Guilty Pleasures

Sleeping in an extra hour this morning and ditching the first few hours of work to enjoy a breakfast burrito with my good buddy Uncle Matty. That's not the guilty pleasure part though...that was just fun. The guilty pleasure was the extra cheese and hot sauce on the burrito....oh yeah.

Update 1:30pm

Apparently, the guys at TMZ.com caught my buddy going for a post-breakfast burrito ice cream at B&R. Guess the burrito wasn't guilty enough, huh?

Click here to see the juicy photo.

Manilow Hell

My lovely wife's and my passion for Barry Manilow started a few years ago when I got a box of cassette tapes my buddy from work, Jose, gave me (I think his friend on the bus gave them to him). After weeding through the Time-Life Swingin' Years tapes and Journey hits, there he was staring at me in a white leisure suite, star necklace and the cocky "I write the songs" smirk.

We were quickly mesmerized by his catchy, cocaine like melodies and lyrics. He had plenty of practice growing up, writing countless jingles for every brand you can imagine...."I am stuck on band-aids, cause they are stuck on me!"...and, "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there."

After watching his live show on PBS, we decided we had to see him in concert. We had a trip to Vegas planned already, coincidentally staying at the Hilton where Barry has an ongoing show. Of course the weekend we stayed there he took off. The only dark weekend in months.

One day we were riding in the car with my Mom and Uncle when lovely Wife and I spontaneously broke into song...a Manilow song. My Uncle said, "Hey, that's Barry Manilow! We just got to see him last week at an invite-only free show at The Forum."

Apparently, he and my Mom wouldn't think that we would enjoy his music...and that The Forum was too long of a mid-week drive for us, so we didn't find out about it until after the fact.

It also turns out that the trumpet player for Barry's show is a friend of mine from college. Despite all the connections to Manilow, we haven't been able to score tickets, or make the time to get to Vegas and see the show.

Then I had a brilliant plan. Barry is doing a Valentine's Day show at the Staples Center! I decided to go all out (because lovely Wife deserves it!), and bought 2 floor seats to the show. This was back in December. It turns out that her schedule in her second semester Master's classes consists of back to back classes on Thursday nights. After a few weeks I put 2 and 2 together and realized Valentine's Day falls on a Thursday.

Much of her grade in those classes is based on attendance and class participation.

In the past few weeks I've tried unsuccessfully to unload the tickets and salvage some of the small fortune I spent on them. In the meantime, I had to scramble to find something else to do for V-day (note: we normally don't do much on Valentine's Day, but in light of our lack of anniversary plans this year, I thought we could make up for it).

While I can't divulge my backup plans here since lovely Wife lurks, it involved another (not as lucrative) purchase.

If the Manilow tickets don't sell, I'm going to personally call her professors and explain the situation and make her go with me! Add that to the backup plans scheduled for the night before and we're going to have a Valentine's Day extravaganza.

Good thing I'm going to be a lawyer...I might be able to eventually pay for Valentine's Day this year!

Day 6:

To keep me going day to day, I partake in guilty pleasures: cigars, single malts, American Gladiators reruns, etc. Last night's guilty pleasure was going back for a third helping of my wife's chicken enchiladas (with ass-kicking hot, homemade pico de gallo to boot). For a Scottish/Irish girl she certainly has a streak of Latin American blood, especially when it comes to cooking.

Now, to follow up with my political rant yesterday I offer a solution to the problem of the endless, ineffectual election process we have in place now.

Based on my current law school endeavors, I got to thinking how efficient the application process is, especially for top schools like Yale, Harvard and the like. They can whittle 10,000 applications down to 200 successful matriculates over the course of months. So why do we need 2 years of issue spewing, mudslinging and slanted punditry to choose from a pool of under a dozen candidates?

I propose an elimination round prior to the primaries (I guess they wouldn't be primaries anymore would they). Those interested in running for president must apply by submitting a resume, a personal statement (2 pages max, double-spaced, 12 point font), and maybe a short video response to one or more prompts. The average American could easily browse 20-30 applicants in one evening and make an informed decision. After the vote, the top few candidates move on to the primaries. Then they can proceed with all the ad campaigns, debates and fund raising.

This cut and dry approach levels the playing ground by eliminating fund raising, at least initially. It also forces candidates to commit their ideals and achievements to paper. Later on in the election, one could always refer back to the original application for the truth.

The idea is by no means complete, or foolproof for that matter, but I think it would allow for higher quality but less popular candidates to have shot, eliminate fund raising as a prerequisite for success, and clear the muck surrounding the real important information needed for a voter to make a decision.