561's and Heartbreak

A word play on Kanye's new album "808's and Heartbreak". You know, 561, being the Palm Beach area code. Get it? Jeez.

I see hawks circling The Breakers right now, which means they either are about to chow down on the scraps of a ridiculously overpriced lunch, or they can read the New York Times. I’m at the epicenter of this Bernie Madoff scandal, sunny Palm Beach. If you ever wanted to hear some grown up people use some grown up language, just take a walk down the street or go into a restaurant and ask someone about Bernie Madoff. I’m out by the pool listening to Gucci Mane’s Hard To Kill, and ol’ Gucci uses some strong words, but you bring in someone’s Grandma who just got hoodwinked by Mr. Madoff, and I feel like you’ll hear some Yiddish mixed in with some Hotlanta hoodrat slang that would even have our friend Gucci Mane heading for the hills with his tail between his legs. And I don’t mean to sound flippant about this but, “what about the children?”, not the trustafarians, but all the kids that were helped by the charitable donations Mr. Madoff’s clients made. Not cool, Bernie. Not cool. You open today’s NYTimes and you see this crook walking around Manhattan with his Barbour coat on mugging for the camera and it’s sick. Apparently he’s under house arrest from 7pm to 9am. Poor baby. Between HBO onDemand, the Nintendo Wii, and SeamlessWeb, this guy’s probably having more fun while under house arrest than he was before he was under house arrest. Does The Law think they are preventing an old man/crook from going to One Oak and getting bottle service? I’ve lived in New York in the Winter, and during those rough January nights I basically put myself on house arrest. Baby, it’s cold outside.

But on a lighter and more awesome note, I am on hiatus from eating like a college kid right now. Food, and I mean real food, tastes delicious as hell. My tastebuds are like, Anise!?, Paprika!?, Keylime!?. Sweet culinary relief. To open the freezer and see ice cream sandwiches is a beautiful thing. I just don’t buy that stuff for myself, ever. What would I do for a Klondike bar? Apparently the answer is to get on a plane and head to Florida.

This time of the year all the grandkids come down to Florida and everyone wears their pastels, khakis, and loafers sans socks and generally looks pretty. I went to a new bar by myself the other night to have a beer and watch some sports. Next to me were two guys, probably late 20s, early 30s, with some very very attractive blonde girls who looked like they were the spawn of Lily Pulitzer and Paul Newman. For my own sanity I’m going to assume they were absolute bitches with bad values (even though they probably were not). And the reason I say this is because they were hanging out with these two guys, Piper and Blakeley, who seemed like they’d rank kind of high on the jerk scale. Again, judging books by covers. Judging books by covers. Ok, so maybe I was just a little jealous. Why can’t my name be Piper, damn it, or at the very least something cool like Barkevious Mingo. And if you think I’ve got the Tom Wolfe-ian skills to make up names like that, I swear to you, on the 6-month CD with 4% return I just opened, that those names are for real. See, a 4% return…not good, not bad, but a good chance that in 6 months I won’t want to call Citibank a motherfucking schmendrik and punch it in the face.

Love Me, Love my Sweater

I'm outy 5000. Off to Florida for Winter Break. A new tradition that I've adopted during the holidays since I've been at school has become what I'm going to call the "Kitchen Sink Omelet Jambaroo". This entails making an omelet with every perishable item in my fridge and pushing myself as far as I can without throwing up. Tonight's omelet was pretty historical...eggs, roast beef, zucchini, cucumbers, and provolone, with a little bit of BBQ sauce to mask the nastiness, or add to the nastiness, I'm not sure. Waste not want not.

Exams are over and I have two other written deliverables due in the next couple of days, but it's nothing I can't do remotely from a computer. Thank you Steve Jobs. This whole winter break thing is a pretty sweet deal. In fact, it's so sweet I'm thinking about pursuing a dual degree so I can stick around one more year and get another set of summer vacation, winter breakage, and spring breakage. Sticking around one more year would also let me take advantage of the awesomely impressive new business school. If you want to see what $100 million can get you, come up and visit the new business school. It's state of the art, and incredibly environmentally friendly. In fact, it is so environmentally friendly that urinals don't use water. I don't understand how that's possible. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't urinals without water just called walls? Anyway, the main atrium aka the Winter Garden, is lit by what seems to be a few 60watt bulbs, but through some crazy smoke and mirror effect, some mice on treadmills, some well placed reflectors, and a splash of Kanye West, the entire building gets lit up from just a few small lights. It's definitely some black magic nonsense. There's also a fancy pants gym which is great because for just $99.99 for the semester you can now work out next to the annoying people you see all the time in class. I will not be joining, for the same reason I don't think I'd ever join a gym in the same building I worked in. It's kind of like separation of church and state. You feel me?

And something else I am totally feeling are these ugly sweater parties. I brought the sweater pictured below to Ann Arbor because a) I like it and b) it's warm as hell, and now it's become my "ugly sweater". I think ugly sweaters in the northeast can't hold a candle to ugly sweaters in the midwest.



And if you are wondering about the masks, a buddy is going abroad for the second semester (yes, that still happens, even in business school), so we made a few funnies over sake bombs and hibachi.

Pretty creepy. One of us joked that it would be funny if we all went in and robbed a bank while wearing the masks. What wasn't funny was when one of the guys above ended up in jail later that night. Oops. I guess that's the thing with sake bombs, they sneak up on you like whoa.

I'm as pale as I'm going to get, so it's time to sign off from Ann Arbor.

Blogging Malaise

I'm a little peeved about the formatting of this blog. Something happened and this just isn't as pretty as it used to be, not that it was ever particularly aesthetically pleasing. Also, I'm a little peeved that everyone and their mother has a blog because I'm starting to feel like I've jumped the shark a little bit. I was reading some other blog the other day, and it was like, "Oh my, the bloody marys at my new favorite brunch spot in the West Village are so totally amaaaaazing", and I thought to my self, who gives a shit, and then I said, well who gives a chicken apple sausage about what I'm saying. This blue and drab green color-scheme makes my blog depressing too, so I think a change /face lift will be coming shortly.

So to recap, Thanksgiving was good, flying in and out of Detroit, the worst city of all time was easy and now I'm nose to the grindstone for the next week with exams/papers and such. My biggest observation from New York, if you go out and dress like a trendy lumberjack you are just fine. Plaid is the new black, the new Chinese, and the new Paul Bunyan-ness. The one night I went out in the city my white button down left me feeling like Professor Square. While I am assuming the role of Professor for just a moment, let me adjust my glasses and make a remark about the auto industry bailout. I have not read anything indicating that five years from now GM, Chrysler, or Ford will be able to compete with foreign automakers, with the bailout money, or even with "Arab Money"...



As we learn in class, pre-negotiated bankruptcy allows you a piece of the pie while there still is at least some pie to cut a piece from. I've seen these Michiganders and believe me, they love their pie, so let's give them at least a little bit, and not make them pay to help these poor CEOs avoid flying coach to their next bailout hearing. If you think it's only the Big 3 who are suffering here in Michigan you are sorely mistaken. Chipotle is getting desperate too. I received a coupon in the mail for a free burrito, salad, or order of tacos. Do you know what's about to happen? A Fajita Burrito Bowl, with barbacoa, sour cream, lettuce, salsa, cheese, and guac is about to happen. Now I will get to Chipotle and I won't order nachos, or a drink so I feel kind of bad because they're trying to get you to buy the fixins as well, but I'm bringing a buddy along to have dinner with me, so I'm stimulating the Michigan economy...one burrito at a time. Put that in your Nobel Prize for Economics pipe Paul Krugman. And if that doesn't work, just hire Busta Rhymes and Andy Garcia's Arab doppelganger.

I'm avoiding all of the Michigan economic messiness, and from my asbestos filled faux-ivory tower, my biggest issue right now is figuring out where to go for Spring Break. Everyone wants something different, and you can't please everyone. I was always the guy who messed up housing in undergrad because I didn't want to piss anyone off. And I'm still that guy today. While everyone is looking for the most cost-efficient trip, I think it is going to turn out that we're going to go somewhere halfway around the world. The good thing is that Spring Break is two weeks this year instead of one. Why? I don't know. I will not be arguing this.

This blog is all over the place but I was due. Enjoy the weekend, and watch Duke vs Michigan because I'm going to try to sit awfully close to the court and get my mug on TV.

Eat. Drink. And Be Bloody Mary.

I just got off the phone with Lenovo tech support. My left speaker stopped working, and who knew that by uninstalling installing and restarting about 14 times I'd finally be able to listen to AC/DC on both speakers again just 67 mins later. Whew. But seriously, what a royal pain in my ass. The woman I spoke with originally said I'd have to send my laptop out to Memphis for a check up, and I said "Oh hells to the no". That wasn't happening. But everything is all good now.

This weekend. Columbus. Ass whooping. Windburn. Spicy Bloody Marys (Maries?). Hot Chocolate with peppermint schnapps. Beer. Beer spiked with Jack (Boilermaker?). Hot Dogs. Chili dogs. Sausage McMuffin. Cookies. Pretzels. Tummy hurts (so good).

Despite losing and capping a miserable season, Ohio State was a solid time. The tailgate, which was put on by my buddy's girlfriend's Dad was serious. Here's a pic. It's blurry but here are all the Michigan peoples at the tailgate with our host in the middle.

O-H...I-know we suck this year.

And the best part was that I found a secret bathroom in the basement of the bookstore which was convenient, close, and clean. There wasn't much harassing from the Ohio State fans, but as you can see, there wasn't a whole lot of Michigan gear visible...not by coincidence either. In some ways Ohio State fans don't want to kick our ass that badly, on the field that is. I can't speak for their outside-the-game mentality. They want to beat the crap out of us in a hard fought contest, and I don't know if Michigan will be able to bring the pain for a few years at least.

I think one of my favorite moments was on the way back to Ann Arbor we pulled up to a stop light and in the back of the guy's car that was stopped next to us he had a shotgun propped up in his baby's car seat. The baby was not in the car seat though, thankfully. I just don't think you're going to see that in the NY-Metro area so much, and I'm all right with that.

So I've got one more day of class left and then it's off to NY/CT for Thanksgiving. It'll probably be a bit before I get back on the blogosphere but coming back home always gives me something to talk about. Unfortunately I'll have a decent amount of work to do, but I'll just be happy to be home. So to all you loyal readers, I'm thankful that you all, or as they say in the Western PA/OHIO, I'm thankful that 'yins' keep coming back for more. Eat much turkey and enjoy.

I'm Wearing a Hoodie to the Last Game

Greetings. I wanted to hit you with a quick post since I leave tomorrow for sunny Columbus, OH, home of the Ohio State Buckeyes. Michigan travels to Ohio State to DOCUME%7E1/John/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-6.jpg" alt="" />renew what is arguably the best rivalry in college sports. This year I don't know how much of a game it's going to be since Michigan has had it's worst football season since George Washington chopped that cherry tree, or something. This is kind of how I envision the game going.

Wedgie.

From all accounts, including Michigan and OSU fans, the Ohio State fans are absolutely horrible. Like, they are crazy, and will fight, and will throw things and dump tar on puppies. So my goal is to not die, which I think I can handle reasonably well. Trying to hop onto someone's porch and have a beer a la Penn State will be something that I will avoid at all costs. A win at Ohio State will make Michigan fans feel a ton better but Ohio State is really solid, so I'm not holding my breath.

As of late I've started feeling like a senior and this is for several reasons. One, because I only have six months of school left, or maybe more like five, and two, because I turned 27 today, and going to Scorekeepers makes me feel a little bit more like an old dirty man each day. It's not enough to deter me from going but it's enough to make me think about it. Now last year Scorekeepers (Skeeps) was the spot and I don't think my friends and I missed a single Tuesday or Saturday there Jan through April. For whatever reason we gave up on it a bit this year, but we all made a pact (this is what you have to do if you are old ass bitches like we are) that we were going to not go home after our class let out at 10p and we were go to Skeeps. So we went. And as I've said before, please Lord let me never have a daughter, please Lord let me never have a daughter. Maybe you remember how Mike Tyson used to enter the ring wearing simply a towel with a hole cut for the head. If not, here is it.

I wish the pic was bigger because you could see how bad ass this guy looked. Since then things have kind of gone downhill for Mr. Tyson, but back then, sweet Jesus, watch out. Now picture that towel, but then cut off about two-thirds of it and somehow make it a woman's shirt, and that my friends is the dress code at Skeeps. So these girls dress like bad asses in a different kind of way. So to the girls, I say, "go on with your bad selves". To the guys, seriously, what is this all about. I didn't get the memo, but apparently you have to wear a hooded sweatshirt out at all times. And not only that but underneath you need a cool $50 t-shirt. Granted, these guys are the ones who end up getting the girls, but we're talking about undergrad dating so nobody knows anything anyway. What seems somewhat apparent is that "Hooded Sweatshirtitude" is directly correlated with "douchebaggery".

Like if you wear this sweatshirt it's like, okay, whatever, I'm cold and I'm going to sit in the corner and smoke cigarettes and I may need a lint roller for the dog hair.

But then maybe you kick it up a notch and wear this which says, ok, I've seen some pics of Kanye, and I'm trying to be stylish without being offensive.




Or maybe you just turn up the volume and wear this, which to me says, "Oh shit, someone spilled paint on me...pysch...it comes like this, and I paid $300 to look like someone spilled on me. What up now, son."

I don't have any "cool" hooded sweatshirts, although I think I'd like to have one. Maybe. Maybe not.

So I'm going to call it quits and read some HBS case which I am pretty much sick of at this point, but I'm not complaining because I don't have anything to complain about these days. Have a good weekend folks.

Flux Capacitors and Whatnot

Man, that was an interesting week. I'm in my pajamas this grey Friday and I'm another week closer to graduation, which is something I've been thinking a lot about recently, mostly because when I leave this place the days of blogging on a lazy Friday in my pajamas while listening to music are so going to be over it's not even funny. Speaking of work and being a grown up one day, my future employer had a recruiting dinner last night and it was pretty nice to be on the other side of the table this year answering questions and sitting back and relaxing a bit. I really don't like "holding court" at these recruiting events but I didn't find it to be that much of a drag. In fact it was kind of nice. My only major qualm was that the guy next to me was ruining his Blue Label by mixing it with Coke. Other than that, put me at a dinner where I'm getting fed like a champion, and give me a captive audience that is going to laugh at all my jokes and I'm like a little piggy in shit.

This year's Corporate Finance prospectives/recruits are once again are a very international, heavily Asian-skewed group. As a Caucasian male (with a some flava) I am in the minority. So this brings me to my story du jour. So a Chinese, a Pakastani, a French Canadian, and an American walk into class.... and while this might sound like it's the preamble to some joke, it really was the preamble to my week, which kind of was like a joke come to think of it. I'm taking a CleanTech Venture Assessment class. "That's cool", you say, to which I reply, "eh, maybe, maybe not". Our work for this course centers around assessing a CleanTech, you know, venture or whatever. On Monday we got our teams and projects (my team consisting of the aforementioned motley crew), and like a swift kick to the mid-section, my team was informed on Monday that on Thursday we had to present our initial assessment of the technology, which was thin film solar and specifically, OLEDs, which obviously stands for Organic Light Emitting Diodes. Obviously. So how this class works is that there's one MBA in each group and the rest are Masters of Engineering aka Masters of Nerdometry. So it was going to be me mobilizing the United Nations Army to get this project done. And here were some issues.


Issue #1: Will the Real Xiaopei please stand up?

There was a person in my group named Xiaopei (Sh-ow-pay). When I set up the meeting to meet and hash out a powerpoint presentation I had no idea who this Xiaopei character was, and not to be all racialist here, but there may or may not be a few Asians who are Masters of Engineering students. So I'm sitting in the lobby of the Bioengineering Building and I'm trying to find Xiaopei. At this point, I'm not wearing my glasses, so when I'm not rocking my specs I've been known to squint a little. So there I am, this "round-eye", squinting at every Asian walking by, guy or girl, and asking them if they were Xiaopei, which unfortunately for my cause sounded a lot like Sharpei.

I said Xiaopei, not Sharpei.

It was going to be a matter of time before someone came back and knocked me out with a laptop or named me Biggot of the Year. Thankfully, I only embarrassed myself for 5-10 mins before the real Xiaopei (a girl) emerged. Good lord, this was not a good start.


Issue #2: And we're talking about what exactly?

So after Team United Nations finally sat down, them engineering cats started talking all kinds of craziness. I think they were speaking Wookie for a minute. This is the marketing position statement we came up with and by "we" I mean not me.

"For the manufacturer of solar panels using thin film, the OLAMco Organic Bilayer Nanoparticle Thin Film is more efficient and more economical than other thin film because it uses a patented nanoparticle technology that lowers costs by using organic materials instead of costly polysilicon or metal oxide materials and a patented manufacturing process which enables large format applications and a more robust finished product."

Well, duh.

I was trying to contribute to the tech talk, but let's just say that my "chlorophyll...more like BORE-ophyll" joke fell on deaf ears.

Anyway, there were several different kinds of language barriers in place and that's an understatement.


Issue #3: Time Crunch


Turning this thing around was not particularly easy either. I guess because all I do is group work I come off being that Type-A b-school guy who is checking in to make sure everything is going as expected. I am surely more mellow than "that guy" but someone has to be the heavy sometimes. Despite the challenges we actually put something pretty solid together and like I told my group, at 6pm on Thursday we'll be done and it is what it is. And it was. Mission Accomplished. Now all I have to do is figure out what the hell we actually said.

About that Vote...

...I rocked that ish. It's been a gorgeous week in Ann Arbor, and I'm sitting in my apartment, the sun is setting and I'm listening to The Isley Brothers greatest hits, which I most certainly did not download illegally from the internets. I think voting in a college town is particularly interesting because students get really fired up and emotional about voting. Unfortunately, on Tuesday people were getting fired up because the lines to vote were really long, and the A-M line was waaaay long than the N-Z line. True, there are probably more people with last names with A-M than N-Z, but what made it worse was that the woman volunteer who was doing the paperwork at the front of the A-M line was so damn slow it was painful. The reason she was slow was kind of amusing though. See, this woman was probably pushing close to three bills, and she had decided to rest her breasts on the table for support or whatever. The problem arose when she had to find people's names to sign them in and give them the voting materials because her breasts kept blocking her view of the names. So basically a local woman's breasts almost thwarted democracy in Ann Arbor on Tuesday. But we prevailed, as did Obama, and Obama supporter or not you gotta be at least a little excited. How Obama can possibly live up to all these expectations, I just don't know, but I'm interested to see how this all is going to play out. So that was last Tuesday and I'm going to take it back to last weekend for a Halloween recap.

For whatever reason I'm apparently 9 years old and I got an ear infection last week, which meant I had to go on meds, and thus had to curb all alcohol consumption, which was fine, but it's a lot easier to get fired up about Halloween after a couple of porch sodas, ya know? I went to a Halloween party last Friday, not dressed up and ready to just say hello and then head back home. But a funny thing happened on the way to the party. I just looked around at all the crazy nonsense walking the streets of Ann Arbor and I started getting jealous of all the fun I was going to miss out on. When I arrived at the party I went up to my buddy who wasn't dressed up either and I said very simply, "we need to get costumes and we need to go to Rick's". So in a matter of 20 minutes we had rustled up some costumes and were ready to rock. And let me tell you, Rick's was an absolute shit show. Dogs making out with cats, Borats making out with Crayola Crayons, bananas making out with Pocahontases...complete insanity. There were some inappropriately awesome costumes this year which again makes me hope I never have a daughter. I think the most ridiculous costume was one I saw last Thursday. Some girl was outside at 1am in red boyshorts/underwear and a bra and she was standing face pressed to the wall of the parking garage across the street from my place, I'm assuming trying to grab some warmth from the wall or something (I don't think she was sober). Every single car slowed down to look at her, and shady guys were yelling to her from out their cars as if she was literally a prostitute. I'm still not sure if she was actually a student or a real life prostitute because I still can't figure out what her costume could've been aside from "Whore". Like does Ricky's sell prepacked "Whore" costumes like they do Snow White and Naughty Nurse or whatever? Maybe. For whatever reason there were an abundance of smurfs this year, which always reminds me of this clip from Family Guy...



On a college campus the best part of Halloween is seeing girls in costume walk home in the morning. I would easily drop a large sum of money to see the girl who dressed as a Smurf (blue face and body paint and all) walk home through the Diag in the morning. Yeah, I'm going to miss college when I leave this place. What I will not miss are those damn crows which are back again this year. As documented back last November these crows or as I call them, messengers of the devil, have decided to wake me up at ungodly hours the past week with their caw-ing. I am literally thinking of hiring some redneck to shoot them. In the event I don't get torn to shreds by these birds I'll be making my way "downtown" to Main St. this evening to see what's good in the A2. I'm guessing probably not too much, but it's worth a try. Have a good weekend loyal readers. Caw.

Dear Dairy

Yes dairy, not diary. I got some dairy related issues right now. I'm a little sick and I can't smell my milk, so I don't know if it's bad or not. I know that religious Jews who strictly observe the sabbath have non-Jews turn on the lights and other appliances for them because it's illegal to turn on anything on the sabbath if you're observant like that. Well if there's someone who goes around turning on lights for those who can't turn on lights shouldn't there be someone to go around smelling milk f0r those who can't smell their milk?

Rebecca Romijn-NotStamos, please smell my milk.

If my mammary serves me correctly it's been a week since I've bought milk, but breast assured, as soon as I'm feeling better I'm going to go out and buy at least two jugs. I mean, I'm a growing boy here and I need my vitamin D. Ah, but there are many ways to get your dairy and your vitamin D. After all there's cheese.

Yes, there is cheese, but there's also the African American man behind the deli counter at Kroger who I think thinks I'm racist. This guy seems to be a really nice guy, but I swear to you he is trying to make me out to be racist or something. For example, when I go up to the counter I'll order Boar's Head Black Forest Ham, because a) Boar's Head is the best, and b) I like their black forest ham. Simple enough. So the guy will go to the back of the deli station and he'll yell to me "what kind of ham do you want!?", and I yell to him "Black forest ham, please!", and he'll say, "what forest ham?" and I'll say "black forest ham", and he'll say "Cracked forest ham!?", and I'll say "no. black. forest. ham". And then he'll kind of give me this look like, "oh now you going yell black all loud and stuff in the middle of a supermarket, you cracker ass cracker mayonnaise-and-white-bread-eatin' motherfucka". I mean, what am I supposed to do, I want my Boar's Head Black Forest Ham. So when he's done he'll come up and give me my ham and ask me if that's all, and that's never all. I usually want some cheese too and I like cheddar so of course this guy, trying to pin me into corner, leans in and says all softly, "white cheddar or yellow cheddar?". I mean, it's like he's asking me "Confederacy cheddar, or Union cheddar?", and he says it with a look that says, "go ahead honky, order the white cheddar, go ahead and order your supremacist cheddar you close-minded no-rhythm bitch". So of course I always go with the yellow cheddar because I don't want to be a racist cheese-orderer. I really don't know what to do, but every week I just keep coming back for more. I think the safe bet is going with roast beef and the colby jack next time.


Apropos of nothing, Halloween is on the horizon, and we all know what this means...invasion of the "sexy bumblebees!!"

Sexy Bumblebees...usually a bunch of tricks.

If I can't muster up a story for you about Halloween then I'm turning in my pen, or modem, or computer, or whatever.