Roll 'em Roll 'em Roll 'em

They're everywhere. In jars on the bookshelf, glass bowls on the dresser, the bottom of drawers and jean pockets.

Pennies. The Fredo of the coin world.

I've always been a big proponent of change (SWIDT?). Especially since I drive a car that has a special compartment for it. Armed with quarters, nickels and dimes, I fear no parking meter.

The problem is the thing I use change for the most I can't use pennies for. I know there's a movement to do away with the penny. But I'm not for it.

After all, what will we leave for the next person in that little plastic dish at the car wash and liquor store if we banish the penny? It's a cheap way of feeling like you're doing something good for someone else without actually doing anything good for them.

I know it costs more to make a penny than the penny's worth, but I don't believe that's the issue.I believe it's an organizational problem. So I decided to be an example for my family and the nation by doing something about it.

Today I took all my pennies and dumped them on the bed. Then, counting in two's fifty-cents at a time, I rolled them into bank coin sleeves.

I wound up with $3.50. That's 350 pennies. See how easy math is with pennies?

I even found a relatively rare 1956 D penny in the pile. Depending on which eBay listing you believe, it's worth either $1.60 or $498. I choose to believe the second one.

I'd be curious to know how many people think the same way as I do about pennies.

And I'll bet you know exactly how much I'll pay for your thoughts on it.

Mr. Lincoln

Since my car accident last week I’ve been driving a rental. It’s not a car I'd ever buy, much less drive voluntarily. But it’s all that was left on the Enterprise lot at 1PM last Wednesday, after what was left of my car was flat-bedded to the body shop.

So choice wasn’t an option.

It’s this little beauty, a 2013 Lincoln MKZ. It’s also a stunning example why I haven’t bought an American-made car since my very first car, a 1965 Plymouth Fury.

On the outside, it's not bad looking. That is unless you compare it to almost any other car in its category on the road. Especially the foreign ones.

Inside, the fit and finish are neither. It is a cheap, plastic-y looking mish-mash of desperation trying to work in unity and failing miserably. Despite all the bells and whistles it's loaded with, it seems like all it's doing is trying to say, "Look how contemporary I am!"

Everything is electrical on it. Electric push-button transmission. Electric volume and air-conditioning adjustment bars you slide your finger across. Electronic instrument display.

There are controls on the steering wheel for audio, various navigation menus and cruise control. But they feel cheap, like they'll break if you press them to hard. The layout is confusing, and if they're going to plaster that many on there then they really should have a bigger wheel.

Also, for all the electronics there's only has one heavily overworked battery. And when the car is running all its gizmos, I bet it's a lonely battery.

Behind the wheel is cramped and crowded. My knees hit the inside of the center console. I thought maybe this was because I'm not exactly a tiny person, but come to find out it's the same for my smaller friends who've sat in the drivers seat.

Don't get me wrong: some of the best cars ever made have been American automobiles. It's not like we don't know how to do it. It's just that with full-salary pensions and giant bonuses, the money that should've been going into R & D on the cars has been lining the pockets of executives and union leaders.

The truth is I'd go out of my way to buy an American car that could go toe to tire with the foreign counterparts I've owned.

But the Lincoln MKZ isn't that car.

Siegel called it

Back in October, my good friend Rich Siegel, who writes the not-to-be-missed blog Round Seventeen, did something he's never done before. No, he didn't take the account team to a group lunch. He didn't suggest reducing the broadcast budget so he could do more banner ads. And he didn't start complimenting the British planner with the knit cap for his insights.

What he did was post a movie review of the film The Master. It was a scathing, no-holds-barred, flat out attack as only Rich can write on what he thought was a deplorable film, not to mention a monumental waste of time.

Here's the thing I found out this afternoon: he was right.

Now normally I'd say that one should make up their own mind about about a movie. I've seen many movies that weren't well-reviewed - Meet Joe Black, Signs and Unbreakable come to mind - that wound up being very entertaining. In fact some of them have even shown up in my Guilty Pleasures posts, like the Final Destination series.

Since the Oscars - which mark the official end of nights Hollywood honors its own because no one else will - are rapidly approaching, I usually try to see as many of the nominated films as possible. So I decided to fire up my screener of The Master, and give it a go. After all, I'm a big fan of the two leads, Jacquin Phoenix and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Sometimes that's enough.

This time it wasn't.

I would've rather been the terrorists being tortured in Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln being shot in the head, or Django being beaten than to have had the Les Miserables experience of sitting through The Master.

At least I didn't have to leave the house and it didn't cost me anything.

Except two and a half hours I'll never get back.