Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers

  • April 13, 2012 4:19 am

I check the voice mail at the bars I co-own every week or so: 10% are robo calls swearing up and down that they can improve my credit card processing fees, 10% are robo calls swearing up and down that they have instant cash for my business, and 80% are hungover customers calling in to say they think they forget their…credit card, cell phones, scarves, purses, wallets, keys, etc., at the bar…wondering – hoping, praying – that we’ve found them.

The calls always sound a little apologetic and desperate, and I always erase the messages without checking for the lost stuff, and without returning the calls.

Forgot something in a bar?  Read more...

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Driven To Drink

  • April 10, 2012 4:04 am

How cruel is this?  Neuroscientist Ulrike Heberlein and her colleagues, bored, and in an apparently sadistic mood, put horny male fruit flies in a container with females who had just mated, and who therefore weren’t in the mood.

Not able to tell their prospective suitors that “they had headaches” or were feeling “bloated and unsexy,” the female flies simply ran away, kicked the guys, or stuck out their egg-laying organs to hold them at bay (that last one, especially, does sound like a turn off).

The scientists did this for four days straight, in three hour sessions, until the poor frustrated males turned to one of the same salves favored by their human counterparts: booze!  Read more...

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It’s Not Easy Being Spock

  • April 6, 2012 3:51 am

In high school my nickname was Spock.

In college an acquaintance once said, “Alf doesn’t shit, he deposits two odorless white pellets a month.”

And they were right.

It would take an army of Freudians to sort this one out, but for some reason, I always felt the need to project an image of inhuman perfection: unfailingly polite, perfect grades, aloof, cool, rational.  I did not yell at people, I did not get into fistfights, and when I lusted after girls, I usually pulled back the minute they showed any interest (time to call in the second army of Freudians).  Read more...

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Fear vs. Greed

  • April 3, 2012 4:19 am

You’re driving along the highway when you see cash fluttering in the air like flakes in a snow globe.

Up ahead you see the source of this unseasonal snowfall: an armored truck with its back door wide open, continuing to drive on, its drivers blissfully unaware that they’re leaking cold hard cash.

What do you do?

Ignore the money and drive on?

Stop and grab as much as you can?

Grab that cash and turn it in to the armored truck company?

Or, drive on, then spend the night twisting and turning, wondering why the hell you didn’t stop and grab some of those $50 bills that fate was practically begging you to take?  Read more...

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USPS To Honor The “Forever 27 Club”

  • April 1, 2012 7:25 pm

In an effort to bolster interest among those under 50, postmaster general Patrick Donahoe on Friday unveiled the USPS’ latest line of “Forever” stamps:

“The Forever 27 Club.”

The “Forever 27 Club” refers to rock and pop musicians who died at the age of 27, and includes legendary icons Robert Johnson (strychnine poisoning), Jimi Hendrix (choked on vomit), Janis Joplin (heroin overdose), Brian Jones (drowning; officially labeled “death by misadventure”), Jim Morrison (heart failure), Kurt Cobain (suicide), and, most recently, Amy Winehouse (alcohol poisoning), as well as other lesser known artists.

Turning to social media outlets Facebook and Twitter, the USPS is sponsoring a contest as to which photo of the 27 Club members should be used for the stamps.  Read more...

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Sincerity: It’s Back!

  • March 30, 2012 4:32 am

Promise me you will boycott the men’s lifestyle blog “Guyism.”  The reason you will do this is because they described 85 year old food critic Marilyn Hagerty’s column on the new Olive Garden that opened in Grand Forks, North Dakota as…

…“unwittingly hilarious.”

Shame on them.
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There’s a reason Ms. Hagerty’s review has gone viral, and it has nothing to do with hilariousness, unwitting or otherwise.

A few excerpts from her March 7 review for the “Grand Forks Herald” newspaper:

The place is impressive. It’s fashioned in Tuscan farmhouse style with a welcoming entryway.

The chicken Alfredo ($10.95) was warm and comforting on a cold day. The portion was generous. My server was ready with Parmesan cheese.  Read more...

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Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

  • March 27, 2012 4:37 am

It was painful listening to Ira Glass’ retraction on NPR’s “This American Life” of performer?/monologist?/actor?/journalist? Mike Daisey’s story on working conditions at the Foxconn factory in China, which manufactures parts for Apple gadgets.

You can hear Glass trying to keep his cool, trying not to scream at Daisey, as Daisey parses the truth about what he did – and did not see – at the factory in Shenzhen.

Daisey was exposed when another NPR reporter working out of China noticed details in his story that didn’t add up, and tracked down Daisey’s Chinese interpreter, a woman named Cathy, who Daisey initially misidentified as “Anna.”

Cathy was with him the whole time.  Read more...

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No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

  • March 23, 2012 3:50 am

Baseball.   Stripping.   Hamburgers.

What could be more American than that?

And yet, little league officials in Lennox, California, a cash strapped, unincorporated one square mile burg next to Los Angeles International Airport, have said no to a $1200 donation from the Jet Strip, a local gentleman’s club.

Jet Strip – get it?  ‘cause it’s next to the airport?  And ‘cause they call certain pubic hairdos “landing strips?”

I digress, but not really.  When he heard about the rejected donation, James Wallace, the general manager of the Jet Strip and a fifteen year veteran of the Lennox Coordinating Council (the Lennox version of a city council), said this: “I just found it sad.  I had every good intention.”  Read more...

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If You Don’t Look Good In Orange, You’re Screwed

  • March 20, 2012 4:27 am

This just in: Tangerine Tango is 2012’s Color of the Year.

Who says so?

Leatrice Eiseman does, and it is her job as executive director of the Pantone Color Institute to tell us what to like.   And, apparently, we listen.

scary lady calls the shots!

In 2006 did you not notice an unusual number of people wearing Blue Turquoise shoes and belts?

In 2003 did it not seem odd to you that everybody was doing Aqua Sky countertops?

In 2001 why were so many women wearing Fuchsia Rose lipstick?

Because Eiseman told them to, that’s why!  Read more...

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Around The Horn: Spare Change? No, Really, Do You?

  • March 19, 2012 9:55 am

ALFREDO: When panhandlers ask you for spare change, do you give it to them?


For me, it depends completely on my mood – and my moods are erratic – I have no coherent philosophy on this.  Here’s my best guess as to the numbers and as to what’s going on in my head:

75% of the time I say “no” (a general feeling that I’m just fuelling their bad habits or that they look healthy enough to work or, most likely, I’m just not in a giving mood).  Read more...

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Parents of the Year

  • March 16, 2012 4:34 am

While reading the morning paper (and yes, I still have large sheets of flattened wood pulp with inked words printed on them delivered to my home),  I reflexively avoid any stories having to do with children being abused, killed, etc.  It’s just too much.  It’s too ugly.  At this point in my life, I don’t need it.

But with a headline like “Two Children Are Found Living In Abandoned Bus,” I had to stop.

I knew I could read this one without plunging into depression over my coffee and bagel.  That one precious word – “Living”- was the key.

 Read more...

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The Great Debate: Disposable vs. Cloth

  • March 13, 2012 4:04 am

Whenever some sketchy teenager comes to the door selling sketchy magazine subscriptions for a sketchy cause, my wife and I bite.  Can’t help it.  I sold toffee peanuts door to door as a kid to pay my way through summer camp, so I’m a soft touch, no matter how shady their paperwork and demeanor are.

So yes, I’m still waiting for that first copy of “Spin” I ordered eight months ago; it’s not that I really wanted “Spin” at all, it’s that I wanted “American Angler” less.

Then yesterday the first issue of something called “Whole Living” arrived in the mail.

 Read more...

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