For decades, when friends told me they were taking their first trip to NY and wanted to know where to get good pizza, I told them to walk into any local pizza joint and they’d get the best slice they’d ever had. Sadly, I have to report that’s no longer true. In the last two years, I’ve tried about ten different places and none of them were up to the pizza snob quality I expected.
Speaking of New York, I never thought I’d see any other game being played on the city’s handball courts, which were long considered holy ground in neighborhood parks. But pickleball is taking those over, too.
It seems like every other day I get an official letter from some corporation I’ve done business with, warning me that it has suffered a data breach which may have exposed my personal data. It always urges me to be cautious — when it’s actually their job to keep an eye on this stuff and keep it secure. Maybe that’s become impossible, but it’s gotten to the point every company should underwrite our permanent access to Experian ID Works or some other service that does the job better. Until they get hacked, of course.
One of my ongoing pet peeves is Italian restaurants that drown their pasta in sauce, so instead of fettuccine bolognese I end up with a bowl of noodles in a marinara soup. Lighten up on the ladles in the kitchen!
I’m amazed whenever I hear commercials at the end of podcasts. After the hosts have thanked their guests and said goodbye, we’ll see you next time, who is sticking around to hear an extra live read for Stamps.com? This is not a linear listen like on a broadcast outlet. Show’s over, I’m moving on to the next podcast in my queue. Do those advertisers know their spots have been given such bad placement? It’s like buying time on a radio station but discovering that your ad runs last in a commercial cluster that lasts seven minutes, by which time listeners are long gone.