Hatching A Plan

Yesterday I talked about how annoyed I was at myself for allowing the problem with my truck's dashboard lights to linger for years when it turned out it wasn't that difficult to fix. Buoyed by the success of my Saturday undertaking I decided to continue the momentum on Sunday and attempt to fix another long-standing issue with my truck - its broken back hatch. You see, the hatch broke several years ago on the 4th of July (I remember the date because I had something in the back of the truck at the time and the problems I had getting that item out are stuck in my head). It wasn't that the lock itself was broken - there was no tension in the handle, so it felt as though it had simply disengaged from the release mechanism. Anyway, I allowed this problem to last for this long for a few reasons: 1. I could still get things in and out through the rear window, which was good enough. 2. Having a broken rear hatch was a convenient excuse if I ever found myself not wanting to help someone move. 3. The rear hatch lock on the last truck I had also broke (apparently this is a thing with Fords) and trying to fix it was a massive annoyance from the very start. When I added all those factors together I decided that as long as there was no pressing need to be able to get the hatch open I saw no reason to spend any time working on it. But, while surfing YouTube to see how to take apart the dashboard I found a few videos about taking apart the back door and it didn't look nearly as hard on the Mountaineer as it was on the Explorer and since my Sunday was free I thought it couldn't hurt to at least give it a try.

The first thing I had to do was take off the skin on the door, which is where I ran into problems when this happened on the Explorer. You see, that skin actually tucked under sections of the door and in trying to gently pull it off I cracked in a couple places. I was able to mostly patch it up but I'm the kind of guy whose eyes immediately go to stuff like that, so the crack bothered me for the rest of the time I owned that car. Honestly, the thought of that happening again was one of the biggest mental hurdle to me even starting this particular project. But, as a wise man once said it is often the first step on the journey which is the hardest so I folded down my seats to get into the rear section of my truck and started to slowly crowbar my way around the edges, wincing every time I hear what I thought was plastic cracking. I had visions of wandering around Goldie's (the local junkyard) hunting for a replacement, but as it turned out once I got the piece around the window loose the rest of it just lifted away without incident. My biggest problem then was the fact that I barely fit in this part of the truck and now I had to figure out where I was going to put this large hunk of plastic so that it was out of my way and not going to snap later. Rather conveniently the hole for the window fit around the driver's seat and that got it mostly out of my way.

Under that was a layer of plastic wrap stuck to the door (don't ask me why), but that came off rather easily. Of course, all this did was leave me facing the back of the door with a few open sections for me to try and find an angle to diagnose my problem. I managed to catch a glimpse of the back of the lever, which is when I discovered that unlike the video on YouTube in which the problem was simply that a nut had come off a bolt, in this version the bolt to the lock wasn't directly connected to the handle, but next to it and as I suspected, the connector which is supposed to hold the two pieces together was nowhere to be found. The only good part about this issue is that when something breaks off inside of a door it really has nowhere to go and I was quickly able to find the broken piece of plastic. Now, yesterday I praised the Ford company for sparing no expense when it came to the number of screws holding my Mountaineer's dashboard together. Today I feel the need to point out that money had to come from somewhere and apparently it was from the rear lock department, because the connector to this rather important piece (being able to store lots of stuff in the back out of the weather is what makes an SUV an SUV after all) was made out of rather flimsy plastic. Admittedly, it was a rather awkward looking thing - picture a short plastic stump with a clamp on the end - which would have been a really annoying thing to fashion out of metal (which I was about to learn). Still, if the option was this or coming up with a better design for the locking mechanism I think they should have sent the engineers back to the drawing board.

I tried to bypass this connector by shoving the bolt directly through the hole in the handle, but there was no way I could make the angle work. I also figured that lying on my stomach and trying to do this with very little light wasn't helping, so it finally dawned on me to pull on the locking rods and make sure the door even opened in the first place. Fortunately they hadn't rusted too badly from lack of use and for the first time in several years the back hatch of my truck was open to the outside world. But while this made me quite happy for a moment, it didn't solve my problem. In fact, all it really did was show me things from a new angle - one in which my issues hadn't changed much from what they had been before. My first thought was that I could just reattach the broken plastic connector because it didn't actually look damaged, just that it had come off. But whether it was structurally screwed or never that strong to begin with, every time I pulled on the handle the connector popped right out again. If I was going to fix this I was going to have to rig up some kind of solution out of something a little more sturdy. Fortunately I was attempting this repair at my parent's house, where 3 generations of tools and parts have collected. Sure, none of them are exactly what I was looking for, but considering my skill level the proper part would have been wasted on me anyway. Besides, having the right part makes things easy and since when are home repairs supposed to be easy?

My father was the one who eventually came up with the very bright idea of just using the eye from a hook-and-eye. It wasn't going to be what you would call a tight fit, but at least it would put up more of a fight since it was metal instead of plastic. The next issue was finding a bolt that fit because, again, Ford doesn't want you messing with their parts since they would much rather you pay one of their technicians to fix your issues so they use awkward sizes. Well, joke is on them because I my dad literally has drawers filled with oddly-sized nuts and bolt, most of them older than me. It took a while but we finally found a couple of clips to hold this contraption together and while my hand wasn't given much room to work with I was eventually able to get the nut turned. It cost me a fair amount of skin on my knuckles, but so far it appears to be working. I will confess that it does not sound smooth, as there is a less-than-comforting thumping noise when you pull on the handle, and that even with the latch working I will not be volunteering to help everyone move all at once, because the hatch is pretty much only to be used in emergency situations (since I estimate 30 pulls before it breaks again, I will be extra picky about which situations warrant it). But that is not the point. The point is that for the first time in years the door is working and I could open if it I wanted to. All in all I have to say it was a very successful weekend of crossing things off my to-do list. Hopefully now that they are finally done I'll be able to keep these items from popping back up on that list for a long time.

Paradise By The Dashboard Light

For as long as I had owned my Mountaineer I believed there to be one major designed flaw. You see, when I turned on the headlights the gauges on my dashboard telling my speed and RPMs were very bright, but the four dials which are off to the side were hard to read. The two closer to the center, letting me know water temperature and oil pressure, were a little easier to see but the two in the corners, indicating how much gas was in the tank and battery life, were almost impossible to see at night. The fact that the two center dials were so bright yet it was harder to read the other ones the further away from the center of the dashboard they got lead me to assume this meant there were just two bulbs behind the dashboard in an effort to save a little money. (Yes, kids, that is how old my car is - there are light bulbs in the dashboard.) Not only did I think this was an extremely cheap move by Ford, but it also seemed like poor planning because if you were ranking the dials in terms of their importance to the driver I think gas would go first and RPMs would be at the bottom of the draft. However, this is hardly the first time I have run into a company which did something which annoyed me in the name of production costs and it wasn't the kind of issue which was a deal-breaker. Plus, I could turn on the overhead light if I really needed to see how much gas I had left, so it was more an inconvenience than anything else and my car history has made me very willing to deal with inconveniences.

The only reason I am even talking about this is that a couple weeks ago the bulb behind my RPM needle burnt out. Now half the dashboard was out and at night I was really close to driving in the dark. While RPMs aren't something I usually worry about while driving, I did have some concerns that the remaining bulb was going to go at any second. I figured I had better get in there and change the bulbs before I was driving totally blind. Car light bulbs have always been one of those things which confuse me, because they are so inexpensive to buy and yet if you ask a mechanic to install them for you it's never a cheap job. That's why I usually try to do this kind of thing on my own, but opening up my dashboard is a hell of a lot more complicated than changing a taillight. Not quite sure how big of an undertaking this would be I turned to the site which is becoming my go-to place for how-to problems: YouTube. Now, I give YouTube a lot of crap based on the terrible people in comment section, but if you are looking for a step-by-step video to teach you how to do a project, it may be the best source on the internet. As I expected there was a video showing me exactly how to open up my dashboard to get to the bulbs and while it was not going to be an quick project, it wouldn't be terribly complicated either. What really caught by eye was the fact that in the video there were four light bulbs in the dashboard, not two.

Suddenly excited at the thought of being able to see every dial without having to turn on the dome light but trying not to get too far ahead of myself I started to take my dashboard apart. The guy who did the video made something very clear in his videos - Ford does not want you in this part of the car because you can mess with odometer, so they made it deliberately complicated. Going off the theory that cheaters are also usually lazy, Ford made it like a jigsaw puzzle and to get the section of the dashboard with the gauges out I would first have to remove three other panels first. The first section was the kickplate underneath the steering wheel. It looked like it was only held on by two screws, but I should have known better because it turned out there were two more screws hidden behind the hood release lever and you needed to be quite flexible to see where the screws were (told you, complicated). When I finally got that plate off I found a second, metal kickplate under the first one. Fortunately I was able to just loosen that one to get the third piece off and after a couple more screws I though I was finally at the point where I could get at the bulbs. Of course that wasn't the case, I was just one step closer and after working with the same sized screw for the entire time, Ford decided to throw a curveball at me and use the smallest screws I have ever seen. The only good news is that I was able to find a tool that would take them off and after an hour of twisting and turning I was finally looking at the inside of my dashboard.

The first thing I noticed is that there weren't two light bulbs like I had long suspected. In fact, there weren't even four like they had shown in the video - there were six. Also, it wasn't just that the one behind the RPM meter was out - four of them had burnt out (obviously a few of them had been out for years) and the other two weren't looking much better. Now, according to the video I had watched the only thing more important than not dropping any screws (because it is not like my fingers are nimble enough to get into tight spots after them) was replacing all the bulbs when you had the chance, because the last thing you wanted was install a new bulb, put the dashboard back together and have one of the bulbs you didn't replace burn out in a couple of weeks. So, I ran to the local auto-parts store and bought six new bulbs and snapped them all into place without incident. I then began the slow and methodical process of screwing all these panels back together and only came up one screw short, which I actually think was missing from another part and I used it there instead. All in all the project took me a little under two hours and I would say the act of actually replacing the light bulbs took 2 minutes of that total. I can now see why mechanics charge so much to do this and why many people are only too happy to pay them for it.

The biggest miscalculation I made was that I finished in the middle of a bright afternoon. While it certainly looked like everything was working as it should I couldn't really test it until the sun went down, which wasn't going to be for a couple of hours. The anticipation was killing me but I have to say turning on the lights and seeing the entire dashboard light up for the first time ever (for me anyway), it was certainly worth the effort. It's amazing how easily people can get used to something not working. But now that I know this is how it should have been for all these years I feel like kind of an idiot for letting it goes this long. I mean, of course Ford would have placed a light behind the gas gauge - any company which has a metal kickplate under a plastic one is not suddenly going to start getting cheap when it came to $1 light bulbs. If anything I owe them an apology because I had been cursing their designers for the last couple of years when I should have been disparaging the name of whichever company they outsourced their light bulbs to. This feeling is very reminiscent of a couple of years ago when I accidentally discovered I had been driving around a truck that had been equipped with a remote starter on it for three years. Still, I guess finding out I'm an idiot now is better than finding out I was an idiot after getting rid of the truck. Plus I didn't have to pay anyone for the privilege because the only thing worse than being wrong is finding out just how wrong you were by a stranger handing you a large bill.

All Shook Up

I admit that people in Boston were a little too wrapped up in our own business last week to pay much attention to the news that letters containing the substance ricin had been sent to the offices of President Obama, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi and a local Mississippi judge. Ricin is a very powerful poison and inhaling it can be fatal, so coming on the heels of the Marathon bombing a lot of people were concerned this signaled a second wave of attacks were coming, but relieved at least this one had been detected before anyone got hurt. Fortunately the letters had also been signed and featured a local postmark, so it was only a matter of time before the FBI was able to track down and apprehend the suspect. It was a scary situation but the entire thing seemed like it had been wrapped up very quickly and was unrelated to the terror in Boston, which is another reason the story didn't get too much traction. All that was left to do was find out why this man sent the letters, if there were any more on the way and why he would be so stupid as to actually sign these mailings with his own name. But as it turned out, getting answers only lead to a new round of questions.

It only took a couple day for the media to tear the first suspect's life apart, though I admit there was a lot to work with. The first man arrested was Christopher Curtis, an Elvis Presley impersonator and aspiring author (he wrote a book about black-market organ sales) whose wife once called the police claiming Curtis had gone off the deep end and believed the government was spying on him with drones. However, being a conspiracy theorist isn't actually a crime and further investigations have revealed the entire thing has been some kind of giant frame-job, done by a disgruntled former business part of Curtis's brother named J. Everett Dutschke. Apparently, Dutschke was recently accused of child molestation and thought Curtis was the one who convinced people to come forward. I have to say, if you are trying to discredit a witness, framing him for trying to mail poison to the President is a pretty solid way to do so. Now Dutschke can add some serious federal charges to his other legal worries and Curtis can go back to singing like Elvis and shopping his book. I guess the lesson in this is that no matter how crazy a person may appear at first glance we should not judge them until we know there ins't someone even more crazy behind them.

Weekly Sporties

-One of the most annoying things in sports is when something which everyone knows is going to happen takes forever to be official. For example, as soon as cornerback Darrelle Revis started angling for a new contract just a couple of years after a long holdout to get a new deal everyone knew his days with the Jets were number because the team was in no hurry to go through that again. Well, after about a month of talking about unloading him it finally happened this week when Revis was shipped from New York to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers where, as expected, he signed a new six-year, $96 million deal which would make him the highest-paid secondary player in the history of the NFL. Even though Revis is one of the best players at his position, all of this was pretty standard for how the NFL offseason works. The thing which was interesting about the his contract is that none of that money is guaranteed. That is unheard of in this day and age. As everyone knows NFL contracts are not iron-clad and the player can be cut at any moment, so getting as much money guaranteed is the only insurance a player can get (and is the only number people pay attention to when deals are announced). On top of all this Darrelle is coming off a second serious leg injury and people wonder just how healthy he really is. The fact that Revis was willing to sign a deal without guaranteed money (though you could make the case this first year is guaranteed because it is not like Tampa Bay will cut him this year) either speaks to his hubris or a grander plan to eventually make it to free agency sooner rather than later. Either way, he's taking a tremendous risk because there is no way he sees anything close to that $96 million. Normally I would be enthusiastic about a player signing a deal which means if he wants money he has to earn it on the field, but when there are so many long-term health ramifications with football I really think players need to get while the getting is good. All of that being said, as a Patriots fan the main thing I am feeling is happy that Revis is out the division.

-Speaking of deals which aren't worth the paper they are written on, this week the Presidents of all the ACC schools got together and approved a grant of rights deal lasting through the 2027-2028 seasons. What this means is that for the next 14 years if any school leaves the ACC they will forced to give all their profits, including local TV and stadium revenue, to the ACC. If they stay in the league they keep that money but if they leave they essentially become a non-profit organization. If that sounds like an extreme clause, that is kind of the point. The premise behind it is the penalties for leaving a conference haven't been steep enough and if a conference wants to protect itself from having all its teams raided it was going to have to get creative. This all sounds really good in theory, right up to the part where I read that three other conferences - the Pac-12, Big Ten and Big-12 - all have similar agreements in place. I'm not sure when the Big-12 put their version of this idea in place, but it certainly hasn't helped them from getting pillage over the last couple of seasons. (Also, you'll notice there is nothing about adding teams, so these conferences obviously have no problem snatching teams from other leagues.) In addition to that little bit of hypocrisy I can't help but feel like if a team really wants to leave a conference it will still be able to find a way out of this deal. These college Presidents have to know the landscape of college athletics is continually changing and they are going to have an opportunity to make even more money in another conference before too long, so there is probably some language in the deal which lets these teams escape without mortgaging their futures. And since the current conference alignments are built on a foundation of sand, hope and toothpicks as soon as one team gets out without stiff penalties it will just open the floodgates a second time. So, I appreciate what these conferences were trying to do, I just think at this point conference realignment has become as part of the game as marching bands at halftime.

-They say it takes a big man to admit when they've made a mistake and the more public the mistake the bigger the man needs to be. Well, apparently Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert is a pretty big man, because this week he re-hired Mike Brown just two seasons after they fired him. Admittedly, this was kind of a strange deal from the start because back in 2010 Brown had just taken the Cavs on a couple of deep playoff runs but the relationship between him and LeBron James had become strained to the point it was no longer going to work. Since James was entering free agency Gilbert thought firing Brown would be the thing which got James to stick in Cleveland. It obviously didn't work and Gilbert found himself without Brown or James the following season. So, in some ways this re-hiring put Cleveland back where they should have been in 2011. However, the only reason I don't love the idea of bringing back the most successful coach in team history is that LeBron James can opt out of his contract after next season and there is already talk he wants to return to Cleveland and mend the fences in his hometown. If he didn't like Brown three seasons ago, what makes you think he will be itching to be coached by him in 2015? You have to imagine Dan Gilbert is aware of this, so in some ways it is like he is doing the decision over again and picking Brown over James. I have to say, that is not the choice I would make. I know last week I said bending over to make James happy didn't get the Cavs a title, but it got them a hell of a lot closer than they will be with Brown, Kyrie Irving and bunch of scrubs. After all, Brown coached Kobe Bryant after LeBron and didn't win a title with him either, so it is not like Mike Brown is Phil Jackson (who shot down rumors he was interested in the Cavaliers job as soon as they came up). In the NBA players matter a hell of a lot more than coaches ever will, which makes it feel like Gilbert got the ultimate re-set button in life and somehow still managed to get this one wrong. He may need to be an even bigger man in the not-too-distant future.

-The only thing worse than having an owner who treats your favorite team like a business and makes decisions based on money instead of what will help the franchise win is one who actually thinks they know a damn thing about how to run a team. I appreciate that most owners are wonderful businessmen and they wouldn't be in the position to buy this very expensive toy if they didn't know a lot about how the world works. Still, that doesn't mean they know a damn thing about sports. The latest example of this is awful Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria. When he's not tricking the city of Miami into building him an expensive new stadium and then selling off all the high-profile free agents he bought after just one year, Loria apparently fancies himself a bit of a baseball guru. The other day the Marlins were scheduled to play a double-header against the Twins. Veteran Ricky Nolasco was scheduled to pitch game one and high-level prospect Jose Fernandez was scheduled to pitch in game two. Loria thought it would be warmer for game one and didn't want to risk his young prospect throwing in cold weather and getting hurt, so he demanded the pitchers swap spots (it actually was warmer for the night game, meaning Loria sucks at weather predictions as well). Reportedly this angered several member of the Marlins, who think Loria should keep his opinions to himself. Normally I would crap on baseball players - saying they are just being too sensitive and this has more to do with the fact they don't like people messing with their regimented schedules than actual concern for Nolasco or Fernandez. The thing is that Loria has lost the benefit of the doubt on this one. I mean, just because you buy a computer it doesn't mean you suddenly know how to build one, so why would a baseball team be any different? Loria has run that franchise into the ground on multiple occasions and they literally can't give away tickets so while he would be the first person I would call if I were looking for ways to ruin my franchise, he can keep his opinions on how to run one to himself.

-The first night of the NFL Draft was on Thursday and as always it was one of the most fun days of the year as teams dealt picks and drafted players at surprising times. Still, for all the fun there was one thing which annoyed me. You see, for years the people calling the draft have had the habit of "tipping" the selection, which means they "guess" who the player was going to be before the Commissioner made it to the microphone. Of course, they could guess with such amazing accuracy because someone had already told them who had been picked. In an effort to add a little more spontaneity to the proceeding the NFL put out a mandate that the analysts were "discouraged" from revealing the picks before they happened (if you really wanted to know you could easily find out because guys who don't work for ESPN were under no such obligations). Now, for the most part the ESPN crew was good about this, but what I kept noticing was the many times when the crew knew who the pick was going to be and then had to pretend they didn't know. Look, there is a reason these guys are sportscasters, not actors. These analysts would spend two or three minutes talking about a prospect and then you could see the fear in their eyes as they realized they had guessed the pick correctly and then have to throw out a bunch more names, explaining why those players would be just as good of a fit with the team in a desperate attempt to throw everyone off the scent, but it was too late. It would have been funny to watch if it wasn't quite so sad. Once again, ESPN got it all wrong - it's not that we don't want guys like Adam Schefter to tell us the picks on Twitter because if you follow Schefter on Twitter that is what you expect him to do, so having the picks revealed to us early is our choice. We also don't mind if the obvious choice is talked about. But what your average viewer doesn't want is Chris Berman smugly revealing the pick as the Commissioner is walking to the mike like he knows anything about football. Not that it matters anyway because everything the NFL touches is rating gold. So, rather than fix something which isn't broken, how about getting back to that whole, "head injuries" issue because that one is a long way from being solved?

-Last week I talked about how NASCAR had come down on both cars in the Penske racing team for having non-conforming pieces on their cars. Well, at the time I forgot to mention just how fickle the NASCAR inspectors can be. I mean, these guys leave almost no margin for error. This week no one got a harsher reminder of that than Matt Kenseth, who won last weekend's race but then failed the post-race inspection and got crushed in penalties. The problem was a connecting brace in his engine which was about 3 grams too light. Actually it was less than 3 grams - approximately the weight of a dime. And for that Kenseth's team lost all the points it got for the race, he was stripped of the pole award (showing how much it bothered him Kenseth went out and won the pole for this week), his crew chief was suspended for six races and team owner Joe Gibbs got his ownership license suspended, which means he isn't allowed to gain any owner point for the next six races either. Obviously, Kenseth is saying this was a mistake and unfortunate but the punishment doesn't fit the crime. As you may expect, I agree with him because all that seems excessive to me. I understand that a lighter car is a faster car, but I'm not totally sure lightening your car by 3 grams makes that much of a difference, especially when drivers' weights can vary wildly (you'd be better off having them simply have a smaller breakfast that morning). All of these penalties for minor infractions just make me wonder if NASCAR has painted itself into a corner. The unofficial motto for this sport is "if you an't cheating, you ain't trying", so guys are always trying to get away with modifications which push the term 'legal' to the very limit. At some point someone is gong to blatantly break the rules by a hell of a lot more than what Kenseth's team did, so what is going to happen to them? It is not like NASCAR has the authority to put people in jail. Though I can say this, if someone ever does end up in jail for cheating I would lie about what put you there, because I'm pretty sure "being off a dime" has an entirely different meaning behind bars.

-One of the easiest jobs in sports is working in the marketing department for a pro sports team. Yes, the hours can be weird and if the team is not performing well on the field you probably have to do more work than you first expect. However, at that level the leagues pretty much sell themselves so most of your work is done for you. You just need to wrangle a player for appearances and then stay the hell out of the way. If you really want to see marketing majors working hard you need to look to the minor leagues, where promotions are vital to a team's success and the smaller the team the more outrageous the stunt has to be. Fledgling teams are always desperate for attention and I can't imagine a more desperate situation than trying to sell minor-league hockey in Arizona, where most residents barely know there is a pro team. This week the Arizona Sundogs of the CHL were looking to increase season ticket sales and came up with a bizarre way to bring attention to this fact. The team's owner, GM, captain and director of marketing raised themselves up in a scissor lift, taking sleeping bags, a large umbrella to ward off the Arizona sun and a pulley system to get food up and send waste down, saying they would not come out of the lift until the team sold 300 season tickets. They went up last Sunday at noon, vowing to stay up for as long as it took but probably expecting to be down in a few hours. They finally reached their goal and were mercifully released late Friday afternoon. I'm just wondering how many times during those long five days they conspired to kill whoever came up with this particular idea? The sad part is the fact the promotion was such a failure for so long ended up getting them more media attention than the original stunt ever could, so it is probably just a matter of time before they try something like this again. Next time I just hope they stage their stunt at a place which doesn't require anyone to go to the bathroom in a bucket.

More Movie Reviews

Once again I have seen enough movies on my cable movie channels that it is time to offer up some more reviews. Just as a reminder, these reviews shouldn't be taken as endorsements or criticisms because I would never presume to know what kind of movie you would enjoy. That is why these reviews very rarely mention the quality of the movie and tend to focus on random things which caught my eye while watching them. The goods news is that if something I said intrigues you, these movies are old enough that by now they are either on your cable movie channels On-Demand feature, NetFlix or available for rent on the cheap somewhere else. If you see any of these and then hate it, at least you didn't have to pay $12 to be disappointed. Let's get to it...

-Man On A Ledge At its core this is a heist movie with a far too-complicated scheme and so many twist and turns that it felt as though they tried to be too clever in the writers' room. However, it is entirely possible that I wasn't following everything that was going on because I couldn't get passed the fact that most of the movie consisted of a guy standing on a ledge, hundreds of feet in the air. As a man who is uncomfortable with heights, I kept wondering how much shooting this movie must have sucked. I'm sure everyone was buckled and strapped in to numerous safety devices, but those things can fail. Plus, that was probably just the talent - my guess is the crew wasn't nearly as secure. Do you think there was one sound guy who showed on the first day and completely freaked out? He thought the title was meant to be obscure or ironic, never thinking he had just signed on to be an amateur trapeze artist for the next month of his life. I'll say this much, if he quit that morning I certainly wouldn't have blamed him. Not to mention, sound is entirely over-rated. It certainly didn't hurt "The Artist" (though the lack of it didn't help that movie either).

-Snow White And The Huntsman If you asked me to explain why I watched this movie I would not be able to give you a legitimate answer other than the fact that I got sucked in waiting to see who played the various dwarfs and then figured I had wasted this much of my life, what's another 30 minutes? Anyway, after watching this I am trying to figure out how Kristen Stewart still gets work, because she seriously has the same facial expression (like she just smelled a fart) no matter what emotion she is trying to convey. Towards the end there is supposed to be a big battle and Snow White gives the rousing pre-war speech (by the way, if you couldn't tell from the trailer this is nothing like the Disney version). Anyway, the fact that Stewart delivers the speech looking and sounding like she would rather be anywhere else in the world really killed it for me. I bet in real life her army would have been so uninspired they would have been slaughtered. Someone needs to remind Stewart that she is a highly-paid actress, she could at least act like she is awake when the camera is rolling.

-5 Year Engagement This is a perfectly cute little movie, starring two people I honestly think I would like to hang out with in real life (Jason Segel and Emily Blunt). The story follows their characters as they plan to get married, but jobs and life keep getting in the way as they grow to want different things. Watching this I couldn't help but remember, just like in real life, two people who are really good people don't always make a really good couple. Seriously, in the course of watching this movie I must have muttered "They should just break up" half a dozen times to no one in particular. And had the movie gone in that direction it probably would have made for a far more interesting conclusion. Instead they went with the typical, overly-schlocky ending, which felt more annoying than usual. Not every couple has to stay together forever and live happily ever after. I know people don't usually go to the movies to be reminded of stuff like that but when we already have dozens of movies with predictable endings one out of ten taking a realistic turn would have been strangely refreshing.

-Wrath Of The Titans At first blush, this doesn't seem like the type of movie which is going to be serving up valuable life lessons, but it does. You see, a few years ago I went into the first remake of "Clash of the Titans" with low-to-no hopes of it being any good. (After all, the original was horrendous.) Therefore, when it wasn't awful I was pleasantly surprised and on the verge of saying I enjoyed the experience. The problem is that since that movie did better than expected Hollywood ordered a sequel almost immediately and then decided not to mess with the formula. The result is a movie that is very similar to the first one and while that sounds like a good formula on the surface, it doesn't work. Just because I enjoyed something the first time around that doesn't mean I suddenly want to have the exact same experience a couple years later. It was too special-effects heavy and came up short under the burden of slightly-raised expectations. But at least I had another example of a truth I was already pretty familiar with - sometimes the smarter course of action is to quit while you're ahead.

-Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World... First off, this was by far the best movie of this bunch, even though the trailer lied. A few months ago I talked about the movie, "Jeff, Who Lives At Home" and how a movie where comedians try to be serious are either great or awful with nothing in between. Well, even though this movie is filled with comedians playing almost every role there are only a few jokes throughout the whole thing (you see them all in the trailer and you need to know this is not the light-hearted comedy romp you are expecting), this movie was great. I reminded me a lot of "Stranger Than Fiction" and I really think these are the kinds of roles Steve Carell should be doing all the time. Also, the soundtrack was great, which made me wonder why it is always movies like this which have the best soundtrack. You would think the big-budget blockbusters could afford any music rights they wanted, so why is it always these less-hyped movies which have the best music? Is it simply because they can't afford a big orchestra to record original music or do you think the writer just has had more time to think it through? Either way it should serve as a lesson for the rest of these filmmakers because the right song as the right moment can really take a movie from good to great in a hurry.

Come Out Of The Shadows

The other night I was flipping around the movie channels when I cam across the film, "Dark Shadows." For those of you who may not have caught it (which I suspect is most of you), the movie stars Johnny Depp as a vampire unearthed after 200 years in 1970s Maine. It was directed by Tim Burton, because at this point I think Depp only does movies by Burton or in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchises (Seriously, when was the last time he was in a movie playing a normal guy? When I heard he was in the "Lone Ranger" movie I thought it would be closer to an average person, but then I discovered he was playing Tonto.) Anyway, I remember when the movie came out last year and I was curious to see if it had been a success or not. (Short answer: kind of. It made money, but not as much as a movie directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp should be making. Hopefully this little stumble will convince them to take a few movies away from one another.) However, it was while I was on the movie's Wikipedia page that I made the more interesting discovery - the movie had actually been based on a TV show in the 70s which had been become somewhat of a cult classic. I had never heard of it before, but I guess not being popular to a lot of people is the first step in being a cult classic. The only good part of this new knowledge is that unlike his takes on "Alice in Wonderland" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" since I was unfamiliar with the subject how poor a job Burton did in honoring the original didn't matter since I didn't have any memories for him to wreck.

I was amazed to learn that the original "Dark Shadows" had been on for five season, which shows you just how much the TV game has changed. I don't care how loyal a following a show might have, these days you never hear of any show with a 'cult' following making it more than two seasons. This is terribly ironic to me considering there are more places for those shows to air these days. Back then I could see cancelling a show which wasn't bringing in enormous ratings because there was far less competition. Network executives didn't have to worry about staying in the top-10 since there were only 5 channels to begin with (they could show a test pattern and it would be in the top-10). Thus, you needed to have millions of people watching for a show to be considered a hit, not the hundreds of thousands which make up a healthy audience today. You would think a lowly network would be desperate for any kind of ratings and a couple million loyal viewers would be enough to save a show from the scrap heap, but not anymore. These days if people want to see their favorite cancelled shows have a second life they either have to start a letter-writing campaign to the network or agree to fund it themselves through a Kickstarter campaign and even then there are no guarantees the movie will ever get made.

Still, the fact this movie even got made in the first place made me wonder if more studios will investigate the "Dark Shadows" route going forward. You see, the way I figure it there are millions of people out there who watched this show growing up not because they loved it but because there was nothing else on. Whatever their motivation, thanks to having fewer options the shows from back then have much more name recognition. [Sidebar: To all the people who contend that the early days of television were so much better than the crap we have on now, I would contend the bulk of those shows were just as awful, maybe even worse than what is getting made today. The problem is today there is just a lot more of it. I'm not saying the stuff on TV today isn't awful and, in some cases, actually making people stupider for having watched it. I'm just saying "Petticoat Junction" wasn't exactly the Shakespeare hour either.] Those people are bound to be curious to see what kind of updates have been done to the story with increased special effects, not to mention a couple new generations of hipsters who are going to be fans of this show just because they were told it was a cult classic back in the day, which means it is like a double-secret cult classic for their generation. (Hipsters love double-secret cult classics.)

Of course, there is one major risk involved in all this and that is people have already rejected this idea once. Like I said, it actually took work to be cancelled in the early days of television and the meager returns on this movie proved that while there are sure to be some people who long for a trip back in time to their childhood there are going to be just as many people who remember thinking this show was dumb the first time around. But, I never said this idea of bringing it to the big screen had to be limited to mildly-popular shows. You could always do hit shows from the early days of television and decrease the odds of people having bad memories of the characters. I mean, Hollywood is currently making movies of shows which were cancelled within the last couple of years and that is only because they already exhausted every slightly-popular show from the 80s, so they are clearly out of good ideas. Even better is that for every person who knows your movie is based on a show, there are two generations (including mine), who will think it was a totally original idea. So I suggest these movie executives stop pouring over yet another "it's 'Die Hard' in the White House" script and start going through the archives of ratings books from the early-60s to locate their new project. But if they do actually find an old show to turn into a movie, do me one favor - don't let Tim Burton direct. I think we've had enough of him ruining stuff we used to have good memories of.

Pronunciation Puzzlement

While working as a search engine optimizer mostly means it is my job to spell things out rather than use abbreviations, I admit that I can see their usefulness. Sometimes space is tight and the room to properly spell out a word just doesn't exist. However, if anything those occasional limitations should make us want to celebrate those times when we can take as much space as we need to send a clear message and unfortunately there just aren't enough people willing to do that anymore. I make no secret of the fact that I have no patience for people who text using symbols and abbreviations. In these days of spell-check and auto-complete there is no reason you should be sending a message which requires decoding. Not only does typing 'gr8' instead of 'great' make you look like an idiot, it doesn't actually save all that much space. I could almost excuse it in people who were around at the start of texting because when you have to hit a button four times just to get a certain letter I can understand why you would want to speed things up (I said almost). However, the fact that teenagers today probably have no recollection of a time before full-keyboard cell phones and they still text like that drives me crazy.

The good news is that since I don't actually communicate with people who talk like that (go ahead, send me a text where the words are made up of symbols and see what kind of response you get), I would be alright leaving this annoying phenomenon out of sight and out of mind. Also, I'm trying to be more sympathetic because I'm sure when I was a teenager I was just as annoying to the people around me, but they didn't notice it as much since things like YouTube weren't so common and they thought it was just me, not the entire age group. The problem is some people have started to talk with these abbreviations in their everyday lives and since I can't walk around with earplugs in they are starting to force it on me. Unless every teenager in America is involved in some kind of amazingly complex piece of performance art designed to create the most annoying humans on the planet (and given the look of these two kids I'm going to say they don't have the brain power to stay in character that long), I can only come to the conclusion that they legitimately think it is acceptable to speak like this. Boy are they going to feel like idiots when people watch videos of themselves in the future (and even worse, people tape everything these days).

The other day I was in line at the bank and behind me were two kids who had just gotten out of high school for the day. They were real 'bros' - polo shirts with the collar intentionally popped (this fad died in the 80s and it really should have stayed that way) and a sideways, flat-brimmed cap covering up a mass of hair which probably took them forever to look like they hadn't tried at all. And they were talking loudly about needed to get back to school for "lax practice." Not lacrosse, "lax". How silly does that sound? I was quite tempted to turn around and put a nice curve into this kid's hat, just to ruin his day. As I said before I can understand why people may feel the need to write it that way on something like a traffic sign or a t-shirt. It's like greeting cards with X-mas instead of Christmas. However, people reading X-mas still say "Christmas." But, just like there is no reason to shorten a message written online because there is an infinite amount of space on the internet, there is no limit on the amount of noises you can make on any given day (and if it were would you really waste any time talking about lacrosse? They say it's the fastest growing sport in America, but do you know anyone who watches it after the age of 22?), so go ahead an say that extra syllable.

I admit this entire post has read like I am one step away from standing on my porch yelling at the neighbors to stay off my lawn or I'm keeping the next baseball that comes over the fence. I'm legitimately fine with it, because since I was never cool it is not like I suddenly became un-cool. The bigger issue is more from a hypocritical standpoint, because I have been guilty of shortening words occasionally. (I mean, who hasn't described a recipe you pulled off for the first time as 'delish'?) The difference is that on the rare occasions it happens I'm almost always doing it as a joke and for comedic effect, not because I actually believe people should talk that way. The only good news is that these fads have a way of eventually passing. I can only hope that just as texting have currently replaced phone calls as the preferred mode of communication, eventually we will loop around and technology will advance to the point where things like Skype become so easy and fast that it becomes the best way to communicate and people will start having all their conversations face-to-face. Hopefully when that happens someone close to these kids will have the heart to tell them to their faces just how silly they sound when they say 'lax.'

Sharing Is Caring

I am pretty amazed how quickly online streaming of TV shows has taken over the world. I knew it was coming and that as download speeds got faster it would become more popular, but I thought it would take a lot longer for it to become the preferred way for people to watch old episodes of TV shows. (I'm not a huge fan, only because I still don't know how to get it on my regular TV. I have a big TV for a reason and refuse to downsize to a tablet.) In that regard, the online movie streaming service NetFlix should be applauded for being so ahead of its time. Not only were they smart to get the rights to so many cancelled but still popular shows, they recently started producing original material in an effort to bring in more viewers without having to pay a studio any fees. Honestly, NetFlix should be looked at as a beacon to the forward-thinking which is needed to succeed in the ever-changing world that is today's entertainment industry but instead they are often mocked for the very public blunders they make. First, they tried to split their online and mailing division into separate companies, which didn't work and was quickly cancelled after public backlash. Then today they said they would be offering a new service which allows you to pay more for the right to share your password with people... which you can do anyway. I swear, sometimes it's like they are successful in spite of themselves.

You see, it is all about customers sharing passwords. Currently NetFlix only allows an account to stream two shows at the same time. But what they notice is that often a single account would be streaming from two vastly different locations. (What a fun way to also let everyone know they are monitoring your streaming habits. Thanks for admitting that Big Brother is always watching, Netflix.) Anyway, the new 'family' service allows you to spend $4 more and stream as many as four shows at once, but what Netflix is really doing is trying to curtail the number of people who tell their friends they can use their Netflix account to watch a random episode of "The Wire". [Sidebar: I wonder about the people sharing their passwords with all their friends. It's a bit of a leap of faith in my eyes, especially now that I know NetFlix is watching what I stream. They make recommendations based on what you've previously viewed, so you'd better hope your friends aren't watching a bunch of weird stuff through your account. This could just be my irrational paranoia, since I am the kind of person who never even shared locker combinations with my friends in high school. Then again, it could just be that my high school friends were idiots and all their lockers were near mine.] Either way, Netflix needs to realize they are seeking honesty from people who refuse to meager $8 a month for their service. I don't have high hopes for this program.

However, this does go back to the always-fascinating issue of just who owns what when it comes to digital media. I'm just not sure how this works when it comes to streaming. I mean, if I buy a CD in my opinion I have every right to make a copy and give it to my friends. But, I didn't really buy the movie I watched through Netflix - I can't even save it to my hard drive and watch it later. So, the question becomes where does the line of ownership fall? While not advisable, any person who has an online account is allowed to do whatever they want with their private passwords. If I have a NetFlix account and want to let my friend watch a movie using it that is my right. I can understand why NetFlix would get upset if I started selling access to my account to people on the internet because then I am charging for a service without paying the rights fees. However, giving a personal friend free access feels like it should be within my rights. After all, if I had the physical copy of the movie mailed to me (which I am not sure NetFlix even does anymore) I can let a friend of mine borrow that copy, who can then lend it to their friend and as long as someone eventually drops it back in the mail there is no harm no foul.

I don't think password sharing is any more or less rampant than passing around DVDs is (was?), so I think the reason Netflix is suddenly so pissed is that now they have numbers to back up just how widespread the sharing network is and they see how many people like their service, but not enough to pay for it. Their biggest problem may be that there really isn't anything they can do to stop password sharing. They can't exactly start limiting accounts to specific areas because too many people move around too much for that to work. All you are going to do then is make a lot of people mad when their NetFlix account suddenly stops working when they are on a business trip. This may be one of those situations where a company just has to live with the consequences of working in an industry where the lines of ownership are very blurry. Besides, they should be happy just to be still in business because even though the ability to stream content is very popular at the moment it is not like the industry is idiot-proof (just ask Hulu+ how easy it is to screw up). Seriously, NetFlix should count their lucky stars they survived the previous public gaffs and that people have hung in with them even though I have never heard anyone who has a NetFlix account sound happy about it. If they need any more motivation to shut up and let customers share passwords if they want they should remember it could always be worse - they could be BlockBuster Online.

Book Your Seats

As I briefly mentioned on Friday, Thursday night I had a chance to go see "Book of Mormon" in Boston. Looking back now I realize how lucky we were to get the show in, as the show ended just a couple hours before the city went into a lockdown mode. I had been looking forward to seeing this show pretty much since the day I first heard about it a couple years ago (but apparently not enough to motivate myself to go see it while it was still in New York). I'm a big fan of "South Park" and figured since "Book of Mormon" was written by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who created that show (not to mention "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut" which was pretty much a musical itself), I knew it was going to be good. It did win the 2011 Tony Award for Best Musical, if that sort of thing matters to you. (I was thinking about it and while I am not usually swayed by shows and movies which have won awards, the Tony's may sway me the least of all. I couldn't even name 5 musicals which have won.) Anyway, "Book of Mormon" tells the story of two young missionaries who are sent to Uganda to preach their faith to the natives and all the shenanigans that happen along the way, all the while poking fun of not only the Mormon faith but all organized religion.

I was slightly hesitant about seeing the show totally cold, because this was the first time I had ever gone to a musical with people who had also never seen it before and without hearing a single song from the album. (Technically I saw "Little Mermaid" in Denver when it was still being work-shopped before opening on Broadway, but it is not like the music was different from the Disney movie.) Normally you see a live show based on recommendations from other people, who then give you a heads up as to which songs are the catchiest, but these were all fresh songs to my ears. When I first walked out of the theater that night I felt as though none of the songs had really been strong enough to be memorable. Well, as I involuntarily began singing a few in the shower the next morning I realized they had been catchy enough to worm their way into my head. Also, I walked away very impressed with not only how intricate the set pieces were, but how easily they were changed back and forth. This may not be the original Broadway cast, but the people working behind the scenes are clearly the top of their profession. I was afraid the show wouldn't be able to live up to my expectations but I must admit it was just as great as I hoped it would be.

I will offer one thing in terms of a warning: I know you are probably saying to yourself that because "South Park" is known for saying outrageous things you are expecting the show to push a few boundaries, especially for a place as stuffy as the theater. (Proving just how out of my element this realm is, most of the ads in the program were for jewelry and safaris). Well, whatever your expectations are for swearing, double them and then add a little more and you'll pretty much go in with an appropriate level of expectations. I don't know if Stone and Parker were trying to shock or just happy to be working without anyone from standards and practices standing over their shoulder, but they really let it fly. I thought it was pretty bad at the time, but it turns out I didn't even get it all thanks to the Boston Opera House's shoddy acoustics. If you are easily offended whatever you do, don't read the lyrics. If nothing else this show has given me a new appreciation for the people who censor "South Park" because if this musical is what results when Parker and Stone are left to their own devices the person in charge of cleaning up the script for the network must have one hell of a tough job.

On top of that you need to get over the whole "making fun of another person's religion" aspect of the night, but since the Mormons weren't outside protesting I assume they aren't that ticked off. (The night I went they were actually outside handing out literature.) Knowing the Mormons appear cool with it is why I feel comfortable saying I can't recommend this show enough. If someone offers you tickets, I highly suggest you take them up on it. Now, I'm not going to lie to you, the tickets are a little hard to come by (I think ours were ordered back in October), you may have to pay above face value to get them and the Opera House is not the best place in the world to see a show (as I mentioned the acoustics were not the greatest. When the entire cast is singing the volume can be a bit much and hearing the actual lyrics can get a little muddled). But, it beats not seeing the show. Plus, this isn't like missing a movie when it is still in the theaters and renting it for later. If you don't see "The Book of Mormon" while it is still in town there is no telling when it may come back around. I had already waited this long and now that I know how good it really is, I certainly wouldn't want to have to wait even longer.

Giving Without Gaining

One of the first Bible parables I learned in my Catholic grade school was about the rich man and old woman. I'll give you the synopsis: outside of a temple there was a place for people to give donations (some things about Church are timeless). An old woman goes up with her purse, opens it and finds only two coins left. Without a word she puts her last two coins in the box and goes on her way. Shortly afterward a very rich man with a sack full of gold arrives at the temple and pulls a handful of coins out of the sack, making an effort to be very conspicuous as he drops the money in the box. At this point the nun telling us this story asked which person had given more. The answer was the old woman because she still gave even though she didn't have much and she did so without expecting any attention or praise in return. The message was very clear: charity isn't the time to strut. This message clearly stuck with me because I have long maintained that charity is something which should be done because you really want to help a cause, not because you are secretly trying to help yourself in some way.

I've been seriously impressed with how Boston has come out this week to support not only the victims of last Monday's bombing, but also the survivors. The Mayor and the Governor have set up the OneFund and in less than a week it has made over $7 million. I've always said Boston takes care of its own and the outpouring of support has proven that. Still, for every person who goes to a prayer service because they really just want to send some good thoughts towards the people who need in at this moment, there are just as many who are there because they think it will get them on the news. Even worse are the companies which want you to donate to the the OneFund, but do so through their website. They say it is so they can match donations dollar-for-dollar, but only up to a certain number. Well, if you are only going to match donations up to $100,000, then just give $100,000 - don't ask people to jump through hoops first, especially when what they are really doing is finding another way to collect your information. It really lessens some companies in my eyes. They will have plenty of time to harvest email addresses to sell to their corporate partners some other time, so if there was ever a time to forgo normal shady business practices this is it.

Weekly Sporties

-Last Friday night Lakers' star Kobe Bryant went down with a torn Achilles tendon and is expected to miss 6-9 months, which could be most of next basketball season. With this dire prognosis and Bryant's own talk that next season could be his last anyway, there is talk the Lakers will amnesty him, which allows teams to cut players without the money left on their deal counting against the cap. You see, because they are so far over the salary ceiling for every dollar the Lakers exceed the limit the league penalizes them a dollar and a half (it is supposed to cut down on the divide between small-market and big-market teams, but teams like the Knicks and Lakers make so much money it doesn't phase them). So, releasing Bryant and his $30 million salary will save the Lakers nearly $80 million, which they could use to surround Dwight Howard with better players (assuming he stays in LA). If this were any other player the decision would be a no-brainer. However, Bryant has been with the Lakers for so long he has entered hallowed territory and any decision regarding the end of his tenure with the team must be done very carefully. It's the question as old as professional sports: business versus sentimentality. No fan wants to see their favorite player end his career in another team's jersey, but at the same time killing any chance the franchise has to win by taking up half the salary cap with a player who is a shell of his former self won't make any fans happy either. In the end I think the Lakers are going to end up making the smart but tough decision and give Bryant his release. This allows the Lakers to try and remain competitive (and Los Angeles will always a free agent destination when they have money) and it isn't the worse thing for Kobe either, as he can wait to see which teams are playing well before signing in the middle of next year. It's going to be weird seeing Kobe play for another team, but since this is Hollywood - where half the fans in the stands are only pretending to care about the outcome of the game anyway - I'm sure they will get over it before too long.

-The Cleveland Cavaliers drafted point guard Kyrie Irving with the hope that one day he would be mentioned among the greatest players in franchise history, but I have to say he is not off to the greatest start. No one questions Irving's abilities, but his talent has yet to translate to wins and every now and again he still does very immature things. The latest example came this week during Cavs' fan appreciation night. Usually taking place during a team's final home game of the season, fan appreciation night has a lot of giveaways and finishes with the players literally giving the jerseys off their backs to a few lucky winners. Since Irving is the Cavs' best player I'm sure everyone was hoping to get his jersey. However, that never happened because as the clock wound down to zero, Irving sprinted off the court and skipped the entire festivities. That behavior was bad enough, but the Cavs made it worse by saying Irving left the court to deal with an injury only they never told Kyrie this, so when he was asked about his injury by the media Irving appeared to have no idea what reporters were talking about. Now, I'm sure no pro ever enjoys fan appreciation night, regardless of the sport but especially when you have had a bad season, but it is part of the job. Plus, if they haven't enjoyed the season, imagine how the fans who paid to watch it feel? Irving was being a baby after having a bad second half and losing another game, but to me the Cavs actions were worse because they made an excuse for him. They should have made him stand up and be accountable. Seriously, have they learned nothing? They coddled LeBron James for years and what did it get them? They should have let Irving stand up an apologize to Cleveland fans, not tried to cover for him. I mean, if he's not going to win many games the least Kyrie could do is be an adult about the situation. Going forward what the Cavs need the most is leadership and covering for him is not going to make Kyrie Irving lead that franchise anywhere but the lottery for the next several years.

-The NFL draft is just a week away, which means we are right on schedule for teams leaking bad stuff about the players they really like. It happens every year right about this time - anonymous sources tell national media outlets about bad Wonderlic scores to make a certain player appear stupid or raise questions about a player's past in an effort to make other teams question whether they want to draft him. The result is that a player slides a few spots too many and suddenly the team that wanted him all along gets that player. Plus they get him without having to trade up to get him and they get to pay him less thanks to the salary slotting system. The only person who gets hurt are the kids, but since they still end up in the NFL no one feels too bad for them. (Of course, this is only when it works. More often than not other teams see through this and will draft a kid anyway. Then the only thing which has happened is the kid has had people on TV questioning his intelligence and his character. Seriously, the NFL is quite messed up at times. All NFL fans know this, but we try not to think about that part too often. It's like eating a hotdog. Don't think about the ingredients, just enjoy.) Anyway, right on cue a report surfaced this week that two anonymous players trashed the hotel room they stayed in during the Scouting Combine in Indianapolis last month. It didn't take too long before the players were named and while both deny they trashed the room and reports have arisen that the word 'trashed' may be over-blown, the damage has been done. I will be curious to see where the two players land, because chances are better than average the team that drafts them was the one who leaked the story to the national press. If that is the case they'd just better hope the players never find out or else that could make for some really awkward team meetings.

-If you want another example of how the people running NFL teams think the rules don't apply to them, this week officers for the FBI and IRS raided the offices of Pilot Flying J, which runs a chain of truck stops and is owned by the Haslam family, after a long fraud investigation. Apparently, the scheme would go like this - the company would offer trucking companies rebates and then either keep the money for themselves or not even tell companies rebates were available, apply for them and get the money sent directly to their offices. And, lest you think this was at just one or two stops and the brothers couldn't be held responsible for a couple of rogue employees, this was apparently a company-wide policy, the brothers were in the room when the decision was made and it has been going on for many years. Obviously no one has been convicted of anything yet and the family will have their day in court, but it doesn't look good for anyone involved. Bill Haslam is Governor of Tennessee and this is very bad for him, but since this is the weekly sporties we're going to focus on the fact that the other brother, Jimmy Haslam, just bought the Cleveland Browns a few months ago. Personally, I am going to be fascinated to see how this plays out. The NFL is paranoid about keeping a clean image and if this were a player caught up in a raid involving federal law enforcement officials they would be suspended for the rest of their lives. But this is an owner and technically one of Commissioner Roger Goodell's bosses. I feel like this one is going to be up to the other owners to ask Haslam to remove himself from the day-to-day operation of the Browns, but I also wonder how many other owners have engaged in similar shady activity and won't want to call out Haslam and risk having a spotlight turned on their business dealings? After all, most billionaires didn't get that way by being nice people. I just want us all to remember this next time we hear about and NFL player who has been accused of a crime - these guys had to learn it from someone.

-When the NHL lockout forced the league to start cancelling games, everyone assumed they would come to an agreement before they were forced to cancel the Winter Classic. The outdoor hockey game typically played on New Year's Day has quickly become one of the NHL's signature events and a fan favorite, so everyone thought both sides would fight hard to save it. When the Winter Classic was wiped off the schedule it was the first time people thought missing an entire season was possible. The season was eventually saved, but the game was not. Most hockey lovers expected the game to return next season, but it appears the NHL is trying to make up for lost time, as a rumor is circulating that the league is planning to have as many as six outdoor Winter Classics next season, including one in Los Angeles. I can not tell you how bad an idea this is. (Not the Los Angeles part. It would not have been my first choice, but it's the second biggest TV market in the country and the Kings just won the Stanley Cup, so I can see why they want to involve LA.) No, what I object to is six games in one season. What made the Winter Classic so visually stunning was how odd and rare it was to see hockey being played outdoors. When you begin to make the special common it dilutes the product. I get that it took the NHL forever to come up with this one good idea, but that doesn't mean they now have to beat that idea into the ground because that will just kill it. Not to mention the sudden expansion from 1 to 6 is far too big of a jump. They need to make sure there is enough interest to sustain that many games and the NHL should do that gradually. Maybe start with two games next year (this year's cancelled location and another of their choosing) and go from there. Otherwise casual fans are going to start ignoring the game and since the NHL lost a lot of them during the lockout I'm not sure how many they have left to lose.

-The idea behind NASCAR is supposed to be that every driver is working with the same equipment and can only adjust their cars so much to keep the playing field level. That is why the cars go through such a rigorous pre-race inspection to make sure every car is within those limits. Well, right before last weekend's NASCAR race both cars in the Penske Racing team were held up for a last minute inspection and nearly missed the start of the race. Apparently track officials had a reason to want to take one last look at the cars to make sure everything was in order (it wasn't and now the teams are facing point penalties and suspensions for several members of the pit crews and both crew chiefs.) Now, guys getting caught bending the rules is nothing new in NASCAR, but what has caused people to raise their eyebrows is that the two Penske cars had already gone through inspection twice and passed. It wasn't until they went through right before the race that they failed inspection, which has caused more than a few people to speculate the teams did a last-minute tweak to the cars and a rival team ratted them out to race officials. Since they were in the next stall a lot of people are pointing to Jimmy Johnson's team or someone from Hendrick Motorsports as the squealer. On the one hand it does make a lot of sense since Penske driver Brad Keselowski ended Jimmy Johnson's run of Championships and is a strong contender to do it again this year. As you would expect, Johnson is strongly denying it was him or anyone from his organization which got the officials attention. While it really doesn't matter who raised the red flag, I can't help but find this whole incident rather comical because NASCAR is supposed to be the preferred racing circuit for outlaws and here we have someone running to the principal's office and crying foul. They certain have come a long way from bootleggers trying to outrun the cops.

-After Adam Scott's amazing run to get into a playoff and eventually win the Masters, I thought one of the best things his caddy Steve Williams did was stay out of the way. For those of you who may not remember, Williams used to caddy for Tiger Woods, which made him just as much of a star as some golfer and when Scott won a WGC event with Tiger in the field during the early stages of his comeback, Williams called it "the best victory of my career." It made him look petty and pulled the attention away from Scott, effectively killing all the good will Williams had built up since Tiger fired him. So, I thought the fact that Williams recognized this and kept quiet after Scott's first major showed that he had realized nothing good comes from talking to the media. Well, that lasted all of three days, because late this week Williams gave an interview in New Zealand in which he said that Tiger should have been disqualified from the Masters because of the illegal drop he took on 15 before admitting that he didn't totally understand the rule which kept Tiger from having to withdraw. Now, I understand that every golfer gets asked about Tiger Woods whenever they are interviewed and given their history there is no way Williams will escape a similar situation. However, there is nothing which says Williams has to answer the question. I don't know if he thought since the interview was airing in New Zealand that he thought it would never make it back to the States, but I think the last few years have taught us that there is no such thing as local media anymore. Plus anytime Williams talks about Woods it continues to sound like sour grapes. A lot of golf pundits are saying this win could open the floodgates for Scott and that the Masters will just be the first of many majors. Well, if Williams isn't more careful with the media he's going to be watching Scott win those majors while carrying someone else's bag.

It's Over

Last night I finally went to see "Book of Mormon", the award-winning musical from the creators of "South Park". I was all set to tell you about the experience for today's blog post, but then all hell sort of broke loose again and I couldn't pull myself away from the television to actually write all my thoughts down (I'll save it for Monday). I got out of Boston a little after midnight last night, which means I just missed all the extreme craziness when the two alleged bombers from the Marathon killed an MIT police officer, carjacked another person, lead police on a chase to neighboring Watertown once that driver escaped and then got into a shootout with police in which one of the suspects was killed while the other escaped, all of which forced the city to go into lockdown. Of course, I didn't discover this until I got home and then like everyone else who was awake at that hour I was glued to the television, hoping for a swift conclusion. Obviously that didn't happen and eventually I reached the point of being too tired to watch anymore and hoped I would read about an arrest the next morning. Unfortunately for the people who live in Watertown the situation was waiting for me when I woke up.

I had vowed that after Wednesday's "There has been an arrest...Never mind.... No, he's in custody... Wait, forget we said anything." debacle that I wasn't going to get sucked into watching any more media coverage until there was actual news to report. But, even though the news didn't change from when I turned it on until about 7 o'clock this evening when the suspect was finally surrounded, I couldn't help but keep the TV on in the background just in case something changed. I'm glad I did because the media was about to call it a day when the suspect was finally spotted and I would have hated to miss that. After all, Boston has been so wrapped up in this story for the last week that to miss the conclusion would have been annoying. So, instead I stayed in my own personal lockdown in the burbs, miles away from the action but somehow just as obedient as if it was happening a couple streets away. It was strange, but even around these parts the streets were much more quiet than usual. The few times a car traveled down my street it was actually jarring and even though it was school vacation week I never saw many neighborhood kids out running around. Honestly, at a few points the silence was deafening.

Speaking of the lockdown, I have to say I was amazed at how well people behaved during all those hours. A few websites compiled a collage of pictures taken from webcams and Twitter accounts from people in the city and for several hours Boston looked like downtown Chernobyl. (If you ever wanted to do 120 on the Pike today was your chance, because all the cops were in Watertown.) The lockdown was in place not because the police thought the suspect was on this side of the river but more in case they needed to get people from the city over to Watertown in a hurry, which meant there was no immediate safety risk for the people downtown. Essentially the police and FBI were asking people to just stay inside and out of there way, exhibiting a little common sense. Since there are knuckleheads in every corner of the Globe (and Boston has filled its quota), I fully expected to turn on my TV and see Sully, Fitzy, Obie and Murph walking through the Common like nothing happened. Instead, everyone was very obedient, which is not something you usually say about the people in this city. I guess it just goes to show you how truly freaked out Monday's bombing had made us all.

That level of paranoia is why I totally understood the emotional outpouring which occurred after the second suspect was taken into custody, when even the cops broke into applause and the Watertown residents who had been trapped inside all day long came out and cheered for each cruiser that drove passed. I know to some it may seem inappropriate to cheer when someone is being arrested, but I will totally defend it in this instance. This man had been Boston's boogeyman for the better part of a week and we had clearly had enough of being terrorized by him. Plus, I'm going to give people the benefit of the doubt and say they understood how important taking him alive was. While no answer he gives as to why he and his brother decided to do this will ever be able to satisfy the families of the dead and the maimed, at least the option of getting answers exists. If he died in a stand-off with police he would have taken that opportunity to the grave with him. I guess crappy closure is still better than none at all. So, thanks to the Boston and Watertown police and fire units, the local FBI office, the transit authority, all the first responders and everyone who kept this city from spiraling out of control over the last few days. It's because of them the residents of Boston have the chance to get things back to normal. It's not going to be a quick recovery, but I have no doubt is it going to happen.

Peering 'Round The Bend

One of the consequences of the increased media presence around Boston is that it has resulted in a lot of people driving in the city who have no idea how the street system around these parts work. They probably expect roads which are two way streets to stay that way and making four rights resulting in getting back to where you just were, which is very rarely the case in this town. Anyway, between the lost media and increased police presence on the highways forcing drivers to obey traffic laws like they haven't done in years, the roads around these parts have been even tougher than normal for the last couple of days. Yesterday I was trapped in one of the more annoying traffic jams of my life. For all of life's annoyances which I will deal with and move on from for some reason traffic jams get under my skin like nothing else. Maybe it is from all my years of doing traffic reports on the radio and feeling as though they are something which should only happen to other people, but being in a car going 10 miles an hour surrounded by 1,000 cars doing the same thing makes me simultaneously want to scream and move to Wyoming, where I assume they don't have this problem.

Yesterday it took me about an hour and half to take a 30 mile journey, with most of that time spent trying to cover the last 9 miles. In the wake of Monday's tragedy I kept reminding myself this was just something I would have to deal with and I would have been fine with it if the traffic had resulted from a legitimate reason, but when I finally got to the end of it there was nothing there - no accident, no line of slow drivers - it just suddenly ended. I have to say that just made the entire situation all the more frustrating because it is one thing to be extremely late for your appointment, it is entirely another when you don't have anything to blame it on. I don't know why this is true, but traffic jams are easier to suffer if you have a person to focus your anger on. There is something about seeing flashing lights off in the distance which takes the emphasis off the same set of taillights in front of you which you have been staring at for the last 30 minutes and causes you to instead bond with them, as if we are all victims of some kind of dastardly scheme, rather than what we really are - not smart enough to find an alternative route when we should have known the highways around here are constantly clogged and too stubborn to live anywhere else.

Traffic jams are all about assigning blame, which is why the worst thing which can happen when you are in one is to find yourself stuck behind an 18-wheeler that blocks your entire view. Not only are these things boring to look at, but they prevent you from seeing what the trouble is or how much longer you can expect to be in it. That inability to know what is coming down the road at me makes want to pull my hair out in clumps. (Although I will say that moment when the truck merges over and you find yourself staring down a blocked-off lane of the highway and three tow-trucks is a little like the moment in a murder mystery when they finally reveal the killer.) Thus, the only logical conclusion you can come up with in that situation is that this trucker is the cause for the entire hold-up and if you could just get around him all your problems would be solved. This warped logic is exactly why I make it a point to drift slightly to one side or another during slow-moving traffic - just in case the person in the low car behind me who can't see around my SUV I want them to have the chance to see what I have in front of my vehicle, which is just more cars. Basically, I'm trying to show them this is not my fault.

Obviously, I know traffic jams are never the result of just one car. Trust me, there is plenty of blame to go around. It takes a series of people to cause that much of a delay, from the person who actually has the accident which blocks the lane, to the first 20 cars who don't know how to merge over and the next 50 who wait until the last possible second to do so down to the slow driver who find themselves in the left lane even though they should never be there and the city planner who thought this stretch of highway only needed to be three lanes wide. My point is simply that while I am never going to wish harm on another driver, people are more understanding of accidents versus seemingly random inconveniences which have no clear beginning or end. Humans have a basic need to know there was a reason something happened (hmmm, seems to be strangely appropriate theme for this week). Hopefully things will go back to normal in a few days and traffic will revert back to just being bad, instead of its current level of God-awful. Of course, that recovery would be a little speedier if the out-of-town press would just agree to stick to the back roads. Given their reporting skills over the last week maybe not being the first on scene would be the best thing for everyone involved.

Let Them Fight It Out

One of the hardest parts of dealing with a tragedy is knowing when it is ok for life to return to normal. When it is ok to start cracking jokes again, especially since the Boston Marathon is such a community event and the odds are really good you know someone who was running, had family running or was volunteering along the way and they probably don't think anything is funny right now? Is it still too soon to start making fun of runners (because some of them are really pushing it and making jokes is part of my coping mechanism)? Well, in an effort to return to normal I'm going to try to get my routine around this blog going once again. That means complaining about stupid things because I can. After another day full of bad information maybe it'll do everyone some good to get their minds off things for a while...

One of my favorite commercials floating around right now features a man going into a gas station and asking if he can buy yesterday's gas at a reduced price. When the guy working the desk tells him that isn't possible, the customer starts inquiring about other ways he may be able to get a discount - buying in bunk, frequent shopper discount or perhaps having a membership card? All of his suggestions are shot down, but the commercial does a very good job of pointing out how insane it is that gas is one of the few in-demand items which never offers any kind of sales price. What they tell you to pay is what you are going to pay and that is the end of the negotiations. If you stop and think about it the concept is all kinds of crazy because there are tons of items we need even more than gasoline (water, bread, milk) and yet those products occasionally go on sale or you can shop around for the best price and usually find a significant difference. Somehow gas (which we actually don't need - we just like more than taking public transportation) has been immune to all of this. If you want to find the best price on gas you just have to drive around looking for it (ironically wasting gas) but thankfully it looks as though that may finally be starting to change.

There has been a mini-concession in the price of gasoline in that a lot of local stations will offer to take a few cents off if you pay cash (which is really just a clever way these station owners have come up with to avoid having to pay the credit card fees while looking like they are passing the savings along to you, not that I will bypass a gift of any kind). But, even more common lately is for gas stations to tie in with a nearby supermarket and say that for a set amount of money you spend there you can get a few cents off at the pump. (Typically it's something like spend $100 on groceries to get .10 off a gallon of gas. If you have ever done the math you would know it takes about .07 before you start to see a big change in how much gas you get compared to what it would be under normal prices, so it really costs about $200 before you see a big difference in how much gas you get for your $20.) The math is still very much out of whack but it is better than nothing since as we talked about people need food and water more than they need gas. What is even better is that the stations which offer this program are forcing the ones which don't to adjust and for once the people behind the wheel are coming out on top.

I know of one intersection near me which has three different gas stations on each corner, directly across from one another. When you come off the highway you have your choice and the only thing distinguishing them from one another was company affiliation. For the longest time this intersection has symbolized everything which is wrong with this situation. Those stations should be fighting one another for my business but instead they all kept the prices equal with one another, perfectly willing to lose customers to each other because they were supremely confident there was enough money to go around for all of them. However, in the last couple of months two of the three stations have linked up with local grocery stores and begun offering ways to lower your gas prices. One of the promotions knocks exactly .05 off a gallon of gas with a very easily attained goal, so imagine my delight when I came to this intersection this afternoon and noticed that the one station which was not affiliated with any kind of discount program was a full .06 cheaper than the other two stations at the intersection. Did my eyes deceive me, or was this good old fashioned competition between two people who were offering the same service?

I'm fully aware that this competition still favors the gas stations, who I am sure are making more money now than ever before. We're all adults here, so I'm probably not blowing your mind when I tell you that even when a store is offering something on sale they are still making money and these oil companies would never allow their stations to offer anything which cut into the profits. Also, given the way oil companies work the most likely conclusion to this little moment of honest-to-goodness, supply-and-demand consumer advantage is that the other two stations will discontinue the promotion and the three stations will agree to go back to keeping prices at a certain level, remembering that they are united in a common cause and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The only way to affect real and permanent change is for consumers to cut down on how much they drive and seriously decrease demand, which actually happened late last year, even if it only lasted for a few short weeks. Still, it was nice to finally see an example where the public didn't have to do all the work or fundamentally change the way they live just to get a few cents off a gallon of gas. All I know is it's about time.

Look Who's Talking

Like everyone else in Boston yesterday afternoon, I was glued to my television trying to get updates on the attack on the Boston Marathon. I found myself bouncing from channel to channel and even though I don't know what I was looking for them to tell me (and it was not like there was anything I could hear which would have put my mind at ease) I just could not turn the TV off. I have to say, while the local channels were doing a fairly good job of letting us know what was going on, the national press was struggling. In many ways that makes sense because the local guys had a distinct home-field advantage of knowing the area well, which meant they could get down to the nuts and the bolts of the issues - which streets and businesses were closed, which routes people could take to get home once the T was shut down, where people could give blood if they wanted and how they could contact love ones if they hadn't been able to get a hold of them yet. Meanwhile, the national press certainly couldn't do that, because why would someone in Montana care that the Boylston was closed? Thus they were left repeating the same information (which wasn't much) every few minutes. This resulted in them reverting back to what most 24-hour cable news networks do to fill time anyway - they started making crap up.

I really could not count the number of times I heard someone say last night, "This report is unconfirmed." Well then, by definition that makes it not news, but conjecture and speculation which is not what people who claim to be journalists should be spouting in a moment like that. When a city is as on edge as Boston was at that moment, what we needed was straight facts - not hearing reporters who are allegedly professionals saying things about numbers of recovered, undetonated devices, possible suspects in custody and the potential of another attack on the other side of the city, none of which turned out to be true the next day. Not only does it waste energy running these leads downs it draws attention from what is really important. See, what the national guys don't know is that Bostonians are stoic. We want to know what is really going on so we can decide how we want to deal with it, not what could maybe, possibly, probably not happening in the name of sensationalism. At that moment they were acting like that person in your office who sees two people go out to lunch and starts telling everyone they are having an affair. These so-called journalists should be better than that.

I guess this issue has become more pronounced with the popularity of social media, because it just shows you how quickly people are still willing to believe anything they hear or see. For example, as soon as the news reported that one of the victims yesterday was an 8-year old, a picture started to circulate of a little girl wearing a runner's number and people were claiming she was the victim. Of course, the actual child killed was an 8 year-old boy, but the damage to some other family who had friends recognize this girl and call them in a panic was already done. It was the same with the other story of the runner who was allegedly killed while her boyfriend waited at the finish line with an engagement ring (also false). Last count saw that story had several thousand re-Tweets. This incident was sad enough, we don't need to go around dramatically embellishing it to try and make it worse. Honestly, I'm not sure who are the worse people in this scenario - the people who are making up these bold-face lies or the people who run with them without doing any checking of their validity. I'm leaning towards the lie-spreaders because they are trying to gain something (usually attention) by passing these things along, whereas I'm not sure what the people who make up these stories actually gain, other than some sick sense of satisfaction about how gullible certain people are.

It just drives me crazy how everyone has to play detective and talk about what 'sources' are saying, when the reality is their source is some guy at the liquor store whose second cousin knows a cop who had the day off but knows guys who were working a detail in Copley. I understand that there are only so many ways to say there is no new information, fill time between press conferences and interview people near the blast who all have the same story. I also sympathize because all people want in that moment is information and when you are the only person with a camera a microphone you feel compelled to provide them with something. Thus, the second anyone appears with even a shred of new information it gets them immediate attention. However, it doesn't mean that attention has to be amplified because false information does more harm than good. Hopefully in addition to the improved security measures which I am sure will be in place by next year's Marathon (again, showing how out-of-touch the national reporters are, I heard one person say the race will totally change next year. No, it won't because, in the words of Will Hunting, "Fuck you, that's why."), we will take yesterday's confusion and remember the golden rule that if you don't have anything productive to add to a situation, sometimes it's best to just keep quiet.

Hometown Heartache

By now I'm sure you've heard the horrible news that a person or group detonated two bombs by the finish line for the Boston Marathon, killing at least 3 and injuring nearly 100 more people. The idea of a terrorist attacking a sporting event has always been one of the great fears in a post-9/11 world. But even worse than the physical damage is the emotional toll on the city right now. Reports are that there were as many as five other devices which were found before they could explode and despite initial reports that a person was in custody, the suspect remains at large. That uncertainty of how many more devices could be out there and how many people are involved has put the entire city on edge and seeing that makes my heart hurt. This isn't supposed to happen in Boston. I love this town and one of the reasons I never want to live anywhere else is that I've always felt safe here. Plus, Boston is a tough city full of tough people. It takes a special breed of humans to deal with summers where it can reach 100 and winters which give you a fresh blizzard every couple of weeks, so to see people walking around unsure of themselves is very unsettling. The thing I am clinging to right now is that I have no doubt my city will emerge stronger than it was before, because we have to. The Governor has already said the city will be open for business tomorrow. I always say New Englanders can be a little set in its ways, but right now stubbornly refusing to alter the way we do things may be the best thing for us.