There wasn’t really any news on Day to Day today, with the exception of a bit on global warming. Well, there was also a thing about stem cells, but that is covered everywhere, so it is just another day of Day to Day doing the same story we heard and will hear all day. OK! (There we are rhyming again….) Oh, and a story about the poultry industry, but we’re not even going to hyperlink that one, because unless you’re KFC, believe us, it is not interesting.

No we had our fun listening to the comedic stylings of Brian Unger, who did a fresh and unique take on Twitter: “Hey people, no one cares enough to know what you are doing right now, and if they do they are idiots!” We had never heard that before, for example on the John Stewart show last week, never. Day to Day, what you already heard, again. Maybe that is why the name has “Day” in it twice? I mean seriously, getting on social networking from the angle of  ”it is self-indulgent” is like doing on piece on candy being sweet. We know. We knew last year. We knew the before that. Yawn…

But Day to Day did surprise us when good old Madeline Brand referred to Iggy Pop as a “washed out old pop star” during her intro to her piece from 2007 on Iggy Pop! (That’s right, not content to just repeat Morning Edition, Day to Day has recently taken to repeating itself.) The piece turns out to be a nice promo for Iggy.

And speaking of promos: we couldn’t leave you with out mentioning the gem of a story about “rypple”. No, not the stuff Sanford drank! It is the hot new web thingy that Day to Day for some reason is giving a free plug to. It is a super dumb idea reminding us of some of the hey-day of the Dot.Com days. It allows you to get “semi-anonymous” feedback from people! Synonym for “semi-anonymous”? Not anonymous. Put real simple, you message people for their advice, and then they can reply to you, but (here is the genius!) their reply is anonymous!!! Like anyone with 1/2 brain couldn’t figure it out.

We just wrote a snarky paragraph here about how dumb of an idea it is…. and we just erased it. We figure it is so obvious our little bit was just lame. Like shooting dead fish in a barrel with grenade launcher. Just not pretty.

New comments coming Monday…. ’cause we can be sure Proffitt and company won’t let us down!

Well the economy is big and bad news for umpteenth time today, and good old Morning Edition trots out 13 stories (out of 22) about how bad it is and what it means and so on. All well and good we guess. But considering that is roughly 60% of that two hour program, we thought that perhaps Day to Day might branch out and tell us more about, oh anything… (Or we could suggest: Afganistan, or Iraq, or Pakistan, or Russia, or Chinese imports, or maybe how the economic problems are effecting countries like Korea, or Japan, or Thailand, or commodity exporters like Australia, or Brazil, or South Africa, or maybe something about freaks using typewriters as musical instruments. Oh wait, they did that (yes it is true!). 

Sigh. No, after Morning edition did 13 stories (13!) on the issue, Day to Day chimes in with 5 more (out of 9). Yeah! And not only that, some basically the same:

 Morning Edition: U.S. Treasury To Follow Europe, Invest In Banks

Day to Day: U.S. Government To Invest In Major Banks 

Yes! The same story twice. Fantastic. Maybe there’s something on TMZ about Britney.,,,

But then again, we did get a great report on Chinese women working in Chinese factories. Summary: it is hard, but Chinese peasant women can work their way up in these factories to office jobs with reasonable (for China) salaries. Yeah, who knew? Not exactly news. And with the downturn, probably dated as well. But dull and boring and already well worn? Yes, everything Day to Day strives to be.

Summary: Some liquor stores in Oakland are selling cheap clothes and brand name knock-offs along with 40′s and stawberry flavored maddog. Implied judgement: it’s a good thing!

Best Line: “You know you could go get some Jordans at the mall for like $150, go to the liqour store you can get it for 50 bucks! And I feel much better supporting a family run business in my own community than some huge corporate run department store.” No commentary from the crack news team at Day to Day. No, just let it go….. how is it that the liquor store can sell $150 shoes for $50? Because the mall store is owned by an evil corporation and the liquor store by a nice Korean family? Maybe. Or maybe, just a thought, because the liquor store Jordans were made by slaves in a Chinese facotry and coated with lead, melamine and polonium before being smuggled by international gangsters into the USA. 

Ok, maybe we exagerate a little…. but you get the point. But hey, if it keeps them in Oakland, at the liquor store, and away from the white women at the mall….. well Day to Day is fine with that.

Really. We wonder, do we need to continue this blog, or did Day to Day just prove beyond a doubt that it should not be on the air. And with just one story. Oh, the wasted time we have spent…..

And what good advice. Gem #1: “If you are in the market now and it is going down you would love to have a stash of cash so you wouldn’t have to take out that money and lock in losses.” Really? Hell, I’d like to have a “stash of cash” any time. So her investment advice is “you shouldn’t have invested in the first place, then you would have cash now”?

Gem #2: “You want to make sure you buy appreciating assests.” Really? My last investment advisor told me to only buy stocks that would lose value.

Gem #3: “If you are a two income household and both of you are husband and wife, both of you should not have a car loan at the same time.” So I should buy one car with my stash of cash? But wait, I need that to not invest! So confusing. 

Top Gem: “I think that is what a lot of people forgot: To invest means to put the principle at risk.” No. The dictionary defines invest as: to commit (money) in order to earn a financial return. That is why people invested in AAA securities that paid 2%, so they would not be at risk. 

But then a few weeks ago she let this one loose: “More and more Americans are relying on their retirement fund for retirement”. Indeed…….

So when it ended, we might be forgiven if we hoped–oh so silly we can be–that Day to Day would not spend it’s hour of news space rehashing all the stuff we had already heard (and heard, and heard). We hoped. But we knew it was not to be. No, for Day to Day must, it seems, boldly step forth and repeat the same stories we just heard. Had not Morning Edition just done a two minute bit on short selling, the point of which was basically: “short selling bad, now banned”?

Yes they had. So what better than to do the exact same story again, but this time for four minutes? Which is, of course, what Day to Day did, and did and did and did all through out the show. “The stories you just heard. Again.” Wonder if it saves money to do that?

Ah….. Someone wake us…. … … and someone did: Steve Proffitt–who, besides having a last name with too many double consonants, lists as his favorite Day to Day story the one about the two middle age guys who skateboard around Berkley real fast. A story which sadly does not include the schedules of said gentleman, making tracking them down and running them over all the more difficult. And which clocked in at 9 minutes. Does that make it twice as important as the Fed ban on short selling? Or does that mean that the short selling story is not even half as news worthy as some old fart falling down a hill in the Bay Area? We’re not sure. We’re finding it really hard to care.

But anyhoo, Mr. Proffitt broke up todays repetition of the news we had already just heard with a funny bit about where we should put our money now. Assuming that funny means something other than what it says in the dictionary.

Yes, this little gem once again proves that humor should be left to professionals, with the hilarious conceit of a young child talking about the markets like a grown up investment counselor, while his dad frets about where to put the family nest egg now. The final decision? Where is the only safe place left? By gosh, it’s the kid’s piggy bank! I know, but try to think about it as a concept rather than an actual bit. It is funny right? Right? Funny line “Piggy bank deposits are not FIDC insured”!!! Oh, that is gold….

Summary: People prefer kayaks over canoes. Mainers may or may not be upset. 

Best line: “‘It’s when people get in [canoes] that things start to happen.’ You can see how the kayak verus canoe debate gets personal.” Yes, I can see it! Those damn people! Canoes were doing just fine until they came along! This is personal; how dare you dis-respect us canoes!

Bonus #1: “…canoe sales remain steady.” So canoes aren’t going away, people are just buying kayaks too?

Bonus #2: This story is from the series What’s the New What?, a supposedly hip/young/urban thingy where “the youth” tell the old bastards listening to Day to Day what is cool and happening now. Yo! Yo! Yo! For shizal my nizzals! Canoez be like so 2007 and shizzle. On da’ real, yo!

Final verdict: I could not care less.