Hey, baby, come’re and warm my globes

Al Gore assaults massage girl

A cure for AIDS? Bring on the guards

Researchers are seemingly on the brink of a cure for aids, but they’ve been doing their research on mice. PETA and its allies focus on destroying these projects as exploitative of our furry friends, so I hope the scientists are well protected.

Mark down on digital point and shoot cameras

Amazon’s got ‘em, but alas, who wants them? As digital phone cameras improve, particularly the new iPhone, it seems to me that the market will split between serious digital cameras and cellphone cameras. I can see carrying a real camera, but for quick shots, if my cell phone will suffice, then that’s what I’ll use. My current iPhone’s camera is not a real tool, although I use it for pictures on this blog, but the new model may change that. And if not, the next generation will. I see no future, however, for a stand-alone quickie camera.

Deer Park Spec house sells

2 Meadow Road, Deer Park

This house, fronting Lake Avenue, came on at $16.5 million but sold for $11.2 yesterday. Still not chump change, but …

New home sales down 33%

Experts “shocked”.

The Commerce Department says new home sales fell in May from a month earlier to a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 300,000. That was the slowest sales pace on records dating back to 1963.

It indicates that buyers left the market as federal tax credits of up to $8,000 expired at the end of April.

Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected a May sales pace of 410,000. April’s sales pace was revised downward to 446,000.

These are experts? No, buyers didn’t “leave the market” when tax credits expired – it’s a simple matter of front-loading. You offer an incentive and the people who were intending to buy bought, and grabbed $8,000 of our money. But having captured future sales with this gimmick, where’s the surprise that there are fewer sales now? I’m no genius, so if I could see this coming, what’s wrong with the experts?

Applesauce

Miss Jean Hill,Concord, Mass

82-year old drunk convinces Concord, Massachusetts to ban bottled water. Her theory: water is packaged in plastic. Well so is applesauce, and, last I looked, a million other items. In fact, the scotch that she admits to preferring to water also comes in a package. When she starts her own still and laps it from a ladle, I’ll give her credit for being a purist. Until then, I consider her a meddlesome old lady who should shut up and stay in her house.

This makes it unanimous

I hate me!

Even the French hate the French

UPDATE:  a joke, not from Jeremy Kaye, but from reader Pierre:

Monsieur LaFontange,
Please stop with the French jokes. Yesterday, someone asked me, “Why do the French never perform “the wave” at a soccer game?” Je ne said pas, I responded. “Because,” he said, “that’s a gesture reserved for use only in time of war.”

Shocker: cellphone towers don’t cause cancer

Who’d have thunk it? Your children will, of course, glow in the dark, but that just makes it easier to find them in the twilight.

A second look at staging

I toured a house on the corner of Parsonage and Lake yesterday and finally saw what staging can do. It was beautifully decorated (they even stuck a jungle gym in the back yard) and the place looked clean and very inviting. I still find it a little off-putting to see pictures on walls and bureaus of people who never lived in the house, but whoever staged this job did a remarkable job. And, versus an empty house, I think this will show better.

But, at least in my opinion, its price is too high, which brings me back to my basic philosophy: better to have an un-staged property, priced right, than a beautifully staged one, priced wrong. Price trumps staging, every time.

Have they checked with the Greenwich Association of Realtors?

Swan song?

A Greenwich couple who live on the corner of Taconic and Stanwich fear that their two pet swans have been stolen. The cops are blaming coyotes (or suicide, doubtless) but I’d expect there’d be enough feathers scattered around to prove that theory. I have another:

There was a broker open house held at this house a few weeks ago, and I noticed the swans then. If I saw them, my colleagues must have too. I’d suggest the cops search the trunks of all realtor-owned Lexuses.