Geoff at the brewery party/battle of the brats/Octoberfest

"...there's 1000 things they wanna say to you." On the orange line train in Chicago looking forward

The Chargers game earlier today.

That's my soon to be former apt in the back. Right before a shift at Sparky's

One of the last! For this place, at least

I'm awake extra early this morning to watch NASA TV's complete coverage of Space Shuttle Discovery's return home to its home planet Earth. (NASA TV is available online via RealOne player)

Wings marinated in Food Bowl brand salsa.

Sturgis, South Dakota is the home to a world renown motorcycle rally. In the past, this yearly event would attract the roughest and toughest of the motorcycle world, but now that is changing.

The demographic of motorcycle buyers has shifted in recent years. In 2003, the average motorcycle owner earned $55,850, up about 26 percent from $44,250 in 1998, according to the most recent data from the Motorcycle Industry Council. On average, Harley-Davidson owners earn more than $80,000 a year, according to the company.

It's been coming for a long time: a once rowdy and lawless community of biker gangs being co-opted by deep-pocketed consumers of corporate marketing messages. In Sturgis, you're going to find a lot of the weekend biker gang types who ship--instead of riding--their custom Harleys to their South Dakota hotels. There's some push-back by some of the ride-to-Sturgis, tough-biker purists, but their protest is limited to t-shirts denouncing the sissy weekenders or simply refusing to attend the watered-down, establishment attended event.

Read more here.

Listening to Al Green on my iPod as I barbecue 20 chicken wings with salsa, spices and habenero hot sauce, which will make its way to Sparky's First Friday Pot Luck

I can only imagine that it's a fear for some men: if you're the father of a child, one that you didn't know of, with a long broken-up past lover. That's what Don Johnston (Bill Murray) does in this movie, along with his Internet-guru/neighbor, Winston, a black man either of African or Jamaican roots.

Winston in this movie is the character that forwards the traveling music that's prevalent in Jim Jarmusch's movies. He makes mix CDs for Don as he travels around an anonymous country in search of a potential long lost son.

Broken Flowers is a move that's made for a less discerning audience. It's supposed to be a comedic movie; however it relies too heavily on Murray's ability to be wordless and still communicate with audiences. That's not comedic enough, however. I've seen Murray's non-verbal communications well executed with his performance in Lost in Translation. On Broken Flowers I wanted to see something more different than Lost in Translation and that didn't happen for me; the movie was a little too much of a Lost In Trans extension.

I give Broken Flowers a grade of B, but the lowest B that's just above a B-

Labor unions are in the news a lot lately since a large chunk of the AFL-CIO's member unions split from the umbrella organization last week. Unions in general, and working people specifically, have been getting a smaller economic cut of the pie for the past two/three decades, while corporate CEOs and managers have been doing quite well in about the same time.

Once upon a time during the hey day of organized labor, blue-collar workers had the ability to buy homes, send their kids to college and plan for a decent retirement. All one had to do was go to work each day and work hard. Those days are over. Once upon a time a hard day's work paid off for a lot of families.

Nowadays with the convergence of the political parties' support coming from corporations, the American workers' ability to make a living by being a hard working laborer has almost disappeared. It's no coincidence that each day business interest gets stronger and the worker gets weaker. Why is there not a larger outcry when a company like United Airlines squanders the pension funds of its workers by investing its assets in higher risk securities? United's pension system is now in the hands of the federal government system that oversees failed pension systems after United purposely placed pension assets in risky stocks. There isn't a big outcry because the rhetoric coming from the right-wing is that all unions (which means blue collar workers) are bad news for economic growth of our country. And people believe it, which isn't surprising because when you hear a line over and over again--like liberal media--you'll start to believe it, regardless of it's truth content.

The slices of the economic pie are getting smaller for the working people of this country. The disparity between the top 10% and the remaining 90% is getting wider. In the meantime there are many companies like General Motors whose management has made some pretty stupid decisions: concentrating on manufacturing and marketing big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.s during a time of skyrocketing oil prices, when demand is up for smaller more efficient hybrids. G.M. was caught napping when demand fell for their big H2 Hummers. When their management decisions go awry, like it has today, it's the working people of G.M. who will be laid-off, see benefit cuts, while management, who made these decisions in the first place, will receive bonuses for cutting jobs and saving money. It's the wave of the future: bad mouth labor for raising the cost of doing business, but it's management which makes decisions to outsource labor to China.