Mike’s Blog: What’s Not To Like?

Norm Clarke writes the gossip column for the Las Vegas Review Journal.  He with his trademark eye patch is the “Kup” of Vegas. I introduced myself to him (and in fact Robyn Leach) at a private screening of the next-to-final eposide of HBO’s The Sopranos series, hosted by Elaine Bracco at the Planet Hollywood resort in LV over my birthday weekend in 2007.  What a specatular experience that was!  I digress.

Norm writes today that the once booming Vegas nightclub & strip club scene is feeling the heat of the Wall Street meltdown:

“Business was down 10 percent before the crash. Now it’s 20 to 25 percent,” said a veteran club operator. Clubs that routinely paid six figures for celebrity hosts during a free-spending three-year run have dramatically cut back, said a club entertainment executive. Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey and Jessica Simpson will still get $100,000-plus, the source said.

The stripper industry is taking a hit as well, a source said. “Strippers were making five grand a night. Now you’re hearing horror stories from the top clubs. They’re used to making a minimum of $1,000 a night. They’re not seeing as many high rollers coming in.”

http://www.lvrj.com/news/30998104.html

Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, the inspiration for the character played by DeNiro in the movie “Casino” has died at age 79.

Rosenthal was a Stardust casino executive before it was seized by the FBI. He was a legendary bookmaker that was banned from Nevada casinos as a member of the ‘Black Book’.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/30982809.html

Rosenthal maintaned a website right up until his death:

http://frankrosenthal.com/ 

An article run by the BBC claims that tests show that playing drums for a rock band requires similar stamina to that of a professional athlete.

Blondie drummer Clem Burke was tested during a 90 minute drum session (the length of an average Blondie set), where his heart rate reached up to 190 beats per minute, or BPM, as we say in the industry. That’s getting into Slayer territory — and this is Blondie. We’ll say that the average Blondie song is a moderate rock tempo — 120 BPM. This means that Slayer (whose songs often reach a skull-mashing 240 BPM) drummer Dave Lombardo’s heart can attain almost 400 BPM.

Dr. Marcus Smith from Chichester University (sounds made up, but surprisingly it isn’t!) claims that drumming in concert burns between 40 and 600 calories an hour. Drummer Clem Burke took part in this eight-year study, and the results are promising for outreach programs for overweight children looking for an option outside of sports.

The study, conducted by the University of Gloucestershire and the University of Chichester measured Burke’s heart rate, oxygen uptake and lactic acid levels. As a result, the Gloucester campus will be seeing the world’s first “drumming laboratory” in the near future, and they plan on continuing tests on other professional drummers.

My work in the IT industry exposes me to many different technology areas. The company I work for is primarily a Network Systems Integrator, serving small/medium sized business in greater Chicagoland. Our system engineers work in the field installing, maintaining and trouble-shooting server-based network systems. We offer limited web services but do not consider web hosting a core competency. That said, I’ve come to learn a lot about the “plumbing” of web techologies over my career.

When I decided to launch this blog and some other hobby sites, I researched carefully the myraid options available for web hosting - including do it for “free” on my company’s servers. After researching many providers, I recalled seeing a big ad for 1 and 1 Internet Services in Business Week, a small/medium business focused magazine. They claimed to be the World’s Largest Web Hosting Company, but I really had not heard of them before. I learned they are actually based in Germany and technically are Europe’s largest web host, but with a growing presence in America.

I signed up with them almost a year ago and have launched a number of sites and blogs - including CubHub.net and this site. Their pricing structure is astonishingly affordable, the tools and options inluded with even thier most basic hosting packages are excellent, and unlike many hosting companies, 1&1 offers telephone based technical support.  Being able to get someone on the phone for technical or account questions is a huge benefit for even technically savvy people like me. No one has all the answers, and being able to access live support has been great.  I’ve called in on 3 or 4 issues related to enhancements and tools they provide and once with an account question.  Each encounter has been quickly responded to and resolved.  I can’t say enough about how good my support experience with 1&1 has been.

Today I see an article in Information Week on 1&1’s new Data Center near Kansas City. It features capacity for 40,000 rackmounted servers, redundant multi-Gigabit fibre links, and a backup power generator that can run for a week with the fuel on hand.  This is a serious facility. 

If you are in the market for your own blog or to host a website, you can’t go wrong with 1 and 1 Internet. (note: If you click through from my 1&1 link, I get a credit toward my bill - that’s all good!)

My son is nearly five and a half years old. Over the past couple weeks, I have enjoyed watching him with pride conquer a few firsts.

• Last week he started kindergarten.
• He rode the school bus for the first time.
• He went bowling.
• He played a video game (Wii bowling)
• He visited an archaeological dig of a found mastodon
• He saw jets take off and land at O’Hare
• He saw his first Cubs game at Wrigley Field

These things are all rites of passage in their own right. Kindergarten is a biggie of course. The day he took the bus for the first time, I took off work to race to meet him when the bus delivered him back home at 3:15. I was there with the other parents, video camera ready, to meet the triumphant little warrior upon return to his kingdom. The bus pulled up, he got off and promptly asked to go play with his neighbor friend. No special day, no special reception, no stories, no ice cream, nothing. With a passing sigh I said that would be fine. In this moment I realized my boy is growing up.

A dad taking his son to his first ballgame was as meaningful to me as it was to him. I never did it much with my dad as he isn’t much of a baseball fan. It was my mother who lived and died with each pitch of Cubs baseball for much of the past half century. It was she who was my Cubbie buddy, going to maybe a dozen games a year or so from when I was about seven years of age. Back then the Cubs were a miserable team and the games were poorly attended. We would wake up on a summers day and go about our morning in the usual way. Then around 10am or so, she’d say “do you want to go to the ballgame today?”.  This was music to my young ears. “Yeah!” And we would grab a light jacket if the calendar didn’t say July or August because ‘it’s always 10 degrees colder at the ballpark’, she would tell me, and make it to Wrigley well in advance of the 1:05 first pitch.

We would walk a block from our home to the Loyola L station and hop a train South to Addison (always an A and B stop on game day) and arrive at Wrigley Field a few minutes later.  We would walk right up and by a General Admission Grandstand ticket only to immediately trade up to Reserved Grandstand upon entering the main concourse of the old ballpark. Our seats would always be part way up the third base line, several rows behind the Cubs dugout. There was never any problem getting in, and getting a great seat.  In the mid-1970’s they often didn’t even open the upper deck unless it was a weekend!

So taking my boy to his first game was really special for me, and I think he too thought it was significant. We had a great time even though the Cubs would get clobbered. (they went on to win their next 7 straight games) We saw two Cubs hit home runs which was quite thrilling to see. He had never been in a crowd that big before, nor had he ever experienced the crescendo of cheers that goes along with a home run by the home team.

It was a great day to be sure, even if my boy was more interested in the six - count ‘em six! - cotton candy vendors that were roaming the seats in Wrigley Field that day!

This guy was to the movie industry what Ernie Anderson was to ABC TV and John Facenda was to NFL Films…

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — A well known voice in Hollywood has been silenced. Don LaFontaine, best known for his appearance in the Geico commercials, died Monday.

He was known as the “King of Voiceovers” and made famous through thousands of movie trailers. He is most famous for the line, “In a world…”.

The cause of death is not official yet, but his agent says he died from a collapsed lung.

He recorded almost 5,000 movie trailers and nearly 350,000 commercials, programs, files, and other presentations. His most recent work included Geico Insurance commercials where he was referred to as “that announcer guy”.

He is survived by his wife, singer/actress Nita Whitaker, and three children.

Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

From WatcherOfTheSkies:

Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown reports: At a press avail in Monroe, Mich., Barack Obama on Palin: “Back off these kinds of stories.”

“I have said before and I will repeat again: People’s families are off limits,” Obama said. “And people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics.”

On charges that his campaign has stoked the story via liberal blogs:

“I am offended by that statement. There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us,” he said. “Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I thought there was somebody in my campaign who was involved in something like that, they would be fired.”

Yes, brilliance from a brilliant man and my preferred Presidential candidate. Rise above the fray, take the high road.  Still, the devil in me enjoys the irony of Sarah Palin’s Republican “Family Values” beliefs coming home to roost.  Karma train comin’ through!

The title of this entry has morphed in meaning for me over the years. These days, it refers to me & family spending Sunday in Wicker Park and getting buzzed by an F-22 Phantom fighter plane during the Chicago Air & Water show.  He tore through the skies sideways above us scaring the dogs and thrilling my kindergartner and me. We saw a few other planes overhead, but that initial flyover really got us going. 

Note to self: take the boy and get to the lakefront for the 2009 Air & Water show.  And bring the camera.

Here is a pic of Blue Angels buzzing Trump Tower (not my photo):

Did I ever tell you about the time I, well, hung out with Tiny Tim for a weekend? Yes, the Tiny Tim from the Tonight Show marriage with Miss Vicky, “Tiptoe Through The Tulips” and all that.

He was brought to town for a couple shows and a live recording, Tiny Tim Live in Chicago (with my pals the New Duncan Imperials) that I was involved with in the glorious 1990’s. Among my strongest memories of him and that weekend…

• Picking him up from O’Hare at like 10am on a weekday, slinking along in the tail end of morning rush traffic, with none other than Tiny freakin’ Tim in the passenger seat, strumming his omnipresent ukulele for a personal serenade. Surreal is an understatement.  Out of body experience is a better description. 
• His cologne/perfume. He stunk to high heaven with perfumed lotions and powders reminiscent of a crowded funeral home wake. Just an ugly, clashing mix of flowery, powdery air pollution. His main handler, my buddy Kenn, put him up in a Holiday Inn in Skokie and reported the guy going to the gift shop and buying only perfumes and scented powders. He reeked of old lady and the laundry soap aisle at Dominicks.
• The guy, as seemingly pleasant and kitschy and all, was an unabashed, hard-lined bigot, racist and chauvinist. I mean the guy’s views on women and relationships was among the most oppressive imaginable.  Entitlement, deference, objectification… listening to him talk was both astonishing and sickening - in a watching a car wreck kind of way.
• Bringing him to WGN Radio in Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue to be a guest on the Spike O’Dell show. It was my first time in that studio and I frankly had a private thrill being there in a place where so much radio history had been made. While sitting in studio one with Tim waiting to be the next featured segment, in walks legendary Farm Report and Noon Show anchor, Orion Samuelson. He is an older man, on the portly side, and today he is dressed impeccably with a striped shirt, tie and suspenders. He is on time as I presume he had always been for the previous 50 years of news updates. He walks in and sits down at what is presumably his usual mic and begins his report on queue. His deep, rich voice starts rumbling the market numbers in an in-person fidelity that took me back. It was like hearing stereo for the first time - he went from mono-AM radio fidelity to in person rumble. He owned that room when he walked in.  So here is Tiny freakin’ Tim sitting to the side of Orion, rustling the paper bag (an apparent trademark of his) that held his ukulele. Orion’s voice doesn’t miss a beat, but it was art to watch him pivot around, while keeping his lips exactly the same distance and relationship to the live mic, and shooting a look that sliced through Tiny Tim with no uncertain meaning: STOP RATTLING YOUR DAMN PAPER BAG WHILE I’M ON THE AIR.  I will never forget that moment.

I heard a couple stories on the radio this week that amazed me:

Story #1: A fundraiser was held in Chicago to benefit starving children of Darfur.  It was an all you can eat buffet dinner.

Story #2:  GM announces XFE series of fuel efficient trucks …better mileage by 1 single MPG. Here’s the AP story:

GM offers more fuel-efficient pickup trucks, SUVs

By DEE-ANN DURBIN – 20 hours ago

DETROIT (AP) — General Motors Corp. is releasing new, more fuel-efficient versions of its full-size pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles later this fall.

The XFE — or extra fuel economy — versions of the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra trucks and Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon SUVs will get one mile per gallon more in both city and highway fuel economy than non-XFE versions. The boost will give them a total of 15 miles per gallon in the city and 21 on the highway.

Are they kidding?  These behemoths that they claim chug only 15mpg are being pitched as fuel efficient?  Are these people crazy? I can’t believe anyone in their right mind could justify this as any sort of effort at conservation.