the journal had a curious article about a not-so-secret society of wall street luminaries that meets only once a year, called kappa beta phi. GET IT?? so clever, those financiers. dick fuld, stanley o'neal and bridge aficionado jim cayne were no-shows, as were former wall street power brokers john corzine and mike bloomberg. nonetheless, the dudes (and they were mostly dudes) still managed to have a good time.
now, i know this is meant to be tongue and cheek, and the members seem to be somewhat aware of their own ridiculousness, but they just couldn't fully stop themselves from appearing like total jerks. shouldn't these guys at least pretend to endear themselves to the public? how out of touch and offensive can they be? let's hear the highlights:
"I feel like the mayor of New Orleans after Katrina," quipped Alfred E. Smith IV, the group's leader, or "Grand Swipe," at the opening of its annual black-tie dinner last week.
zing!
Phi Beta Kappa's key includes a hand pointing at three stars that symbolize the society's principles: morality, friendship and learning. Kappa Beta Phi's key has images of a hand, a beer stein, champagne tumbler and five stars. The stars represent Hennessy cognac and the hand is there to hold a glass.
zany!
The group's humor is anything but politically correct. One crude joke took aim at Rep. Barney Frank's treatment of the U.S. taxpayer, with a reference to Mr. Frank's sexual orientation. Mr. Frank is the first openly gay member of Congress.
typical!
the article also mentions how the society inducted new members who dressed in drag to perform musical ditties, including the following, set to american pie:
A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How the Dow Jones used to make me smile.
And I learned my trade and had my chance
The music played I did my dance
And I made seven figures for a while.
I can't remember if I cried when they pulled the plug on Countrywide...
It sucks that Iceland is out of ice....Bye, Bye to my piece of the pie...Now I travel coach whenever I fly...Maybe this will be the day that I die.
i was on the phone with my mom the other day and i said something along the lines of, "i still have a hard time believing i'm 30; i forget my age sometimes." my 60-plus-year-old mom replied, "oh, that doesn't stop. i do that to this day."
sure, we all know the common signifiers of Bona Fide Adulthood, like child-rearing or homeownership, but nobody tells you whether Adults should enjoy bacon'd! (which i did. immensely. and felt kind of guilty about it afterward) or watch gossip girl (which i do not, only bc i feel a little lech watching such young-looking guys, but i think i'm alone in this). bc y'know, this stuff isn't productive. Adults belong to kiwanis clubs, know how to fold fitted sheets, make their own kimchi, figure out tax deductions, etc.
anyway, do marketers know any better? we all know we're being manipulated even though we'd like to think we can rise above it. the new yorker this week has a detailed and sometimes unnerving article about the marketing of movies. i think the studios' mantra is,
“If we weren’t making decisions based on marketability, John Malkovich would be in every movie,” a top studio marketer says. “Great actor, but not someone you want to see half-naked in the sheets next to Angelina Jolie.”
yowza. they don't have to be so mean about it. i'm sure some people would love to see that.
and man, they've got all of us pegged:
Marketers segment the audience in a variety of ways, but the most common form of partition is the four quadrants: men under twenty-five; older men; women under twenty-five; older women. A studio rarely makes a film that it doesn’t expect will succeed with at least two quadrants, and a film’s budget is usually directly related to the number of quadrants it is anticipated to reach. The most expensive tent-pole movies, such as the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, are aimed at all four quadrants.
women above twenty-five are automatically OLDER WOMEN? dear lord. well, i'm game. let's see whether they can put baby in a quadrant. here's what young women like, according to marketing experts:
friendship - check pop music - check fashion - check sarcasm - duh-really? sensitive boys who think with their hearts - omg check! and romance—but not sex (though they like to hear the naughty girl telling her friends about it) - it's like they interviewed me for this shit. They go to horror films as much as young men, but they hate gore; you lure them by having the ingénue take her time walking down the dark hall. yeah i hate gore, but i also hate horror movies. i'll pretend this is me, though, since who doesn't like dark halls?
whew. so it appears that i'm not a total hag as of yet. but what about the OLDER WOMEN? what do they (we?) like?
feel-good films and Nicholas Sparks-style weepies - hell no they are the core audience for stories of doomed love - maybe? triumphs of the human spirit - ugh, no again They enjoy seeing an older woman having her pick of men - who doesn't? they hate seeing a child in danger - i can take or leave this one.
but just when i'm feeling good about myself, i read this:
Particularly once they reach thirty, these women are the most “review-sensitive”: a chorus of critical praise for a movie aimed at older women can increase the opening weekend’s gross by five million dollars. In other words, older women are discriminating, which is why so few films are made for them.
maybe this is why i've been hating so many movies of late. bring on the Form 1040.
some part of me wishes we can return to a barter economy. my socks for your pencils, or whatever. at least i would be able to understand how it works.
as the economy sank further and further, i took up reading the wall street journal, which i'd only associated with alex p keaton up to that point. the journal manages to synthesize complicated concepts like CDOs in a couple of sentences, while the times can barely explain leverage. moreover, the journal consistently includes sexy details like "On Tuesday, Mr. Buffett says, he was sitting with his feet on his desk in Omaha, drinking a Cherry Coke and munching on mixed nuts, when he got an unusually candid call from a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. investment banker. Tell us what kind of investment you'd consider making in Goldman, the banker urged him, and the firm would try to hammer out a deal."
nonetheless, i enjoyed (?) reading this two-parter in the times from michael lewis and david einhorn on the state of the financial markets. indeed, this is an uncertain time; so much of what we'd assumed was real turned out to be spectacularly illusory. although it is much too easy to reduce this debacle into the usual for-profit bad, public service good dichotomy, we discovered that the two worlds are rather intertwined and, sadly, the destruction of the former has infected the latter. we all lose.
in any case, i am completely fascinated by this madoff thing. the family drama - i don't believe for a second that his sons weren't involved; the sheer breadth - literally six degrees of kevin bacon; those mysterious women (make sure you click on the link here) i once read about in vanity fair and vaguely envied despite their equine features - was their dad involved somehow or is it all just coincidence?
our justice system showed its best side, as it let a man who, in his own words, perpetrated (okay fine, allegedly) a $50 billion fraud traipse around lexington avenue like nothing happened. then the prosecutors thought better of it and decided upon house arrest. THEN, yet another shonda:
The disgraced financier Bernard L. Madoff tried to hide at least $1 million in watches and jewelry from government investigators and should have his bail revoked and sent to jail immediately, federal prosecutors told a judge Monday afternoon.
more impressively, the sons turned the father in!
Last week, Mr. Madoff’s sons, Andrew and Mark, received three packages, containing valuable jewelry and watches, as well as inexpensive items like cufflinks and mittens, according to a person briefed on the contents of the packages. Within a few minutes of receiving the packages, Mr. Madoff’s sons called the law firm of Paul, Weiss, which is representing them, to tell them about the packages, this person said.
guess they've lost their fear of being left out of the will.
and what did congress do? hold yet another hearing, of course. as usual, it was chock full of pithy condemnations and self-righteous anger. here's an idea - do something about it. and that "something" shouldn't be "give away all of our money to a bunch of guys who made more last year than i will in several lifetimes." oh what do i hear? a legislator is coming to our rescue?
Perhaps, one lawmaker suggested, the term “Ponzi scheme,” named after the Italian immigrant who engineered the huge pyramid-investment scheme of the early 20th century, should be declared obsolete and replaced by “the Madoff scheme.”
yes...that's the solution.
sometimes i think to myself, will i ever stop being cynical? isn't it just an easy out? but this unfathomable failure of public trust - how is it that we are giving money, our hard-earned money to vikram pandit? to lloyd blankfein? don't you think hank paulson would've noticed if $750 billion had gone missing during his tenure at goldman? after all, it might have prevented him from amassing an $800m fortune. is it trite to be angry about this at this point? i'd much rather the government give my money to the guy i saw taking a shit in broad daylight on 8th street a few months ago or some welfare queen so she can buy that cadillac she's been eyeing. this entire meltdown has only proven that i haven't been cynical enough.
there is a breathtaking thought.
in parting, to the girl who farted TWICE on the machine next to me at the gym: not cool, man.
as we close out yet another banner year here at interweb detritus, we would like to wish you happy holidays or "whatever you choose to celebrate," as my neighbor said to me the other day.
like c4ts, i was going to compile some awesome best/worst of 08 lists but if you haven't figured it out by now, i'm fairly lazy. here, some gift ideas for the procrastinators out there. i always aim to inform.
a couple of weeks ago this american life tried to tell 20 stories in 60 minutes. most were light, some affecting, but one left a strong impression. david rakoff recounted how he decided to quit his job at a japanese company developing a computer portal through which people can log on to virtually chat with each other and share information because he felt the technology would be a failure. of course, this was a preliminary version of the interwebs. then he went on to tell how he's completely missed the boat on other breakthroughs, like the time he went to see madonna in the 80s at danceteria and declared that she wasn't going anywhere. or how when he was an editor at a major publisher he passed on "men are from mars, women are from venus." i think he deemed this his negative ability to identify trends.
in turn, i started thinking about my own shortsightedness. it's more just laziness, really. after college (fall of 2001) i ran into a friend of mine in the east village. he mentioned that he and his band will be performing at a small cafe 3 blocks away from my apartment that weekend and that he could add my name to the list. i really meant it at the time when i told him that i would come by and watch. of course, saturday rolled around and i was feeling "tired." and besides, whose band actually gets anywhere? i never really heard from him again.
i'm not sure whether that's better or worse than my friend who decided to leave her internship at us magazine in advance of its proposed change from a monthly publication to a weekly, since "that's not gonna go anywhere."
yeah i know, it's a terrible joke. (for those of you who don't get it...how are we friends? kidding. here it is.)
i've been watching the cabinet appointment process with some interest. so far, he's vindicatederic shinseki and, in my mind, wen ho lee. we've distanced ourselves somewhat from automatically associating asian men in science with espionage (yeah, i know, bill richardson, who led the charge against lee, will be commerce secretary in the new administration. it's not a complete victory. let's just hope that he doesn't make all asians rebuild america's crumbling infrastructure). i also admit that steven chu sort of looks like a more handsome (?) version of your prototypicalasian malenerd. one stereotype at a time, i suppose.
what's even better than having two asians safeguarding some of america's icons (military, energy/national security)? 3 asians? no, government officials from cities. yes, those un-real, un-american bastions of elitism. so far, eric holder, obama himself, timothy geithner, hillC, this dude arne duncan, shaun donovan, and rahmbo all hail from NYC and chicago. you can let me know if i've missed any.
my unshakable bias in favor of urban areas (loosely defined in my head as places with a certain level of population density, viable public transportation system, and a government with a at least some understanding of the need for public services and infrastructure) started when i moved from vancouver to atlanta and realized that sidewalks--sidewalks--were not a given. whether driven by race or some other misguided NIMBY-ism, atlantans generally eschewed investment in public property; certain counties refused to permit MARTA within their boundaries. i don't have any sophisticated thoughts on this. it's just mean to not give people who either cannot afford or do not want to drive a car an alternate mode of access.
with 2008 drawing to a close and possibly the best bush comedy skit behind us (this one? that one? too many to count), i really hope that this new administration, with their exposure to and faith in cities, will rebuild public infrastructure and give cities their due.
oh yes, for those who may think city folk are a bunch of snobs, people who live in single-family dwellings with fenced-in yards at the exclusion of all others shouldn't cast stones.
Of the many remarkable aspects of Bush and his presidency perhaps most remarkable is the fact that his vices, the spirited protestations of his many detractors, and all the rest of it have become the white noise of our popular political culture. Yes, he's the worst; yes, he should have been impeached; yes, he's stupid and brazen. But at this point who has the energy to talk, let alone think, about the guy. So, it is with no regret that I offer my perfunctory closing remarks on the Bush Presidency:
Watching the video above, I can't help but think how is that a man with such good reflexes has such poor instincts?
while the US government is fixated on bailing out ho-hum industries like banking and maybe now the big 3, italy has its sights set on a much more "appetizing" idea: a rescue of parmigiano cheese makers! for real dudes, the government will buy up to 100,000 wheels to prop up demand. at a total expenditure of 50 million Euro, it's small potatoes compared to what kashkari & co are spending, but give me cheese over CDOs any day.
i don't know who gail collins is and what she's about, but i know i've defended her to heidi before. i dunno, although her editorials are not very sophisticated they sometimes closely track my own thoughts, so to criticize her would be to criticize myself. or something.
but you know, maybe i'm not giving myself enough credit because even i didn't bother to think this thought:
Saxby Chambliss’s victory in Georgia means that Republicans will have at least 41 seats in the Senate, and if they stick together, the party has the capacity to stop a bill in its tracks.
This is Tom Friedman's latest sad sack of racism and unreasonable generalizations.
Below is the (unedited -- Director's cut!) letter I submitted to the Times in response:
In his most recent op-ed piece, "Calling All Pakistanis," Thomas Friedman asks "ordinary" Pakistanis to gather in the streets to denounce the depraved lunatics who perpetrated the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. On the surface, this is not an unreasonable request. After all, in the name of a shared faith several Pakistanis, it would seem, have murdered scores of innocents, and yet no outpouring of organized dissent has spilled forth onto the streets of Lahore and Karachi.
How can this be, Mr. Friedman wonders, given Pakistanis' easy devolution into violent street protest in the wake of the frivolous Danish cartoon affair. The only conclusion to be drawn from Mr. Friedman's words is that Pakistanis are irrational, petty, and disinterested in substantive affronts to their faith and to their nation. In reading his piece, I am reminded how empty our own streets have been in the wake of all that we know about Guantanamo; I am reminded how spirited the boycott of the Dixie Chicks was following their remarks about the President. I am reminded that we too are a people more inclined to protest words with which we disagree than violent acts committed in our name. Perhaps, there remains a question of degree, but in this regard are the Pakistanis very different from us?
Right before the Thanksgiving holiday, I went into a temp agency in the hopes of securing some contract work, but emerged burdened anew. Mo money, mo problems? Afraid not. There I met with a cheery young woman with a large Chinese character tattooed on the top of her foot and who was under the impression that business dress remains business even when it leaves nothing to the imagination. No doubt her recently completed college career was full of serious study, but she was now tasked with something even more challenging: sorting out my life. I have seen these last several weeks as an extended lesson in humility, but I was shocked in that moment by how much there was still for me to learn. With troubled and liberally mascaraed eyes she reviewed my application, announcing, It says here you're interested in work as an attorney or associate or lawyer...Um, would you consider other categories, like, legal assistant? You don't have any certifications, do you?
Now I am not above being a legal assistant. I am not above doing good and honest work, but the truly humbling aspect of her proposal was this: Say, I swallow my pride, take on a temp job as a legal assistant; what happens when it comes out that I don't know how to do an electronic filing or type fast or bluebook properly? What happens when I get fired? I don't know, but that would have to be a bridge to be crossed later. Yes, I said. Yes, I would consider being a legal assistant. And no, no I have no paralegal certifications. I thanked her for her efforts on my behalf, prayed my application would not get lost amid all the Jaeger bombs she had planned for the weekend, and marched out into the cold November rain.
As I unlocked my bike, I tried to think out of the proverbial and hateful box: Take that kinda-sorta job offer in DC and have a long-distance marriage? Try to substitute teach? Lightning didn't strike. The clouds did not part. The sun did not peak out from over the hills. No, none of these things happened. But then my phone buzzed. It was a former colleague, offering me contract work on the case I was once the junior associate on. A reprieve, not a solution, but something.
the journal had a curious article about a not-so-secret society of wall street luminaries that meets only once a year, called kappa beta phi. GET IT?? so clever, those financiers. dick fuld, stanley o'neal and bridge aficionado jim cayne were no-shows, as were former wall street power brokers john corzine and mike bloomberg. nonetheless, the dudes (and they were mostly dudes) still managed to have a good time.
