Business Life

China is growing triple digits, Sarah Palin is topping the charts, winter is coming and my 401K is still under water. And none of these things bother me as much as the guys who run the stores at the airport.

I'm in LA today. I'm having a little trouble breathing, and my eyes are smarting. But sometimes you have to suck it up to get the job done.

You rarely run into a product that immediately, spectacularly, flamboyantly, doesn't do what it was supposed to do right out of the box. You have to take your hat off to that kind of thing, really.

I guess it's harder to stay electronically fit than I thought. You start the day with good intentions, then you get into something with a lawyer, or a journalist, or one of the folks in Accounting, God help me, and pretty soon you've got a chain going that plumps you up and leaves your whole situation in terminal shape.

At our lunch places, I've seen movie moguls who make billions walking around like my uncle Al after he spent a night at the track. All that's missing is the Pendleton bathrobe hanging open.