Halftime Fun

For all the live bloggers out there.

Go Bears!

College football fired up this weekend! The Cha is pumped about our local team, the Cal Bears. We are halfway through watching a real thumping right now. Go Bears!

The Cha loves The Hose

With Rocky's recent appointment to Contributing Editor, The Cha started feeling bad about being the only person in the house not affiliated with The Hose. But he's not just whining about it. Above: a photo from this morning of Cha trying to establish some Hose-related credentials. At some point we'll explain to him how little this has to do with The Hose.

Reflections on 2008

The ups and downs of 2008.

Movies
Good: Persepolis (I know it was released in France in 2007, but I saw it in 2008)
Bad: Tropic Thunder (horrible, horrible movie)

Music
Good: MGMT
Bad: Jonas Bros (make it stop)

News
Good: Obamamania
Bad: the dissolution of Bear and Lehman (Merrill deserved it)

Business
Good: Uppity investment bankers getting their comeuppance
Bad: Uppity private equity guys getting their comeuppance (I just got here!)

Sports
Good: Michael Phelps
Bad: Every college and pro team I bother to root for, in every sport (Jets schmets)

Friends
Good: Weddings GALORE, including friends from college, old work, grad school, Catjjy’s college, and my family (the Killer B’s are in there somewhere - congratulations) - like having an awesome full-blown, open-bar reunion from a different part of life every weekend.
Bad: Too many friends getting the axe

Home
Good: The Cha turning from a eat-and-poop machine to a walking, talking, running, laughing, hugging, car-loving, joke-telling, Vans-wearing little boy
Bad: 2 dinners out alone with Catjjy all year

Top that, 2009.

Maine attractions (get it?)

Catjjy and I are ditching The Cha this weekend and heading to Maine for a wedding. He is very broken up about it, but we are excited about seeing the Killer B’s.

In researching establishments to hit while we are there, Killer B 1 came across a topless donut shop. It is actually part of a strip club, but it is open from 6am to 11am. Presumably, you buy the donuts from topless girls. This raises a host of questions.

Toplessness is generally a good thing, when applied to attractive women (like the readers of this blog). Donuts are certainly a good thing. Combining the two just might be brilliant. Consumers have shown a willingness to buy their coffee in an attractive Starbucks coffeeshop, even though the exact same Starbucks brew is available for $1 less at the gas station. Will people pay $1.50/donut at the topless place, versus $0.50/donut at the regular donut store? And if so, do you have the most profitable donut store ever?

Or does the whole thing fall apart when you combine toplessness and food service? Are we all a bit squeamish about half naked people handling our food? And perhaps more importantly, do you lose the interest of your audience when you replace the highly-engineered titillation of a strip club at midnight with the mundane everydayness of an operating donut shop at 7am? Is the same topless girl just as sexy doing a pole dance to throbbing R. Kelly beats as she is, say, sweeping up the area where someone dropped a tray full of bearclaws?

I suspect Catjjy and Killer B 2 will veto an early morning run to this particular donut shop, but we will try to get our friend The Cock to check it out and report back. In the meantime, are there any other business models whose profitability could be greatly enhanced by simply removing the employees’ shirts?

The Cha takes over

It seems that The Cha is the new face of The Hose. I must be the only person (perhaps excluding Catjjy) who sees this as a reasonable trade for Padma.

It's been a big week for me, Hose-wise. Three posts, several comments, and now the boy as frontman.

P.S. - Whose banana do you have to peel to get your name listed as a Hoser on the right-side of the screen? Is there voting involved, like there was to get Manolo kicked out?