Boom Boom

Some people look at the way things are and say why.
Some People think of the way things should be and say, “why not”.
Lately I just look at things and think....what the fuck?

***
Have you ever had thoughts about things that that you have never seen but you imagine that you have seen them because they are so perfect and you cannot get them out of your head.

A horse and a flea and three blind mice

Sat on a curbstone shooting dice

The horse he slipped and fell on the flea

"Whoops," said the flea, "There's a horse on me!"

I have been having such a moment with this song and what I envision is Tom Waits at a microphone singing it.

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Giddy and foolish the whole day through

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

I do not know why I find this vision so totally compelling but i do know that I do. When I look around at george Bush’s America and the suffering we have wrought by our own hands it just seems...apropos.

Way down South where bananas grow

A flea stepped on an elephant's toe

The elephant cried, with tears in his eyes

"Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"

Indeed. With all of Waits naturally bent lyrics and romanticism isn’t this one that he should of covered? I mean he covered the eagles “Old 55” which was not a bad song, but it was after all just the Eagles. If he could sing the bad rhyme, “well the sun went so quickly, I went licketysplittly...” certainly he could sing this.

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Giddy and foolish the whole day through

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

In the current times it just seems like it would be such an awesome anthem. The bank bail out. The proposed car company bail outs... unemployment, bankruptcy, Brittany Spears coming back?

Way up North where there's ice and snow

There lived a penguin and his name was Joe

He got so tired of black and white

He wore pink slacks to the dance last night!

Blagojevich. Talk about crazy. Crazy as a shit house rat. Sociopath. And a stupid one. not crazy like a fox, at least not anymore. Just plain, stinking, stupid, crazy. A cancer on his family, his party and his state.

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Giddy and foolish the whole day through

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Depression can lead to voices like this. Voices in your head just kind of overwhelmed by all the back ground noise of all the craziness. Self medicating with booze while watching MSNBC or even worse FOX as people you know buy guns to protect themselves and hoard can goods and water in their basement...



Eli, Eli had some socks

A dollar a pair and a nickel a box

The more you wear 'em the better they get

And you put 'em in the water and they don't get wet!

Wait’s has sung so many great songs. “Nighthawks At The Diner”, “Blue Valentines”, “Jersey Girl”, “Jesus Gonna be Here”, “Get Behind the Mule”. He always said that he was fascinated by the sound coming from down the hall. Leaky pipes or a crying baby. it is all music. In a crazy way.



Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Giddy and foolish the whole day through

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Lots of distress in the world right now. Lots of people not knowing where their next check might be coming from. In the mean time Bernie Madoff defrauds rich people and charities and banks out of 50 billion dollars. Seriously? 50 billion? Who knew until June or so of this year that there was even 50 billion dollars in the world and this guy is able to run a ponzi scheme that big?



Called myself on the telephone

Just to hear that golden tone

Asked myself out for a date

Said be ready 'bout half-past eight!

In a house of the blind the one eyed man is king. I am not sure if the same is true in a madhouse. i a slightly more sane person at an advantage or a disadvantage in a world that seems to have gone mad?



Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Giddy and foolish the whole day through

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

In the mean time, Waits, singing this song (which he has never sung) resonating in my mind like a cancer, like a kiss. Chiding me. Soothing me. making me cry and making me smile as the gravelly voice rolls along the bottom of a smoky stream, just.... observing.



Took myself to the picture show

Sat myself on the very last row

Wrapped my arms around my waist

Got so fresh I slapped my face!

Bush, on his way out. leaving a mess of unparalleled proportions for Obama. Going to iraq and getting shoes thrown at his head. A crazy man who does not even know he is crazy. Shambling along, cannot get out of office quick enough. But it is too late. Too late for a legacy. Too late for kind words. Too late for anything but a shoe, narrowly missing a quick dodging head.



Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

Giddy and foolish the whole day through

Boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy?

I never noticed till I downloaded the lyrics that the chorus is a question. Maybe THE question.

Hiatus

While the diner seeks an appointed position the Diner Review is on Hiatus. This happens on sitcoms all the time.

Diner review: best of 2008 In Preocess

The Diner review is seeking the help of loyal readers. each year I put together a best of the diner review mix. It strikes me that putting it out in December is too late. It also strikes me that there must of have been some brilliant things out this year that i have not heard. Therefore I am publishing this mix early and accepting contributions and suggestions to modify and augment. These are not sequenced at this point so... forgive me.

Song Artist

Mansford Roof : Vampire Weekend

New York: Cat Power

Angel: The Wood Brothers

Lovecraft In Brooklyn: The Mountain Goats

“Woke up afraid of my own shadow Like, Genuinely afraid Headed for the pawnshop To buy myself a switchblade Someday somethings coming From way out beyond the stars To kill us while we stand here It will store our brains in mason jarsAnd then the girl behind the counter asks "How do you feel today?" and I say "I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn!"

Sausalito: Conor Oberst

Sick of Love: Takeover UK

Lost Coastlines : Okkervil River

Big Easy: Rafael Saadiq

Bitch Went Nuts : Ben Folds

Falling Down Again Buick MacKane

Paint the Rust: The Dodos

Few Words in Defense... Randy Newman

You know it kind of pisses me off. That this Supreme Court is going to outlive me. A couple of young Italian fellas and a brother on the Court now, too. But I defy you, anywhere in the world, To find me two Italians as tightassed as the two Italians we got And as for the brother, well Pluto's not a planet anymore either

Handelbars: Flobots

Souled Out: Conor Oberst

Whiskey In My Whiskey: The Felice Brothers

“I put some Whiskey, in my whiskey
I put some heartache, into my heart.
I put my boots, on the old dance floor.
I put three rounds Lord, in my 44.”

Beaumont: Haes Carll

Down Together: Colin Meloy

Emma: Emmanuel Jai

Cowboys: Counting Crows
***
Out of sadness and hopelessness I am also putting this out on Facebook. That is pathetic even for me. For God’s sake....HELP ME. Help me help you. Help America! Do not be a hater.

Post Election Erata....blah, blah, blah

Down in the mouth and not half right
but I can feel the changes comin on
bloom like flowers in bluest night
bloom like the sunlight in my song*


Sooooo... I started writing a little on election night and other then responding to some Facebook posts... I didn’t have anything I thought was meaningful to say. I mean everyone said everything and in a 24 hour news cycle they said it about180,000 times already. So I waited... I watched.... I listened. I learned nothing.
****
Lutheran kids are by a large part angry and somewhat hate filled about the election. That propbably is not fair, I am sure it is just a vocal minority to full of hate but wow. What have these kids got to be so angry about? And why hate Obama? Do their parents hate him that bad? Even if they do shouldn’t the kids be rebelling against that? And what does it say about how we are raising them up as Christians that they have so much angry bile that they are willing to lay out on the web for everyone to see.
****
Mc Cain’s speech was an excellent piece of work. Grace filled. Generous. Funny and serious. It was everything that made me and a lot of other Americans like and admire him for years. It is too bad that such a quality person had to lose. I was worried that they would allow Sarah Palin to break tradition and give her own concession speech. I would not have cared for that.
****
The post election attacks on Palin are embarrassing and unforgivable. And not on her part. I do not think she was ready to be VP much less President but there is no reason to think that she is not spenty intelligent. I have no idea what the agenda is of the poeple who are stabbing at her anonymously but they should be outed, fired and banned from election politics. really unforgivable.
****
all of the words you can't say right
burn my ass with anger to no end
I love my country so much man
like an exasperating friend *


I do not know what Obama is going to do or what he realistically can get done. Picking Rahm Emmanuel is not exactly a reaching acroiss the aisles type move. He sounds like a meticulous, dangerous guy but perhaps he is the guy who can get a job done. We are counting on Obama to surround himself with quality people. Lets hope he is one and that he turns out to be the first of many. I put a number of things on Facebook as a dream for this administration:
I have a dream that Obama gets elected and immediately does the following:
1. Offers Secretary of Defense job to John Mc Cain
2. Makes Petraus head of joint Chiefs of Staff
3. Offers Secretary of Treasury or Fed job to Warren Buffet and urges him to take it as a matter of public service.
4. Announces Hillary will fill next Supreme Court opening.
5. Shuts down our stock market for a week to retool the rules regarding program trading, hedge funds and over night trading and perhaps selling “futures” of things that are not actual commodities.
6. Consider closing the banks for a brief period to review them and open them again so that people have confidence in them.
7. Set aside 700 billion plan and start over. Do not allow the banks to have any money for mergers unless they are mergers directed by the FDIC. Use the money in a way that actually gets banks to lend.
8. Give the first great speech of this Millenium. remind the country that we are the greatest country in the world but help the country to redefine that greatness.
9. Ask Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed to step down from their leadership positions in order to elect new leadership for our new challenges.
That is a lot.

***
I liked Obama’s speech but it was not transcendant. perhaps it did not mean to be. I was moved and not put off by Jesse Jackson’s tears.

yeah, i believe the war is wrong
don't believe that nations can be steered
lead the world by smarts and compassion
by example, not coercion, force and fear*

****
How great is it that Proposition 1 to provide mental health services to youth passed? A tax increase in a time of tremendous economic upset. That is a nice sign about people in St. Louis County and I did not expect it at all.

****
So.... where was i when Barack Obama made history? I was in my shower I believe when they called the elction for him. Granted it was a foregone conclusion before then. We sat at home all night and watched returns come in. I was looking for Indiana, Ohio or Florida to tip for Obama and that would seel it. the fact that they called Pennsylvania so quickly was a sign and the close races in Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana and Missouri which all were supposed to be Red states also boded well. When they called Florida and ohio it was over. The west coast was just gravy.
Looking at the map was a little depressing. It looked almost like a civil war map. Creepy.

****
There is of course the inevitable talk of a new alignment of politics in our country and it just seems so absurd to me. Obama won for among other reasons that the republicans have had the White House for the last eight years. He also was a tremendous campaigner, an unbelievable speaker and someone who catalyzed something in the American populace. The idea that in four years or eight years that this Democratic mandate will continue is delusional. This was a case of people being sick of the administration and having a bright young star to chose to put their hopes in. This honeymoon will likely be over even faster then prior ones, especially if the Democrats in the House have their own agenda.

****
One of the problems with the expectations and hopes people have for Obama is the obvious thing that he cannot change anything. Only we can change things by changing what we do every day. We do not want to change. We do not want to conserve. We do not want to pay more taxes. We want to elect someone to do all the hard things for us but this is America. It comes down to us. That is really annoying.

***
In any case... this is still the greatest country in the world to live and we are all blest. Pray for our leaders. They are going to need it.

*Lyrics of "Move On" by Mike Doughty

DINER REVIEW ELECTION PREVIEW 2008

Sooooo... it is election eves, eve. The talking heads say Obama is lock but Mc Cain has momentum so it is not over. I do not know how those things gibe. The say Mc Cain has to run the table but figuring they have called some of the races wrong I will say if Mc Cain loses Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida.... he is toast.

He was hilarious on SNL last night. He can make fun of himself and he does have timing. Somehow he let the campaign run him as a grumpy old man (and that is perhaps who he is) but that seems unfair. I like John Mc Cain. I like that he fights for what he believes in. I like that he got his reputation of speaking truth to power but i am voting for Obama because:

1. Mc Cain sold out his “crossing the aisle” I am a consensus maker and builder reputation when he chose a V.P. to pander towards a base which had no where else to go and he adopted the extension of the Bush tax cuts which he had made a career of opposing.

2. The choice of Palin also was just a poor choice for this election and the way she was handled is embarrassing. I am confident that she is smart, ambitious and has the best interests of the government at heart but... the way she was rolled out and pandered to the base was a mistake for a candidate who clearly has a lot going foe her.... even if I think i hate her.

3. He did not surround himself with people who could help him make good decisions in difficult time. Surrounding yourself with people who do not have good instincts is...Bushlike. Obama clearly ran a better, smarter campaign. Perhaps running a campaign is whole lot easier then running a government but if you cannot do one...

So I will show up at 6 in Webster and cast my vote. I have predictions.

1. Voter turnout will be huge but even with a massive increase in young voters (18-25) they will not show up and make the effort to vote.
2. Obama wins in landslide with 58% of popular vote, without the youth vote.
3. He has huge electoral college win leading idiot Democrats to do the same thing Karl Rove did and predict a fundamental turn in the electorate and a permanent democratic majority. This is...idiotic. Our country is deeply polarized and politics is cyclical. It is the Dems year and it is only because Obama is a charismatic leader. With anyone else at the top of the ticket (even Hillary) this is a nail biter and they do not win all those states.
4. The Dems have 59 in the Senate.
5. Obama is one term President.
6. Obama is so wrapped up in recession/depression problems that there is no timing or funding for health care reform or almost anything else.

The Republicans could still win this election. They need to promo Sarah Palin at a 50,000 person rally in Branson to get the whole crowd chanting “Obama, Pelosi and Reed...OH MY!” to the tune of “Lions and Tigers and Bears”. That is a scary thought. That could turn the whole thing around with a few prime time TV buys and huge You Tube press. Seriously, that could do it. Instead they will try and scare people in stupid and unscary ways like Bill Ayers and “socialism”...yawn. they deserve to lose. They have no imagination and that is the unkindest thing I can say.

****

MY DREAM
I have a dream that Obama gets elected and immediately does the following:
1. Offers Secretary of Defense job to John Mc Cain
2. Makes Petraus head of joint Chiefs of Staff
3. Offers Secretary of Treasury or Fed job to Warren Buffet and urges him to take it as a matter of public service.
4. Announces Hillary will fill next Supreme Court opening.
5. Shuts down our stock market for a week to retool the rules regarding program trading, hedge funds and over night trading and perhaps selling “futures” of things that are not actual commodities.
6. Consider closing the banks for a brief period to review them and open them again so that people have confidence in them.
7. Set aside 700 billion plan and start over. Do not allow the banks to have any money for mergers unless they are mergers directed by the FDIC. Use the money in a way that actually gets banks to lend.
8. Give the first great speech of this Millenium. remind the country that we are the greatest country in the world but help the country to redefine that greatness.

****

I don’t ask for much.
God’s Blessings. Go vote.

WHAT I AM READING (With Apologies To Nick Hornby)

There is a magazine I read called The Believer (which I somewhat prematurely and optimistically labeled the new New Yorker) and one of my favorite columns in it has been written by Nick Hornby, the guy who wrote Hi Fidelity. The column was called “What I Have Been Reading” and the guy reads a lot and has turned me onto some good books. In fact some very good books. But Hornby is moving on from the column and the magazine so with imitation being the best form of flattery I give you the St. Louis Diner Review version of “What I Have Been reading”.

Michael Chabon: “Yiddish Policeman's Union”
Harper Collins 2007
416 Pages

Chabon is one of the writers that Hornby turned me on to. I think i did not think i would like him because it sounded like he had a French name and well... we hate those people. I like it when my instincts are wrong because you often find something new, and they were very wrong here.

Chabon invents a whole new world historically where after world war two when the state of Israel is started that the Arabs and Palestinians push the Jewish re-settlers into the ocean. The U.S. for reasons that are never quite clear through Secretary of State Seward offer the Jews a 50 year homeland in Alaska and 10s of thousands of Jews settle and prosper there. Like any ethnic group this band of wanderers has it’s share of normal people and crazies and the politics of Jewish Alaska are.... convoluted at best.

Our hero and narrator is a detective and he is living post divorce in a seedy hotel where someone else murdered. The investigation of the murder is complicated by the fact that the 50 years is up and most of the Jews are being forced to leave and those that stay are not necessarily welcome or being offered jobs in the new administration AND his ex wife has gotten the job as his boss.

The gentlemen who was killed also was expected at one point in his life to be the chosen one who would lead the Jews to their right place in the world and perhaps bring on Armageddon and the last days. I think Sarah Palin would have been in favor of this. Anyway, it is NOT a murder mystery but is a book deep in relationships and it is beautifully written if slightly long. This guy can just flat out write and like my earlier review of his book “No Map No Legend” this book is a highly recommended read.
Wikipedia has pretty good entry on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yiddish_Policemen's_Union
Among other things it tells me that the book is in pre-production for a film by the Coen Brothers.
*****
Will Self: “Liver”
Penguin Viking 2008
277 Pages

OK....I love this guy. It does not make me a bad person but it does make me think a little sickeningly about the things I find pleasure in. Self reminds me of Will Sheff of my favorite band Okkervil River. In a recent Paste Magazine Interview he said:
“What I’m hoping is that people walk away from the songs feeling … a subtler kind of violence,” Sheff says, “that they feel uncomfortable and like a lot of their feelings have been stirred up and they’ve been entertained—but in a way that made them feel a little sick.” read the whole thing at: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2008/09/river-of-screams.html
I think Self goes for the same thing. This is actually not a novel but a collection of novellas which are tied together as near as I can tell by the following:

1. Alcoholism
2. Liver Maladies (some caused by Alcoholism).
3. The complexity of the human psyche
4. A Soho bar called “The Plantation Club”
The stories are in no small part, beautiful, depressing and creepy. The inhabitants (becuase they spend almost all their waking hours there) of the Plantation Club make you yearn for their demise, timely or untimely. One of Self’s gifts is to display peoples weaknesses and fragility while still making them obscenely unlikable. It is not at all important that the novellas have anything in common. All four of them are well written and compelling. I got a British Hardcover of this and it is beautifully bound with no dust jacker. Very nice.

!!!!!!!!

H.P. Lovecraft: “Call of the Cthulu”
Penguin Classics 1999
419 Pages

In reading Jonathan Lethem and Michael Chabon I became aware of the work of H.P. Lovecraft and what a powerful influence he has been on both of their work. Because I am a completist and like to find ways to spend idle hours I decided to check him out. Also becuase I am a Mountain Goats fan and they had a song that really kicked it on their last CD called “Lovecraft In Brooklyn”. The Mountain Goats song paints a bleak picture:

“woke up afraid of my own shadow
Like, Genuinely afraid
headed for the pawnshop
To buy myself a switchblade
Someday somethings coming
From way out beyond the stars
To kill us while we stand here
It will store our brains in mason jar
And then the girl behind the counter asks "How do you feel today?" and I say "I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn!"
----Mountain Goats “Love craft In Brooklyn” 2008.

I thought this was something I needed to do, to read, to explore. From my perspective I was clearly wrong. Lovecraft did not really write a lot of books. He was a pulp writer for magazines and that resulted in a lot of short stories and novellas. These have been put together in various collections all of which start with a short biography of the guy and other then the fact that he lived with his aunts, liked to write letters and hang out with Robert Howard (Conan The Barbarian Creator) he did not seem compelling. I did find out from the biography that he was almost paralyzed by xenophobia and when he lived in Brooklyn found himself totally alienated and despising the mass of society.... and especially minorities and strangers. Though this might have gotten him a cabinet position with the Bush administration it seems an unhappy life. Here is the Wiki on him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hp_lovecraft.

“Call of the Cthulu” is the main story in a group of novellas and never having read him before I was amazed at how relentlessly black all of his characters and prose are. There is no joy. There is not even a fake smile. His characters amble through these barren historical and imaginary landscapes and ultimately get to glimpse ultimate horror or ultimate evil before suffering grizzly death or a life a s a recluse from being scarred by what they found out.

It is not much different from being a lawyer.

You do not need to read Lovecraft’s stuff. better to read about him.

%%%%%%%

Ethan Canin: “America America”
Random House 2008
458 Pages

This was a beautiful book. Canin has long been a favorite of mine. I distinctly remember reading his book “Blue River” while I was taking the Missouri Bar Exam. The night before I was reading and finding comfort in his prose before spilling my guts on the exam the next day. My memory is of course totally suspect in that I took the Bar Exam in 1987 and the book was not published until 1995. So much for my bogus memories.

At that time Canin was new and had not really developed his style but since that time he has cranked out several books to universally critical acclaim. He is good and this book is just simply GREAT. It is a Richard Russo type effort set in upstate New York in a thriving, dying, thriving, dying town. A rich and political family adopts a lower class but hard working young man. He becomes acquainted with the ways of the rich, and their daughters. he gets sent to prep school and then to college while working around their house.

During this period, set in 1972 the family is supporting a Presidential Candidate who is running as a Democrat against Mc Govern, Muskie and Humphrey. It looks like he is going to win but there is a scandal and our narrators benefactors are right in the middle of it. Throughout the book as he benefits from the families largesse and connections there is always a sense that he is being used (and perhaps abused) in ways we do not understand.

He grows to be the local newspaper editor and attempts to adopt a protégé in much the same matter and the book is a retrospective as he tells her the story which begins looking back from the funeral of the politician. The book is heartwarming, heart wrenching and achingly well written. If you love the myth of American politics it is a must read, or if you just like someone who really knows his way around language and storycreft. Do not miss this one. It also would make a great gift for anyone you know who reads.

&&&&&&&&

Kurt Vonnegut: “Armageddon In Retrospective”
Putnam 2008
233 Pages

I continue to be very sad that this guy is dead. There is a picture of him on the back of the dust jacket taken by one of his kids or grandkids in front of a door and surrounded by some flowers with boat tennis shoes on. He looks simpatico.
The great thing about Vonnegut is that he was never simpatico. He was questioning, tortured, profoundly disillusioned with humanity and especially government institutions and yet.... he still found a way to love, raise a family and produce some beautiful, beautiful books. Even through disillusionment, depression and despair he always loved people, while seemingly despising what people, especially groups of people, especially groups of people organized as governments.

this book is really just a collection of his wartime writings. Vonnegut was a late arriver in Europe in WWII and was almost immediately captured by the retreating and declining german Army. He was put to work cleaning the streets of Dresden which the allies had left alone because it had no military factories but in the waning days of the war, for one reason or another the Allies, the U.S. decided to firebomb it and level it. He gives that experience the whole book in “Slaughterhouse Five” and his stories here all dance around it. His experiences in the war, as a prisoner, as a survivor of the firebombing and as a liberated prisoner are what make up these stories. All fiction heavily colored by his own experiences.

The stories are short and easy to read and are a sweet glimpse into a young author. the forward written by his son is as revealing as anything written about the man. Families and people are complex and beautiful. War sucks and is dehumanizing. Always. Simple messages by a sweet, brilliant, confused man.

The Trip....Day VIII: An American In Paris

Day VIII
Well today was rainy and cloudy and cooler and... probably one of the best days on the whole trip, which is saying a lot. We got up and Sandy had messed around on the internet the night before and found a place that was about a twenty minute walk from the Hotel called “Breakfast In America”. It was perfect and charming complete with booths, a counter, a complete diner breakfast menu and.... ICED TEA! In France! With lots of ice! It was awesome. Our waitress was a sweet English girl who sounded like she was from Chicago. She was evidently used to dealing with grateful tourists. When we entered there was a group of French kids...early twenties... who had clearly been out all night. they were watching baseball playoffs while eating. We ordered, had a perfect little breakfast (other then the hashbrowns which were really the dreaded potatos Obrien. By the time we were done the place had fellied up with a nice eclectic mix of people. It was a great start to the day.

Next we took a train to the Musse’ D Or’. I like art but have no appreciation for it and as I might have said before the religious art leaves me a little cold. This place however was full of the impressionists and most importantly some Van Goghs. It was awesome and a pleasure just to wander around. We spent a LOT more time there then at the Louvre. Some of the art there was of the kind that just moved me.

On the way back we hit the Cathedral of Notre Dame. there was no hunchback (very disappointing) but we inadvertantly went in while worship services were going on. This was a little odd and disjointed as tourists walked around the edges of the Cathedral while about 500 people worshiped and took communion. What a beautiful place. Unbelievable stained glass and architecture. Going to church there would have been nice. I like Catholics, good liturgical worship.

As a special accomodation to me we hopped on the Metro and went up to Père Lachaise Cemetery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Père_Lachaise_Cemetery. There are Metro stations on two sides of it both which have floral shops next to them so that people can buy flowers for the graves.. It is also the final resting place of the late Jom Morrison. I have always liked the Doors hits but must admit to not owning a single Doors CD though you have to have respect for the body of work and the fact that we did not have to watch him grow old like so many 60’s rockers. How much better is a dead Jim Morrison then a live David Crosby? A lot is the answer. Morrison’s grave is in dierepair and was fenced off. I sat down on a grave next to it and we got yelled at so we went off to oscar Wilde’s grave. Anyone who was imrisoned, reviled, exiled and loved by the French cannot be all bad. He has a really pretty grave.

We went back to the Hotel and napped.

We got up and walked around the Latin Quarter which as I said seems a little like a good boardwalk or Dayton strip. It was a trip just people watching and walking around in the light rain. Paris is beautiful and we ended up getting some more pizza and drinking another bottle of wine and life was good.

After dinner we went to La Cave de la Huchette based on my desire to go watch jazz in Paris. We went in, paid a cover and walked downstairs into what truly was a cave. it appears that a lot of the basements in the latin quarter are carved out of the rock. The room was almost empty and we came in and sat and I went upstairs and got some...BUDWEISER! I had not seen a bottle of Bud in Europe up until that time. Eventually the place filled up and a lady began singing American standards like “Stormy Weather”. The band was tight but what was so much fun was the couples dancing and having an awesome time and between the beers, the music and the dancing it was a delightful evening. In fact it was a perfect day. But the trip was rapidly coming to a close.

The Trip....Day VII

Day VII

Saturday. Another travel day. Light rain. Baguettes and sandwich purchases before heading to the train. I got some pastry with chocolate in it. Very sweet. I have become addicted to the Herald Tribune and to a lesser extent The Guardian. They put our St. Louis Post Dispatch to shame. Seriously. great reporting and covering of issues in about 15 pages of print. If our economy was not heading into the tank I would subscribe. We rode the train to Dijon (no mom I did not get any mustard). Then headed to Paris. I was struck again by how awesome quality rail service is. Handling your own bags, and spreading out on a train is such a great way to travel. Figuring it out is stressful but once again it just seems so much more sustainable then our current batch of airlines going broke. I read in the Herald Tribune that falling fuel prices may allow airlines (other then Southwest) to post a profit. I will hold my breath.

My wife has been generally unimpressed by my contributions to planning this trip. I basically sat it out. This is for several reasons:

1. She is much smarter then me and much more detail oriented.

2. She likes things done in a way that she understands.

3. She always takes my feelings and preferences into account.

This leads to a certain disengagement. So she was pressing me for what I wanted to do. We hit town in the early afternoon after a short cab ride to our hotel on the Ile St. Louis. I thinkl the hotel was called Lettuce’. The female Consiere was cute and we checked into the first room on the whole trip that my wife was “disappointed” by. She seemed to feel that for 180 Euros a night we should be entitled to charm. I agreed but... what the hell. We were in Paris and right off the Latin Quarter.

So in order to make things right we went on a 10 mile Blitzkrieg of Paris. We hit the Louvre (two hours), walked the Champs De Lyse and then walked up to the top of the Arc De Triumphe. (284 steps after a several mile walk) I had no idea that it was so tall, or that people went to the top of it and used it as a lookout. It was very impressive with the longest spiral stairway of my experience. No one died though a Parisian working there screamed at us for not understanding the cue system (there was not one).

On the walk up we noticed some big aeronautics show and at the Arc, when we came down they were flying two large flags and had about 400 military people all tricked out in full regalia. I am sure it was charming but brought to mind every banal joke ever told regarding the French military prowess. From there we took an elongated hike to the Eifel Tower (I thought it was black but it is rather a muddy brown) during which time my feet began to blister and my wife acceeded to my demands that we not go up in the tower, and that we take the Metro back to near our hotel rather then walk the final two miles.

The Metro is cool and scary like all big city mass transit and it remains in my mind the defining difference between big cities like Atlanta, L.A. and Miami and real major cities like NYC, Philly, Chicago, Paris, London. Just my opinion, but what a great way to gt around. Though they do constantly warn you of pickpockets and i could see how at night it could get....sketchy. But still, there is nothing like the feeling of mastering the system and getting yourself around th city without a cab.

Sandy had read about about a great inexpensive place to eat called Polenis and it was both. I cramped place with communal tables out front and in back, but in back seemed to be for people in the know. We sat our front with two other couples sharing bread and water and just people watching. The two main servers looked like they were 50-60 years old and sisters. They bustled and the place was packed and the food was good and fairly cheap for Paris. I had a little rumpsteak with pepper sauce and Sandy had some chicken thing. Naturally we killed a bottle of wine. They did not take credit cards and I nearly had to leave Sandy there. I think that would have been....awkward.

We walked home through the latin District at night and it was seedy, tacky and fun with barkers out front of a lot of places trying to pull you in. there was a lot going on there on a Saturday night and we decided we would return tomorrow to check it out.

The Trip.....Day VI: Beaune Palin!

Day VI









So Thursday night where you are watching the debate at around 8:00 CST we are in Beaune and my wife decides prior to bed that we should stay up and watch it. I know it will come on around 3:00 A.M. and as I said we had killed a bottle of wine. Instead she decided to set an alarm and we went to sleep with me confident that the alarm would go off and we would turn it off and go back to sleep. I was wrong. Alarm went off and she turned on the debate (missing the first 10 minutes) as I lay there trying not to listen, and failing.

I hate Sarah Palin. Let me say that from the outset. I do not know why but I think it is her morally superior rhetoric of small town America and her scolding tone when speaking of those who do not line up behind Senator Mc Cain. I think she was an awful choice, not just because I do not like her, but because she will sink the ticket. She comes off to me as uninquisitive and not too bright and havent we already done that for 8 years.

Anyway. She did a nice job in the debate and she won from the perspective that she did not sound stupid. She still was heavily scripted and when she did not like a question she just talked about something she had memorized like energy and high taxes. She did a good job and did not sound stupid, so she won. Biden did a much better job then her and lost nothing. certainly on a debate team scorecard he won. I am not a huge Biden fan either. He has lined up with big banks and MasterCard at every turn and was key in getting the awful Bankruptcy Reform Act passed in 2005. He takes money from the banks. I do not like him as i said. But he did a good job and is certainly in a position to be President if something awful happens to barrack. She is not. I listened to the talking heads for a few minutes when they were done and went to sleep.

We slept late and got up and had hot baguettes and butter and some hot tea. heaven. then we set out to explore the wine caves. This was a cool experience. We paid like 9 euro dollars each and for that got a little silver plated sommelier cup and were set lose in this catacombed, cavernous stone basement/celler to walk around where they would have a barrel and on top of it a bottle of wine and a candle. You were admonished to only take one taste of each wine. It started with the fruitier whites and worked their way up through chalkier whites, to lighter reds to the big hearty bergundys. One of the cool parts was that there were all kinds of vintages represented. By each bottle there was a barrel to spit your wine into so as not to foul your pallet. I did that a couple of times. We drank our way through, came out the other side and bought a nice Pomard.

We then went to a little place for a kebab. A gebab appears to be a sandwhich on a bakery fresh piece of sourdough cut like a pita. It looks and tatstes a lot like a gyro but without the tsitsi sauce. It was average and expensing and the service sucked. One of the things i have learned in England and in France is the general indifference of servers. I think it is because tips are not normally expected since evidently they get paid a living wage to serve but everything is soooooo slow. I think I said that in an earlier entry but I want to emphasize...slow. In a place where you are eating quickly, ask for the check when the entree arrives.

We hit another Wine cave as it started to rain and drank our way through the ritual with some unpleasant german family. In the prior cave we had been following around some American wine snobs and now were treated to their teutonic equivalent. Not pleasant. But the wine was good. In this one you were directed to the cellar and then had a winding walk of about a 1/4 mile through different chmbers and walls divided by tens of thousands of bottles of wine being stored down thiere. It was creepy but cool.

Afterwords I went to find some more cigars. Sandy went to the big grocery store in town called Casino in order to get some wine glasses so we could....drink more. Now to know my wife is to experience many joys. It is not enough to go to a French grocery and just negotiate the process with awkward smiles and nods for sympathy. Not Sandy. She had to find some glasses and decide to self check. In the self checking process she found the glasses scanned higher then marked and then decided to put them back in the aisle and get another cheaper set. She had a woman chase her and yell at her telling her she needed to bring back the set to erase the sale. There was much yelling and although she ended up being friends she was still made to feel a criminal.

It had gotten cleared up and so went home, drank some more and napped for a while. Or rather she did. I sat out on the back porch and drank wine and played on the internet and read with a blanket on. It was a great afternoon in the sunshine with another nice Cuban to smoke. It was awesome.

We then looked around a lot and as it got colder and colder we decided on a nice restaraunt with a huge fire place which they also used to cook their steaks. It was awesome and warm. I had a great little steak in bernaise sauce. We had another bottle of wine. We went home and passed out. We really like wine.

The Trip.....Day V: Aneccy to Beaune

Day V
Travel day again but not until the afternoon. Woke up and got wife a croissant and I grabbed a baguette which i chewed on. We bought some Gruyer cheese which I nibbled on as well. We had seen a huge, well lit church on the mountain behind the town so started to go exploring. At that edge of the town there is a huge (8 story) chateau which just kind of looms up behind some shops but it also blocked the view of the church so we started walking up guessing in the general direction. Very long, steep hike... several wrong terms. Chateau looked boring so we did not even stop....just kept going up...and up... a little sweaty. On one narrow street we hit a narrow stairway cared out of the hills and we see part of church at the top. We went there and it is this huge cathedral, “Our lady of the Visitation” sitting on this hill with a commanding view of the town, the lake and the lakes valley. Worth the walk. There is a bus of English tourists. There is a man begging at the door. There is stained glass. There are 2345 images of Mary and Jesus. It looks to me like an old church. But what a view. Maybe we could tear it down and build condos? Or a miniature golf course?

I of course am an ugly American. Based on my own review of my behavior there is a chance that I invented ugly American. I think it would be funny to get a t-shirt which said in French “Stupid, Ugly, American.” At least there would be no surprises for anyone. It is a much slower and gentler life. The thing I am impressed most about so far is the sustainability of the lifestyle. The stores do not open til nine. They close from noon to two for lunch. They stay open till when they feel like. They seem to go to the store and buy what they need for that day. They seem to eat locally a lot. So maybe if we put a big amusement park
We then ran back to the hotel and grabbed some baguettes to eat on the train. The first stop we Lyon which was a major train station. Lyon seemed a little scary from our angle but we hung there for an hour and figured out how to head for Beaune. I read of lot of newspapers and was able to get the most recent Guardian and Herald Tribune which made for a sweet ride. As we got out of the Alps the trip looked more and more like a ride from St. louis to KC on Amtrak through Missouri’s wine region. Not a bad trip, but not beautiful and awe inspiring like the Alps. Apparently the palin/Biden debate is this evening. Much speculation..

We hit Beaune...pronounced like Daniel Boone. The station was not much and the town looked like even less from that vantage. We got our bearings with a map and then started lugging our bags the kilometer or so to our hotel which also did not inspire. Happily it surprised. We had a delightful room, with CNN in English and a working internet connection. We had a little back porch and went exploring the town which is deep in the heart of the Burgundy wine region. The whole town sits on top of these wine caves full of Burgundy. The town itself is a total tourist trap but tastefully so.

All along the way I have been buying and smoking various Cuban Cigars. Generally these are purchased at news stands with a TABAC sign and are somewhat suspect as to how they have been stored. The Cuban Partagas brand is my favorite. Nice salty wrapper from that carriebeann rain off the ocean. In Beaune they advertised cigar “caves”. These turned out to be that same little cabinets I saw in Aneccy and Genva and Cambridge. Cuban cigars are not generally the treat that they used to be. Post communist Russia I think they mised a step and there are so many knock off’s that the percentages always favor a good dominican. Still, a real Cuban Partagas knocks me on my ass.

That night we had dinner at Bleu... something or other. I was expecting some signature meal with Bleu Cheese but was instead treated to being bathed in an aquamarine, swimmin g pool like light theme which was...odd. Food was good and I had chicken coquette and I do not remember what Sandy had. We did polish of a nice bottle of burgundy though. Which was sweet. We made some calls reminding people to TiVo the VP debate.

The Trip.....Day IV Aneccy!

Aneccy is a beautiful town in the Alps on a huge lake (about 20 miles around. It is crystal blue. The town itself is charming with lots of blocked off streets in which to roam. We slept till like 11:00 which is always cool. I have given up the idea of a hot breakfast on the continent as well as giving up on ever getting iced tea. We went to a patisserie and sat outside.

One thing I have noticed is how American eating on the go is a non-existent principal in France. You sit, waiters smile at you, you sit (sometimes for 10 or 20 minutes) before they wander over. You order some drinks or tap water. They bring it ten minutes later. You order your food. Sometimes it comes suspiciously fast, sometimes a lot longer. They come back and ask if you want coffee. You ask for the check. In ten minutes or so they bring it back. You look at it and try and hand them a credit card as they walk away. They come back ten minutes later and take your card. They swipe it on a little machine they carry. You sign. You leave. An hour and half has passed. You try and tell yourself this is cool and relaxed and continental. The bile for having sat there so long roils your stomach as you walk away.

That patisserie was nice. I ordered a croissant and a coke with ice. What is it about other countries and ice (for I have noticed this in Mexico and Canada as well)? They brought our drinks and I had a nice can of Coke with a cute little drug store soda fountain glass, and three little tiny pieces (to call them cubes would be like calling saying my penis was 10 inches long) of ice. Sandy laughed. I drank my slightly chilled Coke. Seriously, what is it about the ice? Is a cold drink a crime? It seems more precious then gold in these countries. Am I ice obsessed? Probably, but I think they do not have iced tea because they cannot figure out that it takes a lot of damn ice.

We looked around the town and then began walking on the lake on a bike path, and we kept walking ultimately ending up in another town a couple of miles down the road called Sevrier. We split a bottle of wine looking out over the lake sitting at a smaill table on a lawn. The only other table was filled with some 20 something aged French boys who came, greeted one another with two kisses on each cheek and then drank from the same bottle of Absinthe. We walked back and napped.
France seems to have lovely people but either the goth thing, or Johnny Cash has had a huge influence on these people. Why so much black...why all the time. The kids are all dressed from a “Les Miserables For Kids” collection of expensive clothes meant to look bleak and poverty stricken. My theory on all this blackness.... lack of enough ice. We had pizza for lunch on one of the canals around town. Did I mention the canals? they are lovely. No punting here, or gondaliers. I think we could have taken a boat ride on the river but we were out of season. The pizza is good. Northern Italian. Nice.

Before dinner we decided to walk up to the “Casino” on one of the tips of the lake. Our hotel proprietor was VERY concerned regarding us walking 1.4 Kilometers. He clearly did not understand that my wife has been walking us a minimum of 8 miles a day, just on general principal. So we walked up the lake and it was lovely and then got to the “casino” which was in a little hotel up there. We walked up to the entrance and he asked for our passports and then slyly told us that asking for passports was just their way of making sure that the dress code was abided by. We passed. The “casino” was three small levels filled with slot machines. We kept looking for gaming tables to no avail. I dropped 10 euros (approximately $143,004.32 U.S.) and then we left.

The Trip.....Day III

Day III





Tuesday was a travel day. We awoke to the cell phone alarm and my wife stated she did not sleep well for worry that it would not work. We went downstairs to call the cab and upon opening the door of the TV room were confronted by a rodent. A reasonably large rodent. It seems that my son’s housemates (geniuses all) had elected the night before to take a hedge hog in as a pet. Although this one seemed fairly docile (it ladi by the door as of dead), it was still a disconcerting thing to confron at 6:45 A.M. in Cambridge England. We got a cab. The hedgehog stayed.

The train ride out from London to Cambridge was very uneventful and pleasant and we were looking forward to a ride in with a newspaper and a croissant and perhaps a sausage roll for a leisurely hour long poke into King’s Cross at 7:30 in the morning. We are of course...idiots. I believe I have mentioned that fact before. &:30 on a Tuesday is rush hour. We got to the train station in plenty of time an I bought a sausage roll and she a croissant and then we stood towards the wall keeping our bags out of the way as the platform in front of us filled 8 deep. The train was delayed by a few minutes and when it came there was a crushing press and rush for the few available seats. We barely managed to squeeze on with our bags, standing by the door in a press.

That was bad because it was so unexpected, yet so foreseeable. We were traveling into one of the biggest cities in the world during rush hour. The hour long trip became more nightmarish when at every stop (5 in all) more and more people pressed into our little space. No one moved down the rows to create more space and the people who were seated were careful never to make eye contact with the rest of the crush in much the same manner as I imagine the German guards did not make eye contact with the prisoner loaded onto rail boxcars. It was also hot, and got hotter with each new stop. It was also eerily quiet. I have never commuted on mass transit in a big city and the lack of communication among the masses was disquieting and depressing.

We made King’s Cross and got off the train with our bags once again stupidly attempting to get out of the way of the crowd and let the commuters pass. We stood there for a solid 5 minutes as they thronged by before rolling our eyes and giving up and dragging our bags into the terminal with many “excuse me’s” along the way. It was at best a nightmare as we eventually found the Picadilly Line for Heathrow 123 and 5. No one ever explains what happened to Heathrow 4 and one imagines it is the dark secret of the Picadilly Line. I am thinking it might be the terminal which jets people off to Hogworts Academy. That train too was packed and we could not sit. Standing in the sweltering mass I watched one man get bonked on the head by the closing door in a manner that seemed violent.

We eventually made Heathrow terminal 5 which is obviously some modernist’s cruel joke on London, England and the traveling public. A nice lady at British Airways (very nice airline and it is hard to believe they have anything to do with American Airlines but they are part of the “one world” evil alliance) got us checked in. We went to the security gate and were stopped as the first ones to not get through and told they were closing that checkpoint, and we were directed to the other end of the terminal (about 1/2 mile walk).

We negotiated security fairly easily. There is something about post 9-11 security I have always found vaguely disquieting. It is the sense that I am guilty of something that they are tasked to find out, or perhaps that they presume such guilt and as such are entitled to ex-ray my bags, swipe them for bomb detritus and anally probe me if they deem me a threat. Anyway, we made it through though I did have to take off my belt, but I did not have to take my computer out of it’s bag. This Terminal 5 is a garish, sense offending place of bright lights, loud noises and useless eateries. Again a Starbucks with no iced tea and a duty free shop the size of Macys. I picked up a couple of papers to learn that the U.S. Congress in an act of political spinelessness which should no longer be surprising had voted against the 700 Billion Dollar Bailout Plan.

This plan might not be a good idea. But if these institutions fail we will all be poorer, quicker then if they are not propped up. I do not care what the terms are, they need to be harsh and draconian but to cow tow to the angry voters back home 5 weeks before an election when the world economy is dancing on the brink seems pathetic on so many levels. It is as I said kind of an embarrassing time to be an American. Every paper which discusses their own nations bank problems sites the “toxic debt” sold by the American banks. I do not know if it is true or not but our investment bankers were given way too much money and when they got a “historical model” of making their points with loaded dice, they thought they could rely on that model and then borrowed everyone’s money to make their bets. But who are the “winners” here. The casino analogy seems to fall because where indeed is the house? No one has been able to answer that question for me.

We boarded the plane and once again, other then a crappy sandwich BA is an excellent airline giving us a pleasant flight to Geneva. On the ground we were ushered through customs not being able to be stereotyped as drug dealers or fugitive investment bankers. here is where the day falls to shit. We believe we need to be in another train terminal (there is one hooked up to the Geneva airport) and we get on a train to the main terminal 5 minutes away. We get off and look for out train to Aneccy but cannot find it and conclude it leaves out of another terminal. No one speaks english and the train people are not remotely helpful. Finally a ticketing agent (who was trying to explain that we were in the correct terminal) acceded to our demands and handed us a card for “tram 16” to get us to that terminal.

In the mean time the clock is ticking down as we have 25 minutes till that train departs. Sandy is convinced that there is only one train to Aneccy and if missed we will be staying in Genva for a night. She is frantically looking on maps inside the bus for the hint of a train station. She picks a stop and we hop off and begin frantically asking directions of people who speak no english and... miraculaousy, we find a train stattion 3 blocks away. Miraculously it is the one my wife was looking for. Miraculously... our train was supposed to leave from the main terminal and we were missing it as we spoke to the agent. Miraculously...he could get us on another train which with one stop, would get us to Aneccy 1/2 hour earlier. We sat for a 1/2 hour. I bought a bad sandwich and admired the grafity of the somewhat sketchy area the train was in.

The ride and swithching trains was uneventful accept for the unrelenting beauty of the Alps. We got into the station, Sandy got her bearings and we headed to the Hotel Dejun, checked in and rode a tiny elevator to our room which was significantly better then the Cambridge dorm accomodations. We walked around. We had Fondu. We argued about tipping. We went to bed. Not a bad day to have survived.

The Trip....Day II

Cambridge evidently was founded as a bridge over the river Cam. Who knew? Not quite a “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” but certainly a bridge over dirty, somewhat pretentious (or at least well educated) British waters.

All in all let me say it. A lovely town. And we had great weather. Two nice days of weather after what they said had been a miserably wet summer and early fall. We closed out night one after like 40 straight hours awake at a little French place that was lovely. I had to explain to Jon that the French restaurants generally use crappy cuts of beef and then hide them in sauce and this place was no different but it was still good. Then we went back to Valpo’s Cambridge residence and crashed.
I was worried I would wake up too early but when I finally cam to my wife told me it was 10:30. We were sleeping in little single things that felt like monks beds. The bathroom and shower were both down the hall but we got moving and walked about a mile to an open air market that had intrigued us.

I of course am obsessed by iced tea. I did not really comprehend that England, land of tea would not accommodate me but evidently in a tea culture, iced tea is an abomination. Once again, who knew? Still hope reigns eternal and I walked into a Starbucks and confidently ordered a Vente Black Iced Tea and the girl (American) said “I am sorry, we do not do iced tea”. I asked plaintively whether there was any place in England to get iced tea and she told me sadly, and with utter confidence...”no”. Still I persevered and walked down to Mc Donald's but did not even ask. On the board of drinks they had tea but it was away from soft drinks and next to coffee and they had no urns saying “sweet” and unsweet” I did not let this despair overtake me however.

We ate some meat pies which were pastries with a some cheese and sausage and “swede”. Swede i came to find out is turnip and rather then refusing to eat (the Becker natural reaction to anything different) I muscled through it and found it tasty. We bought some fresh squeezed orange juice at the market. It was delightful. We toured the market (boring) and then took our own walking tour of the town trying to find a noodle bar that had grabbed Sandy’s eye. We found it, “The Dojo” and decided we could live without it. We looked in a bunch of stores and bought Laura a puzzle.

We then bought tickets and went into The King’s College Cathedral. That was pretty awesome but could not figure out how to turn my flash off so could not take pictures inside. It was interesting listening tot he tour guides however and read the stuff on the construction. It was started in the 1400’s by Henry the 6th, one of the first Tudor Monarchs who was trying to legitimize himself through such spending. It has a lot of dragons in it in homage to St. George. It was an awesome church and it would have been nice to take some pictures of.

I went to a cheese monger (high point of trip) and bought some gruyere and some cheddar. They were life changing. We went back and got Jon who was now done with class and went down to the river Cam. They have these flat bottomed boats and they move along the river like gondolas but they pole them. We took a nice trip (having bought several beers to drink along the way, and then the Punter told us all about the history of the various colleges on the Cam including St. Johns, Trinity, King’s College and Queen’s College etc... They have all been there a very long time. All in all it was very cool with all the history and all the intellectual snobbery. If you go to Cambridge, go when it is warm and go Punting.

We then went to the grocery store and stocked our boy up with necessities and then went to a Spanish tapas place which seemed average to me but which he and my wife liked. We then went to a pub called Sir Issac Newton’s and I stood a drink for he and all his housemates. We came home and Sandy did the whole houses dishes and then we sat in bed an read and were kept awake for quite sometime by one of the young ladies in the group Skyping with her parents and then her boyfriend till all hours of the night. Then I passed out.

25th Anniversary Trip

D-Day...Stage 2









As you all might or might not know Obama has sent me to Europe to lay
the groundwork with the heads of State and the Papacy to bring back the
title of Holy Roman Emperor, which he will assume after his elected in
November, It is... quite and honor and as you might guess I am kind of a
really big deal.

We flew out of St. Louis at 5:00 on Saturday, hit Chicago for a short
layover and then flew all night arriving in at 9:10. Although my wife
slept, rather then talk to me I stayed awake all night watching "The
Incredible Hulk" and "Baby Mama" and literally feeling my waning
intelligence ebb yet again.

We took a train to the Kings Cross Station where we ran into our son Jon
who was just going to kill 4 hours in Piccadilly till he was supposed to
meet us.  This was the cause of much celebration as "running into"
someone you know in London is highly unlikely and the Kings Cross Train
Station has slightly more people who are passing through there at any
one time then the State of Alaska (sorry Sarah).

We had a shitty lunch at The Black Bear in Leicester.  I at least ate
bad Fish and Chips but Jon was stupid enough to order the Sunday Roast
Dinner which was a smallish (thankfully) piece of "top round", about 6
new potatoes, some bad vegetables and some bread curling all around it.
What the meat lacked in flavor it more then made up for in toughness.
The fish was just not that good but it was not toxic.  I did think that
someone had puked on my plate but before I sent it back my wife told me
that the pukishly green stuff were "smashed peas".

It makes it very, very easy to understand why every quality person has
left this somewhat god Forsaken country.  I was totally exhausted and so
Sandy decided we should do a blitzkrieg of London "since we are only
here for a day".  That meant that we saw, Trafalgar Square 10 Downing
Street Changing of the Horse Guard Westminster Abbey Buckingham Palace
The Tower Bridge And about 8 other places.  We saw them all through the
auspices of the "underground" but still managed to walk about 10 miles.
We then when back to King's Cross Station and took the hour long train
to Cambridge.  Jon is living in a house with 6 girls and two boys and it
looks... like he has fallen into something good again. When he found us
he was just coming back from a weekend in Ireland... not that I am
bitter.

I think the plan is to see how long I can go without sleep.  I think my
wife's ancestors did a similar "interesting" experiment with the Jews.

Pray for me

Lehman Sisters

Soooooo... what a week. As a bankruptcy lawyer I should have been really excited about what was happening. After all I make my living off of distress. Peoples distress, businesses distress, economic distress. Turmoil, diving markets, skittish people and a more skittish press leading the charge. I should be full of energy and verve but... I found it hard to work on Monday.
Now to be fair my Niece had gotten married over the weekend and my brothers office flooded badly on Sunday but I was in no way prepared for Lehman Brothers, AIG and Merrill Lynch all being threatened with extinction. It was mind numbing. On so many different levels.

Lehman Brother is in Chapter 11 and is selling off it’s good assets so that the rest can be picked over. No one knows what that means for people who had accounts with them and or investments or bonds in the company itself. Everyone knows it is not good but for all practical purposes Lehman Brothers is gone. Likely someone will buy the name and attempt to put it to work somewhere down the line as people keep trying to do with the ghost of the Napster franchise. But gone, over a weekend! Why... because they were so highly leveraged. But we will get to that later.

Merrill Lynch is gone. Swallowed up by Bank of America (which ate Countrywide earlier in the crisis) leaving what would appear to be a monolith but I am thinking it might be the case of a monster swallowing all it can, only to find it was sick to start with (see the rising credit card default rates to get a feeling for how sick). It is almost like BOA is trying to get to the “too big to let fail” status. Which brings us to AIG.

Before I got involved with and insurance defense firm, i had no idea who AIG was. i knew that they were run by one of the notorious Greenbergs (Hank I think). I say notorious because the family has had an eye for a buck and such great instincts throughout the years so as to be legendary. Hank Greenberg probably is thanking his lucky stars (and Elliot Spitzer) that he was forced out but anyway, I knew about AIG. They insure everyone. And when you say, “well they do not insure me, All State insures me”, I need to tell you, that AIG insures ALl State. They insured EVERYTHING. No risk was too big or too nuanced for them to earn a fee on. It would be like if I took out an insurance policy to cover my loses at the craps table. And they were brilliant at it, until they got to insuring the bad bets of people like Lehman and Merrill. They had been backing the shooter at the table for a number of years and the shooter was hot.

The shooter was in course everyone from the investment banks to small timers in town flipping houses and the bet was not a craps bet (which at least has ascertainable odds) but instead was real estate. Because one of the truisms of life thus far has been that real estate always goes up. Right? Well for fans of dollar cost averaging and history, real estate does always go up, they are not making any more of it. The stock market has also historically always gone up but the key is that you have to be in for the long run. My financial advisor is one of my best friends and he trained my wife and I a long time that you do not try and time the market and you have to have an excellent understanding of your own appetite for risk. This has been very good and valuable advise.

So, if these people all bet on real estate, then what is the problem? All they need to do is hunker down and the price of real estate will rise again and all those bad bets they made on the pass line will become good. Right? Well wrong. Very wrong. VERY, VERY WRONG! I see two reasons that the logic is wrong even though it is very logical. They are:

1. Leverage (which is brought on by)

2. The pressure for profits NOW.

I have represented a lot of real estate developers over the past few years. they were bright, intelligent and entrepreneurial and somehow, several years ago we got to a point where if you were not fully invested, meaning if all your assets were not at work then you were a dummy. That is not by itself a bad premise. I have a good German Lutheran disposition which favors this type of industry. No, where it got screwed up was because in order to maximize those working assets, everyone borrowed every cent that they good. That is leverage. Going back to the craps analogy, what these developers did, and what a lot of Americans did on their homes, and Lehman certainly did, well, these craps players visited the loan sharks and gambled on the bet that real estate prices would continue to go up. And up. And up.

Now a good shooter keeps some chips below the table so he can ride out a few sevens, but what our economy was doing was winning bets and then rolling everything forward on the next roll of the dice. None of these developers or investors had any spare powder dry, and when the seven s started coming, they found a way to borrow more and double down. THAT is leverage. But why take this leveraged risk?? It had to be scary. I know it was scary for the real estate developers and many (most) have paid a price with business and personal bankruptcies. But if your the head of Lehman, or Merrill or AIG... not so scary.

1. The money is not yours

2. Your bonus is tied to your stock price, your short term stock price.

3. There is an excellent chance you will be gone before the chickens come home to roost; and (this is everyone’s favorite part of the story)

4. If the 7’s keep coming up, you get fired and get a huge severance package (See Fanny and Freddy CEO’s).
What a Country!

I do love my country and I have a healthy respect (if not a love) for free market capitalism. I know that Obama and Mc Cain are going to fix the system, regulate it better, get back the bonus money, blah blah blah. The problem is not the system and the answer unfortunately is not going to be more regulation. The answer needs to come from a lot deeper in our country. We need to redefine what being a success is. It is not a new Mercedes, although I would love one. if our leaders are going to help us they are going to rally us to redefine our American Values, our Christian values.
But that is a lot to expect. Too much to expect in fact. And in the mean time there is going to be financial turmoil and pain and loses of savings and changes in life style and... all manner of other painful shit. I do not have any answers but this is... more then a little frightening.

STEPFORD VEEP?

Sooooo... I have been pretty good about this Sarah Palin thing. Between work, family, a little school and...oh the apparent collapse of our monetary system I have had plenty going on. Too much to add much needed comment on this dire, dire threat to...well to be fair to everything.

Sarah Palin is, I have decided, the Stepford Veep. She at any point might be capable of talking about cookie recipes and how much she loves the “first dude” her husband, “the world champion snow machine racer”. We have not seen her family since the beginning which is fine but they have kept a tight, tight lid on her and for good reason. She is a VERY limited talent and very limited intellect.

She would rock a school board and clearly rocked a small town and then amidst the moral collapse of Alaska rocked “The Largest State In The Union” (population about 670,000. She has appeared with Mc Cain supposedly because he “likes the crowds she draws” but really because she cannot hack it alone. her two solo appearances with fairly kind hosts have been embarrassing between her not knowing answers on one hand and not answering questions on the other. They have tried to school her but it is a lot to be brought up to date about your lifetime of American history and politics in a week or two.
She does not play that well among anyone but the solid, Christian Democratic base that Mc Cain used to so enjoy fighting and made people like me like him. This sidling up to them has “energized” that base but seriously, where would they go. And she will alienate almost everyone else. She cannot do anything else. I saw her on Fox and she just kept babbling that she and Mc Cain as a team would be ready to serve and ready and they were ready and would be ready and I thought she was going to short circuit and her head was going to explode. Which frankly was as good as she got.

She looks ill prepared. She seems preachy, judgmental and mean. She looks like she will be a massive divider of our country which is already massively divided by the Bush administration. All in all, she seems like my perfect nightmare. the good news is that unless America cannot elect a black man, she is the death nell of the Mc Cain ticket. Imagine a 72 year old president with her being a heartbeat, his cancerous old heartbeat, away from ultimate power.

The problem she has among others is that the way she has carried herself and carried the attack and stuck to her guns despite of the facts (Bridge to nowhere) and promised to cooperate with an investigation she is now stonewalling (troopergate) it is too easy to see her as an angry, vengeful, hateful chief executive. Who DO we want answering the phone at 3:00 A.M. when there is an emergency? Not her. She would nuke them in a heartbeat and have no understanding what it even meant. And her husband. Who is he anyway? The first dude? I get the feeling he will not be going to the Alaska Oil fields for 6 months and i also guess he will not be the primary care giver for Trig and the girls. Where is he?

So ask yourself, why won’t they let her out of the box? they say it is because the media, the liberal media, the mainstream media, the devils tool media will not treat her with the correct deference and respect. Every person needs respect but we expect the media to tell us about this person and to show her to us. That is what the media does. And do you think they are going to deferential like Putin might be. They should show us what she has got if she is “ready to lead”.

While the economy thrashes and they try and make this personal, the American public is going to start truly suffering. And the republicans are on their way out, unless all those nice liberal white folks cannot really vote for a black man. In that case I will be truly, truly scared and i will say a prayer for John Mc Cain’s health every night. because if they are keeping this tight a lid on her, she must be much worse then even I imagine.

Our old friends at the Onion had this.

http://www.theonion.com/content/infograph/rumors_swirl_around_palin

I do believe she will be the butt of every joke. If they love her so much in Alaska, then help me. Send her back.

et tu Palin?

So I originally thought Sarah Palin was an interesting if kind of boring and pandering choice for V.P. Before Cheney V.P.’s did not matter at all and were window dressing at best. The daughter thing should not be an issue. It has nothing to do with her ability to lead but after thinking about it most of the day...

I am thinking she is going to be turned into a bad joke. Seriously, what is a mother of 5 doing running for President? How does that represent traditional conservative American values? I know she is a gun toting, moose hunting former hockey mom but how does that represent traditional American values? Seriously, if I had a 6 month old baby at home, moreover one with Down Syndrome, I would evaluate what my need was to reform Alaska in light of the needs of my family. The Evangelical conservatives which hijacked my old Republican Party have been touting that family matters MOST and family values matter MOST and here is a beauty queen, who left her family to become a career politician. Her husband is supposedly busy in either the oil fields or his commercial fishing business so who is taking care of the home?

She has kind of a squeaky voice. She was runner up for Ms. Alaska. And lets talk about Alaska. It is not even a real State. They have 639,000 or so people there. There are about 387,000 people in the City of St. Louis. The City itself. Not the surrounding counties and municipal area but just the City. Would we like Mayor Slay to be President on the basis of his command of the City of St. Louis Police? There are 2.8 million people in the metropolitan area of St. Louis. Over four times more people live in our metropolitan area then the whole State of Alaska. 670,000 people with a shit-load of oil money. How hard can it be? The Mc Cain spin that she is prepared to lead because of her time as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard is laughable. I am not saying Obama has such experience but he did not define the argument and then go out and pick up a good looking young mother of 5 from a State that should be part of Canada. She has five children. Perfect for V.P. She has named them Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig. That is what most people would name their five kids here in the midwest. It stinks of our values and makes us relate to her in the same way my wife, a conservative, Republican Christian could relate to any moose hunting, hockey mom with 5 kids and a pregnant 17 year old spending all her time away from her family running for office and having kids. And perhaps she will have some more.

Sooooo... I am thinking this could Mc Cain, or at least his candidacy.

The “trooper-gate” thing does not bother me. if my sister was in an ugly custody battle I would not hesitate to try and get her husband fired if i thought it was best for my sister and her kids. That is human nature. But nominating the former Miss Alaska with 5 kids and an infant with down syndrome does raise a question of where her traditional family values are. Her husband owns a commercial fishing business. Shouldn't someone be at home with 4 minor children? Perhaps...a parent.

She was a Catholic, then a Pentecostal, now non denominational. So that at least is stable. While switching her religious affiliations 3 times she has at least been able to remain a life long member of the NRA.

I would assume we have heard all the problems she has and to be fair, these are not real problems. It is only the Vice Presidential nominee but seriously, if her choices make some conservative people uncomfortable and if we question her judgment.

I am going to leave her alone at this point but, I do not think other people will. Perhaps she will give a brilliant speech at the convention and have everyone rally around her. I noticed that for the last two days she has disappeared and hired a team of lawyers for trooper-gate. Not encouraging.

LABOR DAY!

Labor Day? Who would of thunk that I would even live to see another Labor Day. In theory it is a really good idea. A three day weekend to commemorate the end of summer but seriously, sometime in the last 10 years or so summer started to end at the end of July. Why is that? I do not know but kids started to go back to school earlier and earlier. I think they did it so the semester could end before Christmas break but... that seems like a really crappy reason. I miss summer running from the first of June to the end of August. So Labor day is just... kind of odd.

The kids have been back at college or at high school for 2-3 weeks already. I have been working (though based on my hours my partners do not think I am working) like summer was never here. It was not a bad summer. I had two weeks away from work up in Michigan (lovely) but as the summer officially wraps up I cannot help but think of missed opportunities and personal and... national disappointments.

*****

I watched Obama’s speech and it served yet another purpose for me. It was a fine speech but I fell asleep less then half way through. I feel stupid about it but I really did have some unbelievably messianic (small m) hopes for him. I was disappointed by the Biden choice but really thought that he would light it up in front of 80,000 people and give e a speech for the ages. That is not what he did. It was a great speech but... it will not be remembered and it did not transcend anything....again. I am still going to vote for him. I still want to have someone who might be able to replace judges with some that are not young, smart, Nazis.

****

Mc Cain appoints a woman Governor from Alaska. She too is as far to the right as you can get and will play well to the base that Mc Cain has been pandering to since he sold his soul to the Bushies. It is a brave play and bold. She is young, she is pretty, and likely will appeal to some of Hillary’s hard core followers who did not embrace Obama...right? Wrong. Very wrong. Just like abortion is the ONLY issue for that Bush coalition it is the ONLY issue running the other way for Hillary’s gals. They could not even hold their nose and vote for her and the idea that a 40 something women will be President if Mc Cain croaks will frighten a lot of people too.

On that note, it will not frighten me. This EXPERIENCE issue has been bogus one from the start. you do not train to be President. The job is too massive and you either can lead and surround yourself with quality people to help govern, or as we have seen you can grab your dads craziest old friends and let them run your government, your economy and your war. That worked out well. At least Obama will not be bringing his dad’s tribal chief buddies from Kenya in as his cabinet... at least I think he won’t.

****

So we get a day off on Monday. I will go to work anyway. Laboring on Labor Day. Does that make any sense?

****

Wow. A little late breaking news. Sarah Palin’s 17 year old daughter Bristol... 5 months pregnant. This should be a huge non story and obama did the right thing and said it had nothing to do with the election and reminded everyone that his mom had him when he was 18. It is hard to believe that Mc Cain new about it. Was he waiting for the right time to disclose? This is going to be distracting. The idea that somehow it is great news and she is brave to let her daughter have the baby is troubling. It is just a sad story all around but if your not a conservative and you you do not personalize it... it is kind of funny. I do not know anything about “trooper-gate” but where does Mc Cain find all these good looking, energetic young female supporters?