Forget the dragons, just get me a vacuum cleaner
A P.R. company from California just sent me a video game called Dragon Age that was packaged in a cardboard box full of straw.
I now have straw all over my pants and the carpet beneath my desk.
I am thinking this is not the best marketing decision the P.R. company ever made.
I don't bet on football -- which was a good thing Sunday
I stopped betting on football back when I lived in Las Vegas -- not because I was losing, oddly enough, but because of two occasions when I did well.
I never bet much, mind you. And in one of the above-mentioned instances, I didn't bet at all.
The Castaways, later bulldozed to make way for the Mirage, was one of the first casinos to hold a pro football handicapping contest with weekly and year-end cash payouts.
A good friend of mine later won his house in a similar contest at the Barbary Coast. With the Castaways, there was one division for media with prizes on the order of T-shirts, and another for people who had paid to get into the pool.
Halfway through the season, I was mired in the bottom half in the media division. I figured I could either start studying harder, or I could start picking winners against the point spread based on the number of vowels in the each team's name. I went with Plan B, and immediately began rocketing up the standings.
I wound up finishing second, earning a shirt and a dinner in the hotel coffee shop. Meantime, many of the professional gamblers in the main contest were below 50 percent for the season. Y'know, I told myself, if these guys do it for a living and can't even match the results you'd get in the long term by flipping a coin, I should retire from what little sports betting I dabble in.
I was still placing random bets the next fall, though, until a college team lined up for what it hoped would be the winning field goal in the waning seconds of a game. The kicker put his foot into the ball and the ball started toward the goal posts ...
And then it deflated. The ball popped a seam and dropped like a big brown acorn. Having bet on the other team, I won -- and I never wagered on football again. If successful betting means factoring in the stitching on the pigskin, count me out.
That's all a long preamble to the Detroit Lions' game in Seattle yesterday against the Seahawks. I'd spent some time on the phone during the week with Lions VP Bill Keenist, who'd just been elected to the school board in Oxford, and I told him I had a good feeling about the outcome.
Truth is, I thought the 1-6 Lions were absolutely going to pummel the 2-5 Seahawks, and if I were the betting sort, I'd have bet the game with both hands.
Long about the time our guys went ahead 17-0, I was feeling pretty darned smart. Then they hacked up a series of furballs, and Seattle wound up on top, 32-20.
Clearly, I am not qualified to pick winners. Fortunately, I had help figuring that out 26 years ago.
50 more don't-you-dares for food servers. You guys done with that?
I don't know that I'd want to work for this guy, but I wouldn't mind trying his restaurant, assuming he can find enough scrupulously correct staffers to get it open.
Last week I linked to 50 tips for servers and other employees. Here are the next 50.
I particularly like No. 65, "Always remove used silverware and replace it with new." No, Mr. or Ms. Waitperson, I do not want to save my fork. I want to keep the dishwasher from getting bored and I want to keep my carrot cake from tasting like spaghetti sauce, so I'll take a fresh one, please.
On the plus side, you have to really foul up to get me to tip less than 20 percent. So I'm worth the occasional side trip for a piece of cutlery.
Dump truck escapes 4th-floor window
Some people are appalled by this and some are amused. But however you feel about a bunch of guys shoving a dump truck out a window at the old Packard plant in Detroit, it's hard to ignore.
Along with its story, the Wall Street Journal has thoughtfully provided video.
50 don't-you-dares for restaurant staffers
Herewith is a link to a list of 50 things restaurant staffers should never do, as provided to the New York Times by a guy named Bruce who's getting ready to open a seafood joint.
I used "herewith" because he did, as the very first word of the piece. I used "joint" because it doesn't sound like something you'd hear from someone who begins an article with "herewith."
As for the list, it's only part one. Bruce has 50 more don'ts ready to go next week.
Most of the first batch is hard to argue with, as in ...
1. Do not let anyone enter the restaurant without a warm greeting.
5. Tables should be level without anyone asking. Fix it before guests are seated.
21. Never serve anything that looks creepy or runny or wrong.
38. Do not call a guy a "dude."
... but feel free to disagree. In short: Read and discuss, dudes.
Facebook Status Update of the Week
From my friend Jimmy Doom, noted actor-writer-poet and former lead singer of the Almighty Lumberjacks of Death:
"Today is the first day of the rest of your life and about two weeks after I got tired of listening to you bitch about it."
About those chickens ...
I mentioned Kauai's wild chickens in this morning's column about why people drive what they drive, and figured I should probably elaborate here.
The first chickens were brought to Kauai for the same reason chickens get brought anywhere: They're tasty.
Then, the story goes, Filipino immigrants brought in some fighting cocks. Hey, cockfighting is a crime for good reason and it's not my idea of sport, but cultures do what cultures do. Try explaining football.
Anyway, Hurricane Iniki brought carnage and destruction in 1992 and freed a bunch of chickens, hostile and otherwise, who interbred and flourished to the point where they pretty much have the run of the island. Their only natural predators are dogs and cats, who don't want any part of them.
I played four rounds this month at Prince Golf Course, a beautiful layout on the north end of the island that often winds up on Best Courses lists. At one point, I stepped out of my cart and found myself getting hissed and scowled at by a feral cat with a bad attitude and no tail.
Not 10 feet away were two chickens. Excuse me, I said to the cat, but I'm considerably larger than you, and I have 14 golf clubs. Those are birds. Haven't you watched the cartoons?
He kept hissing and arching his back, so I got out of his way. The chickens barely noticed.
Rather than get upset about the chickens, the people of Kauai have embraced them, albeit from a distance. You'll find chicken art and chicken T-shirts and even this chicken recipe, which will help explain why no one eats them.
Kauai Wild Chicken Recipe
1 Kauai wild chicken
1 large onion
1 bunch seasoning spices of your choosing
1 large rock
Salt and pepper
Put all ingredients into a large covered pot. Simmer over a low flame for several hours. Remove the rock. Discard the chicken. Eat the rock.
My lunch with Soupy Sales, a good and funny man
A decade or so ago, a magazine asked me to do stand-up comedy and then write about it.
Okay, I said. So I started putting together some material, writing jokes and jotting down observations and condensing a few of the stories that always knock 'em dead at parties, and before long I had quite a bit of stuff.
What I didn't have, I realized, was an act. But I had someone I could call for advice:
Soupy, who died Thursday in New York at 83, would ring me sometimes if he needed to promote an appearance in Detroit. Or I'd ring him if I needed someone to be spontaneously funny on most any subject imaginable.
This time, fortuitously, he was in Detroit, booked for two or three shows at a supper club along Lake St. Clair. I found him in his hotel room and asked if he had a minute to chat.
"What are you doing for lunch?" he said.
We wound up in a burgundy booth at the old Excalibur in Southfield. He offered advice. He offered jokes. He spent probably three hours with me, partly because he loved comedy but mostly because he was a nice guy.
He was invaluable, and I'm not going to kid anybody: It was an enormous treat to realize I was lingering over lunch with the Soupy Sales.
The last few times I called him, I could tell he'd slowed down. When he was on, he could shoot out jokes like a comedy Gatling gun. Now I'd have to help him with the punchlines of his old stand-bys.
We hadn't talked for a few years. I didn't want to intrude when he clearly wasn't feeling well. But every time we made contact, he ended with the same request: "Tell Detroit I said hello."
This is where it all started for him. He never forgot that, any more than Detroit ever forgot him.
Nobel Peace Prize injustice? How 'bout the Cy Young?
I was puzzled to hear that President Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, but hardly -- as so many others found themselves yesterday -- upset.
Upset I save for truly important miscarriages of justice, like Fernando Valenzuela of the L.A. Dodgers winning the National League Cy Young Award in 1981 when the more deserving pitcher was clearly Tom Seaver of the Cincinnati Reds.
Valenzuela won 13 games and lost 7, with an earned run average of 2.48. Seaver was 14-2 and 2.54. How can that not gnaw at somebody?
Maybe if I'd ever collected Nobel Peace Prize trading cards, I'd have had a stronger reaction to the result in that race. Of course, since we never officially know who the nominees are, it's hard to feel outraged on behalf of the runner-up.
For a tidy overview of the day among Nobel Peace Prize fans, there's a nice piece in the Washington Post today from Eli Saslow.
No tears for Stefani -- but definitely, our thanks
Let the Attorney Discipline Board and the county prosecutor do what they feel needs doing in the case of lawyer Michael Stefani, who admitted Thursday what most people already assumed: he was the source of the text-message transcripts that brought down Kwame Kilpatrick.
He knew the potential penalties for leaking the texts to a newspaper. If he gets spanked by his fellow attorneys, so be it.
I can't imagine he'd have much to fear from a Wayne County jury, though, if the prosecutor brought perjury charges related to his testimony in various hearings. The fact is, without Stefani, Kwame Kilpatrick would still be Mayor for Life and Detroit would still be his rolling frat party.
Considering what Stefani's share of the $8.4 million settlement probably was, I doubt he needs our help defending himself. But if someone starts a defense fund, I might have to find a way to leak him a check.
