by Rob Clymo
Being able to access the internet and your email, no matter what the location is an incredibly handy thing to have. Thanks to a wealth of deals, it's now quick, easy and relatively cheap for anyone to get connected too with a simple ...
Continue reading Solving the Mobile Internet Puzzle
My Daughter’s Halloween Take for 2010
In case anybody is interested, here is Nina's Halloween take this year.
I had her itemize everything in her bag when she got home Sunday night. Isn't that terrible?
Actually, she didn't mind at all. She happily put this together for me in no time really, all the while munching away on the stuff in her bag.
All candy bars are the "fun size" variety -- no big bars this year. The Reese's peanut butter cups are single count.
13 Kit Kats
8 Almond Joys (Amazingly, 0 Mounds)
6 Nerds
8 Snickers
3 Three Muskateers
5 Milky Way (Ever have the "After Midnight" variety with dark chocolate? The best!)
13 Laffy Taffy
4 Air Heads
3 Heath Bars (Heath ice cream, yes. Heath candy bar, no thanks.)
8 Butterfingers
16 Whoppers (no, not the Burger King variety)
4 Nestle Crunch
9 Reese's peanut butter cups (My personal favorites!)
2 Hershey milk chocolate bars
6 Twix
4 bags of pretzels
12 Smarties
5 Candy sticks
1 Milk Duds (These were big when I was a kid - not any more.)
1 Rice Crispy treat
4 Now and Laters
13 Tootsie Pops
3 Tootsie Rolls
3 Sweet Tarts
1 Bottle Caps (My favorites are the root beer ones. I wish they were all root beer!)
11 Sour Punch Licorice
2 Fun Dip
1 M&Ms (I can't believe this number was so low!)
1 Baby Ruth (Quite possibly the worst candy bar ever invented.)
1 Take 5
1 Hot Tamale
1 Starburst
1 Skittles
1 Twizzler
2 Life Saver Gummies
2 Fruit Jelly's
1 Lemon Gummy Heads
1 Gobstopper
1 Rolo (And now a message from our sponsor...)
2 Jolly Ranchers
1 Bazooka bubble gum
9 generic hard candies
2 pencils
1 glow stick
1 goody bag
$2.00 (Can you believe one house was actually giving out $2 per kid? We got 96 kids which means, assuming he got the same number, this guy passed out almost $200 to the kids! Wow.) ...
Continue reading My Daughter’s Halloween Take for 2010
Deal or No Deal? Comparing Dollar Stores to Walmart & Others
Did you know that dollar stores have been around since 1955 when Dollar General opened its first one in Springfield, Kentucky? It's true.
Granted, in terms of purchasing power, a dollar went a lot further back then -- equivalent to just a hair ...
Continue reading Deal or No Deal? Comparing Dollar Stores to Walmart & Others
Why Marriage Makes It So Hard to Control Remodeling Costs. (Well, Kinda Sorta.)
As I've previously mentioned, the Penzo household is in the middle of a long-awaited home renovation project with a reliable contractor.
Originally, it was supposed to be a fairly modest kitchen renovation that involved replacing our porcelain ...
Continue reading Why Marriage Makes It So Hard to Control Remodeling Costs. (Well, Kinda Sorta.)
Ticketmaster’s New Blog (And Why I Hate Them Even More Now.)
I recently bought tickets to see Maroon 5 for one of their upcoming shows in Los Angeles. Let me tell you, I love Maroon 5 almost as much as I love my dog - which puts them pretty far up my totem pole of most-cherished entities.
Of course, like ...
Continue reading Ticketmaster’s New Blog (And Why I Hate Them Even More Now.)
Black Coffee: A Little Fun with My Dog and Some Peanut Butter
It's time to sit back, relax and enjoy a little joe
Welcome to another rousing edition of Black Coffee, your off-beat weekly round-up of whats been going on in the world of money and personal finance. Heres what caught my attention over the past week
Next time you parents with kids need an idea for a clever birthday party game that kids under age eight - or guys like me - will surely get a kick out of, try this: ask everyone to predict how many times the dog will lick its chops after you give him a big glob of peanut butter.
My daughter Nina and I like to do this for fun every once in awhile. I don't know why, but I think watching a dog eat peanut butter is one of the funniest things on earth.
The only rule is that you officially stop counting once the dog has gone at least 10 seconds without licking. Today, our Rhodesian Ridgeback, Major, licked his chops 84 times. Meanwhile, Nina and I were laughing for at least 2 minutes.
I know. I need help.
Blogs I've Been Following This Week
Free From Broke - Financial Krav Maga: Personal Finance Self-Defense for the Modern Era. I know what you're thinking. WTF is Krav Maga? Until I read this very clever article I thought Krav Maga was one of Godzilla's over-sized insect foes. Silly me.
Control Your Cash - Lower Fees Through Prevarication. Ten bonus points for those of you who don't have to look up the word "prevarication." I didn't! Okay, yes I did.
Watson Inc. - Is Extreme Frugality for You? Well, if you ask a Freegan who read Shawn's article, he'd say "extreme" is definitely in the eye of the beholder. Crushed possum roadkill can be mighty tasty when seasoned with condiments raided from the local greedy corporate fast food joint, and accompanied with a little stale bread and out-of-date lima beans (from dented cans, of course) fished out of a grocery store dumpster. It also has to be skillfully prepared, outside an abandoned parking lot lean-to, over a trash can fire started by rubbing together two sticks from a dead chestnut tree, and cooked in a rusty old paint can for a pot. Mmm. When do we eat? I know, right after the lecture on how capitalism makes life unbearably rotten for humans everywhere.
Kiplinger - 10 Surprising Ways Your State May Tax You Next. Still not on the list: taxing toilet flushes. Yet.
Money Beagle - 5 Ways to Save at the Beach. Aside: I once had a secretary who owned a beagle named Bagel.
Debt Consolidation Care - (An interview with some goofy guy named Len Penzo.) Thanks, Sarah!
Debt Vigilante - 8 Ways I Cut Costs Down to Have More Fun. Those lovable Freegans might have a problem with this list because the Vigilante didn't mention dumpster diving and eating roadkill for dinner.
...And Here's Some Other Posts You Might Enjoy:
Hope to Prosper - Trillion Dollar Public Pension Shortfall.
Personal Finance By the Book - New Laws Rock the Debt Settlement World.
Budgets Are Sexy - 5 Things to Always Keep In Your Car.
Eventual Millionaire - I Must Do the Thing I Think I Cannot Do.
Wealth Informatics - Borrowing from 401k for First Time Home Down Payment.
Personal Finance Firewall - Have You Experienced What Financial Freedom Tastes Like?
Oblivious Investor - Dealing With Investment Confusion.
Green Panda Tree House - The Ultimate Way to Manage Your E-Mail.
Barbara Friedberg Personal Finance - Need Extra Money? Do Not Do This!
Sweating the Big Stuff - 5 Main Money Gobblers.
Beating Broke - Balanced Billing: Budget Helper.
The Way-Back Machine: Past Posts Of Mine You May Have Missed
From August 2009:
Personal Finance Decisions: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - If the world of personal finance was a spaghetti western, this is what it would look like.
Credits and Debits
Debit: Approximately one half-million people filed new applications for unemployment benefits last week. That represents a nine-month high for initial claims, and suggests the so-called "summer of recovery" is anything but.
Debit: The reason employers aren't hiring is simple - there is just too much economic uncertainty brought about by President Obama's anti-business policies that, some say, is our economic Katrina.
Debit: With all this uncertainty, I'm not the only one who expects this country to flounder - or worse - until we reverse the economically destructive liberal policies that this Congress and President Obama are foisting on the United States. But there are some who say "bah!" to that because, they say, the only thing we're really uncertain about is, well, uncertainty. At best, that's a glass-half-full opinion, if you ask me.
Credit: I'm normally a glass-half-full guy myself. Unfortunately, that view becomes delusional when the glass is clearly three-quarters empty.
Debit: My friends at Political Calculations recently did a couple of very enlightening studies that shed light on President Obama's tax future and spending future based upon his budget plans, where they concluded: "What we find is that even after adjusting for inflation, President Obama intends to permanently increase the federal government's spending by an average of $576.4 billion during the years from 2010 through 2013. We also see that he doesn't plan to stop there, as he would plan to spend even more money in 2014 and 2015, the last year for which he projects spending in his Fiscal Year 2011 budget."
Debit: Even worse, and as Political Calculations showed, although the tax burden will rise significantly for everyone, starting in 2011 and beyond, the deficits will just continue to get even bigger. There is no way you can spin that by saying the glass is half-full.
Debit: Two big issues contributing to our deficit problems are the absurd pay and benefits enjoyed by public sector employees, which prompted the Freeman's George Leef to observe, "Karl Marx was right - sort of. He was right in saying that society is driven by class warfare, but he got the classes wrong. Its not the case that capitalists exploit workers, but rather that tax consumers exploit taxpayers."
Credit: If this country is going to survive in its present form, we must drastically reduce the size of the federal government and its spending. Don't make the mistake of thinking that's Tea Party hyperbole either. We need to elect true fiscal conservatives this November, regardless of their party affiliation. Otherwise, I fear our country will soon be destroyed from within.
Credit: Meanwhile, in a bit of positive news, MSNBC reports that some architects and real estate websites have declared that the era of the McMansion is all but over. If true, it's good to see that most people have finally woken up and realized that a 3000 square foot house for a family of four - or less - is not only excessive, but also a potentially unnecessary strain on their pocket book.
Debit: Then again, after gasoline jumped to $5 per gallon a couple years ago, I thought the era of the over-sized SUV and monster truck was over too. Oops.
Debit: In other news, the World Health Organization (WHO) called on Friday for the monitoring of a new superbug that is resistant to nearly all antibiotics. This is the same organization that warned us all in 2007 about an H5N1 bird flu pandemic that never came, resulting in millions of wasted dollars for hastily-created vaccines that were never needed. Through 2009, there were only 263 deaths from 447 total cases worldwide. Well, they were close.
Credit: This just in: the World Health Organization just sent out another press release today predicting that, in 2011, the Washington Generals will wrest the NBA title from the Los Angeles Lakers and Billy Bob Thornton will be voted People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive!
By the Numbers
Some fun statistics, courtesy of Wikipedia, on the Washington Generals and their Achilles' heel, the world famous Harlem Globetrotters.
5 The number of alternate team names for the Generals. To give the appearance that the Globetrotters play more than one team, the Generals have also donned uniforms representing the Boston Shamrocks, the New Jersey Reds, the Baltimore Rockets, the New York Nationals, and the Atlantic City Sea Gulls.
6 Between 1953 and 1995, the number of times the Generals have beaten the Harlem Globetrotters.
13,000+ The number of times the Globetrotters have beaten the Generals.
2,499 The Globetrotters' longest winning streak. The streak came to an end on January 5, 1971 when the Generals (playing as the New Jersey Reds) won in overtime 100-99. It was the Globetrotters' only loss between 1962 and 1995. According to Wikipedia, Generals' team owner Louis "Red" Klotz said that after the game the fans, "Looked at us like we killed Santa Claus."
Other Useless News
Here are the Top 5 Referring sites so far during the month of August (excluding search engines and aggregators).
1. MSN: Smart Spending
2. Time Magazine: It's Your Money
3. Wisebread
4. Cheap Healthy Good
5. Mint
Thanks to everyone who has linked to me over the past month! I truly appreciate it. I'll be highlighting the Top 25 referring sites at the end of the month.
Oh yes, and here's another friendly reminder for ya: if you happen to enjoy what you're reading - or not - please make sure you follow me on Twitter. And, if you'll be so kind, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feed too! :-)
Carnival News
This week I had articles featured at the following carnivals:
The Carnival of Personal Finance @ Live Real Now ...
Continue reading Black Coffee: A Little Fun with My Dog and Some Peanut Butter
The Great Debate: Do Kids Really Need Their Own Cell Phone?
Last week I shared the story about my $1055 cell phone bill, courtesy of my teenage son. The article seemed to, um, resonate with a lot readers, not only here but at MSN where it was also featured as a guest post, and on Digg, where at last count it ...
Continue reading The Great Debate: Do Kids Really Need Their Own Cell Phone?
The Ugly Truth: Why Big Spenders Are Terrible In Bed
It is a truism that most big spenders are showoffs; they feed off attention.
Ironically, while your typical big spender works 24/7 trying to impress others, most of the time they rarely do so.
There is a small segment of the population, ...
Continue reading The Ugly Truth: Why Big Spenders Are Terrible In Bed
Dear Diary: What I Did On My Summer Vacation
My family and I just got back from a whirlwind two-week vacation to the East Coast to see the Honeybee's family in Connecticut and do some sightseeing. We also managed to set aside a little time to visit some of my tax money in our nation's ...
Continue reading Dear Diary: What I Did On My Summer Vacation
My Store-Brand vs. Name-Brand Blind Taste-Test Experiment #3
Okay. If you are a regular reader here you know the drill by now, so feel free to skip to the juicy parts!
Are name-brand groceries really worth the extra cost when alternative cheaper store-brand groceries are available? More specifically, when ...
Continue reading My Store-Brand vs. Name-Brand Blind Taste-Test Experiment #3
Drive-By Movie Review: A Simple Plan (A Movie on the Ethics of Found Money)
This is a review of the 1998 movie A Simple Plan starring Billy Bob Thornton, Bill Paxton, Bridget Fonda, and Gary Cole
Plot Summary: Two brothers and a friend find $4 million in the cockpit of a downed plane. The pilot is dead. No one is looking ...
Continue reading Drive-By Movie Review: A Simple Plan (A Movie on the Ethics of Found Money)
Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline and Others: What’s the Best Travel Search Engine?
I can't believe I'm saying this, but our annual summer vacation is right around the corner. Weren't we in the throes of a Little Ice Age just last month?
Ah, well.
I'd like to say we were going back to Maui, but unfortunately I drew the short ...
Continue reading Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline and Others: What’s the Best Travel Search Engine?
Should Low-Income Drivers Receive Subsidies to Use Toll Express Lanes?
Every day on my way home from work I zip by tens of thousands of people behind the wheels of cars stuck in hopelessly gridlocked traffic because they didn't want to pay the toll (usually between $2 and $10, depending on the direction and time of day) for the open express lanes.
For me, the money spent every day for the right to avoid 10 miles of traffic hell is money well-spent. I currently spend about $1000 each year for the privilege of driving unimpeded and, truth be told, I would gladly spend double that if I had to.
Those express toll lanes are a beautiful thing - without them I would not be able to endure my daily 38 mile commute and I would most likely be forced to leave my employer of many years to take a much lower paying job closer to home.
Not everybody thinks they are a good deal.
In fact, a lot of people argue that paid toll lanes are inherently unfair to low-income drivers. They wonder why those who make less money should have to endure a hellish commute while others who can afford to pay for it get to whiz by in relative comfort.
A joint study conducted in 2008 by UCLA and USC actually seems to disprove that line of thought.
According to the study, pay-as-you-go transportation options like toll express lanes are actually fairer to all income levels than paying for road improvements such as additional express lanes through sales taxes alone.
While the study found that toll express lanes are disproportionately used by middle- and upper-middle-income households, it also found that those same drivers would have ended up paying less each year if the lanes would have been funded via their sales taxes.
What troubles me is the study authors' suggestion that policymakers worried about low-income peak-period commuters could provide discounted subsidy pricing based on income levels, or provide travel credits to lower-income commuters.
Of course, such a suggestion poses another problem.
Since the only way to keep the express lanes flowing smoothly is to raise the prices during times of peak use, the implementation of subsidies would result in other drivers being priced out of the lanes in favor of the subsidized lower-income drivers. How fair is that?
As usual, when it comes to subsidies and hand-outs there is no free lunch.
Somebody is always going to have to pay. ...
Continue reading Should Low-Income Drivers Receive Subsidies to Use Toll Express Lanes?
The Redistribution of Health: Excuse Me, But I Think I’m Gonna Be Sick
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. - Abraham Lincoln
I don't feel so good.
The United States Congress stuck their middle finger ...
Continue reading The Redistribution of Health: Excuse Me, But I Think I’m Gonna Be Sick
The (Dead)Beat Generation
Should you walk away from your mortgage just because your home depreciated?
So you refinanced. Or bought too much house. You divided the mortgage payments by your income, and decided you could swing something a few percentage points higher than the recommended 2533 because the market was rising and your house would make you rich just by existing.
You relied on speculation as an investment strategy (not even your own speculation, but other peoples.) But your house got cheaper, maybe cheaper than what you bought it for. Thats called losing money on an investment, which happens all the time, but people think it oughtnt when your bedroom and kitchen are inside the investment.
The market might bounce back. If youre 7 years in, lots can happen in the remaining 23 on a 30-year mortgage.
When you lose money on a stock, your (invisible) bank account gets wiped out. Owe more than your vehicle is worth, and it might get repoed. But stop making payments on a house, and theres a letter from the constable on the door, maybe some yellow tape involved hard to keep that quiet from the neighbors. Also, people getting forcibly removed from their house (its yours and not the banks only after you pay the entire mortgage) make for striking photo and political opportunities. After all, bankers are evil. Meanwhile, its the working stiffs just trying to make ends meet who get raked over the coals. (Wow, a sentence composed entirely of idioms. Mike Lupica approves.)
Some people who make enough to cover the mortgage dump the house anyway the strategic default. They assume investment values only move in one direction. According to Experian, that includes 20% of defaulters.
This is hiding behind the law. Stop making payments, and its not like youll be evicted that week. It takes months, even years. The idea here is to take the mortgage payments and put them toward, say, your credit card balance, figuring the lender will gladly renegotiate a contract you signed in order to get some sort of return on its investment.
Some borrowers think this is fine because if the lender kicks you out, itll be tough for them to sell the house to someone else in a down market anyway. The lender at least wants the house to stay lived in.
This is nonsense. Strategic defaults hurt everyone.
A strategic default does to your credit score what O.J. did to Nicole. Youll never be able to borrow either a) again, or b) until Congress and the White House decide that so many people need to improve their credit score that it just wouldnt be nice to let something as insidious as that have such power over their lives.
Whats the solution? Well, no politician of either party wants the other accusing them of standing by while old ladies and cripples are being kicked out of their houses. The government would then essentially renegotiate mortgage contracts, setting caps on future ones and insisting the lenders take less. Under this type of forced renegotiation, the borrowers dont even have to sack up and face the lenders themselves.
Besides, neighbors, professors, and the blonde lady on TV say defaulting is fine. And for PR reasons, lenders are hunting down deficient borrowers about as aggressively as the federal government goes after illegal immigrants.
Say you walk away from your mortgage, mail your keys to your lender (this is how its done), then rent somewhere. Your (old) neighbor follows, then a third. No matter how swank a neighborhood you deserted, the lawns turn brown and the pools green because no ones living in the houses. Which reduces the value of the remaining houses. Now the people who stayed behind and havent (yet) defaulted watch their homes values decline. Which means theyll likely owe more than their houses are worth, making it more likely that those folks will default. Continue like this, and you end up withDetroit.
When you declare bankruptcy, you can renegotiate to protect yourself from creditors. But strategically defaulting is the opposite you keep all your assets except the house and mortgage.
So what to do? Four choices:
1. Man up, economize and make your payments. Youre obligated to the lender, yourself (to preserve your credit), any kids of yours (unless you dont think you need to set an example) and society. If you steal from your lender, it doesnt directly affect the rest of us, but it makes civilization incrementally more difficult to live inthe broken window theory.
You dont like that answer? Its a house, for crying out loud. You need somewhere to live. No matter how much value it loses, its still better than renting and never building a dime of equity. Stop assuming that because your $100,000 house lost 10% of its value last year, itll lose a similar amount next year and by 2021 will be worth -$10,000.
2. Short sale. If you know you cant make your payments, and youve exhausted every possible way of earning or otherwise securing money, call the lender and come clean AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Theyll sell the house at a loss, just to get you out of there and collect their money. Youll still be on the hook until the bank resells the house, but that wont last forever and at least you can stop throwing good money after bad.
3. Ask for a loan modification. Its begging, but your pride already left a while ago.
4. The Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure. Tell the lender, Look, I cant make the payments. Lets not short sell, Ill just give you the damn thing to get out of this debt. This hurts your credit rating the least, and tells the lender not to worry about you being one of those evictees who pours concrete in the toilets and makes off with the copper wire.
And next time, get a vanilla 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.
About the Author
Greg McFarlane lives in Las Vegas, winters in Maui, travels the globe and hates working for other people. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here and reach Greg at greg@ControlYourCash.com. ...
Continue reading The (Dead)Beat Generation
Dear Diary: A Night at the Oscars with Me and the Honeybee
The other night the Honeybee and I sat down and watched the 82nd Annual Academy Awards, and I have to say it was the most entertaining show I've seen since Billy Crystal was hosting.
Naturally, we recorded the event to avoid all the commercials.
Here's my minute-by-minute take...
7:30 PM: The Honeybee and I send the kids upstairs and snuggle up to the fire before hitting the play button. I've also got with me my trusty bag of Hostess mini-donuts (chocolate) and a glass of milk. The Honeybee goes the other route: A big bag of peanut M&Ms which she has decided to wash down with a Jack and Diet Coke. I know.
7:33 PM: WTF is this? Is that Doogie Howser doing a song-and-dance number? Yep. But you know what? As I watch Neil Patrick Harris start belting out his number it is obvious that he is a capable singer. Who knew? I'm now suddenly intrigued.
7:34 PM: As the openly gay Harris continues his number, two beautiful show girls cozy up to either side of him, seductively pawing at his body. A mere mortal man would easily have trouble keeping his, um, composure. "Look at Doogie!" I tell the Honeybee, "The guy isn't even breaking a sweat." If that were me instead of Doogie, decency laws would force the director to cut to a crowd shot.
7:35 PM: Harris continues his show tune, and is picked up by three male models that would make Brad Pitt look like a nerd. Harris continues belting out his number as he sits on their hunky shoulders. "I bet he's sweating now," deadpans the Honeybee.
7:40 PM: Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin just brought down the house with a hilarious monologue. I bet they threw out 30 jokes in five minutes and maybe two of them fell flat. The best line was Steve Martin commenting on the movie-star good-looks of young actors Zac Efron and Taylor Lautner, warning how time eventually takes its toll: "Take a good look at me guys," said Martin, "This is you in five years."
7:41 PM: Penelope Cruz comes out to give the Best Support Actor award and she looks absolutely stunning. What was Tom Cruise thinking when he let her go? Between Katie Holmes and Penelope, I'll take Penelope every time.
7:42 PM: Of the five guys up for best supporting actor, I'm rooting for Christopher Waltz for his awesome job as the Jew-hunting SS colonel in Inglorious Basterds.
7:43 PM: Waltz wins! His acceptance speech is beautifully done, quick and to the point. "We're off to a really good start!" the Honeybee says. I have to agree. I'm almost 15 minutes into the show and I haven't eaten a single donut yet.
7:56 PM: Teenagers Mylie Cyrus and Amanda Seyfried come out to give an award. Unfortunately, Cyrus stumbles badly over her lines, finally apologizing to the crowd. "As you can tell, we're both kind of nervous," she says. We? I'm sure Seyfried, who had delivered her part flawlessly up to that point, had more than a few choice words for her "friend" back stage. Welcome to Hollywood, kid.
7:58 PM: Wow. District 9 is a nominee for Best Picture! I'd vote for it.
8:08 PM: "What's wrong with Molly Ringwald?" the Honeybee asks. Giving a tribute with Matthew Broderick to the late director John Hughes, she looks like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. Either that, or she was trying to do her best impersonation of the eyeball scene in A Clockwork Orange.
8:10 PM: Dairies all over America are working overtime to print new milk cartons: Judd Nelson is alive! He just walked on stage with a few other 80s brat pack members including Ally Sheedy and Anthony Michael Hall.
8:15 PM: The first injustice of the night: The great Nick Park, of Wallace and Gromit fame, fails to win best animated short film for A Matter of Loaf and Death.
8:16 PM: The Honeybee begins fast forwarding through the rest of the "film short" awards. Meanwhile, I eat my first donut. Mmm. Hostess minis.
8:20 PM: Ben Stiller comes out to present the award for best makeup dressed up in the Avatar blue-face get-up of the Nav'i - complete with a fuzzy tail. Stiller's irreverence is the perfect antidote for a crowd that tends to take itself way too seriously.
8:30 PM: Robin Williams informs the audience, "You've just seen the Governor's Award. Later this evening the Governor's ball will be held, just one of many balls being held all over Hollywood tonight." After I was done rolling on the floor, I ask the Honeybee if she heard that, giving her a wink. Her curt reply: "He said Hollywood, Romeo."
8:45 PM: Almost simultaneously, the Honeybee and I can barely contain ourselves as we joyously exclaim, "Hey, look!" Was it Jack Nicholson? No. Arnold Schwarzenegger? Uh uh. A Led Zeppelin reunion? Nope. It's the musical director from Dancing with the Stars, Harold Wheeler, being introduced as the Academy Awards' conductor!
8:48 PM: Pinch me. An albino just walked up on stage to take the award for sound editing. What are the odds of an albino winning an Academy Award? They have to be astronomical. It could be one hundred years or more before the Oscars ever see another sight like that again.
8:50 PM: Check that. The same albino just claimed another Oscar - this time for sound mixing. Good thing I'm not a betting man.
8:58 PM: Time for the traditional 15-second mention of the Oscars' ugly stepchild - the science and technical awards. "As an engineer, that really bugs me that they give no love to these guys," I complain to the Honeybee. "Why should they?" she says as she downs the last of her Jack and Coke, "Nobody cares." I tell her I care. "Like I said..." she replies.
9:02 PM: Everybody knows I adore Sandra Bullock but whoever did her makeup tonight did her no favors. That red lipstick makes her look like Bozo the Clown.
9:04 PM: Don't look now but it's Demi Moore - DEH-mi (not Deh-MI). "Wow. She's looking great!" says the Honeybee. That she is. DEH-mi is pushing 50 and she looks absolutely terrific. Talk about cougar town - grrrrrrrrrr. What was Bruce Willis thinking? If I were Ashton Kutcher, I would send Bruce a thank you card every Valentine's Day.
9:08 PM: They're now playing the annual tribute to those in the Industry who passed away the year before. "Why is Michael Jackson in the tribute? Does his Thriller video qualify him as a movie star?" the Honeybee asks. I doubt it; she has a good point there. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out how the Academy could have left Farrah Fawcett out of the tribute. Tragic.
9:09 PM: It's only fitting that Jennifer Lopez should immediately follow the Academy's tribute to the dead. Come to think of it, they not only forgot Farrah, they forgot to include JLo's career in that retrospective too. Time for another donut.
9:15 PM: Avatar just won the award for visual effects and director James Cameron looks ecstatic. His movie has been getting trounced by The Hurt Locker, which was directed by his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, but now this win narrows the Oscar awards gap to 3-2 in favor of his ex. There's still the four big awards to go, so this is anybody's contest.
9:18 PM: It had to happen. The lone political statement of the night is made by some dude who raises a banner on stage during the acceptance speech for the best documentary award, which went to The Cove, asking us to "Text 'Dolphin' to XXXXX."
9:23 PM: Oops. The Hurt Locker just took the award for film editing. Kathryn Bigelow 4. James Cameron 2.
9:33 PM: Uh oh. Somebody had a tailgater outside the theater before the show started. Unfortunately, that somebody is an apparently very inebriated Buffalo Bill Cody, who just decided to jump on stage and accept the Best Actor award for Jeff Bridges. Buffalo Bill is giving a rambling speech, punctuated by lots and lots of "yeah, mans."
9:34 PM: Buffalo Bill is still up there babbling. Apparently his dad was the late Lloyd Bridges. Who knew? Meanwhile, we're at eight "yeah mans" and counting. Hopefully, I have enough donuts to get through the rest of this.
9:36 PM: Cody finishes his speech and not a moment too soon. I've got one donut left. How many grams of fat are there in an entire bag of Hostess mini donuts?
9:45 PM: Sandra Bullock wins for Best Actress! That's my girl. I've always said she was a highly underrated actress - so this award is justly deserved. In complete contrast to Buffalo Bill's acceptance speech, Sandra's is both touching and magnanimous. She thanks all of her fellow nominees and even mentions her Razzie award for Worst Actress. A real class act.
10:03 PM: If James Cameron wants to save face in his head-to-head Oscar battle with his ex-wife, he needs the billion-dollar grossing Avatar to take the last two awards, including the Best Director award.
10:04 PM: This can't be good for Cameron: Barbra Streisand is presenting the award for Best Director. Babs asks the crowd if it's finally time a woman won the award for best director. Everybody knows what she thinks and, I gotta tell you, for Cameron it's now a lose-lose situation. Even if he wins the award over ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, I would half-expect Babs to hit him over the head with his statuette.
10:05 PM: Lucky for Cameron he doesn't have to find out. Babs is smiling. Bigelow just beat her ex out for the Best Director honor. Bigelow 5, Cameron 2.
10:06 PM: The Hurt Locker finishes its evisceration of the mighty Avatar, winning the Best Picture award and taking its sixth Oscar of the night. Avatar may be the biggest grossing movie of all-time (well, actually that depends on how you keep score), but in terms of Oscar hardware, it can't hold a candle to a lot of other films.
10:08 PM: It's finally over. But even without commercials, the Academy Awards was still a marathon event. In fact, Steve Martin just walked on stage and closed the festivities by saying the show had run so long that Avatar "now takes place in the past."
10:10 PM: While it looks like the Honeybee has squashed my plans for any after-parties tonight, it's not all bad. I've still got one donut left. ...
Continue reading Dear Diary: A Night at the Oscars with Me and the Honeybee
Retirement Savings: Why My Kids Shouldn’t Plan on Receiving an Inheritance From Me
I know. A lot of you wish you could retire now, looking for reasons to retire early.
However, before that can become reality, it's important to understand our magic number; that magic number, of course, is the amount of money we'll need to have ...
Continue reading Retirement Savings: Why My Kids Shouldn’t Plan on Receiving an Inheritance From Me
Evaluating The Costs of a Longer Commute: When It’s Better to Just Suck It Up
As many of you know, I live in Southern California; cars are king here. Most of us who live in Los Angeles can't even spell "public transportation."
That's why it was big news when I found out my employer was moving 21 miles down the road, ...
Continue reading Evaluating The Costs of a Longer Commute: When It’s Better to Just Suck It Up
Valentine’s Day Giveaway: What’s the Biggest Money Argument You’ve Ever Had?
The Honeybee and I are extremely compatible in almost every way, right on down to when it comes to our philosophy on money and how we handle the household finances.
I understand though that, for upwards of 80 percent of couples, money can be a real source of strife in a relationship.
When it comes to money decisions, I think the biggest knock-down drag-out battle the Honeybee and I have had was whether or not to bundle cable and internet services with one provider or go a separate route with individual providers.
Not very juicy, I know.
Like I said, we really do see eye to eye on most everything.
Now we have had a lot of dumb arguments. Just not about money.
We've actually had knock-down drag out fights over whether we were going to go out to eat at a Mexican or Italian restaurant before.
I've slept on the couch because I refused to back down on the color of a bedroom wall. Well, I refused until I got tired of sleeping on the couch.
We've also been known to have a shouting match or two over whether a picture has been hung in a level fashion (and whether or not anybody other than the Honeybee or the International Committee for Weights and Measures would ever care that it was off kilter by six-thousandths of a micro-arc-second).
Good times.
Which brings me to my first giveaway ever!
I happen to have two copies of Get Financially Naked: How to Talk Money with Your Honey that I want to give away for Valentine's Day.
It is an absolutely terrific book that co-authors Manisha Thakor and Sharon Kedar have put together that is designed to help reduce tension in your relationship by teaching you and your significant other how to communicate about money. It is easy to read and very entertaining too.
If you are interested, you can check out my complete review of this book here.
Here's all you have to do to win one of them. Leave a comment telling me about either:
1. The biggest money argument you ever had with your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, significant other, or even your mom or dad. - OR -
2. The dumbest argument you ever had about anything with your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, significant other, or even your mom or dad.
That's it!
The contest will run until 11:59 pm on Tuesday, February 9, Pacific Daylight Time. At that time, the contest will be closed.
I'll pick two valid entries from all the comments received by a random number generator. Make sure you include a valid e-mail address, so I can contact you if you win.
Your odds of winning are simply based upon the number of comments received - and based upon my readership numbers, that means your odds are going to be pretty darn good!
Good luck! ...
Continue reading Valentine’s Day Giveaway: What’s the Biggest Money Argument You’ve Ever Had?
Inflation 101: Why Avatar Isn’t the Biggest Movie of All Time (And What Movie Is)
This past week, the technologically ground-breaking 3-D movie Avatar was hailed across the globe as the new king of the box office world, "topping" Titanic's box office take by grossing over $1.859 billion worldwide.
According to the media, this ...
Continue reading Inflation 101: Why Avatar Isn’t the Biggest Movie of All Time (And What Movie Is)
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