Christmas is going to be here …

… before you know it.

Anyone who reads the “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” by Gregg Easterbrook at ESPN.com’s Page Two gets a weekly update on “Christmas Creep,” the term he applies to the holiday season reaching deeper into the year in terms of music, store displays and other “signs of the season.”

I’m no fan of Christmas creep in the stores, but I am guilty of starting the Christmas music pretty early each year. And I’m a huge fan of the holiday season overall and always run the WordPress holiday snow on this blog (if you don’t know what this is, just come back around December.) One place it pays to plan ahead is with large Christmas decorations you intend to install outdoors.

If your outdoor holiday decoration plans include multiple elements working together, such as large Christmas ornaments complementing a display of Santa and his reindeer, you want to have your design completed in time to have all the different parts delivered and ready for display when you want to put them up. Few things are more forlorn looking than a team of reindeer surrounded by giant Christmas ornaments pulling an empty sled because Santa is stuck at a delivery hub somewhere south of the North Pole.

Anyone who is looking for large Christmas decorations should hit the link and head to Outdora.com. You can find a selection including everything from basic wreaths and garland to solar-powered ornamental light sticks to truly gigantic tree ornaments and holiday themed displays.

Christmas creep in the stores, in public events and in advertising can be pretty annoying for most everyone. Just ask Gregg Easterbrook. Planning ahead and having the best decorated yard in the neighborhood is something else altogether. Maybe you have outdoor decorations that go up each year as a holiday tradition. Check out Outdora’s large Christmas decorations to create some new traditions.

Just in time for the NFL season, TMQ is back

Gregg Easterbrook’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback is an NFL season staple. When he’s on it’s a great read and when he’s off the column is almost insufferable.

One aspect of TMQ is either a bonus bit of fun or just annoying depending on your perspective, but it’s a guarantee that along with pro football you’re going to get a random bit of commentary on either some of Easterbrook’s pet causes or maybe just something he’s researching for a magazine piece.

This week’s TMQ had a riff on the ongoing problems facing Fannie Mae, and a focus on corporate overpay scandals.

Easterbrook makes a great point with this bonus bit of business commentary.

From the link:

This is the core lesson of CEO overpay scandals: The corrupt or incompetent executive always keeps the money. He may be caught and embarrassed by bad press, but he keeps the money while someone else — shareholders, taxpayers, workers — is punished. Raines recently settled a federal legal complaint by agreeing to return about $3 million of his $50 million, but kept the rest; his employment contract was worded such that even if he was malfeasant, whatever he took from company coffers was his. Hilariously, federal prosecutors claimed victory because Raines “surrendered” to the government a large block of stock options — options now worthless, owing to the Fannie Mae decline Raines helped set in motion by lying about Fannie numbers. Until Congress enacts a law that allows money taken by corrupt or incompetent executives to be recovered, the lying will continue. Lying by CEOs is what society rewards!

Is Spygate now Spyscam?

Gregg Easterbrook drops the mask, so to speak. He writes the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column at ESPN.com (and previously at ESPN.com and NFL.com before again returning to the mouse) and it’s part funny, part satire, part pompously under-informed, part just a cool bit of sports opinion. I enjoy TMQ, warts and all.

Easterbrook is also a respected journalist and think tanker. The article linked above is Easterbrook writing as a journalist, and opening the notebook up a bit more than most journalists would reveal. Over this entire season he ragged the Patriots, and head coach Bill Bilichick, for the Spygate business. He also went after the league, his onetime employer.

This story covers the process of how and why Spygate became a story again right before New England tried to win another Super Bowl. The gist is the NFL, by choice, didn’t face any scrutiny before it had no choice at pre-game press conferences. The other point is evidence gathered by investigative reporting made it obvious there was more to the story of New England’s cheating.

At this point Congress is in the picture and things will not get any easier for a Patriot team that just lost a heartbreaker of a Super Bowl.