Let the cornucopia of vocal performances commence!  The nominations were announced back in December and the excitement is mounting, at least for me it is, only a couple more weeks.  I love it; I get to watch a plethora of performances, some great and some not so much, but fun nonetheless because even if it’s bad, I can’t seem to turn away.  I will also admit that I really like the array of fashion and styling choices as part of the festivities that are the Grammy’s.  Girlie, yes, but hey I’m a girl!  Lil Wayne, the Jonas Brothers, Coldplay, Kenny Chesney, and Katy Perry are the first performers announced for the 51^st annual Grammy Awards to be broadcast on CBS.

 If you watched the nomination special, you have to wonder as I did when the cameras cut to the Jonas Brothers with Taylor Swift standing front and center; is somebody out to get that one Jonas brother?  How awkward to be famous, you are bound and determined to run into a former flame and with cameras in full force mind you, at least when my relationships end there aren’t cameras documenting my every facial expression and outfit choice…right?  I mean I’m pretty sure I’ve not seen anyone lurking lately so if you are…stop it right now. ha    

Anyway, back to the nominations, there seems to be a theme starting with the beautiful young Swift facilitating the nomination show, so does anyone else see a pattern in many of the Albums and Vocal Performance nominations...hmmm, I can relate *ting*.  Ladies enjoy the sweet flavor of revenge, the anthems of those taken for granted and the bitterness on the tongues of those scorned, those that have loved & lost and those who didn’t have the courage to say what’s in their heart, I present exhibits A-F:

 Adele: Chasing Pavements

CHASING PAVEMENTS

Leona Lewis: Bleeding Love  
BLEEING LOVE

TAKE A BOW

BETTER IN TIME

Pink: So What  

SO WHAT

OneRepublic: Dreaming Out Load

APOLOGIZE  

I have to throw a retro vibe in…I loved Jennifer when she was J-Lo, yep I said it!!  The infamous Versace gown reigned supreme at the 2000 GRAMMY Awards:

"Well Jennifer," co-presenter David Duchovny said, "this is the first time in five or six years that I'm sure that nobody is looking at me."

And that ladies & gents…is the best revenge, look amazing and wear your pride well!!  Enjoy the show.

Valentine’s Day is coming! I’m a believer that celebrating Valentine’s Day isn’t just about ‘romantic’ loved ones, but family and friends. Well, that could be due to my lack of a romantic loved one, but I’ll save that for another blog :)

All my family and many great friends live nowhere near me, so I plan to buy the recordable and the funky musical cards for a few. How great to be able to send a personalized voice greeting in a cute card, especially across the miles. Love it! For most others, I want to keep it just as funky and original, but a more reasonable spend. If I were gifted enough, I'd buy some crafty stuff and make some really unique cards, but I'm not that gifted when it comes to crafting! I’ve decided online greetings are the way to go for me. They get the point across, contribute to my PSP of reducing paper use, and there are plenty of options to choose from.

Hallmark.com has some great e-card greetings, although some of the best ones you have to pay to send. American Greetings.com … ditto. I am a big fan of Care2.com where you can send, for free, Valentine’s Day e-cards and with every e-card sent Care2 makes a donation to an environmental nonprofit to save a square foot of rainforest. Very cool.

Walmart.com has some great greeting options. If you have an iPhone, Walmart has partnered with Hershey’s to create a “Blow a Kiss” greeting for Valentine’s Day. You blow a kiss into the iPhone microphone and the person on the other end receives it on their iPhone or in their e-mail box. Unfortunately, I don’t have an iPhone, and for those interested in a good Valentine’s gift for me … there’s an idea, ha! Okay, so if I can’t get the iPhone I’m just hoping someone cares enough to send me a kiss from theirs.

There’s also available on Walmart.com an online greeting the takes a picture you upload and creates a mosaic out of tiny “virtual” M&M’s. Sweet! Check it out at www.walmart.com/sweetideas.

And hey, don't forget … I want an iPhone. Okay, okay. I am willing to settle for flowers, chocolates, candles, shoes, a new 40” or bigger LCD television or, in all seriousness, a thoughtful greeting.

Would love to hear your thoughts, ideas and suggestions on great e-cards and online greetings for Valentine's Day, and any other ways to be creative with sending greetings to loved ones far away. Thanks!

The folks at EA Sports have run Madden 09 and the results are in. You can check out a post from Kotaku here. Based on the comments from some of their readers, it appears that Madden simulations of the Super Bowl are uncanny with an amazing 83% accuracy rating. They got 5 of the past 6 Super Bowls right only missing last year’s win by the New York Football Giants. Those are pretty good odds and I believe that Madden 09 will make EA Sports 6 for 7 (86%). Six for seven, hmm that is just like my beloved “Black ‘n’ Gold” can be with a win on 2/1/09 in Tampa.

Hope you have your Terrible Towels ready to go. What a great story that is. A cherished Pittsburgh broadcaster, Myron Cope, created this original colorful rally rag in 1975 as a way for folks to cheer on their Steelers while raising funds for a school that serves special needs and disabled kids. Cope’s own autistic son was in this school. This towel has raised over $2 million for the school and continues to sell well. I have one on the wall in the Sam’s Club home office and it is not the only one visible! They have been all over the globe, but they are not the most well traveled Terrible Towels. This one may be. Yes, that is ISS commander and Pittsburgh native Michael Fincke defying gravity as he shows that space, the final frontier, is also Steeler Country with his cap and Terrible Towel. As you can see, these are must have items for any Steeler fan.

So, we have the Terrible Towel ready to go. My three year old has her Troy Polamalu jersey ready and I plan on wearing my Ben Roethlisberger jersey for the big game. The snacks will be laid out and the beverages will be flowing. Assuming all goes as the folks at EA Sports predict with Madden 09, I should be enjoying a fine cigar Sunday evening with some friends. Here’s to a good game for us fans, a safe game for the players, entertaining commercials for all of us at home and “one for the other thumb!”

Yeah, I am biased, GO STEELERS! Now all I need is a TastyKake, some Mallo Cups and a Clark Bar. If you do not know what those are, do not worry.

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”

Luciano Pavarotti

For most of you videogame experts out there, this may not be for you, but for a lot of folks who do not know a stylus from an Atari 5200 controller, this is a great way to learn. At a select group of Sam’s Clubs this Saturday (about 100 clubs, so 1 in 6, you can call your local club to check) we partnered with Nintendo to demo the Nintendo DS Lite and that hot new title, Personal Trainer:Cooking (PTC).

PTC is awesome as it teaches someone how to cook. Cooking is something I truly enjoy doing for my family. Pop open a bottle of vino, turn on a little Frank, Tony or Dino and I am a madman in the kitchen. My mom was raised in an Italian household and taught me how to cook at a young age.  I remember listening to all of that great music and fondly recall all of the wonderful smells coming out of the kitchen. She is a little bit older now, but can still cook like no one’s business. She still dances and sings to some of those classic songs and enjoys life. My wife says it is like I am in another world when I cook. I am inspired, alive and often messy but I digress.

If you did not have a great teacher like my mom, perhaps you may want go to your local Sam’s Club this weekend or take a friend, spouse or significant other and make a subtle hint that it might be nice to have a great home cooked meal this weekend. Nintendo’s demo team will be in many of our clubs showing the power of these items to folks who may not know everything you do about the DS Lite and what it can do.

PTC on a Nintendo DS Lite is a powerful combination that allows one to transform ordinary ingredients into wonderful food items. PTC not only makes cooking easier, it makes shopping easier as well. The combination is like having a Personal Digital Assistant while you tour the club. You will know what you need to make some awe inspiring recipes. 

Maybe the key to life is something Mom discovered and you can with a DS Lite and PTC. As my Italian ancestors would have said, “A tavola non si invecchia” (You don't age while seated for a meal.)

Ciao,
Guiseppe

As most of you know, I am a huge Apple fan. While I did not get to go to MacWorld, I did watch the keynote from the comfort of my living room via Quicktime on one of our Macs. You may have heard that tech god and genius Steve Jobs did not deliver this year’s keynote. Expectations were for a disappointing event without him there in his trademark black turtleneck and Levis, but Phil Schiller (SVP of Worldwide Marketing) took the stage for what would be Apple’s last MacWorld keynote. Pretty big challenge for Phil, but he did the job well. Please note that Sam’s does not carry Apple computers. We do carry their Apple TV and iPods. I WISH that we would carry their incredible line of computers. Personally, I am waiting to upgrade as soon as Apple integrates a blu-ray Super Drive into the line up. Come on guys, what are you waiting for?

What did we learn? Well there were some pretty cool announcements as one might expect from Apple. Here is what we took away from the broadcast:

1)      DRM free music is now available on ALL iTunes music. One can now download songs on an iPhone without being connected to WiFi. It is about time! Great move Apple. DRM is not doing anything but inconveniencing folks. Glad to see that Apple and the studios are making this change.

2)      Iwork, Apple’s productivity suite, got a nice facelift. Pages, Numbers and Keynote got some nice touches added to them. As one might expect, they all work seamlessly together to deliver professional looking results for the home user.

3)      Ilife, Apple’s, personal productivity suite, got some major upgrades. IMovie has better transitions and can now reduce/eliminate “shaky cam” jitters via the software. Really important for us home movie types. iPhoto also has some incredible coding built into it. Some newer cameras, our camera buyer tells me that they will be coming to a Sam’s Club near you shortly (and the iPhone) have GPS built in. So now you can tell that the picture you took was at 40.4 degrees Latitude and -79.9 degrees Longitude. What is even cooler is that iPhoto can tell you that that is Pittsburgh PA. They showed photos in Paris at the Eifel Tower and iPhoto knew where they were taken. In addition to this feature, called “Places” they have added a new one called “Faces”. Yes, iPhoto can learn and recognize the faces in your photos. Your Mac asks, in essence, “is that ‘Dave’”? Your train it when it is and is not and it will scan your entire library of photos and find ‘Dave’. Yeah, it is like playing “Where’s Waldo” are really high speed and for a reason. Finally, Garage Band gets a training tool to help us learn to play instruments. I like Garage Band and can play the piano. So some of my playing makes its way to some family music. I cannot however, play real guitar. Apple has lessons that come with and are downloadable for the Mac. Oh, and your “professors” are not just some guitar teacher. No, you are being taught by Sting, John Fogerty and others. Oh and the same thing is available for the piano/keyboard. That would have made my years from ages 5 through 14 a lot more exciting than learning from Mrs. Pritchard as a kid. She was a very nice lady, but Sting? Come on! If Neil Peart is teaching drum lessons anytime soon…

4)      Finally, the big announcement, the 17” Mac book pro. If a laptop computer can be sexy, this is it. Beautiful on the inside and out and really green too! Apple has built it with a special Lithium Polymer battery (like the iPhone and the Air). The advantages are that this can be shaped to be any size. Additionally, it is not able to be replaced by the user, so all of the hinges, doors, adapters etc that create a lot of wasted space are eliminated allowing for more battery in the battery compartment. Yes, Apple can replace them for you when they go. Due to Adaptive Charging, they estimate a life cycle of 1000 recharges or about 5 years of “normal”use, YMMV. Made of a chunk of aluminum in a unibody enclosure, this is a thing of beauty. Minimal hinges, screws etc… It reminds me of the look of an exotic Italian Motorcycle, smooth, light and powerful. If Ducati made computer externals and BMW’s motorcycle division made the internals/operating systems (durable, low maintenance and easy to use) this would be it. WOW.

Well, I was impressed and wrote a bit more than I planned to. In closing, we all hope that Steve Jobs continues to improve his health. I am glad that he and Apple each made a public statement about this to put any fears to rest. The world would be a lot less of a cool place without him and the great vision he has. We should rightly be impressed with what Phil Schiller brought to the table. We can only wish the best for Apple and their team of engineers and designers. Keep up the great work, you make things that we not only want but need.