Month: April 2007

Today there are reports that Toyota passed General Motors in sales in the first quarter, and for the first quarter ever. Oh, and the New York Yankees are in last place in the American League East. I think GM is in far greater trouble than the Yanks. The Toyota Motor Corporation is not the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and as for the pinstripes, just look at your calendar. Yeah, it’s April.

I bought a 2001 Toyota RAV/4 back in October when the Yankees are rarely in last place. I’ve owned American cars over the years but I’ll never buy another. Failed transmissions and water pumps falling into radiators with slicing fan blades were enough for me. The RAV/4 was intended to be a vehicle that would get Megan through her last years of high school and through college, but fate had another plan and I drove it all winter.

Kyle and I did a road trip to Philly for New Years in it and I also measured the gas mileage over a one month period. Overall, the 4 cylinder mini-SUV averaged 22.8 MPG, with the high being 24.1 for our mostly highway trip to Philly. Not bad, but not great either. Weren’t many cars averaging in the low 20MPG range back in the 1980’s?

Now I’m back to driving my 1996 Volvo 850 and it’s still running smoothly after 220,000 miles. My belief is there aren’t many American cars of that vintage still running smoothly after 200K miles. I could be wrong, but as I consider a “Phase 2 mid-life crisis” vehicle purchase, I’m thinking Lexus/Infiniti, not Lincoln or Cadillac. I like my Volvo, but since I purchased it, they were acquired by Ford, who evidently dropped the slogan, “Quality is Job One.” One frustrating constant is the lousy gas mileage cars still get in 2007. Of the mid-sized “luxury” cars I’m looking at, the best MPG is from the Lexus 350ES at 20 city / 30 highway… Sigh.

Anyway, I’m just happy Megan is back driving the Toyota to school. Oh, and I’m rooting for the Yankees to pick themselves off the mat and claw their way back up where they belong. It just won’t be any fun without them.

Jeff commented on my Don Imus post…

I don’t watch either show. I stopped watching the Sopranos after an episode years back when a character viciously beat a woman to death. It was sickening and I was done. It’s really about selective acceptance. I recall a couple years ago Megan was really into “Em” and “Fiddy,” et al. Between her white and black friends, “nigga” “bi-atch” and “ho” were thrown around liberally. It was completely acceptable to the black kids that the white kids were saying these things because they were in “the club.” My point is, these things are accepted in a pretty significant piece of our culture, but are off limits to old white guys. As long as any of these double standards exist, race relations will be strained. And yes, the hipocracy is in technicolor. When Les Moonves states, “From the outset I believe that all of us have been deeply upset and revulsed by the comments,” I just roll my eyes. There’s probably more racism in the boardroom than out on the street. It all comes down to individuals and mutual respect. Don Imus got canned because he didn’t show any.

Some other stuff that’s wrong…
Another “shock jock,” Howard “not K” Stern is expending efforts to ruin “American Idol” by encouraging listeners to vote for the worst performer, Sanjaya Malakar. The NY Times wrote, “By promoting Mr. Malakar, Mr. Stern says, he hopes to turn the talent competition into a farce and destroy its popularity.”

Why? I don’t watch the show, but millions derive some enjoyment from it.

On tax day here in Massachusetts, it’s worth noting a recent NY Times story describing how the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoy almost as much income as the bottom 150 million.

Finally, yesterday on Israel’s Holocaust remembrance day, Holocaust survivor and Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu died barricading the doorway of his classroom to buy time for some of his students to jump out the window to safety.

What a fucked up world.

iTunes sells CD quality songs for 99 cents each. It costs $2.99 for just a piece of the same song as a freakin ringtone and annual sales are approaching $700M …or about 10% of all music industry sales! The industry is even awarding Gold and Platinum awards for ringtones… It’s insanity I say! Rapper Rick Ross actually said, “when he goes into the studio in the future, the idea of making a popular ring tone will definitely be a part of the process.”1. I just cannot imagine Robert Plant saying to Jimmy Page, “Stairway is good mate, but it’s no ringtone.”

For the record, this cranky old man charges his daughters for their ringtone habit and for 411 calls… This month it was nineteen bucks between the two of them. That will buy like what, 4 lattes?

1. CBSNews.com

There’s simply no condoning the idiocy of Don Imus’s comments last week on the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team. However, I do think Jason Whitlock nailed it in his column on the subject. After all, if it weren’t for hip-hop and rap artists spewing their hateful “poetry” of “niggas” and “bitches,” would the tired old man have known the term “ho?” Fortunately, this moronic utterance of a back-nine guy trying to be hip has triggered some positive discussion of race in our country. The more we can keep the conversation going, the more we can sweep ignorance into the dustbin.

Yeah, but after seeing Daisuke “Dice-K” Matsuzaka dazzle in his first start, fans in Red Sox Nation are salivating (some literally) at the prospect of the Dice Man punching out Pinstripes.

But seriously, what’s really early is the race for the White House in 2008. The best thing about the election is that it’s going to cast Dubya and Dick out into the street on their way to the Halliburton boardroom. Anyway, furious fundraising is at hand now and the early results are in. Here are the standings at the end of 2007’s first quarter:

Certainly I don’t have equal intel on all these hopefuls, but as I told Jeff last night, if I had the power to appoint the pres out of this list, I’d pick Hillary Clinton. The cool thing is we’d again get the “2 for 1” benefit, plus someone with experience to run the White House intern program. Problem is, I don’t think she can get elected because of her negative portrayal by the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” In any case, I think it’s a two-man race on the Democratic side of the ledger between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. “Rhymes with Osama.”

For the Republicans, they have the albatross of Iraq and the miserably failed Bush-Cheney co-presidency around their necks. I do think the Mittster will be their candidate. Romney is as “clean” as Barack Obama, just not as bright. Once all the facts come out on Mr. Giuliani, I’m afraid there’s no way he can get nominated. He’s been in 3 marriages and one too many dresses. And poor John McCain… He is an American hero as a former Vietnam POW. Unfortunately, at 70, he looks too sickly to get elected. Not to mention he still supports the slaughter going on in Iraq…

Of course it’s difficult to tell what events may impact the race over the next nineteen months, and who knows what other candidates might emerge. Newt Gingrich has the ego for a run, but his pathetic hypocrisy during the Clinton “scandal” will doom him. I’d like to see Condoleezza Rice get in the Republican competition. Imagine Hillary – Condi for all the marbles. That would be a welcome change in our currently embarrassing republic.

Sadly, that’s the message at the Pernice Brothers website…

Seeing a good rock show is like exercise or sex or crack or beating the Yankees in that it unleashes those feel good endorphins. In spite of Sox fan Joe Pernice’s current idleness, tour season is slowly awakening like perennials in gardens of the chilly Northeast.

With Mr. Kyle Daley under house arrest at his Mom’s for an infraction of General Code 345.987*, I have a free night off to catch a show. This one will not rock in the decibel sense, but Anders Parker is such a brilliant songwriter that the words will be enough… Plus I’ll get to hang with Jeff at least one more time before his twins arrive. After that, all musical bets are off…

Later in the month, Jay Farrar and whatever other musicians currently constitute Son Volt will come through the area. I’m still searching their new record for the hooks that grab me, but they bring it live so I’ll find a way to make it there.

Until this evening, my day will be consumed calculating my contribution to Uncle Sam. That is unlikely to be an endorphin inducing experience…

It’s not Spring yet, but an earlier start to Daylight Saving Time has shone a longer light on our days. Kyle and I took a long walk yesterday. The fresh air was clean. It blew a cool breeze on my head after a stressful struggle with mobile technology. Sometime Friday, my so-called Smartphone began to lose its mind anytime it tried to get my email. It’s a long story, but apparently there was a bad “header” in some message that my “Jack Bauer” Treo couldn’t digest and its processor puked most of the weekend away… I tried a reload of the native “VersaMail,” completely reloaded the entire OS, and then sampled third party offerings called “ChatterMail” and “SnapperMail.” Nope… In the process I lost many of my phone numbers and contacts. After purging some 500 of 800 messages from my corporate email account, I reloaded once more and hoped for the best. It’s been working since yesterday afternoon… I still have no idea what file caused the problem. Good thing I didn’t need the LeoTreo to save the world…

“Play Ball!” In preparation for baseball season, I’ve been commuting to “Moneyball” on the pod. It’s an interesting story of how baseball changed it’s process of talent evaluation from the opinions of tobacco spitting scouts to spreadsheets crafted by Harvard MBA’s. It’s been a good re, uh, listen.

Maybe time does heal all wounds. While listening to music on “shuffle,” I find myself skipping by the “old songs” that remind me. Like impending Spring, that’s a good sign.