Grousing round the big blue marble

In the car on the way to school today, during a discussion of which instruments Margaret and other neighborhood girls were playing or thinking of playing, Natalie informed me (and I already knew this, mind you) that Ruth's sister Nora is learning to play the cello. However, it comes out like this "Ruthis sister Nora is learning to play the jello." I know I should probably be helping her with her pronunciation. But how are you gonna beat a sentence like that?

Meanwhile, in Djakarta, somebody was Googling the phrase "hortatory text," and I'll be damned if the Indonesian Google didn't put my entry from flying back from San Antonio a couple of weeks back #3 in its search. Google.com puts it on the third page, nestled in amongst a bunch of academic claptrap that doesn't mention spaghetti straps at all. Shortly thereafter, someone peaked at me from Amsterdam. By gum, you've got to love this so-called "internet" thingie.

A soft evening

After considerable Sturm und Drang, a lovely mild evening in the back yard. Graham had a late nap, so Mary instructed me to take the kids out there and run em down so they would sleep.

Natalie has, of late, taken to running races the length of the yard. Fortunately, she does not require that I race her every time. Sometimes she'll just go against the clock. Wearing the sharp orange outfit that Nora gave her for her birthday, and some cobalt butterfly sandals, back and forth she went, somehow miraculously achieving a back and forth time of 20 or 19 each time.

Later, she concocted some ball games, making up fine rules each time. When she's in this mode, she smiles and giggles almost as if she were 3 or 4 again, and not a mighty and often whiny 6.

Graham, for his part, ran a few races with the stroller but then concentrated on shovelling mulch into the wagon with a soup spoon. Resisting the call to come back inside for stories, he declared: "I just gotta finish with my garden." Clearly, he has learned much from Mary.

Signs of growth

Though the run-up to Natalie's 6th birthday party had its tensions, Mary and I were able to successfully make it through with only minimal sniping and no out and out yelling.

Likewise, the party itself was largely uneventful, and entirely dairy-free, for Graham's sake.

Graham, for his part, was observed to have eaten 10 pieces of watermelon. And then had a nasty blow-out.

Crash

This movie is equal parts Altman (the many parallel existences) Kieslowski (cosmic coincidence, operatic soundtrack) and Michael Mann (dudes driving in cars at night). For all that, and for all its occasional excesses, it's a pretty decent movie. It has a moral center, which can be reached in fewer than a hundred and one licks.

Sleep

What can I say. I'm just sleepy.

Driving around the Delaware with an investment banker looking for opportunities to package deals that we didn't quite find just yet. Nice little towns, though. Old mill-like housing stock and parks along the river with bandstands, but no post-industrial scenarios next to the rail line to bundle up for a developer. Alas.

Witherspoon Grill

Four guys holding forth on the subject of suburban angst and undertones of desire that aren't supposedly found in the city. Basically about how people want to fuck each others spouses out here because they're bored. Not new material, but groundbreaking for guys to discuss it. Vasectomies are also mentioned, as are kids being excluded from playgroup for being too rough.

Basically, we broke it down. Lettuce was consumed, oddly enough.

Reportage, or, saddle up!

After foolishly inquiring whether there was any press in the room today at the Mid-Atlantic Hedge Fund Association, Orin S. Kramer, Chairman of the New Jersey State Investment Council, which presides over New Jersey's $72 billion dollar pension plan, disclosed that the council had yesterday been discussing (with no resolution, mind you) upping the $800 million currently actually placed in hedge funds to $3.8 billion, with a substantial portion of that (can't read handwriting) to go to single-manager funds, rather than funds of funds.

Jon Corzine is, reportedly, booyah for upping the state's allocation, even if the fee impact is substantial, which could be politically damaging if the returns aren't good. For the electorate, this represents the moral hazard of electing a guy who doesn't need to care if he gets reelected.

Kramer also said that the NJ pension plans funding shortfall present value, officially put at $18 bln, could easily go up to $25 bln or $30 bln if you tweak your assumptions a bit. Like, for instance, not assuming a 9.8% return on equities.

Such a nice guy.

A bundle of contradictions, a typical drive

On the way to the dentist in Somerville, mind running after email of news that Jeff's medical school load out in St Louis has brought his marriage to its knees. Whatever torture I'm going through, that puts things in context. Career not that big a deal, however mired I may be in operational minutiae of crap about which, at the end of the day, I could care less about.

Then, on NPR a story about moving Stalin's body to Georgia, and I'm, like, I gotta get back to Russia.

Desparate confusion, because I really haven't determined the color of my parachute.

At the end of it all, back in the land of Cheever and Updike. Perennial conflicts and accomodations.

One of those days

The day drags on uncertainly, despite a steady stream of caffeine. Waiting for a phone call. Making others. Making hook-ups. Here a VOIP vender, there a Russian offshorer, elsewhere a former colleague looking for high end programmers (like I'd give em up if I had em).

Teaching the new Rumanian kid about things we do other than choo choo trains.

The sun, once bright, now hidden away. 5 o'clock almost here, and my own personal 5 o'clock not too too long afterwards.

McKinsey study of Asset Management in 2010. Good stuff, despite typo on page two.

Graham's poop greatly exacerbated by window that got stuck right around time we installed air conditioner. Can't wait.

Chatterbox

On Amtrak from DC today, this post-college guy was working this post-college girl and he used "Yale" every sixth or seventh word. And I believe she also went there. So why was he breaking that out so hard, like it was going to really impress her? It's sort of like saying, "you know, I breath this really cool stuff called oxygen."

I don't think it was gonna happen, though she kept right on jabbering with him. She was taller than he was, anyhow. And he had a wierd part in his hair. Praise the lord, she left, and he shut up.

Transgressions of the Babe

I heard some smarmy dude on NPR last night comparing Barry Bonds use of steroids (not illegal at time) to Babe Ruth's use of alcohol (illegal during Prohibition). He maintained that Babe Ruth was not stigmatized for breaking the law, and what was really going on was racism, just like when Hank Aaron took Ruth's record back in the 70s.

Which is a crock. I could give a rats ass about Babe Ruth, that pickle-eating jerk. And drinking liquor was breaking the law, but it wasn't cheating, and it didn't make him better or do him any good. He died at 53 of throat cancer from another vice, cigar-smoking.

Bonds, on the other hand, was cheating, using performance-enhancing substances to get better at his profession. Mark McGwire, a white boy, has gotten no free ride himself. The real problem with Bonds is not that he took drugs, but that he's a droid. He looks like a cartoon character.

Flavors of Anxiety

The first hot weekend of the year, we pulled off a trifecta, three straight days at the fountain by the Woodrow Wilson School. Water. Shade. Social life. Free. A good thing.

And Graham decided to go in the deepest part, maybe 18 inches, which is OK deep for him. And he wasn't 100% used to the water pushing his little legs around, and at some point in time I could see he was a little unstable. But he wandered out into the middle of the pool, and I stayed by the side talking to Ivy and Julie, watching him. Sure enought, he gets unstable and starts falling down, face in the water. So I go bounding out and get him, crying and scared.

And here's the thing. I knew he might fall over. I watched him. And when he did, though it was potentially life-threatening if I hadn't been paying attention, I stayed calm and went over and got him. I remember the same calm coming over me when Natalie was 2 and slipped in the pool and got her head wet. I just grabbed her and took care of her.

But the thought of not adding an attachment on an email to a new or prospectice client, or a typo, that fills me with dread and makes my skin crawl.

What's up with that? Why do relative non-issues get me all worked up, when I handle what should be stressful situations easily?

Memorial Day

Big day. Parade. Daniel and Caroline. Playground. The fountain at Woody Woo. Lemonade. Go-carts and a red 911 with Brandon.

Cookies.

Sleep.

Shopgirl

The opening shot of the Nicolas Cage vehicle Lord of War, which tracks the lifecycle of a bullet from factory to battelfield from the point of view of the bullet, is echoed in the opening of Shopgirl, which pans close range over myriad cosmetic displays before panning out to show a number of plasticky LA women. Clearly, there's a heavy dumanization groove going on. And then there's Claire Danes, who's "real," from Vermont.

And clearly we're back in the realm of Jane Austen and Eugene Onegin, the authentic woman set off against the artificial. And she in turn has two suitors, the rich guy with manners but no heart, and the goofball with heart. And Steve Martin who wrote the novel, spells out the rebus for us at the end, that our heroine chooses the doofus because he's for real.

With a certain slimming of the heavy historiosophical trappings of the Russian Novel of the 1840s-1850s, this is right out of my dissertation. The high tone of the film is no surprise for a guy who was, after all, a philosophy major back in the day.

It's fairly wooden, but in the end, it's surprising that Steve Martin got this movie made. The camera, and the plot, move so slowly. The characters aren't quite real, but they are sincere. There is a certain magic.

Continental from San Antonio to Newark

Up at 4:30 for a 6:40 flight. Joy of joys.

On board, happy to see that gender-coding in the bathroom made sense. On the diaper-changing table, a picture of a woman changing a diaper. However, the "don't throw trash in the toilet" picture was of a guy.

The girl sitting behind me, all 20 years of her, wore a maroon spaghetti string tank top with gold (as in shiny) trim. In her notebook, I saw that she was writing some sort of hortatory text, perhaps a poem: "Don't give up, you're only as big as your dreams...." It's good to see our young people wax literary.

Despite my fuzziness, I struggled through The Economist Survey of International Banking. I now understand Basel II. Sort of. Feel richer.

Outside San Antonio

Yesterday evening I headed away from I-10 from the back of our Hampton Inn in the 95 degree heat of dusk. Saw a mid-eighties Black Firebird, pretty well preserved, like the Knight Rider car. A boarded up ranch house next to police station across from cosmetic surgery facility, along a trash-strewn road. Chocolate milk bottle. Who drinks chocolate milk in this heat?

Gated communities, an oddity back east. The first one I saw was nice, made sense in the context. The next one out was not. I walked off the road along a power line behind cheap gated community. All the houses' shades were drawn. There were fences between the $200-250k houses, and the backyards were pathetically. All the dogs were aggressive. What are these people afraid of? The Chinese Baptist Church out back?

Still, it's pretty intense and beautiful trees, with huisache and persimmon trees. Or something like that.

My day job

Recall, if you will, the Riddle of the Sphinx: "What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?"

And the answer: man (crawl, walk, cane).

According to this logic, I'm in the middle of the day now.

And so my job must be my day job, which is why after six years it still feels like a day job, complete with substantial day dreaming. And the question would be, when will the day end, and should I be excited about that, or should I view it with foreboding, as another step towards the grave. Or, to put it another way, will I ever be able to extricate myself into something where I won't be so disengaged.

I remember how Kafka and Max Brod struggled so to find a job where they could work in the morning and then snap up their bowlers and go home and write in the afternoon. Did OK by Kafka, least till he died so young of TB.

Arkansas!

The soda machine at the office out here in San Antonio costs 60c for a 12oz-er. Not bad. Today as change I got back an Arkansas quarter, which I believe is one of the ones that Natalie and I did not find when we went through all the quarters in the house a couple of weekends ago. I put in in a napkin in the front pocket of my knapsack.

Somebody remind me about that when I get back to New Jersey. I gotta give it to Natalie.

Eeyore

The pronunciation of the Milne's eternally gloomy pinnee of the tail would appear to be something of bellwether here at 29 Linden.

Natalie said "Ore" in her formative days.
Graham his "Ee-ore," in two distinct movements.

I realize that only family members might care about this kind of thing, and then to some limited extent. But this blog is my archive, too. If only blogger/google would get off its butt and let me download the whole thing to Excel or .csv or suchlike, then I'd really be in good shape. So those of you who don't like this kid stuff can go read Wonkette.

Snow White

Haven't been writing about the kids much lately. Now I'm sitting between them with Snow White on. The yodelling song is on, and Graham is bouncing off walls.

Apparently, when I came in the door, Graham said: "Daddy's home. I like him. He's a nice guy." Damn, it's good to hear that somebody thinks that.

It's pretty cool that the kids are into the classics like this. Of course, we don't let them watch much else, so go figure.

Now they're eating pear. Smacking and slurping.

Today is not Thursday

Turns out, it's Wednesday.

But I went through the day thinking it was Thursday. In the morning I talked to Bob and Simon about a meeting we've got planned for Friday. I referred to it as "tomorrow." In the afternoon I drank the Coke that I allow myself on Thursdays. It was good.

Then Webb tells me that we've got 2 freakin JADD sessions over at the dusty client. I have to actually work tomorrow.

Gradually, I've adjusted to the new reality of Wednesday. At least I've aged more slowly than I thought I had.

Hustle and Flow

From its description, I didn't think I was going to like this movie. My pimping days have long since past, and I really don't need a lot of reminders about how hos be actin up.

But this turns out to be the ghetto Breakfast Club, a feel-good movie in which we all see a little bit of ourselves. We all understand how Djay yearns to fulfill his dream of being a rapper, and how that skinny white bitch needed to be paying for that mike "in kind", as it were. As the director reminded us during the special features interview, this was a movie about "women getting behind their men," which means giving it up if necessary, to be sure.

But seriously, it's a damned fine movie. I cried. The production values were spot on. And djay had the killer. It was surprising to find out the director was some white dude.

Piracy my foot

The Times today had an article about some French kid gettin all high and mighty about file-sharing: the record companies make too much money, says he, we get robbed. We'll get the artists paid by having some pricing system that'll reward the most popular.

What he neglects is that pop music and stardom are in fact all about getting robbed. People delight to throw their money away on people with big hair, elevator boots, leopard skin and turgid prostheses. Even the Fugazis and Sleater-Kinneys -- the white t-shirt crowd -- of the world need big labels to define themselves against.

If there's rational, transparent pricing, who will pay for the marketing and the excess that sets attraction and repulsion in motion. Could their be a David Lee Roth or a Britney Spears in such a world? We may yet see.

"When you were younger"

Downtown to meet Reardon for lunch today, walking around the old West Village nabe checking things out. Happy to see that Patisserie Claude was still there, and, in it, Claude. After making my purchases, I engaged the fair Frenchman in conversation. "Ahh yes," he said, his voice smooth with french butter, "I remember you, you used to come in here when you were younger." Hmmmmm. Never heard exactly that phrase tossed my way, but indeed it was true, I was 28 when I first came in there, early in our relationship when I'd get two pastries before heading out to the dog run because, in my mind, croissants were'nt really food, they were more like condiments in bread form. Just like bacon was a condiment in meat form.

This, sadly, or felicitously, depending on your point of view, was at the beginning of my education at the hands of Professor Berridge. It is not an interesting story.

Deep in the woods

Today in other offices of the firm discussed yesterday. Wood Hall. Just off of cafeteria. Again, as if in a time warp or even a parallel universe. Styles, hair and otherwise, strikingly retrograde. Geeks in the woods, discussing assessment. In 4 hours of powerpoint and worse, scarcely a sound was uttered about cost. And yet, nobody'd living large, the money's just pouring out. As a consultant, you'd have to love it, were it not so spooky. As a taxpayer, you feel otherwise.

Into the Netherworld

Seemed like a good idea for a change of pace, head out and do a little work for another client. But this was downright creepy, this E-T-S, world famous administrator of standardized tests.

At the door, serious security, lest their fabled IP, their test questions, be compromised: "All hats and scarves must be removed."

Up on the floor, a zombie-like condition obtained. Drowsy programmers performed slow half turns of their heads, before reverting to their screens. Worn carpet and cubes of early 90s vintage. Coming round a bend, I half-expected to trip over a basset hound scratching fleas off himself with his hind legs. But I saw him beforehand, and didn't trip.

In the project manager's office, we met to prepare for the next day's meeting. Coders appeared at the door asking for sign-off on bug fixes so they could be released to production.

F*ck&ng Word

40 minutes of grinding away, trying to hit a deadline, reduced to nothing by the demons of Redmond. Actually, not just them. Them in tandem with the pond scum of IBM's Notes division, as Notes for some reason refused to open Word docs like it normally does, and then they popped open and froze Word just as I was spell-checking. For some reason the autosave failed. And it looks like autosave is set up right.

Luckily what I was working on wasn't really all that important, but still. Vexing. On top of a bad night of sleep and a horrendous knot in my back. Delight.

A grey day indeed

After a springie weekend, the second in a row, a grim, cool, grey day. Which is fine, had it only not been corroborated by depressing meetings and news of depressing meetings I wasn't invited to. At least I haven't gotten any big bills I wasn't expecting. Yet.

Took Graham to see the emu farm on Aunt Molly Road. He wasn't entirely sure about them. I can't imagine why.

Trouble writing

Having trouble thinking of topics to write about after a friend up in Boston was just telling me about a couple getting caught having sex in the storage room at work. They're both married, to other people, got to work on a project together and bingo, bunny time!

Who actually does that shit? I thought that was what the USA Network was for, to work that kind of thing out.

In other news, will venture onto the basketball court today for the first time in years.

Another modest proposal

Cemex revolutionized the concrete business by sending out trucks along the ring road around Mexico City each day and having dispatchers rout them to construction sites when site managers called. They found that, without planning for specific jobs, they could deliver concrete to sites in an average of 45 minutes.

Here's my plan: do the same thing with consultants, or lawyers. Have them head out to airports and along major highways in the morning, cellphones and powerpoint at the ready. Dispatchers can send them out as needed to work sites.

It'll save so much time on sales and marketing and whatnot.

Power hungry

"Next time you have a change of address affix the sticker on the rear of your license so we can see the change, alright."
"You need to turn off your phone."

Ahh, empowering the powerless, in this case at New Jersey DMV, where low-paid state drones got to massage their egos by getting stern with guys like me. And why not? I say. Better that than having them beat their spouses, you gotta figure. Give em a common enemy to light into over TV dinners, the guys in the Volvos and BMWs. At least their pensions plans are rock solid. Not.

One for the road

As Jim and I were standing on the sidewalk talking and watching his son Zeke make frowny faces, our neighbors' minivan pulled out of driveway, with the generously-proportioned matron -- whom we shall call Salma -- in the passenger seat. I could not help but notice that she was eating corn on the cob, which is not on most people's lists of car food. Mmmmm.

They came by butterfly

It was one of those evenings for which God most likely would have invented New Jersey, had He existed.* 65 and mild in the backyard, flowers a bloom, sandbox. A new visor from Elijah's 5th birthday party. Dinner at the picnic table.

And then, from behind the walnut tree, they came flying on the backs of butterflies, the fearsome aliens.




*And I do mean He, as male is the gender most consonant with absence. If God were a woman, She would exist.

It's pathetic

but typical that it's a fine spring day, and I should be headed home, but I'm stuck in this lame basement fulfilling a contractual obligation to text production. I in fact have nothing to say which fits within the confines of bloggable material, oodles outside of it. But that's another story.

Our nation's capital

Union Station, where 20 years ago, after I had hit a bowl coming off the Amtrak going between New Haven and Chapel Hill, this guy picks me out of a crowd from across the room and says, "Hey, dude, come here, I've got the stickiest, hairiest bud. Here, smell my fingers" I swear that's what he says to me, and like an idiot I do and I give him a twenty for an eighth or something, and he says: "Wait right here, I'll be back." So I wait. And wait. And my train's supposed to leave and where's my dude and my eighth and I run back to the train and barely make it on, swearing and cursing, having somewhat learned my lesson.

A cab in Washington is $6.50 anywhere downtown. In Princeton it's like $16 from the train station to my house. If only this could be arbed.

There are all these well-coiffed prewar and International Style apt buildings, but where do the people buy milk and cheese doodles, I ask you. There are no convenience stores. Don't get it.

Much to do

Must bustle to get ready to head out of town. Check train schedule. Pick up suit. Confer with elders.

And in the middle of that write a note to my godfather, who is apparently in, shall we say, rather poor health. He who gave me my guitar. I haven't seen him for years. He didn't make it up to my wedding, though he bankrolled a good little chunk of our honeymoon in Italy. It is an odd chore to dash off a note to someone whom you may never see again, particularly in the middle of making calls to various recalcitrant would-be clients, like the one who said she would call me back in two minutes 3 hours ago. From the sublime to the ridiculous, as the Hegelians would say, is but a shlep.

Hear here

I got a piece of mail on Saturday that looked like junk mail, until I saw a sticker on it that said "From Chad Ludington." That's a diabolical marketing ploy, I thought. In fact, it was no ploy at all. Inside was a brochure and a letter from Chad, in which he courageously writes that he has been losing his hearing for the past 15 years and has set a goal for himself to raise a million dollars to fight hearing loss.

Chad is the only person to have been with me in childhood, at college, and in graduate school. His father, the so-called "Townie", placed me at left-halfback on my first day of soccer back in 1972, a decision from which I've almost recovered. At 15 years, Chad's hearing malady was not long-enough running to account for his scandalous inability to dunk when he returned from Exeter at 6'4" in 1980, but nor did it stop Chad from waxing me 15-0 one-on-one in 1990 (I think I hit the backboard once). This was during a period when I had momentary delusions of ball. Chad cured me of those.

Around 35 million Americans suffer from hearing loss, and that's just Americans. 80% of all hearing loss is sensironeural in nature, which implies that focused research could have a real impact, and indeed real progress has been made in the last few years. To date, the National Organization for Hearing Research Foundation has raised $7.5 million. This modest capitalization means that the marginal impact of every dollar donated is high, and there's a good chance that it can help fund a solution.

So I ask you all today to help Chad work towards his goal of raising a million for a cure by donating by credit card or check to the:

National Organization for Hearing Research Foundation
225 Haverford Avenue
Suite #1
Narbeth, PA 19072-2234

And stick Chad's name in the comment field so he'll know when he's reached his initial goal, on the way to his ultimate goal of a cure.

Fresh Air, no Terry Gross

Brow furrowed, work on the lobe, I piled into the car and stuck in the new CD Kevin had handed me last week. Through the funk cuts the unmistakeable, undulcet tones of Stephen Merritt and the Magnetic Fields: All the Umbrellas in London. There's nothing like a good song to reconfigure everything and put you, as they say, in the moment. Though which moment you're in is unclear. Could be a vision of the future, or, with an oldie, or, as the Magnetic Fields are wont to write, a pseudo-oldie, in an alternate time and space. Whatever. Gotta like it.

Whatever it is, it's better than the present of work, if not the the alternate competing futures to which work might lead. A little holiday.

Sometimes I think, rather Bachelardianly, of the car as an extension of my skull.

Clubland

Wednesday AM The Nassau Club, Princeton
Wednesday PM The Harvard Club, NYC
Thursday AMPM The Princeton-Columbia Club, NYC

At some point in time today I came out of the bathroom and saw a portrait of Princeton prez Shirley Tilghman and I was, like, what's that doing in the Harvard Club? Then I remembered where I was.

In these clubs, people aren't popping ecstasy and drinking Red Bull drinks. No sir. It's all about suits, business cards, hand-waving, and prognosticating. What they share with night clubs is attitude, including ladies with attitude, like the skinny blonde bitch from Pacific Investment Management with a powder blue blackberry and a ridiculous scarf knotted around her neck. I didn't waste breath getting her card, of that you can be sure.

The Harvard Club sports an obscene amount of Crimson. It's like, OK, I get it. Nice book-filled rooms. The Princeton-Columbia Club, on the other hand, is decorated like something out of A Family Affair. Kinda lacks flavor. Food OK in each.

Jobs jobs jobs

In Silver Spring we saw signs on the side of buses: "Cable means 10s of thousands of stable jobs", sure it does. Until a disruptive technology blows it out of the water. Or, alternately, cable becomes a counterproductive legacy with lots of overhead, and a net cost. Could be. Don't get me wrong, I love my cable, even if Mary wants to get rid of it and we really don't watch it, but producing jobs is not a reason to patronize something. Producing value is. Similarly, on the side of 95 coming North into Philly there were pro-dredging signs which cited job production as a rationale. Idiocy. Dredging is good or it isn't. What kind of next jobs would come out of a terminal dredging project? Lots of skilled dredgers? Job creation is not a good rationale for utility selection or public works, particularly when unemployment is 4.7%.

The 1979 Accord

At mom's house over the weekend, going through the tons of crap that's been waiting for me in the attic lo these many years, I found a 1979 copy of Road Test magazine, which reported on all the hottest cars of the year. I did a little research on gas mileage from back in the day, which I remembered as being a lot more impressive than what we get on average these days, which makes no sense, given how much more power we can get with less now. And indeed, I found clunky looking Chryslers getting 37 mpg on the highway, 31 around town. What was striking was how hard I had look for mileage info in those post oil-embargo days. It wasn't featured all that prominently in the ads or in the reviews.

But there was the '79 Accord, its horsepower boosted from 68 to 72. Ready to rock. The 2006 starts at 166, ranges up to 244. Driving Cyrus' felt like being in a frickin Firebird. Impress your friends with your macho Accord. yeah right.

In country

Had coffee with my dad in Hillsboro. Ironically, dad finds himself once again in a Volvo, years after distributing framed quotes from Trevanian disparaging them as not worth driving.

Headed north to Roxboro to meet Mary and Mom in Roxboro. Stopped for a Cheerwine at convenience store. Woman at counter was from the West Bank.

Turned East on 57, into the country. Pine trees, dogwoods, green springing out. Passed taxidermy shops, antique store, general store, hair salons running out of trailers. Country. Oldsmobiles with huge shiny bling wheels, a style feature I associated with the other ghetto. Signs for the county sherriff race, in which a guy named Dempsy faced down another named Duffy.

In Roxboro, stopped at Pete's Sandwich Shop to get burgers "all the way" (i.e. chili, slaw, mustard, onions). It takes 20 minutes, as regulars come in and order around me, and the counter girl gets them hot dog after hot dog as our burgers got overdone. Reminded me of what it's like to be an outsider in an insular small town, as my mother was when she came back to Roxboro after her divorce to perk up the business grandfather had founded in his retirement as an excuse to get out of the house, drink, and play cards in the day time: the trailer parks. But that'll have to wait for another grouse.

Itinerary

4/13 4:04PM Go home, pissed for missing train
4/13 5:15 Undeterred by sane counsel, head off from Princeton into NY Metro rush hour to cross Hudson, into Westchester
4/13 7:30 Arrive Larchmont. Rush hour has added 30 minutes to normal trip
4/13 8:00 Read stories. Graham under blankie between legs during Natalie's
4/14 1:30AM Stupid cat meowing at top of stairs
4/14 8:55 Depart Larchmont for Princeton
4/14 10:30 Arrive Princeton. Pick out outfits for dinner. Get sandwiches from Wild Oats.
4/14 11:30 Depart Princeton for Philly airport
4/14 12:05 Try to eat shitty roast beef sandwich. No mayo.
4/14 12:25 Arrive Philly airport. Get Mayo.
4/14 2:15 Depart Philly. In flight listen to blonde teenagers provide good argument for why America is doomed: "Wouldn't it be totally sweet to, like, have a private plane?" "Like, totally sweet."
4/14 3:55 Arrive RDU
4/14 4:30 Arrive Chapel Hill

Motherfucking NJ Transit

The train had just got there when I got to the Dinky and started buying my ticket. By the time the ticket was done, the train took off. No "All aboard." No nothing. Jackass.

70th and 10th, 6:30 pm 4/11/06

So it's Johnny's birthday, and I go and meet him a dive bar that he favors at 73rd and Amsterdam. "I'm gonna have to cut out at 6, he tells me."

5:30 I get there, he's gone around the corner to smoke a joint.
6:15 Wife calls. He needs to got pick up kid at school. I walk with. We pick up Jacob. He needs to feed the kid. Burger King, naturally.

On the street, Johnny's telling me how he's now the man at work, where they've got half a billion dollars to invest in hedge funds and traders.

Behind us, a guy who looks kinda like Huey Lewis is listening. He bustles up to us.
"Excuse me, I couldnt' help overhearing. I used to be trader at Tudor (a big fund), I'm trying to get back into it." Johnny gives card, invites follow up, goes into BK Lounge for Kingnuggets and fries.

Trader man continues to regale me with anecdotes. Was with Tudor. Founded own shop in World Trade Center. Whoops. Got rear-ended and fucked up his back. On and on.

I try to get away. He comes into BK and hits Johnny with more and more qs. Like a pit bull. Nearly psychotic. Maybe you want that in a trader.

Drunks in a bar

Don't spend much time in them, so I forget what it's like, the delusional conviviality, the tragic lameness of it all. A woman sat there at the corner of the bar for some time. Not particularly attractive, as those who sit at bars a lot tend not to be, but it turns out everybody knew her, and recounted meetings at other bars. Then she got a quarter to use the pay phone on the wall. As I watched her, it took a little while to sink in, what she was doing. That's how long it had been since I saw a pay phone.

One guy recounted how he had had a burger, and then two hot dogs, and they were awesome.

And so on. I left.

Blonde lives

They each looked a little bit like Sharon Stone, sitting there on one of the nearly vertical end seats of the NE Corridor 7:01 Express. Like Stone worn down, with brown freckles from too much sun and the haughty disdain for those less blonde and a half disbelief that they were on the train at all. Sporting an odd amalgam of business and club wear. Had they been "working"? Would they drink a buttery Chardonnay when they got home? One had to wonder.

Home alone

Having the house to yourself seems like such a great idea. It's quiet. You're not driven by the same routines. You can watch sports.

But it's sort of barren too, and seems to foreshadow the days of empty nest which lie ahead, the quiet despair that Elivs Costello and John Cheever write about.

Better see what's on Comedy Central.

Lecture

Boris Mikhailovich Gasparov
Columbia University
*Lecture: “History of a Triplet. Pasternak and Scriabin”

245 East Pyne

Gotta go.

Tsunami

A giant sucking sound, so they say. Huge choo choo train project in Omaha. Unprecedently huge choo choo train project in Chicago. And nobody wants to work on them. What to do? Will there be a place for budding practice areas like mine?

I know this isn't what anybody wants to read about on a blog, but it's to think about anything else. And I gotta post something.

Madison & 44th, 11:57AM

Zip-up suede coat with some funky collar. Herringbone pants. Heels of some sort. Fade-up sleek moderne wraparound shades. Sixty years old if she was a day. Strutting like a member of Fat Albert's crew, pumping up and down I swear to God. You don't see women work it like that but so often, expecially of that vintage.

At least not out here in demure Princeton.

Her'd on the street

On Witherspoon today, under the lovely white blooms of whatever those trees are, passed by the wife of a prominent local poet, a person whom I've met maybe 50 times over 6 years. A woman at one time known for dropping off her kids at my neighbor's house with no prior warning so she could go, for example, shopping. She walked right past, refusing eye contact.

What's up with that?
Are people really that oblivious?
Or do they just work hard to pretend?

In any case, I hope she's gotten over the insane jealousy which beset her when the launch of her passably-reviewed novel was completely overshadowed by the bestselling debut novel of Curtis Sittenfeld. I know that was hard.

Into the belly of the beast

Soccer has begun. A couple of weeks ago we got Natalie her first cleats and shin guards and socks. Which she tried to wear to bed. For a while it looked like soccer might have been nothing but an accessorizing opportunity, but maybe she will actually get into the game.

9AM Saturday. Soccer time. Off to the Y we go. Whoops! It's not at the Y, it's at the park, of course. Off to the park we go. But, this being New Jersey, you cannot park at the park. So we park on the street.

Down on the field, swarming. By the sign-up table, even more. She's on team B-10, which is on field 10, as depicted on the schematic drawing. But out on the field, swarming. Which is field 10? Dunno. There's Lauren on field 6. We'll go there.

Ball put in play. Swarming. Run here, run there. There are girls to whom it comes naturally. Natalie is not one of them. When the ball is thrown at her, she shrieks, she quails, she flashes those pearly whites. Afterwards, a play date...

The scene changes. Sunday. Back yard. For years Natalie has resisted entreaties from dad to play soccer. No longer. It's time to play kick the ball in the goal. Three goals means you get a goal. Goals don't count if the goalie touches it before it goes into the goal. And so on. A little enthusiasm.

From his perch in the sandbox, Graham observes...

Talking to the IRS

My refund did not show up in my account for the second week running, so the Santa Barbara Bank & Trust (how did they score this gig). So I called up the IRS and talked to operator #5201945 (or so she said). And they're telling me they never received my check for capital gains. And it's not reflected in either of my checking accounts. Hmmm.

Who is this man?

At Bank of America's site, today, counting my scant nickels, when whom should I chance to espy but the fellow up top, kicking it with a cup of joe and a laptop. Which struck me as ironic, given his striking resemblance to this dude below, a certain David E. Shaw, founder and grand poo-bah of D.E. Shaw, one of the oldest quant shops on Wall Street. Ironic, you say, why so? Perhaps because Shaw, back in '97, had established an alliance with BofA, allowing it to play derivative games much like the ones played by John Meriweather's Long-Term Capital Management. When LTCM gave new meaning to the term systemic risk on August of '98, Shaw sustained similar losses, ultimately resulting in a $372 million write-off that nearly scuttled the BofA - Nationsbank merger. Substantial bloodletting ensued at Shaw, rumored to have reached 25% of staff in a single day, 90% overall.

Shaw has bounced back just fine, and is not poor. He continues to be able to hire smart people, and even bought FAO Schwarz, the ultimate toybox. But I didn't expect to see him poster-childing for BofA.

Pro forma post

Well, it's the end of another day and I've got nothing really to write about, only a perverse feeling that I've got to churn something out.

Highlights of the day include:

• Staring at my screen trying to decide whether to call or email these hedge fund dudes I went to college with.
• Settling on the email method
  
• Obsessively editing the email to make sure it hits the right notes
• Sending it

It's striking how agonizing it can be to initiate discourse with people you don't know.

But hell, it's spring. Lunch on the piazza.

Poop in tub

Graham put soy nut butter in his hair on Sunday. Globs. So we stuck him in the tub, despite his screams. He calmed down with the new froggy toy that makes a little ribbit. Then he pooped. Super, we thought. Took him out. Doused him in disinfectant. As it were.

So the next night his hair was still dirty. I run another tub. He poops again, gloriously unaware.
This time we clean the tub, run another bath and stick him back in. Wash hair, to the tune of more screaming.

The soy nut butter is gone. For the moment, at least.

Foggy

With the knowledge that my cozy little world and minimal commute will be all ripped up in a couple of month's time because my current client has shockingly decided it has spent enough ($1.5 million) money on us. Can I sell something else right there in town? There are leads, but it'll be a stretch.

So now I have to call people I don't know on the phone and sell them whatever they want. Or find them on the streets.

In other news, the one they call Squakin apparently is on track for some nuptials. We'll be meeting his lady friend in a couple of weeks at my greatiest 40th birthday party ever. It's gonna be grand.

Update from the brackets

I mused a few days ago about how validating it was to have my tournament picks ranking way up in the 90th-plus percentiles. Let me add that, now that my picking accuracy has plummeted to the 58th percentile, I no longer regard it as particularly significant.

Progress update

At the office in New York. Where a few months ago there were workmen and the world's most awe-inspiring crane throwing up the bare bones of a building, today stands a glass-sheithed 35-odd storied skyscraper. There is glass up to the 30th floor, and on the 16th, eye level to me, a guy is sweeping up. Is this a normal progression? Will he sweep his way along behind the upward progress of the building, or did he just spill his french fries? It's pretty late for a construction worker to have been eating lunch.

Meanwhile, along the building's exterior, construction elevators and their counterweights alternate with mesmerizing regularity, as if there were some swank club up there.

Story time

Graham was in fine form tonight, having had no nap. I began the reading with the 10o Trucks book, which I sometimes avoid because it takes too much time to read. We have to declare our favorite trucks on each page. At any rate he makes me do that.

But it had been a while since we had read this book, and yet Graham started off knowing all the names of the trucks. I was impressed. But after 6 or 7 trucks on the first page his memory waned, and he got frustrated with himself, flailing about and hitting his head on the wall. The wall didn't phase him.

And so we see that, at 2 and a half, his memory is prodigious, but imperfect, and it vexes him.

Parking ticket on a Bentley

That's what I saw on the way into the office. I can just see the person, handing the ticket to a personal assistant, if even bothering to do that.

Perhaps these cars don't have a place for change. Surely this suggests an enhancement: built in change dispensers. Maybe in the trunk with the tools.

Anyhow, I keyed it.

Diving in

Let it be known that, after leading my client's NCAA
tourney pool through the weekend, the second round
pushed me back into 2nd place in a field of 13, behind
my colleague Nathan.* Among the total pool of millions
of tourney players and high rollers, my percentile
ranking ranged from 96th to a current low of 84th.

What's pathetic is that, for someone who's never been
in a tournament pool before, who doesn't gamble and
really only pays attention to how UNC does at any
degree of detail (knowing starters' names, for
instance), and at a high level Duke and the rest of
the ACC, or at least the core ACC, how excited I would
be about all of this. I think it's the statistics that
turn me on, the objective measures of how many people
I seem to be outsmarting, even though I know there's a
very strong component of randomness to the whole
proceedings. And the numbers are the purest of
ephemera. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.


*Today is his birthday

Uchitelle on JOLTS report

Louis Uchitelle's Times article reads job gains figures as reflecting not tons of hiring but risk aversion: people are not leaving jobs at normal rate. Skill illiquidity? Surely, it gives rise to ossification, and a lack of cross-fertilization.

And it correlates to lack of ideas out there. There's nothing making people want to go and do things. The big idea now is Hedge Funds and Private Equity, balance sheet crap, not new products. There are diversification and risk dispersion benefits to be had, perhaps: thus far we've rode out GE downgrades, Katrina et al., Refco, etc. But as companies go private to skirt SOX, opacity rises, and things become more insiderish than ever.

People should have ideas.
Here's a few from within the Grouse ecosystem

Mind Alliance
Memory Miner
MTV Ukraine
Rick's Picks

Bitter sweet

So the Tar Heels got beat. It was never reasonable to expect them to do what they did this season anyway. It was almost worth it just to see the expression on the faces of those guys from George Mason as they figured out that they had pulled it off. I don't smile like that very often. And at least this makes it more probable that we'll get more good years out of Hansbrough.

Shoulder season and the living is easy

These intraseasonal moments rule from the point of view of beverage management. By God, you can leave your soda on the back porch and not worry about it freezing, and yet, it stays cold, so you don't have to plan vigilantly to pre-cool everything as you do in summer and winter is well, when the bevs are all toasty inside. Except in the wintry morning, when your cold-assed house with masonry frame walls has cooled the bevs in the pantry.

This may be less of an issue in middle america, where the houses are big enough for monster fridges and people don't pack em full of umpteen types of olives and mustards and whatnot. It's all so complicated.

Child risk management

On the way to school saw Steve Schultz in the rust Volvo Wagon, then Amy White in the fetching gunmetal Honda Odyssey. Both of them live within a stone's throw of me, less than half . And I know Lisa Levine was out there somewhere, from across the street, and I know the only reason we can't carpool is this thing about booster seats. Ya gotta have em, but nobody keeps spares around.

So what, really, is the greater risk? All these unnecessary cars on the road, or kids riding around without booster seats? Seems like the former is pretty bad, particularly in a town where there's a lot of pedestrians who are bound to get hit during rush hour as everybody sneaks through these beat-up residentail streets to get kids to school. Think of all the costs associated with the potholes, the freakin crossing guards at every corner.

They should have pools of municipal booster seats that the school dispenses and collects. Even better, all kids should carry knapsacks with detachable booster seats.

Then we could get them cars off the roads.

Single point of contact government

I tallied up my total tax burden today and, while in percentage terms it's not that horrific, it's still a fair number of dollars, a reasonable chunk of the cost of an full-time employee. Which got me to thinking. Wouldn't it be cool if you could have a dedicated government rep, and client services person who just did your bidding with the various agencies? Looked after your interests, and went to bat for you.

I could just see it. I call up and my rep says: "United States Government, oh, hello Clark, what can I do you for today."
And I'd be like: "Can you blindfold and whip some A-rabs for me down in Gitmo?"
Him: "Right away, no problem."
And then I'd be, like: "Hey, can you build me a chunk of highway out in Missouri?"
Him: "As good as done."

And so on. Twould be fabulous.

The man who swung both ways

Will Blythe's celebrated new book on the UNC-Duke rivalry, whatever it's called, contains a chapter about my dad, "The man who loved both UNC and Duke." Starts on page 294. For those of you familiar with my dad, you will see that Blythe did not fake anything. It is clearly based on either an actual interview, or legend. True to form, my dad recites poems, flits across many topics, curses, offends people at nearby tables, and even raps. He impresses Blythe with his shade of blue agnosticism, which is earnest and not entirely derived from beer revenues. Though Duke both in BA and JD, he criticizes young Dukies for "all coming from New Jersey and frowning a lot." I think all the young Jerseyites are just sad from yearning for the great Garden State.

Give em holes!

I'm sure many have thought this, but I'll just put two cents in. Some data points from the Philadelphia Zoo raise this question: why are there always lines for women's rooms but not for men's rooms?

Obviously, the ladies are in there using up lots of toilet paper cleaning up every drop, but we can't reform that. Clearly they should have more holes and square footage for the femme rooms in most public places. Yes, it feels great to be a guy and sail right through, but at the end of the day we pay the price by having to stand around waiting. And if there are free snacks (and there usually aren't) and you've quit smoking (as most of us have), there's no useful purpose to the time spent waiting for your wife to get out of the bathroom. OK. Sitting on a bench and resting has its virtues.

New frontiers in psychopharmacology

Recent clinical trials have shown that so-called "talk" couples therapy, for years the method of choice for helping challenged couples work through their issues and diminish instances of household corporal abuse, has been shown to be inefficacious in resolving these problems. As in so many other areas of psychological inquiry, chemico-neurological imbalances have been demonstrated irrefutably to determine spousal behavior.

A next generation set of drugs has just entered the marketplace, and it will transform marriage counselling as we know it. New pills by Warner-Lambert and Burroughs Welcome have proven to smooth over even the roughest marital patches, and some couples have reputedly taken to alternating them seasonally just for kicks.

Next up for the pharma industry: career counselling

Let them eat lingonberries?

Bored and hot in a windowless building where the heat is still on when it's 70 outside , I turn to random blogs for inspiration, and quickly find it. Some Swedish public health loon, with a passion for Swedish risk management. He he goes:

The difficult question is: Why did Sweden?s immense resources for prevention not identify that Swedes spent a lot of time on Tsunami prone beaches? Is this too much to ask for? No not in a country that has reduced domestic risks to extremely low levels.

What would he have the Swedish government do, refuse further visas when the concentration of Swedes on the beach was too high? Launch public health campaigns against visiting disaster-prone areas? Let them just stay home and watch hockey on the settee and eat cinnamon buns, that's what I say

Top this

Met a guy at a conference a year and a half ago. Sharp guy. Socialite type. Kept in touch a little. But he's been too busy to get together for coffee.

Today an email: "Graham, we need to get together my friend ... looking for a job and need one
pdq ... Here's my resume. Thoughts?"

So I look at his resume. And find such chestnuts as this: "Co-award-winning luxury gift bag creation; brands sponsorship including Davidoff, Cliquot, Christiania, Holly Kristen Couture, Maybach. "

Now, in certain circles, it's hard to compete with "Co-award-winning luxury gift bag creation." Just gotta find em. Am thinking.

Codicil. This came in on spam: "If you want personlized 401k rate of return graphics that drive new sales and retain existing clients this is for you." Stick that in your luxury bag.

Brary

Stopped into the Princeton library at lunch today to pick up... you guessed it, a book. Walked into the lobby cafe and marvelled to see that every single person in there was a woman. Except for the kids. Striking. Though, it's true, they serve tabbouleh and salads and the like, so there's little surprise.

My book was out, but I went to the general area to see if any of the adjacent books might be of interest. They weren't. Then I thought of another one, so I went to one of the computers and logged in. But where's the catalog icon? Not on the desktop, which would be a logical place. It's swell for my tax dollars to support internet access for cardholders, but I just wanted to look something up. Coulda launched a browser and gotten to the catalog over the internet, yeah, but that's a lot of work. The damned server was right through the wall.

Meanwhile, looked around at the mid-day library clientele. A bunch of sour folks, largely, radiating pride that the public domain afforded them such luxury.

Didn't get a book.

Purest Alpha

Here's one that came over the wires about a hedge fund scam in Chicago:

The three men promoted what they said was a risk-free investment that could yield profits of 10% per week. After giving the men US$25 million—US$23 million from a hedge fund Ms. Vaughn started in 2003 called Directors Performance Fund LLC, and US$2 million of her own money—that money was transferred several times and Ms. Vaughn eventually lost control of it

Never mind the monumental stupidity of the woman who got took. The SEC is prosecuting here as well as the guys. Think about the audacity of the guys that took her. Can you imagine sitting around thinking: "Lets find somebody stupid enough to believe in these returns", and then actually pulling it off, finding the sucker? That's top-notch suavity.

Oscar pans

Rachel Weisz should not have won best supporting actress for The Constant Gardener. No way. Amy Adams from Junebug actually acted. Weisz just traipsed and flounced, for the most part, through a crappy movie.

John Stewart flirted with danger all night. You could sense the crowd willing him out of his acerbic shell to a wuzzah wuzzah. Haven't had time to read the reviews, but I doubt he's establishing a dynasty there. He's got an East Coast groove.

Cameron crazy

I found it very moving to watch Duke's seniors speak to their Cameron constituency last night. Such a fine bunch of young men, part of such an illustrious program, having such a challenging week.

And they played so well, fundamentally. If only they had scored more points, or had caused us to score fewer, they might have won.

The fish place is gone

Just when you think that Princeton's Forrestal Village couldn't sink any further, the fish place at the food court closes. That was a good place. Probably spoiled by spoilage of real fish and inability to forecast demand. Should have hired consultants, clearly.

Princeton continues to hollow out, gradually, imperceptibly. A Bloomberg building is also vacant. Is this some creeping harbinger of the economy at large, or just a local thing?

One thing's for sure. There ain't no great or compelling ideas out there, and however you slice it, much focus is on defense, defense against invasion, hedging against bubbles, etc. Not only does nobody know what the next big thing will be, nobody's even trying.

Edward Altman of NYU said that debt markets forecast about a 30% probably of a GM default this year, much higher as you look out a few years. The distressed investment community is girding itself up for a troth. But that ain't much a new new thing.

Amongst the uber

Today took us 38 floors above Central Park, 11 floors above where I used to webmaster for what would become Eurasianet, to a snooty hedge fund which branched out from Goldman, where all the women are lanky and everyone is kind of an ass. And they demand from us something they didn't say they needed, and huff and puff a little because we're not something that the publicly available evidence wouldn't suggest that we are.

It's a class of people who, because they sort of rule the world, enjoy acting like they rule the world.

Nothing quite makes you feel so Jersey, in senses both good and bad. Like the popular kids in high school movies, you both hate them and want them to have you over for wine coolers and bong hits, to show that you've arrived.

Inspires confidence, #2

From Investment News interview with Lori Ensinger of Columbia Management Group. First off, they say she's 44, but she looks like she's 53 but then tried to remove 9 years surgically. Failed.

Q: How have you been able to generate consistent returns?
A: Diane and I have been doing this for 23 years... We have developed a process that we adhere to rigorously.

Q: How did you arrive at that process?
A: I tend to dabble in behavioral finance. I'm by no means an expert at it...

Umm. Don't "rigorously" and "dabble" kind of cancel each other out? And then she gets behavioral finance wrong.

Inspires confidence

Don't have MS Office on the laptop at home. Some spam comes to my yahoo email, promising Office 2003 for like eighty bucks. Go to site. Here's what it says to me:

"All the software you can order from this site is OEM and DSP software. In the majority of points DSP software is similar to OEM software."

With a ringing endorsement like that, how can you not buy it?

From Moscow to Nairobi

The Economist had an article recently about Moscow in winter, the homeless, and the all but homeless migrant workers from throughout the former USSR getting stepped on. About how developers have these Asian construction workers work for 3 months and build a house, and then don't pay them and have the cops beat them up. It took me back.

Semi-educated Russian men are toxic pond scum, and cops are the lowest of the low. I can see these pigs taking a twenty buck payoff to beat the shit out of some Azeris or Tajiks, and then blowing it on beer, vodka, and a blowjob from some Belarusian whore in a filthy bathroom. They think they're big men, enriching themselves, but in fact they impoverish the country and, therefore, themselves. Business climate is execrable. No rule of law. Who's gonna invest there?

At the end of the day, Russian cops are akin to African ones. Marauding whoremonger punks. No regard for human life at all. I put some quotes from the Slavophile Khomiakov next to one from Fanon, and they were scarcely distinguishable. Russians don't like being compared to sub-Saharan Africa, but there's so much shared.

Highlights

• Webb spent 2 hours looking for tickets for the Bernanke lecture on campus at Princeton today. By contrast, my friend Steve emailed to offer me free ones.
• Mary picked up a book about a moose (Morris) and a bear (Boris). Each page has a stupid pun: Boris "Is your nose running?" Morris "No, it's walking." Natalie cackled like a three year old on each page. Can't wait to get home.
• Visitors from a CDO of CDO firm I hauled in expressed desire for a "long term relationship" with my firm. My CEO showed little, as if, another day at the office. Known issues.
  

A new one

With lots of opportunities coming up in Manhattan, I'm a little scared that my cozy little lifestyle will be rocked, even as I delight in the shwarma and baby bok choy and whatnot you find there but not here. So today I set out through my current building, the most notorious hedge fund hotel in Princeton, armed with flyers for an industry event as a plausible pretext.

And I walked in doors. A simple action, but a nerve-wracking process.
Most receptionists were not delighted to see me.

"We're not a hedge fund, we're a VC."
"We're not a hedge fund, we're long only. We don't hedge." Like anyone cares. I bet they called themselves a hedge fund in 2004.

I walked through one the door of one ambiguously-named firm down at the end of the hall to find a big trading floor, populated with 15 or so dudes. They just looked at me, without getting up. Bemused, they heard me out, nodding politely. "We do fixed-income, relative value" Seemed half-inclined to be drawn out, but then went back into shells.

But got one OK lead and a couple of cards of the bigwigs. OK for 20 minutes work.

Anger Management

As we commence the countdown to my 40th birthday (April 14th, for you the great unwashed who don't know), I'm going to push for greater introspection and the meatier, riskier topics that sometimes get pushed aside in the rush to eat lunch, read a couple of paragraphs, and get back to work.

Today: Anger management. Or, what am I so pissed off about? In the course of my life, there've been a sequence of things that gnarl me. Here's a list of some of the big ones:

1. Other kids picking on me for being a buck-toothed geek
2. My mom for pushing me too hard
3. My dad for being elsewhere, literally and/or figuratively
   
4. Myself for making so many irrational decisions that I've had to fight my way back from
   
5. My company's management for being so short-term in orientation and for not investing in the growth of the firm or the staff
   
6. Myself for not just getting on with things and move past 5
7. My wife for hassling me about carbs

In truth, I manage my anger relatively well, directing most of it internally. Until, that is, I don't. Not that I get violent or chair-throwing, I just lash out or undercut myself and/or don't sleep.

My 15 minutes are up. For today....

President's Day Holiday on ice

Took Natalie to Alexa's birthday party at the Mercer County Skating Rink on President's Day.

She done me proud. Natalie sometimes vexes us with her lack of drive and stick-to-it-ness. She can't be bothered to get comfortable swimming, won't really push to ride her bike, and hasn't really been pushing forward with reading with much vigor. We were forecasting a short skate.

How wrong we were. She loved the ice, despite the fact that the ice seemed to love her right back with its frequent embrace. She kept falling down, getting up, falling down, getting up. She didn't make a ton of technical progress, didn't get much smoother, but she stayed out there, and didn't even care if I went off to sit by the fire. She was a very big girl.

I, for my part, got back into skating despite a 20-year absence, and was able to work my way back to being as bad as I ever was. Fast, but largely unable to stop. Tried to skate cross-over around the turn and fell on my butt, injuring my shoulder a little.

If I hadn't hurt myself that way, I would have kept pushing myself till I got some sort of injury, just to prove I had been there.

You, me, and everyone we know

This film made 10 best lists for many critics. Maybe we're just getting old. There was some good stuff, like the 8-year old kid doing online porn chat and wanting to poop into his partners butthole, "back and forth." But mostly the movie was just pathetic. Little narrative drive. No characters you could latch hold to. Film a these at its worst.

As a corrective, we watched a few minutes of Jerry Maguire on TNT after it was over, which reminded us why we watch indie films. Though indie actors conspicuously lack the pecs and abs a big budget can buy you.

In praise of a brand

Trying to save 70c, bought CVS shaving gel instead of Edge. Have been shocked at the difference. In this case, science built into the brand is for real. Much smoother.

This is unpaid, unsolicited testimony, and you know I'd just as soon bitch.

Savings and Salvation

(sorry about this Z)
It's funny how similar the prevailing theory of savings and investment--

the wonders of compounding combined with the continual deferral of pleasure
("cut out that daily Starbucks latte and save $53,743 over 20 years")

-- is to ascetic, and particularly Protestant, traditions, which would have us forego the pleasures in this world for the sake of salvation in the next. Saving for the next generation or the next world, is there a difference?

Combine this with passive, index investing, which is essentially a faith-based play on the United States and world economies, and you've got a full-fledged theology. To which I would seem to ascribe.

Is this just an easy package to sell cuz there's a bunch of us suckers out there?

Raider of last resort

All the stars were out at the Helmsley Plaza today. Carl Icahn spoke, starting off much on message in his campaign against Richard Larsen, reiterating the same analysis of lame CEOs that I had read from his mouth days before. But, for all his Deputy Dawg cum Other People's Money stylings, he said much that was sensible, and without resorting to powerpoint. Edward Altman and Thomas Lee did use the dark arts of Redmond, but they broke out some cool numbers, so it can be forgiven.

Later, during cocktail hour, the largesse of our hosts Droege Consulting could be measured in such items as actual little lamb chops and sashimi grade tuna. This more than made up for a little bad hair.

Grizzly, man

Grizzly Man is a disturbing movie. Yeah, Werner Herzog has the good taste not to play the audio of our hero and his girlfriend being eaten alive by a bear. Well done. In some ways this restraint, this not showing the monster, conveys as much horror as it did in the Blair Witch Project. And just as with the whiney, wet, nicotine-starved stars of that flick, it's hard to really be too worried about the inevitable in this movie.

Timothy Treadwell was, in his desire to pet the sweet little grizzlies, an idiot and a freak. Then again, aside from the fabulous bear footage, including the roaring fight where one of two big boys takes a dump. it is Treadwell's freakishness and his implicit consciousness of it, his tortured sexuality, his substance abuse, his self-declared self-destructiveness, which make the movie worth watching. When he looks at the camera and -- with his fem voice -- thanks the bears for giving his life meaning, it's pretty poignant.

But late at night, I couldn't help but think about Herzog's commentary after watching the tape. It's just scary, nasty. I don't like the thought of anyone being eaten alive by a bear, even for someone who's into it.

A number of people seem to draw inferences from Treadwell's story about nimrod environmentalists. He was both green and a fool, and the kind of fool that does a lot of damage. He was a tree that would have been better off falling in the forest, right next to where a bear was shitting.

Managerio babble redux

I sucked down the rest of that Lencioni book pretty quick. Despite the somewhat wooden character of it, embarasssing though it might seem, I was deeply into it, this corporate Breakfast Club. And for the most traditionally realist reasons ever: I identified with their plight, and I wanted everything to come out all right. I probably don't need to tell you what happens, but I will: everything comes out all right.

Sure, one person is fired, another quits. But all the other team members take the brave CEO's counsel to heart, assess themselves and their faults, and work together to establish and achieve common goals.

Why does this touch so many nerves for your fair blogger? Could it be that his present place of employment lacks such commonality of focus and such admirable teamwork? Yes, yes it could.
I must say, I also felt like I derived some insight into what leadership and management could be, which was interesting and compelling, given the dearth of role models in my immediate work environment.

If only they could make a movie.

Managerio babble

I started reading Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of Team recently, after taking it from Walter at Christmas. I thought it looked stupid, but like something I should read, as I never read books about leadership yatta yatta.

It's about one savvy old economy exec who comes into a high-tech start up that's not running well. She diagnoses poor team dynamics and takes the 7 top people to an offsite in Napa. They sit in a conference room and discuss the theory of interpersonal dynamics. Doesn't exactly sound like a page turner, but it is.

Part of it is because the type is large and many chapters are 2 pages long, with only a few lines on the second page, so you get a quick and easy sense of accomplishment. But part of it is that it's less bad than most business books, the characters somewhat less wooden and emblematic. You actually want them to work throught their shit, function as a team. Why? dunno.

The slackening magic word

Natalie has long instituted a magic word, at the end of snuggling, that she says and then I have to say it back to her before she lets me get out of her bed. Lately, it's been flattening out. Where once she would go on for as long as 3 minutes, stringing together endlessly strings of fairies kittens and nonsense syllables, by now it has been reduced to "bleh blah bli, unicorn." Which is very easy. I can't tell if she's trying to say that she doesn't care if I get up, or if she's just tired.

On the other hand, last night she made me give her 29 kisses, as that was as high as she could count in Spanish. Not too shabby. If she learns to count by tens, I'll be in trouble.

All in one jaunt

Borrowed Hemant's car to go to the doctor today.

• Your tax dollars at work. 1
  On the way there, in front of the Princeton Township office complex, were four cops with pylons stopping traffic. Why, you ask? Checking to make sure people had on seatbelts. Way to go!
• Isn't it ironic
  The doctor had some Viagra pens handy for filling out forms. For a while, I couldn't get the inky part to poke out. Turns out it was a twister model, not a clicker. You would think it would be easier to get the Viagra pen up.
• Down with vowels
  The guy minding the register at the sandwich shop felt a strong urge to overgeneralize the New Jersey tendency to clip terminal vowels, especially in Italian food words, as in "Moozarell" (or "Mooz") or "Prosciutt." This guy said to everybody "Take it eaz." I'm sure the ladies love it.
• Your tax dollars at work. 2
  On the short drive back to Hulfish street I saw 1 parking cop in a tricycle cart, and then 2 Borough cops in cruisers, 1 Township cop in cruiser, 1 cop in unmarked car. God I feel safe. And ripped off.
  

A rare bifecta

Derived pleasure from two media last night, in pretty rapid succession:

• Caught the tail end of Dazed and Confused on AMC. You gotta love that movie. Even if our adolescence really wasn't like that, Linklater walks the fine line between reality and ideality so adroitly that it takes you back to a place you meant to be.
• Closed out Jonathan Franzen's New Yorker article on birding, mating, and the death of his mother. What can you say, the guy is just a good writer, adroit at bringing disparate sensations together and fishing out the right word for whatever. Must go search on him at Amazon. More than just the Corrections.
  

This a day after listening to the Magnetic Fields, giving me good listening, reading, and viewing in a short period. At least my readers should know I don't just bitch grouse bithch all the time.

The Dinky, 9:40 AM, 2/506. An excursion

Getting on the Dinky, the little train from Princeton out to the main line at Princeton Junction, I couldn't help but to be struck by the sheer number of Princeton undergrads up and all ready to go at such a tender hour on a Sunday morning. Fresh-faced, muffin-nibbling, off to the big city with a plan in mind. That wasn't me at that age, I'll tell you that. If it had been, imagine where I might be now.

Graham wasn't 100% sure about his first trip on a train, admire them though he might in books. But he settled into it. Natalie, a more experenced rail customer, knew just what she wanted. A window.

Going through the tunnel to the New York bound side of the tracks at Princeton Junction, couldn't be but struck by the burnt newspaper that lined the concrete tunnel intermittently. Kids were having a little Saturday night fun, looked like.

The train to New Brunswick was faster, funner, though Graham stayed on my lap and let me sniff his hair. At length, I convinced Natalie to stay and walk around New Brunswick rather than taking the next train back. On the platform an express screamed past at 60 or so, rightly freaking Graham out. Thanks Amtrak.

Though perhaps Natalie was right about turning around. New Brunswick sorta sucks. It was cold and breezy. And there were no fresh-faced Scarlet Knights gamboling about with baked goods. No. More mortal they than Tigers.

On the way back to the station, a quick hot chocolate for the good sport Natalie. Not wanting to miss the train, she walked that fine line between knocking it all back and burning her chocolate thirsting lips. She took care of it just fine.

The Constant Gardener

This was a very confused movie, uncertain as to whether it wanted to be a Gap commercial, a music video, or a sermon. The CD has a picture of Ralph Fiennes pointing a gun, though he actually forgets to in the movie. The title is also misleading. He likes to garden, but he rarely gets to. And then he dies. So sad. Is it supposed to be deep? One's things for sure, the people of Africa are long suffering, but big of heart and spirit. Except the evil ones.

The price of bad pricing

The Times recently reported on iniatives started by a variety of losers around inaccurate pricing in retail establishments. Punitive measures for bad pricing by stores are suggested. This is a bad idea. The tax costs of developing technology and infrastructure to monitor and enforce any such laws would dwarf the benefits to consumers, particularly since we know it would be done in the public sector.

It wouldn't be bad if, say, Consumer Reports spun out a group that certified retailers as having reliable pricing on a fee for service basis to the stores. Pricing insurance. It could even tell stores if their prices are wrong as a reputational risk management tool. But it would take a while to make this pay for itself. The best thing would be to develop the process and export it to emerging markets.

Mostly, this is about people liking to have something to sit around and gripe (or grouse), about. "They charged me $1.49 a pound for those, when they were supposed to be $1.19!" Certain consumer advocates say we should check each item on the receipt for accuracy. Imagine the lost productivity costs of people standing in line behind them. Somebody pulls that in front of me in line, I'm gonna cap em.

Lunch

Went to lunch at a restaurant that had the same telephone # as a took a reservation for the restaurant that had occupied its space previously, failing to mention anything.

Was OK.