A Little Steelers Chatter Because, Well, I've Got to Write Something

This is one of those days that I'm glad I don't have to go anywhere. There are one or two advantages to working out of your home. A big one is that when it's pouring rain, you can roll over in bed and pity all the folks slugging their way to a job somewhere as you doze off.

Being able to work in my underwear -- well, being able to work in my underwear without listening to a lot of screaming -- is another advantage.

In any event, I am sitting at my PC in my downstairs office -- fully clothed, thank-you very much -- thinking about all of the work I have yet to do before my traveling gets crazy beginning on the 30th. I got an assignment done and out today. One a day is about my limit. I could do more, but it might cost me my slacker status. Can't have that.

I have been distracted and haven't blogged in a few days, so I thought I best post something.

How about them Steelers?

Just when you think they are on the ropes, they go and elbow their way to the lead in the AFC North. Of course, Roethlisberger rebreaking the same thumb he broke in 2005 is less than good news. But then he didn't miss any games because of the injury in 2005 and the Steelers went on to win the Super Bowl. So maybe it's a good thing?

Looks like Ward, Legursky and Farrior will be back in the lineup for the game against the Chiefs in two weeks.

I don't pay close enough attention to the minutia of the Steelers operation to have a clue what they paid for wide receiver Jerricho Cotchery, but it was a bargain. A tip of the helmet to the Jets for releasing him.

It will be a little dull this Sunday without a Steelers' game to watch. Maybe I'll try to catch the Ravens-Bengals game.

One of them has to lose, right?

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Somebody Give That Boy a Swift Kick in the Old Kiester!

I am slugging it out trying to get my plate cleared before I am covered up with travel in December.

I'm not complaining, mind you; it's a nice change of pace to have assignments stacked up. I currently have six major pieces to write in addition to the weekly car reviews and twice-a-week blogs I have as a regular part of my schedule.

I don't want to have to fret over any of this stuff as I am jetting around next month. I am going to Las Vegas, Austin, South FL -- twice and New Mexico.

When I'm on the road, I have to compose all my prose on a teeny-weeny, itty-bitty netbook. I don't mind that the keyboard and monitor are a little small, but the silly thing is slower than Mike Tyson doing long division.

It's fine for knocking out a blog or two -- even the ones I get paid for -- but just doesn't work well for longer, more involved projects.

So I am pushing myself to get the longer assignments out of the way.

You couldn't tell I'm under any real pressure by the level of my output the past couple of days. Other than cranking out a blog for Interest.com and doing a little research on a gift guide I'm doing for the Journal Register Group, I've done next to nothing constructive.

I have no excuse. I just didn't feel like doing much, so I didn't.

I'm even blowing off the weekend to visit friends in North Carolina.

Is motivation an issue? Well, yeah.

I recognize my problem and will address it at happy hour later today.

There's nothing like a couple of hours with my elbows on the bar at Soby's to get my head straight.

It works every time!

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We Dodged the 15-Cent Christmas Tree Tax

Do you know what the average cost is for a pack of cigarettes in New York?

Ready? $9.11.

Do you know how much of that total is state taxes?

$4.70.

Why are the taxes so much? I'd venture to say at least some of the tax represents New York lawmakers' efforts to try to get people to quit smoking, or at least cut down, or maybe not start in the first place.

My favorite political commentator, Jonah Goldberg, a few months ago wrote "If you want more of something, tax it less. If you want less of something tax it more."

I'd say that makes sense. It certainly seems logical that the more something costs -- whether through taxes or free-market pressure -- the fewer people will be able, or maybe willing, to buy it.

Are you ready for this? Our federal government, in all its wisdom, has just announced through the Department of Agriculture that it won't tax the sale of every real Christmas tree sold this year 15 cents as it had planned. The tax was set to go into effect on Wednesday.

 

Why? you might ask, would the Obama administration tax Christmas trees? Is it against Christmas or Christmas trees?

Apparently not.

Was this some sort of effort to get people to buy artificial trees rather than fresh ones, thereby protecting the environment?

That's a logical assumption based on the far-left environmental stance of this administration; but you'd be wrong again.

Nope, your fresh Christmas tree would have cost 15 cents more this year because the USDA wanted to underwrite a marketing committee whose mandate would have been to improve our opinion of fresh Christmas trees.

Evidently, unknown to many of us, fresh Christmas trees have been suffering a loss of good will and support.

And since government's job is to stick its nose into absolutely everything, it was going to step in and do its part to try to elevate our opinion of the Christmas tree.

I am not making this up.

The White House pulled the plug on the plan as critics became more vocal throughout the day.

Their defense: George Bush did it!

No, I'm kidding.

Their defense is that some Christmas tree growers asked the government to collect the tax so they could do a fresh Christmas tree version of the dairy farmers' "Got Milk?" campaign.

So let me get this straight: In an effort to create more demand for fresh Christmas trees, they were going to raise the price of each tree by 15 cents. Is that about right?

No wonder they can't fix the economy.

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Some Pluses and Minuses of the TV Season: Bye, Bye Angels

Yes, I recognize the lack of substance, but here are a couple of comments on the current television season.

I have officially stopped watching "How I Met Your Mother." I have blogged about tuning it out a couple of times, and finally pulled the trigger.

I only made it through the past couple of seasons because I am an Alyson Hannigan fan. If you aren't familiar with her, she was the band-camp girl in the movie "American Pie," and a couple of its sequels. It was her stint, however, as the lesbian witch Willow in the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series that made me a fan.

In any event, I've continued watching "How I Met Your Mother" because of Hannigan, but her participation is just no longer enough to keep me tuning into a comedy totally devoid of jokes. Nary a laugh...ever.

The episode a couple of weeks ago was so bad that I stopped watching at the first commercial break. I deleted the show and then deleted the series from my DVR schedule. In the six or or episodes I did watch from beginning to end this season, I don't think I so much as tittered, let alone giggled, laughed or guffawed. Whoever the writers are for this turkey, they are outrageously overpaid.

I have seen only the pilot of a new series that debuted a couple of Fridays ago. I have the second episode recorded and waiting to be watched later this week. It's an NBC series call "Grimm." I liked the initial episode and look forward to seeing the second one. I'm not even sure what's going on yet except that the protagonist is some sort of descendent of the Brothers Grimm, who evidently weren't writing fairy tales, but keeping a journal of strange things they encountered. They had the ability to see different types of monsters and demons the rest of us can't and that sense has been handed down through the generations.

It's too soon to tell if it will be a regular of mine, but I like what I've seen so far.

Finally, I see that ABC has already axed the remake of "Charlies Angels." I never saw it, and that was by design. As a big fan of the original, I couldn't bring myself to watch some modern-day knock-off. Not to mention that not one of the female stars of the remake were as hot as Farrah Fawcett or Jaclyn Smith were in their day. The new version was doomed from the get-go.

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A Slacker's Out for Blogging When There Is No Time or Motivation

I was in Detroit earlier this week with Ford getting tutored on several upcoming vehicles and technology that will be introduced at the Los Angeles auto show later this month.

Because we had to swear a blood oath of secrecy about what we saw, and the trip itself was unremarkable in any way, you aren't hearing about this two-day unadventurous adventure until now.

As a result of this trip that gobbled up two of my days, and then three nearly unproductive days at my PC that rounded out my work week, I am tied to my PC over this weekend trying to produce a few paragraphs of prose that might actually translate into a paycheck somewhere down the road -- unfortunately, probably way down the road.

My slacking earlier this week means I am taking the easy way out in my blog today. I am sending you to AutoTrader.com to read a piece I did for them on credit scores and credit reports. It is a riveting summary of how credit scores and reports influence a consumer's auto financing options.

It is a real page turner -- or at least would be if it were longer than a page -- offering insight that will be indispensable when you next finance a vehicle.

Here's the link: http: www.autotrader.com/research/article/car-news/127406/know-your-credit-score-and-history.jsp.

Cheers!

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Which Do I Like Better the 2012 Buick Verano or New York City? It's No Contest, Really

I was in New York City -- NEW YORK CITY? -- a couple of weeks ago. It's not my favorite place.

I know, I know, I should love it because it's the city that never sleeps, and there is soooo much to do there. The restaurants are wonderful, the pizza has no equal and the theater is the best in the world.

Yawn. Snore.

Here's how I see it: I live in unassuming Greenville, South Carolina and I don't have the time nor the moola to do everything I want to do in Greenville, let alone everything there is to do. Moreover, Asheville and Charlotte, North Carolina, with all they have to offer, are less than 90 minutes away, or about the same amount of time it takes to negotiate 20 blocks by car in Manhattan.

It doesn't matter to me that there are several eateries and bars along every New York city block; I am going to wind up picking just one.

Besides, who the heck wants to deal with the masses of people and nose-to-tail traffic moving with all the alacrity of tree sap just because the pizza is good? Not me.

So what took me to New York? Buick invited me to a first-drive media event of its all-new Verano.

Compact in size, the Verano is a luxury sedan targeting cars such as the Lexus IS 250. It is powered by a 180-horsepower 2.4-liter Ecotec four-cylinder engine that sends output to the front wheels via a driver-shiftable, six-speed automatic transmission. It will scoot from 0-to-60 in less than 9 seconds and has a highway fuel economy rating of 31 mpg. It has 10 air bags.

Going to New York City to test drive a car is something akin to going to Phoenix to learn how to make snowballs. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Previously I had been on a couple of other car manufacturer ride and drives in NYC. The most notorious was the Chrysler launch of its three cab-forward LH sedans -- Chrysler Concorde, Dodge Intrepid and Eagle Vision -- in 1992, I think. A two- or three-day event that included driving all three sedans, it had journalists slogging around the congested streets of the city for hours. It was miserable.

Sprinkled among the hours of nerve-racking driving were stops for tours of the Concorde jet and the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier. The clever diversions didn't help.

So I wasn't excited to learn New York City would be the venue for the Verano launch. I could have attended the West Coast Verano program; it was in the Portland, Oregon area. Unfortunately I had a travel conflict.

The day I flew into LaGaurdia, it was pouring rain. Driving from the airport to the Empire Hotel took well over an hour.

As I have grown older, I have somewhat mellowed. If you can't do anything about a situation, it's far less stressful to just roll with the punches. I was doing a lot of rolling that afternoon.

My room at the Empire was nice enough. The bathroom, however, was so miniscule that when the door was open, it completely blocked the toilet. You had to enter the bathroom, crowd against the shower stall and push the door closed to use the potty. There was no counter around the sink. For a surface on which to put my bag of toilet articles, I had to close the toilet-seat lid and use it. I'm not kidding.

Sleep that night was a highly prized commodity. The racket filtering up to my fourth-floor window was relentless. Drowned out by the three-times-an-hour sirens or the beeping of a reversing garbage truck was what sounded like a slowly spinning 50-gallon drum with a half-dozen ball bearings rolling around inside. I'm assuming it was a malfunctioning air handler unit of some sort. It went on all night long.

When we went to dinner that night, we discovered what we think motivated Buick to choose NYC as the East Coast launch venue: the Kefi restaurant. Apparently, Buick has some sort of relationship with its owner/chef and decided to hold an event where Kefi could be included in the itinerary. Greek cuisine is the specialty of the house, but you couldn't prove it by my experience. I had a perfectly grilled filet mignon in a spectacular red wine sauce. Among the appetizers were the best meatballs I've ever had. These things practically melted in my mouth.

How is the new Verano? On what turned out to be a better driving route -- not great, but acceptable -- than I expected, I found the new Verano to be remarkably quiet and surprisingly athletic. Quick and surefooted, it is crammed with technology and offers a rich variety of high-tech options for its comfortable interior. With a starting price of $23,470, including destination charges, it is a value as well.

Even New York couldn't diminish my first impression of Verano.

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Little Kimmy Kardashian Racks Up Her First D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Well, it seems like only yesterday -- it was actually August 19 -- I blogged about the upcoming Little Kimmy Kardashian wedding collision.

Now a mere 10 weeks later I am blogging about her divorce. How can this freak even look at herself in a mirror?

I would feel so stupid and ashamed, I wouldn't leave the house. If I did, it would only be with a paper bag over my head.

But I guess when you are famous for only being, well, notorious, it's just more press coverage to keep that fame alive. Stupidity is to be embraced.

There's $10 million of someone's money down a rat hole. I wonder if she's giving back the gifts. On the other hand, she reportedly made $18 million from selling photo and story rights to the hoax. Not bad work if you can get it.

In my August blog I wrote that I didn't give the marriage much of a chance. It would last longer than the Dennis Rodman/Carmen Electra farce, but it would end relatively quickly nonetheless.

Of course you don't have to be a celebrity for a wedding to end almost before it begins. An exgirlfriend married the guy she left me to date. She was filing divorce papers before she had her wedding photo proofs. I'm not making this up.

It probably doesn't speak well of me, but I took a little perverse pleasure in the outcome. Ah, what the hell, truth be told: I loved it.

I would be surprised, though, if my Ex made a profit; if so, it certainly wasn't $8 million.

I'd like to take some credit for my Kardashian prediction, but making it hardly took any insight. I don't think anyone -- other than maybe the groom -- thought it would last. The poor sap probably never considered that he was just another headline to keep the Kardashian name out there.

I heard someone quip on the radio this morning that Little Kimmy was well on her way to being the next Zsa Zsa Gabor. Gabor was, perhaps, the most famous of celebrities who was famous only for being famous -- and she did it during an age with no Internet, People magazine or Entertainment Tonight. Part of her fame was anchored by her number of failed marriages.

You go, Kimmy! Who can argue with $8 million profit for a 10-week effort.

It sure beats the hell out of getting a real job!

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