I took my dad to a Bruins playoff game for his birthday on Sunday night. We sat in the snobby seats, the ones where the waiters come down and take your order. They were tremendous seats, but I believe we saw the waiter exactly two times, and both times it was to feed the seemingly bottomless pit teenagers who were sitting next to us. Anyway, the Bruins jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first period, and the place was just rockin’ loud! But Montreal ended up coming back – the Bruins won anyway, 6-4. Turned out to be a fine game. They handed out little yellow pom-poms to everyone, so it was pretty amazing to see 17,500 people waving them when the Bruins scored. Neat-o. Happy birthday, dad.

My buddy Clay, who runs a tight ship over at ClayJohnson.org was the first to identify the song below as Neil Diamond’s “I Am….I Said,” a pop masterpiece from the 1970s. I’ll have to make this game a little tougher.

I went out looking for cars on Saturday and went to seven dealerships. The customer service was just plain laughable. Of the seven dealerships I went to, exactly one guy really knew his product and was actually nice. Naturally, that was the car I liked the least. The rest of these freaks bordered on incompetant. In no particular order, here’s what happened to me:

— One guy at the Honda dealership wouldn’t give me the VIN number of the car unless I committed to buying it. Said he couldn’t give me the VIN number. I told him they had no prayer of me buying it without giving me the VIN number. On my way out, I walked over to the car and wrote down the VIN number, which can be found on the dashboard of ANY car. Idiots.
— Found a car to take for a test drive at the Acura dealership in Boston. Only it had a flat tire. No problem, right? Put some air in it? Oh, of course not. “Sorry Jeff, you’ll have to come back on Tuesday as we have to put in a repair order and take it to the shop.” Uh, what? To put air in the tire? Yeah, I’ll be back Tuesday, no problem. Right.
— Found a car to test drive at the Nissan dealer in Braintree, MA. “Oh, sorry we can’t take it out right now, all of our dealer plates are gone. The wait time is one hour.” Excellent way to sell cars! Have a shortage of delaer plates! Whoooo-hoooo!
—Finally, at my last stop, the Nissan dealership in Cambridge, MA, I walk in and the guy is on the phone and he looks at me for 15 straight minutes while I walk around the Nissan Maxima, get IN the Nissan Maxima, poke, prod, open the HOOD, look inside, look at the guy, look at the car, look at the guy, look at the car, look at the guy. Then I go outside to look at what they have in the lot, and about five minutes later, the salesman finally comes out, only he has his briefcase, and he locks of the door of the dealership, gets in his car, and leaves, with me standing there in the lot looking at cars. What a way to end the day car shopping! Yeee-haw!