Friends with Money

OK OK, it's a total chick flick. And yet, I say unto you, see it. It's just good.

Good characters. Good humor. I laughed, I cried, I scratched myself.

It's one of those quiet classics that will fade towards dust until you're flicking around on a Sunday in February and there it is at 3:00 on UPN and you'll intend to keep flicking through the channels looking for a basketball game but will stay and watch because it's well acted, hitting last channel back to a sporting event only to cover yourself in case another guy walks past.

Drinking alone at noon

Had lunch the other day at the Alchemist and Barrister in Princeton, where the food sucked, but where's the surprise in that. It's Princeton, after all.

A woman in her 50s came in, blonde, alone, and sat near us facing away from the door. She ordered a chili with cheese melted on top, and a glass of white wine. She drank the latter like she needed it. This is classic alcoholic behavior, and one couldn't help but to wonder what was up with her, a type A absent husband? Cheating on her with a younger woman? This was a comfort lunch if ever there was one.

Lions, of liberty

More missteps on the free speech front from the students of Columbia. This week protesters took to the stage and protested a speech given by the violent bigot head of "The Minuteman Project," which supports and instigates free-range armed citizen patrols of our southern borders.

Frankly, it is kind of a First Amendment issue, but the practical ramifications loom larger. I had never heard of the Minuteman Project, now I have, so the young Columbia lefties have effectively vaulted it's reactionary program into the national mainstream. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? Only time will tell. If this galvanizes right wing support for this kind of thing, it's a bad thing. If it simply raises it up into national political discourse, it's a good thing.

Really, we can't have non-uniformed, non-governmental agents patrolling our borders enforcing their interpretation of laws. That would make them unlawful combatants, who should be sent to Gitmo and tagged and head-bagged.

But this probably isn't the best trend for campus political discourse.

Another one bites

So I was looking for this article Gene gave me a couple of years back about hedge funds providing credit to sub-prime consumers, and I tracked in down in the Financial Times in August 2004, using the trusty internet. Actually, Gene found it.

And I'm reading in there about this fund that finances car purchases for losers and miscreants with no credit -- Centrix Capital Management --, and I think, well, that's two years ago, I wonder whassup with them. Turns out, after getting big and successful and financing the Denver Grand Prix and becoming one of the biggest auto financers in Phoenix, to some extent supporting the car market there, the retail arm of the thing went bankrupt a few weeks back after a regulator sat on it and some shareholders sued because the founder seemed to be playing shell games with $5 million or so.

One wonders: is it a good thing that a hedge fund was there to provide liquidity to that market? Could this excess liquidity even be an ecological ill, if it supports unsustainable sprawl? Praps.

Ever so slightly on the road

Usually when I head out on the road I figure I'll see something interesting to write about. Today, however, we went to Darien, Connecticut. It's a cute little town, with cute little restaurants and a cute main street and cute old houses, much like Julianne Moore's crib in Far from Heaven and even more so like the house of Patrick's fiancee in Auntie Mame, which was in fact situated right there in Darien. Who could forget scene of the would be father-in-law offering Mame a cocktail in which the secret ingredient is "honeyyyyyyyyy" (hard to type this one), which she tosses over her shoulder into a plant, or how Mame buys the plot of land nexts door and donates it to a home for blind Jewish violinists, or something like that. If you haven't seen it recently, watch it.

Not much appears to have changed in Darien.

On the way back, traffic on the Garden State Parkway. Not a shocker.

Grouse, and they will come

It would appear that all I need to do is complain about my traffic, and I get some. Good work guys.

I'm getting on an evening schedule, I guess, what with doing actual work during the day.

Tomorrow, work takes us deep into the heart of Connecticut's Gold Coast, where we will be conferring with consultants who are both like and unlike us. Like us, in that they are white males who wear ties and sell to asset managers, unlike us, in that they are clever enough both to have their offices in Connecticut and to not do IT. You may be assured that I will witness and chronicle much wildness, and that I will report it back to you unvarnished, right here on Chew Your Grouse.

Grubbalicious

So I was mowing the front yard the other day and some grass came off as if I had scalped it. That was the first clue.

Enter Mary, who investigated and discovered... grubs. Disgusting little buggers. And she picked them out with her bare hands and drowned them, she did, leaving a fair portion of the yard exposing the deep brown earth of the Garden State.

I had never thought that I would fall in love with my yard. I resent the thing. Should be kicked back by a pool with a drink with an umbrella. But, by gum, when I look out the back window and see brown commingling in the green, I get all worked up. And I rake, though I know it's stupid and Sisyphean and that more brown leaves will fall on there almost before I can turn around. A sucker am I.

The warm icy wall

Wall Street is not a gentle place, pretend though it may. I had a brief visit today with a woman who is a Managing Director at a private bank. Went to college with her, I did, and I played that card when I called her up. I set up a an appointment, and she was fine with that, 30 minutes, her office, no skin there. In e-mail lead up, I pointed up people we knew in common, including former boyfriend (or two) and her brother too.

But when I got there, there's none of the traditional "how's so and so?" or "how's Princeton?" (whence her husband hails, a quick Google showed). No pretense at small talk. No attempt to find common ground. And I couldn't make her talk much about her biz. I was in and out in 15, all very polite, not inviting. Basically she had no interest in a new consultant best friend. Which is, I suppose, not shocking.

Regressing to the mean

I think I recall that The Economist said that McKinsey said that the average piece of user-generated content gets seven views a day. If I've got that right, it is a depressing fact. I work very hard at this blog, and for all my mental sweat equity, my traffic has died back from 13 view per day to 11.

You would think that I would be happy to be trouncing the average by a margin of 57%, but instead it saddens me. I've got a frickin PhD, you know, and my shit is deep. Universities pay hard cold cash for this kind of text, if not much of it.

And what's worse, my numbers are going down. Yes, I know, I should send more promotional emails. Maybe. I should link more. But who has time for that? Before long, I'll be one of the seven hitters, most likely. If posts like this persist.

Cycle du siecle

Where are we now? A cyclical bull within a secular bear? Climbing a wall of worry? About to rock?

All the data guys pull out history going back to 1929 or 1934 or to wherever they've got data, and draw inferences: "there were lots of little bulls between 1966 and 1982, but the markets never went anywhere." As if there were enough data to abstract from. The whole history of market data is very short, and takes place within the context of radically changing external economic forces. Mass production was kind of a big deal, as is globalization. It changes stuff. Nobody knows what's up. They just have data, charts, pointers, and gestures.

And another thing. I'm almost ready to argue that -- just as Sarbanes-Oxley drives public companies into the arms of private equity, so Bogle and Random Walk Theory drive the hedge fund business: if a business walls itself off from disciplined data collection, nobody can prove whether it's doing a good job, in aggregate. Excessive risk-taking and blow-ups like Amaranth derive from a short-term returns focus not unlike the pressure to hit quarterly numbers that called forth all manner of creative accounting from Enron to Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Not that I would argue that we should return to the days on long-only mutual funds. But. as a middle class taxpayer, I have to think that hedge funds could stand a little more oversight.

Of the Essence

After he returned from the trenches of WWI Italy, whence he shipped the manuscript Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus -- a foundational text for logical positivists and stoner mystics alike-- to Bertrand Russell, who quickly got it published, Ludwig Wittgenstein returned to Vienna and found himself a minor celebrity in amongst the philosophical set there, and was invited to the attend Vienna Circle to discuss his work. Wittgenstein duly attended, and when all were gathered, he got up and read a poem by Rilke or Holderlin or Trakl or somebody, and then sat down. The uptight logicians of the circle, startled, asked him to explain himself. So he stood up and read the poem again.

Similarly, Tolstoi, when asked to explain Anna Karenina, said that he would have to read the whole book from start to finish.

Today's rigorously linear and ends-oriented MBA Weltanschaung insists that brevity and essence are one. The shorter and more direct the bullet point, the more it is shorn of descriptive excess, the better. Short and clear means pure.

In a recent discussion a guy was telling me that, by able to integrate the functionalist "need to know on a transaction by transaction basis" executive mode of discourse into his life, he was able to get to the point that he didn't have to "become someone else" when he walked in the door of work. His work persona was him. It kind of makes sense, but it's kind of scary too.

What' s you've got to understand is that Anna Karenina, which can be read in 20-25 hours, if brief by comparison to its referent, which is life.

Big city streets

Down 7th Ave during rush hour tooled a truck with one of them little Pontiac convertibles on the back, wrapped in heavy chains. GM is offering a new 100,000 mile, 5-year warranty!

Like anybody thinks GM will be around in 5 years. Maybe they can do this because they snapped up a bunch cheap parts from the carcass of Delphi.

--

Earlier, walking up 5th, I passed the building where Rolling Stone has it's offices (the Equitable [now AXA] building). A block or so up this scruffy guy talks into his phone: "So on Friday I was hanging with Ace Freeley, then Saturday I was backstage at Christina Aguilera, then Sunday I saw the Stones, and Monday I heard and then talked to Claption.... all in all, 26 concerts in 30 days." Clearly a concert reviewer for the mag, and so so proud of his remarkable achievement.

In the Western Lands

Out early from work for a birthday party at Terhune. 3 girls in the backseat chattering and screeching, as I navigate Princeton's rugged Western Section. Who knew what lurked out there at 3pm? A bevy of Mercedeses, Beamers, Volvos, sleekly slithering through verdant glades with tinted windows forbidding view onto God knows what species of womankind, most likely. Huge back-up at the entrance to Stuart Country Day. Traffic in the middle of nowhere always spooks me, but hey, here in NJ, you're both always and never in the middle of Nowhere.

And then I met Susan "Fabulous".

Tales from the heartland

Impromptu gathering out back chez Eric. 7 guys. Beer. Nuts. Seltzer. Pretzels. Chilly.

Tales of vasectomy. Of counselling. Of a need for post-operative sampling to insure that all the little swimmers are dead. Samples must be delivered 1-hour fresh to the lab during the business day. Think about it. No mean feat in today's hard-driving productivist world. Delivery to a crowded waiting room in a discreet paper bag. "Could you take the sample out of the bag, sir?"

Predictable hijinks ensue.

I think I'll pass.

The President's Last Bang

(When in doubt, a movie review)

This is an odd movie, and I won't dispute the 3 stars that it's rated at Netflix, and while it wasn't necessarily 100% enjoyable, I still say you gotta see it. Cuz it's different.

It's like if Tarantino were a little less violent and lived in some post-totalitarian state and the production values and wit had gotten better but somehow the tone of the thing is distinctly, well, Soviet, or Franco. Sure, most of the actions are undermotivated, and you can't really care about the characters much.

But it's nonetheless a refreshing cinematic palate cleanser.

In general, we've done well by Korean film recently. Memories of Murder is an absolute must see, no doubt. All the Korean films seem to be pervaded by a wierd blend of sentimentality and ultraviolence. Some do it better than others.

Doldrums

Great is my shame. I've been in the office for so long I have nothing to say.

Except, these two bozos here in my office, so intent on their so-called work, wearing their little ties around their little necks like it makes them some kind of muckity-mucks. God, do they look smug, surfing around on the so-called internet. I'll show them, one day, I'll let them know what's really going on. Then they'll be sorry. But it'll be too late.....

Community Park School fall picnic

Unfortunately, all the good Mexican food was gone by the time I got there, leaving only a motley assortment of pastas, salads, and little sandwiches. OK, I got a couple of dumplings.

Natalie was off on her own autonomous to an unprecedented degree, and even Graham venture far from Mary and me to the playground.

In a disturbing development, the Princeton Rec Dept has informed Mary and Stacy that their Brownie troop (Stacy's idea.... thanks Stacy) cannot meet there because they're too noisy and disruptive. This Brownie thing is quickly turning into a debacle. More later.

Califronia Dreamin

What is it with the people who run Southern California's pension funds? First Orange County blows up on structured product back in '94, then San Diego City scandalously underfunds and then covers it up, now San Diego County dangerously overallocates to Amaranth (why do I keep wanting to say Aramark? I had lunch.)

Is the actual secret that Paulie Shore and Nicole Ritchie are in fact running the whole show (Ritchie surely isn't running Aramark, as is clear to all)? That would explain a lot. And then the guys who are supposed to be exercising fiduciary duty over taxpayer money could spend their time eating tofu burritos, attending John Birch Society meetings, and olleying off of rad vert.

Awesome!

Now playing in Peoria?

Back to Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children, which I finished yesterday while stricken with a Fall flu. One lingering question I had was, who would want to read about these New York intelligentsia, other than members of it? Time will tell. While she does't have Franzen's middle America hook, with the St. Louis family, Claire does a particularly good job writing about people distantly removed from the urban center. To some extent, her provincial women bummed out about their disappointing sons are her most poignant characters. Or maybe I'm just projecting. Anyhow, it'll be interesting to see how the book sells in Middle America.

In any case, Claire builds towards the novel's 9/11 climax beautifully. We feel the tension rising, knowing what's coming, anticipating the transvaluation of all anxieties, relishing the ambiguities and complexities which will soon be flattened out by the momentous event. And yet, when it does come, it's somewhat disappointing. It's as if 9/11, in its firefighterly and dusty horror, by now undoubtedly the most narrated event in history, does not yield to the fine filigree of her prose. What you've watched a thousand times on TV and heard told like a cubist Rashomon from hundreds of points of view doesn't need embellishment.

And yet, I ate the novel whole, and look forward to the next. Claire's first book was good, and she gets better with each.

Pot to kettle

In Sunday's Times business section, Roger Lowenstein critiques Nikolas Kozloff's book on Hugo Chavez for being full of phrases like: "in an ominous development for American policymakers." If ever there's been a case of the pot calling the kettle black, this is it. Lowenstein's most famous book, When Genius Failed, is shot through with exactly this sin, harping on how everyone should have known Long Term Capital was gonna collapse from early warnings, harbingers, omens, and other SAT words.

Don't get me wrong, I like Lowenstein. If I see his byline, I'm biased to read the article. But he'll never be Michael Lewis.

ACC Football rankings

Florida State #9
Va Tech #14
Miami #17

Was it worth expanding the conference for this? Do we feel better about ourselves?

Insurable electability

The Economist's recent survey of climate change touched on the subject of home insurance in America, and especially in Florida. State regulators set home insurance rates, meaning that insurers can't adjust pricing to reflect market events. You can kind of see why, to let homeowners predict housepayments year to year (though insurance is a trivial component of homeowner carrying costs and structured products would emerge quickly to manage the risks faced by insurers and insureds).

But in Florida, it goes further. The state subsidizes an insurer -- the Citizens Property Insurance Corporation -- that guarantees coverage to those whose insurers have gone bust, giving it the same kind of moral hazard that the Pension Benefit Insurance Company gives to the Bethlehem Steels and Delphis and American Airlines of the world. The difference, beyond that, is that wealthy homeowners in Florida have recently exerted a disproportionate influence on world events: the election of 2000. The Florida Republican Party and its governor Little Bush have put in place a taxpayer-supported mechanism that insures that it slim margin of dubious victory will be supported.

grey matter

Slow brain day. Here's one of the two poems read at our wedding. John Donne.

If only I could live my life more like this. Or, less like this, as my boss might have it.


Busie olde foole, unruly Sunne;
Why dost thou thus,
Through windowes, and through curtaines call on us?
Must to they motions lovers seasons run?
Sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide
Late schoole boyes, and sowre prentices,
Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will ride,
Call countrey ands to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clyme,
Nor houres, dayes, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beames, so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou thinke?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a winke,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine
Looke, and tomorrow late, tell mee,
Whether both the India's of spice and Myne
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with mee.
Aske for those Kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt heare, All here in one bed lay.

She'is all States, and all Princes, I,
Nothing else is;
Princes doe but play us; compar'd to this,
All honor's mimique; All wealth alchimie,
Thou sunne art halfe as happy'as wee,
In that the world's contracted thus;
Thine ages askes ease, and since thy duties bee
To warme the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art every where;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.

Magic -- for the young parents amongst you

First it was the Magic Schoolbus , starring Ms. Frizzle, aka "The Friz". These word-intensive 30-minute reads inform schoolkids, and in particular Natalie, about a range of science topics, with a shapeshifting bus that goes from the bottom of the sea to the capillaries of poor Arnold's nose. I had to read these fast and skip lots of words to get Natalie to bed on time. There are 10-15 of these.

Now we're on to the Magic Treehouse series, starring Jack and Annie, who sally forth across fiction and fantasy carrying out missions. There are 49 of these 12 chapter books, and at 3 chapters a night that takes us out well past half a year to read them all. In each book, Jack and Annie go into the treehouse, find a book, look at a picture, point to it, and say "I want to go there." At that point in time, the text is canned "the treehouse started to spin. It spun faster and faster. Then everything was still. Absolutely still." Natalie reads these words along with me, incantatorily.

All these books are good.

One of those days

I have many days when I oscillate between thinking I should just quit, start seeing a shrink and a career counsellor and exercising more, etc., and thinking I'm on the cusp of a big breakthrough. Today would be one of those days.

The Company would seem to be about to take on my humble team to fix up some of its processes. Hopefully we'll find a technical resource to help out with it, since it's a technical project.

Soon I'll be there, 13 hours a day, ensconced in lush hardwood panelling, testosterone, and workaholism. Fuck, maybe I should get while the getting's good. Some poor shrink needs me.

9/11 downtown

It was easy to get a parking spot at the train station. Fewer people had gone in to work, most likely as a risk management deal.

At the WTC PATH station at Ground Zero, a bunch of freaks in "9/11, the Truth" t-shirts stood around and bellowed for justice of some sort. Cops talked into their crackling walkie talkies about some planned protest.

All the Irish bars were wall to wall with Firemen. I can see that. One of them had a charcoal grill with a weanie roast set up on the sidewalk. I'm sure that's illegal.

At 9pm I took a walk in Tribeca, and chanced to look south, where they were projecting the twin beams of light skyward. Hadn't known about that ritual. Apparently they do it every year. Looked pretty cool.

Claire Messud's new book

There's been a lot of buzz about The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud's new novel, and I'm reading it now myself. I must say that as much as I like Claire, I look at her as at someone who has had the fortitude to decide what she wanted to do and go out and do it over decades, much like the various rich guys I went to college with. And therefore part of me wants to be catty and snipe at her book, features like the shear Yaliness of all the big and fancy words and occasionally tortured syntax.

But the fact is that she writes well, and I care about her characters. When they're about to have sex that they shouldn't, I'm like "no no no." When fat Freddy sets off for the city, i'm riding shotgun, I want him to succeed, despite his Holden Caulfeldish ridiculousness. And so on.

As much as I may have to say about this novel as I read it, Claire has become a Major Author.

Logan, run

I can tell you neither why I though Boston Logan was a major airport, nor what I was thinking. At least as far as the American Airlines terminal is concerned.

Inside the secured gate area, for example, there are no bathrooms, and there is no food. And when you go out through security, the only food there is after 8:30 is Dunkin Donuts and the main bar, which would take God knows how long.

And then on the way back in through security, the woman scrutinizes my boarding pass thoroughly and scawls her initials "MB" on the back, though nobody ever looks at that side of it again and I throw it away. Good work MB! Praise jah for the FSA and all the great people of Homeland Security.

First day of school eve

Natalie cried tonight at the dinner table when Mary was saying that she didn't think that 1st graders got snacks. Luckily, this theory was proven false. This was her first sign of remorse with regard to grade 1.

Standards of deviation

There is a house on the corner in Chapel Hill, on the twisty hill up to my mom's house, which is egregiously overgrown. It's a dinky little brick ranch, a tear-down-to-be, and the people haven't so much as trimmed a blade of grass there for god knows how many years, so now it'd be like original growth forest there if it weren't for the dear who surely come by and sup on the tender shoots. How ironic is that: nature imposing the appearance of culture. In any case, you can barely see the house from the street and it does look kind of sinister, like what the hell are they doing back there? Oxycontin? Video games? Tabbouleh?

I never thought I'd care about this kind of thing. I remember years back my sister telling me about picking dandelions because otherwise they'd spread to neighbor's yards and thinking "that's absurd," but the fact is that every community concocts and imposes standards around the subjugation of nature, the bracketing of contingency. And these standards, to paraphrase Foucault, are determined by the derelict and marginalized properties that everybody talks about in whispers and louder.

On our block it's the green abandoned house owned by the shifty old Chinese dude. Rumors abound of mysterious late night sightings of day laborers and junkies and the fact that they're gonna condemn the joint and so on and s on.

Mercer County Park, 9/3/2006, 1:30 PM

The 2006 Indo-American fair was a wing-ding indeed. Despite rumors (heard by more than just Mary) that last year's fair attracted 350,000 people (this is clearly based on a subconscious fear that a rising India and China will swamp us whities -- a little discussed theme these days), the fair was populous but not dramatically more than the pathetic Renaissance Fair that we went to back in the spring.

The food, I'll have you know, was delish. Chat plus a mixed meat grill from some restaurant that I stupidly did not get the name of. Better than most.

And then there were stalls with brightly colored garb and books and Bollywood tapes and... life insurance and 529s etc. But mostly, there was music and dancing, first some post-hippy white kids including one guy who was an actual master of the tabla. But then the young ladies started to get up on stage and do some dances, some traditional, others Bollywood music videos adapted to the stage. Girls ranging from 6 to 18. And Natalie, who at first complained the music was too loud, sat at the top of the bleachers and danced along, moving her feet, imitating some hand motions. And she ate Tandoori chicken and mango lassi too (the latter a real shock). So, altogether, a big day for multiculturalizing the lil uns.

But it's hard to figure how a patriarchal culture like India and let and encourage them little girls to be up on stage all suggestive like that. When you can't even show a kiss on screen. It's as if they draw the line between fantasy and fiction a lot more clearly then we do. Or maybe it's just so crowded that there's no place for teens to sneak off to.

Garden State keeps on growing

Sisyphus, need I remind you, is not a myth.

Hauled tons of yard waste to the curb today, part of the endless cycle of Apollo and Dionysus doing battle in the shape of green and brown.

Agassi should quit

Haven't checked the news today, but if he hasn't already, Agassi should drop out of the US Open. All this press about his getting 7 inch needles of more and more drugs in the spine is just inane. It's not heroic. It's poor judgement. The guy is married with children, and he needs his long-termhealth more than he needs this media coup. He could always recuperate and come back and play one more. Next year's Open with a couple of prep tournaments.

Or he could just walk away. While he still can.

The Buffmeister

I had not been aware of Warren Buffett's unorthodox marital arrangement: separated from wife for 30 years, accompanied by a woman she hooked him up with (and with her full support), but married. That's the trouble with America today. Hippies.

Harbingers of recession

Is it just me, or is there more local affiliate advertising making it through to the viewer on cable? I think they're having trouble selling time and are going to the B list, just like in the last recession. Similarly, our local grocer Wild Oats seems to be putting out fewer samples, also a sign of tight marketing dollars. This bodes ill for the economy in 2007, but well for interest rates.

Natalie's front tooth

Natalie came in at 6:15 this morning all excited cuz she had lost one of her front teeth. We had known it was coming, as they had been wiggly for some time. Both of them. This may be an "all I want for Christmas" Christmas chez nous. She plans to give it to the tooth fairy tomorrow night, for some reason. That will give me more time to get my money together.

Blasts from the Past

Back in Chapel Hill, found myself tuning in to the old college radio stations. WXYC, WXDU. Hadn't realized how starved I was for good eclectic radio. On XDU as I drove to Bullock's to get pig, the DJ was an accordion freak, so I heard a bunch of folk music from places like Latvia, Bulgaria, Ecuador, what have you, with accordions and whatnot. Fabulous. The day before the guy was playing cool Mexican folk music on XYC before launching into sophomoric drivel about how hispanics get treated in the new South. Gotta take the good with the bad. But NJ college radio largely sucks. WFMU is good, but they're too dedicated to being cooler than thou and so quickly degenerate into being the on-air version of the sour, self-righteous grey-hairs who man the indie record stores these days.

On Saturday, went into a bar and saw my old girlfriend K, who informed me that she was back in Chapel Hill briefly after a few years out West, to put some money together to go to Idaho or Acadia or somewhere else. 35 years old. I resisted the desire to shake her by the shoulders and say "Wake the fuck up, your life is slipping by," but she had to go back to her scruffy date Michael.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals

This title was entirely deceptive. Thanks God. Sounds nasty.

The book started off slow. Our narrator, one J. Maarten Troost, starts off sounding likes he's gonna be a straight up whiner. Graduate student can't tie shoes straight can't hold down good job, lots of credit card debt lives at home with mom yatta yatta. Girlfriend gets job on desolate atoll in the Pacific, known as Kiribati. They move there.

It's a shithole, literally. That is, a bunch of sand out in the Pacific doesn't have much room for septic systems, so people go to the edge of the reef and take dumps into the water. Also throw trash there. There are lots of nasty skinny dogs running around. All there is to eat is fish, rice, and random half-rotten Australian canned goods. There's no place to go. It's too hot. And so on and so on.

And yet, without ever having one of those big transcendent Ahas, Troost turns it around and begins to show a lot of love for the place. He's happy to leave when he does, but then....

Long and short of it: it's a good book, though there's no sex or cannibals.

This Week in the News: Agassi meets Katrina

As some of you may have heard, Andre Agassi will be playing in his last tournament this year at the US Open in New York, one year after hurricane Katrina razed Louisianna's Gold Coast and exposed fault lines of race and class that we had all fought so hard to repress, even as we marvelled in Agassi's mercurial ability to reach deep inside himself and show us little pieces of ourselves that we did want to see. New Orleans has had a hard time fighting its way back from the monumental destruction brought on by wind, rain, and neglect, but perhaps it, like all of us, can draw some inspiration from Agassi's herculean drive to dig himself out from a shamefully low ranking. Maybe the former Big Easy can also transition from style to substance, from bad hair to no hair, from playboy to crunchmeister.

Next week, surely, we'll hear about Federer and 9/11.

Back from the wedding

So my mom got married again. Like most people's moms, she decided it would be appropriate, after exchanging vows, to launch into a high-toned, high-pitched choral solo version of the Lord's Prayer, while standing up there holding David's hands looking him in the eye. No joke. It was pretty moving, and David had clearly not been clued in to this upcoming feature.

The preacher had all the family members stand and announce that the family's were now merged, which is pretty heavy. Luckily, we know lots of them from high school, and they mostly pull for Carolina. As with most mergers, time will tell whether it will add or destroy shareholder value.

At the lake, as is traditional, there was pig and swimming.

On the flight back, coincided with a cousin (1st once removed) who had come down for the wedding and stayed with a 1st cousin on campus in Chapel Hill, and discussed whether she had been in my sister's wedding back in 1990. We weren't sure, but I was certain I had ushered at her parents's wedding circa 1978. That's when it starts to get heavy.

Demo land

There's nothing quite like a WebEx software demo to get you worked up and raring to go. Today Greg told us all about his web-based Disaster Recovery app and all the exciting customizable features and reporting it offers. You could hardly restrain me, I must say.

Wedding preparations

Got my shoes shined today.
Mary ironed some shorts for Graham, and modified her own dress a touch.
We have to get up a 6AM (could be traumatic for kids) to make Philly airport Friday so Natalie can be at junior bridesmaids' luncheon on time.

You guessed it, my mom's getting married. It will be a significant extravaganza, with multiple events, guests into three digits, and barbeque, which tells you it's for real.

After a cavalcade of suitors over the course of the post-Dad era, one has stuck, a fine one at that, and my mom will once again have a new name, and we will be notionally Brady Bunched up with people we know from high school, though we won't share bedrooms.

It will be a beautiful day, and I will give away the bride.

Joy of joys

Looked in the compost drum this evening at my fresh batch. Tons of squirming creepy crawlies doing what they do best. Fabulous.

The Breakfast Club

Each day they bring us the New York Times. When I'm lucky, or when I sneak downstairs and pull it all together before the kids get there, I get to read some. And each day the newspaper allays some of the anxiety of being in a career which just sort of snuck up on me and leaves me wondering how I ended up looking like this, even if I like my hair and my outfit on a given day.

Because each day the paper of record shows a bit of myself, like the John Hughes movies of yore. Today, new studies of people driven to seek fame to offset feelings of abandonment by a parent (I ID with the cause if not the effect), of middle-aged men taking Viagra to recover the libido of their youth but thereby piss off their wives, who are cool with the course of nature (I haven't thought about the drug but I can see the marital dynamic), and so on. It's as if the paper offers an extension of onesself, starting the day off with a thought or two before it all degenerates into the recitation of professional scripts.

So that's some fine paper. If only the slack motherfuckers had delivered it last Sunday.

More on the mower

• Put it back in the Subaru
• Took it to Lowe's
• Guy looks at me, is like, "is all the gas out of it? The town of West Windsor says it's a fire hazard and won't let us have any gas in the building."
• Nice guy, though. Good hire.
• Put mower back in car and take home.
• Tomorrow: siphon out gas. Try again.
  

More on my relationship to objects

I have written before about how I hate things in the physical world. Here are a few bullet points about how they return my affections.

• Destroyed my old lawnmower going over a big root. Should not have been going over that root, but I had to get the grass behind it and hate the weedwacker passionately, though I bought it at a yard sale for 5 bucks. 7 with the extension cord.
• Bought new lawnmower (same as old) at Lowe's, just in time for Georgian cookout.
  
• Mowed before cookout. Grass was wet.
• Went on vacation.
• Came back, need to mow yard. Lawnmower will not start.
• Took to neighbors who race go-karts. They promise to fix ("it will be fun!"). Mow with theirs.
  
• They do not fix it. In fact, they take it apart no more than I had. Advise taking back to Lowe's.
• I take lawnmower back to my yard.
• Weatherman promises rain.
• Put lawnmower in Subaru to take to Lowe's.
• Drive to work. Minor fumes.
• Go to take colleague to Audi dealer. By now fumes are major.
• Get headache while driving.
• Dump lawnmower back in yard.
• Deliver colleague to dealer.
• Return to work. Minor fumes still there.
• Brain recovers somewhat.
• Write blog
  

Transamerica

Although it's marred by some lamentable Indie-film cliches (the older station wagon covering major swaths of purple mountain majesty on 2-lane roads encountering various combinations of redneckery and authenticity), the emotional core of Transamerica is solid. You care about the characters and their relationship to one another, and they grow. That's so much more than can be said for most movies. Even the secondary characters have some pathos.

Felicity Huffman is great, all of John Steward's "muffman" jokes aside.

And it's funny too.

All told, it's the best synthesis of chick flick/buddy road movie since Thelma and Louise, or Priscilla.

Paradise Now

This is worth watching. A buddy movie about two happy-go-lucky Palestinian guys who are committed suicide bombers who've vowed to go out with one another. When the movement calls and says they've got their chance, the classic hijinks ensue. Dark night of the soul. Last kiss from a martyr's daughter. Vacillation. Debates on the efficacy of terror. Testimony to the horror of a life lived entirely under occupation.

Some of it gets a little wooden, but all in all it's very well done. I normally don't get excited about watching movies about terrorism and martyrdom, for some reason. Paradise Now is balanced and well-thought out, and has feeling. And it's purty.

Beginning of an era

Graham hit Natalie in the face with a little football last night. At point blank range. He did not apologize. Would not. I made the tactical error of giving him an ultimatum: "Say you're sorry or you won't get any drink." He would not, could not, say I'm sorry.

So I put him in his crib, him kicking and screaming. And I went downstairs. And then I heard the telltale pitter pat of his feet. He had climbed out.

This was a first, bespelling our doom. From here on out, he's only staying in the crib when he wants to. Mary was, shall we say, underpleased. As was I.

Text production

I have produced great reams of corporate text today, be it in the oral (conference call with CIO out in LA talking BCP for his BPO call centers, recap to boss) or the written (notes on this meeting, entry in sales pipeline db). At lunch I discussed fine points of corporate-speak to some bedazzled recent hires, who had never imagined that the English language could be so kniptioned.

But wait.... just thought of something better to write about.

Sharp security

NPR this morning reports that all the swiss army knives and nail clippers confiscated at airports get shipped to a warehouse in Harrisburg, PA and auctioned off in bulk. Total proceeds thus far for govt coffers? $300,000. I'm sure that's gross, not net.

How much better would it be to take the little plastic trays of sharp items and offer them to those deplaning just across the way? No shipping, storage, administration, or other costs. Get rid of the things. The laws of large numbers would average things out. It would be like the penny cup by the register.

OK. Giving out sharp things for free is not a typical govt service. But still, times have changed.

Masala on Chambers St., Princeton NJ

In keeping with the theme of restaurant reviews, I'll just say that I suppose I should be happy that Masala makes a concerted effort to be the healthier choice in Indian lunch buffets. They serve brown rice. They take the skin off the chicken Tandoori. There is no lamb saag. Truth be told, I am not grateful. Even if it makes it easier to not have seconds and gorge onesself. The naan is OK, if itself a little thin.

That are other questionable touches about the place. The banquette where I sat just plain smelled. One of those musty restaurant neglect smells, like a small tub of industrial grease was back in the corner somewhere. Paper towels in the bathroom were not in their dispensor but, upon inspection, on the window ledge, as if they were making a break for freedom but didn't quite get there.

I've never had a particularly good meal either there or as take-out. One may hope that this precious restaurant space will free up for something tastier soon.

Cafe Moxie, Vineyard Haven

Was called to task below for failure to provide review of restaurant, so here we go. The restaurant referenced above is fine indeed. My bass dish was mighty good. Mary's duck gnocchi appetizer rocked. Scallops also appealed to all of us, and the deserts were tasty too.

The place was cute. The lock on the bathroom door was not idiot-proof, however, as I demonstrated. Thankfully, I was standing facing away from the door when the nice lady opened it, elsewise it could have proved embarassing for both of us.

Best of all, there were celebrities, or, rather, one of them. This dude walked in and I was, like, "hey, that dude's in pictures." And, despite Mary's protestation that I always think people are somebody, it was in fact Luke Wilson, brother of Owen, wacko in his own right, who stopped in for a repast. Everyone was suitably impressed, though as erstwhile New Yorkers Mary and I pretended to let it roll off of us.

Home again

Back from vacation, a full weekend day spent at home. The kids are atypically happy and excited about playing with their own toys. The house is moderately clean. After fighting it for an hour, Graham naps for the first time in weeks.

At dusk, races in the back yard. Even Mary. Back and forth, back and forth. At certain moments I have thought Mary was crazy in her attachment to and insistence upon the yard, but when we have have backyard races, I see her point.

Graham loves the racing. Sometimes, when he sets out running, he extends his left arm and makes a circular motion which is the exact opposite of the natural running motion. Don't know where that comes from.

Retour a l'etat du jardin

That's back in Jersey, is what it is. After a week in Massachusetts, NJ feels like the wild west.

Coming up on four centuries after the days of Miles Standish and his fellow Puritan stiffies, Massachusetts remains and unrelentingly moralizing place. One nature preserve we went to had a sign saying "no swimming, picnicking, beach chairs, beach sports, or anything of the sort" (italics added). The paper ("we have no ethyl on the Island", said the cash register guy, whatever that means) bag from the grocery store says "supporting your healthy lifestyle." How does the bag know I didn't purchase all junk food? On the walls of the same grocery store are pictures of happy local farmers, and messages about the virtues of locally grown produce.

Meanwhile, the streets are prowled by Volvos and Subarus (we had them too) driven by hawk-nosed women in batik dresses and birkenstocks. Liberal piety reigned supreme. I was surprised that restaurants were allowed to serve both fried food and ice cream.

Grouseback

MA (Begin Magic Tree House books on tape for Natalie) -->
RI (McDonald's, where Graham spurns the dairy-free crispy chicken) -->
CT (end 4th and final book on tape, hop to Merritt from 95 for girls room Natalie can navigate alone) -->
NY (torrential downpours, flooding, and hellacious backup on West Side Highway) -->
NJ (air out house).

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.