... And you can't beat the traffic

If anyone asks, I still tell them that living in L.A. is great. And I believe it. I guess I'm easy, but to me - whatever obstacles your hometown might throw at you - if you can walk out of your home or office and see palm trees, you're pretty damn lucky. And if you can look up and see cerulean blue skies approximately 361 days a year, even better.

The problem is that L.A. is in California, which as of today, is starting to pay people with IOUs. Or, as the New York Times calls them - and I'm just pointing this out because I'm an editorgeek - i.o.u.'s.

I think I might look into doing that for my next major purchases. I never did get that HDTV I kept yammering on about during the 2008 winter holidays. Think Circuit City would take an IOU for one of those? Oh, right, I almost forgot.

California's budget woes also mean that I'm on my way to a salary reduction for the next 12 months, at least. To lower our pay, they're apparently considering using unpaid days, or as they're better known, furloughs. I'm sort of on board with the idea, although every time I hear the word furlough, I think of Michael Dukakis and Willie Horton. So, that's not so great.

Still: Palm trees.

Subpar for the course

Looking for more negative economic indicators? OK, good.

Today's announcement that they're canceling* this year's Skins Game - an annual televised event in which four already-rich professional golfers win tens of thousands of dollars for each hole they win - seems like a particularly bad sign.

Nobody I know is going to lose any sleep over one less golf event on TV. But whether it's because sponsors are too broke to cough up the prize money or the golf people feel it would be in bad taste to make a spectacle of people winning an amount roughly equal to a bazillion times the average annual U.S. salary for hitting a ball in a hole - or both - it feels like a very Depression-era kind of move.

So, uh, enjoy your weekend!

Oh, just one other thing. Have you read about The Oprah "giving away" KFC chicken or some such craziness? (I'm not adding to the hype by posting a link.) This is probably going to be really lame, but I'm high on Tabasco sauce so I'm just going to say it...

It strikes me that it's too bad she didn't time her KFC endorsement to coincide with that Oprah Book Club recommendation a few years ago. They could have had a promotion called A Million Little Pieces of James Frey Chicken.

Thank you, thank you. Don't forget to tip your servers.

* Note to PGA: "Postponed" plus "no makeup date" equals "canceled."

State of their art

So much bad economic news the last few days that I can't - or won't - even begin to digest it.

But then I read about this. Brandeis University is unloading a pretty impressive collection of fine art as a cost-saving move. Now, as sad news goes, this doesn't compare with the tens of thousands of jobs lost so far this week. Not by a longshot. But amid all of the other gloom, the Brandeis story stands out as a particularly bad sign of the shape we're in.

I mean, I've heard of massive layoffs before. Not sure I've heard of a top-tier university - one with an endowment that's probably still around a half-billion dollars - hocking its paintings in order to make payroll.

So, dude: Anyone need a Warhol?