PHOENIX, ARIZ.—I’ll be calling into Bob Marone’s program on WVOX radio tomorrow to give some of my impressions on the Super Bowl, which as everyone knows is not really about the game but the stuff going on in the days leading up to the game. Bob is putting me on at 8:50 a.m., but just so you know it’s two hours earlier out here, which means I might only be half-awake when I go on the air.
So give me a break, please.
WVOX is at 1460 on the AM wave length. But you can also listen by logging onto wvox.com.

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GLENDALE, ARIZ.—I ran into Hanno Setele, a reporter for ORF-TV, an Austrian public television station here to cover the Super Bowl. Of course, it’s really no surprise that there’s a great deal of international press wandering around the highways of this vast desert sprawl, but Austrians, too?

I’ve always associated Austria with pastry, atonal music, waltzes, Kurt Waldheim and Arnold You-Know-Who, but it never crossed my mind that American-brand football was on the liesure agenda of the typical Viennese man on the street.
Setele, who is based in Washington, D.C., set me straight.

“Super Bowl night is a big night,” he said. “Thousands of people are out on the streets, going to parties at hotels.”

That’s amazing when you consider that the time difference across the Atlantic will mean that the contest between the New York Giants and New England Patriots will last well after midnight, Vienna time. They must be crazy. There must be something in the wiener schnitzel to make people stay up so late to watch an hour of football interrupted by six hours of commercials and over-produced half-time entertainment.

ORF has covered 11 Super Bowls, mostly forgettable games. But the Super Bowl is never really about the game, is it?

At the very least, however, the Austrian people must be well-versed on the creative efforts of American advertising. I wonder if they like commercials featuring chimpanzees as much as I do?

Setele said football has a strong fan base in Austria and it’s only getting bigger. Generally speaking, European interest shouldn’t be that surprising, he noted. After all, 75,000 British attended a regular season game betweeen the Giants and Miami Dolphins at Wembley Stadium, a dreary, low-scoring game played in wet, cold weather. I saw that game on television, and turned it off after the first quarter.

The favorite amateur local team is the Vienna Vikings, Setele said, adding, “Of course they couldn’t play Double-A here.”

(Frankly, I bet the Mamaroneck High School Tigers could probably whip them.)
The Vikings draw about 8,000 to 9,000 fans at their games, while Austrian soccer attracts up to 10,000, he said.

“It’s been catching up,” Setele said
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Before you know it, they’ll have Austrian Nascar and professional bull riding. And then, where will our standing in the world be?

LAVEEN, ARIZ—The Gin Blossoms were a hot band in the 1990s with big hits like ” Hey Jealousy” and others. So it must have seemed like a major come-down for the boys who played at a private party last night for a bunch of nerdy journalists covering the Super Bowl.

Hundreds of press were attendance at the Super Bowl XLII Media Party which was held at the Corona Ranch. There was Mexican rodeo, mechanical bull riding, pistol shooting and a Jack Daniels tasting session. Girls in cowboy hats danced on an outdoor bar.

By the time the Gin Blossoms came out to play, the temperature had plummeted; it was so cold you could see your breath. Only a few dozen party goers bothered to get close to the stage, and they didn’t exactly rock out to the Gin Blossoms sound.

Lead singer Robin Wilson, who hails from nearby Tempe, quickly sensed the deadness in the air.
At one point, he said, “I just want to thank the William Morris Agency for booking this gig for us.”

Towards the end of the set, they played “Hey Jealousy,” a song, Wilson said, usually inspired drunk women to jump onto the stage. Clearly, he hoped the magic would continue last night.

It did not.

GLENDALE, ARIZ.- Giants co-owner John Mara of Harrison reminisced today about his late father and legendary team founder, Wellington Mara. He was asked how his father would feel about this year’s Super Bowl-bound team.

“He really would’ve been delighted,” Mara said. “All the road games we won and the close, tough games we won is something he really would’ve enjoyed.”

Wellington Mara died in 2005 at the age of 89.

“The patriarch of the Giants was the last scion of one of the great football families,” Whitney Radio’s Bill O’Shaughnessy observed in a moving tribute at the time.
“They are all gone now: George Halas, Art Rooney, Leon Hess, Sonny Werblin, George Allen, Paul Brown and Vince Lombardi. Only hustlers, lawyers and MBA’s remain to preside over this game of choreographed violence. And only boxing, rugby and hockey celebrate violence more.”

Noting that Mara was born “the son of a bookmaker,” O’Shaughnessy observed how Mara was generous with everyone from drivers to doormen to caddies at Winged-Foot Golf Club.

That was a nice sendoff, but John Mara said that his father often took abuse from the fans during the team’s awful years in the late 1960s and the entire decade of the 70s.

“He wasn’t always this revered figure,” Mara said. “Back then, there were days when he was hung in effigy at the stadium.”

Throough good time and bad, however, the Giants patriarch remained a football purist, his son recalled. The old man would have particularly been proud with Big Blue’s current set of linemen.

“He would’ve loved the way the offensive line is playing,” he said. “That was always his favorite offensive unit.

“When he would got out to practice, he would spend more time with them than anybody else.”

PHOENIX, ARIZ—It’s 11 p.m. and I’m sitting in a 12th floor hotel room in the heart of this city, nursing a splitting headache.
I’m here all week for the Super Bowl craziness, and already they’re sucking the money out of my wallet. Call it the Super Hosing—they’re killing me on car rental, parking, Internet hookup, you name it. A cash register Ka-ching is pounding my head.
What a day. It started with a taxi cab ride from Yonkers to LaGuardia. The driver, Kurt, wouldn’t stop talking, going a mile a minute like he had caffeine coursing through his cerebral cortex and out his ears and nostrils. (how’s that for imagery?) I was wearing ny Giants hat, so that put him on a nearly incoherent riff about Tom Brady, Eli Manning and how there was no pressure on the Giants. So he predicted the Giants would win the big game 24-21.

I think not, Kurt.

But what do I know. Back in the summer, I put the Giants at 3-13 for the regular season. Ernie Palladino, who covers the team for the Journal News assured me they were better than that. He said they had a great new defensive coordinator and the Big Blue defense of Strahan & Co. would surprise me. I scoffed…No way. My arrogant pessimism was only validated by their first two ignominious losses.
Then they ripped off six wins in a row, went on to complete a respectable record of 10-6, which was sufficient to get to the playoffs. Three playoff wins later, and here they are, 12 point underdogs against the Patriots and everyone is excited in this town because this is America’s secular holiday and nothing can put a damper on it, not even the collapse of the domestic economy and the rise of China and the European Union.

Did I tell you about my plane trip?

It was awful. I was booked on AirTran, an airline that packs people in like sardines in seats that are spacious for a starving child of about six. The complimentary meal is a tiny bag of pretzels. And I love airport security. This time, a tall chick in security drag confiscated my lethal can of Old Spice shaving cream. Great, just great.

Now I refuse to shave for the next six days.

Two-hour holdover in Atlanta, the nation’s busiest airport…then onto Phoenix, which at night looks like White Plains. A lot of places look like White Plains at night.

OK, I gotta get a beer. Enough of this blather about Super Tuesday…Wait, I wasn’t talking about Super Tuesday. I was talking about Super Sunday, but there’s not much difference. Both are about hype and disappointment.

Incidentally, have you noticed how the candidates on both sides look like feckless pipsqueaks, now that the country is in big trouble? Can they follow the Patriot’s Act?..Ooh, bad joke. Hey,I wonder if Hillary ever played nose guard at Wellesly.

The Westchester County Board of Acquisitions & Contract has just awarded a $99,800 contract to the Westchester County Association for: “the provision of international relations consulting services, including management of a Westcheser County Business, Education & Culutural Center in China.”

The contract was slipped in by County Executive Andy Spano, who has taken several trips to China over the years and, no doubt, will again. A couple of years ago, he declined to cancel a planned trip even though there was a bitter, Bee-Line Bus strike going on. He took some political hits for it.

It’s hard to see what Westchester gets out of these China visits. Spano insists he’s establishing business ties, but the only thing substantial to come out of his office having to do with China is a mandatory recall of Chinese toys and other imported products tainted with lead-based paint.

Spano’s trips to China have not been funded by county taxpayers, but members of the influential County Association have accompanied him on a few of the trips.

So now we have this A and C contract, which was voted on by Spano, the county’s Public Works commissioner and Bill Ryan, the chairman of the county board of legislators. This is the taxpayers’ money…And one might ask: Who’s really benefitting in this deal?

A couple of weeks ago, I called the Regional Planning Association to see if they had an opinion on a proposal by Garden City developer Vincent Polimeni build a $10 billion, 16-mile tunnel that would from Syosset, Long Island to Rye. A six-mile length of the tunnel would be underneath the Long Island Sound.

The ambitious project would be privately funded and completed by the year 2025, if Polemeni secures all the approvals.

The RPA, which does extensive transportation studies in the tri-state metropolitan area and issues recommendations told me at the time that they hadn’t formulated any thoughts about the Cross Sound Link.
But today, they did issue a statement.

It said, in part: “While the proponents are projecting a number of substantial beneifits, there are also a number of unexplored public costs.”
The RPA said those costs and benefits would need to undergo “substantial scrutiny” before the project can get a go ahead.

The follwing are the RPA’s concerns:

•What would be the actual travel time savings and who would be the primary beneficiaries?
•How will this affect traffic throughout the transportation network, particularly on I-95 and I-287 and on local roads?
•What are the public sector costs? Even a privately funded road would have major public sector financial considerations because of its impact on transportation, land use and related services.
•How would it impact land use on both sides of the Long Island Sound?
•If a tunnel were to be built, is this the best location and configuration? Other alternatives should be compared for transportation, economic and environmental outcomes.
•What would be the actual CO2 emissions, and is making it easier to stay in our cars really the best way to reduce these emissions?
•Where and how would you vent the tunnel, and what would be the impacts on the Sound and neighboring communities?
•What if the funding ends before the project is completed? How would you structure a bonding mechanism to insure that financial responsibility doesn’t revert to the public?
•Who would be in control of the road, the state, the developer or some other entity?
•Will it use state police?
•Who handles emergencies?
•Will property owners need to be paid for the use of their underground property rights?
•Where will material from the tunnel be dumped?
•What will be the impact on sealife from underground boring?

The federal government is going to cut checks made out in amounts of $600 for individuals and $1,200 per couple to stimulate the economy, and I’m feeling stimulated already. In fact, I’m over stimulated. I’m already spending the money, even though I don’t have it. Spending money you don’t have—that’s the American way. Right?
I need some Ritalin to calm myself down. That’s how over stimulated I am.

I’m only half-kidding. I don’t understand the economy, and don’t pretend to understand it. But if our economic health depends on people spending money for junk they don’t need, well, there must be something seriously wrong.
Spending is good. Saving is bad. That’s the message. The mortgage fraudsters and the credit card hawkers WANT US in perpetual debt, paying exhorbitant interest rates, as long as we keep paying and don’t default on the debt. Now that half the nation is bankrupt, the government is handing out checks so people will spend and spend and go into debt again. It’s a vicious circle.

Somebody suggested that the feds ought to just give out gift cards, if it’s just about spending. How about gasoline debit cards? Barnes & Noble? Starbucks?

I like that. Watch, it might just happend.

Here’s another thought. We’re in a global economy and no one seems to totally comprehend it. Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and other financial institutions are writing off billions of dollars in losses and are now going overseas to sovereign nations to get massive infusions of cash.

Meanwhile, the global ecomony has cost thousands and thousands of lost jobs in America.

We can’t control our economy and we can’t protect our workers’ job…so why then are we expending our treasure defending everyone else in the world? Just wondering.

It’s a free for all on “High Noon” today. We go on the air in approximately 30 minutes.
Tune in at 12 noon to 1460 AM on WVOX, or log onto wvox.com. Also call in at 914-636-0110. As the deacons say, share your “joys and concerns.”
Here’s some topics I’m going to discuss…—Teen drinking and parental awareness in Westchester County.—The national economy, meaning the economic stimulus plan and the falling price in real estate.—The proposal to build a tunnel underneath the Long Island Sound. A hearing on that project is being held as I write.
And more, more, more—all packed inside about 40 minutes of hot radio.
Don’t miss being a part of the action. Get the surf board and catch the airwaves.

UPDATE: Here’s the podcast:

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The minority GOP caucus on the Westchester County Board of Legislators is calling for an overhaul of the Board of Acquisition & Contract, which funnels millions of taxpayer dollars into no-bid contracts.

Reacting to recent news and columns in The Journal News, the Republicans are calling attention to the A&C’s inherent corruption as evidenced by the hiring of a lobbyist with ties to the Democratic majority on the board. The firm was given a $55,000 deal.

As reported by the Journal News, the firm made a $1,000 contribution to the Democractic Majority Campaign Committee. According to Legislator George Oros, R-Cortlandt, it turns out the lobbyist also kicked in $250 to Board Chairman Bill “Boss” Ryan’s campaign, too.

Particularly galling is that the county executive’s office already has a lobbyist doing the same job working at half the price.

There is little oversight of the A&C board. It meets during the day with scant public notice and without hearings. Three people, or their surrogates sit on the A&C—County Executive Andy Spano, Public Works Commissioner Ralph Butler and County Board Chairman Bill Ryan. They are the sole voters in a system which is basically a mutal back-scratching society of favor and reward.

The Republicans—Oros, Jim Maisano of New Rochelle and Gordon Burrows of Yonkers want a number of reforms:
1) Full disclosure by A&C members of any campaign contributions made to them by a potential vendor.
2) Prohibit any contract made to a “corporation, firm, person or entity” that employs any relative to members of the A&C.
3). Replace the public works commissioner on the board with the county budget director.
4) Award no contract exceeding three years in length.
5) Electronically record each A&C meeting.

These are all good ideas, but I’d take it a couple of steps further. Ryan has said for years that he wants the legislative branch to be equal to the executive branch. Since the power of the A&C rests mainly in the hands of the county executive, then in order to equalize things the A&C ought to be abolished altogether, or at least reconstituted with a third voting member who would be independent of both the board chairman and the county executive. This should be someone who is appointed to serve only the public’s interest.

Also, I’d require that A&C meet in the evening, so members of the public, who have real jobs, can attend.