Yes Country for Old Men

Where else can you stand next to Donald Trump as he dips a marshmallow into a chocolate fountain at 1pm, and then brush shoulders with Robert Kraft at dinner the night before the Patriots run the table and go 16-0. There are probably a few places this can happen, but one of these places is Palm Beach. In "No Country for Old Men" Tommy Lee Jones felt like he didn't have enough strength to hack it as a sheriff anymore. Well, maybe Mr. Jones, or Mr. Lee Jones, or whatever, should buy a ticket on Jet Blue and come on down to Palm Beach. He could have one of those cushy security jobs at any one of the 40,000 gated complexes/communities down here. My family jokes that when you drive up to one of these complexes/communities you can say "Hi, I'm here to rob the SoandSos", give a little mock salute and a big smile, and 9.9 times out of 10 you'll be let in. I'm pretty sure Tommy Lee Jones could handle that.

"Look at me. I'm the Sheriff of the exclusive Del Boca Vista community"

Why else is Palm Beach great for older men...well, a few nights ago I saw this older gentleman on what looked like a date (of sorts) with a younger woman. The woman was probably in her sixties and was definitely the den mother of the Palm Beach Cougar Den. Anyway, from the body language you could tell dinner wasn't going particularly well. It didn't seem like either of them wanted to be there. But luckily for both of them there was no need to force awkward conversation, and the reason was because the woman had so much collagen in her lips that she needed to use the chicken on the end of her fork in order to jimmy her lips open so she could actually put food in her mouth.

EQUALS



And maybe that was cute when you were 2 years old. But on a sixty year old woman, eh, not so much. Why else is Palm Beach a country for old men...you can wear anything and you nobody will bat an eye. I went to the Polo store on Worth Avenue to find a pair of khakis, and shockingly, or maybe not so shockingly, they didn't have what I call "pants for real people". If you want a pair of red corduroys to go with your lime green linen sport coat and orange loafers, the Palm Beach is the place for you. My point is that Polo can only get away with selling that stuff in Palm Beach and maybe a few other places. You can wear just about any color combination down here and you're safe. If anyone questions you all you have to say is "well Morty, I guess you haven't seen what's new at the Polo store yet", and then just walk off with your paisley chinos, white boat shoes, and red blazer and get some more caviar.

There are a million other reasons why Palm Beach is Yes Country for Old Men. It also has been Yes Country for Young Men like myself. The past week and a half has been a great break from Ann Arbor. I'm starting to wonder whether I should have applied to Palm Beach Community College's MBA program instead. So maybe the major Wall Street firms wouldn't recruit at ol' PBCC, but can you put a price on being able to blog outside in a bathing suit? I'm pretty sure you can't. I feel like I could write some more, but I've got an inny and I'm gathering sweat in my bellybutton which means it's time to shut it down for now.

The next blog will surely be in 2008. Happy New Year.

Purple Stuff

FingertheBlog coming to you from Florida. I'm on vacation and I'm thawing out and loving every minute of it. I spent two productive days in NYC before coming down to Florida, and all I have to do in the next week and a half is drop some resumes and get a tan. I've played some tennis and have gone to the gym, and I'm reading a book...for FUN.

Yesterday I played basketball with my Dad and two FingertheBlog readers not related to me. It's true, they exist. On the way back from playing my Dad and I stopped off at the WalMart in Wellington, FL to pick up some groceries. If you've read some of my other posts you all know how much love I have for WalMart. So we're in the grocery section and we're getting some milk. Across from the milk is a huge display of McArthur Juice. From what I gather, McArthur is a low-cost beverage company that serves the Sam's Clubs and WalMarts of the world. So in this huge fridge-container display thing there are about 50 or so gallons of juice. And just so you understand, we're not talking about not-from-concentrate juice here. We're talking about "bug juice"/powdered sugar and water/knock-of-Kool Aid-juice. It's cheap and it's probably nasty.

I took this pic with my camera-phone.













Fruit Punch, Orange, Lemon, and Grape. Clearly we have winner here and his name is grape. One sad lonely gallon of grape drink. For the love of God, why is everyone jonesing for grape. All of these drinks are sweet, all are sugary, but why is grape the bestseller? I've had this conversation with people before, but I don't think I've ever heard an answer that I thought was satisfactory.

Is it a racial thing? Is it a socio-economic thing? I remember on Saturday in July a few years ago playing basketball at 20th and 2nd in Manhattan and this jacked, 6'6", black guy rolled up to the courts chugging grape soda from a 2-liter bottle. I thought that was pretty badass. I used to come to the courts with mini Poland Spring bottles that I'd take from my gym. I feel like if I came to the courts with my mid-calf socks, tucked in t-shirt, and a 2-liter bottle of grape soda I would be taken less than seriously. Why is the (perceived?) association of grape soda and minorities stronger than the association of grape soda and Caucasians? I'd like to think there is some sort of genetic explanation here, but I really don't know.

Dave Chappelle even takes it one step further by differentiating 'grape juice' and 'grape drink'. You can watch this Not-safe-for-work clip here.

I think we all have our grape soda stories, and I think it's fair to say that we all make our assumptions about grape soda. Let's put these assumptions to bed though. It's almost 2008 for crying out loud. We need answers. Someone call the Freakonomics guys.

C.C. I will Never Forget Ye

I had a 9:10am flight out of Detroit this morning. My plane landed at LaGuardia at 4:30pm. Had I been doing a running diary this is what I would've written...

12:15am: At the Hill House Christmas Party. I'm standing in a circle with a few friends, and they're taking swings of Beefeater Gin in honor of finals being over and in honor of a really long line to the keg...I decline as flying hungover is miserable. The party is an "Ugly Sweater Party". I don't think a lot of Jews own "ugly sweaters" with reindeer prints, or other Christmas-related flair such as iron-on candy canes. Nonetheless I wear the ugliest sweater I own, which I still like, and I get slightly offended when a friend says "Whoa, that's an awesome ugly sweater". I have an early pickup tomorrow. I leave the party and there are 5 inches of snow are on the ground.

4:00am-ish: Wake up, and see that it is still snowing...hard. Go back to sleep.

6:10am: Wake up and call the shared shuttle service that I'm supposed to take. I'm wondering if they can get me to the airport on time, and after speaking with them it appears that a 7:15 pickup is going to get me to the airport at 8:45...my flight is at 9:10am and that's cutting it way too close. I scramble, google "Ann Arbor Cabs", and start calling. Nobody picks up, nobody picks up, nobody picks up. Finally someone picks up. It's C.C., whoever that is, and he says that he can be at my place 7:00a and he can get me to the airport in one hour. He's already made a three hour trip to the airport this morning. He can obviously get the job done. I say "let's do it", and I call the shuttle company to cancel my reservation.

7:00a: I'm downstairs with my bags and run into two friends from down the hall. They were supposed to be picked up by the same shuttle service at 6:45 and their shuttle hasn't arrived. I tell them they should come with me. They agree.

7:05a: C.C. arrives in a minivan, fishtails at least 5 times coming out of our driveway. This might be my last cab ride ever.

7:15a: We're driving down Washtenaw (one of the main drags in Ann Arbor) and the roads have not been plowed. I look about 30 feet ahead and there's some guy wearing black from head to toe riding his bike down the middle of the road. He looks like a ninja...a ninja with a deathwish. Good ol' C.C. pulls up next to him, rolls down the window, and say "Hey man, you're crazy". That's the pot calling the kettle black if I ever heard it. But C.C. was right. What kind of moron is going to ride a mountain bike down a four-lane road in a horrible snowstorm.

7:30a: We're on the highway, and C.C. is passing cars. He turns to me and says "It's amazing what kind of tracks you can make on fresh snow". I start thinking about that old SNL skit "Oops I Crapped My Pants".

7:37a: C.C. has some screws loose, without a doubt. He then says to us, "Hey, did you hear about the limo driver who got car jacked and pistol whipped last week over in Ypsilanti?". We say no. He says, "that was me", and with that takes of his U of M stocking cap to reveal a bloody gauze pad covering the entire back of his head. He then goes on to tell us how he wrestled the gun from the guy (a guy he was driving that night) and narrowly avoided getting shot. You can read about it here. What do you even say to that? He was talking about it like it was no big deal, which kind of freaked me out. At that moment I was reminded of that time in Pee Wee's Big Adventure when Pee Wee hitches a ride from Large Marge. In case it's been a minute since you've seen the movie you can just watch this clip.

7:45a: Two exits aways, thank you God. C.C. passes a Mack truck and I swear they trade paint. I think about a little story from Marketing class about Coors Light. Coors was trying to crack the hispanic market a number of years back and they came up with a catchy slogan: "Sueltalo con Coors", which translated to "Turn it Loose with Coors"...but also translates to "diarrhea your pants", or in this case "diarrhea you pants with Coors". Somebody got fired for that I'm sure. Meanwhile, the "Sueltalo con C.C." campaign is definitely in full swing at this point.

7:50a: My phone is ringing. Any call before 8am is generally bad news. It's the Shuttle company. The guy's waiting for me downstairs. He says "You still need that ride to the airport?". I say "Well you're about 45 mins late, but I called around 6am to cancel my ride". C.C. remarks that that's what you get with these other cab services. Crazy dude has a point.

8:00a: We're pulling up to the American Airlines departures area. C.C. starts saying how that for three people a $65 cab ride is a good deal. I don't disagree, but when I spoke to him earlier in the morning he said the ride was $55. You don't argue with a man who just got pistol whipped.
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So there you have it. By the time I got to the gate my nerves were totally fried. I'm not sure if that was the best or the worst cab ride of my entire life. I should've been wiser and realized my flight was going to be delayed 4 hours or so anyway, but I'm crazy about not being late to anything. I believe that C.C. was the only person who could've gotten me to the airport that quickly. An utter disregard for his safety, combined with a fresh pistolwhip wound, probably mixed with some sort of pharmacological cocktail du jour and good ol' C.C. defied the laws of physics, time, and common sense all so he could serve as my shepherd on this snowy, rainy Sunday. God Speed C.C., you crazy bastard.

Mock...yeah...Int...yeah...erview...yeah, Mock Interview

Vacation starts in t-minus three days, which means one thing...I'm getting my ass kicked by work right now. But quite honestly, if that wasn't the case then this really wouldn't be College, now would it? And it's not like over vacation I can just go back into perfecting my #1 skill of memorizing SportsCenter. I actually have to do some work. We got these interview study guides from UBS (thanks UBS!) that we have to study. Well, we don't HAVE to study them, but if we don't we'll end up as lifeguards this summer, which is kind of what I want to be anyway. Anyway, undoubtedly this UBS book will something I carry during vacation and will make an excellent door stop, pillow for the beach, and if all goes well, kindling for a parking lot bonfire once Michigan beats Florida in the Capital One Bowl (I'll be there). I'm looking forward to being done, but even once I'm done with exams on Friday, the work doesn't stop. I have a mock interview on Saturday morning, after a Christmas party on Friday night, which takes place after my final exam...so you do the math....a few 7 & 7s, plus a 40 equals, I don't know. I did a mock interview last week which was interesting. It was my first one ever, and I dressed in a suit and I had to make mock small talk, and told some mock jokes, chatted about mock turtlenecks, and made a mockery of the BCS system. Even though the mock interview was with an MBA2 I was still a little nervous and I mocked up a couple questions that I should've gotten. Mock me. But the point is to simulate the experience as best as possible, and hopefully it'll help me as I have two informational interviews next week. So what I'm trying to say is I'm going to be busy for the next few days and the next time I might get to you I might be in the Sunshine state.

But before I go here are a couple of things I've been thinking about that you may or may not want to think about too as you are sitting in your spacious office...

1. If you could swim in a pool filled entirely with soup, would it be in a soup that you really enjoy or a soup that you feel like you wouldn't drown in. Is there a happy medium?
2. T-Pain is garbage because I just heard Snoop Dogg use the that voice syyyynnthesizzzererererer yeeeaaahhhh girrrrllll, and Snoop can't sing to save himself and he still sounded pretty good.
3. What are take out Chinese food joints' margins on lunch specials. I bet the actual food costs 45 cents and they sell it for $5 or $6. That's a pretty solid margin. When the Wall Street Journal says that the Chinese economy is sizzling I know why.
4. Why do I generally not enjoy Christmas songs yet I really like that Mariah Carey Christmas song "All I Want for Christmas is You". It might be Mariah's best work. Ever.
5. If you took steroids and were about to get called out on it and were retired, wouldn't you just admit it and say that when you were taking them they were technically legal? I think Mark McGuire is the biggest joke and you can tell him I said that.

That Shit Looks like a Snake...oh it is a snake?

All right. We've known each other for a few months now at the very minimum so I can be honest with you, right? Right. When I first got to school I had some run of the mill medical issues that were more a pain in the ass than anything else. What were they exactly...not relevant. But what is relevant is that I'm not feeling any love from my insurance company, and I think there needs to be some revisions as what counts towards a deductible and what doesn't. Doctors, I'm sorry you all need to deal with this regularly. I can't imagine how frustrating it is to deal with insurance companies. So anyway, I go see the doctor, he assess the situation, he has me get my blood tested for a fiber allergy (what?), and then I go back into room. He says, "You need to eat more fiber". Forty-five minutes in the waiting room and that was his answer. And then he says, "Have you ever heard of the Bristol Scale before". Bristol Scale? I'm thinking maybe this has something to do with ESPN or NASCAR. Um, no, not quite. The Bristol Scale is this...


The doctor points to Type 4 and says "We need more snakes". Come on Doc, what's next, are you going to pull out "Everyone Poops" and read it to me? When I left I remember calling home and saying that I just paid $15 (my co-pay) for the doctor to tell me I needed "more snakes". Kind of a waste of money and definitely a waste of time. Since then I hadn't thought about that trip to the doctor. Two days ago I get an invoice in the mail from those bastards at Aetna saying that of the $244 it cost for the doctor to tell me "more snakes", only $144 of it was covered. Basically they were telling me that I need to pay $100 out of my own pocket before they start covering me in full. As if being asked to pay $15 for "more snakes" wasn't bad enough, now you're telling me I need to shell out another $100 for "more snakes". Are you serious? For $100 I want the doctor to reach in the drawer, grab a lute, and charm one of these brown snakes out of a wicker magazine basket. For $100 I want a cute med student to give me the ol' turn-your-head-and-cough. At least give me my money's worth. I don't know folks, I kind of feel like I'm being cheated here. In Ann Arbor $100 can last you 3 weekends out at the bars. I'm going to pay the $100, obviously, but it's going to take a lot of will power to not send in my check with a Type 3 crackly sausage.

Wake Up Little Su Zhi, Wake Up

I had a marketing presentation today. Six of us have been working on a project for about 2 weeks and we had to present it to the class. We presented an overview of Chinese sneakers/apparel company (obviously) Li-Ning and a proposed marketing strategy for expansion into the US and/or into India. It wasn't the flashiest and most complicated presentation of all time, but we put some long hours in and we had a solid finished product. The presentation took place this morning in our 8am marketing class. It's not easy to get up for 8am classes, and as I've mentioned in these blogs before, sometimes it takes a good hour until you actually can function like a normal human. In class, I'm one of sixty or so students, and sometimes you have the feeling that the teacher doesn't always notice you. Last quarter I was in a class that had a 40% or so participation factor built in. I hadn't spoken all term so on the last day I went up to the professor and asked him to call on me, and he said "where do you sit?", to which I said to myself, "eff, this is not good". He called on me that class, and he took me to school a little bit, but it was a good experience. I'm not sure how he didn't know where I sat, but my theory was that the top part of the frame of his glasses obstructed his view of my row. I mean, the guy I sat next to fell asleep EVERY SINGLE class. Head bob and everything. Did the professor really not notice?

So fast forward to today, and I'm up there in front of the class. I'm still not the most comfortable presenter, so when I'm up there it's kind of like that time in Old School where Will Ferrell is debating James Carville and Will Ferrell gets asked a question, he takes a deep breath, gives an thoughtful and well-crafted answer, finishes, turns to his teammates and says "What just happened? I think I blacked out".


Will, I think you're ready to be sponsored by Li-Ning.

So the point of the story is that I'm up there and I'm looking into the rows of chairs and there are a handful of people who are just hardcore passed out. Eyes closed. Head tilted. I mean, I was looking for some drool action but I didn't see any. Was I so boring...no...because I was up there talking for literally two minutes so they didn't have time to fall asleep on me.

The worst part was that finally, after talking about baseball, and apple pie, and pilgrims, and fat people, and everything else American for like, four months, finally someone steps up and wants to talk about something Chinese, and I look up and two of the Chinese students are out cold, probably dreaming of the day someone would come in and talk about some Chinese product and ask their opinion so they can really show off in class...oh well.

Back in October there was a 2:10pm class (prime post-lunch food coma time) where someone in the back row was making a point, so the class had all turned to listen to him. When he was finished talking and the professor resumed his lecture everyone in the class turned back around to listen to the professor except one guy, who had literally fallen asleep listening to his classmate speak. Hard not to notice that, you know?

So in closing...there is NO CHANCE whatsoever that if you are asleep in class you aren't noticed.