After being up early to go to Oakville to be a sponsor for a confimation I just came home & crashed hard for about 6 hours. After waking up around 10:30 I had a text message from my CL friend asking to "save" her because she was ropped into going out to Chippewa from some of her friends. She said she was @ Brinks and I ended up joining her. I actually can deal with that place, but to be honest I'm really just trying to "ghost hunt" the real spirit of the place. I vaguely remember the joint as a legendary "old man bar."


But the owners I think the same people that own Coulter Bay decided to gentrify the place as every other owner did on Chippewa & turn it into Brinks.

Well all I can say is that from what I remember from the way the place was like when Chippewa first started to form into the place that it is today, their business is kind of the same. The cheesy music & the sparse crowds as the night wears on. Sprucing the place up I don't think paid off, IMHO. The location is still the same, Chippewa famous for drunken frat boys & "tiarra " wanna be Paris & Britney girls spending their Daddy's Money looking to hook up with some "badass."

Here is some visual evidence that the investment just didn't pan out.





I know they serve food here, but I just don't think I would spend the money to eat when the bathrooms look like that, as one old rule says. All I can say is I must be getting old because I just can't stand the people on the Chip Strip.

On a unrelated note I noticed that "Big Shots" is dark. I wonder when happened to that place? From my old job I knew the owner & he actually was a really nice guy. Then again I knew him from my old job & that opens up another can of worms...:-/

All I can say is YAH Federal, BOO NY State Dept of Taxation & Finance....

I'm getting back a really nice chunk of change from Uncle Sam & only getting back a $100 from NY. This is just another reason for myself that if I am ever to gt ahead with my life I must leave this area.

This is what PISSES ME OFF. In New York State there is no Lifelong Learning Educational Credit for Graduate Students :-( So they're not reflecting the Federal Tax code when it comes to income taxes. They're just trying to squeeze some extra out of you. I remember I would get screwed when I used to work in Canada. You would get back the Foreign Tax Credit/Deduction on your federal, but when it comes to NY State you get NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING when it comes to that part of the tax code. New York State absolutely Sucks when it comes to State Income Tax. We can always talk of trying to make this region better, but at the end of the day Western New York will always be handicapped due to being in NEW YORK State. Case in point if they ever included the Foreign Tax Credit/Deduction just think of how much that would boost Real Estate Prices in this area. You could lure more of the Half American/Half Canadian households to live over here & commute to Southern Ontario. Even more so than the ones that are doing it now & building like crazy in Lewiston.

Now I can't complain since I'm just grateful that I don't owe NY. I know so many people that claim Single 0 and still write a check every April to Albany.

This is the only time where I am actually praising George W. Bush for cutting those Capital Gains for the small people like myself. It's just amazing what that will do for you bottom line if you buy & sell a few shares were and there through the year. I know that in the future the Capital Gaines tax cut is going to be toast, but I just hope that they keep the lowered rate for people like myself that are not living off of the small bit of Schedule D income that we get & don't want to actively trade their IRA Account.

It's finally here. The signal that spring will come eventually, the start of the NASCAR Season. Really it started last weekend when I actually fell asleep to the Rolex 24 hour race @ Daytona. I had a small ego boost when Mazda won the GT division with their RX-8.

So I'm going to watch the race this afternoon. With the freeview of Hotpass I can watch an isolation cam of Stewart, Earnhardt Jr, Gordon & Harvick.

I've secretely been into racing for about 10 years now. I started out just watching just the "open wheel" cars such as Indy/Champ cars and Formula One. Then for some reason I just got hooked on the popular trend. Having all the good open wheel drivers go over the Nascar helped as well. Especially my driver Tony Stewart who started off in the IRL and has not looked back since. It is kind of scary that this year's Daytona 500 is going to have more former Indy 500 winners starting than the Actually Indy 500 will in May. It just shows how the landscape has changed.

So Yea, that's what I'm going to be doing for the next few hours, watching 43 cars make left hand turns all afternoon...It is the biggest Spectator sport hands down & actually you can make the case that it bumped hockey out of it's place in the "4 Major Pro Sports" just on TV Revenue alone. So Yea I have been sucked in to the phenomena that is NASCAR. Although I did like it back in the day when the sponsors were extremely potent cigarettes [Winston] & low value beer [Busch]; instead of Cellular Phones [Sprint/Nextel] and Insurance[Nationwide]

The other story line is the arrival of Toyota as a competitive
manufacturer. Last year they were almost kicked out for "cheating" but to be honest it was more of a xenophobic thing than anything else & them not knowing the rules. Now Toyota won the Camping World 300 yesterday when Tony Stewart led from Pole to Finish. I just find it ironic as GM tries to shed the last vestiges of the ultimate blue collar job with it's latest buy out package to close the gap on one of the biggest corporate losses last quarter. While at the same time they are losing ground not only in market share in the USA, but the one showcase for it's products where Chevys once dominated.

In all Go #20 in your Joe Gibbs Toyota!!!

My last V-Week themed post of the week.

This is to honor all the "Crazy" chicks out there. I just love the line, "So what's going to happen to you now? Therapy? Pharmacy? That's what you'd like to believe ,but it ain't easy, when you're going crazy Over The Rainbow..." It just stuffs my mind when I heard some Judy Garland tapes that she recorded when supposedly she was going to write an autobiography. From what they were saying she was drinking & hammered on pills. It is actually kind of errie to hear to say the least.
This songs captures in a very good way the insane chicks that patronize the Allen st strip.


Also I came across the Dashboard Confessional cover of this song. I don't have an open mind when it comes to those guys, but you can judge for yourself. To my it does not do it justice in the least.

It was quite interesting to see the alone women out tonight when I was just doing random things with my Ex/FWB tonight. Seeing coupes of pretty attractive young women in their 20's tonight just blew my mind for some reason.

On another note even though I was pretty upbeat & happy today for whatever unknown reason to myself it was just amazing to see the bitterness from the female gender. I wore a black shirt, basically because it was the only clean thing I had at my disposal & the attitude that I unwillingly projected scared me. You can really screw up your day by wearing the wrong thing. Back to my bright J. Crew Colors from now on when I'm @ work.

With a Twilight Singer tie in, I ended up loaning the CD Blackberry Belle. He's about my age with the same kind of distorted social vibe. It was really funny how he responded when I told him when I was listening to on my iPod the other day. The whole, "Greg Dulli, Afghan Whigs I never knew anyone else knew about them.." SO I find it pretty ironic that i loaned it out to my on V-Day after all.

So here's the nice Groove Oriented Twilight Singers the band/project that Greg started after the Whigs.