Is She Really Going Out With Him?

Guilty pleasures....I've had a few....but too few to mention. Oh, what the hell. I can mention a couple of guilty pleasures currently on my radar:

1. The new show on MTV called "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" If you are a reasonably mature adult, with even a hint of a sense of humor, you will chuckle a lot and laugh out loud more than a little. DVR it, tape it, or something. Just watch it.

2. Sonic of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. The Crazy Asian and I have big plans for a trip there today for lunch. It has been open almost a week, so things should be in good shape for our visit. I am so excited that I woke up at 5am this morning and I can't get it out of my mind. Now my stomach is growling in anticipation and I keep drinking water in the useless attempt to quell my stomach's excitement. All that does is make me go pee every few minutes. (Also, according to the map, the new Sonic is near Teterboro Airport, so maybe we can see some famous people. Or at least their aircraft.)

Full review--maybe with pictures--is promised in the coming days. Stay tuned. And remember, at Sonic, they don't start cooking till they hear from you!

Riddle Me This

Question: how many Puerto Ricans does it take to have a festival in Spanish Harlem?

Answer: All of them. Or so it seems.
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Question: are you more likely to be on TV if you describe the tornado as "sounding like a train"?

Answer: Yes. Or so it seems.
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David Letterman for President!

David Letterman said it more clearly, more maturely and more truthfully than I thought it even could be said: the joke he told about Palin's daughter was a bad joke in every way imaginable. It was not really funny, it was in bad taste, and it was "coarse."

Most importantly, Letterman issued an apology that was unqualified, straightforward and strikes me as sincere. He didn't try to cover his ass by using phrases such as, "if anyone was offended..." Nope, none of that obtuse language so common when people in the public light realize they screwed up. Aside from the joke itself, Letterman has shown maturity FAR BEYOND any of the other people who are using this episode to advance their own, barely-veiled motives of greater public awareness. In fact, to me, the MOST obscene component of this fiasco is how people, like that dumbass Sarah Palin, are crashing down on Letterman in order to raise their public images--and thus their likelihood of winning some election down the road. Or getting more ratings on their dinky little talkshows, like this guy. Or this New York Assemblyman. How in the hell did either of them get a horse in this race?

I wasn't feeling particularly defensive of Letterman when this all happened. But his willingness to stand up, make his sincere apology, and take his lumps make him a much more advanced and wiser and (dare I say it?) better person than dumbass Sarah Palin or a New York Assemblyman or a LA-talk show host heading into his 5th or 6th week on the air. (Yeah, I know Sarah Palin hunts with guns. So do I. I know she is from a rural area. So am I. She is stupid. Oh...and that's where the similarities end.)

Letterman has a history of being edgy. Bully for him. It has made him a well-regarded and well-paid entertainer. And he didn't say this during "Dora the Explorer." He said it on late-night TV for crying out loud! It is time for the crybabies and publicity seekers to grow up. And to take another piece of advice I delight in giving: don't go away mad; just go away!

Fallacies from GM and Chrysler

I've given a great deal of thought to, and studied about, GM and Chrysler's plans to close big percentages of their dealerships. And I have concluded that they will be shooting themselves in the foots. Here are some conclusions and how I reached them.

1. They are lying to Congress and the bankruptcy court by saying that the dealerships they are choosing to close are being selected by pure economics. A spokesperson at Chrysler has already stepped in doo-doo by admitting that other factors come into play. A Chrysler dealership in Tennessee is being closed, in part, because of its failure to invest in some sort of architectural feature that Chrysler wanted it to buy.

2. Fewer dealerships means less competition between dealers of the same brands, which means higher prices, which means fewer sales. Ford is positioned perfectly to profit from this situation. If I go to Chevrolet of East Harlem, for example, and price a new Silverado pickup in fire engine red, when I really want midnight blue, I couldn't go to Chevrolet of West Harlem to find out if they had midnight blue. Or even to price a different truck in fire engine red. But while driving back home, I might pass a Ford dealership that has a truck in red, blue, green, black and white. That leads perfectly into point #3!

3. Fewer dealerships means fewer outlets to place inventory. I realize that Chrysler and GM are planning to emerge from bankruptcy "leaner and meaner," but there will be fewer parking spots to put the new vehicles on display for consumers to see. That means lower unit sales. If UAW was really paying attention, they would see that down the road this means more furloughs. (By the way, automakers are required by law to sell to all dealers at the same price. It's called "antitrust" laws. So a higher price at the dealer does NOT mean higher revenue for the automaker.)

4. The automakers don't own the dealerships. They don't own the inventory; they don't own the real estate; they don't own the toilet paper; they don't own the service departments and they don't own the replacement parts. There is minimal investment on the automakers' parts. It usually takes the form of glossy booklets promoting their vehicles.

5. Fewer dealerships means fewer authorized service centers. When word gets out that when you call for an appointment to get an oil change and the first available time is 60 or 90 days away, consumers will be miffed. Don't doubt for a second that word will get out. That will result in fewer sales.

6. The dealers who remain will be forced to pay higher prices for automaker services. Remember, the automakers don't own the dealers. That means that when a salesperson or maintenance worker goes for training at an automaker's facility, the dealer pays for it. And based solely on economies of scale, dealers will pay more, causing their fixed prices to rise, causing higher sales prices, resulting in fewer sales.

I'm not smart enough to figure out the *real* reason that the two automakers want to close so many dealerships. I'm sure there are "problem children," and they should deal with those children. But claiming economic reasons for displacing so many workers is laughable. Even beyond displacing the workers at the dealerships, it is also bad business for the automakers in the long run. If I did know the *real* reason, I might look at the facts differently. As it stands, if I were in the market to buy a new vehicle in the next several months, I guarantee it would not be GM or Chrysler. Not because I worry about the vehicle quality but rather because it is just too damn inconvenient.

All Ducked Up

Spring of 1964, Scottsville, Kentucky, in the days following Easter....

I don't know how the tradition began of giving the gift of ducks at Easter. As far back as I can remember, and up until my brother and I were into our teens, baby ducks were an annual arrival at our house. I seem to remember that the parents bought them at Marsh's Variety Store on the public square. Seems like they may have also gotten them at the feed store. For the life of me, I can't figure out how this honors the resurrection of our Lord and Savior. But the tradition goes back even further than my youth.

During a recent conversation with my mother, I was reminded of the story of how a suitor of hers in high school attempted to woo her with the gift of a duck. It was her senior year at Allen County-Scottsville High School. Danny Oliver (whom I do not know) gave her a duck for Easter. As well, her best friend Sherry also received a duck (from a different suitor). Their lockers were adjacent in the school building--just outside of Noble Allen's classroom. This would become the ducks' temporary homes. (When I attended the same school building, that classroom had become Joe Cornwell's--who, incidentally, graduated with Momma in 1964, and was a history teacher when I was a student there some 20-odd years later.)

Again, in the category of "why in the world," both Momma and Sherry decided to raise their ducklets in their lockers, as I have already mentioned. Momma remembers it being about 6 weeks before the odor of the ducks' natural biological waste products got to the point that the school's administration ordered that the "ducks be gone." Momma is a little hazy about what happened to Sherry's duck, but Momma took hers home and turned it out at Great-grandma's barn where it immediately took up with a family of piglets. To this day, Momma remains adamant in her claim that her duck came to think it was a pig. It would go to slop with the pigs, it would sleep with the pigs, it would swim with the pigs--as she tells it, the duck would have been a pig if only it had been able to generate bacon.

She doesn't really remember what happened to the duck. Livestock had a way of "disappearing" in the charge of Great-grandma. And by this time, Momma had gone off to college in Bowling Green. It would have been very easy for Great-grandma to devise a "disappearing act" for the duck. (Peking Duck? Duck a l'orange? Foie gras?)

I mention that the suitor was Danny Oliver. That was germane because she chose that name for the duck as well. Never the overly-creative or artistic type, I suppose this seemed sufficient to her for naming the duck. And eventually, I remember that Marsh's Variety Store stopped selling ducks. I think it must have had something to do with the fact that the baby ducks were on display near the entrance of the store, right next to the lunch counter. That couldn't have made the health inspector too happy--but nobody ever caught "duck flu" in Scottsville.