One New York Life

Arizona Cardinals +6.5 over Pittsburgh Steelers: Do you really want to lay 6.5 points on a guy who has, to this point, never played a good post-season game and who only won the Super Bowl because the officiating staff was on the take? Do you really want to be staring at Larry Fitzgerald scoring his third touchdown and wondering how in the world you thought betting against him was a good idea? Maybe two weeks have dulled the memory of him doing absolutely ridiculous things to catch touchdowns throughout the playoffs. Maybe we’re also forgetting that, even if the Steelers double-team him with their best corner and best safety that they STILL have do deal with Boldin. If Ben Roethlisberger plays the type of games as he’s wont to do in the playoffs, the Cardinals will be up 14 before the half. The Steelers are built to play tough it out, crush the run defense. Unfortunately, in all the games they’ve played this year, they’ve never showed they can stop a Greatest Show On Turf-esque two-headed receiving monster. Warner’s having one last blessed run on his way to Canton. And you can’t bet against God and puppies. The Cardinals shock the world. Cardinals outright, Over 36.

PS: As you read this, I’m on my way to Atlantic City where I’ll be watching this game in a 15-person suite after hopefully having not lost all my money on Saturday. In other news, Atlantic City doesn’t have sportsbooks; which I was really bummed to discover. Only in Jersey can casinos and racebooks (horse-race betting) be legal, but the mob still has enough pull in the state government to keep sports’ betting their exclusive domain. Amazing. And Ms. L still trots out the occasional argument that we should live here.

I’d like to thank new blogroll entrant Overthinking It for finally addressing something that’s bothered me about Back To The Future since my ill-advised attempt to be a physics student my first year of college.

To make an awesomely long story very, very short… The Earth orbits the sun at a speed of about 30 km/s 20 miles/second while rotating at a speed of about 0.3 miles/second at the Equator. Since Hill Valley isn’t exactly on the Equator (but surprisingly, does appear on Google Maps) the relative speed is a little less. We’ll call it 0.25 miles/second for ease of math.

Using Einstein’s 1-minute trip, for the Delorean to appear at the exact same location it had to travel about 1200 miles along the Earth’s orbit while compensating about 15 miles along the Earth’s surface. Since we see Marty’s perspective when he goes to 1955, we know the trip is nearly instantaneous to the driver (confirmed by the human eye being unable to see any time differential on Einstein’s watch) and we can say that Einstein traveled about 1200 miles in less than a millisecond or so — about 4 times the speed of light.

I have no big point to tie this together. Only that Doc Brown doesn’t get nearly enough credit for creating a machine that can not only travel through time, but also solving the speed of light problem. And props for someone actually doing the math close to how it’s supposed to be done.

In recent months, I’ve started trying to find out when my ancestors showed up in Upstate New York. My home town of Stillwater, NY is right on the Hudson River just north of Albany (not to be confused with the next town over, Mechanicville where I bought my townhouse. Just to the south in Waterford, the Champlain Canal (the canal that connected Lake Champlain, and thus Montreal, to New York City) empties in to the Erie Canal (the canal that connected the Great Lakes, and thus Chicago and Buffalo, to New York City). Around and to the north in Stillwater, Schuylerville, Bemis Heights, and Glens Falls is the site of the Battle of Saratoga. My town boasts the first and oldest continuously operating hydro-electric station in the country. At one point it housed the third largest railroad yard in the country, paper mills, and textile plants. These are a lot of words to say that it was, at one time, an important, vibrant part of the state. That time has gone — but at least it’s pretty easy to determine why people decided to settle there at some point.

Regardless, I’ve been able to track most of my ancestry except through my dad’s mother’s side. Her mother’s mother, mostly due to somewhat shoddy record keeping when womenfolk got married off, is something of a mystery. The more research I’ve done, the more I’ve realized that the jokes about me being related to everyone in my town are sketchily close to truth. My great-grandmother was one of about a dozen children. Further up the line on her mother’s side is a guy who had 17 sons… one of which had 19 sons. Further up the line on her father’s side is a family of 14 children, one of whom wound up owning most the land along the river where my high school is today.

While Googling some of these names, I found a mention of John Becker (one of the aforementioned children of gigantic families) in a book called The Hudson by Carl Carmer. Becker makes an appearance on one page as a little kid during the battles of Saratoga. And that’s how I came across this book.

I’ve had a hard time explaining this book to people. Near as I can tell, Carmer is somewhere in between a historian and a folklorist. The book seems to be written by taking historic records from people’s journals and letters, speaking to folks that remembered (or were told the story of) the events, and turning the whole thing in to a series of short stories outlining the history of society on the Hudson River. It starts with Indians traveling eastward because a prophecy bade them search out the “river that flows both ways” (the Hudson is affected by the tides so when it comes in, the water looks like it’s flowing up-river) to the “present day” 1930s when the book was written.

And one finds out rather quickly that the rich screwing the poor is a tradition as old as the state of New York. The original Dutch settlers took giant swaths of land via land grants. These people then parceled this land out to farmers. The manor lords would then charge the farmers rent for the right to farm this land. On top of a flat rent, they’d charge a portion of the farm’s profits and tithe of the farm’s goods. Since these manor lords owned almost all the river farmland, farmers generally had no choice. The manor lords are all names people from the state will recognize — their family names are on bridges, universities, towns and buildings all over the state. Van Rensselaer, Vanderbilt, Clinton, Fenimore, Beverwyck… all these names are of people who had the ability to throw people who fell behind on their tribute payments in to debtor prison. This ridiculous system lasted through the British take-over of the Dutch colonies and it was part of the reason used to spur river farmers in to rebellion against the British. Little did the farmers know that the feudal system would remain in place even after the Revolution was won.

If anything, it’s another bit of proof to my theory that everything in New York occurs through a complex series of favors dating back to the 1600s. All these recognizable names — men that are remembered as great philanthropists who helped found colleges and open houses for the arts — spent a solid portion of their lives demanding manor taxes from peasants and keeping this ridiculous system of laws in place using their considerable weight. This would all eventually lead to an insurrection against the state called the Tin Horn Rebellion, after which tenants were convicted of treason, which turned public opinion against the manor lords, which led to the election of a governor that abolished the manor system and pardoned those convicted in the Tin Horn Rebellion, which apparently then erased the history of the manor lords as asses. It’s pretty wicked, when you think about it — when people were upset with the government in the 1800s, mobs broke people out of prison who were unfairly imprisoned. People tarred and feathered tax collectors. The governor had the option of declaring a “state of rebellion.” Now… we bravely…. blog about stuff.

I do like that the book reads as fiction even though it is non-fiction. Reading 25 pages about a steamboat tragedy on the Hudson would be boring. Reading it written in the first person perspective from a guy on the boat is a little better. It also parcels out cool bits of knowledge wrapped up in prose. For instance, there are quite a few old houses in the northeast shaped like octagons. For a 40ish-year period in the late 1800, it was en vogue to build houses shaped like octagons. The original was built by 1840s version of Dr. Phil, a phrenologist named Fowler. Fowler’s Folly was built in Fishkill, NY — was considered one of the first purely American housing designs — and they started to pop up around the Northeast. One of these, built in 1858 by the aforementioned one of 17 sons who himself had 19 sons is in my town (pictured here on an 1889 map across the street from the church — those of you who’ve driven through Stillwater will recognize the fork as the one with the Mobil — and here from a news story in 2006. The “cute” carousel theme has, thankfully, disappeared). It was cool to get random upstate facts that I didn’t know.

My biggest complaint about the book was I expected it to deal more with river communities north of Albany. Instead, it dealt mostly with river communities south of Albany. It was much more about the fishing and steamboat industries in Hudson and Poughkeepsie than the northern communities. I suppose that whaling, fishing, and steamboat travel lends itself more to cute, folksy stories then do paper mills and industry, but more than two would have been nice.

I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone that wasn’t a local history nerd for Upstate New York, like myself. I’m interested in the topic and I had to renew it twice because it was slow going. If I give it credit for anything, it’s the further reading section which suggested many more books on more focused topics.

I will admit to not following pop (or music in general) as closely as I once did. I will also admit to falling off the Mariah Carey bandwagon somewhere between Music Box and Daydream. By the time Butterfly came out, I was in college and had pretty much cycled out of pop. By the time I started hearing her again (circa: 2002 – TDL gets XM), we’d gotten to Charmbracelet and her songs had drifted too far toward hip-hop for my tastes. To note: I like Mariah Carey. I like Busta Rhymes. I do not like Busta Rhymes and Mariah Carey in the same song.

Anyway, this quick ‘n dirty look in to Tom’s musical tastes and questionable manhood is for the purpose of awarding Mimi and her people a “What Were They Thinking” for having her re-record Hero. I understand Mariah’s fanboys (and girls) will say this “reinterpretation” is simply the “evolution of her voice and style”, but let’s be honest… she hardly even sounds like the same person. Mariah’s voice has been noticeably breaking down for a few years — she stopped showing off her range and her singles have been much more dance-esque with hiding behind hooks, loops, and guest stars. It’s Like That is a great club tune. Touch My Body is a fine pop song. Neither are exactly the power singing she laid on people for the first 10 years of her career. Apologists say she is just getting older and her voice is changing with age. People, she didn’t start recording as a pre-pubescent boy — she was 22 when she first recorded Hero. Luciano Pavarotti was still hitting all his notes after abdominal surgery following pancreatic cancer and he was in his 70s.

If you compare the new version to the old version, it’s not so much a “reinterpretation” as it is a “trainwreck”. Save for the big note toward the end (and in tiiIIIME, you’ll find the waaaaaAAAAAY/Then a hero COMES along), she sounds like an mediocre Idol contestant who has no business singing her songs trying to sing her songs. The entire recording is her copping out of big parts and just sounding like a bad imitation of herself. Now, that isn’t to say it isn’t perfectly acceptable by today’s standards. At one point, though, Mariah was so far above “standards” that she was in a rarefied club with like three other women. Even the worst of the apologists would hopefully now admit that something’s gone drastically south with her vocals.

Let’s put this on the list of things not to do: When your vocal chops are starting to diminish, due to — uh — age, don’t re-record one of your pinnacle songs such that everyone will immediately compare it to how you used to sound. You can get away with it live. You can’t get away with it recorded.

Speaking of possibly diminished vocal chops due to “age” — I can’t wait to see what Whitney has in store for us in March.

References

1. Hero – 1993
2. Hero – 2009

As I still haven’t gotten my hands on the Michelob Sample Pack, we’ll start with the Top Ten Series

Black Chocolate Stout
Brewed By: Brooklyn Brewery
Brewed In: Brooklyn, NY
Type: Chocolate Stout
ABV: 10.1%

What They Say: On website: This is our famous Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, our award-winning rendition of the Imperial Stout style, once made exclusively for Catherine the Great. We use three mashes to brew each batch of this beer, achieving a luscious deep dark chocolate flavor through a blend of specially roasted malts. We brew it every year for the winter season. It is delicious when newly bottled, but also ages beautifully for years. (In other news, if I ever live in a house, I may have to try to age one of these for a year).

Website: While I generally hate sites that are entirely flash applications, this one is about as well as they can be done. The navigation always remains at the top and not a lot of time is wasted with silly animations. The only irritating no-no is that it makes sound and websites should not generally make sounds without warning the user.

Why I Picked It: To be perfectly honest, the first time I saw it was at an Albany bar called Cafe Hollywood and their specials board had a “try this for the same price as a regular pint” with it’s alcohol content listed. I like Brooklyn and I like high alcohol content for cheap money, so I went with it. Much later, I’d find it’s bottled form in the city.

—

Presentation (5): I love the design of this bottle. I love the understated black and gold design that says you should take this bottle more seriously then the flippant colors and big B logo on other Brooklyn products. I love that the logo is smaller and put off in the corner allowing the name of the beer to be the featured player. I love that the label’s design is different than the standard Brooklyn label to set it apart from the rest of the brewery’s products. They couldn’t have done this better. 5

Originality (5): For me, most chocolate stouts taste the same. They seem to focus much more on the bitterness of the chocolate then the sweetness. Brooklyn’s is the first (and really only) chocolate stout I’ve had that tries to balance both. It’s remarkably successful. 4

Taste (10): Dangerous. It’s probably the tastiest chocolate stout I’ve ever sampled. If you’ve ever had a chocolate stout and thought about how it should taste… this is it. It’s gives you a touch of sweet and has a deliciously bitter chocolate flavor in the finish. It lingers, but not too much to be unpleasant. It’s good for any beer, great for a stout, and absolutely perfect for a chocolate stout. 10

Body (10): Taken out of context, it’s a very heavy beer. When you taste it, though, the flavor is so distinctly chocolate that you expect the body to be much heavier — almost like a Hershey’s Syrup — then it actually is. It’s heavy, but since it’s thinner than you expect, it feels pleasantly light. It’s perfect. 10

Efficiency (10): Brutally and viciously efficient. Barleywine and Imperial Stouts generally have some kind of flavor issues to slow down consumption. Brooklyn Chocolate Stout doesn’t. It doesn’t have the tongue-sitting bitterness of some Imperial Stouts nor does it have the sickly sweetness of some chocolate stouts. It’s alarmingly good, has no taste issues, only costs about $1 more than a standard six-pack, and can kill you. I honestly don’t know how New York hasn’t made it illegal (though I have noted many bars reduced the draught to 10-ounce pours). 10

Versatility (10): Yeah, right. 5.

Final Grade: 44 (of 50) – Great beer.

Funny story about this show. Ms. L’s birthday is in November. Last November, I gave her a “voucher” saying I would buy tickets for this show on the day of her choosing as her birthday present. I figured this would work out well because we were about to hit the holidays (her birthday’s 11/7) which is quickly followed by tax season. I didn’t want to buy tickets six months out because I hate doing that.

To make a long story short — sometime in October, they announced the show would be closing on January 18th, 2009 and I realized that we’d never gone and her new birthday was about to come up. So, while I saved money on last year’s birthday, I wound up buying double birthday this year. I did my job as a man and picked a day and said “this is the day we’re going” and, of course, I bought the tickets on the night of her company Christmas party. It’s never easy.

A quick plot summary — kids hit puberty in late 19th-century Germany.

The Good

• Some of the songs are really good. The problem is — it’s only some. It’s written by a more modern musician and it shows. There’s no real overarching theme that threads through the show to tie parts together. The musical listens like an album. That’s fine, but it listens like an album with a few really good singles (Mama Who Bore Me, My Junk, Totally F*cked, Those You’ve Known) with a lot of fluff and filler. There was nothing to grab on to and take from the show. When you leave Phantom of the Opera, you remember the overture.
• There were naked boobs! I wasn’t planning on it, but it was a pleasant surprise.
• It was very funny. If I went in to it expecting a comedy, I would have been very happy. They do the awkward teenagers discovering their bodies thing very well. The song My Junk is set around the various students in awkward situations — one has a stacked piano teacher he’s drooling over, one gay student awkwardly propositioning a confused fellow student, and the whole scene is set around a guy at center stage looking at an erotic postcard with a sheet over him while — uh — moving to the rhythm. It works out tremendously (intentionally) funny.
• The stage layout was tremendously unique. There were two or three dozen seats actually ON the stage at stage right and stage left. The supporting chorus singers sat in the crowd as students and occasionally would pop up when the time was right. I thought it was going to be distracting when I initially saw it but it worked.

The Bad

• All the show’s adults are played by one man and one woman. I understand why — the adults are really only small supporting characters — but I found myself occasionally confused about which person they were supposed to be at any given time. That isn’t to say the actors weren’t good, it’s just that there were times where they could have legitimately speaking as more than one person.
• I really didn’t like our Moritz. I don’t know if this is the choreography, but the actor wanted to be a rock-star a little too badly. He held the microphone on the stand with the base of the microphone to the side like Steven Tyler and seemed over-the-top even for Broadway. It just didn’t work for me. In his defense, I didn’t like the entire Moritz storyline which could have tainted him for me. By the way,
• I really didn’t like the entire Moritz storyline. The character kills himself because he fails out of school but the whole failing-out is stupidly arranged and badly told. He spends half the first act desperately freaking out about passing his mid-terms. He passes but the headmaster of the school decides that Moritz shouldn’t be promoted so they arrange for him to fail his final exams. They give no real explanation for this short of “everyone can not be promoted.” Uh, why? Especially since the lead character, Melchior, is explained as the rebellious and morose student hated by the headmaster. They let him go but conspire to expel Moritz whose only flaw seems that he’s jumpy and overly nervous? While he’s in the worst spot of his life, he runs across his old friend Ilse and they talk about old times and she invites him over for some “catching up” and companionship. He says no and then kills himself. But as he’s killing himself he’s talking about how he doesn’t really want to kill himself and should go see Ilse. But… dude… she just left and said she wanted to hang out?
• Then after the suicide, the story out of nowhere cuts to the girls talking about their eventual weddings as they tease each other about the boys in town. Then one girl suddenly goes in to a song about getting molested by her dad. Like — I understand that it happens, I understand that it probably happened more often per capita in the 1800s, but the song was totally out of place. Like, up to this point they’re delivering masturbation jokes and talking about vagina essays and erotic postcards. Then, surprise, we’re talking about a girl getting abused mentally, physically, and sexually by her father. The whole sequence is out of place and doesn’t fit with the rest of the story.
• We got a “this show is two years old and is closing in a month” cast. These guys were getting their Broadway feet wet. I’m not saying they were bad, but they didn’t blow my shoes off like the Les Miserables cast.
• The songs just weren’t solid top to bottom. While there were a couple of very fun standouts, the rest got lost in the shuffle. There’s something to be said that I walked out of theater humming the “There’s only us/There’s only this” tune from Rent. There was just nothing that popped out of this show to make me remember it.

The Rest

The musical is a pared down version of a play. Maybe the play describes some of the events with more detail. I found myself confused by the timeline and found a lot of the story threads rushed together and disjointed. The lead storyline was fine. Melchior and Wendla meet, make out, get pregnant, get separated, and one dies. I can appreciate that. I can even appreciate some of the side storylines, but there was no big tie-in at the end that brought it all together. Combine that with there wasn’t even a really a musical theme to tie the songs together and it felt more like listening to a concept album with live videos than a musical with a story.

They tried to sell this to New York as a Rent for the new generation. It could be like Rent if you took out Jonathan Larson’s ability to take the actual structure of a musical and modernize it with recurring themes and a storyline that all made sense at the end. Duncan Sheik (yes, the Barely Breathing guy) seemed like he took the play and wrote a soundtrack.

In retrospect, I find it baffling this won Tony Awards and took Best Musical in 2006. Looking at the nominees, I realize it wasn’t exactly a heavyweight Avenue Q vs. Wicked fight, but jeez.

I’m glad I got to see it before it closed, but it doesn’t get the Golden TDL Recommendation or anything.

The Good

• It’s 24. I still like it. There’s not a lot more to say. If you like the style and format of 24, you’ll still like it.
• I like that they moved the location to DC. They’d pretty much worn out Los Angeles. The show’s real time format made having people on two coasts awkward. People would be in airplanes for four straight episodes. I’m also glad they used DC instead of NY. NYC’s been blown up enough in TV and film.
• I was glad to see Tony alive again. I thought his death was a waste. Enough people died at the beginning of last season that they didn’t need to kill him off, too.
• It took me a minute to place Rhys Corio as crazy Billy Walsh from Entourage, but once I did it was funny to see him essentially be crazy Billy Walsh without a beard and working in a high-security position in the government.

The Bad

• Who thought casting Janeane Garofalo as bogus Chloe would be a good idea? Whomever it is should be shot, stabbed, and fired. Does anyone who watches this show like her? Does anyone like her?
• Admittedly, the first two episodes worried me. They followed the 24 formula. Jack is in trouble with the government, gets bailed out because they need him, finds a witness who gets shot just as he’s about to reveal something important, etc, etc. After the first two episodes, it became less evident.
• Does it bother anyone else that no one puts together that Jack MIGHT have broken Tony out to find the CIP device? Like… nobody at the FBI even suggests this might be the case? I realize the viewer’s perspective is different because we just see these seven days separated by years of downtime, but has Jack ever been anything but pro-USA?

The Rest

It’s a weird political statement that the show seems to be trying to make this season. I guess they want people to ask themselves if torture is really bad if it prevents innocent people from being killed. It’s valid. I mean, I’m not really pro-torture but if these people weren’t trying to blow up buildings then they probably wouldn’t be in the situation where they were being tortured. I know the argument is “what if they honestly don’t know anything and are the wrong person?” I honestly don’t know the answer.

Oddly, the first five episodes line up tremendously well with a book I’m reading called See No Evil by Robert Baer. Baer is a former CIA agent who was in the agency as it transitioned from the super secret 1970s intelligence agency to the hamstrung by political correctness and lazy government it is today. Most of what he points out — agencies working against each other, people who don’t know how to interrogate witnesses, people more concerned about their careers then getting information — is happening so far this season.

I like the season so far. If more obvious plot twists start happening, I’ll be disappointed. But for now, huge improvement over season six.

W/W/W – Cardinals +4 over Eagles, 32-25, Cardinals outright, Over 47: Donovan McNabb, should he leave the Eagles off this game, leaves behind an interesting legacy. 1-4 in conference championships, 0-1 after completely falling apart in the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl, the Rush Limbaugh incident, not knowing about ties, and getting a crazy amount of love from player analysts while not so much love from non-player analysts. Kurt Warner, on the other hand, is somehow taking a 2nd team to his 3rd Super Bowl and likely earned himself a bid to Canton just by beating the Eagles. Warner remains one of the great mysteries of my life — how did so many teams miss him, to the point where he had to spend time in Arena and World Leagues before an NFL team finally realized he had an arm? In retrospect, I don’t understand how the Eagles were favored as much as they were here. The game went pretty much exactly as I expected — save for the Eagles trying to rattle Warner with cheap shots late in the 1st half (including an inexplicable, five seconds after Warner released the ball knockdown which somehow didn’t result in an ejection) and later playing an almost-perfect 2nd half. Speaking of legacies, Andy Reid’s will be interesting, too. If this is his last season, he’s going to leave the Eagles with a 97-62 regular season record and a 10-7 postseason record. He’s destined to join the Marty Schottenheimer “Guys Who Are Remembered As Worse Than They Actually Were” Club — not to be confused with Phil Jackson “Guys Who Are Remembered As Incredible Coaches Even Though They Had The Best Player In The Game” Club (charter member – Tony Dungy).
Joe: Arizona outright. Over 47: W/W/W
Cam: Arizona +4. Under 47: L/W/L

W/L/L – Steelers -6 over Ravens, 23-14, Ravens +6, Under 34: As the unanimous decision for this game, it was clear this wasn’t going to be the result. Meanwhile, the Steelers’ trend of winning huge games despite terrible play by their quarterback remains intact. Roethlisberger played a bad game, but luckily, the Magical Rookie Train finally went too far off the tracks for the defense to yank it back — much to the joy of the NFL, I’m sure.
Joe: Baltimore +6 Under 34: W/L/L
Cam: Baltimore +6 Under 34: W/L/L

Standings
Straight Up
Cam: 1-1 (5-5)
Tom: 2-0 (5-5)
Joe: 2-0 (3-7)

Against The Spread
Cam: 1-1 (5-5)
Tom: 1-1 (5-5)
Joe: 1-1 (1-9)

Over/Under
Cam: 0-2 (4-6)
Joe: 1-1 (4-6)
Tom: 1-1 (3-7)

To finally wrap this up, I saved a copy of my bill because it was funny and would make sense to look at with the final thoughts on the place. It was conveniently divided in to day and charge type, so I was happily able to look at all the meals ($26.42 for Jamba Juice… woo!) separately from the actual room charges.

$14.40 – One-time bellman gratuity: Apparently, at Atlantis, you will tip your bellman regardless of whether they help you with your luggage or not. Not only that, but no one will mention they are pre-tipped until the end of the week when you get your bill. Had I known this, I would have had them bring me up to my room on their luggage cart. And… $15? Really? Has anyone ever tipped a bellman more than five bucks in the history of hotel travel? Is the cost of living on Nassau like New York City’s? It does explain why the bellmen waiting at the cabs were less than aggressive taking our bags.

$8/day – Royal Maid Gratuity: They charge you this surcharge per day regardless of whether your room actually gets serviced. Ours got serviced exactly once. Not that we necessarily wanted it serviced every day — we collectively have to go through all new bedding before sleeping on it due to our checkered past — but there were days our “Please Service Room” sign was blatantly ignored. Most of our room servicing was finding the maid cart and asking for coffee, towels, and other necessities. And… does the resort even pay these people a salary? Is it cynical to assume $8/day times 100ish rooms on my floor covers the maids entirely? Is it more cynical to assume the hotel pockets all of this “gratuity” and pays the maids $5/hr?

$3/day – Pool and beach gratuity: In retrospect, I still don’t know whom this tip was for. The waitstaff who would come around exactly once to offer cocktails? The people standing in the booth checking your room key for towels? The lifeguards?

$26.40/day – Taxes and Fees: Meh, this is whatever. Not the resort’s fault.

$15/day – Energy surcharge: Because, presumably, they wouldn’t be able to keep the kitchen’s lights on by merely charging $10 for an compressed egg-product sandwich.

$220/day – Per night room: The biggie. Remember, this was a special wedding rate. While drafting this (on January 16th, 2009), I went to their website to search what, exactly, a comparable room (Royal Towers, Bay View, King bed) would cost two people going from Wednesday, March 18th to Monday March 23rd. The room total was $2,635 — an average cost of $527/night. This room charge alone is more than double our total bill, including fees, taxes, room, food, and minibar. I searched other weeks and the cost difference was negligible. Regardless, Joe Schmuckatelli would be looking at about a $500/night hotel stay to go to this place.

Final Thoughts

The resort itself is gorgeous. The pools are immaculately kept, the beach is absolutely beautiful, the aquarium is a great touch, and the casino is serviceable for the size of the resort. They don’t make you feel like a criminal and ask for your first-born as a deposit when getting a beach towel. Their resort village has happy party bands playing music in the evenings and there is plenty to look at and see on the resort to make you happy.

So why didn’t I like it?

I guess, for me, is I’ve never been at a vacation resort in the Caribbean that made it so difficult to get alcohol. From the lack of poolside waitresses to the absolutely unforgivable three-quarter wait for a cocktail waitress during Thursday Night Football. The beer, even the local beer, is badly overpriced. When you start approaching $7 for the Bahamian version of Budweiser, something’s gone drastically wrong. There were no “local” food options. Walking off the resort simply led to more resorts, all of which had different versions of American chains. It truly is resort purgatory. All the water slides, shark tanks, and concerts try to make this place the ultimate resort. Considering the number of people at the resort paying $500/night in a crappy economy, this is apparently a solid plan.

I had a few too many moments where I found myself being a New York City snob. Be it looking at middle-aged suburban ladies dressed in their daughter’s JUICY sweat suits or goofing on a Caribbean resort for having more New York City restaurants than Bahamian restaurants. Or other moments where I may have said, a little TOO disdainfully, “ooh, honey… let’s go get some Italian food at Carmine’s while we’re in the Bahamas!” I don’t enjoy being that guy but I have discovered that the quickest way to cure myself of the desire to live in the suburbs is by spending time in places with large concentrations of suburbanites. I also found myself wondering why, exactly, people with enough disposable income to spend $5,000 – $10,000 on a week’s vacation would choose to spend it here. Again, maybe it’s because I could have a more authentic Bahamian experience in Queens but then I have to remind myself — Americans like America. We don’t like to learn other languages and we like our comfort zone. I’m going to find it odd that this Bahamian super resort full of American chains is successful while Subways and Olive Gardens inexplicably remain open in New York City? Not so much.

I will likely re-examine what I like in a vacation should the day come when Ms. L and I are married and have children. For now, this place was absolutely gorgeous but I’d probably never choose to go back.

Is it time to consider something might be wrong with the system when 3 Wild Cards get through? It’s probably not good when your seeding system creates more favorable match-ups for the five and six seed then it does for your one and two seeds. Regardless, here we are, staring down the barrel a possible Pennsylvania Bowl.

Philadelphia Eagles -4 at Arizona Cardinals (47): This game will totally and completely be won or lost on Arizona’s offensive line. If they protect Warner, Asante Samuel can only cover one guy. There is so many things wrong with betting the Eagles here. They looked better than they actually are last week, they’re a road favorite in the NFC Championship Game in a building that sold out in six minutes, and they’re still coached by Andy Reid. Can’t you see Arizona jumping out to early lead after Warner goes deep on the first drive, Andy Reid trying to respond deep, and the Arizona secondary pulling in an interception and converting it to a 14-point swing? I think the end of the universe might actually be up on us. Cardinals outright, Over 47.
Joe: Arizona outright. Over 47.
Cam: Arizona +4. Under 47.

(Ed note: So you’re saying there’s a chance!)

Baltimore Ravens +6 at Pittsburgh Steelers (34): Like many sports’ clichees, the “it’s really hard to beat a team 3 times in a season” saying turned out to be wrong. It turns out, in 17 chances to sweep a season in the playoffs, teams have been successful 11 times. It’s an easy mistake to make being that it’s only like 65% of the time. That’s hardly even passing in most cases. Regardless, I see absolutely no reason, save for B-Roth being concussed out of the game in the first quarter, that the Ravens don’t lose again here. On the other hand, the Steelers put on a show last week and there’s no reason to assume that this is going to be any version of a shoot-out. Combine that with snowy and cold home Pittsburgh and you have a recipe for a classic, low-scoring playoff game. Ravens +6, Under 34.
Joe: Baltimore +6 Under 34.
Cam: Baltimore +6 Under 34.