Mark Knows It All

Well, it’s that time of year again. The Academy Award nominations are out, and I don’t know half the people that have been nominated, let alone know much about the movies nominated for best picture. Click on this link, Academy Awards , and it will take you to the full nomination list. There was a time when I would make it a point to see all of the nominated films. This year, I have only seen one: The Queen , and it was terrific. My sister in law saw another, Little Miss Sunshine , and she reports it was terrific also. Let’s see what this year’s best movie nominees have to offer. The Queen: After playing Elizabeth I on HBO, Helen Mirren gets a shot at playing Elizabeth II on the big screen, and does a boffo job. This movie examines the behavior of the Royal Family immediately after the death of Princess Diana. I was never a Diana fan, so I can understand their less than emotional reaction to the death of the Prince of Wales’ ex-wife who attempted to bring down the British Monarchy. Sto...

Anyone who has gone to law school, or studied accounting, can tell you the most prolific product manufactured in the United States is widgets. Continually produced and never outsourced, widgets are the basis of our economy. In Contract Law, Rodney would sell to Rowena all the widgets he could produce, and she would buy the same, until something like a shipwreck occurred and widgets ended up in the drink, and the case ended up in every law school Contracts class. The same goes for accounting, every accounting student knows that for determining the cost basis of an item, the IRS wants the cost of the first widget in deducted from the cost of the first widget out in order to determine what the profit is. That is FIFO for you bean counters. But here's the problem, what's a widget? Being from Youngstown, I always visualized a widget as something akin to a ball bearing, manufactured locally at Commercial Shearing, now Parker Hannifin (which has been a fairly good stock to own as of l...

I have no problem with legitimate, political discourse. After all, we are a political nation. It is our great democracy that allows a thorough vetting of our important issues. But what happens when the issues take a back seat to a separate agenda? I contend that the continual barrage of criticism regarding the Iraq War directed towards George Bush is based on a domestic agenda that has nothing at all to do with foreign policy, and that is dangerous. George Bush is bad. He is evil. He is a cowboy. He is Hitler. He is the worst President...EVER!! He has perpetuated an illegal and immoral war. Congress, cut the funding. That is the mantra of the left and the left wing press. But after the rant, the left offers no alternative whatsoever to the Iraq issue other than cut and run. That is because they don't care about Iraq. What they care about is abortion, gun control, feminism, stem cell research, rights for illegal aliens, socialized medicine and wealth redistribution. And oh yes, the ...

I don’t want to say that I wasn’t upset by the outcome of the Ohio State game on Monday night. It certainly wasn’t fun watching the debacle. But I didn’t lose any sleep over it. By the end of this week, it will be ancient history. I have learned the 5 most important words all Ohio State fans should know: there is always next year. That being said, I still feel that on December 1, 2006, Ohio State was the best college team in the nation. And that is where it ended. College football has become an abomination and the biggest fraud perpetrated on the American public in a long time. Let’s take a look at the situation on January 8. Fox Sports made a lot of money. The Arizona tourist industry made a lot of money. The BCS made a lot of money. The NCAA made a lot of money. Ohio State and Florida made a lot of money. The coaches made a lot of money. The bookies made a lot of money. The shirt printers made a lot of money. And the football players….well…made butkus. Why is anyone surprised that th...

When my wife and I bought our house from my extremely elderly aunt, we also bought much of the furniture that was in it. Included in this 1970's style home was a Magnavox television set in a walnut cabinet. Not like the high tech widescreens of today, the televisions of that era were as much a piece of furniture as a television. After all, there were only three stations to watch, four if you included a very grainy PBS, and they all quit broadcasting at 1:00 AM. Your living room looked like a living room, not a "meedchyu center". To make a long story short, my aunt rarely watched television, and this glorious piece of television furniture was practically brand new. We put it in our bedroom, and it was like back to the future. On the back of the television were three different sets of antenna attachments (input connectors for those of you under 30). You could follow the progression from roof antenna, which was still on the roof when we bought the house, to the initial two p...