| Minding the Gap
Two days before Black Friday, that late-November day when all hell breaks loose in the holiday-obsessed American retail industry, Gap Inc. chief executive Glenn Murphy was calmly walking analysts through the company's good-news, bad-news third quarter. Murphy, a veteran Canadian merchant, was recruited last summer by the struggling San Francisco-based retail giant, and this session marked his first full reporting period as the new boss. Though he hails from the considerably less stampede-prone world of big-box pharmacies—Murphy had been the CEO of Shoppers Drug Mart since 2001, presiding over a spectacularly successful run—he gamely talked about 5 a.m. store openings as if they were old hat. Murphy let on that he planned to drop by an Orlando store for a midnight madness event.
No excitement please, we're Reading
An FA Cup run would have been a bit risky, so striker Dave Kitson informed us all that they did not give two 'hoots' about that. They want to concentrate on the league, but of course they don't want to do too well in that because that would put them in Europe. And they wouldn't want that. The most incredulous thing of all is that Royals fans, blinded by their love of Coppell, call radio phone-ins defending the club's position. "Our Steve's right, we're not ready for European football," they garble. So instead they'll stumble on aimlessly until their luck runs out and they go back down to the Championship. They could have made the most of their elevated status and had some fantastic memories that would have lasted a lifetime - as a Bolton fan who has seen his side venture into Europe twice in the past three seasons, I can assure them of that.
A Day For The Ages
My Halloween morning starts in an elevator, where a young woman is trying to hook a fake ring onto her lower lip. It's not going well. The same can't be said for the proceedings upstairs, where costumed employees of Riverside's Best Best & Krieger law firm render a near-flawless performance of the chicken dance. The Oktoberfest motif, complete with braids of suspect origin, at least one chicken mask and a small keg of Heineken, must be a delightful departure from the customary agenda in the sprawling conference room. But it won't be the only departure. "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" starts in 15 minutes. Just outside of town, Highgrove Elementary School's Halloween parade is still hours away. Mrs. Jarvis has morphed into Raggedy Ann. Fourth-grader Pablo Miranda has a trick up his sleeve.
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