Millen Should Be Impeached November 29, 2005

Matt Millen has failed on every level to bring a winner to Detroit. Even though people tout his draft record, what have any of these draft picks done besides make one highlight play a year? They sure as hell don’t have any playoff appearances to show for four years of “spectacular” draft picks. There was a point where Detroit lost 24 straight road games between 2001 and 2003. They have only progressed from 9-7, just short of the postseason run in 2000, to 20-55 since Millen took the team over. The Lions hadn’t finished with less than four wins since 1998 before Millen took the reins—they’ve averaged less than four wins per season up to this point since. Millen’s substandard record makes one long for the days when Detroit would at least make the Wild Card Playoffs, before flaming out in typical Lions fashion.

NEWS AND COMMENT, November 23, 2005 November 23, 2005

The American Music Awards were on last night. Nobody cared; not even the award winners, who scarcely even bothered to show up last night to collect their pyramid trophies. That’s not so startling to me, considering that a.) this award show is a crock; the nominees are based on sales and total spins, which we already know are fabricated by the music industry, so…there’s that. However, there’s b.) This show is taking place less than 48 hours before Thanksgiving, which actually compels the artists not to show up at the AMA’s. Can you say “bad timing”? I don’t know about you, but if I knew that on the busiest traffic day of the year I’d have to schlep out of either of the three airports run by the Port Authority of NY/NJ because I had to attend some awards show that I didn’t have to perform at, I’d pass too. I mean, if you were Kelly Clarkson, where would you rather be—stuck at JFK or LaGuardia waiting for the first American Airlines flight to Dallas, or already set and ready at your mom’s house? Here is a thought—move the AMA’s to summer, when nothing else is on, and it is clear of the Grammy Awards and the Holiday Travel Season.

The Sony Spyware Problem Gets Worse November 7, 2005

I hope that, for starters, the people who are outraged about these actions write to their respective state or commonwealth Attorneys General, and see to it that this does not become industry standard operating procedure. Furthermore, I want no talk from the music industry, not an ounce of it, about price increases for legal digital downloading services such as iTunes, Napster, and the re-branded Grokster. If the Big Four are looking to pull crap like this on their consumers, the ones they hate so much that they would enable their CD’s to install spyware, those cheap and cost-efficient downloader sites may be their only option to distribute in the future. Moreover, we know the artists, who have been scandalously ripped off by this industry repeatedly, can’t be pleased to hear about this either.