Kevin Lennox

Below is the email I sent to McMenamin's COO of Pubs (apparently that's a title).  Is it sad I'm this riled up?

Hi Lars,

My name is Kevin Lennox.

I have been a long time and faithful McMenamin's denizen, regularly visiting Blue Moon, Ringler's, Kennedy School and Edgefield.

As such, I'm pretty familiar with your offerings, and I feel compelled to point out what a smack in the face your recently amended happy hour menu is.

You know, I could understand choosing to either shorten the menu or raise prices, but to do both at the same time wreaks of corporate greed, which seems diametrically opposed to the general McMenamin's ethos.

You're the cool brothers who do everything with quality, authenticity and above all, the customer in mind.

I suppose in this day and age of surcharges everywhere this kind of scheme shouldn't be such a surprise, but I guess it just shows McMenamin's did a better than most..... of duping me into thinking you truly did have the customer at heart.

Unfortunately I still like your beer, so I'll probably continue to drink it, but please know your customer confidence has shrunken by at least one, all because you felt the need to charge an extra dollar for fries.  Seriously McMenamin's?

K

I know I usually talk about fashion and fancy things, but I am insanely excited about the final Harry Potter movies, especially after seeing this trailer:

Has anyone else seen this and cried?  I did.....

It made me think of my own reaction.  Which was me, in my underwear, jumping up and down in a hotel room.  Thankfully I was wise enough not allow any video of that.

I'm happy to report I've added another great show to the list of programs I've been asked to appear on.  This one is called Twin Cities Live and is based out of, you guessed it, Minneapolis/St Paul.  It's a really fun, easy talk show, with great hosts who were very nice to work with.  Whenver I go on a new show, I never know if the hosts are going to play nice with me or not.  It can be a bit awkward, but John and Elizabeth were super welcoming.  Unfortunately their site doesn't let me embed, but you can link to the segment by clicking on the still photo below:

Now for some behind the scenes.  First off, all the clothing was being shipped in via Fed Ex, and was supposed to be arrive the day before we shot this segment, but there were big storms in the mid-west, and the box got sidelined in Indianapolis.  Now, I don't know if any of you have ever dealt with FedEx in situations like this, but it can be trying to say the least.  Fortunately I've been in this situation a bunch of times before, so I whipped Fed Ex into shape, and the package arrived a few hours before the segment.

The next issue was arose when my producer, the lovely Melissa, wanted me to hold up a pair of the black pants I was talking about before the models came out wearing them.  Problem was I only had enough pants for all five models, no extras.  So, we decided I would hold up the pants to talk about, and then pass them off to the producer after the camera went to the first model, so she could rush the pants to the last model who was standing off stage pants-less.  Well I wasn't totally sure when the camera had moved off of me, so if you pay attention you can see me throwing the pants off to Melissa's waiting arms for Tracy, our last model, to put on.  Fortunately, other than that minor flub, it all worked out.

I hope you all had a lovely Father's Day weekend.  I got an extra special treat last week by being invited back on WPIX in New York City to makeover some very deserving Dads.  Now, just to give you a little background on this segment before you watch, we had a lot of trouble getting Dads to do this makeover.  We wanted firemen, and they have such difficult schedules to maneuver, plus, it's a lot harder to get volunteers for these things than you would think.  So, the makeovers aren't totally transformative, but really just a fun thing for these Dads to do, and they got some great gifts from Lands' End, Louis Licari, King of Shaves and Coco-mat.

Also because of the scheduling issues, I didn't even meet or see these guys until the morning of the segment, which meant I had to get there super early.  Being there that early made me really groggy and kinda out of it at the beginning, so out of it that I actually asked one of the firemen if he had any kids!  To which he calmly replied in a rather thick Long Island accent "Uhh, I'm here for the FATHER'S DAY makeover, so yeah, I have kids."  It was a rough early morning for me.  In the end, I think it all went smoothly though.  What do you think?