I thought I would try this out on you all before kicking this as far upstairs as people are willing to listen. To get to the meat of what I hope will happen, there are a few things that must be accepted.
For the people who are roughly my age, we remember how we felt as Americans at the end of the Seventies and the “malaise” that had settled over most of us. At the time, we were facing inflation above 14 percent, unemployment more than 10 percent in most states and as much as 15 percent in some areas. Interest rates on mortgages got as high as 21 percent for a brief time but were always up in the high teens (imagine people complaining about 7 percent mortgage rates these days). In addition, Iranian student revolutionaries held 66 Americans captive, 52 of them for 444 days. In effect, this held America captive and made us all feel powerless, especially so after a botched attempt to rescue them failed miserably. Of course the crisis in the oil rich region caused gas prices to rise dramatically and shortages to occur.
All of the negativity that seemed to swallow us whole during that time was within five or six years of the U.S. military retreating in defeat from Vietnam and from the embarrassment of a president and vice president resigning in disgrace. For you younger folks, I think you had to live during that time to understand how small we felt as Americans. Perhaps only during the Depression 50 years earlier did America suffer from such collective anxiety.
The rough news to this story is that I think we are headed down the same path as we were 30 years ago. America is deep in the middle of a downward spiral with no real expectation of pulling out before we crash. We have no faith in our political leadership, we’re mired in a war with no real way to declare a victory, our dollar has become a joke with no corresponding benefit because our country produces very little worth selling to the world, having shipped that work out to the Developing World. We’ve had two bubbles burst due to avarice and the expectation that the stock market and housing market are required to rise at 20 percent per year, we’re viewed by many others around the world as, let’s face it, losers, and with the rise of Russia, Europe and China, we’re looking less like the world’s only superpower and more like a paper tiger. Again, malaise has settled in and nobody seems to have a prescription.
When Reagan was elected in 1980 he did very little from a policy perspective to change things. All he really did was make Americans walk a little taller and convince people that we are a great nation with great personal strengths and we needed to get out there and get the economy going again. I remember him telling the nation during one of his press conferences to go out and buy that washing machine and new car because there was no reason not to. And people did and the economy grew at the fastest and longest pace in U.S. history. It didn’t take Congress to enact new laws – although the tax cuts didn’t hurt – or any great change to the fundamental way our economy was structured. It took a grandfatherly man to tell us things were OK and for us to believe him.
This brings me to my grand idea, which is really not a grand idea at all, just an opportunity for nationwide redemption and something positive for us as Americans to be judged. The sad part is, we have been wearing the Ruby Slippers to accomplish this goal for years, but we’ve been programmed by many to believe it to be impossible.
While Reagan improved the American psyche, he ratcheted up the rhetoric against our enemies both real and imagined. Russia, or the Evil Empire as he noted, took most of the brunt, but there was plenty left for others who were considered our mortal enemies. In the end, the Russian Knight had been dead for years and was just waiting for the coroner’s report on the time of death. We did a little to help out, but mostly we kicked them while they were down.
In 2000, in the middle of the Russian economic meltdown, I attended a World Economic Forum summit which generally focused on what a mess Russia was. I sat next to a man I considered a friend for a number of years who happened to be the leader of the Duma at the time. The Russians were hit hard by every speaker and virtually blamed for all the ills of the world. I asked my friend how he could stand by silently while his country was trashed so thoroughly. He told me his country deserved the criticism but added they were learning from their mistakes and would be well again soon. He also warned that the tide will turn and America will face the same condemnation from the rest of the world. All of his predictions have come true as Russia is indeed well and we are facing worldwide scorn for our economic and foreign policy transgression.
All of this long-winded blather is to say we need to change our ways and reach out to others to become relevant again and regain our prestige. And the benefit to this relevance will send a message to Americans and the rest of the world that we are not bad people and we still matter.
President Bush is about as lame as any lame duck president has ever been. He has no hope of passing any sponsored legislation and is left merely as a caretaker for a war he started but will not be able to finish. Nobody even thinks about him much anymore unless it’s as a punchline for a joke. The only power he has as president that can help America, and not coincidentally his own image, is to reshape foreign policy and our place in the world. While he shows no sign of making any positive changes, the good news is the changes I want to recommend would be playing from his strong suit.
The President’s current Secretary of State and former National Security Advisor, Condi Rice, is an original Russophile. She was a Fellow at the Hoover Institute on Russian affairs and was a key advisor to Bush 41 on the delicate issue of how to deal with a collapsing adversary with thousands of nuclear weapons. She’s been forced into on-the-job training to learn the ways of the Muslim world, something that hasn’t come easy for her. So why not go back to what she knows and go to work with the Russians and solve problems that can actually be solved? It also wouldn’t hurt to change the public debate away from war in Iraq and escalating rhetoric of future wars.
We haven’t had a real summit with real goals with the Russians since 1991. This is puzzling because we still have not reached an agreement on short range nuclear missiles and the thorny issue of a missile shield, especially one in Eastern Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin is on record suggesting an end to the missiles – the only real potential mass destructive weapon that could get in the wrong hands – but is understandably bothered by a missile shield in Eastern Europe, especially when the reason given is to protect the Poles, et al, from an attack from a rogue nation like Iran. That doesn’t pass anyone’s smell test.
Putin, to his own detriment, has been using his short term energy supply to bully his neighbors, sells military hardware to Iran and North Korea and other undependable states that could turn them on his country some day. Like Bush, Putin needs to leave a better legacy, in his case a legacy other than presiding over an economy fueled by petrol-dollars, and his time to do so is running out as he is forced to leave office next April. The good news is he has amassed such power that the ability to make changes rest solely in his hands.
While Bush needs Congress to ratify any treaty he makes, changing the dialogue will throw off his adversaries, and who would want to oppose a reduction in the nuclear threat, especially in an election year?
So let’s get together and make a deal on nukes. While we’re at it, let’s work on dealing with our shared threat posed by radical Islam, the looming problem in Pakistan, poverty in Africa and the flailing dollar. In the end, success will make both our countries feel better about ourselves and put us back in the same position we have occupied for 70 years as the only two superpowers. Together we can do more than we can do alone and working with each other will push back the European smugness and China’s petulance.
Bush has been surrounded by people who are used to a Cold War approach and most of official Washington is negative on Putin. The Russians are nervous about a uni-polar, one superpower world and are still understandably a bit prickly over our actions in Ukraine and NATO’s advancement to their borders. Having said this, Russia has a need to be reinstated as a legitimate superpower and Americans need to believe we are still capable of doing good in the world. It won’t take much to begin this process, just the desire for the two leaders to do what’s right and good for each of them. Hopefully they will see the value for what’s in it for themselves and be satisfied that it will have the ancillary benefit of helping those they lead walk with a little lighter step. At least one can hope, can we?
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
All Is Well
When we last left our heroes, we were just arriving in San Diego. Some of us were full of angst and feeling a bit sorry for ourselves for having to leave friends and memories behind in Sacramento. OK, it was mostly me, but there’s no need to dwell on those character defects.
The family seems to be settling in fine: The Boy found a very nice condo in Encinitas and shares it with The Ber;
Emily moved into our humble condo and immediately took over the remote control; and Mrs. Laz and I, after an exhaustive search, found a home worth buying (see photo) and we’re waiting for escrow to close the end of the month.
In the end, I guess we managed our transition down here with aplomb and even a bit of grace – words not usually associated with the greater Lazlo family.
The Big Deal that was mentioned in earlier posts did come through and kept most of us occupied to the point we had little sleep and little time to think of much else but the work at hand. Consequently I have been a non-existent friend to a few people who reached out and were ignored by me. Apologies go to Miss E, who made several valiant attempts to visit and converse only to be treated rudely by me; to Susan, who never reads this Blog anyway; and the Big Wopper, who probably needed me to be a better friend these past weeks.
One person who got snagged up by the Big Deal was Sladed, who started working with me and probably now wonders why I have been doing what I have been doing for lo these many years. Trust me, he saw things at their worse and, in a business that’s generally not a pretty sight, he saw it at its ugliest. Working together leaves less time for joint blogging and swimming, but we’ll figure out how to make time for each of these important parts of our lives. Also we have a lot of catching up on Guitar Hero.
So, finally a post filled with a reasonable amount of happiness and contentment; something we haven’t seen in these parts for a while. Maybe it’s in the air?
The family seems to be settling in fine: The Boy found a very nice condo in Encinitas and shares it with The Ber;
Emily moved into our humble condo and immediately took over the remote control; and Mrs. Laz and I, after an exhaustive search, found a home worth buying (see photo) and we’re waiting for escrow to close the end of the month. In the end, I guess we managed our transition down here with aplomb and even a bit of grace – words not usually associated with the greater Lazlo family.
The Big Deal that was mentioned in earlier posts did come through and kept most of us occupied to the point we had little sleep and little time to think of much else but the work at hand. Consequently I have been a non-existent friend to a few people who reached out and were ignored by me. Apologies go to Miss E, who made several valiant attempts to visit and converse only to be treated rudely by me; to Susan, who never reads this Blog anyway; and the Big Wopper, who probably needed me to be a better friend these past weeks.
One person who got snagged up by the Big Deal was Sladed, who started working with me and probably now wonders why I have been doing what I have been doing for lo these many years. Trust me, he saw things at their worse and, in a business that’s generally not a pretty sight, he saw it at its ugliest. Working together leaves less time for joint blogging and swimming, but we’ll figure out how to make time for each of these important parts of our lives. Also we have a lot of catching up on Guitar Hero.
So, finally a post filled with a reasonable amount of happiness and contentment; something we haven’t seen in these parts for a while. Maybe it’s in the air?
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Of Selling Homes and Family Pets
Our house is a very, very, very fine house. With two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard." -- CSNY
Well, I’m a San Diegan now despite living in temporary quarters. My arrival has carried with it more of a permanence as we close on our estates in Virginia next week and we are now in that delightfully nerve-racking escrow period on our home in Sacramento. I think these are both good things.
The sale of the home in Sacramento carries with it some amusement. We got an offer, we countered, she accepted. That was simple and happened over a 24-hour period. Seems as though she wanted the house and didn’t want to dicker like the dickering that was done to us in Virginia. However, our buyer in Sacramento had four items she wanted included in the purchase price: our spa, our refrigerator, our barbeque and the family cat. Yes, the cat.
Now some truth: the cat was not loved in our family, despite being with us for 10 years. It was rescued as a malnourished kitten by a soft-hearted and, as it turns out, soft-headed Mrs. Laz, and was appropriately named at the time, Bones. Over the years Bones developed decidedly unfriendly characteristics. She swipes at you as you walk by, loves to stare down small dogs and let them taste “the claw” when she’s feeling particularly feisty. If you decide you want to get near her and scratch her on the chin, you have about 30 seconds before she bites or claws you. She also enjoyed torturing mice, birds and lizards and bringing their dying and mauled bodies into our house just in case we wanted to watch the final fatal blows.
So when our counter offer was returned, our realtor wrote “refrigerator, spa, barbeque and cat convey with no warranties and no value.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. I hope our buyer loves our house and the cat. The house is certainly worth loving; can’t say the same for the cat. Bye Bones!
Well, I’m a San Diegan now despite living in temporary quarters. My arrival has carried with it more of a permanence as we close on our estates in Virginia next week and we are now in that delightfully nerve-racking escrow period on our home in Sacramento. I think these are both good things.
The sale of the home in Sacramento carries with it some amusement. We got an offer, we countered, she accepted. That was simple and happened over a 24-hour period. Seems as though she wanted the house and didn’t want to dicker like the dickering that was done to us in Virginia. However, our buyer in Sacramento had four items she wanted included in the purchase price: our spa, our refrigerator, our barbeque and the family cat. Yes, the cat.
Now some truth: the cat was not loved in our family, despite being with us for 10 years. It was rescued as a malnourished kitten by a soft-hearted and, as it turns out, soft-headed Mrs. Laz, and was appropriately named at the time, Bones. Over the years Bones developed decidedly unfriendly characteristics. She swipes at you as you walk by, loves to stare down small dogs and let them taste “the claw” when she’s feeling particularly feisty. If you decide you want to get near her and scratch her on the chin, you have about 30 seconds before she bites or claws you. She also enjoyed torturing mice, birds and lizards and bringing their dying and mauled bodies into our house just in case we wanted to watch the final fatal blows.
So when our counter offer was returned, our realtor wrote “refrigerator, spa, barbeque and cat convey with no warranties and no value.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. I hope our buyer loves our house and the cat. The house is certainly worth loving; can’t say the same for the cat. Bye Bones!
Thursday, August 23, 2007
All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers
A wiser philosopher than me (Georg Hegel, I think, although if I could remember this kind of detail I would have made it out of college with a piece of paper other than a reminder not to return for the next semester) once observed, “the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.” I think this means we often miss the signs that important things are going to happen after it’s already too late to do anything about them. I think I may have missed my owl taking off.
There has been a growing realization that I am the first to know about something and the last to act on it. While I wasn’t the original instigator – that role belongs to the Boy – I think I was the first one to figure out the snowbell was heading downhill and we were meeting up with it in San Diego.
To be clear, we’re not leaving Sacramento because it is an absolutely awful place to live; we’d lived in worse places. But San Diego is viewed as a lifestyle change; the ability to live in what most call near-perfect weather, well equipped for 365 days of outside activity, and to live near my two best friends, in no particular order, Mr. Sladed and Italiphil.
Mrs. Laz has been there for the better part of the past two months and the Boy just arrived with Ber in the past two weeks. The Girl, who has decided to take a dip in this familial experiment as the Control Group, is not far behind, perhaps three or four weeks away. It seems everything is in place for me to make my move and join my family in what feels like nothing short of Manifest Destiny. Instead I am stuck with one foot out the door and the other foot with my remaining heel clearly dug in and I am hoping someone can tell me why this is the case.
I can offer up a few theories:
1. I have been someplace other than what I call home for the past several weeks and the thought of packing up a car in the next 72 hours and driving 10 hours sounds exhausting. But I have to do it sometime and better sooner than later as I am beginning to forget what the Mrs. looks like (and the dogs, too).
2. While we were willing to get filleted in Virginia in selling all our land holdings there, we have no interest or ability in doing the same in Sacramento. Therefore we have a beautiful albatross draped around our necks and it doesn’t feel right to leave it unattended with nothing more than the silly hope that we will find a buyer who hasn’t read a newspaper in the last six months and still believes property values in California are at an all-time high. Since this person would be in the same basket as Santa Claus, unicorns and real estate agents that don’t lie and cheat, I don’t think I will hold my breath.
While I am concerned about our real estate curse, we can likely rent our home and hope for a later rebound in the market. Of course this carries the risk of a still larger “correction” and the fact that I will have to pack up an entire house full of furniture and memories and stick it on a moving van that will have to circle around San Diego until we can afford to buy a house there. More exhaustion but I may have a few tricks up my sleeve on this front and will discuss them with Mrs. Laz assuming we are in the same city for more than a few hours.
3. I happen to love sports and, frankly, I may need a larger pull than the Chargers and Padres to tickle my sports fancy. Trevor Hoffman can’t save a game these days and the Pads are languishing. As of this writing, they are not headed for the playoffs unless the bullpen remembers how to pitch again. The Chargers looked great last year until a playoff meltdown was extended into a front office meltdown. This led to the hiring of a gypsy NFL coach with a spotty record who will implement a new system in a situation that screams, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Also, I prefer the NBA to these other minor sports and despite the Kings turning into a League joke with its own front office meltdown, I still get more excited about watching and following the NBA than any other sport short of nude volleyball. Let’s see how the home teams in San Diego perform before passing final judgment, but for now, they’re suspect.
4. Another thought is that I have a practice of making friends with nearly every acquaintance. My friends don’t become best friends – that job was already taken by, in no particular order, Italiphil and Sladed – but I have come to enjoy their company just the same. I worry about what becomes of this collection of misfits who reciprocate their friendship, or at least ask to borrow money. Am I destined to burn through friendships no matter how close a relationship I have with them? Or will settling in one place allow me to build better and longer-lasting friendships and push the other two “best friend” knuckleheads to start giving me a little more respect lest I drop their best-friend status in favor of an outsider?
As mentioned in a previous post I have been saying my good-byes. I have learned that I am not particularly good at it as I don’t like the lonely feeling that I will never see someone again. While no plans exist to never again see any friends we made up in Sacramento, I know there is a possibility our paths may never have the chance to cross. Distance in miles and time are not the best tonic in maintaining friendships as I have found many times in my life. I know each member of our family has to go through this, including Mrs. Laz saying fare-thee-well to Judy, her best friend and soul mate, but I think it affects me more, or perhaps I just complain the loudest about it. I just know I don’t find any joy in this part of moving to a new city. And I also know I have moved away from parents, friends and relatives before and survived, this time it just hits me a little later in life when the twilight for making friends may be slipping away.
Certainly there are other reasons out there to examine, but perhaps my list is more comprehensive than I at first thought. I guess, in the end, I am just dealing with a lot of crap and working through it at a time my mind and body needs to be elsewhere. Or maybe I can bring in another great thinker, Emerson this time, (and of this I am certain and I also know that his partners, Lake and Palmer, were pretty good too). He once wrote that “events are in the saddle and ride mankind.” Maybe he was warning us that it is useless to fight things we can do nothing about, like the fact that I am just listening to Janis Joplin and I continue to be amazed how awful her band the Holding Company truly was. I want to listen to Janis’ raspy voice but her band can’t keep a beat. “Man,” as she would say.
In the end I know I’ll do what Jackson advises. I will go and pack my sorrow, knowing the trashman comes tomorrow, leave it at the curb, and just roll away. Maybe I’ll even do that on that elusive windy day.
There has been a growing realization that I am the first to know about something and the last to act on it. While I wasn’t the original instigator – that role belongs to the Boy – I think I was the first one to figure out the snowbell was heading downhill and we were meeting up with it in San Diego.
To be clear, we’re not leaving Sacramento because it is an absolutely awful place to live; we’d lived in worse places. But San Diego is viewed as a lifestyle change; the ability to live in what most call near-perfect weather, well equipped for 365 days of outside activity, and to live near my two best friends, in no particular order, Mr. Sladed and Italiphil.
Mrs. Laz has been there for the better part of the past two months and the Boy just arrived with Ber in the past two weeks. The Girl, who has decided to take a dip in this familial experiment as the Control Group, is not far behind, perhaps three or four weeks away. It seems everything is in place for me to make my move and join my family in what feels like nothing short of Manifest Destiny. Instead I am stuck with one foot out the door and the other foot with my remaining heel clearly dug in and I am hoping someone can tell me why this is the case.
I can offer up a few theories:
1. I have been someplace other than what I call home for the past several weeks and the thought of packing up a car in the next 72 hours and driving 10 hours sounds exhausting. But I have to do it sometime and better sooner than later as I am beginning to forget what the Mrs. looks like (and the dogs, too).
2. While we were willing to get filleted in Virginia in selling all our land holdings there, we have no interest or ability in doing the same in Sacramento. Therefore we have a beautiful albatross draped around our necks and it doesn’t feel right to leave it unattended with nothing more than the silly hope that we will find a buyer who hasn’t read a newspaper in the last six months and still believes property values in California are at an all-time high. Since this person would be in the same basket as Santa Claus, unicorns and real estate agents that don’t lie and cheat, I don’t think I will hold my breath.
While I am concerned about our real estate curse, we can likely rent our home and hope for a later rebound in the market. Of course this carries the risk of a still larger “correction” and the fact that I will have to pack up an entire house full of furniture and memories and stick it on a moving van that will have to circle around San Diego until we can afford to buy a house there. More exhaustion but I may have a few tricks up my sleeve on this front and will discuss them with Mrs. Laz assuming we are in the same city for more than a few hours.
3. I happen to love sports and, frankly, I may need a larger pull than the Chargers and Padres to tickle my sports fancy. Trevor Hoffman can’t save a game these days and the Pads are languishing. As of this writing, they are not headed for the playoffs unless the bullpen remembers how to pitch again. The Chargers looked great last year until a playoff meltdown was extended into a front office meltdown. This led to the hiring of a gypsy NFL coach with a spotty record who will implement a new system in a situation that screams, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Also, I prefer the NBA to these other minor sports and despite the Kings turning into a League joke with its own front office meltdown, I still get more excited about watching and following the NBA than any other sport short of nude volleyball. Let’s see how the home teams in San Diego perform before passing final judgment, but for now, they’re suspect.
4. Another thought is that I have a practice of making friends with nearly every acquaintance. My friends don’t become best friends – that job was already taken by, in no particular order, Italiphil and Sladed – but I have come to enjoy their company just the same. I worry about what becomes of this collection of misfits who reciprocate their friendship, or at least ask to borrow money. Am I destined to burn through friendships no matter how close a relationship I have with them? Or will settling in one place allow me to build better and longer-lasting friendships and push the other two “best friend” knuckleheads to start giving me a little more respect lest I drop their best-friend status in favor of an outsider?
As mentioned in a previous post I have been saying my good-byes. I have learned that I am not particularly good at it as I don’t like the lonely feeling that I will never see someone again. While no plans exist to never again see any friends we made up in Sacramento, I know there is a possibility our paths may never have the chance to cross. Distance in miles and time are not the best tonic in maintaining friendships as I have found many times in my life. I know each member of our family has to go through this, including Mrs. Laz saying fare-thee-well to Judy, her best friend and soul mate, but I think it affects me more, or perhaps I just complain the loudest about it. I just know I don’t find any joy in this part of moving to a new city. And I also know I have moved away from parents, friends and relatives before and survived, this time it just hits me a little later in life when the twilight for making friends may be slipping away.
Certainly there are other reasons out there to examine, but perhaps my list is more comprehensive than I at first thought. I guess, in the end, I am just dealing with a lot of crap and working through it at a time my mind and body needs to be elsewhere. Or maybe I can bring in another great thinker, Emerson this time, (and of this I am certain and I also know that his partners, Lake and Palmer, were pretty good too). He once wrote that “events are in the saddle and ride mankind.” Maybe he was warning us that it is useless to fight things we can do nothing about, like the fact that I am just listening to Janis Joplin and I continue to be amazed how awful her band the Holding Company truly was. I want to listen to Janis’ raspy voice but her band can’t keep a beat. “Man,” as she would say.
In the end I know I’ll do what Jackson advises. I will go and pack my sorrow, knowing the trashman comes tomorrow, leave it at the curb, and just roll away. Maybe I’ll even do that on that elusive windy day.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
The Perils Of A Roller Coaster Life
Funny how plans can change so suddenly and have such a ubiquitous effect on so many parts of life, and on so many lives. Those who are close to me know I was working on a “big deal.” It’s not unusual for me to be working on a big deal as my business life is nothing more than chasing one big deal after another. Like most big deals, they tend to be elusive and you lose far more than you get. Well, it looks like the latest big deal isn’t going to happen, although that could change again before I finish this post, such has been the roller coaster ride on this one.
It’s not the fact that this latest big deal hasn’t come trough that bothers me, it’s the recent string of perhaps dozens of big deals that haven’t come through that is shaking my confidence. I’ve been on a roll of bad luck, broken promises and bad choices of people I have trusted. It makes me want to take stock of the whole “big deal” way of doing business and look for a simpler way to earn a living. But, of course, that’s not really my personality.
I am a person of faith who believes things happen for a reason and that we are to learn lessons from each disappointment and success. But I am sort of stuck at the moment trying to understand what the two-year streak of “bad luck” is all about. Could it be as simple as just learning how to endure? In my most calm moments, I can see it that way or see it as a way to toughen me up or even just be smarter about the people I deal with. In my more maudlin times, I question my hopes and dreams and if they are meant for others.
Don’t get me totally wrong, I have enjoyed a successful business life by most standards and I couldn’t have wished for or expected a more complete family life. I am more bothered by the fact that I have reached a point in my business where success should be more frequent and reliable and where I should be making better choices in my side ventures.
Last year, in one of my never-ending searches to better my financial position, I started a business with a very close friend. The friend turned out to be not as close as I would have imagined, lied a great deal, chased his own hugely unrealistic dreams and cost me a bundle of money and our friendship. What’s the lesson in this one; not to trust even your closest friends? Not to work with friends? I will likely never know the answer to that. I have made more mistakes in trusting others lately, but this one is a very deep and profound disappointment that makes me question things on many different levels and I have not yet put it in a forum like this except in an abstract way. Now, I suppose, it needs to be said.
It is difficult to convey the ripple effect in these up and down moments (and as of this paragraph, my “big deal” is back on again) and what it means to my family life and current transitory lifestyle. For the moment I am the proverbial man without a country – or a home or home life at least. I have one foot stuck in the mud in Sacramento, I have my wife and my love in San Diego and my dreams for a more complete professional life in faraway places. I had my own plans (kept largely to myself) on a series of moves, but they were dependent on the most recent “big deal.” Without it, I am short a plan.
My mother almost marveled at my ability to cope with diversity. Perhaps because she said it so often I tried all that much harder to live up to her expectation. It could be, however, that I am beginning to reach my limit on things that require me to cope. At my age, I should be coasting more and having to cope less. Finding comfort and peace in my turbulent head seems to be the answer, getting there looks like the challenge.
It’s not the fact that this latest big deal hasn’t come trough that bothers me, it’s the recent string of perhaps dozens of big deals that haven’t come through that is shaking my confidence. I’ve been on a roll of bad luck, broken promises and bad choices of people I have trusted. It makes me want to take stock of the whole “big deal” way of doing business and look for a simpler way to earn a living. But, of course, that’s not really my personality.
I am a person of faith who believes things happen for a reason and that we are to learn lessons from each disappointment and success. But I am sort of stuck at the moment trying to understand what the two-year streak of “bad luck” is all about. Could it be as simple as just learning how to endure? In my most calm moments, I can see it that way or see it as a way to toughen me up or even just be smarter about the people I deal with. In my more maudlin times, I question my hopes and dreams and if they are meant for others.
Don’t get me totally wrong, I have enjoyed a successful business life by most standards and I couldn’t have wished for or expected a more complete family life. I am more bothered by the fact that I have reached a point in my business where success should be more frequent and reliable and where I should be making better choices in my side ventures.
Last year, in one of my never-ending searches to better my financial position, I started a business with a very close friend. The friend turned out to be not as close as I would have imagined, lied a great deal, chased his own hugely unrealistic dreams and cost me a bundle of money and our friendship. What’s the lesson in this one; not to trust even your closest friends? Not to work with friends? I will likely never know the answer to that. I have made more mistakes in trusting others lately, but this one is a very deep and profound disappointment that makes me question things on many different levels and I have not yet put it in a forum like this except in an abstract way. Now, I suppose, it needs to be said.
It is difficult to convey the ripple effect in these up and down moments (and as of this paragraph, my “big deal” is back on again) and what it means to my family life and current transitory lifestyle. For the moment I am the proverbial man without a country – or a home or home life at least. I have one foot stuck in the mud in Sacramento, I have my wife and my love in San Diego and my dreams for a more complete professional life in faraway places. I had my own plans (kept largely to myself) on a series of moves, but they were dependent on the most recent “big deal.” Without it, I am short a plan.
My mother almost marveled at my ability to cope with diversity. Perhaps because she said it so often I tried all that much harder to live up to her expectation. It could be, however, that I am beginning to reach my limit on things that require me to cope. At my age, I should be coasting more and having to cope less. Finding comfort and peace in my turbulent head seems to be the answer, getting there looks like the challenge.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Raped By Realtors
There is an old lawyer joke that is in need of update. It used to go something like, “what do you call one million lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.” I think the time has come to amend this slightly to include Realtors.
We just got so utterly squeezed by the buyer’s criminal agent and our part-time real estate agent on the sale of our estates in Virginia, that one wonders if any laws were broken. Just being told every day that “it’s a buyer’s market” and doing to us what Clinton had been doing to Monica is no way to earn a 6% sales commission. At least that’s my opinion. In fact, you’d have to have little pride in your industry to look someone straight in the face and say your industry deserves this commission – a supposedly negotiable percentage.
On second thought, there may be laws being broken by the agents. Take a look at the current housing market. We hear at least one story every day that the market is slowing and values are plummeting. Who says so? Realtors, of course. And what do Realtors have to benefit by a market in full plunge? Faster sales. So these so-called experts tell us what price to market our house and then let offers come in 20 percent below asking price and urge us to take it. I think there is collusion going on and should be investigated. It's tough being a commissioned sales agent, but have some respect and collectively advise your sellers to hold the line, not drop the price through the basement.
This is not just the comments of someone who ended up on a bad end of transaction, but someone who is seriously challenging whether or not agents are purposely driving down the price of housing to ensure more and faster real estate sales. Yes, I know there are people who made bad investments and got teased with teaser interest rates who unfortunately need to sell. But that is just more of the ginned-up sales cycle that real estate agents urged us to buy into. “Interest rates are the lowest in 40 years,” one ad would say, implying that if you don’t buy now and buy often, you’re a moron. And, naturally, let a Realtor navigate the tricky waters of buying something that ended up at the top of the market.
Whatever happened to the old investment advice of buying low and selling high? And whatever happened to real estate agents advising their buyers that they were purchasing at the top of the market? I suspect they were too busy trying to catch a quick wave that they didn’t pay attention to the sales figures.
Using the Virginia Estates as an example of the chicanery in the industry, we agreed upon a list price that was below our tax assessment. We were told up front that it was a good price. When we entered the market there were two other similar homes for sale and their asking price was about the same as ours. Within days of us entering the market, each dropped their price $30,000, no doubt urged by their agent to do so to make their properties more attractive. I sneered at their willingness to drop so readily, but after several months of no activity, we lowered our price to match them. Once again, within days, they dropped their prices another $20,000, again no doubt at the urging of their “it’s a soft-headed-market” real state agents.
So we have a running of the bears in the real estate market fueled by the chutzpah of real estate agents and the frayed nerves of the people to whom they provide counsel. In unison, it seems, we all became nervous that the value of our homes was plummeting and it would be years when the current value would return. Sell now or face worse choices, we were told.
When we finally got an illusive offer – from a young woman whose mother happened to be an agent – it was so depressing that we nearly rejected it without a counter-offer. Our part-time agents suggested a counter-offer that we normally would never consider. But we did and it barely budged them from their initial offer. To make a long story short, we did reach an agreement, but there is no joy in the end result. Sadly, when we go to buy in San Diego, we will find the meanest, nastiest buyer’s agent possible and do to others what has been done to us. Of course we will probably be told by our agent that it is now a seller’s market. Seems to be our dumb luck, anyway.
We just got so utterly squeezed by the buyer’s criminal agent and our part-time real estate agent on the sale of our estates in Virginia, that one wonders if any laws were broken. Just being told every day that “it’s a buyer’s market” and doing to us what Clinton had been doing to Monica is no way to earn a 6% sales commission. At least that’s my opinion. In fact, you’d have to have little pride in your industry to look someone straight in the face and say your industry deserves this commission – a supposedly negotiable percentage.
On second thought, there may be laws being broken by the agents. Take a look at the current housing market. We hear at least one story every day that the market is slowing and values are plummeting. Who says so? Realtors, of course. And what do Realtors have to benefit by a market in full plunge? Faster sales. So these so-called experts tell us what price to market our house and then let offers come in 20 percent below asking price and urge us to take it. I think there is collusion going on and should be investigated. It's tough being a commissioned sales agent, but have some respect and collectively advise your sellers to hold the line, not drop the price through the basement.
This is not just the comments of someone who ended up on a bad end of transaction, but someone who is seriously challenging whether or not agents are purposely driving down the price of housing to ensure more and faster real estate sales. Yes, I know there are people who made bad investments and got teased with teaser interest rates who unfortunately need to sell. But that is just more of the ginned-up sales cycle that real estate agents urged us to buy into. “Interest rates are the lowest in 40 years,” one ad would say, implying that if you don’t buy now and buy often, you’re a moron. And, naturally, let a Realtor navigate the tricky waters of buying something that ended up at the top of the market.
Whatever happened to the old investment advice of buying low and selling high? And whatever happened to real estate agents advising their buyers that they were purchasing at the top of the market? I suspect they were too busy trying to catch a quick wave that they didn’t pay attention to the sales figures.
Using the Virginia Estates as an example of the chicanery in the industry, we agreed upon a list price that was below our tax assessment. We were told up front that it was a good price. When we entered the market there were two other similar homes for sale and their asking price was about the same as ours. Within days of us entering the market, each dropped their price $30,000, no doubt urged by their agent to do so to make their properties more attractive. I sneered at their willingness to drop so readily, but after several months of no activity, we lowered our price to match them. Once again, within days, they dropped their prices another $20,000, again no doubt at the urging of their “it’s a soft-headed-market” real state agents.
So we have a running of the bears in the real estate market fueled by the chutzpah of real estate agents and the frayed nerves of the people to whom they provide counsel. In unison, it seems, we all became nervous that the value of our homes was plummeting and it would be years when the current value would return. Sell now or face worse choices, we were told.
When we finally got an illusive offer – from a young woman whose mother happened to be an agent – it was so depressing that we nearly rejected it without a counter-offer. Our part-time agents suggested a counter-offer that we normally would never consider. But we did and it barely budged them from their initial offer. To make a long story short, we did reach an agreement, but there is no joy in the end result. Sadly, when we go to buy in San Diego, we will find the meanest, nastiest buyer’s agent possible and do to others what has been done to us. Of course we will probably be told by our agent that it is now a seller’s market. Seems to be our dumb luck, anyway.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
100 Choices
Over the years I have had a number of grandiose ideas for novels. They usually lack a beginning, a middle or an end or, sometimes, all three. But they are ideas nonetheless, and some of them aren’t so bad.
A while back I had at least a good beginning with a novel about an amalgam of people I have known who make poor choices in life. The book was to be titled “100 Choices.”
Essentially the theory of the novel is that we are all given approximately 100 important choices to make in our lives and the number of times we make reasonably good choices will dictate the success of our lives. Assuming life to work along the lines of the Bell Curve, one could expect a fairly fulfilling life by making 50 essentially good choices. On one end, Bill Gates may have made 95 out of 100 correctly – although who knows if his billions make him happy – and perhaps Jeffrey Dahmer (and his parents) made fewer than 10 good choices during his brutal life.
This theory also requires a variant because it is important when the choices are made and how significant they may be. Melinda Gates made a good choice in who she married but this obviously differs from person to person. Michael Vick appeared to have made many good choices during his life, but he is about to nullify those good choices with his recent choice to kill and maim dogs.
While the above assumptions must be taken into account, my theory is aimed more for the average person being asked to make the average choices such as a decision to finish high school, to go to college, who to chose to be your friends, the job you choose, the mate you choose, where you live, buying real estate or not buying real estate, making a choice to drink to excess or use illegal drugs, how to spend your money, investments made, vacations taken, job changes, spousal changes, choices at moments when your integrity is on the line, deciding to work in politics instead of following your dreams, etc. I am sure there are dozens more if I am making the decision to keep thinking about this rather than send out an invoice and actually get a check faster (not sure how important that decision is).
There are also decisions that are very personal that stem from other decisions that you make. For example, I have made decisions in one or more of my businesses that have become important in other areas of my life – some good, some bad. And, of course, we always make decisions in our relationships and how we tend to them and this can amount to a good or a bad decision.
In my bad decision to not write my unwritten novel, my protagonist was going to be a person who basically was on a 0 for 100 run. Yes, the protagonist would have been based on people I know and, yes, they are still pitching a shutout. The only question remaining is, will they ever make a good choice and turn around their lives? The odds appear to be against it.
A while back I had at least a good beginning with a novel about an amalgam of people I have known who make poor choices in life. The book was to be titled “100 Choices.”
Essentially the theory of the novel is that we are all given approximately 100 important choices to make in our lives and the number of times we make reasonably good choices will dictate the success of our lives. Assuming life to work along the lines of the Bell Curve, one could expect a fairly fulfilling life by making 50 essentially good choices. On one end, Bill Gates may have made 95 out of 100 correctly – although who knows if his billions make him happy – and perhaps Jeffrey Dahmer (and his parents) made fewer than 10 good choices during his brutal life.
This theory also requires a variant because it is important when the choices are made and how significant they may be. Melinda Gates made a good choice in who she married but this obviously differs from person to person. Michael Vick appeared to have made many good choices during his life, but he is about to nullify those good choices with his recent choice to kill and maim dogs.
While the above assumptions must be taken into account, my theory is aimed more for the average person being asked to make the average choices such as a decision to finish high school, to go to college, who to chose to be your friends, the job you choose, the mate you choose, where you live, buying real estate or not buying real estate, making a choice to drink to excess or use illegal drugs, how to spend your money, investments made, vacations taken, job changes, spousal changes, choices at moments when your integrity is on the line, deciding to work in politics instead of following your dreams, etc. I am sure there are dozens more if I am making the decision to keep thinking about this rather than send out an invoice and actually get a check faster (not sure how important that decision is).
There are also decisions that are very personal that stem from other decisions that you make. For example, I have made decisions in one or more of my businesses that have become important in other areas of my life – some good, some bad. And, of course, we always make decisions in our relationships and how we tend to them and this can amount to a good or a bad decision.
In my bad decision to not write my unwritten novel, my protagonist was going to be a person who basically was on a 0 for 100 run. Yes, the protagonist would have been based on people I know and, yes, they are still pitching a shutout. The only question remaining is, will they ever make a good choice and turn around their lives? The odds appear to be against it.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Going Home
Could be that I am slow on the uptake, but it is just occurring to me that the Mrs. and I are moving to San Diego. The early signal that I missed is Mrs. Laz has been offered and accepted a job in San Diego and began working there about a month ago. This, coupled with the fact that we are actively looking for a house, are strong indicators that a move is in the works.
I don’t know why this moving business is sneaking up on me since it was first put out as a point of discussion a year ago. But it seemed to go from chin-scratching theory to gaining its own momentum while I wasn’t paying attention.
It’s actually an open secret that nobody in my family likes Sacramento so it should not be that big of a surprise that we have all sought to move elsewhere. I don’t want to say too much that would appear negative about Sacramento because I have plenty of friends who will continue to live here and what I may say will only accentuate the notion that I am a snob.
One thing that can be said that nobody can quarrel with is that Sacramento is hot. When it is 108 degrees, folks around here like to mention that it is a “dry heat.” Well, Hell may be a dry heat too, but it doesn’t mean it’s comfortable. Give me a good ol’ fashioned “night and morning low clouds” situation in San Diego any day of the week over dry heat.
Sacramento has an eclectic population; an odd mixture of farmers, state workers and Bay Area transplants. This makes driving between tomato trucks, 1972 Fords and the occasional Hummer a very interesting and dangerous activity. Fortunately for many there is plenty of room to park their cars in their front lawns – I guess because they can’t navigate past the collection of washing machines and rusted-out refrigerators to get in their garage (assuming the garage has not be converted to a family room).
OK, I got personal, but I guess I am trying to reassure myself that the brown grass in San Diego is greener. Or, better put, denigrating my relationship with Sacramento to ease the pain of separation.
I didn’t think of this until this morning, but I have lived here longer than any other place in my life, which is really quite strange because I have never thought of it as home. I have been here for nearly 20 years but still think of myself as being raised in Michigan (first 14 years) and going through my formative years in San Diego (the next 14 years). Absent a two-year sentence in Texas and two years of breathing hot air in Washington, DC, the rest of my life my home has been here in Sacramento.
The truth about any place you live is you choose to stay because of the people you have come to be friends with. That part is just sinking in as I have been gradually saying goodbye to friends and acquaintances the past several days.
Mind you this should not shock anyone, but I am overly-sentimental about people, places and things. I remember the last few days before moving from Michigan to California where every step I took on the sidewalk I cried a bit knowing I would never step on that section of sidewalk again. It wasn’t because I had so much affection for concrete that I cried; it was more because I didn’t give in to the deceit that my parents were peddling that we would be coming back to Michigan often and that we’d see our friends whenever we liked. It doesn’t work that way and it didn’t take long to learn that Thomas Wolfe was right about going home. When we leave, time leaves with us and we never quite know what we have lost until we take a trip back and realize the distance between us and our friends. People change in small, indecipherable ways that is difficult to notice when we’re together often. But when it’s been a few years, or even months, between visits, you notice the small changes even more.
While it should be easy to be going “home” again, I know there are people and parts of Sacramento I will miss. There is one person I will miss the most and we have done a pretty good job so far of pretending we’re not heading in separate directions. You see, unlike the Boy, the Girl has no interest in coming to San Diego. While she has no great love for the oven of Sacramento, she is working here and until she finds the job she is looking for in another city, she will be too far away for my tastes. I have said a few good-byes with a kiss or hearty handshake already, but saying goodbye to Em is an impossible thought at the moment. A kiss goodbye will never be enough as I can’t picture her not sitting in our family room hogging the remote control. But we will try to say goodbye with a kiss knowing that it may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.
I don’t know why this moving business is sneaking up on me since it was first put out as a point of discussion a year ago. But it seemed to go from chin-scratching theory to gaining its own momentum while I wasn’t paying attention.
It’s actually an open secret that nobody in my family likes Sacramento so it should not be that big of a surprise that we have all sought to move elsewhere. I don’t want to say too much that would appear negative about Sacramento because I have plenty of friends who will continue to live here and what I may say will only accentuate the notion that I am a snob.
One thing that can be said that nobody can quarrel with is that Sacramento is hot. When it is 108 degrees, folks around here like to mention that it is a “dry heat.” Well, Hell may be a dry heat too, but it doesn’t mean it’s comfortable. Give me a good ol’ fashioned “night and morning low clouds” situation in San Diego any day of the week over dry heat.
Sacramento has an eclectic population; an odd mixture of farmers, state workers and Bay Area transplants. This makes driving between tomato trucks, 1972 Fords and the occasional Hummer a very interesting and dangerous activity. Fortunately for many there is plenty of room to park their cars in their front lawns – I guess because they can’t navigate past the collection of washing machines and rusted-out refrigerators to get in their garage (assuming the garage has not be converted to a family room).
OK, I got personal, but I guess I am trying to reassure myself that the brown grass in San Diego is greener. Or, better put, denigrating my relationship with Sacramento to ease the pain of separation.
I didn’t think of this until this morning, but I have lived here longer than any other place in my life, which is really quite strange because I have never thought of it as home. I have been here for nearly 20 years but still think of myself as being raised in Michigan (first 14 years) and going through my formative years in San Diego (the next 14 years). Absent a two-year sentence in Texas and two years of breathing hot air in Washington, DC, the rest of my life my home has been here in Sacramento.
The truth about any place you live is you choose to stay because of the people you have come to be friends with. That part is just sinking in as I have been gradually saying goodbye to friends and acquaintances the past several days.
Mind you this should not shock anyone, but I am overly-sentimental about people, places and things. I remember the last few days before moving from Michigan to California where every step I took on the sidewalk I cried a bit knowing I would never step on that section of sidewalk again. It wasn’t because I had so much affection for concrete that I cried; it was more because I didn’t give in to the deceit that my parents were peddling that we would be coming back to Michigan often and that we’d see our friends whenever we liked. It doesn’t work that way and it didn’t take long to learn that Thomas Wolfe was right about going home. When we leave, time leaves with us and we never quite know what we have lost until we take a trip back and realize the distance between us and our friends. People change in small, indecipherable ways that is difficult to notice when we’re together often. But when it’s been a few years, or even months, between visits, you notice the small changes even more.
While it should be easy to be going “home” again, I know there are people and parts of Sacramento I will miss. There is one person I will miss the most and we have done a pretty good job so far of pretending we’re not heading in separate directions. You see, unlike the Boy, the Girl has no interest in coming to San Diego. While she has no great love for the oven of Sacramento, she is working here and until she finds the job she is looking for in another city, she will be too far away for my tastes. I have said a few good-byes with a kiss or hearty handshake already, but saying goodbye to Em is an impossible thought at the moment. A kiss goodbye will never be enough as I can’t picture her not sitting in our family room hogging the remote control. But we will try to say goodbye with a kiss knowing that it may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
We Need Another Hero
Some of you may read this and think, “Oh crap, he’s writing about sports.” But this is about more than sports; it’s about the intrusion of sports into modern culture and taking a look back at how professional athletes used to fit into our society.
Barry Bonds is chasing a milestone that up until 1974 was believed to be unreachable. That year Hank Aaron surpassed Babe Ruth’s career home run record of 714 dingers. Now Bonds is within six homers of tying Hank Aaron’s record of 755 and there simply isn’t any excitement out there. At least there isn’t the excitement Aaron generated – both good and bad – in his run at the record in 1973 and 1974.
During the end of the 1973 season, the news media hounded Aaron and television cameras were everywhere to record the record-breaking home run. An America still steeped in racial bigotry was also present as Aaron received thousands of letters of hate mail because a black man dared to break a white legend’s record – never mind the fact that the white legend was a legendary cad.
Now that Bonds is nearing the record, it seems there is a collective ho-hum from the media and fans. It could be because the old Roger Maris record of 61 home runs was shattered three times by supposed steroid-filled hitters Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and then Bonds with 73 home runs. Or it could be that Bonds is not liked by fellow players and is silent to the media. Perhaps it is the swirl of controversy emanating from the BALCO scandal that implicates steroid use by Bonds, though he has never admitted using steroids nor been found guilty of their use. For all his current 749 home runs, nobody knows how many were hit before his alleged use of steroids, how many during or how many after, so we’ll always wonder where his legitimate talent ended and was overtaken by performance enhancing substances.
It’s likely baseball fans are yawning at what should be a major achievement for all of these reasons. And that’s what’s wrong with athletes and sports these days. Putting aside all the arguments that Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron hit in smaller ball parks, batted against pitchers whose arms were dead from overuse and never had to face a split-finger fastball or a slider that fell off the plate, Aaron was easy to celebrate because he endured the attention and handled it all like a gentleman. One gets the feeling Bonds has become driven to break the record simply because he can and gets no enjoyment out of it. He knows once he breaks the record it will forever come with an asterisk, which will say more about the man than the towering home runs and his remarkable baseball longevity.
In many ways, it’s too bad Bonds is the bad guy in this. However much he has been rumored to be pumped up on steroids, he is hitting against pitchers who are likely steroid users and that’s only when they actually pitch to him. He draws a walk nearly twice as often as the next hitter and nobody is saying it takes steroids to have a good eye. This means he gets half as many attempts to hit a home run and even fewer good pitches to take a swing. Basically, he gets a home run every time a pitcher makes a mistake by throwing near the plate. Still, all is not right in Mudville.
I was talking to The Boy the other day and was lamenting (yes, Lazlo does lament) that he never got the chance to see Magic and Bird, the old Knicks and Lakers from the 1970s, Jim Brown, Gayle Sayers and the Bears and the Lombardi Packers. I wish he could have seen the old baseball players like Bob Gibson, Carl Yastrzemski and Al Kaline, the first Major League player to be paid $100,000 per season. Perhaps it’s just faded memories, but it seemed like they all played for the joy of the game and not the fame that has suddenly become greater in importance off the field and off the court than on them.
Much of the problem lies in the money today’s athletes earn. Outside of Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan, nowhere does someone get paid more for having so little talent. Third rate short stops are earning $10 million per year, aging point guards $18 million per year and pot-bellied golfers (sorry Ber) are getting millions in endorsements to stretch into their stretch pants. But what they are paid is not everything. It’s the whole illusion of fame and the fact they have it thrust upon them at such a young age. You can find a website today that will tell you who the best 5th graders are at basketball and a 14-year-old basketball player just verbally committed to USC before he decided which high school to play for (hat tip to Nicholas on these tidbits before he desecrated my cell phone).
Sports is also covered differently today than it was in the past. We now have ESPN 1-8 with 24-hours of news to fill and a magazine to fill what’s left. Flip on any sports show tomorrow and you’ll hear more about the NBA draft than you ever heard about the military draft. Sure, I enjoy watching ESPN more than I do CNN, but all the coverage seems to go to the athlete’s heads, making sports more about the “bling” and $4,000 suits than getting the privilege to play a sport that most of us would do for minimum wage.
There was a time (sadly, during my time), that sports writers were the stars. Everyone knew and worshiped Red Smith, Ring Lardner, Grantland Rice and Jim Murray. Their stars were bigger and brighter than the players they covered and they were beloved because they too could do things few mere mortals could: bring the color and texture to sports before it was on television. These writers were paid more than most, if not all, of the sports figures they covered and the players looked up to them and hoped to get a mention in their columns.
After Curt Flood’s legal test brought about free agency and players salaries began to rise to 10 and 20 times that of the average sports writer, a certain economic and social status began to separate the two. Players and writers were no longer invited to the same parties and what they did have in common – the love of the game – began to fade away as the disparity in economic conditions drove a wedge between them. Today sports writers are often overly cynical of athletes and athletes do much to confirm an image of a coddled and protected super class of the modern star. When a minor football player like Pac Man Jones gets nearly as much air time for his third arrest as Paris Hilton did for hers, it’s saddening to see where sports has crossed over to the worst of our modern culture. And while film stars would love to get Paris et al off the cover of the tabloids, so we sports fans look for a throwback to a time when we looked up to our athletes both on and off the field. I suppose in both cases Tina Turner was wrong – we do need another hero.
Barry Bonds is chasing a milestone that up until 1974 was believed to be unreachable. That year Hank Aaron surpassed Babe Ruth’s career home run record of 714 dingers. Now Bonds is within six homers of tying Hank Aaron’s record of 755 and there simply isn’t any excitement out there. At least there isn’t the excitement Aaron generated – both good and bad – in his run at the record in 1973 and 1974.
During the end of the 1973 season, the news media hounded Aaron and television cameras were everywhere to record the record-breaking home run. An America still steeped in racial bigotry was also present as Aaron received thousands of letters of hate mail because a black man dared to break a white legend’s record – never mind the fact that the white legend was a legendary cad.
Now that Bonds is nearing the record, it seems there is a collective ho-hum from the media and fans. It could be because the old Roger Maris record of 61 home runs was shattered three times by supposed steroid-filled hitters Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and then Bonds with 73 home runs. Or it could be that Bonds is not liked by fellow players and is silent to the media. Perhaps it is the swirl of controversy emanating from the BALCO scandal that implicates steroid use by Bonds, though he has never admitted using steroids nor been found guilty of their use. For all his current 749 home runs, nobody knows how many were hit before his alleged use of steroids, how many during or how many after, so we’ll always wonder where his legitimate talent ended and was overtaken by performance enhancing substances.
It’s likely baseball fans are yawning at what should be a major achievement for all of these reasons. And that’s what’s wrong with athletes and sports these days. Putting aside all the arguments that Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron hit in smaller ball parks, batted against pitchers whose arms were dead from overuse and never had to face a split-finger fastball or a slider that fell off the plate, Aaron was easy to celebrate because he endured the attention and handled it all like a gentleman. One gets the feeling Bonds has become driven to break the record simply because he can and gets no enjoyment out of it. He knows once he breaks the record it will forever come with an asterisk, which will say more about the man than the towering home runs and his remarkable baseball longevity.
In many ways, it’s too bad Bonds is the bad guy in this. However much he has been rumored to be pumped up on steroids, he is hitting against pitchers who are likely steroid users and that’s only when they actually pitch to him. He draws a walk nearly twice as often as the next hitter and nobody is saying it takes steroids to have a good eye. This means he gets half as many attempts to hit a home run and even fewer good pitches to take a swing. Basically, he gets a home run every time a pitcher makes a mistake by throwing near the plate. Still, all is not right in Mudville.
I was talking to The Boy the other day and was lamenting (yes, Lazlo does lament) that he never got the chance to see Magic and Bird, the old Knicks and Lakers from the 1970s, Jim Brown, Gayle Sayers and the Bears and the Lombardi Packers. I wish he could have seen the old baseball players like Bob Gibson, Carl Yastrzemski and Al Kaline, the first Major League player to be paid $100,000 per season. Perhaps it’s just faded memories, but it seemed like they all played for the joy of the game and not the fame that has suddenly become greater in importance off the field and off the court than on them.
Much of the problem lies in the money today’s athletes earn. Outside of Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan, nowhere does someone get paid more for having so little talent. Third rate short stops are earning $10 million per year, aging point guards $18 million per year and pot-bellied golfers (sorry Ber) are getting millions in endorsements to stretch into their stretch pants. But what they are paid is not everything. It’s the whole illusion of fame and the fact they have it thrust upon them at such a young age. You can find a website today that will tell you who the best 5th graders are at basketball and a 14-year-old basketball player just verbally committed to USC before he decided which high school to play for (hat tip to Nicholas on these tidbits before he desecrated my cell phone).
Sports is also covered differently today than it was in the past. We now have ESPN 1-8 with 24-hours of news to fill and a magazine to fill what’s left. Flip on any sports show tomorrow and you’ll hear more about the NBA draft than you ever heard about the military draft. Sure, I enjoy watching ESPN more than I do CNN, but all the coverage seems to go to the athlete’s heads, making sports more about the “bling” and $4,000 suits than getting the privilege to play a sport that most of us would do for minimum wage.
There was a time (sadly, during my time), that sports writers were the stars. Everyone knew and worshiped Red Smith, Ring Lardner, Grantland Rice and Jim Murray. Their stars were bigger and brighter than the players they covered and they were beloved because they too could do things few mere mortals could: bring the color and texture to sports before it was on television. These writers were paid more than most, if not all, of the sports figures they covered and the players looked up to them and hoped to get a mention in their columns.
After Curt Flood’s legal test brought about free agency and players salaries began to rise to 10 and 20 times that of the average sports writer, a certain economic and social status began to separate the two. Players and writers were no longer invited to the same parties and what they did have in common – the love of the game – began to fade away as the disparity in economic conditions drove a wedge between them. Today sports writers are often overly cynical of athletes and athletes do much to confirm an image of a coddled and protected super class of the modern star. When a minor football player like Pac Man Jones gets nearly as much air time for his third arrest as Paris Hilton did for hers, it’s saddening to see where sports has crossed over to the worst of our modern culture. And while film stars would love to get Paris et al off the cover of the tabloids, so we sports fans look for a throwback to a time when we looked up to our athletes both on and off the field. I suppose in both cases Tina Turner was wrong – we do need another hero.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Two Years Since
Well, Bill, it’s been two years but it seems like 20. A lot has changed since you left the stage. I sold half of our business to two decent guys. You knew one of them and I think you liked him. I needed some help in replacing you; who would have thought it would take two people? It’s taken some burden off my shoulders but I do have a bit of on-the-job training going on.
We got a chance to see your family a few weeks back for what was a rare family event (something that brought us all together that was about fun and celebration – much better than a funeral, I can report). Willdabeast got married to a Brazilian family and now what is left of our family has grown in size twenty-fold. Willser was a happy man and I am sure you would not be surprised to know that your son was by his side as the Best Man. He gave a great Best Man’s speech which included a few words about missing you, had a big ol’ grin on his face all night and, perhaps, hung out with Mr. Patron a bit too much. But who didn’t?
You daughter looked lovely and older than her years. She also looks a bit like Suey at the age the two of you fell for each other. She danced, smiled at all of Nick’s awful jokes and I think even she met up with Mr. Patron.
Suey looked great. It was the first time I have seen her so happy over the last two years. I know she missed you but it also seemed she got to revel in the laughter of others. You would have been proud of her, your nephew and his cousins. They all did a great job and we have finally been blessed with a real reason to celebrate.
There’s much more to tell you, but I figure you know it all anyway. I just wanted you to know I was especially thinking of you today and all the good we once had and all that we miss. We’ll meet again someday and I hope we will all be judged favorably by the way we have dealt with your loss and yet still kept our eyes looking forward in a positive way. Some days the wave breaks in front of you and sometimes you catch the ride of your life. You’d be happy to know we’re all watching out for the big set.
We got a chance to see your family a few weeks back for what was a rare family event (something that brought us all together that was about fun and celebration – much better than a funeral, I can report). Willdabeast got married to a Brazilian family and now what is left of our family has grown in size twenty-fold. Willser was a happy man and I am sure you would not be surprised to know that your son was by his side as the Best Man. He gave a great Best Man’s speech which included a few words about missing you, had a big ol’ grin on his face all night and, perhaps, hung out with Mr. Patron a bit too much. But who didn’t?
You daughter looked lovely and older than her years. She also looks a bit like Suey at the age the two of you fell for each other. She danced, smiled at all of Nick’s awful jokes and I think even she met up with Mr. Patron.
Suey looked great. It was the first time I have seen her so happy over the last two years. I know she missed you but it also seemed she got to revel in the laughter of others. You would have been proud of her, your nephew and his cousins. They all did a great job and we have finally been blessed with a real reason to celebrate.
There’s much more to tell you, but I figure you know it all anyway. I just wanted you to know I was especially thinking of you today and all the good we once had and all that we miss. We’ll meet again someday and I hope we will all be judged favorably by the way we have dealt with your loss and yet still kept our eyes looking forward in a positive way. Some days the wave breaks in front of you and sometimes you catch the ride of your life. You’d be happy to know we’re all watching out for the big set.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Taking The Easy Road
There is an oft-used trick that musicians and writers of essays apply when they've run out of fresh ideas, reached a writing block or lost a muse. They compile. And if compiling doesn't work, they do a "best of" to re-package what they were able to accomplish when they had ideas, lived without blocks and were amused by a muse.
I don't suffer from a lack of ideas but I have been having a bit of a writer's block -- or, perhaps better said -- a completion problem. As for having a muse, well, let's say I'm interviewing. Geez, I hope Mrs. Laz has forgotten to check this site on a regular basis.
Somewhere on this hard drive is a treatise on all the hot spots in the world, perfectly researched, highly opinionated and completely boring. It’s unfinished, to boot. I also take a humorous stab at explaining modern culture, but it is without consistent wit and is missing the required ending. I’ve thought about it for a while, too, and there is simply no way to kill off the main character to wiggle my way through the final paragraph because I am the main character.
Worse, and perhaps something that could soon produce my death, I have an unfinished tome to Mrs. Laz on the occasion of her __ birthday. I write her HallMike Cards every holiday as a means of personalizing my feelings and saving $2.99 at the local Hall Mark store. It runs several pages now, but not ready to give and now lagging far behind her birthday. Of course there is always our __ wedding anniversary coming up in a few months.
So, to fill something in this space that has remained untouched for 49 days, I am presenting a “Best of Lazlo’s Lament.” You can comment on your favorites if you like, or just point out that whatever I had in writing skill at one time is now lost. While the words will not be new, they will have been forgotten so it will seem new to what is likely a dwindling readership (which was dwindled to begin with). Sure hope I get a little readership on this as perhaps it will push me to finish the unfinished (or find a muse – geez, I hope Mrs. Laz forgot her glasses today).
Peace On Earth
Adrift On An Ocean Of Lonliness
Happy Birthday To Me
A Blessed Day
For A Gentle Warrior
No More I Love Yous
Laz Logic
My Favorite Places
On Sadness and Other Bothersome Things
That's probably way too much for the average reader to read -- especially when you can't take your computer into the bathroom. Anyway, if you find the time, you may learn something about the ravages of a man who was, and is, unhinged.
I don't suffer from a lack of ideas but I have been having a bit of a writer's block -- or, perhaps better said -- a completion problem. As for having a muse, well, let's say I'm interviewing. Geez, I hope Mrs. Laz has forgotten to check this site on a regular basis.
Somewhere on this hard drive is a treatise on all the hot spots in the world, perfectly researched, highly opinionated and completely boring. It’s unfinished, to boot. I also take a humorous stab at explaining modern culture, but it is without consistent wit and is missing the required ending. I’ve thought about it for a while, too, and there is simply no way to kill off the main character to wiggle my way through the final paragraph because I am the main character.
Worse, and perhaps something that could soon produce my death, I have an unfinished tome to Mrs. Laz on the occasion of her __ birthday. I write her HallMike Cards every holiday as a means of personalizing my feelings and saving $2.99 at the local Hall Mark store. It runs several pages now, but not ready to give and now lagging far behind her birthday. Of course there is always our __ wedding anniversary coming up in a few months.
So, to fill something in this space that has remained untouched for 49 days, I am presenting a “Best of Lazlo’s Lament.” You can comment on your favorites if you like, or just point out that whatever I had in writing skill at one time is now lost. While the words will not be new, they will have been forgotten so it will seem new to what is likely a dwindling readership (which was dwindled to begin with). Sure hope I get a little readership on this as perhaps it will push me to finish the unfinished (or find a muse – geez, I hope Mrs. Laz forgot her glasses today).
Peace On Earth
Adrift On An Ocean Of Lonliness
Happy Birthday To Me
A Blessed Day
For A Gentle Warrior
No More I Love Yous
Laz Logic
My Favorite Places
On Sadness and Other Bothersome Things
That's probably way too much for the average reader to read -- especially when you can't take your computer into the bathroom. Anyway, if you find the time, you may learn something about the ravages of a man who was, and is, unhinged.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
A Tragedy In Search of a Stereotype
When the dust settles and the TV cameras go to film another tragedy, all that will be remembered will be the young lives cut short, a handful of professors who died by their sides and the image of a lunatic who brought on this unspeakable carnage. And this is the way it should be.
For now, though, there is a human need to package this senseless bloody morning into something we can all understand. We do this because deep down inside all of us there is a need to put our normal thought process into the mind of a lunatic. We should all just stop because there is nothing normal and nothing sane about what the gunman did, and all the TV experts and resident psychologists getting airtime can just spare us their opinions. This was a kid consumed by evil who carried out the most despicable act of turning his evil on innocents.
Naturally it is difficult for the news media to come to grips with a simple and practical explanation. They want to say we live in a culture of guns; we do. They want to tell us our gun laws are too lax; they are. They want us to know he was a loner, a freak; and he was. They want us to examine the fact he was a South Korean immigrant; of course he was. They feel the need to question the administration and the campus police for their lack of premonition; but nobody could have predicted what would happen. They can’t understand why this kid wasn’t watched more closely based on his past behavior; there are hundreds like him on every campus.
What can be done to prevent this kind of sick event from happening again? Probably nothing, but we can learn from the things that aren’t so apparent and stop searching for the perfect stereotype to fit our preconceived biases. We’re much better off leaving this crazed kid in the same category as all mass murderers and mourn those who died. We’ll all sleep better knowing this particular mass murderer is a genetic mutant and in no way resembles 99.99 percent of the rest of us. Rest in peace to the victims.
For now, though, there is a human need to package this senseless bloody morning into something we can all understand. We do this because deep down inside all of us there is a need to put our normal thought process into the mind of a lunatic. We should all just stop because there is nothing normal and nothing sane about what the gunman did, and all the TV experts and resident psychologists getting airtime can just spare us their opinions. This was a kid consumed by evil who carried out the most despicable act of turning his evil on innocents.
Naturally it is difficult for the news media to come to grips with a simple and practical explanation. They want to say we live in a culture of guns; we do. They want to tell us our gun laws are too lax; they are. They want us to know he was a loner, a freak; and he was. They want us to examine the fact he was a South Korean immigrant; of course he was. They feel the need to question the administration and the campus police for their lack of premonition; but nobody could have predicted what would happen. They can’t understand why this kid wasn’t watched more closely based on his past behavior; there are hundreds like him on every campus.
What can be done to prevent this kind of sick event from happening again? Probably nothing, but we can learn from the things that aren’t so apparent and stop searching for the perfect stereotype to fit our preconceived biases. We’re much better off leaving this crazed kid in the same category as all mass murderers and mourn those who died. We’ll all sleep better knowing this particular mass murderer is a genetic mutant and in no way resembles 99.99 percent of the rest of us. Rest in peace to the victims.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Sorry I Forgot, Diane
Sorry Mrs. Laz, but I haven't been fair to Diane in this space for a while. It has been several months since I have placed a photo of her, and since I believe she is monitoring this site (along with her lawyers), I didn't want to disappoint.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
A Nation Of Whores
I’m real sorry about the content of this post. The words are not mine; I don’t even know what half of them mean. These are the lyrics of three different rap artists and what they have in common is they are all produced under CBS’s Columbia Record label. As we all now know, this is the same CBS which fired the always less-than-polite Don Imus from his radio show for boorishly referring to the Rutgers woman’s basketball team as “Nappy-headed hoes.” If you want to skip past the lyrics, I don’t blame you. But, for those who want to hear what passes for music – at least to CBS executives – please feel free to read on:
The words of Three 6-Mafia:
Yeah, run bitch. Run hoe! Ya nice motherfuckas!
Y'all jealous ass bitches!
You know what I'ma call y'all? Some Jello niggas.
Cuz y'all jealous of us, bitch.
Every motherfucker in our camp ridin clean, nigga.
Y'all know the motherfuckin score.
And this one right here is dedicated to you [censor beep].
It's dedicated to you, nigga.
More from Three Six Mafia:
Well all them hoes that used to be down with me
I signed a deal, made some money, now you bitches downin me?
Bitches tryin ta blast at me,
or am I dreamin the motherfuckers be after me?
Why you tryin ta be like me? You labelled as a wanna-be.
You ghetto hoes, you need to read a bonus Gangsta Boo
Cuz you might find a tip, bitch, that can help you.
I'm a down chick
Niggas be wantin ta crown chick
Stay around chick
Whenever, however, it's goin down, bitch.
Pearls from Lyfe Jennings:
Im from a place where them niggas dont talk a lot
License suspended so we walk a lot Always been a thug since i was a young cat
Breast fed by Godzilla mix my Similac with cognac whoa
Now i cant even pray no more
Cuz i done did so much dirt and smoked so much dro
Im afraid God will be like what you calling here for
Dont be tying my line up asking me for shit no more, whoa.
DMX at their best:
Song titled What These Bitches Want
Aiyyo!! Dog, I meet bitches, discrete bitches
Street bitches, slash, Cocoa Puff sweet bitches (WHAT?)
Make you wanna eat bitches, but not me
Y'all niggaz eat off the plate all you want but not D (UHH)
I fuck with these hoes from a distance
The instant they start to catch feelings
I start to stealin they shit
then I'm out just like a thief in the night
I sink my teeth in to bite
You thinkin life, I'm thinkin more like - whassup tonight?
Come on ma, you know I got a wife
and even though that pussy tight I'm not gon' jeapordize my life (aight?)
Now, back to something resembling normalcy by comparison. Over the years I have listened to Don Imus. He’s sometimes pretty funny, sometimes not. After a few years and several fruitless searches on my local radio dial for his show, I gave up on him. I never thought of him until the recent flap and predictable hypocrisy pushed him into the limelight.
It didn’t take long for those in the race trade to inject themselves into the middle of this show of bad taste, and the cameras followed. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who each have uttered enough racial slurs to begin their own rap group, demanded Imus and any other white bigot pay a price; cash in a suitcase preferred. Sharpton even got Imus to make a trip to kiss his ring in the hope of absolution that wouldn’t come.
What has our sense of perspective in this country come to? CBS throws a fading radio talent under the bus in the name of racial sensitivity and then rakes in millions off the misogynistic rap artists it produces. Jackson and Sharpton have been working off the same tired script for years, setting themselves up as the racial arbiters of our time and yet don’t have an ounce of the moral authority to lead a congregation, little alone a nation.
These two men are the real whores in this story, doing anything to move their own agenda forward. It just so happens that their agenda is the same as their plantation owners, the democrats. The debate will surely shift to the coarseness of words on talk radio and it won't be long before the Fairness Doctrine will be invoked and a movement started to put an end to talk radio (or at least conservative talk radio). Words don't usually scare the average person, but it can scare a democrat if the words cost them an election. Sure, Imus is nominally a liberal, but he can be sacrificed if he serves a larger purpose.
Rather than helping salve the wounds of racial tension, the hypocrisy and hidden agenda are so overwhelming and obvious that it will have the opposite effect. And that will end up being the sad ending of this story.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Quiet Birthdays
Today was The Boy's 25th birthday; a quarter century milestone. We had a fairly quiet evening with just family and The Ber and her mom, and it made me think about the fact that it won't be long before these kinds of celebrations fade away.
During the kids' younger years, the birthdays were celebrated like national holidays and Christmas all rolled into one. The gifts were almost entirely toys or whatever fad they were into at the moment and for reasons I will never be happy about, some assembly was always required. Then comes the electronic birthdays in which everything needs an outlet followed by the years when it was okay to buy clothes providing it was the right kind of clothes -- a tricky bit of shopping required.
Now we're just happy to be part of the celebration of their birthdays and even though we will always celebrate this day and November 9, it may be as secondary revelers as they go about building their own families. It's natural and normal for them to go from birthday hats and horns to quiet nights, but it does serve as a reminder that they are growing up and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.
During the kids' younger years, the birthdays were celebrated like national holidays and Christmas all rolled into one. The gifts were almost entirely toys or whatever fad they were into at the moment and for reasons I will never be happy about, some assembly was always required. Then comes the electronic birthdays in which everything needs an outlet followed by the years when it was okay to buy clothes providing it was the right kind of clothes -- a tricky bit of shopping required.
Now we're just happy to be part of the celebration of their birthdays and even though we will always celebrate this day and November 9, it may be as secondary revelers as they go about building their own families. It's natural and normal for them to go from birthday hats and horns to quiet nights, but it does serve as a reminder that they are growing up and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Final Farewell To A Friend
“We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way.” Irving Townsend.
That day has come for us, and we are living in a smaller circle. Thursday evening our 17-year-old best friend of a dog Mutley was given a simple shot to put him at rest. To our family, he was more than a family pet, he was a friend at all times and a bit of a fable at other times. We took great joy in creating a human persona for Mutley, I suppose because he was as close to being human as a dog could be.
It was the most heartbreaking decision our family has had to make, but in the end, the short drive to the veterinarian’s office was also the easiest. His quality of life had deteriorated in such a way that the only reason his heart was beating was because it knew of nothing else to do. Dogs have a depth of loyalty that we often seem unworthy of. By way of demonstrating that, we all believe Mutley went on living just to please us.
We were told by the vet that dogs are pack animals and when the first shot went in to relax him, he was surrounded by his pack. Mrs. Laz and I, the Boy, the Girl and the Ber were all at his side, scratching behind his ears and alternatively getting wet kisses on the mouth. We fed him snacks (lean snacks for some reason) and a bit of ice cream to keep his mind off the dizziness we were told he was feeling.
A final injection went into his hind leg but his old veins weren’t up to taking the medicine and burst. So a second injection had to go into his front paw and he began to slip quite quickly. I tried to give him another treat as if to slow down the process we all knew was happening, and he began to go for it, but the toxin had begun to do its job and he was unable to indulge in eating once more, a favorite joy of his. We all cried as we watched the life ebb out of him, but we had been crying for a while by then. The Girl stroked his soft coat several times and the Boy gave him a light final kiss on his nose and we all left the room knowing his body was there but his spirit had followed us out the door.
They say when you get to heaven all the dogs and cats you’ve had run up to greet you. Until that day, good buddy, rest in peace.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
U-C-L-A
Some years things go well for a sports fan, but usually there are more downs than ups. The Michigan Wolverines took a thumping from Greater Sladed Family’s favorite USC Trojans. The San Diego Chargers, the only professional football team I care about, got knocked out in the first round of the playoffs and then crashed the entire team despite a 14-2 record.
Mrs. Sladed would lament more about the Padres falling apart in the playoffs than I would, but I am with her in spirit having lived through decades of mediocrity with the Pads. The only other baseball team I care about, the Detroit Tigers, didn’t fare much better.
Then, the fog seems to clear and your team does something good for a change. My Team, the UCLA Bruins, is in bollege basketball's Final Four and doing it with grit, hard-nose defense and crappy shooting. Except for the crappy shooting, I haven’t seen a team like this in Westwood since the old Wooden days.
Here’s hoping the Bruins hoist another Championship banner at Pauley Pavilion. Of course you can check back in a week to find out they didn’t get any farther. And that’s the funny thing about sports. There are hundreds of teams that only dream of being in the Final Four, and who could complain for very long about a 14-2 record? I guess it’s all about finishing the job and I suspect we fans put too much on winning it all. We’re so fickle!
Mrs. Sladed would lament more about the Padres falling apart in the playoffs than I would, but I am with her in spirit having lived through decades of mediocrity with the Pads. The only other baseball team I care about, the Detroit Tigers, didn’t fare much better.
Then, the fog seems to clear and your team does something good for a change. My Team, the UCLA Bruins, is in bollege basketball's Final Four and doing it with grit, hard-nose defense and crappy shooting. Except for the crappy shooting, I haven’t seen a team like this in Westwood since the old Wooden days.
Here’s hoping the Bruins hoist another Championship banner at Pauley Pavilion. Of course you can check back in a week to find out they didn’t get any farther. And that’s the funny thing about sports. There are hundreds of teams that only dream of being in the Final Four, and who could complain for very long about a 14-2 record? I guess it’s all about finishing the job and I suspect we fans put too much on winning it all. We’re so fickle!
Hubris
The Boy and I disagree on what I feel is the most specific example, but we agree we are witnessing more hubris by politicians than every before.
First there was Chuck Hagel, a senator and would-be presidential contender. He called a press conference in his home state of Nebraska and invited the national media, which generally spends its time in Washington, DC and New York (or at Skipper’s Bar). The press was a-flutter over what Senator Hagel had dragged them out to the Nebraska corn fields to announce. Surely, they thought, it was to tell the world he would be entering the presidential race. They were wrong. He merely wanted a little attention to tell the assembled press that he was still considering running for president. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t run for president. Stay tuned, was the best he could offer.
It’s difficult to think of a more self-important moment than Senator Hagel’s non-announcement announcement. Imagine believing the country cares so much about your personal choices that they would want in on what you were thinking on that particular day, especially when you weren’t thinking about that much. It’s an easy lure for the press because Hagel is one of those “moderate” republicans who wants us out of Iraq in some unspecified time (see the pattern here?) and took the courageous position of piling on the Attorney General. I am sure the press was hoping for more, but like most places around the country, I am sure there was a Skipper’s Bar where they could drown their sorrows.
The second round of hubris happened this past week in the bizarre announcement from John Edwards that he was staying in the race despite the fact nobody had asked. He too called a press conference and he too got plenty of takers.
Of course Edward’s yapping was a bit different than Hagel in that there was more to announce. Edwards shared with us that his wife had a reoccurrence of cancer and it had spread. The cancer in Ms. Edwards seems to be the kind people talk about beating, but, in truth, they don’t last that long. The Boy believes this announcement was worthy in that he has used his wife’s illness as a prop (my words, not The Boy’s) and there was more propping that needed to be done. Actually The Boy said Edwards had made his wife’s illness part of the strength that drives him and has included his supporters and potential donors in their journey together. I still think it’s a sick prop.
But believing the world wants to know the details of the internal struggle that happens in far too many families with cancer requires the believers to have some sense that the world cares enough for a prime time press conference followed by a 60 Minutes show. Whatever happened to quiet courage? I guess people can learn a bit about the dreaded disease. I heard a knucklehead reporter announce that he learned more about cancer watching Edward’s announcement than he had at any other time. Right, this is someone writing the news.
Actually, I know far too much about cancer and one great truth is that stress is not very helpful in living longer with the disease. Can anyone think of anything more stressful than being married to a man running for president? What kind of “man” puts his sick wife through the challenges of a presidential campaign? A man full of hubris would be my answer.
The Boy and I agree on this: if he really wanted to impress us, he would do the right thing and put his own ambition on hold and gear back up four years later. He should be spending as much quiet and non-stressful time with his wife as he can, because from what I understand, her illness is in a terminal state. He has plenty of money and plenty of time of his hands. Edwards should forget the rough travel schedule, the glad-handing and the dialing for dollars and remember he has a sick wife at home who could care less if he comes in a distant third in what will likely be her last presidential campaign.
First there was Chuck Hagel, a senator and would-be presidential contender. He called a press conference in his home state of Nebraska and invited the national media, which generally spends its time in Washington, DC and New York (or at Skipper’s Bar). The press was a-flutter over what Senator Hagel had dragged them out to the Nebraska corn fields to announce. Surely, they thought, it was to tell the world he would be entering the presidential race. They were wrong. He merely wanted a little attention to tell the assembled press that he was still considering running for president. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t run for president. Stay tuned, was the best he could offer.
It’s difficult to think of a more self-important moment than Senator Hagel’s non-announcement announcement. Imagine believing the country cares so much about your personal choices that they would want in on what you were thinking on that particular day, especially when you weren’t thinking about that much. It’s an easy lure for the press because Hagel is one of those “moderate” republicans who wants us out of Iraq in some unspecified time (see the pattern here?) and took the courageous position of piling on the Attorney General. I am sure the press was hoping for more, but like most places around the country, I am sure there was a Skipper’s Bar where they could drown their sorrows.
The second round of hubris happened this past week in the bizarre announcement from John Edwards that he was staying in the race despite the fact nobody had asked. He too called a press conference and he too got plenty of takers.
Of course Edward’s yapping was a bit different than Hagel in that there was more to announce. Edwards shared with us that his wife had a reoccurrence of cancer and it had spread. The cancer in Ms. Edwards seems to be the kind people talk about beating, but, in truth, they don’t last that long. The Boy believes this announcement was worthy in that he has used his wife’s illness as a prop (my words, not The Boy’s) and there was more propping that needed to be done. Actually The Boy said Edwards had made his wife’s illness part of the strength that drives him and has included his supporters and potential donors in their journey together. I still think it’s a sick prop.
But believing the world wants to know the details of the internal struggle that happens in far too many families with cancer requires the believers to have some sense that the world cares enough for a prime time press conference followed by a 60 Minutes show. Whatever happened to quiet courage? I guess people can learn a bit about the dreaded disease. I heard a knucklehead reporter announce that he learned more about cancer watching Edward’s announcement than he had at any other time. Right, this is someone writing the news.
Actually, I know far too much about cancer and one great truth is that stress is not very helpful in living longer with the disease. Can anyone think of anything more stressful than being married to a man running for president? What kind of “man” puts his sick wife through the challenges of a presidential campaign? A man full of hubris would be my answer.
The Boy and I agree on this: if he really wanted to impress us, he would do the right thing and put his own ambition on hold and gear back up four years later. He should be spending as much quiet and non-stressful time with his wife as he can, because from what I understand, her illness is in a terminal state. He has plenty of money and plenty of time of his hands. Edwards should forget the rough travel schedule, the glad-handing and the dialing for dollars and remember he has a sick wife at home who could care less if he comes in a distant third in what will likely be her last presidential campaign.
Monday, March 19, 2007
A Veritable Age Of Unreason
When one gets a few years past middle age there are certain rights bestowed upon them. One is the right to be a curmudgeon. There are perhaps lesser rights such as loss of embarrassment and control of certain bodily functions. But for the moment I will dwell on the former rather than the latter.
Of late, Italiphil and I have been complaining about the general rudeness in business today. Common courtesy has disappeared and an ugly rudeness has taken its place. We grumble on about it a lot. Less enlightened and younger readers may say we’re fast approaching curmudegery, if there is a word, but we still remember a day when a phone call was promptly returned and a person’s handshake really was his bond, not just a Cameron Crowe line
When you’re in the midst of curmudgening, you tend to wonder how it has come to pass that the world has gone so wrong and how very smart you have become over the years. This, naturally, leads to being more pissed off.
Our parents had to put up with the Beatles, long hair and a confusing set of differing values. It seems our lot has to endure with smart little boys with bright ideas – like derivatives, start up ventures and the convenient parsing of certain sexual acts not being sex at all. Or at least our generation can’t get that final notion past our wives. We also have to put up with rap, which as near as I can tell is the sound of one man yelling while others throw trash cans down a flight of metal stairs. But I can live with these affronts. What Italiphil and I have struggled with is the loss of appreciation for what our age and experience has brought us. Certainly years of toil should mean something to the smart young people nipping at our heels to get a piece of what we have.
In my business there are a number of people who have entered it presuming they would begin at the top. The old adage of doing what I am doing while their mammies were wrapping their butts in diapers could never be truer. And yet it doesn’t stop their conceits and where they believe they fit in the world. This isn’t to say that some of these younger people aren’t clever, it’s just we don’t want to feel that our time spent blazing the trail for them was wasted.
When Pete Wilson was lured from the Senate to take the lowly job as governor of California, he brought with him much of his young Senate staff. One never met a bunch of more cocksure twenty-somethings. We used to call them the “Penny Loafer Boys” because they wore the uniform of DC and Ivy League training: blue blazers, starched blue cotton pin-point Oxfords and, of course, penny loafers. They came to Sacramento believing they actually knew what they were doing. Within a few months, Willie Brown had them twisted into so many Rubic’s Cubes that they were passing tax increases and extending rights to gays – not exactly what the conservatives had in mind when they dialed Pete’s number.
So Italiohil and I wonder, if we’re not sounding too old and out of step, is it too much trouble to return our phone calls promptly, as a point of taking another task off your Blackberry list if nothing else? Or, what if you ask us to write you an urgent proposal and to have it in your e-mail inbox by the morning, that you actually read it and say thanks? How about giving us some credit for knowing what you think you know, only we actually knew it when we were your age? Perhaps you could just give us some credit when you’re stealing our ideas or re-inventing what we already invented?
It would really be appreciated if you youngins could do this for us. Then we can stop being a curmudgeon and matriculate to being dirty old men. We could use the change of pace.
Of late, Italiphil and I have been complaining about the general rudeness in business today. Common courtesy has disappeared and an ugly rudeness has taken its place. We grumble on about it a lot. Less enlightened and younger readers may say we’re fast approaching curmudegery, if there is a word, but we still remember a day when a phone call was promptly returned and a person’s handshake really was his bond, not just a Cameron Crowe line
When you’re in the midst of curmudgening, you tend to wonder how it has come to pass that the world has gone so wrong and how very smart you have become over the years. This, naturally, leads to being more pissed off.
Our parents had to put up with the Beatles, long hair and a confusing set of differing values. It seems our lot has to endure with smart little boys with bright ideas – like derivatives, start up ventures and the convenient parsing of certain sexual acts not being sex at all. Or at least our generation can’t get that final notion past our wives. We also have to put up with rap, which as near as I can tell is the sound of one man yelling while others throw trash cans down a flight of metal stairs. But I can live with these affronts. What Italiphil and I have struggled with is the loss of appreciation for what our age and experience has brought us. Certainly years of toil should mean something to the smart young people nipping at our heels to get a piece of what we have.
In my business there are a number of people who have entered it presuming they would begin at the top. The old adage of doing what I am doing while their mammies were wrapping their butts in diapers could never be truer. And yet it doesn’t stop their conceits and where they believe they fit in the world. This isn’t to say that some of these younger people aren’t clever, it’s just we don’t want to feel that our time spent blazing the trail for them was wasted.
When Pete Wilson was lured from the Senate to take the lowly job as governor of California, he brought with him much of his young Senate staff. One never met a bunch of more cocksure twenty-somethings. We used to call them the “Penny Loafer Boys” because they wore the uniform of DC and Ivy League training: blue blazers, starched blue cotton pin-point Oxfords and, of course, penny loafers. They came to Sacramento believing they actually knew what they were doing. Within a few months, Willie Brown had them twisted into so many Rubic’s Cubes that they were passing tax increases and extending rights to gays – not exactly what the conservatives had in mind when they dialed Pete’s number.
So Italiohil and I wonder, if we’re not sounding too old and out of step, is it too much trouble to return our phone calls promptly, as a point of taking another task off your Blackberry list if nothing else? Or, what if you ask us to write you an urgent proposal and to have it in your e-mail inbox by the morning, that you actually read it and say thanks? How about giving us some credit for knowing what you think you know, only we actually knew it when we were your age? Perhaps you could just give us some credit when you’re stealing our ideas or re-inventing what we already invented?
It would really be appreciated if you youngins could do this for us. Then we can stop being a curmudgeon and matriculate to being dirty old men. We could use the change of pace.
Rushing To Judgment
Mrs. Laz and I saw a good rendition of the 1950s play “Twelve Angry Men” the other day. It’s great drama that cleverly demonstrates that truth is not always easy to find, and that early judgment and prejudice is the bastion of the ignorant and lazy. And one other thing about the play: it starred George Wendt and the hicks from Sacramento actually held back the urge to yell out “Norrrrrmmmmm!” when he first came on stage. Maybe we’re growing up here, after all.
We saw the play on the heels of the guilty verdict of Scooter Libby and the reflexive and immediate hearings from democrats who promised not to waste your time and, if memory served, had some kind of a 100-day plan that involved something important. Damn if I can remember what it was.
As we now know, Libby was found guilty of what is normally called a process crime – in other words a crime that occurred during the investigation of an underlying crime. Quick judgment has been made by lazy journalists and opportunists from across the aisle that Libby did all sorts of heinous crimes and protected bigger fish up the food chain. Boiled down, however, Libby was found guilty of having a faulty memory, at least compared to that of reporter Tim Russert.
The actual trial was a parade of journalists who had trouble remembering any details of their conversations with Libby and came down to whether or not he talked to Russert on a certain day and what was said. Libby remembers it one way and Russert the other. Memory and juries can be a funny thing and so can judges. The defense brought up several instances when Russert could not remember details of important statements and events but the judge ruled Russert’s fuzzy memory could not be considered by the DC jury that was picked from a pool of republican-hating people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury service. The jury was forced to decide who was telling the truth between the two and settled on Libby as the liar. If only Libby took the Hilary Clinton method of testifying and said “I can’t recall” 250 times he would not be a convicted felon today.
Of course we know now that the original investigation by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was a two-week journey to the truth and ended up being a two-year search to find a criminal without a crime being committed. Most will tell you the investigation was about the leaking of a covert CIA agent’s name, Valerie Plame, to reporter Robert Novak. Fitgerald knew early in his investigation that the State Department’s Richard Armitage was Novak’s source and revealed what he knew without political motivation and without knowing she had been undercover many years before. Armitage was never charged with a crime precisely because under the way the law protecting covert agents is written, there never was a law broken. This is because Plame had become a desk jockey and was known by half the social scene in DC as a CIA analyst at the time she was the subject of Armitage’s obscenity-laced conversation with Novak.
The democrats put on a great stage show this past week, bringing out the injured party herself, Ms. Plame. She complained that her $65,000 per year career was ruined and she could no longer work covertly again – leaving out the part that nobody was considering her for such service ever again. Just to make sure the nutcases watching C-Span were fully bamboozled, hearing chairman Henry Waxman referred to Plame as “covert” as if it were her first name. Obviously if Plame had been covert at the time of Novak’s story, Armitage would be looking for a presidential pardon instead of Libby.
I stopped feeling sorry for Plame and her supposed outing about the time she posed with her husband for the cover of Vanity Fair with gleeful looks abounding. Of course the loss of her secret identity will be eased by her book earnings and from the movie that will be filmed about her travails.
An appeal will settle the matter with Libby and history will allow future generations to have a chuckle at this perverse bit of bad theater, but this investigation could have focused on a different hideous crime: the revealing of numerous state secrets to the press by real intelligence personnel, the publishing of these facts by certain newspapers and the curious underwear stuffing by former National Security Council chief Sandy Berger.
Most of those who really work at the Pickle Farm would rather see these bad actors pay the price for these very real and damaging breeches of national security. And this would not come from a rush to judgment, but from a real and methodical understanding of the truth.
We saw the play on the heels of the guilty verdict of Scooter Libby and the reflexive and immediate hearings from democrats who promised not to waste your time and, if memory served, had some kind of a 100-day plan that involved something important. Damn if I can remember what it was.
As we now know, Libby was found guilty of what is normally called a process crime – in other words a crime that occurred during the investigation of an underlying crime. Quick judgment has been made by lazy journalists and opportunists from across the aisle that Libby did all sorts of heinous crimes and protected bigger fish up the food chain. Boiled down, however, Libby was found guilty of having a faulty memory, at least compared to that of reporter Tim Russert.
The actual trial was a parade of journalists who had trouble remembering any details of their conversations with Libby and came down to whether or not he talked to Russert on a certain day and what was said. Libby remembers it one way and Russert the other. Memory and juries can be a funny thing and so can judges. The defense brought up several instances when Russert could not remember details of important statements and events but the judge ruled Russert’s fuzzy memory could not be considered by the DC jury that was picked from a pool of republican-hating people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury service. The jury was forced to decide who was telling the truth between the two and settled on Libby as the liar. If only Libby took the Hilary Clinton method of testifying and said “I can’t recall” 250 times he would not be a convicted felon today.
Of course we know now that the original investigation by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was a two-week journey to the truth and ended up being a two-year search to find a criminal without a crime being committed. Most will tell you the investigation was about the leaking of a covert CIA agent’s name, Valerie Plame, to reporter Robert Novak. Fitgerald knew early in his investigation that the State Department’s Richard Armitage was Novak’s source and revealed what he knew without political motivation and without knowing she had been undercover many years before. Armitage was never charged with a crime precisely because under the way the law protecting covert agents is written, there never was a law broken. This is because Plame had become a desk jockey and was known by half the social scene in DC as a CIA analyst at the time she was the subject of Armitage’s obscenity-laced conversation with Novak.
The democrats put on a great stage show this past week, bringing out the injured party herself, Ms. Plame. She complained that her $65,000 per year career was ruined and she could no longer work covertly again – leaving out the part that nobody was considering her for such service ever again. Just to make sure the nutcases watching C-Span were fully bamboozled, hearing chairman Henry Waxman referred to Plame as “covert” as if it were her first name. Obviously if Plame had been covert at the time of Novak’s story, Armitage would be looking for a presidential pardon instead of Libby.
I stopped feeling sorry for Plame and her supposed outing about the time she posed with her husband for the cover of Vanity Fair with gleeful looks abounding. Of course the loss of her secret identity will be eased by her book earnings and from the movie that will be filmed about her travails.
An appeal will settle the matter with Libby and history will allow future generations to have a chuckle at this perverse bit of bad theater, but this investigation could have focused on a different hideous crime: the revealing of numerous state secrets to the press by real intelligence personnel, the publishing of these facts by certain newspapers and the curious underwear stuffing by former National Security Council chief Sandy Berger.
Most of those who really work at the Pickle Farm would rather see these bad actors pay the price for these very real and damaging breeches of national security. And this would not come from a rush to judgment, but from a real and methodical understanding of the truth.
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