Our dinner with Sophia, v.1

The Times Magazine goes on and on about how Sophia Coppola has such perfect taste, and when I see her movies and hear her taste in tunes and realize she could have scored her films (the good parts, at least) from my music library I realized that I too must be a mega-tastemaker. So I texted her, and said "Sophia, like, you should totally come over to our house for dinner. It'll be awesome." And she was, like, "You know, I actually need to scope out some locations right in your neighborhood, and I've heard through some really cool friends how fabulous you are."

So, to prepare for her arrival, we did some cleaning around the house. You know, toilets, that kind of stuff (Sophia's not so into the little brown spots, they say), but we didn't go overboard, because we wanted it to feel authentic, if not excessively so. And day of, Sophia rolls up in this perfect little mint-colored semi-stretch Prius with bling rims, and she kissed us all gently on each earlobe, just like they do in Buenos Aires these days.

"Mom"

On our jaunt to the library today, Natalie twice called me mom. As in "Mom, um, I mean dad...." This is very endearing, at the age of six and a half, no less, this indifferentiation of parents. Hopefully, Freudians/Lacanians wouldn't disagree, though I guess they're generally discredited by now.

Graham has the mom/dad thing straight. All too straight for Mary's tastes, I'd have to say.

Your tax dollars on steroids

The Princeton Public Library is money well spent, despite certain bugs in the website, the occasional oppressive hauteur of the staff and the crappy, non service-oriented Sunday hours.

But I don't know what that skinhead freak is doing on the kids' floor back in the corner, standing next to his boom box with headphones rubber-banded to his forehead, doing some sort of home grown pseudo Tai Chi. Yes, it is the United States of America, and he's practicing one of his enduring freedoms, and their should be no prior restraint on such exercise, but still, freaks is freaks, and this is the kids' floor, and this is Megan's Law territory. They should keep that shit on the adult floor. "Excuse me sir, we have a story reading scheduled for that corner." Or some such.

TIAA-CREF, the tussle continues

So this woman from TIAA-CREF calls up Mary and tells her she can extract some of her money but not all of it. This after the woman in Benefits at Mary's former employer signed off on the transaction. They need to hold on to the employer contribution piece until Mary is 55. Which I was thinking, delusionally, is a long long way off. Thanks again, TIAA-CREF.

Which means we're going to have more accounts: Fidelity, UBS, Smith Barney, TIAA-CREF, Merrill, and BofA. Preposterous.

My friend Matthew says TIAA-CREF is where advisors go when they fail at UBS. Sounds about right.

Yet again I say, TIAA-CREF sucks

Because I'll be away all day tomorrow and couldn't blog last night because the Blogger server was overloaded, let me just take a moment to say, once more, how badly TIAA-CREF sucks. Getting Mary's 403-b out of there was like pulling teeth. The "consultants" at the call centers (not to be confused with "brokerage consultants") were universally confused about how to get money out of there, who could do what where, etc. Like something out of Kafka.

And yet David Swensen, head of the Yale endowment and TIAA-CREF trustee, is all excited about how great they are, what "low-cost, client-focused" products and services they provide. Low-cost indeed, until you try to actually do something, then the transaction costs mount.

Head spinning

Talking to too many people about doing or not doing business. Still need to call someone, a thread I initiated, and send one guy my picture to put on his website and another guy some URLs where he should look for jobs and much much more. Posessed by an urge to just flip a burger.

And tomorrow, another conference, at which I'll actually learn some stuff, I'm sure, and I can ride in Steve's shiny new Lexus with a rear-facing camera. Would just as soon rake, honestly.

......

In another blast from my box of the past, was listening this morning to the Neats, a mid-80s Boston band midway between REM and Mission of Burma. Has aged surprisingly well, and the drummer expresses his forcible love for the ride cymbal and kick drum infectiously.

The horror, the horror

Amongst the tapes my mom shipped to me was a jam session I did with Randy Pelosi early in 1989, in the months after I returned from doing the Mayakovsky play at Bowdoin College and when I was, shall we say, not at my peak.



So there we were, out at my house in the country, "jamming", first Randy on the stick and me on the bass, and it's quite clear that he was a real musician and I was not. And then we switched and I was playing guitar while he played saxophone, and the distinction between our skill levels became less clear. I had the old classical guitar miked and going through an amp with a reverb petal, and it's clear from listening to me talk that, on the one hand, I thought I was cool, but that, on the other, my confidence level as a musician was not high.

The horror, then, was listening to me talk, late at night, to the relatively spacy Randy, and try to impress him -- and myself -- with my hip verbal stylings. And also to listen to me playing to him the same riffs I had been playing endlessly to myself in my room, looking out the window, at once kind of wanting to be an artist and not really working at it very hard, while at the same time being eminently conscious of my general directionlessness and having not clue one of what to do about it. Not the best time.

But some of the guitar work is at least respectable. And Randy sounds good on the stick.

A strange calm descended on me

When, after having looked for something for a long while without knowing what it was, I saw something that looked an awful lot like what it might be. Sophocles might have referred to scales falling from my eyes, but I'm not all that dramatic, nor should I be expected to be. Which is not so say that that the search has ended, but only that the end would appear to be closer to hand.

And then I can tell you what the fuck I'm talking about.

Meanwhile, a snack.

Blair Witch Family

A lovely fall day. Pizza and used books in Lambertville. A walk in the woods. A 3:45 appointment at Marketfair for Mom. It all seemed so innocent.

The scene: the Stonybrook Watershed. First, dallying with turtles and stuffed animals and feathers at the Nature Center. No, we are not there for the birthday party, we alone.

At last, we head out on our trek. The paths are wet from rain the night before, but it's cool and the sun is out and, save for watching our step, a perfect fall day for a jaunt. But when we reached the back of the field and faced the eternal question, "which way do we go?" A fatal error. "The Stonybrook trail. We saw signs for it over there. It'll double back." As indeed it would.

But it took a long long while. It was, as they say, a long loop. And we start to run late for the 3:45. Graham's moving too slowly, so I pick him up. Natalie blazes the trail. It keeps going. And going. "We'll turn the corner soon," I say. Famous last words.

The trail is wet. I'm carrying Graham, back and forth from arm to arm as my neo-corporate physique gets maxed out quickly. I grunt. I snarl. I curse (in my mind). Graham holds on to my collar. Choking me. I sweat. The woods keep going, seemingly endless in their woodiness. Back behind now, Natalie starts to whine. Mary says "never again without a map." The trail is wet, I tell you. My feet are soaked, through, and I keep stealing a glance at the time on my cell phone and it's looking bad for the 3:45 until....

We emerge from the woods, and the sign says: "Nature center." It is now clear that Graham needs a diaper change. Strap em in, and we're off to the mall, making the appointment by seconds.

A mango frosty at the food court.

Scenes from a wedding

At long last, I've got photos loaded up from my mom's wedding to David Ontjes (henceforth "Pa") back in August. Here we go. It's worth noting that everyone is wearing Carolina Blue, not Duke Blue, which bodes well.

Only at my office

Two mathematicians, recently introduced to one another, are currently discussing game theory and equilibrium and stuff like that. Their discussion is being facilitated by a classicist.

This is all very fascinating.

Masterbator of the Universe

I met today with a master networker. A guy who proclaims himself to have "a very deep Rolodex, the 6th largest database of Stanford alums in the world." He did not clarify whether that was an AP or a UPI ranking, though it was clear that he had designs on going higher even. Another actual statement: "My emails have 80% clickthrough."

This guy, we'll call him Steve, likes to do deals. With one prestigious hedge fund, lets call it the Snickers Fund, he said he had "at least a couple, a few, no five deals on right now." I nodded.

At 11AM, with a lunch date coming up "with a Harvard woman who used to be at Morgan Stanley", he ate a chocolate cupcake with a knife and fork. Steve invited me to be on the hedge fund committee of his new network to set up events for elite financial services professionals from elite universities. I hope we will serve cupcakes.

While at Starbucks I saw Ashi, the stylingest turban-wearingest Sikh in all of alternative investments business process outsourcing. We're gonna kick it soon.

Cry, freedom

Also found amongst my effects from bygone days, tapes galore. Still can't find one New Order song which the jerks digitally remastered and rerecorded sometime in the early 90s. Lots of stuff holds up OK but not great. The Pressure Boys, for example, sound tinny recorded, though you can hear how on it Rob Ladd is. Echo and the Bunnymen have their moments. Many things sound more like the cure than I remembered.




But Black Uhuru shines through clear as day. This was one great band. Sly and Robby redefine the back end. So I'm riding around Princeton in suit and tie rocking out, fifteen years sober, singing "I got a stalk of sinsemilla, gleaming in my pocket" (backyard?). And it all makes sense, and I'm clearly the coolest cleanly shaved person in all of Central New Jersey.

Iconoclasm

Mom recently sent me a box of stuff from childhood, including letters, tapes, and photos. I shall blog about all of them, I swear I will, if I get deeply bored. I'm having a vague feeling that I might have blogged about this before, but oh well.

Amongst the photos are ones of a trip Leslie and I took to Great Britain and Switzerland in 1981. We thought we were bad. I know I did. I had a frickin Hasselblad camera, and I used it to take artistic and scenic pictures of the olde countries and a select few of their denizens. But almost no pictures of me or my sister. Beg though she might, I hardly shot her, even in the crowd at Charles and Diana's wedding. Oh yes, we were there. I thought pictures of people in tourist spots were as uncool as you could get. She may have forgiven me by now.

Only recently did I realize that my attitude was very close to that of the Muslims or the Medieval Christian Iconoclasts: "no graven images" and all that.

Immigrants and sandwich construction

Lets make no mistake, I'm immensely pro-immigration. When I see Mexican guys riding their bikes to work at 6:30 in the morning in the cold, I feel tremendous respect. My man Geo takes mighty fine care of our vehicles down at the corner Gulf. etc.

But there's one area in which generations of immigrants, from the Greeks of New York diners to the latinos of today's cafeterias make the same mistake, over and over again. They put the lettuce and tomato under your turkey burger on the roll, instead of between the cheese and the roll. They do the same thing if it's beef. And then the cheese sticks to the bun so you can't even move the LT up there so as to put your mustard or mayo below. Often you get the same nonsense on deli sandwiches. Lettuce and mayonnaise on the bottom, in particular, is a troublesome combo.

I know I know. I'm blaming the victim, and this is really a failure of management. But what. Are there no instructional websites or videotapes about this? Perhaps there should be late nite public-service announcements on Univision explaining these principles. Taxpayer funded.

Block party

Just watched Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Neither Mary nor I listen to much rap any more. She never has. And, funny as he is, the movie isn't all that funny most of the time. And yet, and yet, we both liked it quite a bit, quietly, as it were. It's very infectious. You can tell just how much Chappelle is into what he's up to, providing this big fun mysterious party for a bunch of city and country folx. In the end, what it is is sweet.

Deliverance

Caught the last third of Deliverance last night. By today's standards, the whole thing is intensely homoerotic, and not just the time when one of those guys is tied to a tree taking it up the orifice back there. Jon Voight shoots that freak with an arrow and then goes over to him and cries on his chest, opens his mouth, looks at his teeth, what's up with that? Maybe if I had seen the earlier parts.

Burt Reynolds lies in the back of the canoe and cries like a baby. You don't see much of that these days. A wierd frickin movie. Probably worth watching from the start.

I think it's mostly about Vietnam. Post-traumatic stress and all.

But what do I know about that?

Presentation at the Harvard Club

On the way in, saw a guy on the street I hadn't seen since college. Gotta love that.

Gave a song and dance on hedge funds to the Harvard Club last night. They were supposed to be hedge fund neophytes, but a few salty industry dogs made me dance and answer all kinds of questions about investing, when I'm just a poor tech guy, and a fake one at that. I squirmed out of most of that, and deflected the other parts.

They didn't get my frontier / cowboy theme at all. It's not like it was all that complex either. I'm not sure I got any laughs, really, and that with some of my best material.

Afterwards, dinner in this big fancy room. The menu was more impressive than the food.

A new one

On the way into the city on the train I saw a guy hunched over, talking into his cellphone and his Blackberry at the same time. Bravo! Guys like that power the economy for all of us.

SLEP

Mystery solved. For any of you who've wondered over the years whether or not you can take prescription drugs after the expiration date on them has come and gone, let it be known the that Department of Defense and the FDA have done research for a Shelf Life Extension Program (SLEP) which would seem to indicate (is that sufficiently hedged?) that it's usually fine. Don't take the word of a pseudonym, though, consult:

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.