City Island

On Friday I rode North to White Plains, back down through Scarsdale with its Sotheby's storefront and other signs of excess. On Sunday I charted a new course and headed into the city from Larchmont to City Island. City Island, a seafood oasis I had dreamed of for many a moon, tucked away in a corner of a park in the Bronx.

So I went. And it was interesting. A seafood oasis indeed, but striated a little. Closer to the bridge, old-school Italian and Irish-American types fishing, smoking, talking on cell phones in the still humid late afternoon heat. Further out, the scene turns predominantly black and hispanic with a healthy admixture of white folx, and the restaurants look largely more appealing. Some pretty industrial outdoor seating and parking lots, but big platters of fried seafood and ribs and hushpuppies. In short, worth going back to with a credit card.

More on that later.

Budget Sadism on Wall St

So my hair was getting fuzzy and I went to my favorite barber shop down here in financial land, a Bukharan Jewish place (like so many in the city) across from the client site. I had gotten a couple of fine cuts there and spoken some Russian too.

But not today. This guy hardly said a word after I told him to cut it short, he just broke out the clippers and went to work. Short was the request, short it was gonna be. But that wasn't the problem. He cut the sides and back, and then went to work on the detailing. Back and forth along my neck and my ears with the clippers. Put on a clipper extension, do it again. Scrape scrape scrape on my neck. At one point in time, with no warning, he stuck the edge of the clipper in my ear. He didn't ask "Do you want to keep these sideburns?" He just got rid of them. This took like 10 minutes.

The guy was like a fetishist. And this whole time the top of my head was uncut. So I asked if he was gonna do that and he blithely started cutting, no "how would you like it?" no nothing. I'm not going back there. Never before has the delicate dependency one has on the haircutter been clearer.

Crazy birds

These gray birds here in Larchmont keep flying around the head of poor Leno the tabby cat, taunting him mercilessly. They have no shame.

Violence of yore

Caught scenes first from Dirty Harry then from Pulp Fiction on the tube last night. It's funny how defanged classic violence can be on the small screen, how distant the points in history are. Dirty Harry might as well have been from another planet, though the ghosts of stagflation past may yet get us back here. The most gruesome scenes of Tarantino seemed likewise quaint in the kitchen with my mother in law hovering round, providing color commentary.

Damien Walters

An actual Olympic gymnast breaks parkour.



And here he is doing some intense Monty Python shit. The question is, which one of him is real? Is he the tres gay guy in this video pretending to be macho and swaggering in the one above, or the reverse? However you slice it, the guy has talent and cajones.

Good material

So we were standing around the kitchen talking about the buyer protection plans on credit cards, like when you're driving in an unfamiliar state and you buy gas and they call you up and say: "Was that you buying that gas?" So Ted says, "hell, I get calls from the credit card company sometimes saying 'You look fat in that, don't buy it'."

LOL, bitch.

Cured

For the moment, at least, I am cured of commuting to Manhattan. Let us hope I may find a way to make this more or less permanent.

Today drove to the office of my trusty dentist in Somerville, listening to Neal Young. Learned from my dentist that children are typically loss-leaders, relationship- and network- builders, and that the real money is in the aunts, uncles, etc who get referred on the basis of good dental child care and who get higher-margin restorative and cosmetic work done. This suggests -- not surprisingly -- that the baby boom should be driving a lot of volume in the dental world.

A den of naysayers

It is difficult to work in an environment where people are trained to find fault with everything. People spend an inordinate amount of time engaged in CYA, for fear they will get blasted by their peers around the next corner. It's fairly exhausting.

Or so I'm told.

I remember nothing of my commute today, though I at least got in no wrecks. I am certain that I sat next to someone, and that I exited at Newark and took the PATH to Ground Zero. There was a pretty blonde on the PATH, it's true, who was probably Polish. Other than that the surface of Being was smooth and slippery, and nothing stuck. Which is becoming a pattern.

Fight time

Today the Princeton graduate student soccer game was witness to an actual fight: adult men hitting each other in the face, falling on each other, being pulled apart. Blood. It was pretty surreal. Middle class adults don't typically fight. I watched it happen and didn't really believe what I was seeing.

The End of the World

Beth was talking to someone from Bear Stearns who was prognosticating about the end of the world. "A market event, or the real deal?" I asked.

Indeed, recently I have heard serious people actually say things like that for the first time, they can envisage the end of the world. Climate change and its implications for intensely populated areas. Resource contention driven by the rise of consumer expectations in emerging markets. With terrorism as a wildcard. Think about the risks associated with an America in economic freefall as markets and the dollar continue to degenerate. We still have the world's most powerfall military, even if it's in a quagmire. People are proud of it, and may seek to use it to prop up our sense of self. In some sense, Iraq is already that. What if America becomes the wounded dog that bites? What if Iraq becomes for us what Afghanistan was for Russia, the straw that brakes the camel's back?

But, then again, millenialism and eschatology have historically been cyclical phenomena. Malthus comes in and out of style, as the Economist reminds us from time to time. Why, as early as 1988 I initiated a "Millenialism Watch" as part of the countdown to 2000, and found no end of fodder.

A real risk point, sadly, is the Obama assasination meme. Lets say he does get elected. A bunch of crackers are going to be not real happy. What then?

Posting rhythm

Readers,

Apologies for the difficulties in getting posts out during the week. My mindspace is pretty full up trying to get in the groove on a new project. I'll keep getting it out there when I can, so keep coming back.

The Grouse

The new late art

The Canadian director Atom Egoyan's early works: The Adjuster, Family Viewing, The Sweet Hereafter etc, all fell into a single bucket: a critique of inauthenticity and distance in suburbia. Well-trodden ground, but he trod it well and distinctively and with great cinematography and casting (Elias Koteas as the signature lead).

I never saw his film about going to Armenia to revisit his roots, but with Away from Her he stepped into entirely new territory. Here the distance between people, an older couple still much in love, is medically driven: Julie Christie -- stunning as ever -- gets Alzheimer's disease and forgets her husband when she goes into and old folx home. The movie is about watching the husband come to terms with this.

Same beautiful cinematography. Same tricks, sort of, but an entirely new thrust. I think Egoyan's turn is something we're going to see a lot more of as the population ages. Cultural producers who were cynical in their early periods who refocus themselves to find ways to be a little more charitable with and accepting humanity but retain the drive to insight that made them worthwhile. Looking for something that's positive but not Hallmark milquetoast like the family feelgood stuff coming out of Hollywood (Dan in Real Life). We may hope that others make the effort to turn the corner as Egoyan has rather than rest on the laurels of their youth. You can see it in Aki Kaurismaki already, and I'd like to see Jarmusch and the Coen brothers mature too.

A cause for tears

Towards the end of Natalie's soccer practice the other day, I went across the field and was catching up with my friend Tom, and really wasn't paying attention to what was going on on the field. All of a sudden the coach, Paul, calls out to me: "Clark! Come here!" So I hustled over, and heard Natalie crying. As I approached, I saw that her hands were over her face and she was sobbing. Oh shit, I'm thinking, she got banged in the face with the ball or something.

But no. She had scored an own goal (or thought that she had, the other coach said the ball was already in the goal when her foot hit it). This in a 5 on 5 game of novice 7- and 8- year olds with no ref, no goalies, and no scorekeeping. She was inconsolable for a few minutes.

So where did she get this, this extreme anxiety about making a mistake, even in the most casual of settings. I don't think we've ever encouraged it. Peer pressure is no frickin joke. Or is this a biochemical / temperament thing?

Watch this now

The best of everything. Soccer + Capoeira + Parkours.

Waiting Hell

In Ilya Kabakov's early eighties essay "On Emptiness"*, the artist carries on about how Russian railway stations are hell on earth, filthy disgusting places where one feels that one is stuck forever to sit and observe kitchy art. I've come to feel the same way about Newark Penn Station, where all too often I find myself stuck for 20 minutes at the end of the day -- 20 minutes that I don't get to spend with my kids. The place just sucks. All too often I find myself there, sweaty, pushing to get on a train, then standing all the way home. Why do I live in this shithole of a region?

*Between Spring and Summer
Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston, 1990
translated from the Russian by Clark Troy

A week from Hell

At around 3 this afternoon I walked outside the building and realized that I hadn't been in fresh air outside of commuting hours all week. Now, the building has good features like indoor plumbing, elevators (when they come) and chairs, but I don't love it that much. Yes, fair readers, they're actually making me work for a living for once in my life.

Tomorrow I'm off to the City of Elms, also known as the Paris of the 80s, to commune with people I haven't seen for 20 years. Sadly, have not been able to put together a soccer game.

Details to follow.

No time to eat

I once didn't understand what people were talking about when they said they didn't have time to eat because they were working so hard. "Oh please," I thought, or perhaps "Cmon." But now I have joined their ranks.

And I'll tell you, I'm less hungry, too, and conceivably am losing weight. So maybe there's something to be said for stress.

I have been told it was a lovely day today.

Orhan Pamuk -- Snow

Boris Gasparov praised Pamuk to me and others backed it up, so Mary got me a couple for my birthday. Not for naught did the Nobel Committee hook him up with the big prize. The guy does indeed have a distinctive voice and vision, shot through with muted echoes of Magical Realism mixed with the big grasp of the Russians. In fact, I don't know why I'm writing about it. Time to go read.

The Brooklyn Bridge at night

Is quite nice, all lit up. One of the perks of my new job. Except of course the at night part of it.

Gotta go. Maybe I'll think of a real topic on the way home. Did I mention my compost?

A new vegetarian?

I never buy chicken, could probably count the number of times I've bought it not under direct instruction from Mary ("Skinless, boneless thighs -- organic") on a hand or two. So yesterday when I had to pick up chicken for dinner and couldn't get just cuts we wanted but they had whole chickens (lets not even mention the fact that I went to the wrong store), I called up Mary. "Should I just get a whole chicken?" "Sure," she says, so I got a whole chicken, tender, young, organic.

Problem was, it wasn't cut up. I had noticed that as I bought it, I just assumed that Mary, cook that she was, would know how to cut it up. I assumed wrong. Not only did she not know how, she flat out refused.

So who gets to cut the chicken? Not surprisingly, butchery being a masculine art, the man of the house does. Me. So I did it, and it was disgusting. Following the instructions layed down in the Joy of Cooking but with suboptimal knives, I cut through raw flesh and bone and fat, pushing and pulling and muttering and cursing and, after one accident, bleeding. Never again.

Marxism has a term for all this: reification. The process of forgetting how things are made. God bless reification. Now I know why we pay Mexicans down in the Siler City and Smithfield and whatnot all of $6 an hour to process poultry. It's nasty nasty work.

Princeton Junction Train Platform, 6:10 AM

Their in the early morning crush on the platform I heard this convo, roughly, truncated:

Jersey Woman (shades, earrings, voice, etc) "So did you have fun at Disney World? Did you eat at Flying Fish? I really like it there, I could get the swordfish, the scallops...
Guy: "Yeah, it was great"
JW: "Yeah, the best thing is is that they have no refrigeration, it's all fresh every day."
G: "Mmm hmm"
JW: "What did Jenny do?"
G: "She did some shopping"
JW: "Oh yeah, what'd she buy?"
G: "Cosmetics"
JW: "Oh that's great! Did she go to the Aveda?"

And so on and on. People in their 50s. Beyond banal.

Across the tracks on the other platform, the crazy jock preacher guy who works this beat was walking back and forth regaling us with hellfire and brimstone.

I boarded and had to hustle to get the last available seat in that car.

Volume play

My compost is, quite literally, smoking. Let me tell the tale. This weekend I cleared out the old pile and wheelbarrowed it up for Mary, because I had a backlog of grass clippings and had to mow the yard again. And lots of bags of "brown gold," alias other people's yard waste harvested in Fall and archived through Winter. I decided that, this time, rather than pre-curing the clippings in little side piles, I would make a volume play from the jump street. That is, really big pile with fresh clippings, less fresh clippings, earth, and leaves all mixed in there pretty good. Little did I know what awaited....

Steam! At the core! After one day, no less. It's phenomenenomenal, as Homer might say. This pile is flat out cookin. I'm tempted to dump even more bags of brown on, and can't wait to mow again. The Garden State, indeed.

Insomnia

Having been thrown into what everyone is calling a "crisis" situation -- and they admitted that it is but the tail end of a 10 week time "on war footing," I am now the leader ultimately accountible for making the right things happen. Reallistically none of this shit is gonna get laid at my door, but they do look for me for guidance on a set of problems and relationships I have only generic insight into. Now I know I won't hold the bag for things that go wrong, I still feel as if it's all on me.

First off, this is new territory for the kid. A growth opportunity? For sure. And yet to go through it is like fingernails on a blackboard, or, more to the point, insomnia.

A vision from h-e-double tootpicks, it was

I'm usually reading on the train, so it can be forgiven that I didn't see anything going on with the old GM truck plant in Linden. So it came as something of a surprise to me when I looked left from train home the other day and saw a vision from 9/12. The plant was never the most prepossessing structure, but it's still quite a shock to see a void of rubble and metal of that scale. For your viewing pleasure, here's the movie. Actually, one of many.

12:08 East of Bucharest

For those of you who've heard something of a Rumanian New Wave, there's something to it. Judging by the this movie and The Death of Mr Lazarescu, there's a new voice and cadence over there, very slow soft and human and down to earth, the polar opposite of the brash shootemups of popular Russian films. Perhaps closer to the tone of Iranian films, though less transcendent. I'll watch more for sure.

Nothing doing

Spent half the day with a hot potato pressed against my eyelid, so I have almost nothing to report.

It was good to see Natalie whacking a ball with a tennis racket in the backyard and professing an interest in sports, I must say. Something must have happened at school. And Graham too swung and struck a ball with a bat, no less. Something in the Jersey air, must be.

PATH train from Exchange Place to Newark

A gaggle of young homeys got on the train, five of them black and one with a jewfro who wanted to be. They had different styles, one with dreads, one a bling wannabe, lots of retro Nikes. They stood around and talked and shrieked and cackled the whole way to Newark, niggah this and bitch that, a very interesting ritual of communal utterance where each competed to make the next crack, and the noise never once died back. It was a classic pack performance: "We don't care what you (anyone else) think."

Across from me was a guy who would once have been called a Cosby, 35ish black investment banker type in khakis and dress shirt. He kept his eyes closed the whole time, or looked at his Blackberry. Down at the other end of the car, however, were older black people, who were visibly displeased with all the n-words and whatnot.

Little going on

Settling into a new project leaves precious little time to think about anything but work and this frickin stye on my eye (where else, after all?).

Have had recent tune infusions which have offered respite. Those who've got South Slavic Womens' music in mind should check out my friend Corinna's group Black Sea Hotel. If you're more in a Marvin Gaye state of mind, have a look at Hobex, which everybody in North Carolina has known about forever but nobody ever tells me about anything. Check out the rare lap slide/funk combo below with our boy Grumphreys at the helm.

Back to the grindstone

After a couple of relatively blissful weeks in central NJ, it's back to Manhattan for the kid, who once more will be helping a large financial institution clean up messes and make things run all smootherly. This, of course, means more exciting commutes, more thrilling lunches, more of almost anything but work or my marriage, for I am much much wiser than that.

Manifethd Dethdiny

The Economist had an article last week about how the blight of crystal meth seems to be abating in parts of the rural West as it is replaced by more benigh drug addictions like crack, heroin, and oxycontin. I can just see the op-eds in the red state lands of sagebrush decrying how society's going to hell in a handbasket of drugs because men in boots and hats can't get good, self-respectin work on ranches and in Coen brothers movies. I say it's just another indication that the Buffalo Commons hypothesis is proving true. We really weren't meant to settle the plains like we did, they can't sustain agriculture, and now we get meth mouth to prove it.

A travesty

Let me just say that, though the Rolling Stone greatest 100 guitarists in history got a number of things right, one thing collective wisdom erred on was Pete Townsend's place in the Pantheon. Having him at 50 is ridiculous. I just watched a rockumentary on VH1 (yet another way to show my age) and it's astonishing how original and strong he is as a guitarist. If Keith Richards, who is not a technician but a guy with a style, comes in at 10 or so, Townsend belongs in the same neighborhood fer sure.

20,000 hits

Let me note in passing that today we blew past the 20,000 hit mark, about 17 months after we nailed 10,000. Thanks to all yall for coming back.

Job numbers

For where we are presumed to be in the economic cycle, job numbers keep coming back not half bad. Initial jobless claim 4-week moving average still well below 400,000, headline unemployment at 5.0 going perhaps to 5.1 (remember that a decade ago Paul Krugman himself was saying 5.5-6% was as low as unemployment could go before things became inflationary).

One wonders if corporations are particularly loathe to lay off now because they're seeing the bigger picture of baby boomer retirement coming down the road, and therefore particularly fear the cost of onboarding and training. Also because of uncertainty around potential future employees' ability to relocate in the uncertain housing market of 12-24 months out.

Who knows. For the moment, at least, they ain't fired the kid.

Our man in Raleigh

We would be remiss indeed if we failed to note the victory of our pick for the North Carolina State Senate's 16th district, Josh Stein, who handily crushed some other guys in the Democratic primary yesterday while all eyes were on Obama. Full on, say we.

The really big show

Down to Chapel Hill over the weekend for the Pressure Boys reunion in support of cystic fibrosis research (go HERE to buy stuff to contribute). Two good quality nights, they played superbly given that they hadn't played together in 19 years and are all now old as fuck. Just as importantly it was old home week with much crew in the hisouse.

Now back to work.

One last day

The polls are open today for the North Carolina primaries and the eyes of all America are focused squarely on the big race: Josh Stein vs. some other guy for the NC State Senate's 16th District. We have long since cast our lot with Stein, having grown up next door to him and knowing him to be a good solid citizen with a long record of dedicated civil service who looks good in khakis and oxford cloth.

Talked to Whitey today who was headed out to do some poll observing over lunch. There's a lot of community involvement going on down there these days, which makes me right proud.

All too hot off the presses -- Baikal warming faster than atmosphere

This just in from the Moscow Times via Mark Izeman of the National Resources Defense Counsel. Again, going back two posts to our comment on the inability of index makers and securitizers to adequately model and price things, here's another cautionary tale about the limits of scientific knowledge, or rather the fact that science is ever evolving, which urges caution and humility.

Catherine Santore/For MT
Lake Baikal is warming faster than the atmosphere, potentially endangering
some of its wildlife, scientists say.

Baikal Challanges Global Warming Idea

05 May 2008

BloombergNEW YORK -- Lake Baikal is warming faster than the atmosphere,
challenging the idea that large bodies of water can withstand global
warming, U.S. and Russian scientists said.

Baikal, which holds 20 percent of the world's fresh water, has warmed by
1.21 degrees Celsius since 1946, said Marianne Moore, assistant professor of
biological sciences at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Global
temperatures have risen 0.76 degrees Celsius since industrialization, a
United Nations panel on climate change said in March.

The Siberian lake holds more than 2,500 plant and animal species, including
the world's only exclusively freshwater seal, and some could become extinct
by continued warming, said Moore, co-author of a report on Lake Baikal to be
published this month in the journal Global Change Biology. The study
challenges the idea that thermal inertia of oceans, seas and large lakes
would make them more resistant to climate change, Moore said.

"The warming that we're seeing in this lake is of more concern than that of
any other lake because of the extraordinary biodiversity," Moore said. "You
could potentially lose the Baikal seal."

Beginning in the 1940s, data on Lake Baikal was collected by Mikhail Kozhov,
a professor at Irkutsk State University. The research was carried on by his
daughter and granddaughter, Lyubov Izmesteva, a co-author of the journal
article.

The family has taken samples of the lake every seven to 10 days since 1946,
amassing a history that Moore analyzed. The data revealed that the lake's
average summer temperature has increased by 2.4 degrees, Moore said.

"My jaw just dropped to the floor when I heard this," Moore said. "I was
extremely surprised that the data set even existed."



© Copyright 2007. The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.

On poop and predators

Continuing the discussion from the last post, let us pose a new question: what is the climate change impact of our our new neighbors in our land of no predation, all those deer, bunnies, geese, and frickin woodchucks living the life with no foxes and wolves to put them in their place?

Deer, for instance. They eat understory vegetation, making what woods we have left amenable to traipsing and galavanting a most any hour of the day. So what are they doing carbon-wise, are they nibbling down what would be useful carbon sink? Is the loss of greenery offset by the soil enrichment of their caca? Same for bunnies, only smaller. And what of those geese and their issue, is it good for the soil? Does it encourage or hinder growth?

What is the impact of the loss of understory vegetation on forest fire probability? Does it make it more difficult for fires to spread?


On the downside, I saw a neighbor who has lattice-like paving stones in his driveway to let grass grow through trimming the grass with a gas-powered weed eater. The grass is always greener indeed.

Flock of Black Swans

Marketwatch reports today:

"Top officials with the National Association of Realtors and Standard & Poor's, which issues the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, agreed this week their monthly reports are giving imprecise readings of price changes at all levels -- national, state and regional -- due to rare market conditions that are skewing survey results.

The NAR reported last week that U.S median home prices fell 7.7% in March from a year ago. The decline resulted largely from a market anomaly -- a steep decline in costlier home sales due to tighter lending standards and high jumbo-mortgage rates, coupled with a foreclosure-driven spike in cheaper homes."

Never mind the fact that it's the NAR speaking here, consummate "we've found the bottom" spinners, what's this about "rare market conditions" and "market anomalies?" Oh, what they're saying is "our indices don't work in this kind of housing bubble downturn because they're designed to reflect other kinds of market downturns," which is blather. There's nothing "rare" going on here as a statistical phenomenon, however rare it may be as an economic one. Housing prices will act exactly like this whenever this kind of thing happens, it's normal and rule-conforming behavior in these situations. What the index makers are really saying is "we can't model what we said we were going to model, because we've never seen it before, in all 7 years or our index's existence."

We've seen a profusion of black swans recently: "We have 100-year events all the time now." What few will say is that we really don't know how to model things, with all the statistical and computational tools at our disposal, we don't know what the inputs are. There are no black swans on the East Coast, but there is a lot of migrating goose poop.

Non-fiction day

It was non-fiction day the other day in Natalie’s 2^nd grade class. All the kids had written non-fiction books and were to present them to visiting adults as a way of developing their presentation skills (clue 1 that things have changed since we were young, though thankfully they weren’t learning powerpoint).

Natalie was the only kid two put together two books one on cats, the other on pets, including cats. They were pretty good, truth be owned, though less verbose than some of the others, full of pretty nifty drawings and some interesting feline facts as well.

But, as always, the other kids’ books and “presentations” were equally interesting. For example, there was a little WASP boy sitting across from a little Hispanic girl. When I went up to their table and asked “who wants to tell me about their book?” He practically lept off of his chair. And then he told me all about castles, and moats, and catapults, and ramparts, and tunneling, and defenestration (well, almost), on and on in the most excruciating detail. Had he been an adult, I would have slapped him or shaken him by the shoulders. For an 8-year old, it was pretty impressive. Meanwhile the little Hispanic girl had written a book about chores, like mopping and washing dishes, which included comments like “doing chores can make you very tired.” And then there was the little at least half-Asian girl with the book about her parakeet breaking out of its cage and pooping on the windowsill (“it was green”) with exquisite drawings of Venetian blinds and parakeet (the poop was pretty good too), which she narrated with adult-like composure.

Something to keep in mind

I was visiting with a former client yesterday when I was reminded that one of their team had passed away, so I asked about the guy, who was, like, my age. And the guy I was talking to says: "Well, they were getting ready to move to another house and he was down in the basement moving boxes of books around" and I thought I saw the obvious denoument, lifts heavy box, has heart attack. If only things were so simple in life, so the guy keeps going "and it got to be lunchtime, and he sat down and choked on a roast beef sandwich. It got stuck in his throat and there was nobody around, and he died." Which was a new one for me. And gives new meaning and credence to Keith Ferrazzi's dictum "Never eat alone."

No but seriously, that's hard.

Basketball Jones

Even being as equal opportunity offensive as it is, it's difficult to imagine the video being released today.

Day of inquiry

I should be posting about something clever and market related to capitalize on traffic sent over by Felix Salmon's Market Movers blog. But in fact, after a morning conversation with some lofty denizens of the financial district, I have delved into one of the longer-lived mysteries of our time: the lingering question of Jamie Lee Curtis's hermaphroditism.

I must note that I was inspired in this quest by my recent rediscovery of the most excellent series of children's books she has put together with artist Laura Cornell, most recently (in our rotation) I'm Gonna Like Me, Where Do Balloons Go?, and The Human Race, all of which Graham and I have been enjoying immensely. They are as good as children's books get these days, and may take their place in the pantheon of great along with Dr. Seuss, Curious George and Mrs. Moskowitz and the Sabbath Candlesticks.

But I digress. Hermaphroditism. This rumor has clung to Jamie Lee like the gerbil to Gere, and is no less ticklish. And on what evidence? A boyish name? Adopted children? And what are the counterarguments? True Lies, Trading Places, Perfect, and, of course, this month's shocking topless cover photo of the AARP magazine. OK. Maybe that's not a counter-argument.

In any case, I must say that a few minutes due diligence has resolved little, but has aided and abetted digestion.

AAA -- shill about town.

AAA is one of those organizations you have to belong to -- everybody needs a tow or a jump now and then -- and yet it's so heinous in its untiring advocacy of all that's motorific that you have to wonder. Usually I toss the AAA magazine as soon as it comes in, but today I snuck a peak at an article on small, fuel-efficient cars. Perhaps there's one I haven't heard of, I thought. But no, of the three "efficient" cars in there, the best is a Mini at 27/34 highway, and there's also the BMW 128i, sporting 18/28 on the one with the smaller engine, Lord knows what for the one with 300 horses. I've already written about mileage when I was a kid. But this is just ridiculous. There should be no mention of 300 horsepower in an article about fuel-efficient.

Merrill Lynch, slackers

While getting my 401k out of Merrill Lynch and moving it to its current roost was in some ways 100 times easier than getting Mary's 403b out of TIAA-CREF: we got it done in one conference call rather than months of hand-wringing bullshit. But then, after moving so swiftly to extract the ducats, I'm informed that Merrill can send them to the recipient either by 1st Class mail (7-10 business days) or by UPS (4 days), and the latter is excluded because the new home uses a PO Box. So all my money is dangling in the USPS zone for 7-10 days, and a lot of them have been good market days.

Now, as market news geeks know, some significant portion of one's lifetime gains can come from being in the market when things turn. This underlies the buy and hold and dollar-cost averaging theologies. So imagine my dismay at having this non-pathetic bucket of cash out being shuffled between mail bins somewhere between here and its destination in the MidWest.

Merrill Lynch is a classic "wirehouse," in industry terms, whatever the fuck that means. Why don't they wire my money?

Life's little mysteries

Why is it that, "Point of Sale," as they say, you have to select whether you're using a credit or a debit card. With all the info they put onto a card, you'd think they could squeeze that in there.

You may infer that there was little going on in my world today, and you would not err in so inferring. I sat at my desk and operated within the thin walls of Microsoft: Excel, Powerpoint, Word, with continual forays into Firefox. It was one of the first warm days of the year, but already our un climate-controlled third floor got clammy. But at least I got on no trains nor cars (hardly).

Theft, it turns out

Until Mike burned me a disc recently, Richard Hell and the Voidoids were a name I knew well, without actually knowing the tunes. Here's their big hit, which is a great song with a great hook indeed, but it's just as interesting to hear how shamelessly Brian Seltzer and the Stray Cats ripped them off.

Graham throws the frisbee

Mary doesn't remember this, but when he was 18-24 months, Graham was a little jock. When I rolled a ball to him on the floor, he could time its trajectory and reach out and catch it about as well as Natalie could at the same point in time.

However, as the years have progressed and he's been diagnosed with first low tone and then fine and gross motor delays (the former surely shared by his papa), he's become progressively less jocky.

So when I took a frisbee with me when I walked down to the preschool to pick him up (yes, we do live well) and then he rode back with me on his bike, I threw the frisbee and tried to keep it on the long straight sidewalks beneath the flowering trees. Once I hit a tree and took down a branch. After that, that's all Graham wanted to see.

But when we got back to the house, Graham showed an active interest in the disc, including throwing it, mostly into bushes and trees, trying to knock them down and whatnot. But he was into it.

Retail Structured Product

A couple of years back in a big survey on asset management McKinsey rose up and prophesied the rise of retail structured financial products. It was thinking of fancy shmancy longevity annuities etc.

Frank Partnoy of UC San Diego has written a number of books which argue that Wall Street makes its money on "information asymmetry", making products too complicated for their purchasers to understand them, and sophisticated enough to make the act of purchasing them impute luster to their purchasers.

In the end, then, it looks like fancy mortgages were already that retail structured product that flattered its purchaser with its complexity. "I got 5/1 neg-am ARM." Sounds smooth, no?

What does this imply for the future of financial products? Will there be a return to simplicity, products you can trust?

Party!

CNBC yesterday was celebrating its 19th birthday, and in the spirit of sharing it threw some numbers up onscreen (these are best guess from memory). Since the channel's inception, the indices are up like this:

S & P 352%
Dow Jones 440%
NASDAQ a little bit higher even.

Lets talk about the Dow. Just using the rule of 72 to guide us (if rate x number of periods = 72, then you double your amount) we can see that the Dow has a little more than doubled in 19 years. If it doubled twice in 20 years, the rate would be 7.2%, so lets say the Dow has been rising 8% a year to get 440% over 19 years. Before inflation. Lets knock it down two points to control for inflation and we've got a 6% real rate of return. That's below even conservative estimates of historical inflation-adjusted returns. And returns for the broader S & P are lower.

And this during the heyday of CNBC, since 401ks blossomed and equity markets got huge retail
inflows. What it implies is that the new slap-happy capital markets aren't really doing that superb a job with our money.

8:30 AM, Broad St, across from NYSE

Across from the Exchange, just down the hill but above the Hermes store, there is a swanky apartment building with a very hip lobby in which there is a huge chandelier hung, ironically, just above the floor, asymmetrically off to the left. Other than the elegant chandelier it's all very modern and sleek.

This morning as I passed there were a pair of trader boys in stylish suits and some young lady clearly prostrate before the glamor of this foyer:

Her, with great feeling and no trace of irony: "It's so beautiful!"
One of the hims: "Yeah baby, check that out."

And you could tell this was very important to them.

Urban Arteriosclerosis

In its infinite wisdom, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey continues with its ambitious program of building in and around so-called Ground Zero. Seven years later, the hole is one big construction site, and so is everything for blocks around. Somebody's gettin some sweet kickbax and payola.

Anyhoo, last week they opened a new exit from the PATH station, one which took you out the north side of the station and allowed me to skirt some pedestrian volume at the chokepoint when you left the station. So for a few days I liked it. No more.

Now they've closed the old exit and escalators, and everybody has to come and go through the new one, and it's a nightmare because once you hit the streets everyfrickinbody has to walk through an alley at the north end of the site and it's unbearable. Those of you who don't live in the Metro area can't imagine what it's like to spend whole days when seemingly every step you take is constrained by someone in front of you. It sucks.

Dues paying

It was recently brought to my attention that it is a violation of blogo-netiquette to not link back to someone who links to me. We were not taught this growing up down in the Piedmont.

However, this being the case I am deeply indebted to one Felix Salmon of Portfolio.com's Market Movers, who has linked to me on a number of occasions and has given me what, in my modest terms, are major traffic events. I can also say that, when lunchtime comes around and it's time to do some reading and I'm faced with the vast void of surfing ideas that is my brain before the internet, that I often read Felix's blog and that I do not regret the choice. He stays on top of things pretty good, for a ding diddily danged furner.

Antony and the Johnsons

Just thought to look on YouTube. The guy is a freak, but he has both pipes and soul.

Nedostroiki

A nedostroika is an unfinished building, and there were many of them in Russia in the 80s and 90s, cheap 14-story apartment buildings to be that somehow never got done. The conceptualists Ilya Kabakov and Andrei Monastyrsky viewed them and their attendant stagnant pools of fetid water as an allegory for the failure of the Soviet Union. I don't know if they ever quoted Walter Benjamin take on allegory in the Baroque: "allegories are in the realm of thoughts what ruins are in the realm of things", but they might as well have.

The physical legacies of poor planning occur cyclically. I remember well expanses of excess office space in Cary in 1989, and have read of elevated highways to nowhere in Thailand 1997 and boatloads of excess fiberoptics capacity ca 2002-3. All this stuff tends to work itself out in time.

But what of today's surfeit of McMansions and condos, will they be absorbed into the flow of history, or will they be stripped, looted, and rotted? Time will tell.

Popular Malaise

My reposting of Jimmy Carter's Malaise speech has become the search item which brings the most surfers to the Grouse. One wonders what has been the occasion for its rising up in the consciousness of the Googling masses, if not the likeness of the impasse in which we find ourselves to that of Jimmy's day. Though then the America was under threat from the higher quality of imported products (along with expensive oil), when now -- at the far end of an epochal cycle of retooling -- we are victimized by our omnipresent thirst for bigger and more (along with expensive oil).

The new meatloaf

Those with a certain length of perspective will recall how, in the early 90s, meatloaf and mac and cheese began to appear on the menus of stylish urban restaurants: enhanced comfort foods in the post-Milken Bush I recession which assured us that the "greed is good" ethos applied to others and not us and connected us back to our wholesome Mayberry roots (and eventually shifted a good deal of economic power to Bentonville, Arkansas).

What will be the new comfort food? The food which will demonstrate a symbolic return to our roots, a productivist mirage? Or has the homey already been so thoroughly simulacralized as to be not even resurrectable? Perhaps it will be Naan and saag panir.

No Country for Old Men

This is a good movie, with some good scenes, but it's essentially a shoot em up. Minimal plot. Zero character development. Within the Coen ouevre it's a quarter of the movie Fargo is, and it pales beside Raising Arizona too. So why all the fuss and Oscars?

I mean, it's a fine shoot em up. Good sets and cinematography, fine guy dialog, inventive violence. I'm enjoying it.

Eating in peace

Below is a classic outtake from Luis Bunuel's Phantom of Liberty, otherwise by no means his best film. In it (for those of you too busy to watch the 5 minutes) polite society is transacted as people sit on toilets around a table, where the mere mention of food is scandalous. Towards the end, a man discretely carries himself off to a little eating room at the end of the hall, where he gnaws on some chicken.

I was reminded of this by the lunch culture I see in lots of hard-charging corporate environments, where 90% of lunches are taken at one's desk, as efficiently as possible. Members of senior management may set tone by declaring that they "do not believe in lunch." So food becomes a thing of shame, the barest of necessities. A salad, even.

Monday morning

The cruellest time of all, passing between dimensions. The first train of the week is like shrapnel.

But once I settle into work it almost makes sense.

Religious views

I saw recently that someone had put "I believe in science!" as their religious view on Facebook. True enough.

The problem is that science demonstrates that religion is common to all of mankind, and perhaps is the marker that distinguishes us from other species, as science has shown that "language" has become progressively less able to serve as the thing separating us from beasts since Rousseau first served up that hypothesis in the 1780s. People have religion, animals don't.

Perhaps what religion really gives us is an ability to organize our lives around a bigger narrative framework, a sense that we're going from somewhere to somewhere, which allows us to at least sometimes defer gratification and get other things done.

Don't get me wrong, religion does kinda suck and the whole "ecrasez l'infame" thing has made modern life possible. But at the end of the day, it's still the end of the day, and that's where Pascal's Wager appears less wrong.

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is....

..."God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.

Do not, then, reprove for error those who have made a choice; for you know nothing about it. "No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all."

Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. "That is very fine. Yes, I must wager; but I may perhaps wager too much." Let us see. Since there is an equal risk of gain and of loss, if you had only to gain two lives, instead of one, you might still wager. But if there were three lives to gain, you would have to play (since you are under the necessity of playing), and you would be imprudent, when you are forced to play, not to chance your life to gain three at a game where there is an equal risk of loss and gain. But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of which one only would be for you, you would still be right in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.

-Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662

There is, perhaps, no downside risk. But when do you have to bet? Catholics allow for deathbed conversion, Mormons collect terabytes of genealogical data to facilitate the retroactive conversion of ancestors when they snag a convert (which pisses some Jews off to no end). Calvinists held a longer view similar to Pascal: since we don't know shit about God, you have to basically assume that he's gonna smite sinners, and so undertake a course of Godliness from right about when you put down the pacifier.

But I digress. At the end of the day religiousity as a species marker probably has everything to do with our general tendency to be abstract and goal-oriented.

Jhumpa'in the gun

After finishing watching The Namesake, and operating on the usually reasonable assumption that the book is at least as good as the novel, I retract my earlier call upon Jhumpa Lahiri to do more. This was a really good and emotionally real movie, which means that a box of Kleenex is recommended for all but the coldest of heart. A touch overwrought at times, but beautifully acted and well rhythmed and resolved. Rent and watch.

My how they mature

It's Jhumpa Lahiri weekend here in Princeton, where we're watching the movie of The Namesakeand then here's my old contemporary Liesl Schillinger writing a review or her new book in the Times Book Review. Before diving into the quasi-catty let me say that I like Lahiri, I thought The Interpreter of Maladies was a very solid collection of stories and observations and this movie is good too, though I've not read the book.

But I'd like to take a second to look at the branding of Lahiri. The jacket cover photo of her first book was all babeliciousness, as were other pix of her when she promoted the book.


But now there's a new Lahiri, as seen below. There are, admittedly, nine years intervening between the two pictures, but it looks like 22 have passed, and amongst them 9/11. What we are being told is that she is now a senior, authoritative woman of letters, and Schillinger will surely not disabuse us of this. I dunno, I think she's good but from the description of her new stories she could push herself a little harder. I think of Ang Lee as a natural peer, someone whose early work (Eat Drink Man Woman, The Wedding Banquet, Pushing Hands) meditated thoughtfully on issues of cultural conflict and combination, before he moved on to do good to great work in other genres. I'd like to see more before the claims of seniority are arrogated to her.

But, anyhow, no crime compares with Vikram Seth's failure to give us a sequel to A Suitable Boy.

Reading partner, the aftermath

So on the way out the door, and in the car on the way to school, and on the way from the car into school, Natalie kept asking if I had to come with her to class because not many parents really did it and she really didn't want me to, etc. On and on. And then we got into the school and on the way down the hall she quickened her pace so that she wouldn't be seen with me. And then we got into the classroom and...

It was reading time. So first she read a book to Bridget and she leaned against me and then Bridget read us a book and she kissed my nose and climbed on my back and leaned on me and then I read an Amelia Bedelia book and, well, I think you know how that goes. Amelia Bedelia is funny, and girls love her. So it all went well in the end.

Reading Partner

Tomorrow right after drop off I will be Natalie's reading partner in the classroom. It will be interesting to see if she will hold my hand anywhere on the school grounds, or if that phase is over.

Bedtime, Spring '08

Natalie is in a phase where all she wants to do is play a nose kissing game: I try to kiss her nose, she mine, and we both fight it. She also likes to get backrubs, both Mom-style (feather-like) and Dad-style (more traditional).

Graham, on the other hand, is all about kissing time: on the nose, the mouth, the cheeks. This is a particularly sweet period for him, once he gets done fighting putting on his jammies.

Contractual obligation

It's late and I have to get up early for train to Manhattan and here I am trying to think of things to write about to fulfill my statutory blogging obligation.

My dad turned 70 today and my commute was miserable. But at least it's Spring and the Tar Heels are in the Final Four and, lest we should forget, our man Josh Stein is mounting a forceful drive at the North Carolina State Senate. So all's well.

Full speed

After a grisly day, energy sapped by haven woken up at 4am and not gotten back to sleep for real before 5:45 wakie wakie time, everybody at work consumed by similarly low energy and loping negativity, I walked the streets of lower Manhattan looking for something interesting. And there, around 8:30pm along Duane St between Broadway and Trimble Street, he came... Some Hispanic pizza delivery guy -- having delivered a pie -- came sprinting past, his thermal pizza bag drooping by his side. Sprinting, mind you, flat out, and no pizzeria within blocks.

That's what I call a good attitude. He wasn't sitting around kvetching about things being behind and implying it was somebody in the skyscraper across the way's fault. He was porting pies.

Leaving the little guys behind

Marketwatch today reported on how many people fleeing homes and mortgages are leaving behind pets: dogs, cats, you name it. This took me back to the good old days in Moscow, where it was the habit of folks to leave animals behind in the city when they went to the country to their dachas in the summer. I know, it doesn't make sense, you'd think the animals would be happy and useful in the country side, but maybe they wouldn't let them on trains, whatever.

In any case, what you'd end up with was packs of wild dogs, roaming the streets. And yes, some of them became rapid. And yes, they were also pretty pathetic and and liked to be fed. And there are specific classes of rubber-tear gas bulletspouting sawed off handguns that experts consider optimal for deterring packs of wild dogs. I kid you not.

One of these days, if I get enough energy, I will tell you the tale of the one we called devushka.

The Soccer War

I had heard of Ryszard Kapuscinsky for some time, so I snagged The Soccer War, a memoir of good old days in Africa with Lumumba and Nkrumah and whatnot. Reads like a mix of butter and Camus and Dan Rather. More later.

Zillow for 2.0

The social promise of 2.0 is belied by, on the one hand, the randomness with which we encounter it. Wouldn't it be nice if there were self-tagging framework by which one could tag one's content: a zip code, age bracket, religion, income category, etc. Then one could really navigate the user-created space and dig into it. So could marketers, admittedly, but the products we got would be better targeted.

I am a pervert?

Just went across the street to Gristede's so snag some Vintage seltzer. I was wearing my black trench coat over sweatpants and business shoes. I looked like a flasher. I just know that -- when I showed up at the register with ten liters of discount bubbly, they were tittering amongst themselves "here comes that seltzer fetishist again."

Independence Day, the end

So after grousing about Richard Ford's Independence Day I soldiered through to the end and was deeply rewarding. Although it's less minimalistly anti-dramatic than the 200 pages of Crime and Punishment after Raskol'nikov murders the pawnbroker, during which the protagonist lies on his fetid couch, stares at yellow floral patterns in greasy old wallpaper and dreams delusionally fed by his visitors' conversations about (among other things) the crime he committed, the middle section of Ford's novel serves a similar purpose. Our hero is stuck in life, and has to divine a way forward and a way to connect with the people around him. And he does. And it works. And now I have to decide if I read The Sportswriter which was the first novel in the trilogy, or the subsequent one. But read them I will, in due time.

Beirut, again

It astonishes me no small amount that a band this young could make me anticipate nostalgia so eagerly.

The Ethics of Travel Soccer

Plenty of people criticize travel soccer for hauling them all over the place on weekends, but I predict a real backlash against travelling competitive sports in the near future for the simple reason that... there's too much driving involved. As gas stays expensive, the cost driver will be one thing, but from a footprint perspective it is also more than a little abhorrent.

I talked to a woman today who argued that travel soccer gives kids more competition than the milquetoast lower leagues. But what about the effect it has of removing all the alpha athletes from the pool shared by the less competitive? Doesn't it deprive these kids of benchmarks and weaken their own competitive instinct? I dunno, I don't like it.

To continue the distorto-funk trend of yesterday, here's a link to Vernon Reid at his most shining moment.

What we all want

Walking downtown from a drink a midtown, blustery wind blows, full moon shines down. Two teenage girls hugged and squealed and danced in a circle in front of the Whole Foods on Union Square, quite new to me. As I walked and checked out all the many new shiny boites, it once again washed over me how little I could care about Manhattan at this stage in my life. And then I got a shwarma on Macdougal St and saw the chess stores and clubs were still there, and all was better, for a few minutes, at least.

Gang of Four, 1982

The rumbling in the market's tummy

Today was a nasty day on the Street, with all the major indices down in excess of 2%. Apparently, the Fed was taking a little siesta, as it offered up no rate cuts, no special deals at the discount window, squatarama. Admittedly the $200 billion dollar bump from changing statutory reserving requirements for Fannie and Freddie seemed to get us through the morning OK but heh, a market gets hungry by lunch time and really needs a little something to get through the day. But no nothing. Bernanke didn't even order up any Chinese take-out. What do you expect a market to do, under such conditions?

Time to read, not write

I was a little down on Independence Day when last I wrote about it, but I have stayed the course and kept reading -- drawn in no doubt by the fucked-up father-son dynamics -- and am now waiting with bated breath to find out if Paul will have good vision in the eye purposefully put in the way of a 75mph fastball at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown just to tweak his dad, who had just tried to force on him a degree of intimacy unreasonable to expect of any 15-year boy, let alone a clearly disaffected and antisocial one. So I need to go read now, if you will excuse me.

Extraordinary adventures with the Fed

The Fed has recently begun to trot out new approaches to inject liquidity into the economy, beyond the tried and true discount rate reductions. Recent stories which have been kept a little bit quiet include:

• "The Fed and Applebees partner to bring Casual Dining Value."
  In an unprecedented foray into cobranding, The Federal Reserve Bank and Applebees announced an initiative to bring a 2-for-1 entree (with a complementary beverage) to all American households in time for the Easter Weekend. In anticipation of higher than average volume at Applebees restaurants around the country, FEMA units will be mobilized to provide variable labor capacity. Several Wall Street Analysts quickly revised upwards their projections for Applebees same-store sales for the quarter. Stopped on the streets of Harrisburg, PA for comment, pipe fitter Jim Snarksdale commented, "Mmmm, I love that Applejack Chicken sandwich." His girlfriend favored the shrimp caesar salad.
  
  
• "Bernanke provides Much-Needed Liquidity to Inner-City Neighborhood"
  In an unprecedented foray into direct liquidity provision to an underserved market, Chairman Ben Bernanke visited with African-American youths in New York's Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood flanked by microlending guru Mohammed Yunus and armed with a hydrant wrench . After a brief peroration extolling the virtues of entrepreneurialism, Bernanke proclaimed that by an extraordinary dispensation spring was beginning four days early, and opened a hydrant. Much hijinks did ensue.
  
  
• "Fed Attempts to Preemptively enlists Gates Foundation in as yet undetermined Rescue"
  Its own resources growing thin after a busy week, the Fed has according to unnamed sources submitted a proposal to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to secure a line of credit to be used to bail out financial institutions. The Foundation has apparently assented to the request, contingent upon a signed guarantee that any institutions rescued with Foundation money will install Vista on all desktops and ban the use of Firefox and block all searches using Google.
  

Librarians at their best

There is a retired couple in our old neighborhood that never had kids because they were too devoted to their careers as librarians (I kid you not) up at the college. The woman, apparently, regrets it, as she sends copious cards for many occasions.

This easter is no exception, and she sent Natalie a card with a pop-up fluffy bunny (which she loved) and Graham one which sang "Here comes Peter Cottontail" when you opened it in a post Bing Crosby kinda way. Graham went apeshit, playing the card over and over again, bouncing up and down on the couch giggling. That's what you call finding your audience.

The Malaise Speech

Jimmy Carter, July 1979. This took guts, and got him fired.

Good evening.

This is a special night for me. Exactly 3 years ago, on July 15, 1976, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for President of the United States. I promised you a President who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain, and who shares your dreams and who draws his strength and his wisdom from you.

During the past 3 years I've spoken to you on many occasions about national concerns, the energy crisis, reorganizing the Government, our Nation's economy, and issues of war and especially peace. But over those years the subjects of the speeches, the talks, and the press conferences have become increasingly narrow, focused more and more on what the isolated world of Washington thinks is important. Gradually, you've heard more and more about what the Government thinks or what the Government should be doing and less and less about our Nation's hopes, our dreams, and our vision of the future.

Ten days ago I had planned to speak to you again about a very important subject -- energy. For the fifth time I would have described the urgency of the problem and laid out a series of legislative recommendations to the Congress. But as I was preparing to speak, I began to ask myself the same question that I now know has been troubling many of you. Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?

It's clear that the true problems of our Nation are much deeper -- deeper than gasoline lines of energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession. And I realize more than ever that as President I need your help. So, I decided to reach out and listen to the voices of America.

I invited to Camp David people from almost every segment of our society business and labor, teachers and preachers, Governors, mayors, and private citizens. And then I left Camp David to listen to other Americans, men and women like you. It has been an extraordinary 10 days, and I want to share with you what I've heard. First of all, I got a lot of personal advice. Let me quote a few of the typical comments that I wrote down.

This from a southern Governor: "Mr. President, you are not leading this Nation -- you're just managing the Government."

"You don't see the people enough any more."

"Some of your Cabinet members don't seem loyal. There is not enough discipline among your disciples."

"Don't talk to us about politics or the mechanics of government, but about an understanding of our common good."

"Mr. President, we're in trouble. Talk to us about blood and sweat and tears."

"If you lead, Mr. President, we will follow."

Many people talked about themselves and about the condition of our Nation. This from a young woman in Pennsylvania: "I feel so far from government. I feel like ordinary people are excluded from political power."

And this from a young Chicano: "Some of us have suffered from recession all our lives."

"Some people have wasted energy, but others haven't had anything to waste."

And this from a religious leader: "No material shortage can touch the important things like God's love for us or our love for one another."

And I like this one particularly from a black woman who happens to be the mayor of a small Mississippi town: "The big-shots are not the only ones who are important. Remember, you can't sell anything on Wall Street unless someone digs it up somewhere else first."

This kind of summarized a lot of other statements: "Mr. President, we are confronted with a moral and a spiritual crisis."

Several of our discussions were on energy, and I have a notebook full of comments and advice. I'll read just a few.

"We can't go on consuming 40 percent more energy than we produce. When we import oil we are also importing inflation plus unemployment."

"We've got to use what we have. The Middle East has only 5 percent of the world's energy, but the United States has 24 percent."

And this is one of the most vivid statements: "Our neck is stretched over the fence and OPEC has a knife."

"There will be other cartels and other shortages. American wisdom and courage right now can set a path to follow in the future."

This was a good one: "Be bold, Mr. President. We may make mistakes, but we are ready to experiment."

And this one from a labor leader got to the heart of it: "The real issue is freedom. We must deal with the energy problem on a war footing."

And the last that I'll read: "When we enter the moral equivalent of war, Mr. President, don't issue us BB guns."

These 10 days confirmed my belief in the decency and the strength and the wisdom of the American people, but it also bore out some of my longstanding concerns about our Nation's underlying problems.

I know, of course, being President, that government actions and legislation can be very important. That's why I've worked hard to put my campaign promises into law -- and I have to admit, with just mixed success. But after listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our Nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.

Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next 5 years will be worse than the past 5 years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Water gate.

We remember when the phrase "sound as a dollar" was an expression of absolute dependability, until 10 years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our Nation's re sources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.

These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed.

Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal Government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our Nation's life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our Government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don't like, and neither do I. What can we do?

First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this Nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.

One of the visitors to Camp David last week put it this way: "We've got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from the White House, but from every house in America."

We know the strength of America. We are strong. We can regain our unity. We can regain our confidence. We are the heirs of generations who survived threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now. Our fathers and mothers were strong men and women who shaped a new society during the Great Depression, who fought world wars, and who carved out a new charter of peace for the world.

We ourselves and the same Americans who just 10 years ago put a man on the Moon. We are the generation that dedicated our society to the pursuit of human rights and equality. And we are the generation that will win the war on the energy problem and in that process rebuild the unity and confidence of America.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our Nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.

Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this Nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our Nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.

In little more than two decades we've gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous tool on our economy and our people. This is the direct cause of the long lines which have made millions of you spend aggravating hours waiting for gasoline. It's a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our Nation.

The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our Nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.

What I have to say to you now about energy is simple and vitally important.

Point one: I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this Nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980's, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade -- a saving of over 4 1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day.

Point two: To ensure that we meet these targets, I will use my Presidential authority to set import quotas. I'm announcing tonight that for 1979 and 1980, I will forbid the entry into this country of one drop of foreign oil more than these goals allow. These quotas will ensure a reduction in imports even below the ambitious levels we set at the recent Tokyo summit.

Point three: To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our Nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the Sun.

I propose the creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace 2 1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation will issue up to $5 billion in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so that average Americans can invest directly in America's energy security.

Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II, so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this Nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.

These efforts will cost money, a lot of money, and that is why Congress must enact the windfall profits tax without delay. It will be money well spent. Unlike the billions of dollars that we ship to foreign countries to pay for foreign oil, these funds will be paid by Americans to Americans. These funds will go to fight, not to increase, inflation and unemployment.

Point four: I'm asking Congress to mandate, to require as a matter of law, that our Nation's utility companies cut their massive use of oil by 50 percent within the next decade and switch to other fuels, especially coal, our most abundant energy source.

Point five: To make absolutely certain that nothing stands in the way of achieving these goals, I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the redtape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects.

We will protect our environment. But when this Nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

Point six: I'm proposing a bold conservation program to involve every State, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle. This effort will permit you to build conservation into your homes and your lives at a cost you can afford.

I ask Congress to give me authority for mandatory conservation and for standby gasoline rationing. To further conserve energy, I'm proposing tonight an extra $10 billion over the next decade to strengthen our public transportation systems. And I'm asking you for your good and for your Nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense -- I tell you it is an act of patriotism.

Our Nation must be fair to the poorest among us, so we will increase aid to needy Americans to cope with rising energy prices. We often think of conservation only in terms of sacrifice. In fact, it is the most painless and immediate way of rebuilding our Nation's strength. Every gallon of oil each one of us saves is a new form of production. It gives us more freedom, more confidence, that much more control over our own lives.

So, the solution of our energy crisis can also help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country. It can rekindle our sense of unity, our confidence in the future, and give our Nation and all of us individually a new sense of purpose.

You know we can do it. We have the natural resources. We have more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias. We have more coal than any nation on Earth. We have the world's highest level of technology. We have the most skilled work force, with innovative genius, and I firmly believe that we have the national will to win this war.

I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our Nation's problems, when the truth is that the only way out is an all-out effort. What I do promise you is that I will lead our fight, and I will enforce fairness in our struggle, and I will ensure honesty. And above all, I will act.

We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no short-term solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.

Twelve hours from now I will speak again in Kansas City, to expand and to explain further our energy program. Just as the search for solutions to our energy shortages has now led us to a new awareness of our Nation's deeper problems, so our willingness to work for those solutions in energy can strengthen us to attack those deeper problems.

I will continue to travel this country, to hear the people of America. You can help me to develop a national agenda for the 1980's. I will listen and I will act. We will act together. These were the promises I made 3 years ago, and I intend to keep them.

Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science. But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources -- America's people, America's values, and America's confidence.

I have seen the strength of America in the inexhaustible resources of our people. In the days to come, let us renew that strength in the struggle for an energy-secure nation.

In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country. With God's help and for the sake of our Nation, it is time for us to join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.

Thank you and good night.

How old I am

Was once again reminded of my age and station in life this evening at Dos Caminos, a trendy Mexican boite at 50th and 3rd, for my boy Phil's 41st birthday. It being Thursday, the joint was jumping and was packed with many good looking boys and girls of the 20s-30s variety. Time was, the girls part of that equation would have turned me on, but tonight I found myself grateful to be seated next to a guy from Westchester, with whom I could compare commuting tales and discuss children and the joys of being a "consultant" in such a fucked-up economy (he used to sell structured products for a bank, now is assessing one of the injured bond insurers).

In the bathroom of this joint, some junky sycophant in a monkey suit turned on the tap for you when you turned around from the urinal and tried to spritz your hands from a decorative soap dispenser, all in hopes of getting a tip. If I wanted a servant, I'd live in a frickin emerging market, that's what I say to that.

"Obama assasination"

The spectre of an Obama assassination has become a popular meme. It has become a top 100 search topic, for chrissakes

I first heard the idea mooted by a bunch of young blacks a few weeks ago on the subway. From the black point of view: it's rank defeatism and self-victimization before the fact: "Even if we get a black man in the White House, they just gonna take him away." From a white people's point of view, it's veiled racism: it would be said of any black candidate with a chance as a reason for not voting for them. Al Sharpton, Allan Keyes and Lenora Fulani have never been worth the bullet.

To be sure, Obama is more assassinable than most candidates, and more than most presidents, with the obvious and glaring exception of the present one, whose continued presence amongst the living and breathing really demonstrates better than anything else the degree of inaction and disaffection of the nation over which he has blustered these long eight years.

Malthus and Hobbes, together again

Yesterday I had conversation with a Russian guy wearing a black shirt about the possibility of an Obama presidency. He immediately ran to the scenario of an Obama assassination and the geopolitical risks to which it would expose us. I will comment on the Obama assassination question under separate cover.

This morning I receive an excerpt from the The Guardian, which has gotten its hands on a report by EU Foreign Policy doyenne Javier Solana (what was his old job, head of UN?) predicting that the race for Arctic petrochemical reserves between the USA and Russia will precipitate "security issues for Europe, ranging from energy wars to mass migration, failed states and political radicalization," and that Europe should plan for these things.

I need only turn my head to the right to read a fellow commuter's Wall Street Journal article on Australia's quest for salt-free water. Luckily they're unlikely to start a war over it.

It seems we are in a neo-Malthusian moment which everywhere focuses on scarcity of resources and risk of conflagration, which is rather tricky for those of us with small children, who have come to believe that eschatological scenarios were long since relegated to Bruce Willis movies, 9/11 notwithstanding. Could there be a really big war in our time? Are our international institutions strong enough to resist it? Recent evidence has been mixed, but world war would kinda suck.

On James Wood

James Wood, I seem to recall, has been called the greatest literary critic of our times. I might be in a better position to judge this assertion, if I could bring myself to read through anything he's written. Time and again I pick up his reviews, waiting for the magic to happen, only to be repulsed by his excess of hauteur. Yes yes, he's erudite, but can he cut to the bone? It is true that literary criticism has lost much of its appeal for me since I decided to stop trying to feed my family by doing it. But still. Wood is now the Professor of the Practice of Criticism at Harvard. It would do him well to look past practice and try to get in the game.

For shame

Stephen Soderbergh should be deeply ashamed of himself for making movies like the Ocean's series (Eleven and Thirteen, I guess there was a Twelve in there that somehow slipped past). I mean, there are all the cutest boys on there and I'm sure they make money, but they're utterly meatless and implausible. And if he was going to trumpet that much of Ellen Barkin's breasts he might as well have just broke those bad boys out, that's what I say.