The Voices in Frank's Head

A funny thing happened to me the other evening. I was driving along Michigan Avenue in Dearborn when my car hit what this monster of a pothole. It was one of those I really felt it and wondered for a moment if my car was alright. I was relieved when I realized that I still had all four of my tires and that none of them seemed to be flat. Of course, the really weird part of the whole thing was when I continued driving for a moment after that. My had been pulling to the right a bit and needed an alignment. After that pothole, though, it seemed just fine. This makes me wonder: did I hit the pothole just right to knock everything back into place? Or do I know have two problems with my car's alignment that are effectively canceling each other out - at least for the moment. I have a feeling that I have two problems now. I'm going to ignore that for the moment. At least until a couple of my clients cough up enough cash for me to get at least one of them problems fixed.

I live in a city that has three casinos, plus a fourth one right across the river in Canada. That is on top of all of church bingos and the Michigan lottery. However, I have my own kind of gambling addition. I read the newspaper every day. Sometimes the news is very good. Sometimes it's very bad. Today was one of those days when the newspaper just made me want to crawl back into bed and forget the rest of the world existed. (Unfortunately, I have a job to do so that isn't an option.) The front page of today's Detroit Free Press proclaims news from Washington, D.C. that a deal on fuel economy standards is near. This is really good news, in my opinion, because it's over due and I believe it will help the American auto industry in the long-term. It wasn't until I flipped to the local news section that I saw the two articles that made me want to crawl back in bed and stay there. First, there was the story of Deuntay Miller a 1-year-old boy who died nearly two year...

To everyone across the country who reads the Voices in My Head - Happy Thanksgiving! To everyone who reads from Canada and other parts of the world - Happy Thursday! I hope everyone who visits this blog has a day full of family, friends and really good food. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get another slice of Pumpkin Pi. (Oh, I'm such a nerd!)

I was surfing the net this morning, when I probably should have been doing other things, and came across the new LG enV VX9900 cell phone . A few notes. First - a memo to the folks at LG Electronics . Your product is cool, but you're still a ways away from being able to call the product line the enV (as in "envy"). Second, what's with the pitifully small screen size? It's still no bigger than a ravioli. And while I'm thinking of it, what's with the large LG logo? I feel like I should be charging you for advertising space on the phone, if I were to buy it. Shrink the logo and give me a decent display screen; preferably one with a resolution better than 240 x 320.

It looks like Hayden Panettiere is in town today. According to this morning's Free Press , the cheerleader from NBC's Heroes is doing a private event to support Ronald McDonald House charities in Detroit and Ann Arbor. Ne-Yo is in town, too. He is also appearing at that same event. I'm glad he's here, but let's face facts: Ne-Yo doesn't look as good in a cheerleading outfit as Hayden does.

I’m working with the Music Hall to produce an event in January that will bring a bunch of Oscar winners and nominees to Detroit. Someone got the idea that we should have a signature cocktail for the event. I got the assignment on Friday and promptly gathered together a crack team of expert alcoholics to test various recipes. All of them had to incorporate Faygo pop because Faygo is one of our sponsors. It was many hours of exhausting research but we finally perfected the Oscar Orange. I would tell you its ingredients, but it’s a trade secret until January 13th. Yeah, I love my job! After that I walked over the Kales Building in downtown Detroit where two different groups of people were having loft parties – one on the 11th floor and a second on the 3rd where we made our own gourmet pizzas from scratch. Both parties ended just in time for everyone to walk a couple of blocks to Campus Martius Park for the tree lighting. Tree lighting a Campus Martius is something that could have...

Variety is reporting that several screenwriters from the daytime soaps are crossing picket lines and returning to work. As the grandson of a union organizer, I have to say that this is bad news for Writers Guild and all of the labor unions in the entertainment business. The writers' strike is only in its second week. If writers from Days of Our Lives and Young & the Restless are ready to cross the picket line already, that means that there will likely be a lot of others in the coming days. The big media conglomerates know this. It will only make them that much more entrenched and unwilling to give writers a larger share of revenues.

Some folks know this. Others don't. When I established my own production company four years ago, I named it after Prince Igor - an 18th century Russian opera by Alexander Borodin . Today, of course, is Prince Igor Day - a day to commemorate the 127th anniversary of this opera's first public performance. It's a company holiday for me. I use it as a chance to put aside all of the other stuff that I would normally do so I can gaze into my crystal ball for a clue as to what next year holds for the company. 2008 looks like it will be a good year. (*knock on wood*) I have more proposals in front of prospective clients and investors than I did at this point in 2006. That's always a good clue as to what the future holds.

I was leafing through this week's issue of the Metro Times over lunch. They mentioned a statistic that supposedly men with a messy sock drawer have sex three times as often as men with an organized sock drawer. Quite frankly, I have serious doubts as to whether or not there is any validity to this claim. For starters, they didn't reference the source of this statistic. That, in my experience, has always been a red flag. However, I don't feel like taking any chances when it comes to something like this. I'm going to go make a huge mess out of my sock drawer when I get home.

U.S. Senator Barack Obama promised that he would finally get tough with his main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton and that he would do it in the debate earlier this week. Quite frankly, I've seen boxes of Kleenex that were tougher than he was in the debate Monday. With that in mind, I give you my open letter. Dear Senator Obama, It's time for you to drop out of the presidential race. All you're doing now is sucking up air. Sincerely, Your former supporter

I have this sudden desire to move to New York. They have their own group of Jedi. Or I could try starting a similar group in Detroit.