Blahg

31 October 2003

Trick or Treat! Here's a joke, courtesy of Wonka's Laffy Taffy, so don't blame me.

Question: What do all fish have in their cars?

Backward-encrypted Answer: !enohp ralullehs A.

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28 October 2003

Indiana Jones has finally made his way to DVD and I've rediscovered why his are my top three favorite movies of all time.

Before Bono, this professor of archaeology was inspiring me to go see the world and make things happen... someway, somehow. Starting with my misadventures on the East Coast, it quickly got to the point where I could make Indy look like a couch potato. (And I still can.)

In short, they're the kind of slice-of-life movies I can relate to and, like Guinness and U2, the Indy movies are part of my DNA.

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26 October 2003

The World Series sucked.

All those commercials for FOX TV shows only made it more painful.

Is there such a thing as a true Marlins fan? Good Lord. They've had only two winning seasons in their "storied" 11-year history and in neither case did they win a division title. Both times, though, they won the World Series. In between, they were almost put out of business.

Buncha crap, I say.

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25 October 2003

There seems to be some controversy about the PT Cruiser.

I stumbled on this at MSN.com, the 10 Cars That Cost the Least to Insure: Chrysler PT Cruiser, Specialty vehicle Chrysler Voyager, Minivan GMC Safari, Minivan Jeep Liberty, SUV Chrysler Town & Country, Minivan Oldsmobile Silhouette, Minivan Volkswagen Jetta, Compact car Dodge Caravan, Minivan Jeep Wrangler, SUV Oldsmobile Alero, Mid-size car

Where's the controversy? Well, the article's author, Liz Pulliam Weston, explains why the PT Cruiser ranks as the least expensive in terms of insurance:

"Every car on the market has a demographic, a group of buyers to which it most appeals. If a car stirs the hearts of young male drivers, it typically costs more to insure than if it attracts 30-something mothers.

'Some demographics have a higher propensity to crash,' (Bob) Kurilko (V.P. of Edmunds.com) says. 'You’re not going to see a lot of soccer moms going out for street racing, that ‘Fast and Furious’ kind of stuff.'

Hence the PT Cruiser. Its retro curves say sporty, but its five doors and generous cargo room say 'pack in the kids.'"

Huh? Look at the Cruiser below. Does it say "kid-toting mother" or "'tude-packin' YUMMY"? (Once again, that stands for Young Upwardly-Mobile Mattopian.

OK, truth be told, during my travels in some of the seedier parts of the planet I have been called a "mother" something-or-other. But that's in a totally different context, people!

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16 October 2003

WOW! UN-believable! It was a grueling ALCS and a gut-wrenching 11-inning Game 7, but the good guys won in the end. The New York Yankees know how to battle back - they do it time after time. So do I. I am a New Yorker. The New York Yankees are Mattopians. There ya go. Time to go fishin'...

From The New York Times' coverage by Tyler Kepner: "In the eighth inning, there were five outs to go for the unthinkable to become a reality for the Yankees. The Red Sox, spellbound for years by the most powerful mythic force in sports, were that close to stealing a pennant from Babe Ruth's house."

From Yankees.com (photo by David Bergman, MLB.com):

Joe Torre (left) and Spike Lee (right)

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12 October 2003

Yesterday the Red Sox showed the world why the Curse of the Bambino will haunt them this century as well. Pedro Martinez? I'm not impressed. A Fenway groundskeeper in the Yankee bullpen? Puh-leeez...

While on the subject of New England, Robert F. Kennedy espoused the ambitions of the Young Upwardly-Mobile Mattopian (YUMMY) when he said, “There are those who look at things the way they are and ask, ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’”

Some food for thought.

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11 October 2003

Day One of my new beginning.

The bacon and hashbrowns have never tasted better thanks to the new cookware (non-stick rules!) and the coffee has never been finer thanks to the new grinder and coffee maker. Damn. Talk about advancing toward simplicity... I'll follow up that U2 reference by noting that Bono's lost out on the Nobel Peace Prize again. This year Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to win the prize, was recognized for her own human rights crusades in Iran over the past 30 years.

I still say Bono is a worthy recipient. He's a global figure voicing global concerns. Besides, he changed my world - for the better - in many, many ways. Maybe after next year's U2 album, Solar, the committee will come to see the light.

Of course, I also think Mattimus deserves the prize for restoring peace and swagger to the war-torn, but resilient, People's Republic of Mattopia. By the way, did you know Alfred Nobel, in whose name the peace prize is awarded, invented dynamite?

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10 October 2003

Intolerable Cruelty opens in theatres today. It's also my last day in a job that has driven me to the brink of insanity. How ironic.

The movie is highly entertaining and I've got greener pastures ahead (in more ways than one). So there ya go: A classic win/win situation.

Read my review of the new Clooney/Zeta-Jones comedy here then go have a beautiful day!

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7 October 2003

Spotted on Billboard.com today:

Bono Gets Free Pass On Televised 'F'-Word

The Federal Communications Commission decided that U2 singer Bono's utterance of an obscenity during this year's broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards did not constitute a violation of the nation's broadcast indecency rules.

The government agency's Enforcement Bureau yesterday (Oct. 6) rejected complaints by the Parents Television Council and others that Bono's use of the phrase "this is really, really f***ing brilliant" failed to meet the test for indecency. The bureau ruled that Bono's indiscretion was so "fleeting and isolated" that it did not run afoul of the rules.

The commission defines indecent speech as language that, in context, depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities or organs in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards. As a threshold matter, the material aired during NBC's Golden Globes telecast doesn't fall into that category, the bureau ruled.

"The word 'f***ing' may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities," the bureau wrote. "Rather, the performer used the word 'f***ing' as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation. Indeed, in similar circumstances, we have found that offensive language used as an insult rather than as a description of sexual or excretory activities or organs is not within the scope of the commission's prohibition of indecent program content."

In other news, Bono will speak tomorrow at the United Nations Association of the United States of America/Business Council for the United Nations' annual dinner in New York. The artist will discuss his ongoing work against the global spread of the AIDS virus.

That's my boy! - Mattimus

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5 October 2003

The Cubbies can gut the Fishies... The Yankees can no doubt polish off the Athletics or the Red Sox (their series has been an embarrassment)... That'll make way for a Yankees v Cubbies Fall Classic. Curse of the Goat and Curse of the Bambino be damned. Root, root, root for the Yaaan-kees!

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4 October 2003

Take the reviews in Rolling Stone with a grain of salt. As a long-time subscriber, I've been subjected to the jaundiced views of the planet's most biased film critic, Peter Travers, and the bizarre musical tastes of the album review team.

While they offer middle-of-the-road 3-star reviews for the latest from David Bowie(Reality) and Dido (Life for Rent), I consider them both to be standouts in an otherwise mediocre year for music.

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3 October 2003

Once upon a time, at a software company that used to be called J.D. Edwards, I served on an "employee retention committee" (EARS was the acronym; it stood for something silly, but I don't remember what exactly).

At one point during my EARS tenure I railed about the lack of ambition in the hallways of J.D. Edwards, waved the full-color brochure that was printed (certainly at great expense) specifically for this internal committee, and reminded my co-EARS that the purpose of the committee was to make JDE's response line a better place to work (after all, that's what the brochure said right smack on its cover). I warned my co-EARS that in the competitive world of software, JDE wouldn't survive without a renewed sense of ambition, purpose and focus.

After being chastised about having to do things in the name of shareholder value and enduring a roundtable discussion in which one co-EAR commented on how he was the kind of guy who was happy to simply have a job and a cup of water (remember: I was bitchin' about the lack of ambition...), I was ultimately dis-EARed from the glee club.

I must say it was hard to stomach the "shareholder value" argument when I myself was an active participant in the employee stock purchase plan, had even purchased shares on my own through that gawdawful broker, Morgan Stanley, and watched the value of my investment plummet by as much as 66%.

Why did I bring this all up? Well, today I received the following joke in the ol' e-mail box and it reminded me of my "shareholder value" episode. I've seen this one before, but now that I've got this spiffy blog, I thought I'd share it with all of Mattopia.

If you had bought $1,000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1,000.00.

With Worldcom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you had bought $1,000.00 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the 10-cent deposit, you would have $214.00.

Based on the above, my current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. This is my new retirement program. I call it my 401-Keg program.

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