A good place to be a white man

Off the plane in Covington-Cincinnati inter-frickin-national, I hasten to the place to catch a bus to terminal A. There are many signs saying this is the right place for me to be. There is also a portly Caucasian gent who informs us loudly, "Bus to terminal A here." Then, as the bus approaches, he informs us that it is approaching and, as the driver prepares to open the doors, he says "he'll have those door open in a minute."

Just outside of security, a somewhat angry, trim affluent-looking 45-year old with a business cut and neat shirt and tie held up a sign saying something like "Olmos-Fitzguerroya" or somesuch. That would have been inverted in NJ.

Then, the guy who drove the bus (also white) for Enterprise car rental tells me that despite high demand/volume, the rental car prices are low this weekend because prices are high in Indianapolis for the 500. Which makes less than zero sense.

Yes, the midwest is a fine place for a white man to have a menial job and feel no shame.

Later, at the 7-11, four high school girls in bathing suits and a souped up Civic snapped up twelvers of Mountain Dew and Fresca. Ahhhh summer. Straight outta Mellencamp.

Staff development day

Natalie won't have school tomorrow because it's staff development day in Princeton. I could rant and rave till the cows come home about my tax dollars blah blah blah.

But, the fact is, that with a simple application of a certain balm, every day is staff development day.

Books I thought I'd like

Deborah Garrison's The Second Child. The smart Jewish versifying equivalent of Sex in the City moves to New Jersey and breathes quasi-deeply into the experience of suburban living. Read a few poems and then checked out her earlier work. Hated it. And I'm not just saying that because I'm jealous. It scarcely qualifies as poetry, it's all would-be profundity scarcely wrapped in meter.

Rob Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape. I'll try read some more of this, and I feel tremendously for the guy for losing his wife in the blink of an eye, but this book sucks. Sappy sentimental claptrap wrapped around a self-glorying enumeration of cultural items consumed. All those years of working at Rolling Stone have clearly gone to his head, leaving a 40-year old shilling to his mental image of himself as a 23-year old. Which he ain't.

PJ Clarke's, 55th & 3rd

Lunch today took me to PJ Clarke's, a Manhattan "Institution", a fine olde pub with a dark olde bar tended by an Irish guy and with bulbous urinals as tall as your shoulders which fairly catch you up in their come-to-Mama embrace. Which makes for some splatter.

At the height of the lunch hour, a variety of lunch-eating types came in, from young besuited banker boys to scraggle-faced francophone hipsters to women with heels and tan cleavage, and everything in between. In between these types of people, you sickos.

On the menu, classic bar fare, from crab cakes to burgers to steaks etc. There in the dining room with scarred up tables, and ambiance, I assumed it would take a few minutes to bring in the food. Wrong. All this dark wood and leather was but a thin disguise for a food production line of uncharacteristic efficiency. No sooner had we spoken than food arrived to our table. It was OK.

But I dig the joint.

Body farms

I recently saw a story on CNN.com about body farms, where enterprising young law-enforcement researchers test human cadavers for decomposition to help them date time of death. This is what our tax dollars get spent on? How often do cops actually have to establish time of death?

Here's a little brain tickler from Officer.com

Consider this scenario: a victim is found, shot in the head, inside a car on an off-road trail. The temperature has been in the 80s for some time; however, since the car windows are closed, the temperature inside the car has been well over one hundred degrees. Because the car windows were closed, the insects normally involved in decomposition cannot reach the corpse, so the rate of decay is not what might be expected. How do investigators determine a PMI? The Body Farm's database contains data on experiments performed with corpses in closed cars under a variety of similar situations. Access to this data allows investigators to compare known results to the corpse in their situation, and to more accurately determine a PMI.

This is some important shit, and I feel a lot safer knowing that the various arms of government are working hard to make sure that real-life cops aren't getting outpaced by their specular brethren on the various CSI shows, as once they were put to shame weekly by Night Rider and McGyver.

No but seriously, what's with all the reconstructive frenzy? As if DNA analysis didn't do well enough. It's just like with the fetishism of 9/11 remains.... didn't some construction project get kiboshed recently because they found an ankle or two? Who cares? If they're dead, they're dead, I say. Society as a whole shouldn't be spending a bunch of money to becalm relatives and solve mysteries that aren't really mysteries. They're dead.

A fine line

In preparing my talk on "The Trouble of Marcie Flint," in which a dug into why I identified with Charlie Flint, the male lead, it never occurred to me that the story might be read as a parody, how the guy's thoughtful earnestness could be construed as ridiculous abstraction. Try this passage, for instance:

And then, like some trick in the movies, I saw myself as my son, standing in a like garden and sending up out of the dark a plane, an arrow, a tennis ball, a stone -- anything -- while my sister drew hearts in the gravel. The memory of how deep this impulse to reach into the light had been completely charmed me, and I watched the boy send the plane up again and again.

So what, is this guy deep, or is he a sap? Is he more Clark W. Griswold, or Clark.... Or, indeed, is there any difference?

The thing is, the reason the suburbs offer such ready material for parody is that they are always teetering on the edge of self-parody.

The firm handshakes.
The convivial greetings "Hello! So glad to see you!"
The complements "My! Your flowers are beautiful!" or "Isn't she just precious"

You can just go around saying this stuff and never have to think about anything.
Try it. "My, those steaks smell delicious!"

As with the society of the aristocracy and gentry whose mores it seeks to mimic, suburban society glides through on a set of rituals and formalities. However, unlike its predecessors -- which acknowledged their artifice -- it pretends to itself that it is natural. That's why streets and subdivisions so often have bucolic names "Shady Lawn", "Windy Hill", "Brook Lane".

Damn, it's confusing.

Moving on

Now that last night's lecture on Cheever and waspiness in general is done, I can move on in my reading.

Back, perhaps, to Rory Stewart's book about walking across Afghanistan, The Places in Between, which somehow cried out for a rest on the bedside table somewhere around page 55.

Forward, perhaps, to Rob Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape, in a stacko on the radiator, written by a guy I went to college with but never really hung with whose wife died nastily young.

Sideways, conceivably to Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, also about sudden spousal death, but on many a must read list and now, thanks to my thievery, on my chest of drawers.

Probably not to Emmanuel Berman's My Life as a Quant, in which the author is recounting being a physics grad student at Columbia in the 60s. That should be read at work.

Whichever way it flows, it's good to move on.

Next steps

Speculation that Vladimir Putin will move from the Kremlin to the helm of gas gian Gazprom when he's forced to relinquish the presidency are, in fact, quite welcome. I wouldn't have considered it a foregone conclusion that Putin, like Yeltsin before him, would step down at all. I thought he might prefer and custom-built loophole in the constitution. In fact, I still would lay odds on it.

Here's a scenario: sometime between now and the March 2008 elections there's another bomb or terrorist attack, blamed on the conveniently placed Chechens or Al Qaeda, which threatens the stability of the Russian state and just demands that Volodya stick around. We shall see.

More of the same

I'm doing my part, I assure you of that. Just look at me at left, lean muscles churning, pumping up the hill, faster and faster....

Towards a cure for diabetes! (thanks to my upcoming participation in the American Diabetes Association's Tour de Cure in Princeton on June 16).

So as I said, I'm doing my part, but some of you, fair Grousereaders, are bogarting on support for a cure. You know who I mean, you select few down there in North Carolina. You who would enlarge with cream. Don't make me name names and put this down on your permanent internet record.
Don't make me turn this into an NPR-like fundraising filibuster.
Break out those credit cards and make em do what Sweet Little Baby Jesus designed them for. Put em here.

Poster child

So we're in Battery Park on a fine spring day yesterday and I'm showing Graham this tugboat that was actually towing a barge, and this kid comes over to me with a wallet: "Is this yours?" He says, handing it to me and walking away. So I look in the wallet for a card with the guy's phone number, and before finding it I look at his driver's license and find that he's 35-ish, white, lives in Tribeca. Upon inspection of his business card, I learn that he's a VP at US Trust. I call his office and leave a voicemail, and then I scan the crowd as Graham and I make our way back over to the playground.

Later, as the fam and I head back to Beth's place, the guy calls me and I wait for him at a designated spot. And here he comes, happy as a clam to have been reunited with his billfold. After brief pleasantries, he reaches into the wallet and foists a twenty onto me. I'm like, "No no, I don't want it" but he's persistent so I take it. And then he turns and literally runs off. Perhaps he sensed that I was gonna network up to him and ask about his role and talk about the people we knew in common and generally make him want to throw a little business my way. I know he wasn't headed anywhere in particular because I saw him going into the convenience store 10 minutes later when I headed into Starbucks for a tall cold one.

Anyhow, I really shouldn't sweat it because a weasel like that is likely to be amongst those who get sliced away when US Trust continues to fail to integrate well into the Bank of America culture after BofA snapped it up off the side of Schwab, where it was also failing. US Trust has a very nice lobby, to be sure, but go upstairs of their Manhattan flagship and you fall into a shithole straight out of Office Space. It's a failing company, and it's because of rude schmucks like Mr. Tribeca.

And his twenty is headed straight for a United Homeless Organization jug.

Kids going in circles

At the carnival at the middle school, the DJ was playing the 1991 hit "Jump Around" while middle school kids walked in a circle playing some game. Despite the classic beat, none of them could make him/herself dance, preferring instead to walk while staring embarassingly at their feet. Now and again one of them would twitch a little, as if making a brief foray into the world of rhythm before retreating.

Later, I learned that "Cotton-Eyed Joe" has a set Macarena-like dance. Tellingly, it was black girls and white jock boys who dominated the dancing.

Clockwatchers

At first I thought Clockwatchers, a 1997 film starring Lisa Kudrow, Parker Posey, and Toni Collette -- which came out when I was in Moscow working on my dissertation -- was going to be a pale chickflick shadow of Office Space. But, for starters, nothing with Lisa Kudrow and Parker Posey in it can be all bad. While much is formulaic and telegraphed, you have to admire the disciplined cinematography -- with dystopic hints of Tati's Playtime, and there were plenty of yucks. Toni Collette, as per usual, is the good girl.

It's a 2nd tier film, worth having on your Netflix list.

Circle of futility

On the way to work today I passed a nice old house that was having some kind of sale, estate or otherwise. In the driveway were no less than 4 Volvo wagons of different vintages, bumper to bumper. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's a crime the way Volvo (ahem Ford) holds us hostage with the only usable full-sized station wagon. Those of us with driveways too narrow for an Odyssey are hosed. So why, I ask again, does Honda bogart the Accord wagon to us Americans? There it is right there in the picture, the Euro/Japanese variant. All they gotta do is ship those puppies over or make em here, throw a hybrid engine and a rear-facing seat in there for carpooling. And cupholders. And they'd be rich! Oh yeah, they are rich.

Why oh why is it so? Is it payback for Iraq?

Blowing the doors off!

Grousereaders, I just wanted to let you know that thanks to a phenomenal $500 gift from one of our Yankee donors, I've now blown past my initial goal to raise $500 towards a cure for diabetes and have raised it to $2000. Again, I'll be riding 30 hilly New Jersey miles in the heat of summer to earn these ducats.

On a somewhat more somber note, the scorecard in our traditional Northerner vs. Southerner (regional affiliation is defined by where you went to high school) contest stands at:

$650 North
$250 South

My fellow southerners, I say to you now, are we going to let these smug bastards walk all over us in the race to cure Diabetes? The corract answer: "Hell no! We too will have a voice in supporting research to ameliorate and end the suffering of 20 million Americans (and that's just the Americans!)." Step right up and show your pride with a donation.

ps. Northerners. Don't let those rebs get the best of you. Donate here.

Europeans, midwesterners, emerging markets representatives, extraterrestrials, doppelgangers, pets and golems may give at this location.

What can I say?

It's New York in the spring, a good day after a crappy commute, if not a commute from hell.

Our sparsely populated office is being painted, which is not enhancing my head.

Saw no freaks or events on the streets today, nothing more memorable than two Japanese girls passed near 46th and 5th on the way to see Genna at 48th and 8th, musing to each other about the right way to pronounce economics, with and e like bleak or and e like bleck: "Is it economics or economics?" That's actually a good question.

Growing old pains

In the shower this morning, I realized my razor was in the medicine cabinet. As I stepped out of the shower onto the glorified towel that serves us slackers as a bathmat, I tried to gain some leverage with the foot still in the tub and slipped -- catching myself on the shower enclosure with my arm, which is now suspiciously sore.

I used to have no comprehension of how anyone could slip in the shower. Now I get it. I suppose if we had managed the multiple risks involved a little more proactively, I'd be in better shape. Which goes to show you that consultantese is good for something.

Tech n*rs

A few weeks ago during a pretty good talk on Private Equity in Africa, this South African guy with McKinsey and Harvard Business School firmly stamped on his oral resume began to show a snippet from a documentary on his laptop. The sound quality was crappy, so he said to the guy running the lecture series: "Lets get IT in here to fix this." His tone -- haughty and disdainful -- was of the sort which was once saved for the pronunciation of the n word in certain circles, which was picked up on by at least one member of the largely African and African-American audience. Later, he showed an utter lack of regard for the IT guy's time, keeping him waiting around for 10 minutes like he had nothing better to do.

It was funny, and kind of ironic, as he was trying to pump up Africa in his talk.

Commuting use

Humming along the Parkway today, turned off the stereo to be quiet for a while, thought about what I would do if I needed to commute along that road. Perhaps I'd listen to more classical music, I thought, or talk on the phone more. Then I realized how ridiculous it was to think that I needed to be using all my time productively. For what, honestly? This is the Protestant work ethic run absolutely amuck in my delicate skull. Why should I not kick back and enjoy the delicate beauties of our fair state.

And then I go an blog about it.

Oh yes, today was a big day for the Grouse, which got exposure from Felix Salmon's Market Movers blog on Conde Nast's oh-so-tony Portfolio.com. My traffic went straight through it's thatch roof. One discerning reader in Utah even lingered and perused so long that he or she may even join the merry band of Grousereaders.

Sincerity

I was sending out an initial email exhorting friends and family to support my ride in the June 16th American Diabetes Association Tour de Cure to raise money for diabetes research, and found that I was having a difficult time adopting an unironic, enthusiastic tone to ask those nearest and dearest to me to donate to support this most worthy cause, fighting a disease which afflicts some 20 million Americans. If I had been better indoctrinated in the ways of corporate America, like, say, with an MBA, or by working at Walmart, I would assumedly have less trouble donning this mask of unaffected and perky sincerity. I have not had this training, however, so however much I may believe that it is an unalloyed mitzvah to give in support of diabetes research, I will be at pains to express myself directly.

Slow day in the city

In Manhattan today, not much to report, unless you count this big lunk all dressed in hockey gear, probably Rangers I guess -- skates, goalie gloves -- walking out onto the grass in Bryant Park (behind the library), sitting on a chair and reading a newspaper. Maybe the Post. And yes, I looked in the direction he was looking, and yes, there was a camera crew. 3 guys in all, with facial hair. So who knows, maybe it was for YouTube, maybe it's for an indie film, deeply ironic, or maybe it's for a television commercial. By now, same diff.

Later I ran into little Ms RyeandFlax, who informed me that her decided response to her mid-life crisis will be to leave her Big 4 accounting firm and go to an investment bank. Personally, I think she's just early stage in her crisis. Time will tell.

Update from bedtime

Some weeks ago we brought a big boy bed into Graham's room, and left it there with the crib. We needn't have bothered with the transitional phase. Graham climbed right into that bed as if he had never seen a crib. Had he watched enough mafia movies he would have looked at that crib, waved his hand dismissively, and said "you're dead to me."

So now we can snuggle in bed with Graham just like we do with Natalie, but Graham is proving exceptionally affectionate, matching kiss with kiss, nuzzle with nuzzle. And he's still very little.

It's a very nice phase.

The state of the Garden State

It was a gorgeous day here in Central New Jersey: sunny, mild, leaves a budding, and so on. At the end of the day, Natalie even deigned to play with Graham, who was in heaven.

Out on the soccer field, I got through my season opener without injury. That's saying something.

And, as a nightcap, I caught the end of that true classic, which should be on everyone's top 10 of all time list, Coming to America

The money thing

So this headhunter calls me up about a job at a certain asset manager that has already spurned me twice, but the headhunters keep calling anyway cuz they don't know that. And he's talking to me about a financial advisor job, which usually I wouldn't consider but this one pays enough money to put it on the map. More than enough.

And so they talk to me blah blah blah and they make me put my resume in their format and write a letter talking about what clubs I'm in and what a jock I am to show that I'm both social and competitive. And after all that's done (net 3ish hours of the Grouse's precious time) the guy is like, "so how much did you make last year," and I tell him, and he's like "ummmm, errrr. Well, that's a problem, cuz they're gonna look at that and say: if he likes money, why hasn't he figured out a way to earn more? This is a job that offers the potential to earn seven figures eventually, and they want people who want that." And I'm like "I'm a friggin Slavist already, gimme a break." And he's like "They look at money as a proxy for aggression." Fact is, I probably don't want this job and I probably won't get it, but this is a diabolical logic: you can't earn more money because you haven't earned it before.

The Death of Mr Lazarescu

This movie was the critics' darling when in came out in 2005, and it's easy to see why they loved it so much, which doesn't mean you should hate it. But you must be patient. Like 24, it unfolds in something close to real time, though, unlike the show, only one patient dies. It's a very solid example of naturalism, and gives you a pretty good feel for the lingering old Eastern Europe as it slides into the new. The main tension in the movie is between the humane feelings the surrounding characters show towards our rapidly degenerating hero and a wide range of dehumanizing, workaday disdain. But it's not like good guys bad guys. Most of the neighbors and medical staff come and go from caring the whole time.

If you can stomach two hours of characters and atmosphere, cat hair, urine, and obscure drug names and medical terminology, with almost no plot, but lots of humanity, you should definitely watch it.

Natalie rides

Last weekend I took Natalie out to my office complex to take off her training wheels in the secluded calm of glass box land. It was mild, and she rode beneath the allee of flowering corporate trees. At first she was timid, then once she got it, she fairly brimmed with overconfidence: "I'm gonna be riding good way before Canandaigua (vacation in July), and way before Helen!" I was surprised, a bit touched, at her resolve to kick her best friend's ass. No but seriously, it was great to see her feeling empowered.

Bored Indian security guards sauntered out to smoke cigarettes on the bench, and then one got in the security jeep to drive 50 feet then turn around and drive back.

Further out into the parking lot, a Plainsboro ambulance practicing backing up, beeping, and parking.

Cool hand

Why is it that men (can't speak for the ladies) always wash both hands when they've gone to the bathroom, when in every case only one of the hands is likely to have come in harm's way?

Don't get me wrong, now. I always wash both. But why?

Explanations

Today was national Bring Your K ids to Work Day, and, as happens every year, I had no idea that it was coming up and so was utterly unprepared. Across the courtyard, however, at SES Americom, they were 100% prepared, with T-shirts, goodie bags, activities, etc. I must say I was ashamed to have never brought either Natalie or Graham out for this festive occasion.

At lunch, I rightly made a beeline for the cafeteria to beat the rush. Couldn't have been righter, as a crush of folx and younguns ensued. Which would have been unremarkable, had I not witnessed this: adults explaining to teenagers the lunch offerings: "Right here are the french fries, and there are meat balls, and peas..." I knew that the youth of today had problems, but I had not known that an inability to identify common foodstuffs was amongst them.

Take em down

At a hedge fund conference today a certain former SEC Commissioner who has a beard and a freshly minted hedge fund of his own held forth on regulation and other matters, and then some guy in the audience asked a question pertaining to the SEC's recent proposed rule change restricting hedge fund investment to people with $2.5 mln plus to invest: "I don't like the government telling me what I can and can't invest in! That's not the role of goverment."

And our speaker agreed heartily. Since nobody else was gonna ask a question and I stood up and said: "That's a spurious line of argument. Nobody argues that babies shouldn't ride in car seats, or that seatbelt laws are outside the government's domain, and we've had graphic evidence of their utility in NJ recently" (i.e. our stupid cocky governor not wearing one and getting himself almost killed).

You woulda thunk I had dropped sweet little baby jesus off the motel roof. This hirsute former regulator actually said this: "I don't wear a seatbelt because it's the law, I wear it because it's rational to do so. Blah blah blah" This is rank puerile crap. The effectiveness of seatbelt laws is evidenced by reduced incidence of traffic fatalities. It's not about some cowboy sentiment of who's got a right to do what. Corzine should be made personally liable for the expenses his recklessness caused the taxpayers of our fair state to incur, and the trooper who was driving him should be fired for not making him wear a seatbelt.

And somebody should come back around to address the fundamental point about the government's right to protect citizens from themselves as per hedge funds. Which is a different argument altogether from whether the government should exercise that right and how it should do so.

Energy and Rigor

Intellectual rigor is overrated and overrepresented. Energy is what's all too often in short supply. There's always some hardass around to put discipline around a thought process. What's important is to generate flow.

Attitude

"Early" in the morning today was feeling my usual grouchy self, but when I took time to pull back the curtaines and put the chair pillows back on the bed I felt instantly more positive, and effect light and order sometimes have on me.

Over the weekend gossip filtered back about a woman who, upon taking possession of her dream home (hell, we all like the house in our hood) went on and on bitching about how dirty the previous occupant had left it, how their timeline for renovations was blown, blah blah blah. I mean, it's one of the houses house envy is made for and of, and blah blah blah.

Which is all to say that it's astounding how important attitude is to one's experience, and how hard and easy it is to control attitude. It's hard, because it is, and easy, because there's often something you can do if you remember to do it. And there's the rub.

Why LG sucks. Why Best Buy sucks.

We bought a shiny stainless steel LG Dishwasher in November or so, and were mighty proud of how clean and modern at least part of our kitchen looked. Then it broke. Standing water in the bottom. That was about 3 weeks ago. That's when the warranty kicked in, and we called so-called Best Buy, where we had gotten the thing.

I won't bore you with all the details, my hands haven't the strength to type it, nuffbeit to say that they mis-diagnosed the problem, had ridiculous internal communications issues, and the problem dragged on and on without anyone being accountable. I'm sure you're shocked. So a part that was supposed to have arrived Monday finally got here yesterday, and they sent a guy over. So today this guy Winston shows up, and he pulls the dishwasher out onto our hardwood floor with no protection and he's flipping it all around on the wood floor, fixing it, and we -- mindful of how the guys from Lowe's scratched the floor when they put the stove in and how the local free-lance Mexicans scratched the stairs when they brought the treadmill up the stairs (our bad from the jump) -- got kind of jumpy. And we're like "you need help with that, you're going to scratch the floor" and he's like "Look, this is my job, I do this all day, and if the floor gets scratched Best Buy has insurance." Which is absurd. We don' t want to be dealing with Best Buy's frickin insurance, we just don't want our floor scratched. So we get a little worked up and Winston calls his supervisor Brian and, very calmly, says: "I'll be back Tuesday with another guy, this is a two-person job." Winston was pretty impressive, must say, poised, calm, well-trained.

But Best Buy sucks, make no bones about it. Shitty LG product, poor service generally, bad attitude.

Odelay

Just bought it. Like it.

Gotta hurry down to the park to eat some ribs.

On the left is my dad being crowned Poet Laureate of Hillsborough, NC.

Kids

Went to a hedge fund industry happy hour at a swank bar on Central Park South with a bunch of business cards, thinking that business could be done there. Wrong. It was all beautiful bronze boys and girls shinnying up to each other, waitresses with major cleavage and 5 dollar seltzer and loud thumping music. Like a liquor ad, only it charges money.

So I went to the Harvard Club for a talk on private equity in Africa, which was more like it. Industry nerds of all colors.

On the way home, took the Dinkie (small train) to Princeton. No cabs. Rats! On the walk home, at midnight, a dodgeball tournament was letting out of the gym, and boys were roaring from the eternal pleasures of beer.

Marvels of transparency

I may have written at some point in time of my frustrations at looking for one record, the New Order EP 1981-1982 of the singles they put together in the years right after Ian Curtis killed himself. It's great material, but the dickheads went and rerecorded-remastered it sometime in the 90s and sucked all the texture out of it, and that's the only versions you can find most of the time.

So I search for it intermittently, and imagine my glee when I saw a rare Canadian CD of the original material. 3 days from the end of the end of the bidding cycle, the bidding stood at 5.99 and I put in a maximum bid of 15 bux, and was outbid in the blink on an automatic eye. Bidding has now risen to $42.37 with 35 minutes to go, edging closer to the $98 I've seen asked at used music vendors.

The behavioral economists and advocates of the time value of money amongst you may argue that I should just plunk down the ducats and buy the thing, that it's a waste of my time to keep looking, but you would overlook the powerful forces of spousal rebuke, which makes the world not go around, at times.

Once more on repetition

It's astonishing how much people repeat themselves. Today at AA a woman was telling a story and, as she was telling it, I realized that I had already heard her tell exactly the same story, and when she got to the punchline ("I stood at the top of the stairs and heard that vodka bottle calling my name") I had this feeling that her repetition was more or less verbatim. The theoretically inclined would call this type of repetition the performance of self.

Who am I to talk? Particularly in sales, I find myself repeating myself endlessly. In fact, all businesspeople today are supposed to have "elevator speeches," verbal mini-mes. I know that, at parties, I return to well-rehearsed themes and turns of phrase to overawe males and enrapture ladies. You could almost say that we craft a set of linguistic masks to be used with interlocutors of differing distances from ourselves: strangers, people at the school, neighbors, friends, family, self . Theoretically, when you get to the core there ought to be something authentic.

And that's the problem. It's hard to dissociate yourself from what you do most of the time, so you become your elevator story, because it seems easier that way.

A kid, not a girl

It is immensely pleasing to see Natalie in dirty soccer clothes with hair unkempt, more kid than girl, not oppressed by gender or beauty, which will come soon enough, and will send me out to the shotgun store to keep the varmints off.

It warms my heart.

Ride for the cure

Grousereaders,

Once more the June 16 date for the Tour de Cure, Princeton is coming up fast, and I'll be joining in for the second time, raising money for a cure for diabetes. This year I've set an ambitious goal of $500, and once again I'll be keeping track of donations and seeing who gives more: southerners or yankees. We'll be counting region of origin by where you went to high school. So don't let your region down, visit my site here and make a pledge for a cure.

As soon as a reach my goal, I'll back off in the promotional effort.

Pan em all

Sophia Coppola, we have been told, has exquisite taste, and it is everywhere in evidence in Marie Antoinette. All too much so, to be sure. Homegirl need to get some supersized fries and back off a bit, because she lays the aesthetic on as thick as a two-hour perfume commercial. Some of the tunes are good, but the juxtaposition of 80s tunes and 1700s scenes gets overwraught, if no more so than everything else.

We made it through 24 minutes of Miami Vice, in which Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx try to elevate eyebrow lifting to a new art, and fail.

For those who have rued the death of the sitcom, may I suggest The Devil Wears Prada. Meryl got nominated for this? That's like giving Marty the Oscar for The Departed, just doling out honors for lack of anything better to do.

Stamford Marriott, 9:30 AM, 4/6/07

A gathering of private equity and hedge fund folk. The publisher of Trader and DealMaker magazines stands at the podium with the "Top 100 Traders of 2006" issue, including the guy from Centaurus in Houston on the other side of the Amaranth trade who made $2 billion for the year. "Can you imagine what that feels like?" she asks, awestruck. It was pretty pathetic to see a grown human -- who herself made surely reasonable money -- get excited like this, and the mostly guy crowd tittered a little as well at the mere thought of it. Thing is, the Centaurus guy was smart, but he got lucky as hell, and he basically did the same thing as Brian Hunter, just got luckier. There's nothing to emulate. And the problem is that there's no downside, failure is understigmatized. Hunter is back in business, as is John Meriwether of LTCM.

Next, a stop off at the Burlington Coat Factory in city center for a good value on a raincoat. Feels a lot like deparment store, not all that discount an atmosphere, rather pleasant. But there are shirts with 20-20.5 necks, and a 16 is very hard to find. Which says something.

The Target across the street looked like an old-fashioned department store too, making the downtown feel almost real.

Figaro, 44th St, bet 5th and 6th, 4:05 PM

Sat down next to a guy watching Tottenham vs. Seville. At first he seemed like a nice guy, interested in chatting, but then he turned out to be concerned with soccer and only soccer. For some reason he never could really explain, he was a Tottenham fan. As it got down to crunch time he criticized almost every play loudly and with intermittent stomping: "Oh no no no, why are you playing the ball there, you idot!" It was pretty tiresome, pretty typical guy stuff.

I repeat myself when under stress

As this blog drags on and on and blends with my day, I realize that it incurs more and more the same repetition risks that conversation does: "Have I blogged this story before?" I ask myself. Time was I might have combed the archives to see, but it's too hard: the naming conventions for stories aren't normalized, I cant' be certain of a keyword occurence if I search on it.

So I blather on. And you, fair reader, have the same options you would have if you were talking to me at a party and I was going on about some shit from back in the day, though at a real party might be able to eyeball a tray of hushpuppies or perhaps a Cheerwine over my left shoulder. So the blog is in the end a written form of conversation in which I talk about life, the peanut gallery talks about penis enhancement, and pay them no mind. And lord knows I repeat myself in conversation.

An Inconvenient Truth

I'm sorry to say this, but, having just watched the movie, I think that Al Gore really needs to wise up, run for President, and reclaim the crown that was stolen from him back in 2000. He should kick Hilary and Obama right the fuck out of the way. They're young and have plenty of time to figure what to run on. Now they're just running on personality and perceived debts. Admittedly, Gore is the only southern white male I'd vote for around now.

The sole risk is that campaign and job would knock him off message.

Why not?

One of Graham's best sayings at present is: "Why not?", meaning "Why?"
As in:

Mary: "Graham, it's time to go home now"
Graham: "Why not?"

or

Clark: "Graham, put down the tractor and go eat dinner."
Graham: "Why not?"

Sadly, Blogger does not offer intonation functionality, because the way he says it has a charm all its own.

Also of note: Graham is saying "willn't" instead of "won't", just like his sister.

Closing gaps

Henry Paulson, late of Goldman Sachs, seems to have been appointed as much the post of chief whipper of Sarbanes-Oxley as that of Secretary of the Treasury. Not that I'm all that pro-SOX, even though the big accounting companices refer to it as "Y2K without an end date" (quoth Rye and Flax). So Paulson goes around banging on tables saying that SOX is making US Capital markets fall behind those of the rest of the world. As measured by a small uptrend in companies listing with exchanges.

I might protest that he's overreaching, but it took me back 23 years to my AB Duke interview at Duke. For starters, I spilled the soda I had brought in all over the table.

I had submitted an essay on National Industrial Policy a la Robert Reich, and cited a fifteenfold increase in Airbus's market share (from 1 to 15%, while Boeing and McConnell-Douglas retained 82%) as evidence of how we needed some government investment. "Is this really a threat?" asked Professor John W. Cell (father of Jon and Tom Cell of CHHS soccer). A little flustered, I said "the trend of which it is representative is a threat." He huffed and puffed. I did not get the fellowship. (Not that I would have wanted to be in school with Christian Laetner)

And now what? McConnell Douglas is history. Airbus has majority market share. Small trends can grow to be big ones, that's for sure. Maybe Hank's on to something.

Why we have children

As we reached the bottom of the driveway in Larchmont today at the close of Spring Break, I saw that Natalie was tearing up a little bit. "You're sad because we're leaving grandma and grandpa's house?" I said.

And here's what she said, as close to verbatim as possible: "Whenever we leave the house of relatives I have sorrow, but my spirit rises when I think that soon Daniel and Caroline (cousins) will visit us." That's one smooth talking little girl.

A pale yellow envelope

Just momentarily fondled an envelope from Columbia inviting me to a global leadership dinner, for which the cheapest ticket is $500. It clearly fell into my hands by mistake, though I should probably go.

But it brought back memories of that most welcome pale yellow envelope of 1991, informing me that Columbia had not only let me in but had hooked me up with a full ride for 5 years, which was as good as it got for the young Slavist. That was the pale yellow envelope that released me ended the long purgatory period served in Chapel Hill, drinking, reading theory, running ball and chasing beauty, a period I thought would never end.

Perhaps this pale yellow envelope will also offer deliverance. But can I expense it?

Kind and gentle

An article in the Times today talks about using Border Collies to corral geese in Central Park praises them for not harming the geese. Earlier campaigns, we are told, included: "education campaigns to stop people from feeding the geese; letting the grass grow taller to disrupt the birds’ eating habits; building fences to confuse them and try to limit access to certain areas."

Now, I understand that one doesn't want to discharge firearms in Central Parks, but if there's a relatively fixed population of non-migratory geese, here's what I suggest: catch them and cut their little heads off with hacksaws. They are not example of nature, any more than the under-predated deer and bunny who traumatize us are: they are almost purely cultural phenomena. Nature would have a certain amount of all them die violent deaths, and our interstates and other roadways assures some of this too.

I would bet that the people who worry about geese have few qualms about the treatment of acknowledged vermin such as cockroaches, mice, rats, and pigeons.

Culture slock

Am I getting lazy or just unobservant. Used to be every time I was in NY City almost I saw something compelling.

Today, what do I got: two young tourist girls came around an intrablock corner on 49th and looked up at this nondescript building and said "Oh my God! Look at this building" And I wanted to stop and go see what was so special but I was running late to meet a woman named Sioux (I kid you not).

Beyond that it's just hustle and flow. All my deep thoughts are getting sucked up into my quickly approaching lecture on John Cheever and suburban Soteriology. It's gonna frickin rock, dude.

Trains to and fro

8:10 AM Metro North express from Larchmont to Grand Central.
In the bar car, standing. All of a sudden a murmur then a mild hubbub at the other end of the car. Above the crowd a pale female hand flails, fishlike, before disappearing. "Get a doctor! Is there a doctor in the car?" comes a cry from the crowd.

I turn and walk towards the other car, bravely leaving my computer bag behind. I open the car door and walk through to the next "Is there a doctor in the house." A woman turns and looks at me. "You should get the conductor," she says. Thanks a lot, bitch. A conductor comes through, takes a quick look, jumps on the intercom and asks for a doctor. A minute or two later a doctor arrives, a man of 5o or so, loping casually, insouciant in twead and entitlement.

By now the wheels are turning. She's awake. Police and EMT will wait for her at 125th. The doctor sidles away.

3:30 PM NJTransit, NE Corridor
I'm in the loudest seat ever. A couple arguing to one side. Some Algerian guys talking loud in French behind me. An Indian family with very cute little girls in front of me (not that loud). And then a woman with a cellphone behind them, talking incessantly: "And then this bitch comes up to me and is like, 'you a bitch,' and I is like, 'I'm not a bitch, bitch'. And she's like, 'yes you is a bitch,' and I'm like 'no, the hell I'm not, bitch!" And this goes on for 20 minutes.

And I'm thinking, I guess this is what the pre-rush hour trains are like. Then I go one car back to use the bathroom and it's totally quiet.

Baton twirling competition, Hamilton, NJ 10:30-12:30

Jackie and Margaret were performiong, so Natalie, Graham and I accompanied David to a middle school in Hamilton.

There, on one of the seemingly endless hallways of lockers, there was a "Photogenic contest" on the wall. Pictures of twirlers by age group. Best picture with mom. Best picture with grandma. Gave us a hint of what was to come.

The order of the day was, make-up, sequins, even hose. Twirling participants had an initial judging in which they walked back in forth in front of the judge and made I contact and smiled. I kid you not. Jackie and Margaret competed separately in "marching," as in, now twirling. Again, formal stride, knee up chin, smiling. Smiles are important all around.

In the lunch room, where alll the vending machines had suspicious signs saying "Out of order" (they should have said "Would-be Squandered Revenue Opportunity"). 8 people working the lunch table. I made a $3 purchase with a ten dollar bill. The woman took it and rolled her eyes up in her head, ten said slowly "Umm, you're change is $7". So she got it right.

Rarely have I felt class divides so palpable. We were the only people from Princeton there, the only upper-middle class people, and everybody knew it. I wonder if the kids could sense it. The girls from our team were out there in plain leotards, nothing sparkly, no make up. They probably lost points for lack of adornment.

I gotta teach Natalie to play ultimate.

Amy Feiman, in memoriam

Amy was commemorated and layed to rest today in North and South Brunswick, both curiously south of New Brunswick. After 6 years of fighting breast cancer, almost the entire period I've known her, she lost at the age of 49.

It was a memorable service. Her husband Aryeh got up and spoke movingly, but with the calm and restraint of someone who was not surprised by a loved one's death. Of how they met by the copier, were engaged three days later, and married on a mountaintop in Israel. Compare with Forrest Whittaker getting both the Golden Globe and the Oscar, the latter he should have seen coming. On both occasions he was so overwhelmed that he could barely get a coherent sentence out. Either way works.

Many of the speakers chose to bracket their emotions with formal point by point recollections. I'm sure that's about all I could muster. I was impressed that her daughters had it together to speak as well as they did.

There was much wailing. I, personally, was a salt-faced mess, thinking of my sister going through breast cancer at the same time, and how it must be to be her family, etc.

And as I saw Jewish funeral rites for the first time (some beautiful singing, the assembled shovelling dirt in the grave as a "last act of kindness", intensely uniform gravestones), I was both impressed and acutely aware that I was the foreigner here, not just in this congregation, but in this Garden State, so lacking in red clay.


I'm donating to the Dana Farber Center for cancer research.

Another way to get Googled

So I sent a resume in to Google for a job in New York a month or so back. And then a recruiter (Kim) from Google calls me about a different job out in California. And I was like "I don't know if I'd want to move, I'd rather look at something in NYC, but send me the description and I'll take a look at it." And I wait. No description. I go through the spam folder of my Yahoo mail, thinking that Yahoo might not like google emails, but I don't see it.

A couple days later I call Kim back and ask that she send the description in a voicemail. A day or two later I get a call from John, also out in Mountain View, wanting to schedule an interview with Amanda about the New York job. So I'm stoked. They think I look Googlish enough that they'll flip me back to my original job, I think.

So today I've got a phone call scheduled with Amanda. She calls me 10 minutes late. "Sorry" she says. OK. Then she wants to talk to me about the California job. Paints a pretty picture indeed. I tell her to send me the description and I'll think about it. She does so. It gets stuck in the Yahoo spam folder.

Not one word of apology. They act like the name Google is so prestigious that all prospects are just gonna jump for joy and hop on planes to Cally. But you can't put google on your gravestone.

47th St near 5th, 2:45 PM

A guy in his late 40s, dressed casually, with a duffle bag with a yellow sweatshirt poking out, says loudly to himself as if through his teeth: "You gotta be in it to win it," as he strides purposefully westward.

Oh yeah

As I left DMV yesterday there was a Waspy guy in his 50s there, with what hair he had worn long around a balding crown, in jean shorts and sockless pennyloafers, and it occurred to me that, except for him, I was the sole Waspy guy there, which in turn led me to reflect that the world in which I live, this so-called Prince-ton, isn't really all that representative of reality.

A few minutes earlier, I saw another rarity for my uptight breed: back behind the counter where they make licenses, a black guy in his late 20s, maybe gay, came up behind an Italian-American woman in her 40s-50s to show her something. He made a lot of physical contact with her, roughly half of his upper body pressed against hers with an arm around her, showed her the picture, and they both jumped up and down laughing.

I wanted to see the picture. More importanly, Wasps don't touch each other like that in the workplace. It was remarkable.

NJDMV, Quaker Bridge Road, 1:21 PM EDST

I was number 81, waiting to be called to get my new license. Which is much worse than it sounds. They were at 63 already, and it wasn't that crowded. An old lady with number 84 came by with a walker. "Young man" (not me) she says, "Can I sit next to the wall? I'm 81, it's so much easier for me to get up." She sat down and took a breath. Then she got going, ranging around with her head, making eye contact everywhere. "... So the guy who drove me here, lives across the street, sweetheart he is, he shows up in his wife's new caddy last week to take me to the store and I'm like, are you sure this is OK?" And he's like, "yeah, she said you can ride in it, she's just gonna check out the back seat when we're done." Uproarious cackling. More jokes about old people having sex. About funny cell phone music playing during funerals. I can't even recall.

I go up to get my license. She's called soon. She breaks out her original birth certificate, 81 years old, falling apart. A wedding certificate that looks like it was handwritten by the minister. "We don't accept documents from religious institutions, ma'am. Only from municipal authorities."

It was sort of out of Kafka. There was no way she was gonna get a license today, didn't have enough ID certification. But, at the end of the day, she didn't really care, much as she complained. She just wanted somebody to talk to, and something to rail about.

Old School, 2.0

Talked to a guy today who writes, but then can't get himself to write much and what he does, he sends to publishers and then never hears back from them. But he has no blog.

If you want to write, seems to me, there's a cheap and easy place to do it and you don't get rejected. In the same way, at least. And that's right hear on the good old fashioned internet. Our sweet gift from little Baby Jesus.

Oh yeah, the Tar Heels brought an uneven year to an apppropriate end tonight. This team didn't belong in the Final Four. If people come back, next year they should, but not this year. Too flaky.

GUS dry pomegranate

One of the little-noted benefits of Americans' recently developed distaste for soda is the way it has set the soda makers to scrambling. They're all working hard to create new product and get it in front of the soda-loving minority, which would include me. Today I saw a Diet Pepsi Jazz soda in a case. Never heard of it. If I hadn't had a coffee in hand, I would have snapped one up, and I probably should have despite the coffee.

Earlier in the week, in Grand Central Station, I had a Ting, a Jamaican grapefruit soda. It was not bad. Sadly, they gave me only 10 oz of it.

Later that evening, in Philadelphia, the gods graced me with a Canada Dry Lime Soda, which was OK but too sweet and a suspicious green.

But I was delighted tonight to see at our neighborhood grocery store that there's a new line of sodas in town: GUS, or "Grown Up Soda". They have sugar in them, but less, about 60% of what you get from a mainline soda. I know people have been selling sophisticated sodas in health food stores for some time, and, yes, I've been drinking them, but GUS has funky flavors, like the dry pomegranate soda I have next to me right now. It's good, maybe soda of the week.

And then, and then.... On the way down the main soda isle, I spotted litres of the rare San Pellegrino Rosso, and snapped on up for a special occasion. If only we could find the sublime San Pellegrino Pampelmo, which nobody seems to import, and which I've only spotted once stateside, at the Trenton Farmer's Market back in '01 (bought a case). Then should I be happy.

To Lambertville

Mary looked for dining room chairs. I took the kids.

This time Graham held my hand as we crossed the street, and as we crossed the bridge from New Jersey into Pennsylvania. Only technically a spring day, it passed without incident. No injuries, no purchases, except pizza. Perfect!

The middle of life

Had lunch with a friend today. I had always marvelled at her ability -- as a trained cultural anthropolist -- to stay seemingly so engaged with her soul-numbing corporate job. Today she informs me that she has joined the mid-life freak-out club, and is moving along the old decision tree towards the proverbial next step, lest it not be off a cliff.

What this means is that now everyone I know who got a PhD in a liberal art and then pulled a sneak move into the for-profit zone is, at the very least, reconsidering their terms of engagement with that world. Which tells you a lot. Perhaps we're just a bunch of spoiled whiners, or perhaps we're just deep.

On an errand

Just ran out to lunch and to pick up a birthday cake. Took my glasses case so I could read at lunch. Of course, I forgot to put them on, and read without them. When I got back, my glasses were right next to my laptop, right where I had left them.

And then I sat down in my chair and I thought my cellphone was vibrating in my pocket. But then I saw my phone on my desk. Meaning that the vibrations in my side were strictly gastric in nature.

Tonight, in the kind of geekfest only Princeton and a few peers could offer, Ted's lecture on "Attention, Reputation" and something else. Guy's night out indeed.

Circle jerk sublime

At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Columbia Alumni Association kicked it into gear with some dope hors d'ouevres and a fly trio by the main staircase. And then, to make us pay for the fine vittles, we were shoved downstairs into an auditorium for a speech by President Lee Bollinger. But first, the head of the local Alums got up and praised a bunch of people, including Bollinger's wife. And then a local class of 2010 girl got up and praised this wealthy benefactor guy who was paying for her education. And then that guy got up and praised Bollinger's wife for a a number of diverse accomplishments. Like I give a fuck.

And then Bollinger gets up and, not surprisingly, carries on about how Columbia needs to expand into Harlem in a big way to be great. Which is actually OK, I lived up there and I know that the neighborhood could use a capital improvement. And he also talks about how Columbia needs to have a physical presence on all continents. Dunno. Smacks of imperial pretensions. I just think he looks a little too much like Chuck Norris to be taken all that seriously. But I'm sure he'll have most of his way. He is, after all, el presidente.

Freaks on a Train

First, a bearded kid in a parka and a knit cap and with the hood pulled up over it (despite the fact that it’s 45 out) misses his stop, even though the conductor tapped him on the shoulder and told him it was coming up. This kid was in all likelihood tripping. He made a minor scene and the conductor scribbled something on the back of his ticket so he get on the train headed south at Newark Airport.

Then some skinhead kid was arguing with the same conductor about his ticket. I didn’t really catch what their argument about, but the skinhead pointed out that the bathroom hear in our car had been busy forever.

So the conductor goes and bangs on a door and this mini-Ramone homeless weasil comes out, claiming to have been cleaning himself up. And then he looks for his ticket for like 15 minutes while the conductor is trying to throw him off. And then he finds the ticket and gives it to the conductor, who goes: “This isn’t even the right ticket”. And for some reason, the conductor doesn’t throw him out, and he’s saying “I know you, you been on my train before and you do the same thing, hiding in the bathroom.” And the weasil is like, “no way man, I’m homeless and I’m in there freshening up, changing my socks and whatnot. Look, I still got soap on my face…”

As we exit the train, the blonde woman behind me says “I’ve seen him on the train before. He does do the same shit over and over.”

Knight bound

Is it just me, or is there something creepy about that Pontiac G6 commercial where little miss fricking house on the prairie is driving to the game and it turns out she has Bobby Knight tied up in the back seat? I mean, I hate Knight as much as anybody, I used to be kind of cutting edge in the art of hating the guy, but it's odd to have GM plumping for forceable abduction. I guess the golly gee whiz vibe of giving out G6s on Oprah has kinds of worn down, and they decided to rebrand the car a touch.

The thing is

The thing is, there is so much stuff on the internet, I just can't seem to read it all.

Martin Cornick of Somerville, Periodontist

This morning I was in Somerville for my quarterly cleaning, this time at the office of one Martin Cornick, who shares his practice with his son Peter and the low, modest building with another son, who's a lawyer serving an elderly clientele. That's good affinity marketing.

Dr Marty, as they say, is not just a periodontist but a rabbinical figure. Looking all too much like Gene Wilder, the man has a way, which is not to say his way, with clients. I'll never forget the time when he was drilling deep into my sorry jaw to put an implant in there and, despite the intense amount of drugs he had pumped into me, it hurt like fuck. I sat there thinking about Mary giving birth soon and at least it didn't hurt like that. He had my head held in his armpit to keep me from squirming, and, right at the height of the pain, he lets go of my head momentarily and goes, "ya havin fun their, kid?" or somesuch nonsense. It was well-timed, perfect comic release.

And now Dr. Pete, as they say, is running the shop and well, but I miss the old gum rabbi. Surely he's off having well-earned fun, I'm sure. Last time I saw him he had on hiking shoes to complement his mass of frizzy white hair.

The Great Cycle of Nature

And so it goes, the great cycle. Disspiriting news at work beget furious storms of self-doubt, anxiety, and anxiety-doubt. At home, some comfort from warm children's bodies lying against me as I read stories. And then, dinner and a fight, about life goals, the relative import of career, family, houses, friends, geographies, money. And then a backing off, a mild rapprochement before bed (mild, mind you). And then pharmasleep, followed by premature wakie wake time at 5 AM and a heightened if silent revisiting of the prior day's and night's themes.

And then, after a suitable pause, up, eat, shave, shower, suit, car, work, paycheck, work, good news, lunch, work, snack , work, bad news, work, home. Colored check marks on the task list mark the passage through the day.

Male enhancement cream

Much as I sometimes mentally tout my own persistence with this blog, let me give a shout out to our constant commentator, who so diligently dreams up variants on the theme of penis enlargement and then scoots off under a cloak of anonymity into his member-enhancing lair. While I wouldn't say that exhaustive efforts have been made to identify this fellow, there are indications that he suffers from certain neurological traits, which serve as an engin driving speculation that he is derived from a moose.

Keep it up, masked creamer!

Saks Fifth Avenue, 2 PM 3/13/07

I need new shoes, I think, and the last place I got them was Saks, back in the fall of '01, in the shadow of 9/11. So I return to the scene of the crime, through jewelry, up what turns out to be 6 well burnished escalators, populated mostly with skinny done-up women of multiple vintages. To a one, they did not saw howdie.

Round about the 4th floor, a particular done up african american young woman in fur is coming down my way. In her hands she holds a card: "Exotic fur." Oh, I get it, a model. Later a similarly lanky young model in black and desperately uncomfortable looking shoes hobbles her way across the floor with a sign for some Italian like "Unnelio Quargredettoncini" or something. I wanted to put her out of her misery.

I felt vaguely like Augustine entering into Carthage, "a cauldron of hissing lust," though it wasn't me doing the hissing.

On the men's floor, ties cost $145, and everything gleams, and I'm thinking: "Do I really belong amongst all this money?"

Unsurprisingly, I found no shoes.

Stranger than Fiction

This movie works, despite leaning too hard on Miguel de Unamuno's classic Niebla, despite telegraphing the plotline and playing off of stereotypes (Emma Thompson as neurotic novellist, Queen Latifah as the sassy black woman, eccentric cafe dwellers as, well, eccentric cafe dwellers).

In the end, it is, sweet, uplifting, and compelling.

Global Warming

I don't know how anybody can say there's global warming. It's usually so much warmer on the first day of daylight savings time.

Enronstvo i Yukosshchina

According to the NY Times, the Putin government has raided Price Waterhouse's offices looking for incriminating papers around the Yukos affair. The government has apparently likened Yukos to Enron, which is a pretty smooth move. Russia is so opaque that noone will ever be able to assess how much sense this analogy makes, but enough Russians will buy it for it to stick.

Me, while being on record as to Khodorkovsky's lily-whiteness (i.e. not), think he's generally a more appealing figure than Putin. He gives a fuck about civil society, which is nice. He's certainly a lot cuter. It would be interesting to see how Putin does without strong oil revenues. Would they love him so then?

No fun

Ted's remark that there are no bobble-headed dolls on the desks at my current work place rings true: there are none. We are a fairly lame and square lot, sitting around in our suits looking at computers. I had never really thought of it like that.

Those crazy guys

Up in Connecticut for a conference Monday and Tuesday. Lots of fund manager types weighing in on how their "integrity" is the single thing they can't get back if they lose it. So I went and visited a new hedge fund newsletter's website, and what do I see:

High profile hedge fund manager Albert Hsu was arraigned in Superior Court in Norwalk, Conn., today on charges of attempted kidnapping and sexual assault.

Hsu, managing director of fund of funds Anchor Point Capital, allegedly went onto the Internet posing as his ex-girlfriend and described a fantasy of being abducted and raped, according to Ricki Goldstein, a deputy assistant state's attorney. He also posted personal information about the unnamed woman, including her address and her travel schedule...

Hsu’s court appointed lawyer, Dawn Bradanini, reportedly said that Hsu is “thoroughly embarrassed” by his actions.

I'm not sure embarassed is the word. All that money goes to a fella's head, I reckon.

Flashing lights

Graham pulled away from my hand yesterday in Chester as we crossed the street and face planted and when I picked him up, blood was spewing from his head somewhere I didn't know and man, was I freaked out. Not good crisis management. But then Mary came across the street and we stanched the bleeding and then the EMTs and cops they did come, oh, plentifully. Flashing lights, as Graham says.

And he was visibly fine and yet they decided he should go to the emergency room. And as long as we were headed to the emergency room, we might as well stabilize his head and neck with a brace thingie and take him in an ambulance. Flashing lights.

And Natalie and I trailed along behind, spooked, though rationally I knew that he had been moving limbs and all. And at the hospital, CAT scan results and two stitches and 4 hours, he was fine. But the whole thing gave a certain perspective on life and stress and all. Today he insisted on school.

Babel

There are some good things about this movie, and it's well shot, but mostly it's just silly. Kate Blanchett shows her much-noted range by writhing and grimacing and being blonde. Brad Pitt demonstrates some wrinkles (which don't really age him that much) and a soft side. There's a Mexican wedding, complete with chicken neck-wringing and gun-firing. We tour the clubs of Tokyo on ecstasy with no panties on. Woo hoo!

Seriously, the Japanese deaf-mute character is pretty well-developed. The rest of it is like a long after-school special cum music video. I don't know how it could be nominated for anything except for cinematography.

Great to good

I know it's pathetic that I get my rock and roll from the Economist, but the video below from OK Go is pretty fricking cool. Observe....



And yet, and yet, even as I extoll the video's virtues, this band pretty much proves my point from earlier in the week that the stars of YouTube are in some sense not quite ready for prime time. OK Go, which has a good sound, nice hooks, and one brilliant video, went out and made other videos based on the same shtick. And they're fine, they just light nothing on fire.

But we should all do something as sublimely clever as this once. 15 minutes of fame well-earned.

Khodorkovsky, big swinging dick for 2007

Misha's Letter from Siberia in the Economist

The year ahead will show which strategy the developed countries are going to choose to work their way out of their looming energy crisis.

1. Reindustrialisation based on a “new competitiveness” deriving from an energy-efficiency advantage over the industry of China and other developing countries.

2. New colonial wars—this time for energy resources.

3. New leadership: abandonment of the model of increasing material consumption in favour of improvement in the quality of life, an increase in the intellectual component of the consumer basket.

Hard to figure him out. As much money as he's got he must be some kind of a crook, esp. in Russia, and yet he's not kidding. But at the end of the day he's a typical Russian, Westerners cain't write this kind of stuff.

Except, of course, for evangelical Christians, who talk along the lines of point #3 all the time. Even as they live in McMansions and drive big fat SUVs. Some of them.

Better beta

When markets tanked in 2000-2 I did some stupid panic selling. A 400-point day would have caused me stress.

In 2007 less so. Have I adjusted better to volatility, having lived through a nasty down cycle? And with 2000-2 marking the first down cycle in which a substantial portion of the populace had direct exposure to equity markets, are there millions of people who are now wiser and more seasoned out there? Might this limit -- and be limiting -- the downside?

We'll see if this retrenchment has legs, and what happens to my mindset if it does. Stay tuned.

Children's books, adult infantilization

There's a substantial literature on the Jungian aspects of children's books, how it gives them all these nice archetypes and whatnot. But what about what the books do to us, the readers? They are, on the one hand, nice and soothing after a long day of this, that and -- all too frequently -- the other. But might they also dim our brains with little lambs and nice green rolling hills and windmills and all that? Might they not leave us too with the erroneous impression that life might be like that, only to find us collared with a forearm as we cross the office threshhold?

Anyway, they're so cute. Especially the ones about bunnies.

Midtown freakout

I wish somebody could explain for me why when you Google Map midtown Manhattan (try 590 5th Ave, 10022) and put it on Hybrid, why the heck are the buildings all Helter-Skelter. Some going this way, others that, like they're planning on squishing each other or they just couldn't get it organized. Or maybe it's a Homeland Security dealie. You tell me.

In strictest confidence

In AA today, this young girl with a horribly pretentious accent, whom we shall call "Muriel", chimed in for a repeat sharing at the end of the meeting, in response to another woman's tale of having "gone out" and drunk again. In her horribly pretentious accent, she told us that she "never wants to find myself on the streets of Paris again, wandering around my neighbor at 1 in the morning just because I'm drunk. And I never want to find myself lying on my bed at Oxford, staring at my duvet [pronounced, horribly, as "DOO-vay"], thinking "what a beautiful DOO-vay." Like, I'm sorry, how to Paris and Oxford add to the alcoholic, confessional quality here. They don't. She just wanted to make sure we knew she was drunk in some picturesque and prestigious places. I, for one, was impressed, obviously.

AMP

In my everlasting attempt to be more like the kids, I just had an AMP, by Mountain Dew. It was wierd and heavy, like the soda equivalent of Guinness Stout. Crazy kids.

Poaching nothing

The Times ran a story today about YouTube's competitors poaching "talent" such as LonelyGirl15. This is the content equivalent of chasing gains. Very few of the people who have become popular on YouTube will have the ability to create sustainable entertainment.

We have discussed on this blog the struggle that comics go through to stay fresh. It ain't easy. The best do it by having ensembles and limiting exposure: John Stewart has recently cut down on the amount of comedy he has to do each night by becoming America's most earnest book review show. Which is fabulous, by the way, a frickin coup.

But these YouTubers will, by and large, crash and burn, not because they're not talented, but because they're gimmicks. And comedy is hard work.

Tongue tricks

Natalie has developed the annoying habit of sticking her tongue out and touching it with her finger or touching it to her nose as we read stories. If she's not wiggling a tooth, that is. It's all vaguely OCD, and mildly disturbing. I tell her to stop, and you know she doesn't.

Chaos within order

The rigid structure and habitualness of our lives: splitting a DVD across Friday and Saturday night, the same breakfast each Saturday and Sunday, wearing the same fleece and sweats around the house every night and all weekend, sets off and belies a chaotic inability to make big decisions, and set firm direction. Career direction, say.

The jumble of items on surfaces, chests of drawers, closets, things not thrown away, dayglo mini berets. Piles of books , magazines and newspapers.

There's a well-known "type" who hoards years worth of newspapers and other crap until it crowds him/her out of his living space. We're not headed there yet. Stay tuned.

Finance 2.0

A Times article on the beneficial effects of activist hedge fund activities concluded by saying, "invest off of this knowledge, but know that your investment edge will disappear soon as everyone else figures out the same thing." Particularly after that article. Hedge funds, it seems, despite their vaunted secrecy, bring about greater speed of idea circulation.

Hedge fund activism, says the article, is better than pension fund or mutual fund activism. Why? Cuz hedge funds got skin in the game. Make a bad call, it's their ass. They care a lot. Activist hedge funds are lots of rational profit-seeking agents seeking transparency.

Lots of little entities facilitating the flow of information, taking power away from a set of legacy institutions. As hedge funds to i-banks and mutual funds, so blogs to networks, so distributed computing to mainframes.

Volatility goes down, and it's a smoother ride up. Except for when all the lemmings pile in together, as with the GM downgrade last spring and the associated disruptions. But that too passed.

Is capital allocated better? Who knows. But it feels OK now.

Return to the old country

Today, for the first time ever, I met a Russian graduate student (OK, spouse of) who told me that she and her husband intend to go back to Russia after her husband gets his PhD. That would have been inconceivable back in my day, when the whole game was to get a job over here and shuttle back there sporadically to see the folx. But now, things have changed. There's IKEAs over there, and mortgages too. And God knows what else, it's been too long for me.

It's good for Russia, for sure, to have the brain drain slow. It's probably good for us too, for our universities to foster deeper and multilayered ties over there. But it signals a tightening of the scientific labor markets, for now.

Purest BS

Investigating a Wall Street focussed news service called "TradetheNews.com", I came across this chestnut

"Although we do alerts on rumors - we deal with FACTS; we are not another rumor mill "

Got it. We will not report rumors, only the fact there are rumors, which is totally different. And quickly, dammit, because it's not important that you personally believe a rumor, if the idiots over there believe it, you'd better trade on it.

Screen shots

I remember the first time I saw a guy carrying around printed out screenshots of Webpages. A guy was getting on an elevator at Prudential in Newark. I snickered, thinking: "he could just as easily look at that web page on a screen."

That was before I learned about meetings.

I have nothing to say

All I did was work today. Talking to a lot of salesmen about this and that. Both of them.

Lots of blockheads came in my office to talk about a project I'm not on building a system I've never really seen, though it's been our bread and butter forever.

Saw the head of the Princeton Art Department when I was picking up lunch and knew who he was, but got his name wrong. I was still one up on him.

Mary made cupcakes for Graham's school tomorrow. I will eat one before this night is done.

Cohen and comedic halflife

Sasha Baron Cohen's hardcore gag at the Golden Globes, alluding to his colleague's "balls slapping against my chin" or somesuch, pretty much intimates that he has shot own comedic wad. He can't outdo Borat. He may plateau for a while, but soon he's headed down to hang out with the likes of Martin Shore and Dana Carvey.

Not that there's anything surprising in that. Comedic longevity is a tough racked. John Stewart, has aged well, particularly relative to the benchmarks of Carson and Letterman, aided by a few things:

1. Multimedia: He can use clips easily
2. Ensemble: Letterman and Carson have/had sidekicks but not a full crew (though they did: think of some of Chris Eliot's early work on Letterman: that guy used to be funny)
   
3. 30 minutes: half an hour is easier to fill than a whole one
   

And with all these advantages, Stewart is still having a hard time keeping it fresh, and has declined.

Colbert will be challenged to keep it up. He does too much on his own. He's already not all that funny.

Ensemble gives legs.

30 minutes vs 60 for Carson and Letterman.

Front loading 24

Even Jack Bauer can't carry much energy through the wee hours. Just watched 12-4 am of Season 2 of 24, and boy are they dragging along. I mean, how do you follow a nucular explosion? Lock Kim in a convenience store with a deranged hispanic guy? Oh man, is that threatening.

Houses with concrete walls

Learn from our mistake. Masonry frame is not really recommended in the Northeast. You can't insulate the shit. Cold just wafts from the walls downstairs.

We insulated the 2nd floor and now it's freezing downstairs, blazing up there in the evening. We live like frickin Germans over here in our multiple sweaters and thick socks.

My time with Anna Nicole

This afternoon's tragic events took me back to an almost forgotten chapter of my past, a little brush with grea.... whatever. It was 1988, and fresh after graduation from college, I had some NEH money to do a seminar on Ruthenian hexameter odes at the Center for Slavic Enoblement at the University of Houston, which we affectionately called UHon. Now, as everybody knows, Ruthenian hexameter odes call from sustained diligence and discipline, and make a young scholar hungry. But NEH money doesn't go far, and that was particularly true in the Reagan era, so we took to frequenting a Burger King, which we affectionately called BuKing, right next to campus.

And that's where I met Anna Nicole, who aspired at the time to become an exotic dancer, and was saving up her money for vocal chord modifications. Surprisingly, however, she shared with us not only an enthusiasm for Ruthenian hexameter, but for Carpathian belles lettres in general, as they were enjoying something of a renaissance in Houston back then. Sadly, however, her domineering boss would always slink in and break up our colloquy whenever we got all worked up.

We shall miss her.

Scenes from the Leninka

Googling myself, I found a quote I didn't even know was there (and now I can't find it) in the Chronicle of Higher Education, where I characterize the Lenin Library in Moscow as a "feast of humanity." Which is true. Funny thing is, I feel the same way about New Jersey and the metro area, when I'm out and about. I'm rather consistent in my focus decade to decade: maybe it's Balzac I want to be after all.

But back to the Leninka. A mighty shithole it is, while at the same time a real research library. You had to have some academic standing to get in there, and even then you had to stand in line for an hour or so to get in, though us foreigners got shuffled to the front of our own line, and seated in the presitigious Reading Room #1 along with Academics (a rank) and heros of the Great Patriotic War (WWII). It was cold in there, run down. Even the ferns were sad. One guy almost hacked up a lung regularly.

To smoke you went to the basement, by the bathrooms. Not a nice place. Smelly. Right across from the little buffet. There was one guy in there with thick glasses, who basically spent the whole day roaming around picking up cigarette butts so he could roll his own. Always wore the same sweater, he did. Surely a guy who had some rank back in the day and still had the piece of paper to prove it.

Ah Leninka. Ah humanity.

This just in!

NEW YORK (HedgeWorld.com)—Hedge fund correlation to the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index has reduced significantly since June last year, according to the latest edition of Hedge Fund Monitor, a weekly report produced by Merrill Lynch.

Thanks Mama Merrill! If by "reduced correlation" you mean "underperformance", I'm right with ya. I too should put together an "uncorrelated" fund so as to offer my investors diversification benefits.

Now. I know that no investment type or asset class should be expected to outperform indices all the time, and I don't even think hedge funds' aggregate performance in 2006 should count against them, although only regulators should be thinking about them in the aggregate. Hopefully, the less than stellar year will dial back the hysteria around them and increase the level of scrutiny investors apply to them.

But it's just a stupid and lazy argument to claim a non-correlation benefit from underperformance.

Whalley Avenue, New Haven, Fall 1985

The Minutemen came to town and played in some already more or less defunct club out on Whalley. I was working at the radio station, so I must have gotten in for free. After the opening, I decided to sidle backstage.

There was Mike Watt, writing out a set list on his bass case. Some guy with a videocamera -- not small in those days -- got in his face.... "So. The Minutemen are touring for Project Mersh, as in commercialism. What does it mean?"

Watt, looking at camera: "What does it mean? Well, we look at money like this. It's like air, you need it to breath, but what are you gonna do, keep a bunch of oxygen tanks in your garage? So what's our plan? Are we going to accumulate a lot of these vouchers? No, we're going to return them to the market in exchange for goods and services."

Mike Watt, it turns out, is not a philosopher. But nor was he kidding. Them's good words.

Key learnings

Natalie would appear to have learned that saying "I love you" a lot is a good way of paper over little transgressions. "How could they be mad at me?" Dunno if this is a common stage.

Sarah Silverman's show sucks

I hate to say it. But there, I've done it.

I had hoped it would be funny, but it is not. She's one wierd chick.

44th St. between Broadway & 6th, 8:04 AM

I turn from the cash register with Bacon Egg and Cheese and coffee on a tray. Some idiot dashes into me, knocks the coffee down. Surely a hapless Ukrainian .NET jockey. If looks could kill, the way I looked at him would have killed him and his mother back in the heimat. I needed that coffee, and had 26 minutes to consume and then get twelve blocks away. I turned and walked off with my salvaged half cup, leaving him to clean up his mess.

It was a very Manhattan moment.