Friday, April 11, 2008

Local Girl Makes Good



Yep, this is my pizza girl. I've been visiting Savario's Pizza, a little hole-in-the-wall on State Street in Portsmouth, almost every Friday night for... I dunno... A decade? (If you're a pizza lover, check them out. See reviews here and here. Personally, I recommend the 12" red with spinach and sausage.) Often, a teen-aged Gina Catalino was working the register for her dad, pizza-making genius Frank. But a couple years ago, she flew the coop of Portsmouth to launch her budding music career. As you can see, she's done pretty well for herself! Her music is featured on the Showtime TV show "The L Word" and just last week she visited NBC studios for the live performance you see above. Check her out on MySpace.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

They Will Appease Us

Good news to report from the Corporations-Screwing-Scott File.

DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) and I had a nice chat on the phone yesterday. They've discounted our bill about 19% for the next year, and we got one free day of NFL Sunday Ticket. (Did you know you can buy Sunday Ticket the day of the game, just for the day?!) They also helped us discover a package on our bill that we thought we needed for NESN, but didn't. Good news, we save $23/mo; bad news, we've been spending $23/mo. So we are appeased, for now. With today being the Red Sox home opener and World Series ring ceremony at Fenway, there's no chance the picture will go out again, right?!

Meanwhile, I'm happy to report that our Florida vacation is saved! My mom sprung into action and was able to secure 1-way tickets with Southwest and JetBlue. Of course, these tickets cost considerably more than the $30 seats we had secured with SkyBus. Does the Bush administration see the irony here? They want us to not hesitate to spend to "keep the economy going," but when we plan a vacation, the airline goes under due to fuel costs that are nearly twice what they had budgeted for. These fuel costs are, of course, a result of: 1.) Unstable conditions in the Middle East, caused by our invasion of Iraq; 2.) A plummeting dollar caused by Bush's economic policies; and 3.) Corporate greed on the part of the oil companies. So now we're spending 5 times more for the flight, which will obviously affect our spending power on the vacation considerably. So much for your "economic stimulus package," Mr. Bush!

OK, so that was a rant. This was supposed to be a good news blog filing, but I got off on a tangent there. Sorry about that. Stay tuned for another good news post later today, which will be entitled "Local Girl Makes Good." Or "My Pizza Girl Sure Can Sing." Or something else that doesn't suck so much.

Saturday, April 05, 2008

SkyBus Goes South; My Vacation Hangs in Limbo

A couple weeks ago, SeacoastOnline.com had an online poll asking if we were optimistic about the chances SkyBus would make it. I voted that I was optimistic. My brother and his family had just done the Pease to Punta Gorda, Florida, trip and had a good experience with SkyBus, and I'm an optimist by nature. But the poll results were less sanguine, and today, I was awoken by a call from my mom in Punta Gorda. SkyBus was bankrupt, and our vacation was in limbo.

Of course, it's the top story on the Herald site. Foster's has a detailed story here. On SkyBus.com, it there's this helpful tidbit for my mom, who fronted for the tix: "Passengers holding reservations for Skybus flights scheduled to depart on or after Saturday, April 5, 2008 should contact their credit card companies to arrange to apply for a refund."

Currently, my mom is trying to do the super-hero thing and save our vacation, which was to be my first in several years. I was starting to calculate the driving cost, but I may be the only one in the family willing do to the 24-hour road-trip. As this writing, she has secured $99 tix one-way to Florida.

Can this vacation be saved? Stay tuned!

And RIP SkyBus. And Pan Am. And Allegiant. And... Is it just me, or was this airport built over an Indian burial ground? I think a saw a Scooby-Doo episode just like this!