Magazine story

Here are a couple of more signs, as if we needed them, about the plight of magazines these days:

* It's getting more and more difficult to subscribe to a magazine for just six months or a year. These days, your first move is practically a lifetime subscription.

Many publishers are sending out notices asking readers to send in their credit cards to pay for the product. (This is more common, and easier, in renewals, but you get the idea.) The fine print says that the subscription will automatically be renewed when expiration time arrives, unless the company hears from you. They obviously are counting on the reader to do nothing. This way, not only does the company get your money, but it's probably more money than you'd pay if you searched the Internet for bargains.

Recently my subscription to ESPN the magazine was getting ready to expire. I noticed that my credit card that was on their file had expired a few months before, and I was interested in renewing and getting the package of goodies they send to new subscribers (long-sleeve t-shirt, cooler bag, mug). So I went by the expiration date and renewed by check.

The goodies indeed came, but here's the catch: they still figured out a way to automatically renew my subscription through the expired credit card. For three years. I noticed the charge on a bill. I called up the company and got it straightened out (after getting passed along to another number). Still, it's a lot of work to avoid paying the full rate.

* I've been a reader of Newsweek forever. My parents started getting it when I was a small boy, and I've been reading it ever since. However, the magazine changed formats some months ago, and I can't say I read too much of it any more. Therefore, I decided to let it expire.

The expiration date was sometime in July. It is now October. I am still getting my weekly copy of the magazine. I even received a letter from Newsweek's circulation department this week, boldly announcing "Your subscription expired seven weeks ago!" Well, I'd never know it based on what's been coming into my mailbox.

We all have problems in publishing these days, but it seems like either making it more difficult to subscribe or sending free issues out won't solve any of them for magazines.

Why a 16-year-old could do it...

Think Keith Emerson is great on the keyboards? Well, yes, me too. But there's the teen-ager who can do a darn good version of his work. It's worth a listen:

Double ending

It's always a sad day when the major-league baseball season ends. Summer is officially gone. It's time to put the screen windows up and replace them with storms, and start up the furnace. It's even sadder in our house when the Red Sox and Mets both miss the playoffs, and the Yankees make it.

Here in Buffalo, though, Sunday marked a double whammy. Not only did the baseball season end, but football season is about over as well.

That's not what the schedule says, but that's what my head says after watching the Bills get positively crushed by the Jets. As the cliche goes, if it had been a prizefight, the referee would have stopped it after three rounds, er, quarters.

What was pretty obvious two weeks ago has become painfully plain now. The Bills are going nowhere, again. Even if the new coaching staff and front office knows what it is doing, there is a big job ahead. The run of non-playoff teams is going to extend another year, minimum. And probably more.

It's easy to see the culprit here -- bad decisions litter the team's past. They traded up for J.P. Losman, traded up for John McCargo, drafted James Hardy (who pulled a gun on his father on Father's Day shortly after the draft) ... heck, drafted Mike Williams a while ago. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. That doesn't even mention some of the free-agent acquisitions.

But here's the worst part, that doesn't get mentioned much. People are starting to wonder if we'll ever see the Bills get good. I emphasize ever.

Let's review. Putting the Bills back together is obviously going to be a bigger job than we thought. It's tough to picture them getting more than a handful of wins this season.

Then comes 2011. You have to wonder if there's going to be a 2011 season. Both sides seem poised to dig in and have one of those huge labor disputes that happens to pro sports every so often. Football has had some labor peace in the past 23 years, so it will take some work to avoid one next year.

No matter what, 2012 will be here before we know it. That's also known as the last season of the Bills' 15-year lease. There hasn't been a peep out of anyone about that. It's tough to know what everyone is thinking, since it's still two years away. But with a shrinking market and a 92-year-old owner who apparently has no plan of succession about the team's future, it's easy to wonder what will happen to the Bills. That's particularly true since the franchise is probably worth $250 million more in Los Angeles than it is in Buffalo.

I have out-of-town friends who say they would love to be in Buffalo the day the Bills win a Super Bowl. You wonder if they'll ever have the chance.

Dumb questions dept.

Last night, NBC News led its newscast with the results of a new poll on the economy.
One of the questions was, do you think the recession is over?

A reported 70 percent of those asked said the recession was not over. Here is a story on the poll.

This seems like a world-class stupid question to me.

A recession has an economic definition about the economy suffering at least two consecutive quarters of losses. This is not a matter of opinion, it's a fact.

Therefore, asking if the recession is over is like asking if the New England Patriots won Sunday's football game with the Buffalo Bills.

Now, if someone wants to ask if the economic slump is over, that's a different story. That's more of a matter of opinion. The pollsters could ask about confidence, hope for the future, etc.

But it's tough to have a discussion if we don't speak the same language.

Ghoulish behavior

You can argue that reading the Wall Street Journal is something about as much fun as watching Fox News -- and I'd agree with you, particularly when it comes to columnists. But they do come up with great offbeat features for the middle/bottom of page one.

Today's will be loved by anyone who watch the movie "Night of the Living Dead." The author of the story talks to oldest living ghoul from the movie. You can read the story by going here.

If you missed the black-and-white classic, you should know that it deals with the dead coming to life and terrorizing an area of suburban Pittsburgh. I believe I can still make Glenn Locke laugh by quoting an interview with the Sheriff character in the movie. When asked if the ghouls are fast targets, he replies in a Southern accent, "No, they're dead ... they're pretty slow." And when asked how to stop them, he said, "You get the ghoul's brain, you get the whole ghoul."

Shakespeare, eat your heart out.

Strange encounter

I was in the Walden Galleria today, sitting on one of the benches and sipping a drink so that I could finish it and enter a store. In other words, I was minding my own business.

Then a man walked up toward me and pointed at my t-shirt, which was a souvenir of the "Buffalo's Smartest Company" fund-raising competition, sponsored by a credit union. "What's that?" he asked, pointing to the top of my shirt.

"It was from a contest," I replied nervously.

"Buffalo ... that whole place is a ghetto," he said. "Everything's boarded up."

"I live in Buffalo, and it's not a ghetto."

"Where do you live?"

"Near the Zoo."

"Huh?"

"Near the Zoo."

I was drinking faster at this point.

After a pause, he said, "Look at that woman with the big butt. Did you know that 75 percent of all Americans are obese?"

"I think that's a little high," I said.

After hearing about how much he liked the food court at the Galleria ("I eat something and read the paper for an hour," he said), out of the blue came: "There's nothing made in America. Everything is made in China."

"I don't think it's everything."

"Yup, that's why Buffalo is a ghetto."

Gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp.

"Have a nice day."

You just don't expect street people in a mall. Wonder if he votes?

End of the story

It looks like we have some closure on "Rayzor's Edge."

You remember "Rayzor's Edge." It was the book that I did with Rob Ray. The publication came out in November 2007. Happily for me, the hard-cover edition sold out in Western New York in less than four weeks. It actually was the best-selling winter sports book in America at times, according to the sales counter kept by Amazon.com.

The publisher was Sports Publishing LLC of Illinois. I had gone through a few odd experiences along the way with it, including stories from other writers about not getting paid. I also had an editor with the company who lasted, oh, about a week and a half before departing.

Was I nervous about that? You betcha, to quote a certain Alaskan ex-politician. But we (Rob and I both) got a check for our advance in January once we had fulfilled our publicity obligations. We had to pay the photographer out of that, but that was the deal and we fulfilled our end of it.

The paperback version finally came out in late April of 2008. That was nice, except for the fact that it arrived AFTER the Sabres had been eliminated from the playoffs. You might guess that it hurt sales, and you'd probably be right.

We were supposed to get paid in May and November. My guess was that we had sold 4,000 copies of the hardcover edition, but when asked about it (and getting some badgering from me) the publisher said we hadn't reached a high enough number in sales to get more money. Honestly, I didn't see how that could be possible, but I simply swallowed. Besides, we were never told how many copies were actually printed, so it was hard to know how much we might be owed.

The Sports Publishing Web site more or less stopped updating in June, and soon I started getting notes from the bankruptcy court of Chicago, Illinois. The Court got my address wrong, filling me with confidence. I checked with a lawyer who read the contract and said it might help me move closer to the front of the line when it came to payments. In other words, I might get 10 cents on the dollar instead of zero.

Every so often, for months and months, I'd receive a legal notice about some procedure. A few months ago, I got a note saying that the court had agreed to pay the lawyers a fee for their services. My first reaction was "What did they ever write?" However, I wasn't exactly ready to drive to Chicago to complain.

Finally, a short while ago, I received another notice saying the filing had been dismissed. What could that mean? I checked with a local lawyer, and she said the leftover assets probably had just been given to the main creditor, probably a bank, and there was nothing left for me or anyone else. Nice, huh?

I still don't know how many copies were sold, or how much I would have gotten in better times. I'm still glad I wrote the book; it's a good story that a lot of people liked. Besides, it could lead to more opportunities for me. The book also will be an ad for Rob for the rest of his life and thus help him in the years to come.

But as Scott Morrison of Toronto once told me, "Don't expect to get rich writing a sports book." He was right about that.