Domino’s Pizza has been creating quite a buzz by running television commercials that trash their product. The spots confess that many consumers thought their crust tasted like “cardboard” and the sauce like “ketchup”. The company had encouraged feedback from the public and they were stung by their honesty and/or meanness. Their reaction was to get defensive and hidden and childish. No wait…that was Congress. By stark contrast the Domino’s leadership decided to make changes in the recipe and be completely honest about the process. Experts have weighed in about how dangerous it is to trash your own product. That this kind of honesty is doomed to fail. They trot out the disaster of New Coke as a comparison. But I love the new campaign. Covering up what is obvious to many seems like a much worse strategy. I will try the new recipe soon and my sampling will be entirely because of this campaigns refreshing candidness. I remembered a similarly bold admission that took place in the
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Growing up in Southern Ohio I had my share of heroes. Most of them were sports heroes like Ohio State basketball player Jerry Lucas and Cleveland Brown’s running back Jim Brown. My baseball hero was not named Mantle or Mays or Musial. My baseball hero was a rather average Cincinnati Reds player named Gordy Coleman. I am not sure why I picked him. Maybe because he played first base and that is where I played. But I lived and died with Gordy’s daily efforts. Since he was not a star player on most days I died a little. As I grew older I learned that heroes will usually let you down. I admired political leaders only to be sorely disappointed by their actions. I  placed some spiritual leaders in high esteem only to be wounded by their actions. The recent revelations about Tiger Woods has revived the debate about whether celebrities should be viewed as heroes or role models at all. The reality is that
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This series was well received last year. Some would call this a repeat but I prefer to think of it as environmentally friendly blog recycling with no carbon offsets required. Merry Christmas!  Dave As a public service I am providing a shopping guide for things you can give to Jesus on His upcoming birthday. For the internet hall monitors who love to send anonymous and snarky comments I understand that the celebrated date of Christ’s birth is likely off a bit. But since this is when we celebrate we will go with the date assigned. Let’s be honest…giving the King of Kings and Lord of Lords a unique gift is really tough. The last post examined the gifts brought to the young Christ child over 2,000 years by the wise men, I had hoped that examining what the Magi brought might jump start our gift giving ideas.  By the way, there is a plaque that is available in catalogs this year with the title “What
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This series was well received last year. You may view this as a repeat. I prefer to think of it as re-gifting. Blessings and Merry Christmas!    Dave We are fast approaching the hardest day of the year for most men. Many of us men give gifts to our significant others with fear and trembling. Humor writer Dave Barry relates the confusion most men deal with when giving a gift to their wife. He could tell by her reaction to the gift that she had not been dreaming of getting an auto emergency kit, even though it was the deluxe model with booster cables and an air compressor. Clearly, this violated an important rule, but the man had idea what the rule was, and his wife was too upset to tell him. Barry continues his thoughtful treatise… So why is the Christmas season so difficult for men? There are many complex reasons, by which I mean: women. The problem goes back to the very first Christmas. We
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Today is a revisit of a “Christmas Classic” from earlier. How does a blog become a classic? 1) It is your blog, your site, you pay the server charge and you can call it whatever you want 2) You have no time to write today So enjoy a classic from Christmas past… One of my contributions with this modest little blog is to continually ask the tough questions. While listening to  “Away in a Manger” at a recent Christmas program my inquiring mind kicked in. You likely know verse three of the song. The cattle are lowing The poor Baby wakes But little Lord Jesus No crying He makes As I listened an important series of difficult and probing inquiries popped into my head. What noise, exactly, were the cattle making when they started lowing? Was this normal cow talk? Did lowing just sound better than mooing in the lyric or is lowing a more spiritual and reverent cow sound? And then the most important question came to
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As I watched the news this morning I marveled at the maturity of our elected representatives. A t-shirt from the good folks at despair.com came to mind. THE TIME FOR ACTION IS PAST. Now is the time for senseless bickering. So I went in search of something a little more uplifting. And I found it. It was a story about Faith. Regular readers of the humble ramblings know that faith is a regular topic of discussion here. This time faith is the name of one of God’s creatures. The Associated Press tells the story.  Born without front legs to a junkyard dog around Christmas 2002, Faith the puppy was rejected and abused by her mother. She was rescued by Reuben Stringfellow, now an Army E-4 specialist, who had been asked to bury other puppies in the litter. “Can we fix her? Stringfellow, then 17, asked his mom. “No, but maybe we can help her,” she said. So Reuben turned Faith over
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I am a little too old and lot too cynical to be swept away by the latest fad in Christendom. I have sat on the sidelines while Jabez prayed, millions were purpose driven and others found their best life. I guess I was just left behind. Others were incredibly excited by one or all of these phenomenons. So I was more than a little surprised to find that God rocked my world through a ministry I knew little about just a couple of years ago. Their books and materials have not become an entire section at your local Christian superstore. And that is a shame. Because they have a message that needs to be heard by most of us. The organization is called Leadership Catalyst and they have an incredible book called TrueFaced.  I don’t think I have ever had a book (not included in the original 66) impact me as much as this one. Here is how strongly I
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