FX/FXX TV's spy-turned-private detective Sterling Archer offers his margarita recipe. If, however, you're looking for a drink that's a bit more elaborate that the basic one preferred by the animated (in so, so many ways!) and self-absorbed bon vivant, check out the Food Network's myriad margarita recipes. Happy Cinco de Mayo! Or as we here in Texas know it, an official reason to enjoy a margarita, the state's unofficial mixed drink. No, today is not Mexican Independence Day. That's Sept. 16, a national holiday in Mexico celebrating the country’s independence from Spain. So mark your calendar for another special celebración... Read more →
Pop Culture
Some of the taxable goodies in this year's Academy Awards swag bag. (Photo: Distinctive Assets) An Oscar statuette, which is made of gold-plated bronze, costs around $400 to produce. Of course, the value to the winners is decidedly more, both emotionally and when it comes to negotiating their next film contract. But some 2025 nominees for the movie industry’s biggest prize, which will be handed out tomorrow night, already have received much more expensive tokens. Yes, we’re talking about the annual Academy Awards swag bag goodies. This year, Distinctive Assets prepared gift bags for the 25 nominees in the Academy... Read more →
UPDATE, Monday, Feb. 10, 2025: Yes, that's green font in honor of Philadelphia's Super Bowl LIX win last night. I'm taking solace in that it took a Texan, Houston native Jalen Hurts, to lead the Eagles to the title. Did you place a prop bet on last night's NFL championship game? If it paid off, you owe tax on the winnings. Check out the results of some of the most popular Chiefs-Eagles prop bets. Super Bowl LIX is Sunday. It's a rematch between the Kansas City and Philadelphia. KC is looking to take home a third consecutive Lombardi Trophy. The... Read more →
Giving the perfect Christmas gift for your true love can be better than receiving a present. It also can be costly if you use "The 12 Days of Christmas" lyrics as your shopping list! Stubborn inflation means a costlier holiday season. That’s especially true of Christmas gift givers who follow the True Love shopping list in the classic carol The Twelve Days of Christmas. The 41st annual PNC Bank Christmas Price Index® (PNC CPI), which is based on a whimsical tabulation of the price to gift all dozen items in the song, rose 5.4 percent. That’s double last year's 2.7... Read more →
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (left) sits on the Lake Erie shore next to the Great Lakes Science Center (right) in Cleveland's North Coast Harbor. (Photo by Rona Proudfoot, CC BY-SA 2.0) For years, Austinites have been the target of the Buckeye State, and I’m not talking college football. A couple of years ago, billboards popped up in the Austin, Texas, metro area suggesting that Ohio had plenty of cool places to live that were less expensive. Now, the Ohio promotions are in television ads. And just as the Lone Star State capital’s annual Austin City Limits (ACL)... Read more →
Boo! No, it’s not Halloween yet, but today is just as scary for some. They suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia, the fear of Friday the 13th. Fear also is often associated with taxes. With another tax deadline on Monday — the Sept. 16 due date for the third estimated tax payment of the 2024 tax year — today is a good time to acknowledge, and start to overcome the associated fears of, some scary tax misinformation that just won't go away. Here are 13 tax misperceptions that once you know them and the right tax moves to make, you can become a... Read more →
Photo by Luca Dugaro on Unsplash The 2024 Olympics, summer games version, started today with lots of men’s football (soccer to us Americans) and rugby matches on the schedule. Most of us, though, won’t start paying close attention until Friday’s (July 26) opening ceremony. Tennis phenom Coco Gauff and NBA superstar LeBron James, stars at the professional level in their respective sports, will be the Team USA flag bearers. Not only is Gauff the first tennis player to get the opening procession honor, at 20 she is the youngest U.S. Olympian to do so. That’s a fitting complement to veteran... Read more →
Unsplash+ in collaboration with George Dagerotip President Joe Biden last week endorsed the Department of Justice's (DoJ) move to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug. Biden said in social media posts — X (aka Twitter) and YouTube — that the move would reverse “long-standing inequities” under the current criminalization of cannabis. "Look folks, no one should be in jail merely for using or possessing marijuana," the president said in his video statement. Not legalization, but lowering federal interest: The Justice Department move would not legalize marijuana outright for recreational use, which currently is the... Read more →
Photo by Aidan Howe on Unsplash U.S. commercial gambling revenue hit a quarterly record of $17.67 billion in first three months of 2024. It marks the gaming industry’s 13th consecutive quarter of growth, according to the American Gaming Association. And Caitlin Clark hadn’t even played a Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) game yet. Clark’s WNBA May 14 debut with her Indiana Fever facing the Connecticut Sun drew an average television audience of 2.13 million viewers, making it the most watched WNBA game in almost 23 years. I’m willing to bet, pun intended, that is also was the most bet on... Read more →
Shortly after MLB superstar Shohei Ohtani joined the Los Angeles Dodgers, a federal sports gambling scandal involving his now-former translator Ippei Mizuhara broke. This week, Mizuhara (below left), agreed to a plea deal. (Mizuhara photo by Moto "Club4AG" Miwa from USA - Angels vs Mariners 2019-6-8 Anaheim Stadium, CC BY 2.0. Ohtani photo by All-Pro Reels from District of Columbia, USA - Dodgers at Nationals, CC BY-SA 2.0.) Sports and courts too often coincide outside the usual tennis venues. Leagues are sued by competitors. Broadcasting rights battles are litigated. Players’ union grievances are heard by various judges. Individual players sometimes... Read more →
Elizabeth Magie portrait over her The Landlord’s Game board. (Photo: Wednesday’s Women) Rent or buy? Taxes are a part of the equation when making that crucial property decision. Taxes, or rather a specific type of tax, also was the impetus for a real-estate-based board game that morphed into (or, some would say, was appropriated by) what we now know as Monopoly. The game of property purchases and their rental rates when placed on prime gameboard landmarks has remained popular since its launch in 1933, thanks in part to hundreds of licensed spinoffs. And while Charles Darrow, an unemployed salesman in... Read more →
Allegiant Stadium will be filled with 49ers and Chiefs fans Sunday as they vie for the NFL championship in Super Bowl LVIII. (Photo: Allegiant Stadium) This Sunday, millions will watch the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers face off in Las Vegas to determine the National Football League's championship. With the Sin City location, it's fitting that a record 67.8 million American adults are expected to bet on Super Bowl LVIII. That's a 35 percent increase from 2023, according to a new American Gaming Association (AGA) survey. The dollar amount also is up this year. Bettors plan to wager... Read more →
Photo via Unsplash+ in collaboration with Getty Images College football fans are in heaven. The 2023 NCAA bowl season is underway. The first of the 42 games kicked off this morning in with Georgia Southern meeting Ohio in the Myrtle Beach Bowl. The event's sponsoring name notwithstanding, the event is actually more inland, at Brooks Stadium in Conway, South Carolina. There are six more games today, all as appetizers to the main menu meal, the College Football Playoff National Championship Game in Houston on Monday, Jan. 8, 2024. The one downside this year is the number of notable players —... Read more →
Shopping with your true love can be fun, but you'll probably have to make a separate, solo trip so you can surprise your partner. And if you want to buy any or all of the true love gifts in "The 12 Days of Christmas" carol, you also will want to make sure you have lots of cash or a large credit card limit. (Photo via Unsplash+ in collaboration with Getty Images) Even though inflation has slowed this year, Americans are still grumbling about prices. But it hasn't slowed holiday shopping. More than 200 million people went in search of perfect... Read more →
A rare annular, or ring of fire, solar eclipse is tomorrow, Oct. 14. NASA has more on the event. And if it's cloudy where you live or you're not in a prime viewing region, you can livestream the eclipse. October already is the spookiest month of the year, but things ramp up this weekend. Today, in case you haven't looked at a calendar, is Friday the 13th. Tomorrow, Saturday, Oct. 14, millions in the Americas will experience, at least in part, a rare annular solar eclipse. In the United States, the event will begin in Oregon around 9:13 a.m. Pacific... Read more →
Actor Bob Odenkirk in the season 4 finale of "Better Call Saul," where his titular character, after getting his law license reinstated, legally becomes Saul Goodman. (Screen shot from that episode's final scene) It's all good, man, for AMC Networks and Sony Pictures in their legal fight with Liberty Tax In August 2022, Liberty Tax Service sued Sony Pictures, the producer of "Better Call Saul," and AMC Networks, which broadcast the "Breaking Bad" prequel, for trade dress and trademark infringement. But apparently, attorneys for Sony and AMC were up to (OK, probably better than) Saul Goodman standards. They persuaded the... Read more →
Beyoncé on the Renaissance World Tour at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on June 1, 2023, (Photo by Raph_PH - BeyonceSpurs010623) I love music. I just ordered two CDs last week. That last retail admission should tip you off that my prime concert-going days are behind me. In one way, I'm glad. The cost to see my favorite musicians perform back in my day was reasonable, even then. Today's more youthful fans, however, are shelling out big bucks to attend concerts. Marketplace economics are part of the calculation. And emotion is part of the market. So scalpers, whose targets are... Read more →
Margot Robbie as the title character in the Barbie movie based on the iconic doll. (Photo courtesy Warner Bros. Entertainment) I haven't seen the Barbie movie yet, but as fan of filmmaking and owner as a child of a couple of Barbie dolls, I have been following the stories about the script, production, costumes, sets, and stars. But what really caught my attention were the tax remarks by the character portraying Barbie's creator. Barbie arrived in American stores in 1959 thanks to Ruth Handler, who along with her husband had founded the doll's corporate manufacturer Mattel a decade earlier. Many... Read more →
Real Madrid Carlo Ancelotti on the pitch sidelines (Photo: @MadridXtra Twitter screen capture) Spanish tax officials are not letting anything slide, especially when it comes to global celebrities. The tax evasion trial of pop star Shakira is scheduled to start this November. Now Carlo Ancelotti, coach of Real Madrid futbol club (for casual fans like me, that's a popular, and very valuable, soccer team), will stand trial for tax fraud for allegedly failing to declare image rights earnings in 2014 to the Spanish tax office. A Spanish judge said Ancelotti had "acknowledged" the actions which deprived the country's treasury of... Read more →
Great American Park vendor selling frozen treats and beer at a Cincinnati Reds game. (Photo by Chris Metcalf via Flickr CC) Happy MLB Opening Day! No, it's not an official holiday, but it should be. I've been to several Major League Baseball opening days in person over the years. It's great fun. It's also expensive. A ticket to a major league ballpark these days can blow a full grocery budget to bits. And speaking of food, the cost of concessions is outrageous. But since you no longer can bring in food — yes, I'm old enough to remember when we... Read more →