Pithy Title Here

Confession: I love the NFL. It's a perfect sport... a short season where every game is meaningful, where macho players sooner or later are felled by injury or failure, where nearly every game can turn on one great play. The funny thing, though, is that football has become much better to watch at home than in the stadium. Seeing a game in person is always fun, but you're often surrounded by strange drunken louts. At home, you can be around drunken louts you know, which is always a better option. Plus, at home the food/beer is much cheaper and there's no traffic to fight. Also: TV has football covered fantastically. Every camera angle in HD makes you feel like you've got a seat in every part of the stadium. And, with DVR , you can decide when you want a reply. The problem, friends, is a great deal of the announcers just plain stink. I'm not talking about the loudmouth studio shows. It goes without saying those are a waste of your time. I mean what we have to endure d...

On Sept. 11, 2001, my train from Trenton, NJ to New York City was running early. I could barely believe it. I was in Penn Station around 8 a.m. and I walked into my office at 5 th Ave. and 26 th St. at about 8:20 a.m. When I crossed 6 th Ave. on my walk, I did my usual look down the street, my only view of the Twin Towers from Manhattan every day. It was a beautiful day. Sometime around 4 p.m., when my very-delayed train got back to Trenton, the board with the train schedule was flashing with an advisory that PATH service was suspended “due to fire at World Trade Center.” Oh, if it had only been a fire… I can remember a lot of things about that day. I remember standing on 6 th Ave. at about 9 a.m. with hundreds of others just staring in disbelief. I remember making a decision with my coworkers to leave the apartment we were in watching events unfold and walk to the Hudson River as there was nothing to blow up at the River. I remember someone announcing to a boat-full of pa...

I had been pretty psyched all week for Bumbershoot . And, for once, it was something that lived up to the hype. Now, I've been to my share of outdoor concert festivals. But this one was different. First, most don't take place around a well-known landmark. Bumbershoot is set up in the Seattle Center, which, to all of you from outside the Puget Sound area, means the Space Needle. From many of the event's stages, you have a full view of the Space Needle. Which is cool. A few other things that make this unique: Re-entry privileges. I watched two bands this afternoon (more on that in a bit), got my ticket and hand stamped, and went home. Where I ate my food and drank my beer. Granted, if I didn't live a stone's throw from the Seattle Center, I couldn't have done this, but it made a gigantic difference. Instead of spending a day on my feet eating overpriced greasy food, I was able to go home and sit on a real couch in between bands I wanted to see. You can bring stu...

No surprise here but in the six months I've had my Kindle, I hear the occasional argument of "Oh, well, I read real books," as though there is an intellectual preference to do so. You and I might both read Anna Karenina , in other words, but since you read a "real" book and I read it on my Kindle, somehow, your experience is superior to mine. This sort of thing has to stop. Unless Tolstoy intended for you to be taken by the sheer weight of the volume (dear lord, it is a bit long, no?), who cares how you read it? And fine, you read a "real" book. Let me go find someone who read a "real" copy of the book. In Cyrillic. Then, where are you, huh? The point is nowadays we all have different ways of consuming media. Is one so far superior to another? This is hardly a new issue. I spent many a day in high school in ridiculous conversations that went like this: Some guy: What are you listening to? Me: Smashing Pumpkins. Some guy: What album? Me: Siam...

Almost without fail, when I check Twitter at night, I see one of my friends noting that they cannot sleep. I've noticed it even more since moving to the west coast since when I'm lounging on the couch, my east coast friends are already in bed. Or should be. And it's not me seeing them make updates and then interpreting it as insomnia. These folks actually discuss how they have insomnia. And I can't help but wonder... why? You have to understand that my average night involves me fading quickly into sleep once the 11 o'clock hour hits. I sleep like crazy. I sleep through just about anything. My wife stays up far later than me, but I would stay up later, too, if I had her schedule. I'm up at 6:15 every morning. She gets at least two more hours of sleep. Bottom line, though... neither of us are struggling to get our 40 winks. Many of our friends are, though. I am neither a doctor, nor a psychologist. But I don't think you need to be one to know that the inabili...

I spend a lot of time on the road. And this leads to any number moments where I complain about clueless travelers, crowded airports and other hilarity. I realized I haven't relayed a lot of the things that can make your day of travel better... and maybe even help make those around you get where they're going more smoothly. I am hardly the be-all-end-all of travel advice, but I've found a few practical things to be very helpful. Packing - I have no major packing tips. I stuff socks in my shoes. I fold, but I know that anywhere I go will have an iron. And when my trip involves multiple cities, I totally recycle a shirt. I'm not some slob that gets every shirt dirty every day. Big ground rule... if I think I might need something, I usually don't pack it. For example, I might need my swim trunks. I can think of exactly one business trip in my life where they've been used. Leave 'em. Hanging at the pool with coworkers can be done in any attire. Check in the night...

I drive a Camry. Probably will for a lot longer, too. You don't buy a Toyota because you want a four-year car. You buy a Toyota Camry because you want a reliable car. And you know, not only that, but my Camry is quiet. It has 6-cylinder giddyup in a 4-cylinder engine. It gets 600 miles to the damn tank at highway speed. The worst problem it ever had was needing a new battery. You could say I am not one to go overboard about a car. And then I got to LAX last night. I take whatever car Avis gives me on business trips unless it is an atrocity (looking at you PT Cruiser...). If asked, I prefer a car with satellite radio, sun roof and, if in the Northeast, EZPass . Last night, at LAX, I had a convertible Sebring waiting for me. Tonight, I decided to see what that was really like. After a looooong day of work throughout Southern California (picture filming, in the desert, in searing heat, in dress clothes and then still having to drive to LA), I met a friend for dinner downtown. A s...