For good or bad, I’ve been hacking away at this blog for nearly four years now. During that time, I’ve learned a lot, entertained a few and infuriated a couple. Hopefully, you’re one of them. But as I look back on the experience, I see that there’s one key relationship I didn’t understand when I first started – happiness is the blogger’s enemy.

Having been hooked on a number of blogs (some of which are still listed in the Blogroll to the right), I thought I could take a shot at it. After all, I thought I was everything most of the bloggers I read seemed to be – witty, snarky and miserable. Witty and snarky come naturally to me, but the key to a good blog is the misery part – you just can’t spend your time smacking down others unless you have a certain inner angst and self-loathing that needs to be vented.

For the first couple of years, the posts came easily. My job sucked, my life sucked, and it was pretty easy to get me irritated about something in the world. Much like Peter Griffin, there was usually something that really ground my gears, and dumping the bile out on the electronic pad and paper seemed to help. Look back through the history of the MB and you’ll see there’s pretty much a post a day – or two or three – in the early years.

Along the way, though, something happened – I stopped being angry. I’m a little older, so a little mellower, and a little more accepting of the stupidity of those around me. My job, while nothing to write home about, isn’t the worst one in the world, and I’m even happy in my personal life. Things just don’t suck quite as much as they used to, and the MB is paying the price in the form of gaps between posts – including big ones like the one just ended.

What used to come easy has become something of a chore. Much like someone who loved to home cook but suddenly found themselves slinging hash at Denny’s, the posts just don’t flow any more. It’s harder for me to find things to rant about, and harder for me to work up the lather needed to flesh out the rant. It used to be that if I saw someone do something stupid, I thought, “This’ll make a great posting!”; now my reaction more often than not is “Meh …”

Admittedly,  I’ve done things to make the job harder on myself.  I used to do a lot of posts that were basically  just commentary on stories of the day,  a couple of sentences wrapped around a quote from an article somewhere.  I’ve gotten away from those, as I have the Monday Sports Rant and Weekend Eye Candy posts that allowed me to focus on Tuesday through Thursday.  But shifting away from quantity towards quality puts an even larger burden on me to crank out the good stuff, and unlike some of my more talented peers, it’s not always easy.

So what exactly does this all mean? If I was smart, it’d mean the end of this blog. The kiss of death for any content source is lack of content, and those few people who regularly read the MarlinBlog long ago left as the posts became fewer and further between. But I’m a hard-ass and don’t like quitting on things, so we’ll just muddle on. Maybe my life will take a dump and I’ll suddenly find new venomous inspiration, and the posts will once again flow like the green beer and yellow pee on Wednesday. Or perhaps, like the Colorado River once too many irrigation pipes have sucked it off, the posts will slow to a trickle and finally just disappear into the desert sands.

I guess we’ll see, won’t we …

The next domino in the corporate failure of once-iconic car maker General Motors has fallen, as it was announced today that the Hummer brand will be ended.  A deal was thought to be in the works with a Chinese heavy equipment manufacturer, but the apparent collapse of that deal has sealed Hummer’s fate.

While I was sorry to see the earlier end of GM’s Pontiac and Saturn brands, I’m not gonna miss Hummer in the least.  Whereas Pontiac carried history and Saturn represented change, all Hummer stands for is excess.  Born in the chest-thumping days following the original Iraq War, the initial Hummer H1 was a civilian version of the HMMV “Humvee” that gained much fame in the desert sands.  Large, loud, and with no place on civilian highways, the H1 was nonetheless popular with the “big ego, small penis” crowd.  Originally built by AM General, the folks who built the original Humvees for the military, the brand was bought by General Motors and expanded.

I can remember trying unsuccessfully to stifle a giggle the first time I saw the Hummer H2.  Downsized to more closely match the SUVs that were becoming popular at the time, it was literally the worst of both worlds.  It was boxy to try and resemble the H1 (and included embossed replicas of the some of the H1 features no longer needed in a smaller vehicle), but that cost the H1 valuable cargo space.  I figured they’d jumped the shark when I saw a crash test on an H2 that showed it had the suvivability of a ball of tin foil, but it was the even smaller H3 and a pickup version of the H2 that set the stage for failure.  In a time when intelligent people are looking to hybrids and electric vehicles as the future, the Hummer is as dated as leg warmers and spandex pants.

It’s important to note that while the Hummer brand is gone, the HMMV goes right on, as GM owns no part of AM General.  From now on, the only folks with Humvees are the ones who’ve earned them …

I think I’m pretty typical for someone my age in that I feel my generation was totally screwed when it comes to cars.  Our parents got all the cool ’60s muscle cars, but by the time we got our license all those things were long gone – we got the Pinto and the Vega.  It’s not surprise, therefore, that I was pretty pumped when Ford rolled out their retro-Mustang a couple of years back – all the cool of the original with modern touches like airbags and disc brakes.  It didn’t take long for the other manufacturers to follow the leader, and soon we had a brand new Chevy Camaro and Dodge Challenger.  But while everyone’s dipping into the ’60s well for inspiration, some ideas are clearly more inspired than others.

Dodge was a little late to the table rolling out their modern muscle car, and 2010 is the second model year for the Challenger.  One could say they were a bit preoccupied trying to stay corporately afloat, but it seems they used the extra time to learn the mistakes made by Ford and Chevrolet with their earlier introductions.  Most people agree the Challenger is the throwback that is the “truest” to the original design – right down to the colors.  Like the original, you can get your Challenger in classic colors Detonator Yellow, TorRed or Blue Pearl – heck, they even brought back Plum Crazy.  But to celebrate what would represent 40 years of the Challenger – had they stuck around – they’re rolling out a version in … wait for it … Furious Fuschia.

Now, I should point out here that I’m a Ford guy, so there’s really only two acceptable colors to me – white with two Ford Blue stripes or Ford Blue with two white stripes.  I’m willing to tip my hat to the Mopar Gang for showing a little flair in their colors, but dude – that’s a pink car.  There’s just no other way to look at it.  I guess maybe if your girlfriend is into hot cars and you’re trying to impress her with a muscle car for her birthday or something, but I think for the rest of us this is just not going to work. Maybe they could have called this one “Failed Fuschia” …

Oh, and memo to the folks at the Three-Point Star’s Five-Point division:  If you’re gonna celebrate an award, make sure it’s something legitimate.  We all know that JD Power will give an award to anything from cars to toilet paper, but you guys are celebrating the Challenger being named “Most Appealing Midsize Sporty Car” – I mean, what the hell is that?  Probably exactly what you’d expect someone driving a pink car to celebrate, I guess …

Our long national nightmare is finally over – yes, NBC has hammered out an agreement to end the Late Night Wars.

Bringing to an end one of the more contentious – and public – squabbles in TV history, NBC will buy “Tonight Show” host Conan O’Brien out of the remaining 2+ years of his contract for a whopping $32 million, with another $12 million going to his staff as severence.  Jay Leno, O’Brien’s predecessor on the “Tonight Show” and a prime-time failure, will return to his familiar 11:30 turf once NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics concludes next month.  O’Brien, meanwhile, will be free to return to TV on a competitor network this September.

We already talked about how they got into this mess, so I won’t burden you with it again (just urge you to go back and read the earlier entry – and tell a hundred or so friends to do the same … ).  But this is an ugly, expensive end to a sad tale of greed – one in which there are no winners.  NBC President Jeff Zucker looks like a fool, having tried unsuccessfully to have it both ways and ending up with nothing more than the status quo and a lot of expenses.  Leno – who was worried enough about how he was being portrayed in the media that he took time on his show to explain his position and unsuccessfully change the tone of the debate – still comes across as the guy who just wouldn’t go away, unwilling to live up to an agreement he made five years ago.  O’Brien, meanwhile, will resurface in the fall with an new show, and pockets 32 mill for his troubles – but he still has to live with the tag “fired ‘Tonight Show’ host”.

Everyone is trying to stay amicable, but it will be interesting to see how O’Brien handles his final “Tonight Show” tomorrow night.  He’s been beating his NBC bosses up pretty good since this whole controversy broke, but I suspect he’ll take the high road in his finale.  Not only does he want to be remembered as a good guy, but he’s been with the peacock for a long time (remember, he started out as a writer on “SNL”).  He’ll have his largest audience ever tomorrow night, and you know whatever he says will live on forever on YouTube.  Count on him keeping it classy.

Whatever happens tomorrow, this one’s gonna go down with the Edsel and New Coke …

You may remember that a few months back, we wrote about an innovative – if unenlightened – attempt to breathe new life into a stale coffee franchise. At the time, we pointed out that the new “Bikini Espresso” coffee shop was inheriting a difficult location that had already failed in with a previous coffee brand, and wondered if just adding barristas in bikinis was enough to make a difference.

Back to Bikini Bottom for you!

The answer came barely three months after the grand opening. I noticed two things as I drove by recently – no customers, and a pink sign on the door. Suspecting I already knew the answer, I swung into the lot and took a look. Yup – outta business.

Gary Gillett thought he could brew a profitable business plan by mixing coffee with bikini-clad baristas in Torrance.

Just over three months into his experiment, Gillett has called it quits.

On Monday night, Bikini Espresso, the South Bay’s only drive-through bikini coffee shop and a magnet for resident complaints, shuttered its doors.

Pink signs on the front door and near the drive-through window read: “Relocating to a business-friendly town!”

“I had to turn off the lights,” Gillett said angrily. “I’m kind of done with Torrance. Torrance sucks.”

Um … told ya?

The whole “barrista-as-stripper” concept seems to work pretty well in the Pacific Northwest, but maybe that’s because the only bikinis they ever see are in a Victoria’s Secret catalog.  Here, where you only have to go two miles west down 190th to get to the beach and all the bikinis you like, it takes more than skin to win.  A good location, knowledgable staff, undercutting the Mickey D’s across the street – those are the kinds of business savvy decisions that will keep you in the business for the long run.  Half-nekkid servers apparently won’t.

He wanted to stay with the bikini concept even as his business seemed ready to fail.

“I didn’t want to go with the lingerie idea because I thought it would corrupt the original bikini idea,” he said. “I couldn’t have them on the street in lingerie. Plus, Torrance fought me enough on the bikinis.”

Way to stay classy, Gary. That’s not to say that Gillett is giving up on the concept, mind you …

Gillett said he hopes to reopen Bikini Espresso in another city, possibly Redondo Beach.

Woo. Hoo.

Lots of sports this weeekend, but really only one sports story …

Imagine that you’d just achieved the greatest success of your career, only to find everyone focused not on your achievement but rather on the failure of another that allowed it to happen?

Congratulations – you’re Y. E. Yang, 2009 PGA champion!

There aren’t a lot of things you can depend on in this world.  The sun will rise in the east, the Democrats will raise your taxes, and Tiger Woods is a lock when leading a major championship.  Well, keep an eye on Obama and the sun, because Woods got rolled yesterday.

Fourteen times, Tiger has lead coming into the final round of a major, and all fourteen resulted in a victory.  Eight of those came after leading after two rounds, and he was perfect there, too.  So it’s understandable that when he came into the weekend with a four-stroke lead on the field, things were considered pretty much done.  The pundits openly wondered if it was even worth considering the other players in the event.  Funny how things happen, though.

Woods played tight on Saturday, seeming to be playing more to not lose than to win.  As a result, while everyone else in the field was moving, he was idling and saw his lead chopped in half.  Unlike the agressive Woods that slew Padraig Harrington only a week before at Akron, Tiger seemed tentative – something I’ve never seen in him.

Only a slip by Harrington at the end resulted in Woods’ Sunday pairing with the unheralded Yang, an Asian tour veteran playing his first season in America.  Woods and Yang actually have a history, with Yang being one of the very few to ever run down Tiger in an event he lead.  But that was the Dunlop Phoenix in Japan, and Yang was in a different group.  This would be the PGA Championship, and he’d be staring down the greatest golfer in the world.

That didn’t seem to be much of an issue for Yang.

“It’s not like you’re in an octagon where you’re fighting against Tiger and he’s going to bite you, or swing at you with his 9-iron,” Yang said through an interpreter. “The worst that I could do was just lose to Tiger. So I really had nothing much at stake.”

Yang played solid, Tiger once again tight, and when Yang made a spectactular eagle chip at the 14th hole, he leapfrogged Woods into the lead.  Add to that a partially-blocked 3-iron on 18 that will be talked about for a long time, and the dead was done, and the Tiger had been slain.

I’ve always thought that Tiger’s greatest assets aren’t his shotmaking but his reputation and his brain, and neither phased Yang in the slightest.  He showed no intimidation whatsover in his first head-to-head meeting with Woods, and Eldrick’s temper was in evidence repeatedly as he grew more frustrated with each hole.  The debate will rage on as to whether Yang truly won or Woods simply choked – I say both. 

Tiger Woods demonstrated that he is indeed human, and is capable of blowing an event that was clearly his to win.  It’s worth remembering at this point that while Jack Nicklaus won 18 majors, he also placed second in another nineteen events.  For Woods, this will simply add to his runner-up total, but it’s gonna burn for a long time.

The real story, though, must be Yang.  Golf in Asia is huge, and the Korean women have dominated the LPGA Tour for the better part of a decade (how many different event winners do they have named “Kim” – six?  Seven?).  Yang’s victory is the first for an Asian-born player in a PGA major, and while we don’t know if it will be his only major, you can bet it won’t be the last for an Asian golfer.