take on Hillary

Gizmodo posted an article today debunking Hillary Clinton's assertion that she used only one email address for both her personal and state business because she wanted to only carry one device.   Gizmodo and their staff found out that Hillary had both an Ipad and a blackberry, so her 'one device' thing was crap..

but what I've been saying for weeks is that the one device thing is garbage for a completely different reason.   I have three different email accounts on my Iphone.   Two for work and one for personal stuff because, well, technology is great.  When I carried a Blackberry I always had multiple accounts on it, same thing for an Android device I had.

So guess what, Hillary is a lying sack of pant-suit wearing crap and it's only a matter of time before they release her secret correspondences with Hassan Rouhani

take on Roddy White

when I saw that a guy named Roddy White was blamed for outlandish behavior as it came to extra-curricular activity and I just assumed it was the star receiver lifting up his jersey to reveal "Free Vick" on his undershirt and the No Fun League was coming after him again..

then I found out that the Roddy White being punished for pumping artificial crowd noise into the Georgia Dome was actually a fat bald middle aged white guy and not the receiver..  I have no idea what to make of this other than I don't think it is ever healthy for an organization to have two Roddy White's on a staff, especially if neither can go for more than 500/4 in a season.

I will say this, Richard Sherman over in accounting for the Seahawks better be careful cause they've been pumping fake noise into that pit for years.

Take on China's water supply

There are some factoids which I feel are ones I could have written myself. Saw that China dumps 60,000,000 tons of sewage into the ocean every single day and somehow I am not shocked. The water is green in China and I'm not talking algae green, it is fluorescent from all the toxins and somehow it is still cleaner than the air. I get that there isn't a lot the average citizen is going to be able to do about it but you'd think that the average Chinese person has a lifespan on 20 years less than a typical Westerner but maybe that works for a communist country and keeps them somewhat competitive

Take on ass-pain

(This is a re-post of a entry we thought we posted last week but can't find any information on.. we've added a few extra spelling mistakes and grammatical issues to ensure its authenticity)

Recently every time I get off of a cross-country flight and get up out of my seat, I feel like somebody has taken a hammer to the back of my legs a I feel this sharp pain from the back of my ass down to below my knee.  As you can imagine, rushing across an airport trying to catch a connection in Minneapolis while pulling a huge carry-on with a stiff ass is about as much fun as taking one to the nuts in men's softball.  This is completely debilitating and for the life of me I can't figure out what's causing it.   I'm not sitting on a big Costanza wallet, I'm not sitting longer than I ever have, I'm not drinking less water than before and I don't think I've been taking it in the five-hole but I do know that the back of my ass feels ridiculously sore..

Here's to hoping I don't have any long flights coming up..oh wait, I'm due to be on a 14 hour flight to Korea in two weeks.. kill me

Take on the airport

There are only two types of people at an airport. People who have
somewhere to go and people who should we set out to pasture. I walk
through every airport doing 100mph because I have somewhere to go, may
it is the gate, maybe it is the bathroom, maybe it is Starbucks but
the thought of dilly-dallying for the sake of being old or crippled or
bored or brain dead should never be an option. Airports suck and you
should spend no more time in them that you possibly have to because I
have already spent half a lifetime stuck in them like a bad Tom Hanks
movie and can tell you that when I leave this earth and enter the
gates of hell, I'm sure there will be an agent in a short sleeve blue
button down telling me to back up and wait my turn.

Take on upgrading

One of the most disappointing things I have learned recently is that Delta is now treating cross country flights like they do international flights when it comes to upgrades. For years they have eliminated any upgrades when you fly over the pond or to Asia forcing you to cough up the big bucks if you wanted to have any hope of shut-eye but now they are implementing the same policy when flying from the West Coast to the East Coast and visa versa. They explain to me that even as a medallion member with nearly 500,000 miles under his belt in the last five years, they will not upgrade you anymore because it wouldn't be fair to be upgraded on a 3000 mile flight from NYC to LAX but not have the same advantage when flying from NYC to London as the flight time is equal. Fairness sucks and if they really care about it they would let airport kiosks upgrade you on international flights, also, as opposed to taking the cross country upgrade away but this is life on a traveling salesman in 2015. All joys and perks have been stripped away even as the cost has soared.

Take on being off the grid

I was sitting in a four hour meeting this pending after fighting four hours of traffic on the 405 in the hellhole they call the City of Angels this week and when I got out of my meeting this is what my phone looked like
3 text messages, 18 missed calls and 96 emails. I am a person who incessantly checks his email, so even seeing 5 email notifications get me nervous but I have never in my life stared at 117 total notifications and I nearly shit myself which would have sucked on the 405 in rush hour.
Anyway, I hate my life, I hate having to answer 96 emails, I hate LA, I hate Westwood, I hate the fact they have beautiful beaches, babes in bikinis and endless summer and I hate the f&cking 405

Take on the middle seat

Long gone are the days I was platinum on Delta and was getting upgraded left and right. When you go from flying 75,000 to 100,000 miles per year to a measly 50,000, everything changes. I'm still a gold medallion member which basically means that you have to have the entire first class be stricken with food poisoning to ever hope for an upgrade. So here I sit on a six hour cross country flight in a middle seat in coach and the dipshit in front of me just went to the full-recline. So not only are my knees pressed up against the seat back and my nuts are jammed against my thighs, I can count the dandruff particles on his nasty head which I can do at will because the Internet connection sucks so badly and loading a single webpage is AOL slow.

MLIA

take on the veteran's combine

The NFL put together a veteran's combine this weekend where the likes of Michael Sam, Felix Jones and Mike Golic Junior ran through a bunch of agility drills with the hope they could catch the attention of a scout.   I believe the NFL network broadcast the entire thing which is great since it probably still drew better than hockey or baseball but I think that this experiment might very well be a one-and-done thing because it seemed that the reason these were all ex-NFL players was pretty obvious....they had all gotten fat..

Looking over the 40 times of a bunch of running backs, I saw that Mikel Leshoure turned into Michael Bush and Michael Bush turned into Michael Moore because these guys who were once world-class athletes were starting to get into Rich Eisen territory..

the saddest time was that of Felix Jones who clocked in on with a sun-dial time of 4.8 which basically proved that he went from Felix the Cat to Garfield.

Deadspin says there was even some load who clocked in at 6 seconds.. you could eat a lasagna in less time than that..

anyway, maybe the NFL can expand the rosters to 60 spots.. give a couple of guys a shot at making the big league and (hopefully) rotate a few of them in so the head-to-head collisions for any individual player can come down a bit.

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Take on the NCAA "don't bet on it"

I always felt the entire not paying college athletes anything while the NCAA is banking hundreds of millions was incredibly hypocritical but when they came out with their new "don't bet on it" campaign it was just ridiculously disingenuous. You don't allow them to benefit on a game they play and risk their lives in sports like football while you are raking in the cash but now they come out with some lame campaign when the only reason the NCAA mens's basketball is at all popular is because of the tournament and the office bracket. This is like colleges playing lip service to alcohol issues while taking millions from beer companies

Take on mandatory voting

This week Obama had what seemed like a throw-away comment about mandatory voting which struck us as an absolutely horrible idea. I'm not talking about the inalienable freedom decide to vote but rather that it is just not a very good idea. First of all having a influx of uninformed voters decide the fate of this country sounds like a horrible idea. The people who spend more time worrying about American Idol than world issues should probably not be making decisions that will impact all of our collective future. Secondly, the thought that this would lessen the impact of big money in politics is ludicrous as it will only invite more attack ads as people will be voting based only on name recognition. Lastly, this country's constitution was never written to be a true democracy, look at things like the electoral college which is designed to minimize the impact of the uninformed, uneducated and undesirable voters. This is why we live in a republic with a representative democracy and not a true democracy. They may claim it is to protect the minority but truthfully it is to minimize the impact of the stupid and uniformed and I am OK with that.

Plus, if we had to vote in very single election between local, state, county and federal voting, I'd never get any work done. You'd be debating the merits of every dog catcher and country comptroller for hours

Take on the city streets

New York City's streets look like the face of a 13 year old girl. The entire city is one huge crater after another which is to be expected after the winter we've had especially considering the one it followed. I can't say the city should be in better place right now because I can't even imagine when they could have had a chance to patch a single pot-hole up but I think it is due time to come up with something other than that asphalt filler they throw into the streets to patch up the potholes when they do. May I suggest a diamond infused composite filler? Last forever and supports the local business community

Take on race relations

As Starbucks rolled out another failed idea (uninspired lunch sandwiches, limited availability of Pumpkin Spiced Latte, new mermaid logo) with their Race Together initiative it was occurred to everybody-except Starbucks executives apparently, that having a constant dialogue about race is great but believing it can be achieved on the side of a coffee cup is silly. The side of a Starbucks coffee cup has always been a canvas used by baristas to miserably butcher the names of their patrons so why not use it to bring a conversation about race to the coffee table??

For one because the basically all white (and asian) clientele being served by an almost entirely minority staff, race relations although civil still show a gigantic rift right at their espresso station. Maybe open up a couple of Starbucks in East New York or Compton and see a social experiment in action or do some community outreach in minority neighborhood instead of writing "race matters" on a side of a coffee cup for a completely white washed clientele looking for a caffeine kick
I am all for Starbucks tackling issues like clean water, sustainable harvesting and better working conditions for their bean pickers but race is a bit heavy at 8am when the only race I want to hear about is the one my heart will be doing when I pound down a Venti Pike Place Roast with a double espresso thrown over top.

Take on the de Blasio "leadership"

Mayor de Blasio finally came out and commented on the vicious beatdown at that McDonalds in Brooklyn last week and as usual he showed the kind of leadership of a fish. Not only did it take him a week to even comment because he had not seen the video which is all if 3 minutes long but when a story like this grips a city it is his responsibility to address it. When he finally did comment his words were as lame as his delay. He spoke about these kids needing to seek mental health help but glanced over the fact that this was a gang attack of one gang on another in his city. This newspaper would have liked to have seen him stand up and shout that gang violence is not going to be tolerated, not going to be accepted and not going to be justified with lame mental health anecdotes.
TOR has been on the forefront of an overhaul of mental health system especially as it relates to crime but there are times when the issue at hand can't be blamed solely on that. This is a gang issue and one that needs to be addressed as such.
Mayor, stand up and do what is right by this city and do what the people elected you to do by having some guts and showing real leadership.

Take on Mark Davis

It has come to our attention that there might be a worse haircut out there than Kim Jong-un's (http://takeonrighetti.blogspot.com/2015/01/take-on-bad-haircuts.html?m=1) which we find hard to believe but are more than willing to investigate

As it turns out Crazy Al seems like the same one in that father-son duo because good god does Mark Davis look like an imbecile . This guy's got the football acumen of John Idzik, an infatuation with ashed up players like Khloe Kardashian and the haircut of Lloyd Christmas. Although you can kind of see why Crazy Al saw in Jon Gruden because Mark looks like his multiplicity half brother. If his brother had an IQ of 46

No wonder they will never be relevant again

Although it has been pointed out to me that now that the 49ers have lost half their team to retirement or free agency including their best two best assets (Jim Harbaugh and Patrick Willis) that the chances of them being the new doormat of the bay might be a real possibility

Take on the iPhone calendar

I'm getting stood up left and right and couldn't figure out why, until today. I've successfully used the iPhone calendar for years but ever since I got the latest iOS the functionality has gone to hell. I would always schedule an event and then add people to it using the "invite" function in the edit mode but recently whenever I do this, the person I'm inviting stands me up saying they never got my invite. It's odd because I am doing it the same way I have always done it and have never had any issue but recently I have nothing but headache.
If you look at the calendar event you will see a little "?" next to their name as oppose to the green check mark or red X if they have either accepted it declined the invite.
I looked in the iGeek online forums and they aren't much help as the best explain action I can find is that because people have an iCloud account with corresponding email address which they never use, the email invites just flyer lost in cyberspace

Take on the worst of the worst

I always thought that if you got together a bunch of people who travel a lot they could spend hours exchanging war stories of delays, reroutings, deicing, missed runways, turbulence, food poisoning, gross hotels, irritating fellow passengers, lost luggage and various other battle scars. I have basically dedicated a five year blog about the stuff I hate about traveling.
But the one I read today about a guy bitching that they turned around the flight because somebody dropped a horrific deuce in the toilet takes the cake. I mean the fact you turns around and are stuck in Heathrow for a full day sucks but who the hell wants to be on a 10 hour flight with the smell of a truck pisser invading the aisles. I have to move subway cars if I catch myself on one with one of those gigantic homeless people who smell like a combination of urine, dog shit and decaying flesh and could not imagine sitting for a half a day in seat 56E. Thus is the one time the airline was right

Take on minister dollar

I know very little about ministers other than the fact I am an ordained one from the Church or People which I used to marry a couple. What I did get was a big thank you and a thoughtful gift from my congregation but I realize noemi was vastly underpaid because I was never gifted a private $60million jet.
Obviously my desires for one is not all that real but I did find it interesting that some Atlanta based minister has asked his congregation for $60 million for one, what is even better about the story is that his name is Minister Dollar which is an absolutely perfect name for somebody asking for sixty million of them

Take on the Where's Putin thing

The western media is in one of its typical frenzies trying to figure out what happened to Vladimir Putin. Apparently he hasn't made a single public appearance and everything that the state run Russian government has released appears to be week old footage rebranded as new.
Now maybe big Vlad is on a vacation riding on horseback around the steppe shirtless or maybe he's sumo wrestling a Boris Yeltsin looking bear but one thing is for sure, he's impossible to find right now. This is like Min Kardashian going dark (you see what I did there) out of the blue and not posting a new Instagram shot for a week, Vlad IS Russia, he is on TV all of the time basking in his own glory

So if somebody has seen Vlad, please send a tip to TOR and we'll try to verify it. My guess is that he is personally inspecting that flight MH370 which landed under cover o night in the desert in Kazakstan last year

Take on the Times Square Kiss-cam

Is there anything more ridiculous than that big stupid kiss-cam in the middle of Times Square? Every day I try to walk home and get stuck behind this crowd of 100 people trying desperately to get their miserable Midwestern mugs onto some big jumbo-screen for 15 miserable seconds. It is not as if there is some value or a prize for getting onto the screen as nobody is giving out free pack of gum or rolls of condoms, so the only pleasure must be seeing yourself on a grainy TV screen.

At least when people go nuts at a baseball game there are 50,000 other people looking, in this case the only people who are even paying attention are the same people in the shot

Get a life and get out of my way