North Road to Menemsha

An up-island hippie farm. Sheep. Goats. Endangered ducks. Eggs. Pigs. Herbs. Wood-powered hot water. The beardedest lady you ever saw.

Vineyard viewing

Met Abe today at Seth's Pond in West Tisbury. 75-ish year old guy with a black granddaughter, Ava, 5. A good swimmer.

He kept asking if we were renters. "Yup." I said. Then he asked how much we were paying. I told him. That's too much, he tells me, "I've got cheaper houses." So he takes me to them and show them to me. On the ride there I find out that he lives in Chelsea and tought English at CUNY. When I asked about his specialization, it turns out that he ran a high school English dept and adjuncted at CUNY at night. Clue #1.

A 2BR for about a grand, a 3BR for about 1300. Modest. No style. With cigarettes and dog. On 3 acres, as he said, but of scrubby forest. The birds back in there sang prettily, it's true.

The moral: good salesmanship can get you far, but you need product, or you can't make a sale.

The Scarlet fetter

In all the talk of today's fundamentalism, one forgets that the original Puritans settled in Massachusetts. But, in the nation's most liberal state, their hard-assed spirit is visible in many places. Take our rental house for example, when we asked if it had AC, the British owner said no, but that we could back our Hummer up to it and pump cold air in if we saw fit. But there's a ceiling fan in the living room, which I couldn't figure out how to turn on. I asked the "caretaker" about it, and she said, "Oh, that doesn't work. But there's another fan in there so you should be fine." We met the caretaker today, and she turned out to be the owner's daughter, and we discussed the current heat wave. She allowed that, last year, she decided she couldn't live without AC and spent her last $150 on a window unit. Which she proceeded to drop out of the window from two stories up.

More about Massachusetts high-handed didacticism later.

User-created bullshit

Looking for a review of a restaurant in Vineyard Haven, am shocked by the number of respectable media outlets (including the NY Times) that recycle the same user reviews and commercial content (from Fodor's which, at least sent a reviewer). As is so often the case, there's more information delivery infrastructure on the web than there is info to fill it. Like it's so hard to get somebody to write restaurant reviews.

Linguica

A spicy sausage of probably Brazilian or Portuguese derivation, found in many Mass-area breakfast and lunch treats. In the eternal war of regional pork sandwich products, this does pretty well, handily beating out NJ's porkroll.

Lookout Point Beach, Martha's Vineyard

The waves are intense today, the beach sharply sloped. Only a few are swimming, including a few 9 or 10-year olds in body suits. One 8-year old with long blonde hair, either a girl or a proto-surfer, clings to his/her father's neck as they crash the waves again and again, a couple of mini-breaks out from shore. This brings back memories. Dad and I did this many years ago, though not in surf like this.

What kind of behavior does this kind of subsidized risk-taking engender? Will this kid take and manage risk well, and rise in business, or poorly, and drive muscle cars and embrace speed and sensation for its own sake?

Back on the sound side, Natalie and Caroline ride boogie boards in the calm. Three 19-year old sunburned lacrosse-boy lunks strut out of the water, pawing a frisbee back and forth to one another with no skill, but with each movement of their chiselled delts and abs calculated to remind each other and anyone else who might be watching that they were, in fact, men (dammit!), and men who don't care what you think.

I went over to where Graham and Mary and Leslie and Joan were, and put my face in the water and blew bubbles. Graham, till now afraid of the water, came over, intrigued, and then sat with me in the bay. By the time we left, he had come out into the water waste deep. A new record.

In the woods, linked in

Running early for our ferry at Wood's Hole, we deviated off of Rte 28 onto smaller roads, looking for local color. Stopped at Catema, or some such where there was playground (too sunny) and also a nature preserve. So we walked back in there.

On bench in a clearing maybe 5 minutes into the woods, there were three teenagers whom I had espied walking in there, two boys, one girl, a blonde, in a bikini top and rolled down shorts. The girl and one boy were talking on their cellphones, sitting next to each other on the bench. The other guy, rather plump, with ragged blonde hair, sat in the dirt at the girl's feet. Ahh, high school.

A possible hiatus

For the first time in six years, your humble scribe is headed out for two weeks of vacation, on sunny Martha's Vineyard, scourge of Kennedys, but then, we're not Kennedys, are we? In this we rejoice.

Our house there, because it is affordable, has no A/C, nor has it DSL or the like. So grousing may be a little sporadic.

Which is fine, because probably there'll be little to write about. Very little lobster, given the proclivities of Mary and her sister. Perhaps corn.

But worry ye not. If the grouse drops its frequency, it'll roar back in due time, as grouses do.

Mirrors of my waist

Getting dressed this morning, I couldn't help but notice that my pants were fitting quite loosely and comfortably, which is something that happens cyclically and/or sporadically, and is always quite a relief, because it defers once again the time that I'll have to go out shopping for more clothes. Moral hazard will undoubtedly set in, and three or four months from now, having passed through a period of stress, I'll notice that they're tight again.

In other but related news, Natalie headed off to camp today with four dollars in her backpack, with the firm intention of lunching on a hot dog and french fries, but not -- despite all her protestations -- ice cream. I wish I could have been there with her for that, standing in line in the sun at the pool, clutching 4 dollars in her sweaty little palm, in distended expectation of junk food joy.

Snoopy come home

Came home from the office the other day, and the kids were watching a familiar but long since forgotten movie: Snoopy Come Home, which I recall seeing in the theater when I was young. If it was during the initial 1972 theatrical release, that would have made me right at Natalie's age. I was immediately gripped with sadness, felt tears welling up almost, though I couldn't remember why. Mary told me that she had come in the room earlier and both Natalie and Graham were crying.

Turns out, it's all about Snoopy going back to see his original owner, but can't get in cuz of "No Dogs Allowed" signs at hospital and her apt. bldg. And she's kind of a bitch. And then he misses the whole Peanuts gang and is conflicted and wants to go home.

I can identify with a lot of that.

And I totally sung right along with the theme song when it started: "Snooooopy, Snooooopy, come home Snoopy come home."

It's one thing to re-view the classics of childhood with your kids. It's another entirely to unearth long-buried emotional artefacts.

Mad scramble

Georgian feast today in yard.
Bought and assembled new mower after destroying old one on malicious root.
Mowed.
Shashlyk (with Tkemali sauce)
Khachapuri (with actual Suluguni cheese)
Adjapsandal
and more.

Mary would shoot me if she knew I was blogging about it during precious prep time.
Ever the rebel.

Small value coffee

Went to the new Small World Coffee on Nassau St today on walk to Dinkie today. Nice space (thanks Kirsten!), although there's a lot of dead room up front now where they could be generating revenue.

Got an iced coffee. 16 oz, $2.50. I said large, ahem. The Starbucks Venti gives you better unit pricing, even here in Manhattan, like $3 for 24oz, and it's better than Small World, which is muddied with espresso.

Which brings us to the big question. Why? Because it's closer to my house? OK. Because it's not a chain? I used to buy that argument, but it feels more and more like arch romanticism. I want good product. One could argue that small stores provide a service not unlike biodiversity to the consumer ecosystem. But they need good product and reasonable margins. I shouldn't pay an extra markup like some moral tax for noserings. Coffee is way high margin. They could bring the price down and still rake. Or coffee could be a quasi loss leader and have good baked goods.

Just don't soak me.

Day of anger

Nasty stupid tables in Word, with some images embedded and some floating on top.

Reconstituting basic bits of my firm's experience by hand, from local and network drives and Lotus Notes directories, when we should have a searchable KM repository to just pull this stuff from.

Why do I find myself doing this crap at my tender age? I should be pontificating.

To be cheap, we hired some local Mexican guys to haul our recently purchased treadmill up to the 3rd floor, and it gouged our stairs. I dread going home to see what they did. We are morons.

I'm anxious going into vacation. Need to get some prospects to firm up or I'll be knocked back a peg, back to working on stuff that just walked in the door.

At least Zhenya has promised to pick up some Suluguni and Tkemali up by where he works, in preparation for our upcoming Georgian feast. Good neighbors.

The wisdom to know the difference

Went back to AA for the 2nd time yesterday after a 13-year absence. Technically, this is heresy, and I should have exploded.

AA is , truly, a great thing. People in there really are making a best faith concerted effort to deal with their shit and help each other. Where else are you gonna see the kind of positivity that lets a contractor eat a big old salad for lunch. I didn't even see any cheese on there. I personally am, if not a lunch nihilist, than a lunch pessimist, consistently opting for some sort of (if not the most extreme) short-term sensory dividend as against the long term wholistic total return.

The interesting thing about it is how much is over-ascribed to alcohol. Yes, alcoholics can be impulsive people with trouble managing their passions, but so are lots of non alkies, and 10 years after quitting, for most lushes the issues may or may not be causally related. What's awesome is that AA meetings are like free for all group therapy, and everybody's totally earnest and largely well-intentioned. OK, there are no professionals in the room to moderate, but that just makes you develop a healthy level of judgment. Or not, as the case may be.

When they heard me, I detected a number of "tsk tsks" over my quasi-lapsed status. Or maybe I was just projecting.

Minor revelation

I had never really listened to Meat Puppets II until I bought it recently. So I never really understood how closely Kurt Cobain had followed Curt Kirkwood's lead in his Meat Puppets covers on the Nirvana Unplugged record. The songs are hearfelt, but shameless in their fidelity to the original, as if to promulgate a new theory of soul.

Much like Swans version of "Love Will Tear us Apart". Literal, no "value-add" in consultant speak. Lame.

Compare Bobby Darin's over the top rendition of "Bridge Over Troubled Water." He takes that puppy and makes it his own, and despite all the Vegasy shmaltz it becomes something more than the Simon & Garfunkel. Something wierd, yes.

Amongst the wild flowers

Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve, Rte 32, on the Delaware

Under a WPA stone and timber structure with picnic tables, a 4-piece Bluegrass band with a Legacy Outback right behind it. Guitar, fiddle, mandolin, banjo. They're pretty good, but it's suspicious that one guy has on Bass weejuns, white shorts and seersucker. The others are closer to that than the soil, too. But what do you expect.

Down in front there's a table of special needs adult guys, some with face paintings of butterflies and teddy bears. There's a Downs Syndrome guy, an autistic guy on the ground rocking while he admires his art project, and others we would once have called retards. They appear to be digging the tunes. It's a very sweet scene.

Natalie got water lilies on one cheek and a red flower on the other.

After a fruitless insect hunt through the steamy hot fields, a downpour, but the band plays in the picnic house.

Graham makes his first art project, sticking innumerable multicolored pipe cleaners into a little pine cone like thingie (what are those things called?).

The sun-drenched city

Once more it's hot. I really can't think of a ton else to say.

Cross thru Rockefeller Center this morning was closed for some stupid superannuated band in black with pasties play on Good-Morning America. Many flatlanders had come to see these famous people first thing in the morning.

Player of the Game

The hand-wringing continues, but at this point in time it's got to be clear that Materazzi should have been Player of the Game. I don't really care what he said to Zidane: it was brilliant! He pushed the right button, and old Zizou flipped what wig he had. Materazzi thereby gave Italy the edge headed into the penalties.

And now FIFA is going to haul both of them in for a spanking? Will FIFA institute new guidelines around acceptible taunting? Will the dudes on the sidelines have to monitor bad-mouthing as well as offsides?

Time to move on.

Helicopter, fire truck

One of the services I provide for the little ones is the following: I lay on my back and pick them up by the waist, balancing them horizontally over me. I then work through a routine of vehicles. I waive them back and forth and say "helicopter, bukka bukka bukka" or perhaps bounce them and say "fire truck, reeoooreeeoooreeeooo."

I do this for Graham. I did it for Natalie, until she got too big.

Except, it turns out she was not too big, I was just too weak. Now that I've undertaken a program of push-ups to beachify myself (sit-ups come next), I find that I'm stronger, and can hoist all 6 years of her up over me, hold her vertical, and fly her around over me. And when I do this, little miss stubborn screech and pout and slam the door if there's no playdate or Graham won't share a toy or really for just any reason, Natalie has the calm, sweet expression of the two-year old that the helicopter evokes memories of. It's quite a transformation.

More on Zidane

Still no good explanation for the head butt in the morning press. The Maserati or whatever his name is say "your mother is a terrorist goat, and I fucked her last night" or something like that? At the end of the day we're talking less about a contradiction, more about two sides of the same coin. Any poor immigrant or even a rich kid who has the determination, over a number of years, to acquire that level of skill with a ball, to attain that level of anything, perforce has a degree of focus, drive and edge well above that of most of us, and sometimes that cooks up a nasty cocktail.

I don't think anybody expressed so much surprise at Ron Artest, Ben Wallace, Jermaine O'Neal et al. when they went at it a couple years back. Because they're black? Admittedly, it wasn't the world cup final. But it did cost them, esp. Artest, some large ducats.

Anyhow, the moral of the story, for us average joes, is to keep it on the DL. Don't blow.

It could, of course, be the case that Zidane was deciding to kiss off his Dar-al-Jihad future and embrace a burgeoning coreligionist target demographic that is available to him via such channels as Al Jazeerah. He's got the hair for it. It'll be interesting to see how the reruns get played out throughout the ummah.

Dumb jocks

It was pretty shocking to see Zidane head butt that guy to the ground. Not really an auspicious way to end one's career.

But maybe it's not worth being all that shocked. As Americans, many of us tend to romanticize Europe, and soccer falls right into that. We think European soccer players are somehow more sophisticated and cultured than American football players, but at the end of the day, they're just dumb jocks. Sweaty, crass, beer-swiling, alladat.

But Beckenbauer looked pretty swank in his suit, that must be confessed. Better than Barkley.

Syriana

Dunno, if I had to name a fictional country, I'd probably use a name that wasn't a variant of a real country's name -- and with something looking like a known suffix (Husserliana, etc.).

Good movie, though it went a little overboard on ambiguity. What motivates the Clooney character at the end? How does he know what he knows? We have a loose sense of the former, zilch for the latter.

All told, it's pretty cynical. And I'm pretty cynical myself.

Sarah Silverman, Jesus is Magic

Sure, we laughed. But I don't really remember many of the jokes.

Actually, there's basically only one joke: cute JAP pushes the envelope of discourse around race, sex, and dukey. At the end of the day, she's like Dave Chappelle with less volatility and less talent as a physical comic. Less volatile, in that she's never as deep, but when she goes low, she's also not as puerile as some of his copraphilia.

But she's funnier than most. Would like to hang w/her and Kimmel. Would be yucks.

Princeton Junction, 7:10 AM

Wires down on the tracks at Hamilton. All New York-bound trains boarding on the middle track, on the lower level, which is to say walking across the tracks, one at a time, under the watchful eye of the cops. Delays of about an hour.. Thousands of people stacked up on the platforms. Glee abounds.

Is this somehow connected with the state budget standoff 10 miles south in Trenton?

8:05 The conductors of one track say the next one will "platform" normally. No one believes them. The overhead announcer contradicts them. Still, a few of us press on back through the crowds.

By now, my breakfast with Ken is blown. No reason to force myself onto an insanely crowded train. Have coffee and wait, that's the ticket.

A dream

Last night I dreamt that Natalie dove in a pool while Mary and I were standing there talking and swam all the way to the other side underwater, then pulled herself up. As she was doing it, I realized what was going on, and that it was a real development. I was very proud.

This was no doubt the result of the 3-4 pages of The Magic Tree House and the Haunted Castle that she read to us aloud in the car on the way home from Larchmont. This included such big words as "mysterious," which she nailed. We were both very proud.

Neither of us had heard her really read that much, though we knew very well that she could read. Just that morning, at 7, Natalie got up first, grabbed a Magic Treehouse book, jumped onto the bed, and leaned against me, and read for 15 minutes or so. As opposed to climbing into bed, then squirming and whining after five minutes.

Now we can perhaps start to tell her to just go read a book when she's being impossible.

But she's clearly making the transition to big girl, which is less bittersweet perhaps than it looked a year ago. If she can read, swim (she's close), and (next) take off the training wheels, I say she's earned it.

The internet is dangerous

A This Mortal Coil song from ITunes
The first two Meat Puppets records from Amazon.
BBQ from Famous Dave's to take to Karla's cookout.

It's pretty impressive how easily you can blow through cash in without lifting more than a finger.

No chords, no wonders

On the way down, the elevator stops at 5 for Career Blazers, and some lunking stubbly dude with hair like one of the Gallagher brothers or a Japanese soccer player gets in, wearing a shiny silver tie and a hipster mail bag thingie. Made me wonder what I used to look like when I went to temp agencies in grad school.

Running a minute early to lunch today, stopped in to Best Buy to see what electronics stores are selling these days. Ipods and whatnot, I'm thinking.

And there were those. Meanwhile, somewhere off to the side, I'm hearing Joan Jett playing "I love rock and roll" and younguns are gathered round what turns out to be an Xbox console. The game is an electric guitar game, some guy's standing there with a pseudo guitar with 5 colored buttons and a wa-wa pedal. The game was to keep up with some chord changes, represented on screen with colored bars.

And the kid's looking at me and he's like "It'll just take a minute, then you can go" and I'm like "why don't you just get a guitar" (you moron).

Cash money

Lets just speak plainly here: Zidane was cold hard cash against Brazil yesterday. He was Magic to Ronaldinho's George Gervin. France was by far the most enjoyable team to watch of the tournament, the most relaxed. That's why they've got my vote.

Long time no action

It feels like it's been a long time anything interesting happened. Maybe it's because I never go anywhere off the beaten track (San Antonio was an attempt at least). Maybe it's because, at work, in sales, I'm always trying to recast some past experience in the hopes of reliving some minor variation on the same theme at a peer organization. You know that sounds awesome.

I haven't even been going to the library to get more kids' books (another source of variation), though Natalie's recent acquisition of the Magic Treehouse series provides some relief.

That's why all too often I'll be reading about somebody's job in the Times or something and I'm, like, man, they have the life. Or even on NPR, I'll get envious of somebody's gig, which is harder to imagine.

I gotta break out. Or at least get myself fired.

Fed does it again

The Federal Open Markets Committee some minutes ago announced that it was raising the Fed Funds Overnight rate by twenty-five basis points, the 17th such rate hike over the last two years. The Grouse would like to commend Chairman Bernanke and the other members of the committee for so wisely husbanding the money supply, with a stance that is neither excessively commodative nor aggressively yicky. Especially in view of certain inbalances in the markets, notably the so-called "housing bubble" about which there's been so much chatter on this thing they call the internet, as well as historically unprecedented levels of the Current Account Deficit (CAD) and really embarassingly low household savings rates, it's entirely possible that shit could get way fucked up. And then the Chinese would swoop in and, like, totally gobble us up.

Which would be bad.

We therefore reiterate our support for a program of progressive but moderated tightening of credit conditions.

Letting em know

I pulled up to a light next to a youngish businesswoman in a white blouse and a Saab convertible today. I probably don't need to tell you that my little S40 and I left her in the dust effortlessly, accelerating to 60 well before I got to the 40 mph speed limit sign on the ramp crossing Rte 1.

I probably shouldn't have a turbo. My friend Steve expressed guilt to me not long ago on account of the turbo in is PT Cruiser and the poorer mileage the car gets for it. I know that I could get better mileage by driving more conservatively, but where's the fahrvergnugen in that?

No, those rare occasions that Central NJ affords me to floor it and blow past somebody are momemts I cherish. Part of it is, for sure, the legacy of the Turner Thesis, the cowboy mentality of wanting freedom and open roads. Lord knows Detroit encourages us in this. A corollary nuance to this is the middle-aged guy feeling cooped up and needing to kick out testosterone. Detroit has that number too.

Probably I'd be better off in the big boxy 240, where all acceleration occurs in relative rather than absolute terms.

Moving away, inwards

In the Eastern bloc back in the day there was a concept of "internal emigration." This referred to the practice of just moving through the day, acquitting onesself at one's day job, and then getting home to get on with the focus of one's real life, be it art, family, hobby, S & M, whatever. It was basically trying to ignore where and how one lived in reality, and supplant it with fantasy.

I'm sure HR people have a similar concept here. And there are police-state like measures to combat it, like blocking URLs for non-work email, entertainment sites, and (gasp!) blogs. But what are the incremental costs of people whose interests are so disaligned from those of their employers that they pretty much just dial it in and focus all their energies on other aspects of their lives? How much more could companies achieve if they could harness that energy? Would people be happier if they were fully engaged with their work? Would their parallel and therefore total lives be less rich if they were deprived of a downpressor?

One thing's for certain. We're unlikely to find out.

One or many wolves?

This morning, Natalie's first day of camp, she asks me: "Daddy, why do you have to go to work?"
(Note that we've been through this before) And I lay the standard line on her. "To get money to pay for the house and food and stuff." And she rejoins: "But why can't we be like wolves?"

I didn't have the best answer for that.

As for her camp, it is at the swimming pool which adjoins and shares a name with her school, Community Park. On rainy and overcast days, like today, the kids will repair to the nearest building, which is..... her school. So, two days into summer, she'll be back in school. Thankfully, she's at an age where this probably feels more comfortable than annoying. For Freddy, from across the street, who's like 8 or 9, I don't know if that's true. She perhaps will have a vague sense that something is amiss.

Just to be clear

I can't for the life of me understand why the Dutch coach didn't put in van Nestleroy there at the end against Portugal. He's their all-time leading goal scorer. He still scores for United, it ain't like he's ancient or something.

Viewing pleasure

Alright. The second goal for Argentina against Mexico was sublime. It's what we all dream about. Chest trap. Strike with left from top of box into upper corner, coming down with topspin. And I missed it because I was giving Graham watermelon.

Capote. I resisted it at first, but in the end, it was pretty good. Everybody gets what they deserve. Except Capote's boyfriend. Why did he stick around so long? He was plenty cute and a normal guy.

Note that the killers get executed on my birthday. A year to the day before my birth. Which is to say, 100 years to the day after Lincoln got assassinated. Why does so much shit go down on April 14th? Mayakovsky's suicide. The Titanic. The great dust storm of '35, or something like that. Pete Rose.

Wickawitch

The Wicked Witch of the West is, apparently, to scary to stay in the room with, though Helen braves it.

Wickawitch is what Natalie used to call the broomstick rider in Each Peach Pear Plum. That was in fact cute.

About a boss

Had lunch with a guy the other day and two other guys who worked for him. One of them was black.

And bossman's asking me where I stayed the weekend before and I'm like "the Marriott" and he's like "was there a black wedding there? Every time I stay there there's a black wedding there." And I'm thinking, hmmm, this is a game that this Larry Bird-poster-on-the-wall motherfucker he must play all the time with his black employee all the time, and I should say something even more outrageous like "why do they even let those people get married at all," but I don't.

I love Brian Piccolo

Mark my words, this will be the title of my novel. For those of you who don't remember, these are the climactic words of the classic 1971 TV movie Brian's Song, when Billy Dee Williams, as Gale Sayers, declares his love for the by-then-dead-of-cancer Brian Piccolo. The movie had all the typological conflict you could dream of, white-black, brass-shy, alladat.

But mostly, it was a tearjerker for guys, and a permissible one because it featured football players. And it had a soupy theme song, that was a hit of sorts: "If the hands of time, were hands that I could hold, I'd keep them warm and in my arms they'd not turn cold." And they played it every year, it seemed. And we'd watch it and cry, and that was OK cuz it was football.

And later, my dad would cite this line as if ironically, though we in fact knew it was serious.

Looking for a book

Down in the basement this morning looking for a book that I bought a couple of years ago and never read. Unboxed many books that I hadn't seen for years. Books I've never read and may never. And yet, how nice it is to see them, and think such thoughts as "Oh yeah, that book. I've always thought it would be nice to read that." This despite the fact that I deaccessioned a good portion of my libary 3 or 4 years as a service to the field of Slavics, and adverse selection meant that many fine titles walked.

And, for some reason, the dehumidifier was off in the basement. That's not right.

And so the general morning mood was much better than the day before, when Natalie had vexed me so by whining and crying and not wanting to put on socks with her sneakers, despite the fact that she had gym. And I yelled at her louder and meaner than I should've, enough so that even Mary chided me, when she's plenty barky herself sometimes. Stubborn children (primarily Natalie) are not my strongest skillset. Which makes me wonder about my promise as a manager.

Time will tell.

For some reason, things fall apart

Driving home from Bethesda, arguing with Mary, spaced out on the Beltway, and headed East of DC to the South. Not towards NJ. It was bumper to bumper headed counter-clockwise on the Belt, so I cut into Prince George's County to cut over to the BW Parkway.

By repute, this is the capital of Middle class African-American culture, and indeed, it looked just like any other boring piece of middle America, save for the fact that everybody was black. A friendly woman in an Accord at the gas station gave me good directions, and then clarified them further on her way out. But there was thick glass surrounding the cashier inside the gas station. No bathroom. Car stereos turned up to 11.

In a later convenience store, there was filthy cardboard in the floor by the drink machines and also no bathroom. Finally, a toilet was found at Subway, and it was dirty.

There were decrepit tennis courts at high school, and poor signage.

What's the deal? The median household income there is 50% higher than the national median.
Why this seeming attempt to recreate ghetto conditions amidst plenty?

The sweet brownfields of home

Shockingly, we hit bumper to bumper traffic on the way back between... Baltimore and Wilmington. On top of what we had seen on the Belt and the BW Parkway. People be driving.

So imagine our joy when we came across the Delaware Memorial Bridge, exited the Turnpike onto 295, and headed north for the charming burgs or Camden, then Trenton, surrounded by lush green brownfields.

New Jersey. Our home. Land of Springsteen, Soprano, and other older people.

Right next to The City.

The power of sugar

In a tantrum after we leave, Graham succumbs to a lollypop.

For 20 years, traffic on 95 between Baltimore and Wilmington. I guess there's nothing else to do there.

A tricky game

Matt's kids were in the office today, and I had to guess what age his boy was. I guessed a year high. I realized that guessing kids' ages is sort of like guessing women's weight: you can't win unless you're spot on. If you guess too high (or low, in the other case), you simultaneously flatter and imply that the real age (or weight) is somehow defective.

Not true for little kids.

White males above the law

After a meeting over a fruit smoothie with a guy from Brown Brothers Harriman, I needed to pee, so I went into the Brooks Brothers (what is it with brothers?) across from Ground Zero. I was in fact wearing one of their suits, albeit from an outlet, so I felt fully entitled to sneak a little urination action. On the second floor, in the shoe section, some buff Wall St. guy was trying on shirts out in the open, talking to his buddy, rather than go in a changing room, as if he couldn't be bothered. I guess he couldn't.

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.