Our Long National Nightmare

Looks like the WGA strike is finally over, and I could not be happier. Colbert Report, Daily Show and Conan cannot brawl forever, although I loved it while it happened. Hopefully, sitcoms and dramas will come back by late March/early April. Let's hope that the quality resumes ASAP.

A Brief Announcement

This post has a small, but nevertheless critical, function. It confirms that I am indeed alive and on this Earth. And that I have a new computer which is glorious and slim and powerful (I haven't a clue where she gets in from). It is a new Dell Inspiron 1525, and I couldn't be happier with it.

Now that I am no longer shackled with a burdensome hag of a laptop, I should hope that I post more frequently, but you never know with these things. Here's hoping.

Rock musicians are supposed to be nuts

If you've not yet heard the new Amy Winehouse/Mark Ronson single Valerie, you should click on that link and dig it. It is a cover of the Zuton's version from 2006, but who says cover versions are inherently inferior? Certainly not me. These two have created an infectious pop beat that is hard to resist. I consider it a duty of mine to bring some good music out there to the people, and while Winehouse and Ronson are by no means recluses, this song could easily escape the ears of the non-discerning statesider. This is not to fault her at all, but Winehouse is primarily covered here as a boozy wastrel, which is a damn shame because she is an incredible vocalist who should not be reduced to such easy caricatures. So what if she does too many drugs and drinks too much? That is what rock musicians are supposed to do. Give me that junkie with pipes over the pious and crashingly bland Hillary Duff any day.

My computer is giving me a hard time right now, but I could not live with myself if I did not try to get that song out to the world. And yes, for the purposes of that example, the world is defined as those who read my blog. All 11 of you.

In Manhattan did Tad O'Shea, A stately citrus squeeze decree

At the risk of sounding like a Seinfeld stand-up routine, when did eating establishments start taking your name when you order something? I can't imagine this is any more efficient than just doing what they've always done at New York cafes/delis: yell out the items you've ordered with a vaguely menacing look on their face that suggests any further delays in your retrieval of the order will entitle you to a side order of warm spit with your meal.

This new name game is particularly annoying for people like me, who have names that approximately 0% of New Yorkers can spell on the first try. When I go to Jamba Juice, I don't want to give the clerk a lesson on South East Indian phonetics, and how the letter "t" before a vowel is pronounced with a "th" sound, whereas a final "t" is more of a hard stop. Again, I have to ask if this is any real improvement in service time, which is all customers at these establishments care about. If this was some lame marketing guy's idea of building "brand loyalty" or something, it would only confirm everything I think about people who work in marketing, which is that they view the populace as a bunch of lurching, mindless clumps who will patronize a restaurant because the staff calls them by name. You know what I do when someone gives me a coffee that I've ordered and then addresses me by name? I give them the obligatory thanks and a half-smile: the kind where my lips form a grin but my eyes remain steely and dead. I sure as hell don't think Trent and I are going to be friends, and if you do, you're probably the kind of person who chats with every cashier you interact with and then friends them on Facebook with some lame comment like, "Hey Jill, those khakis really worked out great. Thanks a bundle! ;)" I hate those people.

What happens whenever I go to a name-check establishment is that I have to give a fake, monosyllabic name that cannot be messed up by anyone with two functioning brain lobes. Recent favorites include: Chad, Brad, Tad, and Dad. The last one was pretty funny, if only to hear the guy who made my Berry Blast at Jamba ask for it to be picked up--Dad? Berry Blast for Dad?

Do away with giving out your name at these places, and failing that, give out names of television characters or historical figures. I'm looking forward to trying out Indiana Jones and Kublai Khan.

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Contango and backwardation

It's been just shy of 7 weeks since I've posted on this blog, and my only excuse is to say that I've been working so much that during the week I don't know where I am most of the time and certainly can't be bothered to put together full sentences, and during the weekend am in a state of relaxation so profound it can easily be mistaken for catatonia. But let's not dwell on that.

Summer for most people is a time to relax, sleep late and just generally loaf about with a sort of blissful frivolity that underscores the absolute open-endedness of it all. Not for me however. I am up and heading for the office at about 6:55, and am clacking away at the keyboard at 7:25. I step off the desk to end the day at 8:00, and in between I work very hard and learn some cool stuff. Look up the terms that comprise the title of this post and you'll see what I mean. I think finance is a cool place to be, and definitely being around a place where alternative investments get so much play means you can easily learn a lot if you are willing to read a little bit and not be afraid to ask stupid questions. This demanding work leaves little time for my friends, but I do what I can when I can. I am getting an idea of what my life will look like in about a year when I work full time--living for the weekend. But if you get to work around some cool people for those 12-13 hours you are in the office, it can be pretty great. My point is, don't pity the banker for all the work he does and how exhausted he is at the end of the day, because odds are that deep down he really likes it.

Moral Relativism Makes Good Television

As I try to soak up every drop of my last week before work, I find myself slowly dipping my toe into financial interests, almost to gradually reintroduce structure into my days. I start my internship in Private Banking in one week, and since Sunday have thrown myself fully into the DVD collection of a show from the mid 1990s called Profit.

I have no doubt that the deeply disturbing and villainous nature of the show's main character (even within the framework of his job in a conglomerate/acquisitions firm) is the reason it lasted only 4 episodes. He is an inveterate corporate climber, and the textbook definition of a bone chilling sociopath. The show is an incredibly well crafted piece of drama--the two hour pilot alone qualifies as a fantastic film--and was clearly ahead of its time, as today characters like Tony Soprano are accepted into our living rooms. But while The Sopranos is about moral ambiguity, Profit is resolutely amoral. Jim Profit, played magnificently by Adrian Pasdar, is a fascinating character precisely because he is blithely unconcerned with societal conceptions of morals in his pursuit of the position as President of Acquisitions. He freely uses extortion, bribery, psychological torture, and even murder to accomplish his goals, and the questions "Is this right or wrong?" are ignored. Profit doesn't consider or care about how others are harmed by his actions--it's simply not part of his calculus in decisions. There is something incredibly terrifying and Ayn Rand-ian about that. Profit's exterior--well mannered and groomed, Harvard and Wharton educated, seemingly sympathetic and compassionate--is equally menacing, precisely because it is an artifice. He has no actual personality, so he can exploit the full range of human emotion if the situation calls for it and it furthers his end game. If it suits him and his goals to be funny and charming, than he can be. But if he believes that he is better served by planting incriminating evidence and securing a life sentence for an innocent man, than so be it. I am amazed that a show with such a fundamentally scary character ever made it to air, but I'm very glad it did, as it provided me with some amusement and deep ruminations about morality over the past couple days.

Catch Profit on DVD if you can, although it will probably shake you up too much to sleep for a couple of days.

The Return of the King

Been a bit too long, but I had my 21st birthday and final exams to deal with, so sod it.

I'm done with another semester of college, and in the past 24 hours, I've watched three episodes of News Radio, two of The Thick of It, the last episode of Entourage, and one episode of The Larry Sanders Show. I've also started reading The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. This always happens when I come home--I consume a crazy amount of media. Probably because in that two to three week period before I start working for the summer, I get bored being home and by myself. At school, I can usually talk to one of my roommates or meet a friend for coffee(I also drink more coffee when I'm here). I don't mind it too much, as I've always been someone who is reading three books simultaneously and watching a tv show while I do it.

I also read more news online when I'm at home. So far today, I've read/browsed The New York Times, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and The National Review. I am always a little bit surprised when I find myself reading The National Review, because every once in a while I think it's a good magazine, but most of the time I think it is hysterical. I imagine that is a fun place to observe as a fly on the wall, because the clash of one's world view with reality is a staggeringly sad thing to witness.

Not my best, but I'm getting back into the swing of it.