Going Like Sixty

Tinnitus (ringing in my head) makes it not fun for me to be in a very quiet room. I’m lucky that Nancy likes to fall asleep with the TV on. Otherwise there is usually plenty of background noise to make the tinnitus bearable. Except where our desktop computer is located.

Therefore, when it’s not “fan weather” I depend on Pandora.com - a marvelous internet radio station - to play in background when I’m surfing or blogging. It’s free. But Congress and the Recording Industry Association of America are putting them out of business.

Pandora.com is not peer-to-peer. I’m not pirating music. Pandora pays artists everytime I listen. It’s The Music Genome Project, formed by musicians.

However, an obscure federal panel decided last year that Internet radio providers had to use a different pay scale. An exorbitant pay scale. It’s high now, but by 2010, sites like Pandora will have to pay 2.91 cents per listener per hour. Right now, Pandora will have to pay the RIAA 70% of its projected revenue for 2008, and that bill is going to shut down the site, Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, said…

I love Pandora.com because it has exposed me to music I NEVER would have listened to in the past. Therefore, I’ve listened to artists that NEVER would have made my playlist because I didn’t know they existed.

Yet RIAA, who you would think would want me to listen to new artists, is killing the Goose that has a big golden egg.

The music industry has been suffering massively reduced revenues lately as music downloads have caused CD sales to plummet. Internet radio was a shining new business model. Not only does it give you a way to listen to your favorites, it gives emerging artists a chance to be heard. Pandora and Slacker make it easy to buy new music too. — music that you might never have heard any other way. The music business must be crazy to limit this pipeline.

Regular radio is exempt from these outrageous feeds. Because they carry those damn irritating commercials to pay the way. Get this: they don’t pay if they broadcast music, but do pay if they stream it on their website!

There is hope - I hope it doesn’t come too late.

Internet Radio Equality Act (HR 2060), which Manzullo and Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) introduced last year. The bill, which maintains the strong bipartisan support of 149 cosponsors, would vacate a Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decision last year to triple royalty rates Internet radio stations must pay and instead put the rates at parity with satellite and cable radio.

I don’t have a iPod. I find the earpieces annoying. I don’t like CD’s because I don’t want to listen to the same artist for an hour. Terresterial radio is a non-starter because in our little burg it’s Public Radio longhair, Classic Rock, or Country Western. And all those irritating local commercials!

I sure hope Pandora’s box doesn’t get slammed shut by the Recording Industry Association of America. The irony would just be too, well, ironic.

There’s something amiss (pun intended) in the Ladies Professional Golf Association. (LPGA) (ladies, harumph!) No, it’s not their lack of language skills like the LPGA thinks, it’s their lack of looks and the fact that they are all named Park, Kim or Lee. Except for Ochoa. And Wie, but she can’t win.

The LPGA announced they will suspend players from their tour if they can’t pass an oral evaluation. (No pun intended)

Seon-Hwa Lee, the only Asian with multiple victories this year, said she works with an English tutor in the winter. Her ability to answer questions without the help of a translator has improved she says. But I’ll bet you a long tee, she needed a helper to formulate this quote…

“The economy is bad, and we are losing sponsors,” Lee said. “Everybody understands.”

One of the directors, Ms. Peters (I am NOT making this up) says it’s only right.

“This is an American tour,” Peters said. “It is important for sponsors to be able to interact with players and have a positive experience.”

And here I thought it was all about TV ratings lead by quality golf! No, it’s just that the big-wig white guys want to flirt with the golfer chicks.

Some obviously closeted men even think beach volley ball got tedious during the Olympics.

Since it’s not about TV ratings, and they won’t play golf in bikinis, I cannot come up with a solution. I’m just saying that teaching Kim Lee Park to say “conditions were good for scoring, I just couldn’t make any putts” won’t resurrect the Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour.

These may not be solutions, but they are my suggestions:

• Paula Creamer dresses everyone.

• Posture lessons from Morgan Pressel

• Wardrobe by Venus Williams

• Lift, clean and place at every tournament see Morgan Pressel)
• Weight to Height ratio enforced
• Lose a limb or have a short arm
• Deduct inches from knee to bottom of skirt from final score.
• Gimme putts length determined by bust measurement
• All female caddies who must meet same standards above.
• Players who cash in must collect check that is laying on the ground.
• Kissing your caddy after each round must be open mouth.

Nah, it’s hopeless. The LPGA is headed the same as the National Hockey League: you can see them on TV only if you have 886 cable/satellite channels. And then only during playoffs. What? no playoffs in Ladies Professional Golf? Well there ya go! LPGA needs playoffs!

The woman pictured is pregorexic. She is six months pregnant with hardly a visible baby bump.

Pregnorexia is becoming more prevalent these days as previously fit women find themselves having children. Laura, seen here, is trying to stay thin by sticking her fingers down her throat. A recent survey noted that in the U.K., 1 in 50 British women are afflicted.

As always, some of the blame lies with celebrities like Victoria Beckham and Angelina Jolie who remained very thin during their pregnancies. It’s hard to eat for two (or three in Angelina’s case with the twins), when eating for one is a struggle.

During pregnancy, a diet of fresh fruit and vegetables, as well as chicken and fish, are essential for fetal development.

Multi-millionaire children, tweens and teens are as common as implants at the Oscars. Even though most of the stars have aged out of the child star demographic of 14-18, they still are cashing in with performances that appeal to that group.

Miley Cyrus, 15 years old, from Hanna Montana and Daniel Radcliffe, 19, of Harry Potter socked away a cool $25 million each last year. Others, in order from high to low, are Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, both 22, at $15 million; The Jonas Brothers, Kevin, Joe, and Nick, at $12 million; High School Musical star Zac Efron, 20, toted up almost $6 million along with 23-year-old co-star Ashley Tisdale’s $5.5 million.

Emma Watson, 18, who plays Hermioni in Harry Potter took $5 million to the bank this past 12 months. Hilary Duff, 20, got $5 million as did Rupert Grint, 19 who plays Ron Weasley in Harry Potter; and Vanessa Hudgens, 19, survived some unauthorized web exposure to come in at number ten with a nice $3.2 million.

Politics are a carnival of life. So why not make a side show out of a torture technique like waterboarding. Ya pays yo money, ya gets a show that “Don’t Gitmo Better.” Steve Powers opened the sideshow in the shadow of the famous Cyclone rollercoaster. After peeking in a small window you will see a lifesize figure in a hooded sweatshirt lean over another figure. Plug in a few bucks and the waterboarding scene is played out for your viewing enjoyment, including convulsions. Does it get any better? Is it worse than putting Mayo on a Nathan’s Hot Dog? If it’s OK as an interview technique, why is it called a side show?

Mexico introduced the Mastretta MXT, the first car to be designed and built in Mexico, at the British Motor Show to rave reviews. the two seater coupe used aircraft construction techniques to create a very light and therefore very fast car. The power is from a Cosworth engine which is turbocharged to create 240 BHP. It should top out at about 150 mph, with a price of about $64,000.  The first model will run on gas, with a compressed natural gas engine promised for the future. The designer Daniel Mastretta went for a retro Can-Am racing car with wide body and muscular stance. He promises that the car will be easy entry and easy exit. 

“Initial drawings of the car were like slashes on the page and these lines are integrated into the design of the car you see here today,” Mastretta says. “I was trying to evoke emotion with the MXT. It has a dynamic tension that I believe drivers will love. “We have a passion for design in transportation which goes back for 20 years and that is fundamental to this car. It looks fantastic, but there is function there too. Great aerodynamics and low weight combine to maximise performance and handling and the low nose and high wings which enclose the wheels allow the driver to place the car very precisely on the road or track.” (gizmag) 

Resorts have large pools like this 250,000 cubic meter mega pool, which is basically the size of a small lake.  In a similar quest for more water, here are high level details about a mega residential pool.

Gilbert Arenas is a Wizard, an NBA Washington Wizard basketball player of some ability. He is building the largest residential pool in America. These photos are taken of the work in progress, but you can see it features REAL boulders which took up 1/2 of the Million Dollar price tag. Three fish tanks are included including one in the “basement” of the pool so Arenas and his swimming friends can watch the real expert swimmers. Fish. The pool should be done later this month.

Aw, heck if you got it flaunt it, that’s what they always say.

A Sheik spending $47,000 to have the oil changed on his Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 was probably chump change.

To make sure the maintenance was performed right, he had his luxury oil change done in London. He had his car flown all the way from Qatar to London just for the oil change. The supercar only costs about $380,000 and is the same car Bruce Way (Batman) drove in The Dark Knight movie, so yeah, it’s special. The bill for the service was $7,000, the other $40,000 was for transporting the car.