All hating together

The Times today published a heartwarming photo of numerous Israeli religious leaders -- Islamic, Catholic, Armenian, Ashkenazi, and Sepphardic -- coming together in opposition to a common foe: gay rights. Nothing triumphs over prejudice quite like prejudice. Anti-semitism, one of society's traditional glues, just won't work there for some reason.

I found myself driving to work singing along with the Smiths again, and my mind drifted off to Tony Thomas, a tall, well-dressed black guy who hauled himself from the under-manicured streets of East Chicago, Indiana to Yale Law School in the eighties. Between a multi-year research project on House Music, a serious appetite for tha kine, and dying at an excruciatingly young age of AIDS, he never quite made the mark that he might have. On his chest of drawers he had a picture of himself at his high school prom, in a colored tux with a good sized fro and a female date. It must not have been fun to be gay at an i high school. I miss the guy.

Special K

The cleverly named CoachK.com points out that the Spawn of Knight passed Dean Smith for total career NCAA tournament victories (66) when Duke beat Mississippi State to get into the Sweet 16. Where they lost.

Lets just take a second to note that Mr. Unspellable has coached almost all of his career in a tournament with 64 teams and six games. When Dean got started, there were 22 teams in the tournament, then 32 (1975), 40 (1979), 48 (1980), and 64 (1985). Making Dean's victory total much harder earned. There were fewer round of 64 gimmies back then. K's got no fewer than 15 of these fluff games on Dean. For now.

Like a good corporate shill, CoachK lards his site with inspirational witticisms like this: "Leaders have to give time for relationships. But more demands will be placed on their time as they become more successful. So if a person’s success is based on developing relationships, then they have to continually find new ways of getting it done.” Like delegating the relationship-building function.

This one also struck me as deep: “Visualize a wagon wheel as a complete team. A leader might be the hub of the wheel at the center. Now suppose the spokes are the connecting relationships the leader is building with people on the outer rim of the wheel. If the hub is removed, then the entire wheel collapses. In a situation like that, if a team loses the leader, the entire team collapses.” The man is smooth with his metaphors, for sure.

I'm really not sure how I made it this far in life without Coach K's quotes. I'm surprised he doesn't charge for access to them.

In the noggin

The Times reports today that out West somewhere a court invalidated a death sentence because the jurors had consulted a bible in reaching it, when the judge had clearly instructed them to use their own judgment without outside influences. What if one of them had memorized the Bible, or just cited it? What difference does the presence of the physical book make, when it's the text that matters? How is one supposed to make moral judgments in a vacuum?

The point is that the state's not supposed to be killing people, period.

Though McVeigh was worth frying. I'd say Kozlowski and the whole Enron gang should burn too. Capital punishment for crimes involving large amounts of capital, as I used to say.
(Blog sanitized here to prepare for promotional email blast).

sweet orange velvet: Issyk oh so Kul

Love is in the air of Bishkek, Kiev, Tbilisi. Who woulda thunk it. Last time I was paying close attention to the former Soviet realm, Kyrgyzstan was like a big dry Switzerland and Akaev was Mr. Nice Guy amongst a bunch of real roughsters, and now he's up and flown the country. It all takes you back to Prague in '89, almost. Problem is, Prague was all ready for its Velvet Revolution, with a favorable geographic location and an openness driven by Mitteleuropa-crazed backpackers in the 80s. Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and Ukraine, on the other hand, don't have it all organized, and will probably muddle along more like Romania and Bulgaria. God forbid a power vacuum should arise in Georgia. That would be no fun.

That's where having well-placed friends helps: "(Georgian President) Saakashivili invited billionaire financier George Soros to help pay some government salaries and boost all-important tax collection."* Good idea. I think I'll invite Soros to pay for some stuff too. No but seriously, instead of providing services which supplement government (school books, salaries for nuclear scientists, etc), as he has so often, here Soros is propping it right up. It's sort of a new model.

In some ways it's odd how Soros's mission and Wolfowitz's are fellow travellers to a certain point.

In general, optimism is the tone of the day. Here's what Zbigniew Brzezinski says in the Journal today, in support of a rising democratic pluralism in the post-Soviet zone: "Russian youth are well-educated. Increasingly, many have traveled and studied in the West." Shows how long he's been away from the region. He must not have read the surveys showing that a shocking number of Russian youths don't know who Lenin was. Sure, they know about Britney Spears and the Royal Deluxe. They could probably even set me straight on Lindsey Lohan. But that's about it.

*Columbia Alumni Magazine, Winter 2004-5

Props to Ray Ray

After busting on Felton a few weeks back, credit must be given to the young man for nailing four free throws in the crunch time against those cheese-heads. How bout em?

Guru on message

Caught a PBS-like chat with a certain Jon Kabat-Zinn on the TV this weekend. The interview started off with the crusty PBS yankee guy asking the bearded Kabat-Zinn: "who was William James?" To which our guest replies: "He was the father of American psychology." And I'm sitting here thinking, he was also Henry James' brother and the father of Pragmatism as a philosophical school, so why sell him short. But as the guy went on and espoused his doctrine of mindfulness and its ramifications and all that, I came to see that he was in fact just a disciplined salesperson, relentlessly on message for his yogic theory of societal enlightenment. The guy was like, I've got 15 minutes up here on the TV and I won't spare a syllable that doesn't sell my product, nebulous though it may be. Impressive

Is he any kin to you, Z?

Oh what a beautiful morning

5:00AM Graham Screaming. Change poopy diaper.

8:00 AM Graham vomits banana and formula

9:10 AM Arrive for 9:15 Dr's appt. concerning Carpal Tunnel System

9: 45 AM Leave doctor's office without having been seen, after leaving small piece of my mind

10:00 AM Arrive Princeton Junction train station for 10:12 train. Because of holiday, metered parking available.

10:03 AM Arrive Princeton Junction station convenience store. Thirsty. Irritated. Need caffeine. Because of holiday, store closed.

10:15 AM Mary calls my cell. Graham has puked again. Should we go to Larchmont for holiday? Will she brave the Turnpike alone with one sick kid and one boisterous one?

10:28 AM 10:12 train arrives. Because of holiday and circus at Madison Sq. Garden (take Natalie?), train full of jabbering families.

11:30 AM Train near Secaucus by now. Phone rings. It's Rick, my lunch engagement, for which I had rushed out of Dr's appointment and for which Jon, my COO and boss, was energetically polishing sales collateral for me to print in New York office. Rick is violently ill and has stayed in Princeton.

11:31 AM Call Ted at Midtown to check on replacement lunch. Ted can't do it. Conference call. Ted tells of how Henry once puked for 24 hour straight while having strep throat at the same time.

11:40 AM Arrive Penn Station. Set off for Rock. Center on foot, psyched for a falafel with hot sauce from place on 48th st.

11:58 AM Arrive 48th st. Falafelteria closed for Purim. Thankfully, nearby Noodle shop is good consolation prize.

12:15 PM Check in with Mary. Trip to Larchmont is on. Thank God I don't have to go back to Princeton, trip not entirely in vain.

New tennis courts

Out running the other day, I noticed that Princeton, the university, that is, had built and is building a bunch (16? 24?) of new tennis courts down behind the astroturf as it slopes down towards the crew sculling lake. To make up for the ones that got bulldozed to build whatever they're building up the hill. In addition to the other sizable tennis center back over there.

And I'm thinking, like, what are they thinking? Nobody plays tennis anymore, courts are so often fallow, land is at a premium, it's just another paved surface to generate run-off. But Princeton must gird up the ruling class by supporting the grand old sports.

Hey, I'm cool with it. I'm gonna be sneaking onto those mugs. I do play tennis. They're not gonna staff them with guards all the time. No way. They cain't stop the kid.

Rainy day in Jersey

Raining outside. Can't even try out my new tires, really. At least I have this funny new keyboard, bent around all funny to make me type more ergonomically. From a company they call Microsoft. I wish it had a cupholder and a picture of Shania Twain doing a rap duet with old Diff Puddy (his actual new name).

Could someone explain to me who Lindsey Lohan is? I've seen her featured on the cover of several of our finest magazines, and I don't know who the hell she is, and she's not even marginally hot, like teen stars are supposed to be. Britney Spears, a least, has well-designed silicon at work, although rumor has it that she's been taking some pointers of late from Kirstie Alley.

Was saddened to hear yesterday that an old friend got dumped and divorced not long ago for failing to perform financially. That ain't right. It's not like it was a huge surprise he didn't make a lot of money. That's the kind of thing you ought to see coming before you marry them. Rare is it for someone to remake themselves out of whole cloth just because they walk down the aisle.

Warm and foggy

The sun and its various reflections has been chasing me around the building here at Midtown. In most places, you can count on the sun to be in certain places at certain times of day. Rise East, set West, is the way I was always taught. But when you're in a glass box, surrounded by others, it's not like that. Going to the East side of the building late in the day does you no good. So here I sit, hands all clammy, trying to concentrate, thinking of hauling the laptop to another corner of this great shiny ghostly office of ours, so unlike the class B shitholes of some of the scrappier little enterprizes I've visited recently.

And it's a nice day outdoors, too. Spring springs. Had lunch at fancy Bryant Park restaurant with Hilary today, which was wierd because the joint was so swanky I felt like I should have been trying to sell her something instead of holding forth about careers, children, ponds and 40.

Running low

Was freaked out all weekend because I thought that my evident Carpal Tunnel Syndrome might be of the "gnarled up hands for the rest of your life" variant. A colleague assures me that they're not that far gone, though I've clearly booked time with the doctor not in vain. There is funky pain coursing around my pinkies and forearms.

So why am I typing so much doggeral, you may ask yourself. Because by now I feel contractually obligated to produce blogtext. Even with little to comment on. I cannot sacrifice my few, proud readers, even though I got two separate emails over the weekend from people saying that they read my blog and therefore feel in touch with me. Would that it were the case. There's more to me than meets the blog, of that you can be assured.

Tales from the Heartland

My mom's in town from North Carolina, and last night she brought us up to date on a friend of hers, whom we shall refer to as Janet. Some years back, Janet lost her husband to a massive stroke which befell him as he was out walking the dog. The cardio event seems to have been correlated with his considerable girth, which in turn derived from his habitual devotion to Southern food.

For many years, Janet didn't do any dating at all, spending all her time with her kids and grandkids and also coaching young debutantes to get ready for the cotillion (I kid you not). Last night mom tells us Janet is married. She started dating a guy in October, saw him monthly for a couple of months, wasn't tight enough with him to include him in Xmas, and now they're married.

Why the rush, you ask? Sex. Those crazy 60-year olds, they wanted to have sex, but thought it inconceivable outside of wedlock Reminds me of a great scene from the 1809 A Russian Gil-blas by Narezhny, when a woman believes that it is literally impossible for a friend of hers to have gotten pregnant because she is not married. I do hope Janet got a pre-nup.

So there's a little tale of the red-state mentality these days. Premature death by fat, premature marriage by fiat.

Diet Dr Pepper spills on train

I spilled my Diet Dr. Pepper on the train this morning, like a moron. Fortunately the car was pre-depopulated because someone else had spilled more of something else earlier, so mine commingled, unnoticed. Very fortunately, cuz people get worked up over spills on NJ Transit. Like that meshuggeneh witch in the Manolo Blahniks who went ballistic on me when someone kicked my coffee over one day and it got on her precious little shoes.

But I do knock over stuff all the time. Not long ago some lasagna slipped off my plate onto someone's white rug. Never mind the wisdom of having a white rug in the dining room, it was embarassing, but cleanable. Fortunately I've been able to confine my accidents to social rather than business contexts for the most part. I did bump into that guy and spill his wine in a pub in the fall of 2003, but he wasn't a client or anything, so it was OK.

I never run into anybody else's car or pet, so I'm good on that.

Little neuroses

In her newly needy mode, Natalie has taken to doing more than just blather on incessantly, sing at the dinner table, lean on you , and make that annoying noise with her tongue and lips that Mary's good at but I'm not. More recently, she's taken to clearing her throat with an almost pathological frequency.

More disturbingly and poignantly, she's developed a tick: she gently lets out a little "yippy," most often while reading stories. Last night while we were reading Billy and Blaze, she let out seven or eight of these "yippies." It clearly involuntary, a reflex against something. But what? Is she freaking out in advance at the onset of Kindergarten? Have we begun to displace too much frustration with other stuff (Graham, career) onto her? Is she just sick of Graham climbing all over her?

How did her parent-teacher conference go today? Crap, have a 1 pm call to get on before I can check in with Mary on that.

Soy cheese sticks to leg of high chair

I was giving Graham some soy cheese the other day and a piece of it slipped out of my hand and fell down, down, till its progress was arrested on the metal leg of his high chair. It just stuck there. I knew transfats had to be good for something.

Trip in vain

I had hoped a sales jaunt up to Northern New Jersey would yield some good blog fodder, but not really.
Yes, I saw an Assyrian Orthodox Church, as well as a Greek one and a Russian one.
Yes, I saw lots of cops waiting by the sides of roads, one even sniffed my butt.
Yes, I went through two toll booths on the Turnpike when the stupid reader wouldn't recognize my badge for jah knows what reason, when the ones on the Parkway were just fine with it.
Yes, some stupid woman in a rusty Dodge Neon spewed oil all over my car.

But really there was little of note. Probably was looking too hard. There was a thing in the New Yorker not long ago about this guy Milch who was a writer for Hill Street Blues and then NYPD Blue and now Deadwood. Mary said that I needed to read it because the guy's just like me: alkie, Yalie, visionary in his own mind. So I read it. In many ways the guy's a pretentious primadonna with Matthew Barneyesque macho stylings, but then he gives his advice to young writers: write 20 to 50 minutes a day, write dialogue, and don't think about what you're writing before you do it. Makes sense. You can't force it.

It's all gotta count

As with spirit, so with spirits: if you got it you can count it.

The Times' intrepid reporters told us the weekends of a new practice out in the red state region: "Power Hour", the hour after kids turn 21 before bars close, during which time they try to knock back 21 shots. As if just doing 21 weren't enough of an accomplishment, some of them have ambitious "to-do lists" line-iteming out specific drinks tasks, which are crafted and overseen by their very closest friends. The need for buckets is foreseen and provisioned for. Good work, America, for bringing task-oriented project and supply chain management to drinking.

Back when I was drinking, let me tell you, we didn't need to count and plan our drinking precisely to know when we were drunk. We were simply at one with alcohol, and respected its natural ebbing and flowing. Frequently. Somewhere along the way, this intrinsic, wholistic way was lost, but now young drinkers have formal best practices to help them fill the gap. There are unconfirmed rumors that, in certain elite bars across the high plains, top corporate recruiters quietly observe power hours and scout for those who dispatch their shots with the greatest dispatch, panache, and presence of mind, searching for the next Jack Welch...

I'll let you know what I hear.

The Motorcycle Diaries

Cinematography: Yah
Easy on the eye casting: Sure, Che is way dreamy and plenty genuine
Script: Ham-handed hagiography

This thing got glowing, glowing reviews. Well worth renting for a peak of the other America down there, but I think most of the reviewers probably got carried away by the good looks of the whole thing. If you really want to get a flavor of South America, rent Malkovich's The Dancer Upstairs. Even if you don't want the flavor, rent it. Es muy bueno.

Non-productive labor

Economists have a concept called non-productive labor, or something like that, and the classic example is Soviet factories which put together raw materials, labor, and overhead but come up with such a shitty product that they can't charge enough to make money, never mind about fixed prices in a command economy.

Probably a better example of non-productive labor is trying to cut out words and phrases while reading children's books at night. We've all been there, bleary at 7:56 only half way through our three book quota, reading some verbose non-rhyming thing, trying to excise phrases to get the little one down in a timely enough fashion to escape spousal rebuke for poor time management ("It's past her bed time!"). But it's murderous work, trying to read aloud and read ahead at the same time and figure out how to condense without mangling the narrative. For the most part, it's more exhausting than just reading the whole thing.

And then there's the well-documented problem of kid memorization: "No dad, you forgot to say 'I like your shirt, Henry.'" There's nothing like getting caught red-handed.

Your best bet is non-narrative rhyming books with lots of pages, of which you can skip . Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo is a perfect example. You have to begin by never reading all the pages, so they never have a chance to memorize or internalize the sequence of creatures. Never ever read the whole book, and certainly not two nights in a row.

Takes the prize

Being somewhat curmudgeonly, I don't usually blog on subjects suggested to me, as the suggestion of appropriateness makes me feel boxed in. As A Flock of Seagulls so famously brushed off the "New Wave" label when signing autographs at Northgate Mall in 1983 with the incisive comment, "We don't like labels." History, of course, has vindicated them entirely.

But yesterday Gene suggested that I blog about Templeton Prize, about $1.5 million dollars given by the Templeton of mutual fund fame for "progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities." The prize wants to catch spiritual progress up with progress made in other, practical realms such as "research and innovation in food products," where things have gotten better by at least "a hundredfold." So we should make things "a hundredfold better" in the realm of spirit. Gotcha.

There are some critics who think it absurd to try to attach a dollar figure to progress in matters spiritual, that the only appropriate prize would be to send a very nice note to the prizewinner so as not to sully their accomplishment with a quantitative and monetary appraisal.

The Grouse cannot sanction this viewpoint. No no, the offense is not in the monetary component of the award, but that it is a flat fee or lump sum. Anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of compensation theory should see immediately that this is absurd. The only way to properly incent anything, spiritual discovery in particular, is with a scalable variable pay structure, say, 2% up front for progress as it occurs, accrued monthly and 50-75 basis point trailing fees. Since spiritual improvement is, apparently, eminently countable, passing twentyfold and twentyonefold all the way up to a hundredfold, the accounting on this should not be daunting.