Handle With Care

On Saturday I ventured into the Boston Center for Adult Education to take a class on how to make meringues. For those of you not familiar, meringue is a light, fluffy substance which can be turned in to cookies, toppings for pies or used as a frosting on cakes. While this is not how I would typically anticipate spending my Saturdays, I had a lot of fun. We learned how to make three different meringues (French, Swiss and Italian) while making three different desserts. The teacher was very knowledgeable, enthusiastic about the subject and actually seemed like she wanted to be there, which can be a problem with some of these quick, one-day classes. We covered a lot of ground, but none of it was done too fast or with so much technical jargon that a novice like myself would be left in the dust. Overall I would say it was a great time, as I learned a lot and learned some new skills - none of which I will ever use again. Allow me to explain. A meringue is basically made up of two things: sugar and egg whites. You can mix the two in a variety of different ways (which are the main differences between the three types of meringues we made), but if you don't have those two things you aren't making a meringue. The reason I probably won't be making any of these recipes at home comes from this fun fact about me: I suck at separating the eggs whites from the egg yolks.

The teacher tried to teach me a technique she has for separating the yolks from the whites and I take some comfort from the knowledge that her technique could only have come from years of messing up. First she would crack the egg and use the shell to get the majority of the egg white into a cup. Then she would carefully slide the yolk back and forth between her hands to get the rest. Then the yolk would go in to one cup and the egg whites into a third and the process would start over. The point of the three-container system was that if you messed up one time it wouldn't undo all the ones you had separated successfully. Now, some of you may be wondering what the big deal is. A little yolk couldn't really be that much of a problem could it? Well, there is a third ingredient to meringues - air. That is what gives them their light, fluffy points. Apparently fat clogs up the air pockets, takes away all that light texture and the meringue doesn't come out quite right. This is also why I couldn't just use the store-bought, egg white-only container. Apparently those also suck for making meringues because they have all sorts of chemicals in them which makes the final product taste off. If you want to make a real meringue you have to use the real stuff.

My frustration grew from the fact I couldn't even get one egg done correctly. I was 95% of the way there on the first egg and got greedy. I went for one last pass and watched in horror as the yolk slipped between my fingers, landed smack into the egg whites and I was unable to successfully fish it out without the yolk breaking. On the second attempt the yolk broke almost immediately and while that was probably more about the egg versus operator error it was still frustrating to not even get a chance. Since we only had so many eggs to work with I gladly handed off separating duties for the rest of the day. (Apparently, the need to have a good lab partner who is willing to let you copy some of their work doesn't end at 10th grade biology.) Previously I have written that certain things in this life are just not Rakauskas-grade, meaning they are meant for people who possess light, delicate touches or nimble fingers. My people will never repair watches, build ships in bottles or paint figures for historical models. Clearly any jobs which require separating egg whites from the egg yolks has to be added to that list.

I can not tell you how frustrating it is when you can't complete step 1 of a 6 step process. As I have been trying to expand my cooking knowledge I have tried a couple recipes which had multiple tricky steps, but this is the first time I have ever run in to trouble just gathering the ingredients. As frustrating as it may be to be just short of finishing, realizing you've messed up and then having to start over, not having all the parts at the beginning really kills your momentum before you even get started. Imagine if you wanted to put together a bookcase and you couldn't find any nails or screws. Your books would remain on the floor. The same thing happens here. Now, in previous cooking adventures if the recipe called for just the egg whites I would still use the entire egg and not really worry about it. Since that doesn't appear to be an option in this case, there is an above-average chance I won't be making any meringues in the future. There is a famous saying that you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Well, you'll notice there isn't a saying about separating the eggs because even back in the days when they were still coming up with new phrases people recognized how hard that was to do. Or maybe they were working on a phrase about egg whites but couldn't quite make it work. I hear there is a lot of that going around...

Final Flight

Last week there was a big show made out of NASA flying the shuttle Discovery from Florida up to Washington, D.C. where it will be put on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space museum. Every news organization seemed to have the same very dramatic pictures of the shuttle getting a ride on the back of a special 747. Then the other day Twitter was abuzz with pictures of the shuttle being flown passed the Statue of Liberty, one of those very cool moments which makes me happy for the invention of cellphone cameras as in the past only a select few people would have been able to see that as it happened. At first I thought the shuttle was being taken on some kind of victory lap, but then I learn the one in New York wasn't the actual shuttle, just a prototype.This got me thinking about how weird it is that everyone was so excited to see this shuttle, which wasn't even the real thing, flying passed them. I remember when the Bruins won the Stanley Cup last year and it was sent on a tour of New England. Something tells me the lines wouldn't have been so long if the trophy had been a replica.

While I'm sure that some of the buzz the shuttle is getting is a result of the "Well, you don't see that every day" factor, the level of coverage the shuttle retirement has gotten still confuses me. After all, the reason it is available for this little tour is that we've cancelled the shuttle program and essentially retired from exploring space. If all these people had been this interested in what was happening with the shuttle while it was still operational maybe we'd still have a space program. I know that it is human nature to not want something until you find out you can't have it anymore, but people shouldn't be waxing poetic about something after the fact when a little effort before that point could have saved the shuttle from extinction. It is like the rock band Cinderella once reminded us, "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." And when 80s hair bands are providing the most accurate insight into a situation you know something has gone terribly wrong.

Weekly Sporties

-Last week I wrote about how it feels as though Bobby Valentine doesn't like it when things are going too smoothly and feels the need shake things up just to make them interesting. We got another piece of evidence for that theory this week when, after sweeping the Minnesota Twins, the Red Sox manager told the assembled media that he had originally filled out the wrong line-up for the game because he thought the pitcher they were about to face was a lefty. It was only after catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia (who probably only noticed because he sits against lefties) pointed it out that the correct line-up was put out there. Now I'm sure Valentine, who might be the first manager in history who thinks talking to the media is the best part of his job, just thought of this as nothing more than a funny story which the media guys would get a kick out of. While that may be true, he still didn't have to share it. While they are getting better the Red Sox still haven't reached .500 on the season and one of the concerns of the baseball fans in Boston is that with all the time he has spent in the booth the game has passed Bobby V by. This is not the kind of thing which will calm those concerns. My advice to Bobby is this: win first, then worry about keeping the beat writers entertained.

-Every year I tell myself I will not get sucked in to the NFL Draft. After all, when you get right down to it the draft is nothing more than a list of names being read. But, every year I find myself glued to the television, angry when the Patriots don't trade up to take a player I decided they should take almost six whole days ago. That doesn't change the fact that the entire thing is just a big show. The NFL knows everyone is watching and they want to put their best foot forward. As a result no detail is left uncovered, as they stall the proceedings long enough to make sure all the pictures are taken before the next draft pick is announced and this year they added the touch of having players' names on their new team jerseys before they reach the stage. And after every pick the TV cameras make sure to find a fan of that team in the stands. It's that last part that stuck with me. Seriously, where are these Jacksonville Jaguars fans coming from? I'll grant you that New York, just based on size and diversity, is probably home as many obscure sports fans as any place in the world. If you want to find a fan of any team outside of their home state, you would start by looking in New York City. But the Jaguars barely have any fans in the city of Jacksonville and I'm supposed to believe they have fans so loyal they would fly up to New York to watch them draft seventh in what was thought to be a 6-player draft? (The Jaguars eventually traded up, but there was no way of knowing that was going to happen.) After thinking it over, I'm pretty sure those are actors. It's all part of the NFL's big show.

-There was another story which happened last night that almost feels like it was a made-for-TV moment. On the first night of the draft Mohamed Sanu, a wide receiver out of Rutgers, was sitting by his phone. He had been projected as a second or third round selection but, as we all know, hope spring eternal. So, when his phone rang and the voice on the other end of the line told him they were calling from the Cincinnati Bengals and he was about to be their picked, he had no reason to doubt it and began celebrating. It was only after another name appeared on-screen that he knew he had fallen victim to a viscous prank. They called the number back and discovered it was another student at Rutgers who didn't know Sanu but got his number through a friend of a friend and thought it would be really funny. The good news is that this story has a happy ending - during last night's third round Sanu's phone rang again and this time it was really and truly an NFL team calling to let him know he was going to be drafted. That team? The Bengals. So, in the end all was well that ended well. Still, I think Sanu learned a valuable first lesson for his life as an NFL player: be very careful who you give your cell phone number to.

-Because the NFL is basically one giant TV production, it was not a shock to hear this week that its lowest-rated program, the Pro Bowl, is probably going to be cancelled. I'll give the NFL credit for trying to keep this thing going. First they moved the game to Miami so players wouldn't have as far to fly and then they put in on during the week before the Super Bowl so people weren't being asked to watch football after football season was over. However, those moves still weren't enough to build up any interest in what was basically a glorified scrimmage. The main thing they needed to happen was to have players to care and there was nothing they could do to force guys to risk an injury which could screw up next season for a game that didn't really matter. So, it is probably going to be suspended for this year and then formally cancelled after that. The odd part is that they will still have to name rosters for a game that will never be played because a lot of players have bonuses written into their contracts for making the Pro Bowl. At least Brandon Marshall, the last Pro Bowl MVP, will be the answer to a very fun trivia question some day. Given how his career has been going lately, it may be the only way he'll ever be remembered.

-Here's one from the "when it rains, it pours" file. After their head coach lost his appeal last weekend, the New Orleans Saints were saying the positive side was they could now start to think the bounty scandal was almost behind them. All that was left were learning what the player suspensions were going to be and then it was back to the business of football. At least, that was the plan until Monday, when a source revealed to ESPN that for years GM Mickey Loomis had a special listening device wired into his box which would allow him to listen in to the communications between opposing coaches. While this might not have helped in the moment, it could always help against guys you would play again, like division opponents. Furthermore the FBI is investigating because it could violate federal anti-spying laws. When the Patriots got caught up in SpyGate I told anyone who would listen that the reason you never heard many teams condemning them is because every team was cheating in one way or another. Well, it turns out the Saints were cheating a lot worse than anyone could have imagined. This is why you never want to get caught in a very public scandal, because after the lid is off people are going to dig and dig until every skeleton in your closet has been found. If the Saints have done anything else wrong they may either want to confess or start preparing their defense, because it doesn't seem like keeping secrets is their strong suit.

-Another guy who probably would like people to stop digging into his business right about now is NBA players union executive director Billy Hunter. During the lockout Hunter and Derek Fisher, the President of the players union, had a lot of back-room disagreements over how the players should be negotiating with the owners. Apparently, that animosity did not end when the lockout did and Hunter recently tried to have Fisher ousted from his position after Fisher called for an audit of the union's finances. Fisher survived the vote but, probably not coincidentally, several stories soon began to surface that alleged Hunter has been using the players union as his own personal family trust. Apparently everyone related to Hunter is a lawyer and every one of them has been on the union's payroll for a few years. But, the most damning claim was that Hunter talked the union into backing a bank with large ties to his son, all without mentioning the conflict of interest. Technically there is nothing illegal here, but it just doesn't look very good. In light of these reports, the federal government has said they want a look at the union's finances as well. Now, I've often wondered what the heads of these players unions do when the isn't a lockout and they have nothing to negotiate. That, plus the fact many players feel they got a raw deal in the latest collective bargaining agreement could add up to the end for Hunter's time. I just hope he isn't expecting his kids to float him a loan, because I think most of them are about to join him on the unemployment line.

-Last week I told you the story of Wisconsin saying they wouldn't allow redshirt freshman Jarrod Uthoff to transfer to a large number of schools. It was only after a lot of public criticism that they relented on their demands. Well, if you expected that public scrutiny to impact how other players were allowed to transfer, I have some disappointing news for you. This week Dominique Ferguson, a player at FIU, announced that after the school fired head coach Isiah Thomas, he asked for a transfer and the school informed him it wouldn't be letting him out of his scholarship for anyone. They weren't just keeping him away from a few select schools, they were keeping him away from every other school. Thinking he was out of other options Ferguson declared for the NBA draft. This is a bad idea all the way around. Now, coming out of high school Ferguson was a highly recruited prospect and he probably has some game, but after averaging less than 9 points 6 rebounds against inferior competition in two seasons at the school, he has almost no chance of getting drafted. But, this looks even worse for FIU. Seriously, at the end of the day they still claim to be an institution for higher learning, so how is forcing a kid's hand to the point that he drops out of college backing up that claim? Aren't they supposed to be getting the kid prepared for the next stage of his life, not hampering it? On top of that, good luck every getting another recruit to come to your school ever. If you wanted to build yourself into an actual D-I program this wasn't the way to do it. Allow me to put it another way: you'd never see a school like Kentucky pulling this crap.

Who Invited Her?

The main reason I hate the 24-hour cable news channels is that they don't actually believe in anything. Whether it is Fox News or MSNBC, each side is so desperate to keep to the narrative they have been contractually told to follow that they are constantly contradicting themselves. You see, apparently these people don't know that neither political party is all that great and that both sides of the aisle are pretty much made up of the same people hiding behind a letter after their name. They may claim to want different things, but whether they are a Democrat or a Republican, the main thing they really want is money and power. Actually helping people in the course of getting those mostly seems like a happy accident. So, while these political reporters are gleefully banging on the other party for doing something stupid, it never seems to occur to them that their party is doing the same thing, it just hasn't come to light yet. When it finally does come out, they start making excuses for them instead of calling the politicians out for being the idiots the rest of us know they are. Frankly, the entire thing is a joke and as a former journalist it annoys me to no end. But, now the inability to stick to one side of an issue has started to seep into the rest of their lives.

You may remember about a month ago I wrote about how annoying I found it that Greta Van Susteren was able to get Louis CK out as host of this weekend's White House Correspondents' Dinner. Apparently Van Susteren didn't think CK was the right kind of speaker due to the crass jokes he makes about women. While I don't know who made her the sheriff of comedy town I figure her stance was fair enough - I happen to think Louis is very funny, but acknowledge that his comedy is not for everyone and she is as entitled to her own opinion as the next person. I actually thought Louie dodged a bullet with that one, as it probably wasn't his kind of room anyway. My biggest pet peeve with the whole thing was that Van Susteren didn't offer to help find a replacement and only offered criticism, which is just rude. Still, I wasn't about to start an online petition to protest the event or anything. However, today  it was revealed that Van Susteren had invited Lindsey Lohan to be her special guest at the event. Hold on, Louis CK can't go but Lindsey Lohan is cool? You may not like Louis's comedy, but at least he doesn't keep getting arrested for drugs and alcohol. There is no one less Presidential I can think of than Lindsey Lohan.

This is just another example of 24-hour cable new journalists, who when you get down to it are still supposed to be the people who give facts without opinions, switching their opinion whenever the mood strikes them. The reason this really makes my skin crawl is that if anyone from the left side of the aisle announced they were bringing Lindsey Lohan to the White House Correspondents Dinner I have no doubt that Van Susteren would be on TV, condemning them for disgracing this long-standing Washington tradition. (If the current President was a Republican she'd probably be demanding they be brought up on charges of treason.) What is even scarier is that there are people out there who believe everything these people say. It is one thing to have no morals or code of ethics for yourself, but when you actually hold some influence over a wide swath of people that can get a little scary. We all have our biases, but when you only believe something as long as it is convenient to do so you don't really believe it at all. I know I certainly wouldn't want to be on TV saying things I didn't believe.

I know I may be making too big a deal out of this. After all, Fox News gets about 2 million viewers a night and in a country of 300 million people, that means less than one percent of people in America watch Greta on a daily basis. Plus, I should take a step back and remember what event we are talking about here. A couple days ago I heard a great line about Washington, D.C. versus Hollywood: "Hollywood is full of famous, beautiful people who think they have power out in the real world while D.C. is full of ugly people with actual power who just want to be famous." No where does this line blur more than the White House Correspondents' Dinner. That night it is all about seeing and being seen, so it is not like Lohan is being asked to come in and consult on a policy board. I just wish Van Susteren and all her fellow journalist would take a moment to think about how they would react if a some reporter from MSNBC did the same thing. This whole thing started because Van Susteren objected to a comedian being at the dinner, but with this move she's the one who looks like a joke.

Saying It Once Is Enough

They say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Well, in TV it is also just good business. You see, most of the time it is the subject matter, not the stars of the show, which really matter. For example, while people sitting at home want to watch other people dig through abandoned storage lockers, they aren't particularly invested in exactly who is doing the digging. This is why as soon as a network has a good idea you will see it on another network by the next round of new shows. A couple months ago I mentioned how much I enjoyed SpikeTV's documentary series, "Gangland". Each episode of this show takes an hour to dive into the various gangs across America and a marathon on TV can really kill any plans I might have had for that Saturday. Therefore, I was not really surprised when I was flipping around my TV dial and landed on a show called, "Gang World" on another channel. Again, the premise of the show was to take an hour and tell the story of one gang from its founding until today. As near as I can tell the only difference in the two shows is that this one will also examine gangs outside of America, because the episode I caught last night was all about a Canadian biker gang.

First off, I don't know why, but the Canadian biker gangs just seem less dangerous than the American biker gangs. I assume it has to do with the accents. Go ahead, try saying these phrases out loud with your best Canadian accent going: "We were running a lot of Coke, eh? Sure, that other gang wanted in on our turf because they were just a bunch of hosers. So we firebombed their clubhouse, eh." For some reason it just doesn't sound nearly as bad. Not that these guys weren't bad dudes, because they were. I think the most amazing thing about these documentary series is how the can almost make you feel sorry for the subjects, who in any other setting would be far from sympathetic figures. If you were watching a show from the cops' perspective you would almost be rooting for them to be taken out, but when you are watching these shows with the gangs as the central figures and the leader of the gang goes missing you almost feel bad for him, despite the fact that he's a murdering drug dealer. But, that's not the point of this post (hang on, almost there.) What I wanted to talk about today is that when they were describing his death a phrase seemed to jump out at me: "Shot in the head, execution-style."

Now, I've watched my fair share of cop shows and murder mysteries over the years, so I've heard this phrase dozens if not hundreds of times. But for some reason it stuck with me on this viewing. I took some time to think about it and suddenly it seems very redundant. I know that it is meant to explain a person was shot once in the back of the head, probably without warning. Still, when you get right down to it, aren't all gunshots to the head done execution-style? I mean, no one shoots another person in the head to send a message, other than the obvious one of: "I no longer want you to be alive." Honestly, telling me that the shooter was trying to execute the other person is a waste of words. Once my antennae were up about this kind of word redundancy it was suddenly the only thing I could hear. Like a lot of things, when you go looking for them they really start to pop out at you. These are just a few of the ones I caught over the last day or so.

Close Proximity: I use this one all the time, so I can't really fault someone for doing it. Still, proximity implies the person is already close, so it is really unnecessary. The best way to know a phrase is redundant is to ask if you would ever say it the opposite way and you would never say something was in far proximity because it doesn't make sense. I'm going to make an effort to stop using this one.

Future Potential: With the NFL draft starting this tonight and lasting through the weekend, I have been hearing this phrase all week long as analysts talk about players developing to the next level and only now do I see how odd it is. After all, potential is always in the future, otherwise it would no longer be potential and just be talent. Unless of course you are JaMarcus Russell, in which case your potential was imaginary.

General Public: You couldn't be any more general than to describe a group of people as "the public". It doesn't even give a hint about their make-up in terms of race, sex or age. Honestly, it is the most open-ended phrase I could think of to describe a gathering of humans. Calling someone the general public barely implies they have faces. Yet, tickets to sporting events are always "on sale to the general public." Suddenly being a fan feels like a very one-sided relationship.

Combined Total: You hear this phrase on game-shows all the time. It is kind of ironic, considering those are usually tests of knowledge, so you expect one person on the staff to recognize that a total is always when numbers are added up, or combined if you wanted to use another word. Sounds like someone isn't smarter than a 5th Grader.

Free Gift: I got a letter in the mail the other day from one of the contests I entered at the Golf Expo. While I didn't win the trip I had originally been entered for, I was being offered the chance to come in and try again. The letter promised that even if I failed a second time to win the trip I would be given a "free gift" for my troubles. Now, I was never planning to go in because I'm pretty sure the "free gift" I would get is just another opportunity for them to sell me a time-share. But that doesn't change the fact that all gifts are free, otherwise they aren't gifts. If the thought of sitting through an hour-long sales pitch wasn't enough to dissuade me from going, the fact they felt compelled to explain the gift is free would be.

Fighting To Stay Relevant

Like most people, I was swept up in the Kony phenomenon early last month. For those of you who aren't on Twitter, the #Kony2012 movement was a video which was posted online by a filmmaker named Jason Russell which told the brutal story of Joseph Kony, who has been kidnapping children and forcing them to join his army in northern Uganda, resulting in tens of thousands of lost children, known as the Invisible Kids. The video hoped to both raise awareness and bring Kony to justice. Almost overnight the video was an unbelievable success, being watched by over 30 million people within a couple of weeks and has now been viewed almost 90 million times. Suddenly Jason Russell was all over the place, doing interviews with everyone under the sun and making some real progress for his cause. Unfortunately one of the places he also showed up was in San Diego, where two weeks after the video was released he was detained for indecent exposure after what was people close to him deemed as a mild mental break brought on by exhaustion and stress. After that you didn't hear much about him (save for a spoof on "South Park") or Joseph Kony, the world moved on to another story and the kids on Twitter moved to another viral video. To be honest, I kind of forgot about Kony after that.

So, imagine my surprise on Saturday during my Flat Stanley adventure when I was walking through the Boston Common and saw "Kony 2012" written everywhere. It had been drawn in chalk on almost every surface imaginable and while some people had just drawn the words, several of them were part of larger, more elaborate drawings. At first I couldn't figure out what was going on, as I kind of thought we were done with Kony and doubted they would have lasted since last month with the rain we have gotten lately. A little bit of digging revealed they were part of a campaign known as "Cover the Night" designed to keep the story of Kony in the spotlight. Supporters were encouraged to go out and do charity work during the day, then put the logo on any surface they could legally do so once they sun had gone down. Sounds like a positive way to keep things going, but while I was looking in to the story I also found out that outside of Boston it didn't appear to have had much success and even in town some people had gone a little too far and spray-painted "Kony 2012" onto some monuments. If they were looking to catapult themselves back into the national discussion, this wasn't the way to do it.

I applaud the Kony people, not only for having a cause which totally deserves more attention than most things we decide are important in this country, but also for trying to keep it in the public spotlight. Too often we move to a new problem before we actually fix the old one. And, unlike the "Occupy Boston" people who were here in the fall and winter, they have a clear message of what they are trying to accomplish. But that being said, I think they waited too long to having this follow-up activity. I'm sure part of it was to make sure enough time had passed from the Jason Russell's arrest so that wouldn't be what everyone focused on, but it is a fine line between waiting for the dust to settle and waiting too long. In this day and age the period between caring what people say and then forgetting who even said it is getting shorter and shorter. That is great if you find yourself in the middle of a scandal (Seriously, bring up Roger Clemens to someone this week. People are way more angry that the government is going through with a second trial than they ever were about him allegedly lying to Congress.), but not so much when you want to keep an important, though not particularly sexy, issue in the public eye. They should have done this last month, when the spotlight was the brightest.

Activism is really just marketing without a product people have to buy, so the question here is how they plan to keep the cause moving forward. Since the ultimate goal is to have Joseph Kony arrested and brought to trial by the end of the year, my guess is they were planning to do once event like this a month. First off, next month's event has to be better coordinated. The "Cover the Night" project was just supposed to be done at the local level with no official meetings planned and we saw how well that worked out. It also has to be better hyped. If I'm fairly plugged in to social media and if I haven't heard about your event until a full five days after it happened than clearly a few avenues were left unexplored. Thus, I'm going to humbly suggest they step up their efforts. As the old saying goes, you should dance with the one that brought you - they got all this attention because of a short film, so even though sequels usually fall far short of the originals I think they had better get to work making another one. And, if all that fails, Jason Russell could take off his clothes and start wandering the streets of various cities in America, because sex will always sell and it seemed to get him the most attention last time.

Trashing My Plan

Back in the late 90s, neither myself nor any of my siblings drove what you would consider to be high-end vehicles (a trend which continues today, I might add). Because these cars were all on or near their last legs, you never wanted to put too much money in to keep them running. So, sometimes when we needed an expensive part to keep a car on the road my father and I would head off to the local junkyard to see if we could salvage one from another dead car. I always liked trips to the junkyard. First off, 90% of the movies I was watching at the time featured a gunfight in a junkyard, so I thought action was around every turn (it wasn't). And even if there wasn't a movie being shot, at least I would learn about engines (I didn't). Anyway, one time we were looking for a headlight for my sister's Volvo and were about to take it out of one of the cars on the lot when the guy who ran the place came over and began to yell at us. You see, we had wandered into the place where the high-end wrecks were and even though there was nothing in place to tell us otherwise, we should have just known not to go over there. Apparently, these were the "good" junk cars. Not particularly appreciating getting talked down to by a guy who looked as though he invented the process of creating crystal meth, I never went back there ever again. (Snobby behavior? Yep. And I'm not apologizing for it.) Still, I learned a very valuable lesson that day - not all trash is created equally.

Now, I have had issues with trash collection ever since my town switched over to the generic green barrels you see everywhere. It has nothing to do with the company and everything to do with the fact that I used to be able to throw away whatever I needed to and now I can't. Like everyone else on the planet, I'm simply not a fan of getting things taken away from me when I feel as though they are working just fine. For the most part I manage, but occasionally the need to throw away more than the Stepford barrels allows rears its ugly head. A few days ago some new chairs arrived at my house. As often happens these days, the boxes they arrived in were about 50% packing materials. The last time this happened I ended up simply stacking the styrofoam on top of the barrel and came out the next day to discover the material still here and a note on my barrel telling me the company won't take recycling when the lid on the barrel can't be closed. Having learned from that time I made sure to break all the pieces up so they were so small I could shove them far enough into the barrel to secure the lid. What I couldn't fit into the recycling barrel I put into the regular trash. I felt guilty about not recycling all the packing material, but thought it was better than the alternative.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I went out to collect my barrels the next day and found yet another florescent green note attached to the lid. On the paper were several options of the things I could have done wrong, but underlined was the option: styrofoam in the container. First of all, since when is styrofoam not recyclable? When I order Chinese food (cause I'm such a health nut), that comes in styrofoam packages which have the recyclable logo on, so I assumed it was all the same. Is it not? Here I felt bad about not recycling all of it and and it turns out I wasn't supposed to be recycling any of it. Then I got annoyed because I assumed this sticker meant they hadn't taken my recycling and I would have to wait until the next recycling period, which on my street won't be for another two weeks. This meant I would have been holding on to some of this trash for a month, which is not exactly going to inspire me to make sure everything which can be recycled gets recycled. I've said it a million times: when you want people to put in the extra effort on something the best way to make sure it happens is to not also make it hard for them. Fortunately when I opened the lid to confirm my suspicions I was met with an empty container.

I was once told there is a camera on the arm which picks up the barrels, so my best guess is that the truck driver emptied the contents and then discovered I had violated the rules. The fact that he didn't check before adding it to the rest of his haul shows that this is apparently one of those rules which they would like if I followed, but not so much that the guy is willing to actually get out of the truck to make sure I'm not attempting to recycle something I shouldn't and he certainly isn't about to go in after it once he sees illegal trash among the rest of my approved trash. Now I am just waiting to see if I get anything else in the mail or if next time around my house is on some kind of watch list to make sure we aren't breaking any more rules. Either way, the fact that there is good trash versus bad trash is just another one of those things I feel like isn't an issue in a lot of places. As near as I can tell it is just my street and the nearest junkyard. Unfortunately, unlike the junkyard, it is not like I can decide to take my business somewhere else in the future. Pardon the pun, but they kind of have me over a barrel here.

Parking Wars

I vividly remember the first piece of negative feedback I ever got from a stranger about something I had written. I was writing for the school paper and wrote an opinion piece about how unfair I found it that as a student who lived in the dorms and therefore already paying more than the students who commuted to school I was expected to pay hundreds of dollars extra per semester to park my car a mile off campus in a seedy location, while the students who commuted paid $50 to park 100 years away. I wasn't looking for free parking, I just wanted everyone to pay the same rate. The letter which arrived in my mailbox proceeded to call me a brat who needed to grow up and then went on to agree with everything I had said. (It had also included a copy of my article, you know, in case I had forgotten what I had written.) Keep in mind this was 1998, when letters to the editor were actually letters, so this person had put a lot of effort in. But, it was also unsigned and with no return address, proving that even before the time of internet commenting negative people were cowards. Anyway, it was at that time I learned a couple key life lessons: 1. Angry people aren't going to let a little thing like agreeing with you get in the way of their angry letters. 2. Parking is always a touchy subject. Thus, it is with a bit of trepidation that I approach today's subject.

Saturday I went on a Flat Stanley adventure. If you've never heard of such a thing, Flat Stanley was originally the subject of a children's book but became a world-wide phenomenon. Now kids cut out and color in their own Flat Stanley and mail them around the world, where people take pictures of Flat at famous locations and then send him back. For those of you who aren't much for reading, think of it like the Roaming Gnome, but easier to ship. The point is I was showing him the sights of our fair city on Saturday, which meant a long day in Boston. Not wanting to drive in to fight both Red Sox and Bruins game day traffic, I was trying desperate to find a lot just outside the city where I might be able to leave my car for a few hours without having to pay $50 for the opportunity. Eventually I found one and the day went off without a hitch. But what really killed me was when I finally got into the city and was taunted by row after row of open parking meters. You see, in the last couple of years a new policy has gone into effect which states that in most locations you can not remain at the same meter for more than two hours. It doesn't matter if you have an armful of quarters and could easily add more time, you can't stay in longer or else you will be hit with a $25 fine.

This might just be the most annoying thing I have ever heard. I understand that what this rule is attempting to do is prevent someone from squatting on a spot for weeks or months at a time. That is fine. But just because you don't want one car hogging a spot for days at a time that doesn't mean you have to cut the time people are allowed to occupy a parking space down to less time than it takes to watch "The Godfather". You can't do anything in Boston in under two hours, so how about we meet in the middle somewhere and say a 5-hour limit? I'm even willing to compromise and say you don't have to re-program the meters - people will still only be able to purchase parking in two hour chunks, but they don't have to move their cars when they go to buy more. I'm happy to keep filling my meter, I just feel like as long as I am able to pay up I should be able to keep my car in the same spot. So, it's the moving of the cars which really gets to me, you see. Few things annoy me more than rules which people expect you to take seriously even though they are easily circumvented through minimal effort. If you are lucky enough to find two open spots together you just have to roll forward 15 feet to avoid a fine. That would be like saying that robbery isn't a crime as long as only take one thing and your buddy takes one thing. But if you take two items, you're going to jail. My point is that any rule which can be avoided by moving slightly to the left isn't much of a rule in my book.

I'm sure that part of this policy has to do with the Boston sports teams as well. The City doesn't want every space around the stadiums to be taken all day long, because that would essentially kill all the businesses around the stadiums on game days, so they instead push people to park their cars in the private lots. This is idiotic - not just because the city sees none of that money but also it doesn't seem like a sound business plan, as one parking ticket will bring as much money as 20 hours of legally-paid parking at a meter would. I say let people park at meters, knowing they can't come out during games and will eventually get ticketed. On top of that, if you have ever ridden public transportation near the stadiums on the day of the game you would know that those trains are beyond packed and half those people never have the chance to swipe their cards, meaning they are riding for free. Therefore, by having those people take the T versus drive in it is actually costing the city money. A few parking tickets on the cars of people who let their meters expire would go a long way to recouping that difference.

I simply feel as though this policy of not being able to stay in the same parking spot for more than two hours is essentially forced sharing. As if it is somehow my fault that there are not enough parking spaces in this city to go around. (Maybe every street in Southie shouldn't be "Resident Parking Only"?) I'm sure this is the part where the people who came up with the policy would point out that if this practice was not in place than I would not be able to find a space to park in the first place. That could be true, but since I am an adult I know that some things are harder to get than others and occasionally you have to wait a while to get them, so I would find a spot eventually. But knowing that also means that once you do get them you shouldn't have to let them go just to make everyone else happy. Sounds to me like the parking czars in this city are the ones who really need to grow up. Fortunately for me, I still have that letter to the editor I got so many years ago and with a few modifications I could easily forward it to them. After all, I would take the time to write out an entirely new letter, but it seems like every time I start to get into a groove with my thoughts I have to go and more my truck again.

Bandstand Boogie

When I heard that Dick Clark died on Wednesday, I have to admit, I was expecting the news to be greeted with more fanfare. After all, the guy had been on television for close to 60 years, so it wasn't like there wasn't a lot of material to work with. What made Dick Clark so fascinating was that you could ask three generations of Americans about him and get three totally different answers. The Baby Boomers would talk about his impact on "American Bandstand", others would mention his time as host of "Pyramid" (still my favorite game show ever) and then the majority of people would immediately think about him counting down to midnight on New Year's Eve on their television. But that was just the tip on the iceberg. The other day I mentioned how many random TV ventures Al Roker was associated with through his production company. Well, Dick Clark Productions not only invented the "Bloopers" shows, but also invented the American Music Awards, put the Golden Gloves on TV and gave the world shows like "So You Think You Can Dance." It was would not be an over-statement to say that for a while Dick Clark was the most powerful man in Hollywood.

Despite all that history, for the interlude this week we're going to stick with Dick Clark's first and still most famous TV venture, "American Bandstand." Now, I'll admit that I wasn't even close to being around when the show was first on the air and I've only read about its impact on pop culture through various communication classes I have taken over the years. But, there is no denying its impact. If you just look at the list of musical acts who performed on the show you can see that it is like a of catalog of the musical history of America. The show was willing to evolve with the times and covered a wide range of genres, so everyone who was anyone eventually made their way onto "American Bandstand". Musical icons like Michael Jackson made numerous trips to the show, but for today's interlude we're going with a little Earth, Wind and Fire. Despite the not-great audio, I liked that the video starts with a clip of Dick Clark but, if I'm being honest, the reason I picked this particular video from all the "American Bandstand" performances available online could be summed up in one word: Gino.

Weekly Sporties

-I'm beginning to think Bobby Valentine needs chaos to be happy. That is the only explanation I can come up with as to why, after a couple of big wins over the Rays last weekend in which the early-season turmoil of a 1-5 start finally appeared to be behind them, the new Red Sox manager went on Channel 7 and gave an interview in which he said third baseman Kevin Youkilis doesn't appear to be as physically and emotionally into the season as he has in the past. What followed was the inevitable shit-storm from the media, wondering why Valentine was publicly calling out Youkilis, why he was doing it now and questioning what kind of management style this was. Now, the ironic part about this is that Valentine is not wrong. Youkilis had a bad season last year and has gotten off to a slow start this year. There is an above-average chance he is simply done as an elite player. Still, after years of a players-first manager like Terry Francona, this had to be a shock to the locker room. If nothing else it probably not the way to motivate Youkilis to get going. Now, it is possible Valentine is trying to unite a locker room which was very fractured last year by making himself everyone's enemy. That has worked before (most famously on the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey Team) but I have my doubts about that strategy working as well when the players make more money than the manager. You lose the entire locker room in the pros and it just gets you fired. I know it is extremely early, but I think it is safe to say the Bobby Valentine experiment is not going to last very long.

-Of course, it could just be that Valentine is taking his management cues from the rest of the front office. Before Friday's game there was a celebration of the 100th year of Fenway Park. As part of the celebration every single player who ever played for the Red Sox was invited back. However, one notable name was left off the guest list: Theo Epstein. It took until Wednesday for someone to bring up the fact that the former Sox and current Cubs GM was not invited to be part of the celebration. Owner John Henry said he was unaware of the omission, but seeing as how other former Sox GMs were not invited it should not be seen as anything personal against Epstein. That could very well be true and given that Theo is trying to run the Cubs it is very likely he wouldn't have come anyway. Also, Epstein didn't leave here on the best of terms and then was locked in a prolonged negotiation with the Sox over compensation from the Cubs, so he may not have wanted to be back so soon. However, the way it ended doesn't change the fact he was key part in building two World Series-winning teams. Even if his role has been over-blown by some through the years, to not give him the option to attend comes across as petty and a little sad (Jose Canseco was there, for God's sake). Theo was finally invited Thursday night but that was way too little, way too late. Making it worse, this comes on the heels of an offseason in which the front-office had to defend itself against charges of leaking stories to the Boston Globe which called into question the character of Terry Francona after he left, which backfired so badly that Francona got the loudest cheer yesterday. I'm sure in the back of their minds the ownership group was afraid Theo would get louder applause than they would. Well, there are simple ways to alleviate that fear - stop screwing up or start winning games. Sadly, neither is looking very likely at the moment.

-Another guy who could use some good PR right now is Wisconsin basketball coach Bo Ryan. When redshirt freshman Jarrod Uthoff went to Ryan and told him he wanted to transfer, Ryan had a few restrictions on the schools he would let Uthoff out of his scholarship to play for. This is not uncommon, as the last thing college coaches want is for players to transfer within the conference and come back to haunt them. So, not allowing him to transfer to a Big-10 school was expected. But then Ryan said he also that not only was Uthoff banned from transfer to any school in the Big-10, but also any school in the ACC, as well as Marquette, Florida or Iowa State. All in all, that meant 25 schools were on his restricted list. When word of all these restrictions slipped out Ryan and Wisconsin were immediately under fire from the national media, who quickly pointed out that Wisconsin football has twice benefited from quarterbacks transferring in from other programs and no one could tell Ryan where he could or could not go if he wanted to switch jobs. After just one days of taking heat and being called everything from a bully and a control freak to a hypocrite, Ryan lifted most of the restrictions on where Uthoff can go, allowing him to go anywhere outside the Big-10. You know, it just goes to show that the every now and again the power of public shaming comes in handy.

-When Southern Methodist University fired coach Matt Doherty after another bad season, some people thought the school would have problems attracting a big-name coach. After all, SMU is a football-first school and is about to move to the Big East, not exactly a conference where bad teams can get better in a hurry. That is why I was surprised when Larry Brown, the only man to win an NCAA and NBA championship as a coach, agreed to become the head man at SMU. But while I was surprised, I think this is going to work out great for both sides. SMU has no real basketball tradition, which is perfect because Larry has and will coach just about everywhere, so he has no need for traditions. Also, Larry never stays anywhere more than 4 years and since he's 71 years old SMU probably doesn't want him hanging around for too long anyway. He'll be there for a couple years, attract a little attention and sell some tickets simply because of his name recognition, transition the school into the basketball-first Big East, get a few solid recruiting classes to build up a nice foundation for the future of the program and be on his merry way, probably saying he has retired before taking another job 20 minutes later. Just remember, SMU, Larry doesn't allow kissing on the lips.

-Still, Brown has no pressure to win because SMU is one of those schools that only has two sports: football and spring football. Another school with that singular mindset is the reigning National Champions, Alabama. The Crimson Tide were getting ready for spring practice the other day and had their new trophy on display. In case you have never seen it, the National Championship trophy is a crystal football. During the day one of the player's father got his foot caught on the rug, tripped and knocked the trophy off its pedestal, where it fell to the floor. Being made of crystal, it naturally smashed into many pieces. Now, the trophy costs $30,000, which is nothing to a program like Alabama. I'm sure they will have a new one delivered by the end of the month. However, this is the second time this has happened, as Florida's crystal football met a similar fate a few years ago. Which begs the question: why hasn't anyone redesigned this thing yet? Seriously, doesn't anyone see the obvious design flaw of something so fragile being handled by a bunch of football players, who are not known for their light touches? I know that crystal looks better, but sometimes you have to forgo looks for practicality and this may be one of those times. Or at least start including Super-Glue as part of the trophy ceremony.

-When Sean Payton announced that he was going to appeal his year-long suspension one of the reasons he said he was doing it was to clarify what he could and could not do while suspended. Well, last week his suspension was upheld (shocking, considering he was appealing to the same man who decided his punishment) and along with that came an answer: as long as he is suspended Payton is not allowed to have contact with anyone from the NFL. He can't call, he can't email. According to the League, he can't even run next door and say hello to his neighbor, who just so happens to be the Saints GM. I know Commissioner Roger Goodell is pissed about the bounty scandal and even more pissed about being lied to about it, but this seems extreme. I mean, it is one thing to not allow him to talk to Saints personnel about work, but to not allow him to call friends he has on other teams seems unfair. He is suspended, not in solitary confinement. I just think if he accidentally runs into one of his players at the supermarket he shouldn't have to worry that he's never going to get to coach again. However, I'm also not saying Payton should try and run the Saints while in exile because if he gets caught doing that his one-year suspension will be stretched even further (and the NFL would absolutely found out if he tried). Just to be safe, I would recommend that Sean take on that oldest of conspiracy theorist mottoes: If you think they are watching you, it is because they are.

-The reason Payton would never get away with secretly talking to one of his players is that NFL players, coaches and executives are some of the worst gossips in the world. If he talked to someone the League would find out, because there is always one set of loose lips. And NFL lips are never looser than the week before the NFL draft. The hot 'rumor' this week that Robert Griffin III, widely assumed to be the second pick in the draft by the Washington Redskins after Andrew Luck goes to the Colts, is a selfish player who isn't as polished as he needs to be to play at the NFL level. It's funny, you never heard any of this stuff when 20 teams were clamoring to trade up and draft him. That tells me this rumor could be coming from one of three places: one of the teams who didn't get him and are spreading rumors as sour grapes, the Colts as they try to convince their fanbase they are taking the right guy or it could even be the Redskins, attempting to lower expectations (which, by the way, won't work). The point is that while you should rarely listen to anything a person working for an NFL team tells you, you really shouldn't listen the week before the Draft. Again, it is nice to know that no matter how old you get or how much money your business makes, the rules of high school will always apply.

Strange Bedfellows

If you want to make any money in television, you have to become a producer. For all the money you hear about the stars of shows making, the production companies which actually bring the shows to life are raking in even more cash. That is why in the last few years everyone who is anyone has started their own production companies and is the reason credits at the end of movies take 45 minutes to run. When it comes to television they are usually given credit at the end of the show, after the normal credits have rolled, when random graphics with words that make no sense appear for a half-second. Most of these production companies are named after inside jokes that only the actor gets. (For example, Will Ferrell's production company is named Gary Sanchez, apparently for no other reason than Ferrell really likes that name.) Some show have four or five of these mini-production companies involved, which is what happens when the stars of the show each start their own company to get producing credits. Where it gets really interesting is when people and their production companies get attached to projects and create connections you don't anticipate.

Last night I was flipping around, desperately hoping that something from the nearly 1000 channels I have at my fingertips would catch my eye and provide some entertainment. Lacking any other options I eventually paused on SpikeTV, which was showing the last couple minutes of a new show called "Big Easy Justice". The show is centered around a Eugene "Tat-2" Thacker, a professional bounty hunter determined to clean up his hometown of New Orleans. I only caught the last few minutes, but as near as I can tell the premise of each episode is that Tat and his team (The rest of his team includes guys named Viper, Arsenio and Wally. Someone got the short straw in the nickname department.) track down a fugitive and takes them to jail. Basically, if you have ever seen an episode of "Cops" or "Dog the Bounty Hunter" you have seen this show before. However, that wasn't what was particularly interesting. As the episode ended and the credits rolled, the list of production companies involved scrolled by and one in particular caught my eye - Al Roker Entertainment. That couldn't be the same Al Roker from the "Today" show, could it? That had to just be someone who named their production company ironically, right? A few seconds of Googling revealed that it was the Al Roker I thought it was.

You expect certain connections in the world of TV. For example, it is completely normal that Oprah has her hands all over everything on the OWN channel. But I have to admit, I did not see this connection coming. Roker isn't from New Orleans and doesn't even have a police background. Heck, when I think of Al Roker the gritty world of bounty hunting doesn't come close to being the first thing that springs to mind. But, it turns out this isn't his first foray into the these kinds of shows, as his company has also done two season of the show "DEA" for Spike TV. If you go to the Al Roker Entertainment website you discover that Al has his hands all over television. You probably aren't shocked to learn his production company has made several programs for NBC concerning weather disasters. Heck, you can even understand when Al dives into the drug trade, breaking out his serious journalistic chops to produce an investigatory series for MSNBC. And, given that he publicly lost a lot of weight but makes no secret of his love for barbecue it makes sense that Roker's company produced many programs for the Food Network. But Al's company has also looked into the gritty world of pageants with "Hidden Lives of Miss USA" for the E! Network and "A Perfect Party" for something called Fine Living. He's also produced shows for History, PBS, Court TV and Lifetime. Face it, dude is a Renaissance man.

Now I just want to know who else has helped produce shows with connections you never would have imagined. Like I said, you can get a lot of return on your investment into these shows and money has a way of making people willing to overlook previous moral objections about working with a particular subject. Fox is a big company with lots of channels. Does someone like Chris Wallace on Fox News have a hand in "American Dad"? Comedy Central, MTV and NBC are all owned by Viacom, so is Brian Williams helping to make "Workaholics" and "Teen Mom" part of our lives? (Actually, that has nice symmetry - produce a show glorifying teen pregnancy then do a serious news report about the reasons teen pregnancy might be on the rise.) Really, considering how large some of these communication companies are, the possibilities are endless. If nothing else, I plan to start paying closer attention to the closing credits of shows, even though I'm not sure if finding out who has brought certain programs to my TV is going to help or hurt in the long run. For example, would I enjoy "Sons of Anarchy" as much if I knew it was being backed by Glenn Beck? Still, I figure it would be better to know either way. The point is, until I hear otherwise, I'm just going to assume every show on television has been backed by Al Roker. Seriously, that guy is everywhere.

Stop Paying Attention

A couple days ago, one-time rocker Ted Nugent was speaking at a gathering for the National Rifle Association. During his remarks, Nugent made some comments in which he said President Obama, Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are criminals and then compared the NRA to "Braveheart" (maybe not the best week to reference Mel Gibson, but that's another post) saying they had to ride into Washington and cut the heads off Democrats. Charming. Almost immediately Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney was forced to distance himself from Nugent by disavowing his comments. This is exactly the kind of unnecessary gesture which makes me hate politics. All that does is give the man credence when he shouldn't have any. Honestly, what sane person thinks that Ted Nugent has anything to do with Mitt Romney or his campaign? I'm willing to bet the two have never even met and beyond both being Republicans, I would imagine they wouldn't have much to chat about, so why are people associating them? There are stupid people saying stupid things on both sides of the aisle and it is idiotic to expect the leader of the respective political parties to have to answer for every insane thing which is said by people who probably don't share anything  in common beyond the same tax bracket.

Inflammatory speeches are what happen when you put a microphone in front of someone who doesn't have anything smart to say and Nugent doesn't strike me as a deep thinker. It is one thing when members of Romney's campaign or Obama's administration make remarks which are ignorant, but you should almost expect them from people like Nugent. Now, for their part the Secret Service has said they intend to treat the threats seriously (probably because is it well-documented that Nugent has a personal arsenal in his basement) and will investigate Nugent thoroughly. I hope they find enough to stick his ass in jail. Not because I dislike Ted Nugent (Although I remain mystified how he still has a career considering he only produced three good songs in his lifetime and none since 1990. I wonder if he has ever had the balls to open with "Catch Scratch Fever", knowing 98% of the audience plans to leave once they hear it?), but because maybe some extended jail time will finally teach quasi-celebrities to shut the hell up when it comes to politics because they have no idea what they are talking about.

There are many things in politics which are useless, but the most useless of them all might very well be the celebrity endorsement. I will never understand who these endorsements are supposed to help sway, because if you voted for Obama simply because someone like Sean Penn told you to than I'd rather you just stayed home on Election Day. They don't live in the same world as you or I and as such what they think would help the country probably doesn't matter. But what's even worse about these celebrities is that they don't know they are stupid. Just last week I wrote how James Cameron's enthusiasm for the Titanic wreck site does not suddenly make him a naval engineer. Well, the same thing applies here. Just because someone like Ted Nugent owns many guns and likes to talk about the the Second Amendment, that does not make him a Constitutional Scholar. Not to mention, because these people are entertainers who are used to trying to sell people something, they are only telling you half-truths. I remember when P. Diddy was encouraging people to register to vote before the 2008 election. Well, that was only half a statement. Remember, celebrities only want you to get out and 'Rock The Vote" as long as you plan to vote for the same person as them.

It is entirely possible that these kind of politically-incorrect comments are nothing more than stunts designed to get a fading star back into the spotlight and sell a few more records. There are undoubtedly a few morons out there who are only too happy to buy albums based on the artist's political beliefs. But, that actually makes it worse because you never know what mentally unbalanced person could be listening and taking the message to heart. I thought after the political shootings in Arizona we had all agreed to take the rhetoric down a notch, but that restraint appears to have faded away. Instead it is going to fall to the 24-hour cable news networks to stop putting these people on the air. I know they have a ton of air time to fill, but that doesn't mean they should forgo getting off their asses to do some reporting and instead opt to invite the lead singer from White Snake in to comment about unrest in Syria. It may make people actually respect them, rather than make them seem like the jokes they currently appear to be.

We'll probably never know who was the first person to convince an actor or singer that they should get up and voice their opinion on who Americans should be voting for, but that person has done more damage than they will ever know. Because these people already possess inflated egos about how important the unimportant jobs they have actually are, the last thing you want to do is inflate them further by telling them they should comment about world affairs. It is bad enough when actors trying singing, singers try acting and athletes try to do anything but play sports, but to suddenly think you know more than the people who have spent their entire careers in politics is not only crazy, it's insulting to our intelligence. So in the future, the next time some country musician compares Obama to Hitler or Alec Baldwin talks about moving to Canada should Mitt Romney win, rather than running to politicians and asking them to disavow the comments or make a cut-and-paste speech about that person not speaking for the administration, let's all agree to ignore them instead. Words carry a lot less meaning when no one listens to them.

Mark Your Calendars

For the last two days I have seen a crawl along the bottom of my television screen, informing me that this is apparently "Earth Week." As such many news channels are taking this opportunity to turn their logos green and run canned stories about new recycling techniques, what you can do on a daily basis to cut down on your carbon footprint and all the jobs created by "green" companies. On the surface this sounds all well and good, but it still confuses me. Not the reason why the news stations are doing this - I have no doubt they are desperate to put off covering the election until we're at least within six months of it. I'm just wondering where the hell "Earth Week" came from. Apparently this is all part of the run-up to "Earth Day" which is on Sunday, but I don't remember anyone voting on this kind of thing. I mean, who decided we needed to expand this to an entire week? (Don't worry, I'm not about to take some big pro-pollution stance if that is what you were worried about.) I just think that when people are going to be expected to celebrate something for more than a day there should be some kind of committee involved. 

I'm well aware that every day of the year brings with it some kind of holiday to someone. If you don't believe me just check Twitter in the morning to see what is trending. For example, today, April 18th, is National Golf Day, International Jugglers Day, Newspaper Columnist Day, Army Day in Iran and Zimbabwe's Independence Day (given their respective levels of importance, I probably should have led with that one). First off, I want to commend these organizations for being willing to share their spot on the calendar with others. You wouldn't normally associate jugglers with Iran or golfers with Zimbabwe, yet here they are. I guess when the options are to share or you don't get a day at all, it would be a pretty easy call. Not that you have to worry about not getting the day that you have your heart set on, as it is apparently rather easy to declare one day a year as special for your particular hobby. As well it should be. Seriously, I don't think we have nearly enough holidays around these parts. That's is not where my issue lies. I just happen to believe there is a big difference between needing one day to celebrate your skill versus needing seven of them.

However, it doesn't appear to be much harder to get a week for your cause than it does a day and that is wrong. For example, while this is "Earth Week" it is also "Organize Your Files Week". While I appreciate the symmetry of a week of heightened recycling awareness coinciding with a week where people are likely going to the throwing out a lot of paper, I again wonder just how this week was branded without anyone so much as sending out a memo. My point is that a week is a long time to spend celebrating anything, even when it is a happy issue. (For example, even the majority of Jews don't celebrate every night of Hanukkah.) A week of being reminded that if you don't cut up your plastic can rings they could potentially kill every seagull in a 14 mile radius is downright depressing. But, lest you think I'm picking on any one particular organization or religion, just know I can't stand the people who think their birthday needs to be an celebrated for an entire week either. Just because you happened to have been born the same day as roughly 25 million other people that does not mean I should be expected to buy all your drinks for a week. You get your actual birthday or the closest Saturday - that is it. 

I just think before something gets celebrated for a full week we should start out with a one-day trial period to see how it goes. Sure, Earth Day can be expanded into an entire week because it has been around for nearly 40 years, so you know it isn't some flash-in-the-pan fad. I just would have liked a little more warning. But, next week is "National Karaoke Week." This is exactly the kind of thing the screening process I am talking about would prevent. I hate karaoke and I hate the people who insist that everyone has to participate even more. (Seriously, why don't you back off, self-appointed Fun Police? Maybe my idea of a good time doesn't involved standing in front of a group of strangers, singing off-key and desperately wishing "Don't Stop Believing" was a couple verses shorter.) All I'm saying is that it seems awfully presumptuous to think we will automatically like your holiday choice enough to want an entire week of it. So far the only week I have seen everyone get behind without question is "Shark Week". So, unless your week also features awesome footage of sharks jumping out of water or people swimming with some other kind of deadly animal, I suggest you start with a getting a day and then take a wait-and-see approach.

Road Block

Sunday morning I went for a quick nature hike around that bluest of hills in Canton. The first thing I noticed was that I was clearly not the first person to have this idea, because every one of the parking lots were jammed with cars. But the second thing I discovered was that I am a much better Fall hiker than an early Summer hiker. Not only is it less crowded in the Fall (there is nothing worse than being on a crowded trail with people blowing passed you up the mountain - it's not a race people!), it is also cooler (because we all know how well I do not do in the heat). However, the main reason I found I like hiking in the Fall better is that there isn't as much nature then. A Fall hike features fewer plants which irritate allergies or bugs looking to take a bite out of you. Sure, when you are on a nature hike you should expect a fair amount of... you know, nature... but you don't want too much. If you are wondering how much is too much nature, I can sum it up in one word: snakes.

Less than a half-mile into the hike I heard a rustling in the brush just off the trail. I turned my head just in time to see half of a black snake go slithering over a fallen tree. Judging from the part of it I saw the snake was about four feet long. (This is the part of the story in which certain women in my life would make a comment about how well I do around snakes, as if they are totally cool with them. Since this is my blog, I will preemptively retort that if they had been there, they would have left a dust trail like something you would see in a cartoon down the hill.) Anyway, I certainly wasn't pleased with this development, but figured that as long as I didn't go over there and left it alone we'd be fine with one another. I've seen my fair share of the Discovery Channel and remember hearing that snakes can usually strike in a radius similar to their length. According to my math that meant this four-foot snake had a four foot striking radius. As long as I was at least five feet away from it in all directions I would be fine. So I gave it 25 feet, just to be on the safe side, and continued on my way. And if that had been my only encounter with the shoulder-less creatures that day I would have been fine. It wasn't.

Often when I go hiking on Blue Hills I never manage to stay on the same trail the entire time. The trails on Blue Hills are marked by different colors on the trees and these trails intersect in a couple places so usually what happens is before too long I turn and find that I'm no longer following the same color trail. This happened on Sunday as about halfway through I noticed we had taken a turn off the moderate path and onto the tougher trail. That meant steeper inclines and parts which were rockier than expected. As we started back down we came to one of these sections which was nothing but rock. I'm not saying I needed ropes or to call in a helicopter mountain rescue, but my point is that at some points along the way there is no other way around. As we came to one of these sections my eyes remained peeled. I had been on high alert since my encounter with the first snake and was locked in for any movement of the slithering variety. Which meant I noticed the second snake right away.

It was much smaller, just a foot long, but it was harder to avoid than the first one because this one was right where I needed to walk. It had come out of a nearby rock and at first I thought it was just crossing over, but apparently it was enjoying the sun and paused right in the middle of the path. It had picked a perfect spot for maximum stopping power, because the path had bottlenecked to a series of rocks which covered about a 15 foot drop in about 10 feet. So as the snake continued to not move I slowly accepted that I had nowhere to go. One of my options was to jump over it, which wasn't going to happen considering the rocks I would have been jumping onto and the fact that I would be jumping both forward and down. So, I took the second option, which was to to create a new path just to the right of the established path and nearly kill myself. (With a couple days to think it over I now realize how dumb this was because this is where the snake had come from and if there was another snake nearby it was more likely be in the same area. And given that it was probably the small snake's mother it would have been much bigger.) Eventually I made my way to bottom of the rocks and quickly finished the rest of the trail without seeing any more snakes.

Nature and I have a long-standing arraignment: I stay out of its way and it stays out of mine. This is why I try not to kill insects unless they work their way into my bedroom. As such I'm well aware that by going on a nature hike I am officially walking onto the snakes' turf. (I've seen "Boyz in the Hood", I know how this works.) But even with that, I feel like parking yourself in the middle of the only path down some rocks on the side of a hill is a breach of etiquette. If a human did that you would call them a dick and I think the moniker could apply here as well. Honestly, it was like the snake was taunting me - all that was missing was for it to look in my direction and wink at me. Now, this incident does not mean I'm going to give up hikes for the entire summer because I have found I enjoy them. I just think in the future I'm going to stick to the easier, wider paths that have more room to pick a side should I want to give something a wide berth. After all, I may not be able to completely avoid nature when I go on a nature hike, but that doesn't mean we have to share the same space.

Out Of Order

Some people honestly seem to believe that as they get older certain things will eventually stop bothering them. And, as a lot of people do, they believe that since something applies to them, it must also apply to everyone else. When these people see a kid flip out because their toy has broken, they assume that kid will eventually outgrow that behavior once they reach adulthood. Personally, I couldn't disagree with them more. Sure, as adults they may no longer flip out specifically because their Power Wheel has broken, but think about how exasperated computer issues make some of us act compared to others. It's just the toys that change, not the reactions. That is why I think the things which bother us as kids will always bother us, it is just that later in life they will show themselves in different ways. An example of one of those thing is getting cut in line. I'm never surprised to see stories on the news about people rioting while waiting in line to buy some hot new gadget because there is always one jerk in the crowd who will try to cut the line and people, no matter what their age, have a visceral reaction to someone not waiting their turn and attempting to jump over the people patiently waiting in front of them. I was reminded of this feeling as I felt it happening to me this weekend.

I was out to dinner on Saturday night and, as you would expect in Brookline on a beautiful spring night two days before the Boston Marathon and a couple hours after a Red Sox day game, every bar in the area was packed. Armed with knowledge and experience, we fully expected to have to wait a while for our table and at first we were more than willing to do so. I could see the TV with the Celtics game on, so I had no problems standing around. [Sidebar: I would still rather restaurants over-estimate how long the wait is going to be versus telling me it will be 30 minutes knowing it will be closer to an hour, but that is another post for another time.] But, as the waiting game stretched on I found my patience wearing thin and began to go through the game of matching tables with groups while mentally keep my own list of which one might eventually be our table - all the while simultaneously (but quietly) condemning the people who were taking too long to finish their desserts or ordering another round of drinks after the check arrived. If that had been the only issue I could have lived with slow eaters - the real problem arose when I began to feel like the wait staff wasn't keeping close tabs on who was next on the waiting list, at least not as close of tabs as I was keeping.

On more than one occasion my internal clock told me people that had come in after us were seated before us. The staff had a list of names and they seemed to be trying to adhere to it, but if someone was aggressive enough in grabbing a table the waitresses simply didn't have the energy to fight them on it. The worse was one group which appeared to walk in and immediately seat themselves at the first open table they saw. I'm sure they simply thought it was their lucky night, but the rest of us didn't find it as fortunate. Still, they were hardly the only group whose wait appeared to be a lot shorter than ours. At one point we were told that there were only three groups ahead of us, however by my count more tables than that had opened up and been filled with patrons before we ever got seated. At this point in the evening my head was on a swivel, trying to determine who was next. Much like when you are a little kid in reading class and you stop listening to who is speaking to instead count the number of people ahead of you and check the paragraphs to see which one is yours, now I was trying to figure out how many people were in each group and how many of them planned to get food. Fortunately these things come in waves and enough groups left during the next one that several groups got seated at once, including mine, otherwise we might still be standing there.

I think the reason being cut in line has always and will always bother me is that when you cut someone in line you have implied that you are somehow better than they are. It is as though you honestly believe that you should be seated first because you are more important and as such you deserve to get to the rest of your evening first. But it takes two to tango and it is as much the fault of the people who are in charge and allow it to happen as it is the people who do the actual circumventing. I don't want it to seem like I'm picking on the waitresses because they were clearly a little overwhelmed and understaffed (which is the only reason I'm not naming the bar). Still, that hardly seems like it is my fault - it falls on the bar manager. After all, it is not like the Marathon or the Sox games and their subsequent crowds could be considered shocking - they've been on the schedule for months. This is exactly why smart restaurants will have a hostess whose only job is to keep track of who is next to be seated. Otherwise you may as well let everyone fight for tables and seat themselves, because some people out there are going to do it anyway.

An Anniversary Interlude

Today is the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Which makes it as good a day as any to make an embarrassing confession: when I was a kid I was obsessed with the Titanic. I built models of the ship, read every book I could find on it and for a time I was the youngest member of the Titanic Historical Society. I vividly remember my poor aunt taking me to one of their meetings and being interviewed in the paper. In my defense, you can see why I would find the subject fascinating: I was five when the wreck was discovered and the guy who found it was based out of Woods Hole on Cape Cod. So at the time it seemed perfectly logical that I would someday be able to follow in his footsteps. Not to mention, searching for lost ships is basically treasure hunting. What five year-old doesn't want to go on a treasure hunt? Eventually, like most childhood obsessions such as my love of dinosaurs, my fascination with the Titanic has mostly faded away, though not totally. I still have more Titanic facts than I need rattling around in my head and have very strong opinions that people should not be bringing things up from the wreck site. (They call it "preserving history", I call it "grave robbing.") I guess in some ways I'll never totally stop being intrigued by it.

Now, because of the date you may be expecting me to play the theme song from the movie "Titanic." Well, I'm not going to and not just because it would be too easy. I actually have a major beef with that movie, mostly because it made the Titanic a little too cool. Like a hipster getting pissy when the band they knew about first suddenly goes mainstream, I resent that movie for making the "Titanic" so popular they made it into rides at the carnival. Also, one summer I got a temp job at a movie distribution center and it was the same year that movie came out on video, which means I spent most of my summer packing hundreds of copies of it into boxes that weighed a ton. Just like I was sick of beer after two seasons of stocking bars at Gillette Stadium, I was sick of Leonardo DiCaprio's face by the end of the summer. It is probably one of the reasons I have never sat through an entire showing of that movie. (I always jump in about an hour after it starts, once the ship hits the iceberg. I feel like I can guess what I missed and my guess is that I haven't missed much.) Instead we're going with another sailing song. Trust me, it's for the best.

Weekly Sporties

-Prior to yesterday's Red Sox home opener, Rays designated hitter/outfielder Luke Scott made sure he wasn't going to be well-received by the Boston crowd after he had some unflattering words about Fenway Park. Scott said that while the fans might enjoy coming to a historic park, it was not fun for the players who had to work there, as conditions are very cramped. This comes on the heels of comments Scott made about Sox fans last year while a member of the Orioles, when he said he didn't like how they took over other team's ballparks and thought they were a vulgar group. Now, as a defender of all things Boston you might be expecting me to stick up for the park. Well, other than saying that allowing an opposing team's fans to take over your stadium when they come to town tells me more about the Orioles and their fans than anything else, I can't really disagree with Scott. I outgrew Fenway when I was 12, so I'm not going to fight him on his contention that the park is too cramped. Also, there are members of every fan base that take things too far and that includes Red Sox Nation. But, if Red Sox fans want to take solace in anything, they just need to remember that for all his talk if the Red Sox had offered Luke Scott the most money this offseason he would be playing in Fenway every day while talking about its rich traditions and the amazing passion of Red Sox fans. In other words, he's a whore and you should never pay attention to anything a whore says.

-In a recent interview with Time magazine, new Miami Marlin's manager Ozzie Guillen expressed admiration for Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro, saying he was impressed that Castro was able to stay in power for 60 years despite everyone trying to get rid of him. As you can imagine, this did not go over well in a Miami community filled with Cuban ex-pats who had to flee their home country out of fear of Castro. Protests immediately sprung up and one anti-Castro group said they would never go another Marlins game until Guillen was fired. Ozzie flew home during an off day in Philadelphia to apologize in person, but even that was not enough to satisfy some as they protested during his press conference. The Marlins have currently suspended him for 5 games, but that also hasn't appeared to have appeased anyone. Considering the Marlins brought Guillen in specifically to appeal to the Latino community and he clearly hasn't done that, if this story continues to drag on it could very well cost Guillen his job. Now, I'm not going to pretend that I know how offensive comments like this are to someone who is Cuban, but I do think Guillen was sincere in his apology. This is not the first time Ozzie has said something stupid, but this is the first time I have ever heard him apologize for his comments. He made a mistake and he is being punished for it, but I really don't think firing him is the answer. I know this much, if he does keep his job from now he should stick to only talking about baseball.

-One guy who won't be able to talk his way out of his latest mess is former Arkansas Razorback football coach Bobby Petrino. About a week ago Petrino was in what was initially reported as a one-person motorcycle accident. Then, a couple days later it was reported that Petrino had a passenger - a 25 year-old former Arkansas volleyball player who now works in the football department. Ok, not exactly a good sign, but the school could still hide behind the idea that this incident was a matter for Petrino and his family. (Their ability to hide was made easier by the fact the Razorbacks finished 5th in the nation last year and have 15 starters returning, so it's not like the alumni were up in arms.) However, then it was revealed that the woman got her job out of a pool of 150+ more qualified candidates and received a salary above what was allotted for the position. Since Arkansas is a state school, that means taxpayers were essentially paying for Bobby Petrino's mistress. That was the last straw and on Tuesday night Petrino was fired from his job. Now, Arkansas probably brought this embarrassment on themselves by hiring Petrino as he has a checkered past devoid of loyalty, which saw him interviewing for other jobs during the first year of his contract and leaving other teams mid-season, so it is not like he is a humble figure who just screwed up this once. They say that when you wrestle with a pig you're the one who ends up dirty. Funny, you would have thought a school with a Razorback for a logo would have known that better than anyone.

-One last coaching item: Despite my public plea a couple weeks ago for it to happen, Bill Parcells came out a few days ago and said he would prefer to stay retired rather than coach the New Orleans Saints for this season while current head coach Sean Payton serves a one-year suspension for his role in a bounty scandal. Now, there are conflicting reports as to how close this ever came to actually happening, as it appears Payton was the only one in the Saints organization really excited about the possibility, with the rest of the front office preferring to promote from within to ease the transition. On the surface you can understand their logic - after all Parcells is a big personality and might want to bring in a few of his own people, which could add additional tension around a team which is already in for a long year. So, the idea of choosing from the in-house coaches sounds all well and good, except this week the Saints named assistant coach Joe Vitt as the interim head coach. Normally this would be expected, as Vitt already was the assistant Head Coach. The thing is Vitt is himself facing down a six-game suspension for his role in Bounty-gate and has to be away from the team once the preseason ends. What that means is the Saints will then have to name an interim to the interim. What happens if that guy starts out 4-2? Does Vitt still get the job? What if he is 6-0? Do you really make a coaching change at that point? Oh, yeah, this is shaping up to be a much smoother transition than if you brought in Parcells.

-Early in the week, following another sub-par effort and reportedly a verbal altercation with team owner Mark Cuban in the locker room, the Dallas Mavericks deactivated forward Lamar Odom for the rest of the season. For some reason this seems worse than releasing him, as that would allow him to sign with a team for the rest of the season (though not be on the playoff roster). Instead they just sent him away to do nothing until next training camp, thinking it would be addition by subtraction. When Odom was traded from the Lakers for just a low-first round draft pick and a trade exemption, everyone thought the Mavericks were getting a steal. Instead Odom never seemed to be all that interested in playing for Dallas and appeared to just go through the motions. Reportedly the notoriously sensitive Odom is having a rough year off the court, experiencing a death in the family and marital problems. (He's married to a Kardashian, so imagine my surprise there. Those girls are like athlete kryptonite.) You know, I'm sorry Odom is having a bad few months, but millions of people go through this kind of stuff every day and they are forced to just suck it up and deal. The Mavericks have said they will try to trade Odom in the offseason, but good luck getting anything close to a return on your investment now. Only the Lakers can manage to trade a guy for nothing in return and still make out better in the deal.

-With the Summer Olympics fast approaching, the USA men's basketball team is once again expected to take home the gold. And Dwayne Wade thinks the players should be getting a little something for the effort. On Wednesday Wade said he thought the players should be paid for their time over-seas and the amount of jerseys they sell (Ray Allen has said he agrees with Wade, but since Allen has zero chance of being on another Olympic team, we'll focus on Wade here). By Thursday Wade had backed off from this comments, but I don't know why because I don't think he's totally wrong. Being an Olympic basketball player is a lot of strain on a player's body, considering most of the members of the team will make deep playoff runs and have played a lot of games between December and June. Not to mention this is technically their offseason so they should be resting because, unlike most sports in the Olympics, a gold medal is not the biggest prize basketball players are going for. (On more than one occasion I have been thankful members of the Celtics haven't been asked to be Olympians.) Now, I don't think they should be paid just for being on the team, but Wade suggested the players should be compensated for the jerseys they sell and that seems reasonable to me. As someone who has a lot of Dream Team jerseys in my closet I know that I was influenced by the name on the back just as much as the country on the front. Those jerseys are being sold because of who the players are, so I have no problem with those players getting a little cash for that. I know a lot of Olympians from other sports are going to complain because the basketball players already make a very good living and a little extra jersey money won't even dent their bank accounts whereas it could really change the lives of other Olympic athletes, but to that I simply say this: life isn't fair. Maybe you shouldn't have spent your childhood getting really good at a sport no one cares about for three and half years at a time.

-During last Sunday's final round of The Masters, South African Louis Oosthuizen scored one of the rarest feats in golf - a Double Eagle. Also known as an Albatross, it means you shot a 2 on a Par-5 and it is much harder to pull off than a hole-in-one, as evidenced by the fact that Oosthuizen's was only the fourth in the history of the tournament. But, what was weird is that he didn't seem to care that much and casually tossed the historic ball into the crowd behind the green. Now, before the round was even over it was reported that the man who caught the ball gave it back to Augusta National. At first I couldn't understand why you would give something like that away, especially when some websites were offering $20,000 for the ball should Louis win the tournament. But, I've come around on this. First off, the people who can afford to go to the last round of The Masters don't exactly need the money. Secondly, it's not like this guy had anything to do with the Double Eagle - he just caught the ball afterwards. Had he demanded a king's ransom he would have been just like one of those guys who catches a foul ball and then holds it hostage and I hate those guys. Thirdly, this is Augusta National. Something tells me he was well-compensated for letting them have the ball, even if details of exactly what he got will probably never come out. (My guess is he'll get to be a member for a day.) So, let this serve as a reminder to all the sports fans out there: sometimes the way to make sure you get the best deal possible is to not negotiate at all.

Code Breaker

If you have ever spent any time looking for a new place to live, you probably learned pretty quickly that the majority of real estate listings are written in code. At its core selling real estate is nothing more than face-to-face marketing at its finest, so just like Pepsi needs a catch-phrase when they launch a new product, real estate agents are always looking for new buzz words to put in their listings to reel people in. These agents know that no one is going to waste their time even looking at a dump in a bad section of town, so they tell you the place is a "fixer-upper in an up-and-coming" neighborhood. An apartment is no longer a cramped studio, instead it is a "micro-condo designed to help you rid the clutter out of your life" and that house is no longer old, it now has "character and history." Technically they aren't lying to you, but it still doesn't feel like the most honest way of doing business. The problem is that the only way to learn how to break the code is by finding yourself at one of these really bad apartments which the ad made you believe was going to be the best deal ever.

Of course, this tactic of attempting to mask a bad trait by dressing it up to sound like a good one is hardly exclusive to real estate. You see it in music with the band who isn't unsigned by a major label, they are just sticking true to their indie roots. You see it in sports when a quarterback doesn't have a weak throwing arm, he manages the game situations. You even see it in the dating world, because that girl on the singles website isn't a psychotic animal right activist who thinks blowing up a science lab is perfectly acceptable, she's simply passionate about the issues which are important to her. But at the end of the day, nowhere is this practice more relentless than in the world of advertising. Cars no longer have weak engines - they are fuel-efficient and a cheap couch should not be considered flimsy but lightweight and easy to move around the house. After a while you nearly become numb to some of the dumb things ads want you to believe they think are positive attributes. But, the other day I saw an ad featuring one of these buzz/code words and it actually made me laugh out loud.

It was an ad for Ace Hardware stores and featured a man lamenting that it takes so long to find things in those huge warehouse stores like Home Depot and Lowe's. That is why he wanted everyone to go shop at Ace, as their stores are "Speedy-Sized" and would get you back to your weekend sooner. That may be the most creative description of "small and with less of a selection" that I have ever heard. First off, I regularly shopped at an Ace Hardware when working on the beach house, as for a long time it was the closest hardware store, so I have to question their "speedy" claim. I have found having to go to a second hardware store when Ace doesn't have what you are looking for is not exactly a time-saver. But even with that I can admit they are kind of in a difficult position, as they don't have the space to compete with the super stores, yet they are a big enough chain of stores they can't be considered a small, local business everyone in the community is happy to pay a little extra to support. As such they seem to fall into the hazy middle ground. Still, acting as though you aren't carry the same amount of product as though it is on purpose is amusing.

I don't want anyone to think I'm picking on marketing people. I took my fair share of marketing classes in college so I know that while it might often be said that if you don't have anything nice to say than you shouldn't say anything at all, when your business demands you say something you occasionally have to work extra hard to find that positive aspect. Still, the ads that I think carry the most weight are the ones in which the marketing teams have highlighted the product's actual assets, not desperately tried to make themselves measure up against the competition. I feel like all that does is give the other guys free advertising in your commercial. If you can't beat the other store's selection, then you should make sure you carry higher quality items and let that be the focus of your marketing campaign. Stop hiding behind buzz words and let your assets really be an asset, because that will be the thing which really brings in loyal customers who appreciate honesty. Also, before you rush out to see that "cozy" apartment, be aware that it really means you'll be living in someone's closet.