Grading Recent Ads, Volume #5: DirecTV, VW, and Meditation and Chakra Balancing

It's been a long time (about 15 months) since I've written one of these blog posts; I think I have some decent material today, however.  As always, the grades reflect an overall opinion of the advertisement's clarity and quality.  Let's get right to it:

*****************************

Advertisement #1: Don't Get Stuck in a Roadside Ditch

Readers of this series know that I've long enjoyed DirecTV commercials.  This year's campaign is a series of commercials centered around logical-yet-absurd chains of thought ("When X, you Y... when Y, you Z...") that start with the premise of poor cable customer service and end with a ridiculously implausible outcome (in the above advertisement, which is one of four I've seen on the air this year, our protagonist ends up in a roadside ditch).

I can see these commercials being somewhat controversial - they require the viewer to pay attention and wait for the hook, which is almost at the end of the spot.  I can't argue this; some viewers may not pay attention, but I love these commercials nonetheless.  I love most that they're based on the fundamental premise that people want to make good decisions - a completely different idea than other over-saturated ad campaigns (like AT&T Wireless, and did I mention yet in this post that AT&T Wireless has the worst ad campaign on TV right now?) which tend to emphasize the shallow, nastier recesses of our personalities.

By sending the commercial's main character through a series of less and less fortunate outcomes, DirecTV sends home the message that, though picking the wrong TV provider won't get you killed, it'll probably make your life suck for a while.  Of course, DirecTV cannot be literal in describing how picking the incorrect TV provider sucks (commercials showing people on hold with customer service are always infuriating).  So humor has to serve as an analogy for this suckitude, and it also helps solve another problem that I'm betting DirecTV (and every other company that sells these services) has to deal with. 

Allow me to explain:

If your household is anything like mine, you average about two years with a TV provider before switching to a different one.  For instance, once our 24 month Verizon FiOS triple play promo ends in the middle of next year, we'll probably switch back to Cablevision (under my wife's name, not mine, because we had an account under my name with Cablevision from 2009 until 2011) for two more years.  Then in 2015, we'll switch back to FiOS but use my name for a couple of years, until that promotional rate runs out as well.  In 2017, we'll opt to have microchips implanted in the visual cortices of our brains by North Central Positronics, Inc., which will allow us to watch TV in our minds.  I look forward to 2017.

My point here is that, unless a TV service user is so lazy that they don't mind paying exorbitant fees once their promotional rate runs out, or unless they are such talented negotiators that they end up sticking around at the discounted rate for years and years, they're not going to be very loyal to the service.  As a result, staying in the public consciousness and offering a low teaser rate for a couple of years are probably the only ways to get people to switch to a TV service.  You'd better have good commercials if you're going to try to pull this off, and here DirecTV certainly fits the bill.

Grade: B+

******************************

Advertisement #2: Simplicity in a Car Commercial

I feel the issue with car commercials (and forgive me if I'm repeating myself here) is that car companies often have a difficult time not pigeon-holing themselves into a specific demographic.  Great car commercials are rare because the types of messages that are simple enough and distinct enough to appeal across ages, genders, and other demographics are also rare.  (They are also rare because regional and local car dealerships seem to intentionally create some of the worst commercials on the air, but this is an entirely different story.)

The elements of the above commercial, for the Volkswagen Passat, that work across demographics are twofold.  First, everyone remembers the emotions associated with crashing (or almost crashing) their first car - you're scared to death, you're convinced the car is in worse shape than it actually is (like the car in the ad above), and you're convinced that your parents are going to kill you.  None of these things are actually true, but they're how you feel at the time.  The teenaged actors set the scene within the first six seconds of the commercial; you know what's going on, and you can immediately relate.

But there's a second layer of meaning here that I think works best for parents (but also works pretty well for anyone who's ever had parents); the idea that the car doesn't matter to a parent, what matters is that the child is safe.  Cars can be fixed, children are irreplaceable.  The tagline "He can only kill you if you're OK" is perfect for the overall tenor of the ad - simple and stark. 


Volkswagen is absolutely killing it these days with a recent series of commercials devoted to safety in automobiles.  It's a brilliant campaign in general, because almost every driver cares about safety (and those who don't care about safety are unlikely to buy a VW in the first place).  This commercial achieves the near-impossible - an emotionally strong message packaged in a simple and non-confusing ad.

Grade: A

************************

Advertisement #3: Lisa Rossland, Meditation and Chakra Balancing in Love-Relationships-Health and Business, Hates You and Hates the Environment

I know, this is a print advertisement and not a commercial.  I still think it's worth a review.  Allow me to explain:

I work in an office which happens to be located inside a shopping center (kind of like a strip mall, but without the shady massage parlor).  Once every month, I walk out of my office and inevitably I will find one of the above advertisements taped to my car (or sometimes attached to my windshield, where I can drive away with it still attached). 

This annoys me deeply, so in the interest of venting, here are a bunch of reasons why this is a terrible advertisement.

The first reason why these advertisements are terrible is because they lack a "hook" or interesting aspect entirely.  People never read them; they always crumple them up and throw them on the parking lot asphalt.  This leads to an incredible mess which lasts for days. 

The second reason is because it's written in pretty God-awful English (sorry the picture is a little blurry, I took it with my cell phone).  The third reason is because every advertisement is terrible when you see it plastered to your car once a month, every month, for at least a year.  The fourth reason is because the services being offered are complete bullshit and fake hackery.  The fifth reason is because I would assign a 104 percent probability to this woman owning at least five cats and a Saab that is at least ten years old.  The sixth is because I bet she doesn't shave her armpits.  And seventh, finally, when these ads get plastered to your car and then it starts pouring rain, like this afternoon, it's damned near impossible to scrape the residue off your windshield and/or the body of your car.

But hey: at least I'm convinced that it is not true that Lisa Rossland raped and killed a girl in 1990.  Certainly it is impossible that Lisa Rossland raped and killed a girl in 1990.  If anyone out there can prove that Lisa Rossland raped and killed a girl in 1990, please, stop gossiping about it and go straight to the police with it.

(If you don't get the reference, the video is right below.)

Grade: F (the Gilbert Gottfried video gets an A+, however)

How our dog is no longer with us: a Very Sad Story

This is your one warning: maybe you shouldn't read the below story.  It's the type of sad story where the dog dies at the end (or, really, closer to the beginning).  It's the type of story I needed to put on paper because telling people face-to-face is a nearly impossible burden right now.  If you decide to read, read the whole thing before you come to any conclusions.

*****************************

The short story is: my wife and I rescued a terrier mix puppy from a shelter in Philadelphia last October, as a joint wedding gift for ourselves.  We named him Indiana, we fed him Blue Buffalo dog food because we felt it was the best food, we dressed him up for different holidays, and we gave him lots of love and training and play.  My wife took approximately 1,495 pictures of him, because he was adorable.  Sometimes, before things went south with Indiana, I brought him to my office, and (at least as a puppy, before his issues started) he seemed to like that.  And now, he is gone.

After months of socialization and obedience classes, in-home training sessions, hours upon hours of research and study, and multiple doctor's appointments, including our final visit with what we feel is our state's foremost veterinary behaviorist, we made the decision to put our dog down.  The decision was made with much thought, many tears, and a ton of agony.  He was 11 months old, which is an incredibly tragic age for any dog's life to end.

Our veterinary behaviorist was an angel of mercy for us; she helped us greatly in making our decision.  Based on her opinion of the severity of Indiana's aggression, combined with his very bleak prognosis for improvement, we felt we owed the responsibility to the children of our neighbors and our friends (not to mention our own future children) to keep them safe.

I'm writing this in an emotional shell, so it's possible that my words seem robotic and vacant right now.  I can't process in my head, at this point, what all of this means - these were feelings we were supposed to have around age 40, or 45, given our ages when we purchased the puppy.  Dogs are supposed to live about a dozen years, or more.  Our future children were supposed to be old enough to be sad by this dog dying; they were never supposed to have been saved by this dog dying.

****************************

Here's what happened (if you've been to our house or spoken to us over the past few months, you know part of this story already):

We knew Indiana was slightly "off" from the time we met him, but it was impossible at that time for anyone to determine the severity of his adult behavioral issues.  At the time, he presented simply as a nervous puppy, which made sense given what we knew of his early life (he was found malnourished and chained to a pole outside the shelter in a heat wave last August).  He certainly had difficulty warming up to, or trusting, other people, even though we tried to introduce him to as many of our friends and family as possible.

Throughout the time he spent with us, Indy was a smart and obedient dog, as long as he was in his increasingly-smaller "comfort zone."  With only April and me in the house, he was quiet and would obey dozens of commands.  He could name and fetch each of his toys on command.  Further, as long as we were the only people in the house, he was easy to manage, too.  He would mostly sleep through the night (even until 7:30 AM), wouldn't bark at the lawn mower, and even managed the vacuum cleaner pretty well.  In the car, he would immediately sleep and behave the entire time.

But when almost anyone else (save my mother) entered the home, Mr. Hyde would leave and Dr. Jekyll would emerge.  His fear and defensiveness were extreme and, according to our behaviorist, extremely abnormal.  As Indy grew older and stronger, he began to direct severe aggressive behavior toward strangers.  Managing Indy became a long and winding ritual in and of itself - we would introduce strangers to him in a way that (in theory) should have counter-conditioned him to associate strangers with treats (not fear).  This was largely unsuccessful, though, and our lives became more sequestered, as friends and family shirked away from visiting our home in fear of Indiana.

By the time of this writing, he had nipped three people strongly enough to draw blood (one bite, on my father, was almost enough for stitches - thankfully it was my father, who would never press charges against us), and tried to attack/would have attacked countless others, if not for the leash and our intervention.  At the vet behaviorist's consultation, the behaviorist at one point brought out a doll the size of a three year old girl and started dancing it around Indiana.  He sat quietly and then within a millisecond's time, jumped up and attacked the doll.  Had that been an actual child...

We live on a street with dozens of small children.  Many of our friends and family have children, and one day we plan to have children, most likely.  (The silver lining in all of this bullshit is that I finally realized that one day I want to be a parent.)  After the doll incident - and about six other severe aggressive moves Indiana made in the vet's office, while on leash, thankfully - the behaviorist started to mention our options.  She said there could be several, but in our case, there were only two.

The first was to keep Indiana, try to manage his behavior with the addition of Prozac, which we would start with an aggressive mid-range dose given the severity of his problems.  The behaviorist said that some dogs react very well to Prozac, and in the very-best-case scenario, he might be able to be introduced to children, starting at a park from a large distance, and wearing a muzzle.  In this very-best-case scenario, Indiana would need to wear a muzzle around children for the rest of his life.  Additionally, we would need to monitor his behavior around strangers vigilantly for the rest of his life, rewarding him with treats when he ever managed to relax around friends and family.  This was the very-best-case scenario.  She felt it much more likely that even with Prozac, Indiana would continue to be a dangerous dog that displayed abnormal and unpredictable aggression toward people.

To us, this option posed several serious issues.  Is it morally right to put a known aggressive dog around anyone's children, let alone our own?  What does it mean for the dog's quality of life that he would have to be muzzled all the time?  Could we ever have a child while having this dog around?

"You could almost certainly never have a child with this dog around," the behaviorist told us. 

Nor was sheltering Indiana an option; we mentioned a no-kill shelter as an option we'd been thinking about, and the behaviorist dismissed this, again for a number of reasons.  She felt that if relinquished to a shelter, even a shelter that refused to kill dogs, Indiana would probably stay there for a very long time, and she cryptically mentioned that anyone who would take him from this shelter "may not be as nice as you two."  (I took that comment to mean that any future adopters would be fairly likely to abuse and/or fight Indiana.)  That aside, she told us - and we agreed - that shelter life is terrible life for a dog.  Combine this with the large number of non-vicious dogs that currently cannot be placed into homes, and sheltering Indiana would be the equivalent of passing off his death sentence to someone else.

So, the second option was euthanasia.  I had anticipated this might come up during our meeting, though April had been more optimistic.  Still, when we saw the direction she was going, we both immediately broke down crying.  The behaviorist said that, with cases of aggression as severe as Indy's, and given the undesirability of our remaining options, "it would not be wrong to put him down and simply say, this is not the dog for us, for our lifestyle."

She insisted that we not make a decision the day of the meeting, so we didn't.  We agreed that starting Prozac while we made a decision would be a good idea, in case we decided to keep him.  I asked the behaviorist what people tend to decide when dealing with this type of aggression in their dogs, and she replied, "It depends a lot on whether children are in the picture.  When a couple has no children in the house, or no plans for children, many of these people would give Prozac a chance before euthanizing the dog.  But when a couple has children, or plans to have children, often euthanasia is the decision."

This made it a judgment call for us; we didn't yet have a child, but knew we wanted one in the future.  Keeping Indy until we had a child seemed like postponing the inevitable, and sheltering him was a death sentence.  His chances for improvement, even with the most significant intervention, were slim.  I knew immediately that every possible decision was a terrible one to comprehend.  But only one decision gave us the freedom from our constant fear of our dog hurting a friend, family member, or child.  Having witnessed Indiana's attack on my father firsthand, what we saw was a chemically imbalanced and unpredictable dog with the strength to inflict serious injury.  I could never see that happening again to anyone else.  April needed more time to process our options, but eventually she told me on Sunday afternoon that she agreed with the decision.  We had agreed that Indiana needed to be euthanized.

*******************************

In advance of our vet behaviorist meeting, we filled out a thirty-five item questionnaire describing past attempts to control Indiana's behavior.  At the close of our meeting, after the Kleenex box had emptied, I asked the vet whether anything we had done could have caused this.  "If you had done anything wrong, I would have told you.  You did everything you could - this behavior has a huge genetic predisposition."

We still blame ourselves, even though we probably shouldn't.

We know nothing of Indiana's life before he was found at the shelter in Philadelphia.  Given his relatively smaller size and the fact that he wasn't a pure "pit bull" type dog, I do not think he was bred to fight, but I could be wrong about this.  He might have been inbred and his owners, knowing what happened and also being the type of assholes who would leave a malnourished four month old dog chained to a pole in a heat wave, simply gave him up to the next owner. 

Regardless of his breeding, there's no doubt he was under-socialized and there is no doubt he was severely chemically imbalanced.  The puppy socialization window closes at three months - it's very important to introduce a puppy to at least 100 unique people before he or she is three months old.  Indiana may have met fewer than five people (maybe only one, and if so, not a nice one?) during that window. Our vet behaviorist also suggested that something akin to human schizophrenia was at play with Indiana, as well.  "Think of Indiana as a special-needs dog.  If he were a human," the vet behaviorist said last Saturday, "there would be institutions for humans like him.  These institutions don't exist for dogs."

I like to think that we gave Indiana as much love and training and care as we could, and that this was a gift for a dog that never really had a fair chance in the world.  However, there are people who might disagree fundamentally with what we did.  (Just look at PETA to see what level of insane, blinders-on zealotry exists in this world with regard to animals.)  Disagreeing with us is fine, but know that we exhausted every option and spent literally thousands of dollars over the past seven months trying to solve this problem.  Eventually, a reasonable minded person needs to reach their wit's end.  If you still disagree, I'm actually going to ask you to disagree in the most polite way, namely by keeping your opinion to yourself.  This is such a sensitive issue that your opinion will only serve to piss us off.

*****************************

I don't blame the shelter at all for giving us Indiana, nor do I blame the very kind people who worked with Indiana before we purchased him.  I know, however, that we are personally very unlikely to consider rescuing a dog again.  This is not a value judgment on rescuing dogs - there are many wonderful adult dogs out there that need a home, and people who are emotionally and financially fit to rescue, and want to rescue, absolutely should rescue.  But our experience with rescuing was so terrible that it's unlikely we'd ever do it again.  We are too shell shocked.

Certainly, in our opinion, rescuing puppies has greater risk than rescuing an adult dog.  And certainly, given our experience, I would never recommend that a friend ever rescue a puppy from a shelter.  With an adult dog, what you see is what you get, for the most part.  Predicting a puppy's future adult behavior is extremely challenging, and many shelters are not well enough equipped (assuming that anyone outside of a breeder is well enough equipped) to make these judgments.  We understand now that issues related to under-socialization, as well as chemical imbalances, are hidden in puppies and pop up in adolescence or early adulthood.  There is no "cure" or "magic pill" to make them better. 

******************************

At some point, once the pain and tears wear off and we can get back to being newlyweds, we'll consider another dog.  It may be a long wait - dogs often bite toddlers, so that would be something we'd need to think about - but a smaller, calmer and purebred dog could definitely be in our future.  We love dogs, we love the love they give, and we love the work that goes into training a dog.  We don't think we were the problem with Indiana, and the best way to prove that to ourselves would be another dog.

********************************

I debated whether to write this but decided that my friends needed to see this argument for why we had to make our decision.  (I think argument is the proper term here.)  Please know it was a terrible, horrible decision to make, easily one of the toughest of our lives.  That being said, it was the least awful of any number of awful decisions.  Hopefully you can see why; hopefully, you don't blame us.

19 Random Notes on our European Vacation

First and foremost, we had an absolute blast on our honeymoon.  Every day we saw at least one breathtaking historical sight, and every day we had at least one fantastic culinary experience, which was exactly what we wanted.  There will eventually be pictures of what we saw - the very best of them may end up on Facebook, but we're both sensitive to the fact that most people care very little about what photos other people post on Facebook, so we'll be careful about that.

In case you're curious about how the trip to Europe went, though, you can read the following:

1. We chose a Mediterranean cruise because we thought of the trip as a scouting expedition for further vacations.  It's impossible to spend only one day in Rome, or in Barcelona, and do much more than scratch the surface of what there is to see.  Future trips to both of these cities, at some point in our lives, are definitely in order.  We also wanted to explore the ports where we knew much less (such as Tuscany or Marseilles, France) to give them a taste, as well.  Tuscany turned out to be awesome - I'll get to that later - but Marseilles was a little boring (I won't say much about France on this post).
2. Our cruise ship, the Norwegian Epic, was indeed Epic.  It carries about 4,000 passengers and 1,700 crew members on board, and stretched a quarter of a mile forward to aft.  It included so many restaurants that, had our cruise been two weeks instead of one, we would have still not exhausted our meal options.  There were many activities, as well - a ridiculous number of bars and shows (we hit up Howl at the Moon three straight nights, and also saw the Blue Man Group, but skipped on Cirque du Soleil because April and I both find that stuff weird), in addition to a rock climbing wall, outside pool, and a casino.
3. They call the casino on the Epic the Epic Casino, and this was fair.  As soon as the ship hit international waters (about thirty minutes after leaving port), the hundreds of slot machines and dozens of table games opened.  All of the blackjack tables with minimum bets of less than $25 had automatic reshuffling machines, so it was impossible to count cards.  The dealers varied in their level of competency (on one memorable night, I might have called a blackjack dealer an asshole - this would have had me kicked out of Atlantic City, but on a cruise ship as a paying passenger they couldn't throw me overboard.  So I had that going for me, which was nice).  In general, April and I played a little bit every night and ended up even, but that was thanks to...
4. ...Let It Ride.  My God, how did I live 29 years of my life without playing Let It Ride?  It's a really fun game, and really social, as well.  Perhaps a bit more luck oriented (vs. skill oriented) than I'd prefer, but still, April and I both had much honeymooning luck playing the game.  I had a natural straight flush and natural trip-nines during the trip, and April (I think) had the same - my memory of this is slightly fuzzy, all I know is I left the table to smoke a Cuban cigar and came back to see my wife holding a bunch of $100 chips in her hand.  This is always a fun sight.
5. We made friends with fellow honeymooners on our cruise, a really awesome couple from Ohio with whom we did some fairly serious partying and who generously let me borrow 50 Euro for a few hours when my credit card wouldn't swipe for the tour bus in Barcelona.

6. Speaking of malicious incidents in Barcelona, their city buses need more warning signs.  The sliding glass door of the bus almost took off the fingers of my right hand, which was stuck between the door and the bar I was holding onto for dear life while standing.  I was able to escape this bus version of a lobstrosity (really random nerd reference here, but this happened less than a day after I finished reading The Dark Tower series and I needed to make the reference) only by relaxing and letting what was sure to be a bleeding cut on my knuckles happen.
7. After these two unfortunate events happened, I managed to have a wonderful day in Barcelona - one of my favorite cities on the trip.  What a beautiful city, and everyone should see the Sagrada Familia if they're interested in architecture.  What a Gaudi-ish structure.
8. The Tuscan countryside - and our visit to a Tuscan winery for lunch and wine - was another of my favorite days.  After exploring Pisa for a few hours (yes, we both took corny photos of us "pushing" the Leaning Tower), we went to a vineyard on the outskirts of Lucca.  Here, we went on a winery tour and had a traditional Italian lunch - this started with a small Caprese salad and cold antipasto plate, followed by bread and homemade olive oil, which was itself followed by a light homemade pasta dish.  If you're reading this in the United States and are wondering what one change you can make to your pasta to make the end product more authentic in nature, consider this - use less sauce.  For Italians, the harmony of flavors is between the homemade pasta, the olive oil, and whatever cheese you decide to include.  The amount of sauce is very minimal.  If all of the ingredients you use are tasty, you don't need mountains of tomato sauce to cover anything up.   Anyway, after the pasta we had more cheeses and meats, followed by homemade garlic bread, which was followed by dessert.
9. Each of these courses was paired with unlimited quantities of the vineyard's homemade wine.  And when I say unlimited, I mean everyone at our table got pretty drunk and rowdy with lunch.  We were sitting with our honeymooner friends (together, we were maybe the only ones under age 40 on the excursion) and about six older folks who I assume really wanted to party with us.  We made very good wine-fueled friends with everyone at the table over lunch.  At one point, of the older folks, upon learning about our honeymooning status, got up and announced our honeymoon to the entire vineyard (about four tour buses' worth).  Getting that applause was pretty cool.
10. Europe moves to the beat of a different drum than America.  You know some of this already; Europeans care less about timeliness (we were almost never on time for anything we did in Europe, and nobody cared) and European men love to wear form-fitting bathing suits.  I can't decide whether this is because Europe appreciates the male genitalia more than America does, or whether European men simply lack shame.  All I know is that I never want to know, when looking at a dude by the pool, what his junk looks like.
11. Barcelona and Rome are, respectively, the numbers one and two cities worldwide with regard to petty theft (e.g., pickpocketing).  We were both nervous about this in both cities, and made sure to distribute our funds and passports across multiple pockets.  But I think the key to not getting your pocket picked is staying vigilant.  The men and women who pickpocket are very cautious and they want to make sure their mark is both oblivious and vulnerable.  I tried to look like an asshole from New Jersey who would be fast/bold enough to chase a pickpocket down and tackle them free safety-style.  April held onto her pocketbook for dear life.  Whatever it was, it worked.
12. In addition to some generally amazing ruins, our walk through Pompeii included both an ancient whorehouse and casts of skeletons that died in the aftermath of the Vesuvian eruption.  We found both aspects of the tour fascinating (and took many pictures of each, including one piece of ancient pornographic graffiti so profound and disgusting that decorum prevents describing it here).  But many others found them controversial, perhaps because of their values or some shit.  People need to get a grip, take it easy, and enjoy the ride like Europeans enjoy the ride.
13. We were on Floor 13 of our cruise ship.  Many American hotels skip Floor 13 because they think it's bad luck.  I don't get this.
14. Speaking of enjoying the ride, Europeans allegedly drive like crazy people.  I don't know.  What I saw was a different set of social customs that included comparatively little speeding, compared to New Jersey, and driving was done at very low speeds compared to America.  The roads were, obviously, much older than American roads, but much safer and better maintained.  I was almost never worried while being driven around in Europe.
15. ...but that may be because I am not a stoopid Ameri-CAN (read that in your best French accent).  The most annoying aspect of riding on tour buses in Europe was hearing some old man or old lady from the South complain loudly about how European people drive.  Okay, okay, I get it.  European drivers don't care about stop signs, they don't yield, and traffic circles at least superficially seem to involve a modicum of taking your life into your own hands.  But the system works for Europeans - they were raised in it, they know it, and they'd have no clue how to handle driving in America just like you'd have no clue how to drive in Europe, so leave them the hell alone.  
16. I feel like the point I'm trying to make here is hidden between the lines, and it strikes me at this point that it may actually be a political point (though I'm not trying to be political here at all).  It certainly supports people shutting the fuck up and not imposing their culture on the culture that they're visiting.
17. My favorite meals on the trip were, in order: (1) the aforementioned Tuscan vineyard lunch; (2) incredible homemade mozzarella at a farm outside of Sorrento, which was much harder (but in a good way) than the mozzarella served in America; (3) a simple ham and cheese sandwich, combined with a traditional Spanish lager, at a food truck in Barcelona (the lager was served in a brewery glass, even though it came from a food truck); (4) a medium-rare ribeye and lobster bisque at the cruise's steakhouse.
18. Even though our we delayed our honeymoon for seven months after we were married, I didn't regret waiting for this trip at all.  I think we waited in order to do this the "right way" for us.  This has a little to do with me getting a throat infection right after the wedding (it would have made an immediate trip less fun) and very much to do with our state of mind.  The work's not finished right after you get married; you have lots of stuff to organize, gifts to put away (or, sometimes, return), thank you notes to write and many other tasks that I've probably forgotten.  I feel like by waiting a few months, we were able to do all the post-wedding stuff beforehand and just enjoy the trip.
19. Finally, two quick recommendations: when researching your cruise ship, go to one of those websites beforehand that lists people's minor complaints with the ship.  Had we done this, we wouldn't have been surprised to learn that, on the Norwegian Epic, cabins do not really have a private bathroom.  There is simply a frosted glass door that only serves to amplify the sounds inside (let's just say the wife and I made very strict bathroom rules for our trip).  Second, never use a travel agent unless you're absolutely clueless about your destination, and even then, do not use a travel agent.  Travel agents add about as much value in the year 2012 as soothsayers.

That's all, folks.

Welcome to New Jersey, Tim Tebow!

Dear Timmy Timmy-Tim-Tim:

First and foremost, welcome to the next stage of your NFL career, where you'll be playing for the New York Jets. I personally look forward to watching you run 4-5 option plays a game as part of the Jets' new Wildcat formation. Over the next couple months you'll probably find that, because the Jets actually play their games on the left side of the Hudson River at MetLife Stadium, and because their training camp facilities are also in New Jersey, it probably makes the most sense to live in New Jersey while you play for the Jets.

Now, you and I are from the same home town (in God's country; St. John's County, Florida, in particular), and - as I've been living in New Jersey for 19 out of the last 21 years - I thought it might be helpful to explain a few tricks I've learned about living around here. Hopefully you'll refer to these in the event you fall into an awkward situation or three while living in New Jersey.

We should probably start with the whole religion thing, eh, Timmy Boy? I know you're into that shit. The good news, for you at least, is that New Jersey is a reasonably religious place (only 15% of the population self-identifies as atheist; compare this with other states such as Vermont, where over a third are atheists). The bad news is that only 8% of New Jersey residents are Baptists, and less than 0.5% consider themselves "evangelical" in any way, shape or form. We don't have many mega-churches here, it's considered impolite to put anything religious on your car, it's considered even more impolite to talk to someone you're not close with about religion, and - to be honest - you're probably better off just leaving the whole "Son of God" thing within the confines of your own home during your stay here.  (That genuflecting-like substance in the image to the right needs to go away, as well.)

Also, we need to have a quick chat regarding your conversational style. In an excellent article for Grantland.com, Chuck Klosterman opined that you are highly sensitive and have a strong emotional intelligence. Assuming he's right, and he probably is, you're going to need to modify that tone if you want to stick around New Jersey. Don't get me wrong - the whole "rude New Jerseyan" thing is totally overblown. We actually do look out for our neighbors here (assuming our neighbors earn the kindness). But what we aren't, really, is what people in other parts of the country mistakenly call "polite."

We're brutally honest people, we don't waste time on small talk, and if we're going to talk to you, it's going to be a lively conversation. I recently overheard two people converse inside a Publix (we both know what a Publix is, right, Timmy?) in North Florida for three minutes without saying anything important about people, places, or things. It was an incredible conversation to hear, because it wasn't a conversation at all - it was two complete strangers, each simply too polite to end a series of short ramblings about absolutely nothing. Neither conversant could bother saying something nice like "Y'all have a great day now!" while walking away. This will never ever happen in New Jersey. We simply won't engage you in conversation unless we have something to say to you.

All of this being said, you're probably wishing you were traded to Jacksonville, instead. Having spent considerable amounts of time in Jacksonville, I can't blame you. It's a beautiful city, the weather's warm, the girls are pretty and the Force is strong with Jeebus. I think most football fans in that city had Tim Tebow Jaguars jerseys custom-made before the 2010 NFL Draft. They were convinced they'd get you the first time around, and even more convinced they'd get you the second time around, once the Broncos signed Peyton Manning. You would have been, dare I say, deified as a football player in Jacksonville, given your standing there. (Right now, I don't think there are many NFL fans left in Jacksonville.  The team might move to Los Angeles, and that right soon.)

Conversely, I'm not sure that Jets fans are going to welcome you with open arms. I'm not personally a Jets fan, but I know many of them, and they don't exactly have a ton of patience. In fact, you being a Jet is going to be an awesome group psychology experiment - combine the most irrationally optimistic player in the NFL with perhaps the most irrationally pessimistic fan base in sports, and see what happens. Good luck and Godspeed, kid. Stay away from Rex Ryan when he's in an upset mood; I hear he doesn't mince words. Also stay away from him when he's feeling a little... frisky.

Oh, and one more thing about living in New Jersey. I hear your contract is "reasonable" by NFL standards. Combine that with New Jersey real estate prices and you'll probably end up renting an apartment down the street from me. (My wife will bring you a welcome basket, along with a few of her favorite Bible verses. There aren't many.) Anyway, combine that with the lack of state income tax in Florida and the $450,000 mansions for sale in Jacksonville and... yeah, you should have been traded to Jacksonville.

But hey, good luck in New Jersey! Now get the fuck outta here.

Flying is Scary and Annoying

There is an extremely small, but still very slightly greater than zero, mathematical probability that this will be my incredibly ironic epitaph, so I should try to get this right.

I know, I know. Today, thousands of domestic passenger aircraft took off and landed without any incident. The same thing happened yesterday. (But not the day before yesterday.) The statistical evidence also rings true: air travel, per mile traveled, is somewhere between one and two orders of magnitude safer than travelling as a passenger in an automobile.

Even when a plane crashes, the passengers inside the aircraft are about 95% to survive the incident. To board a plane that crashes is highly unlikely, and to perish in an air crash makes a person extremely unlucky. Like, being stricken by a falling brick while walking down the street-level unlucky.

***************************

There's a common type of sports journalism hackery that proceeds as follows: the journalist/hack begins the print article (it's almost always a print article) by making an argument toward some phenomenon that is, for all intents and purposes, objectively true. For instance, Tiger Woods is one of the greatest golfers of all time, or baseball teams that walk more frequently are more likely to be good baseball teams, or anything else you wish. Regardless of the person, team, or sport described, you can assume that there are literally reams of data supporting the argument, and that most intelligent fans of the sport agree them to be true.

Then, at around paragraph five or six, the journalist/hack completely deconstructs the valid argument presented earlier in the article by talking about what their eyes, or their "gut", or their godforsaken spleen, tells them must be true. Here, you can expect to read some language like "I'm fully aware that what I just wrote about is what the data tells us, or what science tells us, or what most fans believe to be true through taking time and research to explore the objective 'facts,' but there's glory and fantasy and wonder in sports that you must be a journalist to understand."

And then the article turns to complete shit, because glory, fantasy, and wonder are not the reasons why most intelligent adults watch (or care about) sports. The above are nothing but straw men; excuse words for idiots who don't take the time to back up their claims with facts (or are lazy or are rushed to make deadline).

When I read what I wrote above about air travel, and think about what I am about to write below, I think of sports journalism hackery, and I hope against all hope that I am not being a hack (though truthfully, I probably am).

***************************

It seems, though I have no facts to back this up, that (until, strangely enough, about ten years ago) air travel was an extremely risky proposition. Perhaps it was the news cycle sensationalizing extremely rare incidents when they happened, or perhaps it was the uncommon frequency with which musicians decided to fly under poor weather conditions, in wintertime in the North, before sufficient air technology existed to handle the problems which later occurred. (Since 1990, I think Wisconsin has forbidden by law all live music concerts except in instances where the artists agreed to travel to the Cheese-state venue via Madden cruiser.)

Over the past ten years or so, though, I can't think of a major domestic aircraft that spontaneously combusted over the Atlantic Ocean (or worse). It seems - and again, I can't prove this - that flying in the United States has become demonstrably safer while the act of flying in the United States has become incredibly more annoying. This is probably intentional; when an air carrier's 747 spontaneously combusts over the Atlantic (or worse), the air carrier tends to file bankruptcy soon thereafter. Killing paying passengers is not an effective marketing campaign. People are significantly more willing to sit in 17" wide seats and pay $6 for cheese plates; safety is paramount to individual comfort.

The lack of comfort inherent in flying economy class these days, though, is one reason why I'm a nervous flier. I don't like feeling cramped, and I especially don't like feeling cramped while surrounded by 128 coughing strangers (many of whom also happen to be under three years old and are screaming).

The Gambler's Fallacy, which I alluded to above, is another reason. Just because the past ten years of domestic passenger air travel in the United States have been relatively error-free doesn't mean that the next ten will be equally as safe. I fly somewhat more than average (I expect to take 13 - shit - flights in the current year) and, over the course of my lifetime, at least one emergency landing is likely in the cards for me.

(NOTE: If/when I am ever involved in an emergency landing, I fully intend to overreact to approximately the nth degree. I will call everyone in my family to say goodbye to them while in flight, and it'll seem really weird when I live another 30-40 years after my plane lands without injury. I could see this definitely leading to family conflict in the future, with me adamant that I survived against long odds.)

But I have to say, the people flying the airplane make me less (vs. more) nervous about flying. Have you seen an airplane pilot lately? These people are badass; they have ice water in their veins. The Miracle on the Hudson was not a miracle; most pilots would have done the same thing. And if you're flying on anything better than Podunk Airlines, you can be reasonably certain that both of your pilots are at least 40 years old, have been flying for at least twenty of these years, and are constantly monitored for health issues. Further, they probably have high job satisfaction - for 80% of the time they're doing their job, they're out of contact with the outside world and just enjoy the flight.

*************************

I'm less nervous as an airplane passenger than I used to be (I used to spend the entire flight on the verge of massive anxiety attack), but I'll never be calm while traveling in a passenger aircraft. I've been thinking lately about possibly taking flight lessons to counteract my anxiety; I'm the type of person who likes to know how things work, and having the experience of flying a small airplane might (to some extent) help me understand more about "typical" flight behavior (e.g., that uncomfortable feeling three-quarters of the way through the flight when the plane starts descending and it seems, for a brief second, like the engines might be stalling).

Plus, I might find that I actually enjoy the friendly skies. Who knows.

Restaurant Review: Harvest Moon, New Brunswick, NJ

In October 2010, in celebration of my birthday, some friends and I went to the microbrewery/restaurant Harvest Moon in New Brunswick, New Jersey, for dinner.  I'd called earlier that day to make a reservation for 7:30 - it was a Saturday and the Phillies were playing a NLCS playoff game, so I assumed the restaurant would be busy.  Most of us arrived there early for beers, but two of my friends were running a little late as it was difficult to find parking in New Brunswick that evening.  At 7:30, we were told we could sit (our table, for eight, was vacant at the time), but unfortunately only six of us were present.

In this case, as we were already drinking at the bar, most restaurants would let us sit and order more drinks and appetizers in anticipation of our party to become complete.  This was not Harvest Moon's seating policy, however; we were told that our friends had five minutes to arrive, or else our table would be given to the next waiting party.  We protested quite loudly about this, as it seemed to make no sense - after all, most of our party had arrived and we were planning to continue spending our money at the establishment.  (In fact, we even tried blackmail - a larger group of approximately 15-20 was planning to "pub crawl" back to Harvest Moon later that night.  This fell on the deaf ears of Harvest Moon's management.)

Long story made somewhat shorter, our friends were more than five minutes late, I became very upset at Harvest Moon and our group of six left in a huff.  (We eventually had a wonderful meal at the always-accommodating Old Bay, perhaps New Brunswick's best dollar-for-dollar restaurant, and yes, the "pub crawl" never made it to Harvest Moon later that night.)  In fact, I swore I'd never go back to the restaurant. 

But, time has a way of fading old grudges, and more or less the same group of friends ended up at Harvest Moon last night for dinner.  I now intend to review Harvest Moon - I tell the story above because I want to leave it aside completely for the rest of the review and focus on the recent past (in order to be fair).

************************

Harvest Moon has interesting ambiance - in a reasonably small space, it somehow combines a working microbrewery, bar, first-floor bistro, and second-floor dining room.  The building is very old, and vestiges of its residential past are clear to the discerning eye - there are stanchions separating two parts of the upstairs dining room, for instance, that clearly separate a living area from what may have been bedrooms, or sitting rooms, in the late 19th century. 

The restaurant occupies what was once a fairly unique niche in New Brunswick cuisine - it is on the low-priced end of casual American dining, on a nice (if relatively quiet and buttoned-up) block of George Street.  The restaurant attracts a mix of younger and older individuals, though on Saturday nights, particularly before shows begin at State Theater, the crowd definitely skews older.  (There are often DJs on party nights that begin spinning at 10 pm, Harvest Moon does attract a younger crowd at that point).

When our group arrived, we were told the wait would be sixty minutes, but with a hint that the wait may end up being significantly shorter than that.  This fortunately ended up being the case, as the manager (the same who argued with us in October 2010) found the head of our table twenty minutes later to let him know that our table would soon be ready.  As we were hungry and a little cranky, this was very welcome news.

The high point of any Harvest Moon experience is the up-close microbrewery experience.  As you enter the restaurant, you can look to the right to see a multi-platform brewing system.  On the top level (about eye level as you walk in) are the storage tanks, each seeming to hold (this is an approximation) about 200 gallons of fully fermented beer.  But any avid home brewer should kneel down and observe the live boiling of the wort on the basement level of the restaurant; on this night, there was an active boil happening in one of the four giant stainless steel tanks. Interestingly, you could even see the boiling effluent pour out into a steaming, 5-gallon fermenting bucket (the exact same kind of bucket that my friends and I use at home, to ferment our own beers).

And the beer at Harvest Moon almost never disappoints.  I started with the Double IPA, which had wonderful citrus hoppiness balanced perfectly with mildly sweet and floral aromas.  Later I had a Pale Ale to complement my Harvest Moon Burger, which was stronger than the name might suggest (6.4% ABV, I believe) and much more robust - it nearly matched the previous IPA in all aspects of the beer drinking experience (hops, malt, and finish).  They had a special Barley Wine on tap this weekend, which my friend purchased thinking she would not like, ended up really enjoying, and letting me have a sip in the process - it was not my cup of tea, as it was very thick and strong, but I agreed it was (at least in small doses) delicious. 

There were many other beers on tap, and a beer aficionado visiting Harvest Moon would be well-served to select the Beer Sampler; seven or eight 5-ounce tastes of each beer, provided in a wood harness that is labeled and presented alongside a tasting guide.

I haven't mentioned the food yet, and this is with reason.  There are few excellent dishes available at the restaurant, and it's never good news when the best dishes are the appetizers. The Moon Nachos, with grilled chicken added to the mix, are incredibly rich and possess just the correct amount of melted Mexican cheeses.  The buffalo wings are breaded (always how I prefer them) and served medium by default, with considerable spice balanced by the generous portion of sliced celery and blue cheese.  Both rank among the best I've ever had in their respective food category.

However, Harvest Moon recently seems to have reduced their portion sizes across the board, and does not handle special requests well.  Even my Moon Burger, requested medium rare, arrived almost well-done.  (By comparison, Tumulty's Pub, a few blocks south on George Street, not only cooks cheeseburgers rare, they basically recommend eating your cheeseburger rare in their menu.)

My dining companions had issues with virtually every main entree that we ordered.  The Pad Thai was overwhelmingly laden with peanuts.  The fish and chips were served without malt vinegar, and the request for the essential condiment of the fried dish was handled as if no one ever asked for malt vinegar before.  The shrimp salad was served with approximately 1.5 ounces of shrimp (they looked to be the factory-farmed, frozen kind you pick up at your local grocery store) and was not evenly dressed.

The service, too, did not meet our expectations.  Our waitress was clearly not enthused with her job; her service was brusque to the point of rudeness, and we often had to request items twice.  (To be fair, the bartenders downstairs were extremely helpful and polite - even going so far as pouring a draught Hard Cider for my non-beer-drinking wife, off the menu, when she asked.)  Our group of friends, whom I've never seen act stingily with gratuities, unanimously felt that the almost-insulting 15% tip was fair for the dining service that we received.

*********************************

Objectively speaking, I'm not sure there is a less pleasing dining experience in all of New Brunswick than Harvest Moon.  (In this calculus, I am excluding the shitty restaurants on Easton Avenue that predominantly cater to drunk Rutgers undergraduates.)  While the restaurant is pleasing in a superficial sense, it appears to be fundamentally mismanaged, from the seating policies, to server training, to the care put into crafting the food.  Beer is the strong point of the Harvest Moon experience, which would make the venue fantastic if it were only a bar.  Unfortunately, it is also a restaurant, and it is a restaurant that no longer stand apart in the American-fusion casual New Brunswick dining segment.

For your money, you're better off going to Tumulty's, Old Bay, or even Old Man Rafferty's.  Tumulty's is a wonderful restaurant with perhaps the coolest vibe (for under $30 a plate) in the city.  Old Bay's food is excellent and their service is so polite and friendly that you might actually think you were in the South.  And Old Man Rafferty's is seemingly more self-aware of its culinary weaknesses; when the desserts are first in the menu, you know that dessert is going to be the best part of the meal. 

Harvest Moon, unlike any of the above-mentioned restaurants, is at risk (in my opinion) of becoming irrelevant in New Brunswick.  There are now more choices than ever, and any restaurant that isn't improving in this environment is clearly fading away.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars (ratings take into account food quality, drink quality, service, ambience/atmosphere, and last but not least, value).

Best for: A delicious beer or two with friends, perhaps accompanied by an appetizer.

Average price: Beers are between $5 and $7; appetizers $8-12, entrees $8-$30.  My Moon Burger was on the low end ($9, not bad for a burger).  There's a late night menu as well, but I've never ordered from it.

Fun With Facebook Numbers

Every so often, when I get bored, I like to analyze random things.  People who know me well know that I love data, and I especially love mining "hidden" data that perhaps exists somewhere south of where most people look.  For instance, this evening I ran a frequency analysis where each of my Facebook friends were a data point.

Behold the following chart:

Figure 1. Arbitrary grouping of Facebook friends, based on when/where we met.

My egomaniacal tendencies aside (I love turning people into data points, simply because it's so deliciously dehumanizing), there are some "interesting takeaways" (as us corporate types like to say) in the above chart.  For instance:

• Facebook's help page states that the average number of connections is 120.  (NOTE: Some of you will ask whether the 'average' is the mean or the median.  I have no idea, but I agree that it's a good argument to have.)  I have some Facebook friends who have under 50 connections; my younger sister currently has 1,658 (which I think is the most of any of my current Facebook friends, though I could be incorrect).  At present, I have 146 connections.  I started this Facebook account in 2007, so - on average, and not counting the people who've deleted me (or whom I've deleted) since then - I've added a net of about thirty Facebook friends per year.  I went into this analysis thinking that I had relatively few Facebook friends; I don't have a huge real-world network of acquaintances, and I'm also relatively stingy about who I choose to connect with via Facebook.  This is a ballpark estimate, but I only confirm about half of the friend requests that I receive (I also almost never send them to other people, which is due to my own approach-avoidance issues and doesn't help pad my stats).  That being said, I'm more pleased now than I was before I crunched these numbers at the girth of my social network.
• Life experiences build your social network.  Had I not gone to graduate school, I would have thirty fewer Facebook friends than I do at the present time.  Had I never attended college at Rutgers, you can cut another 32 friends from the total.  (Actually, even more than that, because it's unlikely that my wife would have married me had I never graduated from college.)  My point here is that, if you operate (as I do) under the assumption that bigger social networks belong to people who are generally more friendly and fun to be around, it makes sense to educate yourself and also to have several different series of life experiences under your belt.
• In my case, at least, a committed relationship also builds my social network.  Some may disagree with that point, and for all I know, my situation is different from what typically happens to people.  There's certainly anecdotal evidence that a previously highly social person will "settle down" into a committed relationship and soon thereafter lose a bunch of acquaintances.  In my case, though, my wife's introduced me to 35 people who've become my Facebook friends, people whom I likely wouldn't have otherwise met.  I think this is because she is far more sociable than I am, and she also has worked for a large company for the past nine years, so she knows a ton of people.  I've been able to get to know some of them, as well.
• I'm (probably) getting better at connecting with people.  I went to graduate school for only two years, but have almost as many Facebook connections through grad school than college (where I spent four years).  This has something to do with a recency effect, but I still think it's worth noting that most of my Facebook connections were built with people whom I did not even know when I started the account five years ago.
• I do an (intentionally) horrible job of being Facebook friends with members of my family.  This is related to something I mentioned above; I'm very stingy about who I confirm.  It actually pains me to have to hide someone from my News Feed, but when someone is that annoying, I know I have to hide them.  With many members of my family, I'm sure I'd have to hide them immediately after becoming their Facebook friend.

There are probably applications that analyze this data for you (they will also definitely hack your Facebook password, spam your profile and your friends' News Feeds, gain access to and sell all of your personal information, and probably give you Hepatitis C as well).  I chose to sit down for ten minutes and run down my Friends list, trying to create logical groups.  Some people were more difficult to put into a group than others (e.g., my sister's former boyfriend, whom I put in "Family" just because that's how I knew him in the first place).  But for the most part, I'm confident in the chart above.

It's interesting to take the time and figure out what your social network consists of - even if you keep Facebook, or Google+, or something else entirely running in the background for a few hours a day at work, it's still an essential part of your life, in my opinion.  If this kind of stuff interests you, perhaps give it a shot with your friends list, and see what you find out.

Restaurant Review: U-Yee Sushi

I've never reviewed a restaurant before, but let's give this a shot and see how it goes.  We'll start with a place near and dear to my heart; U-Yee Sushi.  Because, though there are other foods I love more than sushi, there is no more powerful culinary urge than the urge for raw fish.

************************************

On a weeknight almost every week, either my wife or I make the 40-minute round trip drive from our house to U-Yee Sushi in Iselin, New Jersey.  It's not the best sushi we've ever had, but it's tasty and a solid enough value that, though we've tried numerous places closer to our home in Somerset County, each time hoping we've found a local replacement, we can't help making the drive back to U-Yee.

U-Yee is also a hibachi restaurant (I've had the hibachi once, and it was pedestrian in quality), but is probably best known for its half-price sushi (Sunday through Thursday only).  "Half-price" sushi scares many people, and with good reason - I've read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, and all too many restaurants use promotions like this to mask the poor quality of their ingredients.  When the ingredients in question include raw fish, there is even more of a reason to be nervous.  However, having gone to U-Yee literally hundreds of times and having nary a terrible gastrointestinal incident (except for that one horrible, sleepless night in 2008 - though I'm not sure that was the sushi's fault), you can be assured that "Half-price" sushi nights are simply good value - not bad fish.

Lost in the low, low price of a night at U-Yee (two people can split an appetizer, order 3-4 rolls per person, and each enjoy an alcoholic beverage for $50 or less) is the surprisingly high quality of the cuisine.  Sushi pieces and rolled sushi alike are not only crafted to be delicious, they are also (to varying degrees, depending upon the chef) minor works of art.  Occasionally, sushi appears in highball glasses, in intricate designs and patterns designed to make the diners chuckle.  The communal sushi plates are elegantly balanced so that even those individuals with less-than-daring sushi tastes (California roll, anyone?) can enjoy an interesting visual experience along with the fine food.

Those who choose to sit at the sushi bar often receive a complimentary amuse-bouche (our most recent was a mackerel roll combined with thinly sliced avocado, in a green seaweed wrapper lightly drizzled with spicy sauce, alongside a small cucumber and spicy king crab salad) before the main course.  Sitting at the bar is definitely the way to go - the tables are New York City-level cramped, especially on busy nights, and the sushi chefs are willing to chat with you about what they're making (and can offer recommendations on what's freshest).

Portions are large (between six to eight rolls per order) and generous with regard to the fish amount relative to rice and other, less expensive ingredients.  The spicy tuna roll is among the finest I've ever had - a delicious balance between spice and the fresh, medium-fatty tuna, without even a hint of mayonnaise (I strongly dislike mayonnaise).  But even simple rolls, such as the salmon roll, have remarkable complexity - the sushi chefs take care to season the sushi with rice wine vinegar and a little bit of sake and soy sauce, leaving any possibility of boredom behind but still letting the fish take center stage. U-Yee's sushi coup de grace is most certainly its White Swan roll (spicy white tuna with tempura flakes, wrapped in rice and covered with a thin slice of yellowtail), however.  Multiple layers of flavor - the crunch of the tempura flakes, the mellow tang of the white tuna matched with the raw tenacity of the yellowtail - work together for a sushi experience that should be worth far more than the approximate $7 sticker price. 

For the drinking type, there are more choices at U-Yee than you'd expect at first glance.  The restaurant has a full liquor license and offers an extensive list of cold and warm sake, a standard selection of wines, and both domestic and Japanese imported beers.  Often the servers, in the spirit of Japanese good fortune, will take the time to open and pour my large Sapporo for me, which I always appreciate. 

Speaking of service, it is more than adequate for the price point.  Regulars receive a different, higher caliber of service, but anyone who stops in can be reasonably certain their order will be accurate and their beverage of choice will remain full.  Somewhat annoyingly, you will be charged for refills of your Diet Coke (I'm not sure any restaurant should do this in 2012; charge for the first one, sure, but subsequent drinks should be gratis).

Dining at U-Yee is not without its sore spots.  The restaurant is set aback, in a second-rate shopping mall near a Retro Fitness and a for-profit school for adult education - on most weekday evenings, parking is a serious chore.  (I'll tell you our secret; park behind T.G.I. Friday's, to the left of U-Yee's front, and you'll likely have no more than five parking spots between you and the sushi restaurant.)  Parking is only half the battle, however - the restaurant is in Iselin, a part of New Jersey which for many reasons is not known for driving competency, easily manageable roads, or calm driving scenarios (especially during the holiday season).  U-Yee is often busy on weeknights, and does not take reservations.  If you are forced to wait, you'll be waiting in conditions even more cramped than the seating area itself.  You can rest assured that in these instances, you're dining at a popular restaurant.  Take out is an option for locals, but can sometimes be charged full price (be sure to ask in advance).

Do not judge a book by its cover.  In some ways, U-Yee is "dive" sushi - it's in a working-class area, the decor and walls are somewhat dated, and the restaurant certainly appeals to those who realize that clean, delicious fish doesn't necessarily have to be high-end in nature.  Recently, my wife and I dined at one of the finest sushi establishments in the world (Sushi Yasuda in New York City) - a completely different experience, indeed, but both establishments have the same essence of providing needed comfort food.  With a combination of fresh and inventive sushi design, incredibly delicious food and drink, and a warm and comforting atmosphere, U-Yee is almost always a fine decision, and it comes highly recommended.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars (ratings take into account food quality, drink quality, service, ambience/atmosphere, and last but not least, value).

Best for: Casual night out with the wife and/or with friends; whenever the (incredibly strong) sushi urge strikes you

Average price: My wife and I typically spend between $40-$60 for the two of us, including a 20% tip.

Satellite Radio & The New Culture of Music

My new car, which I purchased almost three months ago, came with a free, three-month trial of SiriusXM satellite radio.  They'll let me continue for another six months for only thirty bucks or so.  Frankly, and I would never tell the kind folks at SiriusXM this, but nine months of satellite radio for thirty bucks is an incredible bargain.  They could charge me more, and I'd be forced to take it.  I'm addicted to satellite radio.

Why is this the case?  Inevitably, the first advantage to satellite radio that people bring up is the lack of commercial interruptions.  This is a clear benefit, but it's not entirely true - some programs, such as Opie and Anthony, have occasional commercial breaks.  And indeed, in general, listening to virtually zero commercials on the radio is better than listening to local hacks pitching non-essential services on every radio station at the exact same time (:50 past the hour or so).

(SOMEWHAT RELATED RANT: Though, local hacks pitching non-essential services is much better than non-local hacks pitching non-essential services.  We now use Verizon FiOS for cable at our home, which is generally speaking a vast improvement over evil fascist-run Cablevision.  However, FiOS erroneously thinks that the entire New York City metro area is interested in hearing the same commercials.  New York City is not Akron, Ohio.  I live in the suburbs, but there are one million people who live in a twenty mile radius of me, and literally everything I might possibly need, from pest removal to appliance repair to Ethiopian food, is available to me within a ten mile radius.  I do not need to hear TV commercials for random kitchen and bath contractors who operate fifty miles away from me.  I would never use them, and even if I were interested, it would be economically infeasible for them to consider selling to me.  The way FiOS defines "local" with regard to commercial transmission makes zero sense - maybe someone out there can explain it to me.  I can't be the only person upset about this.)

Anyway, I feel there are more reasons why satellite radio kicks terrestrial radio's ass than you would be interested in reading.  I'll list a few of the reasons why I feel this way below, and then we can argue, banter, have fisticuffs or whatever you'd prefer regarding the topic.

• Variety of music.  At present, the New York City FM dial is a barren wasteland for people who aren't fifteen years old and/or mentally retarded.  To the best of my knowledge, there exists zero modern rock, alternative rock, or hard rock FM radio stations broadcasting out of NYC right now.  But let's be fair; even when K-Rock existed (R.I.P, 1996-2009), one halfway decent radio station could only do so much.  The business model of terrestrial radio requires a steady and large stable of listeners in order to provide advertising revenue.  Satellite, on the other hand, doesn't give a damn whether you want to listen to 1st Wave (classic alternative, 1989 and earlier), Lithium (classic alternative, 1990-2000 c.f.), or Alt Nation (modern alternative, 2001-present) - you've paid your dues already, so you can listen to whatever you want.  The end result of this is that terrestrial rock radio always needed to play Matchbox Twenty back-to-back with Metallica, even though the fan bases for the aforementioned bands did not overlap.  They assumed, in what was a safe assumption until fairly recently, that listeners would suck it up and listen to both groups on the same radio station.  Satellite, on the other hand, can cater to finicky tastes by compartmentalizing music genres in so many different ways, it's amazing (and at first, overwhelming).
• Variety of non-music content.  I mentioned Opie and Anthony before.  They were once simulcasted on terrestrial radio in my area even while on satellite radio.  This doesn't happen anymore, which is a shame because O&A, while filthy and repulsive, are also incredibly awesome.  I work in an office, doing corporate work, and my long drives to and from work are where I am able to let my id free.  Opie and Anthony's constant comedy and vitriol help me considerably in this endeavor.  Also amazing is Jason Ellis Live, a drive time show on XL Faction.  Regardless of your poison, it's important to laugh out loud in your car, and with the incredible amount of talent leaving terrestrial radio for satellite over the past several years, it's now only possible to do this on satellite.
• Satellite technology.  Except for underpasses and driving rainstorms, I've never had any issue listening to satellite radio at any time.  This contrasts with terrestrial radio, which is obviously constrained by transmitter power (and, also, weather).  Theoretically, if I were to drive from my home in New Jersey to the Pacific coast, I would be able to listen the same radio station.  This would be patently crazy, but theoretically possible.  (NOTE: I'd like to someday drive to Canada in this car.  Does satellite radio work in Canada?  That would be a little racist if it didn't.  Maybe it's similar, but they play lots of Barenaked Ladies, Sarah MacLachlan, and NHL broadcasts on "XL Hoser".)
• Complete lack of censorship.  Back in the day, before our litigious society went berserk on musicians dropping the F-bomb in the vein of artistic expression, you could hear raw, unedited versions of fairly explicit music on terrestrial radio.  I, for one, grew up with Tom Morello screaming repeatedly that Fuck no, he wouldn't do what they told him.  At some point, this shit no longer flew on the FM dial, and songs were entirely dubbed clean - often at the expense of the core intent of the piece.  This does not happen on satellite radio, thankfully, and it's cathartic to hear songs performed the way they were intended to be performed.  Remind me again, why do people get so up in arms about profanity?  These people, clearly, should go fuck themselves.
• In a sense, it's good for the music industry.  I mentioned earlier that satellite radio has more musical genre "cuts" than one might expect (or, in some cases, want).  What's nice to me about some of these stations is the extent to which they promote new, independent, and unsigned music.  It's common for a song to debut on XM U (the indie, college radio station) and end up on Alt Nation (the modern alternative rock station), and if it becomes popular enough on Alt Nation, that goes a long way to international super-stardom - which is what any musician who puts his or her music on the radio should want.  What I don't know is how music gets to XM U in the first place, but judging from the personalities they have on that station, I'm assuming that lots of it is researched from the ground up and is completely unsigned.  If so, that's a good thing for the music industry (where traditional avenues of developing talent are dying rapidly).

Is there anything I miss about terrestrial radio?  I haven't voluntarily put on the FM dial once since I purchased my new car last November, so I suppose there isn't much.  One thing I do miss - and I miss it a great deal - is the locality of terrestrial radio.  By this I mean that until recently, it was possible for a radio station to stick around long enough, and make enough money through advertising, to become a stakeholder in a community's musical culture.  They were part of a city's language, the on-air talent (if talented enough) became an adopted member of the community, and they were able to interact with their listeners in ways that were meaningful.

In the late fall of 1997, my mom wrote K-Rock in New York City a letter (maybe it was an E-mail, but I doubt it) explaining how much her son loved the radio station.  She was thinking they might be nice and send her a bumper sticker or something else to put in my Christmas stocking.  They actually sent a few bumper stickers back to her.  They also sent a long-sleeve T-Shirt (NOTE: I write this in February of 2012.  I'm married and have a mortgage, and I still own and fit in this T-Shirt.  It survived literally 25 moves I've made over the past fifteen years.  It is by far the oldest piece of clothing I own, it is a unanimous first-ballot Clothing Hall of Famer, and I will cry out loud like a baby when it eventually rips).  Oh, and they also threw in demo copies of the top ten alternative rock albums of 1997.  At a value of over $100, they sent these gifts to my mom at no charge.  This was my Ralphie Christmas, it's the Christmas I will always remember.

Fast forward twelve years later.  In early 2009, a friend of mine won floor tickets to see Metallica at the Prudential Center in Newark from the same radio station (though by then K-Rock was in its death throes, about to be consumed by the Demons of New York Radio and turned into Dance Music for Adults with Severe Autism).  Through the radio station promotion, I tagged along with him and spent an evening about ten feet from James Hetfield.  This was one of the concerts I will always remember.

Satellite radio, at least right now, cannot come close to matching the type of emotional connections that were once made easily by local, terrestrial radio stations.  I would love to see it happen in the future; maybe they could vary the on-air talent by region?  Or simulcast more local radio stations?  (They currently do this for a few radio stations in the New York market, such as Z100, though I'm not sure if this is a national or local thing.  I really need to drive my car outside of the New York metro area for once to figure this out.)

For now, it's clear to me that satellite radio is an improvement over the status quo.  It does change the way we connect with our communities as a result of listening to the radio, and it's a little sad to think that one day, the "local one dollar concert series" or the "radio station street crew" will go the way of banks handing out toasters to new customers.  Having satellite radio is like being one of the cool kids in a nationwide school with twenty million students.  You know where you stand, you like where you stand, but you don't know anyone around you.

My New Car

My first car was a 1991 Nissan Maxima, and until two weeks ago, I never enjoyed driving any car more than I enjoyed driving that car.  The Maxima was black with a black leather interior, had a Bose audio system, a power moonroof, and a powerful engine.   It was fun driving that car, which manifested itself in certain ways - first and foremost being, I wanted to drive it all the time.  Part of this was because I was very young and very shiftless and liked the idea of "freedom," as temporary as it might be while still living at home, but I'd sometimes drive that car just for the sake of getting away and driving it.  I'd drive it recklessly fast sometimes, and to this day I think it's a miracle that I never busted it (or myself) up pretty seriously as a teenager, but the steering wheel felt like an extension of my fingertips and the steering was tight enough that I couldn't find a hairpin curve the old car couldn't handle.

The Maxima died in 2005 - it died like a bit player in a Quentin Tarantino movie.  It wasn't pretty.  After the Maxima, I drove a 2001 Hyundai Santa Fe for four years (its two best qualities were that it was reliable and it was free) followed by a 2009 Honda Civic coupe for another three-plus (which was reliable and, while not free, certainly cheap).  I drove both of these cars parsecs of miles - a Boston to New Jersey near-weekly commute will do that for you, as well as 240 miles a week commuting for work even after Boston hit my rear-view mirror for good.  They were reliable cars, as I mentioned, and I've never in my life been stranded alongside a road.  But they weren't fun, and I guess I'm a person who needs driving to be fun.  Oftentimes, I'd drive both cars too fast, but just because I wanted to get to my destination and stop driving them.  The Civic, in particular, had such a harsh ride that even modest potholes would lead to me freaking out a little bit (loud, unexpected noises will never be my friends).

The evening before Thanksgiving, after six months of deliberation, internal hemming and hawing, and approximately six notepad pages' worth of Pros, Cons, and What-Have-Yous, I purchased a new, silver 2012 Acura TSX.  I had for months previous been frustrated with car dealerships' hard-line negotiations with regard to Certified Pre-Owned cars, and was surprised when the local Acura dealership lopped roughly 10% off the MSRP for the new TSX (vs. the CPO car, which had a very firm price).  What follows is highly quantitative in nature: The final price of the car I purchased (between $28,000 and $29,000, for those who care about such things) was a few thousand more than I initially planned to spend, but the near-0% financing made up the difference - and, with my heavy driving, having a car with zero miles on it, at that price, and with the exact features and driving experience I craved, made a ton of sense.  My monthly payment will be a grand total of eight dollars a month more than the Civic payment I took on as a graduate student, and for twelve fewer months in term.

But that's all math.  Let's talk feelings.  Buying this car was extraordinarily difficult for me, as it flew in the face of nearly every rational thought I could have.  After all, my Civic drove fine with no obvious problems, and would have driven well into the year 2020 for "free" (or some shit).  But the Acura was a gut feeling (backed by spreadsheets' worth of budgeting), and when I drove the car off the lot, I knew I'd made a perfectly reasonable (and fun) choice.

The TSX, for less than $30,000, has many features that cannot be found on competitors' sports sedans without spending about $40,000.  Here are a few of my favorites:

• Heated leather seats: They're black leather seats so they'll get plenty warm on their own once the thermometer hits 90 in the summertime.  But up here in the hills of New Jersey, it can be very cold on winter mornings, and it's very nice to have my ass sit on warm leather when I'm driving to work.  The driver and passenger have separate settings, which is nice because the Spouse-O-Matic calibrates at a temperature roughly 10F colder than I do.
• XM Satellite radio/Premium Sound System: I've completely changed my mind on satellite radio.  It's worth $10-$15/month to not have to listen to every radio station have a commercial break at the same time.  It's also worth that cost to have plenty of diverse options - Lithium, Alt Nation, 1st Wave, Coffee House, O&A Radio, ESPN Radio, etc. - it's really an incredible array of radio stations to have at one's fingertips.  With the Acura's sound system, I'm able to blare whatever music I feel like playing at decibel levels that will surely render me deaf by middle age.  Which I'm cool with.
• Smooth, supple ride: After the Civic, which ping-ponged around the road like an arcade game, it feels assuring to have a substantial, responsive car to drive again.  The TSX absorbs many bumps easily, which is nice because many nearby roads are of poor quality.
• The "perfect" engine: To be fair, I would rank the TSX's engine in the bottom half of cars in its segment.  It has a turbocharged, 201-hp four-cylinder engine, which is peppy but by no means a trail blazer.  In exchange for accepting a four-cylinder engine, I also obtain an average 31 mpg highway with a car that does not require premium fuel (plus is fine).  This is actually "enough" of an engine for me, as I typically play nice on the road though I like to speed 10-15 mph over the limit on most highways.  The automatic transmission is very intelligent (it never hesitates in providing enough power going up hills), and has manual paddle shifters on the wheel and a "Sport" mode in case I ever feel truly frisky.
• Memory power seats: Basically, if the Spouse-O-Matic (who is about six inches shorter than me) unlocks the car with her key, the mirrors and seat adjust to her size, and then can revert back to my settings once I unlock the car.  Super cool feature.
• Instant fuel economy, specific tire pressure readouts, range left in fuel tank, etc.: The TSX doesn't mind paralyzing you by analysis if you like it, and if you're reading this, you know I like it.

Finally, there's reliability.  Acura is one of the most reliable brands in existence.  At the last moment before I bought this car, a local BMW dealership came out of the woodwork with an objectively fair deal on a 2008 328i with roughly 45k miles on it.  It would have cost much less than the TSX, but I realized that you never see old BMWs on the road - BMWs age like strippers - while you always see old Acuras on the road.  That ended up sealing the deal for me.

**********************

In short, I'm happy with my decision and I certainly would recommend this car to anyone who's interested in a sporty yet practical sedan.  Further, I'm quite glad that I did something counter-intuitive, something that was outside of my comfort zone, and something that allowed me to reward myself (a little bit) while still being a fine value.  I'm back to looking forward to getting behind the wheel and anticipating the open road again, which is nice.

Test Driving Cars: A Requiem for Car Salesmen

In a post I wrote four months ago, I went into some detail about my thought process regarding possibly upgrading my car.  I received a bunch of responses from people on either side of the coin.  Some were enthusiastic about moving up to a nicer car, especially given that my current car (a 2009 Honda Civic) is both fairly pedestrian to drive and in high demand on the resale market.  Others felt, just as strongly and convincingly, that I should stay put because my current car will last a long while and, after all, it's just a means of getting from Point A to Point B.

The opinions that I received were so powerful that I decided to do nothing for a while - for four months, actually, until after I got married (and after all of the requisite wedding planning had been conducted).  Though I still haven't completely made up my mind, I decided recently to start test driving new* cars.  (*If anything I plan to purchase a Certified Pre-Owned vehicle, so these cars are only "new" to me.)  I figured it'd be a nice personal research project to get me through the fall months, and if I found a car that "Wowed" me so strongly that I couldn't refuse purchasing, I could tell the story about what a gullible sucker I was.

So far I haven't been that much of a sucker, which doesn't surprise me as I'm typically very frugal and hate buying new things.  Back in my salad days as a college student, I was an early adopter of the iPod - since then, I've never been an early adopter for any other product.  So, part of my motivation in test driving these cars is to ease myself, over the course of weeks and months, into actually buying something nice for myself.  I'm treating it the same way I'd treat a training program for a road race; incremental baby steps should lead to a relatively painless purchasing decision.

Speaking of baby steps, here are my self-prescribed ground rules:

1. I will never test drive cars on consecutive days.  That's right, I'm giving myself Joba Rules*.  (Sigh.  I should explain this.  Joba Chamberlain is a Yankees relief pitcher who, infamously, was given special "Rules" for his use out of the bullpen during the 2007 regular season.  One of these rules was that Joba couldn't be used on consecutive days, and yes, it didn't work out well.  I can only hope this works out better for me.)  As you already know, I hate buying things, and the bigger the purchase item is the more I hate buying it.  By giving myself at least one day between each test drive, it'll be more likely that I will be physically and emotionally ready for each experience.  
2. I will research each specific car online, and then reach out to the dealership electronically in order to schedule a test drive.  I like this method for two ways.  One, since there's no way I'm going to sit down and discuss purchasing any of these cars the same day that I test-drive them, I'm giving the appearance that I'm more serious than I am.  That way I don't completely lose the salesman's interest until late in the test drive itself, when I confess that I am still comparing models.  Two, it gives me some heads-up insight on how car dealerships treat the customers who reach out to them (more on this later, as well).
3. I will stay in the same price range (about $25,000 sticker price) across each brand that I test drive.  Given the car brands that I plan to test drive (BMW, Audi, Lexus, Acura, etc.), I know that I'm small potatoes.  Even if I walked into the dealership backwards with my legs spread wide, eager to purchase at any price, I don't think any luxury car salesman wants to spend too much time on my purchase when a heart surgeon could walk through the door the next instant looking to spend $90,000 in a heartbeat (get it?).  So, in the same vein as point #2 above, I want to understand the extent to which each dealership will put effort toward understanding the needs of a small-ball customer like myself.
4. I will be consistent in my conversational style and bring up the same questions to each salesperson.  This is only because I want to hear the opinions of different brand representatives, since each of these companies (in my mind at least) occupies a different space in the luxury market.  I'm testing my own hypotheses as we go along.

 ****************************

I'll tell you about my first two test drives below, but first, a brief treatise on my (small amount of) sympathy for car salesmen*.  (*Let's call them what they call themselves these days - corporate terms like "Client Advisors" or "Sales and Leasing Consultants."  Actually, let's not, because those phrases are stupid.  Let's call them salesmen - even though women can and do sell cars quite often.)  Sales in general is a very tough profession, and these particular salespeople work very long hours for a very low salary and commissions that vary based on factors they cannot possibly control.  They have to deal with all sorts of different people, and - because they are car salesmen - they often see the worst of these people.  They tend to do this for a flat commission (my understanding is this is typically 20-25% of the profit made on a car, which is sometimes as low as $100, depending on the automobile).

Now, I like to negotiate, and I personally never feel that the first price a salesperson offers for their services is the best price that they can offer.  However, I've never understood why people speak so proudly of their experiences yelling, screaming at, or berating car salesmen in order to obtain a relatively small savings (let's say an additional $200 off the already-negotiated price of a car).  I realize that some car dealerships engage in shady practices, and I'm trying not to be too liberal-sappy here in my defense of car salesmen (of all people), but if I can make an honest living doing what I do, shouldn't a car salesman be allowed to make some profit when selling a car?  I just don't feel that the poor schmuck deserves to hear me yell at him or her for a measly $100 or $200.

But, given this, how much is too much profit?  Thankfully the Internet provides insight (some of which is insight that I, the consumer, have to pay a small fee to obtain).  Through these means, it's possible even to estimate what the dealer spent on a CPO car.  CPOs are interesting because the dealer is making their second round of profit on the car; they've already sold/leased it new, and now they're looking for more profit from the second owner.  Given this, an educated consumer should be able to leverage this information and obtain an easy 10-20 percent off the sticker price of a CPO car (all other factors aside).  We'll see how that goes in practice, if/when that happens.

***************************

Test Drive #1: 2008 BMW 328i

I start off with what feels like an easy one, because I can't really see myself driving a BMW.  I tend to dislike how BMW drivers drive, and I'd sort of hate to be lumped into that particular crowd.

I find an online specimen at a dealership conveniently located during my drive home from work, and E-mail the dealership asking them specifically to reach out to me via E-mail and let me know if a 5:30 pm test drive that day would be possible.  Within five minutes of sending this E-mail, I receive a reply back from a human being confirming that indeed, this would be possible, and the name of whom to ask for at the front desk.  That level of responsiveness is nice.

That evening, I steel myself and enter the BMW dealership.  I find it remarkably understated (the salesman I end up working with sits at a small desk without cubicle walls, made of fake wood and with a chip in one side) and relaxed.  The salesman is at the front desk waiting for me, and after some small talk, I get to see the car in person.

From the outside, BMWs are beautiful and alluring automobiles.  They are sleek, shiny, and the bodies are designed in such a way that you would know, even if all identifying information were ripped from the body, that it was a BMW.  Inside, however, the 2008 328i is cramped and confusing. The driver cockpit is barely adequate for a man my size (I am barely six feet tall and weigh under two hundred pounds) and the controls are vague and plastic-feeling.  The seats in this particular car are not real leather - they're a vinyl derivative called "leatherette."  I can't tell the difference between this and real leather, as my parents drove Hyundais when I was a child, but I'm sure it's obvious to some people.

The seat controls were manual and difficult to use.  The side mirrors were extremely small, and the view out of the rear mirror was partially obstructed.  It felt like blind spots would be significant.  However, fit and finish was beautiful, with a sturdy-feeling dashboard, comfortable arm rests, and a nice walnut accent.

Performance-wise, upward of 30 mph, I'd say this car was exactly what I'd expect from a BMW.  It absolutely hummed, and I was trying to be restrained with my driving style (since I figure that if you break it, you buy it).  However, my base model 2009 Civic is faster off the block (up to 30 mph), which made me wonder if something might have been wrong with this particular car.  If so, that's a huge red flag because the car had under 40,000 miles on it.  I was generally disappointed in the performance.

The salesman was low pressure and not at all "sleazy", which was nice for the first car that I test drove. I leave not thrilled about the BMW, but encouraged that the process may not be all that painful.

**********************************

Test Drive #2: 2009 Acura TSX


I did not want to like the Acura TSX either, because it seems that everyone I know drives one, and I like to stand apart a bit from the crowd.  While the specific dealership experience I had was less than perfect, I ended up really enjoying the TSX.

About five minutes after E-mailing the dealership asking if they could reply back (via E-mail) to set up a test drive appointment at 10:00 am on Wednesday, I receive a phone call from the dealership.  I don't pick up.  The next day, I get home from work to find a second phone call from the dealership.  These folks must really want to make a sale, I say to myself as I walk into the Acura dealership.

I mention how impolite it was that I was called when I asked to correspond through E-mail to the salesman, and he asks "Why don't you like to speak over the phone?"  My response should have been: "Because I'm the goddamned customer, and if I want to communicate with you via carrier pigeon and the Pony Express, you're going to have to tolerate it!"  That'll be what I say next time.  Instead, I make up a stupid lie about having a bad throat infection and finding it difficult to speak for long periods of time.

Compared with the BMW, the Acura TSX had better acceleration, smoother pickup and braking, more amenities (e.g., heated leather front seats and driver memory seats), and better fuel economy (roughly 30 mpg on the highway).  Additionally, being of Japanese versus German make, I'd be less likely to see the inside of a repair shop with the TSX. 

However, the fit and finish lacked the panache of the BMW - it reminded me quite a bit of my Civic, except it had more buttons.  The dash felt a bit like plastic, and the driver's console was one tone (a dark gray, sort of uninviting).

After the test drive concluded, I explained to the salesman that I had no intent to purchase but would like to keep his card for my records.  He said sure and invited me inside to obtain the card.  He then disappeared and I realized about 15 seconds after this that I had no business being inside the car dealership at this point; I grabbed a business card off the guy's desk and bolted out the door.

Three steps from my car, the "Sales Manager" introduced himself. 

"Is there any price we can offer you in order to sell this car to you today?"

Had I said "Sure, one dollar!" that would sound like I wanted to buy the car, so I said "No, but thanks" as I was getting into my car and pulled away.  Tough dealership; like I said before, I'm sure they wanted the sale.  They just weren't going to get it from me.

**********************

As I test drive more cars, I'll likely update the blog with my experiences and possibly my final decision.  If anything, someone out there with similar tastes may be pondering a similar decision; I can maybe help him or her out. 

Go Yankees!