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Miss Manners is doing cartwheels in her grave

Actually, I'm not sure if she is dead, so apologies if she is reading this.

Anyway, my wife, mother and I went to dinner the other night at our favorite local restaurant. About halfway through our meal, a couple sits down at a table near us.

The guy was wearing leather loafers with no socks, which he immediately slipped off, so he was sitting there barefoot. (Just imagine the stank of a pair of feet in leather with no socks.) It was vile.

Then, this jerk and his mousy wife proceed to each take out their BlackBerries and start emailing God knows who. Then her phone rings with some obnoxious ring tone set to loud (I think it was Barry Manilow performing Rick Astley - see previous post) and she starts gabbing away as he checks emails and rubs his fat, smelly, cheesy, toe-jam encrusted feet. (Newsflash, Porky: That extra 50 pounds you are carrying around your waist pretty much eliminates any chance of you nailing down the Don Johnson look, even without the socks.)

Do I sound shrill? Tough. There should be certain basic levels of civil behavior and keeping your fetid feet in your shoes while dining in public should be one of them.

The email thing I don't really care about. They clearly deserve each other.

The cell phone thing is something we have all encountered. If you are interested in making a statement about that, try this:

Buy a cheap mini-recorder/dictation device and carry it with you. (They sell them at office supply stores for $20). The next time you are on a train, in a plane, at a restaurant, at the movies and someone is talking on their cell phone more loudly than they would otherwise be conversing, just turn on your tape recorder and hold it up to their face.

When they object, just say "You were talking so loud, I figured that you wanted everyone to hear it, so I am taping it and will be putting it up on on my blog when I get home. Was I mistaken?"

Let me know how it goes.

Armageddon: The moment is nigh

A careful reading of Revelation will show that Judgment Day is tomorrow - November 25, 2008.

How do we know this?

Because Barry Manilow is releasing a new album titled "The Greatest Songs of the Eighties".

It all makes sense. First, he has not aged in 40 years, though his music is immediately old (as demonstrated by an album of 80s music.) Hello? Dorian Gray?

Second, an album of the most annoying music of the 80s by the most annoying artist of the 70s, released in 2008 has to be indicative of some sort of plot to break our already fragile spirits.

For those of you somehow offended by this, or who doubt the validity of this conjecture, I leave you with this:

Was "Islands in the Stream" such a great song that it needed to be remade?

Was anyone pining away for a remake of ANYTHING by Rick Astley?

And just when when we had finally purged that Christopher Cross ear worm from our collective consciousness, along comes Barry singing "Arthur's Theme."

Let loose the dogs of hell.

R.I.P. Second Life, et al

Worlds are colliding!

Reality is, as it turns out, real.

Two people for whom I have great respect are on opposite sides of an important issue: Second Life.

For those not in the know, Second Life is a virtual online world where people live, work, love and die. I tried it for 10 minutes and found it the dullest thing this side of... the real world.

My friend Darryl Ohrt - cool-uber-guru over at design and branding firm Plaid - has long maintained that Second Life was the coolest thing since Men at Work roared onto the music scene in 1982.

My friend Ashlee Vance, tech reporter and Silicon Valley scholar-in-residence at The New York Times blogs that virtual life is... dead.

Sorry Darryl. Gotta side with Ashlee on this one. He's younger than you and has written a whole book, which automatically makes him the smartest person I know. When your book comes out, I'm sure it will eclipse Ashlee's in scope and wisdom.

And to all you Morlocks living in Second Life for the past couple of years: Come into the light and join us Eloi here on the surface.

Just don't make eye contact or eat us.

Ford CEO Alan Mulally: No thanks, I'm good.

Last night's ABC World News showed the CEOs of Ford, Chrysler and GM in front of a House committee begging for the $25 billion that will save their companies from ruin (or so they would have us believe.)

At one point, a congressman asked all of them if they would agree to reduce their salaries to one dollar as a show of solidarity with their employees and with the taxpayers whose money they want.

When asked, Ford CEO Alan Mulally said something to the effect of "No, I think I'm good where I am."

And where is that? How about $21 million in 2007, according to Ford's most recent proxy statement.

Now, I am not necessarily offended that he made $21 million last year. And I am not offended that he made $21 million while his company was going down the toilet. And I am not offended at what he pays the rest of his executive team (click on the proxy statement image below for more details). I am not even offended that these three jamokes came begging for my money by flying in and out of Washington on their private jets. I believe in capitalism to the core of my soul.

But, as soon as you ask ME - the taxpayer - for money, well, now I have some skin in the game and therefore, I have the right to be offended.

What offends me most, however, as someone who does public relations for a living, is that this doofus (Mulally) could not come up with a better answer than "I'm good" to the salary question. There are a thousand ways he could have answered that question, knowing he was on TV:

• "Congressman - With all due respect - I don't think this is an appropriate time or place to negotiate my compensation."
• "Congressman - I am willing to consider any and all options that will ensure the long-term viability of this great American company."
• "Congressman -These hearings are not about my or any individual's compensation. It is about the survival of the American auto industry."

I could go on and on. I might argue that Mulally's PR person is way overpaid for not properly preparing him for that inevitable question about salary.

Finally - some free PR advice for any CEOs who are planning to fly to Washington to beg for more of my money: Fly coach.

R.I.P. PC Magazine

News out today that Ziff-Davis will cease producing a print version of PC Magazine in January.

During the past 3-4 years, I have watched as one reporter/editor/friend after another have left the publication. It is sad.

PC Magazine along with PC World were always the two magazines that I would start reading as I walked from my mailbox back to the front door. Sure, I read it online, but I am still a died-in-the-wool print guy.

I am a firm believer in online journalism and I hope that this decision will help PC Magazine survive and thrive. Their reviews and how-to articles are must reads for anyone who spend more than five minutes trying to figure out how computers work.

That last guy you want to see...

...at your local bird feeder.

My mom shot this photo today of a sharp-shinned hawk on her backyard bird feeder.

Needless to say, the finches, chickadees, doves and even the squirrels were none-too-pleased. They have formed a neighborhood coalition that is petitioning our congressman for more funds to help with their community policing program.

They thought that things were going to be OK when they ran the blue jays and the starlings out of the neighborhood, but now this guy has muscled in and destroyed the very fabric of this once bucolic suburban oasis.

It will be interesting to see if a President Obama is sympathetic to the songbird constituency that was so instrumental in getting him elected.

As we approach the season of giving...

...it's time to decide which charities we want to support.

Ordinarily, we would be thinking about animal welfare groups, food banks, disease research organizations, the Salvation Army  and the like.

But it appears that this year, we have to include General Motors, Ford and Chrysler on our Christmas donor lists.

Yep. GM, Ford and Chrysler made crap cars that nobody wanted for years and years and now that the economy has gone bad, they need you and me to bail them out.

Make no mistake - while Toyota was developing the Prius, GM was building Hummers. While Honda was producing ever more fuel efficient cars, Chrysler was pushing HEMI engines. Oh - and GM built the EV-1. That was quite the success. They took a bad idea (electric cars), put a lousy battery in it (lead acid), oversold it in a multi-million dollar advertising and PR campaign and then said "We tried. Now back to building Cadillac Escalades."

So I am sure that next week, GM CEO RIck Waggoner and his management brethren at Ford and Chrysler will be giving thanks that even though they are responsible for galactically stupid decisions, monumentally inefficient cars and slavish addictions to SUVs and pickups, they still have the good will and grace of the American taxpayer to keep them in business.

How about this? All those housewives and wannabees who enabled Detroit by buying big, gas-guzzling profit machines while the rest of us drove around in our sedans - how about YOU bail out the Big 3 and leave the rest of us out of it.

The shrill desperation of traditional media

I am a strong defender of traditional journalism over the tyranny of bloggers (like me) as valid surrogates.

It seems, however, that my tried-and-true media stalwarts are getting a bit panicky in their twilight years.

Exhibit A: The renewal letter I received from BusinessWeek magazine yesterday. Now I know that it is a long-time practice for print publications to encourage us to renew soon and often, but this one struck me as just plain sad:

Considering that I have subscribed to BusinessWeek for 15 years without interruption, you would think that they might just dial down the hyperbole a little bit with me.

SUBSCRIPTION EXPIRATION ALERT??? Um, my subscription expires in November... 2010.

Guys - you had me at hello. I'm a guaranteed score. A cheap date. An easy lay.

Maybe, at this point, a nice anniversary gift is in order, rather than the scary letters.

And you would think that if anyone would know about the time value of money, it would be the good folks at BusinessWeek.

"Change we can believe in?" Not just yet...

I imagined at least one benefit of a Barack Obama victory would be an exorcising of the Clinton demons from the inner circles of the Democrat Party power structure.

So imagine my surprise when the first two Obama appointees - Rahm Emanuel and John Podesta - were dragged out of the Clintons' closet in Georgetown.

Mr. Obama - I IMPLORE you - make a clean break from the Clinton mafia.

If not now, when?

If not you, who?

Election Day: The Day After

Here's what the key players are doing today:

Barack Obama: Getting in touch with all his old terrorist friends to discuss cabinet and Supreme Court positions.

Joe Biden: Taking a Greyhound bus back to Delaware to celebrate with friends at a local pub that closed 18 years ago.

John McCain: Putting pieces of papers numbered 1-7 in a hat to determine in which house he and Cindy should go get drunk.

Sarah Palin: She and the Toddster are gassing up the snow machines, loading the AK-47s and heading out to hunt baby seals.

Hillary Clinton: Announcing the opening of "Hillary 2012" campaign headquarters in Elmira, NY.

Voting in Connecticut: Like watching paint dry

I guess one of the advantages of living in a relatively small town, in a relatively small state where there is no question about the electoral outcome is that the lines at the poll in my town was, let's say, short.

We waited about 15 seconds.

The last time Connecticut did not go for a Democrat was, I believe, the last time there was a member of the Whig Party on the ballot. So our voting does not carry the high-level of excitement and interest as, say, Pennsylvania or New Mexico.

This was, however, the first time we voted with the new voting machines and I have to say it was singularly unsatisfying. Since I started voting 26 years ago, I have always walked into a big booth like the one pictured at left, yanked a big lever to close the curtains, pushed all sorts of little levers, and then yanked the curtain back open with an authoritative thud that said "I JUST VOTED, DAMMIT! NOW BRING ME MY WOMAN AND A SHOT OF WHISKEY!"

I loved it.

Today, we walked up and received a piece of 8x10 paper that looked like the old Iowa standardized tests that we used to take in elementary school. We took the ballot over to a little mini cubicle, about the size of a microwave oven and stood there while we filled in the circles in black ink. Then we took the ballot over to a machine and fed it in.

How anti-climactic. There was no sense of finality or authority to it. I could have been picking the next president or taking a driver's test. It declared: "I'm not sure, but I think I just voted, unless I didn't fill it out right or the machine doesn't read it right or the poll worker doesn't know how to work the machine or someone hacks into the machine and changes all the votes to Spiderman."

I am all about new, improved technology, but some things are better left untouched by progress. Bring back the big, green machines!

***CLARIFICATION UPDATE***

My comment about the last time Connecticut voted for a Republican president was hyperbole intended for humorous purposes. In fact, Connecticut last voted for a Republican in 1988. We also did so in '84, '80, '76 and '72. As if anyone cared.

Do we really need campaign rallies?

We were watching the evening news last night as McCain and Obama carried out their last orgasmic frenzy of campaign rallies.

I paused the TV and asked my wife:

"Do we we even need these events any more?"

By that, I mean - once upon a time, before mass media and the Internet and blogs and 24/7 news and non-stop talking head punditry on TV and radio - candidates would go from place to place, and citizens would go to campaign events and listen to the candidate's position on the issues and then decide who they wanted to vote for.

Now, it seems like every event is nothing more than a big, substance-free rock concert where the candidate is preaching soundbites to the screaming and fawning faithful with the hope of getting five seconds of video on CNN.

What's the point?

And what do we get for the billions of dollars that this silliness costs? An overtired president-elect who has about 18 months to do his job before he has to start running for his second term.

There has to be a better way. I'm just too lazy to figure it out on this blog. Besides - that's above my pay grade.

Why New York City is the best... and worst

My wife and I were in New York City yesterday and walked over to Central Park South to see some of the finishers of the New York City Marathon.

(AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

We watched the pros start and finish on television from our hotel and then headed out to the park.

You would think from the TV coverage that the entire city stops what it is doing and comes out in support of the runners. I can say that, after running it last year, it certainly feels that way. The crowds are huge almost entirely from start to finish and really help spur you on.

But yesterday, as we were walking toward Central Park South, we were struck by how you could move a single block away in any direction from the race course and you would have NO idea that the world's largest marathon was taking place at that moment. People were going about their Sunday business - walking, driving, shopping, eating - utterly unaware, uninterested or both - that the race was going on. It was a little slice of why I love New York.

What sucks about New York?

Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - is harder to do in New York City. Shopping, parking, eating, laundry - you name it. Stuff we take for granted out here in the sticks requires planning, guile, luck and courage just to consider.

How so?

On our way out of the City, we like to stop at Zabar's - the greatest food store on earth. It is on the upper West Side at Broadway and 80th. Usually, I drive around for a few minutes, see a parking space open up on the street and grab it.

Not yesterday.

We drove around for an hour and 15 minutes, tried four parking garages (full) and never found a place to park.

We finally gave up and came home empty handed. We did stop at a local grocery store, where we found ample parking, wide aisles and nobody crashed their yuppie baby stroller into my Achilles tendons because I decided to stop and buy some corned beef while they were texting their nanny instead of paying attention.

I hate New York.