Should I Stay or Should I Go?

How do you know when it's time to leave a bar? When two guys get in a fight and fists start flying.

How do you know when it's time to stay at a bar? When an Asian girl punches the birthday girl in the breast, and the birthday girl takes her magic wand and smacks the Asian girl in the face. When I see a girl with a birthday hat on get punched in the breast, you better believe it's going to make the blog. I'm sure both of their fathers would've been proud.

Suffice to say, when these two fights happened within one minute of each other last night I was very conflicted as to what I was going to do. This Asian girl had the full on "Asian blush" from drinking and then she turned even more red after the fight. She looked like an heirloom tomato that was wearing way too much mascara. Naturally, the thoughts of tomatoes suddenly made me hungry, so my friend and I just decided the smartest thing to do was get a slice of pizza.

Maybe I'm getting a little long in the tooth, but watching these children lose their minds at the bar yesterday was shocking. Obviously part of the reason is the excessive drinking of bottom shelf alcohol, but it's also because walking to a bar with no jacket and then going into a bar that's a terrarium-friendly 75 degrees just screws with the mind and body.

Hey kids of suburbia...remember making terrariums...or should I say, hey mothers of suburbia out there...remember making these for your kids when they told you at 9pm the night before it was due?


But anyway, last night, I rocked a sweater, and again I got a comment that clearly I wasn't an undergrad. But then I flipped the script and pulled some David Blaine street magic on this girl. I said, where are you from? She said New York. I said, "why are you going to tell me New York, when both you and I know you're from Long Island". Then we realized we lived next door to one another and I told her I'd seen her walking to class last week. She said, well what was I wearing, and I said "tights and Uggs". Two for two. Then I tried to make her personality reappear. Two out of three ain't bad.

I'm going to go to bed now. I'm going to the local mall tomorrow to look for some new spectacles, as my other ones broke. I saw on another blog that you could set up a survey and have people vote on things. I wish I could do that with some frames, but I'm not that tech savvy yet. More later...

Stop Stealing My Jobs

Before we left for Winter Break we had a final Corporate Finance meeting. And yes, I assure you it is as nerdy as you think it is. The guy who ran the meeting was a second-year MBA who volunteered his time to shepherd the MBA1s through the recruiting process. He said that when we came back to school we'd be able to feel tension in the air that wasn't there previously. This tension, he said, was caused by everyone freaking out about recruiting. His advice: Go to school, get your business done, and then get out. This isn't going to be particularly hard for me because that's how I operate anyway. You'll never find me in the lobby passed out in front of my laptop with my iPod and a half-eaten burrito. I prefer to do that in the privacy of my own apartment, thank you very much.

For the past three days I've basically been searching the Michigan job board, eating pretzels and hummus, and going to the gym. I've ventured out of my apartment exactly once each day. One day I decided to pick up my coursepacks at the library, which meant I had to walk to school. What I saw as I walked in was what I expected...a lot of foreign students sitting at tables, passed out in front of their computers. But I was surprised when I went into the library and saw a couple of my close friends studying up for their banking interviews. I wasn't so much surprised that they were actually studying, but it was kind of weird to see four friends in the library and not anyone else in there. Shouldn't they be watching youtube or crushing beer cans on their head? Anything, but being the only four people in the libes, you know? And then I got to thinking that different people are going to handle the next few weeks (recruiting) in different ways. So I decided to making sweeping generalization and lump people into groups...

1. The Oh Just Shut Ups
"Oh, woe is me, I have three interviews a week for the next three weeks. Everyone wants to interview me. Feel bad for me because I'm so damn smart that everyone is dying to talk to me and take me out to fancy dinners". Somebody get me my violin. I'm not saying they're bad people, but I am saying that they know they're smart, I know they're smart, so just be smart and shut up about it. The Oh Just Shut Ups talk about recruiting non-stop, whether they're at a bar or in the cafeteria. They get five offers and then have the chutzpah to bitch about choosing.

2. The Voodoo Doll Keepers
So quiet these ones are. They'll get all the interviews and not say a word. You know they keep voodoo dolls that bear uncanny resemblances to you, and when you cramp up in the middle of the night you wonder whether it's dehydration or a pin prick from 5 blocks away. These folks will be wearing a suit for the next three weeks and you'll debate whether they sleep in that suit, or whether they even sleep at all. You always see them in the lobby with the Wall Street Journal, watching everyone all shifty-eyed like. They'll take a crap in your backpack and then walk away, and then they'll get the job you wanted. These lads and lasses scare the shit out of me.




3. ChickenHeads
Hey Ladies...how many Chanel jackets do you have? You gotta go change before your next interview because you wore the same top back at the first meet-and-greet in September? Really? That was like four months ago. I'm pretty sure nobody will notice. These are the students who run around like chickens without their damn heads. You know EVERYTHING about what's going with their recruiting process, and you don't give a shit either. You know they have a small salad dressing stain on their shirt, but you don't want to upset them so you just keep it to yourself. ChickenHeads end up getting jobs, but they also end up crying at some point in the next three weeks. You offer them a shoulder to cry on, especially if they're cute, which for the most part eliminates a solid portion of the woman I go to school with. Zing.

4. The Hunt-and-Peckers
Similar to your mother's typing technique, the hunt-and-peckers seek out a company and peck away. You might hear them say "Oh, I'm totally feeling the Yum! Brands internship. Did you see what they did in the market yesterday? I've made some really good connections there, and I think I can really see myself there". They've gone to every one of the company's events and they know the names of the recruiters' kids. You go up to a hunt-and-pecker and say, "Bro, how come I didn't see you at the Yum! Brands dinner last night?" Then you watch them freak out, and you just laugh to yourself because the Yum! Brands didn't host a dinner last night. They end up getting the job though.

5. The Easter Eggers
These morons like to put all of their eggs in one or two or three baskets. They sit at their desks dreaming of getting a job at a company that hires 2 people worldwide per summer. And then these people escape reality by writing in their blogs instead of reading their boring-ass accounting coursepack, and they'll come home after playing basketball and melt some of that swiss cheese on the hamburger they made last night. They have Accounting at 8:00a tomorrow morning and they are really really not looking forward to it. They also have to do their laundry sometime in the next two days. Hi Mom.

6. The James Bonders
The James Bonders are smooth operators. They call them James Bonders because every time they have an interview they kill it. They're confident and look super sharp in their suits and have full windsor knots so big that it makes Michael Irvin look like Ragged Dick (pre-riches, of course). These folks get the job. They also date undergrads.

I could go on, but the moral of the story is you have to find a happy medium somewhere, and not let all these crazy people rain on your parade, or ruffle your feathers, or pee in your canteen. You feel me? If/When I get a job, believe you me, I'm going to light this whole blog on fiyah, and you will see the flames all the way from NYC. I'm gonna go find me a chickenhead now. Nighty night.

All Aboard the WT Express...Wooo...Wooo

...Next stop Orlando.

I'm back in Ann Arbor, and there is a lot of snow on the ground. I'm happy to be back, but not necessarily to go to class on Monday. I got home tonight and I made a true college meal, eggs and creamed spinach. But that's not particularly exciting. What is particularly exciting is that I got to see arguably the best bowl game (thus far) of the season. Jimbo and I left the beautiful weather in Palm Beach at about 3:30 on New Year's Eve and drove top down up the Florida turnpike. By the time we got into Orlando, it was cold, pouring, and people were giving us looks because the top was still down and we were getting poured on. Sorry, Orlandoans, it's not easy to pull off to the side of your shitty highway to put the top up when the shoulder is closed. We had bigger fish to fry though...it was New Year's Eve. We met up with six of my friends from Michigan and proceeded to have a seriously awesome time..

Popped Collars...apparently "in" yet again for the new year

The next morning we were up early because Michigan kicked off at 1p. And while, according to ESPN, 91% of America thought the Wolverines would become "Gatorbait" that afternoon, um, it didn't quite work out that way. It was grey, it was cold, it was situated in the middle of the swamp/'hood and it was a beautiful thing to see Michigan smack Florida around and win the game. It was equally beautiful to see all 40,000 or so Gator fans and their 200 or so collective teeth walk out of the stadium while the Michigan faithful stuck around to see the trophy presentation and to hear some parting words from Lloyd Carr.

The sun finally came out but it was freaking freezing at that point and it was time to go back to the bars for a few celebratory cold ones and some good-natured gloating. The next morning my friends took off and I was left to kill a few hours before I took the train back to Palm Beach. I figured while it would be a particularly long train ride, at least I would see a little bit of America. I thought it was kind of an appropriate thing to do, you know, given that it was an election year, and I could kind of simulate a presidential candidate traveling through the middle of NOWHERE from one campaign stop to the next. There were two women behind me as I waited in line to get on the train in Orlando. One woman offered this advice to her friend who was about to board the train. She said "Girl, call me when you get in, and if I don't pick up then call me next week, because you know my phone bill is the last bill I pay every month". They both laughed, as did I, and we were off...

Every time I looked out the window I saw hawks circling. They circled over the orange groves in Winterhaven, they circled over the trailerparks in Seabring, they circled over the rusted cars in Kissimmee, and they circled over everything in between. It was as if the entire middle of the state was dead or dying and the hawks were ready to pick at the remains. Quite sad.

So here I am now, and I've got a few days until classes start, but unfortunately not a few days until the work begins. But between now and then get excited, get very excited, because The Wire is back starting this Sunday.

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.
----

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.