Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

This week a few colleagues and I ran a booth for our company at a small trade show. I say "small" because it wasn't even a trade show, per se. It was a "Developer Day" at a major bank that's one of our customers. This "Developer Day" was like a trade show, though, in that it was an exhibit showcase by multiple vendors, plus various internal teams that platform our solutions. We had table on the exhibit floor.

Here are Five Things:

1. Like with most trade shows, the most common question we got was "So, [Company Name]... what do you do?" But unlike most trade shows, once we gave a one-sentence explanation identifying how we're used in an internal platform, almost everybody was like, "Oh, yeah, I use that daily. Cool." Thus the challenge I put to my team internally was, How can we increase our brand awareness within the bank?

2. We had a good spread of swag...at least to start. We had logo hats, logo socks, USB charger/adapter cables, logo air fresheners (like for a car), and the old trade show standard, logo stickers. I quip at least to start because we sold out of the hats pretty quickly. They were gone within the first hour. The socks went next. Then the charger cables. The air fresheners were a dud until all we had left were those and the stickers, then everybody at least took a whiff of the air fresheners to decide if they like them. 😅 We had, like, a bazillion of them, though, so we packed most of them to send back. I took two home thinking Hawk would like them, since they're lavender. She was skeptical at first but then noticed they were lavender— and purple. She took both.

3. I was bemused at how fast attendees scooped up our merch. I've written before about how all trade shows have a certain class of attendee, the "swag hound". These people cruise from booth to booth, not really interested in what any of the vendors do but feigning just enough interest to hoover up all the free giveaways and enter drawings for big prizes if there are any. Typically, in my experience, swag hounds match one of two stereoptypes: students/very entry level tech workers (i.e., people who are still impressed by getting cheap things for free) and, oddly, mid- to late career government employees (who maybe also are still tickled to get cheap things for free 🤣). But the attendees at this show were all software developers well employed by a major bank. You'd think if they wanted ballcap or a pair of socks, they could afford to buy them.

4. Yes, socks. They're the "it" thing for trade show swag right now! I was very much 🙄 when I saw this fad emerging two years ago— like, really, socks? People can't buy their own socks?—  but it works. Socks are just enough different from the trade show standard of t-shirts that they attract an extra dollop of attention. And my company's socks are actually pretty good quality. Plus, the logo design is just subtle enough that I can wear them with business casual/business dressy outfits when I'm visiting clients. When people at the bank were skeptical about our socks, I stretched my leg out alongside the table to show them I was wearing a pair.

5. Getting colleagues to stay in the booth was a problem, as always. I get it, most people hate standing in the booth waiting for questions— or waiting for real questions instead of people feigning the minimum interest level required to bag our swag. It frustrates me when colleagues who are supposed to be there with me wander off the moment there's a lull... because "Just text me if it gets busy" doesn't work. When it gets busy it gets busy. And when I have a crowd of people in front of me all trying to ask questions it is NOT the time for me to ask them all to wait while I pull out my phone to frantically text people. This show was like many, where I often found myself in the booth alone— because I have a stronger "This is the job I'm here to do" ethic than most of my colleagues. But this time I kept my frustration at bay by choosing to believe that my colleagues who skipped out of the booth were having high-value conversations out in the hall. Were they having high-value conversations? I'm sure they had at least one or two. For the rest of the time that's simply what I chose to believe while I was manning the booth, and facing the crowds, solo.

I saw an interesting article on Gnome Stew, the (roleplaying) gaming blog, last week: Meeting The Villain— And Letting Them Live. It's about the challenge GMs face in a roleplaying game in creating a compelling villain the players don't just mow down in a few rounds of combat. "Well, just make the villain more powerful," is the simplistic solution. But if the villain's too powerful, then what chance do the players have? The story's hard to make compelling if the players can't score any kind of win.

I've made a lot of compelling villains in my D&D games. I know they're compelling because of how the players respond to them. And part of my success has been that my villains have staying power. They remain villains across a story arc, possibly a long story arc; but they're aren't unbeatable. The players always have some way to find victory in the end, even if it takes a lot of time and effort. Here are Five Things I do to make compelling villains with staying power:

1) Do they even know who the villain is? There's a familiar trope from TV and film that the villain appears to taunt the protagonists, twirling an oiled mustache or swirling a black cape while saying something witty. It's definitely okay to play that trope for fun— I often do!— but it doesn't have to come first. I often introduce the villain's story not by showing the villain but by showing the results of one of their plots. The PCs arrive in town just in time to avert an attack by minions, or are called to a scene to help the survivors of a disaster nobody understands the cause of. They investigate and determine that someone is behind it; they just don't know who. Yet.

2) The villain moves fast. One way to block the party from engaging the villain in combat right away and chopping him/her/it/them down in 3 rounds is to give the villain mobility. Think of it from the villain's perspective: a smart villain doesn't loiter at the scene of the crime to be arrested or killed. They're there to see the results of their dastardly planning and escape before facing much risk. Mobility could be as simple as having a fast horse or being a creature, like a dragn, who can fly away. Or it could involve magic or supernatural effects, like teleporting, or turning invisible, or being able to shapeshift and blend into a crowd. In a scifi game, mobility could mean a fast spaceship or transporter technology that's beyond the garden variety bad guy's means. Seeing the villain and seeing them escape really hooks the protagonists' desire for justice.

3) The villain works through minions. Pretty much no self-respecting villain is a solo act. 😅 Even mad egotists who regard no one as being up to their level will still use grunts and patsies to carry out some of their dirty work— and defend them from trouble. The villain's escape á lá #2 is likely enabled by minions keeping the good guys at bay just long enough. The protagonists can still score a partial victory in scenes like this. Defeating minions chips away at the villain's power and is a necessary step toward the ultimate victory (see below); plus maybe they arrived on scene early enough to thwart the villain's dastardly act even though the villain lived to villainize another day.

4) The villain's lair is protected. Going straight at the villain is a simple idea many players will come up with. While as a GM you can't just saying "No" to a player idea, you absolutely can make it clear, through storytelling and action, that this is a tough, uphill battle. The villain's lair, or wherever they hang their hat, is going to be protected. Whether it's magical wards or high tech traps, the front door isn't just open for anyone to come in. There'll be minions here, too, as guard. Oh, and possibly the local law protects the villain! The PCs may well come at the villain this way— and they may well succeed, too— but to do so they're going to have to use a number of different skills and have a plan to whittle down the villain's defenses.

5) The villain is strong— but not insurmountably so. I pretty much always create the villain as being more powerful, even stripped of all their minions, than the PCs can defeat in a fair fight. At least initially. The protagonists have to earn their victory. In addition to finding/identifying the villain, defeating their minions, disarm the traps, etc., they have to decipher what else gives the villain and advantage— and how to neutralize it. That often involves gaining a level or two while pursuing the villain and also figuring out some sort of magical/technological mystery, like how to overcome the villain's weird power armor or antimagic aura. It could also involve convincing reluctant allies to join the fight.

When the group decodes the final pieces of the puzzle, it's time for the big fight— and then, if they're lucky and good, the villain goes down in 3 rounds.

Season 4 of Better Call Saul picks up with small-time lawyer Jimmy McGill struggling to find work outside the legal profession, following his one-year suspension in season 3.. We see him circling want-ads in the newspaper and calling for interviews. The first interview he goes on is for a job selling photocopiers. (Yes, back in 2003, when this season is set, selling photocopiers was a real job. A lot of salespeople who did well in this as an entry-level sales job moved up to selling computer hardware and software— my field. I know, because I interviewed many from this background years later!)

Why is Jimmy going for a sales job? I wondered. Would he be any good at sales? Well, he probably wouldn't have the follow-through for it, but it turns out Jimmy's got some fantastic sales technique. Below is a video clip of him closing a deal— interviewing for the job— with my notes about what he's doing beautifully.

One bit of context about this video clip.... This scene is after Jimmy's interview. He started out the interview okay, making amiable shop talk with the company VP, but then he fell flat with the company owner, Mr. Neff, who grilled him about having no actual sales experience. The two give Jimmy a standard brush-off answer that tells anyone who's been around the block a few times, "Yeah, we're not going to hire you." Jimmy starts to leave but then comes back to make a last-ditch appeal. And it's his appeal that's a beauty of sales technique:



There are several elements of sales mastery that Jimmy demonstrates here. Here are Five Things:

✤ The first is his understanding that "do nothing" is the main alternative. The buyer's main alternative to "hire me"— or "buy my product"— usually isn't "buy/hire this other product/person instead", but do nothing. Buy nothing to solve the problem, leaving the problem unsolved. Or pass on hiring this person and wait to see who applies next. Jimmy makes this explicit then pivots into explaining why that's bad for the owner.

✤ The next technique is highlighting the cost of inaction. Jimmy challenges them on what happens next if they don't hire him. He intuits— or maybe he's done some research off-camera— that Neff doesn't have a line of job candidates waiting for interviews. He challenges Neff that not hiring him now means that Neff continues to have nobody selling his copiers for at least another week, probably a few weeks. And in that time Jimmy could be successfully selling copiers. Of course he has to give them some sense that he actually can sell copiers, which he absolutely nails with his next technique.

✤ A great salesperson knows fear creates urgency to act. Jimmy explains from his knowledge of working in a mailroom that "The copier is the beating heart of any business.... It goes down, it causes delays, that is lost money," and paints a picture of employees frustrated over unreliable copiers and business owners worried about losing clients when work is delayed due to copier breakdowns. In sales it's sad but true— sad from a moralistic perspective— that fear is the best motivator.

✤ What closes the deal is painting a picture of a better future. Asking the customer to face the fear, to stand in the moment of pain (as above) can seem awkward but it's necessary. And while it's necessary it's not sufficient. You've got to show the customer also that what you're selling can solve that pain. Jimmy does that, too, by extending his metaphor of the heartbeat of a business to talk about a new, improved copier being a healthy, beating heart.

✤ Finally, note how through all of this Jimmy is speaking about business impact. He's not talking about copier speeds, fancy features, or MTBF ratings. He's not even talking about how many years of experience he has or what awards he's won in sales— largely because he doesn't have any! Instead he's focusing the pitch on what it means to his customer's business. That is how you sell to business leaders!

While it might be tempting to call these lessons "Sales 101" they're not 101; they're not introductory level lessons. Jimmy's pitch here, offered extemporaneously, is the work of a sales technique master.

It's interesting, as well, that what Jimmy's doing here went right over most people's heads. Based on fan comments on the video I linked above and other identical clips, I'd say 90%+ of the audience failed to recognize any of these techniques. Most people dismissed the whole thing as yet-another instance of Jimmy's con artist bullshit. The fact is Jimmy is not bullshitting in this interview. His interviewers know their business and would bounce him in 2 seconds flat if he made things up. The fact is Jimmy could've been a fantastic, legitimate salesman applying these techniques. And this video clip could be a good training tool for sales technique. In fact I think I'll use it next time I'm teaching a sales seminar!

Recently I wrote about Better Call Saul episode 1.04, where Jimmy rescues a construction worker from a billboard and makes the local news as a hero. While most characters in the episode take the story at face value, Jimmy's rival, Howard Hamlin, sneers that it was staged. That it's a fake, a scam, from a known con artist.



In the moment Howard seems like a total asshat for calling Jimmy a scammer when everyone else is lauding him as a hero. But was Howard right? Did Jimmy stage the accident and rescue for publicity?

Some fan sites treat it like it's not even a question. Jimmy staged the billboard accident, they state. But does their matter-of-factness  come from a reveal in a later episode where Jimmy outright admits it was a con (note: I'm posing this as a hypothetical, not a spoiler!), or is there enough evidence right there in episode 1.04 to support a firm conclusion?

Showrunner Vince Gilligan and his team are sneaky at the craft of writing scenes that appear one way when watched initially but are revealed to be the opposite on further consideration. I'd say they're even too sneaky. Consider their ham-fisted post-facto evidence that Walt poisoned a child in Breaking Bad. Plus, American TV audiences are not accustomed to having to figure things out. We're (sadly) used to morality plays written in such heavy-handed fashion the villains practically walk around with lighted "BAD GUY 👇" signs flashing over their heads. 😅

That said, I believe there's enough evidence in episode 1.04 to conclude Jimmy's daring rescue was a scam. It's not beyond-the-shadow-of-a-doubt level proof, but it's fairly convincing. Five Things:

• We know Jimmy's a scammer. This was part of his character introduction in the pilot, where he catches a pair of young men trying to scam him and invites them to work with him to up their game.


• Jimmy's been a scammer for years. In a flashback at the start of this episode we see him in his "Slippin' Jimmy" mode years earlier scamming bar patrons in Chicago. Running scams was how he supported himself for years.


• The construction worker was up on the billboard catwalk for quite a while. He made a show of starting to tear down the vinyl multiple times, stopping each time as if waiting for a cue from Jimmy, who was having trouble getting the makeshift camera crew to set up the shot correctly. Clearly there was some level of coordination between Jimmy and the guy on the catwalk to stage a scene for the cameras.


• When Jimmy pulled the worker to safety, the man scoffed, "It took you long enough!" That points heavily to it being planned. A construction worker in a real emergency would probably be effusive in praising the person who rescued him, especially if it was a Good Samaritan who rushed in at risk to himself before emergency responders with training and equipment like the fire department arrived.


• Jimmy hid the newspaper with his front-page hero story from his brother, Chuck. While it could be that he didn't want Chuck to think he earned success from anything other than his legal acumen, Chuck is also well aware of Jimmy's "Slippin' Jimmy" con-man days. Chuck rescued him from a con gone wrong, and his requirement for helping was that Jimmy go straight. Jimmy seems afraid that Chuck would see the rescue a new "Slippin' Jimmy" scam.

I saw an interesting article in my newsfeed yesterday, "Gen Z Doesn't Know How to Act in Bars." I'm always curious to read the latest in how older generations are scorning the young. And this article was published by Vox, which has a strong reputation for insightful explanatory journalism. Perhaps this article would go beyond superficial scoffing, I thought, and show whether there's really a there there. Well, it did, and it didn't.

First, let me summarize the complaints, according to the article, about how Gen Z acts incorrectly in bars:

• Gen Z closes out their bills each round, instead of leaving a tab open for the evening, making more work for the bartender. Yes, this really is the primary complaint; the article even states that explicitly. ...Which makes me wonder who wrote this, an overworked bartender?


• In a group of Gen Zs, not everybody will order a drink. ...Again, what sources were used for writing this article?


• Gen Z groups are more interested in socializing with the friends they came with than chatting up the bartender. ...Seriously?


• Gen Z groups stay a long time without drinking the whole time. ...Are you sensing a pattern here?

The author shows a moment of self-awareness about the rubbish she's spreading. Before presenting the above complaints she writes:

"Obviously, it’s incredibly satisfying to point out how a person — or, even better, a whole group of people — does something wrong. It’s even more fulfilling to be able to signal a divide, a marker that, for objective scientific reasons, you could never be implicated in this type of chaotic discordance. Look at this worse person — who is nothing like me — move through the universe, incorrectly!"

You could plausibly argue that this foreward to the complaints— which, taken together, all sound like they come from impatient bartenders who wish customers would just pay and get out— invites us to scoff at them and dismiss them. Indeed, for some of us, like me, it does. I love her little passage about thinking ourselves better than others. But in a published work I believe you've got to evaluate the content by its mass. When an essay is 98% complaints and 2% one trenchant little paragraph about how, maybe, the complaints aren't valid, most people— maybe even, say, 98%— are going to take away the 98% as the message.

What's wrong with the complaints in the article, by the way? Here are Five Things. And remember, I'm two generations older than Gen Z.

1. Closing out the bill each round sounds like a store problem, not a customer problem. Seriously, easy and fast payment system exist. Stop being cheapskates and replace your early-2000s technology. Don't tell me you can't afford to upgrade when you sell $1.50 bottles of beer for $10+ each.

2. Yeah, not everybody orders a drink. Deal with it. It was like that 25-30 years ago when I was a regular bar patron, too.

3. Is it because your service sucks? One big reason not everybody among my friends 25-30 years ago ordered drinks was shit service. At a pub I met friends at every week, most stopped ordering food and drink because table service became so erratic. That was one particular establishment, but in general service levels are way weaker today than they were back in the late 1990s.

4. People order fewer drinks because they're expensive. Even as a Gen Xer I order way fewer drinks in bars and food-and-bar establishments now than in the past because they've just so darn expensive. At $10+ for a beer and $15+ for a cocktail I just can't enjoy them much anymore. Plus, if had the weaker finances of a 20-something I certainly wouldn't be downing a lot of $15+ mixed drinks!

5. People linger over drinks. That's how bars have always worked. The thing that's most ridiculous about this article is the bartenders' repeated preference that people just order drinks as long as they're there, then leave. And that's just so many kinds of wrong. To name just two: A, it was never like that. B, do you really expect people to buy a drink and leave— they could buy that $10 beer for $2 at the grocery store if that's all they wanted— or to get soused on multiple rounds of drinks if they stay for a few hours? These bartenders seem like the worst of the doesn't-know-how-to-socialize stereotype typically thrust on Gen Z.

Panama Travelog #Whatever
Everywhere we went - The whole damn week.

Our trip to Panama in late December, which we returned from a week ago, was an exercise in joy and frustration. Exercise is an unfortunately apropos term as it often took effort to find the joy and hold onto any sense of it amidst all the setbacks.

What went wrong? Lots of things big and small. I'll group it into categories as Five Things:

• Problems started from the hour we landed. The car rental agency downgraded us to a smaller car because they didn't have the one we reserved. At first that seemed like a negligible issue because they also charged us the lower rate, but then two days later our little vehicle couldn't even drive some of the roads in El Valle.


• Meanwhile, we had room trouble at the hotel we checked into the first night. And there was trouble with the second hotel we visited. And the third. Literally everywhere we went, there was a problem. The latter two we serious enough that we would have demanded refunds and gone elsewhere if it weren't too late to find reasonable alternate accommodation.


• Oh, and it wasn't just cars and rooms we had trouble with. Some of the hikes we had on our list were falsely advertised. Like, reviews full of superlatives but nothing actually there. Or officially closed.


• Oh, and it rained every day— and this was supposed to be the dry season!


• Our phones basically stopped getting cell service halfway through the trip, requiring a three-hour troubleshooting session with tech support. Even after it was "fixed", connection remained spotty every time we weren't standing still.


• Oh, and just when we thought we were done with this star-crossed trip.... We were sick the day we traveled home. And sick for almost a week after.

Okay, so that's six things when I promised 5. Even when I group the problems by category there are still too many.

"Okay, so it wasn't perfect," you might respond. "Whenever is a trip perfect?" And haven't I congratulated myself before on planning flexibly so I can call an audible when plans need to change?

Sure, I know things don't go perfectly. That's what I plan to be ready to call an audible when necessary. But understand that calling an audible means crossing things off the list and skipping them. It's fine to do that a small number of times. After a certain number of times it's just frustrating.

What's the frustration, BTW? Aren't there other things I can do? The frustration is about money and opportunity.

Money: We spent several thousand dollars on this trip. It's a real pisser when things we aim to do are suddenly not available. Sure, there are other things to do, but when I get down to having to choose between fourth and fifth choice, is it still worth the thousands of dollars to be here? If I'd known in advance I may have chosen not to go there. ...And gone elsewhere instead. Which leads to the second issue....

Opportunity: Possibly more so than wasting money it's wasted time. I have finite opportunities for international trips like this. Recently it's been 1-2 a year. I do not have an infinite number of years of life. Fewer, even, of active, globe-trotting, get-outdoors-and-do-stuff life. This trip means using up a ticket from a very limited number of tickets in my proverbial ticket book. It infuriates me to see that I've burned one of those tickets on a trip that hits failures left, right, and center.

I've written before about how I hate Las Vegas. Pretty much every time I've been to Vegas for work in the past several years, I've hated it. Why? Here are Five Things:

• The gambling sucks. Gambling was once the primary draw to Las Vegas. The house always had the edge, of course, but years ago they could be gentle about it. Now they've worsened the odds for players by 3x-10x. It amazes me that people still sit down for games where the house wins, on average, 2%, 5%, or even 7% of your money every turn.


• Food is stupid expensive. Years ago Vegas casinos offered good food at fantastic prices. It was a loss-leader to get you in to gamble. Now not only is the gambling itself more of a con than ever before, but the food has flipped around to being a profit center. A meal in a food court costs $30. Dinner in a nice restaurants starts at $100pp— and that's if all you order is an entree and a glass of water, after tax and tip. Throw in a few drinks because you're celebrating, and an appetizer and/or dessert, and you're looking easily at $200pp.


• Smoking. Even though the number of smokers as a percentage of casino patrons is smaller today than years ago, it's still sickening how much latent smoke is in the air. It's like it's all built up over the past 30 years. I have to shower before going to bed so as not to wake up sick in the morning.


• It takes forever to go anywhere. When I enjoyed gambling in Vegas years ago, part of my routine was to visit different casinos to explore the variety. It wasn't hard to get around. Now going anywhere takes seemingly forever. Call an Uber at peak hours? It takes 15-20 minutes to arrive, then 25 minutes to go a few miles. Okay, this is partly a consequence of the huge conferences I travel to Vegas for, and that's why I hate going to Vegas for conferences.


• Mega-hotels have gotten mind-numbingly boring. And too big. To me part of the allure of staying in a nice hotel is that it's nice. (Duh!) While the mega-casino hotels look nice on the outside, they quickly feel mind-numbingly boring on the inside. And they're too big, so it takes for-freaking-ever to get to/from your room.

Well, that's 5 reasons why I hate Vegas. But I said in the title I'm finding peace with it. How is that?

Part of it is just acceptance. Vegas is what it is. It's not like I'm doing it wrong or failing to master some "simple trick" that makes it better. The trick, if you can call it that, is not to go. Indeed, when I travel through Vegas for leisure, I stay in a non-casino hotel outside the casino areas and focus most of my time on things that are not in casinos.

And the other part of it is that when I have to stay in Vegas, in casinos, because my company wants me to work a show, I choose not to sweat the prices. Even off-Strip hotels are $200++/night because of the crowds? That's the company's decision to send me there. Expensive Uber/Lyft rides? Their decision, not mine. Stupid-expensive meals? Again, not my decisions, and not my money.

I've finished the month of October 2024 with 62 journal entries posted to my blog. I thought I'd finish about 60 but then I squeezed in 4 just in the past 12 hours. Technicalities count!

Five Things:

• I once again met my baseline goal of blogging every day. I continue my streak of posting daily for nearly 7 months.


• With 62 blog entries I posted at a rate of 2.0/day. This meets my stretch goal— for the first time in 4 months. Earlier in the year I surpassed 2.0 for four months.


• Usually the driver of blogging more is travel. It's unusual, then, that I blogged more in October than in July, August, or September because I didn't travel this month. ...Well, that's not exactly true. I had a 24-hour business trip to LA early in the month. But that was it; just that one day. And only 2 blogs.


• Instead a lot of my blogs this month came from TV. I started streaming Breaking Bad early this month. I've now watched up through the 3rd season (out of 5) and have written 20 blogs about it. Though even that is just less than one-third of all the blogs I posted this month. So, yay not letting TV/streaming dominate my blog.


• I go into November with a few things in my backlog. There are still a few blogs I've been meaning to write about the last fun trip we took, wheeling/hiking in the mountains in late September. And I'm a few blogs behind on Breaking Bad. Plus, I've written nowhere near the number of blogs about political issues I wish I'd had time to write. With the election coming up in just a few days now we'll see what happens there.

Season 2 episode 8 of Breaking Bad introduces memorable supporting character, Saul Goodman, portrayed by Bob Odenkirk. Saul is a strip mall lawyer who advertises on bus stops and in cheesy local TV station ads. So why is he so memorable— and why did the writers spin off a multi-season series, Better Call Saul, starring him and his story? It's evident from just one episode why audiences are fascinated with him. Here are Five Things:

• Early scenes in the episode show Saul's ads on bus stop benches with the slogan "Better Call Saul!" and a clip of Saul's TV ad where he vamps for the camera while making a pitch that ends with the same slogan. The TV ad paints Saul as an ambulance chaser and probably not very successful lawyer, yet it's corny in a way that makes a viewer curious to see a bit more about him.


• Saul's first "live" scene is responding to a call from Jesse's friend, "Badger", who's just been arrested by the local police. Fast-talking Saul shows up at the jail asking Badger why he committed some misdemeanor like defecating in public. "What, couldn't you hold it?" he teases. He's so cavalier that it takes him a while to realize he's sorted his files wrong and Badger is the client being charged with a much more serious crime, felony drug distribution. Watching Saul is like watching a slow motion replay of a gymnast falling off a balance beam. It's embarrassing but we can't turn away.


• When Walt and Jesse arrive at Saul's office to pay his retainer for defending Badger, Walt objects that the gaudy strip-mall location with a big inflatable mascot on the roof indicates a third-rate lawyer. Jesse responds, "We need not just a criminal lawyer but a criminal lawyer." This is where I was hooked. Jesse knows something about Saul beyond his corny advertising and business defending petty criminals.

( The last two reveal plot twists in this episode )

So, yeah, I see how Odenkirk's Saul really intrigued audiences. Already I'm wondering, was he always dirty, or did something corrupt him? Did he try something bad as a result of despair, as Walt did with trying to find money to pay for his treatment without bankrupting his family? Or was he just corrupted by good, old, venal greed? Better call Saul!

It's in the news today that the last full-size Kmart store in the 50 United States is closing soon. According to this CNN.com article today (and similar on other media channels) the store in Bridgehampton, New York is scheduled to close on October 18. There's a scaled-down Kmart store in Florida, and 4 full-size stores in Guam and the US Virgin Islands. Edit: I'm familiar with the latter— the full-size Kmart in St. Thomas, USVI— because I bought a blender there. And a shirt. And while I left the blender, I kept the shirt and still wear it.

Wow, Kmart is a trip down Memory Lane. Here are 5 Things:

1) I remember when my hometown got a Kmart store. I don't remember exactly when it was, like what year. I'm going to guesstimate it was 1982. But I remember the hoopla around it. The girl similar to my age who lived across the street bragged that she'd made 3 separate trips there with her parents on opening day. She stretched the truth a lot, but kid-me didn't recognize yet how full of shit she usually was. But even going there once on opening day was big. It was the biggest thing to come to our town since the 1976 Fourth of July parade— the US's bicentennial year— when the nearby military base had a tank rolling down our main street!



2) Why was Kmart such a huge thing? It's not that my town was small; it was just poorly planned. Some self-appointed genius in the 1960s had this idea of "bedroom communities", towns that were nothing but places for people who worked in the Big City to sleep and have kids. I ridicule this self-styled genius because other people who were thinking of the idea of "planned communities" were smarter. In our poorly planned "bedroom" community we had several restaurants, two grocery stores, two drug stores, a few doctors and dentists, and a few hair salons... but we didn't have a department store. If the 25,000 people in our town wanted to buy shoes, or a pair of jeans, or a power drill, or an appliance— or even just a pair of underwear— we had to go at least as far as the next town over. ...And even that town didn't have a full department store. The nearest one of those was 40 minutes away. Kmart arrived 15+ years after the first houses in town were built out. And finally, we were on the map!

3) Going to Kmart was like going to a carnival. I mean that in a good way. Not only did Kmart have a whole mall worth of stuff under one roof— and remember, the nearest mall was 40 minutes away— but there was a festive atmosphere. There was a cafe in the back, a popcorn machine up front, and—oh, who can forget—the roving Blue Light specials?!

4) How many people remember the term "Blue light special" or the call of "Attention Kmart shoppers!" over the loudspeakers? How many people under 50 know what I'm talking about? How many under 40? Back in the day it wasn't just a joke. The store had a little box on wheels, kind of the size of a night stand, with a light atop a pole 5-6 feet tall. The light was blue and it flashed like a light atop a police car. Every 15 minutes on busy nights the manager would send the blue light somewhere else in the store and announce over the loudspeakers, "Attention [cityname] Kmart shoppers, for the next 15 minutes there is a blue-light special in [department name]!" People would make trips to the store around dinnertime, or hang out in the store longer if they were going anyway, to see what flash sales would be announced.

5) Kmart has been a failure, but it didn't have to be. A lot people probably think of Kmart as a relic of the past, a way of shopping well past its sell-by date. But it didn't have to be that way. Kmart's modern competitors, stores like Walmart, Target, and Kohl's, are still around. Kmart failed no so much because there's no room for brick-and-mortar stores anymore but because, in an increasingly competitive retail market, there's no room for shitty retailers. Kmart fell into a downward spiral by the early 1990s. Margins were tight, so they went for cost cutting. Instead of reinvesting in their business and staying competitive in the marketplace, they cut quality, cut variety, and cut staff. Kmart became synonymous with dilapidated stores, cheap products, and poor service. Shoppers moved to other retail brands, like Walmart which was expanding across the country. Declining revenue led to more cuts, which led to fewer shoppers and further declining revenue. That's the downward spiral. And now the infamous blue light will soon flash its last.