• I am very much looking forward to this weekend's Fall Club CrawlTM. Yeah, I am a bit biased--it's an event put on by this fine newspaper, after all--but Club CrawlTM is always a great time. As a former marching-band geek, I am especially looking forward to Mucca Pazza at the Rialto Theatre. For more information, check out the 16-page pullout in the middle of this issue, and visit clubcrawl.net--where you can sign up for text-message updates during the event.
• The East Valley Tribune, a daily newspaper in the Phoenix area, announced earlier this week that 40 percent of its staff will get laid off in the coming months. Wow. Times are tough, especially for newspapers, but this cut is especially deep. My sympathies go out to both the Tribune's employees and the readers.
• Speaking of tough times ... since Sept. 30 was the end of the quarter, 401(k) statements will be arriving soon. Brace yourselves for the ugliness, folks.
• Having said that ... now is probably a good time to invest in stocks, bonds and whatnot. After all, the market will inevitably go up from here within a few years--either that, or within a few years, our economic system will have collapsed, making these things called "dollars" worthless anyway.
• Remember the Tucson Sidewinders? They're now called the Reno Aces. I was in Reno last weekend, and I drove by the location of the new stadium--barely under construction--where the Aces will play. The excitement over Triple-A baseball is palpable in Reno. Too bad it never really was here.
