Like Gravy to Potatoes, Luke to Darth Vader; I’m a Souped-up Sucker and I’ll See You All Later

Friday. Man, what a day. I just got off an hour and a half phone call with the big boss lady and another financial manager for my monthly account review. It wasn't pretty, but it came off better than I thought. For those new to this story, I was asked to go back into collections about two months ago to help resolve some of the oldest, messiest accounts on the books. So far, despite all of my hard efforts, I haven't gotten very far. Hey, some of this stuff has been sitting on the books 3-4 years. Did they expect me to get it taken care of in two months? Anyway, most of the review was pretty positive and I got a lot of good ideas on how to get these things cleaned up so we'll see how it goes. By the way, this is commercial collections, specifically very large government accounts in my case. I am not the guy foreclosing on grandma's house because little Jimmy didn't make his car payment.

Today is Friday, and as faithful readers know, I like to get my weekend started right by listening to something upbeat on the way to work. This morning I needed something pretty strong, so I pulled out the big guns: The Beastie Boys. I needed the power of the B-Boys since I was running late. Needless to say, their ultimate power guided me to an early arrival. My choice of albums was Ill Communication. At first look this album seems to be front-loaded. All of the singles are in the first few tracks: Sure Shot, Root Down, Sabotage, etc. Easily the album's best track, Get it Together, is track seven. At that early peak you would think everything would be downhill but there are still a few tracks to hold interest, namely Alright Hear This, Do It, and Flute Loop. This album is similar to Check Your Head in that it is a mix of rap, punk rock, funk instrumentals and obscure samples. However, this album pales in comparison to its predecessor. It couldn't even hold a candle to the genius of Paul's Boutique. That doesn't mean it's bad, though. It's actually quite good. It's like when someone told Joseph Heller that he never wrote another book as good as Catch-22. His reply: Who has?