The Sweet Life

La Dolce Vita. Yeah, right. For some of us it means naked mannequins. I find it interesting that their feet appear to be cloven. They took all the trouble to give them nipples but omitted toes. That says something about society. I’m not sure what it says, but it says something.

Thanks to Christina for the photo.

As it turns out, I share a birthday today with Manute Bol, Tim Robbins, Nico and Bob Weir, among others … and a big shout-out to King James II of Scotland, who would be 578 years old today if he were alive today, which I realize is highly unlikely.
Today is the day I found out why those web sites wanted my birth date. I’m getting e-mail from all of them, wishing me a happy birthday and letting me know that I can save 20% if I shop there on my birthday. Well, that isn’t much of a gift, is it? Happy birthday. Buy something from us.
That’s one of those marketing gimmicks. “Buy two and save.” Buy two and spend is more like it.

Some folks around here are living la dolce vita because the baseball team is headed to its first World Series in 15 years. Sports is a strange thing. Twenty-five strangers won a game and the place went nuts. One fan was quoted in the Inquirer today saying, “It’s the happiest day of my life.” Really. His whole life. A team of millionaires won some baseball games and this guy couldn’t possibly be happier. Technically, they haven’t won anything, so I wonder how the guy is going to feel if they win the Series? He has so much more living to do.
Two seconds after the last out was recorded, thousands of fans took to the streets, hollering and running around like they had just won the lottery. I love baseball, but I've never been worked up enough to run into the street screaming like a maniac. You have to figure that the owners and TV networks look at that stuff and think, 'Man, we have these people by the balls.' I suppose that’s why they can charge us $150 for a ticket to the Series.

The tickets we have to game 4 are going for $1,400 each on StubHub. Each. If it was totally up to me, they would be sitting on the web site waiting for a $2,800 bid right now. If some schmuck wants to pay almost 3-grand to watch a baseball game, I'll be happy to take advantage of his good nature.

$2,800 buys a lot of groceries. Or a thousand gallons of gasoline.

Or what the average major league baseball player earns in about 2 hours.