Tina Fey Books

"Saving American Airlines" focuses on the $3.3 million/day the company is losing, largely because of skyrocketing fuel prices. Bankruptcies and restructuring at other airlines have already resulted in pilots making less, flying more, and passengers being charged for once complimentary items. American, however, is the only legacy carrier to have avoided Chapter 11.

The problem is that airplanes weren't designed to make money at $2.94/gallon fuel prices (up from 76 cents in 2002). Southwest has temporarily solved its fuel cost problem with hedging. Northwest and Delta's merger is not likely to help because they created little redundancy that can be eliminated, and Delta has agreed to give its pilots a raise. Meanwhile, American Airlines pilots are angry about its poor on-time performance and the $250 million in stock grant bonuses recently given managers.

"Larry Page on How to Change the World" covers some of the barriers to major innovation that he sees. Also covered are three major opportunities he sees outside the walls of Google. Driverless cars (safer), geothermal power, and innovations in solar power (one square mile in Nevada can generate 800 MW, vs. 2,000 MW from a nuclear reactor) are three that catch his imagination.

"The Best Advice I Ever Got" presents short snippets from 19 luminaries, including Michael Bloomberg, Larry Page, General Petraeus, and Tina Fey.

I love most everything Al Franken has done-- SNL, books, radio. AL:so really liked the other Air America CD " The O'Franken factor".

Which makes this CD all the more puzzling. It has maybe one clever and somewhat funny track, the Bill O'Reilly war story. The rest of the tracks are, puzzling. They're so unfunny you wonder how they got recorded for posterity. There's 11 minutes of a Wolfman sketch, not a chuckle in the whole thing. There's a unfunny and insensitive sketch about the pillow that snuffed out Arafat. And a sketch about a crying baby that I can't figure out at all.

The CD cover art is amusing though.