The Daily Grill

Slate Of Latter Day Candidates

A possible hat in the ring for GOP candidate for president in 2008 may come from Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. (Mitt?) He's a devout Mormon, which really could have been cool if that religion still advocated polygamy. It would be the first time the US could have had a First, Second and Third Lady.

Better Out Than In

The Jones Soda Co. in Seattle, Washington, renowned for selling weird flavored pop, including turkey and gravy, sweet potato and antacid, has added green pea flavored soda to this years holiday assortment pack. Sound bad? Believe it -- even the company's chairman, Peter van Stolk, says he can't abide some of the crap they turn out. "Why people buy it is beyond me. I can't drink a bottle of this stuff," said van Stolk. Speaking about some of the other varieties available, van Stolk added, "Fish taco was just nasty and we tried curried chicken. That was just wrong." I guess if you had to choose between pea-flavored soda or soda-flavored pee, you'd really never find out about the latter.

But Is She Happy?

It turns out that Hillary Clinton shelled out more dough that any other person in a Senatorial campaign this past mid-term election. They say money can't buy happiness, but a seat in the Senate? No problem.

How'd He Do It?

"I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project," said News Corporation honcho Rupert Murdoch in speaking about the bizarre planned book and TV special "How I Did It". The plan was to have O.J. Simpson explain how he would have, hypothetically speaking, killed his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her boyfriend, Ron Goldman. I'd be more curious to see a re-creation of how this project got so far up the chain of command before being yanked...

UPDATE
Just in case you were thinking that News Corporation got blindsided on this deal and then their sense of moral outrage kicked in, it turns out that they shelled out over $800,000 on the deal which they'll never see again, according to News Corp. spokesman Andrew Butcher, "because Simpson honored his end of the contract by producing the book."

America Worst

I just had one of the worst commercial flights of my life, flying home to the Bay Area from Las Vegas this past weekend, and I figured The Daily Grill was the place to get my griping done. The flight on America West has been booked 5 or 6 days in advance, granted, but the airline would not give me a seat assignment "until I reached the airport". By the time I got to the airport in Vegas, the flight had been massively oversold and no seats were available. Yup. Slammed into standby mode. Near to the boarding time, however, I was awarded a seat. One 15 rows away from my girlfriend, but it was, indeed, a seat.

Then the departure gate was changed twice, during which time we were informed our plane was broken and that another was being located. They found one -- in Phoenix. Which they flew all the way to Vegas to pick us up. Two hours later it arrived...and then the real fun started.

It wasn't until we got loaded into the rather ancient specimen of jet they'd found, took our seats and were locked inside that the flight attendant bothered to announce that "due to the rapid response in bringing the plane in from Phoenix." there was nothing they could do to fix the one out of two broken restrooms. Nor had they had the chance to stock the plane, so there were no beverages or snacks. Then she uttered the words I hereby bequeath to America Worst as their new tagline: "At least we'll get you there."

We were then privileged to sit in the plane, on the ground, for the next 25 minutes waiting in line to take off. Our Flying Tube of Misery flew on through the night (fortunately the busted crapper seemed to be the only malady the plane was suffering from, mechanically-speaking) and we eventually landed safely. The unintentially hilarious parting words by the flight attendant had over the PA was, "Thank you for letting us serve you!", the irony being, of course, that they'd served us nothing.

Usually after that kind of experience, I'd imagine the airline AND their faceless US Airways overlords would be savvy enough to offer travel vouchers, discounts...ANYTHING to win back disgruntled passengers. But no -- it seemed that airline and passengers alike wanted nothing to do with each other.

It's Art

Guys, want to know what to do if your girl catches you checking out other women? Simply let her know that you're not looking at them as if you're shopping, it's more like you're in a museum. This made sense to my girlfriend, until I started saying things out loud whenever we passed women, like "Check out those Pair o' dactyls!", "Moan-a Lisa!" and "Hello, Dali!"

Millard Gets His Shot

In this age of debit, credit and gift cards, the US Mint keeps trying to fill our pockets with useless change. Their latest ploy is a revamped $1 coin, this time featuring all of the Presidents in succession. Starting with George W. (Washington, not Bush), a new coin will come out every 3 months, each featuring another prexy in order of their appearance. So Millard Fillmore fans, the nation's 13th head dude should pop up the start of the 4th year of the new coins. The real winner is Grover Cleveland, who gets to be on TWO coins because he served non-consecutive terms. Now if they'd only retrofit parking meters and pay toilets so we can use the damned things...

MADD Breath

Since threats, imprisonment, death and even picking up trash by the side of the road hasn't worked to decrease the amount of drunk driving fatalities in the last 10 years, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers are stepping up and backing a campaign to have alcohol detection devices installed in all cars. That's fine, but where is the device that stops completely sober bad drivers from getting on the road?

Putting The "Duck" In "Lame Duck"

White House Resident Bush made his first trip to Viet Nam over the weekend and showed why he's so "diplomacy challenged". The man came out of his hotel for one non-official 15-minute visit to the organization that searches for American servicemen remains. Then, on Sunday, he went to a Catholic church service. Never met with any official Vietnamese -- or any people from the country at all. The best part was when his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said Bush hadn't come into contact with any "ordinary Vietnamese" BUT "if you’d been part of the president’s motorcade as we’ve shuttled back and forth,” he said, “the president has been doing a lot of waving and getting a lot of waving and smiles.” I guess it's better than letting the big dope open his trap.

Gates VS Gates

I don't see the point of bringing in Robert Gates as the new Secretary of Defense. The guy was around for the end of the Cold War, which is great, but everyone's acknowledged that the war in Iraq is different than any war we've fought before. Rumsfeld, Gates...shouldn't we be looking at some new blood instead of people who'll bring us more of the same ol'-same ol'? If they want a Gates, about Bill Gates? The guy's not a politician but at least he can make things work. Iraq would end up a division of Microsoft, but what the hell...