JonGorey.com

My wife's birthday is today (happy birthday, babe!), and as we were driving in to work this morning, the perfect birthday gift hit me... except, it was a little late for that.  If I were a more awesome husband, with more (ok maybe  some is the word) discretionary income, I would have secretly booked a trip to someplace fabulous for the weekend, sorted it out ahead of time with her coworkers and boss, packed a bag for her, and kept it all hush hush until we hit the exit ramp on I-93 where one lane goes to her office and the other one goes to Logan Airport. And I'd have just veered off toward the airport, giving her a little panic attack about how I finally did it, after all these trips I took the wrong turn and we're going to be late for work and oh my, and then I'd turn to her and say, "We're not going to work today!"  Wouldn't it be great if I were more awesome?? Alas... I am not. I dropped her off at her office. Y'know, so she can earn the money...

This article in the N.Y. Times  details the latest textbook publishing vendor to collapse as the industry continues to flounder. It was a small shop in New York, and my alma mater Houghton Mifflin (ugh, fine, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ), probably their biggest client, allegedly stopped paying them, so they stopped paying their employees. More likely, they just weren't paying them quickly enough. That's sort of what happened when I worked at ill-fated Publicom, Inc., a vendor in Cambridge that closed down without ever paying me and many other employees our last few paychecks. (Luckily, I was like 25 years old and able to handle free time and unemployment checks with a certain grace. If that happens now I'll be S.O.L.) The interesting thing is how well this article (sent to me by Gina, who's still in the business) sums up the work I used to find so difficult to explain to friends and family members: "The opening pages of any respectable textbook include pictures of d...

There used to be a CompUSA on Market St. in Brighton when I lived in the area, and while it was good to have a giant, cheap, computer/gadget superstore nearby, it also made for the single worst retail customer service experience ever. You couldn't find one helpful employee in there to save your life. (You could find, now and then, an old, strange weirdo guy, who may or may not have worked there, who wasn't helpful at all.)  Well, since they closed the joint a few years ago, it's just sat there dying like a beached concrete whale, pretty much sucking the will to live out of anyone within 200 yards of the thing. But last week, a construction crew showed up and started ripping up the roof and excavating the parking lot. Now we're talking! They must have finally found a viable business to take over the site — what will it be? A new Whole Foods or Trader Joe's ? A decent restaurant or a bar? A Newbury Comics ? (For the love of God, maybe an actual T station, please?) ...

Last week I finished 1776 by David McCullough , a weighty enough volume o' nonfiction that I figured I ought to brag about it just a little. As I've mentioned before , thanks in large part to my Dad and my second grade teacher Mrs. Walsh, I learned just about everything there is to know about the American Revolution at an early age. From Lexington and Concord to Paul Revere's house to the Old North Church to Johnny Tremain, I ate it up. Couldn't get enough. It was like Star Wars , only real, and nearby. (Not that Star Wars wasn't real; I'm not saying that. But it wasn't on my second grade tests for some reason.) Of course, there's only so much you come away with as a kid. I'm finding now that I may have missed some of the, uh, nuances of the conflict. Such as how we were thisclose to losing the damned thing! 1776 actually begins in 1775, amidst the upbeat afterglow of the colonial army's surprisingly forceful showing at Bunker Hill. After mon...

The Yankees are in town, meaning the greatest rivalry in American sports is writing another page of another chapter in its storybook history. (Apologies to fans of UNC, Duke, Green Bay, Bears, Michigan, OSU, and others who think their rivalry is superior. They are great rivalries. They are not, however, the Red Sox-Yankees.)  Somehow the Sox have managed to win all seven of their match-ups with the Yanks so far this season (knocking on wood). The 21st century is a crazy place! We were lucky enough to go to Tuesday night's game, a blowout and a blast. And a few friends were at last night's nail-biter, including rock star Will Dailey (you should buy his new album ), who said it ranked in his top five all-time games.  Wherefore came the inspiration for today's Top Five:  Top Five Sox-Yankees Games I've Attended  5. Friday, April 13, 2001  In the prime of my rip-roaring early 20s, I went to this game with my three best buddies. Of course we sat in the bleachers like any o...

No, not quite. But it makes my list of nominees: Apple, Banana, Blueberry, Grape, Nectarine, Peach, Raspberry, Strawberry, Watermelon. Apple Pros: Grows virtually anywhere; incredibly diverse, with a type to fit every taste and every purpose, from homemade pies to boozy hard cider; acts as nature's toothbrush and keeps those damned doctors away; portable and well-sized for a snack; nice to pick in autumn; keeps well in storage. Cons: Kind of plain; can bruise easily or even harbor worms (gross!); seeds contain cyanide, which is like spy suicide poison, so that can't be good. By the way, I just don't get the Red Delicious — does anyone actually like those grainy things? Yeck.  Banana Pros: Plays well with others (smoothies, cereal, sundaes); protective peel keeps chemicals and fellow shoppers from contaminating your food; portable; great for kids; filling and healthy. Cons: Can get bruised and mushy too quickly; slime factor; seems to attract fruit flies in my experienc...

Often, the intent of an analogy is to illustrate a difficult or abstract concept more clearly to someone by likening it to a situation he or she is familiar with: The colonists didn't win at Bunker Hill, but it was a moral victory, because they held their own and inflicted so much damage on the reigning, more powerful champ... like in Rocky .  It's an — perhaps the ? — essential tool to understanding, I think. I love analogies. I love that everything in the entire universe can be compared to something else, creating this beautiful, intricate fabric of connections. I often say to myself, "Everything is like everything else." The analogy proves the simple, elegant beauty of our world. Most of all, I like to make sports analogies. Baseball, in particular. Football makes for great war comparisons, sure, but the subtlety, strategy, and slowly escalating drama of a baseball game offer much more to work with. Is there any situation in life without a symbolic parallel on the...

And the results are in: Buzz Cut: 1 Helmet Hair: 0 Since I first cut off my long hair (a good three years later than would have been appropriate; I'll admit it, I have trouble letting go), I've had no idea what to do with this thing people call "hair." Or, you might even call it "thinning hair." (I guess if you're mean you'd call it that. Meany.) After some initial trial and error — it had been almost 10 years since I'd gotten a real haircut — I figured out that I liked it cut short. But, you know, hair grows, and fast — even if you don't have a lot of it, what's there can grow like gangbusters. So I'd be delighted with a haircut for all of two weeks before it would get all helmet head-looking on me again. It caused much undue stress. (Not to mention the grease factor... we won't even get into that in this public sphere.) So I've been thinking about chopping it off for awhile, Sinead O'Connor style. (Hee hee — ok, maybe I...