never underestimate the power of a good room

i was wandering out downtown last night and stopped in a few joints and couldn't help but take some impressions of lowell's various purveyors of nightlife. to one extreme, the comfortable and inviting confines of the back page were well-attended, and for nothing more grandiose than a loose collection of volunteer musicians just hacking around. (they called it a "blues jam", but, seriously, when you're covering donny hathaway like that, it's more than just that, isn't it). to the other, there's one so-called italian eatery and bar of noteworthy discomfort and uninvitation (we'll keep the names out of it in the interest of trying to stay positive) where, on both trips past, coming and going, there was not one single paying patron in the entire place. in the middle, but most certainly toward the under-attended end of the spectrum, was a spanish eatery and bar of likewise notable discomfort and uninvitation, which had invested in professional performers of impressive talent, but nonetheless suffered a dearth of attendance even so. and i can't help but blame the room--not the intent, or the people, or the music that was being put down.

if you want to provide a place for people to meet and linger, and perhaps enjoy some entertainment, wouldn't you think comfortable lighting, decor, environment, acoustics and seating would arise somewhere in your figuring? (for success on all counts, stop by the back page and note the fixtures, decoration, air conditioning, sound system quality and furniture, and then try to nominate another place downtown which is even within squirming distance). but, somehow, business owners with cheap lighting, tacky decorations, bad HVAC, poorly-matched PA's and cheesy yard-sale tables and chairs seem to want to throw their good money paying entertainers after the bad they've not invested in their places, and feel like it's unfair that they just can't bring in the bodies.

the excuse i've been hearing so often it makes me want to laugh in their faces is that the neighboring establishment(s) are ruining theirs, as if the long lines to get into a place like brian's ivy hall somehow makes it harder, not easier, to induce one or two to stop in next door to have a look. the italian place even had the better part of a year without anyone across the cobblestoned street with whom to compete in order to build a loyal clientele, but within seconds of an alternative turning up, the crowds were already gone. and it's not because of the musicians, certainly, because these same musicians are now enjoying bigger and better crowds elsewhere.

it's the room.

if you don't have a good one, you either need to invest in a significant upgrade, (not just lame half-measures), move to a new one, or just do without the patronage. because i'd rather sit for hours in a warm comfortable space with good beer listening to good music than to endure 10 minutes without any of that, even given the same good music. (and don't get me going about quality of service--the service in the two-unnamed establishments above is atrocious, has long been atrocious, and is in no apparent danger of becoming un-atrocious--how do bar owners think they don't have to worry about such things???)

either way, i'm happy to know that some establishments get it. saturday night i'm traveling up to fody's in nashua to further learn how it ought to be done. (peter lavender and the limbo souls in a room deserving of them--it's a beautiful thing).

see you there!

a missed trick

spain has wrestled with the same financial sector demons as has the us, but their response has differed in one significant aspect: the spanish government didn't "bail out" their bad banks--they confiscated them. (which is to say, took ownership stakes with the money they gave them, instead of just pissing it away). people might be tempted to ask what a government could possibly do with a failed bank, but i would point out that, as an alternative, we have NOTHING to show for all the cash we squandered on ours, and even then they're STILL cheating us. (and, to add insult to the irony, the banks are naturally worse off for having cut the corners).

banks are, second only to insurance companies, de facto rackets incorporated to extort and cheat, (even, it can be argued, steal), and should not be trusted further than their marble buildings can be thrown. islam, for all its bad press, at least gets this part right. (in islam, echoing jesus' tossing the moneylenders' tables in the temple, and much the same as our own usury laws, only set at a much more reasonable threshold, i.e. zero, it's illegal to charge interest). which is not to say that concentration of capital and mitigation of risk aren't important elements to our system--just to point out that close scrutiny is the least of our communal obligations to economic justice and our own societal solvency. for banks to be "good", like the wolves we domesticated millennia ago, they must be carefully trained, and very often kept on a short leash.

yeah, dubya started it, but barry has done nothing to improve on the folly, and right now our incoming joint chief of staff (shouldn't that be chief of joint staff?) is enduring a certain amount of national security scrutiny over the importance of government solvency to our national defense. dempsey may like to believe we need to prioritize security independent of means, but history is chock full of stories of even absolutely powerful monarchs who were undone by the unrest unreasonable tax burden places on those otherwise sworn to fealty. if we'd like to remain secure in our beds, we ought not to ignore the implications.

called it

can't help but brag a little... last night, at the bar, with the rays down 7, and the sox heading into their rain delay up 1, i called it. you could feel it, clear as day--destiny does not pause for such trivial obstacles. didn't even have to watch when they dragged pap out to try to staunch the bloody gore that was the 2011 season. (he's no mariano rivera, is he). yeah, the yanks having clinched and being compelled to keep the greatest closer who ever lived and still lives safely at the furthest back of the pen had something to do with it, too, but that's baseball, and all she wrote.

it's hockey season, and i couldn't be happier.

in baseball, as in hockey, there are gods who oversee all, and guide every element of every game. an historically bad opening bookended with an historically bad end are affronts to such gods as cannot be overcome, even by achieving the best record in baseball in the middle of it. in baseball, as in hockey, it's a six month season, and it's not how you open, or how you run through the middle, but how you finish (your season or your checks). the '11 sox dissed wake one too many times, pitched the asshole lacky a couple dozen too many times, and got the off-season they earned by stumbling and bumbling through a september to always remember. some have tried to convince me "they tried", but you could see it clearly, like last night's train wreck coming a mile away, that it just wasn't the case. tried? check out the highlights from last night's game in tampa for "tried". just don't look too hard at the stands, because those fans there don't deserve what they have. (florida baseball, though a spring training necessity, should never have been, and, like the DH, needs to be retired in order to save the game).

i enjoyed this season. i thoroughly did. i loved wake's 200th, and i loved watching reddick and lavarnway (how about these past few games!!!) and even weiland, overmatched as he was out there before his time. it's just time to drop pucks is all.

rock and roll

rock and roll is coming to downtown lowell (gary hoey's ho ho hoey's home for the holidays) and gary's packing lita ford for the ride. (got mine front and center). can't wait.

but while we have to...

last night at the back page before the open mic opened, stephe clements booked an opening set from nicholas bogosian that dropped jaws and did what only the best music can do--silenced (pin-drop silenced no word of a lie) a bar full of conversations and glass clinkings to a hush of pure musical communion. nicholas plays appalachian-style banjo and fiddle and accompanies himself with nothing more than his own feet tapping out the rhythm on a square of hardwood parquet, and from such simplicity rose everything that music has ever dreamed to accomplish in this world. it's fair to say he had the room in the palm of his hand, and he rocked it at the same time. (it's for moments like these that a music fan lives). ask anyone who was there. (and if you've never seen a line of penny pinching artists lining up to buy CD's you haven't seen love).

rock and roll will never die

job creation preventer-in-chief

barry o has proposed letting jobless people sue employers who don't hire them, and i cannot think of anything more stupid and less productive in light of our necessary goal of getting some of our legions of unemployed back into the employed column. if any company were ever tempted to hire from the pool of unemployed amercans, they now have compelling reason to never ever publicly open another new position to be filled.

in my company, "internal candidates" already fill most postings, and pre-selected others fill much of the rest. (via head-hunters, employee referrals, etc.) the result of passing such a proposal would be to guarantee that not most, but ALL of the postings will be filled by internal candidates and pre-selected others, since publicizing an open position to the general public would necessarily expose the company to uncontrollable risks that are little to no profitable benefit, via inviting suit by those frustrated that they might not have been the one to be selected. and the more people who are unemployed, the greater the risk, and the greater the incentive to never consider opening a public hiring process ever again.

this proposal would hurt unemployed people, not help. it would also harm employers, who will mitigate their risks of suit by happily preferring the marginal cost of not possibly hiring the best person for a job in return for remaining reliably free from being sued. it's at best populist tripe to propose something like this, and it's also a compelling reason to ask the democrats via their top guy why they hate america so much these days.

the rose by another name

cobblestones is doing yeoman's public service by bragging on their special menu addition for the week, "pork osso bucco", but that's the rose by another name, and i am not confused in the least. in germany they call it schweinshaxe, and my german grandmother called it ham hocks, but it is, by any name, the sweetest smelling and tasting and eating rose on the porker, even, i realize today drowning through my instant salivation, above the belly. (you like bacon, don't you?).

i'm given to understand that "osso bucco" is italian for "bone with a hole in it", and if you've ever seen the shank cut cross-section you'll know what they mean when you see it. the germans prefer to serve the hock all in one piece with the bone sticking out of the top of a softball-sized mountain of carnivorous pleasure, (as, often, do the italians even with their contradictory nomenclature), and i can't say which way the cobblestonians have determined they're going to make our dining week, but, honestly, in the end, it's good either way.

braised is the right way to do it, imho, and if they serve it cross-section, it's the little scoop of marrow in the hollow of the osso bucco that will be (would be--i hope they don't miss that trick) the crowning glory. if they go whole-hog, so to speak, and serve the entire lower shank in one big piece, then digging for the marrow becomes more challenging, but all the sweeter surrounded as it will/would be by the surfeit of splendor that is the whole enchilada. you really can't lose.

so who's coming with me tonight?

connect the dots

earlier this week, new york police beat down a small peaceable group of civilians exercising their 1st amendment rights fully within both the letter and the intent of the law. they were, as can be see here, met with violence and repression for nothing greater than choosing to point out the massive fraud being executed by wall street banks. central to the editorial commentary was a rant about police brutality, but that, honestly, is the least of my outrage with the incident.

a few days ago, the BBC interviewed someone who may or may not be who he represented himself to be, who said "governments don't rule the world, goldman sachs rules the world". (video and commentary here). much like the editorial slant above missing the point of the protest, the pundits discussing the BBC interview are similarly losing the thread.

for refreshment of memory, here's a salon piece on wall street's de facto ownership of our government, and, my favorite, a stanford magazine discussion of what happens to would-be regulators who see the fraud happening, and then are elbowed away from influence so that the fraud can continue unabated.

connect the dots.

idjits part next

not to be outdone by the yahoos and right wingnuts beside them, the lefties are spewing their own preferred brand of fabricated nonsense amongst themselves, too. (one of the funnier aspects of my discovery of this piece of complete and utter nonsense was the caption the referring facebook user chose on their "share": "why do people believe only what they want to believe?", and did you note the bogus citation at the bottom: "source: treasury department"?)

speaking of data from the treasury department, here's lefty-friendly cbs news headline on the same subject, aka the treasury department's latest figures on the debt: "national debt has increased $4 trillion under obama", with the editorial comment prominent within the piece that "it's the most rapid increase in the debt under any us president".

why indeed do people only believe what they want to believe?

obama, like the slavish morons repeating his BS, cites the policies inherited from his predecessor as his excuse, which, i really have to scratch my head to understand--he's 100% extended and expanded all of these on his watch. his rebuttal cites "two wars we didn't pay for", which is rich, because he's not only "surged" both of those, but added two more of his own for good measure. it continues to cite "prescription drug program for seniors...we didn't pay for", despite his having squandered his two years of democrat congressional majority passing a national healthcare law which exempted big pharma from prescription drug controls. it concludes by citing "tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 that were not paid for, despite, as was mentioned in the previous sentence, enjoying two full years of congressional majority during which the repeal would have been as easy as waving a presidential rubber stamp, had something been done about them.

but nothing was done about any of it, except to spend money even FASTER than before.

lefties complaining about righties' proclivity to ignore facts should take a long hard look at themselves in the mirror, and figure out that they are their opponents' reflection, and nothing better.

the only fact that matters anymore is that these two most recent presidencies, one republican and one democrat, have combined to best even hoover for the most economically destructive in history. the answer cannot be swapping deck chairs anymore. what the republicans couldn't destroy, the democrats have most surely, and we're facing economic cataclysm of historic proportions.

did everybody (anybody?) see jon stewart's interview with ron paul last night? (click quickly, it'll only be on top for the rest of today until it's replaced by the one with seth rogan to take place later tonight). ought to be required viewing for both lefties and righties with fact problems, which would be, sadly and apparently, all of them...

idjits

you read (perhaps) yesterday my essay on the abomination which has become our present presidential administration, and the ridiculous suggestion that things could possibly be managed worse. (think about it--the foreign wars, the deficit spending, the confiscation of constitutional liberties--they're all dubya policies writ even larger and more cataclysmic, and trying today to claim it's all been in our best interests, while a couple years ago crying that it was ruining our country, is completely non-sensical). i have no patience for the bullshit.

but, if anything, there's an even more pernicious flavor of bullshit out there coming from the other side, all of whom, apparently, if it can even be believed, with ALL the actual facts on which to take issue with the present administration and donkey in chief, insist upon rallying around lies instead.

to wit, i raise to you the clusterfuck which is CFL light bulbs. have you received an email, or seen a discussion in the media or elsewhere online taking obama to task for what's going on? have you thought to yourself, "yeah, i don't like what's happening, and maybe these yahoos have a point"?

well, if so, you're a dupe.

here's an article from 2007, during a moment while the presumed to be villain of the piece, barry o, was undoubtedly hanging out at his kitchen table not voting on legislation as was his habit as the junior senator from illinois: http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=45156

notice anything? like, say, perhaps the presidential signatory to the legislation?

CFL lightbulbs are yet another bequest from saint dubya, the patron for all the ignorant, effectively illiterate among the outraged out there, who would like to assist those reasonable among us in unseating the scourge currently bedeviling this country. well, here's a word from the middle:

please don't.

you're making it worse. you're making it possible, like with the idiocy with the birth certificate, for those wrong to make it appear right by being innocent of the scurrilous accusations, and never answering to the real charges.

the real charges are the deficit, the debt, the foreign entanglements and the extension and expansion of the "patriot" act. (i still can't write that without quotations, defiling as it does one of our most important words). they're extended by the levying of an impossible-to-afford healthcare boondoggle which exempts big pharma from drug price controls, and big insurance from a single payer system which would inhibit them from charging whatever they can extort from our already insolvent system. and, believe me, that ought to be enough.

the CFL stuff? that's faceless, party-less bureaucracy run amok. you know some senator somewhere (not illinois) got paid off to nominate to give GE a de facto monopoly on CFL bulbs, which they then used to move their factory to china and their corporate dick up our collective asses. (sorry, 14 year old daughter rule suspended). dubya signed it, and, like all the rest of his failed policies, it stands to nominate him for the worst presidency in the history of the country, the competition for which is rapidly becoming only his successor's.

idjits. repeating nonsense only allows the guilty to perpetuate the fraud.

please--get it straight.

oh, this is rich

barry o has just soundbyted that he thinks the GOP vision of government would "fundamentally cripple america". lemme get this straight:

* trillion dollar deficits against a historic 14 trillion dollar debt and an imploding economy that has sustained 10% unemployment and no visible prospects of turning around
* a rogue federal reserve printing money on behalf of foreign economies and wall street banks who in turn get to use that monopoly money to garnish future taxes for what may very well be forever
* renewed "patriot" act abominations against our constitutional liberties, proliferating foreign military entanglements, etc. etc. etc. and a flawed eventual-to-fail healthcare boondoggle that exempted big pharma from drug price controls, and big insurance from a single-payer system of controls

and somehow we're supposed to believe anyone could possibly do worse???

you have to give the man credit for a having an extremely active imagination.

we have met the enemy

a fiscally conservative (coincidentally republican, though you know that's not always a 100% correlation these days) friend of mine, whose common sense i respect a great deal, is frequently observing to me how bureaucracies always act to sustain and enrich (expand) themselves. create a turnpike authority to finance construction of a roadway, and even write into the charter the intent to disband once final payment is complete? sorry, but wake up to find "massDOT" bigger and (not) better than ever, and choke on the irony that it was a republican pol, bill weld, and not a "big government" democrat at all, who handed the "big dig" assets over to the turnpike authority and guaranteed that it could not be retired.

we have a problem in this country with a government that has expanded to not just cause, but BECOME our national insolvency. party political racketeers have been spinning stories to pin all the blame on the "other guys" for years, but it's getting so rich and so deep these days that it's impossible not to picture ourselves nero as our rome (the entire world) burns.

one out of six is a proportion i've read, but whatever the number actually IN government, the truth is far more pernicious, as the rest of us OUT of government become personally attached to our own pet entitlements. (spare me that government sponsored health-insurance is not an entitlement, no matter how long you worked or how much you paid into the system). the crowning irony this morning is reading the local republican point of view, (here at right side of lowell), that free benefits to vets and oldsters to audit state university classes at UML are a travesty to be cut back by shifting more and more of the curriculum to "online" (i.e. not free) status.

how are we ever going to vote to cut off the oxygen to this behemoth who is literally smothering each and every one of us, if all of us insist that the fat off the particular portions of pork being doled out onto our own personal plates should not be trimmed for the good of the whole? this one likes free tuition. that one likes comprehensive cadillac-style healthcare coverage throughout retirement. everyone with a house likes home mortgage tax deductions. and nobody with any income at all cares to be fingered for paying for any of it.

we have a problem today, and it's our collective addiction to government bloat. democrats don't even bother to hide their enthusiasm that government continue to increase in size, until everyone is receiving all the government-sponsored handouts they can rationalize they may or may not need. (i marvel that democrat tv's never seem to be able to tune in the news from greece, where the country spends a similar portion of their GDP to ours on social safety nets and other citizen entitlements, and the whole thing has gone to shit because they, unlike us, haven't been able to print funny money to cover their asses, but, hey, maybe we need an FCC program to give everyone new broadband internet-enabled tv's so there's equal access to information...)

but our real problem is that republicans are fully engaged with the game, only bullshitting us about it so that we don't notice that the original source of our present insolvency, and the authorship to all the current administration polices, and most certainly not the solution to our malaise, is on them. the reason i say the "real problem" (many republicans in the audience will want to say "hey, but the other guys are worse") is that it's the pepsi to the coke that chokes the soda aisle with nutritionally void overpriced sugar water, not the existence alone of coke.

we need to cut government. actually, i should say, we need to SLASH government. we need to throw everyone, and i mean EVERYONE, out on the street without our blankies and entitlements and party membership cards, so that the entire electorate doesn't conspire every election to re-elect the tag-team of republican and democrat bozos who put us in the crapper in the first place. (democrats are now crying that this will hurt people--there's always an argument against it that cannot be countered, except by observing that broke is broke, and we can't afford to be this way any longer).

if you cash a social security check, or skate on a portion of your taxes owing to a mortgage interest deduction, or enjoy free tuition at a state school near you, and opine and lobby and vote to sustain such, YOU are the problem.

WE are the problem.

"everyone should have skin in the game"

over at right side of lowell, (comments disabled there for whatever reason, so i have to do it here), there's an essay on fair federal income taxation and the suggestion that it's important that "everyone should have skin in the game". the author's point, if i may be so presumptuous to paraphrase, is that "we should be careful about going after the rich to pay more", and especially when "not everyone has skin in the game".

really?

let's talk about skin, shall we? we can start by reviewing the latest census figures that show that more than half of american families are making less than $50,000 per year, and a sixth of them are living beneath the poverty line. (when you select families based on those with children, the poverty percentage skews to 20%--that's right, one out of five american children live in poverty already, even before we decide we want to tax their parents further). we can continue by adding up the taxes already being paid on gasoline, unemployment insurance, medicare/medicaid, social security, and etc. and then we can ask ourselves, exactly, what skin of theirs isn't already in the game? i hear a lot about the fact that federal income tax at these levels of income is allowed to fall to zero, but i really have no idea why it's concluded that somehow these people are getting any sort of free ride, or are any less frustrated to see so much of their income whittled away by taxation, or should be first in line when talking about shouldering a larger portion of our massive federal debt.

in fact, you could tax ALL these people ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of their income, and you STILL wouldn't overcome our present budget deficit, or add up to the tax breaks currently being enjoyed by the wealthiest americans who are all, as i'm given to understand, or at least all besides warren buffet, whining that it's really unfair that their top marginal rate be increased from 36 to 39 1/2%.

skin in the game???

imagine you make $50,000 a year, and already pay $5,000 of that in social security and medicare/medicaid taxes. imagine further that you found your family of four an apartment for $850 a month (another $10,000 off the top) and put $20 a week in gasoline taxes not into your fuel tank to get back and forth to work (another grand). by the time it gets time to feed and clothe your family, pay for health insurance, (if you can afford it), and do everything else that's required to survive, tell me how much skin you're going to have left with which to put more "into the game"?

imagine, on the other hand, you make $500,000 a year. we're talking about rescinding a tax rebate you've been enjoying for the past decades of around $20,000 per annum. (that's actually what the aforementioned impoverished family of four LIVES ON, but who's counting). so, what sort of standard of living impact do we imagine will be happening when the effective income of this wealthy person when they're asked to "make do" on $480,000? (and, actually, the numbers here aren't actually nearly as high as i've made them seem--the top marginal rate isn't paid on all that much of the total, and is likely much closer to $10,000 than $20,000, but, again, who's counting).

"skin in the game" is an easy thing to tell everyone to have when, on the one hand, it's actual skin, flesh and bone you're suggesting to take from one family, and a rounding error on their petty cash that you're suggesting is too dear to take from another.

gotta say it again

wcap's broadcast last night of frank morey's show from the back page was merely and sheerly brilliant. it was promo'd on air as part of the lowell bank nitecap series (though good luck finding info on that--nobody seems to want to promote it, even though this event last night was good in the way that historic radio broadcasts are good) and it delivered an experience that defies a certain (generous) amount of belief.

yes, historic.

frank was accompanied on stage by hank smith, and the wcap broadcast team of wireless mike flynn and jack baldwin made the perfect tourguides to this one-of-a-kind musical evening. perfectly respectful to the music, they filled the breaks and got out of the way so that the audience could hear every single note. it was, indeed, the next best thing to being there, and i'm still pinching myself to have been able to take advantage.

in a way, the radio broadcast delivered a better musical experience to being there, (only a small way, let my glass be half full, please), as it was mic'd directly from the stage so the vocals and the guitars were crystal clear. (if frank's voice could ever be described as crystal). it was audible in a way that's just not possible "in person" in a crowded bar, so that what you lost in vibration from the positive energy from the crowd all around you, you recovered in part because of the incredible way you could hear every note and nuance. and the music was so genuine and heartfelt and full of nuance... stunning, in its way, because you just don't hear music this good on the radio, let alone from a small back alley club in a small little city like lowell.

but last night, on the radio, we did, and it was oh so very good.

i don't know from this "nitecap" series. never heard of it before, and couldn't find anything on past or future installments. but i do know that what wcap put on the air (and on the internet--you can and could listen right alone clear-as-a-bell from your pc or your phone or what have you) last night was jaw-droppingly good, and something that the city (meaning you, me, and everyone in it) needs to embrace because it's the best of what lowell can be.

i've heard it--the music downtown here is something special. roll the tanks at the old court, for one recent example. peter lavender and the limbo souls at ole thursday night for another. but frank morey and hank smith went them all one better last night, and--here's the thing: when the bar gets raised, and the musical gauntlet is thrown down, and all the musicians in town hear it, the inspiration to do more and better is irresistible. infectious. like an outbreak the cdc and no boundaries can contain. and last night, by putting frank and hank on the radio, and letting the world in on the musical secret that is the back page club, wcap did what a community radio station is supposed to do, and more, because they put it out there on the net where the whole world could hear it, if they had a mind and the notice to do it.

i do so hope the station gets whatever agreements might be necessary to put the recording out there where more people could and can hear. (if they didn't record it, i take back everything nice i'm saying about them--that would be nigh on criminal!) put down the challenge, and raise up the bar as it were. let everyone hear what's going on here, and see (hear) for themselves what it is that live music can bring to a city.

wireless mike, i don't know if it was you, or jack, or whoever else at the station that got it done, but good on ya, and here's to more, more, more.

a beautiful friday night

my daughter is over, and we enjoyed the season opener of supernatural on the cw. yes we did. (cas rocks, though my daughter only has eyes for sam--fun stuff).

and now that the evening is winding down, i'm listening to a downright brilliant broadcast of frank morey's show over at the back page courtesy of am 980 wcap as part of the lowell bank nightcap series. the sound quality is top-notch--like you are right there, and frank's voice is clear like you so rarely get to hear above the din from further back in the bar. and his accompanist, hank smith, he of harold melvin's bluenotes and a gospel player par excellence is giving it a remarkable patina you just can't hear every day, or any day, for that matter. one of a kind show, and it's right here on the radio. free. wow.

and so it is that i have background music for my smile to see that jody shelley just earned 10 games (the remaining 5 preseason ones, plus the first five of the regular season) in the sin bin for doing what he and too many other thugs do in this game--play hockey dirty instead of tough. new league disciplinarian brendan shanahan, himself no newcomer to league discipline from his time playing in the league, has inherited from colin campbell the responsibility for player safety, and he's already made his mark in charge of the process.--not just 10 games to shelley, but a video-illustrated press conference with clear, succinct and eloquent description of the infraction, which, along with the player's past history, resulted in the precedent-setting penalty. (flames forward pierre-luc letourneau-leblond got the rest of the preseason and the first game of the regular season for his misbehavior).

that's more like it.

it's not that campbell didn't try to do a good job. it's just that shanahan has shown himself to be a natural to take on this extraordinarily tough job, and his independence (campbell's son plays so every decision was always second-guessed regardless of its fairness) and his respect as a tough-minded player will serve him in good stead.

more of the same, i say. and may i also say that it's great to be reading that nathan horton is on track to ease his way back onto the game ice in due time early this season. yeah, they're probably erring on the side of caution, but that's the right way to do it.

a good night.

fantasy teams

i'm often teased about the geek factor inherent in my avid participation in several fantasy sports leagues. for those unfamiliar, fantasy sports are for fanboy and fangirl geeks (mostly fanboys--yes, this is a gender-skewed social affliction) who like to pretend they're part of the real sports action by tabulating statistics associated with selected players, and comparing the statistical performance of their "team" relative to those picked by other fanboy and fangirl geeks in their "league".

the relevant consequence of all this geekdom is that it turns participants into eager morning paper readers, or, should i say, morning website readers, since newspapers never carry the sufficient detail on the stats anymore, nor present it in as convenient or compelling a format for fantasy team tracking purposes. (for example, i can tell you exactly how the minnesota twins fared over the seattle mariners last night, since twinkies closer joe nathan is on my squad, and i'm proud to say not only did his team win for the first time in 11 games, but that he procured the statistical win for himself, and, hence, my fantasy team, by being the pitcher of record in the top of the ninth before tonsoni batted in plouffe to end it, and o need to worry about either of those two--tonsoni is a 36th rounder currently hitting .190, and plouffe, though a 1st round shortstop, doesn't hit worth any attention at .229, a point perhaps better understood by darnell mcdonald et al., but let's not digress any further than to point out that fantasy sports have caused me to know a lot of extremely trivial information).

in any case, i find that pulling up the stock ticker this morning feels exactly like pulling up the sports stats for a variety of reasons, not least being that my fantasy baseball squads are getting pummeled this year, just like my portfolio. (my last year's championship lineup, including mainstays like youkilis, posey, werth, etc., is riddled with injuries, and it's not easy to remain competitive without 'em). but you have to check every morning just in case, because if you're going to make the best out of a bad situation, you have to remain aware of the circumstances and opportunities, just in case a lineup/portfolio adjustment becomes advised.

this morning the dow is down, i mean up, i mean down, i mean up, (it would be, as i'm given to understand, just like watching the sox these days, if i were watching the sox these days, but i'm not unless tim wakefield is pitching), and you could get a sore neck trying to watch the swings. but, believe me, it's worth watching the swings because if you've been following a certain prospect, or stock that you'd like to buy, this is very much like waiting for things to go on sale so you can enjoy a good deal. the stock market right now is absolutely on sale, just like all the rookies who get to play a few games in the fall after the rosters expand, and, yeah, that's how i bagged posey a couple years ago and earned the championship last year, so it absolutely does work.

no guarantees the prices won't still go lower and you'll feel like someone who just bought something at the apple store, (as in, someone whose latest purchase is both obsolete and more expensive than its better replacement a week later), or who took a flyer on jason heyward from all the buzz last season, but if you're going to retire on anything more substantial than a bankrupt social security pension, or figure out how to return your fantasy team to its former glory, you're going to have to figure out when to get in, and how to stay in. (the fact the sox won't put youk out on the DL is killing me, since he's taking an active roster spot on my team while he's riding the bench on tito's, and it's a lot like knowing that UBS' stock will indeed rebound, but not when).

yeah, it's bottom feeding. but have you ever seen how fat the fish tend to be at that end of the food chain?

"but what if i'm too poor to have saved money?"

my previous post has me reflecting on the good fortune of my circumstances. i have to accept (and we all have to expect, and has anyone seen the saying traveling around these days, that "they only call it class warfare when we fight back"?) that most reading this are unlikely to be as fortunate, and thus of little perceived ability to take advantage of much of the advice.

it's worth observing that, even as a twenty-year old profligate, i never smoked cigarettes, (they were beaucoup bucks per pack even then, but nothing like they've become now--if you still smoke, you're a chump and not just for the lung cancer), and i always tried to do what my grandparents, graduates of the great depression, insisted that i learn to do--pay myself first out of every paycheck, (i.e. SAVE), and then and only then try to make do on the rest. (which meant at various times living in houses with five other people, even bunking in with mom and dad, and living on ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches). this also meant that i put the max into my 401K from the first moment it was made available to me, back when i made even less than $20k per year, (pocketing the company match at the same time, tyvm), and i never spent more than i had left after that, or let anything ride up on me from your not-at-all-friendly (no matter what they pretend to you) neighborhood financial service provider if i could help it. (i had one episode with amex over a couple hundred bucks that i resolved immediately back when i was 25, but nothing since). yes, i've owed money on my house for as long as i've owned one, and this condo is no different, but that's it. no other debt. no other silly wastes of money, either to big money, or big tobacco, or big caffeine, (what else would you call dunky's or starbucks?), or big booze, (well, maybe a little beer now and then), and no other risks to live beyond my means, either. the first question i would have to anyone crying poverty, (and, trust me, i realize that there are legions out there who really and truly are, and i'm not trying to make light of that part of it), is do you smoke, do you drink coffee, and do you drink? because if the answer to any of the above is yes, but you do not save 10% of what you make out of each and every paycheck, then you are the source of your own penury. not the economy. not the president. not the banks or the insurance companies or any of the other criminals out there.

you.

our "standard of living" is a perennial joke that the universe plays on our perceptions. (my grandparents grew up without indoor plumbing--i do not misunderstand the reason for my water bill). the black cynicism of "let them eat cake" is bookend to the failed promise of a "chicken in every pot", and both surround the french revolution quite eloquently. yet, a 13th century french peasant would have felt gone to heaven to enjoy that for which the 18th century french peasant took to the barricades. we do NOT need cable tv. we do NOT need a lot of things upon which our monthly savings insolvency is based.

i am not here to debate fair. no, it is not fair that over half the nation survives on a family income of less than $50k while others have so much money that they feel constrained to spend only that much on each of their multiple automobiles. but it is worth it to point out, as my parents pointed out to me, that i'm sure their parents insisted to them, that the world is NOT MEANT TO BE FAIR. what you do with YOUR circumstance is your decision, and an important one. if smoking a pack of butts a day over a bunch of $3 lattes on your way to dropping yet more good money after bad on booze at the bar is your idea of necessary, then it's no wonder that you have no IRA or 401K nest egg of any sufficient size.

get with the program--the man wants you enslaved to compound interest because that's how he pays for all his far-nicer-than-your cars. me? i drive a 9 year old VW and i stop spending my monthly money BEFORE it runs out. and, yes, i do, now that i've been working for 30 years and saving through every one of them, have a little bit set aside to try to help me afford beer on into my dotage. (my preferred vice, after music, and my quicken accounting proves it). write down where yours is going. stop wasting it on things that don't matter. start saving. or you're going to wake up old one day in even worse financial shape than you are now, without the means to stave off the alpo dinner. (dog food is cheaper than cat food--you'll need to plan ahead).

and, once you do accumulate a little bit of your own for yourself, don't be foolish--buy and hold a diversified portfolio of equities and bonds, mixed in relation to your expected retirement date via consistent dollar-cost-average (google it--it's important to know what that is, and why it's important to you) savings each and every paycheck. if you happen to be one of the many currently without work, it's even more important to be frugal. cut out the cable. stop smoking. learn to love cooking your own groceries. because, if you don't, no, it won't be any less unfair, but it will be a lot less enjoyable to you.

...and out come the wolves

global equity assets have dropped a precipitous 4% since the last nyse close, which was itself several percentage points off the previous before that, and, as rancid was prescient to say, out come the wolves.

beside the album being one of the best ever in the history of recorded music, the exposition is an important warning for those not already in their personal financial lifeboats. dubya's suggestion that retirement investments be self-directed was and is dangerous not because it doesn't, under qualified circumstances, carry the potential to provide the best outcome for retirement-minded individuals, but precisely because so few investors are prepared by education, experience and temperament, to do what must be done on the way down the roller coaster slide--which is to say, not jump out.

the time to have prepared for disaster was before, not after, the cataclysm hits, but once it's upon us/you, and auntie em is already in the storm cellar with the door shut behind her, there's not much left to do but wander back into your bedroom and hope the subsequent blow to your head isn't fatal. (you're not holding a bunch of margin positions, are you?) you can also pray to your god and to everyone else's that the house itself stays on its foundation, because it's absolutely possible that the whole house of cards will eventually tumble and everyone will be wiped out, but the one thing you absolutely should not do is figure that you're smarter than the money that forms the foundation of the market, and capable of timing your leap out and leap back in in such a way that you won't be even worse off for having attempted it.

one of the most enduring lessons of my business education was to recall the results of an empirical study of market swings subsequent to the great crash of '29. the premise was to monday-morning-quarterback the crash and its aftermath, and wonder how might have fared a lucky investor to obtain a crystal ball (or mayonnaise jar from funk and wagnall's porch) which would accurately and consistently identify every peak and valley over the past century within 72 hours of its occurrence, and enable such an investor to go all-in and all-out with confidence. can you guess the result? how much further ahead of the market do you think this hypothetical carnac would be able to run? (johnny, we miss you).

the ironic and not to be ignored fact is that such an investor, blessed with perfect anticipation of how the market will move, would actually fare worse than any counterpart who had blindly and faithfully just left all their chips on the roulette table to ride with the wheel. (the caveat is that the blind counterpart would have to have invested in a broadly diversified position that mirrored the market itself, but given that foundation, the clear and counter-intuitive point is that "buy and hold" has always and will always reign supreme). the observed truth is that the majority of the loss from the peak, and the gain from the trough, occurs within the first hours of any extreme, and all the rest of the years of movement in the market pales by relative comparison.

can you guess the length of time between the peak in '29 and the absolute bottom after which the aforementioned clairvoyant investor needed to be all back in? (if you guessed 30 months, you'd be just about right). of course, with all the central bank "intervention" going on these days, the bubble isn't being allowed to bust in the same instant fashion as history's lesson was shown, but the underlying concept is still the same. what goes up comes down, and "down" has little effective limit.

the good news is that what goes down has always in the past come back up, though folks who have lived through the weimar and elsewhere have often not been able to recognize the landscape after emerging from their financial bunkers. if the past is a guide, there are two ways out of this insolvent box in which we're trying to hide (and make no mistake, we, and the rest of the world, are insolvent and no amount of political posturing can change that): hyperinflation (weimar germans brought cash in wheelbarrows to the market to purchase bread, and ask any brazilian you know of sufficient age about their troubles a few years past) and pernicious deflation (google "dust bowl" for how that sort of thing goes around here, and look to japan for how it's turned out for them over the past decades). the difficulty for those of us caught in the whipsaw middle is that the best response to the former is to borrow and spend as much as we can now, since we'll be paying it all back with monopoly money later, (cue bernanke's little print shop), and to the latter is to be as debt-free as possible as quickly as possible, to pinch nickels until tommy j cries, and in both cases to purchase firearms because the process by which the solution sausage is made is not at all pretty.

my prediction? you can just never know. but if you're not buying and holding in the meantime, you're playing a predictably losing hand, and i know all that any of us really wants, in the end, is a chance. if you're in, you're in. get used to it. if you're out, congratulations, but i'm laughing at you anyway, because you'll never guess when to get yourself back in. me? in my IRA/401K i'm heavy in bonds (fixed income, baby) and cash (doing the hokey market pokey and keeping part of my nest egg out) and riding the ride with everything else. (down a bunch--that part's likely down around 20% since a few weeks ago, though happily that was successfully up since the '08 tanking and still only a portion of the whole, so i'm not doing so badly--and ready to ride it down still further). if they don't rig the tax code to screw me before it's time to take it out, i'll do ok.

how about you? you're not expecting to retire on social security, are you?

piling on, capitalism style

leo apotheker, recently minted CEO of hewlett-packard, is the subject of a couple of very public commentaries, the first being from company sources who are hinting that their board, meeting today, is on the verge of his replacement. (reuters report here). the second, of course, is the instant 10% jump in the value of HP shares on the nyse. (there's nothing like instant capitalist plebiscites, is there).

it all sounds very much to me like the current situation with barry o. like leo, barry inherited a serious clusterfuck (14 year old daughter rule, and stop me if that's getting old) from his predecessor, (mark hurd and dubya bush, respectively), and proceeded to absolutely make it worse. but, unlike leo a, barry o has no chairman of his board (unless you count ben bernanke at the fed, though those guys are notorious for not talking, unless of course it's talking without saying anything at all, which they do after their regular meetings) to remove him from office prematurely, so the 2012 presidential campaign will continue.

leo, unfortunately for him, has ray lane, ex pariah from oracle corp, who knows a thing or two about cutting CEO legs out from under by having his via his respective arrogant board chairman and perennial asshole, larry ellison. maybe it's just because ray can, but you know it's not because there's a better plan, because the plan reportedly includes ebay and california gubernatorial failure meg whitman.

too funny.

and too lucky for me by half, since, but for the grace of capitalist whimsy, leo could be tanking my employment ship instead. (now if only we could solve the problems we have in washington as easily...)

piling on

a friend at the game the other day (it wasn't me--i told you, i was done 'cept for wake) observed the legions of bandwagon-jumping, fair-weather fans leaving the sinking ship in the middle of the 8th inning after pap coughed back the lead, and called 'em out for being the assholes and idiots that they are. (though they can't be accused of not knowing the score, because those staying were "treated" to a pair of k's, a GIDP, and a ground out by one of the team's co MVP's to end it). fair enough. but she then went on to point out that the call-in sniping about the lame-ass press conference excuses is pretty lame-ass itself, and it caused me to do a little quick google fu because, to me, it's pretty obvious why they're ending the season much the same way they started it, and a lot of people are missing the point. (though, at almost sixteen and a half million samoleans for the season, they have a pretty eloquent one about the guy my friend calls fucking lackey, and, yeah, 14 year old daughter rule)..

replay if you can those first week of the season's press conferences in your mind, and tell me if they didn't sound EXACTLY the way these press conferences this week sound now. and then have a look at the box sores over the past few weeks, and tell me further if you even have to pay attention to L's and W's to know what's going on: an error last night. three the night before. one the game before that. two the game before that...

in fact, since the last clean sheet during their loss last saturday, they've been averaging almost two per game. and behind that one clean game during that loss last saturday, the error totals going back in time continue at 2, 1, 3, 1, and 2 again--again an average of almost 2-per. (you have to go back to september 9th and 10th for the most recent back-to-back error-less games).

so who's kidding who here? this team is mailing it in, and has for some time now. tito is batting bottom thirds like aviles, jackson and mcdonald in his biggest games, and pitching waste products like lackey in the regular rotation. (and don't get me started about asking why weiland, on a team with a $175M payroll, has to be right there behind the king of all pitching putzes in the rotation, which isn't his fault, but let's call that minor league spade a minor league spade, and agree it's not fair to him or to us that he's out there).

writing's been on the wall for some time now. folks are just now getting around to reading it, but the criticism is well-earned. it's hockey season.

musical "oh yeah"

i wonder, had the beatles not yeah yeah yeah'd the fact that she loves you quite so much, if the musical expression ("yeah") would have gained so much currency. but, regardless of why, there's a pun there between "yeah" and "oh yeah" and "oh yeah?" and ima gonna make it. (or, one could observe, wise guy(s) unknown have dissed for decades, and why should this decade be any different, and whatever possible does that have to do with the price of pointless).

this coming tuesday night, musical worlds collide when kaitlin dibble and her delusions of grandeur take over the plough and stars in cambridge with able support from tim lewandowsky on trombone, arte k on bass, and carl johnson on guitar.

for those who have not had the pleasure of familiarity with tim lewandowsky's slide horn chops, let me be the first to suggest to you that it's alone worth consideration of a trip into cambridge. (for those who know, you know). but put that into the mix with players like carl and arte who can just the two of them create a songscape of remarkable and lyrical depth and complexity, (remarkable not least because of how it's so often built on such sublime simplicity), and throw them all behind a voice and a songwriting talent of such unique timbre and unpredictability, and you have something that is impossible to guess, and, for those who've seen the pieces but never yet together, impossible to resist.

think of the plough this coming tuesday as your own private musical salon where artists will be playing just for you as much as just for themselves. and i, for one, just can't wait.

it's hockey time

plenty of teeth-gnashing this morning from the fanboys of summer (my favorite part is how they're all acting so suprised) but the real game is back, and the bruins open their pre-season up in ottawa tonight.

the rookies have had their rookie tilts, (a split vs the islanders rookies), and the b's have had their black and white scrimmage down in providence, (can you spell koko?), and now it's time for the black and gold to take their world champion show back on the road to see who will be in and who will be out to fill the empty sweaters emptied by the freed free agents. (thomas kaberle, we hardly knew ye, and i'm quite sure we'll hardly miss ye, too).

it's exactly just in time, too, if my understanding from the daily morning box score frustration is any indication. i keep telling folks that it's all about wake, and to enjoy the privilege of having all those other days off from the threat of constant indigestion, but i guess some people are just stubborn. and i do get why tom brady's emergence as a gunslinger (he always used to be just a game manager--it's remarkable to see how his confidence and his throwing have burgeoned as his career progresses) makes for sunday afternoon excitement, but that leaves a lot of midweek time for what really matters, and i, for one, cannot wait.

let's drop it!

why so much of the world now hates us

to wit: barry's insistence on strong-arming palestinian arabs against requesting recognition as a state.

the rationale is that he/we "do not believe that this is the best course of action for achieving palestinian aspirations", as if we know better than one or several or millions of the "all men" who we once believed our creator created equal.

let's say we really don't believe that, exactly as barry says. (which is fair--all equals share a right to their own opinions, and even to say them out loud if i believe our founding document correctly). what possible right do we think we have to act on that?

it's no wonder to me why so much of the world has grown to hate us. we used to show up (invited) when people needed us. now we show up (uninvited) when people surely don't, and, worse, throw our considerable weight around trampling much if not all that they hold dear. because, and this makes me choke it's so stupid, we think we know better than they do.

or, of course, it's realpolitik and we have a hidden selfish agenda that's concerned only with our own interests and nobody else's.

for which would you think we'd deserve to be hated more?

punk vs nihilism vs whatchoogot?

the "commentary" discussion (and coincident musical snipe) has me thinking about musical nihilism. rock and roll rebellion is the ancestor to all, of course, but punk deconstructed everything to the point of often ignoring the con in deconstruction, and passed as perilously close and often full over the lines into nihilism and anarchy, (always recalling to me pearl and her cover of dylan's observation that, when you got nothing, you've got nothing left to lose), as does any musical argument based on taste. (billy idol trash talking zep is the funniest joke of all, observing what a pop poseur he turned out to be, but billy was never really punk, was he).

i've long since stopped worrying that my music offends many. if you know anyone whose melvern taylor records sit beside MC5 in their alphebetized record collections, please introduce me--i'd like to know what else they've got. but i'm gonna roll my eyes when someone resorts to fight-picking over any of it, like we used to in the days when it was either rock and roll or disco and die, because if you have to hate something to like something else, that, as dave champagne likes to sing, is not love.

or, put another way, you can't enjoy the absence of something nearly as much as the presence of something else, so put your music where your mouth is, and let us all hear what sort of musical epicure you are supposing yourself to be. and then, because we're all entertained by other people's misery, tell us anything you own that's worse than the neil diamond record i have yet to throw out that even my ex wife couldn't be bothered to keep around, and lighten the whole thing up.

commentary

a few posts back was expressed a dissenting opinion as to the relative merits of trashy looking prosti-tots (of shall we say challenging appearance) flaunting the liquor laws to booze up the low-to-mid-lifes belly up to the blue shamrock bar. (hey, it's not something i haven't done, so i'm not here to judge). my first point, which i stick with, is that it's illegal. my second point is that, being illegal, not to mention prompting corollary puke on my neighborhood sidewalks, it's contributing to the environment in which responsible bar owners are finding their businesses under pressure and not a few of them continue to have to close.

being someone who appreciates a well-run bar, especially when it features well-run entertainment, (to which i would not suggest belongs children in hooker costumes dispensing rot-gut alcohol), i see this as the sharp edge of the assault on the variety of my neighborhood's hospitality. "left of lynne" can snark all he or she wants, but if that's the standard, then, yeah, call me a killjoy. irresponsibly boozing up irresponsible bar patrons is the source of the problem, not what is necessary to be preserved about downtown. there are strip joints elsewhere that cater to such clientele. we're all free to frequent them. (wish you would).

some of us happen to live here...

dangerous

i am aware that certain voters regard michele bachmann as an important and respectable candidate for the presidency, but, i'm sorry, they're wrong, and here's why:

during the recent republican presidential debate, ms bachman picked a fight with texas governor rick perry on his having signed an executive order requiring immunization of school-age girls against human papilloma virus, which has been shown to cause cervical cancer. her comments to reporters about her opposition? "there's a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. she said her daughter was given that vaccine. she told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result. there are very dangerous consequences". (story with quotes here).

the agreed-upon truth, based on peer-reviewed medical study, is that no known link exists between the HPV vaccine and mental retardation or any other major negative side effect. (bioethicist art caplan wasted no time emailing reporters with what amounts to be a bet of $10,000 that she can't produce anyone with legitimate medical credentials to back up such claim). her own now soon to be ex-campaign manager, ed rollins, publicly called her gaffe a mistake and hectored her to recant, apologize, and move on. but candidate bachmann insists that her characterization of "very dangerous consequences" wasn't an attestation to anything, and refuses to recognize that she's been an idiot of the most dangerous sort. "all i was doing was relaying what a woman had said. i relayed what she said. i wasn't attesting to her accuracy. i wasn't attesting to anything".

i say "of the most dangerous sort", because we're talking here about an applicant to the most important and powerful job in our entire country, and perhaps in the entire world, who is unable to recognize the responsibility not to repeat every little politically convenient factoid of questionable truth that's whispered in her ear without understanding its veracity first of all, and consequences second of all. (dubya had this problem in spades, though he at least limited his circle of little birdies to the whispering maws of dick cheney, carl rove, and other such insiders, and only got us involved in two illegal foreign wars of useless outcome and treasury-imploding expense).

i'm not even concerned if the factoid does or doesn't agree with anyone's political philosophy or agenda, least of all mine. she could just as well have said that a woman told her that the HPV vaccine cured her daughter's cancer and every little girl needs to get one, and it would be just as dangerous in its implication to her inability to lead. the HPV vaccine inoculates against HPV. period. HPV has been linked to cervical cancer, so the presumption is that the vaccine will help inhibit spread of the disease. but it doesn't cure anything you've already got, and it certainly can't cure cancer. but it helps. inoculating school-age girls is expected to dramatically cut cervical cancer rates, and rick perry, for all that the rest of the country (and every apparent democrat) is terrified by his aw shucks dubya-isms, has this one right on the button. it's science. it's responsible public policy. maybe we can disagree on his means, (without consulting the legislature, it's quite the heavy-handed executive order), but we can't disagree on his intent, or on the sense of doing it. (the one question i have is why boys aren't inoculated too, observing that the HPV has to hop around on something in order to get at a sexually active girl...)

anyway, please, can we pull the plug on this crazy lady before it gets seriously dangerous?

the grape

i have a rough time with and around addictive behavior. it's not because i don't have my share of compulsions, (or maybe it is), or sympathies, but i think it's mostly because i have that last ultimate deficit of full empathy that would otherwise come from sharing and intimately knowing the full affliction, that i grow to a loss as to what best to do. oh, there's advice aplenty on how to be supportive yet non-enabling which i've read and tried to follow, but i find that in practice all these helpful suggestions fail to address the biggest roadblock of all, which is the addict's addiction. and there i'm stumped.

my focus for myself when it doesn't involve that which is of absolutely no interest to me, (like caffeine, nicotine, etc.), is always on "high-functioning". i recall, decades ago in college, reviewing an alcoholism-related questionnaire on which 6 out of 1o yes answers would suggest a "problem with alcohol". taking the quiz for myself with my friends was highly entertaining: question 1--have you ever become sick from drinking? had us all in stitches. oh, geez, if these are going to go like this, tell bill w he may have more friends on the way... yes... (i was a late 70's, early 80's college student, and if i'm given to understand how things were before me, and how much things haven't changed since me, such was not a rare answer to be given). one in the possible problem column and on to question 2--has a friend or family member ever suggested you might have a problem with alcohol. phew. no. (shhhh!) question 3 was something about passing out from drinking, and that one, like the first one, was a quite common yes. 2 to the bad. the fourth question may have had something about waking up with the DT's, so that one was more reassuring again... no... and so it went

by the end of question 9, i was five to the bad, (throwing up, passing out, having more than six drinks at one time, etc.) and four to the not so bad. (no DT's, no attempted interventions, etc.) my potential alcoholism, apparently, hinged on the outcome of question number 10, and i'll never forget it:

"have you ever missed a day of school or work due to drinking".

no way.

i had 8am classes and all manner of scholarly inconveniences to my college carrying on, but i was always up and there with my book open and my groggy eyes, too. as god is my witness.

so, fast forward a half dozen years to my first successful software job, at a company where friday afternoons at 3pm were punctuated by the weekly beer run, and there was no shortage of young people being young. my group director was an intense sort of ex-marine who worked hard, played harder, and drank hardest most of all. his interview of me for my position was centered on my softball playing ability, owing to the annual summer company softball league and his insistence on his team always winning. (i was pretty good, so getting his stamp of approval on my hiring was easy enough). and, after every wednesday evening softball game, it was on to the chateau dudley for pitchers of beer and recapping our victorious exploits. (we rarely lost--the group was hand-picked to win, and win we did).

this particular evening, my commandant (whose biceps measured further around than my neck, and that's no word of a lie) buttonholed me at a table after going well into his cups, and started in on us "college boys" compared to real marines. (all in good fun, of course--he liked me fine for having run down one potentially troublesome fly ball that i had turned from a possible home run into an inning-ending out). in the back of my mind, (we engineer types are always figuring), i realized that, pencil neck as i was and am, and though i would never on a level playing field and on my best day have ever been able to outdrink this mountain of a man, i had one possible ace in the hole that might just allow me to survive the crucible. as a college boy, i had joined a fraternity, and been indoctrinated through quarters, beer pong, (the REAL sort, not the silly game its morphed into today), cardinal puff, 99, canoe races and every other manner of drinking game, to be able to down a glass of beer just about as fast as anyone. (it's a technique i once had down pat, what can i say). though he was going to try to turn our little tete a tete into a marathon, i got it into my mind that maybe, just maybe, turning it into a series of sprints might get him past his limit fast enough to spare me mine.

"is it true that navy guys always sip their beer instead of drinking it?" (my dad being a navy guy, and not ever imagining how the information might ever be used in the future, had clued me in early to the sensitivity of marines to be subsumed under their parent service). jackpot. between the perceived slight to his uniform and the impugning of his alcohol-related manhood, i had turned "let's sit here for the next couple hours and drink these two, three, four pitchers of beer, you and i" into something far more immediate and to my one solitary strength where all this idiocy was concerned. sure enough, he didn't take me seriously enough on the first glass to keep up, and mine was bottom up, empty and dry, on the table in a flash.

you know the next part. he poured two more glasses, and said "AGAIN!". this time i knew i had to put a little speed into it, so i gave it a little more effort, and still came in well ahead of his second, more energetic, but still lackadaisical try. "AGAIN!" the third one i knew was going to be for real, so i gave it the full open-gullet pour and the instant-empty just to be sure. his eyes grew wide and he patted me on the shoulder and congratulated me on having some skills, and then he said "one more". the last one i'm not sure i remember so clearly, but it clearly put him over the edge because it was the last one in the little series and he tottered off in search of the mens room or whatever, i was left woozing and reeling in my inebriation to thank my stars i was still conscious. i believe he ended up falling into the bushes outside the doorway and needing to be carried to someone's car to be driven home. oh, the things we do to get ahead in business...

anyway, fast forward to 730 am, and the alarm blaring in my ear, and my head pounding and eyes searing and stomach churning... oh, i oh so desperately wanted to cash in what i never had cashed in, which would be a call-in sick, but, then, i could hear the words in my head as clearly as i could see them on the page, and they asked:

have you ever missed a day of school or work due to alcohol?

no, not today. not me. not ever.

so my 5-and-5 record remained intact, and i got through my four hours on the phone with customers figuring out technical problems and striving to find politeness when all i wanted to do was tell them to read the f'ing manual and leave me alone. i recall the last hour or more having my forehead down on the desk with the receiver in my ear just to force my way through it...

so at 12:30, when my shift was done, one of the few supervisors who never went on the softball expeditions called me into her office to ruin the one last empirical measurement of my non-alcoholism, (finally, someone had suggested i might have a problem with alcohol), and had a heart-to-heart talk with me about my compromised condition. it was all i could do not to laugh in her face. her boss called in sick. every other supervisor who had been out with us the evening before called in sick. most of the other group members who were supposed to take the afternoon shifts on the phone had called in sick. and i was the one who was there, as required, to do my job, and i knew she was going to ask me to pitch in to help out through the afternoon. me have the problem with alcohol??? are you serious?????

so it is that my focus on function (i believe) saved me from spiraling further where so many others have gone the other way, and i was spared the worst of demon rum's not so practical jokes. i can count other incidents in my life where i was shall we say lucky, but, since then, i've been able to maintain my job and my family obligations and my friendships without the booze getting in the way (though i was drunk on my birthday, yes i admit it) and i have to conclude it's because whatever disease i have, it's not that particular disease, or i'd be dying from it. who knows if someone who knows me well will tell you otherwise, but i can only conclude by the fruits of my labor, and comparison to those truly in trouble, that i'm not of the ilk who can empathize and help out alcoholics with their alcoholism, other than sincerely hoping i can do whatever i can, and trusting that they can figure out the rest.

so it is that i'm stuck here with a knot in my stomach that someone i know (and that many of the people i know know) is lost well on the far side of that arbitrary 6-out-of-10 line, and in danger of never coming back. i can't list the symptoms for discretion's sake, but i can say that there is barely functioning, let alone high, to much of this person's life over the past decades--lost jobs. overwhelming debts, broken relationships--and if not for my intercession in several of these areas, there could have very well been a cardboard apartment at a bus depot rather than the very nice and comfortable home now enjoyed.

it's so hard, because in moments of sobriety, it can be made to all seem so very reasonable.

but i know, in my high-functioning and not quite alcoholic's alcohol-experienced mind, it's not. not really.

i tried to cajole an extended period of sobriety to try to restart the system, (silly me, i thought, like me it might be possible to go without for awhile as i once did in my 20's to get my feet back under myself), but lies and clandestine drinking sunk that before it could ever have a hope of getting started. then i tried "only two and no more", but not only were there lies and clandestine drinking when i wasn't around, there was even lies and comically transparent attempts at clandestine drinking right in front of me at the bar like i was too stupid to see completely through the machinations of a drunk having their third and fourth glass of booze in an hour. then i tried "just not when you're with me", because i had sincerely reached the end of my ability to be able to stand being around it, but the third strike on that particular experiment just went across the plate yesterday (if only tim wakefield had the secret for such an easy strikeout) and now i'm here today left only with the "tough love" option and the difficult realization that "zero tolerance" quite probably means having to give up on a drunk before you get to help them.

if anyone has any suggestions, i'm all ears.

the grapevine

neighborhood life is better because word gets around, but neighborhood life can also be complicated because word gets around. worst of all is when the word getting around isn't completely accurate, and therefore somewhat unreliable, but you have to try to navigate through it anyway.

i mentioned last thursday having encountered a pair of disagreeable incidents regarding irresponsible tavern operation, (i'll cite the directions-to-the-smokehouse-for-last-call incident as irreponsible while the repeated incidents of underage and improperly-identified drinkers continue without sanction), but i missed another incident which took place later, after i was safely home in bed. (no, contrary to rumor, i do not always stay out til 2).

in this case, the rumor placed a disturbance in front of one particular establishment in front of which the disturbance did not actually take place. there was some tangential relationship to the establishment even so, but of the positive sort--employees of the establishment acted in aid to the police. but the fact that the grapevine somehow has the two disparate implications twisted together and confused is the troubling part.

there is irresponsibility downtown where alcohol is concerned. there is also a need to look very carefully at the circumstances, as books aren't always as their covers would have them. i just wish everyone with an interest in getting things right would get things right...

"the best stock market week this year..."

last week things turned briefly up , mostly because folks accidentally bought a few more positions than they sold on their rollercoaster ride to bust, and the pundits couldn't wait to brag on the anomaly.

well, this morning the market has taken back half of it in just about 45 minutes, and i can't help but laugh that there might be anyone who is or was surprised.

whereby goes greece goes europe, and whereby goes europe goes us. we can print all the funny money we want, but if the greek (not to mention our own) pensioners are to be kept in the style to which they have become accustomed, we will all be bankrupt.

hard times.

getting it over with vs savoring the moments

had an interesting discussion with various sports fans this weekend about the preferred resolution to this year's MLB playoff race. (so much less compelling to say and to experience than the old style "pennant race", but, hey, it's their game, and they can decide to diminish it in any way they please). the consensus included not a whiff of playoff optimism for the sox, to the point that a vast majority agreed that it would be far better and more merciful for the olde towne team to give back the remaining two games they have to their advantage over the next two weeks so as to let all the broken horses begin to recover and look forward to next year as we always used to.

and let's face it--if you're starting aviles, jackson and mcdonald for the single most important remaining game of your season, you're already done and merely looking for the particular fork to be stuck into you to prove it.

it's too bad, really, for wake who may have two more starts in search of 187, and for the many hospital cases who continue to play (and break down the finite resources of their career bodies in the process) in vain hopes to salvage something from this train wreck of a season. and it's funny to say it that way, recalling as we all do enjoying the best record in the majors at one fleeting moment in time, but it's certainly true. 0 and 6 to start, and who knows what ignominy to finish.

the good news for me is that i only have wake's two (potential) starts left to watch, since tito relieved me of my interest in any of the others. yeah, i know, since the end of june, except for a 4-inning relief appearance in texas during which he tossed goose eggs, he's never given up fewer than 3 runs (3 times) and almost always gives up at least 5 (9 out of 13 times) and frequently 7 or 8. it's one of the most masochistic expressions of sporting fanaticism to look forward to rooting for him, but, in this crazy inside out season of abject futility wrapped around one of the most dominant streaks in the history of baseball (as jeff passan of yahoo sports observes, the 70 and 33 streak, .680 winning percentage, between april 16th and august 9th is only the 12th such since the '94 strike, and none of the others have missed the playoffs, though, as always in the history of the world, there's always to be a first) it's the remaining joy that i have. and i'm grateful.

whence downtown disorder part next

a few days ago i discussed the public promotion (via a loud PA system outside the building) of the (illegal) serving of free liquor in a liquor establishment aka the blue shamrock. want to know what was going on there and in their vicinity last night?

after having spent the evening at ole on merrimack street enjoying the music of the jenny riddle band followed by the dave norton trio, (both recommended listening, by the way), and having myself the odd beer or two, (though they were out of their harpoon ipa drafts, which is a big thumbs down, i'm afraid to say), i took my ambling (on foot) sojourn back home right around the 1am hour.

in corroboration of the importance of the superintendent's suggestion that doors be restricted to arriving patrons at such time, (a practice i'm not sure will solve the entire problem, but more on that in a moment), i was approached as i reached market street by the clearly intoxicated (as well as youthful and not-from-lowell) driver of a major-sized SUV asking for directions to the village smokehouse for him and his carload of what obviously appeared to be quite already and further hopeful further-drunks. everything was wrong with the picture, though no police patrols were nearby, and i didn't feel comfortable presuming to phone police on my mere conjecture and opinion about a private citizen. (though i would have mentioned it to a beat cop if i had seen one). i figured the right option was to trust the proprietors of the establishment, (yeah, i know, i know better), the way the license commission has seen fit to entrust them with the responsibility, at least while the ABCC reviews the repeated incidents of underage and undocumented drinkers in their bar.

yes, i'd like to have that moment back.

because, you see, through the open doors and smoked windows of the blue shamrock, the rest of the market-and-palmer tableau had become positively surreal.

my attention had been caught by the motion of some sort of commotion on top of the portion of the bar i could see from the point of my vantage. taking a moment to process what i was seeing, i became aware that what i was seeing was a scantily clad woman moving sexually suggestively to approximate the gyrations of a strip club stripper, (yes, i would know, but it was a bachelor party, honest!), pouring booze directly from the bottle into the gaping open mouths of the many patrons seated at the bar for the show like so many little goslings begging supper from mommy. i was having trouble believing what i was seeing.

believing what i was seeing had to have been an anomaly, (no liquor establishment downtown would do such a thing, would they?), i moved closer to the doorway so as to be able to see a fuller panorama of the room.

there wasn't one, but THREE scantily clad, stripper gyrating little girls in skimpy little outfits prancing from one end of the bar to the other, pouring booze straight from the bottle into the besotted maws of each and everyone in attendance. (no, i did not see one single patron refusing to have hard liquor poured straight and free from the bottle into their drunken gullets). ABCC? police? anyone??? and it wasn't just an isolated incident--they continued to dance, and they continued to pour, for a considerable amount of time.

i had called only days earlier to prompt an investigation of the establishment's liquor serving practices, without any effective change in the ostensible method and means used by the blue shamrock to over-serve their patrons and compete for being ground zero in the drunk and disorderly debauching of my neighborhood, nor apparently attention from enforcement authorities. i had thus no idea what additional to do, considering as i did at the moment that entering the bar to take pictures was likely to be a personally and physically dangerous option, and calling once again was unlikely to achieve anything more than previous attempts at such, and most everything else i could try would be even less effective than those. and what would stop the bar from claiming the bottles had been paid for or some such other lame excuse for their lawlessness and contribution to the crime burgeoning all around them because of their malfeasance?

i'm sending a note to the superintendent this morning, and i'm going to bring it up publicly in the next neighborhood confab so everyone can discuss the demerits of the situation. but unless and until irresponsible bar owners like those of the blue shamrock and the village smokehouse are brought to responsibility, the surfeit of younger, drunken and violent miscreants making a mess of our downtown will not cease, and a 1am shuttering will not change that much.

your future tax dollars at work

insufficient outrage over our central bank printing bills and then charging us interest on the funny money (via their use to "purchase" t-bills which are immediately sold at a discount to outfits like goldman sachs) never ceases to amaze me. and, today, it all gets much, much worse: the fed has now tag-teamed with the european central bank to start printing their funny money on behalf of EUROPEAN banks, and their miscreant directors (see the previous/following UBS story for an example) and tottering national economies, and leaving us holding the bag for both our cheapened currency as well as the interest on the t-bills these miscreant bank directors will undoubtedly purchase with the proceeds.

the premise of the ruse is so rich that i can barely believe they can say it out loud with a straight face. the AP summarizes it by tossing in that "banking stocks have been hurt recently on fears that they were having trouble getting short-term loans from each other. these central bank loans would relieve that pressure".

are you following all this? institutional investors (most all of whom who work for the big global financial institutions--how cozy is that?) have decided that their institutional stock prices aren't high enough, so they're telling us that we have to throw even more good money (the bogus fed cash is indeed bogus, but the tax dollars with which we'll be required to pay back the purchased debt is very, very real) after bad, (bank bailouts in the trillions make the $25B we handed to the car companies, who actually employed people with that money, by the way, look like the pittance it truly is), and, insult to injury, throw it across national borders so that we're propping up the entire world ahead of and instead of our own folding house of cards.

this, my friends, is the sovereign greek debt default (and portuguese and irish) we've been told has been "successfully" (not) averted. europe is insolvent, so they've dipped into the already insolvent US treasury for their lifeline, and our central bankers, representing as they always do not our country, but our country's bankers, have gone right along with the plan, since, after all, our country's bankers stand to lose some money if all their investments in those insolvent countries are allowed to suffer.

if you aren't listening to ron paul, you aren't paying attention. i don't care if you choose or don't choose to vote for the man for president, (can't say that i'm convinced i can, either), or can even stand his libertarian politics, (i happen to like the idea that my law-abiding life is none of my government's business, but your mileage may vary), but i do care if you continue to ignore what it is he's saying about the serious issues we have with the out-of-control federal reserve--unless and until we do something to rein in ben bernanke and his clique of institutionalized thieves, we're headed for un-avert-able and unmitigated disaster. we need to insist our next president, even if he happens to be our sitting president, addresses this sooner rather than later.

or else we are staring down a lifetime of paying back foreigners on the money we printed for them.

the real terrorists

the infamous "rogue trader" has once again struck a multinational bank, and UBS is going to have to write off at least an entire quarter, if not more, to account for the losses. the english police have taken the banks' nomination for scapegoat into custody, but it's never those ultimately responsible at a bank who end up paying for any of its malfeasance, is it.

somewhere at UBS is a person or persons who deemed risk controls sufficient as they turned their gordon-gecko-like minions loose with exhortations to chase profits any and everywhere they can. it's the same bank whose accountants were caught cheating on their US tax returns only a few years ago, and which got its pudgy little hands caught in the subprime cookie jar recently as well. anyone noticing any pattern here?

if only there were statutes which enabled the arrest of the people in charge. it's ironic, too, since when we're outside our collective first-world borders, we're so very fond of rolling into everyone else's back yards and arresting (and frequently shooting) the top dogs like so many, well, dogs. (right, muammar?) but here inside our own heavily-defended borders, we turn instead on everyone else with the misfortune to be not quite high enough up on the food chain to qualify for caesar's wife status, (or at least monopoly get-out-of-jail-free status), and we lickety-splickety lock them right the hell up instead. (i should think jeff skilling might have a pretty decent constitutional "cruel and unusual" defense because he's just about the only top guy i can name off the top of my head who is still in the dock for something their organization did).

the eastern cultures seem to have at least this much up on us, as those in charge sometimes actually feel enough of the shame of their complicity and ultimate culpability to resign, if not go all the way to seppuku. (ah, the good old asian days). but here in the good old "civilized" west we just let them keep all the loot, and execute someone else they offer as a proxy.

capitalism is rarely pretty...

you knew it was hockey season, right?

someone on monday afternoon was talking about "taking the points", so i replied that they're called "goals", and, yeah, the bruins rookies were playing the islanders rookies down at the nassau coliseum that night. (8-5 for the real "baby b's", though the bookend match last night went the other way 2-7 in favor of the islets).

anyway, as much fun as it is so early in the season to watch and to read about tom brady's accomplishments, (a team record 517 yards passing, though he did toss his first interception during his nfl-record 359th pass attempt), we all remember that 17-1 is not nearly so sweet as 4-games-to-3 in the stanley cup finals, and it's great to read this week that marc savard will have his name engraved on the stanley cup in recognition of his service to this year's stanley cup champions. the nhl rule requires 41 regular season games or a single cup finals appearance, neither of which was possible owing to savvy's concussion-related disability (he appeared in 25 games and then had to quit skating) but the league exercised its rule clause for "extenuating circumstances" and approved the bruins request for special consideration.

congratulations, marc, and to all your teammates for the honor. counting down to the home-and-home against montreal coming up so very soon!

ah, now i (and a bunch of other people) get it

earlier this morning i was confused by tony's reference to NY, but i just hadn't gotten far enough into my morning news reading to catch reports on the upset victory of a republican to take over disgraced democrat anthony weiner's house seat. (sorry, just catching up here...)

like scott brown wrestling the now-junior massachusetts senatorial seat from martha coakley, it would appear an underfunded (200k vs half a million spent on the D side) but strategic-thinking republican candidate correctly connected with voter ire over the twin terrors of runaway government bloat and the sclerotic inability of the gargantuan governmental clusterfuck (14 year old daughter rule) to relieve the crushing economic pressure on the majority of americans. (see previous/next post on census bureau poverty statistics). tony's observation, which i will happily underscore here, is that voters have been taught, by scandal and by most all other evidence, to distrust party politics to such an extreme degree that they will now happily elect any candidate from any party (at least in certain districts) rather than remain beholden to one party or the other.

i happen to take this as a very encouraging sign, but, then again, i'm not a registered democrat.

i recall when we (the collective american electorate) threw the republican miscreants out of power after they had cocked everything up but good a few years ago, and congratulated ourselves for having done it. apparently, the d's mistook that for an entitlement to do nothing with the privilege of leadership, and so the pendulum swings yet again.

my suggestion to frustrated democrats this morning is to figure out that cutting spending IS a big deal, and it needs to be insisted upon just as strenuously as cutting tax breaks for the wealthy and other unacceptable (republican) sacred cows.

right now we (the disaffected and disillusioned middle) despise you both, and for good reason.

first team to figure it out gets all the votes.

who wants 'em?

"middle class americans"

elizabeth warren cites the interests of "middle class americans" as her motivation to run for the US senate. fair enough. (tony's helpfully linked her campaign announcement on the dick howe site). but the coincident release of US census data showing that almost a full 15% of americans are living below the poverty line (boston globe coverage here) points to a disturbing truth--there is rapidly becoming no "middle class" in america anymore, even while the vast majority of us stubbornly and still self-identify as being members.

the median income for a family of four in this country is less than $50k (7% less than its peak 18 years ago) meaning that fully half of american families are getting by on less than that. almost a third of those unfortunates getting by on less than that are actually beneath the arbitrary "poverty line" of $22k, which sadly and coincidentally also represents almost a full 20% of american children. so is this the "middle" elizabeth so eloquently espouses? isn't it actually now truthfully best described as the "lower"?

ah, but there's the political rub. if we say "lower", we're to be accused of "class warfare" aren't we. (yes, with apologies to tony for my snarky comments, the republicans surely are worse on this one).

but that's the long and the short of it. income inequality has ballooned to such extremes that americans previous usefully referred to as "middle class" have slipped in enormous numbers to de facto "lower class" status, and are barely getting by. republicans are even spitefully claiming that these americans are no longer pulling their own weight and something has to be done about it, since these must-be-lazy people have fallen beneath federal guidelines for income tax payments, even though they're faithfully paying their fica and medicare/medicaid and unemployment and all their other payroll taxes just like always. yes, republicans are claiming they ought to be taxed more highly so to spare the wealthiest americans having to give back their tax breaks which cause them to pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes as people making a tiny fraction of their income. you just can't make this shit up.

so can we please stop the madness, and fairly discuss what's going on?

elizabeth, i appreciate your needing to phrase it that way, but, let's be honest--there's no "middle class" anymore. scott brown, if you get it, you'll need to better distance yourself from your party platform or you and your pickup truck are going to be sent packing. everybody else, i know it's not fair that nobody in the media is paying any attention to you anymore now that they've settled on giving us only the scott vs. liz option, but perhaps if you get it too, you can say something meaningful that will help us understand the best way forward.

elizabeth isn't wrong. (if only she wasn't attaching herself to a party machine proven to have no interest in righting things).