An Inside Baseball Look at Something

If you didn't catch the Michigan/Wisconsin game this weekend that's too bad. Michigan had an amazing comeback to upset Wisconsin and then people went nuts. It was the kind of game you hope for when you decide to go to a school like Michigan. After a serious pre-game tailgate and then a post-game tailgate I decided I needed to go home and shower before I went out to the bars. I got out of the shower at around 9:15, said to myself, okay, I'm going to sit on my couch and catch my breath for 10 mins and then head out. I woke up on my couch in my "going out clothes" about 4 hours later. Oh well. It was still a great day and I even did a little bit of the Apache dance on top of the Bus after we won. Remember this episode....



All I know is that next week I need to do a little better job at clock management.

On Monday mornings I typically assess the mess that is my apartment. I have clothes everywhere, books everywhere, and sneakers everywhere. As I straightened up this morning I couldn't help but notice all the recruiting swag I had accumulated from last year. There's my Lehman fridge magnet, my Bear Stearns pens, my Wachovia notebook, and my pet bull named Merrill Lynch. I feel like I could turn my place into an antiques shop now. What's going on in the markets is pretty scary and I'm just hoping that by Sept 1 2009 when I start full-time I'll actually have somewhere to show up to. Ain't no guarantees of anything these days. It's a good time to be in school for sure, or I guess not in financial services.

On a totally unrelated note, I'm enrolled in a class called "Business Leadership in Changing Times". Each week we have a CEO or very senior executive come in and speak to us about a crisis his/her company faced, and each week we have a mock-press conference where everyone in the class plays a role. For example, one week I was kind of disgraced former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert (typecast much?), and the following week I was CEO of Tesla Motors (also an Israeli), and last week in an effort to broaden my acting chops I played a member of the Board of Directors of Sara Lee (an African American not from Israel). It's a pretty interesting class and basically you get hammered with questions and backed into corners and such and you hope that when you answer you don't end up sounding like Sarah Palin. That all aside, three weeks in a row the CEO/Senior Exec used the phrase "Inside Baseball" as in "I'm going to give you an Inside Baseball look at our strategic vision". And then Obama dropped "Inside Baseball" during last week's debate. I hadn't even heard people say this until like 4 weeks ago. Clearly I'm behind the times a little bit. My guess is that you'll be hearing this phrase a whole lot more now that you are aware of it, and if you've already heard of it then pat yourself on the back.

As for me, I guess my goal for the next little bit will be to continue to provide you all with the Inside Baseball analysis of what's going on in my world. I can't promise it'll be super exciting, but it'll more fun than following the financial markets.

It Rains In South Bend (Part 1)

So this is Part 1 of my Notre Dame tale. Part 2 might never happen but I wanted to keep it open-ended just in case. It was a great weekend. It rained the entire time. I got maybe 8 hours of sleep total. When I got back Sunday I was drained but after sleeping 11 hours I felt fine. Then my body said "whoa whoa whoa. Wait a second. This will teach you to never do that again", and then unleashed some horrible 24 hour bug on me that had me sweating and kind of hearing voices. It was bad, readers, it was bad. But I'm back in Ann Arbor and I'm here to tell the tale. Michigan lost to Notre Dame. We sucked. However the fun that was had during the weekend made it worth it, kind of. The following photo-documentary takes place between the hours of 2:00pm last Friday and 3:00am last Saturday...beep beep beep beep beep beep. (Like they do in "24", you know?). Whatever.

Who's ready to drive on The BUS to Notre Dame? These guys.
Sweet. But when you drive a beat up school bus on the highway for longer than it should be on the highway for bad things happen....like a busted fanbelt (or 3). Uh Oh.

"Who can fix this thing?"
"I can" said the Jewish kid from Greenwich wearing designer jeans.

"Wait, so where's the engine?".

But finally six hours later and with the help of a local handyman who just happened to be in the area (thank God) we put three lawnmower fanbelts on a school bus (not advised) and deemed it ready to go. Personally, I was voting to burn the bus collect the $400 from the insurance and rent a limo. I got vetoed. The good news, now I know what a fan belt is. The bad news, it was still raining and we were sweaty and nasty. Let's get the hell out of Albion, MI.

Things started to look up after we bought $900 worth of beer at a liquor store. Let's just say, the owners were not expecting a sale like that to happen on a rainy night. Nothing was going to stop us now...not even a small inflatable football player.

"You're going down, Irish"

Commence Power Hour.


Then things started to get kinda weird.

Actually, really weird.

But we were all friends here, so it was all good. Hooray friends! Hooray Beer!
Truth be told, I sat in my seat the entire time...expect when I needed to stick my arm out of the bus to fix the windshield wiper that broke every 10 mins. Only someone as agile as a cat could do such a thing. Good thing I was on the bus.
We finally arrived in South Bend and promptly took out a huge branch and tore the top of the bus. Oops. At least we had our three lawnmower fan belts in tact.

And before we destroyed the house we decided to get together for a group picture.
Nicely done everyone. No time to shower though, since after all, there's one shower and one bathroom. Who's ready to hit on some freckle-faced irish girls? The League of Extraordinarily Not Sober Gentleman Who Drink Sparks.

Let the games begin, or actually continue, or whatever. The scene in South Bend is horrible, and add in torrential downpours and it doesn't get much better. But we made the best of it and it was a night filled with emotion.

Sometimes we yelled.....
Sometimes we smoked cigarettes and made pretend guns with our fingers....

Sometimes we spoke too loudly whilst standing next to strangers...
Sometimes we said "hey, remember when we spoke too loudly whilst standing next to you. We're sorry about that"
Sometimes we got angry because people spilled all over us and South Bend bars sucked and it was raining out...
but sometimes we got over that and had a big laugh and were happy.
and sometimes we just wanted to close our eyes while using our pinky and index finger to make a pretend phone to call.
and sometimes we were just happy to lend a hand...

And sometimes we put our head through the TV at 3am and cut our ear, requiring stitches, and needed to go to the hospital....


And so ended the first 12 hours of the trip and we kept pace throughout the entire weekend. I went to bed at about 4am that night, woke up at about 6am in the pouring rain to help set up the bus in the lot. I wanted to die. I don't have any more pics right now but hopefully I'll get some more soon. The experience at ND was something that was a "hey that was fun and I never want to do that again" type of thing. I think I'll be doing that again two more times this season though. Oh well.

Ocho Cinco: The Blog's Neighborhood

"aaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy!!!!"
"deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!"
"phiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!"
"woooooooooooooooooooo"

The above is literally all I've been hearing from my window all weeeeeeeek!!!! It's Fall Rush, and I'm like, so nervous for ADPhi, because they like, so need to fill the house next year, and like some of those freshman are bitches and I heard one of them hooked up with a senior's ex-boyfriend, and that's not cool. I can't wait to haze them.

...and, we're back....

My day to day has been pretty uneventful. Basically, home to school, and back, and lunch and eventually out to one of the bars. Today I had to do some real people errands, like get a haircut and go to Verizon. Now that I'm down to 12 readers, or 13 now, from what I'm hearing, I need to get people back on the Finger: The Blog bandwagon. I assure you there is room, so invite people. For you loyal readers, you might recall a post last year dealing with my theory about companies utilizing the strategically place "z". In case you want to head back in time and read this I'll be here waiting for you.

Ok, so now that you know how I feel about Nogginz, you'd think I'd never go back. Later that year I found a woman there who actually did a good job. She's not back this year, apparently because she's touring with Kid Rock or something. I made that up. But yeah, she's not here anymore, so I actually had some dude cut my hair. I should've known I was in for a bad haircut when the dude turned the chair around so it DIDN'T face the mirror. So it felt like he was doing a good job, but I really couldn't tell. At one point he said, "Bro, you've got a ton of cowlicks going on back here", to which I replied, "yeah, I guess I can't really do much about that huh?", when really I wanted to say "bro, it's called being jewish, and those are called curls". And on top of it all, Edward Scissorhands pulled out a straight-razor at one point and started achop chopping.

Yeah, just keep it short and don't cut my neck.

As I said back last November, when you pay $20 for a haircut, you get a $20 haircut, homes. After my haircut debacle I went to Verizon to pick up a new phone, and normally a trip to Verizon wouldn't be blogging material but there was a woman in the store who was making a serious case for a new phone and she wasn't using her inside voice either. She claimed that her phone "got broke" and then "got stole" and because her phone broke before it was stolen she was entitled to a new phone. The woman working at the counter, a real Frances McDormand type (from Fargo) was giving the customer a ton of sarcastic sass, and made the point that if this woman's car had been stolen she wouldn't go to the dealer and ask for a new one. I thought that was a great point and should've ended the conversation right there, but the customer decided to start crying instead. It was pretty awesome.

Definitely awesome. Ya.

In a few hours I leave for glorious South Bend, Indiana to watch the Wolverines hopefully make a mockery out of Notre Dame aka the most overrated team in the country/world. I'm driving down on The BUS.

The BUS. Behind my friends.

And when I get down to South Bend I'm going to be one of twenty people living in a house built for not twenty people, and it's going to be awesome, except for the fact that there is one bathroom for the twenty of us. I'll let you know how that goes next week. Anyway, watch the game and rush ADPhi.

What's the Difference

Week 2 in Ann Arbor brought much of the same as week 1. As I was sitting with my management and operations team in the cafeteria on a Sunday night I felt like I'd never left Ann Arbor. The time last year my fellow MBA1s and I were neck deep in group work, case readings, and recruiting. What a difference a year can make. My group had to do a 4-page crisis write-up for a Lockheed Martin case, and this time around we all "got it", as in we all seemed to know how to sit there, get shit done, and move onto the next task. I just want to illustrate some of the group dynamic differences between this year and last because I think it's interesting.

Silence, silence, silence
Last Year: Sometimes you don't know when someone is thinking, or you want to give someone time to collect their thoughts before they talk. So last year you could be sitting around and everyone is looking at their screen on the four sides of a table and you don't know whether they are reading what they've written, or looking at ESPN, (espn), so you were patient because it was the beginning of the school year and you were trying to be nice, welcoming, warm, and a team player.

This Year: You are not looking at ESPN, and you know that the difference between silence and talking could amount to an extra half hour of sitting and staring at each other. You talk things through and then you move on to the next subject. Done.


My Country is Niiiiice
Last Year: Maybe you were in a group with someone from not the US and maybe he or she was shy and had a hard time communicating. Last year you might've been very patient, and you might've hung on every word this person tried to say. And genuinely you appreciated the effort, albeit at times it was not helpful in the least.

This Year: Okay, you've had a year of getting cold called, prepping for interviews, and hurling insults in English after drinking half a beer, so if you are international and can't get your point across in a few cogent sentences, I'm sorry, but your airtime is getting cut down by half. And the international students know this, and for the most part they've stepped it up in group work. So while last year they might take a solid 20 seconds to say, "um yes, I have a question, and I hope that you explain this again, because to me, I do not understand what this means. Yes. Thank you", this year it's more like, "ayo, I don't know what the eff ya'll mean, nah mean?".

This Ain't Le Bernardin, It's Iron Chef
Last Year: At Le Bernardin, not that I've been, but the devil is in the details, and the ingredients, the service, the plating, etc etc is apparently exquisite. The dinners are long and expensive and memorable, again, apparently.

This Year: Someone peel the potatoes. Someone butterfly the lamb. Someone reduce that balsamic. Who is reducing the balsamic! Someone needs to be reducing the balsamic, like right now. This year we divide and conquer. If you are good at something you do it and you volunteer to do it because you want to get it done. The difference is that the Iron Chefs are as good as the Le Bernardin chefs, and the ingredients are as good, but this time around we move with speed and purpose, and when we plate the thing it might look a little rough around the edges, but we just cooked five freaking dishes in an hour. We've realized the marginal benefit of spending that extra time making everything perfect is just not worth it, yet we are committed to a very very solid end product. And the result is that getting the work done isn't all that bad.

And lastly, I think the major difference is that as people start to get offers, or have offers, they can relax a bit. I am definitely feeling like someone took some weight off my shoulders as last Friday I received an offer.

"Dear 8 pound 6 ounce Baby Jesus, or as our brothers to the south call you, Jésus…we thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Domino’s, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell, and a full-time job offer. Amen"

A Different Kind of Bristol Scale

Yesterday my body said, "yo, chill out", so I'm listening. I'm not sure what it is, but when these MBA folks leave the workplace they all of the sudden start treating their bodies like garbage. I'm not even talking about the greasy food and cheap pitchers, I'm talking about stuff like forgetting to drink water. Some girl apparently passed out at The BUS on during Saturday's tailgate. I thought it should go without saying, but I guess maybe people do need to be reminded to drink water. During class today some girl left the class and about 20 minutes later someone from facilities came in to tell the professor she had to be taken to the hospital. Hopefully she's okay, and it was nothing serious. So I'll say it just this once, but please readers, hydrate.

Although I'm somewhat oriented already, Orientation Week lived up to the hype yet again this year. And Michigan football did not fail to disappoint yet again this year. My expectations for Michigan football are very modest, but my expectations for a solid year of social endeavors is very aggressive as it should be. What I didn't expect was my apparent lack of "class stamina". I had two classes today and while it was a pretty light day my eyelids started getting mighty heavy at around 4pm.

A bunch of my friends are in my 2:10 class and when I showed up I three of us were wearing the same exact blue polo shirt with a red horse, and not just that but another friend in the class before had the same shirt on and then three other people in my class had the same shirt on. The class was a finance class and most of the people in the class worked on Wall Street this summer, so I guess we played into every cliche of the predictable, lemming-like "finance guys". Kudos to Polo for being the "Official Outfitter" of the MBA first day of school.

Guys in b-school have much worse hairlines by the way.

It's funny to see the MBA1s all dressed up though. It'll be about a week before they are wearing t-shirts and flip flops. This is Michigan. And before it gets to be -5 degrees in three weeks people are going to want to enjoy the days of flip flops and t-shirts, and standing outside the building and throwing the football while the undergrads stroll by. And speaking of undergrads, who's the newest girl on the block to have a little baked Alaska cooking in the oven. Oh yes you are Bristol Palin. Oh yes you have a little baby baked Alaska in that tummy. So adorable. When you are 17 or whatever and have a baby in tow, it kind of kills your game at Skeeps, no? Like, do you wear a Gucci baby carrier out to the bar to match your bag?

The scary thing is that it took me about .5 seconds to find such a ridiculous item. I'm going to put this thing right up there on the ridiculous-ometer with the $400 Goyard dog bowl I saw once. Anyway, Bristol my dear, well done grabbing the local hockey stud. Those guys stay cool forever, trust me, I see them all working at the delis when I go home. Free chicken parms for life though. That's pretty awesome. Anyway, my dear Bristol is 17 going on 26, and I'm, well, 26 going on 17 or something like that these days. It's funny how things work out sometimes I guess. Enjoy the US Open.