OVERVIEW Alright - this is another doozy but it provides new perspective, or at least I hope it does. That's because I am now mostly convinced - barring a short trip and/or having big dollars and wanting to splurge - that the smart people stay in Hoboken, vs. Manhattan proper, on a trip here. There are exceptions - it's not convenient ...

Tupper Lake is in The Adirondack State Park of New York State, specifically in its famed High Peaks region. It is a superlative amalgam of mountains, forest, lakes, rivers and wildlife, that surround the nice-but-struggling village of Tupper Lake proper. Let me summarize it this way: Julie and I have been fortunate enough to travel to ...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS A proud atheist, in fact. But - and let me be clear - I really don't care what you believe or don't believe. Are you fair? Honest? Grateful? Curious? Fun? Productive? GOOD ENOUGH! Please continue with your patronage of your synagogue, church, mosque or whatever it might be. I am 100% on board with anything that makes ...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Editor's Note: Seamus Colonnity is an occasional visitor here, borrowed from Christopher Buckley's hysterical "Make Russia Great Again: A Novel". Imagine a less intellectual Sean Hannity, and you're getting close. If you need a visual image of the mighty Seamus, here is a good start. Here, the proudly ultra-MAGA Colon...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS What a weekend. Once the rain stopped late Friday, it was Chamber of Commerce weather combined with Textbook or better everything else. Not sure I could swing the cold or heat or chaos, but there is nothing quite like New York City (and Hoboken), especially now. This was yesterday. Still, many (OK, actually none) have...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS As you'll see in the upcoming Metro NYC Travel Guide, after walking, the mode of transportation of choice around here, at least for this sailor, is the ferry. So, in a mercifully short post for your Friday, I deem the ferries here in Metro NY as magical and will briefly explain why that's so. First, they're magical. L...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS What better place from which to pass pretentious and privileged judgement on the entire American restaurant scene than New York City? Because I think we've all experienced, in every location large and small, the overall drop in the quality of service at restaurants. And something happened here this past weekend that h...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS I should be up front about this: Hoboken, my home until Christmas day, is a veritable adult f'ing Disneyland for someone like me - maybe you, too. Bars. Restaurants. Wine boutiques. Bodegas. Delis. Bagels. JFC there's even a German biergarten a few blocks away with . . . Weissβier! Oh, and there's this place called Ma...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Yeah, baby. A not-too-awful flight in steerage across our big country and we're now wonderfully ensconced in an undisclosed location in happening Hoboken. Pro Tip: I like the Oneworld alliance, of which American and Alaska Airlines are a part. We're flying Alaska both ways, but our American Admiral's Club membership g...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS China's problems have gotten so bad, I felt I needed to call in my heavy hitters. So in a twist, it's Mr. Roarke and Tattoo that step out of da plane; once off, they jump in to an electric Waymo that awaits. Without a word or a driver, the car transports them to a discreet resort, high in one of the world's most treas...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Happy Monday and let's turn our attention to the gee-whiz world of AI - artificial intelligence - and take a look at a tool that uses it in a way that I find quite disturbing. At least as someone that loves to write the old-fashioned way. You know, with my own brain and emotions. The tool is called Lex, and via its cl...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Today - shocker - I will reflect back on a part of my life about which I'd like to brag. But it's also kind of fun and a generational story. too. It is also 100% KLUF. It's about when I saw Ray Davies of The Kinks, in London, while I was working there in 1998. Indeed, future blog posts may recount further highlights o...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS I guess some would call me materialistic. Alright, everyone would, but that's OK, because I know I try to temper that with appreciation and gratitude. Seriously. And there's nothing I own for which I have more appreciation or gratitude than an Omega watch that I inherited from my late father, Bill. It is a 1971 Seamas...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS I trust you had a great holiday weekend. Thanksgiving is easily one of the best times of the year in America, and nowhere more so than here in SF - the peace and quiet are wonderful. In between the wanton piss-ups. But now, we must go back to reality. Because the FTX meltdown is something. It's like Enron or WorldCom,...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS First, a belated Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you had as much fun as we did. But it's also another time of the year, one you've no doubt been eagerly anticipating. Delusions of grandeur! Fake awards for real things! Yes, it's time for the nominees for the 2022 Portico Darwin Awards! Let's take a look at this year's cate...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Let's go into Thanksgiving with the right mindset. I heard this not too long ago and it really puts the whole wealth and greed thing into a new frame of reference. Call me a simpleton raised near a meat packing plant, but a million dollars still seems like a decent amount of money to me. Yet, I observe aghast as 1BR/1...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Happy Thanksgiving Week Monday, made extra special this year by The World Cup occurring simultaneously. Sportswashed or not, and even without beer, it is an amazing exhibition of sport on the grandest scale. But here, away from the desert and certainly not without beer, I'll say that, if Keith Raniere hadn't ruined th...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS You know, I got a lot of push back on the elite nature of my recent post on electric cars. OK, I actually got zero push back, but I need something to justify this list. Because today, I give you the worst cars that I am aware of. I'm talking the real f'ing dogs of the automotive world. I share my own run-in with a bad...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS I have wanted to write something more about sportswashing for a while. I've touched on LIV Golf before, and that's certainly one example of an awful country (Saudi Arabia) attempting to freshen its tainted reputation via sports. But there's also the sportswashing facilitated by the Olympics and Formula 1; both have be...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Recently, I've doubled down on gratitude, cut my news and social media intake, and tried to tame my anxiety. And to make it worse, I've written about it here. Yet, when you thought I couldn't get any more goofy, today, to start your week, I give you a poem. Actually, it's a poem my wife gave me at a low point a few ye...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Happy Friday. Re: the mid-term elections. My major reduction in news intake and social media means I have little to say that hasn't likely already been said by the pundits I'm no longer reading. You're so very welcome. I will make one comment (shocker) though. Remember that most anything Trump touches, he ruins. Maybe...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS I will defer commenting on the mid-term elections until after the dust settles. Plus, after Monday's Debbie Downer of a blog, we need to lighten it up. And what the heck could be lighter than me providing - with cover art and links to the music - the first 3 albums I ever owned? These records were the beginning of wha...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS OK - I am sorry to start the week with such a dark subject. But as you know, I occasionally share things in their entirety that I find unusually profound and/or informative. Sometimes even challenging things. I'm doing that today, but jeez, please do NOT read anything tragic or awful in to this. I am fine, as is Julie...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS A while back, I advocated an electric future, powered by - yes - nuclear power. And we need that, in large part, because of our reliance on dinosaur ruins for, oh, I don't know, forever? Cars, anyone? While I will always wish we hadn't built our world around cars, the fact is, we did, and cars are here to stay for the...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS OK, I know. A post about bowling, bowling shows, famous bowlers and bowling alleys seems a little extreme. Well, I like to live life on the edge. And is there anything edgier than bowling? What drove today's ridiculous topic was this, an article from not too long ago saying that the last bowling alley in my hometown o...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS At least in part, you can blame the East Bay hipster Kevin Monza for this. Today's post was to be a really fun one on bowling; but that will have to wait. My apologies. Because on Friday, Mr. Monza pretty much demanded a comment of some sort on the crazy-town attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of U.S. Representative a...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS One question I'm asked often (especially on Fridays) is "What is the meaning of life, Portico Darwin?" Actually, no one ever asks me that. Instead, it's more like "How do you fill all of those lonely, empty hours in retirement?" Or, if it's someone pleasant: "Where do you get the super cool old photos you use in the b...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Disclaimer: what follows was greatly influenced by this In Plain English podcast, and specifically, the research done by the guest on that episode, Nicholas Bloom. A lot of what I say below is backed up by the cold, hard research done by Bloom and his fellow brainiacs. Their stuff is at WFH Research. With that out of ...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS Happy Monday and am I the only one pissed at Saudi Arabia? First, we've put up with their anti-Semitic and misogynistic bullshit - forever. Then, there was their involvement in that little ol' thing we call 9/11. A bit later came MBS and his penchant for killing those that protest him . . . killing those that protest ...

TODAY'S RAMBLINGS My recent post on my life as told via Esquire covers may have struck you as a bit strange. Today's is worse. Or at least obsessive and probably also compulsive. But at least it might give you something to do this weekend, apart from reading books. And perhaps some will see the method in my madness. In fact, you probab...