Much ado about nothing!

This week at a "Special City Council" meeting, myself and a couple of hundred other bored Branson residents listened while Claudia and Hero impersonators read their lengthy "digital evidence packets" hoping to joust one another out of the Branson Planning Department.  Unfortunately, as Shakespeare had already comedically concluded, it was indeed, much ado about nothing.  Had they squared off about whether Adam Lambert should be chosen as the American Idol. or whether Newt Gingrich should be down here in the Ozarks "dissing the pres", it would have been worth the uncomfortably hot chambers, but........"the ramifications of waterproofing a basement wall".  Give me a break!  All the FEMA compliance stuff withstanding, the fraud/corruption/coverup stuff was just silly.  FEMA would be lucky to find Branson, much less uncover and magnify a "form over substance" mixup dating to before they became famous in New Orleans.  So what was the point?  Was it a clandestine plot to "create a plausible basis for frightened Landing Lessees to "walk their leases"?  Not likely! Was it to save our city from being destroyed by FEMA and the "Washington Bureaucracy" Not likely! Was it to "right some unrightable wrong" in tribute to our morally superior city self image?  I doubt it!  Was it just mean office politics spilling out into the parking lot and beyond?  It looked that way to me, but as Dennis Miller says, "I could be wrong"   

I just can't tell you how badly we need that Road!

     Most days during the last couple of years, I have daily crossed the Interstate on Country Music Blvd.  and proceeded  up "the strip".  Most of the local traffic with destinations north of "the strip" have exited the Interstate at Highway #248.  Those still on Country Music Blvd. West of Interstate 65 seeing the "strip going West" backup find the fast moving right lane and cut off on Roark.  Only those who know the "routes" and are going to destinations on the "strip" or to destinations south of the strip, continue past Roark.  All of those headed to destinations South of the "strip" cut off at Fall Creek by the Dick Clark theater.  (thanks for finishing the Fall Creek intersection)  So what is the point?  The point is that if someone cuts a passable road from the "strip" down the side of the mountain to intersect Roark they will have saved time only for those locals fighting the "strip" only so far as Fall Creek South.  Many of these locals come from the South and won't go north past the "strip" to avoid the backup.  Only the locals coming from the North and who are headed south of the "strip" will benefit.  With the new North/South connector on up the "strip" by Walmart those going to the Condo 
Corridor around Thousand Hills Golf Course will do just as well going on down Roark to the Walmart cutoff.  So who is left to use the Fall Creek Extension.  My guess is damn few.  I further guess that the construction cost per car mile will set a new Missouri record.

Doctors vs. Angie's List

Angie did not overlook Branson in her quest to mobilize every housewife in America to the worthy cause of creating a 21st century "Better Business Bureau".  Branson has been saturated with invitations to contribute to the Springfield Market cell.  I mention this because, this week, there was an interesting  national story confirming that "Main Street" everywhere kinda likes Angie's emerging power.  The story involves the formation, by a group of Doctors, of a new self protection organization to seek legal remedies against Angie, contending that member evaluations of physician services has the potential to ruin the professional practices of doctors throughout the land.  Gee, well we wouldn't want to know what Susie down the street thinks about Dr. Smith, when we can make up our minds about Dr. Generic by watching 300 pharmaceutical commercial a week, all of which extol the caring and wise qualities of  "you doctor".  Of course, I am sure that the Doctor Coalition is just engaged in preventive medicine to make sure that no one goes untreated as a result of anxiety over their doctor's competence.

Branson City Planning's "Grade Card"

During the winter months, I have had occasion to work with the Branson City Planning Department.  It has been my first encounter.  I was apprehensive, in that the few I know who had experience with the Department had warned that their demands were "unbelievable".  I am happy to report that I did not find this so.  Perhaps having experienced the likes of Kansas City and Dallas, my expectations of "beauracacy" was too keen.  What I found was reasonable people, doing reasonable regulatory things to protect the general welfare.  In conclusion, although you might think it self serving, I give them an "A".

PS.  Thanks guys for telling me it was OK to leave the rebar out of the foundation.  Just kidding.

Timeshare Sales and the Consumer Gene

I had an occasion to visit with a group of tele-marketers this week.  On one of those great Ozark early spring days, a dozen or more of the Spinnaker Properties staff, were out on the veranda, (actually it was a concrete & steel commercial building outside corridor) taking what occured to me was a well earned break.  Since last falls confirmation by Katie Couric and the rest of the international media apparatus that the world had "gone to hell", it crossed my mind that selling "ozark timeshares" in March 09' would be like selling Dasani to the drowning.  I was wrong.  A little friendly inquire quickly evidenced that The Dow, The Federal Reserve, The Bailout, The Foreclosure Rate, the Plummeting of House Values, Indeed None of the Above was relevant to their quest.  One of the older and more confident of the group proceeded to explain, with nods of acknowledgment from the group, that their task was more simple.  He explained, what I had not known, namely that about !.5% of the population of this country, are "born with the consumer gene".  According to this unsuspected molecular geneticist, a small subset of our species have an innate and irrepressible instinct to buy things.  All that is required, so he reported, is that they simply have to be reached by "a good salesman" and that they will as a matter of natural course, "sign on the dotted line".  From their veranda vista, I could count perhaps a thousand unoccupied condos maintained and manicured by yesteryear's "consumer gene people". It seemed like incontrovertible evidence and so I, perplexed, but somewhat changed, wandered down the hill to play my part in this extraordinary drama called Branson.