Twenty-Ten, Be Our Friend

                                          

We end the year with ThirdGarage's (3G) Honoree List for 2009:

"As If" Award: To French Ministre De La Justice, Michele Alliot-Marie, for notifying 3G that it is illegal for non-French citizens to create French holidays. We received a "ceasement et desiste" order from Paris regarding our invention of CentJours, a celebration of the year's first hundred days on April 10 or 9 each year. Alliot-Marie states that, " TroisGarages must first hire a French citizen, who must do the inventing." Also, this worker must be perpetually employed. Despite this note, France will forge ahead and celebrate CentJours "as if a French person had invented it."

Perpetual Employment Award: To the New York State Senate and Assembly. This special award is for always being there when we needed them and the fact that, as weird as it may seem, they always will be. On some days, when we were stuck for funny ideas, they were there for us.

Get Working Trophy: To the Hallmark Card Co. for its zealous offer of a contract for 3G to develop 20 new holidays per year for 5 years. This was based on our inventing Arrival Day, as recently reported by RecessionWire and MSN Money. We declined, believing that 100 new holidays is hardly the way to get the economy going and reduce deficits. 3G did, however, refer Hallmark to France, where they can find plenty of idle and inventive citoyens.

Annual Retraction Award: To Governor Dave Paterson, formerly known as David (changed due to unflattering Biblical references to height). Although 3G made a simple human typo error when it wrote, " the legally dumb Governor," we formally retract it anyway. Obviously, we meant that GovDave was "legally bland." We're sorry.

Forceps Manufacturers' Lobby Award: To Baucus, Pelosi, Reid and Co, President O, and "Rahm It" Emanuel. Remember the Seinfeld "Ugly Baby" episode? Wow, that was some ugly baby. But, the parents thought it was an "unprecedentedly beautiful" new earthling. We can't help thinking that there will be some very long feeding nights and a troubled adolescence ahead for the adoring midwives and parents of our new baby, known as The Bill.

"Twenty-Ten, Twenty-Ten
  Please, be
  Our friend,
  Twenty-Ten"


Happy New Year

Toast

1

Santa delivered a new toaster to our house this Christmas. It's a Proctor Silex, made in China. It came with a 24  page instruction booklet, most of which described really bad things that might happen, if you made toast the wrong way.

The booklet may have been written by the same lawyers who write those TV drug ads that warn certain people: "ProToastEx may cause headache, nausea, lack of breath, immediate death." This is the simplest toaster that Santa could find: all white, two slots, one push button and one control knob.

  The 24-page booklet did not mention an obvious design flaw, as shown above:  the electrical plug-wire enters the toaster at the front, where the controls are. In order to plug it in easily, the controls need to face the wall. This glitch may have occurred  because they do not make much toast in China.

2

While making toast in the new gadget the day after Christmas, I read the story about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a plane landing in Detroit. Umar's name had been entered in something called the  Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment or Tide. There are about 550.000 names there. I didn't know that, did you?

That is one Tide we'd all like to see go out and never come back.  There is a "sub-Tide" called Terrorist Screening Data Base with 400,000 names on it.  Then comes a sub-sub-Tide "no-fly list." There are only 4,000 names on that, which did not seem like a lot.

As a result of this incident, I'm betting that many Americans  will now have their  own "no fly" lists with their own names featured prominently on top of them. They'll never fly again, which is too bad. It's hard to compete globally, when you won't get on an airplane. (Note to self: Buy Trailways Bus stock).

3

Here's an idea: maybe airlines should have to publish a list of people who are on each flight for all passengers to see. If you are on a flight with someone named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, coming from Nigeria, paying cash and not checking any bags, you can make up your own mind about taking that flight.

Some people might think this idea is undemocratic, uncivil and prejudicial. Umar's own father would not be one of them; a well-known financier, he notified authorities himself about the danger his son posed.

4

Santa also gave me a book called "When China Rules The World." It says that the US is decadent and China is strong, getting stronger. If Mr. Umar Farouk Abdulmutalab was caught in China, he would already be toast.

5

Even though our new toaster had a plug that came out of the wrong end, it made really good toast on the first try.  I continued reading the news, while eating the near-perfect toast about a new "reality" TV show. This show is about an obese family, in which everyone weighs over 300 pounds. It's all about when, how, how much they all eat and whether they can stop doing that. I'm not making this up.

Reading about this obese family show, got me thinking about China again. I've been to China six times.Whenever I went there, I ate like an emperor and still came back home lighter than before I left.

    I never saw any fat Chinese people; my colleague Joe and I were the fat people there.              

      It might make some sense for that obese family to live in China for a couple of years. Maybe reality TV is part of that decadence that the 'China Rules" author kept mentioning.

                                                                                6   

 The book's basic  premise is that Americans are debt-obese. If we keep consuming with money borrowed from China, their economy will surpass ours by 2027. By 2050,  our whole country will have been Made In China.

     At that point, we really will be you know what.

                                                                            

Seasons' Greetings

                                                    Our Founding Editor





Holy Obama and Peacenik Joe!
The Season's upon us in all its glow.
Tiger's making Birdies, marked with X's,
While Lindsay may soon be running out of sexes.

Citi-Boys can't raise enough money,
Goldie-Lloyd makes it as bees do honey.
Greenwich mommies, freed at last,
to shop and shop 'til there's no SUV gas.

That Graydon, still tops in Vanity,
Other mag moguls just plead insanity.
Paper and print are so Ghosts of the Past.
Twitter, Google are really cheap and fast.

Max, Nancy, Harry still madly wrapping
Year end health with all its tricky trappings.
What the hey, Yes! Nothing could be finer,
Virginia, there is a Santa, and he lives in China.

Yankee Matsui, Johnny Damon too,
Please take Joba along with you.
Those Knicks are what rhymes with Bricks:
Giants' opponents now never need to kick!

"President" Karzai, coal in your sock, Sir!
Ahmajinedad, for you, a radium rocker.
Iraqistan, we've already given many billions,
We're pretty sure it's into the trillions.

Fox-Boys: O'Righty, Sean Enmity, His Beckness,
Take a chill this Yule, or Ex-Lax.
You're rich media guys playing tin soldiers,
While others bravely carry our world upon their shoulders.

Even say a Hoorah for that Hill and Bill,
a whole year taking that Quiet Pill!
Diplo-Hillary aloft in her comfy sleigh,
Passing Santa's Reindeer along her constant way.

"O," what a year it's been, since Inaugural,
A spending race and to top it, a Nobel.
It's hard to think what you'll do for an encore,
no telling, as long as the solvent will lend us more.

But, Dear Readers, compared to 2009,
We think '10 may seem quite sublime.
We wish you all a Happy, Wealthy Year,
With Divine Blessings and far fewer tears.

My Guardian Angel, Clarissa

No matter how hard you try this Christmas Season, you're pretty much going to have to watch It's A Wonderful Life, whether you want to or not. In flush times, we find the strength to pass on it, but, in times we'd like to flush, like these, you are forgiven for watching it as many times as you like.

George Bailey, as played by Jimmy Stewart, is still standing on his bridge, frightened and staring down into the churning river below. He's an S + L guy: an honest provider of mortgages. If that sounds like a  science fiction character, it wasn't meant to be. Bailey is about as close to our banker boys as Beetle Bailey is to Transformers. He's standing on that bridge, life insurance policy in his coat pocket, because he believes, through logic twisted by pain,  that he is worth more to his family drowned than alive.

Millions of people are standing on that bridge with Bailey this year. They have been caught in a downward spiral of lost jobs, threatened health insurance, burned savings, stock market losses, lost home equity. And those are the solid citizens, who played by the rules!  Many may have suffered the added indignity of being totally ignored by HR assistants and recruiters, as they look for rare new jobs or clients, perhaps at half their old pay. They are on that bridge waiting for their emails, letters, calls and texts to be returned. They may be waiting for a celluloid while.

Okay, our story gets cheerier:  enter Clarence, George Bailey's hapless guardian angel, who dives into the river forcing Bailey to dive in to save him. Then, Clarence gives Bailey a tour of "Pottersville," as if he had never been born, in order to prove George's true value to friends and family. Mr. Potter represents some very bad things the world has to offer; he's Banker Bernie with a turban and a black suit, played by Lionel Barrymore.

Heaven must be a pretty busy place these days mustering up a surge-worth of guardian angels to help millions of people by stimulating their self-worth. Imagine long lines of angels being outfitted and parachuted (like Clarence, they have not yet earned wings) to earth.

And so we come to my own guardian angel, Clarissa. Unlike ragged Clarence, she speaks with a very posh Brit accent (Gordonstoun), wears tall heels and dark-rimmed glasses (whom did you think I would get?). Rather than tour the town to prove my true worth, she has helped me re-visit people and events I may have "misunderstood." We'd like to share:

• HR: they have 1,000 apps for 5 spots. Those have been promised to friends of senior management. Most of their time, they are worried about their own jobs. We should love them.
• Health Insurance: Max, Nancy, Harry and O mean well. Your butcher would like to sell prime at sausage prices too, but he can't. Neither can Congress and our CE-O. They need a hug.
• Albany: Have I mentioned how spectacularly smart Clarissa is? Even Clarissa didn't understand Albany, but it must have a purpose, she said, even if we cannot see it. Ah, faith of angels.
• The Deficit: According to Clarissa, her papa never had a dime, nor his papa, nor her mama's papa. It's normal not to pay clothing, wine, school or tax bills in her old culture. Cheers to that!
• Banks: Where Clarissa came from, only the dimmest, dullest boys got sent to run the banks. The smarties, whom girls loved best, became traders. Naturally, the dim boys couldn't keep up. This is simply Natural Selection. Learn to love nature's winners, even if they are smarmadukes.

I'm feeling better already, aren't you? It is a wonderful life after all.

Morning Prayer

Thanks again for the 7:42,

Grand Central bound,

with its grumpy engines

and proper wake-up bells.

Some mornings, sitting before

the blank page, screen, desk,

I wonder:

Did You ever consider

giving up?

I mean, after two

or three days of Creation,

while nobody was looking,

you must have considered it.

After light. After oceans.

After fishes, trees.

After birds, vineyards, the

creepy-crawlies.

After thunder and asparagus.

Did You ever think?

Nobody will care.

Nobody will buy it.

Nobody will ever return my calls,

messages, texts!

I, for one,

would completely understand,

if you had.

What if You really did give up?

What if seven days was really just the middle?

That might explain a few things, actually:

Reality TV, for example. Albany.

Plastic packaging that cuts our fingers.

Congress. Those crazies with eight kids.

But, I do not think You quit.

I think You said:

“Don’t let perfect ruin good.”

And so, here we are,

at another Beginning.

Amen.


Dedicated to Twyla Tharp and Tim Brown, whose books about the creative process have been so helpful and encouraging; and to Harry Beckwith, business writer/speaker extraordinaire for the "perfect" line.

ThanksTaking Day: Black Friday

Have you ever found yourself falling for Ms/Mr Wrong, but you know you're going to do it anyway? You just know it's going to turn out all wrong for you. That's a tell-tail sign: envisioning an end. When you fall for Mr/Ms Right, you don't envision an end.

It looks to me like we are collectively falling for Black Friday and it isn't going to be easy to break it off. It's going to end badly, but we seem to want it so much. Why? Possibly because every media hack in the country, and there are a lot of them, are working us into a frenzy. These might be the same folks who told us about those great mortgages with near-zero interest, no down payments and no silly job requirement.

Have you asked yourselves how Black Friday got here? We awoke one morning still feeling full from a Thanksgiving dinner and with a mild headache to find Black Friday hanging in the sky like one of those huge Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons in the form of a vulture. " This is not my holiday!" the Talking Heads might have sung.

Suddenly, whenever you turn on a TV (usually a mistake anyway) and the car radio, some nitwit is ranting about bargains all over town. In Seattle,which I visited this past Thanksgiving, there was a radio show devoted to Black Friday shopping tips and a Shopping Parade downtown. Disclosure: yes, I did shop. I bought a Christmas present for my wife at Revival, Leah Steen's fine shop in the Capitol Hill district, $109,  and I would do it all over again.

Black Friday. Does that sound like a day on which something really good is going to happen? What is this thing about colors all of a sudden, like Red and Blue states.  I still can't remember which ones are Democratic and which Republican, although TV Talking /heads and newspapers take it for granted that we all know. Who thinks up these things?

Black Friday. How could we be so stupid?

Retailers and their media agents seem to think that spending money we have and don't have is great for the economy. Maybe that's why retailing and media stocks are not such great buys: talk about dumb. An American spending $500 in a discount or department store is probably borrowing at least half of that and perhaps paying as much as 29.9% interest. This is the newest rate banks have invented for us after borrowing untold billions from us in order to "survive." Even these ingrates can't bring themselves to charge 30% interest. Yet.

That $500 bucks may go to protecting some $15 per hour jobs with few or no "benefits." Some of it may even go to places where the retailers are HQ'd, and some more may indeed find its way into the media itself in the form of advertising. But, let's get serious, if you're buying a lot of stuff, much of this dough is going to find its way to China. China is then going to lend it to our "government," so that they can spend way more than $500. Everyday is Black Friday for Congress and State Legislatures.

China. A person making $20 a day in China probably saves $10. A person making $20 an hour in the US, spends $28 per hour. Congress' new universal national healthcare is mostly made in China, since they will lend us the dough. I'm beginning to think that Black Friday is a Chinese idea. I'm going to check my Little Red Book.

Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday. We don't need to get in a frenzy about buying a book our aunt won't read or having to return another tie your sister gave you. We don't feel compelled to become interior horticulturalists or exterior expert electricians. We gather together to share a meal and accomplish the near impossible task of making a turkey taste delicious instead of like moistened copy-paper. Thanksgiving comes with a bonus for many of us: a Friday off to do anything we want. Why would we want to ruin such a good thing in favor of Black Friday?

If we have to have back-to-back national holidays in November, why can't we have Savings Day. Americans would be much better off if they saved that $500 or the $250 of it that they actually have. That is the only way to improve the economy, Pilgrims: the only way to cut debt, invest in decent schools, in other words, keep having something to celebrate on Thanksgiving.

Black Friday looks a lot to me like ThanksTaking and we should break off the relationship right now.

Mulligan

A few years ago, I became somewhat befuddled about what to do with my life. Okay, I was completely befuddled. The cause, as I put it at the time, was being downsized from my job, displaced, severanced and bridged to an early retirement.  My fifteen-year-old daughter put it this way: fired, broke, preparing to sell the house and move away. Bim, Bam, Boom. Don't you hate it when your kids get it exactly right?

Anyway, befuddled, betwixt and between, I did what anyone else would have done in my situation, I created two new holidays. One, which  I called CentJours, was a celebration of the year's first 100 days on April 10 (4/9 in leap years), on which you spent $100 any way you chose as long as it was fun. The other holiday was Arrival Day, any day in the week before Thanksgiving. On this day, the celebrant takes a roundtrip on the Staten Island Ferry, across New York Harbor going out, and, more importantly, coming back. Coming back past Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, you imagine yourself as an actual immigrant, with all of your belongings in a bag and your life savings, maybe $50 or $1,000, in your pocket. You have no job, no office, no place to live, no relatives, only a dream. You alight from the ferry in lower Manhattan. What do you do?

That was the object of the holiday or exercise, if you will. You wanted to put yourself in the immigrant's shoes, not for politically correct feel-good reasons, but as if to say: okay, here I am, where do I go, what do I do, where do I stay? How do I build a life? A good thing to do on Arrival Day, as I did earlier this week, might  be to walk for a while, up past the WTC site, where you notice thousands of busy people walking, but there is not a sound. Eight years have passed since the buildings came roaring down and our world as we knew it also came tumbling down, but we still treat this site with a reverence that is so profound it goes almost unnoticed. Some people want to build it up, but I would simply leave it as a grassy shrine, an outdoor secular cathedral.

When you lose your job and income at fifty-eight and a half in our culture, even if you are relatively wealthy, you have a problem. At least you have a problem if you've been paying attention to your life and realize that what we generally call "retirement" should be an accounting term, not a life term. You never want your life to become a noun; you always want it to be a verb. This is why I like celebrating Arrival Day. In my case I can keep walking north past the place where my grandfather, Adam Welstead, was born at the corner of Bedford and Barrow Streets in what we now call the West Village.
This was a guy, who got through the eighth grade, got a Tammany Hall job in the tax office and commuted from Matawan, NJ to Long Island City. Eventually, Mayor LaGuardia appointed him Tax Commissioner in Queens, he bought a house in Forest Hills, thrived during the Depression and entered the upper-middle class. But that's someone else's story and the object of the exercise is to ask,what's my or your story going to be?

Arrival Day. A good way to clear your head of all the ideas, schemes, plans, dead-ends, worries of the year gone past. Arrival Day: a big do-ever, a Life Mulligan.

But, you might ask, who cares? Why bring this up, when most of us have jobs, look forward to retiring and haven't had many dead ends this past year? Good points.

I bring it up because this year, when I asked myself what I would do in order to forge a new living in this new world I imagined for myself and family, writing a blog did NOT jump to the top of the list, at least not this one.  And so, this is my long way of saying that thirdgarage is going on hiatus, while I focus creative attention on more promising ventures for the next year.

From time to time I may be tempted to update you or to entertain you, and there's always the chance that this blog will morph into another one. But I doubt it. The world will progress very nicely without my two-cents worth of opinion. We already have too many opinions. I'm going to use my Mulligan to be quiet for a while, then I'm going to work on something longer, more meaningful, more helpful.

Happy Arrival Day. Happy Thanksgiving.

Yours,

Mulligan

Veteran's Day: Being A Professional

As most of you know, the closest I ever came to soldiering may have been marching in formation in various armories around NYC and holding an M1 at arm's length during "jug" (detention) on the roof overlooking 15th St at Xavier High School. This was probably a good thing for the country, but left a gap in my resume and a debt owed to so many who served.

I was thinking today about my friend's son, who is in Afghanistan under daily attack. I was also thinking about another friend's son, who had recently returned from Afghanistan, when, out of the blue, I received the following email:

Friends and Family

Yesterday my command asked me to leave this Thursday for Afghanistan to support an investigation into the combat deaths of four Marines.

I will be gone for less than a month, possibly much less, but I wanted to let you know.  Some of you may not even know I'm back from the first trip ... whether you knew or not, I look forward to celebrating my second homecoming of the year in December, I've enjoyed seeing so many of you during the first.

Semper Fi,

Kurt

Kurt Sanger, Jr.is the son of my best and closest friend, Kurt Sr., who died tragically in 1989. Kurt Jr. attended Poly Prep, Holy Cross, and became a Marine and a lawyer along the way. After serving in the Adjutant Corps in what we used to call Yugoslavia, he returned to the States, wrote a pretty decent novel about his war experience and tried to integrate himself back into civilian life.

As it turned out, that didn't go so smoothly. I was lucky enough to spend some time with him, talking to him about the "old days" in Forest Hills Gardens that he remembered from tales his father had told him. It became a wonderful way for both of us to connect with something and someone we had lost. Eventually, Kurt re-enlisted and shipped to Afghanistan for the first time last year, from where he would send me messages from time to time.

The great basketball artist and soldier of the courts, Dr. J. (Julius Erving), said once that, "Being a professional means doing the things we love to do on the days that we don't want to do them." Amen. I keep that quote close-by every day, and today I shared that thought with Kurt Sanger, Jr., Marine, Lawyer, Loving Son, Loyal Friend, one of thousands of true professionals at home and around the world like him.

Today is a day to take off our Red or Blue political uniforms, to refrain from our nearly incessant blather about what are, in the Big Picture, silly things. Today is a day we don't give a hoot about the size of bonuses, the Dow's finish or, or how many games the Knicks will lose. Today we simply salute Kurt and the other real professionals and say: Be Safe, Hurry Home.

To all of you Veterans, Thank You. Enjoy Your Day.

Proust, Harry Potter, And The House Of Health Horrors

Today, I share a little family secret: my Proust Project. Merely mentioning the name Proust in our household will cause eyeballs to roll, smirks to form and heads to shake. Many humbling events may occur in our lives, particularly in the current tenuous era, but none of those can approach Proust's particular way of highlighting  my shortcomings as a literary Pilgrim.

Our saga begins in 1983 on Surfside Beach in Nantucket, a good place, one would think,  to start an eight part continuous novel, Remembrance Of things Past (ROTP). After all,the great work itself begins at a family summer retreat called Combray. My beach book was Volume I of the 1981 Random House Terence Kilmartin update of the classic C.K.Scott Moncrieff original translation from the French. It stands before me now with its warped, weatherbeaten cover and 1018 text pages filled with sea air, humidity and a few grains of sand. The bookmark is the same slice of Pierre Deux ribbon borrowed in 1983. I'd like to report that I actually did finished this volume.... in 2006 with a little help from a new Penguin translation overseen by Christopher Prendergast. That's right; it took me 23years to read two novels.

I should probably tell you at this point, if you have not actually read Proust in its entirety, that it may be described as a Seinfeldian work in that nothing much happens. That is, life happens, but it is the birds tweeting, the leaves being leaves, music playing, parties being parties. Some have referred to it as a Zen novel. To draw a one last, political, analogy,   ROTP is the Albany of literature. It progresses at its own slow pace, day after day, character after character, word by word by word, and not too much is accomplished, except that, since its about people with loads of dough, they find a million ways to spend it.

Where were we? 2006, thirteen years after starting the first volume, I finish it. So, I am pumped, energized. Also, I have an enormous amount of time on my hands due to a sudden disruption in life. I acquired a rare 1927 Moncrieff Cities Of The Plain (IV)published by Albert & Charles Boni, also their 1929 The Captive (VI) . Additionally, I begin keeping Vintage paperback editions handy and continue trying the contemporary Penguin translations.

But I do not finish. In fact, I become deeply discouraged when my brother-in-law, a French scholar and international educator, visits and tells me that the entire work must be read in sequence and all at the same time in order to enjoy its true depth and beauty. And so, my friends, I must begin again, from the beginning, and I am valiantly trying to find the strength to so so.

But, you may ask, why should we care? Why, Reader and Fellow Pilgrim, in this topsy-turvey world of ours should you give a souffle' about my Proust travails?

I was reminded today of my Proust Project by a little piece in the Times, which as you know, is a favorite whipping boy of mine and such a willing victim at that. A Mr. John Schwartz writes a small piece about how the healthcare naysayers harp about the size of the House bill, 1990 pages, as evidence of its worthlessness. He actually finds an expert, Katz, a "fellow in empirical legal studies" at U of Mich. Katz and his colleague brilliantly point out that although the bill contains 363,000 words, only about 234,000 of them " have an impact on substantive law and that "234,000 words do not present a barrier to reading."

I'll bet that will ease any doubts you may have had! They go on together to say that, at this length, the bill is comparable to J.K. Rowling's longest book in the Harry Potter series. I'm not making this up.

Mr. Schwartz, Katz, Times editors (if there are any left who can think and read), thank you all once again for pointing out the obvious to us all: the House bill can only be seen as a work of pure fiction, containing fantastic tales of medical delivery and dark mathematical wizardry. This work would earn Drs. Pelosi and Baucus an unprecedented Triple Nobel Prize for Medicine, Mathematics and Literature, if it ever passed. With friends like Schwartz, and more bad luck, it probably won't.


And newspapers wonder why they are going out of business.


If this is the best that the bill's supporters, like the Times can do,  then there is every reason to hope that I will be able to finish reading Proust's entire Remembrance of Things Past before Congress' monumental work of fiction ever becomes a real law.

"For a long time I used to go to bed early...."
_____________________________________________________________


Please Note: thirdgarage editors would like to remind loyal and even disloyal readers that the staff is currently showing a series of collages at Wine At Five, Rye's premier wineshop and (temporary) art gallery. Having sold one piece last week, staff discovered that reducing prices had a positive influence on buyers. Therefore, prices are currently $95-150 for these unique and, admittedly, slightly odd original works.

$1,100,000,000,000 SUV

Over the weekend, you may have been astounded to discover that the Congressional Health Reform Bill had passed by a couple of votes. This, after an election day on which Americans seemed united in saying "We Hate All Of You" to every politician in the land. You may also have been surprised to see that Congress, with a little assistance from their enabling press friends, was doing fuzzy math again. The paper of Wreckord, the Times, suddenly claimed that the "reform" would cost $1.1 Trillion over ten years. They always write numbers like that, so that they look small. Let's look at the real thing: $1,100,000,000,000. That's better. Or, is it?

But, you may have wondered, as I did, how could this be? During this long saga about healthcare reform, we had been speaking of adding about $800 Billion to the deficit: $800,000,000,000. Now, actually, we all knew that number was fuzzy and its only significance was that it was it was not $1.1 Trillion or more added to the deficit. Now, we find that this is the ten year "cost of reform."

This sounds suspiciously like adding the entire cost of this reform to the deficit. In other words we are going to borrow every cent from our Asian "friends."This despite the Congressional bill's raising of more new taxes on the wealthy, whom everyone hates just for breathing, where does that go?

Whether you consider yourself to be Red, Blue or Purple, it doesn't take a genius to know that this all stinks to low heaven. This is Iraq dressed up in a surgical gown. This plan is also exactly the kind of plan that  GM loved to adopt: let's build a cost structure so high and so out of control and let's make sure that we own that cost structure forever, then let's make silly looking but huge cars. Le's pretend these sales numbers are also real forever and ....on and on. We'll lose a few teeth, but put our heads down on our Grosse Point pillows and in the morning there will be the money we need to borrow under our pillows.

Having just looked at my "open enrollment" information and seen the increases in premiums and the decreases in coverage, I confess to wanting real reform in this area. But, I cannot help thinking that we are about to build the world's biggest SUV factory, just at the moment when oil prices go through the roof, unemployment becomes pandemic, banks 'fess up to stealing everyone blind and all credit markets dry up. I would say that, if Congress was a company, it would be GM. But, it already IS GM.

That's not good. I don't want healthcare reform by GM. I want healthcare as if Google or Apple made it. People who know what they're doing.

Random Thoughts

It's Friday, a day for random thoughts and rest after dodging dozens of calls from eager HR recruiters and prospective clients all week:

Bold Idea: Was Hillary raised near an airport? She's logging more miles than a Delta/NW pilot as she plays nice everywhere. On the home front, there's Rahm alienating everybody in sight, which is, of course, his job. But with Max and Nancy pretty much ignoring Rahm on HealthScare no matter how many loud profanities he hurls at their 1900 page "reform" bill, isn't it time for a change? What could be more sensible than to ground Hill, bringing her home as top Assistant To The Pres. in the White House, where she can make nice with Nancy, Max, Charlie, etc? Then, send Rahm to State, where he can fly around insulting every idiot that we support out there and people we don't; they only understand people named Rahm screaming and getting spittle all over their faces. The Old Switcheroo.

Just a helpful thought.

Kandinsky: After seeing his work at Guggie, it's hard to see why I might want to continue making my little collages and constructions. After all, they've been showing at Wine @ Five in town for weeks with no sales, although much "interest."

Viewing K., especially my favorites from 1910-1912, one sees that every good painting is a portrait of both the painter and the viewer. One also sees that every realistic work is also abstract in a way, and that each good abstract creates its own reality.

Well, that's what I saw; I knew you'd want to know.

Urs Fischer: Is Urs the Swiss-German for Ugh?

This exhibit at the New Museum seems designed solely to poke fun at Capitalists dumb enough to plunk down six figures for one of the "artist's" works and at museum "curators" too spineless to ever say no.

Once upon a time, curator was used as a noun and was a title. Now, we have "curating," in which the museum employee becomes an active participant not only in the exhibiting, but in the art itself, which consist partly of the event.

Upon leaving the New, after 20 minutes, I watched another "event" unfolding on the ground floor. The artist was high on a ladder in his underpants painting grey swirls in a nice pattern on the wall. Around the floor he and someone had "curated" a number of vignettes.

After seeing Kandinsly, one wonders why people like myself continue making collages and constructions, despite having a relatively small gift. After seeing Urs and Underpants Man we know that there are many with an even smaller gift who thrive. So, we proceed, encouraged.

Elections: Have you heard the one about Sarah Palin stumping the country extolling the wonders of Viagra to Republicans, because she's found out it will help them get "elected?"

What is there left to say? Emperor Mike had 15 seconds worth of humility and that was plenty. One wonders which city the Times reporters actually report on, since they believe Mike will now be mending fences. Right. And those classified numbers, they're going to be through the roof soon, Boys. Oi, where do they get these dumbos.

The White House is pointing out that there are actually two Obamas: "Obama" and Obama. It was really "Obama" who went to New Jersey a gazzillion times to stump for Corzine and to avoid Manhattan until "he" absolutely had to say very quietly how much "he" truly loved "his friend" (wink, wink) Billy Thompson. Obama, on the other hand, never left DC, wasn't there, didn't say it, can't be blamed.

Friends, I have been around NYC politics for over 50 years, weaned on the stuff by my Tammany-trained and Fiorello-appointed grandfather. When "Billy" Thompson almost beats you, with 1/10 the money and after being embarrassed and dissed by a President in his own Party, who just happens to also be an African-American, that means people viscerally, truthfully, painfully and wholeheartedly dislike you, your banking dough, your arrogance and your smarm. This is like the butterfly KO-ing Ali in the First. All the money in the world cannot erase this humiliation. The Emperor won, but still came up....short.

The Fifty-First State

Election Day Eve: In New Jersey, President O has been unintentionally stumping for the Republican guvernatorial candidate; nursing homes are frantically readying voter vans to deliver aroused citizens who still remember being Republicans to vote against the Dem candidate. Upstate, a Republican congressional candidate, forced out by the rising the Rush/Newt Republican Right, has endorsed her former Democratic opponent. And here at home, in the state's smallest city, the current Dem Mayor is feeling a deep Republican venom not seen in these parts since women asked to play golf on the weekends!

A Bold Proposal: In September 2001, we proposed adding a fifty-first star to our national flag, a star that would represent our highest aspirations as a nation and demonstrate to our twisted, narrow-minded and determined enemies, at home and abroad, that we would hold firm in our beliefs. It seems like this would be a good time to revive the proposal in the form of a Fifty-First State. Purists please note that Mr. Robert Heft designed the new flag, when he designed our current flag. Also, please note that the new state is a spiritual/aspirational one, not territorial, with the following advantages:

• No new state capitol. No Soviet -style buildings rising in agricultural land, far from population centers and voters' eyes.
• Hence, no additional upper/lower Houses, no staff payroll padding with relatives, no awarding of lucrative contracts to House colleagues, no innovative tax schemes that exempt representatives from payment, and no free extensive healthcare for state employees.
• No new governor. Enough said.
• No new State educational "curriculum." No state tests designed to guarantee improved scores for all grades. No failure to encourage intensive science and math study in favor of fluffy "civics" classes. No selection of literature based on political content vs. artistic merit.
• No additional central gathering point for fourth-rate lawyers with time and money on their hands.
•  No banking or insurance regulation. Oh, sorry, even real states don't have this.
• Etc. & etc.

Seriously folks, it's time for us to have a visible symbol of what we hope to become, a symbol of all the things that still draw people from Africa, Asia, Central & South America, Mexico and Europe to our shores. Funny thing, but these people do not come here driven to earn the median income, have their children get C's in mediocre schools, or to learn to hate prosperous people; they want to be prosperous people. Have you ever met anyone driven to emigrate to China? Russia? India? France? Well, okay, some of us would love to have a place in France, but you get our point, Fellow Pilgrims, I'm sure. People come here to reach their highest aspirations, not average ones. Let's adopt that extra star as a symbol of our newfound energy, wisdom and cohesion that will continue pointing the way.

You can view the fifty-one star flag here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_51_Star_possible_Flag.svg       

and read about Robert Heft here:
http://www.usflag.org/flagdesigner.html       
          

October Classic in 5-7-5

October Classic,
ginkgo, Japanese maple:
perfect curves to home.


crimson, saffron, a
thousand buddhist monks climbing:
field box, mezz, loge, tier.

I Have Nothing To Say, Almost

Today, being Friday, I have nothing to say about the following topics:

1) HealthScare: If it was a holiday, it would be Halloween. Count Dracula operating, Ponzi's Ghost doing the billing, Tony Perkins's Ghost preparing your clean-up shower.

2) Local Taxes: The median property tax in my town, which some morons officially made into a city many years ago, is nearly equal to the median income in the United States, $48,000. The difference is that US median income is falling, while local taxes are rising. I define "city" as a group of people formerly known as a community, who become so focused on future expectations and past glories that they become totally stuck in the present moment, in which they have become incapable of making any decision. They have become Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

3) CFO's: When they lay their heads on pillows at night, they dream of the vast number of employees who will soon become ex-employees. Their favorite number: Zero. Their favorite color: Black. Their favorite work of fiction: Last Year's Annual Report, until this year's version is printed. Their favorite charity: Senior Management Bonuses. Favorite Movie: Meet Joe Black.

4) Retirement: Something that's good to do for your auto every 25,000 miles, but bad for your soul.

5) 401K: A four letter word related to Retirement. When it was invented by the securities industry and hailed as Capitalism's visible hand by Republican supporters, actuaries estimated that retirees would have an average of $350,000 in their accounts. Actual average in 2005: $35,000 for the minority that had an account, 40% less by late 2008.

6) Afghanistan: Read Rory Stewarts's The Places In Between. He already said it all.

7) Fox Sports: Soon we will be carving the Thanksgiving Turkey early, in order to catch the first pitch of the World Series on Fox (after twelve football games) and hear Buck (the perfect Fox announcer name!) and McCarver (the perfect Thanksgiving Series name!) root for the National League team, unless it's the Mets.

8) NFL Commissioner and Lawyers: "Tackling, what tackling?

9) NYC's Next Emperor: Poor Mike, like another famous shortie, he's going to be stuck on his island, still with all the dough, but without an enormous amount of respect he once had. How do we ask Afghans and Iraquis to adopt democracy, when our brightest, richest, savviest citizens don't trust the  system to provide a successor who will be as bright, rich or savvy as they are? This guy went from hero to schmo in a New York Minute.

10) Fall: Every Fall, around Halloween in fact, I mix some dried ginkgo, sycamore, Japanese maple, and beech leaves in a coffee can. Then I strike a match,  light the leaves and close my eyes. The result, like a geni from a lamp is that the smoke grants me three wishes: 1) I am back in Forest Hills Gardens, walking home from my game and smelling the burning leaves from a dozen small piles in the streets, 2) I return to a magical time, in which reasonable human beings played World Series baseball games in the day time; afterwards, we celebrated one ritual with another: the burning of the leaves.3) I remember that after a rain soaked these fires, they smelled even better.

But, I'm not going to say a word about these things today; I am going to see Kandinsky and see what he had to say.

What's So Open About Open Enrollment?

Some people are grappling with difficult voting decisions this week, but millions more are baffled, ticked-off and downright angry over an Orwellian thing called "Open Enrollment." Our editorial meetings were brimming with thoughts about this annual phenomenon. Below is a summary:

• What's so "Open" about a system in which most of the important decisions have already been made for you by two or more extremely large organizations, who are focused on cost-cutting and profitability with only a minor interest in your health? 
• Do former auto company execs and bank regulators migrate to healthcare companies after they "retire" early? Just at a critical moment in the national healthcare brawl, when you'd think that healthcare companies would want citizens/customers to think favorably about them, they demonstrate their stupidity, minor-league greed and inability to communicate clearly in any language. After reading the documents 10 times, you understand they're cutting bennies and charging you more. Can you spell "Public Option?"
• Why do we have to do this every year? There are many things in life that we do not have to become fearful about losing every year "unless you respond in writing by...." For example, we have been trying to cancel our Travel & Leisure subscription for several years. Nobody in the family even remembers ordering it. Yet, it keeps on coming. Why can't our healthcare be like that without this annual "Enrollment?" Why can't your company and your insurer write you an email that says, " We are cutting benefits this way, and we are charging you more this way." Period. Same thing every year. Have you ever heard from these Bobbsy Twins that, "we are giving you more and better coverage and reducing the annual cost to you and your wonderful family by 25%?" Hello!
• Sometime before next year's Congressional elections, Congress and the Administration will present you with the new Health Plan. It boils down to this: if you didn't have any insurance before, or couldn't afford it, you are going to get it. If you had insurance and couldn't afford it, you will pay the same for less. If you had insurance, could afford it and liked it, you may be sent to a low security prison and you definitely will pay much more for a lot less. That's it. Dems are betting that more people will like it than hate it and that they will vote next November. Republicans think  an invisible surgeon's hand will intervene. But, the worst part is that we will probably still have "Open Enrollment."
• Nothing is more closed than Open Enrollment.
• Your current of former employer, sensing a golden opportunity, desperately wants to have a Public Option, so they won't have to provide "benefits" any more. None. Zero. Zilch. CFO's all over the country are smiling because a company that a) never hires anybody anymore b) pays huge bonuses to CFO's and others, and c) no longer has to waste money on benefits that could be going to bonuses is a great company. Right?
• We though AIG was pretty bad. Some of us think owning GM/Citi/Etc is no picnic. We get upset at GoldiLocks and their bonuses. But these CFO's, CEO's and their healthcare partners make those three auto company dingles look like geniuses. And that's not good.
• When President O, Congressman "Wild Thing" Max, Mother Nancy and others look back on the whole sordid Healthcare Thing, they will point to the 2009 Open Enrollment period as THE turning point at which citizens, employees and healthcare co. customers decided that NOTHING could be as stupid, ineffectual and downright insulting as this Annual Customer & Patient Gouging they call Open Enrollment.
• And these were the more reasonable thoughts. We can't print the others.

As an antidote to Open Enrollment, I suggest, actually request, that you listen to Duke Ellington:The Private Collection, Vol. 6, California Dates 1958. Everything will seem a little bit more manageable after listening to Duke and his band live, 50 years ago, but perhaps even more alive today.

More "Truly Shocking" Developments

• Apparently, The New York Times is turning to comedy in order to get its financial house in order. The Times leads today with a "story" about the Afghan President's brother being, are you ready for this shock, on the CIA's payroll. If Times eds ever went anywhere except the Upper West Side and the Beltway, they would have known what any third-grader knows: the Karzai Boys are CIA Central Casting par excellence. Poor Dex Filkins: how did they rope you into this dopey "scoop?"
• President O and his advisors seem determined to send those $250 checks to every Social Security recipient, despite the math: it will add $14 Billion to the deficit. The shocking thing is that O's Team was willing to buy next year's senior votes, instead of this year's. Mrs. Pelosi has pointed out that, since the checks are taxable, the actual deficit number would be less than $14Billion.
• Mr. Rangel was so incensed at the $14B Senior Payoff, he is considering sending every American an extra tax bill this year for a flat $39,000, their share of the total outstanding national debt . Understandably, Mr. Rangel has exempted himself from this uber-tax. He will, however, keep his share of that $14B. It's only right, the guy's got seventeen mortgages to pay off!
• The Leader of the Republican Opposition, Rupert Murdoch, has decided not to change his name to "Red Fox" after all. Advisors to Murdoch pointed out that there already had been  a "Redd Foxx," a noted comedian. Also, his advisors did not think it was wise to draw voters' attention to his odd hair coloring, a secret mixture he got from his friend Paul McCartney. Finally, they told him that he could not be President anyway, since he is a naturalized human, er citizen.
• The FAA has suspended the Delta/NW pilots who overflew their Minneapolis destination, while working on their laptops, ignoring frantic controllers and tempting fighter jets. Delta/NW immediately received over 10,000 job applications for the two openings, many from actual pilots. Delta/NW has decided not to charge those overflown passengers for the extra mileage flown after all; however, the extra miles will not count in their frequent flyer accounts.
• Gen. McChrystal has decided to stop blabbing his new Afgan war strategy at every possible opportunity. He had been under the impression that, since Taliban laws forbid people from watching TV, listening to radio or reading newspapers it was safe to publicize the strategy. He was recently advised that Taliban leaders don't actually follow those laws. Talk about shocked!
• The newly-crowned Co-Commisioners of Baseball, Rupert Murdoch and Scott Boras, have begun talks with the ML Players Association about moving the World Series to early December in order to take advantage of the end of the regular college football schedule. In a related development, ESPN, a division of Disney, has purchased the University of Southern California from its Trustees in a private equity deal. 
• Advisors to NYC's current and about to be Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, have told him that an attempt to change his title from Mayor to Emperor was not likely to pass after his corona.....induction. Reportedly, Bloomie responded, "What good is having an Empire State Building without an Emperor?" Close advisors are considering whether to tell him that, in fact, Gov. Paterson had already staked a claim to the Emperor title anyway.

An Open Letter To Baseball "Commissioner" Selig

Dear Mr. Selig,

My name is Tommy and I am ten years old. I hope that you are the right Baseball Commissioner. My dad says Mr. Murdoch The Fox or his friend Mr. Boris are the real heads of baseball. But, I looked you up on the MLB site and got your name.

I am writing to say a REALLY big thank you. My dad has been trying to get me to like playing and watching baseball since I was six. He grew up in a place called Queens, near where the Mets used to have a team. He's always saying, "When I was a boy......etc." I think those are the five hardest words for kids. He and his friends used to play baseball, stickball, stoop-ball, whiffle-ball, cup-ball and pretty much endlessly pitch against walls and garages. He remembers sneaking a transistor radio into school to listen to the World Series, which he claims they played on warm October days once upon a time.

The thing is, I really HATE baseball. I don't like playing and always fall asleep trying to stay up and watch it. Dad took me to a playoff game once, but I nearly froze to death. No offense to you, but I like Math and Science, even though my dad says I must come from India or China, whatever that means. By the time I finish my homework, it's my bedtime, and your games are on too late for me to watch. This is good, although it makes my dad mad. I love my dad, but, Mr. Selig, please don't change the schedule. Also, keep all of those days off in October, so we have November ball. Even my dad watches football instead in November, and he doesn't make me watch those guys trying to kill each other like Transformers. Don't let them play on Fridays like some people want either.

Dad says that Boris, Murdoch The Fox's assistant, got a lot of money for the players and The Fox needs to get big audiences and make as much money as possible for himself and "the idiot owners." I think this is kinda like in futile times like we study in History, with Lords and Dukes and peasants. Fans are the peasants, which is okay with me.

Dad says everyone hates what's happened to baseball in October, but I don't think it's bad at all: I'm getting good marks in school. I am sorry to tell you that I never liked baseball, but I do think that you, Murdoch The Fox and Boris are doing a good job. Keep it up.

There are probably millions of kids like me in India and China who don't like baseball and love Math and Science. I'm sure they would like you too.

Sincerely,

Tommy

Snow Job, and Other Tales of Higher Math

Dr. Julius Erving, the great pro basketball player has said, "Being a professional means doing the things we love to do on the days that we don't want to do them." Swish, Dr. J. It's not that I don't want to share any brilliant thoughts today, but more that I have been concentrating on a new business travel blog called TripSmart. While I break from that, a few comments on current events, hopefully at the expense of those who believe they are our betters just because a few citizens or shareholders voted for them. We know much better:

• New York State can't seem to catch a break. Now, its math students are not living up to low federal standards and are showing few signs of any improvement. Maybe those folks in the State Assembly and Senate could tutor them. These elected officials are really good at math, especially making positive numbers out of negative ones, and making some numbers, like salaries for uncles and "nieces," disappear completely. Bet kids in Bangalore can't do that.
• Federal math test scores also show that many children are still being left behind. The US lags far behind the rest of the world's math students. Naturally, Asian students shine in this category. Still, Asian students can't touch us when it comes to school team sports and hours spent watching television. Asian parents and educators just don't get it, do they?
• I refer you to page A6 in today's Times for a truly Hilary-larious photo. Our human satellite was making a speech in Moscow, where the Times shot her showing about forty feet of wall behind her, in order to get that red flag with the Hammer & Sickle on it. The Times will roll out this photo again, if Hill ever tries to challenge their man, O. Also, if the Republicans can arise and walk out of Frank Campbell's Funeral Home, they can use it against her as well. What did she ever do to the Cheeseburgers who run the Times?
• Max "Wild Thing" Baucus's Tax....er....Health Reform Bill has emerged from Committee to the Senate Floor, AKA Trough. Some refer to it unkindly as the Snowe Job. When both the Times and the WSJ agree that this Bill, as is, reforms nothing, makes ludicrously optimistic budget projections, and raises healthcare costs for just about anyone who already has it, except Federal employees, that's trouble. But, the good news is that Max has agreed to allow US educators to use his math in a new textbook in order to improve student's test scores. Rumors that Max may receive next year's Noble Prize in Creatively Applied Mathematics could not be confirmed before deadline.
• Apparently, Congress is getting ready to raise a lot of new revenue, even though they won't need it, because Max Baucus found a cool way to lower the deficit. Mrs. Pelosi is considering the benefits of a Value Added Tax. Now, people who don't travel on government GulfStreams on tax dollars can tell you that VAT is one big oxymoron: emphasis on the moron. It's a huge sales tax on consumers, with no requirement for governments to report how it is spent. Apparently, it may be spent to pay for Max Baucus's healthcare plan, which, of course, doesn't really cost anything. Math again! Funny thing, but, what the Demo-Leader may have missed was that she is now in favor of something heretofore anathema to her: a flat tax. How can you be for a 17% flat VAT and  think a 17% flat Income Tax would be a sin against the poor and middle class?
• JP MorgueChasem and GoldieLax are reporting big profits and huge bonuses. Now, here are some guys who know how to do the math, always subtracting the biggest number for themselves before nasty clients, shareholders and customers start lining up. We might wonder: why didn't we buy these guys instead of Losers like AIG and GM? Being last in line with the Three For Us/One For You Boys is better than being first in line with the Losers.
• Citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq still don't get why they should have governments more like ours. Or, do they? 
• Finally, an anonymous donor has endowed a SUNY Chair in Higher Mathematics to be known as the Rangel Chair. 

Okay, back to the real world.

Great News/Bad News

Okay, it's been a little slow lately. Also, I am concentrating the usual creative energies into building a new business and earning a living. Nevertheless, we must have some fun....at others' expense. Fortunately, there's always some idiots around to poke fun at just when you need them.

• Great News: The "independent" Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that the new secret health-plan bill will actually shrink the deficit by arranging coverage for 29 million people currently not covered. Bad News: Congress will need to find other ways to grow the deficit.
• Great News: My phone interview last week with a major international company. The recruiter had a one track mind, seeking to know my past compensation. I avoided this discussion like the plague, but finally succumbed, since she threatened to hang up. Naturally, she eliminated me as being too expensive. When I mentioned the possibility of outsourcing the travel manager position to me, she ended the conversation. Strange News: that company's business: it's the global leader in outsourcing and off-shoring, especially to India.
• Great News: I have seen the new American economy and culture, and it works! Bad News: I was in Toronto, Ontario, Canada when I saw it working, a short crow-flight from Detroit, MI.
• Amazing News: President Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize! Bad News: Hilary will have to travel twice as far, twice as high and twice as fast, if she ever wants to get one of those things. For those who seem apoplectic over the award, be brave: Haldor Laxness got a Nobel too, although, admittedly, he did actually write some really long Icelandic novels. But, not even the Nobel Committee could finish one.
• Stupid News: On Sunday, The Yankees vanquished the Twins , while the dreaded Angels downed the Sox in Boston. So when do they begin the ALCS? Friday, despite the fact that the Angels were 190 miles from the Bronx. Stupider News: Where do moronic bankers, credit raters and regulatory agents go after they leave their posts? Major League Baseball Scheduling Department. Incredibly Stupid News: while the Denver Broncos football team was playing in daytime sun on Sunday, the Rockies had to play at night in below 30' cold. Rockies' fans did not looked pleased; they looked like Broncos' fans.
• Great News: The Baseball Hall of Fame has voted to relax its normal eligibility requirements: five years past retirement and actually playing, coaching, administering or announcing at the Major League Level. Amazing News: President Obama will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown next summer! 1.000 hitter, 0.00 ERA and never struck out. Ever. Now that's a perfect game!

Je Baucuse!

Some of my friends are confused about healthcare reform. Let's simplify it:

1) When the music industry needed reform, did we expect SonyBMG or Warner Music to reform it? Right. It took Apple to create itunes and the ipod to do that.

2) Way back when we were dealing with a ridiculously expensive book distribution system, in which authors got next to nothing, did we ask Random House or Simon & Schuster to reform the system? Correct again. Amazon created itself without asking permission from the Book Politburo.

3) Did you want verizon and at&t to provide an excellent cell phone? Go to the head of the class! Apple again, and BlackBerry just did it.

4) One more. You wanted to reform network TV? Did we ask GE/NBC, Disney/ABC or Viacom/CBS to start the revolution? Tivo to the rescue, thanks.

5) But yet, yet, if we really do want healthcare reform, why would we go to Congress to get it done. Congress is the great teacher for the status quo loving industries above, not to mention Detroit. Okay let's throw in Wall St. too. We've made this point before: asking Congress to reform anything is like asking the Madame to run the Vice Squad. It doesn't matter if you a blue or red; this is true for all.

6) We have placed healthcare reform in the hands of one Max Baucus, who represents a state with 12 inhabitants, none of whom, it would seem, have ever been to a doctor! With all due respect to Sen. Baucus and his off the rack suit and diner-stained necktie, he will not be reforming anything. That's okay with me, because I didn't ask him to do anything.

7) But that leaves us with a reform job still to do. So I propose, once again that we put Apple designers, Google engineers, one smart nurse, one good doctor, one mom, one retired person, one veteran and a dentist in a room. In two weeks, they will have a healthcare plan that we can all buy. We won't need any legislation. Max Baucus can go back to doing Baucusian things. The President can focus on China (the key to Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, debt, the economy, Detroit, etc.)

8) Here's a list we can give that healthcare team: a) Americans are fat; we need to be leaner, b) Americans have terrible diets; they need to improve, c) Americans don't exercise; they need to start walking, d) American schools are bad, so income lags, and poor people get sick more often; we need to fix the schools e) immigrants are here, they use schools and they use healthcare. We can call them whatever names we want, but they are here, not over there. We need to figure them into school and healthcare reform, f) The wealthy are annoying in a thousand different ways, but it is not inherently evil to be wealthy. All immigrants want to be wealthy, but not all immigrants want to be evil, so g) Let's have the wealthy pay more for healthcare and let's have all immigrants pay something by considering a national sales tax to be used only towards healthcare, h) If Max Baucus or any other Congressional type person tries to use those tax proceeds for something else, we will sentence them to 20 years fixing fenceposts in Wyoming or wherever the hell it is that Max Baucus hails from!

Now, let's get serious.

China I: Empire State, But Who's Empire?

October 1, 1999, Beijing. I awoke at 4:30am, dressed, grabbed my packed bags, and went to the lobby of The International Club Hotel (now St. Regis) and got into the car. It was a bright cloudless morning, a good day for even a bad parade. On the way to the old airport, I passed busload after busload of colorfully dressed Chinese, mostly very young, heading for their places in thousands of lines to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the People's Republic of China.

I was returning home after helping to lead a group of executives on a journey across China, from Kashgar in the west, down the Yangtse, into Hunan to see a village election, through Shanghai with its new Stock Exchange, into the ancient capitol. We carried 40 capitalists around with the stated purpose of exploring a huge potential market. The real purpose was to burn several millions to make those guys, and a few women, feel important. They were so over-confident and self-involved, of course, that they didn't look very closely. So, they saw what they wanted to see. Easy future revenue.

But I and the expedition team had seen something else on our 6 trips between November 1998 and that day in Beijing. We had been in the big cities (China has no small ones), up and down a long river before its rapid rise, walked the villages, negotiated the deals, dined with the local Communist Party hosts, met with Foreign Affairs, and been watched, tutored, translated. In short, we had been managed into doing exactly what our hosts wanted us to do, while thinking that we were in charge, at least in the beginning.

China was and is in charge. If you doubt this, perhaps you have not seen the Empire State Building. It was lit with the colors of the People's Republic in celebration of their 6oth Anniversary. That's right, Mao's triumph being hailed in our own backyard. We are bogged down in two wars, healthcare, subprime slop, and our endless search for self-gratification. The Chinese are celebrating our troubles as much as their "triumph."

Funny. Our Team had argued in 1999 that it might not look so great for these mighty capitalists to be seen and photographed at the 50th Anniversary. We actually had to explain that to Management. We were, in effect, sneaking these people out of Beijing, while nobody could see them. I had chosen the old part of the airport, where Nixon had famously arrived, because it was deserted. Our efforts had not deterred the Chairman of our own company, who stayed to celebrate with his new young friend. The friend's company would soon buy our company, still the worst deal in the history of corporate America, since nearly $200Billion in market cap disappeared in the Bursting Bubble.

Until today, I'd always thought of that deal as Mao's revenge. But, I think that he'd be more pleased to see us celebrating his particular brand of totalitarian murder and idiocy, now funded by state capitalism, in the middle of Manhattan.

Empire indeed.

- Ed: Today's post is dedicated to my friend and colleague, Nini Gussenhoven, with whom I travelled many of those Chinese trails and waters. She left us behind far too early; however, she lives on in the words of her twin brother, John, in his new book: Crisscrossing America: Discovering America From The Road. I am sure that Nini was hanging on to him mile after mile as he road his bike. You must buy this book when it debuts next week. We also remember a courageous soldier and friend, John Blewett.

Thoughts On Job Search 3.0

Since we have now stated that a great economic expansion is upon us, we turn our heads to that great conundrum attached to any expansion: the Job Search. Our job, as usual, is not to point out the obvious; that you can find on the bookshelf and through the Job Search Establishment. Herewith some thoughts and observations:

• You may be tempted to portray yourself as an "interesting person." Don't. Creating resume-like web sites, sending clever post cards and generally attempting to "stand out" from the pack backfires almost every time. Corporations do not want interesting people; they want people like them: ordinary, results-oriented, focused on growth, etc.
• Why? The whole point of a corporation is to hold the status quo, especially in difficult times, when zero revenue growth means superlative performance. The CFO can always invent some growth, if needed. When corporations say they can "think outside the box," it is a euphemism for "total disaster." They can think outside the box, but they never will.
• Why? Bad things happen, when ordinary people in corporations think outside the box. That's how we got into the whole Sub-Prime mess.
• Do not wonder why you never get a response from anyone regarding your job application. This is perfectly understandable behavior. A hiring exec has time to see 5-6 "final candidates." HR is scared of that exec, so they need to get into an "elimination mode" quickly in order to reduce 200 applicants by 98%. This leaves no time for niceties. They are the hiring exec to you and you are no threat to them.
• The best way to get through the process is to look very much like you would fit into the organization, but have slightly more energy, enthusiasm and a "can-do" attitude than the other candidates. HR will discard all of the "interesting" people and approaches first, then the over-achievers. The HR screener knows that the job description reads like the fine print in a drug ad, so they look to you to define the real job. They are looking for you to make them look good. You are the Energizer Bunny, who has done her homework, but ordinary enough not to make the hiring exec uncomfortable.
• That last point cannot be made strongly enough: nobody hires a great potential replacement. This is why we scratch our heads over Vice-Presidential candidate choices. People hire you to make them look even more appealing. Duh.
• The mindset you need to have, if you make it through to a meeting (the Search Establishment never calls this an interview), is that you are one of them, you belong. No matter that you have been locked out for 6 mos. or 2 years. You must act like you belong. The mere hint that you accept your "outside-ness" will eliminate you. Act as though you work down the hall in an identical office to the one in which you are meeting. Dress like the hiring exec, speak like her/him, make them feel comfortable and certain that you will help them keep their jobs, so they will never, ever get to be like you, the outsider.
• Start with the shoes, when dressing for the meeting. Really good, comfortable shoes. Imagine someone wearing them and trying to sell you something you do not want, but you buy it anyway. Dress up around the shoes. The shoes will not get you the job, they will give you confidence, energy, balance. Those things will get you the job. Maybe.

More soon. Meanwhile, you must listen to the Sonny Clark Trio's Rudy Van Gelder Edition from 2001. Just don't tell the hiring exec you listened to this, otherwise you won't get the job. It's way, way to cool. Jazz scares them.

Expansion At Last!

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, AKA Princeton Prof and Times' columnist, has declared on the Daily Show that "....the American Dream is dead" for most Americans.

And so, we can say, with utmost certainty, that we are on the brink of perhaps the greatest economic expansion in history.

Apparently, people like Dr. Krugman, who is wealthy by any definition, and an intellectual by intellectual establishment definition, does not know any average Americans. He particularly does not know any average New Yorkers. It will come as a shock to him at some point in the relatively near future, if he pays attention, that recent immigrants to New York City will not be buying any tickets home based on his declaration.

I recommend that Dr. Krugman and his fellow Daily Show guest, the noted seer of American culture, Eliot Spitzer, take a ride on the Number 7 train beyond their moated Manhattan castle. On the trip, if they get off and on in a number of Queens' neighborhoods, they will see a microcosm of the world. If they ride all the way to Main St. Flushing (neither, I'll bet, has been anywhere in Queens except the US Open, in a limo, for the Finals), they will have outdone Columbus and gotten all the way to Asia.

Funny thing, but people from Honduras, Ecuador, Mexico, China, Korea, Malaysia, Afghanistan, etc. do not know that the American Dream has died. Funny thing too, that many of these families work hard so that their children can go to Princeton and hear Dr. Krugman explain how they have wasted their time doing so from his pulpit. Mr. Spitzer, who matriculated at Princeton, pronounced on the same show that "median income has been flat for forty years," was born with a silver spoon in his mouth in addition to the foot. He probably makes the median income in one week at his dad's real estate firm. The former Governor lived the American Nightmare: he had it all and threw it away. Does he assume that since he undervalued the Dream, that others must do the same? A steamroller knows more about the average American.

We have said this hundreds of times in various fun ways, but this time let's be blunt. You cannot get reliable, valuable information in the Media any longer. The Media is made up of wealthy, over-educated people who hang with each other, marry each other, become wealthy and wind up working for huge corporations and elite institutions (News Corp., Time Warner, Disney, GE, Princeton). All the while they pretend that they are looking out for "the little guy."

The only reliable thing we get from them is that we know that the opposite of what they proclaim is the truth.

Start your engines.

Exclusive! The Twitter Interview

Twitter was valued at $1Billion last week after investors placed a $100Million bet on the service that provides subscribers with 140 characters so that they can say out loud what they are doing. We sat down this week with Twitter itself to discuss its phenomenal success and get some under 140 character responses:

3G: Congratulations on becoming a Billionaire.

Twit: We should all know by now not to believe anything banks tell us.

3G: Who are your heroes?

Twit: The Pet Rock. Brilliant. Soap On A Rope. A number of New York's governors.

3G: We get The Pet Rock thing, because it also did not actually do anything, but didn't people actually use that Soap in the shower?

Twit: Some did, it's true, but, mostly the thing just lay unopened in its box. Pure inspiration.

3G: How did you know there was real value in nearly nothing? I mean most people saying what they are doing in 140 or less aren't doing anything remotely interesting.

Twit: We looked at the media companies. They invest billions to say nothing of real interest. We are maintaining a managed cost basis and do not pay for content.

3G: Could you be more specific?

Twit: We knew that "content" had little economic value. Traditional media value their content, but that's pride and myopia. Media commoditized content.

3G: Isn't journalistic content an ethical and moral issue?

Twit: Yes, but the audience doesn't place any economic value on those ethics, hence Sunday am Blah-blah and a dreary 24 month presidential campaign.

3G: And entertainment passing for "news," as with Glenn Beck or Olbermann?

Twit: Exactly. People no longer know what's fact, opinion or entertainment. They place equal value on their own thoughts, opinions, actions.

3G: Even if they are not having interesting thoughts or doing something interesting?

Twit: The thought is interesting, because they have it. A man named McLuhan got this right: the medium is the message. Tweet = cool.

3G: Are you saying that it's the USE of Twitter that counts, not what is communicated?

Twit: Yes. Twitter extends the self. Users typically convey messages of little value to a reader.

3G: The value for the sender and receiver is in the sending and receiving itself?

Twit: And in the machine/network used. Exactly. One is brilliant just for sending and the other is hip just for receiving. Both optimize you as a person.

3G: To extend your thought, if it's the sending and receiving or the trading of information that really counts, is that one possible explanation of the subprime mess? The overall quality of the mortgage-related trades and insurance did not matter?

Twit: It is possible that the traders valued the trade or messages more than the actual aggregate content quality.

3G: They didn't do the long term math, because trades were all about them? You mean, it was more about extending their egos through a medium of trading?

Twit: We hadn't thought about that, but it sounds right. It was about the medium of trading, not the sum quality of their messages or content.

3G: And the sum totals of their trading messages were billions and billions of losses. They couldn't believe it, because it all felt so good, so right. They were twittering away wealth without knowing they were Twittering!

Twit: That's why we are Billionaires today. Twitter feels right. We don't need to do much or have any revenue yet. We are there for Tweet.

3G: That and you pay nothing for content, only infrastructure costs.

Twit: Content's free and all tweets have equal value. Commoditization. Users value the experience; they value belonging.

3G: We value belonging more than correct/factual information. Thanks for nothing! What are you doing now?

Twit: Finishing.

Waiting For The Sand-Blasting Man

Most of my neighbors are quiet ones. We have the occasional early bird gardening crews, blasting their machines at 7:30am, instead of the more polite eight. But, recently, my neighbor, the Metro-Norths, have been causing some alarm and sleeplessness.

I awoke one night about three weeks ago to the sound of what I thought was someone power-washing my fence. Since my fence is, in most places, old and fragile, this concerned me. A power-wash of more than a squirt, would surely demolish the fence. As it turned out, there was nobody doing any power-washing. But, what was that loud sound?

Could it be sand-blasting, power-washing's thirsty cousin? Once, a long time ago, I had briefly worked on a sand-blasting crew; one never forgets the sound. I tried, like a good neighbor, to ignore it and go back to sleep. Didn't happen. So, I did what any decent victim of possible sand-blasting at 3 am would do, I called the cops. The duty cop was well prepared and told me that the Metro-Norths were doing some re-modeling of their estate across the way from our house. Since that property wasn't, technically and legally, inside city limits, we can't do a thing the cop said. Eventually, the sound faded, but each night for weeks we could hear the Metro-North's crews working further down the line.

Last night they were back working directly across the street and woke us up. Before going downstairs to watch early morning TV, I thought of New Neighbor Coleman. I realized that New Neighbor Coleman had been away during the first bout of blasting, and that I had neglected to mention it to him as a new night time feature. Even though I knew that we were both now awake, I didn't think it was proper to call him. Besides, NNC is a lawyer and I knew that he had already called the cops. I also knew that NNC was not going to go easily into that noisy night, precisely because he was NNC The Lawyer. He was going to get to the bottom of how the Metro-North's boundary lines become part of a separate city. If they lived in their own city, then they probably didn't pay city taxes, and, if they didn't pay city taxes, then NNCTL was going to harass them. I became fairly certain of this.

One benefit of having the Metro-North's do their blasting work at 3am is that I discovered a whole new world on TV at that hour. Apparently, people who do not see enough commercials for Viagra or Cialis during civilized viewing hours, can see a lot more of them, including products you've never heard of at 3am. I wondered if NNCTL was also watching, but I didn't see any lights on next door.

My favorite infomercial was for something or someone called Comanche. A man in what looks like an Indian Chief's headdress was saying some very exciting things, while holding a writhing snake over a small cauldron with some leaves peaking out of it. There was a statue of the Blessed Virgin on a shelf over his left shoulder. He was exhorting listeners to call the number on the screen. I knew that, even though I didn't precisely understand his Spanish, because he spoke over some fake ringing sounds. The whole production probably cost about fifty-cents to make, and the poor BV looked totally embarrassed by the whole thing. Whatever it was that Comanche was curing related to Amor, the only word I recognized, and we pretty much know what that means. Remember Crazy Eddie? Comanche makes him look like Walter Cronkite.

Sitting there in my kitchen, watching and listening to Comanche, wondering about NNCTL, I began to wonder if this Comanche guy had gotten his start by having some idiotic neighbor, like the Metro-Norths, wake him up one night.

Then, I realized that the sand-blasting had stopped and I went back up to bed, but not exactly to sleep thinking, gotta call New Neighbor Coleman The Tired Lawyer tomorrow.

Little Black Dress

Before making light,

God cut

a piece

out of the charcoal night,

held it

in one hand,

and waited.

When light came,

God shook

the dark piece

and beheld:

the little

black dress.

Then, God

looked about

for tan shoulders

on which to

perfectly drape it.

(the rest

is herstory).

- For Ingrid Michaelson/copyright 2009/twmcdermott

I highly recommend Ingrid's new album, Everybody. If you do not have it, get it. Now. You will not be sorry.

See You In September?

Those of us in transition look forward to Labor Day's passing, because we believe that everyone we'd like to contact about finding work will be back at their desks, counters or shop floors. But, that doesn't happen. People with jobs, even in the recession, stay on vacation into the second full week of September. And beyond.

Vacation, we think. If only. I've spoken in the past about the only desire stronger in the transitioner than finding real work being the one about never taking a vacation again, when we do find real work.

Real work means that you earn at least half of what you used to earn, regain a sense of confidence and dignity, and feel respected among family and friends. Just don't hold your breath in early September.

There's a certain guy at an international bank, for example, who seems to have a lot of vacation time. He is a friend of my close friend and a business colleague of my close business colleague. He is the hiring executive for a position that perfectly fits my experience and list of accomplishments. Both my friend and colleague encouraged me to write directly to the man, using their names. So, a few weeks ago, I wrote to him.

You know what happens next, of course. Nothing. No acknowledgement of the email (I re-checked the address several times and received no non-delivery message). No phone call or invitation to call him. He has not used one of the dozen ways to brush me off despite my connections to people he knows. Meanwhile, the job may very well been filled already; interviews may already be set for late September. This has become acceptable behavior in the job market. Nothing. Silence. Void.

And yet, we do not pick up the phone to call him and bug him. What we would gain by taking the Energizer Bunny approach, universally recommended by the job search consultants, we would lose if he told us that the spot is filled, or that they have too many great candidates, or that it doesn't seem a fit.

Or, that he figured out that you're his age and he is about to retire. That one never goes away.

But, we must not be denied. Most importantly, we must not deny ourselves. We must have back-up plans to back-up plans. So, I am going to focus more on seeing if my consulting client, who disappeared towards the end of our project's first phase, will once more engage with me.

His suppliers are contacting me, his internal colleagues are contacting me, but he has not been talking.

His email message says that he is still on vacation.

If only.

Children Address The President and Country

Tomorrow night school children around the country will address the President, Congress and their parents. Parents will need permission from their children in order to listen to the address. We have been able to obtain a preview of the address' main points, which we share below:

1) Please stop lying to us. We say this respectfully, because we know that many of you think you're being honest with us, but we need to get your attention. What do we mean? Healthcare, for example, though important, is not on our list of top ten critical to-do's. We are more focused on the two wars currently being fought by our brothers and sisters in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should be talking about these first, everyday, whether or not we think they are a good idea or not. How will we continue to manage these two fronts and how will we pay for it? How will we defend Afghanistan's recent election and condemn Iran's? Do we want to continue borrowing from the Chinese to pay for it all, while they get Iraqi oil rights? ETC.

2) OMG. We don't have time to listen to those chattering cable-heads on the left and right or the network ones in the middle; we have homework and lots of texting to do. We don't have to be "socialists" to know that large corporations are not always honest and that their top people skim millions in so many ways we can't even count. But, we also don't have to be raving "capitalists" to know that Washington D.C. and state capitols are corrupt almost beyond our imaginations. Stop whining. Stop pointing fingers and name-calling. There is too much work to do.

3) Now that we have your attention, we propose that you start this way: we want an apology to us and our parents from the banks and others who caused the phony "recession." We studied recessions in class and none of them are like this one. This one is not part of a natural economic cycle, it was hoisted upon us by a few thousand reckless people, aided by the government. Some of our parents are over 50, and we want big banks and other corporations to start giving them some jobs. Our educations will be pointless, if we have to spend our futures taking care of jobless, moneyless, hopeless parents. Millions of them. Start hiring. Now.

4) Our education is also pointless unless you stop this deficit/borrowing roller-coaster. Also, get the tax code right. Now. Stop all the bickering about how to suck the rich dry (we call this Rangling, after the Congressman who doesn't like to pay taxes). You want us to study so we can be relatively rich, so why do you want to portray the rich as being evil. Only rich bankers are evil, others are perfectly okay. Make everyone pay some taxes, even us, even if it's a dollar. Paying taxes is part of our responsibility and paying no tax has become an entitlement for too many people. Collect universally and spend more wisely!

5) We read history, even though you don't. Every President since our grandparents were in K has wanted to be the Education President. All have failed. Face up to this. We kids watch what you do, not what you say. You say study, study, study, but you do not study yourselves. You seldom read books. You put dumb people in charge of important institutions. You are captivated by TV, which is just another vending machine. You talk incessantly about sports and watch sports all the time. When we're not too good at sports, you get disappointed, as if it was your life and not ours. You encourage the "best" colleges to emphasize sports over every other area of learning. We never see a town announcing something like, "Centerville. Home Of the State Champion Math Team." Do what you say!

6) You have been stealing from Social Security for decades and now you have to stop. Quit lying to our parents that WE can afford to take care of them. You already used their contributions for a million other dumb things, and we can't assume that burden. You sound like you are preparing to spend trillions more on new things. Are you telling us to study harder just so we can take care of you all for our entire lives? Fix Social Security before you do Healthcare. Or, dump it. But, stop stealing!

7) Mr. President, many of us would have voted for you, not just because Sarah was more than a little scary. Also, we are pleased to have an African-American President. But, we respectfully must say: Start Over! your only real opposition is on radio and cable TV. Their audiences did not study very hard in school. They have weird ideas about science, eat really unhealthy food, don't exercise and wear funny clothes. Don't be so worried by these people. Also, don't be mesmerized by your fawning cable admirers; they're dangerous too. Get your priorities straight. We would have voted for you because of who you are not what you promised to do. It's about Trust and Honesty. Focus on making the country honest again; that will be a huge accomplishment. We've been lying to each other for so long, we believe our own hype. We need to get to a place where we can have an honest national conversation. So, shoving Healthcare through will only make matters worse in the long run, because our national moral infrastructure is rotted. And, did we happen to mention that we're totally broke?

8) Consider allowing us to vote and pay taxes. We're being really serious. We look at state legislatures, Congress, corporations, universities. Honestly, we think that we could do as well if not better. How could we screw up Albany? How could our votes mess up AIG, Citi, or Fannie (love that name)? Less than half the eligible adults bother to vote (more talk and not doing), except in Illinois, where twice the number of eligible voters vote, like in Afghanistan. We'd rather share our allowances than take more from China, which does not even like us one little bit. Be bold. Do it. Lower the voting age to 10!

9) Please say hi to the Secretary of State, wherever she might be. She's a Whirlwind, kind of like one of those satellites that used to circle the earth over and over again. Do her trips cost a lot? How many pantsuits does she own?

10) We know that you want us to study hard so that we will have great futures as individuals and together. You want us to have prosperous, healthy lives. Want to know our biggest fear? Our biggest fear is that we will become you, that we will live in a dream world in which we can say one thing and do another. CEO's say they value stockholders first, while many hold them in contempt. Congress says it wants to take care of us, but they want to take care of themselves and their lobbyist friends first. Presidents want what's best for the country, but they overvalue what their own legacies will be. Corporations love capitalism until it hurts them, then they want socialist investment. Parents stop learning as soon as they can and pretend that they know everything anyway. Get real. Or get lost.