Happy New Year

(Photo: Fireworks at Navy Pier on Dec. 31. 2011: Brent Lewis/Chicago Tribune).

Following our recent trend of forgoing basketball commentary and publishing new posts exclusively on holidays (check out our last several posts -- they mark Christmas, Christmas Eve & Thanksgiving!), Drive and Dish wishes a happy New Year to all our readers and friends. Basketball commentary will likely return in the new future, but we won't be trying to keep up with all the other websites and blogs that hype up every crossover, dunk and loose ball foul from now until the NCAA Tournament and NBA Finals. Drive and Dish is a leaner and meaner operation than we were in our halcyon days of 2007 and 2008. We now have neither the personnel nor the time to cover college basketball and the NBA in a thorough manner. So we'll limit our output to occasions on which we have opinions which warrant new blog posts.

Apropos of our admission that since the economic crash of 2008, this blog has been running short on manpower and on time, it's probably worth noting that we've spent the last several months seeking the guidance of some of the most estimable public relations firms in the land (e.g., some of the most expensive PR firms in the land) to help us meet the challenge of mounting a comprehensive rebranding campaign in spite of our downsizing. After having taken in and deliberated over the combined wisdom of such esteemed PR pros (e.g., having blown through the stash set aside for our 2011 mortgage payments, car payments and utility bills), we've arrived at a new organizational motto: Quality over quantity.

So quality over quantity it is!

We may also upload the occasional DJ mix for all our readers and friends who keep asking us for new mixes (or for old ones that they've yet to hear).

Stay tuned...

Happy New Year!

Last week, Drive and Dish wished our readers a Merry Christmas by publishing a Christmas around the world post. This week, we'd like to wish our readers a Happy New Year, but we've decided to let you follow this Sky News link if you'd like to see how the rest of the world rang in the New Year.

2008 may have started off well enough, but in the face of a global economic meltdown and a U.S. recession, it ended on a bit of a rough note. Unfortunately, Drive and Dish hasn't entirely escaped the tough economic times. As such, we've had to make some difficult decisions. Among those has been the decision to reduce the number of content/image research internships Drive and Dish will offer in 2009. Look, Drive and Dish's budget is tightening, so we had to choose between retaining our content/image research interns or our Long Island Iced Tea drinking, table dancing, 21 year old, Pussycat Doll impersonating interns. We spent many hours debating the merits of the respective positions, but at the end of the day*, we decided that the tipsy Pussycat Doll impersonators were too vital to our day to day operations to do without (don't worry: they don't actually have to sing, they just have to dress like the PCDs and be ready to pop, lock and drop it on demand).

So since we no longer have content/image interns to write our blog posts, we're letting you, the Drive and Dish reader, follow this link to see images of New Year's Celebrations from around the world.

And we're handing the baton off to our friend Toki Wartooth (Joe) at Paint the Town Orange for New Year's commentary on the upstart 2008-'09 Illinois basketball team, and to our friends at Top Ten Chicago Sports for some fine Chicago sports related New Year's resolutions.

Happy New Year.

* Disclaimer: Drive and Dish's editors fervently dislike the cliche "at the end of the day," and only use it when attempting to project a sarcastic tone.

Although it's become practically ubiquitous throughout all segments of society, "at the end of the day" is often used as a business cliche. Frequently, in an attempt to seem erudite and sufficiently business jargon literate, a white-collar worker will utilize the cliche "at the end of the day" in a statement such as the following:

"Going forward, at the end of the day, we're at a tipping point where we're starting to see a paradigm shift. It is what it is, so, you know, we need to think outside the box in order to grow our business and optimize our position for (name of product or industry) 2.0."

Drive and Dish's editors have always bristled at the use of such cliche-ridden speech, business or otherwise. However, through the years, we've been subjected to it frequently.

(Image of Taipei 101 Tower: Sky News).