Talk About Your Fair Weather Fans!

We spent more than 30 years without baseball in DC, and many people in our area found that to be an outrage. I was not one of them. Except for the Redskins, Washington has always been a lukewarm sports town - in part, because a lot of the people who came through our area are transients (actually, that's more myth than fact), and in part because DC has always been a roll-up-the-sidewalks-at-6 pm kind of town. The Senators left in 1971, but within a year or two, I became an Orioles fan and never looked back. Memorial Stadium was closer to my home in Montgomery County than RFK was anyway... Fast forward to 1992 - Orioles Park at Camden Yards opened to hugely successful reviews, and suddenly, the baseball world became enamored with the whole "Field Of Dreams" notion that "if you build it, they will come". New stadiums started popping up all over the place, and in most, but not ALL cities, they were also key to driving up attendance. So how about the new Nationals park? It opened to rave reviews, and a near-sellout (that's right - there were a few empty seats for the debut)... And for game two? Well, the announced paid attendance was 20,487 - less than half of the stadium's 43,000 seat capacity. Mind you, major league rules dictate that attendance be counted by number of tickets sold, NOT actual butts in seats... So it's VERY likely there were fewer than 20,000 people in the place last night. Now, I will grant you... It was a chilly night and the game was played against the NCAA basketball championship. But if the Nats, current owners of a five-game losing streak, are in the basement of the NL East by the all-star break, it's going to be a long, QUIET summer along the Anacostia... Hope DC got it's money's worth!

Thanks, But No Thanks!

If looking for a job is a new experience for me (and it is), then so is facing my first rejection notice. The envelope arrived in Friday's mail, and at first, I had no suspicion at all of what might be inside... another form to fill out for a drug test, perhaps? Nah. It was your standard "thanks, but no thanks" letter, complete with a promise to retain my resume in case something more suitable comes up. I had been through two interviews with the company in question, and had actually made the mistake of putting the odds of being hired in my favor... But the biggest shock to me, frankly, was that I actually received the letter via snail mail! I've hired probably 25 people in my career, and I never mailed out letters to the people I didn't hire (shame on me!). I usually DID drop emails in later years, but the notion of paper letters seems so... 20th Century! The application process today is so intertwined with email and websites, that the thought of using a letter carrier to bring me the news had simply never occured to me. Still, bully to my non-employer for rejecting me quickly and with a minimum of pain. Knowing I did NOT get the job makes it much easier for me to plow ahead with more applications - online, of course!

I'm Too Cool For The Room - Jobless Is The New Black!

I lost my job on the last day of February, but guess what... Joblessness didn't hit a new 2.5 year high until March... Which means once again, John Matthews is ahead of the curve!

From Reuters(a possible, if unlikely, future employer of mine):

Employers cut payrolls for a third consecutive month in March and the jobless rate jumped to a 2-1/2 year high, adding more evidence that a housing downturn and credit crisis may have pushed the economy into recession.

It was the first time the U.S. economy shed jobs for three straight months since a five-month string in 2003, when the economy was mired in a jobless recovery from the 2001 recession.

Adding to the bleak picture, the department said a combined 152,000 jobs were lost in January and February, compared with a previous estimate of 85,000. The unemployment rate jumped to 5.1 percent from 4.8 percent, the highest since September 2005.

"There doesn't appear to be any silver lining. It shows that we're right in the middle of a recession," said Carl Lantz, U.S. interest rate strategist at Credit Suisse in New York. "Our expectation is that it will be a longer recession than the last two, and we're just in the beginning."

The White House said it was "not happy" with the jobs report, saying it expected growth to be flat in the first quarter, but pick up later in the year.

On a happier note, I spent some of my jobless time today replacing most of the old incandescent light bulbs in my house with those new model florescent jobs. I may be a bit late to the conversion, but we had tried "green" bulbs once before - buying up a schissel of them at IKEA about four years ago - and those earlier models just didn't shine bright enough for us. Today's models work just fine, though... and they save a ton of electricity. I wish I could tell you I am being a good earthling doing my part for Al Gore and the environment, but I'm not. I'm being cheap!

There's NO WAY This Boy Comes From My Loins!

A proud papa shout out today for our oldest son, Brad, who, for the first time in high school, has achieved straight A's! This was, of course, de rigueur in middle school, but it took until the third quarter of freshman year to reach the top at Sherwood. By doing this, Matthews fils has reached an achievement level that Matthews pere certainly never achieved! Brad is a budding member of the Sherwood "It's Academic" team, and while he did not make the TV squad this season, we're hopeful of him perhaps being quizzed by Mac McGarry himself in his sophomore year! Congrats, Brad... Now clean your room!

WMAL - The Way It Was

The picture you see here has special significance to me - This was the exact air staff in place when I arrived at WMAL in 1982. I rescued this photo from the trash can, along with several of WMAL's hard-earned Peabody awards, during an office swap about 10 years ago. I managed to get the Peabodys (Peabodies? nah.) to their rightful owners, but I saved the photograph, which was framed in a 1970's vintage burnt orange picture frame, for myself, and it spent several years hanging in my office. When I left WMAL, I deeded the photo to the station's de facto historian, Chief Engineer David Sproul, and he was kind enough to scan a copy and forward it to me. The people you see before you made WMAL the top station in Washington for most of the 60's, all of the 70's and about the first third of the 80's. I was lucky to be a part of the team back at a time when people would have KILLED to work at WMAL. In columns, from left to right, top to bottom, Bill Mayhugh, Felix Grant, Ken Beatrice, Frank Harden, Jackson Weaver, Tom Gauger, John Lyon, Chris Core, Ed Walker and Bill Trumbull.

Reason # 108 On Why I Want A Job Soon!

I have applied for several dozen jobs in the past month, and I'm generally encouraged by the progress I've made so far. Some of the possible careers are in news (radio and otherwise)... some are in media relations... and there are others involving varying degrees of writing and P.R., among other things. I'm really anxious to see how this search is going to turn out for many reasons. First and foremost, of course, is that I could use the money! But beyond the obvious, there is also this... Friends, you may find this hard to believe (ha!), but I have opinions! The problem is, because I've worked in news, I have not been able to share most of those opinions publicly. Instead, the patient people I worked with in the WMAL newsroom had to endure my diatribes over the years.

So where am I going with this? See - I'm still reading the newspaper and scanning the internet on a daily basis, and I'm seeing plenty of foolish stories involving foolish politicians and other public figures out there. I'm anxious to find my next career path, because if it's not in news, I'm gonna open my mouth and let it GO! If I do go back into news, you won't hear a peep, because I can't be slamming people who I might have to cover again someday...

I can say this... Lord, there are a lot of TOOLS running our governments... and we only have ourselves to blame.

This Aint No Disney Channel!

Have you seen the latest kiddie TV show that is airing on Hamas Television? In the show, a child murders President Bush... I don't know which is more shameful... the message or the production value!

Memri1
by luvnews