As economy slows, luxury still rolling

December 1, 2008

Here's today's consumer question: Didn't Lexus get the memo about the recession we're in?

Recent columns

• Spam has meatier role in our lives

  November 30, 2008

  Some things should never make a comeback: the Yugo, Celebrity Boxing with Tonya Harding and Danny Bonaduce, the lime-green pantsuit Hillary Clinton wore on her first campaign swing through Iowa.

• If you think you can handle I-95 this holiday, think again

  November 24, 2008

  Traveling on Interstate 95 for the Thanksgiving holiday? Good luck with that plan.

• Friendly advice on choosing the White House dog

  November 23, 2008

  Barack and Michelle Obama, the nation is consumed with your search for the right dog for your family.

• Eating with the in-crowd

  November 17, 2008

  People don't usually think of me as hip, but I can fool you sometimes, which is why I was standing in line at a McDonald's on York Road the other day with the big lunch crowd.

• College tour has its price: $11.42

  November 16, 2008

  This fall, my wife and I are busy trying to find the right college for our youngest son, the high school senior, who does not seem quite as engaged in the process as we are.

• Time to indulge your inner Scrooge

  November 10, 2008

  Well, this is shaping up to be a cheery holiday season, isn't it?

• White House needs a hoop

  November 9, 2008

  Barack Obama, you have your work cut out for you.

• Hang on, it's almost over

  November 3, 2008

  One more day and it'll be over.

• Taunted by TV dance shows

  November 2, 2008

  These are tough times for the dancing-impaired.

• Hey, undecided voters: Time to decide already

  October 27, 2008

  You are an undecided voter.

• Restaurant wait brings whining, little dining

  October 26, 2008

  Here is Cowherd's No. 1 Rule on Dining Out: Never wait more than 15 minutes for a table, because the meal will rarely be worth it.

• Nobody says how boring slots are

  October 20, 2008

  The machine is called Black Cherry. Or it's called Go Bananas! Or Double American Beauty.

• Playing the high-stakes city parking game

  October 19, 2008

  There are a million parking-ticket stories in this city and this is another one, because parking here has always been the emotional equivalent of death by paper-cuts.

• Dream boats for well-heeled only

  October 13, 2008

  This is how bad the economy's going: Even the sweater-tied-around-the-neck crowd is hurting.

• Pop-pop fulfills pigskin promise

  October 12, 2008

  Let's say you're a baby boomer stuck in one of life's little ruts.

• Turn the debate into fight night

  October 6, 2008

  So that other debate is on TV tomorrow night.

• Banks tank; Fido has filet

  October 5, 2008

  If you want to know how crazy people can be about their pets, read Jeffrey Toobin's great piece about Leona Helmsley in last week's New Yorker.

• A winning 'red' carpet moment

  September 28, 2008

  Maybe you're like me: You've never won anything in your life.

• Middle-aged Ravens fans dress to express

  September 22, 2008

  Hey, Mr. Ravens Super-Fan, caught you at the big game against Cleveland yesterday.

• Getting a taste for a place where the drama is delicious

  September 21, 2008

  Let me begin by saying I'm not a foodie. I don't cook. The only thing I know about food is that I like stuffing my fat face with it. Yet somehow, I've gotten hooked on Food Network.

• Offended? Why, we're shocked!

  September 15, 2008

  If there's one way to sum up the 2008 presidential campaign, it's this: Never have so many professed to be offended with so little cause.

• What a brag it is getting old

  September 8, 2008

  So did you go to the big party in DC over the weekend?

• Blowin' in the wind

  September 7, 2008

  With the hurricane season clearly in full swing - they're stacked up like cruise ships in the Caribbean - I'd like to address the TV reporters who go out in these storms to do their stand-ups.

• Just can't wait to humiliate

  January 15, 2008

  Here is the question you have to ask yourself when tuning in to the season debut of American Idol tonight: Is there something wrong with me?

• Bill Hagy was one wild fan of the O's

  August 22, 2007

  I am not going to tell you "Wild Bill" Hagy was a choirboy, because someone who guzzles nine or 10 Budweisers and shot-puts his cooler from the upper deck of a stadium before being led away in handcuffs probably doesn't qualify for that.

• Class acts amid the meltdowns in the Olympics

  February 23, 2006

  Sasha Cohen, Kimmie Meissner and Emily Hughes aside, it's easy to think of these Winter Olympics as another depressing reality show, only without a lot of bad singing or Donald Trump and his lacquered hair reducing some poor apprentice to tears.

• For cicadas, the party's nearly over

  June 14, 2004

  I smell death in the air.

• Here cicada, there cicada, everywhere cicada cicada

  April 19, 2004

  YOU PEOPLE who haven't seen these things, you have no idea what you're in for.

• People can really get charged up over Isabel

  September 18, 2003

  TO SEE THE Isabel panic for myself, I went to Home Depot yesterday because there is simply no better place to be with a hurricane bearing down on you than a store the size of a NATO base that offers 15 varieties of duct tape.

• Even in face of 'Columbia,' astronauts say, carry on

  February 3, 2003

  BY YESTERDAY, the cold, sick feeling of seeing the space shuttle Columbia explode in the blue Texas sky was fading for many, replaced by a numbness as gray as the February dawn.

• Johnny on the spot

  January 7, 2003

  The first time I heard Johnny Holliday broadcast a University of Maryland basketball game was the winter of 1982. I was driving through some Eastern Shore backwater at night, and it was freezing cold, and the only light inside my little Toyota was the glow of the radio dial.

• Police chief dealing with nonsense from media

  October 17, 2002

  IN THE GLARE of the TV lights, Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose's scowl seemed to deepen with each idiotic question thrown his way, to the point where you wondered if the poor man's features could ever return to normal.

• Soon ghastly fish will walk off into the sunset

  August 8, 2002

  AND SO THE death watch begins for the northern snakeheads in that Crofton pond, the infamous "fish from hell" that provided us with so much entertainment throughout this long, horrid summer.

• Arming pilots both concerns and comforts

  September 27, 2001

  I'M TRYING to picture something here, and the more I picture it, the jumpier I get.

• 'Hoping for little miracles,' says firefighter of operation

  September 17, 2001

  IN THE spring of 1990, John Morris, a New York City firefighter and an old friend of mine, rolled up with Ladder 27 to the Happy Land social club in the Bronx, where a tragedy of unspeakable proportions had just occurred.

• What seemed like just another day actually wasn't

  September 13, 2001

  The morning after the worst attack in U.S. history, with images of a jetliner serenely plowing into a glittering office tower and the Pentagon on fire seared into our minds forever, maybe what was most startling was how utterly, blessedly normal everything felt.

• Exchanging vows is good reason to hit the ice

  February 15, 2001

• Experience is in their court

  February 12, 2001

  IT'S A LITTLE after 12:30 on a sunny February afternoon when the first game begins in the worn gym at the Bykota Senior Center in Towson.

• Man doesn't break a sweat buying lingerie for his wife

  February 8, 2001