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.