Cuttone and Co. Inc.

When you go to the hospital for a stress test it can be a little bit intimidating. On the way in you are nervous-after all, your doctor suspects that you might be at risk of a heart attack. Once at the hospital, the technicians hook you up to series of sensors to monitor your vital signs and then put you onto a treadmill. Sometimes they even inject you with thallium, a radioactive isotope that helps the doctor track what is happening inside your heart muscles. I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of anything radioactive coursing through my veins. Peter Parker, I'm not.

After the

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In 1976's "Desperadoes Under the Eaves" Warren Zevon sang of a life of alcoholic dissipation, running up charges while living in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel. After vowing to drink up all the salty margaritas in Los Angeles, he sang "And if California slides into the ocean like the mystics and statistics say it will, I predict this hotel will be standing, until I've paid my bill".
 
With the state poised for a plunge into the Pacific, overwhelmed by a sea of debt and profligate spending, it appears that the California legislature has finally realized that it has to confront this painful reality

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We've all heard horror stories of home buyers who have bought a white elephant fixed-upper only to discover after the purchase that the cost of renovations has skyrocketed to levels never dreamed of. Once the buyer gets in, despite pouring vast sums of money into the project, the repair bills continually mount and suck the homeowner's finances dry. Those houses are called "money pits" and they're the stuff of suburban nightmares. So pervasive is the fear, that Hollywood made a black comedy called "The Money Pit" starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long back in the '80s. Cautionary tales regularly

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By now you have probably heard that today is Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday. A towering figure in our country's history, Lincoln, at great personal cost, guided our nation through its most troubled times. It is difficult to overestimate the impact of the civil war on our nation’s collective psyche, indeed, some scars have only recently begun to heal. The war took four hellacious years to conclude and left 600,000 Americans dead. Scarcely an American family was left untouched by the tragedy. Lincoln, somehow,  was able to marshal the will of the people to engage in a great struggle from

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On this date in 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression, that staple of junior high school reading lists “Of Mice and Men” was published. Steinbeck’s novella, describing the travails of two migrant farm workers, struck a chord with the weary American public and propelled  the young author to nationwide fame.  As you probably recall, the main characters, small, wiry George and the immensely strong yet mentally disabled Lennie, in the throes of forces beyond their control, come to a tragic end as George is forced to kill his friend Lennie in order to save him from an angry, yet mistaken

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As a cruel, cold wind sweeps across the barren investment tundra, investors can be forgiven for refusing to leave the relative warmth of their cash filled igloos. With little prospect of a thaw in economic conditions in the near future, traders appear to be hunkered down while awaiting details of the new administration's economic package. As our senators dicker over details and position themselves to avoid future fallout, there is a worry that the bill will disappoint upon delivery. Hopes for the measure have been high and the unspoken fear that hangs in the air is: "what if it doesn't work"
 

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