on Main Street.”

I shared experiences about the economic rewards of gay-welcoming communities. We provided demographics about the value of the gay dollar (big!), and the many benefits to the community at large, not the least of which is a heightened preservation and design ethic.

I had the pleasure of explaining how CAMP Rehoboth evolved, helping to bridge the gap between gay and straight residents and business owners. Dozens of attendees wanted a how-to manual for starting their own CAMP clones. As people described small towns with fledgling gay sensibilities but no central organizing leadership, I heard CAMP-envy and realized how lucky we are.

As I was leaving the hotel to come home, dozens of city workers in bucket trucks busily installed hundreds of rainbow banners on city lampposts. The annual Equality Forum is on the horizon and the whole community will be celebrating.

The City of Philadelphia makes a great commitment to their LGBT entrepreneurs and citizens, realizing just which side their tourism toast is buttered on. In fact the City recently launched the nation's largest gay tourism marketing campaign, going after its share of the $54.1 billion gay and lesbian travel market.

Their slogan says it all: “Philadelphia: Get your history straight and your nightlife gay.”

The City of Brotherly (and Sisterly) love, indeed.